Earth without tent or
covering, if your sleep be not very sound you will conjure up all sorts
of amazing things. Perhaps the horses take fright and run on their
ropes.

[Illustration: ROPING A GRIZZLY. (By C. M. Russell.)]

You get up to soothe them and find them in a lather of sweat and scared
to a tremble. What they saw, or, like men, imagined they saw or heard in
the black darkness, you cannot tell. Still you are in an Indian country
and perhaps thirty miles from anywhere. Many a night I swore I should
pack up and go home at daylight, but when daylight came and all again
seemed serene and beautiful--how beautiful!--all fear would be
forgotten; I would cook my trout or fry the breast of a young turkey,
and with hot fresh bread and bacon grease, and strong coffee.--Why,
packing up was unthought of!

One of my nearest neighbours was an old frontiers-man and Government
scout. He had married an Apache squaw, been adopted into the tribe
(White Mountain Apaches) and possessed some influence. He liked
trout-fishing, so once or twice I accompanied him with his party, said
party consisting of his wife and all her relatives--indeed most of the
tribe. The young bucks scouted and cut "sign" for us (another branch of
the Apaches being then on the war-path), the women washed clothes, did
the cooking, cleaned and smoked the fish, etc. These Indians were
rationed with beef by the Government, while they killed no doubt quite a
number of our cattle, and even devoured eagerly any decomposed carcass
found on the range; but they preferred the flesh of horses, mules and
donkeys, detesting pork and fish.

In these mountains in summer a serious pest was a green-headed fly,
which worried the cattle so much that about noon hour they would all
congregate in a very close herd out in the open places for
self-protection. No difficulty then in rounding up; even antelope and
deer would mix with them. When off on a fishing and hunting trip it was
my custom to set fire to a dead tree trunk, in the smoke of which my
horses would stand for hours at a time, even scorching their fetlocks.

In these mountains, too, was a place generally called the "Boneyard,"
its history being that some cattleman, stranger to the country, turned
his herd loose there and tried to hold them during the winter. A heavy
snowfall of several feet snowed the cattle in so that they could not be
got out or anything be done with them. The whole herd was lost and next
spring not