"You know," I planted the suggestion, "if I were smart like a Mescalero Apache, I think I would wait for the dark of the moon, and steal a few of his horses."

When Bernice returned she took a quick look at the setting sun and declared we should push on as far as we could before making camp.

"Why?" I asked waiting for a chance to tell her about my visitors.

"Well, you never will believe this," it came tumbling out," but at the store a fellow started chatting with me, claimed he was a peace officer, and anyhow when he found out where we were going he got mad, claimed he had spent half of his life out rescuing dumb people that get lost in the wilderness and he didn't feel like wasting any more time on us. His friend also got mad because I said we were averaging 15 miles a day, when he felt we should be doing 50. And then the store keeper said that’s right and charged me 98 cents per dozen for eggs, and 78 cents for a can of peaches."

By the time she had finished this lament, and I my recital, we had made it out of town. BJ drew up his horse, looked back thoughtfully, and conjectured, "Must be something in the water."

The next day we had to cover 21 miles through intense heat to find water and just enough grass to hold the herd for one night. Traveller didn't do too well. On the last uphill climb of the day, James dismounted and lead his horse along on foot. That evening I took time from repairs to sit and watch the Thoroughbreds trying to find something to eat. They were losing weight, whereas our range horses were doing well, and Charlie had even gained.

Then suddenly I realized why. Since both of our blue bloods had been raised in box stalls with hay replacer pellets, they simply did not know how to forage. They just gummed the grass in poor imitation of our grade animals. I got everyone to drop their chores and cut piles of feed. We even had to put the dry grass into Travellers mouth and show him how to work his jaws. I even robbed the other horses grain supply to keep them alive, thinking all the time about that stable operator suggesting our small horses would give out, when it was our biggest we had to worry about.

As for rattlesnakes, we didn't see, or have to kill 300, but they were there along the trail. The first we came across gave us such a scare that we reacted out of fear, bombarded the creature with rocks, and left him for the scavengers. The second was killed cleanly, and after careful skinning, ended up in a frying pan.

The meat was a little tough, but the flavor sort of a cross between abalone and chicken. Bernice thought it resembled chicken more. The children's opinion was "uck" to the whole idea. I talked BJ into taking a few bites by reminding him of the mountain man's saying, "Meat's meat." Bernice added that if purchased in a tin at a delicatessen, rattlesnake is an expensive treat. Bernadette finally gave in, and came back for seconds.