a large
wooden structure. There were no trees nor grass around it. A Mexican
worked the machinery with the aid of a mule, and water was bought for
our twelve animals, at so much per head. The place was called Mesquite
Wells; the man dwelt alone in his desolation, with no living being
except his mule for company. How could he endure it! I was not able,
even faintly, to comprehend it; I had not lived long enough. He occupied
a small hut, and there he staid, year in and year out, selling water to
the passing traveller; and I fancy that travellers were not so frequent
at Mesquite Wells a quarter of a century ago.

The thought of that hermit and his dreary surroundings filled my mind
for a long time after we drove away, and it was only when we halted and
a soldier got down to kill a great rattlesnake near the ambulance, that
my thoughts were diverted. The man brought the rattles to us and the new
toy served to amuse my little son.

At night we arrived at Desert Station. There was a good ranch there,
kept by Hunt and Dudley, Englishmen, I believe. I did not see them, but
I wondered who they were and why they staid in such a place. They were
absent at the time; perhaps they had mines or something of the sort to
look after. One is always imagining things about people who live in such
extraordinary places. At all events, whatever Messrs. Hunt and Dudley
were doing down there, their ranch was clean and attractive, which was
more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a
place called Tyson's Wells. We slept in our tent that night, for of
all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most
melancholy and uninviting. It reeks of everything unclean, morally and
physically. Owen Wister has described such a place in his delightful
story, where the young tenderfoot dances for the amusement of the old
habitues.

One more day's travel across the desert brought us to our El Dorado.

CHAPTER XVIII. EHRENBERG ON THE COLORADO

Under the burning mid-day sun of Arizona, on May 16th, our six good
mules, with the long whip cracking about their ears, and the ambulance
rattling merrily along, brought us into the village of Ehrenberg. There
was one street, so called, which ran along on the river bank, and then a
few cross streets straggling back into the desert, with here and there
a low adobe casa. The Government house stood not far from the river, and
as we drove up to the entrance the same blank