OCR Text |
Show 194 BY PATH AND TRAIL. not enter into the details of how they happened to be bitten. One man came to the surgeon last November, three hours after the " hila" sank his teeth in his hand. The doctor cauterized the wound and the man experi enced no more inconvenience than he would from the bite of a gopher. The other man, Ernest Phair by name, was bitten at four in the afternoon, had the wound cauter ized and treated with antiseptics two hours after the bite. At 10 o ' clock that night he was ' ' out of his mind, ' ' his limbs became shockingly tumefied and at 2 o'clock in the morning Phair died. This loathsome creature of giant wrack is disappearing and in twenty or thirty years it will be extinct. Eeference here to Yuma reminds me that nowhere in the southwest have I seen tramps, hoboes and yegg men behave themselves as well as they do in this town. When I mentioned this good behavior of the " floating brigade" to Sheriff Livingston he said that conditions made for it. " You see," continued the sheriff, " there is practically no escape from Yuma for a crimi nal. The only avenues open are the railroad and the river. To strike across the country would mean death from tHirst on the desert. This accounts for the fact that the tramps and hoboes are very peaceful in Yuma. The river and railroads offer no hope to an escaped prisoner, for they are too well policed." Accompanied by a guide, I left Casa Grande early in the forenoon on burros or donkeys, and struck southeast across the Aravapi desert, hoping to reach the historic town of Tucson some time in the afternoon of the next day. Passing over ten miles of desert we entered the canyon of Santa Catalina in the mountains of the same name. For four miles we traveled through a dark and dismal gorge enclosed by walls 1,000 feet above the trail |