Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1886-11-05

where along the west side of Bitter creek, and
he wanted us to go along and help him to
find it.
l had been in the west some eight or nine
years then, and had never seen an icthyo-
saurus myself, but thought the young man
must know his business, so | got out my
Winchester and went along with the group.
We tramped over the pale, ashy, glarng
staring stretch of desolation through burn
ing, quivering days of monotony and sage.
brush and alkali water and aching eyes and
parched and bleeding lips and nostrils cut
through and eaten by the sharp alkaline air
mentally depressed and physically worn out,
Pbut cheered ON and braced up by the light and
joyous manner Of the ever hopeful James
Tribolite Elton, of Concord.
James Trilobite Elton, of Concord, never
moaned, never gigged back or shed a hot, re-
morseful tear in this powdery, hungry waste
of gray parched ruin. No regret came forth
from his lips in the midst of this mighty
cemetery, this CHASTITY potters field for ali
that nature had ever reared that was too poor
to bear its own funeral expenses
Now and then Loan, soiled gray COYOTE
without sufficient moral courage to lool, a
dead mule in the hind foot slipped across the
horizon like dirty phantom and faded into
the hot and tremulous atmosphere. We
scorned such game as that and tiudged on,
cheered by the hope that seemed to spring
eternal in the breast OF James Trilobite Elton,
of Concord.
Four days we wallowed through the IN
changing dcsoation. Four nights We went
through the motions of slulnbcring on the
arid bosom of the wasted earth. On the fifth
day James Iri obite Elton said we were now
getting near the point where we would find
what we sought. On we pressed through tho
keen, rough blades of the seldom bunch grass
over the shifting, yellow sand and the green
ish gray of tho bad land soil which never docs
anything but sit around through the accunu-
lating centuries and hold the world together,
kind of powdery poison that delights to
creep into the nostris of the pilgrim and steal
away his brains, or when moistened by a lit
tie snow to accumulate around the feet of the
pilgrim or on the feet of the pilgrims mule
till he has the most of an unsuIvcyed "forty"
on each foot, and the casual observer is
cheered by the novel sight of one homestead
striving to jump another.
Toward evening James Trilobite Elton
gave wild shrek of joy and ran to us from
the bed of an old creek, where he had found
an ichthyosaurus The animal was dead
Not only that but it had been dead long.
long timel
James Milton Sherrod said that "if n COLLEGE
education was Of no more use to man than
that, he, for one, allowed that his boy would
have to grope through life with an academi-
cal education, and very little of it,"
knocked my gun and went back to camp
sadder and madden man, and, though years
have come and gone, 1 am still irritable
when | think of the five days we tramped
along Bitter creek searching for an animal
that was no longer alive, and our guide
knew it before he started
ventured to say to j. Trilobite Elton that
night as we all sat together in the cleaning
discussing whether he should be taken home
with us in the capacity of guide or as IA re-
mains, that it seemed to me a man ought to
have better sense than to wear his young life
away trying to have fun with his superiors in
that way.
"Why, blame 1t all, says James, "what did
you expecti You ought to know yourself
that that animal is extinct!"
"Extinctp says James Milton Sherrod, in
shrill, angry tones. 81 should say he was ex-
tinct That's what we're kiclxin' about. What