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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories, by
+Florence Finch Kelly, Illustrated by Stanley L. Wood
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories
+       Emerson's Wife -- Colonel Kate's Protégée -- The Kid of Apache Teju -- A Blaze on Pard Huff -- How Colonel Kate Won Her Spurs -- Hollyhocks -- The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of Johnson Sides -- A Piece of Wreckage -- The Story of a Chinee Kid -- Out of Sympathy -- An Old Roman of Mariposa -- Out of the Mouth of Babes -- Posey -- A Case of the Inner Imperative
+
+
+Author: Florence Finch Kelly
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2006  [eBook #18309]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMERSON'S WIFE AND OTHER WESTERN
+STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 18309-h.htm or 18309-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/3/0/18309/18309-h/18309-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/3/0/18309/18309-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+EMERSON'S WIFE AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES
+
+by
+
+FLORENCE FINCH KELLY
+
+Author of "With Hoops of Steel," "The Delafield Affair," Etc.
+
+With Illustrations in Color by Stanley L. Wood
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "Want my guns?" shouted Nick derisively.  "Then come and
+take 'em!"]
+
+
+
+
+Chicago
+A. C. McClurg & Co.
+1911
+Copyright
+A. C. McClurg & Co.
+1911
+Published September, 1911
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   EMERSON'S WIFE
+
+   COLONEL KATE'S _Protégée_
+
+   THE KID OF APACHE TEJU
+
+   A BLAZE ON PARD HUFF
+
+   HOW COLONEL KATE WON HER SPURS
+
+   HOLLYHOCKS
+
+   THE RISE, FALL, AND REDEMPTION OF JOHNSON SIDES
+
+   A PIECE OF WRECKAGE
+
+   THE STORY OF A CHINEE KID
+
+   OUT OF SYMPATHY
+
+   AN OLD ROMAN OF MARIPOSA
+
+   OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES
+
+   POSEY
+
+   A CASE OF THE INNER IMPERATIVE
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   "Want my guns?" shouted Nick derisively.  "Then
+     come and take 'em!" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+   Wemple dug his spurs into its sweating side and
+     the beast sprang forward at a faster gallop
+
+   Out on the plain we saw the Kid yelling like a
+     wild man, with Dynamite at his highest speed,
+     chasing a jackrabbit
+
+   "I'd hate to have to spile your hide, but I'll do
+     it if you don't get out o' this trail"
+
+
+
+
+EMERSON'S WIFE
+
+AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES
+
+
+
+
+EMERSON'S WIFE
+
+Nick Ellhorn awoke and looked around the room with curiosity and
+interest, but without surprise.  He had no recollection of having
+entered it the night before, and he was lying across the bed fully
+clothed.  But he had long ago ceased to feel surprise over a matter of
+that sort.  His next movement was to reach for his revolver, and he
+gave a grunt of satisfaction on finding that it hung, as usual, from
+his cartridge belt.  He was aware of a deep, insistent thirst, and as
+he sat up on the edge of the bed he announced aloud, in a tone of
+conviction, "I sure need a cocktail!"
+
+Glancing out of the window, he saw a little plaza, fresh in the morning
+sunlight with its greening grass and budding trees, and beyond it the
+pink walls and portalled front of a long adobe building.  He nodded
+approvingly.
+
+"I reckon I pulled my freight from Albuquerque all right.  And I had a
+good load too," he reflected with a chuckle.  "And I reckon I sure
+bunched myself all right into Santa Fe; for if this ain't the Plaza
+Hotel, I 'm drunker 'n a feller has any right to be who 's been total
+abstainin' ever since last night.  But I 've sure got to have a
+cocktail now, if it busts a gallus!"
+
+He stared wistfully at the door; but drunken lethargy was still upon
+him, and his disinclination to move was stronger than his thirst.  His
+eyes, roving along the wall, fell upon the electric call button.
+Stretching a sinewy arm to its full length he made dumb show of
+pressing it, as he said, "One push, one cocktail; two pushes, two
+cocktails!"  Then he shook his head despairingly.  "Too far, can't
+reach it," he muttered.  But his face brightened as his hand
+accidentally touched his revolver.  Out it flashed, and there was no
+tremor in the long brown hand that held it in position.  Bang!  Bang!
+Bang! went the gun, three shots in quick succession, and then three
+more.  "Six pushes, six cocktails!" he announced, triumphantly.
+
+The button had been driven into the wall, and several holes hovered
+close upon its wreck.  A clatter of hurrying feet on the stairway and
+the din of excited voices told him that his summons had at least
+attracted attention.  "Push button's a sure handy thing!" he exclaimed
+aloud as he fell back on the bed, laughing drunkenly.
+
+The footsteps halted outside and the voices sunk to whispers.
+Presently Ellhorn, gazing expectantly at the door, saw a pair of
+apprehensive eyes peering through the transom.  At sight of the face he
+waved his hand, which still grasped the gun, and called out, "Say, you,
+I want six cocktails!"  The face quickly dodged downward and the feet
+and the whispering voices moved farther away.  Then came the sound of a
+rapid stride down the hall and a deep voice bellowed, "Nick, let me in!"
+
+Nick called out "Tommy Tuttle!" and in walked a big bulk of a man, six
+feet and more tall, with shoulders broad and burly and legs like tree
+trunks.  Ellhorn turned toward him a beaming face and broke into a
+string of oaths.  But his profanity was cordial and joyous.  It bloomed
+with glad welcome and was fragrant with good fellowship and brotherly
+love.
+
+"Nick, you 're drunk," said Tuttle reprovingly.
+
+"You 're away off, Tom!  I was yesterday, but I 've been teetotallin'
+ever since I came into this room last night, and the whole Arizona
+desert ain't in it with my throat this mornin'!  I want six cocktails!"
+
+"No, you don't," the other interrupted decisively.  "You-all can have
+some coffee," and he stepped back to the door and gave the order.
+
+Ellhorn sat up and looked with indignant surprise at his friend.  "Tom
+Tuttle--" he began.
+
+"Shut up!" Tuttle interrupted.  "Come and soak your head."
+
+Ellhorn submitted to the head-soaking without protest, but drank his
+coffee with grumblings that it was not coffee, but cocktails, that he
+wanted.
+
+"Nick, ain't you-all ashamed of yourself?" Tuttle asked severely.  But
+it was anxiety rather than reproof that was evident in his large, round
+face and blue eyes.  His fair skin was tanned and burned to a bright
+red, and against its blazing color glowed softly a short, tawny
+mustache.
+
+"No, Tommy, not yet," Nick replied cheerfully.  "It's too soon.  It's
+likely I will be to-morrow, or mebbe even this afternoon.  But not now.
+You-all ought to be more reasonable."
+
+"To think you 'd pile in here like this, when I 'm in a hole and need
+you bad," Tuttle went on in a grieved tone.
+
+The fogs had begun to clear out of Ellhorn's head, and he looked up
+with quick concern.  "What's up, Tom?"
+
+"The Dysert gang 's broke loose again, and Marshal Black 's in San
+Francisco, and Sheriff Williamson 's gone to Chicago.  I 've got to
+ride herd on 'em all by myself."
+
+"What have they done?"
+
+"Old man Paxton was found dead by his front gate yesterday morning.  He
+'d been killed by a knife-thrower, and a boss one at that--cut right
+across his jugular.  I went straight for Felipe Vigil, and last night I
+got a clue from him, and he promised to tell me more to-day.  But this
+morning he was found dead under the long bridge with his tongue cut
+out.  That's enough for 'em; not another Greaser will dare open his
+mouth now.  I wired you yesterday at Plumas to come as quick as you
+could."
+
+"Then what you gruntin' about, Tom?  I left Plumas before your wire got
+there, and how could I be any quicker 'n that?"
+
+"I wish Emerson was here.  I 'd like to have his judgment about this
+business.  Emerson 's always got sure good judgment."
+
+"Send for him, then," was Nick's prompt rejoinder.
+
+Tuttle looked at him with surprise and disapproval.  "Nick, are you
+drunker than you look?  You-all know he 's just got back from his
+wedding trip."
+
+"But he 's back, all right, ain't he!  Neither one of us has ever got
+into a hole yet that Emerson did n't come a-runnin', and fixed for
+whatever might happen.  And he's never needed us that we did n't get
+there as quick as we could.  You-all don't reckon, Tom, that Emerson
+Mead's liver 's turned white just because he 's got a wife!"
+
+Tom Tuttle fidgeted his big bulk and cleared his throat.  Words did not
+come so easily to him as deeds, but Ellhorn's way of putting it made
+explanation necessary.  "I don't mean it that way, Tom.  Once, last
+year, down in Plumas, when Emerson would n't let us shoot into that
+crowd that wanted to hang him, I wondered for just a second if he was
+afraid, and it made me plumb sick.  But I saw right away that it was
+just Emerson's judgment that there ought n't to be any shootin' right
+then, and he was plumb right about it.  No, Tom, I sure reckon there
+ain't a drop of blood in Emerson's veins that would n't be ready for a
+fight any minute, if 't was his judgment that there ought to be a
+fight, even if he has got married.  But we-all must remember that he 's
+got a wife now, and can't cut out from his family and go rushin' round
+the country like a steer on the prod every time you get drunk and raise
+hell, or every time I need help.  We 'll have to pull together after
+this, Tom, and leave Emerson out.  It would be too much like stackin'
+the cards against Mrs. Emerson if we didn't."
+
+As Tuttle ended he saw a gleam in the other's eyes that caused him to
+add with emphasis, "And I 'm not goin' to call him up here, and don't
+you do it, either!"
+
+Nick got up, shook himself, and winked at the hole in the wall where
+had been the electric button.  He was a handsome man, as tall as
+Tuttle, but more slenderly built, with clean-cut features, dancing
+black eyes, and a black mustache that swept in an upward curve over his
+tanned cheek.  His friend scrutinized him anxiously as he slid
+cartridges into the empty chambers of his revolver.
+
+"Sure you 're sober, Nick?"
+
+Ellhorn laughed.  "How the devil can I tell?  I can walk straight and
+see straight and shoot straight; and if that ain't sober enough to
+tackle any four-spot Greaser, I might just as well get drunk again!"
+
+"Well, I reckon you 're sober enough to jump into this job with me now;
+and if you stay sober, it's all right.  But if I catch you drinkin'
+another drop till we get through with this business, I 'll run you back
+into this room and sit on your belly till you 're ready to holler
+quits!"
+
+It was a dangerous solidarity of crime and mutual protection against
+which the two deputy marshals started out alone.  The Dysert gang had
+been organized originally as a secret society to further the political
+ambitions of men who were not overscrupulous as to instruments or
+methods.  But gradually it had drifted into a means of wreaking private
+revenge and compelling money tribute.  Those of its early members who
+were of the law abiding sort had left it long before, and its
+membership had dwindled to a handful of Mexicans of the recklessly
+criminal sort.  They were credited, in the general belief, with thefts,
+assaults, and murders; but so closely had they held together, so potent
+was their influence with men in public station, and so general was the
+fear of the bloody revenges they did not hesitate to take, that not one
+of them had yet been convicted of crime.
+
+Faustin Dysert, who had organized the society and was still its head,
+combined in himself the worst tendencies of both Mexicans and
+Americans, his mother having been of one race and his father of the
+other, and both of the sort that reflect no credit upon their
+offspring.  But he owned the house in which he lived and two or three
+other adobes which he rented, and was therefore lifted above the
+necessity of labor and held in much regard by his fellow Mexicans.  The
+combination of that influence and the favor of the political boss of
+his party, to whom he had been of use, had made him chief of police of
+Santa Fé and had kept him in that office for several years.  And he had
+been careful to recruit his force from the membership of his society.
+
+Tuttle knew that he could not count on any open help or sympathy from
+the public, for no one would dare to invite thus frankly the disfavor
+of the gang.  And he knew, too, that he could expect to get no more
+information from leaky members of the society or their friends, since
+that swift punishment had been meted out to the wagging tongue of
+Felipe Vigil.  He was well aware also that his chief, the United States
+Marshal, had not been zealous in the pursuit of Dysert's criminals, and
+that Black's friend, Congressman Dellmey Baxter, was known to have
+under his protection several members of the society.  Therefore, if he
+bungled the job, he was likely to lose his official head; and if he
+were not swift and sure in his movements against the gang, his physical
+head would not be worth the lead that would undoubtedly come crashing
+into it from behind, before the end of the week.
+
+"The thing for us to do, Tommy," advised Ellhorn, "is to take in all
+the gang we can get hold of.  We 'll herd 'em all into jail first, and
+get the evidence afterwards.  There 'll be some show to get it then,
+and there ain't now.  We 'll load up with warrants, and arrest every
+kiote that's thought to be a member of the gang; and we 'll start in
+with Faustin Dysert himself!"
+
+Tuttle looked perplexed.  He had in his veins a strain of German blood,
+which showed in his frank, sincere, blonde countenance and in his
+direct and unimaginative habit of mind.  But Ellhorn supplemented his
+solidity and straightforwardness with an audacity of initiative and a
+disregard of consequences that told of Celtic ancestry as plainly as
+did the suggestion of a brogue that in moments of excitement touched
+his soft Southern speech.
+
+"Marshal Black would be dead agin goin' at it that way," said Tuttle
+doubtfully.
+
+"Of course he would!  But he ain't here, and we 'll run this round-up
+to suit ourselves; and if we don't bunch more bad steers than was ever
+got together in this town before, I 'll pull my freight for hell
+without takin' another drink!"
+
+"Mebbe you 're right," said Tuttle slowly, "and I think likely that
+would be Emerson's judgment too.  If he hadn't got married we 'd be all
+right.  Us three could go up agin the whole lot of 'em and win out in
+three shakes!"
+
+"Then let's send for him, and see if he 'll come!"
+
+But Tuttle shook his head.  "No," he said positively, "that would n't
+be a square deal for Mrs. Emerson, and we won't do it.  We 'll stack up
+alone against this business, Nick.  We 'll put on all the guns we 've
+got and keep together.  We might get Willoughby Simmons--he 's deputy
+sheriff now; but he 's got no judgment, and he 's likely to get rattled
+and shoot wild if things get excitin'.  We 'll get the warrants and
+start out right away, for we 've got to keep the thing quiet and nab
+'em before they find out we 're on the warpath.  You-all remember you
+'re sure goin' to keep sober!"
+
+"Well," said Nick with a laugh, "I 'll be sober enough to stack up with
+any measly kiote that's pirootin' around this town!"
+
+Tuttle went for the warrants, and Ellhorn said he would get some
+breakfast.  But first he waited until his friend was out of sight and
+then paid a visit to the bar-room.  Next he went to the telegraph
+office.  The message that he sent was addressed to Emerson Mead, Las
+Plumas, New Mexico, and it read:
+
+"Tommy and me are up against the Dysert gang alone, and I 'm drunk.
+Nick."
+
+He came out of the telegraph office smiling joyously and humming under
+his breath the air of "Bonnie Dundee."  "I did n't ask him to come," he
+said to himself, "and if he wants to now, that's his affair.  Well, I
+reckon he ain't any more likely to have daylight let through him now
+than he was before he got married; and nobody's gun has made holes in
+him yet!"
+
+It was early afternoon when the two friends started out on their
+round-up of bad men.  To attract as little notice as possible they took
+a closed hack and drove rapidly toward the Mexican quarter.  Nick's
+manner showed such recklessness and high spirits that Tuttle regarded
+him with anxiety and began to wonder if it would not be wiser to carry
+out his threat of the morning before attempting anything else.  But he
+caught sight of two Mexicans coming toward them, one handsome and well
+built and the other slouching and ill-favored.
+
+"There come two of 'em now!  Liberate Herrera and Pablo Gonzalez!" he
+exclaimed, with sudden concentration of interest and attention.
+"Liberate is a boss knife-thrower, and I think likely he 's the one
+that did the business for old man Paxton.  Look out for 'im, Nick!"
+
+The carriage came abreast of the two men and Tuttle jumped out, with
+Ellhorn close behind him.  But quick as they were, Herrera, the
+handsome one of the two, understood what was happening and leaped to
+one side, a long knife flashing from his sleeve, before Tuttle's hand
+could descend upon him.  The other was slower and Ellhorn had him by
+the arm before he could thrust his hand into his pocket for his
+revolver.  Herrera's knife slid into position against his wrist and
+Tuttle's revolver clicked.  The Mexican looked dauntlessly into its
+black muzzle, but saw that his companion was submitting, and that both
+were covered by the guns of the officers.
+
+"It's all right, Señor Tuttle," he said coolly.  "You 've got the best
+of me.  I give up."
+
+They drove back to the adobe jail; and while Tuttle was turning his
+prisoners into the custody of Willoughby Simmons, the deputy sheriff,
+Ellhorn slipped out, crossed the street, and went into a saloon.  The
+men already there had watched the arrival of the hack and the two
+prisoners at the jail, and two of them, when they saw Nick coming,
+hurried into the back room, leaving the door open.
+
+"What's up, Nick?" the proprietor asked as he poured the whiskey
+Ellhorn had ordered.
+
+"Tommy and me," answered Nick jauntily, pushing his glass across the
+bar to be filled a second time.  "We 're on top now, and I sure reckon
+we 're goin' to stay there!"
+
+"After the Dysert gang?"
+
+"You bet!  Hot and heavy!  We'll have 'em all bunched in the jail by
+night!"
+
+Ellhorn stood with his back toward the middle door; and the two men in
+the rear room cautiously made their way into the front again, revolvers
+in their hands.  Nick turned and found himself facing Faustin Dysert
+and Hippolito Chavez, a policeman and member of Dysert's society.  His
+two revolvers flashed out, the triggers clicked, and he stood waiting
+for the next move of the others, for he saw at once that they did not
+intend to shoot at that moment.
+
+"You 'll have to give me your guns, Nick," said Dysert.  "You 're drunk
+and disorderly, and I 'm going to arrest you."
+
+"Want my guns?" shouted Nick derisively.  "Then come and take 'em!"
+
+"I 'm going to take them, and I 'll give you two minutes in which to
+decide whether or not you 'll give them up peaceably."
+
+"You will, will you!  Let me tell you, it's yourself that's goin' to be
+taken, dead or alive, and not for any common 'drunk and disorderly,'
+either!  You-all are goin' to swing, you are!  Whoo-oo-ee-ee!"
+
+Across the street, Tuttle had come out of the jail and was looking for
+his friend.  Ellhorn's peculiar yell came bellowing from the saloon,
+and he knew that trouble of some sort was brewing.  Dysert and Chavez
+saw him leaping across the street, and rushed into the back room and
+slammed the door as he entered at the front.  With a glance Tuttle took
+in the group of men with tense, excited faces, gathered at one side of
+the room, Ellhorn, with a revolver in each hand, at the other, and the
+saloon-keeper emerging from underneath the bar.
+
+"Nick, you 're drinkin' again!  Put up your guns!" Tom exclaimed
+angrily.
+
+"After 'em, Tommy!  They went in there!  Whoo-oo-ee-ee!" yelled Nick,
+rushing toward the middle door.  It gave before his weight and he
+dashed in.  Tuttle followed, not knowing what was happening, yet sure
+that his friend was daring some danger.  But the room was empty.
+Through the back door Dysert and his companion had gained a corral,
+into which opened several other houses, and in some one of these had
+disappeared and found concealment.
+
+"Huh!" grunted Nick.  "Tom, if you'd only had sense enough to stay away
+a minute longer I 'd have got both of 'em myself!"
+
+They started forth on another raid, but the members of the Dysert gang
+seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.  Neither in the
+streets, the plaza, their homes, nor their usual haunts could the
+officers of the law find one of those for whom they had warrants.
+
+"It's what I was afraid of," said Tuttle.  "The hint got out too quick
+for us, and now they 're all hiding."
+
+"They've holed up somewhere, all in a bunch, and we 've got to smoke
+'em out.  Whoo-oo-ee-ee!"
+
+The several whiskies with which Nick had succeeded in eluding his
+friend's vigilance were beginning to have manifest effect, and Tuttle
+decided that, whatever became of the Dysert gang, there was only one
+thing to do with Nick Ellhorn, and that would have to be done at once.
+He drove back to the Plaza Hotel, took Nick to his room, locked the
+door, and put the key in his pocket.
+
+"Now, Nick, you-all don't get out of here till you 're plumb
+sober--sober enough to be sorry!"
+
+Nick protested, but Tuttle threw him down on the bed and then
+deliberately sat down on his chest.  Ellhorn swore valiantly and
+threatened many and dire revenges.  But Tom sat still, in unheeding
+silence, and after a little Nick shut his mouth with a snap and gazed
+sullenly at the ceiling.  He labored for breath for a while, and at
+last broke the silence by asking impatiently: "Say, Tom, how long you
+goin' to make an easy chair of me?"
+
+"You know, without askin'!"
+
+Nick relapsed into silence again until his face grew purple and his
+breath came in gasps.  "Tom," he began, and there was no backbone left
+in his voice, "what do you-all want me to promise?"
+
+"Not to drink another drop of whiskey, beer, wine, brandy, or anything
+intoxicatin', till we get the Dysert gang corralled--or they get us."
+
+"All right, Tommy.  I promise."
+
+Tattle got up and looked at his friend with an expression of mingled
+apology and triumph on his big, red face.  "I 'm sorry I had to do it.
+Nick.  You-all know that.  But I had to, and you know that, too.  We
+can't do another thing now till to-morrow, and you 're sober again.  I
+don't see," he went on grumblingly, "as long as they were goin' to kill
+old man Paxton anyway, why they did n't do it before Emerson got
+married!"
+
+Nick had been soaking his head in the wash-bowl and he wheeled around
+with the water streaming over his face.  "Tom, I sure reckon Emerson
+would come if you 'd send for him!"
+
+"Mebbe he would, Nick, but I ain't goin' to do it.  For he sure had n't
+ought to go and get himself killed now, just on our account.  But if he
+was here," Tommy went on wistfully, "we 'd wipe up the ground with that
+Dysert gang too quick!"
+
+Nick rolled over on the bed, sleep heavy on his eyelids.  "Well, I gave
+Emerson the chance this mornin' to let us know whether he 's goin' to
+keep on bein' one of us, or whether he 's goin' to bunch alone with
+Mrs. Emerson after this!"
+
+Tuttle gazed in open-mouthed and wide-eyed astonishment.
+"What--what--do you mean, Nick?  You did n't wire him to come?"
+
+"No, I did n't!  I told him you and me was up against the Dysert
+gang--" Nick's voice trailed off into a sleepy murmur--"alone, and
+I--was drunk--and likely to get--disorderly."
+
+"You measly, ornery--" Tuttle began.  But he saw that Ellhorn was
+already asleep and he would not abuse his friend unless Nick could hear
+what he said.  So he shut his mouth and considered the situation.  He
+knew well enough that in the days before Emerson's marriage any such
+message would have brought Mead to their aid as fast as steam could
+carry him.  But now, if he did not come--well, what Nick had said was
+true, and they would know that the end of the old close friendship had
+come.  But, for the young wife's sake, if he should come, he and Nick
+must not let him do anything foolhardy and they must try to keep him
+out of danger.
+
+Tuttle waited up for the midnight train, on which, if Mead heeded
+Nick's telegram, he would be likely to arrive.  In the meantime, he did
+some spying out of the land and learned that Dysert and some of his
+followers had hidden themselves, with arms, ammunition, and provisions,
+in an empty adobe house belonging to the head of the band.  The deputy
+marshal knew this meant that the criminals would resist to the last,
+and that any attempt to take them would be as perilous an adventure as
+he and his friends had ever faced.  If Emerson came and anything
+happened to him--and it was very unlikely, if they carried the thing
+through, that any one of them would come out of it without at least
+serious injury--then he and Ellhorn would feel that they had been the
+cause of the young wife's bereavement.  And yet, with Mead's help, they
+might succeed.  And success in this enterprise would be the biggest,
+the crowning achievement in all their experience as officers of the law.
+
+As midnight approached, Tuttle scarcely knew whether he more hoped or
+dreaded that Mead would come.  He had faced the muzzle of loaded guns
+with less trepidation and anxiety than he felt as he stepped out on the
+sidewalk when he heard the rattle of the omnibus.  A tall figure, big
+and broad-shouldered, swung down from the vehicle.
+
+"Emerson--Emerson--" Tuttle stammered, his voice shaking and dying in
+his throat into something very like a sob.  Then he gripped Mead's hand
+and said casually, "How 's Mrs. Emerson?"
+
+Mead replied merely, "She's well"; but Tom caught an unwonted
+intonation of tenderness in his voice and saw his face soften and glow
+for an instant before he went on anxiously, "What's up?--and where 's
+Nick?"
+
+Tuttle wavered a little the next morning in his purpose of attacking
+the Dysert retreat.  He took Ellhorn aside and asked his opinion about
+letting the matter rest until the return of Marshal Black and Sheriff
+Williamson.
+
+Nick was quite sober again and looked back over his misdeeds of the day
+before with a jaunty smile and a penitent shake of the head.  "Sure,
+Tom," he said, and the Irish roll in his voice showed that his
+contrition was sincere enough to move him deeply, "sure and I was a
+measly, beastly, ornery kiote to go back on you like that, and you 'd
+have served me right if you 'd set on me twice as long as you did!"
+
+But against Tuttle's suggestion of postponing the conflict he presented
+a surprised and combative front.  "What you-all thinkin' of, Tom?  Why,
+we 've got 'em holed up now, and all that's to do is to smoke 'em out!"
+
+"It's Emerson I 'm thinkin' of--and Mrs. Emerson.  He--he wrote her a
+letter this mornin', and put it in his pocket, and asked me if anything
+happened to him to see that she got it.  Nick, I--I don't like to think
+about that!  If we put this thing off, he 'll go home, and then we-all
+can fight it through without him, mebbe.  Nick, you was a sure kiote to
+send for him yesterday."
+
+"Yes, I sure was," said Nick with sorrowful conviction.  Then he added,
+with an air of cheerful finality, "Well, I would n't 'a' done it if I
+had n't been drunk!  But you 're right, Tommy.  It ain't the square
+deal to Mrs. Emerson for us to take him into this business.  It 'll be
+a fight to a finish, for one side or the other, and it's just as likely
+to be us as them."
+
+At that moment Mead came up, saying briskly, "Well, boys, had n't we
+better be starting out?"
+
+Like his two friends, Emerson Mead was Texan born and bred; but a New
+England strain in his blood, with its potent strength and sanity, had
+given him such poise and force of character as had made him the leader
+of the three through their long and intimate friendship and strenuous
+life.
+
+"I 've just been sayin' to Nick," Tom replied, his eyes evading those
+of his friend, "that mebbe we 'd better let this thing slide till Black
+and Williamson get back."
+
+"Well, Tom, this is your shindy, and whatever you say goes.  But I sure
+think that if you really want to get this Dysert gang, the thing to do
+is to trot in and get 'em, right now.  You know yourself that Black
+ain't any too warm about it, and Williamson is so under Dell Baxter's
+thumb that he 's more likely to trip you up, if he can, than he is to
+help.  You-all won't get another chance as good as this!"
+
+Ellhorn's martial ardor, and his buoyant belief that Mead's marriage
+had in no wise lessened his immunity from bullets, obscured for the
+moment his anxiety about Mrs. Mead.  He slapped his thigh, exclaiming,
+"Them's my sentiments, boys!  Come on!  Let's pull our freight!"
+
+Tuttle's manner still showed some reluctance, but he said no more, and
+the three Texans, each of them six feet three or more in his stockings,
+broad-shouldered, and straight as an arrow, swung into the street.
+
+They took with them Willoughby Simmons, the deputy sheriff for whose
+judgment Tom had so little esteem.  Tuttle sent him to guard the rear
+of the house, a small, detached adobe, in which Dysert and an unknown
+number of his followers had fortified themselves.  Some twenty feet in
+front and toward one corner of the house grew a large old apple tree,
+its leaves and pink-nosed buds just beginning to make themselves
+manifest, and underneath it were some piles of wood.  It was the only
+position that offered cover.  Tuttle asked Mead to station himself
+there, where he could command one end of the house, a view toward the
+rear, and the whole front.  Ellhorn he placed similarly at the other
+front corner.  His own position he took midway between the two, facing
+the door and two small windows that blinked beneath the narrow _portal_.
+
+Mead saw that he was the only one for whom protection was possible, and
+exclaimed, "Say, Tom, this ain't fair!"
+
+But Tuttle paid no attention to his protest, and began to call loudly:
+
+"Dysert!  Faustin Dysert!  We know you 're in there, you and your men,
+and if you 'll give yourselves up you won't get hurt.  But we 're goin'
+to take you, dead or alive!  If there 's anybody in there that don't
+belong in your gang, send 'em out, and we 'll let 'em go away
+peaceable!"
+
+There was no reply from the house.  Evidently those within meant to
+play a waiting game until they could get the officers of the law under
+their hands, or perhaps take them unawares.  Tuttle glanced at Mead and
+saw that he was standing apart from the tree and the piles of wood.
+Tom thought of the letter in his friend's pocket and remembered the
+look that had crossed his face at the mention of his wife.  Great beads
+of sweat broke out on Tom's forehead.  With his lips set and his eyes
+on those squinting front windows he walked across to his friend and
+said in a low tone:
+
+"I reckon, Emerson, we 'd better just stand here and guard the place
+till they see they 'll starve to death if they don't give up."
+
+Mead turned upon him a look of supreme astonishment.  "It's your fight,
+Tom," he answered coolly, "and if you-all think that's the best way of
+fightin' it, I 'll stand by and help as long as I 'm needed.  But I did
+n't come up here expectin' to take part in any cold-feet show!"
+
+Tuttle wiped his face vigorously and did not answer.  "I think there's
+only one thing to do," Mead went on, "and that is to rush 'em and make
+'em show their hand!"
+
+Tuttle shook his head.  "No, no," he exclaimed hurriedly, "that
+wouldn't do at all, Emerson!"
+
+Mead left him and, keeping the front of the house in the tail of his
+eye, hurried across the yard to Ellhorn.  "Nick," he demanded, "what's
+the matter with Tommy?  Does he want to take these Greasers or not?"
+
+"Well, Emerson," said Nick hesitatingly, "I sure reckon the truth is
+that he's afraid you 'll get hurt!"
+
+The ruddy tan of Mead's face deepened to purple, and a yellow light
+blazed in his brown eyes.  He strode back to where Tuttle had resumed
+his post, his fist shot out, and Tom went staggering backward.  "So
+you-all think I 'm a coward, do you?" he shouted.  Then, wheeling, with
+a revolver in each hand, he rushed toward the front door.  Nick saw
+what he purposed to do, and dashed after him with a wild "Whoo-oo-ee!"
+
+Tuttle was left without support.  For a moment he was so dazed by
+Mead's blow that he stared about him bewilderedly.  The men inside the
+house were quick to take advantage of so unexpected a situation.  The
+windows flashed fire and Tom heard the thud of bullets against the
+ground at his feet.  One bit his cheek.  With loud and angry oaths he
+dropped to one knee, rifle in hand, and sent bullets and insults
+hurtling together through the crashing windows.  Springing to his feet
+he ran a few steps forward, dropped to his knee again, and with bullets
+pattering all around him emptied the magazine of his rifle.
+
+Mead and Ellhorn were trying to batter down the door, but it was
+strongly built and had not yielded to their shoulders.  Throwing down
+his empty rifle, Tuttle ran into the _portal_, thrust Ellhorn to one
+side as if he had been a boy, and lunged against the door with all his
+ox-like weight.  Mead threw himself against it at the same instant, and
+it cracked, split, and flew into splinters.
+
+The three big Texans, each with a revolver in either hand, surged
+through the opening.  The Mexicans met them in mid-floor, and the room
+was full of the whirr of flying bullets, the thud of bullets against
+the walls, the spat of bullets upon human flesh.  The officers rushed
+forward, their guns blazing streams of fire, and Dysert and his men
+backed toward the corner.  Mead emptied both of his revolvers and,
+pressing the leader closely, raised one of them to batter him over the
+head.  Dysert threw up his hands, exclaiming, "We give up!" and the
+battle was over.
+
+On the floor were the bodies of four Mexicans, either dead or badly
+wounded.  Dysert and three of his followers were still alive, although
+each had been hurt.  Tuttle, besides the gash in his cheek, had a
+bullet in his left arm, and Ellhorn a wound in his thigh.  Mead's hat
+and clothing had been pierced, but his body was untouched.
+
+They sent for physicians to attend to the wounded Mexicans and, having
+handcuffed their prisoners, hurried them to the jail.  As Simmons led
+the men from the sheriff's office and the three friends were left
+alone, Mead turned to Tuttle.
+
+"Tom," he said, "I 'm sure sorry I struck you just now.  I was so mad I
+hardly knew what I was doing.  You 'd been acting queer, and when I
+found it was because you thought I was afraid, I just boiled over.  I
+had no business to do it, Tom, and I 'm sorry."
+
+The red of Tom's face went a shade deeper, and he fidgeted uneasily.
+"No, Emerson, you 're wrong," he protested.  "I did n't think you was
+afraid.  You-all ought to know better than that.  But--well--the truth
+is, Emerson, I could n't help thinkin' what hard lines it would be for
+Mrs. Emerson if anything--should happen to you."
+
+The tears came into Mead's eyes, and he turned away as Tuttle went on:
+"I told Nick not to send for you, but the darned kiote went and done it
+without me knowing it!"
+
+"No, I didn't," Nick exclaimed.  "I just told him we was in a hole and
+I was drunk!  And, anyway, it's a good thing I did; for now we 've got
+the Dyserts, and Emerson did n't get a scratch!"
+
+"Boys," said Mead, and his voice was thick in his throat, "you 're the
+best friends any fellow ever had; but you-all don't know what a brick
+Marguerite is!  She 'd rather die than come between us, I know she
+would!  She would n't have any more use for me if she thought I 'd kept
+a whole skin by going back on you!  It's the truth, boys, and don't you
+forget it!"
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL KATE'S _PROTÉGÉE_
+
+"Colonel Kate," as both the Select and the Unassorted of Santa Fé society
+were accustomed to speak of Mrs. Harrison Winthrop Coolidge, had long ago
+proved her right to do whatever she chose, by always accomplishing
+whatever she attempted.  She had done so many startling things, and
+always with such dashing success, since Governor Coolidge had brought
+her, a bride, to the old town, that people had become accustomed to her,
+just as they had grown used to the climate, and expected her deeds of
+daring as unthinkingly as they did cool breezes in summer, or sunshine in
+winter.  Besides, everybody liked her; for she had both the charm which
+makes new friends and the tact which holds them loyal.
+
+When, finally, Colonel Kate brought an Indian girl from the pueblo of
+Acoma and made it known that she intended her _protégée_ to grace the
+innermost circles of Santa Fé society, it is possible that some of the
+Select may have shrugged their shoulders a trifle; but, if they did, they
+were careful to have no witnesses.  For Governor Coolidge was the
+richest, the most influential, and the most prominent American in New
+Mexico, and his wife could make and unmake social circles as she chose.
+The Santa Fé _Blast_, which was the organ of the Governor's party,
+announced the event as follows:
+
+"Mrs. Governor Coolidge and guests returned yesterday from a trip to
+Acoma.  As always, Mrs. Coolidge was the life of the party and charmed
+all by her wit and beauty and vivacity. . . .  She even persuaded old
+Ambrosio, the grizzled civil chief of the pueblo, to entrust to her care
+his most precious treasure, his lovely and charming daughter, Miss
+Barbara Koitza.  This beautiful and talented young lady, whom Mrs.
+Coolidge has installed as a friend and guest in her hospitable and
+interesting home, where she is soon to be introduced to Santa Fé society,
+is as cultured as she is handsome.  She has spent a year in the Indian
+school at Albuquerque and two years at Carlyle, and is well fitted to
+adorn the choicest social circles in the land.  She will no doubt be
+warmly welcomed by Santa Fé society and will at once take that position
+in its midst to which her beauty, grace, and talents entitle her."
+
+If she had known of it, poor little Barbara would have been overwhelmed
+by this flourish of trumpets.  But Colonel Kate did not allow it to fall
+under her eye.  And the girl did not even know that, whatever she was
+not, she certainly was interesting and picturesque on the day when she
+first entered her new friend's door.
+
+She wore her Indian costume, and was neat and clean as any white maiden
+with a heritage of bath-tubs.  Spotlessly white were her buckskin
+moccasins and leggings, which encased a pair of tiny feet and then wound
+round and round her sturdy legs until they looked as shapeless as
+telegraph posts.  Her scant, red calico skirt met her leggings at the
+knee; and her red mantle, of Navajo weave, fell back from her head, but
+wrapped closely her waist and arms, and then dropped long ends down the
+front of her dress.  Her coal-black hair, heavy and shining, was combed
+smoothly back from her forehead and fastened in a _chongo_ behind.  Her
+brown face was handsomer than that of most Indian maidens, being longer
+in proportion to its width than is the pueblo type, the cheek bones less
+prominent, the forehead broader, and the lips fuller and more delicately
+chiselled.  It is possible that, far back in Barbara's ancestry, perhaps
+even as far back as the times of the _Conquistadores_, there had been
+some admixture of the white man's race which, after generations of
+quiescence, in her had at last made its influence felt again.
+
+As Mrs. Coolidge led the girl into her new home she looked down at her
+with approving eye and inwardly exclaimed, the conqueror's joy already
+filling her heart, "She 'll be a success!  A tremendous success!  The
+Colonel's wife can do what she pleases now!"
+
+For in the days of which this chronicle tells, Santa Fé was still a
+military post, and the wife of the commanding officer had been all winter
+a thorn in the flesh of Mrs. Coolidge.  The Colonel had been recently
+transferred from an Eastern post; and his wife, who had never been West
+before, had supposed that of course she would at once become the social
+leader of Santa Fe.  Her disappointment was bitter when she found that
+place already firmly held and learned that she, the wife of a colonel in
+the army, and just from the East, would have to yield first place to the
+wife of a mere civilian who had lived in the West for a dozen years.  She
+rebelled and tried to start a clique of her own, and all winter she had
+made trouble among the Select by getting up affairs which clashed with
+Colonel Kate's plans, and by introducing innovations of which Colonel
+Kate did not approve.  Mrs. Coolidge had no fears for her social
+supremacy,--she had reigned too long for the thought of downfall to be
+possible,--but she was tired of being crossed and annoyed, and she
+purposed with one audacious blow to humble the Colonel's wife and put an
+end to her pretensions.
+
+The plan came to her suddenly while she talked with old Ambrosio's
+daughter in the street at Acoma.  She saw that Barbara was discontented
+and unhappy, and that she longed to return to even so much of the life of
+the whites as she had found in the Indian schools.  Colonel Kate pitied
+her and determined to help her.  She was saying to herself that the girl
+was certainly intelligent and attractive, when she suddenly realized that
+this Indian maid was gifted with that indefinable but most potent of
+feminine attractions--personal charm.  And then, like an inspiration, the
+idea took possession of her mind.  She turned impulsively to Barbara:
+
+"Will you go home with me and be my guest for all this spring and summer?"
+
+The joy that beamed in the girl's face told how gladly she would go.  But
+it faded quickly and she shook her head sadly, as she answered:
+
+"I can not.  My father would not allow it.  He will not even let me go
+back to school.  He says that I am an Indian, and that I must stay in
+Acoma and be an Indian."
+
+When Mrs. Coolidge saw that look of eager desire leap into Barbara's eyes
+she determined that the thing should be brought to pass and set herself
+to the task of overcoming old Ambrosio's determination that his daughter
+should never again leave Acoma.  It was not an easy thing to do, but
+Colonel Kate finally accomplished it, on condition that Barbara should
+return whenever he wished her to do so.
+
+During the remaining days of Lent, dressmakers were busy with Barbara's
+wardrobe; and Mrs. Coolidge carefully schooled her in a hundred little
+particulars of manner and deportment.  And meanwhile the Select of Santa
+Fé waited with impatience for a first view of the Indian girl.  For
+Colonel Kate was too shrewd a manager to discount the sensation she
+intended to produce, and so she kept Barbara at home, away from the front
+doors and windows, and out of sight of curious callers.  In the meantime
+she diplomatically helped on the growing interest and excitement, and
+lost no opportunity of arousing curiosity about her _protégée_.
+
+And at last, when Barbara had been three weeks in her home, and no one
+outside her own household had even seen the girl's face; when the town
+was full of rumors and chatter and all manner of romantic stories about
+the Indian girl; when everybody was wondering what she could be like, and
+why Colonel Kate had taken such a fancy to her, then Mrs. Coolidge gave
+her a coming-out party which eclipsed everything in Santa Fe's social
+annals.
+
+All the Select were there, including the Colonel's wife, who had not even
+thought of trying to have a card party the same night.  The doors had
+been opened wide, also, for the Unassorted.  All the most eligible of
+these had received invitations, and not one had sent regrets.  The editor
+of _The Blast_, which was the mouthpiece of the Governor's party, and the
+editor of _The Bugle_, the organ of the opposition, were both there; and
+each of them published a glowing account of the occasion, the former
+because he considered it his duty to "stand in" with whatever concerned
+the Governor; and the latter because he hoped the Governor's wife would
+make it possible for him to be transferred from the Unassorted to the
+Select.
+
+_The Blast_ said: "The Governor's palatial mansion was a dream of
+Oriental magnificence, and the beautiful and artistic _placita_, lighted
+by sparkling eyes of ladies fair and Japanese lanterns, was a vision of
+fairy land."  _The Bugle_ declared: "No, not even in the marble
+drawing-rooms of Fifth Avenue and adjoining streets, nor in the luxurious
+mansions of Washington, could be gathered together a more cultured, a
+more polished, a more interesting, a more _recherché_ assemblage than
+that which filled the Governor's palatial residence and vied with one
+another in doing homage to the winsome Indian maiden."
+
+To call the Governor's residence "palatial" was part of the common law of
+Santa Fé journalism.  In actual fact, it was a one-story, flat-roofed,
+adobe house, enclosing a _placita_, or little court, and having a
+_portal_, or roofed sidewalk, along its front.
+
+When she first went to New Mexico, Mrs. Coolidge enjoyed transports of
+enthusiasm over the quaintness and picturesqueness of its alien modes of
+living.  So she hunted all over Santa Fé for a house of the requisite
+age, dilapidation, and eventful history, to transform into her own home.
+And when at last she found this one, with an authenticated age of two
+hundred years, and a romance, a crime, or a startling event for almost
+every year in its history; with rough, irregular walls four feet thick;
+with tiny, unglazed, iron-barred windows,--then time stopped, it seemed
+to her, until the deed was recorded in her name.
+
+With much sadness of heart she made sentiment give way to civilization
+and renovated the interior.  Wooden floors, instead of the packed earth,
+hardened and glazed by the tread of many generations, plastered and
+papered ceilings and walls and ample windows gave to the inside of the
+house a modern air which its mistress deeply regretted, but accepted
+mournfully as a necessary evil.  But she did not allow a weed or a blade
+of grass to be plucked from its roof; and upon the suggestion that the
+old brown adobe walls should be treated to a coat of gray plaster she
+frowned as if it had been blasphemy.
+
+Upon the _placita_, which had been given over to weeds, tin cans, rags,
+and broken dishes, she lavished loving care and made it the blooming,
+fragrant heart of her home.  In the centre was a locust tree of lusty
+growth, plumy of foliage and brilliant of color; and underneath the tree
+a little fountain shot upward a thin stream, which broke into a diamond
+shower and fell plashing back into a pool whose rim was outlined by a
+circle of purple-flowered iris.  Around this spread a velvet turf, dotted
+with dandelions and English daisies.  An irregular, winding path inclosed
+the tiny lawn, and all the space between the path and the narrow stone
+walk that hugged the four sides of the house was rich with roses.  La
+France and American Beauty and Jacqueminot and many others were there in
+profusion and made the placita a thing of beauty from the time the frosts
+ended until they came again.  A hand rail covered with climbing roses
+guarded the stone walk on three sides of the court, while the fourth side
+of the house was screened by a _portal_ over which roses and honeysuckles
+clambered to the roof.  Facing the wide, roofed passage which gave
+entrance from the street, stood an arch loaded with honeysuckle vines.
+
+Mrs. Coolidge's enthusiasm over New Mexican history, and her admiration
+for the heroic times of the _Conquistadores_, had caused her to make the
+interior of her home almost a museum of antiquities.  On the floors
+Navajo blankets--fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years old, and
+each one with its own dramatic tale--served as rugs.  Silken _rebozos_,
+worn by high-hearted cavaliers riding in search of "_la gran Quivera_"
+draped her windows.  Pueblo pottery, dug from villages that were in ruins
+when the first white men saw them, filled cabinets and shelves.  Saddle
+skirts of embroidered leather, which had pleased the fancy of some brave
+_capitan_ leading a handful of men against a rebellious pueblo two
+centuries ago, made a background for the huge silver spurs of cunning
+workmanship with which some other daring _caballero_ had urged his horse
+in search of adventures and of gold.  And beside them lay the stone axe
+with which a courageous señora, a heroine of the Southwest, had cleft the
+skull of a Navajo chief and saved her townspeople from falling into the
+hands of the savage enemy.  On the walls were old, old paintings of
+_Nuestra Señora de_ this and that, proud of neck and sad and sweet of
+face, which had been brought from the City of Mexico on the backs of
+burros, and adored in little adobe churches by generations of men, women,
+and children, and pierced by the arrows of angry and revengeful Indians
+during the pueblo rebellion, or scarred by fires of destruction, from
+which they had been saved by brave and pious devotees.
+
+Such things as these made a picturesque setting for the Indian maid on
+the night of her début.  It might have been a painful ordeal for her had
+she known that all these people were there mainly to satisfy their
+curiosity concerning her.  But Mrs. Coolidge had carefully kept from her
+the knowledge that she was of especial interest and was expected to
+produce a sensation.  So she knew only that she was having a delightful
+time and that everybody was so kind and cordial and took so much interest
+in her that she did not have a minute during the whole evening in which
+to think about herself.  Everybody was eager to dance, or talk, or stroll
+in the _placita_ with her, and all who were not engaged with her were
+talking enthusiastically in praise of her appearance, her manner, or her
+conversation.
+
+Colonel Kate moved about, proud and happy in the brilliant success of her
+hazardous undertaking and serene in the confidence that the Colonel's
+wife would not again attempt rebellion.  She was even more glad and happy
+for Barbara's sake, for the two had grown very fond of each other and she
+had begun to wonder if old Ambrosio could not be induced to let her adopt
+the girl.  Already it made her heart ache to think she might have to give
+up her _protégée_.  She cast a glance at Barbara, who was holding her
+usual court, a circle of men about her, and thought:
+
+"Nonsense!  Old Ambrosio is not so stupid as to refuse his daughter such
+a chance as I can give her!"
+
+For Colonel Kate, with all her cleverness, had never measured, or even
+imagined, the world-wide difference between the view-points of a pueblo
+chief and an ambitious white woman.  So she felt happy and secure, as she
+smiled in response to one of Barbara's bright glances, and noticed that
+Lieutenant Wemple was still dancing close attendance upon her young
+friend.
+
+Barbara was gowned very simply in white, and carried a bouquet of
+Jacqueminot roses.  Her shining black hair was drawn back from her
+forehead in loose, waving masses and filleted with bands of silver
+filigree.  The brown-faced girl, in her white dress with the glowing
+roses at her breast, made a pleasing picture as she stood beside a
+cabinet of pueblo pottery, against a Navajo _portière_.  Lieutenant
+Wemple, who stood nearest her, thought that, altogether, it made the most
+striking and suggestive composition he had ever seen, and that he would
+like to see her portrait painted just as she stood there; but that would
+be impossible, for no artist could paint two girls into one figure.  And
+she--at one moment she was a bronze figure, listening with drooped
+eyelids, closed lips, and impassive face, and the next she was vibrant
+with life; her big black eyes, which would have redeemed a countenance of
+less attractiveness than hers, sparkled and glowed; her face was radiant
+with eager interest; and the Lieutenant felt that beneath those rich red
+roses must beat a heart as glowing with warm bright life as they.
+
+Santa Fé might be, geographically, far in the deeps of the red and woolly
+West, but the feminine portion of its social circles did not think that
+any reason why they should relapse into barbarism.  And as one means of
+preventing such a dire catastrophe, they made the law of party calls even
+as the laws of the Medes and Persians.  Among themselves the men might
+groan and swear and protest as much as they pleased, but if any one of
+them neglected that duty the ladies forthwith hurled him from the circles
+of the Select into the outer shades of the Unassorted.  After the night
+of Barbara's success these calls did not lag as usual, and Lieutenant
+Wemple, who was wont to be the last, was the very first to present
+himself.
+
+Then followed a series of gayeties in which Barbara was the central
+figure, and Lieutenant Wemple her constant attendant.  Whether it was a
+dinner, or a reception, or a picnic party up the canyon, or a horseback
+excursion to the turquoise mines, he spent as much time by her side as
+the other people allowed.  Barbara enjoyed it all with the zest of a
+mortal let loose in wonderland, and thought that nowhere else in the
+world could there be such delightful people as her new friends.  It
+seemed to her that she had at last come into her own inheritance and
+found the people among whom she really belonged.  But she liked best of
+all the quiet afternoons at home, when she and Mrs. Coolidge sat in the
+_placita_, and Lieutenant Wemple came, and they three read and talked
+together.
+
+The young officer thought her a more interesting companion than any white
+girl he had ever met.  The world--his world--was all so new and
+marvellous to her that it was like opening its doors to some visitor from
+another planet.  He took great pleasure in doing that service and in
+seeing how quickly and eagerly she absorbed everything she saw and heard
+and read; and he found her fresh and constant interest entirely
+delightful.  So it soon came about that the quiet afternoons at home grew
+more and more frequent.
+
+One day in early June they stood together in the _placita_ and agreed
+that it was very beautiful.  The proposition was evident enough and
+likely to cap forth enthusiastic assent from any one.  For the plumy
+green branches of the locust tree were heavy with pendent clusters of
+odorous white bloom; the iris that circled the fountain was glorious in
+its purple raiment; the honeysuckle arch was a mass of red and white
+blossoms trumpeting their fragrance; beside it a great spreading
+rose-bush was yellow with golden treasure; the velvety, emerald turf was
+dotted with white and gold; the rose-bushes were weighted with opening
+buds or perfect flowers, and the warm, soft air was vivid with sunlight,
+and sweet with mingled odors.
+
+So they could hardly have done anything but agree upon the beauty of the
+little court, even if they had wanted to quarrel.  But for the hundredth
+time it struck him that it was very remarkable they should so often think
+alike.  When he made mention of this remarkable fact, she flashed up at
+him one of her eager, brilliant glances.  Then, meeting something more
+than usual in his look, she quickly dropped her eyes again, and over her
+manner there came that mystifying air of shyness and reserve, as if some
+invisible attendant had wrapped about her an impenetrable veil.  In their
+early acquaintance he had often noticed that quick and baffling change in
+her manner, and had liked it, because it seemed to tell of a refined and
+sensitive nature.  From their later frank and friendly intercourse it had
+been absent, and now, when it appeared again and seemed to take her away
+from him, his heart beat fast with the longing to tear the veil away.
+
+For a moment she stood with her gaze resolutely upon the ground and her
+expression and figure impassive.  But she felt his eyes upon her, and her
+brown fingers trembled over the yellow rose in her hand.  Suddenly, as if
+compelled, she lifted her face and the look in his eyes called all her
+heart into hers.  For a second they stood so, revealing to each other
+their inmost feeling, and then, covering her face with her hands, she ran
+into the house.  The Lieutenant picked up the yellow rose she had dropped
+and went out through the street entrance, a very thoughtful look upon his
+countenance.
+
+Wemple had not realized before what was happening to them both, although
+all Santa Fé, except themselves, knew it very well.  But at last he
+understood that he loved her and that she knew it, and that she also knew
+she had confessed in her eyes her love for him.  What was he going to do
+about it?  That was the question he had to face and to settle; and he
+went out alone and tramped over the brown hills and across _arroyos_ and
+through clumps of sage brush and juniper and cactus, and argued it out
+with himself.
+
+He loved her, and she loved him.  Yet--she was an Indian, and did he want
+an Indian wife?  But after all that had passed between them, and the
+silent, mutual confession of the afternoon, could he in honor do else
+than marry her?  Ever since he had come West he had held the firm
+conviction that an Indian can never be anything but an Indian, and that
+to attempt to make anything else out of him is not only a sheer waste of
+time, effort, and money, but is also an injury to the Indian himself,
+because it gives him desires and ambitions that can do nothing but make
+discord with his Indian nature.
+
+But it seemed different with her.  In truth, he told himself, she seemed
+more akin to the white than to the Indian race.  That age-long heritage
+of religious belief and practice that has made a basis of character for
+the pueblo Indian did not seem to have found expression in her.  But if
+after years should bring it to the surface and she should prove to be
+Indian at heart, would it raise a wall between them or would it drag him
+down, because of his great love for her, to that same Indian level?  If
+that Indian nature was there now, patched over and hidden by present
+surroundings, would not happiness be impossible between them?  And if he
+believed that unhappiness would be the sure result of their marriage
+would it not be more dishonorable to marry her than to leave her at once?
+But at the idea of leaving her a sharp pain pierced his heart.  He thrust
+at it the thought that in the long run she would probably be happier if
+she were never to see him again.  Then he ground his teeth together,
+whirled about and started for the town.
+
+Presently he put his hand in his pocket and his fingers closed over
+Barbara's yellow rose.  He raised it to his lips and something very like
+a sob trembled through his soldierly figure.  And then suddenly, in a
+great wave, came the remembrance of her graces of mind and heart and
+body, and of how frank and simple and sincere she was, how sweet and
+gentle and womanly and winning.  At the same moment his own faults rose
+up and upbraided him, and his heart cast away the arguments his brain had
+been weaving, and cried out with all its strength, "Indian or not, she is
+better than I!"  All his white-man's pride and prejudice of race fell
+from him as he pressed her rose to his lips and kissed it again and again.
+
+On the morrow it happened that Lieutenant Wemple was officer of the day
+at the post and his duties kept him so closely confined in and about the
+fort that he had not time to see Barbara.  But in the latter part of the
+afternoon it became necessary for him to see the commanding officer.  The
+Colonel had gone, he knew, on a business errand to the farther end of the
+town, and the Lieutenant started out to find him.  His way back took him
+past the Coolidge residence.  He was walking hurriedly down the street,
+in haste to return to his duties, his blonde head erect, his cap at
+right-eyed angle, his uniform buttoned tightly across his broad shoulders
+and around his trim waist, his sword on hip, and his eyes straight in
+front of him.  But his thoughts were inside the adobe walls of the
+Governor's home and he was calculating how long it would be until,
+released from duty, he could hasten back to pour into a little brown ear
+the words of love of which his heart was full.
+
+Across the street, in the shadow of a _portal_, an old Indian,
+gray-haired and wrinkled, was curiously surveying the Coolidge house.
+
+The heavy, double doors of the _placita_ entrance were open, and as
+Lieutenant Wemple strode past he heard a sound from within, a half
+suppressed exclamation in a voice that trembled with feeling.  It sent
+through him a sudden shock, stopped him in mid-step, and swiftly turned
+him to the _placita_ door.  Barbara, in a white muslin gown, stood under
+the honeysuckle arch, her hands full of yellow roses which she had just
+been plucking from the bush that glowed behind her.  She was looking at
+him with soft and glowing eyes, her eager face radiant with love, her
+lips still parted by the exclamation which sight of him had forced
+through them.
+
+The old Indian under the _portal_ considered him impassively for a moment
+and then sauntered across the street.
+
+An instant only the Lieutenant stood looking at her, spellbound by the
+beauty and sweetness of the picture, and then he sprang to her side and
+gathered her in his arms, forgetful alike of the open doors behind them
+and of his duties at the fort.  It was only for a moment, and then he
+took her hand and led her to Mrs. Coolidge.
+
+But during that moment the Indian with the gray hair and the wrinkled
+face stood in front of the _placita_ doors and looked at them with
+evident interest.  When they went indoors he shut his thin lips close
+together, crossed to the other side of the street, and leaned against the
+column of a _portal_ while he watched the doors and windows of the
+Governor's residence.
+
+It was only a few minutes until Lieutenant Wemple appeared again and
+walked rapidly away.  For army discipline must be remembered and
+maintained, even in times of peace and days of love.  The old man gazed
+at him until he disappeared around a corner, and then crossed the street
+and knocked at the Coolidge door.  Colonel Kate herself opened it and at
+once held out her hands in welcome, crying, "_Entra_!  _Entra_!"  She
+seized his hands and drew him in, pouring forth a voluble welcome in
+Spanish.  He did not give much heed to her words, but coldly asked, in
+the same tongue:
+
+"Where is my daughter?"
+
+Barbara, in the next room, heard his voice, and her first unthinking
+thrill of pleasure was quickly followed by a sinking of her heart which
+chilled and saddened her happy face.  Intuitively she knew what would
+happen.
+
+"She is here," Mrs. Coolidge replied.  "She will be so glad!  Barbara!
+Come quickly!  Here is some one very anxious to see you!"
+
+The girl came slowly and stood before her father with downcast eyes.  His
+piercing glance ran over her dress, and then he grunted in severe
+disapproval.
+
+"Go, put on your own clothing.  Then stand before your father."
+
+"Yes, dear," chimed in Colonel Kate soothingly, "you must seem very
+strange to him in that dress,--scarcely like his daughter.  Put on your
+native costume and come back to us quickly."
+
+Barbara went to her room and Mrs. Coolidge began to tell her visitor,
+with her most charming enthusiasm and with all the delighted expletives
+which her knowledge of Spanish made possible, of Barbara's success, of
+her love affair, and of how very desirable the match would be.  The old
+man listened quietly to the end, looked at her steadily for a moment in
+silence, and then spoke:
+
+"No!"
+
+Colonel Kate's eyes opened wide in amazement at the word.  "What!  Don
+Ambrosio!  Surely--"
+
+"He wishes to marry her?" the old man broke in.
+
+"Indeed he does!  He told me so scarcely ten minutes ago.  He is very
+much in love with her and she with him!"
+
+"No!" repeated the Indian emphatically.  "It cannot be!"
+
+"Surely, señor, you do not understand!  You could not find a more
+desirable husband for Barbara!  Why, he is a lieutenant in the army, a
+first lieutenant, too, and his position will take her into any society
+she wishes to enter.  He has money enough to keep her well, and he loves
+her devotedly!"
+
+"No!  He forgets she is an Indian!  He has seen her in all these clothes
+of the white women in which you have tricked her out, and he thinks she
+is the same as a white woman.  She is not.  She was born an Indian, and
+an Indian she must be until she dies.  Never again shall she leave Acoma."
+
+"Señor!  How can you be so blind to your daughter's interests?  You will
+break her heart!  Surely you cannot be so cruel!"
+
+But Mrs. Coolidge's protests were broken off by Barbara's return.  The
+girl stood before her father with her eyes on the floor and her face cold
+and impassive.  She was dressed again in the garments she had worn when
+she first entered the house, three months before, and she seemed a far
+different creature from the happy and radiant girl to whom her lover had
+but just said good-bye.  Ambrosio looked her over approvingly.
+
+"Now you are my daughter.  Come."
+
+With the pueblo children centuries of training have caused unhesitating
+obedience to parents to become an instinct.  So Barbara did not question,
+but at once followed her father toward the door.  Mrs. Coolidge was
+weeping.  Barbara threw both arms around her neck and kissed her again
+and again.  The girl's face was expressionless and there were no tears in
+her voice, but her wide, black eyes, paling now to brown, told the agony
+that was in her heart.
+
+"Tell him," she whispered in English, "that I must go back.  My father
+bids me, and I must go.  My father will never again let me leave Acoma.
+Tell him I shall never see him again, but I shall love him always."
+
+"My poor child!" sobbed Mrs. Coolidge.  "We must find some way to bring
+you back!"
+
+"It is useless to try.  I know my father, and I know it will be
+impossible for me ever again to leave the pueblo.  I must be an Indian
+all the rest of my life.  But I shall love him always.  Tell him so."
+
+"Come!" called Ambrosio from the _portal_.
+
+Half an hour later the train was carrying them back to Acoma.  Colonel
+Kate at once sent a note to Barbara's lover, telling him what had
+happened.  But the messenger, being a small boy, met other small boys on
+the way, and by the time the young officer read the news the Indian girl
+was well on her way toward home.
+
+Lieutenant Wemple applied for leave of absence, and as soon as possible
+he followed old Ambrosio.  At Laguna, where he left the railroad, he
+hired a horse and inquired the way to Acoma.  It was the middle of the
+night, but he refused to wait for daylight, and started at once across
+the plain, galloping as though life and death depended on his mission.
+In the early morning he reached the great rock-island of Acoma, towering
+four hundred feet above the plain, and climbed the steep ascent to the
+village on its summit.  A file of maidens, and among them his lover's eye
+quickly sought out Barbara, were coming from the pool far beyond,
+carrying water jars upon their heads, graceful as a procession of
+Caryatides.  Wemple found his way to Ambrosio's door, where the old chief
+was sitting in the early sunlight.  As he stopped his horse Barbara came
+up the street, her _tinaja_ poised on her head.  One swift and frightened
+flash of her black eyes was all the recognition she gave him as she
+hurried into the house.
+
+Briefly the Lieutenant told the old man that he loved Barbara and wished
+to marry her.  Inside the house the girl stood out of sight, listening
+anxiously for her father's reply, although she well knew what it would be.
+
+"The señor forgets that my daughter is an Indian and that he is a white
+man."
+
+"I do not care whether she is Indian or white.  I love her and I want her
+to be my wife."
+
+"You mean that you do not care what she is now.  But after she is your
+wife you want her to be a white woman in her heart.  You want to take her
+away from me, her father, and away from her mother, and her clan, and all
+our people, and make her forget us and forget that she is an Indian.  No!"
+
+"No, señor!" urged the Lieutenant, "I do not wish her to forget you.  She
+shall come back to visit you whenever she wishes."
+
+A crafty look came into Ambrosio's eyes.  "There is one way," he went on
+quietly, not heeding Wemple's reply, "in which you may make her your
+wife.  But there is only one."
+
+The officer leaned eagerly forward in his saddle and the girl inside the
+door clasped her hands and listened breathlessly.  The old Indian went
+on, slowly and deliberately, as if to give his listener time to weigh his
+words, while his keen eyes searched the white man's face.
+
+"You think my daughter loves you well enough to forsake and forget her
+people if I would let her.  Do you love her well enough to leave your
+people and become one of us?  Do you love her well enough to be an Indian
+all the rest of your life, wear your hair in side-locks, enter the clan
+of the eagle, or the panther, become Koshare or Cuirana, dance at the
+feasts, forget your people, and never again be other than an Indian?  If
+you do, speak, and she shall be your wife."
+
+Ambrosio shut his lips tightly and waited for the young man's answer.
+And the young man stared back, his ruddy cheek paling under its sunburn,
+and spoke not.  A whirling panorama of visions was filling his brain as
+he realized what the old chief's words meant.  He saw himself living the
+life of these people; renouncing everything that meant "the world" and
+"life" to him--everything except Barbara; driving burros loaded with wood
+to town and tramping about its streets with a basket of pottery at his
+back; saw himself with painted face and nude, smeared body dancing the
+clownish antics of the Koshare; planting prayer sticks; sprinkling the
+sacred meal; taking part and pretending belief in all the heathen rites
+of the pueblo secret religion--and then Barbara sprang out of the house,
+crying to her father in the Indian tongue, "Wait!  Wait!"
+
+Both men turned toward her inquiringly.  She stood before them,
+hesitating, excited, her eyes on the ground, as if anxious but yet
+unwilling to speak.
+
+"Father," she began in Spanish, "it is useless for you and the señor to
+speak longer about this.  For since I have returned to my home I do not
+feel as I did before."  She stopped an instant and then went on
+hurriedly, pouring out her words with now and then little, gasping stops
+for breath.  "Now I do not wish to marry him.  I wish to marry one of my
+own people.  He is not an Indian and never can become one.  I know now
+that I can never be anything but an Indian and so it is better for me to
+marry one of my own people.  I do not wish to marry the señor, even if he
+should become one of us."
+
+Wemple looked at her blankly, as if hardly comprehending her words, and
+then cried out, "Barbara!  You cannot mean this!"
+
+"You see, señor," said the old man, "there is nothing more to say."
+
+"Is there nothing more to say, Barbara?" Wemple appealed to her in a
+broken voice.
+
+She did not look at him, but shook her head and went back into the house.
+
+Lieutenant Wemple turned his horse and with head hanging on his breast
+rode slowly, very slowly, back toward the long declivity leading to the
+plain below.  If he had not ridden so slowly this tale might have had a
+different ending.
+
+Ambrosio went into the house and began telling his wife what had
+happened.  Barbara took an empty _tinaja_ and said she would go for more
+water.  When she stepped outside she could still see the forlorn figure
+of her lover riding slowly down the trail.  Her heart yearned after him
+as she bitterly thought:
+
+"He will believe it!  I made him believe it!  And I can never tell him
+that it is not true!"
+
+Then something set her heart on fire and put into it the thought of
+rebellion.  She looked around her at the village and thought of the life
+it meant for her, as long as she should live; of the heartbreak she would
+have to conceal from sneering eyes, of the obscene dances in which she
+would soon be forced to take part, of the persecutions she would have to
+suffer because she could no longer think as her people thought; and
+hatred of it all filled her to the teeth.  Rebellion burned high in her
+soul and with clenched fingers she said to herself, "I hate the Indians!
+In my heart I am a white woman!"  She cast one more longing, loving
+glance at the disappearing figure and resolution was born in her heart:
+"And I will be a white woman, or die!"
+
+She looked hastily about.  No one seemed to be watching her.  She dropped
+the _tinaja_ beside the house and walked swiftly--she feared to run lest
+she might attract attention--to the edge of the precipice.  There she
+looked down over the flight of rude steps, hacked centuries ago in the
+stone and worn smooth by many scores of generations of moccasined feet,
+which was once the only approach to the fortress-pueblo.  It was three
+hundred feet down that precipitous wall to where the steps joined the
+trail, but from babyhood she had gone up and down, and she knew them
+every one.  From one to another she fearlessly sprang, and over several
+at a time she dropped herself, catching here by her hands and there by
+her toes and finally landed, with a last long leap, on the trail.  One
+glance told her that her lover had almost reached the road at the foot of
+the cliff and that if he should then quicken his pace she could scarcely
+hope to catch him.  But love and determination made steel springs of her
+muscles, and she bent herself to the task.  For if she could not overtake
+him there was no hope anywhere.
+
+Lieutenant Wemple, with his head still hanging on his breast and his
+horse creeping along at its own pace, turned from the declivity into the
+road which would take him back to Laguna, to the railroad, and to his own
+life.  There the horse decided to take a rest; and Wemple, aroused to
+realization of his surroundings by the sudden stop, jerked himself
+together again, straightened up, sent a keen glance across the plain and
+over the road in front of him, and struck home his spurs for the gallop
+to the railroad station.  As the horse leaped forward, he thought he
+heard some one calling.  Turning in his saddle he saw Barbara running
+toward him, her breast heaving, her arms outstretched.  She almost fell
+against the horse's side, panting for breath.
+
+"It was not true," she gasped, "what I said up there!  I wanted to save
+you.  Take me with you if you still love me!  For I love you and I
+hate--I hate all that--" turning her face for an instant toward the
+heights above them--"and if you do not want me I must die, for I will not
+go back."
+
+For an instant their eyes read each other's souls, and then she hastily
+put up her hand to stop him from leaping from his horse.
+
+"No, no!  Do not get off!  They will be sure to follow us and we must
+lose no time.  Take me up behind you and gallop for Laguna.  If we can
+catch the next train we'll be all right!"
+
+She seized his hand and sprang to her seat behind his saddle.  He turned
+and kissed her.
+
+"Put spurs to your horse," she said.  "They will be sure to follow us
+soon."
+
+There was need of haste, for scarcely had the horse pricked up his ears
+and sprung into a long gallop when they heard loud shouts from the top of
+the mesa.
+
+"Hurry, hurry!" exclaimed Barbara.  "They have found me out and they will
+follow us!"
+
+Scarcely had she spoken when the sound of a rifle report came from the
+top of the cliff, and Wemple's left arm dropped helpless beside him.
+
+"They dare not shoot to kill," she said, "but they think they can
+frighten you, and they may cripple the horse.  My darling, you will not
+let them have me again?"  The terror in her voice told how intense was
+her fear of capture.
+
+"Sweetheart, they shall not have you again unless they kill me first!"
+
+A dozen Indians were galloping recklessly down the steep trail.  "Promise
+me," Barbara, pleaded, "if it comes to that, if you must die, you will
+kill me first!  For it would be hell--it would be worse than hell--to go
+back there now!"
+
+Wemple did not answer.  "Promise me that you will," she begged.  "You do
+not know what you would save me from; but believe me, and promise me that
+you will not send me back to it!"
+
+"I promise!" he answered as another shot whistled in front of them and
+clipped the top of the horse's ear.  Wemple dug his spurs into its
+sweating side and the beast sprang forward at a faster gallop.  The
+Indians, shouting loudly, were urging their ponies across the plain at
+breakneck speed.  Lieutenant Wemple glanced back again and a frown
+wrinkled his forehead, as he said, "If our horse does not break down we
+may keep ahead of them until we reach Laguna."
+
+[Illustration: Wemple dug his spurs into its sweating side and the beast
+sprang forward at a faster gallop.]
+
+Barbara patted the horse and whispered soft words of encouragement and
+then under her breath she sent up a fervent petition to the Virgin Mary
+to protect them.  Looking back, she recognized their pursuers, and told
+Wemple that one of them was her brother, and another was a young man whom
+her parents wished her to marry.  This one had a faster horse than the
+others and perceptibly gained upon the fugitives.  He left the road where
+a turn in it seemed to offer an advantage and, galloping across the
+plain, was presently parallel with them and not more than two hundred
+yards away.  He raised his gun and Wemple, with quick perception noting
+that his aim was toward their horse's neck, gave the bridle a jerk that
+brought the animal to its hind feet as the bullet whistled barely in
+front of them.  It would have been quickly followed by another, but the
+Indian's pony stumbled, went down on its knees, and horse and rider
+rolled over together.
+
+The other Indians came trooping on in a cloud of dust, yelling and
+shouting, and now and then firing a shot, apparently aimed at the good
+horse that so steadily kept his pace.
+
+"They only want me," said Barbara.  "If they can overtake us there are
+enough of them to overpower you.  They will not try to do much harm to
+you, for they would not dare.  But they will take me and carry me back
+with them--if you let them."
+
+"I will not let them," he replied between set teeth.
+
+At last Wemple saw that their pursuers were slowly but surely gaining on
+them.  Barbara saw it too, and she redoubled her prayers to the Virgin,
+and both she and her lover with words and caresses strove to keep up the
+courage in their horse's heart.  The good steed was of the sort whose
+spirit does not falter until strength is gone, and he seemed to
+understand that these people on his back were under some mighty need.
+For with unwavering pace he kept up his long, swift gallop,
+notwithstanding his double burden and the distance he had travelled
+before the race began.
+
+So they kept on, mile after mile, with their pursuers gaining, little by
+little, upon them, and when at last they neared Laguna the Indians were
+within a hundred yards.  A banner of smoke across the plain told them
+that the east-bound train was approaching.
+
+"I believe we can make it!" exclaimed Wemple, as they heard the engine's
+announcing scream.  Apparently their pursuers guessed what the fugitives
+would try to do, for as they saw the train they shouted and yelled louder
+than before and urged their ponies to a still higher speed.  They gained
+rapidly for a little while, for the Lieutenant's horse was beginning to
+flag, and Wemple, leaning to one side, gave the bridle into Barbara's
+hands and, with left arm dangling useless, reached for his revolver.  He
+began to fear that they might yet head him off and surround him.  They
+outnumbered him hopelessly, but he would try to fight his way through
+them.  If worst came to worst,--he would save two shots out of the
+six,--Barbara should not fall into their hands.
+
+The train drew into the station and the Indians were not more than a
+hundred feet behind him.  The horse's faltering gait and heaving sides
+showed that he had reached almost his limit of strength.  Some dogs ran
+out from a house, barking furiously.  But being in his rear they only
+made Wemple's horse quicken his pace.  They darted at the heads of the
+ponies, which shied and pranced about, and so lost to their riders some
+valuable seconds.
+
+The train was already moving as Wemple dashed up to its hindmost car, his
+horse staggering and their pursuers almost upon them.
+
+"Jump for the car-steps!" he shouted to Barbara.  She had not leaped and
+clambered up and down the stair in the Acoma cliff all her life for
+nothing, and her strength and agility stood her in good stead in this
+moment of supreme necessity.  She leaped from the horse's back, landed
+upon the upper step, and whirled about to assist her lover.
+
+The train was moving faster, the Indians, with shouts and yells and
+curses, were grasping at his bridle, and Wemple felt his horse giving way
+beneath him.  With a last encouraging call to the poor beast he urged it
+to one more leap, and as it brought him again even with the end of the
+car he threw his leg over its neck and jumped.  The horse staggered and
+fell as he left the saddle and caused him to lose his balance.  He went
+down upon the car-steps, his wounded left arm beside him and his right
+doubled beneath his body.  In another instant he would have rolled back
+to the ground beneath the hoofs of the Indian ponies, but Barbara seized
+him by the shoulders, and held him until he recovered his footing.
+
+The Indians, seeing his predicament, whipped up their horses and galloped
+beside the platform, reviling and jeering at him.  Wemple scrambled to
+his feet and put his arm about Barbara, as though fearful they might yet
+try to take her from him.  She leaned over the rail, laughed in their
+faces, and called out, in the Indian tongue:
+
+"Good-bye!  Good-bye, forever!  Now I shall be a white woman!"
+
+
+
+
+THE KID OF APACHE TEJU
+
+      Baby, my babe,
+  What waits you yonder,
+      Out in the world?
+      Dear little feet,
+  There must they wander,
+      Out in the world?
+      Soft little hands,
+  What shall they do there,
+      Out in the world?
+      Baby, my babe,
+  What fate must you dare,
+      Out in the world?
+
+
+All around Apache Teju for miles and miles lies the gray,
+cactus-dotted, heat-devoured plain, weird and fascinating, with its
+placid, tree-fringed lakes, that are not; its barren, jagged,
+turquoise-tinted mountain-peaks, born here and there of the horizon and
+the desert; its whirling, dancing columns of sand, which mount to
+mid-sky; its lying distances and deceiving levels; its silence and its
+fierce, white, unclouded sunshine.
+
+And when you draw rein under the cottonwoods at Apache Teju, uncurl the
+wrinkles of your eyelids in the welcome shade, and cool your eyes in
+the vivid green of the alfalfa field, it suddenly comes to you that
+never before did you understand what blessedness there is in a bit of
+shadow and a patch of green things growing.
+
+From the spring at the top of the slope behind the house a line of
+noble old cottonwoods files along the _acequia_ halfway down the hill,
+and there, where the ditch divides, forks into a spreading double row,
+which incloses the house and stables and comes together again in a
+little grove beyond the road, where the two ditches empty into a pond.
+The house lies there in this circlet of trees, a low, whitewashed,
+flat-roofed adobe, rambling along in apparent aimlessness from cosey
+rooms through sheds and stables, until the whole connecting structure
+incloses a large corral.
+
+In front of the house is a tiny square of blue-grass, bordered by beds
+of geraniums and larkspurs and hollyhocks, inclosed by a low adobe
+wall, and shaded by a young cottonwood growing in the centre.  Beyond,
+on the slope of the hill below the ditch, where its waters can be
+spread over all the surface, is the rich, velvety emerald of the
+alfalfa field.  And the fame of that little square of grass and of that
+little field of alfalfa fills all the land from Deming to Silver City,
+and from Separ to the Mimbres.
+
+And that is Apache Teju, headquarters for the northern half of a ranch
+that spreads over seven thousand square miles of the arid hills and
+plains of southern New Mexico, where for hours and hours you may travel
+toward a horizon swimming in heat, across the gray, hot, quivering
+levels, broken only by clumps of gay-flowered cactus and the blanching
+bones and sun-dried hides of cattle, dead of starvation and thirst.
+
+The superintendent's wife and I sat in the tiny grass plat enjoying the
+balmy breath that in the late afternoon steals over and cools this
+strange, hot land.  Texas Bill had just galloped home from the nearest
+railroad station with a big package of Eastern mail; and the combined
+attractions of letters, late magazines, and a box of New York candy so
+engrossed us that we did not see the Kid until the gate clicked and he
+stood before us, asking,
+
+"Is this the double A, quart circ., bar H outfit?"
+
+"The what?" I gasped, looking at the queer little figure in
+astonishment.  He was perhaps a dozen years old, though the slender,
+childish figure and the experienced face belied each other and made
+guessing difficult.  He wore a man's sombrero, old and dirty, which
+came down to his ears and flopped a wide, unstiffened brim around his
+face.  With tardy recollection of his manners,--learned who knows
+where,--he doffed his head-gear after he had spoken, and stood with
+serious face, but unable to repress a smile that twinkled in his great
+blue child's eyes at my astonishment.  A big rent across one shoulder
+of his shirt showed a strip of sunburned flesh beneath and sent one
+sleeve dangling over his hand.  His baggy trousers--no, that is not the
+word, they were "pants"--were held in place by a halter strap buckled
+tightly about his waist, and his feet were concealed in shoes so much
+too large for him that his toes were not visible in the mouths gaping
+at their front ends.  And on one foot clanked and jingled the pride and
+glory of his attire--a huge spur, three inches long, silver-plated and
+highly polished, and so heavy that that foot dragged as he walked.
+
+He repeated his question, and the superintendent's wife leaned forward,
+with a laughing aside to me:
+
+"You tenderfoot!  Haven't you learned our brand yet?"  And to the boy:
+"Yes, this is Apache Teju.  Do you want to see any one?"
+
+"Boss home yet from Deming?"
+
+"Mr. Williams?  I expect him this evening."
+
+The boy threw himself down full length upon the grass and pressed his
+face against the cool, green blades.
+
+"Well," he exclaimed, "it's pretty fine here, ain't it?  That green
+down there is just out of sight.  I heard there was blue-grass and
+alfalfa here, but who 'd have thought it would look so nice?"
+
+"Do you want to see Mr. Williams?"
+
+"I guess it ain't necessary," and he sat up again, pressing a handful
+of grass upon each glowing cheek.
+
+I handed him the candy box and he helped himself daintily with the
+tongs, saying, "Thank you, ma'am," with a sidelong glance which let me
+know that his heart was won to my service from that moment.  He put a
+piece in his mouth, and his face beamed with pleasure.
+
+"This just strikes my gait!  'T ain't much like Deming candy, is it?  I
+saw the boss last night in Deming," he added, turning to Mrs. Williams.
+"You're his wife, ain't you?  I thought so, soon as I saw you.  He was
+kidding me about coming out here to be a cowboy, and I told him all
+right, if he wasn't running a blaze, I 'd go him on that.  I was to
+have rode out with him in his buggy, but I was up pretty late last
+night with the boys, doing the town, and when I got up this morning he
+was gone.  I was n't going to have him think I 'd backed out of the
+bargain, so I says to the conductor, 'I got a job out at
+Apache--cowboy--gimme a ride to Whitewater.'  And he says, 'All right,
+jump on.  You 're welcome to a ride on my train whenever you want it.'
+So I walked over from Whitewater, and I 'm ready to go to work to-night
+if the boss says so.  He won't find me no tenderfoot, you hear me."
+
+The naive bravado of the child's speech was irresistible.  It won my
+heart as completely as I had won his, and I straightway emptied my
+candy box into his hands.  "Oh!" he breathed, looking at the heap of
+dainties with infantile delight.  And then he fell upon them with
+avidity and did not speak another word until the last one had
+disappeared down his throat.
+
+So that was how the Kid came to live at Apache Teju.  He said his name
+was Guy Silvestre Raymond.  But whether a mother's lips had really
+bestowed that name upon him, or he had appropriated it to himself out
+of some blood-and-thunder romance, whose hero he had decided to
+imitate, name and all, is one of the things that nobody but the Kid
+will ever know.  But it did n't matter much anyway, for he had always
+been called Kid, and that name followed him to the ranch, much to his
+disgust.  For he had decided, as he told me one day, that the ladies of
+the household should call him Guy, and that among the men his name
+should be "Broncho Bob."
+
+He was a waif of the railroad.  All his life had been spent along its
+line, blacking boots, selling nuts, candy, papers, on the trains or
+around the depots of the frontier cities and towns.  And he had taken
+care of himself ever since he could remember.  He had reached Deming a
+few days before in a worse but less picturesque state of dilapidation
+than that in which he presented himself at Apache Teju.  After deciding
+that he would leave the railroad and become a cowboy, he had scraped
+together, in Heaven knows what devious ways and by what lucky chances,
+the apparel of state in which he set forth on his new life.
+
+The next morning there was trouble in the corral.  Kid had been
+directed to mount an old and gentle pony whose meek and humble
+appearance did not at all agree with his ideas of the sort of steed
+Broncho Bob should bestride.  There was in the corral a black horse
+called Dynamite, a mettlesome young thing whose one specialty was
+bucking.  And of this it never failed to give a continuous performance
+from the time a rider mounted its back until he was dislodged.  Kid was
+determined to ride Dynamite.  Texas Bill and Red Jack were trying to
+persuade him out of his notion by telling him how dangerous the horse
+was, and how he once landed Mr. Williams, the best rider on the whole
+ranch, on top of the house.
+
+"Suppose he did," blustered the Kid.  "He won't land me on top of the
+house, nor on top of the ground, neither.  I tell you, I ain't afraid
+to fork any horse that ever bucked!  I can ride anything that wears
+hair!  You hear me shout?  Anything that wears hair!"
+
+"See here, youngster," said Texas Bill, in his longest and most
+indifferent drawl, "I 've been ridin' horses more years than you 've
+been born, an' I 've tamed more pitchin' horses than you ever saw any
+other kind, an' I ain't a little bit afraid of a pitchin' horse.  I 'm
+a whole, big, blazin' lot afraid!"
+
+"What if you are?" retorted Kid.  "I don't have to be a coward 'cause
+you 're one!"
+
+Texas Bill's eye glared, and his hand jerked toward his hip pocket.
+Then he grunted and walked over to where I was feeding the two Angora
+goats out of my hands.
+
+"If he was a man--" he began in an angry voice, and then broke off.
+"But I 'm not fightin' babies.  I thought I 'd keep him from breakin'
+his durn fool neck, but he can go it now as fast as he wants to."
+
+The superintendent came out and told Kid he would have to obey orders
+or go back to Deming at once.  So he sullenly mounted the meek and
+humble pony and cantered off.
+
+About mid-forenoon, when there was no one at home but little Madge, the
+ten-year-old daughter of the house, the cook, and myself, Kid galloped
+back alone.  Madge came dancing from the corral to where I sat in the
+front yard, her eyes blazing and her hands quivering with excitement.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "He's going to ride Dynamite!  He 's run off from
+them and come back to ride Dynamite!"
+
+"He must not do it!  I must not let him!"  And I started for the
+corral.  Madge grasped my skirt with both hands.
+
+"Dynamite won't hurt him!  I know he won't!"
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"I know he won't because--don't you tell mamma--I was on him myself one
+day, and he never bucked a bit!"
+
+"You!  How did you dare?"
+
+"I wanted to see if I could, and there was nobody in the corral, and I
+climbed on his back, and he was just lovely!"
+
+And just then, with Kid astride him, Dynamite pranced and curveted down
+the road.  With a beaming face Kid waved his hat at us and galloped
+off.  Dynamite making not even the sign of a desire to buck.  After
+that the boy could not be persuaded to ride any other horse.  And as
+long as Kid bestrode him, or Madge, with Kid's connivance and help,
+surreptitiously mounted him, Dynamite's behavior was perfect.  But he
+worked woe upon any grown person that made the attempt.
+
+The black horse's life was not an easy one under Kid's mastership.  The
+boy never rode at a less pace than a gallop, and even in that dry, hot
+air Dynamite was always reeking with sweat when they came home.
+
+Just how the Kid put in his time out on the plains was a mystery.  The
+cowboys with whom and for whose assistance he was sent out
+good-naturedly swore that he was "not worth a whoop in h--l."  If they
+needed him, he was nowhere in sight, and if they particularly did not
+want him he was sure to come charging over the plain, straight upon the
+cattle they had bunched, and scatter the frightened creatures to the
+four winds.  But mostly they said he managed to get lost; which was
+only their kindly way of putting the fact that he slipped away from
+them and pursued his own amusements at a sufficient distance not to be
+disturbed by their need of him.
+
+What he did with himself all day long Mrs. Williams and I discovered
+one day when driving to Whitewater.  Out on the plain we saw the Kid
+yelling like a wild man, with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a
+jack-rabbit.  That evening I heard him giving Madge a thrilling account
+of how he had chased a gray wolf, which, after running many miles, had
+turned on him and viciously sprung at his throat, and how he had made
+Dynamite jump on the beast and trample its life out.  And I recognized
+in the tale merely Kid's version for Madge's ears of his chase of the
+jackrabbit.
+
+[Illustration: Out on the plain we saw the Kid yelling like a wild man,
+with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a jackrabbit.]
+
+For by that time he had become, in her eyes, the exemplar of all that
+is inspiringly bold and daring, and he felt it necessary to keep up his
+reputation.  For her he was a knight of prowess who could do anything
+he wished and against whom nothing could prevail.  So he told her
+wonderful tales of what he had seen and done and been through, and of
+his daily adventures, and brought to her the occasional results of his
+single-handed combats with birds and beasts.  He offered to dig up a
+tarantula's nest for her and to catch and tame for her pleasure a
+side-winder rattlesnake, or, if she preferred, a golden oriole or a
+mocking-bird.  It did n't make any difference to him whether she chose
+a rattlesnake or an oriole; whatever she wanted him to do, he was ready
+to attempt.  And Madge looked and listened and worshipped; and Kid,
+basking in the warmth of her adoration, swaggered about in ever
+increasing pride and importance.
+
+One day, just after he had returned from a two days' trip out on the
+range, I heard him telling her a blood-curdling tale of an adventure
+with a mysterious and villainous looking Mexican, who, he said, had
+shot off the end of one of his fingers.  Then, the Kid declared, he had
+made Dynamite rear and strike the Mexican to the ground with his
+forefeet and then trample him until he was so dead that he 'd never
+shoot anybody else's finger off.
+
+Madge was filled with horror and admiration and pity, and begged to be
+allowed to see and bind up the mutilated finger.  But he refused with
+superior indifference, clinched his bleeding finger in his fist and
+said it was n't anything and did n't hurt, anyway.  Madge's mother
+called her away, and straightway there appeared at my door a boy with
+pale face, quivering lips, and tear-filled eyes, holding up a bloody
+hand.  I bound up the wound, which was a clean cut chipping off the end
+of one finger, and he buried his face in my lap and cried.  Soothing
+and cuddling him, for somehow I felt that was what the child needed, I
+asked:
+
+"How did you hurt yourself, Kid?"
+
+"I was making a peg to hang my saddle on, and I chopped my finger with
+the hatchet."
+
+I said nothing, but soothed and cuddled him the more, and he sobbed at
+my knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied.  After that I
+think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity
+in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted
+and comforted.  He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado
+outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it
+was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had
+come to him.  But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation,
+which he trusted me not to betray, to interfere with his double
+character of knight of prowess with Madge, and of Broncho Bob with the
+men.
+
+Excitement did not lack at the ranch-house whenever Kid was at home.
+If he was sent to help with the milking, one of the cows was sure to
+kick over a full milk-pail, knock him over with her hoof, or break
+loose from her restraining ropes, charge around the corral like a wild
+beast, and crash through one of the house windows or plunge in at an
+open door.  If he was told to house the geese and chickens for the
+night, such a commotion ensued as brought the whole household to see if
+coyotes had broken into the chicken yard.  At sight of him the pet
+Angora goats fled on their swiftest legs, with a running leap mounted
+one of the corral sheds, and then sped to what they had learned was the
+only place of safety, the roof of the house.  And when he was not
+stirring up the animals, he was playing jokes on the cowboys.  Holy
+John, a middle-aged, thick-witted fellow, who never knew what had
+happened to him until the rest were roaring with laughter, was the
+special butt of his tricks.
+
+One evening the boys were sitting around the kitchen door talking
+quietly, for Kid was off with Madge, helping her to bury a dead kitten.
+Holy John sat in a slouching attitude on the doorsteps, his new
+sombrero, with a stiff, curled brim, tipped far back on his head.  Kid
+came in through the corral and stood in the kitchen for a few minutes.
+Then he seized the molasses jug and, tiptoeing very softly behind Holy
+John, filled the brim of his brand-new sombrero with the sticky liquid.
+It flowed out over his back and down into his trousers, and Holy John
+lifted a wondering and bewildered face to see his companions breaking
+into uproarious mirth.  Then his long-enduring patience was smothered
+in wrath, and he laid violent hands upon Kid and spanked him before
+Madge's eyes.
+
+This was too much for a knight of prowess tamely to endure, and the boy
+blustered around in his most vigorous impersonation of the character of
+Broncho Bob.
+
+"This ranch ain't big enough to hold Holy John and me too.  Him or me,
+one or the other, has sure got to ask for his time, and it won't be me
+either, you hear me shout.  I 'll get him sure buffaloed, and if he
+don't pull his freight before he 's a day older, there 'll be the
+biggest killing here that Apache Teju ever heard of."
+
+It was very quiet the next day at the ranch.  Mr. and Mrs. Williams and
+Madge had driven to Silver City, the cowboys were all on the range, and
+I kept in my room with some work.  After a time I heard a noise at the
+end of the house, just outside my room, and I went to see what it was.
+Kid was there with a pick and shovel, toilsomely digging a hole in the
+hard adobe soil.
+
+"What are you doing, Kid?"
+
+"Nothing much.  Just digging a hole."
+
+"Isn't that where the old Apache chief is buried?"
+
+He looked up with interest.  "Is this the place?  Do you know right
+where it is?"
+
+"They told me it is there where you are digging.  Those rocks that you
+can barely see, outline his grave.  Are you going to dig him up?"
+
+"Me?  What would I want to dig him up for?  I ain't lost no Injun!  I
+'m just digging a hole--for Madge.  She wants to plant a tree.  What
+did they bury him here for?  Did they kill him here on the ranch?"
+
+"This was a fort once, before there was any ranch here, and there was a
+war with the Apaches, and they were getting beaten, and so they sent
+this old chief down to the fort to make terms for them.  The commander
+received him and put him in a tent and set a guard over him.  In the
+night the guard fell asleep, and when he wakened he was frightened lest
+the Indian might have escaped.  So he punched into the tent with his
+bayonet to see if he was still there, and hit the chief in the foot.
+That made him angry and he came out and killed the guard.  The noise
+roused the soldiers, and they killed the chief, and they buried him
+here, inside the stockade, so that the Indians would n't suspect that
+he was dead until they could get reinforcements."
+
+"The Injun killed the guard, did he?  Good enough for him!  I wish it
+had been Holy John!"
+
+He fell to work again with more vigor than ever, but presently he
+stopped and growled:
+
+"I 'd like to run a blaze on that ornery galoot that he 'd remember all
+the rest of his life!"
+
+After a while I chanced to see Kid carrying a bundle done up in a gunny
+sack down to the _acequia_ and hide it among the currant bushes.  I
+noticed that he had carefully filled up the hole he had been digging,
+and I asked,
+
+"Aren't you going to plant the tree?"
+
+"No," he replied carelessly, "it would n't grow there.  The soil's too
+hard."
+
+The cowboys spread their beds every night under the cottonwoods beside
+the lower acequia, and that night we heard them in earnest discussion
+long after they had gone to bed.  Mr. Williams was with them for a
+short time and came back, saying that they were talking about ghosts,
+and that Kid had declared emphatically that the old Apache chief walked
+o' nights and that he had both seen and heard him.
+
+"He gave a vivid description," Mr. Williams went on, "of waking up one
+night and seeing the Indian's skeleton rise up out of the ground and
+pounce on a soldier who stood near and kill him outright.  He will have
+Holy John so terrified that the poor fellow will want his time at once.
+For John believes everything that is impossible, and he will see ghosts
+all night long and be afraid of his own shadow in the daytime."
+
+That night, just as morning broke, the whole household was awakened by
+a loud, piercing yell, followed by another and another, and all rushed
+from their beds in time to see Holy John leap over the fence and dart
+down the road, still shrieking as if fiends were after him.  And beside
+his deserted bed under the cottonwoods lay some grisly thing, shining
+in the gray light with streaks and patches of white.  Kid looked after
+the flying figure and said, in a tone of extremest satisfaction,
+
+"He's sure buffaloed!"
+
+Holy John had awakened in the dim, early dawn and found the skeleton of
+the Apache chief cuddling against him.
+
+That morning, as I sat in the yard reading, the voices of Kid and Madge
+came to me from around the corner of the house, and I heard a snatch of
+their conversation.
+
+"Madge, I 'm going to pull my freight.  I won't work on the same ranch
+with such a coward as that Holy John."
+
+"Truly, Guy, are you going away?"
+
+"Yes, I am.  I ain't going to stop to ask for my time.  I 'm going
+to-day, before the boss comes home."
+
+"Well, then, what am I going to do?  You 're not going off to leave me?"
+
+Silence for the space of ten seconds.
+
+"Jiminy!  Tell you what, you come too!"
+
+"I can't!  Mamma wouldn't let me!"
+
+"Don't ask her.  Come right along with me!  We 'll elope!  That's more
+fun than anything!  Girls that is anything always elopes!"
+
+Then they wandered off to the alfalfa field, and soon I saw them
+throwing stones at the prairie dogs with which it was infested.  So I
+concluded that what I had heard was merely some of the Kid's
+braggadocio, and, smiling at the sentimental turn he had taken, I went
+on with my book and thought no more of it.
+
+But when lunch time came neither Madge nor Kid appeared for the meal.
+Much calling failed to bring a response.  Then I remembered and gave
+account of the conversation I had heard.  It was found that Dynamite
+was gone from the corral.  Evidently the little scapegrace had meant
+what he said and had carried Madge off.  Mrs. Williams ordered the cart
+and at once we started after the fugitives.
+
+"He has most probably gone toward Deming," she said.  "I will send Red
+Jack to Whitewater to stop them if they are there, but I think we had
+better drive toward Deming as fast as possible."
+
+About ten miles out we caught sight of the runaways.  They were mounted
+on Dynamite, Madge holding fast behind.  Kid was urging the horse
+furiously back and forth among a flock of carrion crows, and practising
+with his lasso upon them as they rose and flapped about in short and
+heavy flight.  They seemed to be having great sport, for Kid was
+shouting and yelling at the birds, and Madge screaming with laughter at
+their clumsy efforts to escape.  So absorbed were they in their play
+that they did not see us until we were almost beside them.  At first
+Kid made as if he would start Dynamite off on the gallop, but Mrs.
+Williams called to him sternly, and he turned and trotted back to us,
+smiling and looking amazingly innocent.
+
+Madge sat still and stared at us with big, frightened eyes, until Mrs.
+Williams had twice spoken to her, and then she slipped quickly down, to
+be folded in her mother's arms and sob upon her bosom all the way home.
+I persuaded the Kid to sit between us in the cart and drive us back,
+tying Dynamite behind.
+
+"He was awful mad at first," the boy confidingly said, "to have to
+carry double.  But I made him sure hump himself right along."
+
+At home we found the superintendent just returned.  He gave the Kid a
+paternal lecture, which probably did him as much good as if it had been
+in Chinese, and then, in cattle-ranch parlance, gave him his time--paid
+him to date and discharged him.
+
+And a few minutes later we saw the last of the Kid, as the forlorn
+little figure, with the wide, flopping sombrero, and the big, dragging
+spur, walked out of the gate and down the road toward Whitewater, and
+was soon swallowed in the shimmering heat of the plain.
+
+
+
+
+A BLAZE ON PARD HUFF
+
+  "And I 'm free to say that the grand results
+      of my explorations show
+  That somehow paint gets redder the farther
+      out West I go!"
+          --EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+One summer night I was on a train that was speeding eastward across
+southern New Mexico.  It was one of the white nights of that region,
+when the full moon, shining like sun-lighted snow and hanging so low in
+the sky that it seems to be dropping earthward, fills the clear, dry
+air with a silvery radiance and floods the barren plain with a
+transfiguring whiteness, in which the gray sands glimmer as if with
+some unearthly light of their own.
+
+The day had been long, wearisome, and unspeakably hot and dusty; and
+with the coming of this beautiful night and its cool breezes most of
+the passengers betook themselves to the car steps and platforms, where
+they lingered until we reached the little town of Separ, late in the
+evening.  As the train stopped, we saw that apparently the entire
+population of the village was crowded inside the station house.  One
+after another, men came cautiously out upon the platform, carrying guns
+in their hands and casting long, anxious looks across the plain.  Their
+set faces and ready revolvers and rifles showed that it was no ordinary
+matter which had sent the whole town to find protection in the railroad
+depot.
+
+They told us that a man had come running into town a little while
+before, and, falling headlong, exhausted, at the feet of the first
+person he met, had cried out that the Apaches were coming.  Hastily
+revived and cared for, he explained that the Indians had attacked the
+cattle camp, ten or twelve miles south of Separ, where he and some
+other cowboys had been making a round-up, and killed all but himself.
+He had managed to creep out undiscovered and had run at the top of his
+speed all the way to Separ to bring the warning.  He said that the
+Apaches, in a large band, numbering at least a hundred, had surprised
+the camp, killing the men as they lay in their blankets and committing
+horrible atrocities upon the dead bodies, and had then fallen upon the
+horses and cattle, killing and maiming the poor beasts in mere lust of
+cruelty.  He was sure they were following him--he had heard their yells
+several times during his desperate race, and each time he had redoubled
+his speed.  His shoes were gone, his stockings hung in shreds from his
+ankles, and his feet were a mass of raw and bleeding flesh, pierced by
+hundreds of cactus thorns.  He had hurried away on an Eastern-bound
+freight train to Deming, the next station, to rouse the citizens and
+help to raise a militia company, whose coming was expected in a few
+hours.  And telegrams had been sent to Fort Bayard giving news of the
+outbreak and asking for a troop of cavalry.
+
+Every soul in Separ--men, women, and children--with all the arms and
+ammunition in the town, had huddled into the station house, where they
+hoped they would be able to make a successful resistance, and, as one
+man said, "make as many good Injuns as the Lord would let them."  For
+in those days the hearts of the bravest in the Southwest knew terror,
+and with good reason, when the Apache went on the war path.
+
+The train sped on into the radiant white night, but the car steps and
+platforms were deserted.  The passengers all sought their berths as
+soon as possible, there to lie below the level of the windows and pile
+all the pillows they could get between themselves and the side of the
+car.  When we reached Deming we found the place in an uproar.  Every
+bell in town, from the gong of the railroad restaurant to the church
+bell, was ringing its loudest and wildest.  Men in varied degrees of
+undress were running up and down the streets calling loudly upon all
+citizens to come out at once.  The people were assembling at the depot,
+where two or three of the cooler-headed had taken the place of leaders
+and had begun to organize the excited mass into an armed and officered
+company and get it ready to go quickly to the assistance of beleaguered
+little Separ.
+
+Then our train sped on again through the wondrous night, and I knew no
+more about the Indian war at Separ until I sat on the kitchen doorstep
+at Apache Teju, one evening some years later, and beguiled Texas Bill
+into telling me yarns of his long and checkered experience as a cowboy.
+
+The cool, soft breath of evening filled the air, the alfalfa field
+glowed its most vivid emerald in the yellow rays of the setting sun,
+and in the same rich light the gray, barren hillside beyond shone like
+beaten gold.  And Texas Bill, just in from a week's trip on the range,
+soothed and inspired by the civilizing influences of the ranch-house, a
+shave, clean clothes, and his supper, unbent from his usual bashful
+dignity and talked.
+
+Texas Bill was tall and big and loose-jointed, and he spoke always in a
+long, soft, indifferent drawl.  He held two articles of belief which no
+man might dispute without getting sight of the knife in his bootleg or
+the revolver on his hip.  One was that Texas was the biggest and best
+State in the Union; and the other, that the cow business was no longer
+fit for a gentleman to follow.  He lounged on a bench beside the door
+and told me tales of the range and the round-up, of herds of cattle
+stampeded by the smell of water, of long rides in blinding sand storms,
+of the taking in of the tenderfoot, of centipedes and side-winders, of
+Indian fights and narrow escapes.
+
+"Were you ever in one of these Indian attacks yourself?" I asked, for
+his Indian yarns had been about other men.
+
+Texas Bill solemnly considered the heel of his boot a moment, and then
+just as solemnly replied:
+
+"Yes, I was killed by the Apaches oncet."
+
+He turned a serious face off toward Cooke's Peak, which towered, a
+mighty, sculptured mass of purest sapphire blue, against a turquoise
+sky; and I, seeing that his countenance bore just such an expression of
+inscrutable solemnity as it might have done had he been acting as chief
+mourner at his own funeral, answered just as soberly:
+
+"That must have been very interesting!  I wish you would tell me about
+it."
+
+His gaze returned to his feet, his face relaxed into a smile, a chuckle
+began somewhere in his throat, wandered down his long frame and lost
+itself in his boots, which were high-heeled and two sizes too small for
+him.  Then he spoke again:
+
+"That was the time we run a blaze on Pard Huff."
+
+Then he relapsed into silence, contemplation of his boots, and several
+successive and long-drawn chuckles.  But at last he began his story.
+
+"You see, Pard Huff, he was a tenderfoot, and there was n't nothin' he
+was n't afraid of a-tall.  You could n't convince him that coyotes
+ain't dangerous; and he thought it was sure death if a tarantula looked
+at him; and you could make him jump out of his boots any time by just
+buzzin' your tongue behind his ear.  I reckon he 'd have sure died of
+fright if he had ever seen a live rattlesnake spittin' its tongue at
+him.
+
+"And Injuns!  Well, he watched for Apaches all day long a durn sight
+more 'n he did for cattle, and he could n't sleep nights for bein'
+afraid they 'd catch him.  He did n't seem to think of anything but
+Apaches, and he had n't been with us very long till the boys did n't
+give him a chanst to think of anything else a-tall.
+
+"We was makin' a round-up down below Separ then, and there was ten of
+us and the chuck wagon when we made camp at night.  Well, one night,
+Pard Huff, he was scareder than ever, and the boys struck his gait
+right off and kep' him a-runnin'.  I did n't know they was goin' to
+blaze him quite so bad or I 'd have done my best to stop the thing.
+Well, and they would n't, either, if he had n't been the meanest sort
+of a coward that ever laid awake nights.  He asked each of us separate,
+and then all of us in a bunch at supper, if there was any danger of
+Apaches down there, and we-all told him there was, lots of it.  One of
+the boys said he 'd seen signs over toward Hatchet Mountain that very
+day that sure meant Apaches, and another said he 'd heard that a little
+ranch about forty mile away had lately been cleaned out by them and
+everybody killed.  Then we-all talked about it and agreed that they
+might come on us any minute, that most likely they 'd attack us that
+very night and that we ought to be ready for them.
+
+"Well, sir, that Pard Huff, he never said another word.  He just set
+there with his eyes getting bigger and his face whiter every minute.
+We kep' it up and told stories about the way them devils do--everything
+we 'd ever heard of--how they hold you and pull out your tongue, or cut
+off your ears, or run a stake through you and pin you to the ground, or
+smash your face to a jelly with a rock, or burn you alive, till Pard
+Huff did n't know which end he was a-standin' on a-tall.
+
+"We got out our blankets and turned in, but just kep' a-talkin' about
+the Apaches till that Pard Huff, he was shakin' as if he had a fit.
+One of the boys said he 'd bet if the Apaches did come, Pard Huff would
+get his ears cut off the first rattle, because they was so big the
+Injuns could n't see nothin' else a-tall in camp till they got them out
+of the way.  And then _bang! bang! bang!_ went some six-shooters, the
+boys yelled 'Injuns!'--'Apaches!' as loud as they could, and the feller
+on the other side of Pard Huff (Pard was layin' next to me) yelled out.
+'Boys, I 'm killed!' says he, and he rolled over on his face and kicked
+and yelled and groaned.  Then _bang! bang! bang!_ went the six-shooters
+again; and then you ought to have seen that Pard Huff!  Well, sir, he
+was sure buffaloed!  He jumped out of his blankets and let out one
+yell.  The chuck wagon was right behind us, and he give one jump and
+went clean over it and lit out across country like an antelope.
+You-all just ought to 've seen that tenderfoot pull his freight!
+
+"The boys come up a-laughin' and watched him run.  They was a-bettin'
+he would n't stop till he got to Apache Teju, but I said it was n't
+right to buffalo him that bad.  So we-all yelled and called him to come
+back, but he only run the faster.  The durn fool tenderfoot thought it
+was the Apaches chasin' him!  We-all thought he 'd soon find out there
+was nothin' wrong a-tall and come back, and so we went to bed again.
+But he did n't.
+
+"The next day I had to come to Apache Teju and I found Pard Huff's
+bloody tracks most all the way to Separ.  He 'd run right over stones
+and cactus and prairie dog holes and everything else in his way.  And
+them fool people at Separ was all huddled up in the depot, and a
+company of men with Winchesters and six-shooters was there from Deming,
+and everybody was watchin' the country all 'round with spyglasses, for
+Injuns!  Well, sir, that durn fool tenderfoot, that Pard Huff, had told
+them a fool yarn about the Apaches surprisin' our camp and killin'
+everybody but him, and they was sure buffaloed!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "I know they were."
+
+"You!  How did you know anything about it?"
+
+"Oh, I was there that night.  I passed through on the train, and Separ
+and Deming were the worst scared towns I ever saw."
+
+Texas Bill chuckled, pleased at this verification of his story, and
+went on:
+
+"Then you know what I 'm tellin' you is sure true!  I thought mebbe
+you-all mightn't believe it, a-tall, for it sure don't look reasonable
+that folks could get so buffaloed over a durn fool tenderfoot's yarn.
+They looked at me with mighty big eyes when I rode into Separ.
+
+"'Why,' says they, 'how did you-all get out alive?  We sure thought you
+was dead!'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'as far as I know, I 'm sure alive; and I don't know
+as I 've been into anything to get out of a-tall.'
+
+"'Why,' says they, 'Pard Huff--'
+
+"'Oh,' says I, 'damn Pard Huff!  He 's a tenderfoot and afraid of his
+shadder!  He dreamed about Apaches and jumped up with a yell and lit
+out for God's sake.  We tried to call him back, and he thought it was
+the Apaches after him.  I reckon he 's scared you-all half to death
+with his yarn.  You 're as bad as tenderfeet yourselves!'
+
+"But they 'd got the notion scared into them so bad they could n't
+believe anything else, and they sure thought there must be Injuns
+around somewheres; and so I left 'em and rode on for Apache Teju.
+Pretty soon I met a troop of cavalry from Fort Bayard on the trot for
+Separ.  The captain rode up to me and says, 'Have you been near the
+scene of the Indian depredations?'
+
+"'No, sir,' says I, 'I hain't seen no Injun depredations, nor Injuns
+neither, this summer.'
+
+"'Humph!' says he, 'that's queer!'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' says I, 'I think likely.  I _heard_ there was some trouble
+with 'em last night down below Separ, but if there 's _been_ any Injun
+depredations I hain't seen 'em a-tall.'  And then I rode on, for I had
+n't time to be bothered with no more of his questions, and, too, I
+reckoned likely him and his soldiers needed some exercise.
+
+"And they got it, too.  They just kep' on the trot for the Mexican
+line, and kep' a-goin' for three months.  They 'd started out for
+Injuns, and Injuns they was bound to have.  They jest wound around
+through all that country south of Separ, and over into old Mexico, and
+back again, and up into the mountains and across the plains, and did
+n't even see an Apache the whole three months.  And they did n't find
+out it was all nothin' but a blaze on Pard Huff till after they 'd come
+back.  I reckon about that time they concluded there ain't no bigger
+fool on earth than a tenderfoot, a-tall.  And there ain't, neither.
+
+"Well, I tell you, that Pard Huff was sure mad when he found out we-all
+had been running a blaze on him!  I don't know as I blame him much, for
+that ten-mile run of his to Separ in his sock feet over cactus and
+stones was n't much of a joke, a-tall.  But he was an all-fireder fool
+tenderfoot than we s'posed, or we would n't have done it."
+
+
+
+
+HOW COLONEL KATE WON HER SPURS
+
+Mrs. Harrison Winthrop Coolidge had long been the recognized leader of
+Santa Fé society.  Her husband, who had twice been Governor of New
+Mexico (this was long before the Territory had put on the garment of
+Statehood), was the best known and most esteemed man in the Southwest.
+He was rich, energetic, capable, and popular, and he came of the family
+of the Massachusetts Coolidges; while his wife, who was just as capable
+and as popular as he, sprang from the Adams family of the same State.
+But, notwithstanding all this, to the Unassorted of Santa Fé society
+she was always "Colonel Kate"; and the Select themselves, in moments of
+sprightly intimacy, would sometimes refer to her or even address her by
+that sobriquet.
+
+The occasional new resident and the frequent health-seeker were sure to
+hear of Colonel Kate before they had spent more than a day or two in
+the ancient city; and if they had come from the strait-laced East they
+were likely to be much scandalized when they learned the identity of
+the lady spoken of thus disrespectfully, and would at once want to know
+how and why such things could be.  Then they would be told that the
+shocking appellation was only a good-natured and admiring recognition
+of Mrs. Coolidge's general efficiency.  For it was the universal
+opinion in Santa Fé that Colonel Kate would always accomplish whatever
+she started out to do, and that nobody ever could guess what she would
+start out to do next.
+
+All this was quite true, but it was also true that the Governor's wife
+had won her military title by the especial daring and efficiency which
+she had once displayed on a particular occasion.  The facts in the case
+are known only to some three or four people who have always kept them
+very quiet.  It happened, however, when I asked for information about
+Mrs. Coolidge's nickname, that the man with whom I was talking was the
+very one who had first bestowed it upon her, and he told me the secret
+truth about it.  Mrs. Coolidge had no stancher friend than he, nor any
+who regarded her with greater respect and admiration, but he rarely
+spoke of her or addressed her by any other name than "Colonel Kate."
+
+It all happened a good many years ago, when Harrison Winthrop Coolidge,
+then a comparatively young man and newly married, had just come out
+from Massachusetts to be Governor of New Mexico.  His wife was a young
+woman of tall and shapely figure, handsome face, and striking presence,
+and possessed of such vivacity, vigor, health, and strength as few
+women enjoy.  Her superabundant vitality found many emergencies upon
+which to expend itself, but the man who told me this story declared
+that she never found one that was too big for her.  She probably never
+found a bigger or more important one than that which she faced on the
+night when she won her spurs.  Governor and Mrs. Coolidge reached New
+Mexico in the days of the first coming of the railroad, when the sleepy
+old Territory woke to a brief season of active and hilarious life.  And
+the Governor, fresh from New England reverence for law and legal forms
+and accepted methods, was inexpressibly shocked by the low opinion in
+which such things were held in his new bailiwick.  Especially was he
+horrified by the frequent and brief proceedings which left men who had
+been too free with their guns or with other people's property hanging
+from trees, projecting beams, and other convenient places.  The usual
+rough justice of the affair did not, in his eyes, mitigate the
+offensiveness of its irregularity.
+
+The Santa Fé _Bugle_ at once interviewed him about his plans and
+intentions, and Governor Coolidge talked very strongly on the subject
+of lynch law.  He said that it was entirely wrong, unworthy even of
+barbarians, and was not to be endorsed or palliated in either principle
+or practice.  He deplored the frequency of its operations in New
+Mexico, and emphatically declared his intention of stamping it out.
+
+And he took that opportunity to announce that all persons connected
+with lynching affairs would be treated as murderers or accessories to
+murder.
+
+The editor of _The Bugle_, which was the organ of the opposition,
+published every word the Governor said, and then gleefully waited for
+something to happen.  He did not know what it would be, but he was
+perfectly sure there would be something, and that it would be
+interesting.
+
+On the night after the interview was published Mrs. Coolidge awoke,
+possessed by an uneasy feeling that something unusual was taking place.
+They were living then in the ancient adobe "Governor's palace," with
+its four-foot walls and its eventful history ante-dating the landing at
+Plymouth Rock, and for a half-waking instant she wondered if some
+unshriven victim of century-gone enmity and revenge still walked those
+old halls or sought its mortal habiliments among the rotting bones in
+the _placita_.  She listened and heard whispering voices and cautious
+movements in the _portal_ that fronted the entire length of the
+building.  Then she arose, wrapped a long, dark cloak about her, and
+peeped out of the window.  Directly in front of their bedroom, in the
+_portal_, were three or four men who bore among them some long and
+heavy burden.  She drew her dark hair across her face, that there might
+be no white gleam to attract their attention, and crouched beside the
+window to watch.
+
+One of the men, who was apparently a leader, mounted the shoulders of
+two others and seemed to be feeling for something in the wall above the
+window.  The dim rays of an old moon, which showed that the time must
+be near morning, did not afford as much light as he needed, and he
+fumbled for some time before he found the hook in the wall for which he
+was looking.  Over it he passed the end of a rope and then jumped to
+the ground.  They pulled together on the rope, and the long, dark
+burden, which had been left lying on the ground, was drawn upward until
+it hung in front of the window beside which Mrs. Coolidge was watching,
+and she saw that it was a human body.  Then they fastened the rope to
+one of the iron bars across the window and stood for a few moments
+looking at the swaying body and chuckling together.  The one who seemed
+to be the leader rolled a cigarette and lighted it, and by the glare of
+the match she recognized him.  He was a man of prominence in Santa Fé
+and the leader of the opposing party, not only locally but for the
+whole Territory as well.
+
+Mrs. Coolidge's first impulse was to awaken her husband, but a swift
+intuition warned her that that would not be wise.  So she controlled
+her horror and indignation, and, as she stared at the poor, lifeless
+thing swaying outside, she did some very rapid thinking.  She
+understood that there had been a lynching and that the corpse had been
+brought there and hung in front of her husband's bedroom window, where
+his first waking glance would fall upon it, as a sign of how public
+opinion regarded his ideas and intentions on the subject of lynch law.
+She saw that it was intended as a warning and a contemptuous defiance,
+and her spirit rose high in righteous wrath.  She knew well that this
+event presaged for the Governor trouble and humiliation, and probably,
+if a conflict were precipitated at once, an early defeat, and she
+quickly decided that he must not see the body or know what had
+happened.  But what could she do with it?
+
+Then an idea occurred to her and she smiled and said to herself that it
+was impossible.  But it seemed such a good idea, and it pleased her so
+much, that she kept on thinking about it.  Presently she assured
+herself that her husband was still sleeping quietly; then she put on
+some clothes, and, laughing softly, went out on the _portal_.
+
+The man who had been the leader in the affair that night, and whom Mrs.
+Coolidge had recognized, was awakened early the next morning by the
+sound of voices in front of his house.  It was barely dawn, but already
+a little group of Mexicans were staring at his door and talking with
+much excitement.  Wondering what it could mean he hastily dressed
+himself and went out.  As he opened the front door he ran into the body
+of the man, swinging above his own threshold, which he had left a few
+hours before hanging at the Governor's window.
+
+"My jaw dropped and I shut the door mighty quick, when I saw that," he
+told me, with a reminiscent, amused chuckle at himself.  "I knew in a
+second that the Governor was onto us, that he must have seen us in
+front of his window, and that it was up to me to do some lively pullin'
+of freight.  As a matter of fact, I had n't had anything to do with the
+lynching.  That had been done by some cowboys who were in town the day
+before, and the fellow they 'd done for was an ornery cuss of a
+half-breed Mexican, who was a whole lot better off dead than alive,
+anyway.  He tried to play some low-down game on 'em at poker, and they
+just strung him up and rode off.  Some of our fellows heard about it,
+and three or four of us decided it would be a good thing to let
+Coolidge know what our sentiments were.
+
+"We were in dead earnest, and we meant to get his political scalp and
+drive him out of the Territory with his tail between his hind legs,
+before he knew what had happened to him.  I won't say," and the man
+grinned and his eyes twinkled, "I was n't expecting to be appointed
+Governor myself afterwards.  Anyway, I did n't care to be roped into a
+trial for murder just then.  It would have interfered with my plans.
+And if the Governor had seen us apparently lynching a man right under
+his eyes, he could cinch us if he wanted to.
+
+"I called the Mexicans up to the door, told them I didn't know how the
+body got there (I didn't, either), but it must have been put there by
+some of my enemies.  Then I gave them money to take charge of it, say
+the dead man was a friend of theirs, and do the proper thing.  So the
+poor cuss was in luck by the affair after all, for he got a mass said
+over him.  Then I sent word to my friends who 'd been with me, and we
+all just quietly skipped, on the minute.  At sun-up that morning there
+was n't one of us in town.  I had urgent business in Texas for the next
+week.
+
+"You see, we 'd all of us thought our new Governor was just a
+highfalutin' tenderfoot, and it would n't be any job at all to buffalo
+him.  But this move of his gave us a suspicion that maybe we 'd sized
+him up wrong.  It was just the kind of quiet warning that we 'd be
+likely to give if we had cards up our sleeve that the other fellow did
+n't know about.  It looked as if he really could and would strike back
+good and plenty if we pushed him too hard.  So we sent word to our
+crowd all over the Territory to keep quiet a while.  And let me tell
+you, life in New Mexico was not nearly so exciting for the next few
+weeks as some of us had planned it should be.
+
+"Still, I was n't quite satisfied about it.  Somehow, the Governor did
+n't seem to pan out to be just the kind of man who would give that kind
+of a jolt to his enemies.  He was too Eastern.  I was still chawin' it
+over in my mind, when one day I met Mrs. Coolidge, two or three weeks
+after it happened and the first time I 'd seen her since.  She was
+lively and cordial, as she always was, and is; but as I shook hands
+with her and looked her in the eyes she suddenly dropped her eyelids,
+and a queer expression crossed her face.  She had hold of herself again
+in a second and was looking at me and smiling and talking.  But that
+second was enough.  It flashed into my mind that she was the one who 'd
+done it.  I reckon I would n't have dared to bone her about it if I 'd
+waited two minutes.  But the impulse took me, and I just asked her
+bluntly right then and there if it was she who had transferred that
+Greaser from her husband's window to my door.
+
+"She threw up her head and looked me square in the eyes--you know that
+straight, frank gaze she has--frowned a little and said, 'Yes, I did
+it.  I thought your doorway was the rightful place for that corpse to
+be found in.'
+
+"Well, the joke of it and the pluck of her just struck me right where I
+lived, and I fairly roared.  'Put it there, Mrs. Coolidge,' I said, and
+stuck out my hand, as soon as I could speak.  'You 're a regular
+captain!  No, you 're bigger than that--you 're a colonel!  Shake, and
+let's be friends!'
+
+"Well, I just thought it would be a shame to drive a woman with as much
+pluck and _sabe_ as that back East to live.  So I passed the word down
+the line in our party that we 'd give the Governor a show--let him have
+fair play anyhow, and, if he could make good, all right, the pot should
+be his.  I was so tickled by Mrs. Coolidge's trick and the way she won
+out on it that I never called her anything but 'Colonel' after that,
+and, somehow, the title stuck.  Anyway, she deserves it."
+
+For a long time after this affair, so I learned from Mrs. Coolidge when
+I asked her about the story her friend had told me, the Governor
+thought it was that interview and the stern spirit he displayed in it
+that had made the change in the opposition's attitude toward him and
+had seemed to affect the feeling of the whole Territory.  For his
+official path became unexpectedly easy.  There were few attempts to
+balk him in his administration of affairs and there was a general
+manifestation of tolerance, and even of willingness to see how his
+ideas would work out.
+
+But the time came when, understanding better the people with whom he
+had to deal, he knew that that interview ought to have had just the
+opposite result.  One day he said to his wife how surprising it was
+that it had not landed him in the hottest of hot water, and how puzzled
+he was to account for what seemed to have been its effect.  Then she
+confessed to him what had happened on that crucial night, how she had
+taken the body away and hung it in front of the other house, and what
+she partly knew and partly guessed about the results of the affair.  At
+once he realized that her instant and audacious retaliation was what
+had made possible his success and his growing popularity.
+Nevertheless, he was shocked at first, for New England was still but a
+little way behind him.  But amusement soon overcame every other
+feeling, and he laughed heartily in admiration of her daring, just as
+his opponent had done.  After that, he seemed to take particular pride
+in her sobriquet, and himself often called her "Colonel Kate."
+
+
+
+
+HOLLYHOCKS
+
+Green and peaceful, the long, low undulations of the prairie sea of
+southern Kansas spread away to the horizon in lines as graceful and
+pleasing as those of a reclining Venus.  Here and there against a
+hillside the emerald waves broke in a bright foam of many-colored
+flowers.  In all that vast extent over which I could look, there was
+visible no living creature save the tiny furred and feathered things
+whose home it was.  The soft prairie wind blew caressingly against my
+cheek and seemed to whisper in my ear: "Why do men cling to the
+boisterous, cruel, lying sea as the emblem of freedom?  Is not here
+beauty that allures with freedom's own charms?  Is not here freedom
+herself, serene, smiling, constant, and blessed with a blessedness the
+sea knows not?"
+
+The prairie wind blew the freedom it sang of into my heart, and it
+dwelt there with joy and exultation as I drove on and on over the waves
+of that smiling emerald sea.  I salved my eyes, wearied and scorched by
+brick walls and city pavements, with those long, swinging reaches of
+green, and their silent benediction filled and soothed my very soul.
+
+At last, when the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down their
+eastern slopes, there appeared against the velvet green of the distance
+the sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly, naked, and unashamed in
+its bustling newness.  And nearer, by a mile or more, on a green slope
+which caught the golden-red rays of the sinking sun, was a little
+enclosure, naked and ugly as the town itself, but silent and
+awe-inspiring with the silence and awe of death.  A barbed-wire fence
+enclosed it, and the prairie turf still covered much of its space.
+There were here no sunken mounds, no reeling headstones, no discolored
+marbles.  The grave heaps were trimly rounded, the wooden crosses which
+marked most of them grinned their newness, and the few headstones and
+monuments shone upstartishly white in the sun.  Barren of that curtain
+of verdure with which love strives to conceal the footprints of death,
+the little cemetery lay there against the green hillside like some
+fresh, gaping, ghastly wound in the face of a loved one.
+
+One grave stood out startlingly from the rest.  On the others only an
+infrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of loving
+effort to cover death's nakedness.  But this one, which lay in the
+centre of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot-cross with
+a dense growth of hollyhocks.  Their tall shafts were clothed with a
+luxuriance of vivid red bloom, as if they had sucked into their petals
+the life blood of the sleeper below.  In the level red sun-rays they
+glowed with lusty contempt of the silent impotence beneath them.
+
+A woman in a white dress, with her hands full of the red hollyhock
+blooms, walked between the graves down to the barred gate and came out
+upon the road as I drove up.  I recognized her as the woman whose
+acquaintance I had made in the train a few days previously, and in
+whose company I had travelled from Chicago hither.  She had been a
+pleasant chance acquaintance--intelligent, gentle, and refined.
+
+"Will you ride back to town with me?" I said.
+
+She accepted the offer of the seat beside me, carefully holding her
+flowers.
+
+"How odd that grave looks with its marshalled array of hollyhocks!" I
+said, by way of opening conversation, for she sat there silent.  "What
+a peculiar taste, to adorn a loved one's last resting-place in that
+way!"
+
+She looked up at me silently, and I noticed that her eyes were hollow,
+and her face sad.  Then she turned toward the graveyard and the tall
+red hollyhocks standing out so vividly in the sunset glow, and said
+quietly:
+
+"It is my mother's grave.  I planted the hollyhocks upon it."
+
+She was silent again, looking sadly and tenderly at the flowers in her
+lap, but presently she went on:
+
+"I do not mind telling you why I did it.  Perhaps talking about it will
+lessen the heaviness of my heart.  No one but my sister knows why I
+planted them there, and she has never seen the grave, nor have I seen
+her, since our mother died.  When we were young girls at home, our
+mother loved hollyhocks.  She had the yard filled with great clumps of
+them.  We were away at school for a few years and when we went home
+again they quite horrified our advanced, young ladyish taste.  We
+thought them vulgar, and between ourselves we fretted and scolded about
+them and declared to each other that they were horrid, and that we were
+ashamed to have any one visit us while those great, ugly, coarse things
+filled the yard.  We apologized for them to visitors and said they were
+mother's flowers, but we hated them.  And after a while we complained
+about them to mother and said before her how common and coarse and
+old-fashioned they were.  And she, dear, gentle soul, said not a word,
+but looked sadly out at the flowers she loved so well and had cared for
+so long and so tenderly.  And one day, after we had fretted and worried
+her a long time about them, she said to us--I can see yet how she tried
+to smile and disguise the sadness in her heart--that we might dig up
+all the hollyhocks and plant other flowers in their places.  And we
+did.  It stabs me to the heart now to think of it,--but we did it
+joyfully.
+
+"After we were married and went away from home--my sister to London and
+I to Chicago--our mother came here to this town and soon died.  In the
+sorrow of that time, when first I knew how much and how tenderly I
+loved her, I remembered about the hollyhocks, and at last realized how
+brutally thoughtless and unfeeling we had been.  So, in shame and
+remorse, I did the one little thing that was all I could do, and
+covered the grave of our dear, patient, gentle, saint-like mother with
+the flowers she loved the best of all, but which we had not let her
+gladden her life with.  I do not pretend to know whether or not there
+is a hereafter, or whether there is anything more of her than what lies
+under those red flowers back there.  But often I wish--oh, how I
+wish!--that it may be so, and that from somewhere her spirit may look
+down and see and be pleased by the atonement I have tried to make!
+
+"I wrote to my sister what I had done, and I found that she also felt
+as I did about it.  Every summer I come here and see that the
+hollyhocks grow and flourish as we wish them to; and, at her request, I
+gather and send to her some of the blooms.  These in my lap are for
+that purpose, and two weeks from now she will be weeping over them in
+her London home.  If we could only have known--then--how we should feel
+about it now!"
+
+
+
+
+THE RISE, FALL, AND REDEMPTION OF JOHNSON SIDES
+
+The day was hot, and the wind was high, and the alkali dust from the
+sagebrush plains sifted into the car, and whitened the stuffy
+upholstering, and burrowed into the nerves of the passengers.
+Everybody longed for the coming of night, and the relief of the climb
+up the cool heights of the Sierras.
+
+I looked out on the sun-flooded platform at Winnemucca and wondered,
+with a feeling of irritation against all things earthly, what I should
+do with myself during all the long, hot, and uncomfortable hours that
+were still to be endured.  And then I saw the big, broad-shouldered
+figure and the round, good-natured face of the Nevadan enter the car
+and come straight toward my section.  At once I forgot the heat and the
+alkali dust, and my heart sang with joy, for I knew the Nevadan of old,
+and knew him for the prince of story tellers.  So there was content in
+my soul and foreknowledge of delightful entertainment with tales new
+and old.  For the Nevadan's old stories are just as interesting as his
+new ones, because you never recognize them as anything you ever heard
+before.  His store of yarns is limitless and needs only a listener to
+set it unwinding, like an endless cable, warranted to run as long as
+his audience laughs.
+
+So the Nevadan talked, and I listened and felt at peace with the world.
+And presently he began to tell me about Johnson Sides.
+
+"Of course, you 've heard about him, have n't you?" he asked.
+"Everybody who has lived on either slope of the Sierras must have heard
+about Johnson.  Well, Johnson Sides is a whole lot of a man, even if he
+is only a Piute Indian.  It ain't quite fair, though, to speak of him
+as only an Indian, for he has developed into an individual and wears
+store clothes.
+
+"The first time I ever saw Johnson was away back, years ago, when I
+first went to Virginia City.  Going down C Street one day I stopped to
+look at some workmen who were excavating for the foundation of a house.
+They had been blasting, and were working away like good fellows getting
+the pieces of rock off the site.  On the south side of the biggest
+stone they had removed, where the sun shone on him and he was sheltered
+from the wind, a big Piute was lying on the ground and watching the
+workmen as if he had been their boss.  He was wrapped in an army
+blanket, new but dirty, and he wore a fairly good hat and a pair of
+boots without holes.  His face and hands were dirty, and his hair hung
+around his ears and neck and eyes in that fine disorder which the
+Piutes admire.
+
+"I wondered why he was watching the workmen, for it is little short of
+a miracle for a Piute to take any interest whatever in manual labor.
+So I spoke to him.  Without paying any attention to me or what I had
+said, or even seeming to be conscious of my presence, he rose,
+straightened himself up, threw his head back, and said, as if he were
+addressing the world in general: 'White man work, white man eat; Injun
+no work, Injun eat; white man damn fool.'
+
+"I laughed and said, 'You 've struck it, right at the bottom.  Anybody
+with as much wisdom as that deserves to be supported by the community.
+Here 's a dollar for you.'
+
+"He took the money as disdainfully as if he had been a prince and I a
+subject paying back taxes, and without once looking at me stalked off
+down the street.  An hour afterwards I ran across Johnson, two other
+bucks, and a squaw, sitting on the ground in the sun behind a barn,
+playing poker.  Johnson must have raked in everything the whole party
+had, for that night the rest of them were sober and he was whooping
+drunk.  In consequence, he got locked up for a while.  The police of
+Virginia City always paid Johnson the compliment of locking him up when
+he got drunk, for with whiskey inside of him he was more like a mad
+devil than anything else.
+
+"After he got out of jail I saw him standing around for several days
+looking as lordly and unconscious as if he had been worth a million.
+But the pangs of hunger must have set his wits to work.  For pretty
+soon he appeared on the streets with a wrinkled, decrepit, old Piute
+tied to a string.  He had fastened the string to the old fellow's arm
+and he walked behind, holding the other end, but apparently as
+unconscious of the whole business as if he 'd been the sole inhabitant
+of Virginia City.  He stalked along with his head in the air, and the
+old fellow trotted out in front until Johnson yanked the string.  Then
+they stopped and the old man began to beg money of the passers-by, and
+Johnson turned his back on his companion and looked off down the
+street, proudly pretending that they weren't together.  If any one gave
+the old man money Johnson took it at once and it disappeared somewhere
+inside his blanket.  Johnson and his prime minister, we used to call
+the combination.  But Johnson would n't beg for himself.  Oh, no!  He
+was too proud.  It's a fact, I never knew or heard of Johnson Sides
+himself asking for money.  But he kept his prime minister trotting
+around for several weeks, and he never let go the string or let the old
+fellow keep a two-bit piece.
+
+"But Johnson was reformed at last; and it was the power of the press
+that did it.  Talk about the press as a moral agent!  Why, bless your
+soul, when one newspaper can reform a whole Piute Indian and make a man
+of him--well, the question's settled, then and there, and the pulpit
+and the platform ain't in it after that.
+
+"We did n't try to reform him--in fact, we 'd rather have kept him as
+he was at first.  He was more amusing.  But the aspirations of
+Johnson's soul were too much for us.  I used to give him money
+sometimes--he was sure to do something if he got drunk that was worth
+writing up--and so he got into the habit of coming to our newspaper
+office whenever he felt the need of more cash.  He did n't ask for
+anything, and he always made you feel that he was doing you a great
+favor in accepting any stray chicken-feed you might have about your
+clothes.  He just sat around like a bronzed and blanketed statue of
+Caesar, or Alexander, or Napoleon Bonaparte.  Not one of the whole lot
+of them ever looked more as if he owned the whole earth than Johnson
+did after he 'd sat there three hours waiting for somebody to give him
+two bits or a chew of tobacco.
+
+"I found out after a while that he could give me scraps of news about
+the Indians over at Pyramid Lake or in the city that were worth making
+into local items, and I always paid him for them.  Nobody ever saw a
+prouder Indian than Johnson was the first day I did that.  I marked the
+paragraphs with a blue pencil and gave him a copy of the paper, and he
+carried it around with him until it was worn out.  The money I gave him
+for them he kept in his pocket for two whole days.  But at last there
+was a big poker game behind a barn--six bucks down from Pyramid Lake
+with five dollars apiece, and it was too much for Johnson.  His proudly
+earned silver went into the pot with the rest.
+
+"Johnson brought up items every day after that, and soon began to feel
+himself one of the profession and a man of consequence.  He always
+brought two or three other bucks with him to see his importance and be
+impressed by his superiority.  While they stood against the wall or
+squatted in a corner Johnson would take a chair at a dignified distance
+from me and begin, 'Now, you make 'um paper talk.'  And he always ended
+his account with the emphatic command, 'Now, you make 'um paper talk
+straight.'
+
+"But his information was not always 'straight.'  He had all the
+instincts of the modern and progressive journalist, and he did n't
+hesitate to fake when news was scarce and he wanted money.  For after
+he joined the newspaper profession he gave up begging by proxy and
+allowed his prime minister to beg on his own account and keep his own
+earnings.
+
+"Well, it was n't long after Johnson's entrance into literature until
+he discarded his blanket and appeared in a coat.  The other Indians
+began to regard him with awe-struck admiration.  Every afternoon he
+waited in the office until the paper came out, and then he marched off
+with a copy in which his 'talk' was marked.  He showed this to every
+Indian he saw, and together they admired it with the paper wrong side
+up, sidewise, and every other way.  Johnson's special friends among the
+whites were similarly favored.  He would hand the paper with a
+magnificent air, point a dirty finger to a marked paragraph, and say,
+'Make 'um paper talk--me!'
+
+"The civilizing influence of literary pursuits and universal respect
+soon told upon Johnson's personal appearance.  He began to wash his
+face and hands.  His self-respect seemed to grow, like love, by what it
+fed on; and the more he became respectable, the more his ambitions
+spread out and flourished.  The next time he had big luck in a poker
+game, instead of spending his money in a spree, he bought a brand-new
+suit of store clothes.
+
+"His new position in society by that time demanded more money to
+support it properly than his literary efforts brought in; and as poker
+games were not always on hand, and sometimes turned out the wrong way,
+Johnson actually decided to work.  His free, proud soul had been so
+effectually tamed by respectability and harnessed by civilization that
+he accepted every odd job of work that came along by which he could
+earn money.  He looked quite decent and respectable, and, by virtue of
+really trying to do it, he managed to get a fairly good command of
+English.
+
+"The civilizing process had been going on two or three years when
+Johnson's mind got an illumination as to the value of knowledge.  He
+decided that the young Piutes ought to go to school, though Johnson
+himself never had showed any great desire for knowledge.  He has since
+learned to read a little, and can write his own name, but at that time
+he was satisfied with 'making the paper talk' through my agency.
+However, he set his heart on having a school for the young Indians.  I
+suppose he realized that they could n't all achieve social position and
+influence in the field of journalism, as he had done, but must be
+provided with some of the implements of civilization to start with.
+
+"There was some Government money with which the school could be run
+after it was started, but there was no building in which it could be
+held.  The thing lagged along for a while, and Johnson tried to set
+several schemes going, without success.  Finally, one fine morning, the
+proprietor of a lumber yard thought some of his piles of lumber had
+been tampered with.  He saw some tracks, which he followed, and in the
+outskirts of the town, near a bunch of wickiups, he came upon two other
+lumber-yard men, also following tracks.  A little farther on they found
+Johnson, even more important and dignified than usual, superintending
+the construction of a schoolhouse.  Half a dozen Indians were at work,
+and Johnson was bossing them as if he had been building schoolhouses
+all his life.
+
+"The men boned him about stealing the lumber, and he frankly said yes,
+he had stolen it.  That is, he had bossed the job, and made the other
+bucks do all the packing.  He explained that he had to steal it,
+because he could n't buy it, and they would n't give it to him, and he
+had to have that schoolhouse.  His frankness amused them, and they told
+him, all right, go ahead, and if he needed any more lumber he might
+have it.
+
+"He finally got the schoolhouse finished, corralled the Indian brats,
+and after the school was started visited it three times a week, when he
+did n't go every day.  If any of the youngsters showed signs of mutiny,
+all the teacher had to do was to threaten to call in Johnson Sides, and
+immediately peace became profound.  For by that time he had more
+influence among the Indians, big and little, than anybody else, white
+or red.  They looked up to him with a veneration which he accepted as
+his right as calmly as he had formerly taken the quarters and
+half-dollars his prime minister had begged for him.
+
+"That schoolhouse was the last stealing he ever did, even by proxy, and
+pretty soon he quit getting drunk.  He has never given up poker
+entirely but he has quit gambling away everything he gets, and only
+joins in a social game now and then, when he is flush, as any gentleman
+might.
+
+"He was a good deal of a man, was Johnson, and everybody respected him
+and was glad to help him along.  He worked and earned money, and saved
+a little, and proved himself quite capable, and was clean and decent
+and respectable.  People liked to employ him, for he was industrious
+and sober.  That is, he was sober for a long time.  There must have
+been five or six years in which Johnson was never even tipsy.  He was
+mighty proud of himself and his good reputation, and when he did fall
+it hurt him bad.
+
+"For fall he did, at last, when a big enough temptation came along.
+And then he got whizzing, whooping, roaring drunk.  It was a wilder,
+madder, more devilish drunk than any he had ever taken in the old days
+when he was only a dirty Piute buck, without ambitions or achievements.
+It seemed as if he were making up for all the time he had lost while he
+was respectable, and condensing into one all the drunks he might have
+taken and had n't.
+
+"He kept it up for three weeks.  Part of the time he was with the
+Indians, part in Virginia City, and part in Carson.  How he managed to
+escape arrest is more than I can tell, and how it happened that he did
+n't massacre the whole population of Nevada is still more of a mystery.
+He had fights with Indians and with whites, with men who were drunk and
+men who were sober, and they drew guns, knives, and fists.  But Johnson
+didn't get hurt, and nobody else got killed.
+
+"After it was all over and he had sobered up, Johnson came to me and he
+was so repentant and humiliated that, I declare, I never felt so sorry
+for anybody in all my life.  He thought it was all up with him, that he
+had ruined all his good repute and influence, that nobody would ever
+believe him, or trust him, or respect him after that, and that it was
+quite useless for him to try to be a good Indian again.  Of course he
+did n't put it in so many words--he expressed more by gestures and
+looks and grunts than by words--but that was the meaning of it all.
+
+"I felt so sorry for him that I made up my mind I 'd give him a lift;
+and as I began to talk and try to encourage him I had an inspiration
+that was just the thing.
+
+"'Don't you be so discouraged, Johnson,' I said.  'We can make things
+all right again.  We 'll get the Legislature to repeal this drunk of
+yours and that'll set you right up where you were before.  I 'm going
+over to Carson to-morrow, and I 'll have the Legislature make a law
+that will wipe out the whole business and fix everything for you as if
+you had n't been drunk at all.'
+
+"Johnson was delighted, but he did n't feel quite sure about it.  So I
+had to make him understand that I knew what I was talking about.
+
+"'It's all straight,' I said.  'They do that every session for
+somebody.  Why, So-and-So'--and I mentioned the name of a prominent
+citizen--'was on an awful drunk last winter; and just as soon as he
+sobered up he went right over to Carson and had the Legislature pass a
+bill repealing his spree, and you know that he is just as much
+respected as he was before.  I'll attend to your business myself
+to-morrow, and then I 'll publish the whole thing in the paper and
+everybody will read it and know that you are all right again.  But you
+must remember one thing, Johnson,' I said.  'You must remember that as
+you are an Indian the Legislature can't do this for you more than once.
+If you were a white man you could have as many drunks repealed as you
+wanted.  But being an Indian this is your last chance, and you must
+keep straight after this.'
+
+"Well, the upshot of it was that Johnson put his trust in me; and I
+flatter myself that I was just the man he needed in the emergency.  You
+'ve lived in the West, and you know what the Nevada Legislature is, and
+always has been.  There never was one that you couldn't count on to do
+anything under the sun that tickled its sense of humor.  I thought that
+bill about Johnson's drunk would strike 'em in just about the right
+place, and it did.  They dropped everything else and sent it through
+with a hurrah.
+
+"There was a long preamble, telling about Johnson Sides's prominence
+and influence and the great importance of his retaining the high
+position in the respect of the community which he had won, and about
+the misfortune into which he had fallen, and how it was the universal
+wish that he should be reinstated in public esteem.  And then there was
+a resolution which declared that Johnson Sides's drunk should be and
+was thereby repealed, destroyed, wiped out, for ever and ever, and that
+all statutes not in accordance with that act were thereby annulled from
+that time forth.  They passed it through both houses unanimously, and
+the next day I published the bill verbatim and all the proceedings in
+our paper.
+
+"Johnson's face fairly shone with joy when I read it to him.  It was
+his patent of respectability, and he stowed it away in his breast
+pocket as carefully as if it had been his passport to heaven.  He
+carried it there until it was worn out, and then he came after another.
+He's worn out three or four since then, but he always keeps one in his
+pocket.
+
+"The scheme worked like a charm; for his redemption has been complete,
+and he 's been a good Indian, sober, industrious, and respectable--but
+not nearly so interesting--ever since."
+
+
+
+
+A PIECE OF WRECKAGE
+
+  Delay not thy coming, my love, my own!
+  Though patient I wait thee, my love unknown,
+  Yet long I thy figure to see, and know
+  What form thou wilt have, and what face be thine,
+  And when thou wilt clasp me, dear love of mine;
+  For all that is left me is thy cold breath,
+  And wond'ring I wait thee, my sweetheart, Death!
+
+
+It may be that the high tide of material development which in late
+years has been sweeping over Southern California has penetrated even to
+that isolated nook in the hills which, when I knew it, was the saddest
+place I had ever seen.  It was a lonely region, miles and miles away
+from railroads, telegraphs, newspapers--all the mighty, roaring music
+of civilization.  Off toward the east the desert stretched its level
+expanse of vague coloring, and westward the rounded hills, green in the
+winter, yellow as ripe wheat fields through the long, rainless summer,
+reared their mounds higher and higher until they stopped, as if cowed
+and ashamed, at the flanks of Monte Pinos.  And the mountain, majestic
+and vapor-veiled, seemed always to be watching them in their work of
+protecting and comforting the wrecks that clung to their feet.
+
+For that was why this region, despite its soft, reposeful beauty,
+seemed so sad--because of the wrecks, the human wrecks, who dwelt
+there, who had seized such fast hold of the sphinx-like hills that only
+death could unloose their grasp.  Some of them were relics of
+California's heyday, men who, when the waves of hope and adventure and
+endeavor were rolling fast and high over the Golden State, were so
+dashed about and bruised and beaten that at last they were glad to be
+cast ashore among these hills.  Some had hidden themselves there
+because they were weary of the world and all its works, and wished to
+go where they could no longer hear even its heart-beats.  Others there
+were who had fled thither to escape the scorn of men or the vengeance
+of the law.  And there were a few who were staying on and on, and would
+always stay, because those enchantresses that whisper in the evening
+breezes of the mountains and the desert, that put forth caressing hands
+in the balmy air that bathes the hills and canyons in the early
+morning, whose wooing voices sing in the music of birds and chant in
+the cries of wild things at night, had taken captive their wills, and
+they could not go if they would.
+
+Their cabins were scattered through the valleys, or on the sides of the
+hills, or in the recesses of the canyons, miles apart.  Sometimes,
+though rarely, there was a little family in one.  But usually the only
+occupant was an elderly or middle-aged man, who spoke but little about
+himself or his past, and was as destitute of curiosity as to what was
+going on in the outside world as he was about the former lives and
+affairs of his fellow wreckage.
+
+Nevertheless, I had the good fortune to learn much of the story of one
+of these men.  A member of our camping party chanced to make speaking
+acquaintance with him at the quaint old adobe house under its huge,
+spreading grapevine and waving cottonwoods, which served as stage
+station and supply store--the centre of such civilization as there was
+in all the region within a radius of thirty or forty miles.  Every one
+in that country called him "Old Dan."  I found his name one day in the
+Great Register--twin relic, with the shabby old stage, of the outer
+world--which hung in the stage station.  But as it was not his real
+name, nor probably any name by which he was ever known outside of those
+hills, it will be of no use to mention it here.
+
+Old Dan, learning that we were not pleased with our camping-place,
+invited us to pitch our tents under some trees near his cabin.  And for
+one delightful month of the southern summer we brought into his life
+the strange sensation of voices fresh from the world he had discarded.
+The unwonted influence unlocked his memories and sent his mind back to
+dwell among the almost forgotten years when he, too, was of the world
+and delighted in it.
+
+We soon fell into the habit of sociability.  Every evening he would
+come down to our camp, usually bringing his violin, and sit with us for
+hours at our camp fire.  His cats--he had near a dozen of them--came
+trailing after him, and his two dogs trotted by his side.  Two or three
+of the cats sprang into his lap as soon as he sat down, and the rest
+snarled at the dogs for appropriating the choice positions nearest him,
+and then disposed themselves in an outer row.  The stable inclosure was
+only a few rods distant, and the three burros it contained, as soon as
+they heard his voice, ranged themselves in a solemn row at the nearest
+point, looking as wise and mysterious as so many sphinxes.
+
+Sometimes he played for us, with unexpected skill and feeling, on his
+violin.  As the days went by and our acquaintance grew more intimate,
+he gradually fell back into memories of the past and turned over for
+us, now and then, the pages of his life's history.  But all these bits,
+heard at many different times, and some things which were told me
+afterwards by men who had known him in other years and places, I have
+gathered into one continuous narrative.  For in my memory they are all
+fused together, as if he had told us the whole of his story in one
+evening--one special evening, of which remembrance is most vivid.
+
+The moon was at its half, and showered down just enough of its silver
+light to bring out sharply the darkling woods on the hill beyond the
+little stream and to make his cabin under the trees, off in the
+opposite direction, take on strange shapes, while it cut out, sharp and
+distinct against the background of light, the silhouettes of the solemn
+and unmoving burros, standing in a row behind the fence.  Our camp fire
+blazed and crackled and the crimson and orange flames mounted high in
+the air and showed our little party, sitting or half lying about it on
+blankets.  Old Dan, sitting on a great chunk of wood, his lap full of
+cats, his violin beside him, and his usual bodyguard of cats and dogs
+around him, went far back into his youth and let us know--what probably
+he had told no other being since he broke those ties--why he left the
+home, the heritage, and the name of his ancestors.
+
+He had been playing on his violin, and then, putting it down, had begun
+to tell us about some hunting adventure.  The red light danced over his
+wrinkled, weather-beaten face and scraggly, grizzled beard; and as I
+considered his large, well-shaped head and strongly marked features, it
+seemed to me there was something familiar in his countenance.  In his
+voice a peculiar intonation--I had noticed it many times before--teased
+me with suggestions of a voice heard somewhere else.
+
+And presently I remembered.
+
+He turned his face toward me, the firelight fell bright and strong upon
+it, that peculiar tone in his voice sounded at just the same instant,
+and there flashed upon me the memory of a scene in Boston two years
+before.  It was in Faneuil Hall, and a great mass of eager,
+enthusiastic faces was turned toward the platform, where stood a member
+of one of Massachusetts' old and distinguished families.  His speech,
+full of persuasive fire, had welded his whole audience into one
+personality that, for the time being, at least, felt as he felt and
+thought as he thought.  And the voice of the orator, which had
+impressed me by reason of a certain peculiar intonation, was like this
+man's voice, and his face had in it much that was like the face of Old
+Dan.
+
+I spoke of the resemblance, and Old Dan at first drew back within
+himself.  Then he began to question me eagerly about the man.  And
+presently he had let us know who he was.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you are right.  There is a strong resemblance between
+us, or there was when we were young.  I have not seen him for more than
+forty years.  He is my brother--younger than I.  You know what the
+family has been in New England.  There has not been a generation of it
+for a hundred, yes, a hundred and fifty years, that has not made its
+influence felt either in Massachusetts or the nation.  I cut loose from
+it before I was twenty, and they have known nothing about me since.  In
+fact, they think me dead--they thought I died then, and I do not intend
+they shall ever know that I did not.  This is the first time since I
+left that anybody has known my real name, and you 'll do me a favor if
+you never speak of it to any one else, here or elsewhere.  I have not
+always been known by the same name since then, but what difference does
+that make?  When a man leads as many different lives as I have done, he
+has a right to more names than one or two.
+
+"I was in Harvard College and it was the summer vacation after my
+junior year.  Every male member of our family"--Old Dan spoke that
+"our" with timid and shame-faced, but very evident, pride--"for I don't
+know how many generations, has gone to Harvard, and I suppose I am the
+only one of the whole lot of them that didn't graduate.  I went to New
+York that summer to transact some business for my father.  I succeeded
+with it very well, but in the meantime I did n't neglect the
+opportunities of enjoying myself with a good deal more freedom than I
+would have dared to take at home.  I probably was n't born quite up to
+the high standard of morality, dignity, and self-respect which my
+ancestors had set; and if I had stayed there all my life I would
+probably have found living up to it either very galling or quite
+impossible.  I dare say it is just as well that I did break loose and
+burn the bridge behind me, for if I had stayed in New England it's
+likely I should have turned out a black sheep and brought shame and
+disgrace upon my people.
+
+"While I was in New York I fell in with a pleasant, companionable man,
+some years older than myself.  He went around with me a good deal, took
+me to his home, where I met his wife and sister, gave me sensible
+advice about a number of things, and was altogether so entertaining and
+so kind and such a good fellow that I thought myself fortunate in
+having met him.
+
+"One evening, when I was almost ready to return to Boston, I dined with
+him at his home.  He had had me there to dinner several times, and the
+evening had always passed off pleasantly.  But on this evening I drank
+more wine than was good for me.  Probably it was doctored, but I don't
+know.  All my life, whenever I have taken a glass too much, one sure
+result has followed.  All the restraints of conduct which I ordinarily
+feel drop away, and I become reckless.
+
+"So this evening, when he brought out cards and we began to bet on the
+game, both my moral sense and my prudence deserted me.  I drank more
+and more, and bet higher and higher, and after a while I realized that
+he had won from me quite a sum of money which I had neglected to send
+to my father during the day.
+
+"Then I drank more; and after that I do not know what happened until I
+awoke with a dazed sense of having heard a woman scream and of being in
+the midst of some confusion.  I felt a blow on my head and a grip on my
+arm and heard a voice shouting in my ear, 'You scoundrel, I 'll kill
+you!'  I was in another room, my friend's wife was sobbing hysterically
+on a lounge, and he was gripping and shaking me and pointing a pistol
+at my head.
+
+"He said I had shamefully insulted his wife and that he was going to
+kill me.  And I was drunk enough to believe him, and maudlin enough to
+beg for my life and to accept with tears what terms he was willing to
+offer.  It was finally settled that he should keep me under his
+personal charge until I could get five thousand dollars from my father
+to pay over to him.  Then he made me write a letter to my father which
+he dictated.
+
+"He locked me in a room with himself, put the key in his pocket, waited
+until he thought I had gone to sleep, and then threw himself down on
+the bed with the pistol in his hand and was soon fast asleep.
+
+"But instead of going to sleep I was rapidly getting sober enough to
+understand what a rat in a hole I had made of myself, and I was so
+overcome with horror and shame that I felt I would rather die than face
+my father again.  I put the letter, which he had left lying on a table,
+in my pocket.  With my knife I took out the screws of the door lock and
+was soon creeping stealthily downstairs.  As I turned the first street
+corner I saw that my keeper was rushing after me in hot pursuit.  Day
+was just breaking, and through the dim, deserted streets I ran at the
+top of my speed, turning corners, dodging down side streets, trying my
+best to get out of sight of my pursuer.  He kept close behind me, but
+at last I reached the docks,--where I meant to drown myself,--just
+enough ahead of him to dodge behind a pile of lumber.
+
+"My sudden appearance startled some poor wretch, who was crouched
+there, making his preparations for eternity, just as I myself was about
+to do.  He gave me one scared look, as if he feared I was some one come
+to stop him, and jumped into the water.  In his sudden leap one foot
+dragged after him the little pile of clothing and the letter he had
+been writing.
+
+"I crouched down into a hiding-place, so startled by this sudden
+apparition, in the very act of doing what I had made up my mind to do,
+that I drew back from the deed with sudden awe and shrinking.  I had no
+time to think before my pursuer dashed up, calling my name loudly.  He
+had seen the suicide and thought it was I.  He waited about and watched
+for the body a while and then went away, and that was the last I ever
+saw of him.
+
+"When I crawled out of my hiding-place I had no idea what I was going
+to do.  The suicidal impulse had spent itself, and although I had
+escaped from my pursuer for the moment I was so afraid of meeting him
+again that I slunk along like a criminal.  But strong as that fear was,
+I would rather have met him than faced my father.  Soon I came to a
+wharf where a steamer was taking aboard passengers for California.  At
+once my determination was made.  I hurried to a pawnbroker's shop, and
+from my watch and what little jewelry I had I realized enough money to
+buy a steerage ticket, and in a few hours was on my way, under a new
+name.
+
+"The Boston papers which the next San Francisco steamer brought told me
+the story of my suicide, of the recovery of my body, and of its burial
+in our family lot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.  I hope the poor wretch whose
+bones are crumbling under the monument was more worthy of its praises
+than I.
+
+"After I read that, all thought of the possibility of returning, or of
+letting them know that I was not dead, dropped from my mind.  I plunged
+into the furious life of those days with such eagerness and enjoyment
+that I lost all desire to go back,--would have had none, even if I had
+not disgraced my name before I left.
+
+"Of course, I soon understood that I had been caught in the simplest
+sort of a blackmailer's trap.  But I had betrayed my father's trust in
+me and had gambled away his money, and--what was as crushing to my
+vanity as this other was to my sense of honor--I had been duped in a
+way that any greenhorn ought to have seen through.  So I put it all
+behind me and was glad to be alone among strangers.
+
+"I rushed off to the mines, of course, as soon as I could get there,
+and I made piles of money, especially at first.  And I was probably the
+most hot-headed, reckless, devil-may-care young rascal on the whole
+Coast.  I made many enemies and had many a narrow escape, as most
+everybody did in those days.
+
+"Perhaps the closest call I had was at Foley's Gulch.  A fellow had
+lately come there who thought he could sing.  Op'ry Bill, we called
+him.  We got him started to singing in a saloon one night, and I led
+the boys on in making fun of him.  We got him wild, but he did n't
+offer to shoot, not even when I sent a bullet spinning through his hat.
+He knew I was the leader in it all, but he just waited for a good
+chance before he hinted at revenge.  It was a week or two before the
+chance came, and in the meantime he pretended to be friendly with me.
+
+"One afternoon I was in a saloon, and the barkeeper had just told me
+how Shirty Smith and Op'ry Bill had had a quarrel, and how Shirty was
+tearing around like a mad bull and swearing he 'd shoot Bill on sight,
+when in walked Op'ry himself.  He came up almost behind me, slapped me
+on the shoulder with his left hand, asked me to take a drink with him,
+slipped his hand down on my right arm and began feeling of it and
+praising my muscle.  My eye happened to fall on a broken bit of a
+mirror behind the bar, and I saw that his right hand was cocking a
+pistol at the back of my head.  I called out loudly and angrily,
+'Shirty, don't shoot him in the back!'
+
+"Op'ry Bill was so taken aback by what he supposed to be his own danger
+that he wheeled around and turned his pistol the other way.  Shirty was
+n't there, but I had him covered when he turned back, red hot at having
+been deceived.
+
+"Did I kill him?  No, I thought I 'd give him a lecture first, as I had
+him well covered, about being so ornery mean, and while I was talking
+Shirty rushed in, hot on the trail, and swore he 'd let daylight
+through me if I did n't give him first chance at the sneak.
+
+"A good many of the young fellows, like me, for instance, and plenty of
+the older ones, too, were utterly reckless about how much money we made
+and how much we lost.  Everything went at a fast and furious rate, and
+it was all the same to us whether we were raking in or pouring out the
+dust.  It was many a year after those stirring days before I tried to
+figure up how much I took out of the ground and might have got for my
+mine locations if I had had a particle of thrift--such as I ought to
+have had, considering my New England birth and ancestry.  It footed up
+past the million mark, and, if I had had sense enough to handle it
+properly, would have made me worth several times that amount by the
+time I reached middle age.
+
+"But I don't know that I regret it now.  I 'm as well off here with my
+cats and dogs and burros as if they were so many mines and ranches and
+railroads.
+
+"I had a partner once, a fellow a little older than I, and not so
+reckless and hare-brained, and together we had been sinking a prospect
+hole that promised to be one of the best I ever struck.  We had been at
+work two or three months, and I was just as sure there was a big
+fortune in that hole as I could be of anything.  But I got tired of
+staying in one place so long,--it was lonely and monotonous,--and I
+wanted some excitement.  So one evening I challenged him to play
+seven-up for the mine, the loser to take his outfit and walk.  He
+refused and tried to argue me out of my crazy whim, but finally I
+taunted him into it.  I lost, and the next morning I packed up my
+blankets and walked away.  A month afterwards he sold the mine for a
+hundred thousand dollars, and in less than a year its owners had
+realized a round half million out of it.
+
+"But the most exciting part of all those years was the time when I was
+called 'Grizzly Dick.'  I ought to be ashamed to tell anything about
+that portion of my history; but it is all so long ago, and things have
+changed so much since then, that it almost seems as if I were talking
+about some other man.
+
+"It all began at Grizzly Gulch, where a man named Johnson had taken a
+strong dislike to me.  I had played some joke on him which made him
+ridiculous, and he hated me more than if I 'd tried to kill him.  He
+started down to the city with his dust, and somebody robbed him, and
+half killed him into the bargain.  He accused me of being the robber
+and I had no witnesses to prove an alibi.  They had a trial and
+convicted me of the crime, as Johnson swore that he recognized me.  I
+knew that it was simply a scheme of his to get even with me, and I
+didn't believe that he had been robbed at all.  But I was sentenced to
+prison for two years and I had to go.
+
+"When I got out my teeth were on edge for revenge on Johnson, the
+lawyers, the judge, the jury, and the whole law-making system that had
+made me, an innocent man, spend those two years fuming in a cell.  I
+was ready to fight the whole organization of society and the whole
+system of government, from President to jailer.  I swore the biggest,
+hardest kind of an oath that I would give them a reason for being so
+anxious to put people in prison.  Only, I didn't propose that they
+should ever send me there again.
+
+"Well, for two years Grizzly Dick was the terror of that county and all
+the adjoining ones.  To take him, alive or dead, was the ambition of
+half the sheriffs in California.  After my first few escapades I had
+plenty of helpers.  Men as desperate and as dare-devil as I gathered
+around me and we carried things with a high hand.  I cared nothing for
+the profits of being an outlaw.  What I wanted was revenge on society,
+and the excitement and risk of the game.  The greater part of whatever
+we took went to my followers, and I never kept more than was necessary
+for my immediate needs.
+
+"We had many a desperate fight with sheriffs and their posses, many a
+wild ride over the hills and through the pine woods on dark nights, and
+many a day of lying hidden in the brush or in caves.
+
+"I followed that sort of life for two years, and then, one day, I
+suddenly felt a disgust for it all, and concluded I 'd had enough
+revenge and was ready to be an honest man again.
+
+"So I deliberately left that part of the State and everybody supposed
+that Grizzly Dick had been killed and his body carried off and buried
+by his gang.  But nothing of the sort had happened.  He reappeared
+under another name a good many days' travel from that region.
+
+"Five or six years afterwards I went back to that same county and was
+elected sheriff.  Yes, I was recognized.  A good many people suspected
+and two or three openly declared that I was Grizzly Dick.  But I made
+the best sheriff they had ever had, and I did some work in the way of
+catching a stage robber, cleaning out a nest of gamblers, and getting
+rid of a couple of desperadoes, which they were so glad to have done
+that they didn't care who or what I might have been.
+
+"I served two terms and they wanted me to run again.  But by that time
+I had come to realize that I had frittered away a big part of my life,
+and I began to have some of the ambitions to accomplish something worth
+while that I ought to have had a dozen years before.
+
+"So I went down to San Francisco and raised a tidy sum of money to
+begin on by going in with an acquaintance on a trip to Bering Sea to
+catch otters.  We chartered a vessel, spent a whole summer up there,
+and realized nearly ten thousand dollars apiece out of it.
+
+"I had a pretty good practical knowledge of mining matters, and so my
+operations in mines and mining stocks were generally successful.  It
+was n't long until I was a rich, a very rich, man, and a prominent one,
+too.  There is a street named for me in San Francisco.  That is, it
+bears the name I was known by while I was sheriff and while I lived in
+the city.  I married and built a fine residence, and altogether I was
+as prosperous and had as bright a future as any man in California.
+
+"But one day, after I had been living in San Francisco five or six
+years, I made a deal that wasn't a success, and half my fortune went in
+less than a week.  And at the same time I discovered that my wife was
+not all I had thought her.  She had evil tendencies that I had not
+suspected, and bad companions of whom I had known nothing; and together
+they had taken her at a flying pace down the road to destruction.  And
+when the end came, at the same time that I had my first financial blow,
+the surprise was overwhelming.  It was an end so shameful and to me so
+humiliating that I could not bear at first to go out among men and meet
+my friends.  It was a critical time and my affairs needed my closest
+attention.  But I was too broken down and overcome by the disgrace to
+attempt to do anything.  And when I did go back everything was ruined.
+
+"I did n't care very much, for my greatest desire just then was to get
+away from everybody I had known.  I wanted to put behind me and forget
+everything that would remind me of my wife, and her ruin, and my
+disaster.
+
+"So I started out alone with a prospector's outfit, and finally brought
+up here.  I 've been here now, I guess, about ten years, and it's very
+likely that I 'll stay here all the rest of my life.  I 've got a
+prospect hole over on the other side of that hill that may amount to
+something some time.  But I don't care whether it does or not.  I like
+to work in it and think about whether or not I 'm going to strike
+anything, but I don't care two bits one way or the other.
+
+"No, I 'm not lonely.  My cats and dogs and burros are pretty good
+company, and then I have my violin.  But just these hills, and the sky,
+and the breezes, and the birds and beasts that come around, are as much
+company as any man needs to wish for.
+
+"When I came here I was tired of the world, dead tired of it.  And I
+have n't got rested yet.  I shall not leave here until I do.  And I
+don't suppose that will ever be.  For my time will soon come.  It's all
+I have to look forward to, and I just sit here and wait for it and
+wonder what shape Death will have when he does finally find me out.
+That is the only thing in the world I have any curiosity about, now;
+and I often think about it in much the same way that I used to wonder,
+when I was a youth, what the woman would be like whom I was to love."
+
+The next summer we camped at the mouth of a canyon near the foot of
+Monte Pinos, but one day we drove across the hills to pay a visit to
+Old Dan, and learned at the stage station that he was no more.  He had
+sickened and died alone, in the early spring, and his body had been
+found, after many days, in his cabin by his nearest "neighbor," another
+lone man living ten miles away.  We drove on to his deserted little
+ranch and found that they had made a grave for him on the side of the
+hill above the cabin--a grave marked only by its settling mound of
+earth and one poor piece of board, cracked, aslant, and weather-beaten,
+and bearing neither name nor date.
+
+Doubtless it is as well so.  For he that lies beneath was only a piece
+of wreckage, with a past that was dead and a future that was empty.
+The memory of all those turbulent years was heavy upon his gray head,
+and he wished only that the hills might cover him and give him rest and
+concealment.
+
+And away on the other side of the continent there is a grave that has
+known the tears of love and the hand of remembrance.  Its flowers are
+bright and its shining marble is graven fair with name and date and
+words of praise.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY, OF A CHINEE KID
+
+      "Little Ah Sid
+      Was a Chinee Kid,
+  A cute little cuss, you 'd declare,
+      With eyes full of fun
+      And a nose that begun
+  Right up at the roots of his hair."
+      --M. C. SPEER.
+
+
+This Chinee Kid was not Ah Sid, but another one whose name was Ah Wing.
+He was a Chinee Kid only so far as he was n't a Boy, and just how much
+of him was Chinee Kid and how much was Boy is difficult to say.
+Sometimes he seemed to be mostly all one, and sometimes just as much
+the other, and, again, he was a harmonized mixture of the two.
+
+Wing's father and mother were both Chinese, but Wing had been born and
+had lived all his nine years in the town of Tobin, which is in
+California, on the overland road, far enough up the Sierra climb for
+the east-bound trains to have always two engines when they pass its
+depot.  He wore Chinese clothes, except upon his head, whereon
+invariably reposed the time-honored hat of the American village boy,
+that always looks the same whether it is one week or one year old--the
+hat that is dirty gray in color, conical as to crown, sloping as to
+brim, and dilapidated as to general appearance, the hat that is
+irrefragable proof that its wearer is a Boy.  This head-gear he wore
+over the queue of his forefathers, braided, ebony, shining, and hanging
+half-way down his little legs.
+
+Wing could jabber Chinese as shrilly and rapidly as any of his
+playmates of the Chinese quarter, and with his young friends of the
+white race he could reel off amazing vocabularies of American slang.
+And he could swear, and frequently did so, with all the nonchalance of
+a Chinaman and the intensity and picturesqueness of an American.  He
+could, if the occasion seemed to demand it, drop his eyelids and "_No
+sabe_" as stupidly as any Celestial who ever entered the Golden Gate.
+But with any man, woman, or child whom he chose to favor with his
+conversation he could talk volubly in fairly good English.  And his
+lungs were just as capable, and just as frequently put to the test, as
+those of any white boy in Tobin, of the ear-splitting shouts and yells
+without which boys' games cannot be played and boys' thoughts
+communicated to one another.
+
+Wing had such an amazing ability to seem to be everywhere at the same
+time that he was nicknamed "Wings."  But no one ever called him that to
+his face who wanted him to answer a question or pay any attention to
+what was said to him.  The first time it was tried he protested, with
+all the dignity of George Washington insisting on his title of
+President, that his name was Wing.  After that he merely met the
+nickname with a blank, solemn, "_No sabe_" stare, as uncompromising and
+as impenetrable as a stone wall.  It was impossible to look out of
+doors at any time or in any part of Tobin without seeing Wing.  He was
+always going somewhere and was always in a hurry, but he was always
+ready to stop and chat for a moment with any one, large or small, who
+addressed him without giving offence.
+
+Everybody knew him, residents and summer visitors alike.  The men all
+teased him and the women all petted him.  Nobody knew or cared in which
+one of the dozen houses of the Chinese quarter Wing's father and mother
+lived, nor whether his father had a laundry, a store, or a garden.
+They were nobodies; but Wing was a public character.
+
+Wing's chief daily function was to assist at the arrival of the
+east-bound passenger train.  The west-bound, having only one engine,
+was of less consequence.  But at the passing of the other he never
+missed a day, Sundays, holidays, or rainy season.  He inspected the
+engines, counted the wheels, considered the possibility of getting a
+ride on the pilot of the second engine, dodged around through the
+crowd, ran against people, had his toes trodden on, saw everybody who
+went away, stared at all who came, capered up and down the car-steps,
+put pins on the rail to be flattened by the wheels, stood with one foot
+inside the track until the train started, and, after it was all over,
+rode away triumphantly, hanging to the steps of the hotel omnibus.
+
+After a while he began to thrill with the desire to know how it would
+feel to run backward on the track in front of the moving engine.  He
+had had a brief glimpse of the possibility of that bliss as he crossed
+the track one day when the train was coming in; and the more he thought
+about it, the surer he felt that some day he would have to do it.  He
+was well acquainted by that time with the engines, and the engineers
+too, and his trick of standing astride the rail and looking up with
+sparkling, defiant eyes at the engine's noble front was only a sort of
+preparation for other deeds.
+
+One day he had assisted at the dismounting of the passengers, had seen
+the last departing traveller disappear inside the cars, had had his
+queue pulled by the news agent, and a narrow escape from being knocked
+over by the baggage man's trunk van, when he started off at top speed
+to get in front of the engine before the train should start.  A young
+woman with a baggage check in her hand was standing near an omnibus
+waiting for the driver to come.  Wing's headlong speed would have
+carried him safely past her, but a big man with two suit-cases was
+rushing toward him, and as he veered to one side he struck heavily
+against the girl.  The blow knocked her against the steps of the
+omnibus and sent Wing sprawling in the dust.
+
+A slender, trim-looking young man, who had got off the train and was
+about to enter the omnibus of another hotel, saw the collision and
+sprang to her assistance.  Helping her to her feet, he asked anxiously
+if she was hurt, and then seized Wing's arm and gave him a little
+shaking.
+
+"You young rascal!" he exclaimed.  "Why don't you look where you are
+going?"
+
+"Oh, don't scold him, please!" the girl pleaded.  "He did n't intend to
+do it, and I 'm not hurt at all.  Wing, how do you do?  Did it hurt
+you?"
+
+Wing was indignantly tearing himself loose from the young man's hand
+and was looking wishfully after the departing train and the lost
+opportunity.
+
+"Lemme go," he demanded.  "No, didn't hurt."
+
+The young woman blushingly thanked the stranger as he helped her into
+the vehicle.  Then, instead of returning to the other omnibus, which
+was waiting for him, he shook his head at the driver and stepped in
+after her.  As they rattled up the street he found it difficult to keep
+his eyes off her slender, supple figure and the shining glory of
+golden-red hair that aureoled the clear, soft brilliance of her pink
+and white complexion.  When she looked up once and caught his look of
+admiration she blushed deeply and endeavored to disguise her
+embarrassment in lively talk with some people who sat near her.  The
+newcomer saw that they were evidently old friends and inferred that she
+was a resident of the town.  From scraps of their talk that reached his
+ears he learned that her name was Annie Millner, and that she was a
+physician's daughter.'
+
+The young man inscribed his name on the hotel register, "Robert
+Ellison, Worcester, Mass.," and then sauntered out to take a look at
+the town.  He watched the omnibus from which he had just dismounted, as
+it stopped in front of a pretty cottage set back in some pleasant
+grounds on the slope of the opposite hill, until he saw Miss Millner
+enter the gate.
+
+"I guess I 'll like it better here than I expected to," was his thought
+as his eye followed her figure.  "This air feels good, the sunshine is
+fine, and that's a glorious blue sky.  They say I 'm likely to become
+an invalid if I try to live East any longer, and so that's cut out.
+Well, a fellow could have plenty of out-door life here, and enjoy it,
+if there are many days like this.  It looks as if there 'd be money in
+these orchards too.  I reckon Dr. Millner must live in that cottage.
+What an inviting looking place it is!  I guess I 'd better go back to
+the hotel and ask the clerk about the physicians here.  I might need
+one sometime."
+
+Discreet inquiry of the hotel clerk as to the population of the town,
+resident and floating, its general healthfulness, the number of
+health-seekers, their success, and the number and relative skill of the
+physicians it supported finally elicited for Ellison all the
+information his present interest desired concerning Dr. Millner and his
+family.
+
+He also learned much about the history of Tobin.  In its early days it
+had been a mining camp and, as Tobin's Gulch, had been rich and famous.
+Then, as the mines petered out, it had dwindled to poverty and two rows
+of houses.  But, after a long while, new people had begun to come.
+Some of them had planted miles upon miles of orchards and vineyards,
+others had come to be cured of bodily ills by its climate, at once
+bracing and caressing, and still others, there for a brief summer
+sojourn, had spread the knowledge that it was a pleasant and
+picturesque retreat.  So the town had dropped the plebeian "Gulch" from
+its name and as "Tobin" counted with ever increasing pride the hundreds
+of cars that carried its fruit from ocean to ocean and the growing
+numbers of its health-seekers and summer visitors.
+
+"It looks good to me," was Ellison's inward comment as he walked up the
+street again.  "I think I 'll look into this fruit business.  That
+would give me an out-door life, and there seems to be money in it.
+That's a neat cottage of Dr. Millner's.  I 'll walk past and look at
+the grounds.  Hello, here comes that Chinee Kid--what 'd she call him?
+Wing, wasn't it?  Queer-looking little critter, but she seemed to like
+him.  Hello, Wing!  Where are you flying to now?  Got over your bumps
+yet?"
+
+But the Chinee Kid cast one sober, stupid look at Ellison's sociable
+countenance, opened his mouth just wide enough to grunt "_No sabe_,"
+and hurried on.
+
+Ellison looked after him with a foolish little smile and exclaimed
+aloud, "Well, I 'll be hanged!  If that is n't a kid!"
+
+He heard the sound of a girl's laugh, and turning quickly, saw a merry
+face surrounded by golden-red hair disappearing from a window of the
+Millner cottage.  He blushed furiously, frowned and muttered an angry
+little word, as he thought, "That kid needs to be spanked."  But,
+although he was smarting a little with the feeling that the boy had
+made him seem ridiculous in her eyes, his glance covertly searched her
+windows as he walked on, hoping for another glimpse of the girlish
+figure and the glowing hair.
+
+A year went by, and Ellison, brown and athletic-looking, was building a
+pretty cottage on the crest of a gently sloping hill just outside the
+town.  Annie Millner, wearing a new ring and carrying a great happiness
+in her heart, went often to see how the cottage was progressing and how
+the trees were growing.  For the hill-slope was covered with the
+gray-green of young olive trees, the dense, dark foliage of young
+oranges, and the stunted, scraggy boughs of the Japanese persimmon.
+His fruit ranch promised well, the day for their bridal was set, and
+they were hopeful, glad, and happy.
+
+But Wing was the young man's implacable enemy.  He neither forgot nor
+forgave the shaking he had received at their first meeting, and he
+revenged himself for it as much as lay in his small power whenever he
+found opportunity.  He succeeded occasionally in making Ellison look
+foolish in his own eyes; and he, in consequence, disliked the child and
+disapproved of the universal petting that was given him.  It
+particularly annoyed him that Annie showed his small enemy so much
+favor, and he would sometimes think angrily, when irritated by some
+trick of the Chinee Kid, that if she had more regard for his feelings
+she would not join in the general encouragement that was given to the
+heathen brat in being a public nuisance.
+
+As for Wing, if he had known, or could have understood what happiness
+his childish sport had been instrumental in bringing to these two
+people, it is probable that his antipathy to Ellison would have
+extended even to Annie, whom, as it was, he considered one of his best
+friends.  But he could not know, nor could they, that he was their
+kismet and that his small brown hands wound and unwound, tangled and
+straightened, the threads of their lives.
+
+One day they were all three at the depot again.  Wing, of course, was
+there in the discharge of his usual duties.  Annie had walked down to
+welcome a friend whom she expected, and Ellison had come because it
+gave him an opportunity to be with her.  As the railroad approached the
+town from the west it passed through a deep cut, from which it came out
+on a low embankment, and rounded a sharp curve before it reached the
+station, a few yards beyond.  The roar of the oncoming train was borne
+to them on the wind and before it emerged from the cut a ridiculous
+little figure darted out of the crowd on the platform and raced down
+the track to the curve.  It was dressed in a Chinese blouse and
+trousers of faded and dirty blue denim, while a pair of old Chinese
+slippers, partly covering the feet, left in full view two bare, brown
+heels.
+
+"There goes Wing!" exclaimed one man to another.  "That kid 's going to
+get killed at this little trick of his some day."
+
+The train rushed at the curve with a shout that was thrown back from
+the hills, and the people on the platform held their breath--though to
+many of them it was nothing new--as with flying feet and monkey-like
+agility the Chinee Kid danced backward on the track.  There was a brief
+vision of a pair of big, blue sleeves waving in the air, of a black,
+flying queue, and of a pair of twinkling feet, and then with sparkling
+eyes, a triumphant countenance and a loud "Ki-yi!" Wing leaped to the
+platform, the engine scarcely a yard behind him.
+
+"Is it lots of fun, Wing?" said Annie, smiling at him indulgently.
+
+"Bet your boots it is!" he shouted as he darted off to inspect the
+dismounting passengers.
+
+"See here, Wing," said Ellison, putting his hand in a kindly way on the
+boy's shoulder, "you mustn't do that!  You'll get killed at it some
+day."
+
+Wing looked up at him with an uncomprehending stare, wriggled from
+under his detaining hand, stopped long enough to shake his head with a
+stolid "_No sabe_," and then dodged away.
+
+Annie had heard the little dialogue and now turned to Ellison with a
+merry laugh.  Her friend had not come, and as they walked back together
+she began to rally him about Wing's refusal to understand anything he
+said.  It nettled him slightly and he replied that people made entirely
+too much of the little ape, and that if they would teach him better
+manners instead of petting him so much, it would be a good thing for
+him as well as for the public comfort.
+
+Then Annie took up his case rather warmly and declared that he was a
+cute little thing, and that his manners were all right if he was
+treated with good manners in the first place.  The consequence was that
+by the time they reached her gate they were deep in the lurid
+entanglements of a lovers' quarrel.
+
+The previous day she had taken a horseback ride with a man of whom
+Ellison strongly disapproved.  He had intended to explain the matter to
+her calmly and tell her just what kind of man the other was, and why it
+was unwise for her to accept his attentions.  But in the heat of temper
+engendered by their quarrel about Wing, he lost his bearings, and what
+he had meant should be a request for her not to show the man any favor
+again became very like an explicit command.
+
+Annie asked him sarcastically if he thought he had bought with his
+engagement ring a slave who was never to open her mouth unless he gave
+her leave.  Then, feeling a bit ashamed of his vehemence and mentally
+fumbling for words of explanation, he began to say something about what
+"self-respecting girls" should do.  Annie flashed a blazing look at
+him, slammed the gate, and left him alone on the sidewalk.  A little
+later he saw the objectionable man making a bargain with Wing about
+carrying a note, and with a sore and angry heart he watched the shabby
+hat and the long queue travel up the hill to the Millner home.
+
+While he was at work among his trees that afternoon he saw them ride
+past.  He noted the defiant poise of Annie's head, which did not turn
+by so much as a hair's breadth toward the cottage and the trees and
+him, but he was not near enough to see that her eyes were red and that
+she bit her lip to control its trembling.  So he wrote a letter to her
+that evening saying that evidently they had made a mistake; and an hour
+later he had the engagement ring in his pocket and a great bitterness
+in his heart.
+
+Two days afterward, as Annie sat on the veranda of a friend's house
+near the depot she saw the hotel omnibus coming down the street with
+Ellison in it.  "Why, there's Robert!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said her friend, looking at her curiously, "he 's going East.
+Did n't you know it?"
+
+Instantly all of Annie's pride gave way.  She was in the wrong, she
+told herself, and she would ask him to forgive her.  She would send a
+note to him at the station and ask him not to go away without seeing
+her.
+
+"I 'll have time," she thought, "for they said the train is a few
+minutes late to-day and I 'll get Wing to carry it over to the station.
+There he is now, waiting at the curve."
+
+She hurriedly pencilled a few words upon a scrap of paper and, folding
+it as she went, ran down the steps and up a side street parallel with
+the railroad, and then climbed the low embankment upon which the boy
+stood.
+
+Wing was waiting in the middle of the track for the train and the
+ecstasy of his daily performance.  In the meantime he was holding out
+at arm's length and considering with proud and satisfied eyes a big,
+artificial spider and web which had that morning been given to him by
+one of the ladies at the hotel.
+
+"Wing," she called, "I want you to run back to the station and give
+this note to Mr. Ellison.  You 'll see him there on the platform, or,
+perhaps, in the baggage room.  You 'll have plenty of time, for the
+train 's late today.  Please go quickly, Wing, for I want him to have
+the note at once."
+
+The train was already rumbling in the deep cut just beyond the turn,
+but the wind was blowing strongly toward it, and neither of them heard
+the fateful sound.  The high wind caught her dress and blew it against
+the spider in the boy's hand.  It tangled the toy in the folds and
+wrenched it from his fingers and then caught the hem of her gown upon
+the splitting edge of a worn rail.  As she stooped to loose it the
+terrible front of the engine appeared, rounding the curve.
+
+Wing looked in blank amazement at his empty fingers and then, as he saw
+his plaything hanging to the folds of her dress, he sprang after it
+exclaiming, "My bug!  My bug!"  As he seized it again he saw the
+approaching train, and, his mind bent on what he was intending to do,
+turned to begin his usual backward race.  Annie, stooping to loose her
+dress, with her back to the approaching train, was not yet aware of the
+oncoming doom.  Her gown blew again across his legs, and to free
+himself he gave her a little push.  With the warning shriek of the
+engine in her ears and darkness surging over her brain she fell just
+outside the track and rolled down the sloping embankment as far as her
+skirt, held beneath the wheels of the engine, allowed.
+
+But for the Chinee Kid there was no such escape.  The iron hoof of the
+engine was upon him as he made his first backward leap.  When they
+picked up his little, mangled body the spider was still grasped in his
+brown fist.
+
+The crowd on the station platform had seen it all--had seen him, as the
+engine rounded the curve, turn to Annie and push her off the track,
+thus saving her life at the cost of his own.
+
+The townspeople persuaded his parents to let them give him a public
+funeral, to which all Tobin turned out, with tears and flowers and
+resolutions praising the little boy in high-sounding words for his
+heroic deed.  A public subscription was taken up for the benefit of
+Wing's parents, to which Annie's father and lover and all her friends
+and everybody who had liked and petted the child contributed so
+liberally that his father and mother took his remains and sailed back
+to China.
+
+When Ellison, from the platform, saw Annie's danger everything left his
+heart save absorbing love for her, and with a white face and
+alarm-distended eyes he dashed across the track and had her in his arms
+before the others had recovered from their brief paralysis of horror.
+
+They were married as soon as Wing's obsequies were over.  And now, if
+you ever pass through Tobin and will look for that sunny hillside with
+the olive and orange trees climbing its slope and the pretty cottage on
+its crest, you will see a home in which Wing's memory is enshrined with
+all possible love and honor and gratitude.
+
+You see, they do not know that it was all on account of his "bug."
+Neither do they know that, small, brown, Chinee Kid though he was, he
+had stood in their lives for Fate.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF SYMPATHY
+
+"Sympathy with his kind and well-doing for its
+welfare, direct or indirect, are the essential conditions of
+the existence and development of the more complex
+social organism; and no mortal can transcend these
+conditions with any success."--HENRY MAUDSLEY.
+
+
+Our party was going from the Yosemite Valley to Lake Tenaiya--that
+beautiful bit of shining, liquid sapphire ringed by its mighty setting
+of granite peaks and domes--by the long and roundabout way of Cloud's
+Rest.  It would be an all-day trip, but we knew that at the end would
+be the cabin of Henry Moulton, a lone mountaineer, to receive us, with
+such comfort as it could give, and Henry Moulton himself to cook for
+us a supper of fresh fish and game.  The thoughts of the whole party
+began to turn longingly in that direction as the afternoon of the late
+summer day waned, and in straggling, silent file we hurried our
+horses, with such speed as was possible, over the blind trail.  The
+Artist, who was next in front of me, turned in his saddle and said:
+
+"We ought to get a warm welcome at Moulton's cabin.  For this is the
+first party that has been up here for two months, and it's not likely
+that he has seen another human being in all that time."
+
+"Does he live all alone, then?"
+
+"Absolutely alone.  He has a cabin on the banks of Lake Tenaiya--it
+is only about three or four miles farther, now--and whenever parties
+of tourists come up from the Valley to stay a day or two, he cooks
+for them and lets them sleep in his shanty if they wish.  He is
+a very strange man, and I hope you will be able to draw him into
+conversation, for I 'm sure you would find him an interesting
+character.  His life story is the queerest thing I 've run across on
+the Pacific Coast, and if you won't give away to him that you know
+anything about it, I 'll tell it to you."
+
+At once I scented big game, for the Artist had spent many summers in
+that region and knew all that was strange or weird or startling in its
+history.  Already he had told me many tales, and if this was to be
+the strangest of them all I wanted to hear it.  So I urged my horse
+on and by dint of circling around trees and jumping over logs and
+occasionally falling into single file, we managed to keep within
+talking distance of each other while he told me this tale of the lone
+man at Lake Tenaiya:
+
+"I knew Moulton years ago--thirty, yes, thirty-five of them--in
+Cambridge, where we were boys together.  He went to Harvard and was
+graduated from both the academic and the law departments, and was
+looked upon as a promising young man.  If any prophet had foretold to
+me, in those days, that Henry Moulton would become a hermit in the
+Sierras and do cooking for tourists, I would have told him he was the
+father of lies, and had better retreat to his natural home.  Moulton
+married a handsome young woman of an influential family--his own
+people were poor--and all his friends were confident that a brilliant
+future awaited him.
+
+"A few years after his marriage he came West, intending to settle in
+San Francisco and practise law.  His wife stayed behind until he
+should get a start.  The gold fever was n't dead yet in those days,
+and Moulton had a bad attack of it.  When I came to the Coast he was
+working in some played-out placer mines, and feeling perfectly sure
+that he was going to strike a fortune almost any day.  When a man has
+once dug gold out of the ground with his own hands, he seems to be
+unfitted for doing anything else.  It's as bad as the gambler's mania.
+Well, the fever got into Moulton's blood, and he gave himself up to
+it, drifting about, prospecting, and sometimes striking a good thing,
+but often quite the contrary.
+
+"Finally his wife came on, and she persuaded him to give up the gold
+hunt and his roving life and settle down in San Francisco to the
+practice of his profession.  He got on remarkably well, had all the
+business he could attend to, and was making a heap more money than
+there was the slightest probability of his ever digging out of the
+ground.  But the fever of his vagrant, irresponsible life was still in
+his veins, and with all that promise of a successful career before him
+he was restless and unhappy.  He could not forget the camp fire in the
+mountains and the whispering of the pine trees and the life of the
+woods.  I don't know if you understand--" and the Artist hesitated,
+turning upon me an uncertain, questioning glance.
+
+"I know what you mean," I answered.  "Go on and say what you had in
+mind.  It's a fascinating question."
+
+"That it is," he replied, "and I never can decide whether it is
+something fine and high in a man's nature which makes him want to
+yield to that sort of a yearning, or whether it is mere latent
+savagery, coming out all the stronger for having been long repressed.
+
+"But what's the use of speculating?  The bald truth is that if a man
+has a strong feeling for Nature and once knows the charm of wandering
+alone in wild places, he 'll have a string tied to him forever after,
+that will give him some mighty hard jerks.
+
+"Moulton felt all that fascination very keenly, and the mountains and
+the forests seemed to be always calling him and commanding him to
+return to them.  The follies and the faults of men and the baseness of
+human nature, of which, of course, the practice of his profession gave
+him special knowledge, irritated him, and every new case made him more
+impatient with civilization and more contemptuous of his fellow men.
+
+"I was in the courtroom once when he won a big case which had been
+bitterly contested.  A crowd of lawyers was there, and they were all
+enthusiastic about the way he had conducted it and the brilliant
+victory he had won.  They pressed around to congratulate him, but he
+got away from them as soon as he could and went into the street with
+me.  We walked a block or more before he spoke, and then he burst out
+bitterly:
+
+"'I 've won some thousands of dollars and a lot of prestige in this
+case, but what is it all worth?  I 'd give it all to lie just one
+night, perfectly free, under the pine trees in the mountains, beside a
+worthless prospect hole, watching a bear shambling through the brush,
+and listening to the coyotes yelping in the distance.  Even a coyote
+is better than most men, and a bear is noble company beside them!'
+
+"Moulton's wife was as dissatisfied as he, but in a different way.
+She was of Puritan stock--and the sturdy moral sense of those old
+fellows, their rock-ribbed principles, and their determination to make
+other people think as they thought, came out strong in her character.
+
+"Of course, that kind of a woman was bound to be shocked by the more
+free and easy life of the Pacific Coast.  Her constant mental state
+was one of stern disapproval.  And the gypsy outcropping in her
+husband's nature filled her with anxiety.  It was quite impossible for
+her to understand it or to sympathize with it in the least.
+
+"Their marriage had been an ardent love match, and notwithstanding
+the way their natures had been drifting apart they still loved each
+other devotedly.  At home, where she had been in harmony with her
+surroundings, she had been a very charming woman.  And so she was
+still--only--well, I must admit that she did seem out of place here.
+She was so uncompromising, you know.
+
+"I did n't wonder, though, that she was amazed and confounded by the
+change in her husband's character.  It would have shocked any of his
+old friends and it must have been an awful blow to his wife, who was
+still as ambitious for him as he had once been for himself.
+
+"She had one general name for this unexpected development in him and
+called it all his 'bearism.'  At first she applied it in fun, when he
+told her how much he had enjoyed watching and hunting the wild animals
+in the mountains, but she soon decided that it was a pretty good name
+for his new characteristics.  And so his 'bearism' came to be more and
+more of a division between them.  Not that they ever quarrelled--I am
+sure they did not.  They just agonized over the hopeless state of
+affairs, and each one seemed to be always pained and grieved because
+it was impossible to come round to the other one's way of thinking.
+
+"Finally, Dorothy--his wife--went home on a visit.  I think she did it
+in a last desperate hope that she might induce him to follow her and
+stay in the East.  For a little while after she left, Moulton braced
+up and put more heart into his work.  He seemed to feel, at last, some
+pride in his really splendid capacities, and to have some revival of
+his old ambitions.
+
+"I thought he had overcome the gypsy longing, and had buckled down to
+work for good.  And so I was much surprised one day, when I found him
+in an unusually gloomy mood, to see him take down both of his diplomas
+and fling them into the fire.
+
+"'Gewgaws!' he exclaimed, contemptuously.  'Trinkets!  No sensible man
+ought to care a snap of his finger either for them or for what they
+represent.'
+
+"We had a long talk after that, and he told me fully what shape his
+thoughts had been taking.  It was that same story, which so many
+people have been telling of late years, of sneering pessimism as to
+the human race and its possibilities, and of contempt for the labors
+and rewards of life.  We argued the matter for hours, and each one of
+us convinced himself that the other was entirely wrong.
+
+"Moulton was then finishing up an important case, and as soon as it
+was concluded, he and some friends went away to have a few days of
+hunting in the mountains.  He did not return with the others, who said
+that he had not quite finished his hunt, but that he expected to be
+back within a week.  I went East just then and stayed a year, and when
+I reached San Francisco again I found he had not yet returned.  And he
+has not been back to this day.
+
+"I heard of him occasionally, sometimes in one part of the State,
+sometimes in another, prospecting, hunting, trapping, roaming about,
+but always in the mountains, and always keeping pretty well away from
+signs of civilization.
+
+"Six years ago, when I first came to the Yosemite, I found Moulton
+here, acting as a guide.  The loveliness and the majesty of the place
+had entranced him, just as they have entranced many another, and he
+stayed here, working as a guide, for several years.  But he let me
+know at once that he did n't want me to speak about his past life,
+either to him or to others, and so no one here ever knew that we were
+anything more than the merest roadside acquaintances.
+
+"Four or five years ago he tired of even the civilization of the
+Valley, and built a cabin up here at Lake Tenaiya, so that he would
+not see so many people.  He is willing to cook for the occasional
+parties that go up to the lake, and very glad, I guess, when they
+leave him alone again with the trees and the mountains.  When the snow
+drives him out in the fall he goes down to the Valley and lives as
+caretaker during the winter in one of the hotels--which is quite as
+lonely as his summer life--until it is possible to come up to his
+cabin again in the spring."
+
+"And his wife?" I asked.  "What has become of her?"
+
+"After she found that she could not induce him to return to
+civilization she got a divorce; and the last I knew of her she was
+devoting herself to the advancement--Whoa, there!  What's the matter
+with you?"
+
+Both his horse and mine gave a sudden snort and a bound, and started
+to run.  We checked them at the second leap and peered through the
+underbrush to see what had frightened them.  A dark object was
+rustling the leaves on the ground beside a clump of bushes.
+
+"It's a bear!" the Artist whispered excitedly, drawing his revolver.
+"I know this is reckless, but--you are n't afraid, are you?--the
+temptation is too much for my prudence.  If he comes for us we 'll
+give our horses the rein and they 'll outrun him."
+
+I leaned forward, trying to get a better view, and just as I heard the
+click of the trigger I caught a glimpse of a white human foot.
+
+"Stop!" I cried.  "It's a man!"
+
+It was too late to stop the discharge, but a quick turn of his wrist
+sent the bullet whistling harmlessly through the trees.  The creature
+scrambled hurriedly away through the dead leaves, and our horses,
+trembling and snorting, tried again to run.
+
+"It is a bear!" he cried as we saw its shaggy bulk awkwardly climbing
+the slope between two clumps of bushes.  "No, by Jove, it's got hands
+and feet!  Now, what in the--"
+
+Then the thing half turned toward us, and we saw that it had a man's
+head and face, covered with hair and beard.
+
+"Good God!  It's Henry Moulton!" cried the Artist.  "Moulton!
+Moulton!  Come back here!  What's the matter with you!"
+
+At the sound of his name the man sprang to his feet, facing us.  The
+bearskin which wrapped his body slipped down and left him entirely
+nude.  In an instant he dropped upon all fours again, drew the skin
+over him and shambled away.
+
+We turned our staring eyes upon each other, and there was no need to
+speak the appalling thought that was in both our minds.  With one
+accord we plied our whips and drove our unwilling and terrified horses
+in the direction he had taken.  We came near enough to see that he was
+digging among the dry leaves for acorns, and that his beard and mouth
+were defiled with earth, and full of fragments of leaves and acorn
+shells.  But as soon as he saw us he darted off into the thick
+underbrush, whither we could not follow him.
+
+We hurried on to his shack, where the rest of the party had already
+arrived, and the men all started back at once with ropes and lariats
+for Moulton's capture and garments for his covering.
+
+The cabin was a rough affair, made of logs and chinked with fir
+boughs, and having an earthen floor.  A bunk made of rough timbers
+and mattressed with twigs of fur was covered with some blankets and
+clothing, tossed into heaps.  Under the blankets at the head of the
+bunk I found a little pile of books--a Shakespeare, a volume of
+Emerson's essays, Thoreau's "Walden," and a well-worn "Iliad," in the
+Greek text.
+
+"How queer," said one of the women, as she looked curiously at the
+volumes, "that an ignorant creature such as this crazy mountaineer
+must be should have such books as these in his cabin!  They must have
+been left here by some tourist, and he has put them away and kept
+them.  It shows how much respect even the ignorant have for learning."
+
+Some torn scraps of paper were scattered over the floor, and I picked
+them all up and tried to piece them together.
+
+When the men returned with the lunatic he was quiet and obedient,
+except when they tried to substitute proper clothing for his bearskin.
+Against this he fought with all his strength, striking, scratching,
+and kicking with hands and feet, snapping and biting viciously, and
+all the time either roaring with fury, or, when they succeeded in
+pulling the hide a little away from him, groaning, shrieking, and
+writhing as if he were being flayed.
+
+So they desisted and left him wrapped in the skin and tied to a tree
+near the cabin door.  There he constantly walked back and forth on all
+fours, the length of his rope, restlessly and in silence, as caged
+animals do.  If any one approached too near he sprang at the intruder
+with a savage growl and a snap of his jaws.  But otherwise he paid
+no attention to any of those who had expected to be his guests.  He
+refused to eat, unless they offered him acorns or dry oak leaves.
+These he devoured voraciously.
+
+There was some scrawled writing on the scraps of paper I had pieced
+together and the Artist and I made out some disjointed sentences.  We
+agreed that the lunatic must have written them himself, in the first
+beclouding of his mind, and we thought the words might have some
+effect upon him.  So we went out to where the poor, crazed creature
+was tied, and, looking him squarely in the eyes, the Artist spoke very
+slowly:
+
+"Dorothy.  Dorothy.  She said I am a bear.  Where is Dorothy?"
+
+He stopped and stared and a puzzled, human look came into his eyes.
+He rose slowly to his feet and stood upright, leaning against the
+tree.  For the moment he forgot his bearskin covering and it half
+fell off.  He stared at us, mumbling strange sounds, which presently
+became incoherent words of human speech.  But he spoke thickly and
+uncertainly, like one long unused to the sound of his voice:
+
+"Where is--Dorothy?  I want--she said--Dorothy--Dorothy--she said--I
+--a bear--I--I--am--a bear."
+
+Then he dropped to all fours again and drew his bearskin closely
+about him and that was the last flicker of human intelligence that he
+showed.
+
+The next morning the men made a small platform of some loose boards to
+which they tied the lunatic.  He fought desperately against his bonds,
+and it required the combined strength of all the men of the party to
+fasten him securely to the platform.  Then the guide improvised a
+harness of ropes and hitched to this primitive sled the horse which he
+himself rode.  Watching the poor creature closely, our little party
+went slowly back to the Valley, whence he was sent to an asylum.  The
+Artist wrote to Mrs. Moulton an account of his condition, and told her
+also its probable cause.
+
+Some months afterward I went to the asylum, purposely to learn what
+had become of him.  The physician said his mental condition was
+steadily improving, that there was a pretty sure prospect of his
+recovery, and that he would probably be sane all the rest of his
+life, if--and the doctor put a significant emphasis upon that little
+word--"if he lives as a sane man should, among men, and busies himself
+as other men do."
+
+Then the man of healing took from a shelf a book and read to me the
+words which I have put at the beginning of this account.
+
+He told me also that Mrs. Moulton was there, that she had been there
+almost from the first, and that she spent all the time with the
+unfortunate man that the physicians would allow.
+
+"Her presence," the doctor added, "has had a singularly helpful effect
+upon him."
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD ROMAN OF MARIPOSA
+
+  "I thank whatever gods may be
+  For my unconquerable soul."
+      --WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.
+
+
+Mariposa, in the days when I first knew it, was still a wreck of the
+gold fever.  The merest skeleton of its former self, it lay there in
+the gulch between the chaparral-covered foothills and hugged its
+memories of the days when it was young and lusty and had a murder every
+morning for breakfast.  All around it the gashed and seamed and scarred
+and furrowed earth bore testimony to the labors of those stirring
+times, when men dug a fortune out of the ground in a day--and spent it
+in the town at night.
+
+It was my first visit to the town, but I soon found that the people
+still lived in the past.  The first man with whom I talked made vivid
+for my eyes the placer mines down the bed of the creek, in his young
+days as thronged as a city street, but now deserted and blistering in
+the sun; made me hear the sounds of bar-room frolicking and fighting,
+and the rolling chorus of "Forty-nine"; made me see, as he had seen,
+the piles of gold-dust and nuggets upon the gaming tables, and the
+hundreds of gold-weighted miners trooping into town on Saturday night.
+And every man and woman with whom I talked did the same thing for me,
+with new incidents and characters, until the hours became a fast-moving
+panorama of the "days of gold," and I began to feel as if I myself were
+living through their excitements and had drawn their delirium into my
+veins.
+
+My hostess, herself an old-timer, began the entertainment anew as we
+sat on her porch in the early forenoon of the next day, breathing deep
+draughts of the honey-scented air blowing down the hills from thousands
+of pink-flowered manzanita bushes.  She told me how she and her sister
+had alighted from the stage in Mariposa one evening, so many years
+before, when they were both "just slips of girls."  They were the very
+first white women there, and the men, hundreds of them, who had not
+seen the form of woman, save Indian squaws, for many months, came to
+their shanty, called their father outside and begged to be allowed just
+to look at them.  So the two came shyly out, hand in hand, and the men
+crowded around them with looks of respectful adoration, and then passed
+on to make way for others.  One fell on his knees and kissed the hem of
+her dress.  And presently a voice rose out of the throng, and the whole
+great crowd quickly joined in the hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
+
+As we talked, one or another old-timer stopped to greet us and to add
+for my entertainment still more recollections of the days when they and
+hope and Mariposa were young.  My pulses beat fast with the excitement
+of that dead life which their stories called into being again and I
+forgot that they and the century too had grown old since the times of
+which they spoke--until the Newspaper Man came along, and the sight of
+him brought me back to the present with a sudden jerk.  I had seen him
+last in San Francisco, only a week previous, but he had been in
+out-of-the-way, ghost-of-the-past Mariposa, he told me, for several
+days, reporting a murder trial for his paper.
+
+"Better come to this afternoon's session of the case," he said.  "The
+prisoner is n't much, but his father 's the most interesting old chap I
+'ve run across since I 've been on the Coast.  I 'll tell you about him
+as we walk over."
+
+So we sauntered up the hot, dusty street to the court-house, between
+the rows of straggling, forlorn little houses, each one with its own
+thrilling memory of the "days of Forty-nine"; and the Newspaper Man's
+tale, like everything else in Mariposa, took its being and its
+beginning from that same boisterous time.
+
+"It's a brutal, ghastly case," he said, "and to my mind the only
+mystery about it is the prisoner's father.  He is a fine-looking man,
+with the manner and the head of an old Roman.  He has the reputation of
+being the straightest and squarest man in the county; and how he ever
+came to be the father of such a good-for-nothing scum-of-the-earth as
+the prisoner I can explain only on the supposition that he is n't.
+
+"The old man is one of the pioneers in Mariposa, and they tell me that
+he was one of the nerviest men that ever drew a gun in this town.  He
+killed his man in those days, just as lots of other good men did, but
+it was in self-defence; and everybody was glad that the town was rid of
+the man he dropped, and so nothing was said about it.  There was a
+coroner's jury, which gave a verdict of suicide, and explained their
+finding on the ground that it was suicidal for any man to draw on Dan
+Hopkins and then give Dan the chance to shoot first.
+
+"Along in the latter years of the gold excitement a woman came to the
+town, who seems to have been part Portuguese, part Mexican, and all
+bad.  She followed some man here from San Francisco, and lived as hard
+a life as the times and place made possible.  And after a while she
+went to Dan Hopkins and told him that he must marry her.  At first he
+would n't consider seriously either her story or her proposition.  But
+she kept at him, swore by all the saints in the calendar that the child
+was his, and then swore them all over again that if he did not marry
+her she would kill the child and herself too as soon as it was born,
+and their blood would be on his head.  And finally he did marry her,
+and made a home for her.
+
+"Time and again during this trial I 've watched that man's fine, stern
+old face and wondered what his motives and his feelings were when he
+took that poor beast of a woman to be his wife--whether he really
+believed her and thought it was his duty; or whether he feared that if
+he did not, the blood of a woman and a child would haunt him all the
+rest of his life; or whether the underside of his nature, under her
+influence, rose up and dominated all that was best in him and made him
+love her and be willing to marry her.
+
+"Whatever it was, the deed was done, and the woman of the town became
+Mrs. Hopkins, with Dan Hopkins's gun at her service, ready to take
+revenge upon anybody who might offer her the least insult or whisper a
+slighting word about the past.
+
+"He did not try to crowd her down people's throats--they might let her
+alone if they wished, and they mostly did, I believe--but they were
+made to understand that they had to treat her and speak of her with
+respect.
+
+"He bought a big ranch a little way out of town, and there they lived
+from that time on.  As far as I can find out, the woman lived a
+straight, respectable kind of life for a dozen years or more, and then
+she died.
+
+"But all her badness seems to have descended to the boy.  It's one of
+the oddest studies in heredity I ever came across.  The people here all
+tell me that until he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was a manly
+sort of a lad, and gave promise of being something like his father as
+he grew up.  But about that time the evil in him began to show itself,
+and the older he grew the less moral principle he seemed to possess.
+He was courageous, they say, and that was the only good quality he had.
+It was a sort of dare-devil bravery, and along with it he was cruel,
+thieving, untruthful, and--well, about as near thoroughly bad as they
+make 'em.  At least, that's the sum of the account of him the people
+here have given me.
+
+"The old man was universally known to be so honest and square in all
+his dealings, and so upright and honorable in every way, that the son's
+depravity seemed all the blacker by contrast.  He has stood by the
+young fellow from the first of his wickedness, so everybody says, and
+has always shown toward him not only steadfast affection, but just the
+same sort of spirit that he did toward the boy's mother.
+
+"He has never intimated even to his best friend that the young man was
+anything but the best and most dutiful son that ever lived.  He has
+kept him supplied with money, so that the fellow's only reason for the
+petty thievery he did was pure love of stealing.  He has paid his fines
+when he has been arrested, and shielded him from public contempt, and
+done everything possible to make it easy for him to be honest and
+respectable.
+
+"But the boy has steadily gone on, they say, from bad to worse; and now
+he has capped it all with this crime, which, in wilful and unprovoked
+brutality, was worthy of a criminal hardened by twice his years and
+experience.
+
+"He and another young blade about as bad as he is (though this one
+seems to have been the one who planned it and led in its execution),
+went to the house of an old man, who lived alone a little farther up in
+the foothills toward the Yosemite Valley, and asked to be allowed to
+stay all night.  The old man took them in, got supper for them, and
+made them as comfortable as he could.  In the night they got up and
+murdered him, stole all his money--he had just sold some horses and
+cattle to the prisoner's father--and were preparing to skip the country
+and go to Australia, when they were arrested.
+
+"The thing 's not been absolutely proved on young Hopkins yet, but the
+circumstantial evidence is so plain that, even if there is nothing
+else, I don't see how he 's going to escape the rope.  I 've just heard
+a rumor, though, that there 's to be some new evidence this afternoon
+that will settle the matter without a doubt."
+
+The room rapidly filled up, and as we waited for court to open, the
+Newspaper Man pointed out one and another hale old man whose clear eyes
+and fresh skin belied his years, and told tales of his daring forty
+years before, of the wealth he had dug from the earth, and of the
+reckless ways in which he had lost it.  And at last came the prisoner
+and his father.  The old man's figure was tall, erect, broad-chested,
+and muscular, and his bearing proud and reserved.
+
+"I 'm always half expecting to see that old man get up," the Newspaper
+Man whispered to me, "fold his arms across that great chest of his, and
+say '_Romanus sum_,' and then proudly lead his son away."
+
+He must have been sixty-five years old or more, though he looked twenty
+years younger.  His dark hair and beard were only sifted with gray, and
+he held himself so erect and with such dignity, and all the lines of
+his countenance expressed such force and nobleness of character, that
+the suggestion of his appearance was of the strength of middle age.
+
+But the boy was a painful contrast.  His eye was shifty, his expression
+weak and sensual, and the hard lines of his face and the indifference
+of his manner told the story of a man old in criminal thoughts if not
+in years and deeds.  For he looked no more than twenty-five, and may
+have been even younger.
+
+The father sat near him, and although they seldom spoke together he
+frequently by some small act or apparently unconscious movement showed
+a tenderness and affection for the wayward son that seemed all the
+greater by contrast with his own proud reserve and the boy's hardened
+indifference.
+
+The new testimony was brought in.  The sheriff had set a go-between at
+work with the two prisoners, and with his aid had secured copies of all
+the notes they had at once begun writing to each other.  In these
+letters, which were all produced in court, they had freely discussed
+their crime and argued about the points wherein they had made mistakes.
+Young Hopkins had boasted to the other that they need not fear
+conviction, because his father would certainly get them clear; and they
+had planned what they would do after the trial was over, wallowing in
+anticipations of a course of crime and debauchery.
+
+When the sheriff began to give this testimony the old man's hand was
+resting affectionately on his son's shoulder.  As it went on, laying
+bare the depravity of the boy's soul, the muscles of his face quivered
+a little, and presently, with just the suggestion of a flinching
+shudder in face and figure, he took his hand away and shrank back a
+little from the young man.  I wondered as I watched him whether he was
+admitting to himself for the first time that this was the evil child of
+an evil woman, for whom there was no hope, or whether it was a
+revelation to him of a depth of depravity in his son's heart of which
+he had not guessed.
+
+Then the prosecution asked for a few minutes' recess, announcing that
+it had a new witness to bring forward.  After much hurrying to and fro,
+and whispering and consulting among lawyers and court and prison
+officials, young Hopkins's accomplice appeared on the witness-stand and
+turned State's evidence.  He had learned of the intercepted letters,
+and, frightened by their probable result for himself, told the whole
+story of the crime, from the time Hopkins had first broached it to him
+until they were arrested in San Francisco.  And during the entire
+narration of the cold-blooded, brutal, and cowardly deed, old Dan
+Hopkins sat with his eyes on the witness, as steady and unflinching in
+color and nerve and muscle as if he had been listening to a lecture or
+a sermon.
+
+I think he had decided, even then, what he would do, no matter what the
+finding of the jury might be.
+
+At last it was all over; the jury listened to the judge's charge, and
+filed out.  "It's hanging, sure," said the Newspaper Man.  "After that
+evidence and that charge there's only one verdict they can bring in.
+It's a good thing as far as the boy's concerned, but I do feel sorry
+for his governor."
+
+Every one felt so sure that the jury would soon return that none left
+their places, and a buzz of conversation soon filled the room.  Old Dan
+Hopkins sat with his arms folded, his head erect, and his eyes, steady
+and clear, upon the empty witness chair.  There were many sympathizing
+glances sent toward him, though no one approached or spoke to him; for
+it was evident from his compressed lips and frowning brow that he
+preferred to be left alone.  He had moved a little away from his son,
+and sat scarcely ten feet distant on my left.  When the jury returned,
+in less than half an hour, he bent upon them the same abstracted gaze
+and unmoved countenance.
+
+The foreman stood up and glanced sadly toward the man who had been his
+friend and neighbor for many years.  There were tears in his eyes, and
+his voice broke and trembled as he gave their verdict, "Guilty of
+murder in the first degree."
+
+Not a sound broke the death-like stillness of the room as he sat down,
+and I noticed that every face within my view was turned away from the
+prisoner's chair and the old man who sat near it.  The tense strain of
+the moment was broken by the prisoner's counsel, who arose and began a
+motion for a new trial.
+
+But the click of a revolver sharply halted his first sentence, as Dan
+Hopkins jumped to his feet with a sudden, swift movement of his right
+arm.  A dozen men leaped forward with outstretched arms crying, "Stop!
+Stop!"
+
+But even before they could reach him the report rang through the room,
+and just as they seized the father's arms the son dropped to the floor,
+dead.  He waved back the men who were pressing around him.
+
+"Stop!" he cried.  "Stand back a minute!" And they fell back
+instinctively.
+
+He walked calmly to the judge's desk and laid down his smoking pistol.
+Then he folded his arms and faced about, with head thrown back,
+flashing eyes, and colorless face.  He looked at the sheriff, who, with
+the sense of official duty strong upon him, had stepped out from the
+huddled crowd and was coming toward him.
+
+"Wait one minute, let me speak," he said.  "I believe you are all my
+friends, for I have lived most of my life here, among you, and I hope I
+have the respect and confidence and friendship of you all.  But that,"
+and his flashing eyes rested for a moment upon the sheriff, the
+lawyers, and then upon the judge, "must have no influence upon the
+penalty I shall pay for what I have just done.  The knowledge has been
+bitter enough to me this afternoon that that poor boy there deserved
+death.  For the first time I have been convinced that he was bad from
+the bottom of his heart, and that there was no hope for him.  But with
+my own hand I have killed him, that he might be saved the last horror
+and disgrace.  Let them, and the law's justice, be my portion, for I
+deserve them for having given him life in the first place.  Mine was
+the first sin, and it is right that I should suffer the disgrace and
+the penalty."
+
+He turned to the sheriff, holding out his arms for the handcuffs.
+"Now, I am ready.  Arrest me."
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES
+
+Perhaps it was a mere matter of nerves, but it seemed to me that
+morning that it was the cliffs of the Valley.  Those mighty,
+overshadowing, everlasting walls and towers of the Yosemite seem to be
+endowed with the power to produce numberless changes of feeling.
+
+Sometimes you gaze at them, and they lift up your spirit and hold it
+aloft in the free air, and send it up, and up, and up, until it reaches
+the very blue of heaven, and you know that you are free and powerful
+and ennobled, made one with the saints and mighty ones of earth.
+
+The next morning you go forth and look up at those silent granite
+heights, and expect them to repeat their miracle.  But they will not.
+They frown upon you and crush you down into the earth you are made of.
+Like an accusing conscience, they lift their stern, forbidding faces
+above you on all sides and look you steadily in the eyes with their
+insistence upon your unworthiness, until, in despair, you are ready to
+shut yourself up to escape their persecutions.
+
+Of course, as I said before, it may not be the cliffs at all.  It may
+be nothing but nerves.  But I think it is the walls of the Valley.
+
+On that particular morning they had made me bite the dust until I could
+no longer endure the sight of them.  To escape their solemn,
+contemptuous faces I ran down a little path which led into a dense
+thicket of young pines and cedars.  The trees grew so close together
+that they shut out all view of everything beyond a few feet on each
+side of the path.  The ground was brown with their cast-off needles,
+and the air was pungent with their fragrance.  Overhead there were
+glimpses of a smiling blue sky, and the cool, fragrant shadows of the
+thicket were brightened by patches of gleaming sunshine.  The friendly
+sounds of woodpeckers hammering the trees, and of birds singing among
+the branches, pleased my ears and diverted my thoughts.
+
+The only reminder of those towering granite Preachers, with their
+everlasting "All is vanity," was the roaring and crashing of the
+Yosemite Falls, which filled the Valley with their thunder and made the
+air tremble.
+
+The sights, the sounds, the odors, enveloped my senses and filled me
+with delighted, languorous content.  It was very comforting, and I sat
+down on a log in the edge of a little opening, all pink and fragrant
+with wild roses, to enjoy the sensuous delight of it all and so take
+revenge upon the great stone Preachers waiting for me outside the
+thicket.
+
+Presently there came from beyond the glade a soft, crooning noise,
+which in an instant more became that sweetest of sounds, the voice of a
+happy child alone with nature.
+
+A little girl, perhaps four or five years old, came slowly down the
+path.  She was talking to herself and to the trees and birds and
+squirrels, and even to the brown pine-needles under her feet.  Her hat,
+which she had stuck full of wild roses, hung at the back of her head,
+the ends of her brown curls just peeping below it.  Without the least
+trace of childish shyness she came straight to where I sat, mounted the
+log beside me, and asked me to take a thorn from her finger.
+
+"Did it hurt you?" I asked, as I patted the chubby brown fist after the
+operation.  "You are a very brave little girl not to cry."
+
+"Yes, I know it," she replied, looking at me with big violet eyes,
+frank and confiding.  She was a beautiful child, with a glorious
+perfection of feature and complexion.  "I 'm always brave.  My papa
+says so, and my new mamma says so, too.  I 've got two mammas--my new
+mamma and my gone-away mamma.  But I like my new mamma best."
+
+"Do you?  Why?"
+
+"'Cause she's always and always dust as good as she can be.  And she
+never and never says 'Stop this minute!' er 'at I make her head ache,
+er 'at I 'm naughty, er anything.  She dust puts her arms all 'round me
+and says, 'Dear little girl.'  An' 'en I 'm good.  And I love my new
+mamma, I do, better than my gone-away mamma."  And she gave a decided
+little nod, as if in defiance of some privately urged claim.
+
+"Where has your other mamma gone?" I asked, expecting to hear but the
+one answer.  She raised her long lashes and looked at me seriously.
+
+"You 're a tourist lady, ain't you?  That's why you don't know.  Well,
+it was a tourist man, 'at stayed a long time, who tooked my gone-away
+mamma away."
+
+"A tourist man?  Why did he do that?"
+
+"'Cause he did n't want me 'round, I guess.  When the flowers was here
+that other time he comed to the store where my mamma sold all the
+pretty things my papa made dust every day an' every day.  An' I did n't
+like him a bit, I did n't."
+
+"Why didn't you like him?"
+
+"'Cause he did n't like me, and did n't want me 'round.  When my mamma
+was there and I was there, he would come and talk to my mamma, an' 'en
+he would tell her to send me away.  An' 'en she would put me in the
+back room; an' if I cried an' kicked the door, she would put me in the
+closet.  If the tourist man wasn't there, she loved me most all the
+time."
+
+"Did n't she love you all the time, anyway?"
+
+For answer the small maiden shut her eyes tightly and shook her head
+rapidly and decidedly.
+
+"Why do you think she did n't love you all the time?"
+
+"'Cause sometimes she was n't good to me."
+
+"Did you love her all the time?"
+
+Another decided head-shaking.
+
+"You did n't?  Why?"
+
+"I did n't love her when she did n't love me.  But my new mamma loves
+me all the time an' all day an' all night an' every day an' every night
+an' always.  An' we dust have the bestest times togevver, an' I love
+her dust all I can love anybody."  She hugged her chubby arms close up
+to her breast as if she had them around the loved one's neck, screwed
+up her pretty face, and gave the little grunt with which childhood
+expresses the fulness of its affection.
+
+"Did you see the tourist man take your gone-away mamma away?"
+
+"No, I didn't see him, but he did, 'cause once she went to take a walk
+an' 'en he never came back any more."
+
+"And did n't she ever come back?"
+
+"'Course not!"  She looked at me in wide-eyed amazement at my
+ignorance.  "One day she said for me to stay there 'cause she was going
+to take a walk.  An' I cried to go too, an' 'en she picked me up quick
+an' hugged me tight an' kissed me.  An' 'en she put me down an' said
+no, she was going too far.  An' she took off her ring, her pretty gold
+ring, 'at she never let me have before, an' said to play wif it and
+when papa come give it to him.  An' I did, an' papa readed a letter 'at
+was on the table, an' 'en he fell down on the bed an' cried.  An' I put
+my hand on his face an' said, 'Poor papa, what's 'e matter?'  An' 'en
+he took me up in his arms, an' we bofe cried, an' cried, an' cried.
+An' he said, 'Poor little girl!'"
+
+She paused a moment, and then, with the air of one summing up a long
+discourse, she exclaimed, "An' that's why I 've got a gone-away mamma!"
+
+I stroked the little one's hand, which nestled confidingly in mine, and
+said, half absently, "And she never came back?"
+
+The child had fallen into a reverie, her big violet eyes fastened on
+the ground at our feet, but my words roused her into sociability again
+and she chattered on:
+
+"No, 'course not, she never comed back.  But one day 'ere was a letter,
+all alone dust for me, an' my papa called me an' said, 'Here is a
+letter for my little girl; now, I wonder who it's from?'  She said this
+with the quaintest imitation of grown-up condescension addressing a
+child, waited a moment, as if to give to suspense its proper effect,
+and then went on:
+
+"He tored it open an' inside the en'lope was dust a tiny bit of a
+letter wif just a little bit of reading and writing on it.  An' 'en my
+papa dropped it 's if it was a yellow-jacket an' he said, great big an'
+loud, 'Money!  from them!  Don't touch it, child!'  An' he frowed it in
+the fire.  But I did n't see no money and I wanted to keep my letter,
+'cause it was all mine.  But I had my new mamma then, an' when I cried
+she writed me another letter."
+
+"Yes," I said, "it's very queer to have two mammas, is n't it?  But
+when did you get your new mamma?"
+
+"Well, one day, after there was n't any more snow, we all went to
+church.  And I had on my new white dress--it's awful pretty--and a new
+ribbon on my hair, and a new hat--not this old one--prettier than this,
+lots, with pretty flowers on it.  And papa and--and--_her_, they stood
+up and talked wif the preacher, an' I would n't sit still.  I dust
+runned right up side of my papa and held on to his leg all the time.
+An' when the preacher did n't talk any more she picked me up an' hugged
+me tight, an' kissed me an' said, 'I 'm going to be your mamma now,
+darling.'
+
+"An' she 's been my new mamma ever since, an' I 'm going to keep her
+for my mamma always and always, and I don't want my gone-away mamma
+ever to come back, 'cause I love my new mamma best."
+
+Just then there burst upon the warm, soft air a babel of shouts and
+yells and loud hurrahs.  The wee maiden turned a brightening face in
+the direction of the uproar, and announced:
+
+"That's wecess.  I must go now.  I 'spect my mamma will want me.  She
+is n't dust my new mamma, she is n't.  She's the teacher, too.  An' I
+go to school wif her every day.  But I don't have to stay in the
+schoolhouse 'less I want to."
+
+She slipped off the log and started down the path, and then came back
+to kiss me good-bye.  The hurried tread of a woman rustled through the
+thicket, and a Madonna-like face appeared between the branches.
+
+"Come, dearie," she called, and the child ran across the glade, jumped
+into her arms and nestled upon her neck with a cry of delight.
+
+Months afterward, in a city on the other side of the continent, I met a
+beautiful woman.  She was a little overdressed and over-jewelled, but I
+thought as I talked with her that never before had I seen a woman of
+such glorious perfection of features and complexion and figure.
+
+My visit to the Yosemite, the previous summer, chanced to be mentioned,
+and at once she began to ask me question after question about the
+Valley, and about those who live in it and cater to the comfort of
+travellers.  Her husband, tall, athletic-looking, and handsome, leaned
+upon the back of her chair and made tactful efforts to divert the
+conversation into other channels.  She yielded for the moment, but soon
+managed to lead me away to a quiet nook where she at once re-commenced
+her inquiries.  Her beautiful face haunted and teased me with
+suggestions of previous sight.  But I could not recall any former
+meeting, and so I decided that some chance street view of her
+countenance had impressed its beauty upon my memory.
+
+As she rapidly poured forth question after question, I could not help
+noticing and wondering about the pathetic wistfulness in her eyes and
+the nervous eagerness of her manner.  Presently she said she hoped to
+visit the Yosemite herself some time, and then hurriedly asked if I had
+seen any of the people who live there during the winter, and if any of
+them had children, and if the little ones, too, were subjected to that
+hardship.
+
+There was intense longing in her lovely violet eyes as she asked these
+questions, but she quickly dropped her lids, and only her hands,
+trembling in her lap, betrayed that she felt more than casual interest.
+
+I told her everything I could remember, facts, incidents, and
+anecdotes, that I thought would interest her.  It did not occur to me
+that her eagerness for information was anything more than an unusually
+keen curiosity about a mode of life so different from her own.
+Chancing to recall my adventure with the little maid I told her about
+it.
+
+I dwelt on the child's beauty and precocity, and repeated her account
+of why she had two mammas.  The red blood was dyeing my listener's face
+a deep crimson, but still I did not understand, and went on lightly--
+
+"She was as charming a little thing as I ever saw, but she was not at
+all complimentary to the 'gone-away mamma,' for she declared,
+emphatically, that she loved her new mamma best, and meant to keep her
+always, and did n't want her gone-away mamma ever to come back, because
+the new mamma loved her so much, and they had such good times together."
+
+The surging color flowed in a quick tide from her face and left there a
+gray pallor, like that of granite cliffs when the sun goes down, and
+her hands were so tightly locked that her fingers looked white and
+ghastly.  I thought it was indignation against that distant and unknown
+woman who had yielded to temptation that was moving her so strongly,
+and expected to hear from her parted lips some sweeping sentence of
+fiery feminine scorn and contempt.
+
+But it was a low moan that came through their paling curves as she
+swayed once in her chair and then fell to the floor.
+
+The physician, who was hurriedly summoned, said that it was a case of
+heart failure, and that she must have died instantly from some sudden
+shock.
+
+And then, looking again at the beautiful, cold face, I understood at
+last.  For death had completed the likeness which life had only
+suggested, and the faultless features, lying now in their eternal,
+expressionless calm, were exactly those of the beautiful child.
+
+Her friends wondered much at her strange and sudden death.  But I knew
+that remorse had had its perfect work, and that the sudden vision of a
+sweet child-face out of whose rosy lips came the accusing words, "I
+love my new mamma best, and I don't want my gone-away mamma ever to
+come back," had pierced her heart through and through.
+
+
+
+
+POSEY
+
+        "Since I breathed,
+  A houseless head, beneath the sun and stars,
+  The soul of the wood has stricken through my blood."
+        --THE FORESTERS.
+
+
+Everybody who has ever seen him knows him only as "Posey"--a name for
+which he is indebted solely to the accident of birth.  For in that
+Indiana county where he first saw the light, and when he went to
+California, some forty years ago, that was the name at once bestowed
+upon him, and by it he has been known ever since.  It is possible that
+Posey has not forgotten what his name really is; but, if so, he is the
+only person who has allowed his memory to be burdened with that useless
+knowledge.
+
+The traveller is likely to meet him striding along any one of the
+forest roads or trails within forty miles of the Yosemite Valley, or
+lounging around a stage station, or taking his ease in some
+mountaineer's cabin.  And he will know at once that that is Posey, for
+no one who has ever heard of him can mistake his identity at even the
+first glance.  Moreover, Sunday is always with him, and Sunday is just
+as unmistakable as Posey.  Sunday is a very small dog, of about the
+bigness of your two fists, that carries within his small skin enough
+courage, audacity, and dignity to befit the size of an elephant.  He is
+also known as "Posey's bear dog"--a sobriquet bestowed upon him partly
+in humor, because of his ridiculously small size, and partly in honor,
+because of his utter fearlessness.
+
+Posey is a sparely built, muscular man, of medium size, quick and jerky
+in his movements, and springy in his gait.  His face is broad and
+tanned, his cheek bones high, and his nose a snub.  His beard is short
+and thin and grizzled, and his gray hair, curling at the ends, hangs
+around his neck.  His shoulders are sloping, his chest deep but not
+wide, his arms long, and his hips narrow.  He is always dressed in a
+blue flannel shirt, blue overalls, hob-nailed shoes, and a gray slouch
+hat; and the whole outfit is always very old and very dirty.  His
+overalls, fastened upon him in some miraculous way, hang far below his
+waist.  Why they stay in place suggests the goodness of God since it
+passeth all understanding.
+
+Nature made a great mistake when she caused Posey to be born a white
+man, heir to all the white man's achievement.  For he is a child of
+earth--a gentle, kindly savage, a white man with the soul of an Indian.
+But Posey has done his best to correct nature's mistake, and has made
+himself as much of an Indian as his white man's heritage will allow.
+He is a nomad, as thorough a nomad as any barbarian who never heard of
+those wondrous works of man called civilization.  In all that wide
+stretch of country which he frequents and in which he has lived for
+thirty years and better, there is not one spot which he can call home.
+But that is nothing to Posey.  He would not know what to do with a home
+if he had one.
+
+His sole possessions are some blankets, a gun, and Sunday.  If he wants
+to go anywhere, whether it be one mile or fifty miles away, he straps
+his blankets on his back, whistles to Sunday, shoulders his gun, and
+goes.  Sometimes he sleeps on the ground and sometimes he stops for a
+night or for three months in the cabin of some lone mountaineer or in
+an Indian _rancheria_.  It is doubtful if Posey himself knows how many
+Indian wives and half-breed children he has in these Indian villages
+scattered through the mountains.  He will drop in on one of them for a
+day or a month, divide his possessions with her and her children,
+provide lavishly for them with gun and fishing-tackle while he is
+there, and when the desire fills him to be somewhere else he will leave
+them with as little concern as he feels for the birds and squirrels in
+the trees.
+
+Save in the mirthfulness of which he is an ever-bubbling spring, Posey
+has become, in looks and gestures, in mode of thought and manner of
+expression, as much Indian as white.  Nevertheless, he prefers, very
+greatly, the society of his own race, and likes best that of people of
+superior mental qualities and force of character.  In Posey's creed
+there is but one article, namely, that all men are eternally and
+immutably equal--just as good as he is.  That is, that would be the
+sole article in his creed if he had any creed and if he were conscious
+that such is his belief.  For it is very certain that Posey never gave
+thought, in all his life, to the question of human equality.  He simply
+has an unconscious feeling about it which he has breathed into his
+being from the mountain air around him and absorbed from the earth
+which has been his bed for many and many a night.  It is there, just as
+the dirt on his neck is there, and Posey is equally unconscious of them
+both.
+
+Formerly, for a good many years, he was a guide in the Yosemite Valley,
+and once he had in his charge a woman who was a many times millionaire,
+of social prestige throughout two continents, and known by name all
+over her own land from the palaces of Newport to the huts in the
+Sierras.  She found fault with many things, and finally insisted that
+her stirrup was too small.  Posey, who had cheerfully endeavored to
+satisfy all her complaints, examined it carefully and then told her, in
+gentlest voice and politest manner: "The stirrup 's all right, madam.
+It's your foot that 's too damn big."
+
+Nobody ever saw Posey troubled in the least about anything in this
+world or the next.  To him, mere existence is a pleasure, and the days
+of his life have been a linked merriment long drawn out.  He is always
+ready to listen to and laugh at and join in jokes and fun; and if
+nothing new of that sort is at hand, old ones will answer the purpose
+almost as well.  He is quick to repay such entertainment from his own
+inexhaustible store, and he never fails to turn anything that happens,
+no matter how serious it may be, into jest and farce.  He has even been
+known to fling witticisms and ridicule at a bear that was coming at him
+full speed.  But, no; that is not quite accurate.  Posey has been known
+to say that he said these things to a charging bruin.  But Posey
+usually hunts alone.
+
+He is learned in the habits and secrets of the beasts and birds and
+reptiles and insects of the mountain and the forest, and in the virtues
+and malefactions of trees and flowers.  But he does not consider this
+knowledge of any consequence, and sets far more store upon another
+stock of learning, which he does not display upon ordinary occasions.
+For such chance acquaintances among the tourists as he considers
+unusual in mental attainments he rolls out the scientific names of
+trees and plants with unction and delight.  Usually they are not
+recognizable at first, because, having been learned by ear and
+preserved by memory, their Latin has become somewhat Poseyized.
+
+He can reel off yards upon yards of narrative about adventures in
+mountain storms, exciting incidents in hunting, the people he has
+guided in the Yosemite Valley and upon the mountains, and all the
+strange things that could not but have happened to a merry
+earth-spirit, living alternately among the denizens of the wilderness
+and in the midst of a stream of people from all the four quarters of
+the globe.  When he tells these tales he generally adopts the crescendo
+method, being spurred on by the applause of his hearers to larger and
+larger achievements as story succeeds story.
+
+One autumn afternoon I sat on the veranda at Wawona and listened to the
+tales of luck and pluck in forest and mountain that Posey, squatted on
+the steps, poured forth for my entertainment and that of such others as
+chose to stop and listen.  He talked in quick, jerky sentences,
+constantly bobbing his head about and making little, angular gestures
+with his hands and arms.
+
+"Posey," I said, "did you ever meet a bear, face to face, when you did
+n't have a gun?"
+
+"Lots of times!"
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Pooh!  I don't care, if 't ain't a grizzly.  If I meet a grizzly on
+the trail when I hain't no gun with me I don't tramp on his toes, you
+bet.  I jest hide behind a bush and purtend I don't see him till he
+gets out the way.  But any other kind of a bear 's got to give me right
+o' way, gun or no gun.  Me get out of the way fer an ornery brown bear!
+Huh!  Not much!  All you've got to do is jest to stand up and lay down
+the law to 'em, and they 'll sneak out and into the bushes and leave
+you the trail, 'fore you can get furder 'n 'Be it enacted.'  I 'll bet
+I could talk any brown bear in the Sierras out o' the trail in five
+minutes.
+
+"Once I was comin' down Pinoche Mountain, windin' along a narrow trail
+through some high bushes, when I seed a bear roundin' a turn not more
+'n ten yards ahead of me.  I did n't have no gun, and it was n't much
+of a trail, but I reckoned it was a heap sight better 'n scramblin'
+through them bushes, and I jest thought I 'd let the bear do the
+scramblin'.  Sunday, he rushed out between my legs and begun to
+bow-wow, bold as if he 'd been John Sullivan.  'Hist, Sunday!' says I,
+'I've got the floor!  Gimme the first chance; and if there 's any
+talking to do after that, you can do it.'  So he come and squatted down
+beside me; and the bear, he stood there lookin' at us.
+
+"'Mr. Bear,' says I, 'I 'd hate to have to spile your hide, but I 'll
+do it if you don't get out o' this trail.  I 've killed eighty bear in
+these mountains, and I won't take no sass from you.  The climate in
+this trail ain't what you need, an' I advise you to git out of it.  Off
+into the bushes with you!  Whoop!  Git!'  An' off he went, just as if I
+owned that trail an' he was trespassin'.
+
+[Illustration: "I 'd hate to have to spile your hide, but I 'll do it
+if you don't get out o' this trail."]
+
+"That bear was as reasonable as any I ever see, but I had more trouble
+with a big feller up toward Crescent Lake.  I got sleepy that
+afternoon, for I 'd been settin' up watchin' fer bear the night before.
+So I put my gun an' a snack I had on a stump and went to sleep.  When I
+waked up there was a big brown bear nosin' my lunch and tryin' to open
+the bundle with his paw.  I picked up some pine cones--_Pinus
+pondyrosy_ it was I was sleepin' under" (he rolled this out with the
+slyest glance at a professor from an Eastern college who had joined his
+little audience)--"an' begun peltin' 'em at him just so's to tip his
+ears and his tail.  Sunday, he 'd travelled off somewhere and missed
+this fun.  Then I started in to abusin' that bear.  My!  I called him
+everything I could lay my tongue to.  He 'd stop an' listen a minute,
+cock up one ear and wink, and then he 'd go to work at that lunch
+passel ag'in.  I jest kept on swearin' harder and harder at him till I
+could taste brimstone.  And at last it got too much for 'im.  He took
+his paws down off 'n that stump an' marched off as dignified as a woman
+who 's heard you say somethin' you did n't mean her to.
+
+"But the cheekiest thing I ever did with a bear was one night over in
+Devil's Gulch.  A big storm come up just about dark an' I found a sort
+o' cave to crawl into.  A big tree, a _Pinus Lamberteeny_" (another sly
+glance at the professor), "had fell alongside o' some rocks an' made a
+fine dry den.  A lot of dry leaves was made into a bed, an' I says to
+Sunday: 'Reckon we 'll have company before long.  Wonder whether it 'll
+be a brown or a grizzly.'  Sunday, he curled up an' went to sleep, an'
+I was settin' down at the mouth of the den lookin' out into the dark
+when up come a big, black thing.  I knew 't was the bear, an' it was
+too dark to see if it was a grizzly.  But it just made me mad to think
+of that bear comin' to turn me out into the rain, an' I up with my fist
+an' give 'im a cuff.  'Git out o' this, you ole tramp,' says I.  'I was
+here first, an' there ain't no room fer you.'  An' I belted him on the
+other ear.  That bear jest turned tail an' walked off as meek as Moses,
+an' me an' Sunday had the den to ourselves all night.
+
+"Yes, sir," and he shook his head and chuckled in delighted remembrance
+of his waggishness, "that was jest about the cheekiest joke I ever
+played on a bear!"
+
+Posey's mirthful spirits make him always a welcome visitor in the
+cabins that, tucked away among trees and bowlders, shelter the lone
+mountaineers.  But of all those who live within the circuit of his
+peregrinations his particular chum is Win Davis--"J. Winthrop Davis" is
+the name painted in big, black letters on a pine board nailed to his
+cabin door, although nobody ever takes the trouble to call him anything
+but "Win."  After seeing that doorplate, you will hardly need to hear
+his nasal intonation to know that he came from the land of the tutelary
+codfish.
+
+That was nearly half a century ago and ever since he has been the child
+of the mines, the forests, and the mountains.  And Nature, as if in
+gratitude for his loving allegiance, seems to have taken him under her
+protection and stayed the progress of years over his head.  For,
+although he has almost reached the allotted three score and ten, his
+big frame, his ruddy face, his shock of hair, his auburn beard that
+flows to his waist, his actions, and his apparent feelings do not
+indicate a day over forty.
+
+When our buckboard stopped at his cabin door he rushed out, shouting
+hospitable welcome in a tremendous voice.  If he ever spoke in anything
+less than a roar he would make his Herculean body and Jovian head
+ridiculous.  As he never does, he is grand.
+
+Posey was there, and, while Win bustled about in the lean-to kitchen
+making hot biscuits and coffee, he began to tell us entrancing yarns of
+the adventures and successes they had enjoyed hunting and trapping
+together during the previous winter.  Apparently neither had felt it
+any hardship that for months they had been shut off entirely from all
+companionship with their kind.  Nature is good to these lone men of the
+mountains.  She gives them happiness and serenity in her arms, steeps
+them in lore of all manner of wild things, and makes them simple and
+honest of heart as a child.  But for what she gives she exacts an awful
+price, for she cuts from their hearts the dearest ties of the race.  In
+all those little cabins scattered along the slopes and through the
+gorges of the Sierras there is scarcely one in which you will find wife
+or child, or regret that there is none, or wish that such might yet be.
+
+The talk drifted from one thing to another, and finally one of our
+party told Mark Twain's yarn about "the meanest man on earth."  Our
+host listened at the kitchen door, a streak of flour shining white
+athwart the cataract of his auburn beard, and testified his amusement
+by a delighted roar that was like unto the rejoicings of a bull of
+Bashan.
+
+"Posey," he exclaimed, "tell 'em about that stingy friend o' yours!"
+
+Posey chuckled and pushed his old slouch hat to the back of his head.
+
+"Well," he said, "I reckon that feller was jest about as stingy as the
+feller you 've been tellin' about, and mebby stingier, 'cause he 'd
+take more risks.  Anyway, he was as ornery stingy as he could be an'
+live.  If he 'd been any wuss he 'd of died to save grub an' shoe
+leather.  W'y, him and me was out huntin' together oncet, over toward
+Mono.  But I oughter tell you fust it was a long time ago, 'way back in
+the days when everybody had to carry powder-flasks, an' each of us had
+one on a string 'round his neck.
+
+"Well, 'long about noon we come to a clear, purty little lake and set
+down to eat a snack.  I was stoopin' over the edge of the lake to get
+some water in my hat an' my powder-flask slipped off an' went,
+kersplash, down to the bottom!  The water was so clear I could see it
+layin' down there, as plain as could be, fifty feet down, I reckon, fer
+them mountain lakes is prodeejus deep.  Well, the other feller, he
+could dive better 'n I could--he was a great one fer divin'--an' he
+said he 'd go down after it.  So he stripped, but kep' his powder-flask
+'round his neck.  That kinder riled me, fer it looked as if he was
+afeared I 'd run off with it while he was gone.  I did n't say nothin',
+though, an' down he went.
+
+"Well, I set there an' waited, an' finished eatin' my snack, an' waited
+an' waited for him to come up agin.  I reckon I must a' set there about
+fifteen minutes, anyhow, and at last I begun to git so curious about
+what he could be doin' all that time, that I up an' went over to the
+edge of the bank an' peeked down into the water.  An' consarn my
+soul!"--here Posey bristled up with as much excited interest in voice
+and manner as if he were at that moment peering down into the depths of
+the lake--"What do you s'pose he was a-doin' down there?"
+
+"Drowning?" suggested one of our party in a tone that Posey must have
+thought too flippant for the occasion, for he turned upon the speaker
+with an indignation that could not all have been inspired by the memory
+of his stingy friend's deed.
+
+"Drownin'!  Him!  An' leave his duds up on the ground fer somebody else
+to git the good of?  Huh!  Not much!  No, sir!  There he was, down
+there at the bottom of the lake--an' I 'm a-tellin' you the Gospel
+truth, an' you may take me out an' drown me in that there very lake if
+I ain't--there was that ornery, stingy cuss down there takin' his time
+to empty the powder out o' my flask into his'n!  I was so mad I felt
+like heavin' a rock down on 'im!"
+
+Like many a man in far less humble station, Posey has but to repeat an
+idea or a statement a few times to convince himself of its absolute
+truth, no matter how reckless may have been its first enunciation.  As
+we talked, the sound and savor of frying venison came appetizingly from
+the kitchen.  Posey sniffed it and straightened up, with childlike,
+pleased expectancy.
+
+"Venison 's a mighty healthy meat, ain't it, Doc?" he said, addressing
+a physician who was with us.  The doctor gave assent, and Posey swelled
+and beamed with pleasure that his opinion had won scientific approval.
+
+"Yes, sir," he went on enthusiastically, "it's the healthiest meat
+there is!  Wy, if a man would jest eat venison all the time, he 'd
+never be sick, an'--an' he'd never die, neither!"  He paused a moment,
+the least mite taken aback by the sweepingness of his proposition, then
+glanced belligerently around his little circle of listeners and
+repeated with emphasis: "No, sir!  he'd never die!"  He stopped again,
+but this time with triumph shining in his face, as who would say.
+Dispute it if you dare!  Evidently he was quite convinced by that time
+of the truth of his statement, but still felt the need of making his
+hearers believe.  He brought his fist down upon the table with a blow
+that made the dishes Win Davis was placing thereon jump and rattle, and
+exclaimed in tones of the most serious and heartfelt conviction:
+
+"No, sir!  He'd live forever, he would!  He 'd never, _never_ die!"
+
+
+
+
+A CASE OF THE INNER IMPERATIVE
+
+"This is my section," said Dr. Elizabeth Black; and the three women who
+were convoying her down the aisle crowded around her for a last
+good-bye.  There was an excited flurry of talk as they hoped her
+journey would be pleasant and wished they were going too; and she
+heartily wished they were; and they wondered if she would find it
+tiresome; and she assured them she was a good traveller; and they
+charged her to write them a postal every day.  Then all four had to
+press into the section to make room for two men to walk past them to
+the next seat.
+
+"But they did n't get on here--they 've only been out on the platform,"
+said the youngest and prettiest of the three, lowering her voice and
+casting a swift glance in their direction.  "They look interesting,
+Doctor, and if they stay on long enough maybe you 'll scrape
+acquaintance with them.  When I take a long journey I always know
+everybody in the car by the end of the second day."
+
+"We must go, girls," exclaimed another.  "It's time for the train to
+start."  Then she produced a florist's parcel, which she had been
+trying to conceal in the folds of her dress, and unrolled from it a
+bunch of glowing roses.  Another pressed into Dr. Black's hands a book;
+and the third, a box of candy.
+
+"And here 's a magazine Dr. Wallace sent--you know she could n't
+come--and we agreed not to give them to you till the very last
+minute--for our last good-bye--"  Her voice wavered and Dr. Black broke
+in with surprised and grateful exclamations.
+
+"The book 's a love story," said the youngest one, an apologetic note
+perceptible in her voice, "but it's a pretty story, and the treatment's
+interesting, and I thought you might enjoy it, for railroad travelling
+always makes one feel sentimental, anyway."
+
+"Oh, the train 's moving!  Good-bye, dear!"  The one who was nearest to
+Dr. Black left a hurried kiss upon her cheek, the others hastily
+pressed her hands, and all three scurried toward the door.  Their
+friend raised her window and looked out in time to wave a final
+farewell as they landed safely upon the platform.  As she settled back
+in her seat she saw that one of the men in the next section had also
+been watching for their reappearance outside.  Their eyes met as she
+turned from the window, relieved and smiling.
+
+She admired her roses for a moment, tucked them into her belt, and then
+opened her magazine.  But her expression was more pensive than
+interested as she idled over its pages, looking now and then at a
+picture and reading only a paragraph or a stanza here and there.  Her
+thoughts were more with the scenes of the life she was leaving behind
+her, or flying on, with inquiry and indecision, into that whither she
+was bound.  Should she stay on the Pacific Coast where she was going to
+visit her father and mother in their new home, open an office in some
+city near them, and build up a practice there?  Or should she return to
+take the position which had been offered her in the faculty of the
+women's medical college from which she had been graduated with high
+honors three years before?  After her graduation, a year's work as
+interne in the women's hospital had heightened the expectations of her
+friends; and the success with which she had then served as physician
+and superintendent of a branch dispensary and hospital in the slum
+district had made all who were watching her progress predict for her a
+brilliant career.
+
+She had accepted the appointment to the college corps of instructors
+with the deepest gratification, and she looked forward longingly to the
+opportunities it would give her for special work and to the surety of
+advancement that would follow.  But her heart misgave her not a little
+as she thought of the great joy it would give her father and mother
+should she decide to stay near them in California, and of the grief
+that her mother would try to dissemble if she should return to the East.
+
+Well, she would not decide the question now, and she put it from her as
+she cast a careless eye over her fellow travellers, let it rest for a
+moment on the two men in the section in front of her own and then
+turned to her book.  Alternately reading, looking at the passing
+landscape, and now and then lapsing into reverie, her attention was so
+withdrawn from her surroundings that she was not aware that one of the
+men in front had turned several times and allowed a casual glance to
+pass from her down the row of heads behind her.  Nor did she notice,
+when they returned from an hour's absence in the smoker, that he sat
+down in the front seat of their section.
+
+"You don't mind riding backward?" commented his companion.
+
+"I 'm not particularly stuck on it, but just now I want to look at that
+girl in the section behind us.  It's good for the eyes to rest on such
+a splendid creature as she is."
+
+"I 'll come over there with you and we 'll study her together," the
+other replied, as he changed his seat.
+
+"Is n't she a fine specimen?" said the first.  "She 's five
+feet nine if she 's an inch,--I noticed her when she got on at
+Philadelphia,--broad-shouldered and deep-chested and clear-skinned.
+And that glow in her cheeks rivals the roses her friends gave her.  How
+old do you guess her, Wilson?"
+
+"I 'd never try guessing such a problem as that!  She's evidently one
+of the new women--you can tell that by her looks.  And they never show
+their age, maybe because they don't think about it.  This girl might be
+twenty, perhaps a year or two more, if you judge by her face.  But if
+you take her expression into account--these women who do things always
+look as if they 'd had an experience of life that in former days they
+could n't acquire under forty.  Well, you might split the difference
+and say she 's thirty."
+
+"I don't think so.  I 'd guess her under twenty-five.  And she probably
+won't look a day older than she does now for the next fifteen years."
+
+"I don't know about that, Adams.  If she's a school-teacher she 'll get
+more or less sharp-featured or anxious-faced and have wrinkles and
+crow's-feet.  And those are things that do not aid and abet a woman in
+forgetting her birthdays."
+
+"But she is n't a school-teacher, Wilson.  She has n't got the
+unmistakable school-ma'am look.  I 've been wondering what she is, and
+I don't make it out.  I don't think she 's a doctor, because she has
+n't got the professional cast of countenance, and she 's too carefully
+dressed."
+
+Wilson laughed and turned a bantering eye upon his companion.  "You
+must be getting interested, Adams!  Is it a case of love at first
+sight?"
+
+"No, you know I 'm not given to that sort of thing.  But I don't read
+much on the cars, on account of my eyes, and while you 've been reading
+I 've spent the time looking at the passengers.  And I found that girl
+and her roses by far the most pleasing items in the car."
+
+"But she is n't beautiful," Wilson objected.  "Her face is not pretty,
+and she 's inclined to be raw-boned."
+
+"Yes, I 'll admit her features are irregular, and there 's fault to be
+found with each one.  But that does n't matter.  No woman with that
+live, creamy skin, that clear red in her cheeks, and that intelligent
+expression, could be any less than handsome.  And she fairly glows with
+health and vitality.  She has made me just curious enough about her
+vocation to want to know what it is, and if she stays on the train long
+enough to make an opening possible I intend to try to find out."
+
+"Well," said Wilson, yawning, "you 're fortunate to be able to get up
+so much interest in your fellow-passengers.  It is n't once in a dozen
+journeys that I find anybody on a railroad train who does n't strike me
+as being an entirely superfluous person."
+
+"Oh, well," responded Adams good-naturedly, "you must remember that you
+are ten years older than I am, and that you are married and settled
+down, while I 'm not."
+
+"It would be better for you if you were."
+
+"Yes, I know you are always preaching at me the advantages of double
+blessedness.  But I 'm not going to marry until I can't help it.  When
+the girl comes along who can make me forget everything in the world but
+herself, I 'll marry her, if she 'll have me."
+
+"Which she probably won't, as things generally turn out in this world,"
+the other rejoined, smiling.
+
+In the meantime Dr. Black was dipping here and there into the pages of
+her book, which had proved to be Mallock's "Human Document," more
+interested in its speculations concerning human nature and human
+nature's twin problems of life and love than in its slender thread of
+story.  Gradually her interludes of meditation grew longer and more
+frequent, until the book closed in her lap and she looked dreamily out
+of the window, her thoughts busy with herself, her past, and her future.
+
+Should she ever marry?  She thought it rather unlikely, but she had no
+definite intentions on either side of the question.  She smiled as her
+thoughts travelled back to her first engagement, in her high-school
+days.  She admitted to herself that she had been rather a gay lassie
+then, and had thought more about the boys than about her studies.  She
+remembered, too, that she had been very popular among those same boys,
+and that that very popularity had doomed the engagement to a brief but
+exciting existence.
+
+Then she recalled how she had passed, soon after this episode, under
+the influence of an enthusiastic teacher who had wakened her ambitions
+and led her to decide that she must make of herself something out of
+the usual and go out into the world and take part in its work.  Then
+succeeded a period of such close application to her books that her
+parents and friends became alarmed lest she should injure herself.  She
+ceased to smile upon her youthful admirers and treated them so curtly
+or talked to them so toploftily that she got the reputation of having
+become a man-hater.
+
+"And I was n't anything of the sort," she said to herself, smiling and
+smelling her roses.  "I simply did n't like that kind of young men any
+more.  They bored me to death."
+
+About that time, she remembered, she began to be much more interested
+in older men, men of more knowledge and achievement, and that they also
+began to show a liking for her.  The teachers in the high school seemed
+to find it interesting to talk with her.  The district attorney, who
+was their next door neighbor, seemed just as well satisfied, when he
+strolled across the lawns for a chat with her father, if he found
+Elizabeth alone on the veranda.  The family physician encouraged the
+scientific trend of her reading, loaned her books by Maudsley and
+Darwin and Havelock Ellis, and often dropped in to talk with her about
+her studies, her reading, and her plans.  He applauded and encouraged
+her first tentative notion that she would like to study medicine, and
+it was his arguments and influence that overcame her mother's
+objections and persuaded her father that it would be worth while to
+spend upon her medical education the money it would demand.  And,
+finally, came the doctor's wife, asking to see her alone.
+
+"I am sure you do not realize what you are doing," the doctor's wife
+said, "and so I want to put it frankly before you, as one woman to
+another.  The truth is, my husband is falling in love with you; he is
+fascinated by you.  And I want to ask you to save him from himself, and
+me from no end of heartache and misery, I 'm fond of you, Elizabeth,
+you know that, and I 'm proud of your abilities, and I want you to have
+a great success, but I don't want you to trample down my happiness on
+your way.  He and I have always been happy together until now; and it
+all rests with you, Elizabeth,--as a woman you know that--whether we
+keep our happiness and content with each other or go straight on into
+such disaster and wretchedness as you cannot imagine.  And so I 've put
+my pride in my pocket--it was no small thing to do, my girl,--and have
+come to ask you not to take my husband's love away from me."
+
+As Elizabeth looked back to that time she owned to herself that, deeply
+moved as she had been by the appeal of the doctor's wife, her feelings
+had not all been of the same sort.  In the depths of her soul there had
+been no little pride and exultation that the doctor was being chained
+to her chariot wheels, and she remembered quite distinctly that she had
+had a strong desire to keep him there.  She herself had felt for him
+nothing more than cordial friendship and gratitude; but, nevertheless,
+there had been mingled with generous compassion some resentment against
+the wife, whose appeal she could not disregard.
+
+Two years after that episode, while at home on her summer vacation, she
+met a lawyer, a man of high position, wide intellectual sympathies, and
+much culture, who promptly fell in love with her and proposed marriage.
+He interested her deeply and exercised over her a greater fascination
+than any man she had met before, and she gave her promise to be his
+wife, without thought as to its effect upon her future.  But when she
+began to prepare for her return to the medical college he interposed an
+amazed veto.  If she was to be his wife she must give up all
+expectation of a career separate from their home.  She wavered and
+hesitated for two days, and then packed her trunk and returned to her
+studies.  Thinking of him, as she gazed at the picturesque, wooded
+hills and valleys of Pennsylvania, she did not regret her action.  She
+had never regretted it, she said to herself, but, nevertheless, she was
+sorry, she had always felt a distinct sense of loss, that he had passed
+out of her life.
+
+Since then, the straight road to her medical degree and through her
+subsequent labors had been undisturbed by emotional storms.  Twice she
+had refused offers of marriage, but they had come from men for whom she
+felt no more than the merest passing friendship.  She had worked hard,
+and the farther she had progressed the more pleasure she had taken in
+her work and the more absorbed she had become in her prospects and
+ambitions.  Looking into the future, for which she had planned and
+toward which she was working with all her powers, she said calmly to
+herself that it was more attractive to her than any other.  And yet,
+would she be tempted to give up her ambitions and hopes of achievement
+if, for instance, she were to meet a man as well endowed in mind and
+heart as the hero of the book she had just been reading,--with such
+fineness of fibre and such power of loving?  She would not face the
+question squarely, but told herself that she was not at all likely to
+meet such a paragon.
+
+"And, at any rate," she thought, as she was roused from her reverie by
+the cry of "Dinner now ready in the dining-car," "of one thing I am
+very sure, and that is that I shall never marry until I meet a man
+strong enough in himself and in his love for me to make me forget
+everything else and not care whether or not I go on with my profession."
+
+The dining-car was so full that she was about to turn back, when the
+waiter beckoned her to a table at which the two forward seats were
+unoccupied.  She took one with some hesitation and turned her face
+toward the window.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said a voice from the other side of the table,
+"but if you find it disagreeable to ride backward won't you take my
+seat?  I do not mind it in the least."
+
+She turned with a smiling and grateful refusal upon her tongue, saw
+that her two neighbors across the table were the men from the section
+in front of hers, and hesitated.  The other man quickly added his plea
+to his companion's, and in a few moments they had changed seats.  The
+one who had first spoken asked if her friends in Philadelphia got
+safely off the car, and presently all three were chatting pleasantly
+together.
+
+When Elizabeth returned to the Pullman the one who had proposed
+exchanging seats, and whom his friend called Adams, brought her some
+evening papers.  She thanked him, and, seeing that he did not at once
+turn away, asked him to sit down.  They talked about the news in the
+papers, laughed over stories which one or the other told, branched off
+upon books, and were pleased to find that they had some favorites in
+common.  They spoke of the scenery through which they had passed during
+the day and of the brilliant sunset into which the train seemed to be
+plunging, and he told her of the gorgeous sunset panoramas of the Rocky
+Mountains and of striking effects he had seen among the snow-clad peaks
+of the Sierras.  He related adventures into which his profession, that
+of mining engineer, had taken him; and Elizabeth listened with
+interest, asked questions, made comments, and talked entertainingly,
+but said nothing of her own walk in life.  When finally he said
+good-night and went to rejoin his companion in the smoker, the evening
+was so far gone that the busy porter had transformed the car into a
+lane of tapestry.
+
+As Elizabeth lay in her berth, musing pleasantly over the events of the
+evening, it occurred to her that Mr. Adams had left a number of
+openings into which it would have been easy for her to step with some
+remark about herself or her work, which would have revealed her
+vocation.  She had not done so merely because something else which she
+wanted to say had happened, each time, to come into her mind.  Thinking
+it over, she remembered so many such openings that it seemed as if they
+must have been made with intent.  She wondered if he had been trying to
+find out her occupation, and smiled gleefully.
+
+"If that's what he wants to know," she thought, "I 'll give him an
+interesting time to-morrow trying to find out.  I wonder if he and his
+friend have made a wager about what my profession is.  Very likely.
+Well, he 's a good talker and interesting enough to help pass the time;
+and if he wants to try again to-morrow, I 'll be at home in this
+section until we reach Chicago."
+
+The next morning, with the excuse of some trivial attention to her
+comfort, Adams came again to Elizabeth's seat and they were soon
+talking as interestedly as on the previous evening.  A piece of news in
+the morning paper gave him opportunity to turn the conversation upon
+the profession of teaching for women and he talked of the noble work
+for the public good which women do in that way.  Elizabeth listened
+with a little gleam in the corner of her eye, agreed with him warmly
+and spoke with enthusiasm of her own indebtedness to some of those
+under whom she had studied.
+
+Then Adams dwelt on the widening opportunities for work and
+self-expression which women have nowadays, and said he thought that the
+profession of medicine was one for which women were well fitted, and
+that he was not surprised that so many women found in it congenial work
+and marked success.  With some effort Elizabeth kept her face very
+serious and doubted if the profession was one for which any but the
+most exceptional women were suited, and, on the whole, was inclined to
+think that if she were very ill she would rather call a man than a
+woman physician.  He led the talk on to other occupations in which
+women engage, and some Elizabeth praised and others deprecated as
+vocations for her sex.  But not once did she give any indication that
+they had touched upon her own kind of work.  Adams looked puzzled and
+Elizabeth concealed behind her handkerchief a smile which she was not
+able to repress.
+
+"I wonder what it can be," he thought.  "She surely does something.
+The expression of her face, her intelligence, and her interest in all
+kinds of things tell that very plainly.  I wish Chicago were not so
+near.  She 's an extremely interesting woman."
+
+"I suppose I shall soon have to bid you good-bye," he said, as they
+neared the station in Chicago.  "I have enjoyed our brief acquaintance
+very much, and if I can be of any assistance to you in Chicago I shall
+be glad to do so.  I am going farther west, to California, on the Santa
+Fé line, but as my train does not leave at once I shall have some time
+to spare."
+
+"Why, what a jolly coincidence!" Elizabeth exclaimed.  "I also am going
+to California on the Santa Fé line!"
+
+"Indeed!  Then I am more fortunate than I expected to be!"  His
+pleasure shone in his brightening face.  "My friend, Mr. Wilson, stops
+in Chicago and I have been rather dreading the boredom of the rest of
+the trip.  I don't read much on the cars, as I have to be careful of my
+eyes, and the time is apt to hang heavily on my hands.  I have enjoyed
+our talks so much that I shall be very grateful if you will let me pay
+you an occasional visit during the rest of the journey."
+
+Elizabeth cast him a sidewise glance and smile.  "I think the passing
+acquaintances one makes now and then and the brief friendships with
+people who merely cross one's path are among the most delightful of the
+small things of life.  It often happens that they are more pleasant,
+for the time, than the old friendships that have lasted so long they
+have become commonplace."
+
+"For my part," he answered, "I don't think a friendship is worth
+continuing after it has become commonplace.  I think I 'd like to be
+arbiter of manners and customs long enough to make it quite the proper
+thing to march up to any one whose appearance you like and say, 'How do
+you do?  Your face interests me and I 'd like to know you.  Here 's my
+card.'"
+
+"Oh, if you 'll do that," smiled Elizabeth, "I 'll do my best to help
+make you dictator!  I've so often wished to do that very thing!  But of
+course you don't dare.  And yet you see such interesting faces,
+sometimes, faces of people you know you would like.  Sometimes a face
+of that sort haunts me long afterward, and I almost wish I had had the
+courage to speak."
+
+"I am glad you understand," Adams replied with a little embarrassed
+laugh, "because now I can confess that that very desire took possession
+of me when I saw you come into the car yesterday."
+
+Elizabeth bent a demure glance upon his feet.  "Shall I be very
+gracious and make a reciprocal confession, or shall I be entirely
+truthful and admit that I scarcely saw you yesterday until you offered
+me your seat in the dining-car?"
+
+The next day, as the train swept through the emerald levels of Iowa,
+Adams spent most of the time at Elizabeth's side and they talked
+together with constant interest and satisfaction, each feeling a
+growing pleasure in the other's society, and an increasing sense of
+consequence in whatever the other said.  When Elizabeth withdrew that
+night behind the curtains of her berth she was possessed by such a
+feeling of elation as she had not felt in a long time.  A smile was on
+her lips, and a smile was in her heart.  Her pulse beat fast, her brain
+was active, she could not sleep.  Her mind was full of the happenings
+and the conversation of the last two days, and all that he had said to
+her she went over again with vivid remembrance of the least details of
+look and gesture.  And in the background of her consciousness a
+triumphant refrain was keeping time with her thoughts.  "He loves me,"
+it chanted, "already he loves me, more than he knows."
+
+In the smoking-room Adams was making up for the cigars he had denied
+himself during the day.  He moved about restlessly, possessed by an
+intense desire to get out of doors and walk fast and far.  His mind was
+filled by a galloping troop of vivid memories--a pair of bright,
+dark-lashed gray eyes, the sound of a low, clear laugh, the turn of a
+rosy cheek, an opinion which had interested him, a pretty thought, a
+way she had of smiling appealingly after she had said something
+whimsical or perverse.  And underlying and overlying and penetrating
+through all these was an irritated consciousness of the fact that it
+would be a long time until the next day.
+
+Dr. Black looked out the next morning on the wide, forlorn plains of
+western Kansas, with her heart as flooded with happiness as they were
+with sunshine.  A luxurious sense of power throbbed in her veins as she
+smiled a good-morning to Adams across the aisle.  He came at once to
+ask how she had slept, and if she was beginning to feel the journey
+wearisome.  Close upon the heels of her thrilling sense of gladness and
+mastery came the feminine instinct of concealment, and presently Adams
+began to notice in her manner a suggestion of reserve.  There was
+certainly a difference, he said to himself, a little lessening of the
+frank comradeship she had shown toward him the day before.  He wondered
+if he bored her, if he had shown too much desire for her society.  He
+went away to the smoking car, where he fidgeted about, began a cigar,
+threw it out of the window, and in ten minutes was back again with a
+book he had fished out of his travelling-bag, asking if Miss Black had
+read it and, if not,--would she like to take it for a while?
+
+It was Lubbock's "Pleasures of Life."  No, Elizabeth had not read it,
+but she had read Lubbock's book on ants, bees, and wasps, and she began
+to tell him about it, forgetting in the pleasure of companionship the
+consciousness which a little while before had veiled her manner.  He
+followed with some stories about the tarantula and tarantula hawk which
+he had seen while on a professional trip in the Southwest.  And so they
+wandered on, through talk about insects and animals, back to the book
+which lay on Elizabeth's lap.  He took it up and read to her a page
+here and there, and soon they were talking earnestly about the varied
+ideals that are possible to the young and ambitious.
+
+Adams had not tried again, since their second conversation, to find out
+her vocation.  His pleasure in her society had driven all thought of it
+from his mind.  He had even forgotten that he had ever supposed her to
+have a profession.  Elizabeth had said nothing about her work, at first
+from whimsical perversity.  But this morning, as they talked, a
+definite desire crept into her mind that he should not know.
+
+"I shall not tell him I am a physician," she thought.  "It's not much
+longer, and for this little while I want to be just a mere woman."
+
+And for the rest of that day it was only at rare intervals, and even
+then with a little shock of surprise, like that with which one suddenly
+comes upon some old picture of himself, that she remembered she was a
+doctor of medicine.  The physician was submerged in the woman.  And the
+woman was alive to her finger-tips with realization of her endowment of
+the "eternal feminine."
+
+Adams slept little that night, but lay with his head on his interlocked
+hands, staring out of his window at the fleeting shadows of the summer
+night, thinking of Elizabeth, remembering what Elizabeth had said
+during the day, seeing Elizabeth's face and eyes and the bit of white
+throat that showed above her collar, hearing Elizabeth's voice, and
+longing to touch, with even a finger-tip, the sweep of soft brown hair
+that rippled away from her neck.  It seemed to him that morning would
+never come.  He looked at his watch a score of times, and, finally,
+rose at the first flush of dawn.
+
+For a while he moved restlessly back and forth between his section and
+the smoking-room, like an uneasy ghost of murdered sleep.  But at last
+it occurred to him that he ought to stay out until Miss Black was ready
+for breakfast, lest he might embarrass her by being near when she
+should emerge from behind her curtains in morning dishabille.  So he
+retired to the smoker, gave the porter a goodly fee to tell him when
+the lady in Number 8 arose, and sat down resolutely at the window with
+his elbows on the sill and his chin in his hands.  He sat there
+determinedly, not allowing himself even to turn around, through what
+seemed hours and hours of time.  Now and then he dozed a little, and
+awoke with a start, dreaming he had heard her voice beside him or had
+felt the ripple of her dress against his hand.
+
+When at last the porter brought the welcome news, he went back to his
+seat and waited for Elizabeth to reappear from the dressing-room.  It
+seemed to him that it must be near noon, although it was only eight
+o'clock, when finally he saw her coming down the aisle.  He quickly
+bent his head over some memoranda with which he had been trying to
+occupy himself, and pretended to be writing very busily as she moved
+toward her section.  But afterwards, when he looked at the paper he
+found on it only some meaningless scrawls.  Elizabeth's color deepened
+as she saw him and a dark crimson wave swept to his brow as he felt her
+draw near.
+
+That day Adams rarely left her side.  In his tones, his looks, his
+manner, she was able to read his love as plainly as if it had been put
+into words.  "And of course," she thought, with an inward smile, "he
+thinks he is concealing it all from me, and he would be surprised to
+find that I know anything about it."
+
+Her own heart throbbed in response so exultantly and so gladly that it
+carried her feeling beyond the doors of expression and transformed it
+into irradiating feminine charm.  It sparkled in her eyes, gave a new
+winsomeness to her smile, a softer grace to her movements, and a
+penetrating sweetness to her voice.
+
+Once, when Adams had gone to fetch her a glass of water, she leaned her
+head upon her hand for a moment and was conscious of a little nervous
+catch in her breath.  Something he had just said brought back to her
+mind a memory of the lawyer to whom she had been engaged and of whom
+she had been thinking--was it only three days ago?  It seemed as if she
+had lived through many months since then.  "If I had felt like this
+toward him," she thought, "I would not have gone back to college."
+
+Adams gave her the water with adoration in his eyes.  For an instant
+her glance met his and then quickly dropped.  He leaned forward with a
+sudden start and barely checked the words of love that were ready to
+rush from his tongue.  Then he left her for a little while and walked
+about restlessly for the few paces that were possible in the end of the
+car.
+
+He must keep a closer watch on himself, he mused.  What would she think
+of him if he dared to speak to her of love after a three days'
+acquaintance?  By the merest scratch he had kept himself from clamoring
+"I love you!  I love you!" in her ear.  And justly she might have
+considered it an insult.  What was he to her but a mere car
+acquaintance?  True, she had seemed to find his company pleasant and
+congenial, and perhaps she would allow him to go to see her at her
+home.  And then, after he had made himself known to her father and
+mother and allowed them to find out who and what he was--then, he would
+bring his fate to the test.
+
+He went back with a tighter curb upon himself and a determination to
+guard his tongue more closely.  Elizabeth felt at once the slight
+change in his demeanor.  But she did not stop to reason about it or to
+question herself as to its cause.  Conscious only of an instinctive,
+imperious desire for him to be again just as he had been before, she
+leaned toward him with a jesting remark, and the slow turn of her head,
+the witchery of her smile, the way her eyes flashed and dropped,
+strained his new resolution almost to the breaking-point.  He leaned
+back in the seat with his arms rigid and his fists clenched until she,
+noticing the tense muscles of his hand, laughingly told him he would
+have nervous prostration if he did not learn to relax his nerves.
+
+Presently the train switched and stopped at a small station, and Adams
+learned from the conductor that they would wait there, perhaps fifteen
+or twenty minutes, for an east-bound train to pass.  Most of the
+passengers got out to walk up and down while they were waiting, and
+when Adams and Elizabeth saw, across the road, beside a restaurant, a
+little vine-covered arbor in which were tables and chairs, they decided
+that it looked inviting, and went in to see if they could get some
+lemonade.  It was quite deserted and after a few minutes Adams went out
+to see if he could find a waiter.
+
+When he returned, Elizabeth, sitting with her face toward the door,
+looked up with a welcoming smile, their eyes met, and hers did not
+drop.  He rushed toward her, his face shining with love.  Scarcely
+knowing what she did, she sprang to her feet, all her consciousness
+engrossed in the thrilling prescience that in another instant she would
+sink into his arms.  But at her very side, as he seized her hand, he
+stopped with a perceptible rigor of muscles and expression.  His
+resolution of an hour before had flashed into his mind and he had
+pulled himself together with a mighty effort.
+
+A little tremor passed through Elizabeth's body and she drew back a
+little as he dropped her hand.  "Oh, look!  The train is going!" she
+exclaimed, and rushed for the door.
+
+They ran at top speed across the road, he lifted her bodily to the
+front steps of the last car, and swung himself upon the rear platform.
+They gained their seats, flushed and panting, and the conductor, coming
+to see if they had got on without injury, explained that the east-bound
+train was late and he had been ordered to go on to the next siding and
+wait there.  He lingered for a few minutes, chatting with them and
+denying their charge that he had not rung the bell.  After he was gone,
+Adams turned to Elizabeth with a paling face and said:
+
+"I hope you will pardon me, Miss Black.  I can only throw myself on
+your mercy.  My only excuse is that I--"
+
+She stopped him with a gesture.  "Don't speak of it," she said, in a
+low tone, her eyes on the floor, "and don't think of it again.  In such
+an unusual friendship as ours, unusual incidents must be--"
+
+A thumping jar broke her speech and a sudden stop threw them both
+violently forward against the other seat.
+
+"Are you hurt?" Adams asked anxiously as they scrambled to their feet.
+"There must have been an accident," he went on, putting his head out of
+the window.  He drew it back quickly, his face white.  "Don't look," he
+exclaimed.  "There's been a collision!  It's horrible!  But don't be
+alarmed.  There 's no more danger now.  I 'll go out and see just what
+has happened."
+
+"Wait a minute, please!  Perhaps you can help me," Elizabeth exclaimed,
+reaching for her suit case.  "I'll be needed, and I 'll want help."
+She was hurriedly opening the case and taking out articles and
+packages.  With face intent and manner preoccupied she appeared a
+different person.  The woman had sunk out of sight and the physician
+was uppermost.
+
+Adams looked on with an amazed face.  "Then you are a physician!" he
+exclaimed.  "I did not know--"
+
+She nodded, without looking up, absorbed in a search for something.
+"That package of bandages," she murmured.  "Oh, here it is.  Yes, I 'm
+a physician, and I 've had practice in surgery.  Come, let's get out
+there at once.  If you will carry these packages I 'll take my surgical
+case and my medicine bag.  I 'm so glad I put all these things in my
+suit case."
+
+It had been a head-on collision between the two trains.  In some way,
+nobody knew how, there had been a misunderstanding of orders, and the
+east-bound train, instead of waiting at the next switch, had come on
+toward the usual passing place.  In the shock of meeting, its engine
+had reared and ploughed its way over the other and the two monsters lay
+upon the ground, a mass of twisted scraps of iron.  One engineer had
+stuck to his post, the other had jumped, as had both the firemen.  One
+was dead, the other three all severely injured.  Among the train crews
+and the passengers of the day coaches there were a number of broken
+limbs and many severe cuts, bruises, and shocks.
+
+From the east-bound train another physician appeared, and he and
+Elizabeth worked over the injured, sometimes together, sometimes
+separately.  Adams was constantly beside her, ready to carry out her
+directions.  He brought water, held bandages, helped her to put them
+on, handed instruments, and kept her belongings close at hand.  She had
+cast aside her hat and rolled her sleeves above her elbows, and as she
+bent a flushed, perspiring, and absorbed face above her work, forgetful
+alike of her own and of his personality, she seemed so utterly unlike
+the woman he had known for the last three days that a feeling of
+bewilderment and estrangement began to creep over him.  Once she
+complimented him upon his watchfulness and dexterity, and the smile
+with which she did it set his heart to throbbing again and bridged what
+had seemed like a chasm between the two Elizabeths.
+
+He watched her long, slender, strong hands as she deftly and rapidly
+manipulated the bandages, felt for a broken bone, or used her
+instruments, and a great, awed wonder, the homage of intelligence to
+skilled capacity, mingled with the adoration that filled his soul.
+
+He began to torture himself with doubts and questions.  Could such a
+woman care for him?  What was there about him that could appeal to so
+rare a prize?  What had he to offer in character, or personality, or
+achievement, or promise?  And the more he doubted the more intense
+became his desire to know.
+
+Elizabeth rose from her knees beside a man whose crushed foot she had
+been bandaging.  "Is there anybody else?" she said to Adams.  Her hands
+and arms were smeared with blood stains, and upon her dress there were
+smirches of earth and blood.  But Adams saw only that the red sunset
+rays gilded her brown hair into a halo.
+
+"No," he answered, "I think not.  The last bruise has been cared for
+and the last hysterical woman has quit crying.  Now you must rest and
+refresh yourself and have some dinner.  An engine is coming from the
+west to take the cars of the east-bound train back to the next station
+and all the passengers who wish can go there; and to-night another
+train will continue on their way those for California.  It will be here
+before long, but perhaps it will be possible to get something to eat
+first."
+
+They started toward their car and met the other physician.  "Will you
+do me the honor of exchanging cards with me?" he said to Elizabeth.
+"You have shown yourself so competent here this afternoon, and your
+work has been so skilfully done that I want to compliment you upon it,
+and to say that I am sure you have before you a promising future."
+
+Dr. Black's face flushed and her eyes sparkled with pleasure, as she
+read on the card the name of a famous surgeon.  "You are very kind,"
+she replied, "and I thank you heartily.  Praise from one of your skill
+and standing is more worth having than anything else I can think of."
+
+Her words carried fresh doubt and despair to Adams's heart.  "It can't
+be possible," he thought, "that such a woman would care, could care,
+for me and my love.  And yet, I must know, I must know before this day
+ends."
+
+They returned to their car and found it deserted.  Adams waited while
+Elizabeth went to the dressing-room to remove the stains of her
+afternoon's work.
+
+"It can't be possible," he kept saying to himself, "but I must know--I
+must know, at once."
+
+With a great effort he forced himself into an appearance of composure.
+He feared that he might startle and offend her if he gave expression to
+the ardors that throbbed in his heart and brain.  "She must be tired
+and nervous," he thought, "and I will try to speak and act calmly.
+
+"You would not let me finish my apology a few hours ago," he began, as
+soon as she returned, "but now you must listen to the only excuse I
+have for my fault--if it was a fault.  The only thing I can say for
+myself is that I love you--love you so much that I almost forgot
+myself.  I love you more than I had thought it would be possible to
+love any woman--and back there, in the summer-house, when I went in and
+saw you sitting there, my love broke from my control and swept over me
+like a flood, and for a moment I scarcely knew what I did--I forgot
+myself and the respect which was your due.  But it was all because I
+love you so, and want you for my wife, my mate, more than I want
+anything else in the world.  I know, we 've only known each other for
+three days, but I had to speak to you, now, at once.  And if you care
+enough for me even to think about it, I won't ask for anything more
+until you 've had time, you and your family, to know me better and find
+out who and what I am."
+
+Elizabeth listened with her gaze on her lap.  She was conscious of a
+feeling of resentment, that increased as he went on, because he could
+speak so calmly and composedly.  It showed in her eyes as she lifted
+them to his face, but quickly changed to compassion as she saw there
+such suspense and longing as smote her heart with pain.
+
+"You do not need to speak," he said, and she saw his countenance wince
+and change.  "I have read my answer in your eyes."  He rose as if to go.
+
+"Wait a moment," she said hastily.  "It is right that you should know
+how much I also cared until--" she broke off, hesitating, and then went
+on, slowly and thoughtfully, with a puzzled air, as though she herself
+did not quite understand.  "When you came back to me, in that little
+summer-house, and I looked into your eyes, my heart told me that you
+were going to seize me in your arms; and I knew that if you did I was
+ready to sink into your embrace and to give up everything for your
+sake.  For you had swept me clean off my feet and had made me not care
+for my career, or for anything but you.  But when you did n't--believe
+me, I don't know how or why it was--somehow the shock of your not doing
+it, when I was so ready to give my love--well, the tide seemed to turn
+then and go back.  And now--I 'm on my feet again, and care
+tremendously about my profession and my career."
+
+He looked at her blankly, and as his lips twitched and moved she barely
+heard, "And I did n't--I barely kept myself from doing it, because it
+seemed unworthy--"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and interrupted him, in a tone as low as
+his.  "We who are strong can be taken only by a strength that is
+greater than ours."
+
+"Good-bye," he said, rising.  "Either my love was not quite great
+enough, or my strength was too great.  I will send the porter to carry
+your bags and help you to find your section in the other train.  I
+shall stay here until to-morrow.  Good-bye."
+
+His voice was very tender as he spoke the last word.  She held out her
+hand, and he touched it with his lips.  She pressed both hands upon her
+heart, which seemed bursting with cross-currents of feeling and desire.
+He was halfway down the aisle when she sprang to her feet and called to
+him to stop, to come back.  He turned and saw her slowly take a step or
+two toward him.  The intent gaze which he bent upon her wavered for an
+instant, and then she saw his lips grow tense and white.
+
+"No," he said deliberately, "I shall not come back.  I do not want a
+wife who would bring to me any less than the greatest love of which she
+is capable.  Good-bye, Dr. Black."
+
+He was gone, and Elizabeth, sinking back into her seat, saw him walk
+away into the hills.  The tears gathered in her eyes.  She watched him
+as his figure disappeared among the twilight shadows.
+
+"I wonder if it would have been different--it might have been
+different," she was thinking, "if he--he had been--as he was this
+afternoon."  She mused a little longer and then her face brightened as
+she rose with a triumphant lifting of her head and a half-smile on her
+face.  "And anyway," she said aloud, "he has my address!"
+
+
+
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