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Our senior partner, not satisfied with New Mexico, went out to Arizona for a look round, liked the prospect, and decided to locate there, so we moved out accordingly. My partner had bought out a Mexican's rights, his cattle, water-claims, ranches, etc., located at the Cienega in Apache county, near the head-waters of the Little Colorado River.
R. M. Gilbert was his name; he was ranching and for the sake of mutual aid in case of Indian raids he had built his adobe house at one end of his holding, within two hundred yards of his neighbor's home. The building stood on bare ground at the summit of a little rise near the Cienega bottom, where the grass and tulles grew waist-high.
On the south coast, directly opposite Matanzas, lies a vast swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata. It occupies an area of about seventy-five miles in length and about thirty miles in width, almost a dead flat, and practically at sea-level. Here and there are open spaces of water or clusters of trees, but most of it is bog and quagmire and dense mangrove thickets.
The superintendent knew that pork would be tempting to a mutton-sated bear, and he chuckled as he rode away. At midnight in the camp upon the mountain the superintendent heard a muffled roar echoing far away, and he laughed softly, turned over and went to sleep. In the morning, with two herders and their collies, he went back to the cienega.
The Cienega is one of the nooks of the isle of Baru, south-west of the Estero de Pasacaballos, by which we reach the opening of the Dique de Mahates.
We crossed the valley into some low, rolling hills and camped on a small stream called Rock Creek. Chauvin said this was a great place for antelope. The horses were picketed out on a grassy cienega, which offered them pretty good feed. We got our supper, made camp and went to bed. During the night a wind began to blow from the northwest, and in a few hours it had become a hurricane.
The effect of water upon the desert soil is almost magical and even though the rains fail and the earth be parched, on the moist land of the cienega the fields of waving grass and grain are perennially green. The owner has acquired by location and purchase, title to several thousand acres of land, that is all fenced and much of it highly cultivated.
They are not a proper article of food. In the swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata are both alligators and crocodiles, some of them of quite imposing dimensions. The insect life of the island is extensive. From personal experience, particularly behind the search-light of an automobile that drew them in swarms, I, should say that the island would be a rich field for the entomologist.
There's nothing to be gained and every chance of being cut off by troops from Grant and Bowie, even if they do succeed in slipping by us." "That's more than I can tell, sir. The men say the paymaster's coming along this week; they heard it from the quartermaster's train we passed at the Cienega three days ago."
Half a mile from the cienega the dogs stopped before a thicket, bristled their backs and growled impatient remonstrance to the superintendent's efforts to shove them into the brush with his foot.
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