And if it were full of gold as the United States treasury, the burros took up all their time so they couldn't do much.

Between doggone stock drinking or not drinking and the darn fool diary that had to be kept, Bud opined that they needed an extra hand or two.

Bud was peevish, these days.

Gila Bend had exasperated him because it was not the town it called itself, but a huddle of adobe huts.

He had come away in the sour mood of a thirsty man who finds an alkali spring sparkling deceptively under a rock.