r strangeness.

As for food, that appears to be chiefly a matter of being willing.
Desert Indians all eat chuckwallas, big black and white lizards that
have delicate white flesh savored like chicken. Both the Shoshones and
the coyotes are fond of the flesh of Gopherus agassizii, the turtle
that by feeding on buds, going without drink, and burrowing in the sand
through the winter, contrives to live a known period of twenty-five
years. It seems that most seeds are foodful in the arid regions, most
berries edible, and many shrubs good for firewood with the sap in them.
The mesquite bean, whether the screw or straight pod, pounded to a
meal, boiled to a kind of mush, and dried in cakes, sulphur-colored
and needing an axe to cut it, is an excellent food for long journeys.
Fermented in water with wild honey and the honeycomb, it makes a
pleasant, mildly intoxicating drink.

Next to spring, the best time to visit Shoshone Land is when the
deer-star hangs low and white like a torch over the morning hills. Go
up past Winnedumah and down Saline and up again to the rim of Mesquite
Valley. Take no tent, but if you will, have an Indian build you a
wickiup, willows planted in a circle, drawn over to an arch, and bound
cunningly with withes, all the leaves on, and chinks to count the stars
through. But there was never any but Winnenap' who could tell and make
it worth telling about Shoshone Land.

And Winnenap' will not any more. He died, as do most medicine-men of the
Paiutes.

Where the lot falls when the campoodie chooses a medicine-man there it
rests. It is an honor a man seldom seeks but must wear, an honor with
a condition. When three patients die under his ministrations, the
medicine-man must yield his life and his office.

Wounds do not count; broken bones and bullet holes the Indian can
understand, but measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft.
Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill
in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted
the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment
from any other, say the white doctor, whom many of the younger
generation consult. Or, if before having seen the patient, he can
definitely refer his disorder to some supernatural cause wholly out
of the medicine-man's jurisdiction, say to the spite of an evil spirit
going about in the form of a coyote, and states the case convincingly,
he may avoid the penalty.