In another place there were no banks, and the water had spread for three miles in broken sloughs and around half-submerged islands, the one deep channel being lost in the maze of shallow ones.  With these things to contend with it was dusk long before I neared the town, the twelve miles having stretched to twenty.  Finally I saw a windmill partly submerged.  Some distance away was a small ranch house also in the water.  The house, with lights in the upper story, was a cheering sight; the windmill looked out of place in the midst of all this desolation of water.  Soon other houses appeared with lights showing through the windows.  Once I lost my way and spent a half hour in getting back to the right channel.

Somewhere in the dark, I never knew just when, I passed the mouth of the Gila River.  In a similar way in broad daylight I had passed the Bill Williams Fork above Ahrenburg.

At last I neared the town.  I could discern some buildings on top of a small hill, evidently one of the back streets of Yuma.  After tying my boat, I hid my small load in some mesquite trees, then climbed the hill and passed between two peculiar stone houses dark as dungeons.  They puzzled me from the outside, but when once past them, I was no longer in doubt.  I had entered the open gateway leading to the courtyard of the Yuma penitentiary.  No wonder the buildings looked like dungeons.  This was a new experience for me, but somehow I had always imagined just how it would look.  I was considering beating a retreat when a guard hailed me and asked me if I was not lost.  With the assistance of the guard, I escaped from the pen and found my way to the streets of Yuma, just four days after leaving the Needles bridge.

CHAPTER XXVI

ACROSS THE MEXICO BORDER

“Mexico is a good place to keep away from just at present.”  This was the invariable answer to a few casual inquiries concerning what I would be likely to meet with in the way of difficulties, a possible companion for the voyage to the Gulf, and how one could get back when once there.  I received little encouragement from the people of Yuma.  The cautions came not from the timid who see danger in every rumour, but from the old steamboat captains, the miners, and prospectors who knew the country and had interests in mineral claims across the border.  These claims they had lost in many cases because they had failed for the last two years to keep up their assessment work.  There were vague suggestions of being stood up against an adobe wall with a row of “yaller bellies” in front, or being thrown into damp dungeons and held for a ransom.