drab sagebrush and the
green fan of the palmetto became steadily more common, the latter
figuring largely in the daily life of the Mexicans, for its mashed,
saponaceous roots provided them with their pulpy _amole_, which was an
excellent substitute for soap. Prickly pears, Spanish bayonets, masses
of greasewood bushes and scattering fringes of short grama grass
completed the carpeting of the desolate plain.

Doggedly they pushed on, thankful for the heavy rains of the last two
days, which had reached even here and left little pools of bad-tasting
water for themselves and their beasts. At noon they stopped and built a
fire of stunted cedar, for in daylight its telltale flames told nothing.
They cooked another black-tailed deer, smoked some of the meat, and ran
bullets until they had all of the latter they could possibly use. On
again toward the Canadian until nightfall, lighting no fire, but eating
the meat they had cooked at noon. They arranged a four-shift watch and
passed a peaceful night. In their range of vision were Raton Peak,
Pike's Peak, and the Wet Mountain, that paradise for hunters; the twin
Spanish Peaks with their caps of snow, and behind these towering
sentries loomed the sullen bulk of a great mountain range under a thin
streak of glittering white.

At any distance their appearance hardly would tell whether they were
white hunters or Indians from Bent's, since their garb was a mixture of
both and their skins so tanned, their hair so long as to cause grave
doubts. More than once in that country two white men have exchanged
shots, each taking the other for an Indian. At Bent's Fort on the
Arkansas there were stray Indians from far-off tribes, and they dressed
in what they could get; and at The Pueblo, that little trading post
farther up on the Arkansas, Indians and whites lived together and
intermarried. Not one of the four but could speak more than one savage
dialect; and Tom's three companions possessed an Indian vocabulary which
left little to be desired. If it came to a test which might prove too
severe for him he could be dumb, and fall back on the sign language.

At last the Canadian was reached and passed, and Hank led them
unerringly up the valley of a little feeding stream which poured its
crystal flood down the gorges of a mountain range now almost over their
heads. Coming to a rocky bowl scooped out of the sheer, overhanging wall
at a bend, he built a fire of dry wood that was safely screened,