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A sort of low veranda protected by lattice screens, made from a species of slim cactus, called ocotilla, woven together, and bound with raw-hide, ran around a part of the house. Our dinner was enlivened by some good Cocomonga wine.
The pools were well up on the desert, where pinnacles and buttes had given way at last to a roughly level country, with only occasional fissures as reminders of the canyon. Bear grass and yucca, barrel and fish-hook cactus as well as the ocotilla appeared. The sun was sinking when the horses smelled water and cantered to the shallow but grateful basins.
The camp was set in the shelter of a huge rock pile, purple, black, yellow and crimson in color, with a single giant ocotilla growing from the top. A man in overalls was bending over the fire, while another was bringing a dripping coffee pot from a little spring that bubbled from under the rocks. A number of burros were grazing among the cactus roots. Enoch rode up slowly and dismounted stiffly.
The ocotilla or candlewood with long, lash-like stalks springing from a common centre that cactus, which, when dried, needs only a lighted match to set it afire flourishes in the rocky ledges.
On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the casa of Don Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the thorny cactus which the Mexicans call ocotilla.
One thing was sure, if I was not successful in securing a boat at Needles, the very next train would find me on board, bound for the Western Slope. By mid-afternoon the chaparral had disappeared and only the cactus remained the ocotilla, covered with a million flowers, wave upon wave of crimson flame, against the yellow earth.
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