He had not taken the trouble to remove the labels, and the pictures of red tomatoes glared at us in the hot sun through the day; they did not look poetic, but our old enemies, the ants, were outwitted.
There was another species of tiny insect, however, which seemed to drop from the little cotton-wood trees which grew at the edge of the acequia, and myriads of them descended and crawled all over us, so we had to have our beds moved still farther out on to the open space of the parade ground.
And now we were fortified against all the venomous creeping things and we looked forward to blissful nights of rest.
We did not look along the line, when we retired to our cots, but if we had, we should have seen shadowy figures, laden with pillows, flying from the houses to the cots or vice versa.

It was certainly a novel experience.
With but a sheet for a covering, there we lay, looking up at the starry heavens.

I watched the Great Bear go around, and other constellations and seemed to come into close touch with Nature and the mysterious night.

But the melancholy solemnity of my communings was much affected by the howling of the coyotes, which seemed sometimes to be so near that I jumped to the side of the crib, to see if my little boy was being carried off.

The good sweet slumber which I craved never came to me in those weird Arizona nights under the stars.
At about midnight, a sort of dewy coolness would come down from the sky, and we could then sleep a little; but the sun rose incredibly early in that southern country, and by the crack of dawn sheeted figures were to be seen darting back into the quarters, to try for another nap.