the Rockies, called Rawhide Peak, and at night we camped on Rawhide Creek, a rather desolate stream, without timber, bordered only with shrubs and weeds.  It seemed cheerful, however, upon its stony banks with such a gay crowd as we had, so many soldiers and other people about, with their wagons, horses, mules, tents and mess-chests.  But a great black cloud was rising over Rawhide Peak, and just as we were seated comfortably at dinner down came the whirlwind upon us, nearly blew over our tent, and covered our dinner with a thick coating of the dust of the Plains.  Beds, clothing, hair, mouths, noses, were full of the fine gray powder.  What if our dinner was spoiled?  ’Twas but the fortune of war.  The blow was soon over, and we managed to dine off the scraps, so as not to go quite hungry to bed.  The rain poured down for five minutes, and laid the dust when too late, the sky cleared, and a wonderful rainbow, three deep, appeared in the east.  The sunset was one not to be forgotten.  The deep blue-black of Rawhide Peak, cut sharp by the clear gleaming apricot sky, and above the flying clouds, wavered and pulsed with color and flame.  We watched them by the camp-fire till twilight faded and moon and stars shone with desert brilliancy.  Shaking the dust from our beds as a testimony against the spiteful spirits of Rawhide Peak, we slept with our usual profundity.  Always, however, before bedtime we had to go through the little ceremony of removing the burs from our clothing, for every plant in this country seems to have a bur or a tick-seed, and we found a new one in every camp.  Sometimes they were arrows or needles an inch long, sometimes triangles with sharp corners, sometimes little spiked balls, sometimes long bags with prongs.  There was no end to their number and variety, and they grew to be one of our studies.

After the first wrench of waking, the morning, from dawn to sunrise, was always beautiful.  It amused us while dressing to watch the ears of the mules moving against the pale yellow sky, and the men, like black ghosts, stealing about.  We crossed a wide, noble mesa clothed with buffalo-grass:  there was no heat, no dust, and the long caravan before us made, as usual, a moving picture.  The desert looked more like Palestine than ever, with the low buttes and sandhills yellow in the distance.  “Towered cities called us then,” yet when we reached them we found but desolation, “and the fox looked out of the window.”  The queer little horned frogs, lizards, rattlesnakes and coyotes were the sole inhabitants.  “Them sandhills,” we were told, “tracks across the country for a thousand mile.”