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Irrespective of the kind of fuel used, the baking by ash-burial made the ware gray, cloudy, or dingy, and not very durable. Pottery burned with sage or grease-wood was firm, light gray unless of ocherous clay, less cloudy than if ash-baked, yet mottled.

In other places there appear mixed with it the equally scrubby but somewhat greener grease-wood the two resinous shrubs affording the only fuel on which the emigrant can rely while following the Rocky Mountain trail. These sage regions are the habitation of a magnificent bird the Sage Cock. He may well be called the King of the grouse tribe.

From the zone of blackness surrounding the camp burst the short bark, the hungry whine, the long-drawn-out wail of desert wolves. "Supper, sons," called Naab, as he replenished the fire with an armful of grease-wood. Naab's sons had his stature, though not his bulk. They were wiry, rangy men, young, yet somehow old. The desert had multiplied their years.

It was a narrow arroyo or gully, varying in width from twelve to twenty feet, and averaging fifteen feet in depth. It ran almost due north and south for a distance of five miles, through a bare, level prairie tenanted only by roving cattle and horses if one excepts rabbits, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, owls, lizards, and scorpions. There was no vegetation except grease-wood, cactus, and sagebrush.

Climb out about 1300 feet above the river to the top of the narrow canyon. Here is a sloping plateau, dotted with bunch-grass and grease-wood, a fourth of a mile wide. Then rounded mountains rise beyond the plateau, some of the peaks reaching a height of 4000 feet above the river. The opposite side is much the same, but with a wider plateau. We had no idea before what a wonderful country this is.

To many such, a meadow carpeted with blue grass or timothy is the only pasture on which grazing horses or grazing cattle can exist; the dried-out looking tufts of bunch-grass, scattered here and there or sheltered at the roots of the sage, mean nothing; the grama-grass hidden in the grease-wood is unnoticed or mistaken for a weed.

Only one kind of fuel, except for a single class of vessels, is now used in pottery-firing; namely, dried cakes or slabs of sheep-dung. Anciently, several varieties, such as extremely dry sage-brush or grease-wood, piñon and other resinous woods, dung of herbivora when obtainable, charcoal, and also bituminous or cannel-coal were employed.

"My rig's over behind that grease-wood. You're a new one, ain't ye?" Bob nodded. "That horse is branded pretty thick," he said by way of diversion. The man chuckled. "Have to turn his skin other side out to get another one on," he agreed. They drove down an old dim road that avoided the difficulties of the cañon. At camp they found the surries just loading up. Bob took his place.

August Naab deliberately threw a bundle of grease-wood upon the camp-fire. A blaze leaped up, sending abroad a red flare. "Who comes?" he called. "Friends, Mormons, friends," was the answer. "Get down friends and come to the fire." Three horsemen advanced to the foreground; others, a troop of eight or ten, remained in the shadow, a silent group. Hare sank back against the stone.

Knob-like buds had broken out upon them, the first sign that they were living things. It happened to be Easter eve, and she was restless, full of strange thoughts as the yellow-flowering grease-wood bushes were full of rushing sap. A year ago that night her love for her husband had died its sudden, tragic death. In the very act of forgiveness, forgiveness had been killed.