April i, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
491 
it through the glasses I could see burros and 
men coming toward camp. I knew that they 
must have the head to return so soon, and hastily 
scrambled down and walked toward them. As 
1 came up I saw that the first burro had a huge 
sheep head on it, and I could hardly believe 
when I saw it that it was the one which we had 
seen the day before. We brought it back to 
camp in triumph, and on measuring it, it proved 
to be a wonderful head, with i6*4 inch base by 
36 inches in length. 
Luck had finally changed for J. G. M. and he 
had succeeded in making good use of his one 
chance, as he had killed one of the biggest rams 
that had been taken out of the country for some 
time. 
They had found the sheep just under the cliffs 
where we had lost the blood trail. He had 
fallen dead over the precipice the night before. 
The first shot had struck him right through the 
we went up to the hot springs. We found a 
very beautiful spring further up the canon than 
I had gone in the morning, where a great stream 
of hot water gushed out of the cliff, and fell 
down in a succession of pools, the water cool¬ 
ing rapidly as it flowed, and by going down as 
far as was necessary, a person could get a bath 
in any temperature that he desired. The pres¬ 
ence of a large amount of water also brought 
out a luxuriance of vegetation that we had not 
seen equalled before in Lower California. There 
were gentians in bloom and goldenrod and other 
flowers, and some really green grass. We spent 
a luxurious afternoon in bathing, smoking and 
loafing and returned to camp for supper. 
The next day was J. G. M.’s day of rest, and 
Eleno and I started out again deer hunting. We 
went back on the trail to where J. G. M. had 
killed the ram, and as we were going up it, a 
coyote ran out and started across the desert. 
started for the arm of the lake where we had 
camped the second day in. It was time our trip 
ended, as the horses showed the effects of three 
weeks of scant fare very heavily. The captain 
was careful of his stock, and always camped 
near the best feed he could find, but the best 
feed in Lower California would have made a 
Northern horse drop dead with astonishment. 
A few spare bunches of withered grass and some 
ironwood trees in leaf was “good feed.” 
Though the horses and mules were thin, the 
four burros seemed as well as ever. They al¬ 
ways went in two pairs, and never by any chance 
changed off, each burro associating only with 
his partner and seeming to hold the other two 
in contempt. They had all the dignity in patience 
of untold years, though one little fellow not 
much bigger than a Newfoundland dog would 
sometimes jump about a little, and was, there¬ 
fore, always called by Eleno “Muy broncho 
MOUNTAIN SHEEP COUNTRY. 
CAMP AT PALM MAR. 
shoulders, going in from the front and coming 
out behind the fore leg, while the second shot 
had gone straight through the middle of the 
body. It was a remarkable exhibition of the 
vitality of these animals that he had gone fully 
a mile and lived half an hour with two such 
wounds from a soft-nose .405 bullet. The hind 
quarters of this ram had been badly eaten by the 
coyotes, but we still got enough fresh meat from 
him to supply our immediate wants, as the veni¬ 
son had just given out. 
This completed our sheep hunting for the trip, for 
we were now out of the sheep country, and we had 
the heads we wanted. J. G. M. had gone in from 
the first with the statement that he only wanted 
one head, while I had willingly limited myself 
to two. We had certainly been greatly favored 
by fortune, as the smallest of our three heads 
was larger than the largest head taken out by 
the party just before us, though they had been 
forty-two days in the mountains and had killed 
five rams. 
As he had not had a good day of rest with 
nothing on his mind on the trip, J. G. M. de¬ 
cided that he wanted to stay over one day at 
the camp at Agua Caliente, so that afternoon 
Unfortunately for him, like Lc-t’s wife, he stop¬ 
ped a long distance off and looked back. I took 
one shot at him with my rifle, knocking him 
over. I certainly thought we had that coyote, 
but when we got to where he fell, he had gone, 
and on examination we found pieces of his leg 
bone which had been knocked out by the bullet. 
The distance was evidently too great for the 
bullet to carry up, even though I had shot a 
little high, and it had cut off his hind leg at the 
knee. We followed his trail for some time and 
Eleno gave another remarkable exhibition of 
tracking, but it was evident the coyote would 
go all day faster than we could follow, so we 
were forced to give him up. We turned back 
and took to looking for deer, but though we 
worked hard- and long, we saw no deer and re¬ 
turned to camp at last under the first cold and 
rainy sky that we had seen. It looked like a 
heavy storm and kept up a spatter of rain dur¬ 
ing the night. About 8 o’clock that night one 
white and two Mexican cowpunchers rode up 
the arroyo and camped near us. They were 
crossing the mountains and left early in the 
morning without having come in contact with us. 
Next day our storm had blown over, and we 
burro”—very wild. There is no question that 
for a country like Lower California, an animal 
like a burro, which will only drink once a day 
at most and which can go comfortably for forty- 
eight to sixty hours without water, is a tre¬ 
mendous advantage. 
We still had three days of travel between us 
and civilization, and we finally left the moun¬ 
tains and reached the laguna early in the after¬ 
noon. The captain went up to the spring at the 
foot of the mountains and got our last supply 
of fresh water, and the next morning we struck 
out for Signal Mountain. It was the same long 
pull through desert that we had had coming 
out, and the midges were still with us in swarms. 
But at last we reached the end of the laguna, 
gave the horses their last drink of brackish 
water, and pushing on camped below Signal 
Mountain. It was a gorgeous night, clear and 
warm, bringing many regrets at leaving for the 
North. 
We had barely got under way for Calexico 
when I saw a coyote looking at us from a near¬ 
by hill. Mindful of my prior miss, I got down 
on the ground to get a rest and make a sure 
thing of it, whereupon my target ran like a 
