Sparsely over the dull surface grew the few shrubs that could survive the heat and dryness,stunted, unlovely things of burr, spine, thorn, or saw-edged leaf,all bent one ways by the sand blown against them,bristling cactus and crouching mesquite bushes.

Why, I've knowed 'em to hide behind a brown-bush, clump er cactus, or a rock, so mighty cunnin' thet ther ain't one scout in fifty would see 'em, let alone a stranger.

Son, I know every cactus clear to Bald Eagle.

She did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination.

Well, I'm glad to be back in the show, 'cause there is more going on than there was in the hospital, where I put in a week while the doctors were pulling the cactus pin feathers out of pa that grew out on him in Indian Territory.

I saw both prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper trees.

Here and there, like solitary sentinels, stands out a tall cactus, with perhaps two or three heads or branches, growing perpendicularly with itself.

Here and there towered that giant cactus, the saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty feet high, with a coronet of richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as splendid as a Corinthian column.

" "'Burbanked'?" "That's a new verb made out of the name of Luther Burbank, the man who has raised such marvelous flowers in California and has turned the cactus into a food for cattle instead of a prickly nuisance.

When one waters the cactus over its body, the waxy coating is washed away and the plant begins to rot.