I never want another experience like that. Pod said afterward it was his first and last painting. He thought the cowboys might have shot a pipe out of his mouth, but he hadn't thought they could condescend to such a low trick as to make him paint a sign with his donkey's tail. The cowboys wanted us to spend the night with them, but Pod replied that he couldn't tarry, but he said he was much obliged for all their courtesies. About dark we said good-bye, and pretending we would travel ten miles that evening, pitched camp near a bridge crossing White River, one or two miles from Rangely. At dawn the men were out after sage hens. They saw several, but couldn't get a shot at the shy creatures.
We started early and traveled over a desolate wilderness of sage and greasewood in a torturing sun, and were unpacked at one o'clock for an hour's rest. Sometimes the trail led through deep channels in the hard-baked sand for several hundred yards, where we were obscured from view. These channels wound about through the desert and mesa, as if they might be the beds of dried-up rivers; and they were often so narrow that had we met a wagon either our outfit or the vehicle would have had to turn back. We came across quantities of skeletons and skulls of horses and cattle and wild animals, but I failed to see any donkey's bones. Don was glad when in these cuts, for he managed there to keep in the shade, while trailing in the open he was ever trotting ahead to hide under a bush where three-fourths of him was exposed to the sun.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we crossed the backbone of the plateau, at an altitude of seven thousand feet, and met a wagon with four horses, bound for Leadville with honey. The driver said he was from Vernal, some sixty miles to the west. Pod thought honey would go well with hot cakes for supper, and after some coaxing got the freighter to break a case and sell him a half dozen boxes. Then the question arose, how could he safely carry the honey?
"Good idee not to put all your eggs in one basket," Coonskin remarked. Pod said he wouldn't. He tucked one box in a saddle-bag, another in a roll of blankets strapped behind his valet's saddle, another in a bag of supplies on Skates, and the last two he packed carefully in the canvas awning. The men conversed and smoked awhile, when the stranger happened to mention that he sometimes dealt in hides. Here was the chance the men were waiting for. The bearskin Skates had carried from Turkey Creek belonged to the poker-player, but he promised half what he should get for it to Pod, if he would let the donks carry it till disposed of. The man said he was willing to give $60 for a fine silvertip skin, so Coonskin unpacked. The stranger was more pleased with it than he would admit, and hemmed and hawed some about the price, but finally paid the $60, and we moved on.
It was six o'clock, and the sun was sinking behind the distant plain when the buildings of the K ranch loomed in the distance. The sound of galloping horses approaching us from behind caused me to look around, and I beheld two Indians with guns in hand, yelling and gesticulating wildly as they leaned over their ponies' necks, spurring hard to catch up with us. When Pod and Coonskin saw the Indians after them, they got ready to throw up their hands. Their faces were as chalky as an alkali desert.
"Have you seen any cattle branded U. S.?" one of the wild men inquired. Pod said he hadn't.
"Where you from?" questioned the half-breed. Pod said: "White River country."
"Ah, we just from there—been hunting up stolen cattle," the half-breed replied. "Found them, but fellows wouldn't give them up. We've done our duty; the fort must deal with them now."
Pod asked what fort, and was told Fort Duchesne, some seventy miles away. We learned that two companies of colored troops of the U. S. army were stationed there. The Indians never touched us.