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Updated: June 4, 2025
"As long as the S. W. & P. and the B. F. & N. W. were scrapping, the Sancho Hills Basin had as good service with burros." Both Boise and Courtney laughed. "Be careful, Johnny," warned Courtney. "Mr. Boise is president of the S. W. & P., and is now also virtually president of the B. F. & N. W." Constance sighed, but stuck gamely to her post.
Up the slope toiled and nodded the pack-animals, the little burros going easily where the horses labored. Their packs, like the humps of camels, bobbed from side to side. Stones rattled down; the heat-waves wavered black; the dust puffed up and sailed. The sky was a pale blue, like heated steel, except where dark clouds peeped over the mountain crests.
Then out of this, through a narrow canyon, past the gray-rock walls and gulch with black cave at bottom and slide in the talus above, over the fertile plateau, long descent on foot, where as I zigzag I see the men and the burros what seem to be hundreds of feet below. "On down another dry stream bed, many stony descents in a shut-in canyon.
When the westering sun lost most of its heat and threw slant shadows and a yellow light over the mountains, Oliver would have a pair of ancient greys, patient as burros and hardly faster, hitched to a buckboard and then drive off into the evening and perhaps, long after the dinner hour. Only foul weather kept him in from these lonely jaunts on which he never took a companion.
After supper it was arranged that two of the boys should watch the camp until one o'clock, and then awake the others, who were to stand guard until morning. Tommy and Sandy were to take the first watch. "I don't think there's much use of anyone standing guard!" exclaimed Will. "Our lovely burros over there will probably lift up their voices if any stranger comes nosing around in the dark."
In the morning, when Warren brought the burros to camp and began preparations for the usual packing, Cameron broke silence. "Pardner, your story last night made me think. I want to tell you something about myself.
For a long time she lay tossing on the unfamiliar couch, listening to the night sounds without, and the hideous brays of the wandering burros; but at last she fell into an uneasy slumber, and dreamed that she had gone away to boarding school, but instead of having Carrie for a playmate, her companions were two blazing shoes who kept offering her molasses taffy out of her father's hat.
The marvel is that anything satisfactory can be accomplished with such an awkward instrument, and yet these fields in some instances show grand results. We expressed surprise to an intelligent citizen at seeing long lines of burros laden with freight beside the railroad, and going in the same direction, remarking to him that the railway ought to be able to compete with the jackasses.
The narrow streets are full of idlers in every attitude of picturesque languor. Mrs. Steele sympathises deeply with the lean and patient little burros with wooden racks on their backs holding on either side a clay jar filled with water. "Efery yar ees two media, about twenty-five cent your money. Vater ees more dearer dthan vine," explains our interpreter.
The streets of the town are in tolerably good condition, paved with lava once vomited from the neighboring mountain, now so quiet. The gutters are in the middle of the thoroughfares, and the sidewalks are only a few inches in width. Carts or wheeled vehicles of any sort are very little used, freight being carried almost wholly on the backs of burros and Indians.
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