Next day Old Tom appeared at Emigrant Springs wanting to know if we had seen a white burro and a black burro. We had that very morning.
"They're mine," he said, "but I can't keep 'em home."
Hunting burros seemed to be his life work. Two weeks later we heard of him twenty miles away still hunting his burros. The Worrier opined that he had no burros, but our guide was prejudiced.
We learned to appreciate what it meant to hunt burros, for though our burros were horses, the Worrier spent most of the days in camp looking for them. It was amazing how far they could travel with hobbles on. They were clever at hiding, too, but we were assured that they were dull compared to burros. Everybody on the desert seems to have burros somewhere that he expects to use some day. They are all delightfully casual about them:
"Did you happen to see a bunch of burros in the gulch youse come through?"
"No. Have you lost yours?"
"Yes. Gone about a week. I thought maybe they was over there."
The hope seems to be that they will come back for water. Generally they do, but sometimes they go to some other water hole and leave you to guess which one. At Silver Lake the brigand called French Pete had come from thirty miles off looking for his burros.
"You ought to put a bell on them," our hostess had told him.
"I did, but it's no use. You can't find 'em, anyway. They're too smart."