While the teams were working through, L. and I passed on ahead, with our rifles at our saddle-bows, hoping to start a bear or shoot a buck-tail deer, but saw no game of any kind. Our experience among the mountains on this trip, indeed, was unfavorable to the stirring accounts we had heard and read of great game there. The lack of trees there, except in the cañons, and especially of nut-bearing trees, and likewise of fruit-bearing bushes, must be unfavorable to animal life, as a rule, and I doubt if there ever was much there, except an occasional deer or bear, eagle or buzzard. We were surprised to find so few birds, and scarcely any squirrels, except a little red species no bigger than our ground-squirrels east. We met two of Kerber's teams toiling wearily up the Pass, as we descended it, and gave them the first news they had had from the ranch in weeks. We got several miles ahead, before we knew it, and did not halt until we reached the foot of the Pass, where it debouches into the valley of the Little Arkansas. It was an hour or more before the ambulances overtook us, and then we received a rough account of their experiences. In several places, they had had to lash ropes around them and edge them along the hillsides the best they could. In others, they would have upset repeatedly, but managed by walking and pushing to keep them on their wheels, and finally got through safe and sound. The wagon, however, being heavier and clumsier, had capsized badly, and they had driven ahead and left it, with instructions to follow on as soon as possible. Crossing the valley of the little Arkansas and a high range beyond, late in the afternoon we descended into the valley of the Arkansas proper, and at sunset went into camp on its banks, near Schwander's ranch. The Arkansas, we found, was here already a very considerable stream, but we forded it without difficulty. Our unfortunate wagon, perhaps it should be added, got along after dark, much the worse for wear; and jaded and weary with the day's journey, we were glad to pass a quiet night of it.