Then I felt hungry! Oh, so hungry! The sight seemed to stimulate me, and I moved on down the river until I came opposite the same objects, but they now looked altogether different. I could not make out what I had first seen; but I did see in the north and west a dark-blue cloud near the horizon, rapidly rising. Here the bluff came down close to the river, dropping down in benches with a narrow sandy bottom. I went down near the river to where there was a rack-heap or pile of driftwood; and, evening coming on, I selected a place between two sand ridges and built a fire. Where I built it it was not more than fifty feet from the water's edge, which was very shallow, just barely a thin sheet of water, the channel running against the north bank. After I had gotten the fire to burning good, I went back up on the bench of land, to where I could see over to the objects that had attracted my attention so much, and just as the sun was disappearing behind the hills the blue cloud had settled back. Not definitely making out what any of the objects were, I went back to the fire. Just then I heard the sound, as if it were an ax, in the direction I had been looking. It was repeated several times, and then all was silence. Soon it began to turn very cold, and by morning had frozen the river, in the shallow places along the bars. There was no grass where I built the fire. I had made it in a basin between two sand ridges; and when it had burned to a bed of coals I took the end-gate of a wagon, which I found in the driftwood, and separated the coals to right and left, to some little distance from the fire-bed. Then I built two fires and stretched myself out in the original warm fire-bed between the two fires. I was resting, but could not sleep for hours,—or so it seemed to me. I kept turning from side to side, at first on account of the heat in the sand under me; then I would get up from time to time and replenish the fires. Finally I fell into a dreamy slumber, from which I would suddenly arouse, and at one time in the night, when I became thoroughly awakened, I was fully five rods from the fire. This gave me much concern. I had dreamed that some one wanted my bed and had driven me away from it, and I must have left my bed while I was asleep. Here I uttered the first word I had heard since leaving the camp of the Mexicans. "No," I said; "I am here alone." It was very cold, and I judged by the Dipper, that grand old night clock of the hunter and cowboy, that it would soon be morning: and to my intense delight it was but a short time until I heard a rooster crow. The sound came from the object I had previously seen, and the place from where I had heard the strokes of the axe. Again and again that welcome sound came to my ears, and two miles away, as I soon learned. Then just at good broad daylight, I heard the bark of a dog.