The Man Brought The Rattles To Us And The New Toy Served To Amuse My Little Son.

At night we arrived at Desert Station.

There was a good ranch there, kept by Hunt and Dudley, Englishmen, I believe. I did not see them, but I wondered who they were and why they staid in such a place. They were absent at the time; perhaps they had mines or something of the sort to look after. One is always imagining things about people who live in such extraordinary places. At all events, whatever Messrs. Hunt and Dudley were doing down there, their ranch was clean and attractive, which was more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a place called Tyson's Wells. We slept in our tent that night, for of all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most melancholy and uninviting. It reeks of everything unclean, morally and physically. Owen Wister has described such a place in his delightful story, where the young tenderfoot dances for the amusement of the old habitues.

One more day's travel across the desert brought us to our El Dorado.

CHAPTER XVIII

EHRENBERG ON THE COLORADO

Under the burning mid-day sun of Arizona, on May 16th, our six good mules, with the long whip cracking about their ears, and the ambulance rattling merrily along, brought us into the village of Ehrenberg. There was one street, so called, which ran along on the river bank, and then a few cross streets straggling back into the desert, with here and there a low adobe casa. The Government house stood not far from the river, and as we drove up to the entrance the same blank white walls stared at me. It did not look so much like a prison, after all, I thought. Captain Bernard, the man whom I had pitied, stood at the doorway, to greet us, and after we were inside the house he had some biscuits and wine brought; and then the change of stations was talked of, and he said to me, "Now, please make yourself at home. The house is yours; my things are virtually packed up, and I leave in a day or two. There is a soldier here who can stay with you; he has been able to attend to my simple wants. I eat only twice a day; and here is Charley, my Indian, who fetches the water from the river and does the chores. I dine generally at sundown."

A shadow fell across the sunlight in the doorway; I looked around and there stood "Charley," who had come in with the noiseless step of the moccasined foot. I saw before me a handsome naked Cocopah Indian, who wore a belt and a gee-string. He seemed to feel at home and began to help with the bags and various paraphernalia of ambulance travellers. He looked to be about twenty-four years old. His face was smiling and friendly and I knew I should like him.

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