She instantly caught her infant off its little pallet made
of a small piece of thin wood covered with a rabbit skin, and putting
the baby under one arm, and giving a smart jerk to a small girl that was
crying to the top of her voice, she bounded off and fairly flew up the
gentle slope toward the summit, the girl following after very close. The
woman's long black hair stood out as she rushed along, looking over her
shoulder every instant as if she expected to be slain. The mother flying
with her children, untrammeled with any of the arts of fashion was the
best natural picture I ever looked upon, and wild in the extreme. No
living artist could do justice to the scene as the lady of the desert,
her little daughter and her babe, passed over the summit out of sight. I
followed, but when I reached the highest summit, no living person could
be seen. I looked the country over with my glass. The region to the
north was black rocky, and very mountainous. I looked some time and then
concluded I had better not go any further that way, for I might be
waylaid and filled with arrows at some unsuspected moment. We saw Indian
signs almost every day, but as none of them ever came to our camp it was
safe to say they were not friendly. I now turned back and examined the
Indian woman's camp. She had only fire enough to make a smoke. Her
conical shaped basket left behind, contained a few poor arrows and some
cactus leaves, from which the spines had been burned, and there lay the
little pallet where the baby was sleeping.
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