Note Back to Main Text — XV.

The opening of the ground—and it was occasionally not unlike the opening of a trap-door—brought work in plenty to Roosevelt and his friends at the Maltese Cross. The glades about the water-holes where the cattle congregated became bogs that seemed to have no bottom. Cattle sank in them and perished unless a saving rope was thrown in time about their horns and a gasping pony pulled them clear. The ponies themselves became mired and had to be rescued. It was a period of wallowing for everything on four feet or on two. The mud stuck like plaster.[11]