Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/40

 call for reveille separated the party. "Fellows," said one of the quartette, in speaking of it some days afterward, "I tell you it was a struggle of the giants, and when the smoke of battle cleared away, I found I'd lost two dollars and seventy-five cents."

As it presents itself to my recollection now, our life wasn't so very monotonous; there was always something going on to interest and instruct, even if it didn't amuse or enliven.

"Corporal Dile's har-r-r-se's bit by a ratthler 'n th' aff hind leg"; and, of course, everybody turns out and gets down to the stables as fast as possible, each with his own prescription, which are one and all discarded for the great Mexican panacea of a poultice of the "golondrina" weed. Several times I have seen this used, successfully and unsuccessfully, and I do not believe in its vaunted efficacy by any means.

"Oscar Hutton's bin kicked 'n th' jaw by a mewel." Hutton was one of the post guides, a very good and brave man. His jaw was hopelessly crushed by a blow from the lightning hoofs of a miserable "bronco" mule, and poor Hutton never recovered from the shock. He died not long after, and, in my opinion, quite as much from chagrin at being outwitted as from the injury inflicted.

Hutton had had a wonderful experience in the meanest parts of our great country—and be it known that Uncle Sam can hold his own with any prince or potentate on God's footstool in the matter of mean desert land. All over the great interior basin west of the Rockies Hutton had wandered in the employ of the United States with some of the Government surveying parties. Now he was at the mouth of the Virgin, where there is a salt mine with slabs two and three feet thick, as clear as crystal; next he was a wanderer in the dreaded "Death Valley," below the sea-level, where there is no sign of animal life save the quickly darting lizard, or the vagrant duck whose flesh is bitter from the water of "soda" lakes, which offer to the wanderer all the comforts of a Chinese laundry, but not one of those of a home. At that time I only knew of these dismal places from the relation of Hutton, to which I listened open-mouthed, but since then I have had some personal acquaintance, and can aver that in naught did he overlap the truth. The ground is covered for miles with pure baking-soda—I decline to specify what brand, as I am not