om continuing the pursuit.
So we had to return to the post without reward for our exertion
except the consciousness of having made the best effort we could to
catch the murderers. That night, in company with Lieutenant Thomas
G. Williams, I crossed over the river to the Mexican village of
Piedras Negras, and on going to a house where a large baille, or
dance, was going on we found among those present two of the Indians
we had been chasing. As soon as they saw us they strung their bows
for a fight, and we drew our six-shooters, but the Mexicans quickly
closed in around the Indians and forced them out of the house--or
rude jackal--where the "ball" was being held, and they escaped. We
learned later something about the nature of the fight the drummer had
made, and that his death had cost them dear, for, in addition to the
Indian killed and lying by his side, he had mortally wounded another
and seriously wounded a third, with the three shots that he had
fired.

At this period I took up the notion of making a study of ornithology,
incited to it possibly by the great number of bright-colored birds
that made their winter homes along the Rio Grande, and I spent many a
leisure hour in catching specimens by means of stick traps, with
which I found little difficulty in securing almost every variety of
the feathered tribes. I made my traps by placing four sticks of a
length suited to the size desired so as to form a square, and
building up on them in log-cabin fashion until the structure came
almost to a point by contraction of the corners. Then the sticks
were made secure, the trap placed at some secluded spot, and from the
centre to the outside a trench was dug in the ground, and thinly
covered when a depth had been obtained that would leave an aperture
sufficiently large to admit the class of birds desired. Along this
trench seeds and other food were scattered, which the birds soon
discovered, and of course began to eat, unsuspectingly following the
tempting bait through the gallery till they emerged from its farther
end in the centre of the trap, where they contentedly fed till the
food was all gone. Then the fact of imprisonment first presented
itself, and they vainly endeavored to escape through the interstices
of the cage, never once guided by their instinct to return to liberty
through the route by which they had entered.

Among the different kinds of birds captured in this way,
mocking-birds, blue-birds, robins, m