Mormons still follow the Trail, recognizable by their long, greasy beards. One such passed us, driving an ancient Ford,--the very one, I should say, in which Brigham Young came to Utah. It showed faded remnants of three coats of paint, white, blue and black. On the radiator rested a hen coop containing several placid biddies. We tacitly ignored a murmur from Toby about “an eggs-hilarating drive.” A dozen children, more or less, sat beside the Mormon. Attached to the Ford was a wagon, drawn by six burros, with a burro colt trotting beside, and atop the wagon, under a canvas roof, a few more women and children. We were too appalled to notice whether the Ford pulled the burros, or the burros pushed the Ford. Following the prairie schooner came a rickety wagon, piled with chairs, stoves and other domestic articles. Last of all came a house. It was, to be sure, a small house, but considering that the car was only working on two cylinders, one could not reasonably expect more. Later we passed a man on horseback, wearing two sombreros, one atop the other, with a certain jaunty defiance. Whether he did it from ostentation, for warmth, to save space, to keep out moths, or was just moving, we could not guess. Or he may have been a half-crazy prospector, whose type we began to recognize,--old, vague-eyed men with strange beards, speech curiously halting, from long disuse, and slow, timid manners,--riding a burro or rack-of-bones horse up a side trail. In every section of the Rockies one meets these ancient, unwashed optimists, searching in unlikely crannies, more from life-long habit than in the hope of striking it rich. So long have they lived remote from human beings, that if a gold mine suddenly yielded them the long sought fortune and compelled them to return to the world, they would die of homesickness. When Coronado marched over the Apache Trail, he saw far above him a walled town built in the recessed cliffs, whose protective coloring made it nearly invisible to the casual passerby. The Spaniard, seeking the Seven Cities of Cibola, imagined he had discovered one of their strongholds, but when he rushed up the steep path, more breathless, doubtless in his heavy armor than we four centuries later in our khaki suits, he found the swallow’s nest deserted, and the birds flown,--where and for what reason is the great mystery of the Southwest.