s.

They liked the Wyoming country they had seen, but deplored the heavy
drinking. They told us of one man who had said that he did not mean to
go into town on the Fourth of July. Everybody got drunk, said he, and he
did not want to put himself in the way of temptation. They spoke of a
lovely farming country in the midst of which was a little town where
saloons were open all night and all day Sunday. They told us of one
saloon keeper who had been hauling barrels of whiskey for days in
preparation for his business of July 4th. He openly boasted that he
meant to take in $3,000. on that day.

As we drive along, we constantly see the remains of former camps by the
roadside. Old tin teakettles, pieces of worn-out campstools, piles of
tin cans; these are mute and inglorious monuments to the bivouacs of
other days. These immense Plateau States are very dependent upon canned
foods, and all along tin cans mark the trail. We have many evidences,
too, that we are in a sheep and cattle country. We pass the dried up
carcasses of sheep and the bones of cattle and of horses as they lie
upon the desert near the road. Often the fleece of the sheep, dried and
shrunken by wind and weather, sticks to the bones of the animal. It lies
where it fell, only one of a vast herd, sick and dying, perhaps freezing
in a blizzard. We asked one countryman what the sheep did in case of the
fierce storms that sometimes sweep over the winter plains. "They just
hump up and die," he replied. We saw many a shriveled carcass of some
poor animal that had succumbed and fallen never to rise again. But so
high are these plains and so dry is the atmosphere, that nature quickly
shrivels these carcasses and they are not offensive as they would be in
damp climates.

Out on the desert we waited for a long freight train to pass as it stood
blocking the roadway. The train conductor came along and he and T.
exchanged greetings. "It's good to see you," said the conductor; "you
motor people are about the only signs of life we fellows see out here on
the desert."

Coming into Wamsutter, and later coming toward Rawlins, we flushed
numbers of grey-brown prairie chickens, almost as large as hens. They
would fly up from the sage brush as the noise of our machine came near.
There were some large flocks of young birds. Between Rawlins and Laramie
we met late in the afternoon a large caravan of movers. They looked
foreign and were evidently in search of new farms and homes. Th