Elsewhere I have already sketched in outline our trip as we walked south together from Durango to the San Juan, then through the Navajo Reservation to the high plateau of northern New Mexico, where, utterly deserted by fair weather, we camped for a week, while a cold wave swept over us, forcing the thermometer down to ten and twelve degrees below zero, and nearly freezing us and our animals in the still cold of the winter nights. Even after we got under way again and were making progress southward in the direction of the “rimrock” of the Mogollon Mountains, persistent ill-luck followed us in the shape of almost nightly falls of snow and rain, which added nothing to the comfort of sleeping on the ground or walking across an almost trackless waste. But if we were disappointed here, Price’s promise of Indian summer was abundantly fulfilled when once we had waded through the snow in the great primeval forests that cover the northern slopes of the Mogollons, and made the abrupt descent of the “rimrock.” It was like the contrast of Florida with our Northern winter. The live-oak and budding cottonwood and the warm sun and sprouting grass gave us royal welcome from the cold and snow beyond; and, at the end of the first day’s journey in this region, we came out upon a ranch. It was thirty miles to the nearest neighbor, and the ranchman and his wife were glad to see anyone, even casual “burro-punchers,” like Price and me. There chanced to be a considerable company at the ranch that night. An outfit of three men who were hunting mountain lion through the range for the sake of the bounty on their scalps had come there to camp, bringing with them the carcass of a bear. And the postman, whose beat took him from the Santa Fé line southward through some Mormon settlements and on to scattered ranches north of the Tonto Basin, was also quartered there. So that we sat down more than a dozen strong to dine on bear steak and potatoes and bread and coffee; and when dinner was over, Price and I again had the good fortune to find that our tobacco suited well the taste of the company. We were gathered now in the living-room of the cabin. Some of the men were seated on the floor and others in rough, hand-made chairs about a wood fire in a large, open fireplace. The talk ranged at random over phases of hard living known to such men as these. It was varied and rich and sometimes racy. In it Price shone as a bright, particular star. None had travelled the Southwest so thoroughly as he, or experienced so much of its characteristic life. Then his native readiness at narrative stood him in good stead, and, penniless prospector that he was, he held unchallenged the centre of the stage.