at once, or for several days. "Oh," he said, he "would help me,"
he having some forty nigger troopers with him. "All right," I said, and
took the men along with me, got back behind the cattle, spread these
novel cowboys out and began to drive, when such a shouting and shooting
of guns took place as never was heard before in these parts. We drove
the cattle, really only a thousand head or so, back to the supposed
Reservation border, quite unmarked and vague, and so left them, only to
wander back again at their leisure to where they had been. The officer
made all kinds of threats that he would turn the Indians loose on them,
but nothing more was then done.

At my winter camp, some thirty-five miles below headquarters, there was
a good three-roomed frame house, a corral, etc., and the Little Colorado
River flowed past near by. It was to these lower parts of the range that
most of our cattle drifted in winter time. Two or three other large
cattle-ranches marched with us there.

A small Mormon settlement was not far off. These Mormons were a most
venturesome people and daring settlers. Certainly they are the most
successful colonists and a very happy people. Living in close community,
having little or no money and very little live stock to tempt Providence
(rustlers), theirs is a peaceable, though possibly dull, existence. They
had frequent dances, but we Gentiles were not admitted to them.[1]

[Footnote 1: _See_ Appendix, Note 1.]

In winter one lives better than in the hot weather, table supplies being
more varied. In summer, excepting during the round-ups, we never had
butcher meat, and in my camp butter, eggs and milk were not known; but
in winter I always had lots of good beef, potatoes, butter and some eggs
from the Mormons, but still no milk. This was varied, too, by wild duck,
teal and snipe shot along the river bottom.

Talking of snipe, it is very wonderful how a wounded bird will carefully
dress and apply down and feathers to the injury, and even apply splints
and ligatures to a broken limb.

My principal duties at this season consisted in riding the range on the
lookout for unbranded calves, many calves always being missed on the
round-up. This was really rather good sport. Such calves are generally
big, strong, fat, and run like jack-rabbits, and it takes a fast and
keen pony to catch them. Occasionally you would be lucky enough to find
a maverick, a calf or a yearling so old as to have left its mother and