"Hunt camels thin!" snorted the cook with disgust. "By the powers 'twas precious little opportunity we had for camel huntin' thim days, with old Geronimo onto his job ev'ry day from sun-up to dark. No, my son, 'twas ten years or more later whin I went camel huntin'. I was workin' for the M. C. outfit, up to Williams, an' they had a contract to deliver some beef steers to the Injun agent at the Moharvey reservation down below the Needles on the Big Colorado. We'd had an elegant summer for rain, an' the desert was covered with grass an' water. So the old man decides to trail them across the country, an' we takes the herd an' struck off down the mountain towards the head of the big Chino Valley an' then on west till we struck the Bill William's fork of the Big Colorado down which we was to drift till we reached the main river. "We started with a young moon, an' by the time we hit the Bill William's fork the job of night herding was a plumb picnic, so far as the steers went. We had them all as do-cile as a bunch of trained pigs; an' what with the grand feed to handle them on we'd never yet lost a single one of them nor had a stampoodle of any kind. "We bedded them oxen down one night in a great open valley after an easy day's drive. There was only five of us, four with the steers, an' me, cook an' horse-wrangler, we havin' everything on four pack mules, which I drove with the remuda. "That night Billy St. Joe asked me if I wouldn't take his guard for him, he bein' about sick all day with nuralgy. So when I was called along about midnight to spoon them for two hours I jumps an' was soon joggin' around the bunch, which was all a-lyin' down as decent as one could wish fer. 'Twere hard to keep awake, an' I reckon I must 'a' been a-noddin' in the saddle, for, the first thing I knowed there was a snort an' a cracklin' of horns an' hocks, an' away went me steers like the very old divil himself was behind them. "I pulled meself together, slapped old Shoestring down the hind leg with me quirt, an' put spurs after them, hopin' to turn them. Old Shoestring snorted an' kept them sharp ears of his workin' an' looking' back over his shoulder like, as if he was a-feered too. I hadn't been sidin' them fer more than a hundred yards when, hearin' a snortin' an' a gruntin' behind me, I takes a look meself over me shoulder, an' such a sight as me eyes did get. "'Twas sure no wonder them steers was a-runnin away, fer right behind us was three great figures with long necks an' humps on their backs like two water kegs a-settin' up there. They wasn't gallopin', nayther was they trottin', but jist a-shufflin' along over the ground like ghosties, an' every once in a little while one of them gives a grunt an' a gurgle which sent them oxen wild with terror. Hangin' to these creatures was long strings of somethin' more like a lot of ragged clothes than anything else, an' what with the flutterin' an' wavin' they resembled a lot of animated scarecrows.