Rocks, the forward hound, grew weary of hunting for things which were not, and retired to the rear to pay court to a lady friend; and Dan had to rope Rocks, and with some irritation he started his pony, and Rocks kept the pace by dint of legging it, and by the help of a tow from 900 pounds of horse-flesh. Poor Rocks! He understood his business; but in consequence of not being able to explain to the men what fools they were, he suffered.

The hot mid-day sun of New Mexico soon kills the scent, and we were forced to give over for the day. A cavalry sergeant shot three deer, but we, in our superior purpose, had learned to despise deer. Later I made a good two-hundred-yard centre on an antelope, and though I had not been fortunate enough in years to get an antelope, the whole sensation was flat in view of this new ambition.

On the following morning we went again to our dead cow, but nothing except the jackals had been at the bear’s prey, for the wily old fellow had evidently scented our camp, and concluded that we were not a cow outfit, whereat he had discreetly “pulled his freight.”

We sat on our horses in a circle, and raised our voices. In consideration of the short time at our disposal, we concluded that we could be satisfied with taking 1800 pounds of bear on the instalment plan. The first instalment was a very big piece of meat, but was—I am going to confess—presented to us in the nature of a gift; but the whole thing was so curious I will go into it.

We hunted for two days without success, unless I include deer and antelope; but during the time I saw two things which interested me. The first was a revelation of the perfect understanding which a mountain cow-pony has of the manner in which to negotiate the difficulties of the country which is his home.

Dan, the foreman, was the huntsman. He was a shrewd-eyed, little, square-built man, always very much preoccupied with the matter in hand. He wore a sombrero modelled into much character by weather and time, a corduroy coat, and those enormous New-Mexican “chaps,” and he sounded a cow-horn for his dogs, and alternately yelped in a most amusing way. So odd was this yelp that it caught the soldiers, and around their camp-fire at night you could hear the mimicking shouts of “Oh, Rocks! eh-h-h! hooick! get down on him, Rocks; tohoot! tohoot!” We were sitting about on our horses in a little sienneca, while Dan was walking about, leading his pony and looking after his dogs.

When very near me he found it necessary to cross an arróyo which was about five feet deep and with perfectly perpendicular banks. Without hesitation he jumped down into it, and with a light bound his pony followed. At the opposite side Dan put up his arms on the bank and clawed his way up, and, still paying no attention to his pony, he continued on. Without faltering in the least, the little horse put his fore-feet on the bank, clawed at it once, twice, jumped, scratched, clawed, and, for all the world like a cat getting into the fork of a tree, he was on the bank and following Dan.

A DANGEROUS PLACE

Later in the day, when going to our camp, we followed one of Dan’s short-cuts through the mountains, and the cowboys on their mountain ponies rode over a place which made the breath come short to the officers and men behind; not that they could not cross themselves, being on foot, but that the cavalry horses could they had their solemn doubts, and no one but an evil brute desires to lead a game animal where he may lose his life. Not being a geologist, I will have to say it was a blue clay in process of rock formation, and in wet times held a mountain torrent. The slope was quite seventy degrees. The approach was loose dirt and malpais, which ran off down the gulch in small avalanches under our feet. While crossing, the horses literally stood on their toes to claw out a footing. A slip would have sent them, belly up, down the toboggan-slide, with a drop into an unknown depth at the end. I had often heard the cavalry axiom “that a horse can go anywhere a man can if the man will not use his hands,” and a little recruit murmured it to reassure himself. I passed, with the loss of a quarter of the skin on my left hand, and later asked a quaint old veteran of four enlistments if he thought it was a bad place, and he said, “It’s lizards, not harses, what ought to go thar.”