Bisbee daily review., 1907-08-21
BURRO ATE HIS PANTS AND
 MONEY
Left Naked on Desert Porterie Was Considered Crazy When He Rode Plump Into Picnic Party,

PHOENIX, Aug. 20.-J. A. Porterie met William Burns of Mohave county. whom he had not seen for thirty years. He never saw him but once. but that once was enough for the cir cumstances of their meeting were such as to impress the event and the face of MT. Burns indelibly upon his memory.
 Mir. Burns had caused the arrest of Porterie on a charge of insanity. MT. Porterie was not actually taken into custoday, for although he acted
 like wild man by reason of an ex- perience through which he had just gone. he was not insane within the meaning of the law which defines in- sanity as crime.
 That was in 1877. MT. Porterie was making his second and final trip to this territory, coming from Stone Ferry on the Colorado to Mineral Park. The weather was warm and MT. Porterie left the ferry early one evening, riding one buTro, another following as a pack animal. The dls- tance wa5 siXty-five miles. Late one night he made camp, spread his blan- keS and lay down intending to set out before daylight in the morning so as to get into the park early. The night was so warm that he could not sleep. He removed his trousers of 1 light linen and soon fell asleep. I He awoke at daybreak and looking around. the first thing he observed was the absence of a big straw hat, The second thing was a vacancy at the side of his blankets where he had carefully folded and laid his trousers The next thing was about a foot of a trousers leg hanging out of the mouth of one of the burros. a notorious camp scavenger.
 It is a horrible thing for a man to be left hatless and trouserless on the desert but the horror of the thing was intensified in this case by the fact that Mr. Porterie had $55 in bills in those pants beside a small quantity of silver.
 He sprang to his feet and seized the end of the trousers leg and pulled violenxly, bracing one foot against the predatory animals breast The burrO's stomach and jaws gave up the dainty reluctuantly but the trousers had been so thoroughly masticated that they were useless as wearing apparel. They looked as if they had not only been masticated but partly digested The roll of bills was recovered in the shape of chunk of hopeless pulp. 1t was impossible to separate it into its original constituent elements There was not distinguishable figure or design. The marks of the geomet- rical lathe and the parallel plane were all gone. Nothing at all could be done with the pants and they were thrown away. There was no sign anywhere of the hat.
 By this time the sun was up and MT. Porterie arranged a head covering out of a guDny sack but Shere was no material in the camp out of which to construct a makeshift for trousers. NIT. POrterie resolved to approach the park and when he reached the wood ed country to go into hiding, entering the camp after nightfall.
 He came into a country heavily wooded with oak. along the banks of small streams. He moved around curve in the road and came plump upon a picnic party for it was Sun day morning He quickly veered off into the brush but not before he was seen as he knew from the screams of some women. He concealed himself and watched the party which appeared to be in wild commOtion. At length one man detached himself from it and hurried away on horseback. That man was MT. Burns as MT. Porterie afterwaTd learned.
 In an hour or two he returned, ac- companied by several other men, one of whom was an officer and the rest members of his posse. They beat the brush until they came upon Mir. Por- terie and questioned him closely re- garding his mental attitude toward things in general. He appeared to be sane enough on all subjects except burros but the mention of one of these animals would throw him into par oxysms. He was led away from this exciting theme and when he had fin ished a narration of his misfortunes his captors rolled on the ground with laughter. One of them on his recov- cry hurried off to camp and soon re- turned with suitable clothing. Mir. Porterie forgaye but never forgot MT. Burns, nor has he every fully over