; it
was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good
courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements
that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and
gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about
a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench,
and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the
manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had
choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact
that I ever laid before a trusting public.

I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally one
finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and
foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual
height.

CHAPTER IV.

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation
for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty
canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and
redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible.
And we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved
and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea. Next we
hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they had
settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons
and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been swinging
all day, and clothed ourselves in them--for, there being no ladies either
at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had looked
to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o'clock in the
morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy Dictionary
where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteens
and pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a final
pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the pipes, tobacco
and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and then
fastened down the coach curtains all around, and made the place as "dark
as the inside of a cow," as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque
way. It was certainly as dark as any place could be--nothing was even
dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled ourselves up like
silk-worms, each person in