And, say, that was a funny fight, too. A big, rough-looking fellow, presumably a miner, had been cutting up too much fuss on the depot platform. The agent came out and asked him to be quiet, but instead of quieting him, he made matters worse. The big fellow began cursing everybody on the platform. A cop was called and in a moment there was a mix up. The cop pecked the fellow all over the head with his pistol, but the miner gamely came back at him with his own pistol, neither of them uttering a word. In a few minutes blood was streaming from both. The big fellow finally gave in and put up his gun. "Come on now," said the cop, grabbing the man by the arm, and starting up the street. I was wondering where the jail was, when to my surprise the cop released the man before they had gone a block. The cop now came back to the depot, smiling. "I got rid o' him," he said, but he was mistaken, for the other fellow, by this time, had also reached the depot. Walking up close to the cop, he leered: "Do you think I'm afraid of you?" and then another fight, even rougher than the other, began. It was at this juncture, unobserved, I slipped into the coke car. Within a short time after leaving Dalhart we crossed the State line into New Mexico. CHAPTER VI. _Across the Line into New Mexico--Barren Sand Hills--Jack Rabbits--Prairie Dogs--A Glorious Sunset, etc._ The train had now entered a country that is simply indescribable for its bleak barrenness. On every hand, as far as I could see, was nothing but barren sand hills, broken here and there by high mountain ridges. In some places we would go forty or fifty miles without seeing a sign of human habitation, then suddenly we would come upon a small collection of adobe huts, that is, huts built of sun-dried, mud bricks. These little houses have a flat roof, and some of them are no taller than a man's head. They are occupied by Mexicans and Indians. A big rain would destroy all these dwellings; but rain is almost as scarce in this desolate, sun-baked region as snow is in the Torrid Zone. When it does rain there and a man's clothes are wet, it takes but ten minutes for the air to dry him off again. From where I was sitting in the door of the coke car thousands upon thousands of jack rabbits, cotton tails and prairie dogs could be seen dodging in and out among the rocks and cactus trees. Once, just before dark came on, a solitary cowboy, wearing high boots and a big sombrero, mounted on a spirited young pony, dashed across the tracks ahead of the train and disappeared behind the low mountain ridges toward the sunset--and such a grand, beautiful sunset that was!--the sun slowly sinking behind the distant mountain peaks, and the whole heavens lit up with a perfect flood of golden beauty, was a scene, though I live to be a hundred years old, I shall never forget. Nowhere else in all the world, I believe, are the sunsets so gloriously beautiful as in Arizona or New Mexico.