The next day took us out of the lowlands. We entered the desert, winding over a series of rolling plains, sandy and covered with black mesquite and here and there an occasional cactus. Now we began to see beside the road those sinister little wooden crosses that the country people erect on the spot where some man died a violent death. Around the horizon barren purple mountains hemmed us in. To the right, across a vast dry valley, a white and green and gray hacienda stood like a city. An hour later we passed the first of those great fortified square ranchos that one comes across once a day lost in the folds of this tremendous country. Night gathered straight above in the cloudless zenith, while all the skyline still was luminous with clear light, and then the day snuffed out, and stars burst out in the dome of heaven like a rocket. Antonio and Primitivo, in that queer harsh Mexican harmony which sounds like nothing so much as a fiddle with frazzled strings, sang "_Esperanza_" as we jogged along. It grew cold. For leagues and leagues around was a blasted land, a country of death. It was hours since we had passed a house. Antonio claimed to know of a water-hole somewhere vaguely ahead. But toward midnight, which was black and without moon, we discovered that the road upon which we were traveling suddenly petered out in a dense mesquite thicket. Somewhere we had turned off the _Camino Real_. It was late and the mules were worn out. There seemed nothing for it but a "dry camp," for so far as we knew there was no water anywhere near. Now we had unharnessed the mules and fed them, and were lighting our fire, when somewhere in the dense thicket of chaparral stealthy footsteps sounded. They moved a space and then were still. Our little blaze of greasewood crackled fiercely, lighting up a leaping, glowing radius of about ten feet. Beyond that all was black. Primitivo made one backward leap into the shelter of the wagon; Antonio drew his revolver, and we froze beside the fire. The sound came again. "Who lives?" said Antonio. There was a little shuffling noise out in the brush, and then a voice. "What party are you?" it asked hesitantly. "Maderistas," answered Antonio. "Pass!" "It is safe for _pacificos_?" queried the invisible one. "On my word," I cried. "Come out that we may see you." At that very moment two vague shapes materialized on the edge of the firelight glow, almost without a sound—two peons, we saw as soon as they came close, wrapped tightly in their torn blankets. One was an old, wrinkled, bent man wearing homemade sandals, his trousers hanging in rags upon his shrunken legs; the other a very tall, barefooted youth, with a face so pure and so simple as to almost verge upon idiocy. Friendly, warm as sunlight, eagerly curious as children, they came forward, holding out their hands. We shook hands with each of them in turn, greeting them with elaborate Mexican courtesy. "Good evening, friend. How are you?"