The wind, too, is a besom over the treeless spaces, whisking
new sand over the litter of the scant-leaved shrubs, and the little
doorways of the burrowers are as trim as city fronts. It takes man
to leave unsightly scars on the face of the earth. Here on the
mesa the abandoned campoodies of the Paiutes are spots of
desolation long after the wattles of the huts have warped in the
brush heaps. The campoodies are near the watercourses, but never
in the swale of the stream. The Paiute seeks rising ground,
depending on air and sun for purification of his dwelling, and when
it becomes wholly untenable, moves.

A campoodie at noontime, when there is no smoke rising and no
stir of life, resembles nothing so much as a collection of
prodigious wasps' nests. The huts are squat and brown and
chimneyless, facing east, and the inhabitants have the faculty of
quail for making themselves scarce in the underbrush at the
approach of strangers. But they are really not often at home
during midday, only the blind and incompetent left to keep the
camp. These are working hours, and all across the mesa one sees
the women whisking seeds of chia into their spoon-shaped
baskets, these emptied again into the huge conical carriers,
supported on the shoulders by a leather band about the forehead.

Mornings and late afternoons one meets the men singly and
afoot on unguessable errands, or riding shaggy, browbeaten ponies,
with game slung across the saddle-bows. This might be deer or even
antelope, rabbits, or, very far south towards Shoshone Land,
lizards.

There are myriads of lizards on the mesa, little gray darts,