One of those chance occurrences which afterward seem fated started Forrest Kirkland and his wife Lula on the absorbing adventure of copying the rock art—the paintings and petroglyphs—of Texas Indians. In August of 1933 the Kirklands attended a family reunion and fish fry on the Llano River a few miles below Junction, Texas. While Forrest and his father were examining arrowheads the children had picked up in a nearby field, the elder Kirkland told his son of some Indian rock paintings he had seen along a bluff above the Concho River near Paint Rock, some thirty miles east of San Angelo, when he had stopped there while on a fishing trip. Knowing that Forrest, who was both an artist and collector of fossils and Indian relics, would surely enjoy these mysterious paintings, the father urged him to stop to see them on his way back to Dallas. Forrest had, in fact, heard of the Paint Rock paintings but that was long before the archeological bug had bitten him, and he had never taken the time to see them. Now he decided to take his father's advice. He said of this visit (1934):

Arriving in Paint Rock about sundown we lost no time locating the place. No one being in sight we entered the gate, drove to the camp ground, and pitched camp for the night. A hurried look over the cliff and at the paintings convinced me that no one with whom I had talked had seemed to fully appreciate the significance of these pictographs. We decided that night to make some copies with my water colors, which I always take with me on trips. Copies, we thought, would add interest to our little Indian collection which was growing so rapidly. Accordingly, we set to work early the next morning and by 10:00 A.M. I had carefully filled two 8 x 10 spaces with interesting groups and Lula had done almost as many in pencil. The colors and designs were copied accurately but no attempt as made to draw to a scale or include every figure in a design. Our sole object was to get a few Indian pictographs for our collection.

The designs Lula had copied in pencil, I later worked up in water color to match the two I had made on the spot. These were framed and hang today on our museum walls. They are the seed from which, I believe, one of our most worthwhile aspirations has grown.

We didn't make a careful survey of the complete group of paintings while we were there, but only a casual spection showed they were badly weathered. Some had been injured by sightseers and many of them had been totally destroyed by ruthless vandals. Here was a veritable gallery of primitive art at the mercy of the elements and the hand of a destructive people. In a few more years only the hundreds of deeply carved names and smears of modern paint will remain to mark the site of the paintings left by the Indians.

Every time I looked at these copies which we hung in our little museum, this question came to mind. Why shouldn't I return to Paint Rock and carefully copy every picture still remaining on the cliff and so save them for future generations? Lula and I talked it over. She thought it was a good thing to do. I went to the library for information but found almost nothing on the subject—just two short articles in the Texas Folklore Society publications. Evidently no one had given the subject much thought. What was at first merely a suggestion in my mind soon became a solemn command. I am a trained artist able to make accurate copies of these Indian paintings. I should save them from total ruin.

So it was definitely decided that we would drop everything at the first slack season of the summer and go to Paint Rock to copy the paintings. It was a serious undertaking for me. I felt my almost total lack of knowledge on the subject. I could do the drawing well enough but were my eyes trained to see what I should see? I read all the books I could find that told about primitive paintings, especially those on the walls of caverns in Europe, and in that way tried to prepare myself for the task.

Not only did Forrest Kirkland return to copy the pictographs at Paint Rock, but he and his wife were to spend every moment he could steal from an active business for the remainder of his life in copying the rock art of Texas. Kirkland must have realized, perhaps dimly at first but with sure conviction, that everything he had done and been before was training for this immense task. He had found his mission and it was an all-consuming one. Never again did he paint landscapes, save once as payment for the privilege of copying rock art. Never again did he search for fossils, and even the quest for arrowpoints had lost its appeal. Talented, energetic, dedicated, and singleminded, he became a zealot in his determination to record and preserve the rock art of Texas.

Born November 24, 1892, on a farm near Mist, in southeastern Arkansas, Olea Forrest Kirkland was educated in the local grammar and high schools, and attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, for a year. He studied commercial art for a short time in Battle Creek, Michigan, before being drafted for World War I. Although a childhood bout of what appears to have been rheumatic fever left him with a damaged heart, and hiking with a heavy pack made him dizzy and white with fatigue, he was sent to France as an infantryman. On board ship he contracted mumps and as soon as the troopship docked at Le Havre he was placed in a British hospital and later in a British convalescent camp. In the hospital the British managed to lose his papers, and it was not until the war was over that he was able to officially establish his identity; as a result of this loss Kirkland was not paid even the pittance a private was due. He enjoyed the convalescent camp, however, for he liked to meet and talk to strangers, and there were men of many nationalities there. They in turn must have been charmed by this young Arkansan who spoke an interesting dialect and had a rare talent for getting on with people.

Nearly penniless but with time to spare in the convalescent camp, Kirkland spent all but his last cent to buy watercolors and paper. With these he painted scenes of the surrounding countryside and sold them to fellow soldiers, a practice he kept up throughout the two years he spent in France. When he had recovered from the mumps he was assigned to the 120th Infantry, but after a company commander had seen one of his sketches he was attached to the intelligence section of the 2nd Battalion and served as a map maker there for the remainder of his stay in Europe.

Discharged from the service in 1919, and feeling himself too old to complete his disrupted education, Forrest Kirkland moved to Dallas, where he went to work for an engraving firm. By 1925 this largely self-taught artist had established his own business, an advertising-art studio which specialized in making intricate drawings of industrial machinery for catalogue illustrations. Such illustrations had to be accurate in the smallest detail, yet the artist had to draw them quickly if he was to turn a profit. At this Kirkland became a master. Working freehand with an airbrush he could rapidly translate complex blueprints of cotton ginning, oilfield, and other equipment into attractive and realistic pictures. He was blessed with a mechanic's understanding of machinery as well, and occasionally pointed out to engineers weaknesses in their designs. Throughout his adult life Kirkland committed himself fully to whatever he was doing, and for years labored twelve and fourteen hours a day, seven days a week in his studio. After the business was established and he could take vacations, he labored as long if not longer at his pleasures.

Soon after he started his own business a young woman came to work for him. Lula Mardis was born in Fisher County, Texas, on a ranch almost under the shadow of the Double Mountain. She too was an artist, had studied at the Art Institute in Chicago, and had had practical experience doing art work for a department store in Birmingham, Alabama. Besides helping with the art work in the studio she kept the firm's accounts and did many of the other chores for the bustling, growing business. After five years she and Forrest were married, and thereafter they shared their work, hobbies, and ultimately their interest in Indian rock art. On their camping trips in later years she did much of the driving and all the photography. The photographs in this volume are only a sample of her artistry with the camera. She was also camp cook and explorer, and occasionally did some of the preliminary work on the pictograph copies. Though most of what is said here refers to Forrest Kirkland, and though the paintings reproduced in this volume are his, they would scarcely have been possible without the help of his devoted wife.

During the busy, hard-working, early years of his business career Kirkland continued to paint watercolor landscapes. He soon became well known in the Dallas area for them and received several awards in competitions. He was a lifelong member of the Dallas Art Association, and in 1933 was listed in the American Art Annual—the "Who's Who" of American art—published by the American Federation of Arts. He painted his landscapes solely for his own pleasure, not because he hoped to sell them, for he felt that if he did his pleasure in them would be spoiled and painting would become just work. After he had achieved recognition in the field of watercolors and had mastered the medium to his own satisfaction, his interest in it began to wane. Significantly, Kirkland never worked in oils. He was impatient to complete whatever he was doing and he could do a watercolor of a Dallas slum, a favorite subject, between home and office whereas an oil painting would have pre-empted days of his precious time. The speed with which he could paint an exquisite watercolor or produce a meticulous drawing of complex industrial machinery was to stand him in good stead when he turned his talents to copying rock art.

His interest in fossils began one day in 1932 when a friend brought to the studio a section of a beautiful specimen of an ammonite, an extinct form of mollusk related to the pearly nautilus. Kirkland, always possessed of a curious, inquisitive turn of mind, was keenly interested in it. He knew his friend would not part with the specimen, but he said, "Give it to me," and receiving the expected answer, retorted, "I'll just go out and find one for myself then." And he did. First, Kirkland bought and borrowed all the books he could find on geology and paleontology, and when he had assimilated their information, he obtained a geological map of Texas so that he could locate and visit promising fossil localities. Lula was enthusiastic, and their weekend excursions to fossil sites were soon broadened into full-scale camping trips. In the next two years they collected and identified hundreds of fossils. Among them were some fossils Kirkland could not identify but believed might be impressions of jellyfish. Though friends scoffed at this notion, with characteristic perseverance he sent a specimen to R. S. Bassler of the United States National Museum, who reported that Kirkland had discovered an impression of a jellyfish not known previously in this country. As a result Kirkland sent a brief article and photographs to Natural History magazine, which published them in the April, 1941, issue as a "letter to the editor" (Vol. XLVII, No. 4, p. 243). Kenneth E. Caster, a paleontologist at the University of Cincinnati, saw the letter and ultimately made a study of this new fossil material, though the war postponed publication until 1945. In his paper Caster (1945) set up a new family, Kirklandae, to accommodate the new genus and species (Kirklandaa texana Caster) for the jellyfish which Kirkland had found.

Most friends were incredulous that the Kirklands should have such a bizarre hobby as fossil collecting, and some probably wrote the couple off as demented when in later years they took to camping in inhospitable places to copy ancient markings on rocks. But a few shared their interest in fossils, and as a result the Dallas Fossil and Mineral Club came into being, and Kirkland was for a time its president. But while collecting fossils the Kirklands had often discovered Indian arrowheads and other artifacts, and gradually their interest in archeology surpassed their interest in fossils. As a result, Kirkland helped organize the Dallas Archeological Society and was its president until his death. The club met twice a month, and as often he had a lecture prepared for it. He was an excellent public speaker, holding audiences spellbound even when talking on subjects which would normally hold slight interest for them. Under Kirkland's guidance the Society also started a bimonthly publication called The Record, and although it was intended primarily for the entertainment of its members, its quality was such that libraries and museums were soon requesting copies. Kirkland was a frequent contributor (see Bibliography), as he was to other archeological journals.

Predictably, the Kirklands read everything they could find in this new field of interest, and from the beginning they recognized that archeological specimens had a story to tell and were not merely baubles which collectors could boast about to one another. Mrs. Kirkland recalls (letter to writer, dated August 24, 1964):

We collected all the publications and books on the subject, from universities, second-hand book stores, new book stores, anywhere we could get them, from all over the country, from Washington to Austin and the west. And we studied them. Forrest suggested, shortly after the Dallas Archeological Society was formally organized, that when they went exploring, no matter what, to always keep records and write about what they found.

Kirkland practiced what he preached, even insisting that his wife also keep field notes since, as he said (1934): "It will be interesting to compare the two sets of Notes and see how differently a man and a woman view the happenings on an archeological trip." Mrs. Kirkland kept diaries of their summer camping trips from 1934 through 1939. She kept no diary during the brief trip of 1940, and wrote only a few words about their last trip in 1941. These fascinating accounts are quoted at length here.

The winter of 1933-1934, after the Kirklands had visited Paint Rock, must have dragged on interminably for them, and not until the twentieth of June could they get away from business for the trip to Paint Rock. Kirkland (1934) described their work there and the procedure they were to follow at the scores of sites they later visited:

When we arrived in Paint Rock, late in the afternoon of June 20th, the whole place about the paintings seemed changed. A new fence had been built around the ranch and a keeper's house stood beside the gate. At once, I saw we might have trouble getting into the place. We didn't stop at the gate, but instead drove on to town and then learned from an ice man that the place was a part of a ten section ranch owned by a Mr. Sims. The old gentleman still lived in the ranch house some distance from the highway, but his son, O. L. Sims, now County Judge, lived in town. I also learned that Judge Sims was an authority on Indians, that study being his hobby. I knew at once he was the man to see.

I found him just as he was leaving his office, evidently rushing out to meet his wife, but he took enough time to listen to my plan and to explain the gate-keeper and the new rules they had been forced to make about entering the ranch. It seems that cattle rustlers of a new kind have sprung up in recent years, far more efficient than the famous rustlers of pioneer days. They will drive a fast truck into a ranch at night, corner a drove of sheep or a herd of cattle, load up, make a quick get-away, and dispose of their loot to a string of associated markets and restaurants along a regular route. To combat these outlaws a keeper had been placed at the gate and no one was allowed on the ranch without a written permit. Judge Sims was much interested in my plan to copy the paintings and gave me a letter that would get us past the gate-keeper.

Not long after sun-up the next morning we were on the grounds mapping out our work. It was decided that in order to keep all the drawings uniform I should do the actual painting. Lula would go ahead and make a careful survey of the cliff and assist in any other way possible. It was decided to start at the west end of the cliff and proceed towards the east, copying the paintings as much as practical in the order they appeared on the rocks. The copies were to be made one-eighth actual size, a careful record was to be kept of the designs too badly mutilated to be made out; and each drawing should include the complete design exactly as it was made by the original artist.

My procedure was first to measure the rock on which a group of paintings appeared, then to draw the outline of the rock to scale on my board; then to measure the principal figures in the design and draw them in pencil to the same scale. The remaining parts of the design were carefully copied freehand. This procedure was continued until two boards were filled with pencil sketches of the paintings. Then returning to the first group and preparing my water colors, I painted in all the backgrounds which represented the rocks on which the paintings were made. These backgrounds were given only a general color, no attempt being made to represent the variations of color on each rock. Then sitting before each group of paintings I carefully checked my pencil sketch to see that it was accurate, and colored the drawing as nearly like the original Indian painting as my skill and colors would allow. This procedure was followed until the last group of paintings had been copied.... I copied in all one hundred and twenty groups. Forty-one groups, fifty-two single drawings, and ten handprints were so badly mutilated that they could not be copied.

It took three days to copy the Paint Rock pictographs, and after the Kirklands spent Sunday with Judge Sims, three vacation days still remained. They headed first for Sanco, a small town about forty miles north of San Angelo, near which they knew of an archeological site. After collecting some artifacts there, they turned their Model-A Ford toward Fort Chadbourne, a few miles to the east. Not only had they seen some interesting artifacts gathered from this region, but Judge Sims had shown them a tracing of some Indian petroglyphs taken from a boulder in the vicinity. Their experience there was typical of the difficulties which often beset their path. As Kirkland recorded it (1934):

What is left of the once thriving little city of Fort Chadbourne is scarcely worthy of a name. The depot, large enough to serve a town of 2,500 people stood apparently deserted; a dilapidated two-story school building raised its vacant bell tower about the mesquites that covered the valley; and one large store building still remained to mark the west side of what was once the square. This building, once divided to accommodate a drug store, hardware store, and general merchandise establishment, is now one huge desolate room about 90 x 100 feet. It is arranged for a dance hall, with an orchestra stage on one side and a cold drink stand and a few groceries on the other. The proprietor and his family lived in a small space, curtained off in one corner.

We asked for cold Cokes but the stand was out of ice so we contented ourselves with spending a few minutes in the shade, exchanging remarks about the dry weather and the dilapidated building. I had hoped to get some information from some of the natives about the location of the Indian petroglyphs but we were the only people in town except for the lady in the store, who had never heard of Indian carvings. Presently two cars drove up and four men came in and ordered drinks. No mention was made to there about the lack of ice and the drinks were apparently enjoyed by all.

The eldest of the men, thin, wrinkled, and one-eyed, looked suspiciously at Lula and I. He was a typical "hayseed" and seemed a little dubious of Lula's trousers. I could easily see that we were "forners" to him. Thinking that he might know about the petroglyphs I asked if he knew anything about a cave in those parts with Indian pictures on the wall. He refused to talk and the other men knew nothing of such a cave. He only muttered something and eyed me with his one good eye.

Finally, he said "Look here stranger; I aint tellin' nothin'. What you lookin' for, gold or silver?"

"I'm not hunting gold or silver," I explained. "I'm just an artist and want to copy the Indian paintings on the walls of the cave."

"Wall, that might be" he replied "but I shore aint sendin' nobody up any of them canyons where one of my friends is bottlin' up a batch."

I went to the car, got my Paint Rock sketches, lined them up against the wall, and put on a real show for the folks. The old man was dumfounded. He even crawled along the floor before them so as to get a better view. This sold him completely and he became so friendly before we left that he invited us to spend the weekend at his house. But he knew nothing of the petroglyphs.

Years later the Kirklands were to "get" the Fort Chadbourne petroglyphs; in 1934 they had to satisfy themselves with prospecting for new archeological sites before returning to Dallas. On their homeward way, however, they lunched by the road in a shady place a few miles west of Breckenridge. Judge Sims had assured Kirkland that the paints used for the paintings at Paint Rock did not originate in Concho County, and Kirkland remembered that he had once near Breckenridge picked up some limonite, an oxide of iron that could have served as a pigment. Now, while eating, his eyes fastened on a series of gullies washed into the gray clay of a hillside, so after lunch and a short rest the two explored the hill.

... there in this one gully we found every color used by the Indians at Paint Rock, with the exception of black, which, as I have said, must have been charcoal. At the top near the surface of the ground was a thin layer of light gray chalky substance which appeared almost white when marked on a rock. A few inches below this was a similar layer, except it was of a lemon-yellow tint. At other levels in the clay were other deposits of oxide of iron, ranging in color from orange, through bright red, deep violet and brown. Some lumps were hard but much of it was as soft as chalk and perfectly free from grit. The supply seemed almost unlimited.

I searched the ground around the deposit but found no indication of Indian habitation. From the sack of color which I collected from the deposit, I selected a grade of twelve colors. When ground and mixed with glue and glycerine, this material made an excellent water color; although the shade of each color became several shades darker than it appeared when used as a pastel. To further test the use of the colors, I copied some of the Indian paintings with them and found they matched almost exactly the original colors used by the Indians. The discovery of this deposit so perfectly completed our week's work that we arrived home, still thrilled at the grand climax to our first serious archeological expedition. (Kirkland, 1934)

When Kirkland copied the Paint Rock pictographs he did not know of any other places where similar paintings might be found. But that winter he sent J. E. Pearce, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas, black and white photographs of the paintings he had made. Pearce was enthusiastic about Kirkland's work and invited the Kirklands to visit him in Austin before A. T. Jackson left for a summer in the field. Jackson was then collecting data for his work on The Picture-Writing of Texas Indians (1938), and Pearce thought a meeting of the two men should be profitable for both. Lula Kirkland wrote (1935):

We went down and showed him the original paintings and enjoyed a very pleasant visit with them. Mr. Jackson considered getting Forrest to go with him on field trips as an artist, to paint the pictographs. But we preferred to go out on our own during our vacations. Mr. Jackson suggested that if we could take a month off it would be well to go to the Hueco Tanks Indian paintings near El Paso, or if we had a shorter time to go to Meyers Springs, near Dryden, Texas, west of the Pecos.

With these leads the Kirklands could hardly wait to be off for the field, but it was July 20 before they could get away, and at that only two weeks could be spared from the business.

They drove first that summer to Paint Rock to check the accuracy of the previous year's work and to add a few miscellaneous paintings they had omitted. Then taking Jackson's advice they headed for Meyers Springs. By the time they had obtained permission to visit the site it was dark and they could not reach it that night, so as soon as they could find a flat place they set up their cots and ate supper by flashlight. They were so excited and eager to see the pictographs they could scarcely sleep. Up at daybreak, after a hurried breakfast they were on their way to the Springs.

The paintings (Plates 70-79), different from those at Paint Rock, were of much interest, and Kirkland immediately set to work. While he was making preliminary measurements, the ranchman and his family arrived for a visit, and only after a lengthy conversation could Kirkland get back to his work. Fortunately, the visitors warned the Kirklands that their car, parked on a Bermuda grass plot on the canyon floor, would be in danger of being washed away if it should rain up the canyon. That afternoon it did rain, and within an hour the water was several feet deep over the flat rock on which they had been standing to copy the paintings.

We were feeling rather discouraged and disgusted for it continued to rain at intervals, and since the canyon was dammed below the cliff the water would only run off to a small extent since the dam kept it backed up. That night we had to sit in the car and try to sleep. A most uncomfortable way to try to sleep. I said try—for that is all you can do, you become so cramped after a few minutes in one position you awake and there are a limited amount of positions you can get in.

July 24, Thursday. Were we glad when day came! The canyon had run down so we could see the rocks we had to stand on. They were covered with slimy mud as slippery as if they were greased, but we had to get those pictures! Donned bathing suits, and with bare feet Forrest made a careful attempt to get to the paintings to finish drawing them. By taking a step, then carefully placing our bare feet so as to rub off the slimy mud and get a toe hold, we managed to make our way along the wall and finish the drawing that day.

Unfortunately we had a sunny day, I say unfortunately because the water in which we worked outside the shadow of the cliff reflected the sun on our tender skins uncovered by the bathing suits, and before we realized it we were badly sun burned. We had worked in the shadow of the cliff so did not dream of this happening. (Lula Kirkland, 1935)

Kirkland was not able to finish his copies until the twenty-fourth, but on the next day they hurried to Alpine and Sul Ross College, where Victor Smith of its faculty was said to know the location of some pictograph sites. He told them of some paintings in the Davis Mountains, and by Sunday noon, July 27, they had arrived at Fort Davis. While copy-

ing rock paintings in this region the Kirklands made a discovery which was often to prove highly useful in making out dim paintings. In an exceptionally low shelter under a huge rock they found some small black animal pictures (Plate 89):

The spaces under the rock were no more than a few inches to a foot in height, and the Indians had evidently used them like a fireplace as they were smoked almost black. The animal paintings were painted on this smoked rock surface in black. You can imagine the difficulty we had in seeing them. Someone had been there previously, however, and chalked an outline around some of the clearer. pictures in order to make photos of them. The chalking obscured some of the detail and we wanted to see what was underneath, so Forrest decided to try washing the chalk off. As soon as the rock was wet the little animals popped up clearer than ever, and we began finding other animals as we wet the rock. Many that we later found had not been seen before. Unfortunately the chalk would not wash off but the attempt to get it off gave us a very valuable idea for future use. From then on when detail was hard to make out we found by wetting the rock with water the picture and all bits of paint, with a few exceptions, would be bright and clear for as long as it was wet. (Lula Kirkland, 19:35)

Hearing of another pictograph site northwest of Fort Davis and having copied all the pictographs they could find in the Fort Davis vicinity (Plates 89, 90), on July 30 the Kirklands headed for the Rock Pile Ranch.

All afternoon we followed the rocky road up and down mountains, through canyons and narrow valleys until it became a mere trail. Going down one steep mountain we struck a rock hard and found later that we had broken the cap over the end of the radius rods and just missed breaking a rod. We saw only one ranch house, but a few dim trails led off the main road at intervals. These people seldom go out to the "big" cities. Just before sundown we arrived at the Rock Pile Ranch house, in a high mountain valley, almost under the shadow of old Sawtooth. Almost in the yard and back of the house was a huge pile of granite rocks as high as one hundred feet, and several hundred yards in front of the house was another huge pile even higher. From these the ranch got its name.... What an Indian's paradise that rock pile must have been! Among the huge rocks many as large as good sized houses I found shelters and caves of a variety of shapes and sizes, some connected by corridors of varying widths and heights. High up in the rock pile I found a large pine tree growing in dirt lodged in a crevice. Crevices among the rocks also held water, like cisterns. (Lula Kirkland, 1935)

Kirkland rapidly copied the paintings in the shelters of the rock piles (Plates 91, 92), and with only a few days of vacation left, they headed for the lower Pecos River country many miles to the east, where they had heard other pictographs were to be found. He copied the pictographs of Mile Canyon, near Langtry, on August 2 (Plates 9, 10) but his reaction to these distinctive paintings is not recorded, and on the following day they had to leave for Dallas.

The following summer, 1936, the Kirklands were able to spend almost a month copying pictographs, the greater part of it in the lower Pecos River country. This year too, they had a new automobile, a 1936 Dodge sedan. In previous years they had driven a 1929 Model-A Ford coupé, an ideal car in most respects because its high clearance allowed them to go places most automobiles could not go. But the coupé was cramped, particularly when they wanted to sleep in it. The Dodge was roomier, if somewhat lower, and it was used for all of their subsequent field work. An ice chest and a chuck box which made a table when opened were fastened to the running board. A two-burner Coleman stove, two folding cots, campstools, and a five-gallon water jug rounded out their camping equipment. Having only a mosquito bar to cover their cots, they slept in the car when it rained.

Leaving Dallas on the Fourth of July, they copied the pictographs in the Lehmann Rock Shelter, near Doss in Central Texas, on the fifth (Plates 111, 112), and continued southwest. After exploring some of the canyons in the lower Pecos River country, Kirkland was copying its paintings by the eighth. They remained in Val Verde County through the sixteenth of the month, Kirkland painting thirteen places (Plates 1-3, 11-14, 16, 19, 43-46) in this interval—a prodigious quantity considering the complex nature of the pictographs and the heat, dust, and other difficulties with which they had to contend. A glance at Mrs. Kirkland's Diary (1936) illustrates well the conditions under which they worked. On July 12, for example:

... after a hurried lunch we started for a location on the banks of the Rio Grande. Mr. McBee (the landowner) was to show us the way but while we were getting water from a tank, he went on and left his wife to show the way. On the way we had to burn out a wasp's nest to get through a gate. We arrived at the place where we had to stop the car. We had been told we would have to go through a bat tunnel to get to the shelter we wanted. The old Southern Pacific railroad dump along the canyon wall was the road we had to go to get there. The tunnel had been made in the cliff by the railroad. Since its abandonment it had become the roosting and breeding place of millions of bats. It was fairly light, but the stench of the bats in the tunnel was very disagreeable and sickening. I was scared the first trip through. It wasn't so the return trip, but the last trip the next day made me sick. Our clothing even smelled of that nasty tunnel. We found the shelter but the pictures were rather crude and scarce. Forrest drew all of them before we left for the car.

That night while we were fixing the cots some wild animal came up in the bushes and growled. It wasn't a wolf and from all evidence since, it must have been a panther. We went on to bed since we couldn't see anything, but was I scared! I knew it was unlike a coyote to do this growling and not quite like a panther not to scream. He (or she) sounded like a mad tomcat but many times louder. He evidently smelled us and the food, and growled because we prevented him from getting to it. We went on to bed, however, and I tried hard not to go to sleep, but did doze occasionally, to be awakened by this animal growling again. All night long he circled our car and occasionally growled nervously as if he was very angry. I could smell him too, when he came to a certain spot in his rounds. I never in my life was so glad for daylight to come.

Most of the pictograph sites were difficult to get to, and some required considerable ingenuity.

... the descent into [Rattlesnake] Canyon was so steep and difficult he [Forrest] had to let his paint box down with a rope and climb down after it. I followed him soon and having no rope I took along a pair of trousers, tied up the end of one leg, placed my camera outfit and our lunch in it, and while holding to one end I slid down the rocks. It is far too difficult to climb in and out of canyons to get a bite of lunch so we usually carried it with us. The pictures in this canyon, by the way, were on the back wall of a small grotto-like shelter. A beautiful mural of Indian designs interwoven with their representation of the human figure in costumes. It was dimmed by the many years of sun and wind action but had not been mutilated by white man and with study, Forrest was able to get all the designs. He worked all of this day (July 14) on the drawings.

... Late in the afternoon ... a rainstorm came up and I tried to let Forrest know about it. I had returned to the car ahead of him when I saw the rainstorm coming. It seemed to have been raining some time on the draws at the head of the canyon so I feared it might get up and Forrest would be marooned in the shelter. Did you ever see an ocatillo? If you have, you can imagine what a predicament I found myself in when I tried to run through a thicket of them in a high wind. The ocatillo is usually found on rocky ledges along the banks and top edges of canyons and rocky hillsides. It has the appearance of a bunch of almost straight canes an inch or so in thickness and closely studded the entire length with half-inch or longer thorns, loosely stuck in the ground. In a high wind they were whipping around in all directions and since they grew only a few feet apart, in places it was difficult to walk through them. I tried running through. (Lula Kirkland, 1936)

Finishing the Rattlesnake Canyon paintings on the fifteenth (Plates 1-3) the Kirklands spent one more day in the lower Pecos River country, copying pictographs on the Brown Ranch (Plate 19).

We found the way easily enough but it was not easy to get over the road. The last half of it was practically impassable and often we had to stop and pull rocks out of the way or one of us would have to stay out and tell the other just how far to go this way or the other, so we could get by. We met a Mr. Skiles, the man who lives on the ranch, who rushed up to us with a gun across his saddle. When he learned that we had stopped at his house and got directions from his wife, and that we had been told about the pictures on this ranch by his wife, he was very friendly. After finding the shelter in which we thought the pictographs were we ate a bite and prepared for our afternoon's work. It was raining in several directions so we were in a big hurry. Forrest got his water colors and board and I my camera and away we went. Almost to the canyon one of my shoe soles came off back to the heel. I was afraid I would step on a thorn or that it would trip me, and wondered what in the world I could do. Forrest gave me a string off a rag he had in the paint box. I tied the sole on winding it over and around my foot- but still it would slip off. I eventually arrived at the shelter after one of the most difficult descents and ascents of a canyon we had yet encountered. High up on the canyon wall was the shelter. A small one badly weathered but some very very interesting pictographs.

. . . We were thirsty after our hasty scramble and discovered that in our rush to get to the shelter we had forgotten to bring our waterbag. All the water we had was a small bottle in the paint box that he had brought along to paint with. The heat was intolerable and the mosquitos made you miserable with their buzzing and stinging. We decided to take a tiny swallow of the water at a time and wait as long as we could before taking another and maybe we could manage to finish the pictures before we had to return to the car. The water was hot and not overly clean but how good it tasted. We found a hole in a rock with some water in it left by a recent shower and though it was full of animal life Forrest managed to get enough water from it together with some from the bottle to finish the pictographs.

. . . we decided to get out of there before night. We were badly crowded for time but by hurrying we managed to get over the most difficult part of the road before all daylight left us. We stopped by the side of the road and prepared a few bites to eat by flashlight. We had passed a ranch house on the way out, but left it about 11/2 miles behind. While we were getting settled for the night here came the rancher from the house all out of breath. He had seen our car lights going on and off and said he thought we might have been a son he was expecting, in trouble of some kind. Really I think he wanted to see who we were and he had walked all that distance to see. (Lula Kirkland, 1936).

On the seventeenth the Kirklands drove to Alpine, sought advice from Victor Smith about the paintings that remained to be copied, and spent the night at Fort Davis before making a swing through the Big Bend. Kirkland copied the pictographs at Bee Cave and Chalk Draw on the nineteenth (Plate 81), Agua Fria (Plate 82) on the twentieth, Comanche Springs (Plate 83) and Study Butte (Plate 84) on the twenty-first, and Glenn Spring (Plate 85) and Hot Springs (Plate 85) on the twenty-second and twenty-third, all in Brewster County. Heading north, he copied the rock art near Balmorhea (Plates 93-96) on the twenty-fourth, and after a side excursion through the Guadalupe Mountains and on to Carlsbad, New Mexico, copied the pictographs at Blue Mountain (Plates 96, 97) in Ector County on the twenty-ninth before turning homeward.

In 1937 the Kirklands were able to get away from Dallas by July 3, the lower Pecos River country once again being their destination. On the way Kirkland copied the paintings at Paint Rock Springs (Plates 113, 114) on the Llano River, and those in the Frio Canyon (Plate 15). Disappointed that rock art was so scarce in the Hill Country, they hurried on to the lower Pecos, remaining there eight days (July 7-14). In this interval Kirkland filled fourteen boards (Frontispiece, Plates 20-28, 47-49, 64). Returning to Dallas by a different route, he copied the petroglyphs near Roscoe in Nolan County (Plate 115) and the rock art near Breckenridge (Plate 121).

Again in 1938 the Kirklands spent the month of July in Val Verde County copying its rock art, and between the fourth and the twentieth of the month Forrest filled twenty-eight boards (Plates 4-8, 17, 18, 29-34, 50-53, 55-63, 65, 69). By now they had copied the paintings at most of the better-known and more accessible sites, so that these copies not only represented much meticulous painting but a tremendous amount of arduous climbing and hiking under very trying conditions. For example, after copying the pictographs they found in several shelters (Plate 29) they decided to walk down Pressa Canyon in hopes of finding more paintings.

The canyon was almost filled with trees and underbrush and we found the walking better in the center of the stream bed regardless of the huge boulders and rocks we had to clamber over for a greater part of the way. The sun was almost directly overhead, the trees gave hardly any shade, the limestone rocks and boulders had been scoured to whiteness by the many waters that had been over them, and they reflected back the white hot heat of the sun in a blinding glare. They were almost as hot as the top of an old iron stove with a fire in it.

But on we went, finding here and there an open stretch of canyon in which the walking was good. Finally when the sun was beginning to throw a shade on one side of the canyon, we found high up on the sunny side a narrow shelf above which were some tiny animals, human and deer pictures in red, unlike anything we had discovered before F Plate 531. Forrest decided he would try to get them before the bit of shade along the ledge disappeared and so that we would not have to make the tiresome walk back again. He had to work with his back in the sun, but managed somehow to get them done in all that intolerable heat. If we could have had a breeze it would have relieved us much.... After a bit of rest we started our long hot walk back to the car up the canyon. When we did get there we were so completely exhausted and so thirsty we just flopped down in the dirt and sat there until we gained enough strength to get in the car and find a place to camp for the night.

On the way out we found an old stunted live oak that afforded enough shade for ourselves and car, and there we stopped. Putting out the cots, we removed all unnecessary clothing and lay there and just rested for more than an hour. Away in the night some animal awoke us barking real hoarse. We shined his eyes with the flashlight, Forrest saw the bulk of his body, and we decided it was a fox who had discovered us. He ran away, but returned later and barked again. We went back to sleep and let him bark. (Lula Kirkland, 1938)

Copying the petroglyphs in Lewis Canyon (Plates 56-63) a few days later was also trying work. Lula Kirkland recorded (1938):

Never have I worked under more trying circumstances. First the sun caused a steaming heat to come from the rocks and later the rocks were as hot as if they had a fire under them, the glare even with smoked glasses was bad and the reflected heat from the hot rocks became almost intolerable. Still we worked on. There was no shade near to give a minute's relief and hardly a breath of air could be felt. We crawled under a bush for a bit of very thin shade and ate our lunch. Back to work we went, but about 4:00 o'clock we had to quit. The sun seemed as if it was baking our brains, the water we had would not quench our thirst, and it became so unbearable we had to walk down to the river to the waterhole and crawl in the shelter and stay for an hour or more. When we came out we felt better, some thunderheads had collected, and it was thundering rather heavily. We started to work again but had hardly finished a board full when it started raining. We made a shelter for our boards, Kodak, etc., with rocks piled together which kept them dry until the rain continued with more force when we decided we were going to get wet anyway so might as well go to the car. It was about a half a mile up a difficult steep trail -a trail filled with small rocks and rubble that rolled and turned with every step you made on them. I put my Kodak in the top of my old straw hat -I tied the strings tight under my chin-my handbag and an extra pair of shoes I had under my arm. It was pouring down rain by that time and rushing up that cliff was a breath-taking task without it raining in your face. I held my hand over a hole in my hat to keep the rain out, and when I got to the car I didn't have a dry thread on me. My hat string had drawn up till it was choking me, but only a small amount of water got on my head. When the rain slacked a bit we changed to dry clothes, crawled in the car, rested, and went to sleep from sheer exhaustion while the rain continued.

Days were sometimes wasted in searching for paintings which did not exist or were disappointing after they were found. Though clothes were torn from their backs, the Pecos waded and rewaded, innumerable canyons climbed into and out of, and blazing heat and choking dust remained their constant companions, this remarkable couple doggedly clung to their mission. With reluctance even, they left the sweltering canyons of the lower Pecos River to return to Dallas at the end of the month.

By this time word of Kirkland's paintings was spreading, and in 1938 the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, exhibited them. In subsequent years his paintings were exhibited at the Buffalo Museum of Science (1940) and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1943). Kirkland also prepared oversized copies of some of the more intriguing pictographs and used these over and over again in the lectures he was requested to give on the subject.

The month of July, 1939, found the Kirklands again on the trail of rock paintings. Before returning to the lower Pecos River region they copied the rock art of several Central Texas sites (Plates 117, 122, 123). By the twelfth of the month six more boards of paintings (Plates 35-37, 41, 54, 80) had been made in the lower Pecos River region, and on the following day the Kirklands headed for Balmorhea, where they had heard of more pictographs. Failing to find these, they visited again with Victor Smith in Alpine, copied the pictographs at Indian Water Hole (Plate 80), then visited Presidio on the Rio Grande before turning westward for the Hueco Tanks and its famous pictographs.

All who drive westward from Alpine to El Paso are impressed with the distance and the land. So too was Mrs. Kirkland (1939), who remarked that

The thing that impressed me most about the miles we traveled from Marfa to El Paso was the many, many miles of semi-desert, I might say desert that has little or no water; it hardly affords life to the lizards and rattlesnakes. Texas is a large state but so much of this country is apparently so worthless. At all times we were in sight of near and far mountains, beautiful with the haze in the distance and varicolored when near. The Rio Grande is a green line of vegetation, after we drew near to it, with large blue mountains, forming a formidable looking barrier across in Mexico. Sand dunes with stunted mesquites filled the valley where irrigation had not reached. From McNary on to El Paso we saw river water running in irrigation ditches with green fields of cotton and feed stuffs. I remember how sweet the clover smelled. The highway stretches out in a straight line for miles and miles up the valley, for the greater part between rows of cottonwood trees. The longest avenue of trees I've ever seen before.

After a brief stop in El Paso they continued on to Hueco Tanks, Mrs. Kirkland describing them (1939) as:

Small mountainous piles of granitoid rock, sticking up out of a desert valley, surrounded by other small mountains. These huge piles of rocks catch rain water in holes or crevices in rock called tanks, and keep it there clean and sweet many months after a rain. It is a veritable oasis in the desert.

They pulled up at the largest water hole and, eager to see the paintings they had heard so much about, immediately began to search for them. Some of the first they found were in

what is called the Comanche Cave. . . . The air that greeted us was icy cool and so refreshing. On a huge rock up near the top of the cave was one large rock on which someone had printed, no one knows how many years ago, the sign "WATTER HEAR." Underneath through a gap about four feet wide was a huge cistern of water, ice cold. The slanting rock leading up to the cistern was polished to a glassy surface by the many feet, Indian and white, that had gone up for water. Reclining on the cool rock with the cool air coming from the cave was a delightful experience after our climbing over the hot rocks looking for pictures, and over our heads on the top or the ceiling of the shelter the Indians had painted pictographs. Over them hundreds of names are written and printed, the earliest date I saw was 1849.... Walking and climbing up and down and around the huge rocks we found most of the pictures near the ground level and near mortar holes. With night coming on we chose a place to camp and called the day ended. (Lula Kirkland, 1939)

Recording the many pictographs of Hueco Tanks was a tremendous task, but with Kirkland diligently painting and Mrs. Kirkland scrambling up and down the rocks locating new sites, photographing various shelters, and taking care of the camp chores, they had completed the copies on twentysix boards (Plates 124-149) by the end of the month.

It was the most productive summer of painting they had had or were to have. Although they spent two more summer vacations copying rock art, they had visited the major sites in the state and Forrest Kirkland's health appears to have been failing. July of 1940 found them once again in the lower Pecos River country, where they found a few more paintings to reproduce (Plates 38-40), but their vacation was brief. Mrs. Kirkland fell and injured her back and had to return to Dallas for treatment. Kirkland copied only a few other petroglyphs (Plate 116) in Nolan County during the remainder of the summer.

The next year, 1941, two weeks in July were devoted to recording the paintings and petroglyphs of the Panhandle. They had planned to go back to the Pecos and Devils rivers but heard the region was having so much rain that they did not do so. The rock art of Rocky Dell in Oldham County was copied first (Plates 150-152), then the scattered petroglyphs of the region (Plates 153—160) before they drove south to Fort Chadbourne, where Kirkland copied one last design (Plate 120). That winter he finished an article about the rock art of the Panhandle for the Bulletin of the Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society (Forrest Kirkland, 1942b). Soon after, he was felled by a heart attack.

He was forty-nine years old when he died, April 2, 1942. He had attempted what no one else had dared, and he had succeeded beyond the dreams of any. He had copied most of the rock art then known in Texas. His heroic, self-imposed task was completed.