On turning round, there was an armed Apache brave standing close behind me; but he was only one of a hunting party.

What sentiment that grunt expressed I never learnt.
It is remarkable how a range or tract of country that has been overstocked or over-grazed will rapidly produce an entirely new flora, of a class repugnant to the palate of cattle and horses.

In this way our mountain range in particular, when in course of a very few years it became eaten out, quickly decked itself in a gorgeous robe of brilliant blossoms; weeds we called them, and weeds no doubt they were, as our cattle refused to touch them.

Certain nutritious plants, natives of the soil, such as the mescal, quite common when we first entered the country, were so completely killed out by the cattle that later not a single plant of the kind could be found.
Amongst the fauna of Arizona was, of course, the ubiquitous prairie dog; and as a corollary, so to speak, the little prairie owl (_Athene cunicularis_), which inhabits deserted dog burrows and is the same bird as occupies the Biscacha burrows in Argentina.

Rattlesnakes, so common around dog-towns, enter the burrows to secure the young marmots.