uld yet be
known as something else than "The Lepero."

The prairie over which we travelled never varied in aspect save with
the changing hours of the day. The same dreary swell, the same yellowish
grass, the same scathed and scorched cedars, the same hazy outlines of
distant mountains that we saw yesterday, rose before us again to-day,
as we knew they would on the morrow,--till at last our minds took the
reflection of the scene, and we journeyed along, weary, silent, and
footsore. It was curious enough to mark how this depression exhibited
itself upon different nationalities. The Saxon became silent and
thoughtful, with only a slight dash of more than ordinary care upon
his features, the Italian grew peevish and irritable, the Spaniard was
careless and neglectful, while the Frenchman became downright vicious in
the wayward excesses of his spiteful humor. Upon the half-breeds, two
of whom were our guides, no change was ever perceptible. Too long
accustomed to the life of the prairie to feel its influence as peculiar,
they plodded on, the whole faculties bent upon one fact,--the discovery
of the Chihuahua trail, from which our new track was to diverge in a
direction nearly due west.

Our march, no longer enlivened by merry stories or exciting narratives,
had become wearisome in the extreme. The heavy fogs of the night and the
great mist which arose at sunset prevented all possibility of tracing
the path, which often required the greatest skill to detect, so that we
were obliged to travel during the sultriest hours of the day, without
a particle of shade, our feet scorched by the hot sands, and our heads
constantly exposed to the risk of sunstroke. Water, too, became each day
more difficult to obtain; the signs by which our guides discovered its
vicinity seemed, to to me, at least, little short of miraculous; and
yet if by any chance they made a mistake, the anger of the party rose
so near to mutiny that nothing short of Halkett's own authority could
restore order. Save in these altercations, without which rarely a
day passed over, little was spoken; each trudged along either lost in
vacuity or buried in his own thoughts.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE PLACER

As for myself, my dreamy temperament aided me greatly. I could build
castles forever; and certainly there was no lack of ground here for the
foundation. Sometimes I fancied myself suddenly become the possessor
of immense riches, with which I should found a new colony in