crawled and slid, from boulder to bush, and bush to boulder, in cactus
scrub and on naked sand, always in a sweat of fear, until the dust caked
in the nostrils and the breath sobbed in the body, around and away many
a mile until they came to their own land again. And all the time
Winnenap' carried those buzzard's eggs in the slack of his single
buckskin garment! Young Shoshones are like young quail, knowing without
teaching about feeding and hiding, and learning what civilized children
never learn, to be still and to keep on being still, at the first hint
of danger or strangeness.

As for food, that appears to be chiefly a matter of being willing.
Desert Indians all eat chuck-wallas, 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. Winne