iness of aspect, that was California, and
beyond it lay the Pacific, the goal of their hopes.

The last three months had been filled with toil, hardships, and
adventure. Although in that time they saw no white men, nor men of any
kind beyond catching occasional glimpses of the stealthy Apaches, who
hung on their trail for weeks, and with whom they exchanged more than
one rifle-shot, they were never without evidences that this whole vast
country had once been occupied by a mighty people. Hardly a day passed
that Glen did not hold his rod on the ruined foundation-wall of some
huge structure of long ago, or stumble over heaps of broken pottery
graceful in form and design, or gaze wonderingly at the stone houses of
ancient cliff-dwellers perched on ledges now inaccessible, or walk in
the dry beds of crumbling aqueducts, or select choice specimens from
piles of warlike implements fashioned from shining crystal or milk-white
quartz, or, in some way, have his attention called to the fact that he
was traversing a country in which had dwelt millions of his kind, who
had long since passed away and been forgotten. He had puzzled over miles
of hieroglyphic inscriptions and rude pictures, drawn on the smooth
black walls of rugged canons, and learned from them fragmentary tales of
ancient battles or of encounters with savage beasts.

Then, too, he had known hunger and thirst and bitter cold. His Christmas
dinner, eaten during a short pause from work on the line, had been a bit
of spoiled bacon and a couple of wormy hard-tack, with which, in honor
of the day, he had his full share of "Billy" Brackett's treasured
cheese, brought out at last to grace this feast. Not only were their
provisions nearly exhausted at that time, but it was the fifth day on
which they had been unable to wash, for want of water. Two weeks before,
a wagon had been sent to the mining-camp of Prescott, nearly a hundred
miles away, and they had nearly given up all hopes of its safe return.
That night it came into camp, and that night, too, they found a number
of rock cisterns full of water. In the darkness of that same evening,
while hastening from the pool in which he had been bathing, to get his
share of the Christmas supper, poor Glen had run plump into a gigantic
cactus, and filled his body with its tiny, barbed thorns. Altogether it
was a memorable Christmas, and one he will never forget.

On the last night of December they built a gigantic bonfire of whole