understanding of a military man.

So it was decided to take the Ehrenberg detail.

CHAPTER XVII. THE COLORADO DESERT

Some serpents slid from out the grass That grew in tufts by shattered
stone, Then hid below some broken mass Of ruins older than the East,
That Time had eaten, as a bone Is eaten by some savage beast.

Great dull-eyed rattlesnakes--they lay All loathsome, yellow-skinned,
and slept Coiled tight as pine knots in the sun, With flat heads through
the centre run; Then struck out sharp, then rattling crept Flat-bellied
down the dusty way.

--JOAQUIN MILLER.

At the end of a week, we started forth for Ehrenberg. Our escort was now
sent back to Camp Apache, and the Baileys remained at Fort Whipple, so
our outfit consisted of one ambulance and one army wagon. One or two
soldiers went along, to help with the teams and the camp.

We travelled two days over a semi-civilized country, and found quite
comfortable ranches where we spent the nights. The greatest luxury was
fresh milk, and we enjoyed that at these ranches in Skull Valley. They
kept American cows, and supplied Whipple Barracks with milk and butter.
We drank, and drank, and drank again, and carried a jugful to our
bedside. The third day brought us to Cullen's ranch, at the edge of
the desert. Mrs. Cullen was a Mexican woman and had a little boy named
Daniel; she cooked us a delicious supper of stewed chicken, and fried
eggs, and good bread, and then she put our boy to bed in Daniel's crib.
I felt so grateful to her; and with a return of physical comfort, I
began to think that life, after all, might be worth the living.

Hopefully and cheerfully the next morning we entered the vast Colorado
desert. This was verily the desert, more like the desert which our
imagination pictures, than the one we had crossed in September
from Mojave. It seemed so white, so bare, so endless, and so still;
irreclaimable, eternal, like Death itself. The stillness was appalling.
We saw great numbers of lizards darting about like lightning; they were
nearly as white as the sand itself, and sat up on their hind legs and
looked at us with their pretty, beady black eyes. It seemed very far off
from everywhere and everybody, this desert--but I knew there was a camp
somewhere awaiting us, and our mules trotted patiently on. Towards noon
they began to raise their heads and sniff the air; they knew that water
was near. They quickened their pace, and we soon drew up before