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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
+
+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: Red Men and White
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Illustrator: Frederic Remington
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2009 [EBook #28675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED MEN AND WHITE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ RED MEN AND WHITE
+
+ BY
+
+ OWEN WISTER
+
+ ILLUSTRATED
+
+ BY FREDERIC REMINGTON
+
+ NEW YORK AND LONDON
+ HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+ Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+ _Printed in the United States of America._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SPECIMEN JONES (Page 36)]
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+
+ S. B. W. AND O. J. W.
+
+ FROM THEIR SON
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in a
+past as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; so
+swiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of life
+and manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here and
+there a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separate
+parts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weight
+of length; and they have been received by my closest friends with
+suspicion.
+
+Many sorts of Americans live in America; and the Atlantic American, it
+is to be feared, often has a cautious and conventional imagination. In
+his routine he has lived unaware of the violent and romantic era in
+eruption upon his soil. Only the elk-hunter has at times returned with
+tales at which the other Atlantic Americans have deported themselves
+politely; and similarly, but for the assurances of Western readers, I
+should have come to doubt the truth of my own impressions. All this is
+most natural.
+
+If you will look upon the term "United States" as describing what we
+are, you must put upon it a strict and Federal construction. We
+undoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office,
+and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should stand
+bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. But
+as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in
+its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.
+Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled
+together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the
+boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their
+processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our
+wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States
+date our letters 18--, and speak of ourselves as living in the present
+era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be
+writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of
+this nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving among
+us. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennessee
+mountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father to
+son? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even before
+the day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.
+This sprout of the Middle Ages flourishes fresh and green some five
+hundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single State
+of Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not long
+ago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people to
+see, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness this
+scene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroad
+ran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might that
+audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno
+Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous
+crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such
+monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for
+American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a
+holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,
+unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women
+who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from using
+such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will
+say, instead, _male cow_ and _caviard horse_ (a term spelled as they
+pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this
+lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far to
+spread.
+
+It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remote
+centuries that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enough
+to show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States and
+Territories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? I
+know that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belong
+among the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in all
+the others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of making
+my country's acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gather
+conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at
+heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always
+ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,
+knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet
+undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that
+general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that
+seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether
+branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and
+oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,
+"There's too much politics in this country"; and we shake hands.
+
+But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.
+They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.
+They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you will
+find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take
+my view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,
+are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit of
+Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise and
+fall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook's surprise of E-egante,
+and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they were
+told to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,
+is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call
+upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit
+these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such
+realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which
+it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless
+hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri
+who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories
+entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+ LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE                                3
+
+ SPECIMEN JONES                                         36
+
+ THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU                               64
+
+ THE GENERAL'S BLUFF                                    82
+
+ SALVATION GAP                                         115
+
+ THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE                        131
+
+ LA TINAJA BONITA                                      159
+
+ A PILGRIM ON THE GILA                                 211
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ SPECIMEN JONES                             _Frontispiece_
+
+ "BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION"              _Facing page_ 6
+
+ "HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE
+ OF THE MEDICINE-MAN"                            "      14
+
+ "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"                     "      34
+
+ AN APACHE                                       "      38
+
+ CUMNOR'S AWAKENING                              "      52
+
+ THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON                       "      58
+
+ "'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'"            "      90
+
+ THE CHARGE                                      "     102
+
+ "HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN"                "     112
+
+ THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER                          "     122
+
+ "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"                    "     128
+
+ "HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET"           "     148
+
+ "'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN
+ JONES"                                          "     156
+
+ "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY.
+ YOU'RE ALONE'"                                  "     204
+
+ "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"               "     238
+
+
+
+
+RED MEN AND WHITE
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE
+
+
+Something new was happening among the Crow Indians. A young pretender
+had appeared in the tribe. What this might lead to was unknown alike to
+white man and to red; but the old Crow chiefs discussed it in their
+councils, and the soldiers at Fort Custer, and the civilians at the
+agency twelve miles up the river, and all the white settlers in the
+valley discussed it also. Lieutenants Stirling and Haines, of the First
+Cavalry, were speculating upon it as they rode one afternoon.
+
+"Can't tell about Indians," said Stirling. "But I think the Crows are
+too reasonable to go on the war-path."
+
+"Reasonable!" said Haines. He was young, and new to Indians.
+
+"Just so. Until you come to his superstitions, the Indian can reason as
+straight as you or I. He's perfectly logical."
+
+"Logical!" echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that
+the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.
+
+"You'd know better," remarked Stirling, "if you'd been fighting 'em for
+fifteen years. They're as shrewd as Æsop's fables."
+
+Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff--one old and shabby, the
+other young and very gaudy--riding side by side.
+
+"That's Cheschapah," said Stirling. "That's the agitator in all his
+feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively."
+
+The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the
+two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too
+close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.
+
+"Nice manners," commented Haines. "Seems to have a chip on his
+shoulder."
+
+But Stirling looked thoughtful. "Yes," he muttered, "he has a chip."
+
+Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad,
+and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. "How!" he said,
+pleasantly, and ambled on his way.
+
+"Now there you have an object-lesson," said Stirling. "Old Pounded Meat
+has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run
+the Crow Nation?"
+
+"Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?" inquired Haines.
+
+"I didn't notice it. For his supper, probably--probably he's getting up
+a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and
+can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no
+stock in him--not yet. They've seen soda-water before. But I'm told this
+water-boiling astonishes the young."
+
+"You say the old chiefs take no stock in him _yet_?"
+
+"Ah, that's the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason."
+
+"And I was amused."
+
+"Because you're an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn't my
+business to shoot Indians I'd study them."
+
+"You're a crank," said Haines.
+
+But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere
+animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his
+primal brain--nearer nature than our own--the directness of a child
+mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of
+light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this;
+but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah
+would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would
+strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that
+the white man was more comfortable as a friend than as a foe, that
+rations and gifts of clothes and farming implements were better than
+battles and prisons. Once their superstition was set alight, these three
+thousand Crows might suddenly follow Cheschapah to burn and kill and
+destroy.
+
+"How does he manage his soda-water, do you suppose?" inquired Haines.
+
+"That's mysterious. He has never been known to buy drugs, and he's
+careful where he does his trick. He's still a little afraid of his
+father. All Indians are. It's queer where he was going with that dog."
+
+Hard galloping sounded behind them, and a courier from the Indian agency
+overtook and passed them, hurrying to Fort Custer. The officers hurried
+too, and, arriving, received news and orders. Forty Sioux were reported
+up the river coming to visit the Crows. It was peaceable, but untimely.
+The Sioux agent over at Pine Ridge had given these forty permission to
+go, without first finding out if it would be convenient to the Crow
+agent to have them come. It is a rule of the Indian Bureau that if one
+tribe desire to visit another, the agents of both must consent. Now,
+most of the Crows were farming and quiet, and it was not wise that a
+visit from the Sioux and a season of feasting should tempt their hearts
+and minds away from the tilling of the soil. The visitors must be taken
+charge of and sent home.
+
+"Very awkward, though," said Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to
+take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. "The
+Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how
+like the way we manage Indian affairs!" And so they started.
+
+Thirty miles away, by a stream towards which Stirling with his command
+was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered.
+There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth.
+Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young
+Cheschapah's talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw
+acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain
+distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness.
+Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their
+eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued
+the older chiefs.
+
+[Illustration: "BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION"]
+
+"And more than that, I, Cheschapah, can do," said he, boasting in
+Indian fashion. "I know how to make the white man's heart soft so
+he cannot fight." He paused for effect, but his hearers seemed
+uninterested. "You have come pretty far to see us," resumed the
+orator, "and I, and my friend Two Whistles, and my father, Pounded
+Meat, have come a day to meet you and bring you to our place. I have
+brought you a fat dog. I say it is good the Crow and the Sioux shall
+be friends. All the Crow chiefs are glad. Pretty Eagle is a big chief,
+and he will tell you what I tell you. But I am bigger than Pretty
+Eagle. I am a medicine-man."
+
+He paused again; but the grim old chiefs were looking at the fire, and
+not at him. He got a friendly glance from his henchman, Two Whistles,
+but he heard his father give a grunt.
+
+That enraged him. "I am a medicine-man," he repeated, defiantly. "I have
+been in the big hole in the mountains where the river goes, and spoken
+there with the old man who makes the thunder. I talked with him as one
+chief to another. I am going to kill all the white men."
+
+At this old Pounded Meat looked at his son angrily, but the son was not
+afraid of his father just then. "I can make medicine to bring the rain,"
+he continued. "I can make water boil when it is cold. With this I can
+strike the white man blind when he is so far that his eyes do not show
+his face."
+
+He swept out from his blanket an old cavalry sabre painted scarlet.
+Young Two Whistles made a movement of awe, but Pounded Meat said, "My
+son's tongue has grown longer than his sword."
+
+Laughter sounded among the old chiefs. Cheschapah turned his impudent
+yet somewhat visionary face upon his father. "What do you know of
+medicine?" said he. "Two sorts of Indians are among the Crows to-day,"
+he continued to the chiefs. "One sort are the fathers, and the sons are
+the other. The young warriors are not afraid of the white man. The old
+plant corn with the squaws. Is this the way with the Sioux?"
+
+"With the Sioux," remarked a grim visitor, "no one fears the white man.
+But the young warriors do not talk much in council."
+
+Pounded Meat put out his hand gently, as if in remonstrance. Other
+people must not chide his son.
+
+"You say you can make water boil with no fire?" pursued the Sioux, who
+was named Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, and had been young once.
+
+Pounded Meat came between. "My son is a good man," said he. "These words
+of his are not made in the heart, but are head words you need not count.
+Cheschapah does not like peace. He has heard us sing our wars and the
+enemies we have killed, and he remembers that he has no deeds, being
+young. When he thinks of this sometimes he talks words without sense.
+But my son is a good man."
+
+The father again extended his hand, which trembled a little. The Sioux
+had listened, looking at him with respect, and forgetful of Cheschapah,
+who now stood before them with a cup of cold water.
+
+"You shall see," he said, "who it is that talks words without sense."
+
+Two Whistles and the young bucks crowded to watch, but the old men sat
+where they were. As Cheschapah stood relishing his audience, Pounded
+Meat stepped up suddenly and upset the cup. He went to the stream and
+refilled it himself. "Now make it boil," said he.
+
+Cheschapah smiled, and as he spread his hand quickly over the cup, the
+water foamed up.
+
+"Huh!" said Two Whistles, startled.
+
+The medicine-man quickly seized his moment. "What does Pounded Meat
+know of my medicine?" said he. "The dog is cooked. Let the dance begin."
+
+The drums set up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and
+less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council.
+Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre
+of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart
+with the empty cup, having words among themselves. The flame reared high
+into the dark, and showed the rock wall towering close, and at its feet
+the light lay red on the streaming water. The young Sioux stripped naked
+of their blankets, hanging them in a screen against the wind from the
+jaws of the cañon, with more constant shouts as the drumming beat
+louder, and strokes of echo fell from the black cliffs. The figures
+twinkled across each other in the glare, drifting and alert, till the
+dog-dance shaped itself into twelve dancers with a united sway of body
+and arms, one and another singing his song against the lifted sound of
+the drums. The twelve sank crouching in simulated hunt for an enemy back
+and forth over the same space, swinging together.
+
+Presently they sprang with a shout upon their feet, for they had taken
+the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began
+a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and
+after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and
+crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were
+ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog
+pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests
+heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as the excited crew filed
+and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting
+uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with
+knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from
+the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The
+dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating
+their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of
+the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.
+
+The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the
+dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go
+to their beds.
+
+"It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends," said Pounded
+Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. "But we want no war with the
+white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now."
+
+"We have not come for war," replied the Sioux. "We have come to eat much
+meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little
+Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers."
+
+Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.
+
+"We shall have war," said the confident son to his father. "My medicine
+is good."
+
+"Peace is also pretty good," said Pounded Meat. "Get new thoughts. My
+son, do you not care any more for my words?"
+
+Cheschapah did not reply.
+
+"I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be.
+The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong."
+
+"They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards."
+
+"Have done," said the father, sternly. "If you are a medicine-man, do
+not talk like a light fool."
+
+The Indian has an "honor thy father" deep in his religion too, and
+Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay
+brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the
+tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane
+into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked,
+and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to
+wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be
+surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he
+sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.
+
+"Go quick, Kinney," he said to the interpreter, "and tell them it's
+peace, or they'll be firing on us."
+
+Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign,
+they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose
+and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long
+explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to
+allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but
+after the firing's done, you must justify it to important personages who
+live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their
+lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.
+
+Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was
+fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without
+obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and
+recognizing him, Stirling understood about the dog. The medicine-man,
+with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners
+as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.
+
+Stirling sent for Kinney. "Send that rascal away," he said. "I'll not
+have him bothering here."
+
+The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he
+had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and
+Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled
+again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his
+business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to
+say that business was always slow in time of peace.
+
+By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there
+was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine
+Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night
+fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah's hour, and
+the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for
+thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy
+preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their
+guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not
+listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the
+agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling
+its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on
+being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of
+the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all.
+Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz
+about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.
+
+"It's an interesting state of affairs," said Stirling to Haines. "There
+are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming.
+We've got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite
+early in your career."
+
+"Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking."
+
+"Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave
+them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice."
+
+The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in
+the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was
+composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them
+rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This
+little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it
+listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in
+English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are
+pungent, and far from complimentary.
+
+"It's got to stop here," said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as
+Reno's Crossing. "They've got to be kept on this side."
+
+"Can it be done without gunpowder?" Haines asked.
+
+"If a shot is fired now, my friend, it's war, and a court of inquiry in
+Washington for you and me, if we're not buried here. Sergeant, you will
+take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with
+me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends."
+
+The fording began, and the two officers went over to the east bank to
+see that the instructions were carried out.
+
+"See that?" observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped
+into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the
+Crows. "Every man jack of them is armed. And here's an interesting
+development," he continued.
+
+It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles.
+The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the
+officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine--the two Indian
+police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of
+the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick
+painted swarm that yelled across the ford.
+
+"Bet you there's a hundred," remarked Haines.
+
+"You forget I never gamble," murmured Stirling. Two of the five long
+boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted;
+and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered
+multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a
+small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear,
+pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came
+tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side
+drew forward a little.
+
+"You tell them," said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, "that
+they must go back."
+
+Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.
+
+"Take them over, then," the officer ordered.
+
+[Illustration: "HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE OF THE
+MEDICINE-MAN"]
+
+The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing.
+His horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now
+launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck the
+man's horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed
+from the other bank.
+
+"Looks like the court of inquiry," remarked Stirling. "Don't shoot,
+boys," he commanded aloud.
+
+The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. "You not shoot?" he said. "But he hit
+that man's horse--all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you."
+
+"Right. Quite right," growled Stirling. "All the same hit Uncle Sam. But
+we soldier devils have orders to temporize." His eye rested hard and
+serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular
+unconcern. "Tem-po-rize, Johnny," said he. "You savvy temporize?"
+
+"Ump! Me no savvy."
+
+"Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he's hit that
+horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There's Two
+Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And
+there's a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that--it's
+very catching--Yes, we're going to have a circus. Attention! Now what's
+that, do you suppose?"
+
+An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing
+through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth,
+full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the
+tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and
+melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford's edge grew bare of
+dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the
+wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in
+the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers
+firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the water, his face
+brightened with a last flare of command.
+
+"Make your medicine!" he said. "Why are the white men not blind? Is the
+medicine bad to-day?" And he whipped his son's horse to the right, and
+to the left he slashed the horse of Two Whistles, and, whirling the
+leather quirt, drove them cowed before him and out of the stream, with
+never a look or word to the white men. He crossed the sandy margin, and
+as a man drives steers to the corral, striking spurs to his horse and
+following the frightened animals close when they would twist aside, so
+did old Pounded Meat herd his son down the valley.
+
+"Useful old man," remarked Stirling; "and brings up his children
+carefully. Let's get these prisoners along."
+
+"How rural the river looks now!" Haines said, as they left the deserted
+bank.
+
+So the Sioux went home in peace, the lieutenants, with their command of
+twenty, returned to the post, and all white people felt much obliged to
+Pounded Meat for his act of timely parental discipline--all except one
+white person.
+
+Sol Kinney sauntered into the agency store one evening. "I want ten
+pounds of sugar," said he, "and navy plug as usual. And say, I'll take
+another bottle of the Seltzer fizz salts. Since I quit whiskey," he
+explained, "my liver's poorly."
+
+He returned with his purchase to his cabin, and set a lamp in the
+window. Presently the door opened noiselessly, and Cheschapah came in.
+
+"Maybe you got that now?" he said, in English.
+
+The interpreter fumbled among bottles of liniment and vaseline, and from
+among these household remedies brought the blue one he had just bought.
+Cheschapah watched him like a child, following his steps round the
+cabin. Kinney tore a half-page from an old Sunday _World_, and poured a
+little heap of salts into it. The Indian touched the heap timidly with
+his finger. "Maybe no good," he suggested.
+
+"Heap good!" said the interpreter, throwing a pinch into a glass. When
+Cheschapah saw the water effervesce, he folded his newspaper with the
+salt into a tight lump, stuck the talisman into his clothes, and
+departed, leaving Mr. Kinney well content. He was doing his best to
+nourish the sinews of war, for business in the country was
+discouragingly slack.
+
+Now the Crows were a tribe that had never warred with us, but only with
+other tribes; they had been valiant enough to steal our cattle, but
+sufficiently discreet to stop there; and Kinney realized that he had
+uphill work before him. His dearest hopes hung upon Cheschapah, in whom
+he thought he saw a development. From being a mere humbug, the young
+Indian seemed to be getting a belief in himself as something genuinely
+out of the common. His success in creating a party had greatly increased
+his conceit, and he walked with a strut, and his face was more unsettled
+and visionary than ever. One clear sign of his mental change was that he
+no longer respected his father at all, though the lonely old man looked
+at him often with what in one of our race would have been tenderness.
+Cheschapah had been secretly maturing a plot ever since his humiliation
+at the crossing, and now he was ready. With his lump of newspaper
+carefully treasured, he came to Two Whistles.
+
+"Now we go," he said. "We shall fight with the Piegans. I will make big
+medicine, so that we shall get many of their horses and women. Then
+Pretty Eagle will be afraid to go against me in the council. Pounded
+Meat whipped my horse. Pounded Meat can cut his hay without Cheschapah,
+since he is so strong."
+
+But little Two Whistles wavered. "I will stay here," he ventured to say
+to the prophet.
+
+"Does Two Whistles think I cannot do what I say?"
+
+"I think you make good medicine."
+
+"You are afraid of the Piegans."
+
+"No, I am not afraid. I have hay the white man will pay me for. If I go,
+he will not pay me. If I had a father, I would not leave him." He spoke
+pleadingly, and his prophet bore him down by ridicule. Two Whistles
+believed, but he did not want to lose the money the agent was to pay for
+his hay. And so, not so much because he believed as because he was
+afraid, he resigned his personal desires.
+
+The next morning the whole band had disappeared with Cheschapah. The
+agent was taken aback at this marked challenge to his authority--of
+course they had gone without permission--and even the old Crow chiefs
+held a council.
+
+Pretty Eagle resorted to sarcasm. "He has taken his friends to the old
+man who makes the thunder," he said. But others did not feel sarcastic,
+and one observed, "Cheschapah knows more than we know."
+
+"Let him make rain, then," said Pretty Eagle. "Let him make the white
+man's heart soft."
+
+The situation was assisted by a step of the careful Kinney. He took a
+private journey to Junction City, through which place he expected
+Cheschapah to return, and there he made arrangements to have as much
+whiskey furnished to the Indian and his friends as they should ask for.
+It was certainly a good stroke of business. The victorious raiders did
+return that way, and Junction City was most hospitable to their thirst.
+The valley of the Big Horn was resonant with their homeward yells. They
+swept up the river, and the agent heard them coming, and he locked his
+door immediately. He listened to their descent upon his fold, and he
+peeped out and saw them ride round the tightly shut buildings in their
+war-paint and the pride of utter success. They had taken booty from the
+Piegans, and now, knocking at the store, they demanded ammunition,
+proclaiming at the same time in English that Cheschapah was a big man,
+and knew a "big heap medicine." The agent told them from inside that
+they could not have any ammunition. He also informed them that he knew
+who they were, and that they were under arrest. This touched their
+primitive sense of the incongruous. On the buoyancy of the whiskey they
+rode round and round the store containing the agent, and then rushed
+away, firing shots at the buildings and shots in the air, and so
+gloriously home among their tribe, while the agent sent a courier
+packing to Fort Custer.
+
+The young bucks who had not gone on the raid to the Piegans thronged to
+hear the story, and the warriors told it here and there, walking in
+their feathers among a knot of friends, who listened with gay
+exclamations of pleasure and envy. Great was Cheschapah, who had done
+all this! And one and another told exactly and at length how he had seen
+the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man's hand; it could
+not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah's had been
+accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in
+his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that
+surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been
+like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed
+among the groups, alone and aloof; he spoke to none, and he looked at
+none, and he noted how their voices fell to whispers as he passed; his
+ear caught the magic words of praise and awe; he felt the gaze of
+admiration follow him away, and a mist rose like incense in his brain.
+He wandered among the scattered tepees, and, turning, came along the
+same paths again, that he might once more overhear his worshippers.
+Great was Cheschapah! His heart beat, a throb of power passed through
+his body, and "Great is Cheschapah!" said he, aloud; for the fumes of
+hallucination wherewith he had drugged others had begun to make him
+drunk also. He sought a tepee where the wife of another chief was alone,
+and at his light call she stood at the entrance and heard him longer
+than she had ever listened to him before. But she withstood the
+temptation that was strong in the young chief's looks and words. She did
+not speak much, but laughed unsteadily, and, shaking her head with
+averted eyes, left him, and went where several women were together, and
+sat among them.
+
+Cheschapah told his victory to the council, with many sentences about
+himself, and how his medicine had fended all hurt from the Crows. The
+elder chiefs sat cold.
+
+"Ump!" said one, at the close of the oration, and "Heh!" remarked
+another. The sounds were of assent without surprise.
+
+"It is good," said Pretty Eagle. His voice seemed to enrage Cheschapah.
+
+"Heh! it is always pretty good!" remarked Spotted Horse.
+
+"I have done this too," said Pounded Meat to his son, simply. "Once,
+twice, three times. The Crows have always been better warriors than the
+Piegans."
+
+"Have you made water boil like me?" Cheschapah said.
+
+"I am not a medicine-man," replied his father. "But I have taken horses
+and squaws from the Piegans. You make good medicine, maybe; but a cup of
+water will not kill many white men. Can you make the river boil? Let
+Cheschapah make bigger medicine, so the white man shall fear him as well
+as the Piegans, whose hearts are well known to us."
+
+Cheschapah scowled. "Pounded Meat shall have this," said he. "I will
+make medicine to-morrow, old fool!"
+
+"Drive him from the council!" said Pretty Eagle.
+
+"Let him stay," said Pounded Meat. "His bad talk was not to the council,
+but to me, and I do not count it."
+
+But the medicine-man left the presence of the chiefs, and came to the
+cabin of Kinney.
+
+"Hello!" said the white man. "Sit down."
+
+"You got that?" said the Indian, standing.
+
+"More water medicine? I guess so. Take a seat."
+
+"No, not boil any more. You got that other?"
+
+"That other, eh? Well, now, you're not going to blind them yet? What's
+your hurry?"
+
+"Yes. Make blind to-morrow. Me great chief!"
+
+A slight uneasiness passed across the bantering face of Kinney. His
+Seltzer salts performed what he promised, but he had mentioned another
+miracle, and he did not want his dupe to find him out until a war was
+thoroughly set agoing. He looked at the young Indian, noticing his eyes.
+
+"What's the matter with you, anyway, Cheschapah?"
+
+"Me great chief!" The raised voice trembled with unearthly conviction.
+
+"Well, I guess you are. I guess you've got pretty far along," said the
+frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose
+primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking
+at him with intent black eyes. "Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again.
+Medicine heap better after a while."
+
+The Indian's quick ear caught the insincerity without understanding it.
+"You give me that quick!" he said, suddenly terrible.
+
+"Oh, all right, Cheschapah. You know more medicine than me."
+
+"Yes, I know more."
+
+The white man brought a pot of scarlet paint, and the Indian's staring
+eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and
+set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. "Stand back," he said, in
+mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now
+Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had
+committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other
+poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of
+them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation
+it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah
+if he should recite "The Battle of Hohenlinden." He was drawing squares
+and circles with the point of the sabre.
+
+"No," he said to himself, "that piece won't do. He knows too much
+English. Some of them words might strike him as bein' too usual, and
+he'd start to kill me, and spoil the whole thing. 'Munich' and
+'chivalry' are snortin', but 'sun was low' ain't worth a damn. I
+guess--"
+
+He stopped guessing, for the noon recess at school came in his mind,
+like a picture, and with it certain old-time preliminaries to the game
+of tag.
+
+     "'Eeny, meeny, money, my,'"
+
+said Kinney, tapping himself, the sabre, the paint-pot, and Cheschapah
+in turn, one for each word. The incantation was begun. He held the sabre
+solemnly upright, while Cheschapah tried to control his excited
+breathing where he stood flattened against the wall.
+
+     "'Butter, leather, boney, stry;
+     Hare-bit, frost-neck,
+     Harrico, barrico, whee, why, whoa, whack!'
+
+"You're it, Cheschapah." After that the weapon was given its fresh coat
+of paint, and Cheschapah went away with his new miracle in the dark.
+
+"He is it," mused Kinney, grave, but inwardly lively. He was one of
+those sincere artists who need no popular commendation. "And whoever he
+does catch, it won't be me," he concluded. He felt pretty sure there
+would be war now.
+
+Dawn showed the summoned troops near the agency at the corral, standing
+to horse. Cheschapah gathered his hostiles along the brow of the ridge
+in the rear of the agency buildings, and the two forces watched each
+other across the intervening four hundred yards.
+
+"There they are," said the agent, jumping about. "Shoot them, colonel;
+shoot them!"
+
+"You can't do that, you know," said the officer, "without an order from
+the President, or an overt act from the Indians."
+
+So nothing happened, and Cheschapah told his friends the white men were
+already afraid of him. He saw more troops arrive, water their horses in
+the river, form line outside the corral, and dismount. He made ready at
+this movement, and all Indian on-lookers scattered from the expected
+fight. Yet the white man stayed quiet. It was issue day, but no families
+remained after drawing their rations. They had had no dance the night
+before, as was usual, and they did not linger a moment now, but came and
+departed with their beef and flour at once.
+
+"I have done all this," said Cheschapah to Two Whistles.
+
+"Cheschapah is a great man," assented the friend and follower. He had
+gone at once to his hay-field on his return from the Piegans, but some
+one had broken the little Indian's fence, and cattle were wandering in
+what remained of his crop.
+
+"Our nation knows I will make a war, and therefore they do not stay
+here," said the medicine-man, caring nothing what Two Whistles might
+have suffered. "And now they will see that the white soldiers dare not
+fight with Cheschapah. The sun is high now, but they have not moved
+because I have stopped them. Do you not see it is my medicine?"
+
+"We see it." It was the voice of the people.
+
+But a chief spoke. "Maybe they wait for us to come."
+
+Cheschapah answered. "Their eyes shall be made sick. I will ride among
+them, but they will not know it." He galloped away alone, and lifted his
+red sword as he sped along the ridge of the hills, showing against the
+sky. Below at the corral the white soldiers waited ready, and heard him
+chanting his war song through the silence of the day. He turned in a
+long curve, and came in near the watching troops and through the agency,
+and then, made bolder by their motionless figures and guns held idle, he
+turned again and flew, singing, along close to the line, so they saw his
+eyes; and a few that had been talking low as they stood side by side
+fell silent at the spectacle. They could not shoot until some Indian
+should shoot. They watched him and the gray pony pass and return to the
+hostiles on the hill. Then they saw the hostiles melt away like magic.
+Their prophet had told them to go to their tepees and wait for the great
+rain he would now bring. It was noon, and the sky utterly blue over the
+bright valley. The sun rode a space nearer the west, and the thick black
+clouds assembled in the mountains and descended; their shadow flooded
+the valley with a lake of slatish blue, and presently the sudden
+torrents sluiced down with flashes and the ample thunder of Montana.
+Thus not alone the law against our soldiers firing the first shot in an
+Indian excitement, but now also the elements coincided to help the
+medicine-man's destiny.
+
+Cheschapah sat in a tepee with his father, and as the rain splashed
+heavily on the earth the old man gazed at the young one.
+
+"Why do you tremble, my son? You have made the white soldier's heart
+soft," said Pounded Meat. "You are indeed a great man, my son."
+
+Cheschapah rose. "Do not call me your son," said he. "That is a lie."
+He went out into the fury of the rain, lifting his face against the
+drops, and exultingly calling out at each glare of the lightning. He
+went to Pretty Eagle's young squaw, who held off from him no longer, but
+got on a horse, and the two rode into the mountains. Before the sun had
+set, the sky was again utterly blue, and a cool scent rose everywhere in
+the shining valley.
+
+The Crows came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers
+obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move
+across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river
+twelve miles to the post.
+
+"They are afraid," said new converts. "Cheschapah's rain has made their
+hearts soft."
+
+"They have not all gone," said Pretty Eagle. "Maybe he did not make
+enough rain." But even Pretty Eagle began to be shaken, and he heard
+several of his brother chiefs during the next few days openly declare
+for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains,
+and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence
+followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of
+them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate
+audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same
+day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers
+were struck by lightning.
+
+When the officers at Fort Custer heard of this they became serious.
+
+"If this was not the nineteenth century," said Haines, "I should begin
+to think the elements were deliberately against us."
+
+"It's very careless of the weather," said Stirling. "Very inconsiderate,
+at such a juncture."
+
+Yet nothing more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was
+an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave
+the hostiles time to increase both in faith and numbers.
+
+Among the excited Crows only a few wise old men held out. As for
+Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird
+enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who
+believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing
+mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved
+for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and,
+desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day
+there came an order from the agent to all the Indians: they were to come
+in by a certain fixed day. The department commander had assembled six
+hundred troops at the post, and these moved up the river and went into
+camp. The usually empty ridges, and the bottom where the road ran,
+filled with white and red men. Half a mile to the north of the
+buildings, on the first rise from the river, lay the cavalry, and some
+infantry above them with a howitzer, while across the level, three
+hundred yards opposite, along the river-bank, was the main Indian camp.
+Even the hostiles had obeyed the agent's order, and came in close to the
+troops, totally unlike hostiles in general; for Cheschapah had told them
+he would protect them with his medicine, and they shouted and sang all
+through this last night. The women joined with harsh cries and
+shriekings, and a scalp-dance went on, besides lesser commotions and
+gatherings, with the throbbing of drums everywhere. Through the
+sleepless din ran the barking of a hundred dogs, that herded and hurried
+in crowds of twenty at a time, meeting, crossing from fire to fire among
+the tepees. Their yelps rose to the high bench of land, summoning a
+horde of coyotes. These cringing nomads gathered from the desert in a
+tramp army, and, skulking down the bluffs, sat in their outer darkness
+and ceaselessly howled their long, shrill greeting to the dogs that sat
+in the circle of light. The general sent scouts to find the nature of
+the dance and hubbub, and these brought word it was peaceful; and in the
+morning another scout summoned the elder chiefs to a talk with the
+friend who had come from the Great Father at Washington to see them and
+find if their hearts were good.
+
+"Our hearts are good," said Pretty Eagle. "We do not want war. If you
+want Cheschapah, we will drive him out from the Crows to you."
+
+"There are other young chiefs with bad hearts," said the commissioner,
+naming the ringleaders that were known. He made a speech, but Pretty
+Eagle grew sullen. "It is well," said the commissioner; "you will not
+help me to make things smooth, and now I step aside and the war chief
+will talk."
+
+"If you want any other chiefs," said Pretty Eagle, "come and take them."
+
+"Pretty Eagle shall have an hour and a half to think on my words," said
+the general. "I have plenty of men behind me to make my words good. You
+must send me all those Indians who fired at the agency."
+
+The Crow chiefs returned to the council, which was apart from the war
+party's camp; and Cheschapah walked in among them, and after him,
+slowly, old Pounded Meat, to learn how the conference had gone.
+
+"You have made a long talk with the white man," said Cheschapah. "Talk
+is pretty good for old men. I and the young chiefs will fight now and
+kill our enemies."
+
+"Cheschapah," said Pounded Meat, "if your medicine is good, it may be
+the young chiefs will kill our enemies to-day. But there are other days
+to come, and after them still others; there are many, many days. My son,
+the years are a long road. The life of one man is not long, but enough
+to learn this thing truly: the white man will always return. There was a
+day on this river when the dead soldiers of Yellow Hair lay in hills,
+and the squaws of the Sioux warriors climbed among them with their
+knives. What do the Sioux warriors do now when they meet the white man
+on this river? Their hearts are on the ground, and they go home like
+children when the white man says, 'You shall not visit your friends.' My
+son, I thought war was good once. I have kept you from the arrows of our
+enemies on many trails when you were so little that my blankets were
+enough for both. Your mother was not here any more, and the chiefs
+laughed because I carried you. Oh, my son, I have seen the hearts of the
+Sioux broken by the white man, and I do not think war is good."
+
+"The talk of Pounded Meat is very good," said Pretty Eagle. "If
+Cheschapah were wise like his father, this trouble would not have come
+to the Crows. But we could not give the white chief so many of our
+chiefs that he asked for to-day."
+
+Cheschapah laughed. "Did he ask for so many? He wanted only Cheschapah,
+who is not wise like Pounded Meat."
+
+"You would have been given to him," said Pretty Eagle.
+
+"Did Pretty Eagle tell the white chief that? Did he say he would give
+Cheschapah? How would he give me? In one hand, or two? Or would the old
+warrior take me to the white man's camp on the horse his young squaw
+left?"
+
+Pretty Eagle raised his rifle, and Pounded Meat, quick as a boy, seized
+the barrel and pointed it up among the poles of the tepee, where the
+quiet black fire smoke was oozing out into the air. "Have you lived so
+long," said Pounded Meat to his ancient comrade, "and do this in the
+council?" His wrinkled head and hands shook, the sudden strength left
+him, and the rifle fell free.
+
+"Let Pretty Eagle shoot," said Cheschapah, looking at the council. He
+stood calm, and the seated chiefs turned their grim eyes upon him.
+Certainty was in his face, and doubt in theirs. "Let him send his bullet
+five times--ten times. Then I will go and let the white soldiers shoot
+at me until they all lie dead."
+
+"It is heavy for me," began Pounded Meat, "that my friend should be the
+enemy of my son."
+
+"Tell that lie no more," said Cheschapah. "You are not my father. I have
+made the white man blind, and I have softened his heart with the rain. I
+will call the rain to-day." He raised his red sword, and there was a
+movement among the sitting figures. "The clouds will come from my
+father's place, where I have talked with him as one chief to another. My
+mother went into the mountains to gather berries. She was young, and the
+thunder-maker saw her face. He brought the black clouds, so her feet
+turned from home, and she walked where the river goes into the great
+walls of the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the
+lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah." He dealt Pounded Meat
+a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound
+of Cheschapah's galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk
+everything. Their scepticism was conquered.
+
+The medicine-man galloped to his camp of hostiles, and, seeing him, they
+yelled and quickly finished plaiting their horses' tails. Cheschapah had
+accomplished his wish; he had become the prophet of all the Crows, and
+he led the armies of the faithful. Each man stripped his blanket off and
+painted his body for the fight. The forms slipped in and out of the
+brush, buckling their cartridge-belts, bringing their ponies, while many
+families struck their tepees and moved up nearer the agency. The spare
+horses were run across the river into the hills, and through the yelling
+that shifted and swept like flames along the wind the hostiles made
+ready and gathered, their crowds quivering with motion, and changing
+place and shape as more mounted Indians appeared.
+
+"Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?" said Cheschapah
+to Two Whistles. "That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from
+the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They
+are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any
+more than they saw me when I rode among them that day."
+
+He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened
+them to their painted bodies.
+
+"You will let me go with you?" said Two Whistles.
+
+"You are my best friend," said Cheschapah, "and to-day I will take you.
+You shall see my great medicine when I make the white man's eyes grow
+sick."
+
+The two rode forward, and one hundred and fifty followed them, bursting
+from their tepees like an explosion, and rushing along quickly in
+skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw
+the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky,
+and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride
+put him in a sort of trance.
+
+"The medicine is beginning!" shouted Cheschapah; and at that Two
+Whistles saw the day grow large with terrible shining, and heard his
+own voice calling and could not stop it. They left the hundred and
+fifty behind, he knew not where or when. He saw the line of troops
+ahead change to separate waiting shapes of men, and their legs and
+arms become plain; then all the guns took clear form in lines of
+steady glitter. He seemed suddenly alone far ahead of the band, but
+the voice of Cheschapah spoke close by his ear through the singing
+wind, and he repeated each word without understanding; he was watching
+the ground rush by, lest it might rise against his face, and all the
+while he felt his horse's motion under him, smooth and perpetual.
+Something weighed against his leg, and there was Cheschapah he had
+forgotten, always there at his side, veering him around somewhere. But
+there was no red sword waving. Then the white men must be blind
+already, wherever they were, and Cheschapah, the only thing he could
+see, sat leaning one hand on his horse's rump firing a pistol. The
+ground came swimming towards his eyes always, smooth and wide like a
+gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it
+sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue
+smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers
+moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke
+into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and
+empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two Whistles
+saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there was
+nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah's head-dress in the middle.
+The horse's even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
+head-dress fell out of Two Whistles' sight, and the earth returned.
+They were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead
+horse on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people
+everywhere outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump
+on a gray pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a
+red sword lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then
+took it in his hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it
+savagely, and fell again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass.
+But he got on his horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at
+the blood running on his body. The horse moved always, and Two
+Whistles followed with his eye a little deeper gush of blood along a
+crease in his painted skin, noticed the flannel, and remembering the
+lie of his prophet, instantly began tearing the red rags from his
+body, and flinging them to the ground with cries of scorn. Presently
+he heard some voices, and soon one voice much nearer, and saw he had
+come to a new place, where there were white soldiers looking at him
+quietly. One was riding up and telling him to give up his pistol. Two
+Whistles got off and stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol.
+The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved
+slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as
+the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol
+uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the
+straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre, and the white
+man's blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own naked, clotted
+body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it into his
+breast.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARGE]
+
+Far away up the river, on the right of the line, a lieutenant with two
+men was wading across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with
+his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had
+dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up
+their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing
+breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets'-nest, and the
+lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life;
+he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in
+among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to
+be sure no hornets remained. Finding them gone, and their dead spirited
+away, he came back on the bank to the one dead Indian, who had a fine
+head-dress, and was still ribanded with gay red streamers of flannel,
+and was worth all the rest of the dead put together, and much more. The
+head lay in the water, and one hand held the rope of the gray pony, who
+stood quiet and uninterested over his fallen rider. They began carrying
+the prize across to the other bank, where many had now collected, among
+others Kinney and the lieutenant's captain, who subsequently said, "I
+found the body of Cheschapah;" and, indeed, it was a very good thing to
+be able to say.
+
+[Illustration: "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"]
+
+"This busts the war," said Kinney to the captain, as the body was
+being lifted over the Little Horn. "They know he's killed, and they've
+all quit. I was up by the tepees near the agency just now, and I
+could see the hostiles jamming back home for dear life. They was
+chucking their rifles to the squaws, and jumping in the river--ha!
+ha!--to wash off their war-paint, and each ---- ---- would crawl out
+and sit innercint in the family blanket his squaw had ready. If you
+was to go there now, cap'n, you'd find just a lot of harmless Injuns
+eatin' supper like all the year round. Let me help you, boys, with
+that carcass."
+
+Kinney gave a hand to the lieutenant and men of G troop, First United
+States Cavalry, and they lifted Cheschapah up the bank. In the tilted
+position of the body the cartridge-belt slid a little, and a lump of
+newspaper fell into the stream. Kinney watched it open and float away
+with a momentary effervescence. The dead medicine-man was laid between
+the white and red camps, that all might see he could be killed like
+other people; and this wholesome discovery brought the Crows to terms at
+once. Pretty Eagle had displayed a flag of truce, and now he surrendered
+the guilty chiefs whose hearts had been bad. Every one came where the
+dead prophet lay to get a look at him. For a space of hours Pretty Eagle
+and the many other Crows he had deceived rode by in single file,
+striking him with their whips; after them came a young squaw, and she
+also lashed the upturned face.
+
+This night was untroubled at the agency, and both camps and the valley
+lay quiet in the peaceful dark. Only Pounded Meat, alone on the top of a
+hill, mourned for his son; and his wailing voice sounded through the
+silence until the new day came. Then the general had him stopped and
+brought in, for it might be that the old man's noise would unsettle the
+Crows again.
+
+
+
+
+SPECIMEN JONES
+
+
+Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a
+man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had
+left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Cañon
+del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim
+might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the cañon, and ended
+among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away by
+this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his
+saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and
+the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him; for
+the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling this
+sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was not
+in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.
+
+Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside
+that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and
+Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to
+widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be
+nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with
+tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at the boy's heels,
+and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was
+really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of this--excepting the
+boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place
+of entertainment.
+
+Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and
+full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his
+funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile--the only water for twoscore of
+miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the
+southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the
+Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray
+floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two
+desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else.
+Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and
+selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was
+brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the
+glaring vacant months--some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding
+a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes
+they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons.
+Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore
+knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for
+the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next
+man, and their names, when they had any, would be O'Rafferty, Angus,
+Schwartzmeyer, José Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some
+longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one
+stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and
+whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after
+sundown--a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
+
+On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in
+Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally.
+This one had paid for everybody's drink several times, because he felt
+friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had
+played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him
+dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand
+round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the
+opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the
+beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they
+therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you
+may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good
+tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that
+he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own
+revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster
+at the necessary moment.
+
+"Tried to draw on me, did yer?" said the old gentleman. "Step higher!
+Step, now, or I'll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin's egg."
+
+"Thinks he's having a bad time," remarked Ephraim. "Wonder how he'd like
+to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?"
+
+"Weren't his ear funny?" said one who had helped bury the man.
+
+"Ear?" said Ephraim. "You boys ought to been along when I found him,
+and seen the way they'd fixed up his mouth." Ephraim explained the
+details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a
+humorist. "Wonder how it feels," he continued, "to have--"
+
+[Illustration: AN APACHE]
+
+Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
+hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
+with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
+no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
+often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
+over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
+singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
+in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
+
+"Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf," remarked the old gentleman to
+the tenderfoot. "High-yer!" And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
+scraped the boy's boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
+that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
+
+"'Drink to me only with thine eyes,'" sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
+did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
+nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he
+was but twenty-six now.
+
+The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played "Matamoras,"
+Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
+the concertina stopped with a quack.
+
+"Quit it!" said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
+weapon. "I don't want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We've
+just got cleaned up."
+
+It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of
+Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now
+for the first time he noticed the boy.
+
+"Blamed if he ain't neat," he said. But interest faded from his eye, and
+he turned again to the wall. "'Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,'" he
+melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang
+he was always grammatical.
+
+"Ye kin stop, kid," said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved
+his pistol into his belt.
+
+The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and
+strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling
+with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. "Set 'em
+up," he said to Ephraim. "Set 'em up again all round."
+
+His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the
+old gentleman, still benevolent, said, "Yer langwidge means pleasanter
+than it sounds, kid." He glanced at the boy's holster, and knew he need
+not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it
+once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the
+boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot's hand
+might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated.
+The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to
+glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the
+line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster,
+handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled
+and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
+
+"Well, my regards," he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the
+old gentleman's arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy
+reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman's own pistol,
+and jammed it in his face.
+
+"Now you'll dance," said he.
+
+"Whoop!" exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. "_Blamed_ if he ain't
+neat!" And Jones's handsome face lighted keenly.
+
+"Hold on!" the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was
+mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had
+forgotten their drinks. "Not one swallow," the boy continued. "No,
+you'll not put it down either. You'll keep hold of it, and you'll dance
+all round this place. Around and around. And don't you spill any. And
+I'll be thinking what you'll do after that."
+
+Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. "Why, he ain't bigger
+than a pint of cider," said he.
+
+"Prance away!" commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the
+old gentleman's not widely straddled legs.
+
+"You hev the floor, Mr. Adams," Jones observed, respectfully, at the old
+gentleman's agile leap. "I'll let no man here interrupt you." So the
+capering began, and the company stood back to make room. "I've saw juicy
+things in this Territory," continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to himself,
+"but this combination fills my bill."
+
+He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye.
+That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud
+as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though
+his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He
+had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna,
+with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
+among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and
+always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no
+receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood,
+he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all his
+might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His
+buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman's fervent skipping,
+had cooled, and a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave young
+nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no notion that there
+was another American wanderer there, whose reserved and whimsical nature
+he had touched to the heart.
+
+The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment, since he
+was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in that room was
+distinctly against him. The old gentleman was dancing with an ugly eye;
+he had glanced down to see just where his knife hung at his side, and he
+had made some calculations. He had fired four shots; the boy had fired
+one. "Four and one hez always made five," the old gentleman told himself
+with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was going to stop his
+double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy fell straight into
+it. He squandered his last precious bullet on the spittoon near which
+Mr. Adams happened to be at the moment, and the next moment Mr. Adams
+had him by the throat. They swayed and gulped for breath, rutting the
+earth with sharp heels; they rolled to the floor and floundered with
+legs tight tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr. Adams with the
+pistol-butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose nothing, when the
+bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised, and flew across the room,
+harmless, for a foot had driven into Mr. Adams's arm, and he felt a
+cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth, chilly muzzle of
+Specimen Jones's six-shooter.
+
+"That's enough," said Jones. "More than enough."
+
+Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
+sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
+the over-strained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
+With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
+plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
+first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
+while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
+ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
+dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like
+a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy's wrist.
+
+"Go easy, son," said he. "I know how you're feelin'."
+
+The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the quietness
+of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones.
+He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and
+he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern
+revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still
+holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end,
+careless of the risk to his first joint.
+
+"Why, you little ---- ----," said Specimen Jones, caressingly, to the
+hypnotized youth, "if you was to pop that squirt off at me, I'd turn you
+up and spank y'u. Set 'em up, Ephraim."
+
+But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones remembered. His last
+cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim's. He had stopped, having
+a little money, on his way to Tucson, where a friend had a job for him,
+and was waiting. He was far too experienced a character ever to sell his
+horse or his saddle on these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as
+if he might, but he never did; and this was what disappointed business
+men like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.
+
+But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and
+Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. "Why, so I
+haven't," he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. "I guess,"
+he continued, hastily, "this is worth a dollar or two." He drew a chain
+up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a
+little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of years--not,
+indeed, since it had been placed there originally. "It ain't brass," he
+added, lightly, and strewed it along the counter without looking at it.
+Ephraim did look at it, and, being satisfied, began to uncork a new
+bottle, while the punctual audience came up for its drink.
+
+"Won't you please let me treat?" said the boy, unsteadily. "I ain't
+likely to meet you again, sir." Reaction was giving him trouble inside.
+
+"Where are you bound, kid?"
+
+"Oh, just a ways up the country," answered the boy, keeping a grip on
+his voice.
+
+"Well, you _may_ get there. Where did you pick up that--that thing? Your
+pistol, I mean."
+
+"It's a present from a friend," replied the tenderfoot, with dignity.
+
+"Farewell gift, wasn't it, kid? Yes; I thought so. Now I'd hate to get
+an affair like that from a friend. It would start me wondering if he
+liked me as well as I'd always thought he did. Put up that money, kid.
+You're drinking with me. Say, what's yer name?"
+
+"Cumnor--J. Cumnor."
+
+"Well, J. Cumnor, I'm glad to know y'u. Ephraim, let me make you
+acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you're rested from your
+quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend. Step around, you Miguels
+and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever y'u claim your names are. This is
+Mr. J. Cumnor."
+
+The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the spirit of these
+American words, but they drank their drink, and the concertina resumed
+its acrid melody. The boy had taken himself off without being noticed.
+
+"Say, Spec," said Ephraim to Jones, "I'm no hog. Here's yer chain.
+You'll be along again."
+
+"Keep it till I'm along again," said the owner.
+
+"Just as you say, Spec," answered Ephraim, smoothly, and he hung the
+pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-colored lady with
+bright straw hair holding out a bottle of somebody's champagne. Specimen
+Jones sang no more songs, but smoked, and leaned in silence on the bar.
+The company were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a
+bucket to clean them for the morrow.
+
+"Know anything about that kid?" inquired Jones, abruptly.
+
+Ephraim shook his head as he washed.
+
+"Travelling alone, ain't he?"
+
+Ephraim nodded.
+
+"Where did y'u say y'u found that fellow layin' the Injuns got?"
+
+"Mile this side the cañon. 'Mong them sand-humps."
+
+"How long had he been there, do y'u figure?"
+
+"Three days, anyway."
+
+Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. "Your clock needs wiping,"
+he remarked. "A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way
+the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it'll say
+three. That's the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy."
+
+"Well, that ain't a bad thing to be in this country," said Ephraim,
+rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the hands. "If that man
+had been crazy he'd been livin' right now. Injuns'll never touch
+lunatics."
+
+"That band have passed here and gone north," Jones said. "I saw a smoke
+among the foot-hills as I come along day before yesterday. I guess
+they're aiming to cross the Santa Catalina. Most likely they're that
+band from round the San Carlos that were reported as raiding down in
+Sonora."
+
+"I seen well enough," said Ephraim, "when I found him that they wasn't
+going to trouble us any, or they'd have been around by then."
+
+He was quite right, but Specimen Jones was thinking of something else.
+He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and doubtful. He saw the
+tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans, looming and silent, and a
+little way off the new fence where the man lay. An odd sound startled
+him, though he knew it was no Indians at this hour, and he looked down
+into a little dry ditch. It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach
+among the stones, sobbing.
+
+"Oh, snakes!" whispered Specimen Jones, and stepped back. The Latin
+races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among Saxons tears are a
+horrid event. Jones never knew what to do when it was a woman, but this
+was truly disgusting. He was well seasoned by the frontier, had tried a
+little of everything: town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving,
+marriage occasionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked
+out, and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing upon
+their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very slight. That is
+why he was called Specimen Jones. He had exhausted all the important
+sensations, and did not care much for anything any more. Perfect health
+and strength kept him from discovering that he was a saddened, drifting
+man. He wished to kick the boy for his baby performance, and yet he
+stepped carefully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his
+presence. He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken
+desert.
+
+"Why, hell," complained Specimen Jones, "he played the little man to
+start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about
+dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep' him from bein' buried early
+to-morrow. I've been wild that way myself, and wantin' to shoot up the
+whole outfit." Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to
+be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. "But I never--" He glanced
+towards the ditch, perplexed. "What's that mean? Why in the world does
+he git to cryin' for _now_, do you suppose?" Jones took to singing
+without knowing it. "'Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora
+pass this way?'" he murmured. Then a thought struck him. "Hello, kid!"
+he called out. There was no answer. "Of course," said Jones. "Now he's
+ashamed to hev me see him come out of there." He walked with elaborate
+slowness round the corral and behind a shed. "Hello, you kid!" he called
+again.
+
+"I was thinking of going to sleep," said the boy, appearing quite
+suddenly. "I--I'm not used to riding all day. I'll get used to it, you
+know," he hastened to add.
+
+"'Ha-ve you seen my Flo'--Say, kid, where y'u bound, anyway?"
+
+"San Carlos."
+
+"San Carlos? Oh. Ah. 'Flora pass this way?'"
+
+"Is it far, sir?"
+
+"Awful far, sometimes. It's always liable to be far through the Arivaypa
+Cañon."
+
+"I didn't expect to make it between meals," remarked Cumnor.
+
+"No. Sure. What made you come this route?"
+
+"A man told me."
+
+"A man? Oh. Well, it _is_ kind o' difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan
+not to lie to a stranger. But I think I'd have told you to go by Tres
+Alamos and Point of Mountain. It's the road the man that told you would
+choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?"
+
+Cumnor snapped eagerly.
+
+"Of course y'u do. And you've never saw one in the whole
+minute-and-a-half you've been alive. I know all about it."
+
+"I'm not afraid," said the boy.
+
+"Not afraid? Of course y'u ain't. What's your idea in going to Carlos?
+Got town lots there?"
+
+"No," said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones.
+"There's a man there I used to know back home. He's in the cavalry.
+What sort of a town is it for sport?" asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario
+tone.
+
+"_Town_?" Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral.
+"_Sport?_ Now I'll tell y'u what sort of a town it is. There ain't no
+streets. There ain't no houses. There ain't any land and water in the
+usual meaning of them words. There's Mount Turnbull. It's pretty near a
+usual mountain, but y'u don't want to go there. The Creator didn't make
+San Carlos. It's a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after
+slickin' up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He
+found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come
+along. He 'ain't done any work around that spot at all, He 'ain't. Mix
+up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and
+rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer
+stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place
+chasin' Apaches, and you've got San Carlos."
+
+Cumnor was silent for a moment. "I don't care," he said. "I want to
+chase Apaches."
+
+"Did you see that man Ephraim found by the cañon?" Jones inquired.
+
+"Didn't get here in time."
+
+"Well, there was a hole in his chest made by an arrow. But there's no
+harm in that if you die at wunst. That chap didn't, y'u see. You heard
+Ephraim tell about it. They'd done a number of things to the man before
+he could die. Roastin' was only one of 'em. Now your road takes you
+through the mountains where these Injuns hev gone. Kid, come along to
+Tucson with me," urged Jones, suddenly.
+
+Again Cumnor was silent. "Is my road different from other people's?" he
+said, finally.
+
+"Not to Grant, it ain't. These Mexicans are hauling freight to Grant.
+But what's the matter with your coming to Tucson with me?"
+
+"I started to go to San Carlos, and I'm going," said Cumnor.
+
+"You're a poor chuckle-headed fool!" burst out Jones, in a rage. "And
+y'u can go, for all I care--you and your Christmas-tree pistol. Like as
+not you won't find your cavalry friend at San Carlos. They've killed a
+lot of them soldiers huntin' Injuns this season. Good-night."
+
+Specimen Jones was gone. Cumnor walked to his blanket-roll, where his
+saddle was slung under the shed. The various doings of the evening had
+bruised his nerves. He spread his blankets among the dry cattle-dung,
+and sat down, taking off a few clothes slowly. He lumped his coat and
+overalls under his head for a pillow, and, putting the despised pistol
+alongside, lay between the blankets. No object showed in the night but
+the tall freight-wagon. The tenderfoot thought he had made altogether a
+fool of himself upon the first trial trip of his manhood, alone on the
+open sea of Arizona. No man, not even Jones now, was his friend. A
+stranger, who could have had nothing against him but his inexperience,
+had taken the trouble to direct him on the wrong road. He did not mind
+definite enemies. He had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and
+would not object to shooting them here; but this impersonal, surrounding
+hostility of the unknown was new and bitter: the cruel, assassinating,
+cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom the vigilantes
+had driven from California. He thought of the nameless human carcass
+that lay near, buried that day, and of the jokes about its mutilations.
+Cumnor was not an innocent boy, either in principles or in practice, but
+this laughter about a dead body had burned into his young, unhardened
+soul. He lay watching with hot, dogged eyes the brilliant stars. A
+passing wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and
+ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly, for the next he
+knew it was the cold air of dawn that made him open his eyes. A numb
+silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot had that moment of
+curiosity as to where he was now which comes to those who have journeyed
+for many days. The Mexicans had already departed with their
+freight-wagon. It was not entirely light, and the embers where these
+early starters had cooked their breakfast lay glowing in the sand across
+the road. The boy remembered seeing a wagon where now he saw only chill,
+distant peaks, and while he lay quiet and warm, shunning full
+consciousness, there was a stir in the cabin, and at Ephraim's voice
+reality broke upon his drowsiness, and he recollected Arizona and the
+keen stress of shifting for himself. He noted the gray paling round the
+grave. Indians? He would catch up with the Mexicans, and travel in their
+company to Grant. Freighters made but fifteen miles in the day, and he
+could start after breakfast and be with them before they stopped to
+noon. Six men need not worry about Apaches, Cumnor thought. The voice of
+Specimen Jones came from the cabin, and sounds of lighting the stove,
+and the growling conversation of men getting up. Cumnor, lying in his
+blankets, tried to overhear what Jones was saying, for no better reason
+than that this was the only man he had met lately who had seemed to care
+whether he were alive or dead. There was the clink of Ephraim's
+whiskey-bottles, and the cheerful tones of old Mr. Adams, saying, "It's
+better 'n brushin' yer teeth"; and then further clinking, and an inquiry
+from Specimen Jones.
+
+"Whose spurs?" said he.
+
+"Mine." This from Mr. Adams.
+
+"How long have they been yourn?"
+
+"Since I got 'em, I guess."
+
+"Well, you've enjoyed them spurs long enough." The voice of Specimen
+Jones now altered in quality. "And you'll give 'em back to that kid."
+
+Muttering followed that the boy could not catch. "You'll give 'em back,"
+repeated Jones. "I seen y'u lift 'em from under that chair when I was in
+the corner."
+
+"That's straight, Mr. Adams," said Ephraim. "I noticed it myself, though
+I had no objections, of course. But Mr. Jones has pointed out--"
+
+"Since when have you growed so honest, Jones?" cackled Mr. Adams, seeing
+that he must lose his little booty. "And why didn't you raise yer
+objections when you seen me do it?"
+
+"I didn't know the kid," Jones explained. "And if it don't strike you
+that game blood deserves respect, why it does strike me."
+
+[Illustration: CUMNOR'S AWAKENING]
+
+Hearing this, the tenderfoot, outside in his shed, thought better of
+mankind and life in general, arose from his nest, and began preening
+himself. He had all the correct trappings for the frontier, and his
+toilet in the shed gave him pleasure. The sun came up, and with a
+stroke struck the world to crystal. The near sand-hills went into
+rose, the crabbed yucca and the mesquite turned transparent, with
+lances and pale films of green, like drapery graciously veiling the
+desert's face, and distant violet peaks and edges framed the vast
+enchantment beneath the liquid exhalations of the sky. The smell of
+bacon and coffee from open windows filled the heart with bravery and
+yearning, and Ephraim, putting his head round the corner, called to
+Cumnor that he had better come in and eat. Jones, already at table,
+gave him the briefest nod; but the spurs were there, replaced as
+Cumnor had left them under a chair in the corner. In Arizona they do
+not say much at any meal, and at breakfast nothing at all; and as
+Cumnor swallowed and meditated, he noticed the cream-colored lady and
+the chain, and he made up his mind he should assert his identity with
+regard to that business, though how and when was not clear to him. He
+was in no great haste to take up his journey. The society of the
+Mexicans whom he must sooner or later overtake did not tempt him. When
+breakfast was done he idled in the cabin, like the other guests, while
+Ephraim and his assistant busied about the premises. But the morning
+grew on, and the guests, after a season of smoking and tilted silence
+against the wall, shook themselves and their effects together,
+saddled, and were lost among the waste thorny hills. Twenty Mile
+became hot and torpid. Jones lay on three consecutive chairs,
+occasionally singing, and old Mr. Adams had not gone away either,
+but watched him, with more tobacco running down his beard.
+
+"Well," said Cumnor, "I'll be going."
+
+"Nobody's stopping y'u," remarked Jones.
+
+"You're going to Tucson?" the boy said, with the chain problem still
+unsolved in his mind. "Good-bye, Mr. Jones. I hope I'll--we'll--"
+
+"That'll do," said Jones; and the tenderfoot, thrown back by this
+severity, went to get his saddle-horse and his burro.
+
+Presently Jones remarked to Mr. Adams that he wondered what Ephraim was
+doing, and went out. The old gentleman was left alone in the room, and
+he swiftly noticed that the belt and pistol of Specimen Jones were left
+alone with him. The accoutrement lay by the chair its owner had been
+lounging in. It is an easy thing to remove cartridges from the chambers
+of a revolver, and replace the weapon in its holster so that everything
+looks quite natural. The old gentleman was entertained with the notion
+that somewhere in Tucson Specimen Jones might have a surprise, and he
+did not take a minute to prepare this, drop the belt as it lay before,
+and saunter innocently out of the saloon. Ephraim and Jones were
+criticising the tenderfoot's property as he packed his burro.
+
+"Do y'u make it a rule to travel with ice-cream?" Jones was inquiring.
+
+"They're for water," Cumnor said. "They told me at Tucson I'd need to
+carry water for three days on some trails."
+
+It was two good-sized milk-cans that he had, and they bounced about on
+the little burro's pack, giving him as much amazement as a jackass can
+feel. Jones and Ephraim were hilarious.
+
+"Don't go without your spurs, Mr. Cumnor," said the voice of old Mr.
+Adams, as he approached the group. His tone was particularly civil.
+
+The tenderfoot had, indeed, forgotten his spurs, and he ran back to get
+them. The cream-colored lady still had the chain hanging upon her, and
+Cumnor's problem was suddenly solved. He put the chain in his pocket,
+and laid the price of one round of drinks for last night's company on
+the shelf below the chromo. He returned with his spurs on, and went to
+his saddle that lay beside that of Specimen Jones under the shed. After
+a moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his
+pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in
+the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale
+bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile
+said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference,
+and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for a last look
+at Jones, he turned once, and saw the three standing, and the chocolate
+brick of the cabin, and the windmill white and idle in the sun.
+
+"He'll be gutted by night," remarked Mr. Adams.
+
+"I ain't buryin' him, then," said Ephraim.
+
+"Nor I," said Specimen Jones. "Well, it's time I was getting to Tucson."
+
+He went to the saloon, strapped on his pistol, saddled, and rode away.
+Ephraim and Mr. Adams returned to the cabin; and here is the final
+conclusion they came to after three hours of discussion as to who took
+the chain and who had it just then:
+
+    _Ephraim._ Jones, he hadn't no cash.
+
+    _Mr. Adams._ The kid, he hadn't no sense.
+
+    _Ephraim._ The kid, he lent the cash to Jones.
+
+    _Mr. Adams._ Jones, he goes off with his chain.
+
+    _Both._ What damn fools everybody is, anyway!
+
+And they went to dinner. But Mr. Adams did not mention his relations
+with Jones's pistol. Let it be said, in extenuation of that
+performance, that Mr. Adams supposed Jones was going to Tucson, where he
+said he was going, and where a job and a salary were awaiting him. In
+Tucson an unloaded pistol in the holster of so handy a man on the drop
+as was Specimen would keep people civil, because they would not know,
+any more than the owner, that it was unloaded; and the mere possession
+of it would be sufficient in nine chances out of ten--though it was
+undoubtedly for the tenth that Mr. Adams had a sneaking hope. But
+Specimen Jones was not going to Tucson. A contention in his mind as to
+whether he would do what was good for himself, or what was good for
+another, had kept him sullen ever since he got up. Now it was settled,
+and Jones in serene humor again. Of course he had started on the Tucson
+road, for the benefit of Ephraim and Mr. Adams.
+
+The tenderfoot rode along. The Arizona sun beat down upon the deadly
+silence, and the world was no longer of crystal, but a mesa, dull and
+gray and hot. The pony's hoofs grated in the gravel, and after a time
+the road dived down and up among lumpy hills of stone and cactus, always
+nearer the fierce glaring Sierra Santa Catalina. It dipped so abruptly
+in and out of the shallow sudden ravines that, on coming up from one of
+these into sight of the country again, the tenderfoot's heart jumped at
+the close apparition of another rider quickly bearing in upon him from
+gullies where he had been moving unseen. But it was only Specimen Jones.
+
+"Hello!" said he, joining Cumnor. "Hot, ain't it?"
+
+"Where are you going?" inquired Cumnor.
+
+"Up here a ways." And Jones jerked his finger generally towards the
+Sierra, where they were heading.
+
+"Thought you had a job in Tucson."
+
+"That's what I have."
+
+Specimen Jones had no more to say, and they rode for a while, their
+ponies' hoofs always grating in the gravel, and the milk-cans lightly
+clanking on the burro's pack. The bunched blades of the yuccas bristled
+steel-stiff, and as far as you could see it was a gray waste of mounds
+and ridges sharp and blunt, up to the forbidding boundary walls of the
+Tortilita one way and the Santa Catalina the other. Cumnor wondered if
+Jones had found the chain. Jones was capable of not finding it for
+several weeks, or of finding it at once and saying nothing.
+
+"You'll excuse my meddling with your business?" the boy hazarded.
+
+Jones looked inquiring.
+
+"Something's wrong with your saddle-pocket."
+
+Specimen saw nothing apparently wrong with it, but perceiving Cumnor was
+grinning, unbuckled the pouch. He looked at the boy rapidly, and looked
+away again, and as he rode, still in silence, he put the chain back
+round his neck below the flannel shirt-collar.
+
+"Say, kid," he remarked, after some time, "what does J stand for?"
+
+"J? Oh, my name! Jock."
+
+"Well, Jock, will y'u explain to me as a friend how y'u ever come to be
+such a fool as to leave yer home--wherever and whatever it was--in
+exchange for this here God-forsaken and iniquitous hole?"
+
+"If you'll explain to me," said the boy, greatly heartened, "how you
+come to be ridin' in the company of a fool, instead of goin' to your job
+at Tucson."
+
+The explanation was furnished before Specimen Jones had framed his
+reply. A burning freight-wagon and five dismembered human stumps lay in
+the road. This was what had happened to the Miguels and Serapios and the
+concertina. Jones and Cumnor, in their dodging and struggles to exclude
+all expressions of growing mutual esteem from their speech, had
+forgotten their journey, and a sudden bend among the rocks where the
+road had now brought them revealed the blood and fire staring them in
+the face. The plundered wagon was three parts empty; its splintered,
+blazing boards slid down as they burned into the fiery heap on the
+ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them,
+bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed
+in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the
+garbage of combat and murder littered the earth, and in the air hung an
+odor that Cumnor knew, though he had never smelled it before. Morsels of
+dropped booty up among the rocks showed where the Indians had gone, and
+one horse remained, groaning, with an accidental arrow in his belly.
+
+"We'll just kill him," said Jones; and his pistol snapped idly, and
+snapped again, as his eye caught a motion--a something--two hundred
+yards up among the bowlders on the hill. He whirled round. The enemy was
+behind them also. There was no retreat. "Yourn's no good!" yelled Jones,
+fiercely, for Cumnor was getting out his little, foolish revolver. "Oh,
+what a trick to play on a man! Drop off yer horse, kid; drop, and do
+like me. Shootin's no good here, even if I was loaded. _They_ shot, and
+look at them now. God bless them ice-cream freezers of yourn, kid! Did
+y'u ever see a crazy man? If you 'ain't, _make it up as y'u go along_!"
+
+More objects moved up among the bowlders. Specimen Jones ripped off
+the burro's pack, and the milk-cans rolled on the ground. The burro
+began grazing quietly, with now and then a step towards new patches of
+grass. The horses stood where their riders had left them, their reins
+over their heads, hanging and dragging. From two hundred yards on the
+hill the ambushed Apaches showed, their dark, scattered figures
+appearing cautiously one by one, watching with suspicion. Specimen
+Jones seized up one milk-can, and Cumnor obediently did the same.
+
+[Illustration: THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON]
+
+"You kin dance, kid, and I kin sing, and we'll go to it," said Jones. He
+rambled in a wavering loop, and diving eccentrically at Cumnor, clashed
+the milk-cans together. "'Es schallt ein Ruf wie Donnerhall,'" he
+bawled, beginning the song of "Die Wacht am Rhein." "Why don't you
+dance?" he shouted, sternly. The boy saw the terrible earnestness of his
+face, and, clashing his milk-cans in turn, he shuffled a sort of jig.
+The two went over the sand in loops, toe and heel; the donkey continued
+his quiet grazing, and the flames rose hot and yellow from the
+freight-wagon. And all the while the stately German hymn pealed among
+the rocks, and the Apaches crept down nearer the bowing, scraping men.
+The sun shone bright, and their bodies poured with sweat. Jones flung
+off his shirt; his damp, matted hair was half in ridges and half glued
+to his forehead, and the delicate gold chain swung and struck his broad,
+naked breast. The Apaches drew nearer again, their bows and arrows held
+uncertainly. They came down the hill, fifteen or twenty, taking a long
+time, and stopping every few yards. The milk-cans clashed, and Jones
+thought he felt the boy's strokes weakening. "Die Wacht am Rhein" was
+finished, and now it was "'Ha-ve you seen my Flora pass this way?'"
+"Y'u mustn't play out, kid," said Jones, very gently. "Indeed y'u
+mustn't;" and he at once resumed his song. The silent Apaches had now
+reached the bottom of the hill. They stood some twenty yards away, and
+Cumnor had a good chance to see his first Indians. He saw them move, and
+the color and slim shape of their bodies, their thin arms, and their
+long, black hair. It went through his mind that if he had no more
+clothes on than that, dancing would come easier. His boots were growing
+heavy to lift, and his overalls seemed to wrap his sinews in wet,
+strangling thongs. He wondered how long he had been keeping this up. The
+legs of the Apaches were free, with light moccasins only half-way to the
+thigh, slenderly held up by strings from the waist. Cumnor envied their
+unencumbered steps as he saw them again walk nearer to where he was
+dancing. It was long since he had eaten, and he noticed a singing
+dulness in his brain, and became frightened at his thoughts, which were
+running and melting into one fixed idea. This idea was to take off his
+boots, and offer to trade them for a pair of moccasins. It terrified
+him--this endless, molten rush of thoughts; he could see them coming in
+different shapes from different places in his head, but they all joined
+immediately, and always formed the same fixed idea. He ground his teeth
+to master this encroaching inebriation of his will and judgment. He
+clashed his can more loudly to wake him to reality, which he still could
+recognize and appreciate. For a time he found it a good plan to listen
+to what Specimen Jones was singing, and tell himself the name of the
+song, if he knew it. At present it was "Yankee Doodle," to which Jones
+was fitting words of his own. These ran, "Now I'm going to try a bluff.
+And mind you do what I do"; and then again, over and over. Cumnor waited
+for the word "bluff"; for it was hard and heavy, and fell into his
+thoughts, and stopped them for a moment. The dance was so long now he
+had forgotten about that. A numbness had been spreading through his
+legs, and he was glad to feel a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. It
+was a piece of gravel that had somehow worked its way in, and was
+rubbing through the skin into the flesh. "That's good," he said, aloud.
+The pebble was eating the numbness away, and Cumnor drove it hard
+against the raw spot, and relished the tonic of its burning friction.
+The Apaches had drawn into a circle. Standing at some interval apart,
+they entirely surrounded the arena. Shrewd, half convinced, and yet with
+awe, they watched the dancers, who clashed their cans slowly now in
+rhythm to Jones's hoarse, parched singing. He was quite master of
+himself, and led the jig round the still blazing wreck of the wagon, and
+circled in figures of eight between the corpses of the Mexicans,
+clashing the milk-cans above each one. Then, knowing his strength was
+coming to an end, he approached an Indian whose splendid fillet and
+trappings denoted him of consequence; and Jones was near shouting with
+relief when the Indian shrank backward. Suddenly he saw Cumnor let his
+can drop, and without stopping to see why, he caught it up, and, slowly
+rattling both, approached each Indian in turn with tortuous steps. The
+circle that had never uttered a sound till now receded, chanting almost
+in a whisper some exorcising song which the man with the fillet had
+begun. They gathered round him, retreating always, and the strain, with
+its rapid muttered words, rose and fell softly among them. Jones had
+supposed the boy was overcome by faintness, and looked to see where he
+lay. But it was not faintness. Cumnor, with his boots off, came by and
+walked after the Indians in a trance. They saw him, and quickened their
+pace, often turning to be sure he was not overtaking them. He called to
+them unintelligibly, stumbling up the sharp hill, and pointing to the
+boots. Finally he sat down. They continued ascending the mountain,
+herding close round the man with the feathers, until the rocks and the
+filmy tangles screened them from sight; and like a wind that hums
+uncertainly in grass, their chanting died away.
+
+The sun was half behind the western range when Jones next moved. He
+called, and, getting no answer, he crawled painfully to where the boy
+lay on the hill. Cumnor was sleeping heavily; his head was hot, and he
+moaned. So Jones crawled down, and fetched blankets and the canteen of
+water. He spread the blankets over the boy, wet a handkerchief and laid
+it on his forehead; then he lay down himself.
+
+The earth was again magically smitten to crystal. Again the sharp cactus
+and the sand turned beautiful, and violet floated among the mountains,
+and rose-colored orange in the sky above them.
+
+"Jock," said Specimen at length.
+
+The boy opened his eyes.
+
+"Your foot is awful, Jock. Can y'u eat?"
+
+"Not with my foot."
+
+"Ah, God bless y'u, Jock! Y'u ain't turruble sick. But _can_ y'u eat?"
+
+Cumnor shook his head.
+
+"Eatin's what y'u need, though. Well, here." Specimen poured a judicious
+mixture of whiskey and water down the boy's throat, and wrapped the
+awful foot in his own flannel shirt. "They'll fix y'u over to Grant.
+It's maybe twelve miles through the cañon. It ain't a town any more than
+Carlos is, but the soldiers'll be good to us. As soon as night comes you
+and me must somehow git out of this."
+
+Somehow they did, Jones walking and leading his horse and the
+imperturbable little burro, and also holding Cumnor in the saddle. And
+when Cumnor was getting well in the military hospital at Grant, he
+listened to Jones recounting to all that chose to hear how useful a
+weapon an ice-cream freezer can be, and how if you'll only chase Apaches
+in your stocking feet they are sure to run away. And then Jones and
+Cumnor both enlisted; and I suppose Jones's friend is still expecting
+him in Tucson.
+
+
+
+
+THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU
+
+
+Unskilled at murder and without training in running away, one of the two
+Healy boys had been caught with ease soon after their crime. What they
+had done may be best learned in the following extract from a certain
+official report:
+
+    "The stage was within five miles of its destination when it
+    was confronted by the usual apparition of a masked man
+    levelling a double-barrelled shot-gun at the driver, and the
+    order to 'Pull up, and throw out the express box.' The driver
+    promptly complied. Meanwhile the guard, Buck Montgomery, who
+    occupied a seat inside, from which he caught a glimpse of
+    what was going on, opened fire at the robber, who dropped to
+    his knees at the first shot, but a moment later discharged
+    both barrels of his gun at the stage. The driver dropped from
+    his seat to the foot-board with five buckshot in his right
+    leg near the knee, and two in his left leg; a passenger by
+    his side also dropped with three or four buckshot in his
+    legs. Before the guard could reload, two shots came from
+    behind the bushes back of the exposed robber, and Buck fell
+    to the bottom of the stage mortally wounded--shot through the
+    back. The whole murderous sally occupied but a few seconds,
+    and the order came to 'Drive on.' Officers and citizens
+    quickly started in pursuit, and the next day one of the
+    robbers, a well-known young man of that vicinity, son of a
+    respectable farmer in Fresno County, was overtaken and
+    arrested."
+
+Feeling had run high in the streets of Siskiyou when the prisoner was
+brought into town, and the wretch's life had come near a violent end at
+the hands of the mob, for Buck Montgomery had many friends. But the
+steadier citizens preserved the peace, and the murderer was in the
+prison awaiting his trial by formal law. It was now some weeks since the
+tragedy, and Judge Campbell sat at breakfast reading his paper.
+
+"Why, that is excellent!" he suddenly exclaimed.
+
+"May I ask what is excellent, judge?" inquired his wife. She had a big
+nose.
+
+"They've caught the other one, Amanda. Got him last evening in a
+restaurant at Woodland." The judge read the paragraph to Mrs. Campbell,
+who listened severely. "And so," he concluded, "when to-night's train
+gets up, we'll have them both safe in jail."
+
+Mrs. Campbell dallied over her eggs, shaking her head. Presently she
+sighed. But as Amanda often did this, her husband finished his own eggs
+and took some more. "Poor boy!" said the lady, pensively. "Only
+twenty-three last 12th of October. What a cruel fate!"
+
+Now the judge supposed she referred to the murdered man. "Yes," he said.
+"Vile. You've got him romantically young, my dear. I understood he was
+thirty-five."
+
+"I know his age perfectly, Judge Campbell. I made it my business to find
+out. And to think his brother might actually have been lynched!"
+
+"I never knew that either. You seem to have found out all about the
+family, Amanda. What were they going to lynch the brother for?"
+
+The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the
+table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. "Judge Campbell!"
+she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain
+herself, if possible.
+
+"Well, my dear?"
+
+"You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who
+was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I
+ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail--"
+
+"Oh!" said the enlightened judge.
+
+"--Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of
+Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those
+yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails,
+and made those wicked men stop and go home?"
+
+"Amanda, I believe I recognize myself."
+
+"I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they've caught the
+other one, and he'll be up with the sheriff on to-night's train, and I
+suppose they'll lynch _him_ now!"
+
+"There's not the slightest danger," said the judge. "The town wants them
+to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an
+atrocious act--"
+
+"Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,"
+interrupted Amanda.
+
+"But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Mrs. Campbell, with impatience. "I saw the hole in his
+back. You needn't tell me all that again. If he'd thrown out the express
+box quicker they wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head. Wells and
+Fargo's messengers know that perfectly. It was his own fault. Those boys
+had no employment, and they only wanted money. They did not seek human
+blood, and you needn't tell me they did."
+
+"They shed it, however, Amanda. Quite a lot of it. Stage-driver and a
+passenger too."
+
+"Yes, you keep going back to that as if they'd all been murdered instead
+of only one, and you don't care about those two poor boys locked in a
+dungeon, and their gray-haired father down in Fresno County who never
+did anything wrong at all, and he sixty-one in December."
+
+"The county isn't thinking of hanging the old gentleman," said the
+judge.
+
+"That will do, Judge Campbell," said his lady, rising. "I shall say no
+more. Total silence for the present is best for you and best for me.
+Much best. I will leave you to think of your speech, which was by no
+means silver. Not even life with you for twenty-five years this coming
+10th of July has inured me to insult. I am capable of understanding whom
+they think of hanging, and your speaking to me as if I did not does you
+little credit; for it was a mere refuge from a woman's just accusation
+of heartlessness which you felt, and like a man would not acknowledge;
+and therefore it is that I say no more but leave you to go down the
+street to the Ladies' Lyceum where I shall find companions with some
+spark of humanity in their bosoms and milk of human kindness for those
+whose hasty youth has plunged them in misery and delivered them to the
+hands of those who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of
+nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be
+shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by cruelty and
+despair."
+
+It had begun stately as a dome, with symmetry and punctuation, but the
+climax was untrammelled by a single comma. The orator swept from the
+room, put on her bonnet and shawl, and the judge, still sitting with his
+eggs, heard the front door close behind her. She was president of the
+Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum, and she now trod thitherward through
+Siskiyou.
+
+"I think Amanda will find companions there," mused the judge. "But her
+notions of sympathy beat me." The judge had a small, wise blue eye, and
+he liked his wife more than well. She was sincerely good, and had been
+very courageous in their young days of poverty. She loved their son, and
+she loved him. Only, when she took to talking, he turned up a mental
+coat-collar and waited. But if the male sex did not appreciate her
+powers of eloquence her sister citizens did; and Mrs. Campbell, besides
+presiding at the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum in Siskiyou, often
+addressed female meetings in Ashland, Yreka, and even as far away as
+Tehama and Redding. She found companions this morning.
+
+"To think of it!" they exclaimed, at her news of the capture, for none
+had read the paper. They had been too busy talking of the next debate,
+which was upon the question, "Ought we to pray for rain?" But now they
+instantly forgot the wide spiritual issues raised by this inquiry, and
+plunged into the fascinations of crime, reciting once more to each other
+the details of the recent tragedy. The room hired for the Lyceum was in
+a second story above the apothecary and book shop--a combined enterprise
+in Siskiyou--and was furnished with fourteen rocking-chairs. Pictures of
+Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott ornamented the wall, with a photograph
+from an old master representing Leda and the Swan. This typified the
+Lyceum's approval of Art, and had been presented by one of the husbands
+upon returning from a three days' business trip to San Francisco.
+
+"Dear! dear!" said Mrs. Parsons, after they had all shuddered anew over
+the shooting and the blood. "With so much suffering in the world, how
+fulsome seems that gay music!" She referred to the Siskiyou brass-band,
+which was rehearsing the march from "Fatinitza" in an adjacent room in
+the building. Mrs. Parsons had large, mournful eyes, a poetic
+vocabulary, and wanted to be president of the Lyceum herself.
+
+"Melody has its sphere, Gertrude," said Mrs. Campbell, in a wholesome
+voice. "We must not be morbid. But this I say to you, one and all: Since
+the men of Siskiyou refuse, it is for the women to vindicate the town's
+humanity, and show some sympathy for the captive who arrives to-night."
+
+They all thought so too.
+
+"I do not criticise," continued their president, magnanimously, "nor do
+I complain of any one. Each in this world has his or her mission, and
+the most sacred is Woman's own--to console!"
+
+"True, true!" murmured Mrs. Slocum.
+
+"We must do something for the prisoner, to show him we do not desert him
+in his hour of need," Mrs. Campbell continued.
+
+"We'll go and meet the train!" Mrs. Slocum exclaimed, eagerly. "I've
+never seen a real murderer."
+
+"A bunch of flowers for him," said Mrs. Parsons, closing her mournful
+eyes. "Roses." And she smiled faintly.
+
+"Oh, lilies!" cried little Mrs. Day, with rapture. "Lilies would look
+_real_ nice."
+
+"Don't you think," said Miss Sissons, who had not spoken before, and sat
+a little apart from the close-drawn clump of talkers, "that we might
+send the widow some flowers too, some time?" Miss Sissons was a pretty
+girl, with neat hair. She was engaged to the captain of Siskiyou's
+baseball nine.
+
+"The widow?" Mrs. Campbell looked vague.
+
+"Mrs. Montgomery, I mean--the murdered man's wife. I--I went to see if I
+could do anything, for she has some children; but she wouldn't see me,"
+said Miss Sissons. "She said she couldn't talk to anybody."
+
+"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Campbell. "I dare say it was a dreadful shock to
+her. Yes, dear, we'll attend to her after a while. We'll have her with
+us right along, you know, whereas these unhappy boys may--may be--may
+soon meet a cruel death on the scaffold." Mrs. Campbell evaded the
+phrase "may be hanged" rather skilfully. To her trained oratorical sense
+it had seemed to lack dignity.
+
+"So young!" said Mrs. Day.
+
+"And both so full of promise, to be cut off!" said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"Why, they can't hang them both, I should think," said Miss Sissons. "I
+thought only one killed Mr. Montgomery."
+
+"My dear Louise," said Mrs. Campbell, "they can do anything they want,
+and they will. Shall I ever forget those ruffians who wanted to lynch
+the first one? They'll be on the jury!"
+
+The clump returned to their discussion of the flowers, and Miss Sissons
+presently mentioned she had some errands to do, and departed.
+
+"Would that that girl had more soul!" said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"She has plenty of soul," replied Mrs. Campbell, "but she's under the
+influence of a man. Well, as I was saying, roses and lilies are too
+big."
+
+"Oh, _why_?" said Mrs. Day. "They would _please_ him so."
+
+"He couldn't carry them, Mrs. Day. I've thought it all out. He'll be
+walked to the jail between strong men. We must have some small bokay to
+pin on his coat, for his hands will be shackled."
+
+"You don't say!" cried Mrs. Slocum. "How awful! I must get to that
+train. I've never seen a man in shackles in my life."
+
+So violets were selected; Mrs. Campbell brought some in the afternoon
+from her own borders, and Mrs. Parsons furnished a large pin. She
+claimed also the right to affix the decoration upon the prisoner's
+breast because she had suggested the idea of flowers; but the other
+ladies protested, and the president seemed to think that they all should
+draw lots. It fell to Mrs. Day.
+
+"Now I declare!" twittered the little matron. "I do believe I'll never
+dare."
+
+"You must say something to him," said Amanda; "something fitting and
+choice."
+
+"Oh dear no, Mrs. Campbell. Why, I never--my gracious! Why, if I'd known
+I was expected--Really, I couldn't think--I'll let _you_ do it!"
+
+"We can't hash up the ceremony that way, Mrs. Day," said Amanda,
+severely. And as they all fell arguing, the whistle blew.
+
+"There!" said Mrs. Slocum. "Now you've made me late, and I'll miss the
+shackles and everything."
+
+She flew down-stairs, and immediately the town of Siskiyou saw twelve
+members of the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum follow her in a hasty
+phalanx across the square to the station. The train approached slowly up
+the grade, and by the time the wide smoke-stack of the locomotive was
+puffing its wood smoke in clouds along the platform, Amanda had
+marshalled her company there.
+
+"Where's the gals all goin', Bill?" inquired a large citizen in boots of
+the ticket-agent.
+
+"Nowheres, I guess, Abe," the agent replied. "Leastways, they 'ain't
+bought any tickets off me."
+
+"Maybe they're for stealin' a ride," said Abe.
+
+The mail and baggage cars had passed, and the women watched the
+smoking-car that drew up opposite them. Mrs. Campbell had informed her
+friends that the sheriff always went in the smoker; but on this
+occasion, for some reason, he had brought his prisoner in the Pullman
+sleeper at the rear, some way down the track, and Amanda's vigilant eye
+suddenly caught the group, already descended and walking away. The
+platoon of sympathy set off, and rapidly came up with the sheriff, while
+Bill, Abe, the train conductor, the Pullman conductor, the engineer, and
+the fireman abandoned their duty, and stared, in company with the
+brakemen and many passengers. There was perfect silence but for the
+pumping of the air-brake on the engine. The sheriff, not understanding
+what was coming, had half drawn his pistol; but now, surrounded by
+universal petticoats, he pulled off his hat and grinned doubtfully. The
+friend with him also stood bareheaded and grinning. He was young Jim
+Hornbrook, the muscular betrothed of Miss Sissons. The prisoner could
+not remove his hat, or he would have done so. Miss Sissons, who had come
+to the train to meet her lover, was laughing extremely in the middle of
+the road.
+
+"Take these violets," faltered Mrs. Day, and held out the bunch, backing
+away slightly at the same time.
+
+"Nonsense," said Amanda, stepping forward and grasping the flowers. "The
+women of Siskiyou are with you," she said, "as we are with all the
+afflicted." Then she pinned the violets firmly to the prisoner's flannel
+shirt. His face, at first amazed as the sheriff's and Hornbrook's,
+smoothed into cunning and vanity, while Hornbrook's turned an angry red,
+and the sheriff stopped grinning.
+
+"Them flowers would look better on Buck Montgomery's grave, madam," said
+the officer. "Maybe you'll let us pass now." They went on to the jail.
+
+"Waal," said Abe, on the platform, "that's the most disgustin' fool
+thing I ever did see."
+
+"All aboa-rd!" said the conductor, and the long train continued its way
+to Portland.
+
+The platoon, well content, dispersed homeward to supper, and Jim
+Hornbrook walked home with his girl.
+
+"For Lord's sake, Louise," he said, "who started that move?"
+
+She told him the history of the morning.
+
+"Well," he said, "you tell Mrs. Campbell, with my respects, that she's
+just playing with fire. A good woman like her ought to have more sense.
+Those men are going to have a fair trial."
+
+"She wouldn't listen to me, Jim, not a bit. And, do you know, she really
+didn't seem to feel sorry--except just for a minute--about that poor
+woman."
+
+"Louise, why don't you quit her outfit?"
+
+"Resign from the Lyceum? That's so silly of you, Jim. We're not all
+crazy there; and that," said Miss Sissons, demurely, "is what makes a
+girl like me so valuable!"
+
+"Well, I'm not stuck on having you travel with that lot."
+
+"They speak better English than you do, Jim dear. Don't! in the street!"
+
+"Sho! It's dark now," said Jim. "And it's been three whole days since--"
+But Miss Sissons escaped inside her gate and rang the bell. "Now see
+here, Louise," he called after her, "when I say they're playing with
+fire I mean it. That woman will make trouble in this town."
+
+"She's not afraid," said Miss Sissons. "Don't you know enough about us
+yet to know we can't be threatened?"
+
+"You!" said the young man. "I wasn't thinking of you." And so they
+separated.
+
+Mrs. Campbell sat opposite the judge at supper, and he saw at once from
+her complacent reticence that she had achieved some triumph against his
+principles. She chatted about topics of the day in terms that were
+ingeniously trite. Then a letter came from their son in Denver, and she
+forgot her rôle somewhat, and read the letter aloud to the judge, and
+wondered wistfully who in Denver attended to the boy's buttons and
+socks; but she made no reference whatever to Siskiyou jail or those
+inside it. Next morning, however, it was the judge's turn to be angry.
+
+"Amanda," he said, over the paper again, "you had better stick to socks,
+and leave criminals alone."
+
+Amanda gazed at space with a calm smile.
+
+"And I'll tell you one thing, my dear," her husband said, more
+incisively, "it don't look well that I should represent the law while my
+wife figures" (he shook the morning paper) "as a public nuisance. And
+one thing more: _Look out!_ For if I know this community, and I think I
+do, you may raise something you don't bargain for."
+
+"I can take care of myself, judge," said Amanda, always smiling. These
+two never were angry both at once, and to-day it was the judge that
+sailed out of the house. Amanda pounced instantly upon the paper. The
+article was headed "Sweet Violets." But the editorial satire only
+spurred the lady to higher efforts. She proceeded to the Lyceum, and
+found that "Sweet Violets" had been there before her. Every woman held a
+copy, and the fourteen rocking-chairs were swooping up and down like
+things in a factory. In the presence of this blizzard, Mount Shasta,
+Lucretia Mott, and even Leda and the Swan looked singularly serene on
+their wall, although on the other side of the wall the "Fatinitza" march
+was booming brilliantly. But Amanda quieted the storm. It was her gift
+to be calm when others were not, and soon the rocking-chairs were merely
+rippling.
+
+"The way my boys scolded me--" began Mrs. Day.
+
+"For men I care not," said Mrs. Parsons. "But when my own sister
+upbraids me in a public place--" The lady's voice ceased, and she raised
+her mournful eyes. It seemed she had encountered her unnatural relative
+at the post-office. Everybody had a tale similar. Siskiyou had denounced
+their humane act.
+
+"Let them act ugly," said Mrs. Slocum. "We will not swerve."
+
+"I sent roses this morning," said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"_Did_ you, dear?" said Mrs. Day. "My lilies shall go this afternoon."
+
+"Here is a letter from the prisoner," said Amanda, producing the
+treasure; and they huddled to hear it. It was very affecting. It
+mentioned the violets blooming beside the hard couch, and spoke of
+prayer.
+
+"He had lovely hair," said Mrs. Slocum.
+
+"_So_ brown!" said Mrs. Day.
+
+"Black, my dear, and curly."
+
+"Light brown. I was a good deal closer, Susan--"
+
+"Never mind about his hair," said Amanda. "We are here not to flinch. We
+must act. Our course is chosen, and well chosen. The prison fare is a
+sin, and a beefsteak goes to them both at noon from my house."
+
+"Oh, why didn't we ever think of that before?" cried the ladies, in an
+ecstasy, and fell to planning a series of lunches in spite of what
+Siskiyou might say or do. Siskiyou did not say very much; but it looked;
+and the ladies waxed more enthusiastic, luxuriating in a sense of
+martyrdom because now the prisoners were stopped writing any more
+letters to them. This was doubtless a high-handed step, and it set
+certain pulpits preaching about love. The day set for the trial was
+approaching; Amanda and her flock were going. Prayer-meetings were held,
+food and flowers for the two in jail increased in volume, and every day
+saw some of the Lyceum waiting below the prisoners' barred windows till
+the men inside would thrust a hand through and wave to them; then they
+would shake a handkerchief in reply, and go away thrilled to talk it
+over at the Lyceum. And Siskiyou looked on all the while, darker and
+darker.
+
+Then finally Amanda had a great thought. Listening to "Fatinitza" one
+morning, she suddenly arose and visited Herr Schwartz, the band-master.
+Herr Schwartz was a wise and well-educated German. They had a lengthy
+conference.
+
+"I don't pelief dot vill be very goot," said the band-master.
+
+But at that Amanda talked a good deal; and the worthy Teuton was soon
+bewildered, and at last gave a dubious consent, "since it would blease
+de ladies."
+
+The president of the Lyceum arranged the coming event after her own
+heart. The voice of Woman should speak in Siskiyou. The helpless victims
+of male prejudice and the law of the land were to be flanked with
+consolation and encouragement upon the eve of their ordeal in court. In
+their lonely cell they were to feel that there were those outside whose
+hearts beat with theirs. The floral tribute was to be sumptuous, and
+Amanda had sent to San Francisco for pound-cake. The special quality she
+desired could not be achieved by the Siskiyou confectioner.
+
+Miss Sissons was not a party to this enterprise, and she told its
+various details to Jim Hornbrook, half in anger, half in derision. He
+listened without comment, and his face frightened her a little.
+
+"Jim, what's the matter?" said she.
+
+"Are you going to be at that circus?" he inquired.
+
+"I thought I might just look on, you know," said Miss Sissons. "Mrs.
+Campbell and a brass-band--"
+
+"You'll stay in the house that night, Louise."
+
+"Why, the ring isn't on my finger yet," laughed the girl, "the fatal
+promise of obedience--" But she stopped, perceiving her joke was not a
+good one. "Of course, Jim, if you feel that way," she finished. "Only
+I'm grown up, and I like reasons."
+
+"Well--that's all right too."
+
+"Ho, ho! All right! Thank you, sir. Dear me!"
+
+"Why, it ain't to please me, Louise; indeed it ain't. I can't swear
+everything won't be nice and all right and what a woman could be mixed
+up in, but--well, how should you know what men are, anyway, when they've
+been a good long time getting mad, and are mad all through? That's what
+this town is to-day, Louise."
+
+"I don't know," said Miss Sissons, "and I'm sure I'd rather not know."
+And so she gave her promise. "But I shouldn't suppose," she added, "that
+the men of Siskiyou, mad or not, would forget that women are women."
+
+Jim laughed. "Oh no," he said, "they ain't going to forget that."
+
+The appointed day came; and the train came, several hours late, bearing
+the box of confectionery, addressed to the Ladies' Reform and Literary
+Lyceum. Bill, the ticket-agent, held his lantern over it on the
+platform.
+
+"That's the cake," said he.
+
+"What cake?" Abe inquired.
+
+Bill told him the rumor.
+
+"Cake?" repeated Abe. "Fer them?" and he tilted his head towards the
+jail. "Will you say that again, friend? I ain't clear about it. _Cake_,
+did ye say?"
+
+"Pound-cake," said Bill. "Ordered special from San Francisco."
+
+Now pound-cake for adults is considered harmless. But it is curious how
+unwholesome a harmless thing can be if administered at the wrong time.
+The gaunt, savage-looking Californian went up to the box slowly. Then he
+kicked it lightly with his big boot, seeming to listen to its
+reverberation. Then he read the address. Then he sat down on the box to
+take a think. After a time he began speaking aloud. "They hold up a
+stage," he said, slowly. "They lay up a passenger fer a month. And they
+lame Bob Griffiths fer life. And then they do up Buck. Shoot a hole
+through his spine. And I helped bury him; fer I liked Buck." The speaker
+paused, and looked at the box. Then he got up. "I hain't attended their
+prayer-meetin's," said he, "and I hain't smelt their flowers. Such
+perfume's liable to make me throw up. But I guess I'll hev a look at
+their cake."
+
+He went to the baggage-room and brought an axe. The axe descended, and a
+splintered slat flew across the platform. "There's a lot of cake," said
+Abe. The top of the packing-case crashed on the railroad track, and
+three new men gathered to look on. "It's fresh cake too," remarked the
+destroyer. The box now fell to pieces, and the tattered paper wrapping
+was ripped away. "Step up, boys," said Abe, for a little crowd was there
+now. "Soft, ain't it?" They slung the cake about and tramped it in the
+grime and oil, and the boards of the box were torn apart and whirled
+away. There was a singular and growing impulse about all this. No one
+said anything; they were very quiet; yet the crowd grew quickly, as if
+called together by something in the air. One voice said, "Don't forgit
+we're all relyin' on yer serenade, Mark," and this raised a strange
+united laugh that broke brief and loud, and stopped, leaving the silence
+deeper than before. Mark and three more left, and walked towards the
+Lyceum. They were members of the Siskiyou band, and as they went one
+said that the town would see an interesting trial in the morning. Soon
+after they had gone the crowd moved from the station, compact and swift.
+
+Meanwhile the Lyceum had been having disappointments. When the train was
+known to be late, Amanda had abandoned bestowing the cake until morning.
+But now a horrid thing had happened: the Siskiyou band refused its
+services! The rocking-chairs were plying strenuously; but Amanda strode
+up and down in front of Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott.
+
+Herr Schwartz entered. "It's all right, madam," said he. "My trombone
+haf come back, und--"
+
+"You'll play?" demanded the president.
+
+"We blay for de ladies."
+
+The rocking-chairs were abandoned; the Lyceum put on its bonnet and
+shawl, and marshalled down-stairs with the band.
+
+"Ready," said Amanda.
+
+"Ready," said Herr Schwartz to his musicians. "Go a leedle easy mit der
+Allegro, or we bust 'Fatinitza.'"
+
+The spirited strains were lifted in Siskiyou, and the procession was
+soon at the jail in excellent order. They came round the corner with the
+trombone going as well as possible. Two jerking bodies dangled at the
+end of ropes, above the flare of torches. Amanda and her flock were
+shrieking.
+
+"So!" exclaimed Herr Schwartz. "Dot was dose Healy boys we haf come to
+gif serenade." He signed to stop the music.
+
+"No you don't," said two of the masked crowd, closing in with pistols.
+"You'll play fer them fellers till you're told to quit."
+
+"Cerdainly," said the philosophical Teuton. "Only dey gif brobably very
+leedle attention to our Allegro."
+
+So "Fatinitza" trumpeted on while the two on the ropes twisted, and grew
+still by-and-by. Then the masked men let the band go home. The Lyceum
+had scattered and fled long since, and many days passed before it
+revived again to civic usefulness, nor did its members find comfort from
+their men. Herr Schwartz gave a parting look at the bodies of the
+lynched murderers. "My!" said he, "das Ewigweibliche haf draw them apove
+sure enough."
+
+Miss Sissons next day was walking and talking off her shock and
+excitement with her lover. "And oh, Jim," she concluded, after they had
+said a good many things, "you hadn't anything to do with it, had you?"
+The young man did not reply, and catching a certain expression on his
+face, she hastily exclaimed: "Never mind! I don't want to know--ever!"
+
+So James Hornbrook kissed his sweetheart for saying that, and they
+continued their walk among the pleasant hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENERAL'S BLUFF
+
+
+The troops this day had gone into winter-quarters, and sat down to kill
+the idle time with pleasure until spring. After two hundred and forty
+days it is a good thing to sit down. The season had been spent in
+trailing, and sometimes catching, small bands of Indians. These had
+taken the habit of relieving settlers of their cattle and the tops of
+their heads. The weather-beaten troops had scouted over some two
+thousand aimless, veering miles, for the savages were fleet and mostly
+invisible, and knew the desert well. So, while the year turned, and the
+heat came, held sway, and went, the ragged troopers on the frontier were
+led an endless chase by the hostiles, who took them back and forth over
+flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or
+a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze
+at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were
+glad to march into Boisé Barracks this morning by eleven, and see a
+stove.
+
+They rolled for a moment on their bunks to get the feel of a bunk again
+after two hundred and forty days; they ate their dinner at a table;
+those who owned any further baggage than that which partially covered
+their nakedness unpacked it, perhaps nailed up a photograph or two, and
+found it grateful to sit and do nothing under a roof and listen to the
+grated snow whip the windows of the gray sandstone quarters. Such
+comfort, and the prospect of more ahead, of weeks of nothing but post
+duty and staying in the same place, obliterated Dry Camp, Cow Creek
+Lake, the blizzard on Meacham's Hill, the horse-killing in the John Day
+Valley, Saw-Tooth stampede, and all the recent evils of the past; the
+quarters hummed with cheerfulness. The nearest railroad was some four
+hundred miles to the southeast, slowly constructing to meet the next
+nearest, which was some nine hundred to the southeast; but Boisé City
+was only three-quarters of a mile away, the largest town in the
+Territory, the capital, not a temperance town, a winter resort; and
+several hundred people lived in it, men and women, few of whom ever died
+in their beds. The coming days and nights were a luxury to think of.
+
+"Blamed if there ain't a real tree!" exclaimed Private Jones.
+
+"Thet eer ain't no tree, ye plum; thet's the flag-pole 'n' th' Merrickin
+flag," observed a civilian. His name was Jack Long, and he was
+pack-master.
+
+Sergeant Keyser, listening, smiled. During the winter of '64-65 he had
+been in command of the first battalion of his regiment, but, on a theory
+of education, had enlisted after the war. This being known, held the men
+more shy of him than was his desire.
+
+Jones continued to pick his banjo, while a boyish trooper with tough
+black hair sat near him and kept time with his heels. "It's a
+cottonwood-tree I was speakin' of," observed Jones. There was one--a
+little, shivering white stalk. It stood above the flat where the
+barracks were, on a bench twenty or thirty feet higher, on which were
+built the officers' quarters. The air was getting dim with the fine,
+hard snow that slanted through it. The thermometer was ten above out
+there. At the mere sight and thought Mr. Long produced a flat bottle,
+warm from proximity to his flesh. Jones swallowed some drink, and looked
+at the little tree. "Snakes! but it feels good," said he, "to get
+something inside y'u and be inside yerself. What's the tax at Mike's
+dance-house now?"
+
+"Dance 'n' drinks fer two fer one dollar," responded Mr. Long,
+accurately. He was sixty, but that made no difference.
+
+"You and me'll take that in, Jock," said Jones to his friend, the
+black-haired boy. "'Sigh no more, ladies,'" he continued, singing. "The
+blamed banjo won't accompany that," he remarked, and looked out again at
+the tree. "There's a chap riding into the post now. Shabby-lookin'.
+Mebbe he's got stuff to sell."
+
+Jack Long looked up on the bench at a rusty figure moving slowly through
+the storm. "Th' ole man!" he said.
+
+"He ain't specially old," Jones answered. "They're apt to be older, them
+peddlers."
+
+"Peddlers! Oh, ye-es." A seizure of very remarkable coughing took Jack
+Long by the throat; but he really had a cough, and, on the fit's leaving
+him, swallowed a drink, and offered his bottle in a manner so cold and
+usual that Jones forgot to note anything but the excellence of the
+whiskey. Mr. Long winked at Sergeant Keyser; he thought it a good plan
+not to inform his young friends, not just yet at any rate, that their
+peddler was General Crook. It would be pleasant to hear what else they
+might have to say.
+
+The General had reached Boisé City that morning by the stage, quietly
+and unknown, as was his way. He had come to hunt Indians in the district
+of the Owyhee. Jack Long had discovered this, but only a few had been
+told the news, for the General wished to ask questions and receive
+answers, and to find out about all things; and he had noticed that this
+is not easy when too many people know who you are. He had called upon a
+friend or two in Boisé, walked about unnoticed, learned a number of
+facts, and now, true to his habit, entered the post wearing no uniform,
+none being necessary under the circumstances, and unattended by a single
+orderly. Jones and the black-haired Cumnor hoped he was a peddler, and
+innocently sat looking out of the window at him riding along the bench
+in front of the quarters, and occasionally slouching his wide, dark
+hat-brim against the stinging of the hard flakes. Jack Long, old and
+much experienced with the army, had scouted with Crook before, and knew
+him and his ways well. He also looked out of the window, standing behind
+Jones and Cumnor, with a huge hairy hand on a shoulder of each, and a
+huge wink again at Keyser.
+
+"Blamed if he 'ain't stopped in front of the commanding officer's," said
+Jones.
+
+"Lor'!" said Mr. Long, "there's jest nothin' them peddlers won't do."
+
+"They ain't likely to buy anything off him in there," said Cumnor.
+
+"Mwell, ef he's purvided with any _kind_ o' Injun cur'os'tees, the
+missis she'll fly right on to 'em. Sh' 'ain't been merried out yere only
+haff'n year, 'n' when she spies feathers 'n' bead truck 'n' buckskin fer
+sale sh' hollers like a son of a gun. Enthoosiastic, ye know."
+
+"He 'ain't got much of a pack," Jones commented, and at that moment
+"stables" sounded, and the men ran out to form and march to their
+grooming. Jack Long stood at the door and watched them file through the
+snow.
+
+Very few enlisted men of the small command that had come in this morning
+from its campaign had ever seen General Crook. Jones, though not new to
+the frontier, had not been long in the army. He and Cumnor had enlisted
+in a happy-go-lucky manner together at Grant, in Arizona, when the
+General was elsewhere. Discipline was galling to his vagrant spirit, and
+after each pay-day he had generally slept off the effects in the
+guard-house, going there for other offences between-whiles; but he was
+not of the stuff that deserts; also, he was excellent tempered, and his
+captain liked him for the way in which he could shoot Indians. Jack Long
+liked him too; and getting always a harmless pleasure from the mistakes
+of his friends, sincerely trusted there might be more about the peddler.
+He was startled at hearing his name spoken in his ear.
+
+"_Nah!_ Johnny, how you get on?"
+
+"Hello, Sarah! Kla-how-ya, six?" said Long, greeting in Chinook the
+squaw interpreter who had approached him so noiselessly. "Hy-as kloshe
+o-coke sun" (It is a beautiful day).
+
+The interpreter laughed--she had a broad, sweet, coarse face, and
+laughed easily--and said in English, "You hear about E-egante?"
+
+Long had heard nothing recently of this Pah-Ute chieftain.
+
+"He heap bad," continued Sarah, laughing broadly. "Come round ranch up
+here--"
+
+"Anybody killed?" Long interrupted.
+
+"No. All run away quick. Meester Dailey, he old man, he run all same
+young one. His old woman she run all same man. Get horse. Run away
+quick. Hu-hu!" and Sarah's rich mockery sounded again. No tragedy had
+happened this time, and the squaw narrated her story greatly to the
+relish of Mr. Long. This veteran of trails and mines had seen too much
+of life's bleakness not to cherish whatever of mirth his days might
+bring.
+
+"Didn't burn the house?" he said.
+
+"Not burn. Just make heap mess. Cut up feather-bed hy-as ten-as (very
+small) and eat big dinner, hu-hu! Sugar, onions, meat, eat all. Then
+they find litt' cats walkin' round there."
+
+"Lor'!" said Mr. Long, deeply interested, "they didn't eat _them_?"
+
+"No. Not eat litt' cats. Put 'em two--man-cat and woman-cat--in
+molasses; put 'em in feather-bed; all same bird. Then they hunt for
+whiskey, break everything, hunt all over, ha-lo whiskey!" Sarah shook
+her head. "Meester Dailey he good man. Hy-iu temperance. Drink water.
+They find his medicine; drink all up; make awful sick."
+
+"I guess 'twar th' ole man's liniment," muttered Jack Long.
+
+"Yas, milinut. They can't walk. Stay there long time, then Meester
+Dailey come back with friends. They think Injuns all gone; make noise,
+and E-egante he hear him come, and he not very sick. Run away. Some more
+run. But two Injuns heap sick; can't run. Meester Dailey he come round
+the corner; see awful mess everywhere; see two litt' cats sittin' in
+door all same bird, sing very loud. Then he see two Injuns on ground.
+They dead now."
+
+"Mwell," said Long, "none of eer'll do. We'll hev to ketch E-egante."
+
+"A--h!" drawled Sarah the squaw, in musical derision. "Maybe no catch
+him. All same jack rabbit."
+
+"Jest ye wait, Sarah; Gray Fox hez come."
+
+"Gen'l Crook!" said the squaw. "He come! Ho! He heap savvy." She
+stopped, and laughed again, like a pleased child. "Maybe no catch
+E-egante," she added, rolling her pretty brown eyes at Jack Long.
+
+"You know E-egante?" he demanded.
+
+"Yas, one time. Long time now. I litt' girl then." But Sarah remembered
+that long time, when she slept in a tent and had not been captured and
+put to school. And she remembered the tall young boys whom she used to
+watch shoot arrows, and the tallest, who shot most truly--at least, he
+certainly did now in her imagination. He had never spoken to her or
+looked at her. He was a boy of fourteen and she a girl of eight. Now she
+was twenty-five. Also she was tame and domesticated, with a white
+husband who was not bad to her, and children for each year of wedlock,
+who would grow up to speak English better than she could, and her own
+tongue not at all. And E-egante was not tame, and still lived in a tent.
+Sarah regarded white people as her friends, but she was proud of being
+an Indian, and she liked to think that her race could outwit the soldier
+now and then. She laughed again when she thought of old Mrs. Dailey
+running from E-egante.
+
+"What's up with ye, Sarah?" said Jack Long, for the squaw's laughter had
+come suddenly on a spell of silence.
+
+"Hé!" said she. "All same jack-rabbit. No catch him." She stood shaking
+her head at Long, and showing her white, regular teeth. Then abruptly
+she went away to her tent without any word, not because she was in
+ill-humor or had thought of something, but because she was an Indian and
+had thought of nothing, and had no more to say. She met the men
+returning from the stables; admired Jones and smiled at him, upon which
+he murmured "Oh fie!" as he passed her. The troop broke ranks and
+dispersed, to lounge and gossip until mess-call. Cumnor and Jones were
+putting a little snow down each other's necks with friendly profanity,
+when Jones saw the peddler standing close and watching them. A high
+collar of some ragged fur was turned up round his neck, disguising the
+character of the ancient army overcoat to which it was attached, and
+spots and long stains extended down the legs of his corduroys to the
+charred holes at the bottom, where the owner had scorched them warming
+his heels and calves at many camp-fires.
+
+"Hello, uncle," said Jones. "What y'u got in your pack?" He and Cumnor
+left their gambols and eagerly approached, while Mr. Jack Long, seeing
+the interview, came up also to hear it. "'Ain't y'u got something to
+sell?" continued Jones. "Y'u haven't gone and dumped yer whole outfit at
+the commanding officer's, have y'u now?"
+
+"I'm afraid I have." The low voice shook ever so little, and if Jones
+had looked he would have seen a twinkle come and go in the gray-blue
+eyes.
+
+"We've been out eight months, y'u know, fairly steady," pursued Jones,
+"and haven't seen nothing; and we'd buy most anything that ain't too
+damn bad," he concluded, plaintively.
+
+Mr. Long, in the background, was whining to himself with joy, and he now
+urgently beckoned Keyser to come and hear this.
+
+"If you've got some cheap poker chips," suggested Cumnor.
+
+"And say, uncle," said Jones, raising his voice, for the peddler was
+moving away, "decks, and tobacco better than what they keep at the
+commissary. Me and my friend'll take some off your hands. And if you're
+comin' with new stock to-morrow, uncle" (Jones was now shouting after
+him), "why, we're single men, and y'u might fetch along a couple of
+squaws!"
+
+"Holy smoke!" screeched Mr. Long, dancing on one leg.
+
+"What's up with you, y'u ape?" inquired Specimen Jones. He looked at the
+departing peddler and saw Sergeant Keyser meet him and salute with
+stern, soldierly aspect. Then the peddler shook hands with the sergeant,
+seemed to speak pleasantly, and again Keyser saluted as he passed on.
+"What's that for?" Jones asked, uneasily. "Who is that hobo?"
+
+But Mr. Long was talking to himself in a highly moralizing strain. "It
+ain't every young enlisted man," he was saying, "ez hez th' privilege of
+explainin' his wants at headquarters."
+
+"Jones," said Sergeant Keyser, arriving, "I've a compliment for you.
+General Crook said you were a fine-looking man."
+
+"General?--What's that?--Where did y'u see--What? _Him?_" The
+disgusting truth flashed clear on Jones. Uttering a single
+disconcerted syllable of rage, he wheeled and went by himself into
+the barracks, and lay down solitary on his bunk and read a newspaper
+until mess-call without taking in a word of it. "If they go to put
+me in the mill fer that," he said, sulkily, to many friends who brought
+him their congratulations, "I'm going to give 'em what I think about
+wearin' disguises."
+
+[Illustration: "'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'"]
+
+"What do you think, Specimen?" said one.
+
+"Give it to us now, Specimen," said another.
+
+"Against the law, ain't it, Specimen?"
+
+"Begosh!" said Jack Long, "ef thet's so, don't lose no time warnin' the
+General, Specimen. Th' ole man'd hate to be arrested."
+
+And Specimen Jones told them all to shut their heads.
+
+But no thought was more distant from General Crook's busy mind than
+putting poor Jones in the guard-house. The trooper's willingness, after
+eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to
+his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight
+months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often
+dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of
+life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The
+American "statesman" does not care about our army until it becomes
+necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew all
+this well; and realizing that these soldiers, who had come into
+winter-quarters this morning at eleven, had earned a holiday, he was
+sorry to feel obliged to start them out again to-morrow morning at two;
+for this was what he had decided upon.
+
+He had received orders to drive on the reservation the various small
+bands of Indians that were roving through the country of the Snake and
+its tributaries, a danger to the miners in the Bannock Basin, and to
+the various ranches in west Idaho and east Oregon. As usual, he had
+been given an insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he
+had been instructed by the "statesmen" to do it without violence--that
+is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor
+Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to,
+pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a "statesman"
+would achieve it. The force at the General's disposal was the garrison
+at Boisé Barracks--one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The
+latter was not adapted to the matter in hand--rapid marching and
+surprises; all it could be used for was as a reinforcement, and,
+moreover, somebody must be left at Boisé Barracks. The cavalry had had
+its full dose of scouting and skirmishing and long exposed marches, the
+horses were poor, and nobody had any trousers to speak of. Also, the
+troop was greatly depleted; it numbered forty men. Forty had deserted,
+and three--a sergeant and three privates--had cooked and eaten a
+vegetable they had been glad to dig up one day, and had spent the
+ensuing forty-five minutes in attempting to make their ankles beat the
+backs of their heads; after that the captain had read over them a
+sentence beginning, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time
+to live, and is full of misery"; and after that the camp was referred to
+as Wild Carrot Camp, because the sergeant had said the vegetable was
+wild carrot, whereas it had really been wild parsnip, which is quite
+another thing.
+
+General Crook shook his head over what he saw. The men were
+ill-provided, the commissary and the quartermaster department were
+ill-provided; but it would have to do; the "statesmen" said our army
+was an extravagance. The Indians must be impressed and intimidated by
+the unlimited resources which the General had--not. Having come to this
+conclusion, he went up to the post commander's, and at supper astonished
+that officer by casual remarks which revealed a knowledge of the
+surrounding country, the small streams, the best camps for pasture,
+spots to avoid on account of bad water, what mules had sore backs, and
+many other things that the post commander would have liked dearly to ask
+the General where and when he had learned, only he did not dare. He did
+not even venture to ask him what he was going to do. Neither did Captain
+Glynn, who had been asked to meet the General. The General soon told
+them, however. "It may be a little cold," he concluded.
+
+"To-morrow, sir?" This from Captain Glynn. He had come in with the forty
+that morning. He had been enjoying his supper very much.
+
+"I think so," said the General. "This E-egante is likely to make trouble
+if he is not checked." Then, understanding the thoughts of Captain
+Glynn, he added, with an invisible smile, "_You_ need no preparations.
+You're in marching order. It's not as if your men had been here a long
+time and had to get ready for a start."
+
+"Oh no," said Glynn, "it isn't like that." He was silent. "I think, if
+you'll excuse me, General," he said next, "I'll see my sergeant and give
+some orders."
+
+"Certainly. And, Captain Glynn, I took the liberty of giving a few
+directions myself. We'll take an A tent, you know, for you and me. I see
+Keyser is sergeant in F troop. Glad we have a non-commissioned officer
+so competent. Haven't seen him since '64, at Winchester. Why, it's
+cleared off, I declare!"
+
+It had, and the General looked out of the open door as Captain Glynn,
+departing, was pulling at his cigar. "How beautiful the planets are!"
+exclaimed Crook. "Look at Jupiter--there, just to the left of that
+little cottonwood-tree. Haven't you often noticed how much finer the
+stars shine in this atmosphere than in the East? Oh, captain! I forgot
+to speak of extra horseshoes. I want some brought along."
+
+"I'll attend to it, General."
+
+"They shouldn't be too large. These California fourteen-and-a-half
+horses have smallish hoofs."
+
+"I'll see the blacksmith myself, General."
+
+"Thank you. Good-night. And just order fresh stuffing put into the
+aparejos. I noticed three that had got lumpy." And the General shut the
+door and went to wipe out the immaculate barrels of his shot-gun; for
+besides Indians there were grouse among the hills where he expected to
+go.
+
+Captain Glynn, arriving at his own door, stuck his glowing cigar against
+the thermometer hanging outside: twenty-three below zero. "Oh Lord!"
+said the captain, briefly. He went in and told his striker to get
+Sergeant Keyser. Then he sat down and waited. "'Look at Jupiter!'" he
+muttered, angrily. "What an awful old man!"
+
+It was rather awful. The captain had not supposed generals in the first
+two hours of their arrival at a post to be in the habit of finding out
+more about your aparejos than you knew yourself. But old the General was
+not. At the present day many captains are older than Crook was then.
+
+Down at the barracks there was the same curiosity about what the "Old
+Man" was going to do as existed at the post commander's during the early
+part of supper. It pleased the cavalry to tell the infantry that the
+Old Man proposed to take the infantry to the Columbia River next week;
+and the infantry replied to the cavalry that they were quite right as to
+the river and the week, and it was hard luck the General needed only
+mounted troops on this trip. Others had heard he had come to superintend
+the building of a line of telegraph to Klamath, which would be a good
+winter's job for somebody; but nobody supposed that anything would
+happen yet awhile.
+
+And then a man came in and told them the General had sent his boots to
+the saddler to have nails hammered in the soles.
+
+"That eer means business," said Jack Long, "'n' I guess I'll nail up mee
+own cowhides."
+
+"Jock," said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, "you and me 'ain't got any soles
+to ourn because they're contract boots, y'u see. I'll nail up yer feet
+if y'u say so. It's liable to be slippery."
+
+Cumnor did not take in the situation at once. "What's your hurry?" he
+inquired of Jack Long. Therefore it was explained to him that when
+General Crook ordered his boots fixed you might expect to be on the road
+shortly. Cumnor swore some resigned, unemphatic oaths, fondly supposing
+that "shortly" meant some time or other; but hearing in the next five
+minutes the definite fact that F troop would get up at two, he made use
+of profound and thorough language, and compared the soldier with the
+slave.
+
+"Why, y'u talk almost like a man, Jock," said Specimen Jones. "Blamed if
+y'u don't sound pretty near growed up."
+
+Cumnor invited Jones to mind his business.
+
+"Yer muss-tache has come since Arizona," continued Jones, admiringly,
+"and yer blue eye is bad-lookin'--worse than when we shot at yer heels
+and y'u danced fer us."
+
+"I thought they were going to give us a rest," mumbled the youth,
+flushing. "I thought we'd be let stay here a spell."
+
+"I thought so too, Jock. A little monotony would be fine variety. But a
+man must take his medicine, y'u know, and not squeal." Jones had lowered
+his voice, and now spoke without satire to the boy whom he had in a
+curious manner taken under his protection.
+
+"Look at what they give us for a blanket to sleep in," said Cumnor. "A
+fellow can see to read the newspaper through it."
+
+"Look at my coat, Cumnor." It was Sergeant Keyser showing the article
+furnished the soldier by the government. "You can spit through that." He
+had overheard their talk, and stepped up to show that all were in the
+same box. At his presence reticence fell upon the privates, and Cumnor
+hauled his black felt hat down tight in embarrassment, which strain
+split it open half-way round his head. It was another sample of
+regulation clothing, and they laughed at it.
+
+"We all know the way it is," said Keyser, "and I've seen it a big sight
+worse. Cumnor, I've a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get
+back."
+
+And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected
+to sleep in for some undisturbed weeks, and by four o'clock had eaten
+its well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee, and was following
+the "awful old man" down the north bank of the Boisé, leaving the
+silent, dead, wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile
+behind in the darkness. The mountains south stood distant, ignoble,
+plain-featured heights, looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing
+stars and the slice of hard, sharp-edged moon, and the surrounding
+plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and
+nothing with desolate perpetuity. The snowfall was light and dry as
+sand, and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or
+knoll. The column moved through the dead polar silence, scarcely
+breaking it. Now and then a hoof rang on a stone, here and there a
+bridle or a sabre clinked lightly; but it was too cold and early for
+talking, and the only steady sound was the flat, can-like tankle of the
+square bell that hung on the neck of the long-eared leader of the
+pack-train. They passed the Dailey ranch, and saw the kittens and the
+liniment-bottle, but could get no information as to what way E-egante
+had gone. The General did not care for that, however; he had devised his
+own route for the present, after a talk with the Indian guides. At the
+second dismounting during march he had word sent back to the pack-train
+not to fall behind, and the bell was to be taken off if the rest of the
+mules would follow without the sound of its shallow music. No wind moved
+the weeds or shook the stiff grass, and the rising sun glittered pink on
+the patched and motley-shirted men as they blew on their red hands or
+beat them against their legs. Some were lucky enough to have woollen or
+fur gloves, but many had only the white cotton affairs furnished by the
+government. Sarah the squaw laughed at them: the interpreter was warm as
+she rode in her bright green shawl. While the dismounted troopers
+stretched their limbs during the halt, she remained on her pony talking
+to one and another.
+
+"Gray Fox heap savvy," said she to Mr. Long. "He heap get up in the
+mornin'."
+
+"Thet's what he does, Sarah."
+
+"Yas. No give soldier hy-as Sunday" (a holiday).
+
+"No, no," assented Mr. Long. "Gray Fox go téh-téh" (trot).
+
+"Maybe he catch E-egante, maybe put him in skookum-house (prison)?"
+suggested Sarah.
+
+"Oh no! Lor'! E-egante good Injun. White Father he feed him. Give him
+heap clothes," said Mr. Long.
+
+"A--h!" drawled Sarah, dubiously, and rode by herself.
+
+"You'll need watchin'," muttered Jack Long.
+
+The trumpet sounded, the troopers swung into their saddles, and the line
+of march was taken up as before, Crook at the head of the column, his
+ragged fur collar turned up, his corduroys stuffed inside a wrinkled
+pair of boots, the shot-gun balanced across his saddle, and nothing to
+reveal that he was any one in particular, unless you saw his face. As
+the morning grew bright, and empty, silent Idaho glistened under the
+clear blue, the General talked a little to Captain Glynn.
+
+"E-egante will have crossed Snake River, I think," said he. "I shall try
+to do that to-day; but we must be easy on those horses of yours. We
+ought to be able to find these Indians in three days."
+
+"If I were a lusty young chief," said Glynn, "I should think it pretty
+tough to be put on a reservation for dipping a couple of kittens in the
+molasses."
+
+"So should I, captain. But next time he might dip Mrs. Dailey. And I'm
+not sure he didn't have a hand in more serious work. Didn't you run
+across his tracks anywhere this summer?"
+
+"No, sir. He was over on the Des Chutes."
+
+"Did you hear what he was doing?"
+
+"Having rows about fish and game with those Warm Spring Indians on the
+west side of the Des Chutes."
+
+"They're always poaching on each other. There's bad blood between
+E-egante and Uma-Pine."
+
+"Uma-Pine's friendly, sir, isn't he?"
+
+"Well, that's a question," said Crook. "But there's no question about
+this E-egante and his Pah-Utes. We've got to catch him. I'm sorry for
+him. He doesn't see why he shouldn't hunt anywhere as his fathers did. I
+shouldn't see that either."
+
+"How strong is this band reported, sir?"
+
+"I've heard nothing I can set reliance upon," said Crook, instinctively
+levelling his shot-gun at a big bird that rose; then he replaced the
+piece across his saddle and was silent. Now Captain Glynn had heard
+there were three hundred Indians with E-egante, which was a larger
+number than he had been in the habit of attacking with forty men. But he
+felt discreet about volunteering any information to the General after
+last night's exhibition of what the General knew. Crook partly answered
+what was in Glynn's mind. "This is the only available force I have,"
+said he. "We must do what we can with it. You've found out by this time,
+captain, that rapidity in following Indians up often works well. They
+have made up their minds--that is, if I know them--that we're going to
+loaf inside Boisé Barracks until the hard weather lets up."
+
+Captain Glynn had thought so too, but he did not mention this, and the
+General continued. "I find that most people entertained this notion," he
+said, "and I'm glad they did, for it will help my first operations very
+materially."
+
+The captain agreed that there was nothing like a false impression for
+assisting the efficacy of military movements, and presently the General
+asked him to command a halt. It was high noon, and the sun gleamed on
+the brass trumpet as the long note blew. Again the musical strain
+sounded on the cold, bright stillness, and the double line of twenty
+legs swung in a simultaneous arc over the horses' backs as the men
+dismounted.
+
+"We'll noon here," said the General; and while the cook broke the ice on
+Boisé River to fill his kettles, Crook went back to the mules to see how
+the sore backs were standing the march. "How d'ye do, Jack Long?" said
+he. "Your stock is travelling pretty well, I see. They're loaded with
+thirty days' rations, but I trust we're not going to need it all."
+
+"Mwell, General, I don't specially kyeer meself 'bout eatin' the hull
+outfit." Mr. Long showed his respect for the General by never swearing
+in his presence.
+
+"I see you haven't forgotten how to pack," Crook said to him. "Can we
+make Snake River to-day, Jack?"
+
+"That'll be forty miles, General. The days are pretty short."
+
+"What are you feeding to the animals?" Crook inquired.
+
+"Why, General, _you_ know jest 's well 's me," said Jack, grinning.
+
+"I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five
+pounds next ten, and you're out of grain for the next ten. Is that the
+way still?"
+
+"Thet's the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs."
+
+Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the
+horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now
+returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.
+
+They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals
+could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a
+little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road,
+trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren
+height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs
+of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey
+had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and
+trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General
+Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were
+their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have
+been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three
+hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the
+column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the
+gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two
+days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the
+mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging
+of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and
+there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.
+
+Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of
+willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh
+of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close,
+nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight blue
+smoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The
+whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and
+the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent
+in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching
+a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with
+pines above.
+
+The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts
+forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready;
+and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The
+horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress,
+sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies,
+and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs.
+They could not wedge a man's length into that pliant labyrinth, and the
+General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above,
+Crook's cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood,
+hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared
+at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows,
+with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene
+and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds--not birds of prey--and the
+quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the
+liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.
+
+"What do you suppose they're doing?" inquired Glynn.
+
+"Looking at us," said Crook.
+
+"I wish we could return the compliment," said the captain.
+
+Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would
+have been less worth watching. Two willow branches shook, making a
+vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train
+was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an
+orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and
+were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses
+and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little
+light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in
+different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye
+fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from
+the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of
+long grass tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short
+while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable
+tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising
+always into the quiet afternoon.
+
+"Can you see 'em?" said Glynn.
+
+"Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this
+band?"
+
+Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.
+
+It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be
+pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty
+troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the
+thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to
+wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.
+
+"It's his bet, and he holds poor cards," murmured Specimen Jones; and
+the neighbors grinned.
+
+And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent
+the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in
+consequence, disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of
+sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn
+wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his
+amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.
+
+"You tell E-egante," he said, "that I am not going to fight with his
+people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm,
+and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask
+E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante
+and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine
+o'clock."
+
+And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer,
+and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or
+showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further
+sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. "Say that I am
+Gray Fox," said he.
+
+On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going
+opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow
+entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread
+aside for three figures to stand there.
+
+"E-egante!" said Sarah, eagerly. "See him big man!" she added to Crook,
+pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with
+fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She,
+being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.
+
+"He is counting our strength," said Glynn.
+
+"He's done that some time ago," said Crook. "Tell E-egante," he
+continued to the squaw, "that I will not send for more soldiers than he
+sees here. I do not wish anything but peace unless he wishes
+otherwise."
+
+Sarah's musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched
+her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length.
+He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often.
+All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble.
+There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had
+not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was
+raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the
+horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come
+to-morrow with Gray Fox.
+
+And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as
+innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.
+
+"My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,"
+the General admitted. "And that fellow put his finger right on the
+place. I'll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more
+soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told
+him I lied; she's an uncertain quantity, I find. But I told him the
+exact truth--that I had no more--and he won't believe it, and that's
+what I want."
+
+So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely
+exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force
+was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an
+impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command.
+Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men's village, and the troops
+went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze
+ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people in the thicket should
+have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules
+pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered
+among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of
+the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the
+flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built
+irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended
+glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little
+blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook's tent, and Sergeant
+Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his
+camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket
+below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By
+eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a
+little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on
+the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water
+running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant
+Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the
+dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack
+Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar,
+because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command
+of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master--the
+instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and
+Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they
+stood at the fire, but away from him.
+
+"How do you like this compared with barracks?" the sergeant asked,
+conversationally.
+
+"It's all right," said Jones.
+
+"Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn't enjoy it
+much myself. Sit down and get warm, won't you?"
+
+The men came and stood awkwardly. "I 'ain't never found any excitement
+in getting up early," said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted,
+and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones
+kicked the log into better position. "But this affair's gettin'
+inter-esting," he added.
+
+"Don't you smoke?" Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his
+tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going
+better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.
+
+"Arizona's the most outrageous outrage in the United States," declared
+Jones.
+
+"Why did you stay there six years, then?" said Cumnor.
+
+"Guess I'd been there yet but for you comin' along and us both enlistin'
+that crazy way. Idaho's better. Only," said Jones, thoughtfully, "coming
+to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it's a wonder a man
+don't just split like a glass chimbly."
+
+The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.
+
+"How! how!" said a strange, propitiating voice.
+
+It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself.
+They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not
+running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and "How!
+how!" he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who
+remained seated.
+
+"Good-evening," said the sergeant.
+
+"Christmas is coming," said Jones, amicably.
+
+"How! how!" said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his
+horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and
+beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly
+jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp
+and shaken his head; but the Indian's nerves were evidently on the
+sharpest strain.
+
+"Sit down!" said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started
+suspiciously.
+
+"Warm here!" Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.
+
+The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed
+almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with
+heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for
+vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and
+pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers
+only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount,
+looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got
+off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they
+smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the
+magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.
+
+"He's a jim-dandy," said Cumnor.
+
+"You bet the girls think so," said Jones. "He gets his pick. For you're
+a fighter too, ain't y'u?" he added, to E-egante.
+
+"How! how!" said that personage, looking at them with grave affability
+from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the
+sergeant's pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,
+the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of
+being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning
+embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp,
+crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante
+gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had
+come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it
+would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview.
+Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but
+she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had
+taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay
+wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances.
+The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice
+made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant
+on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.
+
+By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty
+waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten
+o'clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the
+squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to
+do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn
+smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking
+wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she
+served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven,
+and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He
+gave the orders himself.
+
+"Sergeant."
+
+Keyser saluted.
+
+"You will detail eight men to go with you into the Indian camp. The men
+are to carry pistols under their overcoats, and no other arms. You will
+tell the Indians to come out. Repeat what I said to them last night.
+Make it short. I'll give them ten minutes. If they don't come by then a
+shot will be fired out here. At that signal you will remain in there and
+blaze away at the Indians."
+
+So Keyser picked his men.
+
+The thirty-one remaining troopers stopped joking, and watched the squad
+of nine and the interpreter file down the bank to visit the three
+hundred. The dingy overcoats and the bright green shawl passed into the
+thicket, and the General looked at his watch. Along the bend of the
+stream clear noises tinkled from the water and the ice.
+
+"What are they up to?" whispered a teamster to Jack Long. Long's face
+was stern, but the teamster's was chalky and tight drawn. "Say," he
+repeated, insistently, "what are we going to do?"
+
+"We're to wait," Long whispered back, "till nothin' happens, and then
+th' Ole Man'll fire a gun and signal them boys to shoot in there."
+
+"Oh, it's to be waitin'?" said the teamster. He fastened his eyes on the
+thicket, and his lips grew bloodless. The running river sounded more
+plainly. "---- ---- it!" cried the man, desperately, "let's start the
+fun, then." He whipped out his pistol, and Jack Long had just time to
+seize him and stop a false signal.
+
+"Why, you must be skeered," said Long. "I've a mind to beat yer skull
+in."
+
+"Waitin's so awful," whimpered the man. "I wisht I was along with them
+in there."
+
+Jack gave him back his revolver. "There," said he; "ye're not skeered, I
+see. Waitin' ain't nice."
+
+The eight troopers with Keyser were not having anything like so
+distasteful a time. "Jock," said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, as they
+followed the sergeant into the willows and began to come among the
+lodges and striped savages, "you and me has saw Injuns before, Jock."
+
+"And we'll do it again," said Cumnor.
+
+Keyser looked at his watch: Four minutes gone. "Jones," said he, "you
+patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There
+must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with
+side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It's a big
+one--all brothers." Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick
+through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all
+the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle,
+fleeting visions of yellow and red through the quiet-colored twigs.
+Others squatted stoically, doing nothing. A few had guns, but most used
+arrows, and had these stacked beside them where they squatted. Keyser
+singled out a somewhat central figure--Fur Cap was his name--as his
+starting-point if the signal should sound. It must sound now in a second
+or two. He would not look at his watch lest it should hamper him. Fur
+Cap sat by a pile of arrows, with a gun across his knees besides. Keyser
+calculated that by standing close to him as he was, his boot would catch
+the Indian under the chin just right, and save one cartridge. Not a red
+man spoke, but Sarah the squaw dutifully speechified in a central place
+where paths met near Keyser and Fur Cap. Her voice was persuasive and
+warning. Some of the savages moved up and felt Keyser's overcoat. They
+fingered the hard bulge of the pistol underneath, and passed on,
+laughing, to the next soldier's coat, while Sarah did not cease to
+harangue. The tall, stately man of last night appeared. His full dark
+eye met Sarah's, and the woman's voice faltered and her breathing grew
+troubled as she gazed at him. Once more Keyser looked at his watch:
+Seven minutes. E-egante noticed Sarah's emotion, and his face showed
+that her face pleased him. He spoke in a deep voice to Fur Cap,
+stretching a fringed arm out towards the hill with a royal gesture, at
+which Fur Cap rose.
+
+"He will come, he will come!" said the squaw, running to Keyser. "They
+all come now. Do not shoot."
+
+"Let them show outside, then," thundered Keyser, "or it's too late. If
+that gun goes before I can tell my men--"
+
+He broke off and rushed to the entrance. There were skirmishers
+deploying from three points, and Crook was raising his hand slowly.
+There was a pistol in it. "General! General!" Keyser shouted, waving
+both hands, "No!" Behind him came E-egante, with Sarah, talking in low
+tones, and Fur Cap came too.
+
+[Illustration: "HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN"]
+
+The General saw, and did not give the signal. The sight of the
+skirmishers hastened E-egante's mind. He spoke in a loud voice, and at
+once his warriors began to emerge from the willows obediently. Crook's
+bluff was succeeding. The Indians in waiting after nine were
+attempting a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of
+nine men appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance
+left them. They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. And they came,
+and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The troopers had
+all they could do to form an escort and keep up the delusion, but by
+degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding along the edge
+of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and saying, "How!
+how!" to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony ambled, and
+sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning to wonder,
+when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the thicket,
+leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away, round the
+curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he hesitated to
+kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and scurrying,
+the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed. Sarah had
+been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and now she
+vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind, and
+leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.
+
+"I don't feel so mad as I ought," said Specimen Jones.
+
+Crook laughed to Glynn about it. "We've got a big balance of 'em," he
+said, "if we can get 'em all to Boisé. They'll probably roast me in the
+East." And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one
+escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of
+the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington,
+and explained to each other how they would have done it.
+
+And so the General's bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom,
+"all along o' thet yere pizen squaw," as Mr. Long judiciously remarked.
+It was not until many years after that the chief's destiny overtook
+him; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Let me no longer pervert General Crook's military tactics.
+It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend
+who was present has written me since the first publication of this
+story.
+
+_Mr. Remington's illustration was made to suit the text in its original
+form._--Publisher's Note.]
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION GAP
+
+
+After cutting the Gazelle's throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent,
+secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was
+the other man--the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine
+morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He
+was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously
+made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.
+
+The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on
+account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer
+Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested
+in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn's relations with the
+Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was
+genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling
+him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of
+the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn's "rusted mustache
+had livened up; same ez flow'rs ye've kerried a long ways when yer girl
+puts 'em in a pitcher o' water." Being the sentiment of a placer miner,
+the lover's feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the
+Gazelle's that was purely official; it was for him that she personally
+cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her
+trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits--gold,
+coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust--that her hall of entertainment
+earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton'
+needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to
+ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money
+until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting
+her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once,
+on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry
+the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain
+shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to
+the right place. A woman's name and an address at San Antonio were
+certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the
+stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave
+him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that
+young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his
+knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold
+inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at
+that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was
+forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all,
+though, it was silly, just for the sake of a laugh, to let the old lover
+learn the face of his secret rival. It was one of those early unimagined
+nails people sometimes drive in their own coffins. An ancient series of
+events followed: continued abject faith and passion on the miner's part;
+continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued
+trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her
+very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of
+doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final
+accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to
+the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the
+instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever,
+calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and
+dead. He had managed well. The whole game had shown instantly like a
+picture on his brain, complete at a stroke, with every move clear. He
+had let the man go down the hill--just for the present. The camp had got
+up, eaten its breakfast, and gone out to the ditches, Drylyn along with
+the rest. Owing to its situation, neighbors could not see him presently
+leave his claim and walk back quickly to the Gap at an hour when the
+dance-hall was likely to be lonely. He had ready what to say if the
+other women should be there; but they were away at the creek below,
+washing, and the luxurious, unsuspecting Gazelle was in bed in her own
+tent, not yet disturbed. The quiet wild beast walked through the
+deserted front entrance of the hall in the most natural manner, and so
+behind among the empty bottles, and along the plank into the tent; then,
+after a while, out again. She would never be disturbed now, and the wild
+beast was back at his claim, knee-deep, and busy among the digging and
+the wetness, in another pair of overalls just like the ones that were
+now under some stones at the bottom of a mud-puddle. And then one very
+bad long scream came up to the ditches, and Drylyn knew the women had
+returned from their washing.
+
+He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man;
+had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could
+remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew
+that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was
+going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with
+his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone
+out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered,
+for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package
+of gold-dust--some of it very likely his own--to the smooth-faced
+messenger at Folsom, Drylyn's stolid body trembled from head to foot,
+and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.
+
+But down below there the screams were sounding. A brother miner came
+running by. Drylyn realized that he ought to be running too, of course,
+and so he ran. All the men were running from their various scattered
+claims, and Salvation Gap grew noisy and full of people at once. There
+was the sheriff also, come up last evening on the track of some
+stage-robbers, and quite opportune for this, he thought. He liked things
+to be done legally. The turmoil of execration and fierce curiosity
+thrashed about for the right man to pitch on for this crime. The
+murdered woman had been so good company, so hearty a wit, such a robust
+songstress, so tireless a dancer, so thoroughly everybody's friend, that
+it was inconceivable to the mind of Salvation Gap that anybody there had
+done it. The women were crying and wringing their hands--the Gazelle had
+been good to them too; the men were talking and cursing, all but Drylyn
+there among them, serious and strange-looking; so silent that the
+sheriff eyed him once or twice, though he knew nothing of the miner's
+infatuation. And then some woman shrieked out the name of Drylyn, and
+the crowd had him gripped in a second, to let him go the next, laughing
+at the preposterous idea. Saying nothing? Of course he didn't feel like
+talking. To be sure he looked dazed. It was hard luck on him. They told
+the sheriff about him and the Gazelle. They explained that Drylyn was
+"sort of loony, anyway," and the sheriff said, "Oh!" and began to wonder
+and surmise in this half-minute they had been now gathered, when
+suddenly the inevitable boot-prints behind the tent down the hill were
+found. The shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had
+never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was
+this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a
+straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged
+thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He
+was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of
+calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen
+that consequences were going to rise and burst like this. The next thing
+he knew he was in a pursuit, with pine-trees passing, and the hurrying
+sheriff remarking to the band that he proposed to maintain order. Drylyn
+heard his neighbor, a true Californian, whose words were lightest when
+his purpose was most serious, telling the sheriff that order was
+certainly Heaven's first law, and an elegant thing anywhere. But the
+anxious officer made no retort in kind, and only said that
+irregularities were damaging to the county's good name, and would keep
+settlers from moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylyn and asked him
+when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be
+unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went
+along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had
+never sized up the true state of Drylyn's feeling for the Gazelle, and
+that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they
+found the man they were hunting, but he doubted if the sheriff would be
+persuading enough for Drylyn. They came out on a road, and the
+sleep-walker recognized a rock and knew how far they had gone, and that
+this was the stage-road between Folsom and Surprise Springs. They
+followed the road, and round a bend came on the man. He had been taking
+it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the
+night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to
+Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small
+creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous
+compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into
+cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was
+really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he
+recognized the sheriff's voice, telling him it would go better with him
+if he did not try to kill any more people, he was greatly relieved that
+it was not highwaymen after him and his little gold, and he put up his
+pistol and waited for them, smiling, secure in his identity; and when
+they drew nearer he asked them how many people he had killed already.
+They came up and caught him and found the gold in a moment, ripping it
+from his pocket; and the yell they gave at that stopped his smiling
+entirely. When he found himself in irons and hurried along, he began to
+explain that there was some mistake, and was told by the chatty neighbor
+that maybe killing a woman was always a mistake, certainly one this
+time. As they walked him among them they gave small notice to his
+growing fright and bewilderment, but when he appealed to the sheriff on
+the score of old acquaintanceship, and pitifully begged to know what
+they supposed he had done, the miners laughed curiously. That brought
+his entreating back to them, and he assured them, looking in their
+faces, that he truly did need to be told why they wanted him. So they
+held up the gold and asked him whose that had been, and he made a
+wretched hesitation in answering. If anything was needed to clinch their
+certainty, that did. They could not know that the young successful lover
+had recognized Drylyn's strange face, and did not want to tell the truth
+before him, and hence was telling an unskilful lie instead. A rattle of
+wheels sounded among the pines ahead, and the stage came up and stopped.
+Only the driver and a friend were on it, and both of them knew the
+shot-gun messenger and the sheriff, and they asked in some astonishment
+what the trouble was. It had been stage-robbers the sheriff had started
+after, the driver thought. And--as he commented in friendly tones--to
+turn up with Wells and Fargo's messenger was the neatest practical joke
+that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and
+anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry
+of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at
+feeling the ghastly chain of probability that had wound itself about
+him.
+
+The sheriff wondered if there were a true ring in the man's voice. It
+certainly sounded so. He was talking with rapid agony, and it was the
+whole true story that was coming out now. But the chatty neighbor nudged
+another neighbor at the new explanation about the gold-dust. That there
+was no great quantity of it, after all, weighed little against this
+double accounting for one simple fact; moreover, the new version did not
+do the messenger credit in the estimation of the miners, but gave them a
+still worse opinion of him. It is scarcely fair to disbelieve what a man
+says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it.
+Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening
+sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the
+deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way.
+It had even been in the miners' heads to finish the business here on the
+Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there
+was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff's plea
+that something further might have turned up at the Gap; but at the
+driver's more forcible suggestion that the Gap would feel disappointed
+at being left out, they consented to take the man back there. Drylyn
+never offered any opinion, or spoke at all. It was not necessary that he
+should, and they forgot about him. It was time to be getting along, they
+said. What was the good in standing in the road here? They nodded
+good-day to the stage-driver, and took themselves and the prisoner into
+the pines. Once the sheriff had looked at the driver and his friend
+perched on the halted stage, but he immediately saw too much risk in his
+half-formed notion of an alliance with them to gallop off with the
+prisoner; his part must come later, if at all.
+
+But the driver had perfectly understood the sheriff's glance, and
+he was on the sheriff's side, though he showed no sign. As he drove
+along he began thinking about the way the prisoner had cried out just
+now, and the inconsiderable value of the dust, and it became clear in
+his mind that this was a matter for a court and twelve quiet men. The
+friend beside him was also intent upon his own thoughts, and neither
+said a word to the other upon the lonely road. The horses soon knew
+that they were not being driven any more, and they slackened their
+pace, and finding no reproof came for this, they fell to a comfortable
+walk. Presently several had snatched a branch in passing, and it waved
+from their mouths as they nibbled. After that they gave up all
+pretence at being stage-horses, and the driver noticed them. From
+habit he whipped them up into shape and gait, and the next moment
+pulled them in short, at the thought that had come to him. The
+prisoner must be got away from the Gap. The sheriff was too
+single-handed among such a crowd as that, and the driver put a
+question to his friend. It could be managed by taking a slight liberty
+with other people's horses; but Wells and Fargo would not find fault
+with this when the case was one of their own servants, hitherto so
+well thought of. The stage, being empty and light, could spare two
+horses and go on, while those two horses, handled with discretion and
+timeliness, might be very useful at the Gap. The driver had best not
+depart from rule so far as to leave his post and duty; one man would
+be enough. The friend thought well of this plan, and they climbed down
+into the road from opposite sides and took out the wheelers. To be
+sure these animals were heavy, and not of the best sort for escaping
+on, but better than walking; and timeliness and discretion can do a
+great deal. So in a little while the driver and his stage were gone
+on their way, the friend with the two horses had disappeared in the
+wood, and the road was altogether lonely.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER]
+
+The sheriff's brain was hard at work, and he made no protest now as he
+walked along, passive in the company of the miners and their prisoner.
+The prisoner had said all that he had to say, and his man's firmness,
+which the first shock and amazement had wrenched from him, had come to
+his help again, bringing a certain shame at having let his reserve and
+bearing fall to pieces, and at having made himself a show; so he spoke
+no more than his grim captors did, as they took him swiftly through the
+wood. The sheriff was glad it was some miles they had to go; for though
+they went very fast, the distance and the time, and even the becoming
+tired in body, might incline their minds to more deliberation. He could
+think yet of nothing new to urge. He had seen and heard only the same
+things that all had, and his present hopes lay upon the Gap and what
+more might have come to light there since his departure. He looked at
+Drylyn, but the miner's serious and massive face gave him no suggestion;
+and the sheriff's reason again destroyed the germ of suspicion that
+something plainly against reason had several times put in his thoughts.
+Yet it stuck with him that they had hold of the wrong man.
+
+When they reached the Gap, and he found the people there as he had left
+them, and things the same way, with nothing new turned up to help his
+theory, the sheriff once more looked round; but Drylyn was not in the
+crowd. He had gone, they told him, to look at _her_; he had set a heap
+of store by her, they repeated.
+
+"A heap of store," said the sheriff, thinking. "Where is she now?"
+
+"On her bed," said a woman, "same as ever, only we've fixed her up
+some."
+
+"Then I'll take a look at her--and him. You boys won't do anything till
+I come back, will you?"
+
+"Why, if ye're so anxious to see us do it, sheriff," said the chatty
+neighbor, "I guess we can wait that long fer ye."
+
+The officer walked to the tent. Drylyn was standing over the body, quiet
+and dumb. He was safe for the present, the sheriff knew, and so he left
+him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front
+of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that
+they had a rope there.
+
+"Once upon a time," said the sheriff, "there was a man in Arkansaw that
+had no judgment."
+
+"They raise 'em that way in Arkansaw," said the chatty neighbor, as the
+company made a circle to hear the story--a tight, cautious circle--with
+the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.
+
+"The man's wife had good judgment," continued the narrator, "but she
+went and died on him."
+
+"Well, I guess that _was_ good judgment," said the neighbor.
+
+"So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry,
+which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of
+setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being
+shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the
+hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on 'em, and also a heap of
+hens' eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no
+judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it's her I'm
+chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the
+eggs hatched out, she didn't stop to notice, but up and takes them down
+to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they
+drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and
+come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck
+figured out she'd made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the
+chickens were in heaven."
+
+The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage
+a little. "Now," said he, "ain't you boys just a trifle like that duck?
+I don't know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I
+don't know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for
+him we've got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it's
+an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and--God
+forgive me!--I was one of them. I'll tell you how that was. He looked
+enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We
+came on a cabin we'd never known of before, pretty far up in the
+hills--a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a
+man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought.
+We knew we had caught him--that's the way we felt. So we got our guns
+ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin.
+We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he'd
+been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!--we gave him no time!
+He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got
+tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted
+some words: 'Where the wicked cease from troubling.' He had figured
+that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And
+ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me
+second. Now this afternoon I'm alone here. You know I can't do much. And
+I'm going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don't say that in
+this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times,
+when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and
+when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is
+that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can't name
+me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that
+being so, don't we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can
+see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at
+our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience--and we shot him
+down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you
+insist--"
+
+The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him.
+Some of the men knew the story of the prospector--it had been in the
+papers--but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite
+well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner.
+The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and
+discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out
+of the dead woman's tent, and, looking down, realized the intended
+rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with
+a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he
+was trying to escape.
+
+"That's the man!" he shouted savagely to the ring.
+
+Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying
+Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong
+two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised
+scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the
+dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind,
+thrown down, and held.
+
+"So ye were alone, were ye?" said the chatty neighbor. "Well, ye made a
+good talk. Keep quiet--we don't want to hurt ye."
+
+At this supposed perfidy the Gap's rage was at white-heat again; the men
+massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger's fate
+was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and
+death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over
+for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black
+against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and
+when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention
+to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him
+go, and the sheriff too. The driver's friend had left his horses among
+the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now
+joined the crowd.
+
+"You meant well," the sheriff said to him. "I wish you would tell the
+boys how you come to be here. They're thinking I lied to them."
+
+"Maybe I can change their minds." It was Drylyn's deep voice. "I am the
+man you were hunting," he said.
+
+[Illustration: "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"]
+
+They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness
+has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap
+was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill
+the mountain air.
+
+"You boys think I'm touched in the head," said Drylyn, and paused. "This
+knife done it," said he. "This one I'm showing you."
+
+They looked at the knife in his hand.
+
+"He come between me and her," Drylyn pursued. "I was aiming to give him
+his punishment myself. That would have been square." He turned the knife
+over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their
+eyes. "You don't believe me!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Well, I'm going
+to make you. Sheriff, I'll bring you some evidence."
+
+He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned.
+Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing
+beneath the dead man.
+
+"Does them look like being touched in the head?" inquired Drylyn, and he
+threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. "I
+don't seem to mind telling you," he said. "I feel as quiet--as quiet as
+them tall pines the sun's just quittin' for the night." He looked at the
+men expectantly, but none of them stirred. "I'd like to have it over,"
+said he.
+
+Still no one moved.
+
+"I have a right to ask it shall be quick," he repeated. "You were quick
+enough with him." And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.
+
+They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the
+right one. The chatty neighbor shook his head. "Seems curious," he
+said, slowly. "It ought to be done. But I couldn't no more do it--gosh!
+how _can_ a man fire his gun right after it's been discharged?"
+
+The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. "You won't?" he
+said.
+
+"You better quit us," suggested the neighbor. "Go somewheres else."
+
+Drylyn's eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and
+the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. "Him and me," he
+muttered. "It ain't square. Him and me--" Suddenly he broke out, "I
+don't choose him to think I was that kind of man!"
+
+Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his
+fingers. "Sheriff," he began, but his tone changed. "I'm overtakin'
+him!" he said. "He's going to know now. Lay me alongside--"
+
+And so they did.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE
+
+I
+
+
+The Legislature had sat up all night, much absorbed, having taken off
+its coat because of the stove. This was the fortieth and final day of
+its first session under an order of things not new only, but novel. It
+sat with the retrospect of forty days' duty done, and the prospect of
+forty days' consequent pay to come. Sleepy it was not, but wide and
+wider awake over a progressing crisis. Hungry it had been until after a
+breakfast fetched to it from the Overland at seven, three hours ago. It
+had taken no intermission to wash its face, nor was there just now any
+apparatus for this, as the tin pitcher commonly used stood not in the
+basin in the corner, but on the floor by the Governor's chair; so the
+eyes of the Legislature, though earnest, were dilapidated. Last night
+the pressure of public business had seemed over, and no turning back the
+hands of the clock likely to be necessary. Besides Governor Ballard, Mr.
+Hewley, Secretary and Treasurer, was sitting up too, small, iron-gray,
+in feature and bearing every inch the capable, dignified official, but
+his necktie had slipped off during the night. The bearded Councillors
+had the best of it, seeming after their vigil less stale in the face
+than the member from Silver City, for instance, whose day-old black
+growth blurred his dingy chin, or the member from Big Camas, whose
+scantier red crop bristled on his cheeks in sparse wandering
+arrangements, like spikes on the barrel of a musical box. For comfort,
+most of the pistols were on the table with the Statutes of the United
+States. Secretary and Treasurer Hewley's lay on his strong-box
+immediately behind him. The Governor's was a light one, and always hung
+in the arm hole of his waistcoat. The graveyard of Boisé City this year
+had twenty-seven tenants, two brought there by meningitis, and
+twenty-five by difference of opinion. Many denizens of the Territory
+were miners, and the unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air,
+breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed
+against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until
+they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the
+night's untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its
+shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had
+appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a
+good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it
+from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare
+into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be
+sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides;
+but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the
+idle, and this was counted a sensible thing by the law-makers. They took
+the ground that shaping any government for a raw wilderness community
+needed seclusion, and they set a high value upon unworried privacy.
+
+The sun had set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that
+looked momentous. Only the Governor's and Treasurer's were impassive,
+and they concealed something even graver than the matter in hand.
+
+"I'll take a hun'red mo', Gove'nuh," said the member from Silver City,
+softly, his eyes on space. His name was Powhattan Wingo.
+
+The Governor counted out the blue, white, and red chips to Wingo,
+pencilled some figures on a thickly ciphered and cancelled paper that
+bore in print the words "Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber," and then
+filled up his glass from the tin pitcher, adding a little sugar.
+
+"And I'll trouble you fo' the toddy," Wingo added, always softly, and
+his eyes always on space. "Raise you ten, suh." This was to the
+Treasurer. Only the two were playing at present. The Governor was kindly
+acting as bank; the others were looking on.
+
+"And ten," said the Treasurer.
+
+"And ten," said Wingo.
+
+"And twenty," said the Treasurer.
+
+"And fifty," said Wingo, gently bestowing his chips in the middle of the
+table.
+
+The Treasurer called.
+
+The member from Silver City showed down five high hearts, and a light
+rustle went over the Legislature when the Treasurer displayed three twos
+and a pair of threes, and gathered in his harvest. He had drawn two
+cards, Wingo one; and losing to the lowest hand that could have beaten
+you is under such circumstances truly hard luck. Moreover, it was almost
+the only sort of luck that had attended Wingo since about half after
+three that morning. Seven hours of cards just a little lower than your
+neighbor's is searching to the nerves.
+
+"Gove'nuh, I'll take a hun'red mo'," said Wingo; and once again the
+Legislature rustled lightly, and the new deal began.
+
+Treasurer Hewley's winnings flanked his right, a pillared fortress on
+the table, built chiefly of Wingo's misfortunes. Hewley had not counted
+them, and his architecture was for neatness and not ostentation; yet the
+Legislature watched him arrange his gains with sullen eyes. It would
+have pleased him now to lose; it would have more than pleased him to be
+able to go to bed quite a long time ago. But winners cannot easily go to
+bed. The thoughtful Treasurer bet his money and deplored this luck. It
+seemed likely to trap himself and the Governor in a predicament they had
+not foreseen. All had taken a hand at first, and played for several
+hours, until Fortune's wheel ran into a rut deeper than usual. Wingo
+slowly became the loser to several, then Hewley had forged ahead, winner
+from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go
+home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. It was an extraordinary
+run, a rare specimen, a breaker of records, something to refer to in the
+future as a standard of measure and an embellishment of reminiscence;
+quite enough to keep the Idaho Legislature up all night. And then it was
+their friend who was losing. The only speaking in the room was the brief
+card talk of the two players.
+
+"Five better," said Hewley, winner again four times in the last five.
+
+"Ten," said Wingo.
+
+"And twenty," said the Secretary and Treasurer.
+
+"Call you."
+
+"Three kings."
+
+"They are good, suh. Gove'nuh, I'll take a hun'red mo'."
+
+Upon this the wealthy and weary Treasurer made a try for liberty and
+bed. How would it do, he suggested, to have a round of jack-pots, say
+ten--or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred--and then stop?
+It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor
+looked at him. But Wingo's large countenance remained inexpressive, his
+black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips
+were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall.
+The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon
+he should have a disclosure to make; something that would need the most
+cheerful and contented feelings in Wingo and the Legislature to be
+received with any sort of calm. Wingo was behind the game to the tune
+of--the Governor gave up adding as he ran his eye over the figures of
+the bank's erased and tormented record, and he shook his head to
+himself. This was inadvertent.
+
+"May I inquah who yo're shakin' yoh head at, suh?" said Wingo, wheeling
+upon the surprised Governor.
+
+"Certainly," answered that official. "You." He was never surprised for
+very long. In 1867 it did not do to remain surprised in Idaho.
+
+"And have I done anything which meets yoh disapprobation?" pursued the
+member from Silver City, enunciating with care.
+
+"You have met my disapprobation."
+
+Wingo's eye was on the Governor, and now his friends drew a little
+together, and as a unit sent a glance of suspicion at the lone bank.
+
+"You will gratify me by being explicit, suh," said Wingo to the bank.
+
+"Well, you've emptied the toddy."
+
+"Ha-ha, Gove'nuh! I rose, suh, to yoh little fly. We'll awduh some mo'."
+
+"Time enough when he comes for the breakfast things," said Governor
+Ballard, easily.
+
+"As you say, suh. I'll open for five dolluhs." Wingo turned back to his
+game. He was winning, and as his luck continued his voice ceased to be
+soft, and became a shade truculent. The Governor's ears caught this
+change, and he also noted the lurking triumph in the faces of Wingo's
+fellow-statesmen. Cheerfulness and content were scarcely reigning yet in
+the Council Chamber of Idaho as Ballard sat watching the friendly game.
+He was beginning to fear that he must leave the Treasurer alone and take
+some precautions outside. But he would have to be separated for some
+time from his ally, cut off from giving him any hints. Once the
+Treasurer looked at him, and he immediately winked reassuringly, but the
+Treasurer failed to respond. Hewley might be able to wink after
+everything was over, but he could not find it in his serious heart to do
+so now. He was wondering what would happen if this game should last till
+noon with the company in its present mood. Noon was the time fixed for
+paying the Legislative Assembly the compensation due for its services
+during this session; and the Governor and the Treasurer had put their
+heads together and arranged a surprise for the Legislative Assembly.
+They were not going to pay them.
+
+A knock sounded at the door, and on seeing the waiter from the Overland
+enter, the Governor was seized with an idea. Perhaps precaution could
+be taken from the inside. "Take this pitcher," said he, "and have it
+refilled with the same. Joseph knows my mixture." But Joseph was night
+bar-tender, and now long in his happy bed, with a day successor in the
+saloon, and this one did not know the mixture. Ballard had foreseen this
+when he spoke, and that his writing a note of directions would seem
+quite natural.
+
+"The receipt is as long as the drink," said a legislator, watching the
+Governor's pencil fly.
+
+"He don't know where my private stock is located," explained Ballard.
+The waiter departed with the breakfast things and the note, and while
+the jack-pots continued the Governor's mind went carefully over the
+situation.
+
+Until lately the Western citizen has known one every-day experience that
+no dweller in our thirteen original colonies has had for two hundred
+years. In Massachusetts they have not seen it since 1641; in Virginia
+not since 1628. It is that of belonging to a community of which every
+adult was born somewhere else. When you come to think of this a little
+it is dislocating to many of your conventions. Let a citizen of Salem,
+for instance, or a well-established Philadelphia Quaker, try to imagine
+his chief-justice fresh from Louisiana, his mayor from Arkansas, his
+tax-collector from South Carolina, and himself recently arrived in a
+wagon from a thousand-mile drive. To be governor of such a community
+Ballard had travelled in a wagon from one quarter of the horizon; from
+another quarter Wingo had arrived on a mule. People reached Boisé in
+three ways: by rail to a little west of the Missouri, after which it was
+wagon, saddle, or walk for the remaining fifteen hundred miles; from
+California it was shorter; and from Portland, Oregon, only about five
+hundred miles, and some of these more agreeable, by water up the
+Columbia. Thus it happened that salt often sold for its weight in
+gold-dust. A miner in the Bannock Basin would meet a freight teamster
+coming in with the staples of life, having journeyed perhaps sixty
+consecutive days through the desert, and valuing his salt highly. The
+two accordingly bartered in scales, white powder against yellow, and
+both parties content. Some in Boisé to-day can remember these bargains.
+After all, they were struck but thirty years ago. Governor Ballard and
+Treasurer Hewley did not come from the same place, but they constituted
+a minority of two in Territorial politics because they hailed from north
+of Mason and Dixon's line. Powhattan Wingo and the rest of the Council
+were from Pike County, Missouri. They had been Secessionists, some of
+them Knights of the Golden Circle; they had belonged to Price's Left
+Wing, and they flocked together. They were seven--two lying unwell at
+the Overland, five now present in the State-House with the Governor and
+Treasurer. Wingo, Gascon Claiborne, Gratiot des Pères, Pete Cawthon, and
+F. Jackson Gilet were their names. Besides this Council of seven were
+thirteen members of the Idaho House of Representatives, mostly of the
+same political feather with the Council, and they too would be present
+at noon to receive their pay. How Ballard and Hewley came to be a
+minority of two is a simple matter. Only twenty-five months had gone
+since Appomattox Court-House. That surrender was presently followed by
+Johnston's to Sherman, at Durhams Station, and following this the
+various Confederate armies in Alabama, or across the Mississippi, or
+wherever they happened to be, had successively surrendered--but not
+Price's Left Wing. There was the wide open West under its nose, and no
+Grant or Sherman infesting that void. Why surrender? Wingos, Claibornes,
+and all, they melted away. Price's Left Wing sailed into the prairie and
+passed below the horizon. To know what it next did you must, like
+Ballard or Hewley, pass below the horizon yourself, clean out of sight
+of the dome at Washington to remote, untracked Idaho. There, besides
+wild red men in quantities, would you find not very tame white ones,
+gentlemen of the ripest Southwestern persuasion, and a Legislature to
+fit. And if, like Ballard or Hewley, you were a Union man, and the
+President of the United States had appointed you Governor or Secretary
+of such a place, your days would be full of awkwardness, though your
+difference in creed might not hinder you from playing draw-poker with
+the unreconstructed. These Missourians were whole-souled, ample-natured
+males in many ways, but born with a habit of hasty shooting. The
+Governor, on setting foot in Idaho, had begun to study pistolship, but
+acquired thus in middle life it could never be with him that spontaneous
+art which it was with Price's Left Wing. Not that the weapons now lying
+loose about the State-House were brought for use there. Everybody always
+went armed in Boisé, as the gravestones impliedly testified. Still, the
+thought of the bad quarter of an hour which it might come to at noon did
+cross Ballard's mind, raising the image of a column in the morrow's
+paper: "An unfortunate occurrence has ended relations between esteemed
+gentlemen hitherto the warmest personal friends.... They will be laid
+to rest at 3 p.m.... As a last token of respect for our lamented
+Governor, the troops from Boisé Barracks...." The Governor trusted that
+if his friends at the post were to do him any service it would not be a
+funeral one.
+
+The new pitcher of toddy came from the Overland, the jack-pots
+continued, were nearing a finish, and Ballard began to wonder if
+anything had befallen a part of his note to the bar-tender, an enclosure
+addressed to another person.
+
+"Ha, suh!" said Wingo to Hewley. "My pot again, I declah." The chips had
+been crossing the table his way, and he was now loser but six hundred
+dollars.
+
+"Ye ain't goin' to whip Mizzooruh all night an' all day, ez a rule,"
+observed Pete Cawthon, Councillor from Lost Leg.
+
+"'Tis a long road that has no turnin', Gove'nuh," said F. Jackson Gilet,
+more urbanely. He had been in public life in Missouri, and was now
+President of the Council in Idaho. He, too, had arrived on a mule, but
+could at will summon a rhetoric dating from Cicero, and preserved by
+many luxuriant orators until after the middle of the present century.
+
+"True," said the Governor, politely. "But here sits the long-suffering
+bank, whichever way the road turns. I'm sleepy."
+
+"You sacrifice yo'self in the good cause," replied Gilet, pointing to
+the poker game. "Oneasy lies the head that wahs an office, suh." And
+Gilet bowed over his compliment.
+
+The Governor thought so indeed. He looked at the Treasurer's strong-box,
+where lay the appropriation lately made by Congress to pay the Idaho
+Legislature for its services; and he looked at the Treasurer, in whose
+pocket lay the key of the strong-box. He was accountable to the Treasury
+at Washington for all money disbursed for Territorial expenses.
+
+"Eleven twenty," said Wingo, "and only two hands mo' to play."
+
+The Governor slid out his own watch.
+
+"I'll scahsely recoup," said Wingo.
+
+They dealt and played the hand, and the Governor strolled to the window.
+
+"Three aces," Wingo announced, winning again handsomely. "I struck my
+luck too late," he commented to the on-lookers. While losing he had been
+able to sustain a smooth reticence; now he gave his thoughts freely to
+the company, and continually moved and fingered his increasing chips.
+The Governor was still looking out of the window, where he could see far
+up the street, when Wingo won the last hand, which was small. "That ends
+it, suh, I suppose?" he said to Hewley, letting the pack of cards linger
+in his grasp.
+
+"I wouldn't let him off yet," said Ballard to Wingo from the window,
+with sudden joviality, and he came back to the players. "I'd make him
+throw five cold hands with me."
+
+"Ah, Gove'nuh, that's yoh spo'tin' blood! Will you do it, Mistuh
+Hewley--a hun'red a hand?"
+
+Mr. Hewley did it; and winning the first, he lost the second, third, and
+fourth in the space of an eager minute, while the Councillors drew their
+chairs close.
+
+"Let me see," said Wingo, calculating, "if I lose this--why still--" He
+lost. "But I'll not have to ask you to accept my papuh, suh. Wingo
+liquidates. Fo'ty days at six dolluhs a day makes six times fo' is
+twenty-fo'--two hun'red an' fo'ty dolluhs spot cash in hand at noon,
+without computation of mileage to and from Silver City at fo' dolluhs
+every twenty miles, estimated according to the nearest usually travelled
+route." He was reciting part of the statute providing mileage for Idaho
+legislators. He had never served the public before, and he knew all the
+laws concerning compensation by heart. "You'll not have to wait fo' yoh
+money, suh," he concluded.
+
+"Well, Mr. Wingo," said Governor Ballard, "it depends on yourself
+whether your pay comes to you or not." He spoke cheerily. "If you don't
+see things my way, our Treasurer will have to wait for his money." He
+had not expected to break the news just so, but it made as easy a
+beginning as any.
+
+"See things yoh way, suh?"
+
+"Yes. As it stands at present I cannot take the responsibility of paying
+you."
+
+"The United States pays me, suh. My compensation is provided by act of
+Congress."
+
+"I confess I am unable to discern your responsibility, Gove'nuh," said
+F. Jackson Gilet. "Mr. Wingo has faithfully attended the session, and
+is, like every gentleman present, legally entitled to his emoluments."
+
+"You can all readily become entitled--"
+
+"All? Am I--are my friends--included in this new depa'tyuh?"
+
+"The difficulty applies generally, Mr. Gilet."
+
+"Do I understand the Gove'nuh to insinuate--nay, gentlemen, do not rise!
+Be seated, I beg." For the Councillors had leaped to their feet.
+
+"Whar's our money?" said Pete Cawthon. "Our money was put in thet yere
+box."
+
+Ballard flushed angrily, but a knock at the door stopped him, and he
+merely said, "Come in."
+
+A trooper, a corporal, stood at the entrance, and the disordered Council
+endeavored to look usual in a stranger's presence. They resumed their
+seats, but it was not easy to look usual on such short notice.
+
+"Captain Paisley's compliments," said the soldier, mechanically, "and
+will Governor Ballard take supper with him this evening?"
+
+"Thank Captain Paisley," said the Governor (his tone was quite usual),
+"and say that official business connected with the end of the session
+makes it imperative for me to be at the State-House. Imperative."
+
+The trooper withdrew. He was a heavy-built, handsome fellow, with black
+mustache and black eyes that watched through two straight, narrow slits
+beneath straight black brows. His expression in the Council Chamber had
+been of the regulation military indifference, and as he went down the
+steps he irrelevantly sang an old English tune:
+
+     "'Since first I saw your face I resolved
+     To honor and re--'
+
+"I guess," he interrupted himself as he unhitched his horse, "parrot and
+monkey hev broke loose."
+
+The Legislature, always in its shirt-sleeves, the cards on the table,
+and the toddy on the floor, sat calm a moment, cooled by this brief
+pause from the first heat of its surprise, while the clatter of Corporal
+Jones's galloping shrank quickly into silence.
+
+
+II
+
+Captain Paisley walked slowly from the adjutant's office at Boisé
+Barracks to his quarters, and his orderly walked behind him. The captain
+carried a letter in his hand, and the orderly, though distant a
+respectful ten paces, could hear him swearing plain as day. When he
+reached his front door Mrs. Paisley met him.
+
+"Jim," cried she, "two more chickens froze in the night." And the
+delighted orderly heard the captain so plainly that he had to blow his
+nose or burst.
+
+The lady, merely remarking "My goodness, Jim," retired immediately to
+the kitchen, where she had a soldier cook baking, and feared he was not
+quite sober enough to do it alone. The captain had paid eighty dollars
+for forty hens this year at Boisé, and twenty-nine had now passed away,
+victims to the climate. His wise wife perceived his extreme language not
+to have been all on account of hens, however; but he never allowed her
+to share in his professional worries, so she stayed safe with the
+baking, and he sat in the front room with a cigar in his mouth.
+
+Boisé was a two-company post without a major, and Paisley, being senior
+captain, was in command, an office to which he did not object. But his
+duties so far this month of May had not pleased him in the least.
+Theoretically, you can have at a two-company post the following
+responsible people: one major, two captains, four lieutenants, a doctor,
+and a chaplain. The major has been spoken of; it is almost needless to
+say that the chaplain was on leave, and had never been seen at Boisé by
+any of the present garrison; two of the lieutenants were also on leave,
+and two on surveying details--they had influence at Washington; the
+other captain was on a scout with General Crook somewhere near the
+Malheur Agency, and the doctor had only arrived this week. There had
+resulted a period when Captain Paisley was his own adjutant,
+quartermaster, and post surgeon, with not even an efficient sergeant to
+rely upon; and during this period his wife had stayed a good deal in the
+kitchen. Happily the doctor's coming had given relief to the hospital
+steward and several patients, and to the captain not only an equal, but
+an old friend, with whom to pour out his disgust; and together every
+evening they freely expressed their opinion of the War Department and
+its treatment of the Western army.
+
+There were steps at the door, and Paisley hurried out. "Only you!" he
+exclaimed, with such frank vexation that the doctor laughed loudly.
+"Come in, man, come in," Paisley continued, leading him strongly by the
+arm, sitting him down, and giving him a cigar. "Here's a pretty how de
+do!"
+
+"More Indians!" inquired Dr. Tuck.
+
+"Bother! they're nothing. It's Senators--Councillors--whatever the
+Territorial devils call themselves."
+
+"Gone on the war-path?" the doctor said, quite ignorant how nearly he
+had touched the Council.
+
+"Precisely, man. War-path. Here's the Governor writing me they'll be
+scalping him in the State-House at twelve o'clock. It's past 11.30.
+They'll be whetting knives about now." And the captain roared.
+
+"I know you haven't gone crazy," said the doctor, "but who has?"
+
+"The lot of them. Ballard's a good man, and--what's his name?--the
+little Secretary. The balance are just mad dogs--mad dogs. Look here:
+'Dear Captain'--that's Ballard to me. I just got it--'I find myself
+unexpectedly hampered this morning. The South shows signs of being too
+solid. Unless I am supported, my plan for bringing our Legislature to
+terms will have to be postponed. Hewley and I are more likely to be
+brought to terms ourselves--a bad precedent to establish in Idaho. Noon
+is the hour for drawing salaries. Ask me to supper as quick as you can,
+and act on my reply.' I've asked him," continued Paisley, "but I haven't
+told Mrs. Paisley to cook anything extra yet." The captain paused to
+roar again, shaking Tuck's shoulder for sympathy. Then he explained the
+situation in Idaho to the justly bewildered doctor. Ballard had confided
+many of his difficulties lately to Paisley.
+
+"He means you're to send troops?" Tuck inquired.
+
+"What else should the poor man mean?"
+
+"Are you sure it's constitutional?"
+
+"Hang constitutional! What do I know about their legal quibbles at
+Washington?"
+
+"But, Paisley--"
+
+"They're unsurrendered rebels, I tell you. Never signed a parole."
+
+"But the general amnesty--"
+
+"Bother general amnesty! Ballard represents the Federal government in
+this Territory, and Uncle Sam's army is here to protect the Federal
+government. If Ballard calls on the army it's our business to obey, and
+if there's any mistake in judgment it's Ballard's, not mine." Which was
+sound soldier common-sense, and happened to be equally good law. This is
+not always the case.
+
+"You haven't got any force to send," said Tuck.
+
+This was true. General Crook had taken with him both Captain Sinclair's
+infantry and the troop (or company, as cavalry was also then called) of
+the First.
+
+"A detail of five or six with a reliable non-commissioned officer will
+do to remind them it's the United States they're bucking against," said
+Paisley. "There's a deal in the moral of these things. Crook--" Paisley
+broke off and ran to the door. "Hold his horse!" he called out to the
+orderly; for he had heard the hoofs, and was out of the house before
+Corporal Jones had fairly arrived. So Jones sprang off and hurried up,
+saluting. He delivered his message.
+
+"Um--umpra--what's that? Is it _imperative_ you mean?" suggested
+Paisley.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Jones, reforming his pronunciation of that unaccustomed
+word. "He said it twiced."
+
+"What were they doing?"
+
+"Blamed if I--beg the captain's pardon--they looked like they was
+waitin' fer me to git out."
+
+"Go on--go on. How many were there?"
+
+"Seven, sir. There was Governor Ballard and Mr. Hewley and--well, them's
+all the names I know. But," Jones hastened on with eagerness, "I've saw
+them five other fellows before at a--at--" The corporal's voice failed,
+and he stood looking at the captain.
+
+"Well? Where?"
+
+"At a cock-fight, sir," murmured Jones, casting his eyes down.
+
+A slight sound came from the room where Tuck was seated, listening, and
+Paisley's round gray eyes rolled once, then steadied themselves
+fiercely upon Jones.
+
+"Did you notice anything further unusual, corporal?"
+
+"No, sir, except they was excited in there. Looked like they might be
+goin' to hev considerable rough house--a fuss, I mean, sir. Two was in
+their socks. I counted four guns on a table."
+
+"Take five men and go at once to the State-House. If the Governor needs
+assistance you will give it, but do nothing hasty. Stop trouble, and
+make none. You've got twenty minutes."
+
+"Captain--if anybody needs arrestin'--"
+
+"You must be judge of that." Paisley went into the house. There was no
+time for particulars.
+
+"Snakes!" remarked Jones. He jumped on his horse and dashed down the
+slope to the men's quarters.
+
+"Crook may be here any day or any hour," said Paisley, returning to the
+doctor. "With two companies in the background, I think Price's Left Wing
+will subside this morning."
+
+"Supposing they don't?"
+
+"I'll go myself; and when it gets to Washington that the commanding
+officer at Boisé personally interfered with the Legislature of Idaho,
+it'll shock 'em to that extent that the government will have to pay for
+a special commission of investigation and two tons of red tape. I've got
+to trust to that corporal's good sense. I haven't another man at the
+post."
+
+[Illustration: "HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET"]
+
+Corporal Jones had three-quarters of a mile to go, and it was ten
+minutes before noon, so he started his five men at a run. His plan was
+to walk and look quiet as soon as he reached the town, and thus
+excite no curiosity. The citizens were accustomed to the sight of
+passing soldiers. Jones had thought out several things, and he was not
+going to order bayonets fixed until the final necessary moment. "Stop
+trouble and make none" was firm in his mind. He had not long been a
+corporal. It was still his first enlistment. His habits were by no
+means exemplary; and his frontier personality, strongly developed by
+six years of vagabonding before he enlisted, was scarcely yet
+disciplined into the military machine of the regulation pattern that
+it should and must become before he could be counted a model soldier.
+His captain had promoted him to steady him, if that could be, and to
+give his better qualities a chance. Since then he had never been drunk
+at the wrong time. Two years ago it would not have entered his
+free-lance heart to be reticent with any man, high or low, about any
+pleasure in which he saw fit to indulge; to-day he had been shy over
+confessing to the commanding officer his leaning to cock-fights--a
+sign of his approach to the correct mental attitude of the enlisted
+man. Being corporal had wakened in him a new instinct, and this
+State-House affair was the first chance he had had to show himself. He
+gave the order to proceed at a walk in such a tone that one of the
+troopers whispered to another, "Specimen ain't going to forget he's
+wearing a chevron."
+
+
+III
+
+The brief silence that Jones and his invitation to supper had caused
+among the Councillors was first broken by F. Jackson Gilet.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "as President of the Council I rejoice in an
+interruption that has given pause to our haste and saved us from
+ill-considered expressions of opinion. The Gove'nuh has, I confess,
+surprised me. Befo' examining the legal aspect of our case I will ask
+the Gove'nuh if he is familiar with the sundry statutes applicable."
+
+"I think so," Ballard replied, pleasantly.
+
+"I had supposed," continued the President of the Council--"nay, I had
+congratulated myself that our weightiuh tasks of law-making and so fo'th
+were consummated yesterday, our thirty-ninth day, and that our friendly
+game of last night would be, as it were, the finis that crowned with
+pleashuh the work of a session memorable for its harmony."
+
+This was not wholly accurate, but near enough. The Governor had vetoed
+several bills, but Price's Left Wing had had much more than the required
+two-thirds vote of both Houses to make these bills laws over the
+Governor's head. This may be called harmony in a manner. Gilet now went
+on to say that any doubts which the Governor entertained concerning the
+legality of his paying any salaries could easily be settled without
+entering upon discussion. Discussion at such a juncture could not but
+tend towards informality. The President of the Council could well
+remember most unfortunate discussions in Missouri between the years 1856
+and 1860, in some of which he had had the honor to take part--_minima
+pars_, gentlemen! Here he digressed elegantly upon civil dissensions,
+and Ballard, listening to him and marking the slow, sure progress of the
+hour, told himself that never before had Gilet's oratory seemed more
+welcome or less lengthy. A plan had come to him, the orator next
+announced, a way out of the present dilemma, simple and regular in
+every aspect. Let some gentleman present now kindly draft a bill setting
+forth in its preamble the acts of Congress providing for the
+Legislature's compensation, and let this bill in conclusion provide that
+all members immediately receive the full amount due for their services.
+At noon both Houses would convene; they would push back the clock, and
+pass this bill before the term of their session should expire.
+
+"Then, Gove'nuh," said Gilet, "you can amply vindicate yo'self by a
+veto, which, together with our votes on reconsideration of yoh
+objections, will be reco'ded in the journal of our proceedings, and
+copies transmitted to Washington within thirty days as required by law.
+Thus, suh, will you become absolved from all responsibility."
+
+The orator's face, while he explained this simple and regular way out of
+the dilemma, beamed with acumen and statesmanship. Here they would make
+a law, and the Governor must obey the law!
+
+Nothing could have been more to Ballard's mind as he calculated the
+fleeting minutes than this peaceful, pompous farce. "Draw your bill,
+gentlemen," he said. "I would not object if I could."
+
+The Statutes of the United States were procured from among the pistols
+and opened at the proper page. Gascon Claiborne, upon another sheet of
+paper headed "Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber," set about
+formulating some phrases which began "Whereas," and Gratiot des Pères
+read aloud to him from the statutes. Ballard conversed apart with
+Hewley; in fact, there was much conversing aside.
+
+"'Third March, 1863, c. 117, s. 8, v. 12, p. 811,'" dictated Des Pères.
+
+"Skip the chaptuhs and sections," said Claiborne. "We only require the
+date."
+
+"'Third March, 1863. The sessions of the Legislative Assemblies of the
+several Territories of the United States shall be limited to forty days'
+duration.'"
+
+"Wise provision that," whispered Ballard. "No telling how long a poker
+game might last."
+
+But Hewley could not take anything in this spirit. "Genuine business was
+not got through till yesterday," he said.
+
+"'The members of each branch of the Legislature,'" read Des Pères,
+"'shall receive a compensation of six dollars per day during the
+sessions herein provided for, and they shall receive such mileage as now
+provided by law: _Provided_, That the President of the Council and the
+Speaker of the House of Representatives shall each receive a
+compensation of ten dollars a day.'"
+
+At this the President of the Council waved a deprecatory hand to signify
+that it was a principle, not profit, for which he battled. They had
+completed their _Whereases_, incorporating the language of the several
+sections as to how the appropriation should be made, who disbursed such
+money, mileage, and, in short, all things pertinent to their bill, when
+Pete Cawthon made a suggestion.
+
+"Ain't there anything 'bout how much the Gove'nuh gits?" he asks.
+
+"And the Secretary?" added Wingo.
+
+"Oh, you can leave us out," said Ballard.
+
+"Pardon me, Gove'nuh," said Gilet. "You stated that yoh difficulty was
+not confined to Mr. Wingo or any individual gentleman, but was general.
+Does it not apply to yo'self, suh? Do you not need any bill?"
+
+"Oh no," said Ballard, laughing. "I don't need any bill."
+
+"And why not?" said Cawthon. "You've jist ez much earned yoh money ez us
+fellers."
+
+"Quite as much," said Ballard. "But we're not alike--at present."
+
+Gilet grew very stately. "Except certain differences in political
+opinions, suh, I am not awah of how we differ in merit as public
+servants of this Territory."
+
+"The difference is of your own making, Mr. Gilet, and no bill you could
+frame would cure it or destroy my responsibility. You cannot make any
+law contrary to a law of the United States."
+
+"Contrary to a law of the United States? And what, suh, has the United
+States to say about my pay I have earned in Idaho?"
+
+"Mr. Gilet, there has been but one government in this country since
+April, 1865, and as friends you and I have often agreed to differ as to
+how many there were before then. That government has a law compelling
+people like you and me to go through a formality, which I have done, and
+you and your friends have refused to do each time it has been suggested
+to you. I have raised no point until now, having my reasons, which were
+mainly that it would make less trouble now for the Territory of which I
+have been appointed Governor. I am held accountable to the Secretary of
+the Treasury semiannually for the manner in which the appropriation has
+been expended. If you will kindly hand me that book--"
+
+Gilet, more and more stately, handed Ballard the Statutes, which he had
+taken from Des Pères. The others were watching Ballard with gathering
+sullenness, as they had watched Hewley while he was winning Wingo's
+money, only now the sullenness was of a more decided complexion.
+
+Ballard turned the pages. "'Second July, 1862. Every person elected or
+appointed to any office of honor or profit, either in the civil,
+military, or naval service, ... shall before entering upon the duties of
+such office, and before being entitled to any salary or other emoluments
+thereof, take and subscribe the following oath: I--'"
+
+"What does this mean, suh?" said Gilet.
+
+"It means there is no difference in our positions as to what
+preliminaries the law requires of us, no matter how we may vary in
+convictions. I as Governor have taken the oath of allegiance to the
+United States, and you as Councillor must do the same before you can get
+your pay. Look at the book."
+
+"I decline, suh. I repudiate yoh proposition. There is a wide difference
+in our positions."
+
+"What do you understand it to be, Mr. Gilet?" Ballard's temper was
+rising.
+
+"If you have chosen to take an oath that did not go against yoh
+convictions--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gilet!" said Ballard, smiling. "Look at the book." He would not
+risk losing his temper through further discussion. He would stick to the
+law as it lay open before them.
+
+But the Northern smile sent Missouri logic to the winds. "In what are
+you superior to me, suh, that I cannot choose? Who are you that I and
+these gentlemen must take oaths befo' you?"
+
+"Not before me. Look at the book."
+
+"I'll look at no book, suh. Do you mean to tell me you have seen me day
+aftuh day and meditated this treacherous attempt?"
+
+"There is no attempt and no treachery, Mr. Gilet. You could have taken
+the oath long ago, like other officials. You can take it to-day--or take
+the consequences."
+
+"What? You threaten me, suh? Do I understand you to threaten me?
+Gentlemen of the Council, it seems Idaho will be less free than Missouri
+unless we look to it." The President of the Council had risen in his
+indignant oratorical might, and his more and more restless friends
+glared admiration at him. "When was the time that Price's Left Wing
+surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their
+shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have
+crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning.
+As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the
+soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in
+the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I
+will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern rule and dictation. I will
+risk all to be with the Southern people, and if defeated I can, with a
+patriot of old, exclaim,
+
+     "'More true joy an exile feels
+     Than Cæsuh with a Senate at his heels.'
+
+"Aye, gentlemen! And we will not be defeated! Our rights are here and
+are ours." He stretched his arm towards the Treasurer's strong-box, and
+his enthusiastic audience rose at the rhetoric. "Contain yo'selves,
+gentlemen," said the orator. "Twelve o'clock and our bill!"
+
+"I've said my say," said Ballard, remaining seated.
+
+"An' what'll ye do?" inquired Pete Cawthon from the agitated group.
+
+"I forbid you to touch that!" shouted Ballard. He saw Wingo moving
+towards the box.
+
+"Gentlemen, do not resort--" began Gilet.
+
+But small, iron-gray Hewley snatched his pistol from the box, and sat
+down astraddle of it, guarding his charge. At this hostile movement the
+others precipitated themselves towards the table where lay their
+weapons, and Governor Ballard, whipping his own from his armhole, said,
+as he covered the table: "Go easy, gentlemen! Don't hurt our Treasurer!"
+
+"Don't nobody hurt anybody," said Specimen Jones, opening the door.
+
+This prudent corporal had been looking in at a window and hearing
+plainly for the past two minutes, and he had his men posted. Each member
+of the Council stopped as he stood, his pistol not quite yet attained;
+Ballard restored his own to its armhole and sat in his chair; little
+Hewley sat on his box; and F. Jackson Gilet towered haughtily, gazing at
+the intruding blue uniform of the United States.
+
+"I'll hev to take you to the commanding officer," said Jones, briefly,
+to Hewley. "You and yer box."
+
+"Oh, my stars and stripes, but that's a keen move!" rejoiced Ballard to
+himself. "He's arresting _us_."
+
+[Illustration: "'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN JONES"]
+
+In Jones's judgment, after he had taken in the situation, this had
+seemed the only possible way to stop trouble without making any, and
+therefore, even now, bayonets were not fixed. Best not ruffle Price's
+Left Wing just now, if you could avoid it. For a new corporal it was
+well thought and done. But it was high noon, the clock not pushed
+back, and punctual Representatives strolling innocently towards their
+expected pay. There must be no time for a gathering and possible
+reaction. "I'll hev to clear this State-House out," Jones decided.
+"We're makin' an arrest," he said, aloud, "and we want a little room."
+The outside bystanders stood back obediently, but the Councillors
+delayed. Their pistols were, with Ballard's and Hewley's, of course in
+custody. "Here," said Jones, restoring them. "Go home now. The
+commanding officer's waitin' fer the prisoner. Put yer boots on, sir,
+and leave," he added to Pete Cawthon, who still stood in his
+stockings. "I don't want to hev to disperse anybody more'n what I've
+done."
+
+Disconcerted Price's Left Wing now saw file out between armed soldiers
+the Treasurer and his strong-box; and thus guarded they were brought to
+Boisé Barracks, whence they did not reappear. The Governor also went to
+the post.
+
+After delivering Hewley and his treasure to the commanding officer,
+Jones with his five troopers went to the sutler's store and took a drink
+at Jones's expense. Then one of them asked the corporal to have another.
+But Jones refused. "If a man drinks much of that," said he (and the
+whiskey certainly was of a livid, unlikely flavor), "he's liable to go
+home and steal his own pants." He walked away to his quarters, and as he
+went they heard him thoughtfully humming his most inveterate song, "Ye
+shepherds tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way."
+
+But poisonous whiskey was not the inner reason for his moderation. He
+felt very much like a responsible corporal to-day, and the troopers knew
+it. "Jones has done himself a good turn in this fuss," they said. "He'll
+be changing his chevron."
+
+That afternoon the Legislature sat in the State-House and read to
+itself in the Statutes all about oaths. It is not believed that any of
+them sat up another night; sleeping on a problem is often much better.
+Next morning the commanding officer and Governor Ballard were called
+upon by F. Jackson Gilet and the Speaker of the House. Every one was
+civil and hearty as possible. Gilet pronounced the captain's whiskey
+"equal to any at the Southern, Saint Louey," and conversed for some time
+about the cold season, General Crook's remarkable astuteness in dealing
+with Indians, and other topics of public interest. "And concernin' yoh
+difficulty yesterday, Gove'nuh," said he, "I've been consulting the
+laws, suh, and I perceive yoh construction is entahley correct."
+
+And so the Legislature signed that form of oath prescribed for
+participants in the late Rebellion, and Hewley did not have to wait for
+his poker money. He and Wingo played many subsequent games; for, as they
+all said in referring to the matter, "A little thing like that should
+nevuh stand between friends."
+
+Thus was accomplished by Ballard, Paisley--and Jones--the Second
+Missouri Compromise, at Boisé City, Idaho, 1867--an eccentric moment in
+the eccentric years of our development westward, and historic also. That
+it has gone unrecorded until now is because of Ballard's modesty,
+Paisley's preference for the sword, and Jones's hatred of the pen. He
+was never known to write except, later, in the pages of his company
+roster and such unavoidable official places; for the troopers were
+prophetic. In not many months there was no longer a Corporal Jones, but
+a person widely known as Sergeant Jones of Company A; called also the
+"Singing Sergeant"; but still familiar to his intimate friends as
+"Specimen."
+
+
+
+
+LA TINAJA BONITA
+
+
+     "And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up,
+     because there had been no rain in the land."--1 Kings xvii. 7.
+
+A pretty girl was kneeling on the roof of a flat mud cabin, a harvest of
+red peppers round her knees. On the ground below her stood a swarthy
+young man, the bloom on his Mexican cheeks rich and dusky, like her own.
+His face was irresponsible and winning, and his watching eyes shone upon
+her with admiration and desire. She on the roof was entertained by her
+visitor's attention, but unfavorable to it. Through the live-long sunny
+day she had parried his love-talk with light and complete skill,
+enjoying herself, and liking him very well, as she had done since they
+were two children playing together in the Arizona desert. She was quite
+mistress of the situation, because she was a woman, and he as yet merely
+a boy; he was only twenty-two; she was almost sixteen. The Mexican man
+at twenty-two may be as experienced as his Northern brother of thirty,
+but at sixteen the Mexican woman is also mature, and can competently
+deal with the man. So this girl had relished the thoughtless morning and
+noon as they passed; but twice lately she had glanced across the low
+tree-tops of her garden down the trail, where the cañon descended to the
+silent plain below.
+
+"I think I must go back now," said the young man, not thinking so. He
+had a guitar from the cabin.
+
+"Oh!" said she, diverted by his youthful feint. "Well, if you think it
+is so late." She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchief
+and strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her head
+to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole
+roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer
+with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting
+and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her most
+wistfully.
+
+"It is not precisely late--yet," said he.
+
+"To be sure not," she assented, consulting the sky. "We have still three
+hours of day."
+
+He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. "But after night it
+is so very dark on the trail to camp," he insincerely objected.
+
+"I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark."
+
+"It is for the horse's legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing."
+
+"Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quite
+suddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have a
+good figure."
+
+"I am much heavier than last year," said he. "My arm--"
+
+"I can see, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you kiss me any more.
+You didn't offer to when you came this morning--and that shows you men
+perceive things more quickly than we can. But don't go yet. You can lead
+your horse. His legs will come to no harm, eased of your weight. I
+should have been lonely to-day, and you have made it pass so quickly.
+You have talked so much that my peppers are not half spread."
+
+"We could finish them in five minutes together," said the youth, taking
+a step.
+
+"Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread on
+them, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, go
+bring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty."
+
+But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof.
+
+"Very well, then," said Lolita. "If you like this better, finish the
+peppers, and I'll go for the water."
+
+"Why do you look down the trail so often?" said the baffled love-maker,
+petulantly.
+
+"Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day," the girl
+replied, softly.
+
+"Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?"
+
+"Why not?" She shaded her eyes, and looked where the cañon's widening
+slit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changeless
+waste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of the
+gaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes
+and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled
+to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or
+even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the
+dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.
+
+"What does he come here for?" demanded Luis.
+
+"The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes."
+
+"Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luis
+lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched
+Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little
+with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and
+unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing
+from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita
+knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling
+her peppers:
+
+     "'Soy purita mejicana;
+     Nada tengo español.'"
+
+(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this
+melodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.
+
+"Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly.
+
+"Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa."
+
+"I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis.
+
+But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly.
+
+"Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that
+white flour."
+
+Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they
+were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross
+with a sense of failure. "El telele se murió," he sang.
+
+     "'The hunchback is dead.
+     Ay! Ay! Ay!
+     And no one could be found to bury him except--'"
+
+"Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?"
+
+"Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly."
+
+"You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it."
+
+The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from the
+cabin.
+
+"Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,
+where it is pleasant.
+
+     "'And no one could be found to bury him except
+     Five dragoons and a corporal
+     And the sacristan's cat.'"
+
+Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.
+Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fenced
+irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a
+nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air
+that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their
+varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed
+and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a
+holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see
+or think of Arizona, just outside.
+
+"Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?" inquired Luis, dropping his music.
+
+She sighed. "He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is
+no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last
+week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know what
+is going to happen to us." The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to come
+outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent
+abiding-place.
+
+"There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to
+Maricopa," chirped the bird on the ground.
+
+She made no answer to this. "What are you doing nowadays?" she asked.
+
+"I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American
+soldiers," he replied, promptly.
+
+"By Tucson?"
+
+"No. Huachuca."
+
+"Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May."
+
+"It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita."
+
+"But it's October now!" Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and
+broke into laughter.
+
+"I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since."
+
+"Have you asked any one for work?"
+
+"It is not my way to beg."
+
+"Luis, I don't believe you're quite a man yet, in spite of your
+mustache. You complain there's no money for Mexicans in Arizona because
+the Americans get it all. Why don't you go back to Sonora, then, and be
+rich in five minutes? It would sound finely: 'Luis Romero, Merchant,
+Hermosillo.' Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap at
+Guaymas. You would live in a big house, perhaps with two stories, and I
+would come and visit you at Easter--if your wife would allow it." Here
+Lolita threw a pepper at him.
+
+The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.
+
+"And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told the
+American contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. He
+didn't say much about you," added the little lady.
+
+"Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages to
+pay for the food he supplied us. They charge you extra for starvation,
+those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so he
+may strive to win a home for her."
+
+"I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could strive
+to win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way."
+
+"I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of their
+gringo customs."
+
+"You speak truly indeed," murmured Lolita.
+
+"It is you who know about them," the boy said, angry like a child. He
+had seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. "They say you
+prefer gringos to your own people."
+
+"Who dares say that?"
+
+The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. He had touched her that
+time.
+
+But Lolita's eye softened at the instant of speaking, and she broke into
+her sweet laugh. "There!" she said, recapturing the situation; "is it
+not like old times for you and me to be fighting."
+
+"Me? I am not fighting."
+
+"You relieve me."
+
+"I do not consider a gringo worth my notice."
+
+"Sensible boy! You speak as wisely as one who has been to school in a
+large city. Luis, do you remember the day Uncle Ramon locked me up for
+riding on the kicking burro, and you came and unlocked me when uncle was
+gone? You took me walking, and lost us both in the mountains. We were
+really only a little, little way from home, but I thought we had got
+into another country where they eat children. I was six, and I beat you
+for losing me, and cried, and you were big, and you kissed me till I
+stopped crying. Do you remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't you remember?"
+
+"I don't remember child's tricks."
+
+"Luis, I have come to a conclusion. You are still young enough for me to
+kiss quite safely. Every time you fight with me--I shall kiss you. Won't
+you get me some fresh water now?"
+
+He lounged, sulky, against his barrel.
+
+"Come, querido! Must I go all that way myself? Well, then, if you intend
+to stand and glare at me till the moon rises--Ah! he moves!"
+
+Luis laid the guitar gradually down, and gradually lifting a pail in
+which the dipper rattled with emptiness, he proceeded to crawl on his
+journey.
+
+"You know that is not the one we use, muchacho," (little boy), remarked
+Lolita.
+
+"Keep your kisses for your gringo," the water-carrier growled, with his
+back to her.
+
+"I shall always save some for my little cousin."
+
+The pail clattered on the stones, and the child stopped crawling. She on
+the roof stared at this performance for an open-mouthed moment, gloves
+idle among the spicy peppers. Then, laughing, she sprang to her feet,
+descended, and, catching up the water-jar (the olla de agua), overtook
+him, and shook it in his face with the sweetest derision. "Now we'll go
+together," said she, and started gayly through the green trees and the
+garden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing at
+her red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did they
+cross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of the
+leaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation into
+Arizona's domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground--dead
+cattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought,
+killed in the sanctuary by cold water.
+
+A wise, quiet man, with a man's will, may sometimes after three days of
+thirst still hold grip enough upon his slipping mind to know, when he
+has found the water, that he must not drink it, must only dampen his
+lips and tongue in a drop-by-drop fashion until he has endured the
+passing of many slow, insidious hours. Even a wise man had best have a
+friend by his side then, who shall fight and tear him from the perilous
+excesses that he craves, knock him senseless if he cannot pin him down;
+but cattle know nothing of drop by drop, and you cannot pin down a
+hundred head that have found water after three days. So these hundred
+had drunk themselves swollen, and died. Cracked hide and white bone they
+lay, brown, dry, gaping humps straddled stiff askew in the last
+convulsion; and over them presided Arizona--silent, vast, all sunshine
+everlasting.
+
+Luis saw these corpses that had stumbled to their fate, and he
+remembered; with Lolita in those trees all day, he had forgotten for a
+while. He pointed to the wide-strewn sight, familiar, monotonous as
+misfortune. "There will be many more," he said. "Another rainy season is
+gone without doing anything for the country. It cannot rain now for
+another year, Lolita."
+
+"God help us and our cattle, and travellers!" she whispered.
+
+Luis musingly repeated a saying of the country about the Tinaja Bonita,
+
+     "'When you see the Black Cross dry,
+     Fill the wagon cisterns high'"
+
+--a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom,
+stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded
+wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath the
+desert.
+
+"But the Black Cross has never been dry yet," Luis said.
+
+"You have not seen it lately," said Lolita.
+
+"Lolita! do you mean--" He looked in her troubled eyes, and they went on
+in silence together. They left behind them the bones and the bald level
+on which they lay, and came to where the cañon's broader descent
+quickened until they sank below that sight of the cattle, and for a time
+below the home and trees. They went down steeply by cactus and dry rock
+to a meeting of several cañons opening from side rifts in the Sierra,
+furrowing the main valley's mesa with deep watercourses that brought no
+water. Finding their way in this lumpy meeting-ground, they came upon
+the lurking-place of the Tinaja Bonita. They stood above it at the edge
+of a pitch of rock, watching the motionless crystal of the pool.
+
+"How well it hides down there in its own cañon!" said Luis. "How pretty
+and clear! But there's plenty of water, Lolita."
+
+"Can you see the Black Cross?"
+
+"Not from here."
+
+They began descending around the sides of the crumbled slate-rock face
+that tilted too steep for foothold.
+
+"The other well is dry, of course," said Lolita. In the slaty,
+many-ledged formation a little lower down the cañon, towards the peep of
+outlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second round
+hole, twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in this
+place, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size and
+depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed
+man's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja's
+reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully
+represented except the water.
+
+"It must have been a real well once," said Luis.
+
+"Once, yes."
+
+"And what made it go dry?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+"How strange it should be the lower well that failed, Lolita!"
+
+The boy and girl were climbing down slowly, drawing near each other as
+they reached the bottom of the hollow. The peep of open country was
+blocked, and the tall tops of the mountains were all of the outer world
+to be seen down here below the mesa's level. The silence was like
+something older than this world, like the silence of space before any
+worlds were made.
+
+"Do you believe it ever can go dry?" asked Luis. They were now on the
+edge of the Tinaja.
+
+"Father Rafael says that it is miraculous," said the girl, believingly.
+
+Opposite, and everywhere except where they were, the walls went sheer
+down, not slate-colored, but white, with a sudden up-cropping formation
+of brick-shaped stones. These also were many-layered and crumbling,
+cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them.
+No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven,
+tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita
+looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that
+white formation shot up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary and
+irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones
+were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand--four small stones
+shaping a cross, back against the white, symmetrical and plain.
+
+"It has come farther--more uncovered since yesterday," Lolita whispered.
+
+"Can the Tinaja sink altogether?" repeated Luis. The arms of the cross
+were a measurable space above the water-line, and he had always seen it
+entirely submerged.
+
+"How could it sink?" said Lolita, simply. "It will stop when the black
+stones are wholly dry."
+
+"You believe Father Rafael," Luis said, always in a low voice; "but it
+was only Indians, after all, who told the mission fathers at the first."
+
+"That was very long ago," said she, "and there has always been water in
+the Tinaja Bonita."
+
+Boy and girl had set the jar down, and forgotten it and why they had
+come. Luis looked uneasily at the circular pool, and up from this
+creviced middle of the cañon to the small high tops of the mountains
+rising in the free sky.
+
+"This is an evil place," he said. "As for the water--no one, no three,
+can live long enough to be sure."
+
+But it was part of Lolita's religion. "I am sure," said she.
+
+The young Mexican's eyes rested on the face of the girl beside him, more
+beautiful just then with some wave of secret fear and faith.
+
+"Come away with me, Lolita!" he pleaded, suddenly. "I can work. I can be
+a man. It is fearful for you to live here alone."
+
+"Alone, Luis?" His voice had called her from her reverie back to her
+gay, alert self. "Do you consider Uncle Ramon nobody to live with?"
+
+"Yes. Nobody--for you."
+
+"Promise me never to tell that to uncle. He is so considerate that he
+might make me marry somebody for company. And then, you know, my husband
+would be certain to be stupid about your coming to see me, querido."
+
+"Why do you always mock me, Lolita?"
+
+"Mock you? What a fancy! Oh, see how the sun's going! If we do not get
+our water, your terrible Tinaja will go dry before supper. Come, Luis, I
+carried the olla. Must I do everything?"
+
+He looked at her disconsolate. "Ah!" he vibrated, revelling in deep
+imaginary passion.
+
+"Go! go!" she cried, pushing him. "Take your olla."
+
+Upon the lightest passing puff of sentiment the Southern breast can
+heave with every genuine symptom of storm, except wreck. Of course she
+stirred his gregarious heart. Was she not lovely and he twenty-two? He
+went down the natural stairs and came slowly up with the water, stopping
+a step below her. "Lolita," he said, "don't you love me at all? not a
+very little?"
+
+"You are my dearest, oldest friend, Luis," she said, looking at him with
+such full sweetness that his eyes fell. "But why do you pretend five
+beans make ten?"
+
+"Of course they only make ten with gringos."
+
+She held up a warning finger.
+
+"Oh yes, oh yes! Strangers make fine lovers!" With this he swelled to a
+fond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, "It is not difficult to kill a
+man, Lolita."
+
+"Fighting! after what I told you!" Lolita stooped and kissed her cousin
+Luis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.
+
+"As often as you please," he said, as she released herself angrily, and
+then a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart,
+trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into the
+Tinaja with a gulping resonance. Loitering strings of sand strewed after
+it, and the boy's and girl's superstitious eyes looked up from the
+ringed, waving water to the ledge. Lolita's single shriek of terror
+turned to joy as she uttered it.
+
+"I thought--I thought you would not come!" she cried out.
+
+The dismounted horseman above made no sign of understanding her words.
+He stepped carefully away from the ledge his foot had crumbled, and they
+saw him using his rifle like a staff, steadying its stock in successive
+niches, and so working back to his horse. There he slid the rifle into
+its leather sling along the left side of his saddle.
+
+"So he is not dead," murmured Luis, "and we need not live alone."
+
+"Come down!" the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comer
+stood by his horse like an apparition.
+
+"Perhaps he is dead, after all," Luis said. "You might say some of the
+Mass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer."
+
+Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the
+stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To
+him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the
+sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had
+started and stared to see--not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his
+horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in
+the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture--smoke from the rifle, and
+himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did not
+believe the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff,
+and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him,
+and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, and
+ready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing without
+concealment of her heart's desire.
+
+"Come down!" she repeated. "Come round the side." And, lifting the olla,
+she tapped it, and signed the way to him.
+
+"He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care to
+climb more than he must," said Luis. But the man had stirred at last
+from his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presently
+he was near enough for Luis to read his face. "Your gringo is a handsome
+fellow, certainly," he commented. "But he does not like me to-day."
+
+"Like you! He doesn't think about you," said Lolita.
+
+"Ha! That's your opinion?"
+
+"It is also his opinion--if you'll ask him."
+
+"He is afraid of Cousin Luis," stated the youth.
+
+"Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you--if he could see you."
+
+"There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your
+gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not."
+
+"How little he knows you!"
+
+"It is you he does not know very well," the boy said, with a pang.
+
+The scornful girl stared.
+
+"Oh, the innocent one!" sneered Luis. "Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one
+man can always recognize another, and the women don't know much."
+
+But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to
+read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no
+thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and
+to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. "You
+have come just in time," she called out to him. At the voice, he looked
+at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a
+tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his
+bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his
+blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above,
+getting a grip of himself. "Luis was becoming really afraid that he
+might have to do some work," continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill.
+"You know Luis?"
+
+"I know him."
+
+"You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us," she pursued,
+arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.
+
+"I can."
+
+At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when she
+had come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile fluttered
+on her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; nor
+could she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping him
+keep his grip.
+
+Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita's thoughts away from
+him and all other men. "No, indeed, he does not understand her very
+well," he repeated, bitter in knowing the man's suspicion and its
+needlessness. Something--disappointment, it may be--had wrought more
+reality in the young Mexican's easy-going love. "And she likes this
+gringo because--because he is light-colored!" he said, watching the
+American's bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but of
+sterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himself
+forewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, his
+mustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health by
+the weather. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode to
+the Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolita
+unclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushing
+coldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slighting
+touch changed the Mexican boy's temper to diversion and malice. Here
+were mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with a
+vengeance!
+
+"Give me that," said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar to
+him with such feline politeness that the American's blue eyes filled
+with fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quite
+ready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of his
+Saxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail out
+to the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.
+
+As the three went silent up the cañon, Luis caught sight of Lolita's
+eyes shining with the hurt of her lover's rebuff, and his face sparkled
+with further mischief. "She has been despising me all day," he said to
+himself. "Very well, very well.--Señor Don Ruz," he began aloud,
+elaborately, "we are having a bad drought."
+
+The American rode on, inspecting the country.
+
+"I know at least four sorts of kisses," reflected the Mexican trifler.
+"But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the top
+of a rock." He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his
+pistol, and his knife. "How clumsy these gringos are when it's about a
+girl!" thought Luis. "Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much
+care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical
+gringo!--Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!"
+
+The American continued to inspect the country, his supple,
+flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.
+
+"Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz," persisted the gadfly, lighting
+again. "Don Ramon's spring does not run now, and so we must come to the
+Tinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday.
+Everybody absent from home, except Lolita." Luis thought he could see
+his Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile over
+himself and his skill grew more engaging. "Lolita has been telling me
+all to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry."
+
+"It was you said that!" exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.
+
+"So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagree
+about." The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to his
+tormentor. "No sabe cuantos son cinco," Luis whispered, stepping close
+to Lolita. "Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now." Lolita
+drew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his head
+slightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. "But what do you
+say yourself, Don Ruz?" inquired Luis, pleased at this slight
+coincidence--"will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?"
+
+"I expect guessing won't interfere with the water's movements much,"
+finally remarked Don Ruz--Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in his
+voice were not much like the Mexican's light fluency. They were music to
+Lolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. The
+bitter Luis relished this too.
+
+"You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wondering
+about this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen so
+much of the cross out of water. Lolita says--"
+
+"So that's that place," said Genesmere, roughly.
+
+Luis looked inquiring.
+
+"Down there," Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back along
+the road they had come.
+
+Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, should
+never have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.
+
+"I'd have seen it if I'd had any use for it," said Genesmere.
+
+"To be sure, it lay off the road of travel," Luis assented. And of
+course Don Ruz knew all that was needful--how to find it. He knew what
+people said--did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolita
+perhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above the
+water, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty.
+Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they could
+judge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolita
+were surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubt
+what the Indians said about the great underground snake that came and
+sucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence was
+nearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.
+
+To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressed
+contempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of it
+before, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed the
+desert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where he
+expected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the cañon, suffering the
+glib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings still
+smouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in his
+cheeks; but of Luis's chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, a
+single English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit.
+It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and,
+overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easily
+he could play this simple, unskilful American.
+
+They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees,
+where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.
+
+"So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?" said Luis, perceiving the
+American's pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at Gun
+Sight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita's and her cousin's
+trail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above the
+Tinaja. "You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know,
+Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probably
+frijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here." He was giving his
+pony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted.
+"I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming till
+to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper." He spoke jauntily from his horse,
+arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day's courting, gray
+steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil
+severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body
+together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft
+on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for
+Luis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcerted
+the most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to his
+galled self-esteem. "Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I
+shall come to-morrow, mañana en la mañana."
+
+"Good-night," said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; "I cannot
+stop you from passing my house."
+
+Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded
+upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease,
+ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American
+was not the man to wait until his enemy's back was turned.
+
+     "'El telele se murió
+     A enterrar ya le llevan--'"
+
+The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.
+
+     "'Ay! Ay! Ay!'"
+
+Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other,
+looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. The
+minstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than the
+American's shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant with
+thoughtlessness. Like most of his basking Southern breed, he had no
+visible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer than
+three minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough to
+sleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thing
+to sell some other man's horses over the border and get a fine coat and
+hat.
+
+     "'Cinco dragones y un cabo,
+     Oh, no no no no no!
+     Y un gato de sacristan.'"
+
+Coat and hat were getting up the cañon's side among the cactus, the
+little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider;
+and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they
+went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in
+Genesmere's brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew,
+and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the
+sun--the sun of Arizona at the day's transfigured immortal
+passing--became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating
+like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep,
+and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over
+earth and sky.
+
+Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. "I didn't
+shoot because I was afraid of hitting you," he said.
+
+So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the
+Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her
+stupid and slow.
+
+"Are you going to eat?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh yes. I guess I'll eat."
+
+She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been
+Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and
+with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules,
+coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
+
+"It is getting dark," said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it,
+and sat down again.
+
+"I've never hurt a woman," he said, presently, the vision of his rifle's
+white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more
+flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.
+
+"Then you have a good chance now," said Lolita, quickly, busy over her
+cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in
+her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and
+sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.
+
+"And I wouldn't hurt a woman"--he was hardly talking to her--"not if I
+could think in time."
+
+"Men do it," she said, with the same defiance. "But it makes talk."
+
+"Talk's nothing to me," said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. "Do I
+care for opinions? Only my own." The fierceness passed from his face,
+and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud,
+changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. "I wouldn't want to have to
+remember a thing like that." He stretched himself, and leaned his elbows
+on his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding his
+fingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not a
+sign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreck
+of faith and passion. "I have to live a heap of my life alone," the
+lounger went on. "Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And I
+don't propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of." Lolita was
+throwing a cloth over the table and straightening it. "I'm twenty-five,
+and I've laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might say
+different."
+
+"It is ready," said Lolita, finishing her preparations.
+
+He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chair
+to the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She moved
+about the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him,
+seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was a
+peon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparatively
+well. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were several
+dishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to his
+plate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionally
+looking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again in
+words. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: "So, you see, you
+saved his life down there."
+
+She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she said
+nothing, but waited for what next.
+
+"You don't believe that. You don't know that. He knows that."
+
+She laughed again, more briefly.
+
+"You can tell him so. From me."
+
+Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita's lips and hinder each
+other's escaping.
+
+"And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn't have stopped. He'd have
+shot. Say that. From me. He'd have shot, because he's a Spaniard, like
+you."
+
+"You lie!" This side issue in some manner set free the girl's tongue, "I
+am not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am
+Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood.
+But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him
+go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell
+him it is Lolita's. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had
+enough of men's talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!"
+
+Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. "I
+suppose," he said, very slowly, "that folks like you folks can't
+understand about love--not about the kind I mean."
+
+Lolita's two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon
+her gods. "Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make
+you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved
+me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always,
+since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day,
+having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear
+his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you
+would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house
+to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is
+you who are the fool."
+
+She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to
+bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to
+him.
+
+"Lolita!" he whispered. "Lolita!"
+
+But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when
+presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way
+that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the
+desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew
+her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and
+changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "My
+life!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door the
+air of the cañon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire
+and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the
+trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased
+to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes
+of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five
+planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the
+keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards
+the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere's eye, and Lolita felt
+him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.
+
+"What is it?" she said.
+
+"Nothing." He was staring at the hill. "Nothing," he replied to himself.
+
+"Dreamer, come!" said Lolita, pulling him. "It is cold here in the
+night--and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember."
+
+"What does this girl want now?"
+
+"The cards! our cards!"
+
+"Why, to be sure!" He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the
+fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,
+laughing for delight at her lover's being himself again--his own right
+self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.
+
+"Take it!" she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep
+his distance. "There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You
+shall buy me another." She flung the light instrument, that fell in a
+corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to
+a blurred hollow humming, and silence.
+
+"Now you have done it!" said Genesmere, mock serious.
+
+"I don't care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and
+you shall give me a new one.
+
+     "'Yo soy purita mejicana;
+     Nada tengo español,'"
+
+sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herself
+at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. "You
+sit there!" She nodded to the opposite side of the table. "Very well,
+move the lamp then." Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from
+him. "He thinks I cheat! Now, Señor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar.
+Do you hear?"
+
+"Too many pesos, señorita."
+
+"Oh, oh! the miser!"
+
+"I'm not going broke on any señoritas--not even my own girl!"
+
+"Have you no newer thing than poverty to tell me? Now if you look at me
+like that I cannot shuffle properly."
+
+"How am I to look, please?" He held his glance on her.
+
+"Not foolish like a boy. There, take them, then!" She threw the cards at
+him, blushing and perturbed by his eyes, while he scrambled to punish
+her across the table.
+
+"Generous one!" she said. "Ardent pretender! He won't let me shuffle
+because he fears to lose."
+
+"You shall have a silk handkerchief with flowers on it," said he,
+shuffling.
+
+"I have two already. I can see you arranging those cards, miser!"
+
+It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether she
+stole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for her
+when he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and the
+cards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, his
+oldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself.
+Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon to
+forget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of the
+moment.
+
+"Say my name!" he ordered; and at the child effort she made over "Russ"
+he smiled with delight. "Again!" he exclaimed, bending to catch her R
+and the whole odd little word she made. "More!"
+
+"No," pouted the girl, and beat at him, blushing again.
+
+"Make your bet!" he said, laying out the Mexican cards before him.
+"Quick! Which shall it be?"
+
+"The caballo. Oh, my dear, I wanted to die this afternoon, and now I am
+so happy!"
+
+It brought the tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly
+declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows
+and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out
+of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her
+win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the
+guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at
+last Genesmere began to speak of the next time, and Lolita to forbid
+such talk as that so soon. She laid her hand over his lips, at which he
+yielded for a little, and she improvised questions of moment to ask him,
+without time for stopping, until she saw that this would avail no
+longer. Then she sighed, and let him leave her to see to his animals,
+while she lighted the fire again to make breakfast for him. At that
+parting meal an anxiety slowly came in her face, and it was she that
+broke their silence after a while.
+
+"Which road do you go this time, querido?" she asked.
+
+"Tucson, Maricopa, and then straight here to you."
+
+"From Maricopa? That is longer across the desert."
+
+"Shorter to my girl."
+
+"I--I wish you would not come that way."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That--that desert!"
+
+"There's desert both ways--all ways. The other road puts an extra week
+between you and me."
+
+"Yes, yes. I have counted."
+
+"What is all this, Lolita?"
+
+Once more she hesitated, smiling uneasily beneath his scrutiny. "Yo no
+se" (I don't know). "You will laugh. You do not believe the things that
+I believe. The Tinaja Bonita--"
+
+"That again!"
+
+"Yes," she half whispered. "I am afraid."
+
+He looked at her steadily.
+
+"Return the same road by Tucson," she urged. "That way is only half so
+much desert, and you can carry water from Poso Blanco. Do not trust the
+Coyote Wells. They are little and shallow, and if the Black Cross--Oh,
+my darling, if you do not believe, do this for me because you love me,
+love me!"
+
+He did not speak at once. The two had risen, and stood by the open
+door, where the dawn was entering and mixing with the lamp. "Because I
+love you," he repeated at length, slowly, out of his uncertain thoughts.
+
+She implored him, and he studied her in silence.
+
+Suddenly hardness stamped his face. "I'll come by Tucson, then--since I
+love you!" And he walked at once out of the door. She followed him to
+his horse, and there reached up and pulled him round to her, locking her
+fingers behind his neck. Again his passion swept him, and burned the
+doubt from his eyes. "I believe you love me!" he broke out.
+
+"Ah, why need you say that?"
+
+"Adios, chiquita." He was smiling, and she looked at his white teeth and
+golden mustache. She felt his hands begin to unlock her own.
+
+"Not yet--not yet!"
+
+"Adios, chiquita."
+
+"O mi querido!" she murmured; "with you I forget day and night!"
+
+"Bastante!" He kissed her once for all.
+
+"Good-bye! good-bye! Mis labios van estar frios hasta que tu los toques
+otra vez" (My lips will be cold until you touch them again).
+
+He caught her two hands, as if to cling to something. "Say that once
+more. Tell me that once more."
+
+She told him with all her heart and soul, and he sprang into his saddle.
+She went beside him through the cold, pale-lighted trees to the garden's
+edge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren ground
+among the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that came
+beyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strong
+figure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter.
+When the steeper fall of the cañon hid him from her she ran to the
+house, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sight
+again below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, the
+white horse and dark rider and the mules, until they became a mere line
+of something moving, and so vanished into the increasing day.
+
+Genesmere rode, and took presently to smoking. Coming to a sandy place,
+he saw prints of feet and of a shod horse in the trail heading the other
+way. That was his own horse, and the feet were Lolita's and Luis's--the
+record and the memory of yesterday afternoon. He looked up from the
+trail to the hills, now lambent with violet and shifting orange, and
+their shapes as they moved out into his approaching view were the shapes
+of yesterday afternoon. He came soon to the forking of the trails, one
+for Tucson and the other leading down into the lumpy country, and here
+again were the prints in the sand, the shod horse, the man and the
+woman, coming in from the lumpy country that lay to the left; and
+Genesmere found himself stock-still by the forking trails, looking at
+his watch. His many-journeyed mules knew which was the Tucson trail,
+and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walked
+asunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They went
+along a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came to
+an end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footing
+looking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master sat
+quiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; and
+the sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So far had he come
+yesterday with that mind easy over his garnered prosperity, free and
+soaring on its daily flight among the towers of his hopes--those
+constructions that are common with men who grow fond: the air-castle
+rises and reaches, possessing the architect, who cherishes its slow
+creation with hourly changes and additions to the plan. A house was part
+of Genesmere's castle, a home with a wife inside, and no more camping
+alone. Thus far, to this exact ledge, the edifice had gone forward
+fortunately, and then a blast had crumbled house and days to come into
+indistinguishable dust. The heavy echo jarred in Genesmere, now that he
+had been lured to look again upon the site of the disaster, and a
+lightning violence crossed his face. He saw the two down there as they
+had stood, the man with his arms holding the woman, before the falling
+stone had startled them. Were the Mexican present now in the flesh, he
+would destroy him just for what he had tried to do. If she were
+true--She was true--that was no thanks to the Mexican. Genesmere was
+sorry second thoughts had spared that fellow yesterday, and he looked at
+his watch again. It was time to be starting on the Tucson trail, and the
+mules alertly turned their steps from the Tinaja Bonita. They could see
+no good in having come here. Evidently it was not to get water. Why,
+then? What use was there in looking down a place into a hole? The mules
+gave it up. Genesmere himself thought the Tinaja poorly named. It was
+not pretty. In his experience of trail and cañon he knew no other such
+hole. He was not aware of the twin, dried up, thirty yards below, and
+therefore only half knew the wonders of the spot.
+
+He rode back to the forks across the rolling steepness, rebuilding the
+castle; then, discovering something too distant to be sure about, used
+his glass quickly. It was another rider, also moving slowly among the
+knolls and gullies of the mesa, and Genesmere could not make him out. He
+was going towards the cabin, but it was not the same horse that Luis had
+ridden yesterday. This proved nothing, and it would be easy to circle
+and see the man closer--only not worth the trouble. Let the Mexican go
+to the cabin. Let him go every day. He probably would, if she permitted.
+Most likely she would tell him to keep away from her. She ought to. She
+might hurt him if he annoyed her. She was a good shot with a pistol. But
+women work differently from men--and then she was Mexican. She might
+hide her feelings and make herself pleasant for three weeks. She would
+tell him when he returned, and they would laugh together over how she
+had fooled this Luis. After all, shooting would have been too much
+punishment. A man with a girl like Lolita must expect to find other men
+after her. It depends on your girl. You find that out when you go after
+other men's girls. When a woman surely loves some other man she will not
+look at you. And Lolita's love was a sure thing. A woman can say love
+and a man will believe her--until he has experienced the genuine article
+once; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with her
+inside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not to
+be accounted for. If anybody had said last year--why, as late as the
+20th of last March--that settling down was what you were coming to--and
+now--Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding a
+horse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. "No longer
+alone!" he said aloud, suddenly, and surprised the white horse.
+
+The song about the hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythm
+in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it,
+naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion
+to piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick after
+slow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again;
+would never want to--not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head back
+to take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountains
+like a picture, and himself far out in the flat country, and the bare
+sun in the sky. He had come six miles on the road since he had last
+noticed. Six miles, and the air-castle was rebuilt and perfect, with no
+difference from the old one except its foundation, which was upon sand.
+To see the unexpected plain around him, and the islands of blue, sharp
+peaks lying in it, drove the tune from his head, and he considered the
+well-known country, reflecting that man could not be meant to live here.
+The small mountain-islands lay at all distances, blue in a dozen ways,
+amid the dead calm of this sand archipelago. They rose singly from it,
+sheer and sudden, toothed and triangled like icebergs, hot as stoves.
+The channels to the north, Santa Rosa way, opened broad and yellow, and
+ended without shore upon the clean horizon, and to the south narrowed
+with lagoons into Sonora. Genesmere could just see one top of the Sierra
+de la Quitabac jutting up from below the earth-line, splitting the main
+channel, the faintest blue of all. They could be having no trouble over
+their water down there, with the Laguna Esperanca and the Poso de Mazis.
+Genesmere killed some more of the way rehearsing the trails and
+water-holes of this country, known to him like his pocket; and by-and-by
+food-cooking and mule-feeding and the small machine repetitions of a
+camp and a journey brought the Quijotoa Mountains behind him to replace
+Gun Sight and the Sierra de la Naril; and later still the Cababi hid the
+Quijotoa, and Genesmere counted days and nights to the good, and was at
+the Coyote Wells.
+
+These were holes in rocks, but shallow, as Lolita said. No shallower
+than ordinary, however; he would see on the way back if they gave signs
+of failing. No wonder if they did, with this spell of drought--but why
+mix up a plain thing with a lot of nonsense about a black cross down a
+hole? Genesmere was critically struck with the words of the tune he now
+noticed steadily running in his head again, beneath the random surface
+of his thoughts.
+
+     "Cinco dragones y un cabo,
+     Y un gato de sacristan."
+
+That made no sense either; but Mexicans found something in it. Liked it.
+Now American songs had some sense:
+
+     "They bathed his head in vinegar
+       To fetch him up to time,
+     And now he drives a mule team on
+       The Denver City line."
+
+A man could understand that. A proud stage-driver makes a mistake about
+a female passenger. Thinks he has got an heiress, and she turns out to
+peddle sarsaparilla. "So he's naturally used up," commented Genesmere.
+"You estimate a girl as one thing, and she--" Here the undercurrent
+welled up, breaking the surface. "Did she mean that? Was that her
+genuine reason?" In memory he took a look at his girl's face, and
+repeated her words when she besought him to come the longer way and
+hesitated over why. Was that shame at owning she believed such stuff?
+True, after asking him once about his religion and hearing what he said,
+she had never spoken of these things again. That must be a woman's way
+when she loved you first--to hide her notions that differed from yours,
+and not ruffle happy days. "Return the same road by Tucson!" He
+unwrapped a clean, many-crumpled handkerchief, and held Lolita's
+photograph for a while. Then he burst into an unhappy oath, and folded
+the picture up again. What if her priest did tell her? He had heard the
+minister tell about eternal punishment when he was a boy, and just as
+soon as he started thinking it over he knew it was a lie. And this quack
+Tinaja was worse foolishness, and had nothing to do with religion.
+Lolita afraid of his coming to grief in a country he had travelled
+hundreds, thousands of miles in! Perhaps she had never started thinking
+for herself yet. But she had. She was smarter than any girl of her age
+he had ever seen. She did not want him back so soon. That was what it
+was. Yet she had looked true; her voice had sounded that way. Again he
+dwelt upon her words and caresses; and harboring these various thoughts,
+he killed still more of the long road, until, passing after awhile Poso
+Blanco, and later Marsh's ranch-well at the forks where the Sonora road
+comes in, he reached Tucson a man divided against himself. Divided
+beyond his will into two selves--one of faith besieged, and one of
+besieging inimical reason--the inextricable error!
+
+Business and pleasure were waiting in Tucson, and friends whose ways and
+company had not been of late for him; but he frequented them this time,
+tasting no pleasure, yet finding the ways and company better than his
+own. After the desert's changeless, unfathomed silence, in which nothing
+new came day or night to break the fettering spell his mind was falling
+under, the clink and knocking of bottles was good to hear, and he
+listened for more, craving any sound that might liven or distract his
+haunted spirit. Instead of the sun and stars, here was a roof; instead
+of the pitiless clear air, here was tobacco smoke; and beneath his
+boot-heels a wooden floor wet with spilled liquids instead of the
+unwatered crumbling sand. Without drinking, he moved his chair near the
+noisiest drinkers, and thus among the tobacco smoke sought to hide from
+his own looming doubt. Later the purring tinkle of guitars reminded him
+of that promised present, and the next morning he was the owner of the
+best instrument that he could buy. Leaving it with a friend to keep
+until he should come through again from Maricopa, he departed that way
+with his mules, finding in the new place the same sort of friends and
+business, and by night looking upon the same untasted pleasures. He went
+about town with some cattlemen--carousing bankrupts, who remembered
+their ruin in the middle of whiskey, and broke off to curse it and the
+times and climate, and their starved herds that none would buy at any
+price. Genesmere touched nothing, yet still drew his chair among these
+drinkers.
+
+"Aren't you feeling good to-night, Russ?" asked one at length.
+
+And Genesmere's eyes roused from seeing visions, and his ears became
+aware of the loud company. In Tucson he had been able to sit in the
+smoke, and compass a cheerful deceit of appearance even to himself.
+Choosing and buying the guitar had lent reality to his imitated peace of
+mind; he had been careful over its strings, selecting such as Lolita
+preferred, wrapt in carrying out this spiritual forgery of another
+Genesmere. But here they had noticed him; appearances had slipped from
+him. He listened to a piece of late Arizona news some one was in the
+middle of telling--the trial of several Mormons for robbing a paymaster
+near Cedar Springs. This was the fourth time he had heard the story,
+because it was new; but the present narrator dwelt upon the dodgings of
+a witness, a negress, who had seen everything and told nothing,
+outwitting the government, furnishing no proofs. This brought Genesmere
+quite back.
+
+"No proofs!" he muttered. "No proofs!" He laughed and became alert. "She
+lied to them good, did she?"
+
+They looked at him, because he had not spoken for so long; and he was
+told that she had certainly lied good.
+
+"Fooled them clean through, did she? On oath! Tell about her."
+
+The flattered narrator, who had been in court, gave all he knew, and
+Genesmere received each morsel of perjury gravely with a nod. He sat
+still when the story was done.
+
+"Yes," he said, after a time. "Yes." And again, "Yes." Then he briefly
+bade the boys good-night, and went out from the lamps and whiskey into
+the dark.
+
+He walked up and down alone, round the corral where his mules stood,
+round the stable where his bed-blankets were; and one or two carousers
+came by, who suggested further enjoyments to him. He went to the edge of
+the town and walked where passers would not meet him, turning now and
+then to look in the direction of Tucson, where the guitar was waiting.
+When he felt the change of dawn he went to the stable, and by the first
+early gray had his mules packed. He looked once again towards Tucson,
+and took the road he had promised not to take, leaving the guitar behind
+him altogether. His faith protested a little, but the other self
+invented a quibble, the mockery that he had already "come by Tucson,"
+according to his literal word; and this device answered. It is a comfort
+to be divided no longer against one's self. Genesmere was at ease in his
+thraldom to the demon with whom he had wrestled through the dark hours.
+As the day brightened he wondered how he had come to fool a night away
+over a promise such as that. He took out the face in the handkerchief,
+and gave it a curious, defiant smile. She had said waiting would be
+long. She should have him quickly. And he was going to know about that
+visitor at the cabin, the steeple-hatted man he saw in his visions. So
+Maricopa drew behind him, small, clear-grouped in the unheated morning,
+and the sun found the united man and his mules moving into the desert.
+
+By the well in the bottom of the Santa Cruz River he met with cattle and
+little late-born calves trying to trot. Their mothers, the foreman
+explained, had not milk enough for them, nor the cursed country food or
+water for the mothers. They could not chew cactus. These animals had
+been driven here to feed and fatten inexpensively, and get quick money
+for the owner. But, instead, half of them had died, and the men were
+driving the rest to new pastures--as many, that is, as could still
+walk. Genesmere knew, the foreman supposed, that this well was the last
+for more than a hundred miles? Funny to call a thing like that Santa
+Cruz a river! Well, it was an Arizona river; all right enough, no doubt,
+somewhere a thousand feet or so underground. Pity you weren't a
+prairie-dog that eats sand when he gets a thirst on him. Got any
+tobacco? Good-bye.
+
+Think of any valleys that you know between high mountains. Such was
+southern Arizona once--before we came. Then fill up your valleys with
+sand until the mountains show no feet or shoulders, but become as men
+buried to the neck. That is what makes separate islands of their
+protruding peaks, and that is why water slinks from the surface whenever
+it can and flows useless underneath, entombed in the original valley.
+This is Arizona now--since the pterodactyls have gone. In such a place
+the traveller turns mariner, only, instead of the stars, he studies the
+water-wells, shaping his course by these. Not sea-gulls, but ravens, fly
+over this waste, seeking their meal. Some were in front of Genesmere
+now, settled black in the recent trail of the cattle. He did not much
+care that the last well was gone by, for he was broken in by long travel
+to the water of the 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through this
+journey. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and
+men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and
+they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck,
+and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but
+will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and
+Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night,
+carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it
+but a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached his
+calculated 'dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,
+dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade
+at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the
+mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose
+loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the
+other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the
+mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid
+in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twenty
+yards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, when
+they clouded back again round their carrion.
+
+This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoon
+brought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty of
+time for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promise
+had changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in the
+steeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along the
+road nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wetting
+the beasts' tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next
+'dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went through
+before coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The posted
+plants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legions
+and legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling at
+the top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck the
+blossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded to
+pods ten feet in the air. Genesmere's horse started and nearly threw
+him, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmere
+could tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to hunt
+water, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try at
+running away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.
+Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding
+the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their
+water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the
+stranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostile
+sound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passing
+enemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas,
+an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some rose
+to look after him; some lifted their heads from the ground, and seeing,
+laid them down again. He came upon a calf watching its mother, who had
+fallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow's
+foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from
+rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings;
+her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her
+pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her
+tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He
+placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse
+the calf came to its mother, who began to lick it. He presently marked
+ahead the position of the coming 'dobe-hole by the ravens assembled in
+the air, continually rising and lighting. The white horse and mules
+quickened their step, and the trail became obliterated by hundreds of
+hoof-marks leading to the water. As a spider looks in the centre of an
+empty web, so did the round wallow sit in the middle of the plain, with
+threaded feet conducting from everywhere to it. Mules and white horse
+scraped through the scratching mesquite, and the ravens flapped up. To
+Genesmere their croaking seemed suddenly to fill all space with loud
+total clamor, for no water was left, only mud. He eased the animals of
+their loads and saddles, and they rolled in the stiff mud, squeezing
+from it a faint ooze, and getting a sort of refreshment. Genesmere
+chewed the mud, and felt sorry for the beasts. He turned both canteens
+upside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well,
+that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; but
+spilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal after
+animal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at this
+spot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards away
+to be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. He
+lay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animals
+now that last hole might be used up by the cattle before he got
+there--and then it was two stages more to the Santa Cruz well. And the
+man would be gaining just so many more days unhindered at the cabin. Out
+of the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. If
+that were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cut
+for that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as the
+animals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun got
+bad. What business had October to be hot like this? So in the darkness
+he mounted again, and noon found him with eyes shut under a yucca. It
+was here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sitting
+in a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by the
+window, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was no
+fool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a man
+more a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in bright
+light, and said, "No proofs." The bright light was the real sun coming
+round the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cows
+were here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his own
+beasts, and spoke to them.
+
+"Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!" He stopped at the pain. It was in his lips
+and mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightened
+him. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signs
+that it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands were
+showing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaseless
+sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in
+the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest
+island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away to
+a transparent fringe.
+
+"Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod," remarked Genesmere, aloud, and
+remembered his thickened mouth again. "I can stand it off for a while
+yet, though--if they can travel." His mules looked at him when he
+came--looked when he tightened their cinches. "I know, Jeff," he said,
+and inspected the sky. "No heaven's up there. Nothing's back of that
+thing, unless it's hell."
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU'RE ALONE'"]
+
+He got the animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like the
+last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't fool
+me," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." His
+eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foreman
+was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," he
+continued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made his words. "This
+live-stock here's not enjoying itself like its owners in town. This
+live-stock was intended for Eastern folks' dinner.--But you've got
+ahead of 'em this trip," he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly,
+and, hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. "You don't
+want to talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You're
+alone.--I wish I'd never known!" he suddenly cried out.
+
+He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping his
+hands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow with
+their loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for some
+little while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had brought
+these beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against the
+divine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,
+and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinite
+sadness. "If she'll tell me it's not so," he said, "I'll believe her. I
+will believe her now. I'll make myself. She'll help me to." He took what
+rest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,
+having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It
+was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his
+increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the
+mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a
+mule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for
+all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky
+at the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his hand
+reached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into a
+pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away
+and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and
+shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he
+saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted
+his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his
+eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.
+Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of
+his eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.
+
+"You're not experienced," said Genesmere. "I'm not dead yet. But I'm
+obliged to you for being so enterprising. You've cleared my head. Quit
+that talk, Russ Genesmere." He went to the mule that had given out
+during the night. "Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if that
+hunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for him
+without help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or only
+thinking it? I know I'm alone. I've travelled that way in this world.
+Why?" He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answer
+came in a fierce voice: "Because you're a man, and can stand this world
+off by yourself. You look to no one." He suddenly took out the
+handkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. "That's lightened my
+pack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they'll never make camp." He
+took what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefully
+between stones--for they had come near the mountain country--and,
+looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. "Ha, ha!" he said,
+slyly; "you're not there, though. And I'll prove it to you." He chose
+another direction, and saw another flowing river. "I was expecting you,"
+he stated, quietly. "Don't bother me. I'm thirsty."
+
+But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile
+place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang
+out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't
+seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not
+chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham.
+Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks
+thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the
+same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting
+until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,
+and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool,
+she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among
+stones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly.
+"Didn't stay to see you get wicked." Then he grew stern again. "You've
+showed yourself up, and you can't tell land from water. You're going to
+let the boys take you straight. I don't trust you."
+
+He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse's tail, and they set
+out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for
+the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man
+brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet
+sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,
+and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below,
+gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monuments
+slanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead in
+space, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness.
+The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere's attention. "Toll on!"
+he cried to them. "Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summer
+and winter, night and day, I've known you, and I've heard you all along.
+A man can't look but he sees you walling God's country from him, ringing
+away with your knell."
+
+He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the full
+moon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himself
+had evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open.
+He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life,
+and he heard something somewhere screaming "Water! water! water!" fast
+and unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn,
+and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet,
+and the screaming stopped. "Round 'em up, Russ Genesmere! It's getting
+late!" he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. They
+dodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horse
+urging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of a
+log that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, and
+Genesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinging
+his rope and yelling in the full moon: "Round 'em up! round 'em up!
+Don't you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd's bedded down
+along with the ravens."
+
+The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of a round hole, but he
+did not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and the
+mountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beat
+into his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the broken natural
+stairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver's, and ground his
+forehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled once
+up round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began to
+tear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbing
+with his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him in
+the cañon his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, having
+slaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where he
+now lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.
+
+He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. He
+was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead,
+and a moist rag on his lips.
+
+"Water!" He could just make the whisper.
+
+But Lolita made a sign of silence.
+
+"Water!" he gasped.
+
+She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be all
+just now.
+
+His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolita
+screamed at his leap for the living well.
+
+"Not yet! Not yet!" she said in terror, grappling with him. "Help!
+Luis!"
+
+So this was their plot, the demon told him--to keep him from water! In a
+frenzy of strength he seized Lolita. "Proved! Proved!" he shouted, and
+struck his knife into her. She fell at once to the earth and lay calm,
+eyes wide open, breathing in the bright sun. He rushed to the water and
+plunged, swallowing and rolling.
+
+Luis ran up from the cows he was gathering, and when he saw what was
+done, sank by Lolita to support her. She pointed to the pool.
+
+"He is killing himself!" she managed to say, and her head went lower.
+
+"And I'll help you die, caberon! I'll tear your tongue. I'll--"
+
+But Lolita, hearing Luis's terrible words, had raised a forbidding hand.
+She signed to leave her and bring Genesmere to her.
+
+The distracted Luis went down the stone stairs to kill the American in
+spite of her, but the man's appearance stopped him. You could not raise
+a hand against one come to this. The water-drinking was done, and
+Genesmere lay fainting, head and helpless arms on the lowest stone, body
+in the water. The Black Cross stood dry above. Luis heard Lolita's
+voice, and dragged Genesmere to the top as quickly as he could. She,
+seeing her lover, cried his name once and died; and Luis cast himself on
+the earth.
+
+"Fool! fool!" he repeated, catching at the ground, where he lay for some
+while until a hand touched him. It was Genesmere.
+
+"I'm seeing things pretty near straight now," the man said. "Come close.
+I can't talk well. Was--was that talk of yours, and singing--was that
+bluff?"
+
+"God forgive me!" said poor Luis.
+
+"You mean forgive me," said Genesmere. He lay looking at Lolita. "Close
+her eyes," he said. And Luis did so. Genesmere was plucking at his
+clothes, and the Mexican helped him draw out a handkerchief, which the
+lover unfolded like a treasure. "She used to look like this," he began.
+He felt and stopped. "Why, it's gone!" he said. He lay evidently seeking
+to remember where the picture had gone, and his eyes went to the hills
+whence no help came. Presently Luis heard him speaking, and, leaning to
+hear, made out that he was murmuring his own name, Russ, in the way
+Lolita had been used to say it. The boy sat speechless, and no thought
+stirred in his despair as he watched. The American moved over, and put
+his arms round Lolita, Luis knowing that he must not offer to help him
+do this. He remained so long that the boy, who would never be a boy
+again, bent over to see. But it was only another fainting-fit. Luis
+waited; now and then the animals moved among the rocks. The sun crossed
+the sky, bringing the many-colored evening, and Arizona was no longer
+terrible, but once more infinitely sad. Luis started, for the American
+was looking at him and beckoning.
+
+"She's not here," Genesmere said, distinctly.
+
+Luis could not follow.
+
+"Not here, I tell you." The lover touched his sweetheart. "This is not
+her. My punishment is nothing," he went on, his face growing beautiful.
+"See there!"
+
+Luis looked where he pointed.
+
+"Don't you see her? Don't you see her fixing that camp for me? We're
+going to camp together now."
+
+But these were visions alien to Luis, and he stared helpless, anxious to
+do anything that the man might desire. Genesmere's face darkened
+wistfully.
+
+"Am I not making camp?" he said.
+
+Luis nodded to please him, without at all comprehending.
+
+"You don't see her." Reason was warring with the departing spirit until
+the end. "Well, maybe you're right. I never was sure. But I'm mortal
+tired of travelling alone. I hope--"
+
+That was the end, and Russ Genesmere lay still beside his sweetheart. It
+was a black evening at the cabin, and a black day when Luis and old
+Ramon raised and fenced the wooden head-stone, with its two forlorn
+names.
+
+
+
+
+A PILGRIM ON THE GILA
+
+
+Midway from Grant to Thomas comes Paymaster's Hill, not much after Cedar
+Springs and not long before you sight the valley where the Gila flows.
+This lonely piece of road must lie three thousand miles from Washington;
+but in the holiday journey that I made they are near together among the
+adventures of mind and body that overtook me. For as I turned southward
+our capital was my first stopping-place, and it was here I gathered the
+expectations of Arizona with which I continued on my way.
+
+Arizona was the unknown country I had chosen for my holiday, and I found
+them describing it in our National House of Representatives, where I had
+strolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hot
+to make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that the
+place had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk and
+replies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in the
+sharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had not
+thought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories were
+rumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neither
+cattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order and
+prosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently lost his
+temper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey and
+enlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well on
+to three times the size of New York--had a hundred and thirteen thousand
+square miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice as
+big as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of the
+earth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as the
+town of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus was
+Arizona's chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and the
+Apache her leading citizen.
+
+And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgot
+his sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his single
+gesture--that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during the
+suspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at the
+full stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of manner
+from my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would add
+famine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, but
+it was all told in Mr. Pumpelly's book, true as life, thirty years
+ago--doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this report
+discouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go there
+to-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals in
+security. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowing
+their particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay in
+their minds.
+
+At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my first
+sight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly and
+smilingly watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits of
+the railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, the
+leap into civilization that the Territory had taken. "Let Pennsylvania
+see those blossoming fields for herself," said he, "those boundless
+contiguities of shade." And a sort of cluck went off down inside my
+neighbor's throat, while the speaker with rising heat gave us the
+tonnage of plums exported from the Territory during the past fiscal
+year. Wool followed.
+
+"Sock it to 'em, Limber Jim!" murmured the man in the duster, and
+executed a sort of step. He was plainly a personal acquaintance of the
+speaker's.
+
+Figures never stick by me, nor can I quote accurately the catalogue of
+statistic abundance now recited in the House of Representatives; but as
+wheat, corn, peaches, apricots, oranges, raisins, spices, the rose and
+the jasmine flowered in the Boy Orator's eloquence, the genial antics of
+my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as
+"He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more that
+have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad to
+remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of
+metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for
+enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I should
+have voted to make the Territory a State that very day.
+
+"With her snow-clad summits, with the balm of her Southern vineyards,
+she loudly calls for a sister's rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor any
+cycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her Salt
+River, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, her hundred irrigated
+valleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, where
+thousands of noble men and elegantly educated ladies have already
+located, and to which thousands more, like patient monuments, are
+waiting breathless to throng when the franchise is proclaimed. And if my
+death could buy that franchise, I would joyfully boast such martyrdom."
+
+The orator cracked his hands together in this supreme moment, and the
+bulky gentleman in the duster drove an elbow against my side, whispering
+to me at the same time behind his hand, in a hoarse confidence:
+"Deserted Jericho! California only holds the record on stoves now."
+
+"I'm afraid I do not catch your allusion," I began. But at my voice he
+turned sharply, and, giving me one short, ugly stare, was looking about
+him, evidently at some loss, when a man at his farther side pulled at
+his duster, and I then saw that he had all along been taking me for a
+younger companion he had come in with, and with whom he now went away.
+In the jostle we had shifted places while his eyes were upon the various
+speakers, and to him I seemed an eavesdropper. Both he and his friend
+had a curious appearance, and they looked behind them, meeting my gaze
+as I watched them going; and then they made to each other some laughing
+comment, of which I felt myself to be the inspiration. I was standing
+absently on the same spot, still in a mild puzzle over California and
+the record on stoves. Certainly I had overheard none of their secrets,
+if they had any; I could not even guess what might be their true opinion
+about admitting Arizona to our Union.
+
+With this last memory of our Capitol and the statesmen we have
+collected there to govern us, I entered upon my holiday, glad that it
+was to be passed in such a region of enchantment. For peaches it would
+be too early, and with roses and jasmine I did not importantly concern
+myself, thinking of them only as a pleasant sight by the way. But on my
+gradual journey through Lexington, Bowling Green, Little Rock, and Forth
+Worth I dwelt upon the shade of the valleys, and the pasture hills
+dotted with the sheep of whose wool the Boy Orator had spoken; and I
+wished that our cold Northwest could have been given such a bountiful
+climate. Upon the final morning of railroad I looked out of the window
+at an earth which during the night had collapsed into a vacuum, as I had
+so often seen happen before upon more Northern parallels. The evenness
+of this huge nothing was cut by our track's interminable scar, and
+broken to the eye by the towns which now and again rose and littered the
+horizon like boxes dumped by emigrants. We were still in Texas, not
+distant from the Rio Grande, and I looked at the boxes drifting by, and
+wondered from which of them the Boy Orator had been let loose. Twice or
+three times upon this day of sand I saw green spots shining sudden and
+bright and Biblical in the wilderness. Their isolated loveliness was
+herald of the valley land I was nearing each hour. The wandering
+Mexicans, too, bright in rags and swarthy in nakedness, put me somehow
+in mind of the Old Testament.
+
+In the evening I sat at whiskey with my first acquaintance, a Mr. Mowry,
+one of several Arizona citizens whom my military friend at San Carlos
+had written me to look out for on my way to visit him. My train had
+trundled on to the Pacific, and I sat in a house once more--a saloon on
+the platform, with an open door through which the night air came
+pleasantly. This was now the long-expected Territory, and time for roses
+and jasmine to begin. Early in our talk I naturally spoke to Mr. Mowry
+of Arizona's resources and her chance of becoming a State.
+
+"We'd have got there by now," said he, "only Luke Jenks ain't half that
+interested in Arizona as he is in Luke Jenks."
+
+I reminded Mr. Mowry that I was a stranger here and unacquainted with
+the prominent people.
+
+"Well, Luke's as near a hog as you kin be and wear pants. Be with you in
+a minute," added Mr. Mowry, and shambled from the room. This was because
+a shot had been fired in a house across the railroad tracks. "I run two
+places," he explained, returning quite soon from the house and taking up
+the thread of his whiskey where he had dropped it. "Two outfits. This
+side for toorists. Th' other pays better. I come here in 'sixty-two."
+
+"I trust no one has been--hurt?" said I, inclining my head towards the
+farther side of the railroad.
+
+"Hurt?" My question for the moment conveyed nothing to him, and he
+repeated the word, blinking with red eyes at me over the rim of his
+lifted glass. "No, nobody's hurt. I've been here a long while, and seen
+them as was hurt, though." Here he nodded at me depreciatingly, and I
+felt how short was the time that I had been here. "Th' other side pays
+better," he resumed, "as toorists mostly go to bed early. Six bits is
+about the figger you can reckon they'll spend, if you know anything." He
+nodded again, more solemn over his whiskey. "That kind's no help to
+business. I've been in this Territory from the start, and Arizona ain't
+what it was. Them mountains are named from me." And he pointed out of
+the door. "Mowry's Peak. On the map." With this last august statement
+his mind seemed to fade from the conversation, and he struck a
+succession of matches along the table and various parts of his person.
+
+"Has Mr. Jenks been in the Territory long?" I suggested, feeling the
+silence weigh upon me.
+
+"Luke? He's a hog. Him the people's choice! But the people of Arizona
+ain't what they was. Are you interested in silver?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, meaning the political question. But before I could
+say what I meant he had revived into a vigor of attitude and a
+wakefulness of eye of which I had not hitherto supposed him capable.
+
+"You come here," said he; and, catching my arm, he took me out of the
+door and along the track in the night, and round the corner of the
+railroad hotel into view of more mountains that lay to the south. "You
+stay here to-morrow," he pursued, swiftly, "and I'll hitch up and drive
+you over there. I'll show you some rock behind Helen's Dome that'll beat
+any you've struck in the whole course of your life. It's on the wood
+reservation, and when the government abandons the Post, as they're going
+to do--"
+
+There is no need for my entering at length into his urgence, or the
+plans he put to me for our becoming partners, or for my buying him out
+and employing him on a salary, or buying him out and employing some
+other, or no one, according as I chose--the whole bright array of
+costumes in which he presented to me the chance of making my fortune at
+a stroke. I think that from my answers he gathered presently a
+discouraging but perfectly false impression. My Eastern hat and
+inexperienced face (I was certainly young enough to have been his
+grandchild) had a little misled him; and although he did not in the
+least believe the simple truth I told him, that I had come to Arizona on
+no sort of business, but for the pleasure of seeing the country, he now
+overrated my brains as greatly as he had in the beginning despised them,
+quite persuaded I was playing some game deeper than common, and either
+owned already or had my eye upon other silver mines.
+
+"Pleasure of seeing the country, ye say?" His small wet eyes blinked as
+he stood on the railroad track bareheaded, considering me from head to
+foot. "All right. Did ye say ye're going to Globe?"
+
+"No. To San Carlos to visit an army officer."
+
+"Carlos is on the straight road to Globe," said Mr. Mowry, vindictively.
+"But ye might as well drop any idea of Globe, if ye should get one. If
+it's copper ye're after, there's parties in ahead of you."
+
+Desiring, if possible, to shift his mind from its present unfavorable
+turn, I asked him if Mr. Adams did not live between here and
+Solomonsville, my route to Carlos. Mr. Adams was another character of
+whom my host had written me, and at my mention of his name the face of
+Mr. Mowry immediately soured into the same expression it had taken when
+he spoke of the degraded Jenks.
+
+"So you're acquainted with him! He's got mines. I've seen 'em. If you
+represent any Eastern parties, tell 'em not to drop their dollars down
+old Adams's hole in the ground. He ain't the inexperienced juniper he
+looks. Him and me's been acquainted these thirty years. People claim it
+was Cyclone Bill held up the Ehrenberg stage. Well, I guess I'll be
+seeing how the boys are getting along."
+
+With that he moved away. A loud disturbance of chairs and broken glass
+had set up in the house across the railroad, and I watched the
+proprietor shamble from me with his deliberate gait towards the
+establishment that paid him best. He had left me possessor of much
+incomplete knowledge, and I waited for him, pacing the platform; but he
+did not return, and as I judged it inexpedient to follow him, I went to
+my bed on the tourist side of the track.
+
+In the morning the stage went early, and as our road seemed to promise
+but little variety--I could see nothing but an empty plain--I was glad
+to find my single fellow-passenger a man inclined to talk. I did not
+like his mustache, which was too large for his face, nor his too careful
+civility and arrangement of words; but he was genial to excess, and
+thoughtful of my comfort.
+
+"I beg you will not allow my valise to incommode you," was one of his
+first remarks; and I liked this consideration better than any Mr. Mowry
+had shown me. "I fear you will detect much initial primitiveness in our
+methods of transportation," he said.
+
+This again called for gracious assurances on my part, and for a while
+our polite phrases balanced to corners until I was mentally winded
+keeping up such a pace of manners. The train had just brought him from
+Tucson, he told me, and would I indulge? On this we shared and
+complimented each other's whiskey.
+
+"From your flask I take it that you are a Gentile," said he, smiling.
+
+"If you mean tenderfoot," said I, "let me confess at once that flask and
+owner are from the East, and brand-new in Arizona."
+
+"I mean you're not a Mormon. Most strangers to me up this way are. But
+they carry their liquor in a plain flat bottle like this."
+
+"Are you a--a--" Embarrassment took me as it would were I to check
+myself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger if he had
+ever embezzled.
+
+"Oh, I'm no Mormon," my new friend said, with a chuckle, and I was glad
+to hear him come down to reasonable English. "But Gentiles are in the
+minority in this valley."
+
+"I didn't know we'd got to the valleys yet," said I, eagerly, connecting
+Mormons with fertility and jasmine. And I lifted the flaps of the stage,
+first one side and then the other, and saw the desert everywhere flat,
+treeless, and staring like an eye without a lid.
+
+"This is the San Simon Valley we've been in all the time," he replied.
+"It goes from Mexico to the Gila, about a hundred and fifty miles."
+
+"Like this?"
+
+"South it's rockier. Better put the flap down."
+
+"I don't see where people live," I said, as two smoky spouts of sand
+jetted from the tires and strewed over our shoes and pervaded our
+nostrils. "There's nothing--yes, there's one bush coming." I fastened
+the flaps.
+
+"That's Seven-Mile Mesquite. They held up the stage at this point last
+October. But they made a mistake in the day. The money had gone down the
+afternoon before, and they only got about a hundred."
+
+"I suppose it was Mormons who robbed the stage?"
+
+"Don't talk quite so loud," the stranger said, laughing. "The driver's
+one of them."
+
+"A Mormon or a robber?"
+
+"Well, we only know he's a Mormon."
+
+"He doesn't look twenty. Has he many wives yet?"
+
+"Oh, they keep that thing very quiet in these days, if they do it at
+all. The government made things too hot altogether. The Bishop here
+knows what hiding for polygamy means."
+
+"Bishop who?"
+
+"Meakum," I thought he answered me, but was not sure in the rattle of
+the stage, and twice made him repeat it, putting my hand to my ear at
+last. "Meakum! Meakum!" he shouted.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the driver.
+
+"Have some whiskey?" said my friend, promptly; and when that was over
+and the flat bottle passed back, he explained in a lower voice, "A son
+of the Bishop's."
+
+"Indeed!" I exclaimed.
+
+"So was the young fellow who put in the mail-bags, and that
+yellow-headed duck in the store this morning." My companion, in the
+pleasure of teaching new things to a stranger, stretched his legs on the
+front seat, lifted my coat out of his way, and left all formality of
+speech and deportment. "And so's the driver you'll have to-morrow if
+you're going beyond Thomas, and the stock-tender at the sub-agency where
+you'll breakfast. He's a yellow-head too. The old man's postmaster, and
+owns this stage-line. One of his boys has the mail contract. The old man
+runs the hotel at Solomonsville and two stores at Bowie and Globe, and
+the store and mill at Thacher. He supplies the military posts in this
+district with hay and wood, and a lot of things on and off through the
+year. Can't write his own name. Signs government contracts with his
+mark. He's sixty-four, and he's had eight wives. Last summer he married
+number nine--rest all dead, he says, and I guess that's so. He has
+fifty-seven recorded children, not counting the twins born last week.
+Any yellow-heads you'll see in the valley'll answer to the name of
+Meakum as a rule, and the other type's curly black like this little
+driver specimen."
+
+"How interesting there should be only two varieties of Meakum!" said I.
+
+"Yes, it's interesting. Of course the whole fifty-seven don't class up
+yellow or black curly, but if you could take account of stock you'd find
+the big half of 'em do. Mothers don't seem to have influenced the type
+appreciably. His eight families, successive and simultaneous, cover a
+period of forty-three years, and yellow and black keeps turning up right
+along. Scientifically, the suppression of Mormonism is a loss to the
+student of heredity. Some of the children are dead. Get killed now and
+then, and die too--die from sickness. But you'll easily notice Meakums
+as you go up the valley. Old man sees all get good jobs as soon as
+they're old enough. Places 'em on the railroad, places 'em in town, all
+over the lot. Some don't stay; you couldn't expect the whole fifty-seven
+to be steady; but he starts 'em all fair. We have six in Tucson now, or
+five, maybe. Old man's a good father."
+
+"They're not all boys?"
+
+"Certainly not; but more than half are."
+
+"And you say he can't write?"
+
+"Or read, except print, and he has to spell out that."
+
+"But, my goodness, he's postmaster!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it? Young Meakums all read like anything. He
+don't do any drudgery."
+
+"Well, you wouldn't catch me signing any contracts I couldn't read."
+
+"Do you think you'd catch anybody reading a contract wrong to old
+Meakum? Oh, momma! Why, he's king round here. Fixes the county elections
+and the price of tomatoes. Do you suppose any Tucson jury'll convict any
+of his Mormons if he says nay? No, sir! It's been tried. Why, that man
+ought to be in Congress."
+
+"If he's like that I don't consider him desirable," said I.
+
+"Yes, he is desirable," said my friend, roughly. "Smart, can't be
+fooled, and looks after his people's interests. I'd like to know if that
+don't fill the bill?"
+
+"If he defeats justice--"
+
+"Oh, rats!" This interruption made me regret his earlier manner, and I
+was sorry the polish had rubbed through so quickly and brought us to a
+too precipitate familiarity. "We're Western out here," he continued,
+"and we're practical. When we want a thing, we go after it. Bishop
+Meakum worked his way down here from Utah through desert and starvation,
+mostly afoot, for a thousand miles, and his flock to-day is about the
+only class in the Territory that knows what prosperity feels like, and
+his laws are about the only laws folks don't care to break. He's got a
+brain. If he weren't against Arizona's being admitted--"
+
+"He should know better than that," said I, wishing to be friendly. "With
+your fruit exports and high grade of citizens you'll soon be another
+California."
+
+He gave me an odd look.
+
+"I am surprised," I proceeded, amiably, "to hear you speak of Mormons
+only as prosperous. They think better of you in Washington."
+
+"Now, see here," said he, "I've been pleasant to you and I've enjoyed
+this ride. But I like plain talk."
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"And I don't care for Eastern sarcasm."
+
+"There was no intention--"
+
+"I don't take offence where offence is not intended. As for high-grade
+citizens, we don't claim to know as much as--I suppose it's New York you
+come from? Gold-bugs and mugwumps--"
+
+"If you can spare the time," said I, "and kindly explain what has
+disturbed you in my remarks, we'll each be likely to find the rest of
+these forty miles more supportable."
+
+"I guess I can stand it," said he, swallowing a drink. He folded his
+arms and resettled his legs; and the noisome hatefulness of his laugh
+filled me with regret for the wet-eyed Mowry. I would now gladly have
+taken any amount of Mowry in exchange for this; and it struck me afresh
+how uncertainly one always reckons with those who suspect their own
+standing.
+
+"Till Solomonsville," said I, "let us veil our estimation of each other.
+Once out of this stage and the world will be large enough for both of
+us." I was wrong there; but presentiments do not come to me often. So I,
+too, drank some of my own whiskey, lighted a cigar, and observed with
+pleasure that my words had enraged him.
+
+Before either of us had devised our next remark, the stage pulled up to
+change horses at the first and last water in forty miles. This station
+was kept by Mr. Adams, and I jumped out to see the man Mr. Mowry had
+warned me was not an inexperienced juniper. His appearance would have
+drawn few but missionaries to him, and I should think would have been
+warning enough to any but an over-trustful child of six.
+
+"Are you the geologist?" he said at once, coughing heavily; and when I
+told him I was simply enjoying a holiday, he looked at me sharply and
+spat against the corner of the stable. "There's one of them fellers
+expected," he continued, in a tone as if I need not attempt to deny
+that, and I felt his eye watching for signs of geology about me. I told
+him that I imagined the geologist must do an active business in Arizona.
+
+"I don't hire 'em!" he exclaimed. "They can't tell me nothing about
+mineral."
+
+"I suppose you have been here a long while, Mr. Adams?"
+
+"There's just three living that come in ahead of--" The cough split his
+last word in pieces.
+
+"Mr. Mowry was saying last night--"
+
+"You've seen that old scamp, have you? Buy his mine behind Helen's
+Dome?"
+
+My mirth at this turned him instantly confidential, and rooted his
+conviction that I was a geologist. "That's right!" said he, tapping my
+arm. "Don't you let 'em fool you. I guess you know your business. Now,
+if you want to look at good paying rock, thousands in sight, in sight,
+mind you--"
+
+"Are you coming along with us?" called the little Meakum driver, and I
+turned and saw the new team was harnessed and he ready on his box, with
+the reins in his hands. So I was obliged to hasten from the disappointed
+Adams and climb back in my seat. The last I saw of him he was standing
+quite still in the welter of stable muck, stooping to his cough, the
+desert sun beating on his old body, and the desert wind slowly turning
+the windmill above the shadeless mud hovel in which he lived alone.
+
+"Poor old devil!" said I to my enemy, half forgetting our terms in my
+contemplation of Adams. "Is he a Mormon?"
+
+My enemy's temper seemed a little improved. "He's tried most everything
+except jail," he answered, his voice still harsh. "You needn't invest
+your sentiment there. He used to hang out at Twenty Mile in Old Camp
+Grant days, and he'd slit your throat for fifty cents."
+
+But my sentiment was invested somehow. The years of the old-timers were
+ending so gray. Their heyday, and carousals, and happy-go-luckiness all
+gone, and in the remaining hours--what? Empty youth is such a grand easy
+thing, and empty age so grim!
+
+"Has Mowry tried everything, too?" I asked.
+
+"Including jail," said my companion; and gave me many entertaining
+incidents of Mowry's career with an ill-smelling saloon cleverness that
+put him once more into favorable humor with me, while I retained my
+opinion of him. "And that uneducated sot," he concluded, "that hobo with
+his record of cattle-stealing and claim-jumping, and his acquittal from
+jail through railroad influence, actually undertook to run against me
+last elections. My name is Jenks; Luke Jenks, Territorial Delegate from
+Arizona." He handed me his card.
+
+"I'm just from Washington," said I.
+
+"Well, I've not been there this session. Important law business has
+detained me here. Yes, they backed Mowry in that election. The old
+spittoon had quite a following, but he hadn't the cash. That gives you
+some idea of the low standards I have to combat. But I hadn't to spend
+much. This Territory's so poor they come cheap. Seventy-five cents a
+head for all the votes I wanted in Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma; and up
+here the Bishop was my good friend. Holding office booms my business
+some, and that's why I took it, of course. But I've had low standards to
+fight."
+
+The Territorial Delegate now talked freely of Arizona's frontier life.
+"It's all dead," he said, forgetting in his fluency what he had told me
+about Seven-Mile Mesquite and last October. "We have a community as high
+toned as any in the land. Our monumental activity--" And here he went
+off like a cuckoo clock, or the Boy Orator, reciting the glories of
+Phoenix and Salt River, and the future of silver, in that special
+dialect of platitudes which is spoken by our more talkative statesmen,
+and is not quite Latin, quite grammar, or quite falsehood. "We're not
+all Mowrys and Adamses," said he, landing from his flight.
+
+"In a population of fifty-nine thousand," said I, heartily, "a stranger
+is bound to meet decent people if he keeps on."
+
+Again he misinterpreted me, but this time the other way, bowing like one
+who acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in such
+peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I
+had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not
+prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny
+plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes,
+he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done with
+him.
+
+I could have reached Thomas that evening, but after our noon dinner let
+the stage go on, and delayed a night for the sake of seeing the Bishop
+hold service next day, which was Sunday, some few miles down the
+valley. I was curious to learn the Mormon ritual and what might be the
+doctrines that such a man as the Bishop would expound. It dashed me a
+little to find this would cost me forty-eight hours of Solomonsville, no
+Sunday stage running. But one friendly English-speaking family--the town
+was chiefly Mexican--made some of my hours pleasant, and others I spent
+in walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritual
+was well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I was
+obliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middle
+of his discourse.
+
+"Don't empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs," he
+was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his
+voice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly a
+leader of men. "Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that
+thoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has not
+ceased because they're rotten. That's the error of the ignorant, who
+know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant
+stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not.
+The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly and
+die. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in her
+blood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to the
+man. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathe
+the tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad for
+us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes
+deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are
+sick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see this
+sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house,
+with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving each
+day, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers in
+the door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing the
+twenty-ninth hymn."
+
+The scales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizona
+clear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been a
+politician's way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, and
+I willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for my
+holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me,
+and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well
+pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a
+blessing--the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with
+the Mormons stand--I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow
+duster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merely
+said to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And I
+knew that we should speak together soon, and he would tell me why
+California only held the record on stoves.
+
+But oh, my friends, what a country we live in, and what an age, that the
+same stars and stripes should simultaneously wave over this and over
+Delmonico's! This too I kept thinking as I killed more hours in walking
+the neighborhood of Solomonsville, an object of more false hope to
+natives whom I did not then observe. I avoided Jenks, who had business
+clients in the town. I went among the ditches and the fields thus turned
+green by the channelled Gila; and though it was scarce a paradise
+surpassing the Nile, it was grassy and full of sweet smells until after
+a few miles each way, when the desert suddenly met the pleasant verdure
+full in the face and corroded it to death like vitriol. The sermon came
+back to me as I passed the little Mormon homes, and the bishop rose and
+rose in my esteem, though not as one of the children of light. That
+sagacious patriarch told his flock the things of week-day wisdom down to
+their level, the cleanly things next to godliness, to keep them from the
+million squalors that stain our Gentile poor; and if he did not sound
+much like the Gospel, he and Deuteronomy were alike as two peas. With
+him and Moses thus in my thoughts, I came back after sunset, and was
+gratified to be late for supper. Jenks had left the dining-room, and I
+ate in my own company, which had become lively and full of intelligent
+impressions. These I sat recording later in my journal, when a
+hesitating knock came at my bedroom, and two young men in cowboy costume
+entered like shy children, endeavoring to step without creaking.
+
+"Meakums!" my delighted mind exclaimed, inwardly; but the yellow one
+introduced the black curly one as Mr. Follet, who, in turn, made his
+friend Mr. Cunningham known to me, and at my cordial suggestion they sat
+down with increasing awkwardness, first leaving their hats outside the
+door.
+
+"We seen you walking around," said one.
+
+"Lookin' the country over," said the other.
+
+"Fine weather for travelling," said the first.
+
+"Dusty though," said the second.
+
+Perceiving them to need my help in coming to their point, I said, "And
+now about your silver mine."
+
+"You've called the turn on us!" exclaimed yellow, and black curly
+slapped his knee. Both of them sat looking at me, laughing
+enthusiastically, and I gathered they had been having whiskey this
+Sunday night. I confess that I offered them some more, and when they
+realized my mildness they told me with length and confidence about the
+claims they had staked out on Mount Turnbull. "And there's lots of lead,
+too," said yellow.
+
+"I do not smelt," said I, "or deal in any way with ore. I have come here
+without the intention of buying anything."
+
+"You ain't the paymaster?" burst out black curly, wrinkling his forehead
+like a pleasant dog.
+
+Yellow touched his foot.
+
+"Course he ain't!" said curly, with a swerve of his eye. "He ain't due.
+What a while it always is waitin'!"
+
+Now the paymaster was nothing to me, nor whom he paid. For all I knew,
+my visitors were on his roll; and why yellow should shy at the mention
+of him and closely watch his tipsy mate I did not try to guess. Like
+every one I had met so far in Arizona, these two evidently doubted I was
+here for my pleasure merely; but it was with entire good-humor that they
+remarked a man had the right to mind his own business; and so, with a
+little more whiskey, we made a friendly parting. They recommended me to
+travel with a pistol in this country, and I explained that I should do
+myself more harm than good with a weapon that any one handled more
+rapidly than I, with my inexperience.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Meakum," I said.
+
+"Follet," corrected black curly.
+
+"Cunningham," said yellow, and they picked up their hats in the hall and
+withdrew.
+
+I think now those were their names--the time was coming when I should
+hear them take oath on it--yet I do not know. I heard many curious oaths
+taken.
+
+I was glad to see black curly in the stage next day, not alone for his
+company, but to give him a right notion of what ready money I had about
+me. Thinking him over, and his absence of visible means of support, and
+his interest in me, I took opportunity to mention, quite by the way,
+that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, the
+rest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And I
+looked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of my
+nickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidence
+when we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, and
+the Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He nodded
+to me and gave Follet a message.
+
+"Tell your brother" (wouldn't a father have said Tom or Dick?) "that
+I've given him chances enough and he don't take 'em. He don't feed my
+horses, and my passengers complain he don't feed them--though that's not
+so serious!" said he to me, with a jovial wink. "But I won't have my
+stock starved. You'll skip the station and go through to Thomas with
+this pair," he added to the driver in his voice of lusty command.
+"You'll get supper at Thomas. Everything's moved on there from to-day.
+That's the rule now." Then he returned to black curly, who, like the
+driver, had remained cowed and respectful throughout the short harangue.
+"Your brother could have treated me square and made money by that
+station. Tell him that, and to see me by Thursday. If he's thinking of
+peddling vegetables this season I'll let him sell to Fort Bowie.
+Safford takes Carlos, and I won't have two compete in the same market,
+or we'll be sinking low as Eastern prices," said he to me, with another
+wink. "Drive on now. You're late."
+
+He shut the flap, and we were off quickly--too quickly. In the next few
+moments I could feel that something all wrong went on; there was a
+jingle and snapping of harness, and such a voice from the Bishop behind
+us that I looked out to see him. We had stopped, and he was running
+after us at a wonderful pace for a man of sixty-four.
+
+"If you don't drive better than that," said the grizzled athlete,
+arriving cool and competent, "you'll saw wood for another year. Look how
+you've got them trembling."
+
+It was a young pair, and they stood and steamed while the broken gear
+was mended.
+
+"What did California hold the record in before the Boy Orator broke it?"
+said I, getting out.
+
+He shot at me the same sinister look I had seen in the Capitol, the look
+he must always wear, I suppose, when taken aback. Then he laughed
+broadly and heartily, a strong pleasant laugh that nearly made me like
+him. "So you're that fellow! Ho, ho! Away down here now. Oh, ho, ho!
+What's your business?"
+
+"You wouldn't believe if I told you," said I, to his sudden sharp
+question.
+
+"Me? Why, I believe everything I'm told. What's your name?"
+
+"Will you believe I haven't come to buy anybody's silver mine?"
+
+"Silver! I don't keep it. Unloaded ten years ago before the rabbit
+died."
+
+"Then you're the first anti-silver man I've met."
+
+"I'm anti anything I can't sell, young man. Here's all there is to
+silver: Once upon a time it was hard to get, and we had to have it. Now
+it's easy. When it gets as common as dirt it'll be as cheap as dirt.
+Same as watermelons when it's a big crop. D'you follow me? That's silver
+for you, and I don't want it. So you've come away down here. Well, well!
+What did you say your name was?"
+
+I told him.
+
+"Politician?"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. I took a look at those buzzards there in
+Washington. Our Senate and Representatives. They were screeching a heap.
+All about ratios. You'll be sawing wood yet!" he shouted to the driver,
+and strode up to help him back a horse. "Now ratio is a good-sounding
+word too, and I guess that's why they chew on it so constant. Better
+line of language that they get at home. I'll tell you about Congress.
+Here's all there is to it: You can divide them birds in two lots. Those
+who know better and those who don't. D'you follow me?"
+
+"And which kind is the Boy Orator?"
+
+"Limber Jim? Oh, he knows better. I know Jim. You see, we used to have a
+saying in Salt Lake that California had the smallest stoves and the
+biggest liars in the world. Now Jim--well, there's an old saying busted.
+But you'll see Arizona'll go back on the Democrats. If they put wool on
+the free list she'll stay Republican, and they won't want her admitted,
+which suits me first-rate. My people here are better off as they stand."
+
+"But your friend Mr. Jenks favors admission!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Luke? He's been talking to you, has he? Well now, Luke. Here's all
+there is to him: Natural gas. That's why I support him, you see. If we
+sent a real smart man to Washington he might get us made a State. Ho,
+ho! But Luke stays here most of the time, and he's no good anyway. Oh,
+ho, ho! So you're buying no mines this season?"
+
+Once more I found myself narrating the insignificance of my visit to
+Arizona--the Bishop must have been a hard inquisitor for even the deeply
+skilful to elude--and for the first time my word was believed. He
+quickly took my measure, saw that I had nothing to hide, and after
+telling me I could find good hunting and scenery in the mountains north,
+paid me no further attention, but masterfully laid some final commands
+on the intimidated driver. Then I bade good-bye to the Bishop, and
+watched that old locomotive moving vigorously back along the road to his
+manifold business.
+
+The driver was ill pleased to go hungry for his supper until Thomas, but
+he did not dare complain much over the new rule, even to black curly and
+me. This and one other thing impressed me. Some miles farther on we had
+passed out of the dust for a while, and rolled up the flaps.
+
+"She's waiting for you," said the driver to black curly, and that
+many-sided youth instantly dived to the bottom of the stage, his boots
+and pistol among my legs.
+
+"Throw your coat over me," he urged.
+
+I concealed him with that and a mail-sack, and stretched my head out to
+see what lioness stood in his path. But it was only a homelike little
+cabin, and at the door a woman, comely and mature, eying the stage
+expectantly. Possibly wife, I thought, more likely mother, and I asked,
+"Is Mrs. Follet strict?" choosing a name to fit either.
+
+The driver choked and chirruped, but no sound came from under the
+mail-sack until we had passed the good-day to the momentous female,
+whose response was harsh with displeasure as she wheeled into her door.
+A sulky voice then said, "Tell me when she's gone, Bill." But we were a
+safe two hundred yards on the road before he would lift his head, and
+his spirits were darkened during the remainder of the journey.
+
+"Come and live East," said I, inviting him to some whiskey at the same
+time. "Back there they don't begin sitting up for you so early in the
+evening."
+
+This did not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bring
+another fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first had
+been. "She tires a man's spirit," said black curly, and with this rueful
+utterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas in
+the dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to this
+new place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had taken
+himself off, and the driver sat at the table with me, still occasionally
+snickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him until
+the gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said,
+with a nervous, hasty relish, "The Widow Sproud is slick," and departed.
+
+Consoled by no better clew than this I went to bed in a down-stairs
+room, and in my strange rising next day I did not see the driver again.
+Callings in the air awaked me, and a wandering sound of wheels. The
+gaunt woman stood with a lamp in my room saying the stage was ready,
+and disappeared. I sprang up blindly, and again the callings passed in
+the blackness outside--long cries, inarticulate to me. Wheels heavily
+rolled to my door, and a whip was struck against it, and there loomed
+the stage, and I made out the calling. It was the three drivers, about
+to separate before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they were
+wailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, in
+whatever place they lay sleeping. "Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!" came from
+somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating
+antiphonal, "Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!" and in the chill black air my
+driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, "Car-los! Car-los!"
+One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let me
+dress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash cold
+water in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat among
+the leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having four
+hours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faint
+reveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and I
+pushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myself
+and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the
+sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and
+both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my
+frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the
+mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after
+the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we
+went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came
+from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear,
+running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had
+yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas.
+With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain,
+and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired
+desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper
+body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the
+thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide
+continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until
+breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the
+driver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks had
+told me they would be.
+
+It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila,
+and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend Captain
+Stirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the news
+was in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in any
+previous part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed my
+having no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to do
+with it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some had
+thought I was the paymaster.
+
+"Folks up here," he explained, "are liable to know who's coming."
+
+"If I lived here," said I, "I should be anxious for the paymaster to
+come early and often."
+
+"Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here,
+and us civilians profit some by it."
+
+[Illustration: "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"]
+
+Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce the subject
+of black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but before I
+had compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited me.
+Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I was
+stranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to see
+an old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and the
+quartermaster's hearty will to help me to do so could not cure my
+blankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round at
+Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other
+friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at
+an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for
+good or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in
+gloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged
+back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed
+my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably
+slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that
+in reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the
+ancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go
+to house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed
+legally married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve months, and
+ten had run against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signs
+of leaving her. The driver did not think her much entitled to
+sympathy, and certainly she showed later that she could devise
+revenge. As I thought over these things we came again to the cattle
+herd, where my reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor did
+the variance between my movements and my reported plans seem wholly
+explained to them by Stirling's absence, and at the station where I
+had breakfasted I saw them question the driver about me. This interest
+in my affairs heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when next
+day I came to it after another waking to the chanted antiphonals and
+another faint reveille from Camp Thomas in the waning dark, extreme
+comfort spread through me. I sat in the club with the officers, and
+they taught me a new game of cards called Solo, and filled my glass.
+Here were lieutenants, captains, a major, and a colonel, American
+citizens with a love of their country and a standard of honor; here
+floated our bright flag serene against the lofty blue, and the mellow
+horns sounded at guard-mounting, bringing moisture to the eyes. The
+day was punctuated with the bright trumpet, people went and came in
+the simple dignity of duty, and once again I talked with good men and
+women. God bless our soldier people! I said it often.
+
+They somewhat derided my uneasiness in the Gila Valley, and found my
+surmisings sensational. Yet still they agreed much ready money was an
+unwise thing on a stage journey, although their profession (I suppose)
+led them to take being "held up" less seriously than I with my peaceful
+traditions of elevators and the down-town lunch. In the wide Sulphur
+Springs valley where I rode at large, but never so long or so far that
+Fort Grant lay not in sight across that miracle of air, it displeased me
+to come one morning upon yellow and black curly jogging along beneath
+the government telegraph line.
+
+"You cover a wide range," said I.
+
+"Cowboys have to," they answered. "So you've not quit us yet?"
+
+"I'm thinking of taking a hunt and fish towards Fort Apache."
+
+"We're your men, then. You'll find us at Thomas any time. We're
+gathering stock up these draws, but that'll be through this week."
+
+They spurred their horses and vanished among the steep little hills that
+run up to Mount Graham. But indeed they should be no men of mine!
+Stirling had written me his scout was ended, and San Carlos worth a
+longer visit than I had made there, promising me an escort should I
+desire to camp in the mountains. An escort it should be, and no yellow
+or black curly, over-curious about my private matters! This fell in
+excellently with the coming paymaster's movements. Major Pidcock was
+even now on his way to Fort Grant from Fort Bowie; and when he went to
+Thomas and Carlos I would go, too, in his ambulance; and I sighed with
+pleasure at escaping that stage again.
+
+Major Pidcock arrived in a yellow duster, but in other respects differed
+from the Bishop, though in his body a bulky man. We were introduced to
+each other at the club.
+
+"I am glad, sir, to meet you at last," I said to him. "The whole Gila
+Valley has been taking me for you."
+
+"Oh--ah!" said Pidcock, vaguely, and pulling at some fat papers in his
+coat; "indeed. I understand that is a very ignorant population. Colonel
+Vincent, a word with you. The Department Commander requests me--" And
+here he went off into some official talk with the Colonel.
+
+I turned among the other officers, who were standing by an open locker
+having whiskey, and Major Evlie put his hand on my shoulder. "He doesn't
+mean anything," he whispered, while the rest looked knowingly at me.
+Presently the Colonel explained to Pidcock that he would have me to keep
+him company to Carlos.
+
+"Oh--ah, Colonel. Of course we don't take civilians not employed by the
+government, as a rule. But exceptions--ah--can be made," he said to me.
+"I will ask you to be ready immediately after breakfast to-morrow." And
+with that he bowed to us all and sailed forth across the parade-ground.
+
+The Colonel's face was red, and he swore in his quiet voice; but the
+lips of the lieutenants by the open locker quivered fitfully in the
+silence.
+
+"Don't mind Pidcock," Evlie remarked. "He's a paymaster." And at this
+the line officers became disorderly, and two lieutenants danced
+together; so that, without catching Evlie's evidently military joke, I
+felt pacified.
+
+"And I've got to have him to dinner," sighed the Colonel, and wandered
+away.
+
+"You'll get on with him, man--you'll get on with him in the ambulance,"
+said my friend Paisley. "Flatter him, man. Just ask him about his great
+strategic stroke at Cayuse Station that got him his promotion to the pay
+department."
+
+Well, we made our start after breakfast, Major Pidcock and I, and
+another passenger too, who sat with the driver--a black cook going to
+the commanding officer's at Thomas. She was an old plantation mammy,
+with a kind but bewildered face, and I am sorry that the noise of our
+driving lost me much of her conversation; for whenever we slowed, and
+once when I walked up a hill, I found her remarks to be steeped in a
+flighty charm.
+
+"Fo' Lawd's sake!" said she. "W'at's dat?" And when the driver told her
+that it was a jack-rabbit, "You go 'long!" she cried, outraged. "I'se
+seed rabbits earlier 'n de mawnin' dan yo'self." She watched the animal
+with all her might, muttering, "Law, see him squot," and "Hole on, hole
+on!" and "Yasser, he done gone fo' sho. My grashus, you lemme have a
+scatter shoot-gun an' a spike-tail smell dog, an' I'll git one of dey
+narrah-gauge mules."
+
+"I shall not notice it," said Major Pidcock to me, with dignity. "But
+they should have sent such a creature by the stage. It's unsuitable,
+wholly."
+
+"Unquestionably," said I, straining to catch the old lady's song on the
+box:
+
+     "'Don't you fo'git I's a-comin' behind you--
+          Lam slam de lunch ham.'"
+
+"This is insufferable," said Pidcock. "I shall put her off at Cedar
+Springs."
+
+I suppose the drive was long to him, but to me it was not. Noon and
+Cedar Springs prematurely ended the first half of this day most
+memorable in the whole medley of my excursion, and we got down to dine.
+Two travellers bound for Thomas by our same road were just setting out,
+but they firmly declined to transport our cook, and Pidcock moodily saw
+them depart in their wagon, leaving him burdened still; for this was the
+day the stage made its down trip from Thomas. Never before had I seen
+water paid for. When the Major, with windy importance, came to settle
+his bill, our dozen or fourteen escort horses and mules made an item,
+the price of watering two head being two bits, quite separate from the
+feed; and I learned that water was thus precious over most of the
+Territory.
+
+Our cook remounted the box in high feather, and began at once to comment
+upon Arizona. "Dere ain't no winter, nor no spring, nor no rain de hole
+year roun'. My! what a country fo' to gib de chick'ns courage! Dey hens
+must jus' sit an' lay an' lay. But de po' ducks done have a mean time.
+
+     "'O--Lawd!
+     Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"
+
+"I would not permit a cook like that inside my house," said Major
+Pidcock.
+
+"She may not be dangerous," I suggested.
+
+"Land! is dey folks gwineter shoot me?" Naturally I looked, and so did
+the Major; but it was two of our own mounted escort that she saw out to
+the right of us among the hills. "Tell dem nigger jockeys I got no
+money. Why do dey triflin' chillun ride in de kerridge?" She did not
+mean ourselves, but the men with their carbines in the escort wagon in
+front of us. I looked out at them, and their mouths were wide open for
+joy at her. It was not a stately progress for twenty-eight thousand
+dollars in gold and a paymaster to be making. Major Pidcock unbuttoned
+his duster and reclined to sleep, and presently I also felt the
+after-dinner sloth shutting my eyes pleasantly to this black road.
+
+"Heave it, chillun! can't you heave?" I heard our cook say, and felt us
+stop.
+
+"What's that?" I asked, drowsily.
+
+"Seems to be a rock fallen down," the Major answered. "Start it, men;
+roll it!"
+
+I roused myself. We were between rocks and banks on the brow of a hill,
+down which the narrow road descended with a slight turn. I could see the
+escort wagon halted ahead of us, and beyond it the men stooping at a
+large stone, around which there was no possible room to drive. This
+stone had fallen, I reflected, since those travellers for Thomas--
+
+There was a shot, and a mule rolled over.
+
+I shall never forget that. It was like the theatre for one paralyzed
+second! The black soldiers, the mule, the hill, all a clear picture seen
+through an opera-glass, stock-still, and nothing to do with me--for a
+congealed second. And, dear me, what a time we had then!
+
+Crackings volleyed around us, puffs of smoke jetted blue from rock
+ramparts which I had looked at and thought natural--or, rather, not
+thought of at all--earth and gravel spattered up from the ground, the
+bawling negress spilled off her box and ran in spirals, screaming, "Oh,
+bless my soul, bless my soul!" and I saw a yellow duster flap out of the
+ambulance. "Lawd grashus, he's a-leavin' us!" screeched the cook, and
+she changed her spirals for a bee-line after him. I should never have
+run but for this example, for I have not naturally the presence of mind,
+and in other accidents through which I have passed there has never been
+promptness about me; the reasoning and all has come when it was over,
+unless it went on pretty long, when I have been sometimes able to leap
+to a conclusion. But yes, I ran now, straight under a screen of rocks,
+over the top of which rose the heads of yellow and black curly. The
+sight of them sent rushing over me the first agreeable sensation I had
+felt--shapeless rage--and I found myself shouting at them, "Scoundrels!
+scoundrels!" while shooting continued briskly around me. I think my
+performance would have sincerely entertained them could they have spared
+the time for it; and as it was, they were regarding me with obvious
+benevolence, when Mr. Adams looked evilly at me across the stones, and
+black curly seized the old devil's rifle in time to do me a good turn.
+Mr. Adams's bullet struck short of me ten feet, throwing the earth in my
+face. Since then I have felt no sympathy for that tobacco-running
+pioneer. He listened, coughing, to what black curly said as he pointed
+to me, and I see now that I have never done a wiser thing than to go
+unarmed in that country. Curly was telling Mr. Adams that I was
+harmless. Indeed, that was true! In the bottom of this cup, target for a
+circled rim of rifles, separated from the widely scattered Major and his
+men, aware of nothing in particular, and seeing nothing in particular
+but smoke and rocks and faces peering everywhere, I walked to a stone
+and sat upon it, hypnotized again into a spectator. From this
+undisturbed vantage I saw shape itself the theft of the gold--the first
+theft, that is; for it befell me later to witness a ceremony by which
+these eagles of Uncle Sam again changed hands in a manner that stealing
+is as good a name for as any.
+
+They had got two mules killed, so that there could be no driving away in
+a hurry, and I saw that killing men was not a part of their war, unless
+required as a means to their end. Major Pidcock had spared them this
+necessity; I could see him nowhere; and with him to imitate I need not
+pause to account for the members of our dismounted escort. Two soldiers,
+indeed, lay on the ground, the sergeant and another, who had evidently
+fired a few resisting shots; but let me say at once that these poor
+fellows recovered, and I saw them often again through this adventure
+that bound us together, else I could not find so much hilarity in my
+retrospect. Escort wagon and ambulance stood empty and foolish on the
+road, and there lay the ingenious stone all by itself, and the carbines
+all by themselves foolish in the wagon, where the innocent soldiers had
+left them on getting out to move the stone. Smoke loitered thin and blue
+over this now exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. How
+secure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless of
+identification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, an
+escort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at the
+top of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed into
+sight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I had
+never seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow and
+black curly looked so natural that I wondered if Jenks and the Bishop
+would come climbing down too. But no more old friends turned up that
+day. Some went to the ambulance swift and silent, while others most
+needlessly stood guard. Nothing was in sight but my seated inoffensive
+form, and the only sound was, somewhere among the rocks, the voice of
+the incessant negress speeding through her prayers. I saw them at the
+ambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,
+ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill's brow.
+Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouring
+negress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:
+
+     "'Oh--Lawd!
+     Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"
+
+All this while I sat on the stone. "They have done us brown," I said
+aloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.
+My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. I
+should not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,
+brought from several quarters by the fusillade--two in a wagon from
+Cedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with in
+the hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistance
+to any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what we
+all should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatory
+with pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to them
+than any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaseless
+discourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge of
+everything.
+
+"Let yer men quit the'r guns, did ye, general?" piped the very old man.
+"Escort oughtn't never to quit the'r guns. I seen that at Molino del
+Rey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn't crawl out in the
+road like a turtus to git the sunshine."
+
+"Where were you?" thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who now
+appeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they had
+been protecting at an immense distance. "Don't you know your duty's to
+be on hand when you hear firing?"
+
+"Law, honey!" said the cook, with a guffaw, "lemme git my han's over my
+mouf."
+
+"See them walls they fooled yer with!" continued the old man, pointing
+with his stick. "I could have told yer them wasn't natural. Them doesn't
+show like country rock;" by which I found that he meant their faces were
+new-exposed and not weather-beaten.
+
+"No doubt you could have saved us, my friend," said the Major, puffing
+blandly.
+
+But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. "Yes, I could have told
+yer that," assented the sage, with senile complacence. "My wife could
+have told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that."
+
+"I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements," announced Pidcock. "Tap
+the telegraph wire," he ordered.
+
+"I have to repawt to the Major," said a soldier, saluting, "dat de line
+is cut."
+
+At this I was taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while
+ninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire if they
+knew their business."
+
+Swearing capably, the Major now accounted clearly to us for the whole
+occurrence, striding up and down, while we lifted the hurt men into the
+ranch wagon, and arranged for their care at Cedar Springs. The escort
+wagon hurried on to Thomas for a doctor. The ambulance was, of course,
+crippled of half its team, and the dead mules were cleared from their
+harness and got to the road-side. Having satisfactorily delivered
+himself of his explanation, the Major now organized a party for
+following the trail of the robbers, to learn into what region they had
+betaken themselves. Incredible as it may seem, after my late
+unenterprising conduct, I asked one of the riders to lend me his horse,
+which he did, remarking that he should not need it for an hour, and that
+he was willing to risk my staying absent longer than that.
+
+So we rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble to
+follow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth of
+hillocks, puny and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in the
+trough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty about
+three of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and was
+something less than civil at what he called my suggestions.
+
+"When I have ascertained their route," he said, "it will be time enough
+to talk of their identity."
+
+In this way we went for a mile or so, the trail leading us onward, frank
+and straight, to the top of a somewhat higher hill, where it suddenly
+expired off the earth. No breath vanishes cleaner from glass, and it
+brought us to a dead halt. We retraced the tracks to make sure we had
+not lost them before, but there was no mistake, and again we halted dead
+at the vanishing-point. Here were signs that something out of the common
+had happened. Men's feet and horseshoe prints, aimless and superimposed,
+marked a trodden frame of ground, inside which was nothing, and beyond
+which nothing lay but those faint tracks of wandering cattle and horses
+that scatter everywhere in this country. Not one defined series, not
+even a single shod horse, had gone over this hill, and we spent some
+minutes vainly scouring in circles wider and wider. Often I returned to
+stare at the trodden, imperturbable frame of ground, and caught myself
+inspecting first the upper air, and next the earth, and speculating if
+the hill were hollow; and mystery began to film over the hitherto sharp
+figures of black curly and yellow, while the lonely country around grew
+so unpleasant to my nerves that I was glad when Pidcock decided that he
+must give up for to-day. We found the little group of people beginning
+to disperse at the ambulance.
+
+"Fooled yer ag'in, did they?" said the old man. "Played the blanket
+trick on yer, I expect. Guess yer gold's got pretty far by now." With
+this parting, and propped upon his stick, he went as he had come. Not
+even at any time of his youth, I think, could he have been
+companionable, and old age had certainly filled him with the impartial
+malevolence of the devil. I rejoice to say that he presided at none of
+our further misadventures.
+
+Short twenty-eight thousand dollars and two mules, we set out anew, the
+Major, the cook, and I, along the Thomas road, with the sun drawing
+closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made.
+The site of my shock lay behind me--I knew now well enough that it had
+been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel
+the earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleeve
+whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again--and the present
+comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase
+continually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling of
+the wheels many subjects for talk came into my mind, and had I been
+seated on the box beside the cook we should have found much in common.
+Ever since her real tenderness to those wounded men I had wished to ask
+the poor old creature how she came in this weary country, so far from
+the pleasant fields of cotton and home. Her hair was gray, and she had
+seen much, else she had never been so kind and skilful at bandaging. And
+I am quite sure that somewhere in the chambers of her incoherent mind
+and simple heart abided the sweet ancient fear of God and love of her
+fellow-men--virtues I had met but little in Arizona.
+
+"De hole family, scusin' two," she was saying, "dey bust loose and tuck
+to de woods." And then she moralized upon the two who stayed behind and
+were shot. "But de Gennul he 'low dat wuz mighty pore reasonin'."
+
+I should have been glad to exchange views with her, for Major Pidcock
+was dull company. This prudent officer was not growing distant from his
+disaster, and as night began to come, and we neared Thomas, I suppose
+the thought that our ambulance was driving him perhaps to a
+court-martial was enough to submerge the man in gloom. To me and my news
+about the robbers he was a little more considerate, although he still
+made nothing of the fact that some of them lived in the Gila Valley, and
+were of the patriarchal tribe of Meakum.
+
+"Scoundrels like that," he muttered, lugubriously, "know every trail in
+the country, and belong nowhere. Mexico is not a long ride from here.
+They can get a steamer at Guaymas and take their choice of ports down to
+Valparaiso. Yes, they'll probably spend that money in South America. Oh,
+confound that woman!"
+
+For the now entirely cheerful negress was singing:
+
+     "'Dar's de gal, dar's my Susanna.
+     How by gum you know?
+     Know her by de red bandanna,
+     An' de shoestring hangin' on de flo'--
+     Dad blam her!--
+     An' de shoestring hangin'--'
+
+"Goodness grashus! what _you_ gwineter do?"
+
+At this sudden cry and the stopping of the ambulance I thought more
+people were come for our gold, and my spirit resigned itself. Sit still
+was all I should do now, and look for the bright day when I should
+leave Arizona forever. But it was only Mrs. Sproud. I had clean
+forgotten her, and did not at once take in to what an important turn the
+affairs of some of us had come. She stepped out of the darkness, and put
+her hand on the door of the ambulance.
+
+"I suppose you're the Paymaster?" Her voice was soft and easy, but had
+an ample volume. As Pidcock was replying with some dignity that she was
+correct, she caught sight of me. "Who is this man?" she interrupted him.
+
+"My clerk," said Pidcock; and this is the promptest thing I can remember
+of the Major, always excepting his conduct when the firing began on the
+hill. "You're asking a good many questions, madam," he added.
+
+"I want to know who I'm talking to," said she, quietly. "I think I've
+seen property of yours this evening."
+
+"You had better get in, madam; better get in."
+
+"This is the Paymaster's team from Fort Grant?" said Mrs. Sproud to the
+driver.
+
+"Yes, yes, madam. Major Pidcock--I am Major Pidcock, Paymaster to the
+United States army in the Department of Colorado. I suppose I understand
+you."
+
+"Seven canvas sacks," said Mrs. Sproud, standing in the road.
+
+"Get in, madam. You can't tell who may be within hearing. You will find
+it to your advantage to keep nothing--"
+
+Mrs. Sproud laughed luxuriously, and I began to discern why black curly
+might at times have been loath to face her.
+
+"I merely meant, madam--I desired to make it clear that--a--"
+
+"I think I know what you meant. But I have no call to fear the law. It
+will save you trouble to believe that before we go any further."
+
+"Certainly, madam. Quite right." The man was sweating. What with
+court-martial and Mrs. Sproud, his withers were wrung. "You are entirely
+sure, of course, madam--"
+
+"I am entirely sure I know what I am about. That seems to be more than
+some do that are interested in this gold--the folks, for instance, that
+have hid it in my hay-stack."
+
+"Hay-stack! Then they're not gone to Mexico!"
+
+"Mexico, sir? They live right here in this valley. Now I'll get in, and
+when I ask you, you will please to set me down." She seated herself
+opposite us and struck a match. "Now we know what we all look like,"
+said she, holding the light up, massive and handsome. "This young man is
+the clerk, and we needn't mind him. I have done nothing to fear the law,
+but what I am doing now will make me a traveller again. I have no
+friends here. I was acquainted with a young man." She spoke in the
+serenest tone, but let fall the match more quickly than its burning made
+needful. "He was welcome in my home. He let them cook this up in my
+house and never told me. I live a good ways out on the road, and it was
+a safe place, but I didn't think why so many met him, and why they sat
+around my stable. Once in a while this week they've been joking about
+winning the soldiers' pay--they often win that--but I thought it was
+just cowboy games, till I heard horses coming quick at sundown this
+afternoon, and I hid. Will hunted around and said--and said I was on
+the stage coming from Solomonsville, and so they had half an hour yet.
+He thought so. And, you see, nobody lives in the cabin but--but me."
+Mrs. Sproud paused a moment here, and I noticed her breathing. Then she
+resumed: "So I heard them talk some; and when they all left, pretty
+soon, I went to the hay-stack, and it was so. Then the stage came along
+and I rode to Thomas."
+
+"You left the gold there!" groaned the wretched Major, and leaned out of
+the ambulance.
+
+"I'm not caring to touch what's none of mine. Wait, sir, please; I get
+out here. Here are the names I'm sure of. Stop the driver, or I'll
+jump." She put a paper in the Major's hand. "It is Mrs. Sproud's
+hay-stack," she added.
+
+"Will you--this will never--can I find you to-morrow?" he said,
+helplessly, holding the paper out at her.
+
+"I have told you all I know," said Mrs. Sproud, and was gone at once.
+
+Major Pidcock leaned back for some moments as we drove. Then he began
+folding his paper with care. "I have not done with that person," said
+he, attempting to restore his crippled importance. "She will find that
+she must explain herself."
+
+Our wheels whirled in the sand and we came quickly to Thomas, to a crowd
+of waiting officers and ladies; and each of us had an audience that
+night--the cook, I feel sure, while I myself was of an importance second
+only to the Major's. But he was at once closeted with the commanding
+officer, and I did not learn their counsels, hearing only at breakfast
+that the first step was taken. The detail sent out had returned from
+the hay-stack, bringing gold indeed--one-half sackful. The other six
+were gone, and so was Mrs. Sproud. It was useless to surmise, as we,
+however, did that whole forenoon, what any of this might mean; but in
+the afternoon came a sign. A citizen of the Gila Valley had been paying
+his many debts at the saloon and through the neighborhood in gold. In
+one well known for the past two years to be without a penny it was the
+wrong moment to choose for honest affluence, and this citizen was the
+first arrest. This further instance of how secure the robbers felt
+themselves to be outdid anything that had happened yet, and I marvelled
+until following events took from me the power of astonishment. The men
+named on Mrs. Sproud's paper were fewer than I think fired upon us in
+the attack, but every one of them was here in the valley, going about
+his business. Most were with the same herd of cattle that I had seen
+driven by yellow and black curly near the sub-agency, and they two were
+there. The solvent debtor, I should say, was not arrested this morning.
+Plans that I, of course, had no part in delayed matters, I suppose for
+the sake of certainty. Black curly and his friends were watched, and
+found to be spending no gold yet; and since they did not show sign of
+leaving the region, but continued with their cattle, I imagine every
+effort was being made to light upon their hidden treasure. But their
+time came, and soon after it mine. Stirling, my friend, to whom I had
+finally gone at Carlos, opened the wire door of his quarters where I sat
+one morning, and with a heartless smile introduced me to a gentleman
+from Tucson.
+
+"You'll have a chance to serve your country," said Stirling.
+
+I was subpoenaed!
+
+"Certainly not!" I said, with indignation. "I'm going East. I don't live
+here. You have witnesses enough without me. We all saw the same thing."
+
+"Witnesses never see the same thing," observed the man from Tucson.
+"It's the government that's after you. But you'll not have to wait. Our
+case is first on the list."
+
+"You can take my deposition," I began; but what need to dwell upon this
+interview? "When I come to visit you again," I said to Stirling, "let me
+know." And that pink-faced, gray-haired captain still shouted
+heartlessly.
+
+"You're an egotist," said he. "Think of the scrape poor old Pidcock has
+got himself into."
+
+"The government needs all the witnesses it can get," said the man from
+Tucson. "Luke Jenks is smart in some ways."
+
+"Luke Jenks?" I sat up in my canvas extension-chair.
+
+"Territorial Delegate; firm of Parley and Jenks, Tucson. He's in it."
+
+"By heavens!" I cried, in unmixed delight. "But I didn't see him when
+they were shooting at us."
+
+The man from Tucson stared at me curiously. "He is counsel for the
+prisoners," he explained.
+
+"The Delegate to Washington defends these thieves who robbed the United
+States?" I repeated.
+
+"Says he'll get them off. He's going to stay home from Washington and
+put it through in shape."
+
+It was here that my powers of astonishment went into their last decline,
+and I withheld my opinion upon the character of Mr. Jenks as a public
+man. I settled comfortably in my canvas chair.
+
+"The prisoners are citizens of small means, I judge," said I. "What fee
+can they pay for such a service?"
+
+"Ah!" said Stirling,
+
+"That's about it, I guess," said the man from Tucson. "Luke is mighty
+smart in his law business. Well, gents, good-day to you. I must be
+getting after the rest of my witnesses."
+
+"Have you seen Mrs. Sproud?" I asked him.
+
+"She's quit the country. We can't trace her. Guess she was scared."
+
+"But that gold!" I exclaimed, when Sterling and I were alone. "What in
+the world have they done with those six other bags?"
+
+"Ah!" said he, as before. "Do you want to bet on that point? Dollars to
+doughnuts Uncle Sam never sees a cent of that money again. I'll stake my
+next quarter's pay--"
+
+"Pooh!" said I. "That's poor odds against doughnuts if Pidcock has the
+paying of it." And I took my turn at laughing at the humorous Stirling.
+
+"That Mrs. Sproud is a sensible woman to have gone," said he,
+reflectively. "They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn't
+be safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are found
+dead in this country--but you'll have government protection."
+
+"Thank you kindly," said I. "That's what I had on the hill."
+
+But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.
+
+Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection.
+At seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmas
+and Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase which
+they sometimes print in capitals upon their bills--Combination
+Extraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, and
+the old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and our
+coal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including Sergeant
+Brown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, you
+can see what appearance we made descending together from the mean
+Southern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to have
+been the town's whole population, numbering five thousand.
+
+Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflage
+immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,
+speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than
+half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy
+shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled
+cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these
+the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,
+express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers from
+Lowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color and
+dust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door of
+the Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of the
+same idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,
+as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found the
+wet-eyed Mowry standing.
+
+"How's business on the other side of the track?" I said to him.
+
+"Fair to middlin'. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?"
+
+"You've forgotten I told you they're a property I don't care for, Mr.
+Mowry. I suppose it's interest in this recent gold discovery that brings
+you to Tucson." He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glance
+that flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, "So many of
+your Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now," I wrote
+my name in the hotel book, while he looked to remind himself what it
+was.
+
+"Why, you're not to stay here," said Stirling, coming up. "You're
+expected at the Barracks."
+
+He presented me at once to a knot of officers, each of whom in turn made
+me known to some additional by-stander, until it seemed to me that I
+shook a new hand sixty times in this disordered minute by the hotel
+book, and out of the sixty caught one name, which was my own.
+
+These many meetings could not be made perfect without help from the
+saloon-keeper, who ran his thriving trade conveniently at hand in the
+office of the San Xavier. Our group remained near him, and I silently
+resolved to sleep here at the hotel, away from the tempting confusion of
+army hospitality upon this eve of our trial. We were expected, however,
+to dine at the post, and that I was ready to do. Indeed, I could
+scarcely have got myself out of it without rudeness, for the ambulance
+was waiting us guests at the gate. We went to it along a latticed
+passage at the edge of a tropical garden, only a few square yards in
+all, but how pretty! and what an oasis of calm in the midst of this
+teeming desolation of unrest! It had upon one side the railway station,
+wooden, sordid, congesting with malodorous packed humanity; on the next
+the rails themselves and the platform, with steam and bells and baggage
+trucks rolling and bumping; the hotel stood on the third, a confusion
+of tongues and trampings; while a wide space of dust, knee-deep, and
+littered with manoeuvring vehicles, hemmed in this silent garden on
+the fourth side. A slender slow little fountain dropped inaudibly among
+some palms, a giant cactus, and the broad-spread shade of trees I did
+not know. This was the whole garden, and a tame young antelope was its
+inhabitant. He lay in the unchanging shade, his large eyes fixed
+remotely upon the turmoil of this world, and a sleepy charm touched my
+senses as I looked at his domain. Instead of going to dinner, or going
+anywhere, I should have liked to recline indefinitely beneath those
+palms and trail my fingers in the cool fountain. Such enlightened
+languor, however, could by no happy chance be the lot of an important
+witness in a Western robbery trial, and I dined and wined with the
+jovial officers, at least talking no business.
+
+With business I was sated. Pidcock and the attorney for the United
+States--I can remember neither his name nor the proper title of his
+office, for he was a nobody, and I had forgotten his features each new
+time that we met--had mapped out the trial to me, preparing and
+rehearsing me in my testimony until they had pestered me into a hatred
+of them both. And when word was brought me here, dining at Lowell
+Barracks, where I had imagined myself safe from justice, that this same
+attorney was waiting to see me, I rose and I played him a trick.
+Possibly I should not have done it but for the saloon-keeper in the
+afternoon and this sustained dining now; but I sent him word I should be
+with him directly--and I wandered into Tucson by myself!
+
+Faithful to my last strong impression there, I went straight to the tiny
+hotel garden, and in that darkness lay down in a delicious and torpid
+triumph. The attorney was most likely waiting still. No one on earth
+knew where I was. Pidcock could not trace me now. I could see the stars
+through the palms and the strange trees, the fountain made a little
+sound, somewhere now and then I could hear the antelope, and, cloaked in
+this black serenity, I lay smiling. Once an engine passed heavily,
+leaving the station utterly quiet again, and the next I knew it was the
+antelope's rough tongue that waked me, and I found him nibbling and
+licking my hand. People were sitting in the latticed passage, and from
+the light in the office came Mr. Mowry, untying a canvas sack that he
+held. At this sight my truancy to discretion was over, and no head could
+be more wakeful or clear than mine instantly became.
+
+"How much d'yer want this time, Mr. Jenks?" inquired Mowry.
+
+I could not hear the statesman's reply, but thought, while the sound of
+clinking came to me, how a common cause will often serve to reconcile
+the most bitter opponents. I did not dare go nearer to catch all their
+talk, and I debated a little upon my security even as it was, until my
+own name suddenly reached me.
+
+"Him?" said Mowry; "that there tailor-made boy? They've got him sleepin'
+at the Barracks."
+
+"Nobody but our crowd's boarding here," said some one.
+
+"They think we're laying for their witnesses," said the voice of Jenks.
+And among the various mingled laughs rose distinct a big one that I
+knew.
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. Tell you about witnesses. Here's all there is
+to them: spot cash to their figure, and kissing the Book. You've done no
+work but what I told you?" he added, sharply.
+
+"We haven't needed to worry about witnesses in any shape, Bishop."
+
+"That's good. That's economy. That little Eastern toorist is harmless."
+
+"Leave him talk, Bishop. Leave 'em all tell their story."
+
+"It's going to cost the whole stake, though," said Jenks.
+
+"Deserted Jericho!" remarked old Meakum.
+
+"I don't try cases for nothing, Bishop. The deal's covered. My clients
+have publicly made over to me their horses and saddles."
+
+"Oh, ho, ho!" went the Bishop. But this last word about the horses was
+the only part of the talk I could not put a plain meaning upon.
+
+Mr. Mowry I now saw re-enter the lighted door of the office, with his
+canvas sack in his hand. "This'll be right here in the safe," said he.
+
+"All right," answered Jenks. "I'll not be likely to call on you any more
+for a day or so."
+
+"Hello!" said the office clerk, appearing in his shirt-sleeves. "You
+fellows have made me forget the antelope." He took down a lantern, and I
+rose to my feet.
+
+"Give us a drink before you feed him," said Jenks. Then I saw the whole
+of them crowd into the door for their nightcap, and that was all I
+waited for.
+
+I climbed the garden fence. My thoughts led me at random through
+quantities of soft dust, and over the rails, I think, several times,
+until I stood between empty and silent freight trains, and there sat
+down. Harmless! It seemed to me they would rate me differently in the
+morning. So for a while my mind was adrift in the turbulent
+cross-currents of my discovery; but it was with a smooth, innocent
+surface that I entered the hotel office and enjoyed the look of the
+clerk when he roused and heard me, who, according to their calculations,
+should have been in slumber at the Barracks, asking to be shown my room
+here. I was tempted to inquire if he had fed the antelope--such was the
+pride of my elation--and I think he must have been running over
+questions to put me; but the two of us marched up the stairs with a lamp
+and a key, speaking amiably of the weather for this time of year, and he
+unlocked my door with a politeness and hoped I would sleep well with a
+consideration that I have rarely met in the hotel clerk. I did not sleep
+well. Yet it seemed not to matter. By eight I had breakfast, and found
+the attorney--Rocklin I shall name him, and that will have to
+answer--and told him how we had become masters of the situation.
+
+He made me repeat it all over, jotting memoranda this second time; and
+when my story was done, he sat frowning at his notes, with a cigar
+between his teeth.
+
+"This ain't much," he said. "Luckily I don't need anything more. I've
+got a dead open-and-shut case without it."
+
+"Why don't you make it deader, then?" said I. "Don't you see what it all
+means?"
+
+"Well, what does it all mean?"
+
+Either the man was still nettled at my treatment of him last evening, or
+had no liking for amateur opinions and help; otherwise I see no reason
+for the disparagement with which he regarded me while I interpreted
+what I had overheard, piece by piece, except the horse and saddle
+remark.
+
+"Since that don't seem clear, I'll explain it to you," he said, "and
+then you'll know it all. Except their horses and saddles, the accused
+haven't a red cent to their names--not an honest one, that is. So it
+looks well for them to be spending all they've apparently got in the
+world to pay counsel fees. Now I have this case worked up," he pursued,
+complacently, "so that any such ambiguous stuff as yours is no good to
+me at all--would be harmful, in fact. It's not good policy, my friend,
+to assail the character of opposing counsel. And Bishop Meakum! Are you
+aware of his power and standing in this section? Do you think you're
+going to ring him in?"
+
+"Great goodness!" I cried. "Let me testify, and then let the safe be
+opened."
+
+Rocklin looked at me a moment, the cigar wagging between his teeth, and
+then he lightly tossed his notes in the waste-paper basket.
+
+"Open your safe," said he, "and what then? Up steps old Mowry and says,
+'I'll thank you to let my property alone.' Where's your proof? What word
+did any of them drop that won't bear other constructions? Mowry's well
+known to have money, and he has a right to give it to Jenks."
+
+"If the gold could be identified?" I suggested.
+
+"That's been all attended to," he answered, with increasing complacence.
+"I'm obliged to you for your information, and in a less sure case I
+might risk using it, but--why, see here; we've got 'em hands down!" And
+he clapped me on the knee. "If I had met you last evening I was going to
+tell you our campaign. Pidcock'll come first, of course, and his
+testimony'll cover pretty much the whole ground. Then, you see, the
+rest of you I'll use mainly in support. Sergeant Brown--he's very
+strong, and the black woman, and you--I'll probably call you third or
+fourth. So you'll be on hand sure now?"
+
+Certainly I had no thought of being anywhere else. The imminence of our
+trial was now heralded by the cook's coming to Rocklin's office punctual
+to his direction, and after her Pidcock almost immediately. It was not
+many minutes before the more important ones of us had gathered, and we
+proceeded to court, once again a Combination Extraordinary--a spectacle
+for Tucson. So much stir and prosperity had not blossomed in the town
+for many years, its chief source of life being the money that Lowell
+Barracks brought to it. But now its lodgings were crowded and its
+saloons and Mexican dens of entertainment waked to activity. From a
+dozing sunburnt village of adobe walls and almond-trees it was become
+something like those places built in a single Western day of riot
+extravagance, where corner lots are clamored for and men pay a dollar to
+be shaved.
+
+Jenks was before us in the room with his clients. He was practising what
+I always think of as his celluloid smile, whispering, and all-hail with
+everybody. One of the prisoners had just such another mustache as his
+own, too large for his face; and this had led me since to notice a type
+of too large mustaches through our country in all ranks, but of similar
+men, who generally have either stolen something or lacked the
+opportunity. Catching sight of me, Jenks came at once, friendly as you
+please, shaking my passive hand, and laughing that we should meet again
+under such circumstances.
+
+"When we're through this nuisance," said he, "you must take dinner with
+me. Just now, you understand, it wouldn't look well to see me hobnobbing
+with a government witness. See you again!" And he was off to some one
+else.
+
+I am confident this man could not see himself as others--some others, at
+least--saw him. To him his whole performance was natural and
+professional, and my view that he was more infamous by far than the
+thieves would have sincerely amazed him. Indeed, for one prisoner I felt
+very sorry. Young black curly was sitting there, and, in contrast to Mr.
+Adams, down whose beard the tobacco forever ran, he seemed downcast and
+unhardened, I thought. He was getting his deserts through base means. It
+was not for the sake of justice but from private revenge that Mrs.
+Sproud had moved; and, after all, had the boy injured her so much as
+this? Yet how could I help him? They were his deserts. My mood was
+abruptly changed to diversion when I saw among our jury specimens of
+both types of Meakum, and prominent among the spectator throng their
+sire, that canny polygamist, surveying the case with the same forceful
+attention I had noticed first in the House of Representatives, and ever
+since that day. But I had a true shock of surprise now. Mrs. Sproud was
+in court. There could be no mistake. No one seemed to notice her, and I
+wondered if many in the town knew her face, and with what intent she had
+returned to this dangerous neighborhood. I was so taken up with watching
+her and her furtive appearance in the almost concealed position she had
+chosen that I paid little heed to the government's opening of its case.
+She had her eyes upon black curly, but he could not see her. Pidcock
+was in the midst of his pompous recital when the court took its noon
+intermission. Then I was drawn to seek out black curly as he was
+conducted to his dinner.
+
+"Good-day," said he, as I came beside him.
+
+"I wish I didn't have to go on oath about this," I said.
+
+"Oath away," he answered, doggedly. "What's that got to do with me?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Come where?" He looked at me defiantly.
+
+"When people don't wish to be trailed," I went on, "do I understand they
+sometimes spread a blanket and lead their horses on it and take off
+their shoes? I'm merely asking out of a traveller's curiosity."
+
+"I guess you'll have to ask them that's up on such tricks," he answered,
+grinning.
+
+I met him in the eyes, and a strong liking for him came over me. "I
+probably owe you my life," I said, huskily. "I know I do. And I
+hate--you must consider me a poor sort of bird."
+
+"Blamed if I know what you're drivin' at," said black curly. But he
+wrinkled his forehead in the pleasant way I remembered. "Yer whiskey was
+good all right," he added, and gave me his hand.
+
+"Look here," said I. "She's come back."
+
+This took the boy unguarded, and he swore with surprise. Then his face
+grew sombre. "Let her," he remarked; and that was all we said.
+
+At the afternoon sitting I began to notice how popular sympathy was not
+only quite against the United States, but a sentiment amounting to
+hatred was shown against all soldiers. The voice of respectability
+seemed entirely silent; decent citizens were there, but not enough of
+them. The mildest opinion was that Uncle Sam could afford to lose money
+better than poor people, and the strongest was that it was a pity the
+soldiers had not been killed. This seemed inappropriate in a Territory
+desiring admission to our Union. I supposed it something local then, but
+have since observed it to be a prevailing Western antipathy. The
+unthinking sons of the sage-brush ill tolerate a thing which stands for
+discipline, good order, and obedience, and the man who lets another
+command him they despise. I can think of no threat more evil for our
+democracy, for it is a fine thing diseased and perverted--namely,
+independence gone drunk.
+
+Pidcock's examination went forward, and the half-sack of gold from the
+hay-stack brought a great silence in court. The Major's identification
+of the gold was conducted by Rocklin with stage effect, for it was an
+undoubted climax; but I caught a most singular smile on the face of
+Bishop Meakum, and there sat Mrs. Sproud, still solitary and engulfed in
+the throng, her face flushed and her eyes blazing. And here ended the
+first day.
+
+In the morning came the Major's cross-examination, with the room more
+crowded than before, but I could not find Mrs. Sproud. Rocklin did not
+believe I had seen her, and I feared something had happened to her. The
+Bishop had walked to the court with Jenks, talking and laughing upon
+general subjects, so far as I could hear. The counsel for the prisoners
+passed lightly over the first part of the evidence, only causing an
+occasional laugh on the score of the Major's military prowess, until he
+came to the gold.
+
+"You said this sack was one of yours, Major?" he now inquired.
+
+"It is mine, sir."
+
+A large bundle of sacks was brought. "And how about these? Here are ten,
+fifteen--about forty. I'll get some more if you say so. Are they all
+yours?"
+
+"Your question strikes me as idle, sir." The court rapped, and Jenks
+smiled. "They resemble mine," said Pidcock. "But they are not used."
+
+"No; not used." Jenks held up the original, shaking the gold. "Now I'm
+going to empty your sack for a moment."
+
+"I object," said Rocklin, springing up.
+
+"Oh, it's all counted," laughed Jenks; and the objection was not
+sustained. Then Jenks poured the gold into a new sack and shook that
+aloft. "It makes them look confusingly similar, Major. I'll just put my
+card in your sack."
+
+"I object," said Rocklin, with anger, but with futility. Jenks now
+poured the gold back into the first, then into a third, and thus into
+several, tossing them each time on the table, and the clinking pieces
+sounded clear in the room. Bishop Meakum was watching the operation like
+a wolf. "Now, Major," said Jenks, "is your gold in the original sack, or
+which sack is my card in?"
+
+This was the first time that the room broke out loudly; and Pidcock,
+when the people were rapped to order, said, "The sack's not the thing."
+
+"Of course not. The gold is our point. And of course you had a private
+mark on it. Tell the jury, please, what the private mark was."
+
+He had none. He spoke about dates, and new coins, he backed and filled,
+swelled importantly, and ended like a pricked bladder by recanting his
+identification.
+
+"That is all I have to say for the present," said Jenks.
+
+"Don't complicate the issue by attempting to prove too much, Mr.
+Rocklin," said the judge.
+
+Rocklin flushed, and called the next witness, whispering sulkily to me,
+"What can you expect if the court starts out against you?" But the court
+was by no means against him. The judge was merely disgusted over
+Rocklin's cardinal folly of identifying coin under such loose
+conditions.
+
+And now came the testimony of Sergeant Brown. He told so clear a story
+as to chill the enthusiasm of the room. He pointed to the man with the
+mustache, black curly, and yellow. "I saw them shooting from the right
+of the road," he said. Jenks tried but little to shake him, and left him
+unshaken. He was followed by the other wounded soldier, whose story was
+nearly the same, except that he identified different prisoners.
+
+"Who did you say shot you?" inquired Jenks. "Which of these two?"
+
+"I didn't say. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know a man when he shoots you in broad daylight?"
+
+"Plenty was shooting at me," said the soldier. And his testimony also
+remained unshaken.
+
+Then came my own examination, and Jenks did not trouble me at all, but,
+when I had likewise identified the men I knew, simply bowed smilingly,
+and had no questions to ask his friend from the East.
+
+Our third morning began with the negress, who said she was married, told
+a scattered tale, and soon stated that she was single, explaining later
+that she had two husbands, and one was dead, while the other had
+disappeared from her ten years ago. Gradually her alarm subsided and
+she achieved coherence.
+
+"What did this gentleman do at the occurrence?" inquired Jenks,
+indicating me.
+
+"Dat gemman? He jes flew, sir, an' I don' blame him fo' bein' no wusser
+skeer'd dan de hole party. Yesser, we all flew scusin' dey two pore
+chillun; an' we stayed till de 'currence was ceased."
+
+"But the gentleman says he sat on a stone, and saw those men firing."
+
+"Land! I seed him goin' like he was gwineter Fo't Grant. He run up de
+hill, an' de Gennul he run down like de day of judgment."
+
+"The General ran?"
+
+"Lawd grashus, honey, yo' could have played checkers on dey coat tails
+of his."
+
+The court rapped gently.
+
+"But the gold must have been heavy to carry away to the horses. Did not
+the General exert his influence to rally his men?"
+
+"No, sah. De Gennul went down de hill, an' he took his inflooence with
+him."
+
+"I have no further questions," said Jenks. "When we come to our alibis,
+gentlemen, I expect to satisfy you that this lady saw more correctly,
+and when she is unable to recognize my clients it is for a good reason."
+
+"We've not got quite so far yet," Rocklin observed. "We've reached the
+hay-stack at present."
+
+"Aren't you going to make her describe her own confusion more?" I began,
+but stopped, for I saw that the next witness was at hand, and that it
+was Mrs. Sproud.
+
+"How's this?" I whispered to Rocklin. "How did you get her?"
+
+"She volunteered this morning, just before trial. We're in big luck."
+
+The woman was simply dressed in something dark. Her handsome face was
+pale, but she held a steady eye upon the jury, speaking clearly and with
+deliberation. Old Meakum, always in court and watchful, was plainly
+unprepared for this, and among the prisoners, too, I could discern
+uneasiness. Whether or no any threat or constraint had kept her
+invisible during these days, her coming now was a thing for which none
+of us were ready.
+
+"What do I know?" she repeated after the counsel. "I suppose you have
+been told what I said I knew."
+
+"We'd like to hear it directly from you, Mrs. Sproud," Rocklin
+explained.
+
+"Where shall I start?"
+
+"Well, there was a young man who boarded with you, was there not?"
+
+"I object to the witness being led," said Jenks. And Bishop Meakum moved
+up beside the prisoners' counsel and began talking with him earnestly.
+
+"Nobody is leading me," said Mrs. Sproud, imperiously, and raising her
+voice a little. She looked about her. "There was a young man who boarded
+with me. Of course that is so."
+
+Meakum broke off in his confidences with Jenks, and looked sharply at
+her.
+
+"Do you see your boarder anywhere here?" inquired Rocklin; and from his
+tone I perceived that he was puzzled by the manner of his witness.
+
+She turned slowly, and slowly scrutinized the prisoners one by one. The
+head of black curly was bent down, and I saw her eyes rest upon it while
+she stood in silence. It was as if he felt the summons of her glance,
+for he raised his head. His face was scarlet, but her paleness did not
+change.
+
+"He is the one sitting at the end," she said, looking back at the jury.
+She then told some useless particulars, and brought her narrative to the
+afternoon when she had heard the galloping. "Then I hid. I hid because
+this is a rough country."
+
+"When did you recognize that young man's voice?"
+
+"I did not recognize it."
+
+Black curly's feet scraped as he shifted his position.
+
+"Collect yourself, Mrs. Sproud. We'll give you all the time you want. We
+know ladies are not used to talking in court. Did you not hear this
+young man talking to his friends?"
+
+"I heard talking," replied the witness, quite collected. "But I could
+not make out who they were. If I could have been sure it was him and
+friends, I wouldn't have stayed hid. I'd have had no call to be scared."
+
+Rocklin was dazed, and his next question came in a voice still more
+changed and irritable.
+
+"Did you see any one?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"What did you hear them say?"
+
+"They were all talking at once. I couldn't be sure."
+
+"Why did you go to the hay-stack?"
+
+"Because they said something about my hay-stack, and I wanted to find
+out, if I could."
+
+"Did you not write their names on a paper and give it to this gentleman?
+Remember you are on oath, Mrs. Sproud."
+
+By this time a smile was playing on the features of Jenks, and he and
+Bishop Meakum talked no longer together, but sat back to watch the
+woman's extraordinary attempt to undo her work. It was shrewd, very
+shrewd, in her to volunteer as our witness instead of as theirs. She was
+ready for the paper question, evidently.
+
+"I wrote--" she began, but Rocklin interrupted.
+
+"On oath, remember!" he repeated, finding himself cross-examining his
+own witness. "The names you wrote are the names of these prisoners here
+before the court. They were traced as the direct result of your
+information. They have been identified by three or four persons. Do you
+mean to say you did not know who they were?"
+
+"I did not know," said Mrs. Sproud, firmly. "As for the paper, I acted
+hasty. I was a woman, alone, and none to consult or advise me. I thought
+I would get in trouble if I did not tell about such goings on, and I
+just wrote the names of Will--of the boys that came round there all the
+time, thinking it was most likely them. I didn't see him, and I didn't
+make out surely it was his voice. I wasn't sure enough to come out and
+ask what they were up to. I didn't stop to think of the harm I was doing
+on guess-work."
+
+For the first time the note of remorse conquered in her voice. I saw how
+desperation at what she had done when she thought her love was cured was
+now bracing the woman to this audacity.
+
+"Remember," said Rocklin, "the gold was also found as the direct result
+of your information. It was you who told Major Pidcock in the ambulance
+about the seven sacks."
+
+"I never said anything about seven sacks."
+
+This falsehood was a master-stroke, for only half a sack had been found.
+She had not written this down. There was only the word of Pidcock and me
+to vouch for it, while against us stood her denial, and the actual
+quantity of gold.
+
+"I have no further questions," said Rocklin.
+
+"But I have," said Jenks. And then he made the most of Mrs. Sproud,
+although many in the room were laughing, and she herself, I think, felt
+she had done little but sacrifice her own character without repairing
+the injury she had done black curly. Jenks made her repeat that she was
+frightened; not calm enough to be sure of voices, especially many
+speaking together; that she had seen no one throughout. He even
+attempted to show that the talk about the hay-stack might have been
+purely about hay, and that the half-sack of gold might have been put
+there at another time--might belong to some honest man this very moment.
+
+"Did you ever know the young man who boarded with you to do a
+dishonorable thing?" inquired Jenks. "Did you not have the highest
+opinion of him?"
+
+She had not expected a question like this. It nearly broke the woman
+down. She put her hand to her breast, and seemed afraid to trust her
+voice. "I have the highest opinion of him," she said, word painfully
+following word. "He--he used to know that."
+
+"I have finished," said Jenks.
+
+"Can I go?" asked the witness, and the attorneys bowed. She stood one
+hesitating moment in the witness-stand, and she looked at the jury and
+the court; then, as if almost in dread, she let her eyes travel to black
+curly. But his eyes were sullenly averted. Then Mrs. Sproud slowly made
+her way through the room, with one of the saddest faces I have ever
+seen, and the door closed behind her.
+
+We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of them
+doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis
+were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the
+charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold
+statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly
+at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during
+any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He
+dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. "Now three witnesses
+have between them recognized all the prisoners but one," he continued.
+"That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in
+gold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceeds
+of a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man,
+and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until this
+trial began. The prisoner's name was on Mrs. Sproud's paper. The
+statement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other of
+the prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who described
+herself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who are
+admitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Their
+statements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on the
+record unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believe
+them--and remember that not a word they said has been questioned--" here
+the judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with the
+various alternatives of fact according to which the jury must find its
+several possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen and
+still, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutes
+away. It seemed one to me.
+
+When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oracular
+eye in most of them unchanged. "Not guilty," said the foreman.
+
+"What!" shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. "None
+of 'em?"
+
+"Not guilty," monotonously repeated the foreman.
+
+We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the
+laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots
+that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we
+went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. "There's a certain
+natural justice done here in spite of them," he said. "They are not one
+cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out
+free, but penniless."
+
+"How about Jenks and that jury?" said I. And Stirling shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street,
+the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel
+emerging from a photographer's studio. The Territorial Delegate had been
+taken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to
+be in this souvenir.
+
+"That's a picture I want," said I. "Only I'll be sorry to see your face
+there," I added to black curly.
+
+"Indeed!" put in Jenks.
+
+"Yes," said I. "You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way,
+Mr. Jenks, I suppose you'll return their horses and saddles now?"
+
+Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp
+thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his
+clients. "I had hoped to," he said; "that is, as many as were not needed
+to defray necessary costs. But it's been an expensive suit, and I've
+found myself obliged to sell them all. It's little enough to pay for
+clearing your character, boys."
+
+They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated.
+Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it
+seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.
+
+"They look disappointed," I remarked. "I shall value the picture very
+highly."
+
+"If that's Eastern sarcasm," said Jenks, "it's beyond me."
+
+"No, Mr. Jenks," I answered. "In your presence sarcasm drops dead. I
+think you'll prosper in politics."
+
+But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events,
+though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddly
+prosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses;
+two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in so
+many of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruits
+increase that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed their
+dollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He had
+stayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with the
+title, "What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona." Inside were twenty blank
+pages, and he failed of re-election.
+
+Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoning
+Camp Thomas and Lowell Barracks, those important sources of revenue for
+the neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and left
+it poorer than ever.
+
+At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking to
+the other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that she
+was too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east as
+Willcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.
+
+But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened to
+black curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of the Gila
+Valley and of the Boy Orator, I recall Bishop Meakum's remark about our
+statesmen at Washington: "You can divide them birds in two lots--those
+who know better, and those who don't. D'you follow me?"
+
+                         THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
+intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Red Men And White, by Owen Wister.
+    </title>
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+
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
+
+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: Red Men and White
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Illustrator: Frederic Remington
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2009 [EBook #28675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED MEN AND WHITE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;">
+<img src="images/icover.jpg" width="315" height="500" alt="COVER" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h1>RED MEN AND WHITE</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>OWEN WISTER</h2>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED</h3>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By FREDERIC REMINGTON</span></h3>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 103px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="103" height="125" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>NEW YORK AND LONDON</h4>
+
+<h4>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</h4>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1895, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Printed in the United States of America.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p><a name="Frontispiece" id="Frontispiece"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 233px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="233" height="500" alt="SPECIMEN JONES (Page 36)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SPECIMEN JONES (Page <a href="#Page_36">36</a>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p class="center">TO<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">S. B. W. and O. J. W.</span><br />
+<br />
+FROM THEIR SON<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in a
+past as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; so
+swiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of life
+and manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here and
+there a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separate
+parts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weight
+of length; and they have been received by my closest friends with
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Many sorts of Americans live in America; and the Atlantic American, it
+is to be feared, often has a cautious and conventional imagination. In
+his routine he has lived unaware of the violent and romantic era in
+eruption upon his soil. Only the elk-hunter has at times returned with
+tales at which the other Atlantic Americans have deported themselves
+politely; and similarly, but for the assurances of Western readers, I
+should have come to doubt the truth of my own impressions. All this is
+most natural.</p>
+
+<p>If you will look upon the term &#8220;United States&#8221; as describing what we
+are, you must put upon it a strict and Federal construction. We
+undoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office,
+and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should stand
+bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. But
+as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in
+its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.
+Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled
+together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the
+boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their
+processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our
+wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States
+date our letters 18&mdash;, and speak of ourselves as living in the present
+era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be
+writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of
+this nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving among
+us. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennessee
+mountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father to
+son? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even before
+the day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.
+This sprout of the Middle Ages flourishes fresh and green some five
+hundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single State
+of Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not long
+ago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people to
+see, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness this
+scene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroad
+ran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might that
+audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno
+Domini, but many years <span class="smcap">B.C.</span> The African deserves no pity. His hideous
+crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such
+monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for
+American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a
+holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,
+unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women
+who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from using
+such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will
+say, instead, <i>male cow</i> and <i>caviard horse</i> (a term spelled as they
+pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this
+lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far to
+spread.</p>
+
+<p>It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remote
+centuries that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enough
+to show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States and
+Territories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? I
+know that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belong
+among the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in all
+the others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of making
+my country&#8217;s acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gather
+conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at
+heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always
+ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,
+knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet
+undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that
+general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that
+seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether
+branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and
+oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,
+&#8220;There&#8217;s too much politics in this country&#8221;; and we shake hands.</p>
+
+<p>But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.
+They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.
+They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you will
+find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take
+my view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,
+are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit of
+Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise and
+fall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook&#8217;s surprise of E-egante,
+and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they were
+told to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,
+is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call
+upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit
+these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such
+realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which
+it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless
+hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri
+who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories
+entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="65%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">SPECIMEN JONES</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SPECIMEN_JONES">36</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THE_SERENADE_AT_SISKIYOU">64</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE GENERAL&#8217;S BLUFF</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THE_GENERALS_BLUFF">82</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">SALVATION GAP</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SALVATION_GAP">115</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THE_SECOND_MISSOURI_COMPROMISE">131</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">LA TINAJA BONITA</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#LA_TINAJA_BONITA">159</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">A PILGRIM ON THE GILA</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#A_PILGRIM_ON_THE_GILA">211</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="65%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" summary="Illustrations">
+
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">SPECIMEN JONES</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Frontispiece"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION&#8221;</td>
+<td><i>Facing page</i></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo1">6</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE<br />
+OF THE MEDICINE-MAN&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo2">14</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo3">34</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">AN APACHE</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo4">38</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">CUMNOR&#8217;S AWAKENING</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo5">52</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo6">58</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;&#8216;AIN&#8217;T Y&#8217;U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?&#8217;&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo7">90</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE CHARGE</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo8">102</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo9">112</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo10">122</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER&#8217;&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo11">128</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo12">148</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;&#8216;DON&#8217;T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,&#8217; SAID SPECIMEN<br />
+JONES&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo13">156</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;&#8216;YOU DON&#8217;T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY.<br />
+YOU&#8217;RE ALONE&#8217;&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo14">204</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&#8220;EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE&#8221;</td>
+<td align="center">&#8220;</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo15">238</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/i015.jpg" width="400" height="316" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><h2>RED MEN AND WHITE</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="LITTLE_BIG_HORN_MEDICINE" id="LITTLE_BIG_HORN_MEDICINE"></a>LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE</h2>
+
+<p>Something new was happening among the Crow Indians. A young pretender
+had appeared in the tribe. What this might lead to was unknown alike to
+white man and to red; but the old Crow chiefs discussed it in their
+councils, and the soldiers at Fort Custer, and the civilians at the
+agency twelve miles up the river, and all the white settlers in the
+valley discussed it also. Lieutenants Stirling and Haines, of the First
+Cavalry, were speculating upon it as they rode one afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t tell about Indians,&#8221; said Stirling. &#8220;But I think the Crows are
+too reasonable to go on the war-path.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Reasonable!&#8221; said Haines. He was young, and new to Indians.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just so. Until you come to his superstitions, the Indian can reason as
+straight as you or I. He&#8217;s perfectly logical.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Logical!&#8221; echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that
+the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d know better,&#8221; remarked Stirling, &#8220;if you&#8217;d been fighting &#8217;em for
+fifteen years. They&#8217;re as shrewd as &AElig;sop&#8217;s fables.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff&mdash;one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>old and shabby, the
+other young and very gaudy&mdash;riding side by side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s Cheschapah,&#8221; said Stirling. &#8220;That&#8217;s the agitator in all his
+feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the
+two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too
+close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nice manners,&#8221; commented Haines. &#8220;Seems to have a chip on his
+shoulder.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Stirling looked thoughtful. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; he muttered, &#8220;he has a chip.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad,
+and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. &#8220;How!&#8221; he said,
+pleasantly, and ambled on his way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now there you have an object-lesson,&#8221; said Stirling. &#8220;Old Pounded Meat
+has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run
+the Crow Nation?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?&#8221; inquired Haines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t notice it. For his supper, probably&mdash;probably he&#8217;s getting up
+a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and
+can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no
+stock in him&mdash;not yet. They&#8217;ve seen soda-water before. But I&#8217;m told this
+water-boiling astonishes the young.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You say the old chiefs take no stock in him <i>yet</i>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, that&#8217;s the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I was amused.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Because you&#8217;re an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn&#8217;t my
+business to shoot Indians I&#8217;d study them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a crank,&#8221; said Haines.</p>
+
+<p>But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere
+animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his
+primal brain&mdash;nearer nature than our own&mdash;the directness of a child
+mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of
+light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this;
+but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah
+would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would
+strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that
+the white man was more comfortable as a friend than as a foe, that
+rations and gifts of clothes and farming implements were better than
+battles and prisons. Once their superstition was set alight, these three
+thousand Crows might suddenly follow Cheschapah to burn and kill and
+destroy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How does he manage his soda-water, do you suppose?&#8221; inquired Haines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s mysterious. He has never been known to buy drugs, and he&#8217;s
+careful where he does his trick. He&#8217;s still a little afraid of his
+father. All Indians are. It&#8217;s queer where he was going with that dog.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Hard galloping sounded behind them, and a courier from the Indian agency
+overtook and passed them, hurrying to Fort Custer. The officers hurried
+too, and, arriving, received news and orders. Forty Sioux were reported
+up the river coming to visit the Crows. It was peaceable, but untimely.
+The Sioux agent over at Pine Ridge had given these forty permission <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>to
+go, without first finding out if it would be convenient to the Crow
+agent to have them come. It is a rule of the Indian Bureau that if one
+tribe desire to visit another, the agents of both must consent. Now,
+most of the Crows were farming and quiet, and it was not wise that a
+visit from the Sioux and a season of feasting should tempt their hearts
+and minds away from the tilling of the soil. The visitors must be taken
+charge of and sent home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very awkward, though,&#8221; said Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to
+take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. &#8220;The
+Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how
+like the way we manage Indian affairs!&#8221; And so they started.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty miles away, by a stream towards which Stirling with his command
+was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered.
+There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth.
+Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young
+Cheschapah&#8217;s talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw
+acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain
+distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness.
+Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their
+eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued
+the older chiefs.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo1" id="illo1"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i022.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="376" alt="&#8220;BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;And more than that, I, Cheschapah, can do,&#8221; said he, boasting in Indian
+fashion. &#8220;I know how to make the white man&#8217;s heart soft so he cannot
+fight.&#8221; He paused for effect, but his hearers seemed uninterested. &#8220;You
+have come pretty far to see us,&#8221; resumed the orator, &#8220;and I, and my
+friend Two <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>Whistles, and my father, Pounded Meat, have come a day to meet you and
+bring you to our place. I have brought you a fat dog. I say it is good
+the Crow and the Sioux shall be friends. All the Crow chiefs are glad.
+Pretty Eagle is a big chief, and he will tell you what I tell you. But I
+am bigger than Pretty Eagle. I am a medicine-man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused again; but the grim old chiefs were looking at the fire, and
+not at him. He got a friendly glance from his henchman, Two Whistles,
+but he heard his father give a grunt.</p>
+
+<p>That enraged him. &#8220;I am a medicine-man,&#8221; he repeated, defiantly. &#8220;I have
+been in the big hole in the mountains where the river goes, and spoken
+there with the old man who makes the thunder. I talked with him as one
+chief to another. I am going to kill all the white men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this old Pounded Meat looked at his son angrily, but the son was not
+afraid of his father just then. &#8220;I can make medicine to bring the rain,&#8221;
+he continued. &#8220;I can make water boil when it is cold. With this I can
+strike the white man blind when he is so far that his eyes do not show
+his face.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He swept out from his blanket an old cavalry sabre painted scarlet.
+Young Two Whistles made a movement of awe, but Pounded Meat said, &#8220;My
+son&#8217;s tongue has grown longer than his sword.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Laughter sounded among the old chiefs. Cheschapah turned his impudent
+yet somewhat visionary face upon his father. &#8220;What do you know of
+medicine?&#8221; said he. &#8220;Two sorts of Indians are among the Crows to-day,&#8221;
+he continued to the chiefs. &#8220;One sort are the fathers, and the sons are
+the other. The young warriors are not afraid of the white man. The old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>plant corn with the squaws. Is this the way with the Sioux?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With the Sioux,&#8221; remarked a grim visitor, &#8220;no one fears the white man.
+But the young warriors do not talk much in council.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pounded Meat put out his hand gently, as if in remonstrance. Other
+people must not chide his son.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You say you can make water boil with no fire?&#8221; pursued the Sioux, who
+was named Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, and had been young once.</p>
+
+<p>Pounded Meat came between. &#8220;My son is a good man,&#8221; said he. &#8220;These words
+of his are not made in the heart, but are head words you need not count.
+Cheschapah does not like peace. He has heard us sing our wars and the
+enemies we have killed, and he remembers that he has no deeds, being
+young. When he thinks of this sometimes he talks words without sense.
+But my son is a good man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The father again extended his hand, which trembled a little. The Sioux
+had listened, looking at him with respect, and forgetful of Cheschapah,
+who now stood before them with a cup of cold water.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You shall see,&#8221; he said, &#8220;who it is that talks words without sense.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Two Whistles and the young bucks crowded to watch, but the old men sat
+where they were. As Cheschapah stood relishing his audience, Pounded
+Meat stepped up suddenly and upset the cup. He went to the stream and
+refilled it himself. &#8220;Now make it boil,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah smiled, and as he spread his hand quickly over the cup, the
+water foamed up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Huh!&#8221; said Two Whistles, startled.</p>
+
+<p>The medicine-man quickly seized his moment. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>&#8220;What does Pounded Meat
+know of my medicine?&#8221; said he. &#8220;The dog is cooked. Let the dance begin.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The drums set up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and
+less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council.
+Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre
+of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart
+with the empty cup, having words among themselves. The flame reared high
+into the dark, and showed the rock wall towering close, and at its feet
+the light lay red on the streaming water. The young Sioux stripped naked
+of their blankets, hanging them in a screen against the wind from the
+jaws of the ca&ntilde;on, with more constant shouts as the drumming beat
+louder, and strokes of echo fell from the black cliffs. The figures
+twinkled across each other in the glare, drifting and alert, till the
+dog-dance shaped itself into twelve dancers with a united sway of body
+and arms, one and another singing his song against the lifted sound of
+the drums. The twelve sank crouching in simulated hunt for an enemy back
+and forth over the same space, swinging together.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they sprang with a shout upon their feet, for they had taken
+the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began
+a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and
+after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and
+crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were
+ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog
+pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests
+heaved, and their arms and bodies swung <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>alike as the excited crew filed
+and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting
+uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with
+knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from
+the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The
+dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating
+their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of
+the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.</p>
+
+<p>The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the
+dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go
+to their beds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends,&#8221; said Pounded
+Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. &#8220;But we want no war with the
+white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We have not come for war,&#8221; replied the Sioux. &#8220;We have come to eat much
+meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little
+Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We shall have war,&#8221; said the confident son to his father. &#8220;My medicine
+is good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Peace is also pretty good,&#8221; said Pounded Meat. &#8220;Get new thoughts. My
+son, do you not care any more for my words?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be.
+The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have done,&#8221; said the father, sternly. &#8220;If you are a medicine-man, do
+not talk like a light fool.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Indian has an &#8220;honor thy father&#8221; deep in his religion too, and
+Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay
+brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the
+tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane
+into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked,
+and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to
+wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be
+surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he
+sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go quick, Kinney,&#8221; he said to the interpreter, &#8220;and tell them it&#8217;s
+peace, or they&#8217;ll be firing on us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign,
+they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose
+and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long
+explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to
+allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but
+after the firing&#8217;s done, you must justify it to important personages who
+live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their
+lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was
+fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without
+obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and
+recognizing him, Stirling understood <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>about the dog. The medicine-man,
+with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners
+as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.</p>
+
+<p>Stirling sent for Kinney. &#8220;Send that rascal away,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll not
+have him bothering here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he
+had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and
+Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled
+again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his
+business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to
+say that business was always slow in time of peace.</p>
+
+<p>By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there
+was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine
+Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night
+fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah&#8217;s hour, and
+the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for
+thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy
+preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their
+guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not
+listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the
+agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling
+its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on
+being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of
+the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all.
+Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>to buzz
+about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an interesting state of affairs,&#8221; said Stirling to Haines. &#8220;There
+are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming.
+We&#8217;ve got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite
+early in your career.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave
+them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in
+the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was
+composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them
+rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This
+little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it
+listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in
+English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are
+pungent, and far from complimentary.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s got to stop here,&#8221; said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as
+Reno&#8217;s Crossing. &#8220;They&#8217;ve got to be kept on this side.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can it be done without gunpowder?&#8221; Haines asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If a shot is fired now, my friend, it&#8217;s war, and a court of inquiry in
+Washington for you and me, if we&#8217;re not buried here. Sergeant, you will
+take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with
+me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The fording began, and the two officers went over <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>to the east bank to
+see that the instructions were carried out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See that?&#8221; observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped
+into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the
+Crows. &#8220;Every man jack of them is armed. And here&#8217;s an interesting
+development,&#8221; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles.
+The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the
+officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine&mdash;the two Indian
+police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of
+the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick
+painted swarm that yelled across the ford.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bet you there&#8217;s a hundred,&#8221; remarked Haines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You forget I never gamble,&#8221; murmured Stirling. Two of the five long
+boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted;
+and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered
+multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a
+small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear,
+pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came
+tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side
+drew forward a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You tell them,&#8221; said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, &#8220;that
+they must go back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take them over, then,&#8221; the officer ordered.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo2" id="illo2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i032.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="335" alt="&#8220;HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE OF THE
+MEDICINE-MAN&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE OF THE
+MEDICINE-MAN&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing. His
+horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now
+launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>the man&#8217;s horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed
+from the other bank.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Looks like the court of inquiry,&#8221; remarked Stirling. &#8220;Don&#8217;t shoot,
+boys,&#8221; he commanded aloud.</p>
+
+<p>The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. &#8220;You not shoot?&#8221; he said. &#8220;But he hit
+that man&#8217;s horse&mdash;all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right. Quite right,&#8221; growled Stirling. &#8220;All the same hit Uncle Sam. But
+we soldier devils have orders to temporize.&#8221; His eye rested hard and
+serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular
+unconcern. &#8220;Tem-po-rize, Johnny,&#8221; said he. &#8220;You savvy temporize?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ump! Me no savvy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he&#8217;s hit that
+horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There&#8217;s Two
+Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And
+there&#8217;s a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that&mdash;it&#8217;s
+very catching&mdash;Yes, we&#8217;re going to have a circus. Attention! Now what&#8217;s
+that, do you suppose?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing
+through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth,
+full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the
+tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and
+melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford&#8217;s edge grew bare of
+dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the
+wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in
+the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers
+firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>water, his face
+brightened with a last flare of command.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Make your medicine!&#8221; he said. &#8220;Why are the white men not blind? Is the
+medicine bad to-day?&#8221; And he whipped his son&#8217;s horse to the right, and
+to the left he slashed the horse of Two Whistles, and, whirling the
+leather quirt, drove them cowed before him and out of the stream, with
+never a look or word to the white men. He crossed the sandy margin, and
+as a man drives steers to the corral, striking spurs to his horse and
+following the frightened animals close when they would twist aside, so
+did old Pounded Meat herd his son down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Useful old man,&#8221; remarked Stirling; &#8220;and brings up his children
+carefully. Let&#8217;s get these prisoners along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How rural the river looks now!&#8221; Haines said, as they left the deserted
+bank.</p>
+
+<p>So the Sioux went home in peace, the lieutenants, with their command of
+twenty, returned to the post, and all white people felt much obliged to
+Pounded Meat for his act of timely parental discipline&mdash;all except one
+white person.</p>
+
+<p>Sol Kinney sauntered into the agency store one evening. &#8220;I want ten
+pounds of sugar,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and navy plug as usual. And say, I&#8217;ll take
+another bottle of the Seltzer fizz salts. Since I quit whiskey,&#8221; he
+explained, &#8220;my liver&#8217;s poorly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He returned with his purchase to his cabin, and set a lamp in the
+window. Presently the door opened noiselessly, and Cheschapah came in.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you got that now?&#8221; he said, in English.</p>
+
+<p>The interpreter fumbled among bottles of liniment and vaseline, and from
+among these household remedies <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>brought the blue one he had just bought.
+Cheschapah watched him like a child, following his steps round the
+cabin. Kinney tore a half-page from an old Sunday <i>World</i>, and poured a
+little heap of salts into it. The Indian touched the heap timidly with
+his finger. &#8220;Maybe no good,&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Heap good!&#8221; said the interpreter, throwing a pinch into a glass. When
+Cheschapah saw the water effervesce, he folded his newspaper with the
+salt into a tight lump, stuck the talisman into his clothes, and
+departed, leaving Mr. Kinney well content. He was doing his best to
+nourish the sinews of war, for business in the country was
+discouragingly slack.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Crows were a tribe that had never warred with us, but only with
+other tribes; they had been valiant enough to steal our cattle, but
+sufficiently discreet to stop there; and Kinney realized that he had
+uphill work before him. His dearest hopes hung upon Cheschapah, in whom
+he thought he saw a development. From being a mere humbug, the young
+Indian seemed to be getting a belief in himself as something genuinely
+out of the common. His success in creating a party had greatly increased
+his conceit, and he walked with a strut, and his face was more unsettled
+and visionary than ever. One clear sign of his mental change was that he
+no longer respected his father at all, though the lonely old man looked
+at him often with what in one of our race would have been tenderness.
+Cheschapah had been secretly maturing a plot ever since his humiliation
+at the crossing, and now he was ready. With his lump of newspaper
+carefully treasured, he came to Two Whistles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now we go,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We shall fight with the Piegans. I will make big
+medicine, so that we shall <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>get many of their horses and women. Then
+Pretty Eagle will be afraid to go against me in the council. Pounded
+Meat whipped my horse. Pounded Meat can cut his hay without Cheschapah,
+since he is so strong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But little Two Whistles wavered. &#8220;I will stay here,&#8221; he ventured to say
+to the prophet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does Two Whistles think I cannot do what I say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think you make good medicine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are afraid of the Piegans.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I am not afraid. I have hay the white man will pay me for. If I go,
+he will not pay me. If I had a father, I would not leave him.&#8221; He spoke
+pleadingly, and his prophet bore him down by ridicule. Two Whistles
+believed, but he did not want to lose the money the agent was to pay for
+his hay. And so, not so much because he believed as because he was
+afraid, he resigned his personal desires.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the whole band had disappeared with Cheschapah. The
+agent was taken aback at this marked challenge to his authority&mdash;of
+course they had gone without permission&mdash;and even the old Crow chiefs
+held a council.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty Eagle resorted to sarcasm. &#8220;He has taken his friends to the old
+man who makes the thunder,&#8221; he said. But others did not feel sarcastic,
+and one observed, &#8220;Cheschapah knows more than we know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let him make rain, then,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle. &#8220;Let him make the white
+man&#8217;s heart soft.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The situation was assisted by a step of the careful Kinney. He took a
+private journey to Junction City, through which place he expected
+Cheschapah to return, and there he made arrangements to have as much
+whiskey furnished to the Indian and his friends <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>as they should ask for.
+It was certainly a good stroke of business. The victorious raiders did
+return that way, and Junction City was most hospitable to their thirst.
+The valley of the Big Horn was resonant with their homeward yells. They
+swept up the river, and the agent heard them coming, and he locked his
+door immediately. He listened to their descent upon his fold, and he
+peeped out and saw them ride round the tightly shut buildings in their
+war-paint and the pride of utter success. They had taken booty from the
+Piegans, and now, knocking at the store, they demanded ammunition,
+proclaiming at the same time in English that Cheschapah was a big man,
+and knew a &#8220;big heap medicine.&#8221; The agent told them from inside that
+they could not have any ammunition. He also informed them that he knew
+who they were, and that they were under arrest. This touched their
+primitive sense of the incongruous. On the buoyancy of the whiskey they
+rode round and round the store containing the agent, and then rushed
+away, firing shots at the buildings and shots in the air, and so
+gloriously home among their tribe, while the agent sent a courier
+packing to Fort Custer.</p>
+
+<p>The young bucks who had not gone on the raid to the Piegans thronged to
+hear the story, and the warriors told it here and there, walking in
+their feathers among a knot of friends, who listened with gay
+exclamations of pleasure and envy. Great was Cheschapah, who had done
+all this! And one and another told exactly and at length how he had seen
+the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man&#8217;s hand; it could
+not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah&#8217;s had been
+accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that
+surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been
+like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed
+among the groups, alone and aloof; he spoke to none, and he looked at
+none, and he noted how their voices fell to whispers as he passed; his
+ear caught the magic words of praise and awe; he felt the gaze of
+admiration follow him away, and a mist rose like incense in his brain.
+He wandered among the scattered tepees, and, turning, came along the
+same paths again, that he might once more overhear his worshippers.
+Great was Cheschapah! His heart beat, a throb of power passed through
+his body, and &#8220;Great is Cheschapah!&#8221; said he, aloud; for the fumes of
+hallucination wherewith he had drugged others had begun to make him
+drunk also. He sought a tepee where the wife of another chief was alone,
+and at his light call she stood at the entrance and heard him longer
+than she had ever listened to him before. But she withstood the
+temptation that was strong in the young chief&#8217;s looks and words. She did
+not speak much, but laughed unsteadily, and, shaking her head with
+averted eyes, left him, and went where several women were together, and
+sat among them.</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah told his victory to the council, with many sentences about
+himself, and how his medicine had fended all hurt from the Crows. The
+elder chiefs sat cold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ump!&#8221; said one, at the close of the oration, and &#8220;Heh!&#8221; remarked
+another. The sounds were of assent without surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is good,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle. His voice seemed to enrage Cheschapah.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Heh! it is always pretty good!&#8221; remarked Spotted Horse.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have done this too,&#8221; said Pounded Meat to his son, simply. &#8220;Once,
+twice, three times. The Crows have always been better warriors than the
+Piegans.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you made water boil like me?&#8221; Cheschapah said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not a medicine-man,&#8221; replied his father. &#8220;But I have taken horses
+and squaws from the Piegans. You make good medicine, maybe; but a cup of
+water will not kill many white men. Can you make the river boil? Let
+Cheschapah make bigger medicine, so the white man shall fear him as well
+as the Piegans, whose hearts are well known to us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah scowled. &#8220;Pounded Meat shall have this,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I will
+make medicine to-morrow, old fool!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Drive him from the council!&#8221; said Pretty Eagle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let him stay,&#8221; said Pounded Meat. &#8220;His bad talk was not to the council,
+but to me, and I do not count it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the medicine-man left the presence of the chiefs, and came to the
+cabin of Kinney.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221; said the white man. &#8220;Sit down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You got that?&#8221; said the Indian, standing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;More water medicine? I guess so. Take a seat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, not boil any more. You got that other?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That other, eh? Well, now, you&#8217;re not going to blind them yet? What&#8217;s
+your hurry?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. Make blind to-morrow. Me great chief!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A slight uneasiness passed across the bantering face of Kinney. His
+Seltzer salts performed what he promised, but he had mentioned another
+miracle, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>and he did not want his dupe to find him out until a war was
+thoroughly set agoing. He looked at the young Indian, noticing his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter with you, anyway, Cheschapah?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Me great chief!&#8221; The raised voice trembled with unearthly conviction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I guess you are. I guess you&#8217;ve got pretty far along,&#8221; said the
+frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose
+primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking
+at him with intent black eyes. &#8220;Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again.
+Medicine heap better after a while.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Indian&#8217;s quick ear caught the insincerity without understanding it.
+&#8220;You give me that quick!&#8221; he said, suddenly terrible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, all right, Cheschapah. You know more medicine than me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The white man brought a pot of scarlet paint, and the Indian&#8217;s staring
+eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and
+set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. &#8220;Stand back,&#8221; he said, in
+mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now
+Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had
+committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other
+poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of
+them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation
+it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah
+if he should recite &#8220;The Battle of Hohenlinden.&#8221; He was drawing squares
+and circles with the point of the sabre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he said to himself, &#8220;that piece won&#8217;t do. He knows too much
+English. Some of them words might strike him as bein&#8217; too usual, and
+he&#8217;d start to kill me, and spoil the whole thing. &#8216;Munich&#8217; and
+&#8216;chivalry&#8217; are snortin&#8217;, but &#8216;sun was low&#8217; ain&#8217;t worth a damn. I
+guess&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped guessing, for the noon recess at school came in his mind,
+like a picture, and with it certain old-time preliminaries to the game
+of tag.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Eeny, meeny, money, my,&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>said Kinney, tapping himself, the sabre, the paint-pot, and Cheschapah
+in turn, one for each word. The incantation was begun. He held the sabre
+solemnly upright, while Cheschapah tried to control his excited
+breathing where he stood flattened against the wall.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Butter, leather, boney, stry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Hare-bit, frost-neck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Harrico, barrico, whee, why, whoa, whack!&#8217;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re it, Cheschapah.&#8221; After that the weapon was given its fresh coat
+of paint, and Cheschapah went away with his new miracle in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is it,&#8221; mused Kinney, grave, but inwardly lively. He was one of
+those sincere artists who need no popular commendation. &#8220;And whoever he
+does catch, it won&#8217;t be me,&#8221; he concluded. He felt pretty sure there
+would be war now.</p>
+
+<p>Dawn showed the summoned troops near the agency at the corral, standing
+to horse. Cheschapah gathered his hostiles along the brow of the ridge
+in the rear of the agency buildings, and the two forces watched each
+other across the intervening four hundred yards.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;There they are,&#8221; said the agent, jumping about. &#8220;Shoot them, colonel;
+shoot them!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t do that, you know,&#8221; said the officer, &#8220;without an order from
+the President, or an overt act from the Indians.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So nothing happened, and Cheschapah told his friends the white men were
+already afraid of him. He saw more troops arrive, water their horses in
+the river, form line outside the corral, and dismount. He made ready at
+this movement, and all Indian on-lookers scattered from the expected
+fight. Yet the white man stayed quiet. It was issue day, but no families
+remained after drawing their rations. They had had no dance the night
+before, as was usual, and they did not linger a moment now, but came and
+departed with their beef and flour at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have done all this,&#8221; said Cheschapah to Two Whistles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cheschapah is a great man,&#8221; assented the friend and follower. He had
+gone at once to his hay-field on his return from the Piegans, but some
+one had broken the little Indian&#8217;s fence, and cattle were wandering in
+what remained of his crop.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our nation knows I will make a war, and therefore they do not stay
+here,&#8221; said the medicine-man, caring nothing what Two Whistles might
+have suffered. &#8220;And now they will see that the white soldiers dare not
+fight with Cheschapah. The sun is high now, but they have not moved
+because I have stopped them. Do you not see it is my medicine?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We see it.&#8221; It was the voice of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But a chief spoke. &#8220;Maybe they wait for us to come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah answered. &#8220;Their eyes shall be made <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>sick. I will ride among
+them, but they will not know it.&#8221; He galloped away alone, and lifted his
+red sword as he sped along the ridge of the hills, showing against the
+sky. Below at the corral the white soldiers waited ready, and heard him
+chanting his war song through the silence of the day. He turned in a
+long curve, and came in near the watching troops and through the agency,
+and then, made bolder by their motionless figures and guns held idle, he
+turned again and flew, singing, along close to the line, so they saw his
+eyes; and a few that had been talking low as they stood side by side
+fell silent at the spectacle. They could not shoot until some Indian
+should shoot. They watched him and the gray pony pass and return to the
+hostiles on the hill. Then they saw the hostiles melt away like magic.
+Their prophet had told them to go to their tepees and wait for the great
+rain he would now bring. It was noon, and the sky utterly blue over the
+bright valley. The sun rode a space nearer the west, and the thick black
+clouds assembled in the mountains and descended; their shadow flooded
+the valley with a lake of slatish blue, and presently the sudden
+torrents sluiced down with flashes and the ample thunder of Montana.
+Thus not alone the law against our soldiers firing the first shot in an
+Indian excitement, but now also the elements coincided to help the
+medicine-man&#8217;s destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah sat in a tepee with his father, and as the rain splashed
+heavily on the earth the old man gazed at the young one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you tremble, my son? You have made the white soldier&#8217;s heart
+soft,&#8221; said Pounded Meat. &#8220;You are indeed a great man, my son.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah rose. &#8220;Do not call me your son,&#8221; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>said he. &#8220;That is a lie.&#8221;
+He went out into the fury of the rain, lifting his face against the
+drops, and exultingly calling out at each glare of the lightning. He
+went to Pretty Eagle&#8217;s young squaw, who held off from him no longer, but
+got on a horse, and the two rode into the mountains. Before the sun had
+set, the sky was again utterly blue, and a cool scent rose everywhere in
+the shining valley.</p>
+
+<p>The Crows came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers
+obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move
+across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river
+twelve miles to the post.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They are afraid,&#8221; said new converts. &#8220;Cheschapah&#8217;s rain has made their
+hearts soft.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They have not all gone,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle. &#8220;Maybe he did not make
+enough rain.&#8221; But even Pretty Eagle began to be shaken, and he heard
+several of his brother chiefs during the next few days openly declare
+for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains,
+and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence
+followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of
+them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate
+audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same
+day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers
+were struck by lightning.</p>
+
+<p>When the officers at Fort Custer heard of this they became serious.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If this was not the nineteenth century,&#8221; said Haines, &#8220;I should begin
+to think the elements were deliberately against us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very careless of the weather,&#8221; said Stirling. &#8220;Very inconsiderate,
+at such a juncture.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Yet nothing more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was
+an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave
+the hostiles time to increase both in faith and numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Among the excited Crows only a few wise old men held out. As for
+Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird
+enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who
+believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing
+mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved
+for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and,
+desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day
+there came an order from the agent to all the Indians: they were to come
+in by a certain fixed day. The department commander had assembled six
+hundred troops at the post, and these moved up the river and went into
+camp. The usually empty ridges, and the bottom where the road ran,
+filled with white and red men. Half a mile to the north of the
+buildings, on the first rise from the river, lay the cavalry, and some
+infantry above them with a howitzer, while across the level, three
+hundred yards opposite, along the river-bank, was the main Indian camp.
+Even the hostiles had obeyed the agent&#8217;s order, and came in close to the
+troops, totally unlike hostiles in general; for Cheschapah had told them
+he would protect them with his medicine, and they shouted and sang all
+through this last night. The women joined with harsh cries and
+shriekings, and a scalp-dance went on, besides lesser commotions and
+gatherings, with the throbbing of drums everywhere. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>Through the
+sleepless din ran the barking of a hundred dogs, that herded and hurried
+in crowds of twenty at a time, meeting, crossing from fire to fire among
+the tepees. Their yelps rose to the high bench of land, summoning a
+horde of coyotes. These cringing nomads gathered from the desert in a
+tramp army, and, skulking down the bluffs, sat in their outer darkness
+and ceaselessly howled their long, shrill greeting to the dogs that sat
+in the circle of light. The general sent scouts to find the nature of
+the dance and hubbub, and these brought word it was peaceful; and in the
+morning another scout summoned the elder chiefs to a talk with the
+friend who had come from the Great Father at Washington to see them and
+find if their hearts were good.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our hearts are good,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle. &#8220;We do not want war. If you
+want Cheschapah, we will drive him out from the Crows to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are other young chiefs with bad hearts,&#8221; said the commissioner,
+naming the ringleaders that were known. He made a speech, but Pretty
+Eagle grew sullen. &#8220;It is well,&#8221; said the commissioner; &#8220;you will not
+help me to make things smooth, and now I step aside and the war chief
+will talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you want any other chiefs,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle, &#8220;come and take them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pretty Eagle shall have an hour and a half to think on my words,&#8221; said
+the general. &#8220;I have plenty of men behind me to make my words good. You
+must send me all those Indians who fired at the agency.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Crow chiefs returned to the council, which was apart from the war
+party&#8217;s camp; and Cheschapah walked in among them, and after him,
+slowly, old Pounded Meat, to learn how the conference had gone.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You have made a long talk with the white man,&#8221; said Cheschapah. &#8220;Talk
+is pretty good for old men. I and the young chiefs will fight now and
+kill our enemies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cheschapah,&#8221; said Pounded Meat, &#8220;if your medicine is good, it may be
+the young chiefs will kill our enemies to-day. But there are other days
+to come, and after them still others; there are many, many days. My son,
+the years are a long road. The life of one man is not long, but enough
+to learn this thing truly: the white man will always return. There was a
+day on this river when the dead soldiers of Yellow Hair lay in hills,
+and the squaws of the Sioux warriors climbed among them with their
+knives. What do the Sioux warriors do now when they meet the white man
+on this river? Their hearts are on the ground, and they go home like
+children when the white man says, &#8216;You shall not visit your friends.&#8217; My
+son, I thought war was good once. I have kept you from the arrows of our
+enemies on many trails when you were so little that my blankets were
+enough for both. Your mother was not here any more, and the chiefs
+laughed because I carried you. Oh, my son, I have seen the hearts of the
+Sioux broken by the white man, and I do not think war is good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The talk of Pounded Meat is very good,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle. &#8220;If
+Cheschapah were wise like his father, this trouble would not have come
+to the Crows. But we could not give the white chief so many of our
+chiefs that he asked for to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cheschapah laughed. &#8220;Did he ask for so many? He wanted only Cheschapah,
+who is not wise like Pounded Meat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would have been given to him,&#8221; said Pretty Eagle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Did Pretty Eagle tell the white chief that? Did he say he would give
+Cheschapah? How would he give me? In one hand, or two? Or would the old
+warrior take me to the white man&#8217;s camp on the horse his young squaw
+left?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pretty Eagle raised his rifle, and Pounded Meat, quick as a boy, seized
+the barrel and pointed it up among the poles of the tepee, where the
+quiet black fire smoke was oozing out into the air. &#8220;Have you lived so
+long,&#8221; said Pounded Meat to his ancient comrade, &#8220;and do this in the
+council?&#8221; His wrinkled head and hands shook, the sudden strength left
+him, and the rifle fell free.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let Pretty Eagle shoot,&#8221; said Cheschapah, looking at the council. He
+stood calm, and the seated chiefs turned their grim eyes upon him.
+Certainty was in his face, and doubt in theirs. &#8220;Let him send his bullet
+five times&mdash;ten times. Then I will go and let the white soldiers shoot
+at me until they all lie dead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is heavy for me,&#8221; began Pounded Meat, &#8220;that my friend should be the
+enemy of my son.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell that lie no more,&#8221; said Cheschapah. &#8220;You are not my father. I have
+made the white man blind, and I have softened his heart with the rain. I
+will call the rain to-day.&#8221; He raised his red sword, and there was a
+movement among the sitting figures. &#8220;The clouds will come from my
+father&#8217;s place, where I have talked with him as one chief to another. My
+mother went into the mountains to gather berries. She was young, and the
+thunder-maker saw her face. He brought the black clouds, so her feet
+turned from home, and she walked where the river goes into the great
+walls of the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the
+lightning. You are not the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>father of Cheschapah.&#8221; He dealt Pounded Meat
+a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound
+of Cheschapah&#8217;s galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk
+everything. Their scepticism was conquered.</p>
+
+<p>The medicine-man galloped to his camp of hostiles, and, seeing him, they
+yelled and quickly finished plaiting their horses&#8217; tails. Cheschapah had
+accomplished his wish; he had become the prophet of all the Crows, and
+he led the armies of the faithful. Each man stripped his blanket off and
+painted his body for the fight. The forms slipped in and out of the
+brush, buckling their cartridge-belts, bringing their ponies, while many
+families struck their tepees and moved up nearer the agency. The spare
+horses were run across the river into the hills, and through the yelling
+that shifted and swept like flames along the wind the hostiles made
+ready and gathered, their crowds quivering with motion, and changing
+place and shape as more mounted Indians appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?&#8221; said Cheschapah
+to Two Whistles. &#8220;That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from
+the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They
+are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any
+more than they saw me when I rode among them that day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened
+them to their painted bodies.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will let me go with you?&#8221; said Two Whistles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are my best friend,&#8221; said Cheschapah, &#8220;and to-day I will take you.
+You shall see my great medicine when I make the white man&#8217;s eyes grow
+sick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The two rode forward, and one hundred and fifty <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>followed them, bursting
+from their tepees like an explosion, and rushing along quickly in
+skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw
+the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky,
+and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride
+put him in a sort of trance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The medicine is beginning!&#8221; shouted Cheschapah; and at that Two
+Whistles saw the day grow large with terrible shining, and heard his own
+voice calling and could not stop it. They left the hundred and fifty
+behind, he knew not where or when. He saw the line of troops ahead
+change to separate waiting shapes of men, and their legs and arms become
+plain; then all the guns took clear form in lines of steady glitter. He
+seemed suddenly alone far ahead of the band, but the voice of Cheschapah
+spoke close by his ear through the singing wind, and he repeated each
+word without understanding; he was watching the ground rush by, lest it
+might rise against his face, and all the while he felt his horse&#8217;s
+motion under him, smooth and perpetual. Something weighed against his
+leg, and there was Cheschapah he had forgotten, always there at his
+side, veering him around somewhere. But there was no red sword waving.
+Then the white men must be blind already, wherever they were, and
+Cheschapah, the only thing he could see, sat leaning one hand on his
+horse&#8217;s rump firing a pistol. The ground came swimming towards his eyes
+always, smooth and wide like a gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that
+Cheschapah would not let it sweep him away. He saw a horse without a
+rider floated out of blue smoke, and floated in again with a cracking
+noise; white soldiers moved in a row across his eyes, very small and
+clear, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>and broke into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean
+and empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two
+Whistles saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there
+was nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah&#8217;s head-dress in the
+middle. The horse&#8217;s even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
+head-dress fell out of Two Whistles&#8217; sight, and the earth returned. They
+were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead horse
+on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people everywhere
+outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump on a gray
+pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a red sword
+lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then took it in his
+hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it savagely, and fell
+again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass. But he got on his
+horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at the blood running on
+his body. The horse moved always, and Two Whistles followed with his eye
+a little deeper gush of blood along a crease in his painted skin,
+noticed the flannel, and remembering the lie of his prophet, instantly
+began tearing the red rags from his body, and flinging them to the
+ground with cries of scorn. Presently he heard some voices, and soon one
+voice much nearer, and saw he had come to a new place, where there were
+white soldiers looking at him quietly. One was riding up and telling him
+to give up his pistol. Two Whistles got off and stood behind his horse,
+looking at the pistol. The white soldier came quite near, and at his
+voice Two Whistles moved slowly out from behind the horse, and listened
+to the cool words as the soldier repeated his command. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>The Indian was
+pointing his pistol uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier&#8217;s coat and
+buttons, and the straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre,
+and the white man&#8217;s blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own
+naked, clotted body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it
+into his breast.</p>
+
+<p>Far away up the river, on the right of the line, a lieutenant with two
+men was wading across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with
+his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had
+dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up
+their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing
+breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets&#8217;-nest, and the
+lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life;
+he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in
+among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to
+be sure no hornets remained. Finding them gone, and their dead spirited
+away, he came back on the bank to the one dead Indian, who had a fine
+head-dress, and was still ribanded with gay red streamers of flannel,
+and was worth all the rest of the dead put together, and much more. The
+head lay in the water, and one hand held the rope of the gray pony, who
+stood quiet and uninterested over his fallen rider. They began carrying
+the prize across to the other bank, where many had now collected, among
+others Kinney and the lieutenant&#8217;s captain, who subsequently said, &#8220;I
+found the body of Cheschapah;&#8221; and, indeed, it was a very good thing to
+be able to say.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo3" id="illo3"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i056.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="336" alt="&#8220;THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;This busts the war,&#8221; said Kinney to the captain, as the body was being
+lifted over the Little Horn. &#8220;They know he&#8217;s killed, and they&#8217;ve all
+quit. I was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>up by the tepees near the agency just now, and I could see the hostiles
+jamming back home for dear life. They was chucking their rifles to the
+squaws, and jumping in the river&mdash;ha! ha!&mdash;to wash off their war-paint,
+and each &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; would crawl out and sit innercint in the family
+blanket his squaw had ready. If you was to go there now, cap&#8217;n, you&#8217;d
+find just a lot of harmless Injuns eatin&#8217; supper like all the year
+round. Let me help you, boys, with that carcass.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kinney gave a hand to the lieutenant and men of G troop, First United
+States Cavalry, and they lifted Cheschapah up the bank. In the tilted
+position of the body the cartridge-belt slid a little, and a lump of
+newspaper fell into the stream. Kinney watched it open and float away
+with a momentary effervescence. The dead medicine-man was laid between
+the white and red camps, that all might see he could be killed like
+other people; and this wholesome discovery brought the Crows to terms at
+once. Pretty Eagle had displayed a flag of truce, and now he surrendered
+the guilty chiefs whose hearts had been bad. Every one came where the
+dead prophet lay to get a look at him. For a space of hours Pretty Eagle
+and the many other Crows he had deceived rode by in single file,
+striking him with their whips; after them came a young squaw, and she
+also lashed the upturned face.</p>
+
+<p>This night was untroubled at the agency, and both camps and the valley
+lay quiet in the peaceful dark. Only Pounded Meat, alone on the top of a
+hill, mourned for his son; and his wailing voice sounded through the
+silence until the new day came. Then the general had him stopped and
+brought in, for it might be that the old man&#8217;s noise would unsettle the
+Crows again.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="SPECIMEN_JONES" id="SPECIMEN_JONES"></a>SPECIMEN JONES</h2>
+
+<p>Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a
+man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had
+left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Ca&ntilde;on
+del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim
+might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the ca&ntilde;on, and ended
+among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away by
+this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his
+saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and
+the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him; for
+the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling this
+sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was not
+in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.</p>
+
+<p>Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside
+that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and
+Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to
+widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be
+nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with
+tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>the boy&#8217;s heels,
+and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was
+really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of this&mdash;excepting the
+boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place
+of entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and
+full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his
+funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile&mdash;the only water for twoscore of
+miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the
+southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the
+Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray
+floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two
+desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else.
+Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and
+selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was
+brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the
+glaring vacant months&mdash;some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding
+a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes
+they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons.
+Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore
+knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for
+the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next
+man, and their names, when they had any, would be O&#8217;Rafferty, Angus,
+Schwartzmeyer, Jos&eacute; Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some
+longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one
+stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>Whoever came, and
+whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after
+sundown&mdash;a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in
+Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally.
+This one had paid for everybody&#8217;s drink several times, because he felt
+friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had
+played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him
+dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand
+round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the
+opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the
+beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they
+therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you
+may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good
+tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that
+he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own
+revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster
+at the necessary moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tried to draw on me, did yer?&#8221; said the old gentleman. &#8220;Step higher!
+Step, now, or I&#8217;ll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin&#8217;s egg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thinks he&#8217;s having a bad time,&#8221; remarked Ephraim. &#8220;Wonder how he&#8217;d like
+to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Weren&#8217;t his ear funny?&#8221; said one who had helped bury the man.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo4" id="illo4"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 298px;">
+<img src="images/i062.jpg" class="smallgap" width="298" height="500" alt="AN APACHE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">AN APACHE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ear?&#8221; said Ephraim. &#8220;You boys ought to been along when I found him, and
+seen the way they&#8217;d fixed up his mouth.&#8221; Ephraim explained the details
+simply, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a humorist. &#8220;Wonder how it
+feels,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;to have&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
+hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
+with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
+no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
+often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
+over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
+singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
+in the least. He had seen everything quite often.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,&#8221; remarked the old gentleman to
+the tenderfoot. &#8220;High-yer!&#8221; And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
+scraped the boy&#8217;s boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
+that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Drink to me only with thine eyes,&#8217;&#8221; sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
+did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
+nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he
+was but twenty-six now.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played &#8220;Matamoras,&#8221;
+Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
+the concertina stopped with a quack.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quit it!&#8221; said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
+weapon. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We&#8217;ve
+just got cleaned up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>to the regret of
+Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now
+for the first time he noticed the boy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blamed if he ain&#8217;t neat,&#8221; he said. But interest faded from his eye, and
+he turned again to the wall. &#8220;&#8216;Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,&#8217;&#8221; he
+melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang
+he was always grammatical.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye kin stop, kid,&#8221; said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved
+his pistol into his belt.</p>
+
+<p>The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and
+strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling
+with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. &#8220;Set &#8217;em
+up,&#8221; he said to Ephraim. &#8220;Set &#8217;em up again all round.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the
+old gentleman, still benevolent, said, &#8220;Yer langwidge means pleasanter
+than it sounds, kid.&#8221; He glanced at the boy&#8217;s holster, and knew he need
+not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it
+once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the
+boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot&#8217;s hand
+might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated.
+The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to
+glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the
+line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster,
+handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled
+and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, my regards,&#8221; he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the
+old gentleman&#8217;s arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy
+reached down a lightning <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>hand, caught the old gentleman&#8217;s own pistol,
+and jammed it in his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now you&#8217;ll dance,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whoop!&#8221; exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. &#8220;<i>Blamed</i> if he ain&#8217;t
+neat!&#8221; And Jones&#8217;s handsome face lighted keenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hold on!&#8221; the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was
+mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had
+forgotten their drinks. &#8220;Not one swallow,&#8221; the boy continued. &#8220;No,
+you&#8217;ll not put it down either. You&#8217;ll keep hold of it, and you&#8217;ll dance
+all round this place. Around and around. And don&#8217;t you spill any. And
+I&#8217;ll be thinking what you&#8217;ll do after that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. &#8220;Why, he ain&#8217;t bigger
+than a pint of cider,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Prance away!&#8221; commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the
+old gentleman&#8217;s not widely straddled legs.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You hev the floor, Mr. Adams,&#8221; Jones observed, respectfully, at the old
+gentleman&#8217;s agile leap. &#8220;I&#8217;ll let no man here interrupt you.&#8221; So the
+capering began, and the company stood back to make room. &#8220;I&#8217;ve saw juicy
+things in this Territory,&#8221; continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to himself,
+&#8220;but this combination fills my bill.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye.
+That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud
+as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though
+his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He
+had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna,
+with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and
+always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no
+receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood,
+he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all his
+might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His
+buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman&#8217;s fervent skipping,
+had cooled, and a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave young
+nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no notion that there
+was another American wanderer there, whose reserved and whimsical nature
+he had touched to the heart.</p>
+
+<p>The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment, since he
+was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in that room was
+distinctly against him. The old gentleman was dancing with an ugly eye;
+he had glanced down to see just where his knife hung at his side, and he
+had made some calculations. He had fired four shots; the boy had fired
+one. &#8220;Four and one hez always made five,&#8221; the old gentleman told himself
+with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was going to stop his
+double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy fell straight into
+it. He squandered his last precious bullet on the spittoon near which
+Mr. Adams happened to be at the moment, and the next moment Mr. Adams
+had him by the throat. They swayed and gulped for breath, rutting the
+earth with sharp heels; they rolled to the floor and floundered with
+legs tight tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr. Adams with the
+pistol-butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose nothing, when the
+bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised, and flew across the room,
+harmless, for a foot had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>driven into Mr. Adams&#8217;s arm, and he felt a
+cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth, chilly muzzle of
+Specimen Jones&#8217;s six-shooter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s enough,&#8221; said Jones. &#8220;More than enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
+sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
+the over-strained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
+With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
+plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
+first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
+while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
+ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
+dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like
+a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy&#8217;s wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go easy, son,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I know how you&#8217;re feelin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the quietness
+of the man&#8217;s voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones.
+He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and
+he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern
+revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still
+holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end,
+careless of the risk to his first joint.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, you little &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;,&#8221; said Specimen Jones, caressingly, to the
+hypnotized youth, &#8220;if you was to pop that squirt off at me, I&#8217;d turn you
+up and spank y&#8217;u. Set &#8217;em up, Ephraim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>remembered. His last
+cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim&#8217;s. He had stopped, having
+a little money, on his way to Tucson, where a friend had a job for him,
+and was waiting. He was far too experienced a character ever to sell his
+horse or his saddle on these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as
+if he might, but he never did; and this was what disappointed business
+men like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.</p>
+
+<p>But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and
+Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. &#8220;Why, so I
+haven&#8217;t,&#8221; he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. &#8220;I guess,&#8221;
+he continued, hastily, &#8220;this is worth a dollar or two.&#8221; He drew a chain
+up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a
+little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of years&mdash;not,
+indeed, since it had been placed there originally. &#8220;It ain&#8217;t brass,&#8221; he
+added, lightly, and strewed it along the counter without looking at it.
+Ephraim did look at it, and, being satisfied, began to uncork a new
+bottle, while the punctual audience came up for its drink.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t you please let me treat?&#8221; said the boy, unsteadily. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t
+likely to meet you again, sir.&#8221; Reaction was giving him trouble inside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where are you bound, kid?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, just a ways up the country,&#8221; answered the boy, keeping a grip on
+his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you <i>may</i> get there. Where did you pick up that&mdash;that thing? Your
+pistol, I mean.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a present from a friend,&#8221; replied the tenderfoot, with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Farewell gift, wasn&#8217;t it, kid? Yes; I thought so. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>Now I&#8217;d hate to get
+an affair like that from a friend. It would start me wondering if he
+liked me as well as I&#8217;d always thought he did. Put up that money, kid.
+You&#8217;re drinking with me. Say, what&#8217;s yer name?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cumnor&mdash;J. Cumnor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, J. Cumnor, I&#8217;m glad to know y&#8217;u. Ephraim, let me make you
+acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you&#8217;re rested from your
+quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend. Step around, you Miguels
+and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever y&#8217;u claim your names are. This is
+Mr. J. Cumnor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the spirit of these
+American words, but they drank their drink, and the concertina resumed
+its acrid melody. The boy had taken himself off without being noticed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say, Spec,&#8221; said Ephraim to Jones, &#8220;I&#8217;m no hog. Here&#8217;s yer chain.
+You&#8217;ll be along again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Keep it till I&#8217;m along again,&#8221; said the owner.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just as you say, Spec,&#8221; answered Ephraim, smoothly, and he hung the
+pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-colored lady with
+bright straw hair holding out a bottle of somebody&#8217;s champagne. Specimen
+Jones sang no more songs, but smoked, and leaned in silence on the bar.
+The company were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a
+bucket to clean them for the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Know anything about that kid?&#8221; inquired Jones, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Ephraim shook his head as he washed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Travelling alone, ain&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ephraim nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where did y&#8217;u say y&#8217;u found that fellow layin&#8217; the Injuns got?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Mile this side the ca&ntilde;on. &#8217;Mong them sand-humps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How long had he been there, do y&#8217;u figure?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Three days, anyway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. &#8220;Your clock needs wiping,&#8221;
+he remarked. &#8220;A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way
+the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it&#8217;ll say
+three. That&#8217;s the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, that ain&#8217;t a bad thing to be in this country,&#8221; said Ephraim,
+rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the hands. &#8220;If that man
+had been crazy he&#8217;d been livin&#8217; right now. Injuns&#8217;ll never touch
+lunatics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That band have passed here and gone north,&#8221; Jones said. &#8220;I saw a smoke
+among the foot-hills as I come along day before yesterday. I guess
+they&#8217;re aiming to cross the Santa Catalina. Most likely they&#8217;re that
+band from round the San Carlos that were reported as raiding down in
+Sonora.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I seen well enough,&#8221; said Ephraim, &#8220;when I found him that they wasn&#8217;t
+going to trouble us any, or they&#8217;d have been around by then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was quite right, but Specimen Jones was thinking of something else.
+He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and doubtful. He saw the
+tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans, looming and silent, and a
+little way off the new fence where the man lay. An odd sound startled
+him, though he knew it was no Indians at this hour, and he looked down
+into a little dry ditch. It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach
+among the stones, sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, snakes!&#8221; whispered Specimen Jones, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>stepped back. The Latin
+races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among Saxons tears are a
+horrid event. Jones never knew what to do when it was a woman, but this
+was truly disgusting. He was well seasoned by the frontier, had tried a
+little of everything: town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving,
+marriage occasionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked
+out, and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing upon
+their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very slight. That is
+why he was called Specimen Jones. He had exhausted all the important
+sensations, and did not care much for anything any more. Perfect health
+and strength kept him from discovering that he was a saddened, drifting
+man. He wished to kick the boy for his baby performance, and yet he
+stepped carefully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his
+presence. He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, hell,&#8221; complained Specimen Jones, &#8220;he played the little man to
+start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about
+dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep&#8217; him from bein&#8217; buried early
+to-morrow. I&#8217;ve been wild that way myself, and wantin&#8217; to shoot up the
+whole outfit.&#8221; Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to
+be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. &#8220;But I never&mdash;&#8221; He glanced
+towards the ditch, perplexed. &#8220;What&#8217;s that mean? Why in the world does
+he git to cryin&#8217; for <i>now</i>, do you suppose?&#8221; Jones took to singing
+without knowing it. &#8220;&#8216;Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora
+pass this way?&#8217;&#8221; he murmured. Then a thought struck him. &#8220;Hello, kid!&#8221;
+he called out. There was no answer. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>&#8220;Of course,&#8221; said Jones. &#8220;Now he&#8217;s
+ashamed to hev me see him come out of there.&#8221; He walked with elaborate
+slowness round the corral and behind a shed. &#8220;Hello, you kid!&#8221; he called
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was thinking of going to sleep,&#8221; said the boy, appearing quite
+suddenly. &#8220;I&mdash;I&#8217;m not used to riding all day. I&#8217;ll get used to it, you
+know,&#8221; he hastened to add.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Ha-ve you seen my Flo&#8217;&mdash;Say, kid, where y&#8217;u bound, anyway?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;San Carlos.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;San Carlos? Oh. Ah. &#8216;Flora pass this way?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it far, sir?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Awful far, sometimes. It&#8217;s always liable to be far through the Arivaypa
+Ca&ntilde;on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t expect to make it between meals,&#8221; remarked Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No. Sure. What made you come this route?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A man told me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A man? Oh. Well, it <i>is</i> kind o&#8217; difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan
+not to lie to a stranger. But I think I&#8217;d have told you to go by Tres
+Alamos and Point of Mountain. It&#8217;s the road the man that told you would
+choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cumnor snapped eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course y&#8217;u do. And you&#8217;ve never saw one in the whole
+minute-and-a-half you&#8217;ve been alive. I know all about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not afraid,&#8221; said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not afraid? Of course y&#8217;u ain&#8217;t. What&#8217;s your idea in going to Carlos?
+Got town lots there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones.
+&#8220;There&#8217;s a man there I used <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>to know back home. He&#8217;s in the cavalry.
+What sort of a town is it for sport?&#8221; asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Town</i>?&#8221; Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral.
+&#8220;<i>Sport?</i> Now I&#8217;ll tell y&#8217;u what sort of a town it is. There ain&#8217;t no
+streets. There ain&#8217;t no houses. There ain&#8217;t any land and water in the
+usual meaning of them words. There&#8217;s Mount Turnbull. It&#8217;s pretty near a
+usual mountain, but y&#8217;u don&#8217;t want to go there. The Creator didn&#8217;t make
+San Carlos. It&#8217;s a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after
+slickin&#8217; up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He
+found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come
+along. He &#8217;ain&#8217;t done any work around that spot at all, He &#8217;ain&#8217;t. Mix
+up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and
+rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer
+stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place
+chasin&#8217; Apaches, and you&#8217;ve got San Carlos.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cumnor was silent for a moment. &#8220;I don&#8217;t care,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I want to
+chase Apaches.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you see that man Ephraim found by the ca&ntilde;on?&#8221; Jones inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t get here in time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, there was a hole in his chest made by an arrow. But there&#8217;s no
+harm in that if you die at wunst. That chap didn&#8217;t, y&#8217;u see. You heard
+Ephraim tell about it. They&#8217;d done a number of things to the man before
+he could die. Roastin&#8217; was only one of &#8217;em. Now your road takes you
+through the mountains where these Injuns hev gone. Kid, come along to
+Tucson with me,&#8221; urged Jones, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>Again Cumnor was silent. &#8220;Is my road different from other people&#8217;s?&#8221; he
+said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not to Grant, it ain&#8217;t. These Mexicans are hauling freight to Grant.
+But what&#8217;s the matter with your coming to Tucson with me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I started to go to San Carlos, and I&#8217;m going,&#8221; said Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a poor chuckle-headed fool!&#8221; burst out Jones, in a rage. &#8220;And
+y&#8217;u can go, for all I care&mdash;you and your Christmas-tree pistol. Like as
+not you won&#8217;t find your cavalry friend at San Carlos. They&#8217;ve killed a
+lot of them soldiers huntin&#8217; Injuns this season. Good-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Specimen Jones was gone. Cumnor walked to his blanket-roll, where his
+saddle was slung under the shed. The various doings of the evening had
+bruised his nerves. He spread his blankets among the dry cattle-dung,
+and sat down, taking off a few clothes slowly. He lumped his coat and
+overalls under his head for a pillow, and, putting the despised pistol
+alongside, lay between the blankets. No object showed in the night but
+the tall freight-wagon. The tenderfoot thought he had made altogether a
+fool of himself upon the first trial trip of his manhood, alone on the
+open sea of Arizona. No man, not even Jones now, was his friend. A
+stranger, who could have had nothing against him but his inexperience,
+had taken the trouble to direct him on the wrong road. He did not mind
+definite enemies. He had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and
+would not object to shooting them here; but this impersonal, surrounding
+hostility of the unknown was new and bitter: the cruel, assassinating,
+cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom the vigilantes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>had driven from California. He thought of the nameless human carcass
+that lay near, buried that day, and of the jokes about its mutilations.
+Cumnor was not an innocent boy, either in principles or in practice, but
+this laughter about a dead body had burned into his young, unhardened
+soul. He lay watching with hot, dogged eyes the brilliant stars. A
+passing wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and
+ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly, for the next he
+knew it was the cold air of dawn that made him open his eyes. A numb
+silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot had that moment of
+curiosity as to where he was now which comes to those who have journeyed
+for many days. The Mexicans had already departed with their
+freight-wagon. It was not entirely light, and the embers where these
+early starters had cooked their breakfast lay glowing in the sand across
+the road. The boy remembered seeing a wagon where now he saw only chill,
+distant peaks, and while he lay quiet and warm, shunning full
+consciousness, there was a stir in the cabin, and at Ephraim&#8217;s voice
+reality broke upon his drowsiness, and he recollected Arizona and the
+keen stress of shifting for himself. He noted the gray paling round the
+grave. Indians? He would catch up with the Mexicans, and travel in their
+company to Grant. Freighters made but fifteen miles in the day, and he
+could start after breakfast and be with them before they stopped to
+noon. Six men need not worry about Apaches, Cumnor thought. The voice of
+Specimen Jones came from the cabin, and sounds of lighting the stove,
+and the growling conversation of men getting up. Cumnor, lying in his
+blankets, tried to overhear what Jones was saying, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>for no better reason
+than that this was the only man he had met lately who had seemed to care
+whether he were alive or dead. There was the clink of Ephraim&#8217;s
+whiskey-bottles, and the cheerful tones of old Mr. Adams, saying, &#8220;It&#8217;s
+better &#8217;n brushin&#8217; yer teeth&#8221;; and then further clinking, and an inquiry
+from Specimen Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whose spurs?&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mine.&#8221; This from Mr. Adams.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How long have they been yourn?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since I got &#8217;em, I guess.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;ve enjoyed them spurs long enough.&#8221; The voice of Specimen
+Jones now altered in quality. &#8220;And you&#8217;ll give &#8217;em back to that kid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Muttering followed that the boy could not catch. &#8220;You&#8217;ll give &#8217;em back,&#8221;
+repeated Jones. &#8220;I seen y&#8217;u lift &#8217;em from under that chair when I was in
+the corner.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s straight, Mr. Adams,&#8221; said Ephraim. &#8220;I noticed it myself, though
+I had no objections, of course. But Mr. Jones has pointed out&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since when have you growed so honest, Jones?&#8221; cackled Mr. Adams, seeing
+that he must lose his little booty. &#8220;And why didn&#8217;t you raise yer
+objections when you seen me do it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know the kid,&#8221; Jones explained. &#8220;And if it don&#8217;t strike you
+that game blood deserves respect, why it does strike me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo5" id="illo5"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i078.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="401" alt="CUMNOR&#8217;S AWAKENING" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CUMNOR&#8217;S AWAKENING</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Hearing this, the tenderfoot, outside in his shed, thought better of
+mankind and life in general, arose from his nest, and began preening
+himself. He had all the correct trappings for the frontier, and his
+toilet in the shed gave him pleasure. The sun came up, and with a stroke
+struck the world to crystal. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>The near sand-hills went into rose, the crabbed yucca and the mesquite
+turned transparent, with lances and pale films of green, like drapery
+graciously veiling the desert&#8217;s face, and distant violet peaks and edges
+framed the vast enchantment beneath the liquid exhalations of the sky.
+The smell of bacon and coffee from open windows filled the heart with
+bravery and yearning, and Ephraim, putting his head round the corner,
+called to Cumnor that he had better come in and eat. Jones, already at
+table, gave him the briefest nod; but the spurs were there, replaced as
+Cumnor had left them under a chair in the corner. In Arizona they do not
+say much at any meal, and at breakfast nothing at all; and as Cumnor
+swallowed and meditated, he noticed the cream-colored lady and the
+chain, and he made up his mind he should assert his identity with regard
+to that business, though how and when was not clear to him. He was in no
+great haste to take up his journey. The society of the Mexicans whom he
+must sooner or later overtake did not tempt him. When breakfast was done
+he idled in the cabin, like the other guests, while Ephraim and his
+assistant busied about the premises. But the morning grew on, and the
+guests, after a season of smoking and tilted silence against the wall,
+shook themselves and their effects together, saddled, and were lost
+among the waste thorny hills. Twenty Mile became hot and torpid. Jones
+lay on three consecutive chairs, occasionally singing, and old Mr. Adams
+had not gone away either, but watched him, with more tobacco running
+down his beard.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Cumnor, &#8220;I&#8217;ll be going.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nobody&#8217;s stopping y&#8217;u,&#8221; remarked Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to Tucson?&#8221; the boy said, with the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>chain problem still
+unsolved in his mind. &#8220;Good-bye, Mr. Jones. I hope I&#8217;ll&mdash;we&#8217;ll&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;ll do,&#8221; said Jones; and the tenderfoot, thrown back by this
+severity, went to get his saddle-horse and his burro.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Jones remarked to Mr. Adams that he wondered what Ephraim was
+doing, and went out. The old gentleman was left alone in the room, and
+he swiftly noticed that the belt and pistol of Specimen Jones were left
+alone with him. The accoutrement lay by the chair its owner had been
+lounging in. It is an easy thing to remove cartridges from the chambers
+of a revolver, and replace the weapon in its holster so that everything
+looks quite natural. The old gentleman was entertained with the notion
+that somewhere in Tucson Specimen Jones might have a surprise, and he
+did not take a minute to prepare this, drop the belt as it lay before,
+and saunter innocently out of the saloon. Ephraim and Jones were
+criticising the tenderfoot&#8217;s property as he packed his burro.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do y&#8217;u make it a rule to travel with ice-cream?&#8221; Jones was inquiring.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re for water,&#8221; Cumnor said. &#8220;They told me at Tucson I&#8217;d need to
+carry water for three days on some trails.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was two good-sized milk-cans that he had, and they bounced about on
+the little burro&#8217;s pack, giving him as much amazement as a jackass can
+feel. Jones and Ephraim were hilarious.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t go without your spurs, Mr. Cumnor,&#8221; said the voice of old Mr.
+Adams, as he approached the group. His tone was particularly civil.</p>
+
+<p>The tenderfoot had, indeed, forgotten his spurs, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>he ran back to get
+them. The cream-colored lady still had the chain hanging upon her, and
+Cumnor&#8217;s problem was suddenly solved. He put the chain in his pocket,
+and laid the price of one round of drinks for last night&#8217;s company on
+the shelf below the chromo. He returned with his spurs on, and went to
+his saddle that lay beside that of Specimen Jones under the shed. After
+a moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his
+pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in
+the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale
+bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile
+said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference,
+and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for a last look
+at Jones, he turned once, and saw the three standing, and the chocolate
+brick of the cabin, and the windmill white and idle in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll be gutted by night,&#8221; remarked Mr. Adams.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t buryin&#8217; him, then,&#8221; said Ephraim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nor I,&#8221; said Specimen Jones. &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s time I was getting to Tucson.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went to the saloon, strapped on his pistol, saddled, and rode away.
+Ephraim and Mr. Adams returned to the cabin; and here is the final
+conclusion they came to after three hours of discussion as to who took
+the chain and who had it just then:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Ephraim.</i> Jones, he hadn&#8217;t no cash.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Adams.</i> The kid, he hadn&#8217;t no sense.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ephraim.</i> The kid, he lent the cash to Jones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Adams.</i> Jones, he goes off with his chain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Both.</i> What damn fools everybody is, anyway!</p></div>
+
+<p>And they went to dinner. But Mr. Adams did not mention his relations
+with Jones&#8217;s pistol. Let it be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>said, in extenuation of that
+performance, that Mr. Adams supposed Jones was going to Tucson, where he
+said he was going, and where a job and a salary were awaiting him. In
+Tucson an unloaded pistol in the holster of so handy a man on the drop
+as was Specimen would keep people civil, because they would not know,
+any more than the owner, that it was unloaded; and the mere possession
+of it would be sufficient in nine chances out of ten&mdash;though it was
+undoubtedly for the tenth that Mr. Adams had a sneaking hope. But
+Specimen Jones was not going to Tucson. A contention in his mind as to
+whether he would do what was good for himself, or what was good for
+another, had kept him sullen ever since he got up. Now it was settled,
+and Jones in serene humor again. Of course he had started on the Tucson
+road, for the benefit of Ephraim and Mr. Adams.</p>
+
+<p>The tenderfoot rode along. The Arizona sun beat down upon the deadly
+silence, and the world was no longer of crystal, but a mesa, dull and
+gray and hot. The pony&#8217;s hoofs grated in the gravel, and after a time
+the road dived down and up among lumpy hills of stone and cactus, always
+nearer the fierce glaring Sierra Santa Catalina. It dipped so abruptly
+in and out of the shallow sudden ravines that, on coming up from one of
+these into sight of the country again, the tenderfoot&#8217;s heart jumped at
+the close apparition of another rider quickly bearing in upon him from
+gullies where he had been moving unseen. But it was only Specimen Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221; said he, joining Cumnor. &#8220;Hot, ain&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going?&#8221; inquired Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Up here a ways.&#8221; And Jones jerked his finger generally towards the
+Sierra, where they were heading.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Thought you had a job in Tucson.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I have.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Specimen Jones had no more to say, and they rode for a while, their
+ponies&#8217; hoofs always grating in the gravel, and the milk-cans lightly
+clanking on the burro&#8217;s pack. The bunched blades of the yuccas bristled
+steel-stiff, and as far as you could see it was a gray waste of mounds
+and ridges sharp and blunt, up to the forbidding boundary walls of the
+Tortilita one way and the Santa Catalina the other. Cumnor wondered if
+Jones had found the chain. Jones was capable of not finding it for
+several weeks, or of finding it at once and saying nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll excuse my meddling with your business?&#8221; the boy hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>Jones looked inquiring.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Something&#8217;s wrong with your saddle-pocket.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Specimen saw nothing apparently wrong with it, but perceiving Cumnor was
+grinning, unbuckled the pouch. He looked at the boy rapidly, and looked
+away again, and as he rode, still in silence, he put the chain back
+round his neck below the flannel shirt-collar.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say, kid,&#8221; he remarked, after some time, &#8220;what does J stand for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;J? Oh, my name! Jock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Jock, will y&#8217;u explain to me as a friend how y&#8217;u ever come to be
+such a fool as to leave yer home&mdash;wherever and whatever it was&mdash;in
+exchange for this here God-forsaken and iniquitous hole?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ll explain to me,&#8221; said the boy, greatly heartened, &#8220;how you
+come to be ridin&#8217; in the company of a fool, instead of goin&#8217; to your job
+at Tucson.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The explanation was furnished before Specimen Jones had framed his
+reply. A burning freight-wagon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>and five dismembered human stumps lay in
+the road. This was what had happened to the Miguels and Serapios and the
+concertina. Jones and Cumnor, in their dodging and struggles to exclude
+all expressions of growing mutual esteem from their speech, had
+forgotten their journey, and a sudden bend among the rocks where the
+road had now brought them revealed the blood and fire staring them in
+the face. The plundered wagon was three parts empty; its splintered,
+blazing boards slid down as they burned into the fiery heap on the
+ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them,
+bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed
+in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the
+garbage of combat and murder littered the earth, and in the air hung an
+odor that Cumnor knew, though he had never smelled it before. Morsels of
+dropped booty up among the rocks showed where the Indians had gone, and
+one horse remained, groaning, with an accidental arrow in his belly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll just kill him,&#8221; said Jones; and his pistol snapped idly, and
+snapped again, as his eye caught a motion&mdash;a something&mdash;two hundred
+yards up among the bowlders on the hill. He whirled round. The enemy was
+behind them also. There was no retreat. &#8220;Yourn&#8217;s no good!&#8221; yelled Jones,
+fiercely, for Cumnor was getting out his little, foolish revolver. &#8220;Oh,
+what a trick to play on a man! Drop off yer horse, kid; drop, and do
+like me. Shootin&#8217;s no good here, even if I was loaded. <i>They</i> shot, and
+look at them now. God bless them ice-cream freezers of yourn, kid! Did
+y&#8217;u ever see a crazy man? If you &#8217;ain&#8217;t, <i>make it up as y&#8217;u go along</i>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo6" id="illo6"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i086.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="320" alt="THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>More objects moved up among the bowlders. Specimen <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>Jones ripped off the burro&#8217;s pack, and the milk-cans rolled on the
+ground. The burro began grazing quietly, with now and then a step
+towards new patches of grass. The horses stood where their riders had
+left them, their reins over their heads, hanging and dragging. From two
+hundred yards on the hill the ambushed Apaches showed, their dark,
+scattered figures appearing cautiously one by one, watching with
+suspicion. Specimen Jones seized up one milk-can, and Cumnor obediently
+did the same.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You kin dance, kid, and I kin sing, and we&#8217;ll go to it,&#8221; said Jones. He
+rambled in a wavering loop, and diving eccentrically at Cumnor, clashed
+the milk-cans together. &#8220;&#8216;Es schallt ein Ruf wie Donnerhall,&#8217;&#8221; he
+bawled, beginning the song of &#8220;Die Wacht am Rhein.&#8221; &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you
+dance?&#8221; he shouted, sternly. The boy saw the terrible earnestness of his
+face, and, clashing his milk-cans in turn, he shuffled a sort of jig.
+The two went over the sand in loops, toe and heel; the donkey continued
+his quiet grazing, and the flames rose hot and yellow from the
+freight-wagon. And all the while the stately German hymn pealed among
+the rocks, and the Apaches crept down nearer the bowing, scraping men.
+The sun shone bright, and their bodies poured with sweat. Jones flung
+off his shirt; his damp, matted hair was half in ridges and half glued
+to his forehead, and the delicate gold chain swung and struck his broad,
+naked breast. The Apaches drew nearer again, their bows and arrows held
+uncertainly. They came down the hill, fifteen or twenty, taking a long
+time, and stopping every few yards. The milk-cans clashed, and Jones
+thought he felt the boy&#8217;s strokes weakening. &#8220;Die Wacht am Rhein&#8221; was
+finished, and now it was &#8220;&#8216;Ha-ve you seen my Flora pass <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>this way?&#8217;&#8221;
+&#8220;Y&#8217;u mustn&#8217;t play out, kid,&#8221; said Jones, very gently. &#8220;Indeed y&#8217;u
+mustn&#8217;t;&#8221; and he at once resumed his song. The silent Apaches had now
+reached the bottom of the hill. They stood some twenty yards away, and
+Cumnor had a good chance to see his first Indians. He saw them move, and
+the color and slim shape of their bodies, their thin arms, and their
+long, black hair. It went through his mind that if he had no more
+clothes on than that, dancing would come easier. His boots were growing
+heavy to lift, and his overalls seemed to wrap his sinews in wet,
+strangling thongs. He wondered how long he had been keeping this up. The
+legs of the Apaches were free, with light moccasins only half-way to the
+thigh, slenderly held up by strings from the waist. Cumnor envied their
+unencumbered steps as he saw them again walk nearer to where he was
+dancing. It was long since he had eaten, and he noticed a singing
+dulness in his brain, and became frightened at his thoughts, which were
+running and melting into one fixed idea. This idea was to take off his
+boots, and offer to trade them for a pair of moccasins. It terrified
+him&mdash;this endless, molten rush of thoughts; he could see them coming in
+different shapes from different places in his head, but they all joined
+immediately, and always formed the same fixed idea. He ground his teeth
+to master this encroaching inebriation of his will and judgment. He
+clashed his can more loudly to wake him to reality, which he still could
+recognize and appreciate. For a time he found it a good plan to listen
+to what Specimen Jones was singing, and tell himself the name of the
+song, if he knew it. At present it was &#8220;Yankee Doodle,&#8221; to which Jones
+was fitting words of his own. These ran, &#8220;Now I&#8217;m going <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>to try a bluff.
+And mind you do what I do&#8221;; and then again, over and over. Cumnor waited
+for the word &#8220;bluff&#8221;; for it was hard and heavy, and fell into his
+thoughts, and stopped them for a moment. The dance was so long now he
+had forgotten about that. A numbness had been spreading through his
+legs, and he was glad to feel a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. It
+was a piece of gravel that had somehow worked its way in, and was
+rubbing through the skin into the flesh. &#8220;That&#8217;s good,&#8221; he said, aloud.
+The pebble was eating the numbness away, and Cumnor drove it hard
+against the raw spot, and relished the tonic of its burning friction.
+The Apaches had drawn into a circle. Standing at some interval apart,
+they entirely surrounded the arena. Shrewd, half convinced, and yet with
+awe, they watched the dancers, who clashed their cans slowly now in
+rhythm to Jones&#8217;s hoarse, parched singing. He was quite master of
+himself, and led the jig round the still blazing wreck of the wagon, and
+circled in figures of eight between the corpses of the Mexicans,
+clashing the milk-cans above each one. Then, knowing his strength was
+coming to an end, he approached an Indian whose splendid fillet and
+trappings denoted him of consequence; and Jones was near shouting with
+relief when the Indian shrank backward. Suddenly he saw Cumnor let his
+can drop, and without stopping to see why, he caught it up, and, slowly
+rattling both, approached each Indian in turn with tortuous steps. The
+circle that had never uttered a sound till now receded, chanting almost
+in a whisper some exorcising song which the man with the fillet had
+begun. They gathered round him, retreating always, and the strain, with
+its rapid muttered words, rose and fell softly among them. Jones had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>supposed the boy was overcome by faintness, and looked to see where he
+lay. But it was not faintness. Cumnor, with his boots off, came by and
+walked after the Indians in a trance. They saw him, and quickened their
+pace, often turning to be sure he was not overtaking them. He called to
+them unintelligibly, stumbling up the sharp hill, and pointing to the
+boots. Finally he sat down. They continued ascending the mountain,
+herding close round the man with the feathers, until the rocks and the
+filmy tangles screened them from sight; and like a wind that hums
+uncertainly in grass, their chanting died away.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was half behind the western range when Jones next moved. He
+called, and, getting no answer, he crawled painfully to where the boy
+lay on the hill. Cumnor was sleeping heavily; his head was hot, and he
+moaned. So Jones crawled down, and fetched blankets and the canteen of
+water. He spread the blankets over the boy, wet a handkerchief and laid
+it on his forehead; then he lay down himself.</p>
+
+<p>The earth was again magically smitten to crystal. Again the sharp cactus
+and the sand turned beautiful, and violet floated among the mountains,
+and rose-colored orange in the sky above them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jock,&#8221; said Specimen at length.</p>
+
+<p>The boy opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your foot is awful, Jock. Can y&#8217;u eat?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not with my foot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, God bless y&#8217;u, Jock! Y&#8217;u ain&#8217;t turruble sick. But <i>can</i> y&#8217;u eat?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cumnor shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Eatin&#8217;s what y&#8217;u need, though. Well, here.&#8221; Specimen poured a judicious
+mixture of whiskey and water down the boy&#8217;s throat, and wrapped the
+awful <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>foot in his own flannel shirt. &#8220;They&#8217;ll fix y&#8217;u over to Grant.
+It&#8217;s maybe twelve miles through the ca&ntilde;on. It ain&#8217;t a town any more than
+Carlos is, but the soldiers&#8217;ll be good to us. As soon as night comes you
+and me must somehow git out of this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow they did, Jones walking and leading his horse and the
+imperturbable little burro, and also holding Cumnor in the saddle. And
+when Cumnor was getting well in the military hospital at Grant, he
+listened to Jones recounting to all that chose to hear how useful a
+weapon an ice-cream freezer can be, and how if you&#8217;ll only chase Apaches
+in your stocking feet they are sure to run away. And then Jones and
+Cumnor both enlisted; and I suppose Jones&#8217;s friend is still expecting
+him in Tucson.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_SERENADE_AT_SISKIYOU" id="THE_SERENADE_AT_SISKIYOU"></a>THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU</h2>
+
+<p>Unskilled at murder and without training in running away, one of the two
+Healy boys had been caught with ease soon after their crime. What they
+had done may be best learned in the following extract from a certain
+official report:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The stage was within five miles of its destination when it was
+confronted by the usual apparition of a masked man levelling a
+double-barrelled shot-gun at the driver, and the order to &#8216;Pull up, and
+throw out the express box.&#8217; The driver promptly complied. Meanwhile the
+guard, Buck Montgomery, who occupied a seat inside, from which he caught
+a glimpse of what was going on, opened fire at the robber, who dropped
+to his knees at the first shot, but a moment later discharged both
+barrels of his gun at the stage. The driver dropped from his seat to the
+foot-board with five buckshot in his right leg near the knee, and two in
+his left leg; a passenger by his side also dropped with three or four
+buckshot in his legs. Before the guard could reload, two shots came from
+behind the bushes back of the exposed robber, and Buck fell to the
+bottom of the stage mortally wounded&mdash;shot through the back. The whole
+murderous sally occupied but a few seconds, and the order came to &#8216;Drive
+on.&#8217; Officers and citizens quickly started in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>pursuit, and the next day
+one of the robbers, a well-known young man of that vicinity, son of a
+respectable farmer in Fresno County, was overtaken and arrested.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Feeling had run high in the streets of Siskiyou when the prisoner was
+brought into town, and the wretch&#8217;s life had come near a violent end at
+the hands of the mob, for Buck Montgomery had many friends. But the
+steadier citizens preserved the peace, and the murderer was in the
+prison awaiting his trial by formal law. It was now some weeks since the
+tragedy, and Judge Campbell sat at breakfast reading his paper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, that is excellent!&#8221; he suddenly exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May I ask what is excellent, judge?&#8221; inquired his wife. She had a big
+nose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve caught the other one, Amanda. Got him last evening in a
+restaurant at Woodland.&#8221; The judge read the paragraph to Mrs. Campbell,
+who listened severely. &#8220;And so,&#8221; he concluded, &#8220;when to-night&#8217;s train
+gets up, we&#8217;ll have them both safe in jail.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Campbell dallied over her eggs, shaking her head. Presently she
+sighed. But as Amanda often did this, her husband finished his own eggs
+and took some more. &#8220;Poor boy!&#8221; said the lady, pensively. &#8220;Only
+twenty-three last 12th of October. What a cruel fate!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Now the judge supposed she referred to the murdered man. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;Vile. You&#8217;ve got him romantically young, my dear. I understood he was
+thirty-five.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know his age perfectly, Judge Campbell. I made it my business to find
+out. And to think his brother might actually have been lynched!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I never knew that either. You seem to have found out all about the
+family, Amanda. What were they going to lynch the brother for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the
+table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. &#8220;Judge Campbell!&#8221;
+she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain
+herself, if possible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, my dear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who
+was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I
+ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; said the enlightened judge.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&mdash;Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of
+Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those
+yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails,
+and made those wicked men stop and go home?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Amanda, I believe I recognize myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they&#8217;ve caught the
+other one, and he&#8217;ll be up with the sheriff on to-night&#8217;s train, and I
+suppose they&#8217;ll lynch <i>him</i> now!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s not the slightest danger,&#8221; said the judge. &#8220;The town wants them
+to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an
+atrocious act&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,&#8221;
+interrupted Amanda.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh yes!&#8221; said Mrs. Campbell, with impatience. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>&#8220;I saw the hole in his
+back. You needn&#8217;t tell me all that again. If he&#8217;d thrown out the express
+box quicker they wouldn&#8217;t have hurt a hair of his head. Wells and
+Fargo&#8217;s messengers know that perfectly. It was his own fault. Those boys
+had no employment, and they only wanted money. They did not seek human
+blood, and you needn&#8217;t tell me they did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They shed it, however, Amanda. Quite a lot of it. Stage-driver and a
+passenger too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you keep going back to that as if they&#8217;d all been murdered instead
+of only one, and you don&#8217;t care about those two poor boys locked in a
+dungeon, and their gray-haired father down in Fresno County who never
+did anything wrong at all, and he sixty-one in December.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The county isn&#8217;t thinking of hanging the old gentleman,&#8221; said the
+judge.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That will do, Judge Campbell,&#8221; said his lady, rising. &#8220;I shall say no
+more. Total silence for the present is best for you and best for me.
+Much best. I will leave you to think of your speech, which was by no
+means silver. Not even life with you for twenty-five years this coming
+10th of July has inured me to insult. I am capable of understanding whom
+they think of hanging, and your speaking to me as if I did not does you
+little credit; for it was a mere refuge from a woman&#8217;s just accusation
+of heartlessness which you felt, and like a man would not acknowledge;
+and therefore it is that I say no more but leave you to go down the
+street to the Ladies&#8217; Lyceum where I shall find companions with some
+spark of humanity in their bosoms and milk of human kindness for those
+whose hasty youth has plunged them in misery and delivered them to the
+hands of those <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of
+nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be
+shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by cruelty and
+despair.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It had begun stately as a dome, with symmetry and punctuation, but the
+climax was untrammelled by a single comma. The orator swept from the
+room, put on her bonnet and shawl, and the judge, still sitting with his
+eggs, heard the front door close behind her. She was president of the
+Ladies&#8217; Reform and Literary Lyceum, and she now trod thitherward through
+Siskiyou.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think Amanda will find companions there,&#8221; mused the judge. &#8220;But her
+notions of sympathy beat me.&#8221; The judge had a small, wise blue eye, and
+he liked his wife more than well. She was sincerely good, and had been
+very courageous in their young days of poverty. She loved their son, and
+she loved him. Only, when she took to talking, he turned up a mental
+coat-collar and waited. But if the male sex did not appreciate her
+powers of eloquence her sister citizens did; and Mrs. Campbell, besides
+presiding at the Ladies&#8217; Reform and Literary Lyceum in Siskiyou, often
+addressed female meetings in Ashland, Yreka, and even as far away as
+Tehama and Redding. She found companions this morning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To think of it!&#8221; they exclaimed, at her news of the capture, for none
+had read the paper. They had been too busy talking of the next debate,
+which was upon the question, &#8220;Ought we to pray for rain?&#8221; But now they
+instantly forgot the wide spiritual issues raised by this inquiry, and
+plunged into the fascinations of crime, reciting once more to each other
+the details of the recent tragedy. The room hired for the Lyceum <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>was in
+a second story above the apothecary and book shop&mdash;a combined enterprise
+in Siskiyou&mdash;and was furnished with fourteen rocking-chairs. Pictures of
+Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott ornamented the wall, with a photograph
+from an old master representing Leda and the Swan. This typified the
+Lyceum&#8217;s approval of Art, and had been presented by one of the husbands
+upon returning from a three days&#8217; business trip to San Francisco.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear! dear!&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons, after they had all shuddered anew over
+the shooting and the blood. &#8220;With so much suffering in the world, how
+fulsome seems that gay music!&#8221; She referred to the Siskiyou brass-band,
+which was rehearsing the march from &#8220;Fatinitza&#8221; in an adjacent room in
+the building. Mrs. Parsons had large, mournful eyes, a poetic
+vocabulary, and wanted to be president of the Lyceum herself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Melody has its sphere, Gertrude,&#8221; said Mrs. Campbell, in a wholesome
+voice. &#8220;We must not be morbid. But this I say to you, one and all: Since
+the men of Siskiyou refuse, it is for the women to vindicate the town&#8217;s
+humanity, and show some sympathy for the captive who arrives to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They all thought so too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not criticise,&#8221; continued their president, magnanimously, &#8220;nor do
+I complain of any one. Each in this world has his or her mission, and
+the most sacred is Woman&#8217;s own&mdash;to console!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;True, true!&#8221; murmured Mrs. Slocum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must do something for the prisoner, to show him we do not desert him
+in his hour of need,&#8221; Mrs. Campbell continued.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll go and meet the train!&#8221; Mrs. Slocum exclaimed, eagerly. &#8220;I&#8217;ve
+never seen a real murderer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;A bunch of flowers for him,&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons, closing her mournful
+eyes. &#8220;Roses.&#8221; And she smiled faintly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, lilies!&#8221; cried little Mrs. Day, with rapture. &#8220;Lilies would look
+<i>real</i> nice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you think,&#8221; said Miss Sissons, who had not spoken before, and sat
+a little apart from the close-drawn clump of talkers, &#8220;that we might
+send the widow some flowers too, some time?&#8221; Miss Sissons was a pretty
+girl, with neat hair. She was engaged to the captain of Siskiyou&#8217;s
+baseball nine.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The widow?&#8221; Mrs. Campbell looked vague.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mrs. Montgomery, I mean&mdash;the murdered man&#8217;s wife. I&mdash;I went to see if I
+could do anything, for she has some children; but she wouldn&#8217;t see me,&#8221;
+said Miss Sissons. &#8220;She said she couldn&#8217;t talk to anybody.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor thing!&#8221; said Mrs. Campbell. &#8220;I dare say it was a dreadful shock to
+her. Yes, dear, we&#8217;ll attend to her after a while. We&#8217;ll have her with
+us right along, you know, whereas these unhappy boys may&mdash;may be&mdash;may
+soon meet a cruel death on the scaffold.&#8221; Mrs. Campbell evaded the
+phrase &#8220;may be hanged&#8221; rather skilfully. To her trained oratorical sense
+it had seemed to lack dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So young!&#8221; said Mrs. Day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And both so full of promise, to be cut off!&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, they can&#8217;t hang them both, I should think,&#8221; said Miss Sissons. &#8220;I
+thought only one killed Mr. Montgomery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My dear Louise,&#8221; said Mrs. Campbell, &#8220;they can do anything they want,
+and they will. Shall I ever forget those ruffians who wanted to lynch
+the first one? They&#8217;ll be on the jury!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p><p>The clump returned to their discussion of the flowers, and Miss Sissons
+presently mentioned she had some errands to do, and departed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would that that girl had more soul!&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She has plenty of soul,&#8221; replied Mrs. Campbell, &#8220;but she&#8217;s under the
+influence of a man. Well, as I was saying, roses and lilies are too
+big.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <i>why</i>?&#8221; said Mrs. Day. &#8220;They would <i>please</i> him so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He couldn&#8217;t carry them, Mrs. Day. I&#8217;ve thought it all out. He&#8217;ll be
+walked to the jail between strong men. We must have some small bokay to
+pin on his coat, for his hands will be shackled.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t say!&#8221; cried Mrs. Slocum. &#8220;How awful! I must get to that
+train. I&#8217;ve never seen a man in shackles in my life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So violets were selected; Mrs. Campbell brought some in the afternoon
+from her own borders, and Mrs. Parsons furnished a large pin. She
+claimed also the right to affix the decoration upon the prisoner&#8217;s
+breast because she had suggested the idea of flowers; but the other
+ladies protested, and the president seemed to think that they all should
+draw lots. It fell to Mrs. Day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now I declare!&#8221; twittered the little matron. &#8220;I do believe I&#8217;ll never
+dare.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must say something to him,&#8221; said Amanda; &#8220;something fitting and
+choice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh dear no, Mrs. Campbell. Why, I never&mdash;my gracious! Why, if I&#8217;d known
+I was expected&mdash;Really, I couldn&#8217;t think&mdash;I&#8217;ll let <i>you</i> do it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We can&#8217;t hash up the ceremony that way, Mrs. Day,&#8221; said Amanda,
+severely. And as they all fell arguing, the whistle blew.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;There!&#8221; said Mrs. Slocum. &#8220;Now you&#8217;ve made me late, and I&#8217;ll miss the
+shackles and everything.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She flew down-stairs, and immediately the town of Siskiyou saw twelve
+members of the Ladies&#8217; Reform and Literary Lyceum follow her in a hasty
+phalanx across the square to the station. The train approached slowly up
+the grade, and by the time the wide smoke-stack of the locomotive was
+puffing its wood smoke in clouds along the platform, Amanda had
+marshalled her company there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s the gals all goin&#8217;, Bill?&#8221; inquired a large citizen in boots of
+the ticket-agent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nowheres, I guess, Abe,&#8221; the agent replied. &#8220;Leastways, they &#8217;ain&#8217;t
+bought any tickets off me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe they&#8217;re for stealin&#8217; a ride,&#8221; said Abe.</p>
+
+<p>The mail and baggage cars had passed, and the women watched the
+smoking-car that drew up opposite them. Mrs. Campbell had informed her
+friends that the sheriff always went in the smoker; but on this
+occasion, for some reason, he had brought his prisoner in the Pullman
+sleeper at the rear, some way down the track, and Amanda&#8217;s vigilant eye
+suddenly caught the group, already descended and walking away. The
+platoon of sympathy set off, and rapidly came up with the sheriff, while
+Bill, Abe, the train conductor, the Pullman conductor, the engineer, and
+the fireman abandoned their duty, and stared, in company with the
+brakemen and many passengers. There was perfect silence but for the
+pumping of the air-brake on the engine. The sheriff, not understanding
+what was coming, had half drawn his pistol; but now, surrounded by
+universal petticoats, he pulled off his hat and grinned doubtfully. The
+friend with him also stood bareheaded and grinning. He was young Jim
+Hornbrook, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>the muscular betrothed of Miss Sissons. The prisoner could
+not remove his hat, or he would have done so. Miss Sissons, who had come
+to the train to meet her lover, was laughing extremely in the middle of
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take these violets,&#8221; faltered Mrs. Day, and held out the bunch, backing
+away slightly at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense,&#8221; said Amanda, stepping forward and grasping the flowers. &#8220;The
+women of Siskiyou are with you,&#8221; she said, &#8220;as we are with all the
+afflicted.&#8221; Then she pinned the violets firmly to the prisoner&#8217;s flannel
+shirt. His face, at first amazed as the sheriff&#8217;s and Hornbrook&#8217;s,
+smoothed into cunning and vanity, while Hornbrook&#8217;s turned an angry red,
+and the sheriff stopped grinning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Them flowers would look better on Buck Montgomery&#8217;s grave, madam,&#8221; said
+the officer. &#8220;Maybe you&#8217;ll let us pass now.&#8221; They went on to the jail.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal,&#8221; said Abe, on the platform, &#8220;that&#8217;s the most disgustin&#8217; fool
+thing I ever did see.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All aboa-rd!&#8221; said the conductor, and the long train continued its way
+to Portland.</p>
+
+<p>The platoon, well content, dispersed homeward to supper, and Jim
+Hornbrook walked home with his girl.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For Lord&#8217;s sake, Louise,&#8221; he said, &#8220;who started that move?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She told him the history of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you tell Mrs. Campbell, with my respects, that she&#8217;s
+just playing with fire. A good woman like her ought to have more sense.
+Those men are going to have a fair trial.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She wouldn&#8217;t listen to me, Jim, not a bit. And, do you know, she really
+didn&#8217;t seem to feel sorry&mdash;except just for a minute&mdash;about that poor
+woman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Louise, why don&#8217;t you quit her outfit?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Resign from the Lyceum? That&#8217;s so silly of you, Jim. We&#8217;re not all
+crazy there; and that,&#8221; said Miss Sissons, demurely, &#8220;is what makes a
+girl like me so valuable!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m not stuck on having you travel with that lot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They speak better English than you do, Jim dear. Don&#8217;t! in the street!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sho! It&#8217;s dark now,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And it&#8217;s been three whole days since&mdash;&#8221;
+But Miss Sissons escaped inside her gate and rang the bell. &#8220;Now see
+here, Louise,&#8221; he called after her, &#8220;when I say they&#8217;re playing with
+fire I mean it. That woman will make trouble in this town.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s not afraid,&#8221; said Miss Sissons. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you know enough about us
+yet to know we can&#8217;t be threatened?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You!&#8221; said the young man. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t thinking of you.&#8221; And so they
+separated.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Campbell sat opposite the judge at supper, and he saw at once from
+her complacent reticence that she had achieved some triumph against his
+principles. She chatted about topics of the day in terms that were
+ingeniously trite. Then a letter came from their son in Denver, and she
+forgot her r&ocirc;le somewhat, and read the letter aloud to the judge, and
+wondered wistfully who in Denver attended to the boy&#8217;s buttons and
+socks; but she made no reference whatever to Siskiyou jail or those
+inside it. Next morning, however, it was the judge&#8217;s turn to be angry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Amanda,&#8221; he said, over the paper again, &#8220;you had better stick to socks,
+and leave criminals alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Amanda gazed at space with a calm smile.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;And I&#8217;ll tell you one thing, my dear,&#8221; her husband said, more
+incisively, &#8220;it don&#8217;t look well that I should represent the law while my
+wife figures&#8221; (he shook the morning paper) &#8220;as a public nuisance. And
+one thing more: <i>Look out!</i> For if I know this community, and I think I
+do, you may raise something you don&#8217;t bargain for.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can take care of myself, judge,&#8221; said Amanda, always smiling. These
+two never were angry both at once, and to-day it was the judge that
+sailed out of the house. Amanda pounced instantly upon the paper. The
+article was headed &#8220;Sweet Violets.&#8221; But the editorial satire only
+spurred the lady to higher efforts. She proceeded to the Lyceum, and
+found that &#8220;Sweet Violets&#8221; had been there before her. Every woman held a
+copy, and the fourteen rocking-chairs were swooping up and down like
+things in a factory. In the presence of this blizzard, Mount Shasta,
+Lucretia Mott, and even Leda and the Swan looked singularly serene on
+their wall, although on the other side of the wall the &#8220;Fatinitza&#8221; march
+was booming brilliantly. But Amanda quieted the storm. It was her gift
+to be calm when others were not, and soon the rocking-chairs were merely
+rippling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The way my boys scolded me&mdash;&#8221; began Mrs. Day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For men I care not,&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons. &#8220;But when my own sister
+upbraids me in a public place&mdash;&#8221; The lady&#8217;s voice ceased, and she raised
+her mournful eyes. It seemed she had encountered her unnatural relative
+at the post-office. Everybody had a tale similar. Siskiyou had denounced
+their humane act.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let them act ugly,&#8221; said Mrs. Slocum. &#8220;We will not swerve.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I sent roses this morning,&#8221; said Mrs. Parsons.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Did</i> you, dear?&#8221; said Mrs. Day. &#8220;My lilies shall go this afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here is a letter from the prisoner,&#8221; said Amanda, producing the
+treasure; and they huddled to hear it. It was very affecting. It
+mentioned the violets blooming beside the hard couch, and spoke of
+prayer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He had lovely hair,&#8221; said Mrs. Slocum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>So</i> brown!&#8221; said Mrs. Day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Black, my dear, and curly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Light brown. I was a good deal closer, Susan&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind about his hair,&#8221; said Amanda. &#8220;We are here not to flinch. We
+must act. Our course is chosen, and well chosen. The prison fare is a
+sin, and a beefsteak goes to them both at noon from my house.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, why didn&#8217;t we ever think of that before?&#8221; cried the ladies, in an
+ecstasy, and fell to planning a series of lunches in spite of what
+Siskiyou might say or do. Siskiyou did not say very much; but it looked;
+and the ladies waxed more enthusiastic, luxuriating in a sense of
+martyrdom because now the prisoners were stopped writing any more
+letters to them. This was doubtless a high-handed step, and it set
+certain pulpits preaching about love. The day set for the trial was
+approaching; Amanda and her flock were going. Prayer-meetings were held,
+food and flowers for the two in jail increased in volume, and every day
+saw some of the Lyceum waiting below the prisoners&#8217; barred windows till
+the men inside would thrust a hand through and wave to them; then they
+would shake a handkerchief in reply, and go away thrilled to talk it
+over at the Lyceum. And Siskiyou looked on all the while, darker and
+darker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>Then finally Amanda had a great thought. Listening to &#8220;Fatinitza&#8221; one
+morning, she suddenly arose and visited Herr Schwartz, the band-master.
+Herr Schwartz was a wise and well-educated German. They had a lengthy
+conference.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t pelief dot vill be very goot,&#8221; said the band-master.</p>
+
+<p>But at that Amanda talked a good deal; and the worthy Teuton was soon
+bewildered, and at last gave a dubious consent, &#8220;since it would blease
+de ladies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The president of the Lyceum arranged the coming event after her own
+heart. The voice of Woman should speak in Siskiyou. The helpless victims
+of male prejudice and the law of the land were to be flanked with
+consolation and encouragement upon the eve of their ordeal in court. In
+their lonely cell they were to feel that there were those outside whose
+hearts beat with theirs. The floral tribute was to be sumptuous, and
+Amanda had sent to San Francisco for pound-cake. The special quality she
+desired could not be achieved by the Siskiyou confectioner.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sissons was not a party to this enterprise, and she told its
+various details to Jim Hornbrook, half in anger, half in derision. He
+listened without comment, and his face frightened her a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jim, what&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going to be at that circus?&#8221; he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought I might just look on, you know,&#8221; said Miss Sissons. &#8220;Mrs.
+Campbell and a brass-band&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll stay in the house that night, Louise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, the ring isn&#8217;t on my finger yet,&#8221; laughed the girl, &#8220;the fatal
+promise of obedience&mdash;&#8221; But she stopped, perceiving her joke was not a
+good one. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>&#8220;Of course, Jim, if you feel that way,&#8221; she finished. &#8220;Only
+I&#8217;m grown up, and I like reasons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well&mdash;that&#8217;s all right too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ho, ho! All right! Thank you, sir. Dear me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, it ain&#8217;t to please me, Louise; indeed it ain&#8217;t. I can&#8217;t swear
+everything won&#8217;t be nice and all right and what a woman could be mixed
+up in, but&mdash;well, how should you know what men are, anyway, when they&#8217;ve
+been a good long time getting mad, and are mad all through? That&#8217;s what
+this town is to-day, Louise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Miss Sissons, &#8220;and I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;d rather not know.&#8221;
+And so she gave her promise. &#8220;But I shouldn&#8217;t suppose,&#8221; she added, &#8220;that
+the men of Siskiyou, mad or not, would forget that women are women.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim laughed. &#8220;Oh no,&#8221; he said, &#8220;they ain&#8217;t going to forget that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The appointed day came; and the train came, several hours late, bearing
+the box of confectionery, addressed to the Ladies&#8217; Reform and Literary
+Lyceum. Bill, the ticket-agent, held his lantern over it on the
+platform.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the cake,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What cake?&#8221; Abe inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Bill told him the rumor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cake?&#8221; repeated Abe. &#8220;Fer them?&#8221; and he tilted his head towards the
+jail. &#8220;Will you say that again, friend? I ain&#8217;t clear about it. <i>Cake</i>,
+did ye say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pound-cake,&#8221; said Bill. &#8220;Ordered special from San Francisco.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Now pound-cake for adults is considered harmless. But it is curious how
+unwholesome a harmless thing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>can be if administered at the wrong time.
+The gaunt, savage-looking Californian went up to the box slowly. Then he
+kicked it lightly with his big boot, seeming to listen to its
+reverberation. Then he read the address. Then he sat down on the box to
+take a think. After a time he began speaking aloud. &#8220;They hold up a
+stage,&#8221; he said, slowly. &#8220;They lay up a passenger fer a month. And they
+lame Bob Griffiths fer life. And then they do up Buck. Shoot a hole
+through his spine. And I helped bury him; fer I liked Buck.&#8221; The speaker
+paused, and looked at the box. Then he got up. &#8220;I hain&#8217;t attended their
+prayer-meetin&#8217;s,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and I hain&#8217;t smelt their flowers. Such
+perfume&#8217;s liable to make me throw up. But I guess I&#8217;ll hev a look at
+their cake.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went to the baggage-room and brought an axe. The axe descended, and a
+splintered slat flew across the platform. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of cake,&#8221; said
+Abe. The top of the packing-case crashed on the railroad track, and
+three new men gathered to look on. &#8220;It&#8217;s fresh cake too,&#8221; remarked the
+destroyer. The box now fell to pieces, and the tattered paper wrapping
+was ripped away. &#8220;Step up, boys,&#8221; said Abe, for a little crowd was there
+now. &#8220;Soft, ain&#8217;t it?&#8221; They slung the cake about and tramped it in the
+grime and oil, and the boards of the box were torn apart and whirled
+away. There was a singular and growing impulse about all this. No one
+said anything; they were very quiet; yet the crowd grew quickly, as if
+called together by something in the air. One voice said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t forgit
+we&#8217;re all relyin&#8217; on yer serenade, Mark,&#8221; and this raised a strange
+united laugh that broke brief and loud, and stopped, leaving the silence
+deeper than before. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>Mark and three more left, and walked towards the
+Lyceum. They were members of the Siskiyou band, and as they went one
+said that the town would see an interesting trial in the morning. Soon
+after they had gone the crowd moved from the station, compact and swift.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Lyceum had been having disappointments. When the train was
+known to be late, Amanda had abandoned bestowing the cake until morning.
+But now a horrid thing had happened: the Siskiyou band refused its
+services! The rocking-chairs were plying strenuously; but Amanda strode
+up and down in front of Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Schwartz entered. &#8220;It&#8217;s all right, madam,&#8221; said he. &#8220;My trombone
+haf come back, und&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll play?&#8221; demanded the president.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We blay for de ladies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The rocking-chairs were abandoned; the Lyceum put on its bonnet and
+shawl, and marshalled down-stairs with the band.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ready,&#8221; said Amanda.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ready,&#8221; said Herr Schwartz to his musicians. &#8220;Go a leedle easy mit der
+Allegro, or we bust &#8216;Fatinitza.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The spirited strains were lifted in Siskiyou, and the procession was
+soon at the jail in excellent order. They came round the corner with the
+trombone going as well as possible. Two jerking bodies dangled at the
+end of ropes, above the flare of torches. Amanda and her flock were
+shrieking.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So!&#8221; exclaimed Herr Schwartz. &#8220;Dot was dose Healy boys we haf come to
+gif serenade.&#8221; He signed to stop the music.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No you don&#8217;t,&#8221; said two of the masked crowd, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>closing in with pistols.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ll play fer them fellers till you&#8217;re told to quit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cerdainly,&#8221; said the philosophical Teuton. &#8220;Only dey gif brobably very
+leedle attention to our Allegro.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So &#8220;Fatinitza&#8221; trumpeted on while the two on the ropes twisted, and grew
+still by-and-by. Then the masked men let the band go home. The Lyceum
+had scattered and fled long since, and many days passed before it
+revived again to civic usefulness, nor did its members find comfort from
+their men. Herr Schwartz gave a parting look at the bodies of the
+lynched murderers. &#8220;My!&#8221; said he, &#8220;das Ewigweibliche haf draw them apove
+sure enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sissons next day was walking and talking off her shock and
+excitement with her lover. &#8220;And oh, Jim,&#8221; she concluded, after they had
+said a good many things, &#8220;you hadn&#8217;t anything to do with it, had you?&#8221;
+The young man did not reply, and catching a certain expression on his
+face, she hastily exclaimed: &#8220;Never mind! I don&#8217;t want to know&mdash;ever!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So James Hornbrook kissed his sweetheart for saying that, and they
+continued their walk among the pleasant hills.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_GENERALS_BLUFF" id="THE_GENERALS_BLUFF"></a>THE GENERAL&#8217;S BLUFF</h2>
+
+<p>The troops this day had gone into winter-quarters, and sat down to kill
+the idle time with pleasure until spring. After two hundred and forty
+days it is a good thing to sit down. The season had been spent in
+trailing, and sometimes catching, small bands of Indians. These had
+taken the habit of relieving settlers of their cattle and the tops of
+their heads. The weather-beaten troops had scouted over some two
+thousand aimless, veering miles, for the savages were fleet and mostly
+invisible, and knew the desert well. So, while the year turned, and the
+heat came, held sway, and went, the ragged troopers on the frontier were
+led an endless chase by the hostiles, who took them back and forth over
+flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or
+a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze
+at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were
+glad to march into Bois&eacute; Barracks this morning by eleven, and see a
+stove.</p>
+
+<p>They rolled for a moment on their bunks to get the feel of a bunk again
+after two hundred and forty days; they ate their dinner at a table;
+those who owned any further baggage than that which partially covered
+their nakedness unpacked it, perhaps nailed up a photograph or two, and
+found it grateful to sit and do nothing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>under a roof and listen to the
+grated snow whip the windows of the gray sandstone quarters. Such
+comfort, and the prospect of more ahead, of weeks of nothing but post
+duty and staying in the same place, obliterated Dry Camp, Cow Creek
+Lake, the blizzard on Meacham&#8217;s Hill, the horse-killing in the John Day
+Valley, Saw-Tooth stampede, and all the recent evils of the past; the
+quarters hummed with cheerfulness. The nearest railroad was some four
+hundred miles to the southeast, slowly constructing to meet the next
+nearest, which was some nine hundred to the southeast; but Bois&eacute; City
+was only three-quarters of a mile away, the largest town in the
+Territory, the capital, not a temperance town, a winter resort; and
+several hundred people lived in it, men and women, few of whom ever died
+in their beds. The coming days and nights were a luxury to think of.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blamed if there ain&#8217;t a real tree!&#8221; exclaimed Private Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thet eer ain&#8217;t no tree, ye plum; thet&#8217;s the flag-pole &#8217;n&#8217; th&#8217; Merrickin
+flag,&#8221; observed a civilian. His name was Jack Long, and he was
+pack-master.</p>
+
+<p>Sergeant Keyser, listening, smiled. During the winter of &#8217;64-65 he had
+been in command of the first battalion of his regiment, but, on a theory
+of education, had enlisted after the war. This being known, held the men
+more shy of him than was his desire.</p>
+
+<p>Jones continued to pick his banjo, while a boyish trooper with tough
+black hair sat near him and kept time with his heels. &#8220;It&#8217;s a
+cottonwood-tree I was speakin&#8217; of,&#8221; observed Jones. There was one&mdash;a
+little, shivering white stalk. It stood above the flat where the
+barracks were, on a bench twenty or thirty feet higher, on which were
+built the officers&#8217; quarters. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>The air was getting dim with the fine,
+hard snow that slanted through it. The thermometer was ten above out
+there. At the mere sight and thought Mr. Long produced a flat bottle,
+warm from proximity to his flesh. Jones swallowed some drink, and looked
+at the little tree. &#8220;Snakes! but it feels good,&#8221; said he, &#8220;to get
+something inside y&#8217;u and be inside yerself. What&#8217;s the tax at Mike&#8217;s
+dance-house now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dance &#8217;n&#8217; drinks fer two fer one dollar,&#8221; responded Mr. Long,
+accurately. He was sixty, but that made no difference.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You and me&#8217;ll take that in, Jock,&#8221; said Jones to his friend, the
+black-haired boy. &#8220;&#8216;Sigh no more, ladies,&#8217;&#8221; he continued, singing. &#8220;The
+blamed banjo won&#8217;t accompany that,&#8221; he remarked, and looked out again at
+the tree. &#8220;There&#8217;s a chap riding into the post now. Shabby-lookin&#8217;.
+Mebbe he&#8217;s got stuff to sell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack Long looked up on the bench at a rusty figure moving slowly through
+the storm. &#8220;Th&#8217; ole man!&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He ain&#8217;t specially old,&#8221; Jones answered. &#8220;They&#8217;re apt to be older, them
+peddlers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Peddlers! Oh, ye-es.&#8221; A seizure of very remarkable coughing took Jack
+Long by the throat; but he really had a cough, and, on the fit&#8217;s leaving
+him, swallowed a drink, and offered his bottle in a manner so cold and
+usual that Jones forgot to note anything but the excellence of the
+whiskey. Mr. Long winked at Sergeant Keyser; he thought it a good plan
+not to inform his young friends, not just yet at any rate, that their
+peddler was General Crook. It would be pleasant to hear what else they
+might have to say.</p>
+
+<p>The General had reached Bois&eacute; City that morning <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>by the stage, quietly
+and unknown, as was his way. He had come to hunt Indians in the district
+of the Owyhee. Jack Long had discovered this, but only a few had been
+told the news, for the General wished to ask questions and receive
+answers, and to find out about all things; and he had noticed that this
+is not easy when too many people know who you are. He had called upon a
+friend or two in Bois&eacute;, walked about unnoticed, learned a number of
+facts, and now, true to his habit, entered the post wearing no uniform,
+none being necessary under the circumstances, and unattended by a single
+orderly. Jones and the black-haired Cumnor hoped he was a peddler, and
+innocently sat looking out of the window at him riding along the bench
+in front of the quarters, and occasionally slouching his wide, dark
+hat-brim against the stinging of the hard flakes. Jack Long, old and
+much experienced with the army, had scouted with Crook before, and knew
+him and his ways well. He also looked out of the window, standing behind
+Jones and Cumnor, with a huge hairy hand on a shoulder of each, and a
+huge wink again at Keyser.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blamed if he &#8217;ain&#8217;t stopped in front of the commanding officer&#8217;s,&#8221; said
+Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lor&#8217;!&#8221; said Mr. Long, &#8220;there&#8217;s jest nothin&#8217; them peddlers won&#8217;t do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They ain&#8217;t likely to buy anything off him in there,&#8221; said Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mwell, ef he&#8217;s purvided with any <i>kind</i> o&#8217; Injun cur&#8217;os&#8217;tees, the
+missis she&#8217;ll fly right on to &#8217;em. Sh&#8217; &#8217;ain&#8217;t been merried out yere only
+haff&#8217;n year, &#8217;n&#8217; when she spies feathers &#8217;n&#8217; bead truck &#8217;n&#8217; buckskin fer
+sale sh&#8217; hollers like a son of a gun. Enthoosiastic, ye know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;He &#8217;ain&#8217;t got much of a pack,&#8221; Jones commented, and at that moment
+&#8220;stables&#8221; sounded, and the men ran out to form and march to their
+grooming. Jack Long stood at the door and watched them file through the
+snow.</p>
+
+<p>Very few enlisted men of the small command that had come in this morning
+from its campaign had ever seen General Crook. Jones, though not new to
+the frontier, had not been long in the army. He and Cumnor had enlisted
+in a happy-go-lucky manner together at Grant, in Arizona, when the
+General was elsewhere. Discipline was galling to his vagrant spirit, and
+after each pay-day he had generally slept off the effects in the
+guard-house, going there for other offences between-whiles; but he was
+not of the stuff that deserts; also, he was excellent tempered, and his
+captain liked him for the way in which he could shoot Indians. Jack Long
+liked him too; and getting always a harmless pleasure from the mistakes
+of his friends, sincerely trusted there might be more about the peddler.
+He was startled at hearing his name spoken in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Nah!</i> Johnny, how you get on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Sarah! Kla-how-ya, six?&#8221; said Long, greeting in Chinook the
+squaw interpreter who had approached him so noiselessly. &#8220;Hy-as kloshe
+o-coke sun&#8221; (It is a beautiful day).</p>
+
+<p>The interpreter laughed&mdash;she had a broad, sweet, coarse face, and
+laughed easily&mdash;and said in English, &#8220;You hear about E-egante?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Long had heard nothing recently of this Pah-Ute chieftain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He heap bad,&#8221; continued Sarah, laughing broadly. &#8220;Come round ranch up
+here&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anybody killed?&#8221; Long interrupted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;No. All run away quick. Meester Dailey, he old man, he run all same
+young one. His old woman she run all same man. Get horse. Run away
+quick. Hu-hu!&#8221; and Sarah&#8217;s rich mockery sounded again. No tragedy had
+happened this time, and the squaw narrated her story greatly to the
+relish of Mr. Long. This veteran of trails and mines had seen too much
+of life&#8217;s bleakness not to cherish whatever of mirth his days might
+bring.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t burn the house?&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not burn. Just make heap mess. Cut up feather-bed hy-as ten-as (very
+small) and eat big dinner, hu-hu! Sugar, onions, meat, eat all. Then
+they find litt&#8217; cats walkin&#8217; round there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lor&#8217;!&#8221; said Mr. Long, deeply interested, &#8220;they didn&#8217;t eat <i>them</i>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No. Not eat litt&#8217; cats. Put &#8217;em two&mdash;man-cat and woman-cat&mdash;in
+molasses; put &#8217;em in feather-bed; all same bird. Then they hunt for
+whiskey, break everything, hunt all over, ha-lo whiskey!&#8221; Sarah shook
+her head. &#8220;Meester Dailey he good man. Hy-iu temperance. Drink water.
+They find his medicine; drink all up; make awful sick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess &#8217;twar th&#8217; ole man&#8217;s liniment,&#8221; muttered Jack Long.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yas, milinut. They can&#8217;t walk. Stay there long time, then Meester
+Dailey come back with friends. They think Injuns all gone; make noise,
+and E-egante he hear him come, and he not very sick. Run away. Some more
+run. But two Injuns heap sick; can&#8217;t run. Meester Dailey he come round
+the corner; see awful mess everywhere; see two litt&#8217; cats sittin&#8217; in
+door all same bird, sing very loud. Then he see two Injuns on ground.
+They dead now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Mwell,&#8221; said Long, &#8220;none of eer&#8217;ll do. We&#8217;ll hev to ketch E-egante.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A&mdash;h!&#8221; drawled Sarah the squaw, in musical derision. &#8220;Maybe no catch
+him. All same jack rabbit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jest ye wait, Sarah; Gray Fox hez come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gen&#8217;l Crook!&#8221; said the squaw. &#8220;He come! Ho! He heap savvy.&#8221; She
+stopped, and laughed again, like a pleased child. &#8220;Maybe no catch
+E-egante,&#8221; she added, rolling her pretty brown eyes at Jack Long.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know E-egante?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yas, one time. Long time now. I litt&#8217; girl then.&#8221; But Sarah remembered
+that long time, when she slept in a tent and had not been captured and
+put to school. And she remembered the tall young boys whom she used to
+watch shoot arrows, and the tallest, who shot most truly&mdash;at least, he
+certainly did now in her imagination. He had never spoken to her or
+looked at her. He was a boy of fourteen and she a girl of eight. Now she
+was twenty-five. Also she was tame and domesticated, with a white
+husband who was not bad to her, and children for each year of wedlock,
+who would grow up to speak English better than she could, and her own
+tongue not at all. And E-egante was not tame, and still lived in a tent.
+Sarah regarded white people as her friends, but she was proud of being
+an Indian, and she liked to think that her race could outwit the soldier
+now and then. She laughed again when she thought of old Mrs. Dailey
+running from E-egante.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s up with ye, Sarah?&#8221; said Jack Long, for the squaw&#8217;s laughter had
+come suddenly on a spell of silence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;H&eacute;!&#8221; said she. &#8220;All same jack-rabbit. No catch him.&#8221; She stood shaking
+her head at Long, and showing her white, regular teeth. Then abruptly
+she went away to her tent without any word, not because she was in
+ill-humor or had thought of something, but because she was an Indian and
+had thought of nothing, and had no more to say. She met the men
+returning from the stables; admired Jones and smiled at him, upon which
+he murmured &#8220;Oh fie!&#8221; as he passed her. The troop broke ranks and
+dispersed, to lounge and gossip until mess-call. Cumnor and Jones were
+putting a little snow down each other&#8217;s necks with friendly profanity,
+when Jones saw the peddler standing close and watching them. A high
+collar of some ragged fur was turned up round his neck, disguising the
+character of the ancient army overcoat to which it was attached, and
+spots and long stains extended down the legs of his corduroys to the
+charred holes at the bottom, where the owner had scorched them warming
+his heels and calves at many camp-fires.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello, uncle,&#8221; said Jones. &#8220;What y&#8217;u got in your pack?&#8221; He and Cumnor
+left their gambols and eagerly approached, while Mr. Jack Long, seeing
+the interview, came up also to hear it. &#8220;&#8216;Ain&#8217;t y&#8217;u got something to
+sell?&#8221; continued Jones. &#8220;Y&#8217;u haven&#8217;t gone and dumped yer whole outfit at
+the commanding officer&#8217;s, have y&#8217;u now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I have.&#8221; The low voice shook ever so little, and if Jones
+had looked he would have seen a twinkle come and go in the gray-blue
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been out eight months, y&#8217;u know, fairly steady,&#8221; pursued Jones,
+&#8220;and haven&#8217;t seen nothing; and we&#8217;d buy most anything that ain&#8217;t too
+damn bad,&#8221; he concluded, plaintively.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Long, in the background, was whining to himself with joy, and he now
+urgently beckoned Keyser to come and hear this.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ve got some cheap poker chips,&#8221; suggested Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And say, uncle,&#8221; said Jones, raising his voice, for the peddler was
+moving away, &#8220;decks, and tobacco better than what they keep at the
+commissary. Me and my friend&#8217;ll take some off your hands. And if you&#8217;re
+comin&#8217; with new stock to-morrow, uncle&#8221; (Jones was now shouting after
+him), &#8220;why, we&#8217;re single men, and y&#8217;u might fetch along a couple of
+squaws!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Holy smoke!&#8221; screeched Mr. Long, dancing on one leg.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s up with you, y&#8217;u ape?&#8221; inquired Specimen Jones. He looked at the
+departing peddler and saw Sergeant Keyser meet him and salute with
+stern, soldierly aspect. Then the peddler shook hands with the sergeant,
+seemed to speak pleasantly, and again Keyser saluted as he passed on.
+&#8220;What&#8217;s that for?&#8221; Jones asked, uneasily. &#8220;Who is that hobo?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Long was talking to himself in a highly moralizing strain. &#8220;It
+ain&#8217;t every young enlisted man,&#8221; he was saying, &#8220;ez hez th&#8217; privilege of
+explainin&#8217; his wants at headquarters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jones,&#8221; said Sergeant Keyser, arriving, &#8220;I&#8217;ve a compliment for you.
+General Crook said you were a fine-looking man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo7" id="illo7"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i120.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="393" alt="&#8220;&#8216;AIN&#8217;T Y&#8217;U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?&#8217;&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;&#8216;AIN&#8217;T Y&#8217;U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?&#8217;&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;General?&mdash;What&#8217;s that?&mdash;Where did y&#8217;u see&mdash;What? <i>Him?</i>&#8221; The disgusting
+truth flashed clear on Jones. Uttering a single disconcerted syllable of
+rage, he wheeled and went by himself into the barracks, and lay down
+solitary on his bunk and read a newspaper until mess-call without taking
+in a word of it. &#8220;If <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>they go to put me in the mill fer that,&#8221; he said, sulkily,
+to many friends who brought him their congratulations, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to
+give &#8217;em what I think about wearin&#8217; disguises.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think, Specimen?&#8221; said one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Give it to us now, Specimen,&#8221; said another.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Against the law, ain&#8217;t it, Specimen?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Begosh!&#8221; said Jack Long, &#8220;ef thet&#8217;s so, don&#8217;t lose no time warnin&#8217; the
+General, Specimen. Th&#8217; ole man&#8217;d hate to be arrested.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And Specimen Jones told them all to shut their heads.</p>
+
+<p>But no thought was more distant from General Crook&#8217;s busy mind than
+putting poor Jones in the guard-house. The trooper&#8217;s willingness, after
+eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to
+his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight
+months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often
+dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of
+life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The
+American &#8220;statesman&#8221; does not care about our army until it becomes
+necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew all
+this well; and realizing that these soldiers, who had come into
+winter-quarters this morning at eleven, had earned a holiday, he was
+sorry to feel obliged to start them out again to-morrow morning at two;
+for this was what he had decided upon.</p>
+
+<p>He had received orders to drive on the reservation the various small
+bands of Indians that were roving through the country of the Snake and
+its tributaries, a danger to the miners in the Bannock Basin, and to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>the various ranches in west Idaho and east Oregon. As usual, he had
+been given an insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he
+had been instructed by the &#8220;statesmen&#8221; to do it without violence&mdash;that
+is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor
+Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to,
+pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a &#8220;statesman&#8221;
+would achieve it. The force at the General&#8217;s disposal was the garrison
+at Bois&eacute; Barracks&mdash;one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The
+latter was not adapted to the matter in hand&mdash;rapid marching and
+surprises; all it could be used for was as a reinforcement, and,
+moreover, somebody must be left at Bois&eacute; Barracks. The cavalry had had
+its full dose of scouting and skirmishing and long exposed marches, the
+horses were poor, and nobody had any trousers to speak of. Also, the
+troop was greatly depleted; it numbered forty men. Forty had deserted,
+and three&mdash;a sergeant and three privates&mdash;had cooked and eaten a
+vegetable they had been glad to dig up one day, and had spent the
+ensuing forty-five minutes in attempting to make their ankles beat the
+backs of their heads; after that the captain had read over them a
+sentence beginning, &#8220;Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time
+to live, and is full of misery&#8221;; and after that the camp was referred to
+as Wild Carrot Camp, because the sergeant had said the vegetable was
+wild carrot, whereas it had really been wild parsnip, which is quite
+another thing.</p>
+
+<p>General Crook shook his head over what he saw. The men were
+ill-provided, the commissary and the quartermaster department were
+ill-provided; but it would have to do; the &#8220;statesmen&#8221; said our army
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>was an extravagance. The Indians must be impressed and intimidated by
+the unlimited resources which the General had&mdash;not. Having come to this
+conclusion, he went up to the post commander&#8217;s, and at supper astonished
+that officer by casual remarks which revealed a knowledge of the
+surrounding country, the small streams, the best camps for pasture,
+spots to avoid on account of bad water, what mules had sore backs, and
+many other things that the post commander would have liked dearly to ask
+the General where and when he had learned, only he did not dare. He did
+not even venture to ask him what he was going to do. Neither did Captain
+Glynn, who had been asked to meet the General. The General soon told
+them, however. &#8220;It may be a little cold,&#8221; he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To-morrow, sir?&#8221; This from Captain Glynn. He had come in with the forty
+that morning. He had been enjoying his supper very much.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; said the General. &#8220;This E-egante is likely to make trouble
+if he is not checked.&#8221; Then, understanding the thoughts of Captain
+Glynn, he added, with an invisible smile, &#8220;<i>You</i> need no preparations.
+You&#8217;re in marching order. It&#8217;s not as if your men had been here a long
+time and had to get ready for a start.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh no,&#8221; said Glynn, &#8220;it isn&#8217;t like that.&#8221; He was silent. &#8220;I think, if
+you&#8217;ll excuse me, General,&#8221; he said next, &#8220;I&#8217;ll see my sergeant and give
+some orders.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly. And, Captain Glynn, I took the liberty of giving a few
+directions myself. We&#8217;ll take an A tent, you know, for you and me. I see
+Keyser is sergeant in F troop. Glad we have a non-commissioned officer
+so competent. Haven&#8217;t seen him since &#8217;64, at Winchester. Why, it&#8217;s
+cleared off, I declare!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><p>It had, and the General looked out of the open door as Captain Glynn,
+departing, was pulling at his cigar. &#8220;How beautiful the planets are!&#8221;
+exclaimed Crook. &#8220;Look at Jupiter&mdash;there, just to the left of that
+little cottonwood-tree. Haven&#8217;t you often noticed how much finer the
+stars shine in this atmosphere than in the East? Oh, captain! I forgot
+to speak of extra horseshoes. I want some brought along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll attend to it, General.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They shouldn&#8217;t be too large. These California fourteen-and-a-half
+horses have smallish hoofs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll see the blacksmith myself, General.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you. Good-night. And just order fresh stuffing put into the
+aparejos. I noticed three that had got lumpy.&#8221; And the General shut the
+door and went to wipe out the immaculate barrels of his shot-gun; for
+besides Indians there were grouse among the hills where he expected to
+go.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Glynn, arriving at his own door, stuck his glowing cigar against
+the thermometer hanging outside: twenty-three below zero. &#8220;Oh Lord!&#8221;
+said the captain, briefly. He went in and told his striker to get
+Sergeant Keyser. Then he sat down and waited. &#8220;&#8216;Look at Jupiter!&#8217;&#8221; he
+muttered, angrily. &#8220;What an awful old man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was rather awful. The captain had not supposed generals in the first
+two hours of their arrival at a post to be in the habit of finding out
+more about your aparejos than you knew yourself. But old the General was
+not. At the present day many captains are older than Crook was then.</p>
+
+<p>Down at the barracks there was the same curiosity about what the &#8220;Old
+Man&#8221; was going to do as existed at the post commander&#8217;s during the early
+part of supper. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>It pleased the cavalry to tell the infantry that the
+Old Man proposed to take the infantry to the Columbia River next week;
+and the infantry replied to the cavalry that they were quite right as to
+the river and the week, and it was hard luck the General needed only
+mounted troops on this trip. Others had heard he had come to superintend
+the building of a line of telegraph to Klamath, which would be a good
+winter&#8217;s job for somebody; but nobody supposed that anything would
+happen yet awhile.</p>
+
+<p>And then a man came in and told them the General had sent his boots to
+the saddler to have nails hammered in the soles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That eer means business,&#8221; said Jack Long, &#8220;&#8217;n&#8217; I guess I&#8217;ll nail up mee
+own cowhides.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jock,&#8221; said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, &#8220;you and me &#8217;ain&#8217;t got any soles
+to ourn because they&#8217;re contract boots, y&#8217;u see. I&#8217;ll nail up yer feet
+if y&#8217;u say so. It&#8217;s liable to be slippery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cumnor did not take in the situation at once. &#8220;What&#8217;s your hurry?&#8221; he
+inquired of Jack Long. Therefore it was explained to him that when
+General Crook ordered his boots fixed you might expect to be on the road
+shortly. Cumnor swore some resigned, unemphatic oaths, fondly supposing
+that &#8220;shortly&#8221; meant some time or other; but hearing in the next five
+minutes the definite fact that F troop would get up at two, he made use
+of profound and thorough language, and compared the soldier with the
+slave.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, y&#8217;u talk almost like a man, Jock,&#8221; said Specimen Jones. &#8220;Blamed if
+y&#8217;u don&#8217;t sound pretty near growed up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cumnor invited Jones to mind his business.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yer muss-tache has come since Arizona,&#8221; continued <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>Jones, admiringly,
+&#8220;and yer blue eye is bad-lookin&#8217;&mdash;worse than when we shot at yer heels
+and y&#8217;u danced fer us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought they were going to give us a rest,&#8221; mumbled the youth,
+flushing. &#8220;I thought we&#8217;d be let stay here a spell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought so too, Jock. A little monotony would be fine variety. But a
+man must take his medicine, y&#8217;u know, and not squeal.&#8221; Jones had lowered
+his voice, and now spoke without satire to the boy whom he had in a
+curious manner taken under his protection.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look at what they give us for a blanket to sleep in,&#8221; said Cumnor. &#8220;A
+fellow can see to read the newspaper through it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look at my coat, Cumnor.&#8221; It was Sergeant Keyser showing the article
+furnished the soldier by the government. &#8220;You can spit through that.&#8221; He
+had overheard their talk, and stepped up to show that all were in the
+same box. At his presence reticence fell upon the privates, and Cumnor
+hauled his black felt hat down tight in embarrassment, which strain
+split it open half-way round his head. It was another sample of
+regulation clothing, and they laughed at it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We all know the way it is,&#8221; said Keyser, &#8220;and I&#8217;ve seen it a big sight
+worse. Cumnor, I&#8217;ve a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get
+back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected to
+sleep in for some undisturbed weeks, and by four o&#8217;clock had eaten its
+well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee, and was following the
+&#8220;awful old man&#8221; down the north bank of the Bois&eacute;, leaving the silent,
+dead, wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile behind in
+the darkness. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>The mountains south stood distant, ignoble,
+plain-featured heights, looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing
+stars and the slice of hard, sharp-edged moon, and the surrounding
+plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and
+nothing with desolate perpetuity. The snowfall was light and dry as
+sand, and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or
+knoll. The column moved through the dead polar silence, scarcely
+breaking it. Now and then a hoof rang on a stone, here and there a
+bridle or a sabre clinked lightly; but it was too cold and early for
+talking, and the only steady sound was the flat, can-like tankle of the
+square bell that hung on the neck of the long-eared leader of the
+pack-train. They passed the Dailey ranch, and saw the kittens and the
+liniment-bottle, but could get no information as to what way E-egante
+had gone. The General did not care for that, however; he had devised his
+own route for the present, after a talk with the Indian guides. At the
+second dismounting during march he had word sent back to the pack-train
+not to fall behind, and the bell was to be taken off if the rest of the
+mules would follow without the sound of its shallow music. No wind moved
+the weeds or shook the stiff grass, and the rising sun glittered pink on
+the patched and motley-shirted men as they blew on their red hands or
+beat them against their legs. Some were lucky enough to have woollen or
+fur gloves, but many had only the white cotton affairs furnished by the
+government. Sarah the squaw laughed at them: the interpreter was warm as
+she rode in her bright green shawl. While the dismounted troopers
+stretched their limbs during the halt, she remained on her pony talking
+to one and another.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Gray Fox heap savvy,&#8221; said she to Mr. Long. &#8220;He heap get up in the
+mornin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thet&#8217;s what he does, Sarah.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yas. No give soldier hy-as Sunday&#8221; (a holiday).</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; assented Mr. Long. &#8220;Gray Fox go t&eacute;h-t&eacute;h&#8221; (trot).</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe he catch E-egante, maybe put him in skookum-house (prison)?&#8221;
+suggested Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh no! Lor&#8217;! E-egante good Injun. White Father he feed him. Give him
+heap clothes,&#8221; said Mr. Long.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A&mdash;h!&#8221; drawled Sarah, dubiously, and rode by herself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll need watchin&#8217;,&#8221; muttered Jack Long.</p>
+
+<p>The trumpet sounded, the troopers swung into their saddles, and the line
+of march was taken up as before, Crook at the head of the column, his
+ragged fur collar turned up, his corduroys stuffed inside a wrinkled
+pair of boots, the shot-gun balanced across his saddle, and nothing to
+reveal that he was any one in particular, unless you saw his face. As
+the morning grew bright, and empty, silent Idaho glistened under the
+clear blue, the General talked a little to Captain Glynn.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;E-egante will have crossed Snake River, I think,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I shall try
+to do that to-day; but we must be easy on those horses of yours. We
+ought to be able to find these Indians in three days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I were a lusty young chief,&#8221; said Glynn, &#8220;I should think it pretty
+tough to be put on a reservation for dipping a couple of kittens in the
+molasses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So should I, captain. But next time he might dip Mrs. Dailey. And I&#8217;m
+not sure he didn&#8217;t have a hand in more serious work. Didn&#8217;t you run
+across his tracks anywhere this summer?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;No, sir. He was over on the Des Chutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you hear what he was doing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Having rows about fish and game with those Warm Spring Indians on the
+west side of the Des Chutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re always poaching on each other. There&#8217;s bad blood between
+E-egante and Uma-Pine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Uma-Pine&#8217;s friendly, sir, isn&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, that&#8217;s a question,&#8221; said Crook. &#8220;But there&#8217;s no question about
+this E-egante and his Pah-Utes. We&#8217;ve got to catch him. I&#8217;m sorry for
+him. He doesn&#8217;t see why he shouldn&#8217;t hunt anywhere as his fathers did. I
+shouldn&#8217;t see that either.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How strong is this band reported, sir?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve heard nothing I can set reliance upon,&#8221; said Crook, instinctively
+levelling his shot-gun at a big bird that rose; then he replaced the
+piece across his saddle and was silent. Now Captain Glynn had heard
+there were three hundred Indians with E-egante, which was a larger
+number than he had been in the habit of attacking with forty men. But he
+felt discreet about volunteering any information to the General after
+last night&#8217;s exhibition of what the General knew. Crook partly answered
+what was in Glynn&#8217;s mind. &#8220;This is the only available force I have,&#8221;
+said he. &#8220;We must do what we can with it. You&#8217;ve found out by this time,
+captain, that rapidity in following Indians up often works well. They
+have made up their minds&mdash;that is, if I know them&mdash;that we&#8217;re going to
+loaf inside Bois&eacute; Barracks until the hard weather lets up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Glynn had thought so too, but he did not mention this, and the
+General continued. &#8220;I find that most people entertained this notion,&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;and I&#8217;m glad they did, for it will help my first operations very
+materially.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>The captain agreed that there was nothing like a false impression for
+assisting the efficacy of military movements, and presently the General
+asked him to command a halt. It was high noon, and the sun gleamed on
+the brass trumpet as the long note blew. Again the musical strain
+sounded on the cold, bright stillness, and the double line of twenty
+legs swung in a simultaneous arc over the horses&#8217; backs as the men
+dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll noon here,&#8221; said the General; and while the cook broke the ice on
+Bois&eacute; River to fill his kettles, Crook went back to the mules to see how
+the sore backs were standing the march. &#8220;How d&#8217;ye do, Jack Long?&#8221; said
+he. &#8220;Your stock is travelling pretty well, I see. They&#8217;re loaded with
+thirty days&#8217; rations, but I trust we&#8217;re not going to need it all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mwell, General, I don&#8217;t specially kyeer meself &#8217;bout eatin&#8217; the hull
+outfit.&#8221; Mr. Long showed his respect for the General by never swearing
+in his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see you haven&#8217;t forgotten how to pack,&#8221; Crook said to him. &#8220;Can we
+make Snake River to-day, Jack?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;ll be forty miles, General. The days are pretty short.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What are you feeding to the animals?&#8221; Crook inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, General, <i>you</i> know jest &#8217;s well &#8217;s me,&#8221; said Jack, grinning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five
+pounds next ten, and you&#8217;re out of grain for the next ten. Is that the
+way still?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thet&#8217;s the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the
+horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now
+returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.</p>
+
+<p>They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals
+could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a
+little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road,
+trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren
+height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs
+of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey
+had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and
+trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General
+Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were
+their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have
+been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three
+hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the
+column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the
+gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two
+days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the
+mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging
+of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and
+there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.</p>
+
+<p>Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of
+willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh
+of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close,
+nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight blue
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>smoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The
+whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and
+the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent
+in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching
+a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with
+pines above.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo8" id="illo8"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i053.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="361" alt="THE CHARGE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE CHARGE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts
+forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready;
+and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The
+horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress,
+sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies,
+and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs.
+They could not wedge a man&#8217;s length into that pliant labyrinth, and the
+General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above,
+Crook&#8217;s cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood,
+hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared
+at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows,
+with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene
+and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds&mdash;not birds of prey&mdash;and the
+quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the
+liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you suppose they&#8217;re doing?&#8221; inquired Glynn.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Looking at us,&#8221; said Crook.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish we could return the compliment,&#8221; said the captain.</p>
+
+<p>Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would
+have been less worth watching. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>Two willow branches shook, making a
+vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train
+was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an
+orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and
+were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses
+and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little
+light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in
+different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye
+fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from
+the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of
+long grass tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short
+while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable
+tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising
+always into the quiet afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you see &#8217;em?&#8221; said Glynn.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this
+band?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.</p>
+
+<p>It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be
+pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty
+troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the
+thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to
+wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s his bet, and he holds poor cards,&#8221; murmured Specimen Jones; and
+the neighbors grinned.</p>
+
+<p>And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent
+the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in
+consequence, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of
+sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn
+wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his
+amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You tell E-egante,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that I am not going to fight with his
+people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm,
+and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask
+E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante
+and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine
+o&#8217;clock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer,
+and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or
+showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further
+sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. &#8220;Say that I am
+Gray Fox,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going
+opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow
+entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread
+aside for three figures to stand there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;E-egante!&#8221; said Sarah, eagerly. &#8220;See him big man!&#8221; she added to Crook,
+pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with
+fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She,
+being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is counting our strength,&#8221; said Glynn.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s done that some time ago,&#8221; said Crook. &#8220;Tell E-egante,&#8221; he
+continued to the squaw, &#8220;that I will not send for more soldiers than he
+sees here. I do <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>not wish anything but peace unless he wishes
+otherwise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah&#8217;s musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched
+her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length.
+He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often.
+All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble.
+There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had
+not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was
+raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the
+horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come
+to-morrow with Gray Fox.</p>
+
+<p>And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as
+innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,&#8221;
+the General admitted. &#8220;And that fellow put his finger right on the
+place. I&#8217;ll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more
+soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told
+him I lied; she&#8217;s an uncertain quantity, I find. But I told him the
+exact truth&mdash;that I had no more&mdash;and he won&#8217;t believe it, and that&#8217;s
+what I want.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely
+exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force
+was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an
+impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command.
+Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men&#8217;s village, and the troops
+went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze
+ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>in the thicket should
+have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules
+pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered
+among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of
+the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the
+flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built
+irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended
+glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little
+blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook&#8217;s tent, and Sergeant
+Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his
+camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket
+below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By
+eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a
+little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on
+the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water
+running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant
+Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the
+dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack
+Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar,
+because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command
+of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master&mdash;the
+instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and
+Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they
+stood at the fire, but away from him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you like this compared with barracks?&#8221; the sergeant asked,
+conversationally.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all right,&#8221; said Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn&#8217;t enjoy it
+much myself. Sit down and get warm, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The men came and stood awkwardly. &#8220;I &#8217;ain&#8217;t never found any excitement
+in getting up early,&#8221; said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted,
+and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones
+kicked the log into better position. &#8220;But this affair&#8217;s gettin&#8217;
+inter-esting,&#8221; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you smoke?&#8221; Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his
+tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going
+better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Arizona&#8217;s the most outrageous outrage in the United States,&#8221; declared
+Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you stay there six years, then?&#8221; said Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Guess I&#8217;d been there yet but for you comin&#8217; along and us both enlistin&#8217;
+that crazy way. Idaho&#8217;s better. Only,&#8221; said Jones, thoughtfully, &#8220;coming
+to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it&#8217;s a wonder a man
+don&#8217;t just split like a glass chimbly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How! how!&#8221; said a strange, propitiating voice.</p>
+
+<p>It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself.
+They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not
+running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and &#8220;How!
+how!&#8221; he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who
+remained seated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-evening,&#8221; said the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Christmas is coming,&#8221; said Jones, amicably.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How! how!&#8221; said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his
+horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and
+beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly
+jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp
+and shaken his head; but the Indian&#8217;s nerves were evidently on the
+sharpest strain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sit down!&#8221; said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started
+suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Warm here!&#8221; Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed
+almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with
+heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for
+vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and
+pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers
+only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount,
+looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got
+off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they
+smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the
+magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a jim-dandy,&#8221; said Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You bet the girls think so,&#8221; said Jones. &#8220;He gets his pick. For you&#8217;re
+a fighter too, ain&#8217;t y&#8217;u?&#8221; he added, to E-egante.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How! how!&#8221; said that personage, looking at them with grave affability
+from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the
+sergeant&#8217;s pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of
+being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning
+embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp,
+crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante
+gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had
+come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it
+would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview.
+Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but
+she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had
+taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay
+wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances.
+The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice
+made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant
+on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.</p>
+
+<p>By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty
+waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten
+o&#8217;clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the
+squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to
+do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn
+smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking
+wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she
+served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven,
+and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He
+gave the orders himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sergeant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Keyser saluted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You will detail eight men to go with you into the Indian camp. The men
+are to carry pistols under their overcoats, and no other arms. You will
+tell the Indians to come out. Repeat what I said to them last night.
+Make it short. I&#8217;ll give them ten minutes. If they don&#8217;t come by then a
+shot will be fired out here. At that signal you will remain in there and
+blaze away at the Indians.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So Keyser picked his men.</p>
+
+<p>The thirty-one remaining troopers stopped joking, and watched the squad
+of nine and the interpreter file down the bank to visit the three
+hundred. The dingy overcoats and the bright green shawl passed into the
+thicket, and the General looked at his watch. Along the bend of the
+stream clear noises tinkled from the water and the ice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What are they up to?&#8221; whispered a teamster to Jack Long. Long&#8217;s face
+was stern, but the teamster&#8217;s was chalky and tight drawn. &#8220;Say,&#8221; he
+repeated, insistently, &#8220;what are we going to do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re to wait,&#8221; Long whispered back, &#8220;till nothin&#8217; happens, and then
+th&#8217; Ole Man&#8217;ll fire a gun and signal them boys to shoot in there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s to be waitin&#8217;?&#8221; said the teamster. He fastened his eyes on the
+thicket, and his lips grew bloodless. The running river sounded more
+plainly. &#8220;&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; it!&#8221; cried the man, desperately, &#8220;let&#8217;s start the
+fun, then.&#8221; He whipped out his pistol, and Jack Long had just time to
+seize him and stop a false signal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, you must be skeered,&#8221; said Long. &#8220;I&#8217;ve a mind to beat yer skull
+in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waitin&#8217;s so awful,&#8221; whimpered the man. &#8220;I wisht I was along with them
+in there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>Jack gave him back his revolver. &#8220;There,&#8221; said he; &#8220;ye&#8217;re not skeered, I
+see. Waitin&#8217; ain&#8217;t nice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The eight troopers with Keyser were not having anything like so
+distasteful a time. &#8220;Jock,&#8221; said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, as they
+followed the sergeant into the willows and began to come among the
+lodges and striped savages, &#8220;you and me has saw Injuns before, Jock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And we&#8217;ll do it again,&#8221; said Cumnor.</p>
+
+<p>Keyser looked at his watch: Four minutes gone. &#8220;Jones,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you
+patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There
+must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with
+side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It&#8217;s a big
+one&mdash;all brothers.&#8221; Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick
+through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all
+the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle,
+fleeting visions of yellow and red through the quiet-colored twigs.
+Others squatted stoically, doing nothing. A few had guns, but most used
+arrows, and had these stacked beside them where they squatted. Keyser
+singled out a somewhat central figure&mdash;Fur Cap was his name&mdash;as his
+starting-point if the signal should sound. It must sound now in a second
+or two. He would not look at his watch lest it should hamper him. Fur
+Cap sat by a pile of arrows, with a gun across his knees besides. Keyser
+calculated that by standing close to him as he was, his boot would catch
+the Indian under the chin just right, and save one cartridge. Not a red
+man spoke, but Sarah the squaw dutifully speechified in a central place
+where paths met near Keyser and Fur Cap. Her voice was persuasive and
+warning. Some of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>savages moved up and felt Keyser&#8217;s overcoat. They
+fingered the hard bulge of the pistol underneath, and passed on,
+laughing, to the next soldier&#8217;s coat, while Sarah did not cease to
+harangue. The tall, stately man of last night appeared. His full dark
+eye met Sarah&#8217;s, and the woman&#8217;s voice faltered and her breathing grew
+troubled as she gazed at him. Once more Keyser looked at his watch:
+Seven minutes. E-egante noticed Sarah&#8217;s emotion, and his face showed
+that her face pleased him. He spoke in a deep voice to Fur Cap,
+stretching a fringed arm out towards the hill with a royal gesture, at
+which Fur Cap rose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He will come, he will come!&#8221; said the squaw, running to Keyser. &#8220;They
+all come now. Do not shoot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let them show outside, then,&#8221; thundered Keyser, &#8220;or it&#8217;s too late. If
+that gun goes before I can tell my men&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off and rushed to the entrance. There were skirmishers
+deploying from three points, and Crook was raising his hand slowly.
+There was a pistol in it. &#8220;General! General!&#8221; Keyser shouted, waving
+both hands, &#8220;No!&#8221; Behind him came E-egante, with Sarah, talking in low
+tones, and Fur Cap came too.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo9" id="illo9"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/i144.jpg" class="smallgap" width="400" height="396" alt="&#8220;HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The General saw, and did not give the signal. The sight of the
+skirmishers hastened E-egante&#8217;s mind. He spoke in a loud voice, and at
+once his warriors began to emerge from the willows obediently. Crook&#8217;s
+bluff was succeeding. The Indians in waiting after nine were attempting
+a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of nine men
+appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance left them.
+They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>they came, and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The
+troopers had all they could do to form an escort and keep up the
+delusion, but by degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding
+along the edge of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and
+saying, &#8220;How! how!&#8221; to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony
+ambled, and sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning
+to wonder, when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the
+thicket, leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away,
+round the curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he
+hesitated to kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and
+scurrying, the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed.
+Sarah had been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and
+now she vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind,
+and leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t feel so mad as I ought,&#8221; said Specimen Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Crook laughed to Glynn about it. &#8220;We&#8217;ve got a big balance of &#8217;em,&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;if we can get &#8217;em all to Bois&eacute;. They&#8217;ll probably roast me in the
+East.&#8221; And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one
+escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of
+the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington,
+and explained to each other how they would have done it.</p>
+
+<p>And so the General&#8217;s bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom,
+&#8220;all along o&#8217; thet yere pizen squaw,&#8221; as Mr. Long judiciously remarked.
+It was not until many years after that the chief&#8217;s destiny overtook
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>him; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="SALVATION_GAP" id="SALVATION_GAP"></a>SALVATION GAP</h2>
+
+<p>After cutting the Gazelle&#8217;s throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent,
+secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was
+the other man&mdash;the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine
+morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He
+was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously
+made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.</p>
+
+<p>The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on
+account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer
+Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested
+in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn&#8217;s relations with the
+Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was
+genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling
+him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of
+the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn&#8217;s &#8220;rusted mustache
+had livened up; same ez flow&#8217;rs ye&#8217;ve kerried a long ways when yer girl
+puts &#8217;em in a pitcher o&#8217; water.&#8221; Being the sentiment of a placer miner,
+the lover&#8217;s feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the
+Gazelle&#8217;s that was purely official; it was for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>him that she personally
+cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her
+trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits&mdash;gold,
+coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust&mdash;that her hall of entertainment
+earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton&#8217;
+needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to
+ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money
+until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting
+her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once,
+on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry
+the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain
+shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to
+the right place. A woman&#8217;s name and an address at San Antonio were
+certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the
+stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave
+him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that
+young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his
+knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold
+inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at
+that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was
+forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all,
+though, it was silly, just for the sake of a laugh, to let the old lover
+learn the face of his secret rival. It was one of those early unimagined
+nails people sometimes drive in their own coffins. An ancient series of
+events followed: continued abject faith and passion on the miner&#8217;s part;
+continued presents <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued
+trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her
+very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn&#8217;s first sickening dawn of
+doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final
+accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to
+the Gap come out of the Gazelle&#8217;s tent so early in the morning; the
+instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever,
+calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and
+dead. He had managed well. The whole game had shown instantly like a
+picture on his brain, complete at a stroke, with every move clear. He
+had let the man go down the hill&mdash;just for the present. The camp had got
+up, eaten its breakfast, and gone out to the ditches, Drylyn along with
+the rest. Owing to its situation, neighbors could not see him presently
+leave his claim and walk back quickly to the Gap at an hour when the
+dance-hall was likely to be lonely. He had ready what to say if the
+other women should be there; but they were away at the creek below,
+washing, and the luxurious, unsuspecting Gazelle was in bed in her own
+tent, not yet disturbed. The quiet wild beast walked through the
+deserted front entrance of the hall in the most natural manner, and so
+behind among the empty bottles, and along the plank into the tent; then,
+after a while, out again. She would never be disturbed now, and the wild
+beast was back at his claim, knee-deep, and busy among the digging and
+the wetness, in another pair of overalls just like the ones that were
+now under some stones at the bottom of a mud-puddle. And then one very
+bad long scream came up to the ditches, and Drylyn knew the women had
+returned from their washing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p><p>He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man;
+had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could
+remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew
+that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was
+going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with
+his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone
+out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered,
+for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package
+of gold-dust&mdash;some of it very likely his own&mdash;to the smooth-faced
+messenger at Folsom, Drylyn&#8217;s stolid body trembled from head to foot,
+and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.</p>
+
+<p>But down below there the screams were sounding. A brother miner came
+running by. Drylyn realized that he ought to be running too, of course,
+and so he ran. All the men were running from their various scattered
+claims, and Salvation Gap grew noisy and full of people at once. There
+was the sheriff also, come up last evening on the track of some
+stage-robbers, and quite opportune for this, he thought. He liked things
+to be done legally. The turmoil of execration and fierce curiosity
+thrashed about for the right man to pitch on for this crime. The
+murdered woman had been so good company, so hearty a wit, such a robust
+songstress, so tireless a dancer, so thoroughly everybody&#8217;s friend, that
+it was inconceivable to the mind of Salvation Gap that anybody there had
+done it. The women were crying and wringing their hands&mdash;the Gazelle had
+been good to them too; the men were talking and cursing, all but Drylyn
+there among them, serious and strange-looking; so silent <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>that the
+sheriff eyed him once or twice, though he knew nothing of the miner&#8217;s
+infatuation. And then some woman shrieked out the name of Drylyn, and
+the crowd had him gripped in a second, to let him go the next, laughing
+at the preposterous idea. Saying nothing? Of course he didn&#8217;t feel like
+talking. To be sure he looked dazed. It was hard luck on him. They told
+the sheriff about him and the Gazelle. They explained that Drylyn was
+&#8220;sort of loony, anyway,&#8221; and the sheriff said, &#8220;Oh!&#8221; and began to wonder
+and surmise in this half-minute they had been now gathered, when
+suddenly the inevitable boot-prints behind the tent down the hill were
+found. The shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had
+never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was
+this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a
+straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged
+thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He
+was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of
+calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen
+that consequences were going to rise and burst like this. The next thing
+he knew he was in a pursuit, with pine-trees passing, and the hurrying
+sheriff remarking to the band that he proposed to maintain order. Drylyn
+heard his neighbor, a true Californian, whose words were lightest when
+his purpose was most serious, telling the sheriff that order was
+certainly Heaven&#8217;s first law, and an elegant thing anywhere. But the
+anxious officer made no retort in kind, and only said that
+irregularities were damaging to the county&#8217;s good name, and would keep
+settlers from moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylyn <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>and asked him
+when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be
+unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went
+along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had
+never sized up the true state of Drylyn&#8217;s feeling for the Gazelle, and
+that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they
+found the man they were hunting, but he doubted if the sheriff would be
+persuading enough for Drylyn. They came out on a road, and the
+sleep-walker recognized a rock and knew how far they had gone, and that
+this was the stage-road between Folsom and Surprise Springs. They
+followed the road, and round a bend came on the man. He had been taking
+it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the
+night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to
+Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small
+creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous
+compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into
+cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was
+really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he
+recognized the sheriff&#8217;s voice, telling him it would go better with him
+if he did not try to kill any more people, he was greatly relieved that
+it was not highwaymen after him and his little gold, and he put up his
+pistol and waited for them, smiling, secure in his identity; and when
+they drew nearer he asked them how many people he had killed already.
+They came up and caught him and found the gold in a moment, ripping it
+from his pocket; and the yell they gave at that stopped his smiling
+entirely. When he found himself in irons and hurried along, he began <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>to
+explain that there was some mistake, and was told by the chatty neighbor
+that maybe killing a woman was always a mistake, certainly one this
+time. As they walked him among them they gave small notice to his
+growing fright and bewilderment, but when he appealed to the sheriff on
+the score of old acquaintanceship, and pitifully begged to know what
+they supposed he had done, the miners laughed curiously. That brought
+his entreating back to them, and he assured them, looking in their
+faces, that he truly did need to be told why they wanted him. So they
+held up the gold and asked him whose that had been, and he made a
+wretched hesitation in answering. If anything was needed to clinch their
+certainty, that did. They could not know that the young successful lover
+had recognized Drylyn&#8217;s strange face, and did not want to tell the truth
+before him, and hence was telling an unskilful lie instead. A rattle of
+wheels sounded among the pines ahead, and the stage came up and stopped.
+Only the driver and a friend were on it, and both of them knew the
+shot-gun messenger and the sheriff, and they asked in some astonishment
+what the trouble was. It had been stage-robbers the sheriff had started
+after, the driver thought. And&mdash;as he commented in friendly tones&mdash;to
+turn up with Wells and Fargo&#8217;s messenger was the neatest practical joke
+that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and
+anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry
+of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at
+feeling the ghastly chain of probability that had wound itself about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff wondered if there were a true ring in the man&#8217;s voice. It
+certainly sounded so. He was talking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>with rapid agony, and it was the
+whole true story that was coming out now. But the chatty neighbor nudged
+another neighbor at the new explanation about the gold-dust. That there
+was no great quantity of it, after all, weighed little against this
+double accounting for one simple fact; moreover, the new version did not
+do the messenger credit in the estimation of the miners, but gave them a
+still worse opinion of him. It is scarcely fair to disbelieve what a man
+says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it.
+Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening
+sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the
+deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way.
+It had even been in the miners&#8217; heads to finish the business here on the
+Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there
+was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff&#8217;s plea
+that something further might have turned up at the Gap; but at the
+driver&#8217;s more forcible suggestion that the Gap would feel disappointed
+at being left out, they consented to take the man back there. Drylyn
+never offered any opinion, or spoke at all. It was not necessary that he
+should, and they forgot about him. It was time to be getting along, they
+said. What was the good in standing in the road here? They nodded
+good-day to the stage-driver, and took themselves and the prisoner into
+the pines. Once the sheriff had looked at the driver and his friend
+perched on the halted stage, but he immediately saw too much risk in his
+half-formed notion of an alliance with them to gallop off with the
+prisoner; his part must come later, if at all.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo10" id="illo10"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i156.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="358" alt="THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the driver had perfectly understood the sheriff&#8217;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>glance, and he was on the sheriff&#8217;s side, though he showed no sign. As
+he drove along he began thinking about the way the prisoner had cried
+out just now, and the inconsiderable value of the dust, and it became
+clear in his mind that this was a matter for a court and twelve quiet
+men. The friend beside him was also intent upon his own thoughts, and
+neither said a word to the other upon the lonely road. The horses soon
+knew that they were not being driven any more, and they slackened their
+pace, and finding no reproof came for this, they fell to a comfortable
+walk. Presently several had snatched a branch in passing, and it waved
+from their mouths as they nibbled. After that they gave up all pretence
+at being stage-horses, and the driver noticed them. From habit he
+whipped them up into shape and gait, and the next moment pulled them in
+short, at the thought that had come to him. The prisoner must be got
+away from the Gap. The sheriff was too single-handed among such a crowd
+as that, and the driver put a question to his friend. It could be
+managed by taking a slight liberty with other people&#8217;s horses; but Wells
+and Fargo would not find fault with this when the case was one of their
+own servants, hitherto so well thought of. The stage, being empty and
+light, could spare two horses and go on, while those two horses, handled
+with discretion and timeliness, might be very useful at the Gap. The
+driver had best not depart from rule so far as to leave his post and
+duty; one man would be enough. The friend thought well of this plan, and
+they climbed down into the road from opposite sides and took out the
+wheelers. To be sure these animals were heavy, and not of the best sort
+for escaping on, but better than walking; and timeliness and discretion
+can do a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>great deal. So in a little while the driver and his stage were
+gone on their way, the friend with the two horses had disappeared in the
+wood, and the road was altogether lonely.</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff&#8217;s brain was hard at work, and he made no protest now as he
+walked along, passive in the company of the miners and their prisoner.
+The prisoner had said all that he had to say, and his man&#8217;s firmness,
+which the first shock and amazement had wrenched from him, had come to
+his help again, bringing a certain shame at having let his reserve and
+bearing fall to pieces, and at having made himself a show; so he spoke
+no more than his grim captors did, as they took him swiftly through the
+wood. The sheriff was glad it was some miles they had to go; for though
+they went very fast, the distance and the time, and even the becoming
+tired in body, might incline their minds to more deliberation. He could
+think yet of nothing new to urge. He had seen and heard only the same
+things that all had, and his present hopes lay upon the Gap and what
+more might have come to light there since his departure. He looked at
+Drylyn, but the miner&#8217;s serious and massive face gave him no suggestion;
+and the sheriff&#8217;s reason again destroyed the germ of suspicion that
+something plainly against reason had several times put in his thoughts.
+Yet it stuck with him that they had hold of the wrong man.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the Gap, and he found the people there as he had left
+them, and things the same way, with nothing new turned up to help his
+theory, the sheriff once more looked round; but Drylyn was not in the
+crowd. He had gone, they told him, to look at <i>her</i>; he had set a heap
+of store by her, they repeated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;A heap of store,&#8221; said the sheriff, thinking. &#8220;Where is she now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On her bed,&#8221; said a woman, &#8220;same as ever, only we&#8217;ve fixed her up
+some.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll take a look at her&mdash;and him. You boys won&#8217;t do anything till
+I come back, will you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, if ye&#8217;re so anxious to see us do it, sheriff,&#8221; said the chatty
+neighbor, &#8220;I guess we can wait that long fer ye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The officer walked to the tent. Drylyn was standing over the body, quiet
+and dumb. He was safe for the present, the sheriff knew, and so he left
+him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front
+of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that
+they had a rope there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once upon a time,&#8221; said the sheriff, &#8220;there was a man in Arkansaw that
+had no judgment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They raise &#8217;em that way in Arkansaw,&#8221; said the chatty neighbor, as the
+company made a circle to hear the story&mdash;a tight, cautious circle&mdash;with
+the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The man&#8217;s wife had good judgment,&#8221; continued the narrator, &#8220;but she
+went and died on him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I guess that <i>was</i> good judgment,&#8221; said the neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry,
+which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of
+setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being
+shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the
+hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on &#8217;em, and also a heap of
+hens&#8217; eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it&#8217;s her I&#8217;m
+chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the
+eggs hatched out, she didn&#8217;t stop to notice, but up and takes them down
+to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they
+drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and
+come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck
+figured out she&#8217;d made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the
+chickens were in heaven.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage
+a little. &#8220;Now,&#8221; said he, &#8220;ain&#8217;t you boys just a trifle like that duck?
+I don&#8217;t know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I
+don&#8217;t know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for
+him we&#8217;ve got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it&#8217;s
+an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and&mdash;God
+forgive me!&mdash;I was one of them. I&#8217;ll tell you how that was. He looked
+enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We
+came on a cabin we&#8217;d never known of before, pretty far up in the
+hills&mdash;a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a
+man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought.
+We knew we had caught him&mdash;that&#8217;s the way we felt. So we got our guns
+ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin.
+We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he&#8217;d
+been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!&mdash;we gave him no time!
+He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got
+tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted
+some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>words: &#8216;Where the wicked cease from troubling.&#8217; He had figured
+that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And
+ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me
+second. Now this afternoon I&#8217;m alone here. You know I can&#8217;t do much. And
+I&#8217;m going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don&#8217;t say that in
+this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times,
+when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and
+when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is
+that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can&#8217;t name
+me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that
+being so, don&#8217;t we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can
+see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at
+our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience&mdash;and we shot him
+down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you
+insist&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him.
+Some of the men knew the story of the prospector&mdash;it had been in the
+papers&mdash;but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite
+well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner.
+The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and
+discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out
+of the dead woman&#8217;s tent, and, looking down, realized the intended
+rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with
+a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he
+was trying to escape.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the man!&#8221; he shouted savagely to the ring.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying
+Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong
+two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised
+scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the
+dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind,
+thrown down, and held.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So ye were alone, were ye?&#8221; said the chatty neighbor. &#8220;Well, ye made a
+good talk. Keep quiet&mdash;we don&#8217;t want to hurt ye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this supposed perfidy the Gap&#8217;s rage was at white-heat again; the men
+massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger&#8217;s fate
+was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and
+death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over
+for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black
+against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and
+when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention
+to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him
+go, and the sheriff too. The driver&#8217;s friend had left his horses among
+the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now
+joined the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You meant well,&#8221; the sheriff said to him. &#8220;I wish you would tell the
+boys how you come to be here. They&#8217;re thinking I lied to them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe I can change their minds.&#8221; It was Drylyn&#8217;s deep voice. &#8220;I am the
+man you were hunting,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo11" id="illo11"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/i164.jpg" class="smallgap" width="400" height="371" alt="&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER&#8217;&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER&#8217;&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness
+has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap
+was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill
+the mountain air.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You boys think I&#8217;m touched in the head,&#8221; said Drylyn, and paused. &#8220;This
+knife done it,&#8221; said he. &#8220;This one I&#8217;m showing you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They looked at the knife in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He come between me and her,&#8221; Drylyn pursued. &#8220;I was aiming to give him
+his punishment myself. That would have been square.&#8221; He turned the knife
+over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their
+eyes. &#8220;You don&#8217;t believe me!&#8221; he exclaimed, savagely. &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m going
+to make you. Sheriff, I&#8217;ll bring you some evidence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned.
+Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing
+beneath the dead man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does them look like being touched in the head?&#8221; inquired Drylyn, and he
+threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t seem to mind telling you,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I feel as quiet&mdash;as quiet as
+them tall pines the sun&#8217;s just quittin&#8217; for the night.&#8221; He looked at the
+men expectantly, but none of them stirred. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to have it over,&#8221;
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>Still no one moved.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have a right to ask it shall be quick,&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;You were quick
+enough with him.&#8221; And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the
+right one. The chatty neighbor <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>shook his head. &#8220;Seems curious,&#8221; he
+said, slowly. &#8220;It ought to be done. But I couldn&#8217;t no more do it&mdash;gosh!
+how <i>can</i> a man fire his gun right after it&#8217;s been discharged?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. &#8220;You won&#8217;t?&#8221; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You better quit us,&#8221; suggested the neighbor. &#8220;Go somewheres else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Drylyn&#8217;s eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and
+the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. &#8220;Him and me,&#8221; he
+muttered. &#8220;It ain&#8217;t square. Him and me&mdash;&#8221; Suddenly he broke out, &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t choose him to think I was that kind of man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his
+fingers. &#8220;Sheriff,&#8221; he began, but his tone changed. &#8220;I&#8217;m overtakin&#8217;
+him!&#8221; he said. &#8220;He&#8217;s going to know now. Lay me alongside&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so they did.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_SECOND_MISSOURI_COMPROMISE" id="THE_SECOND_MISSOURI_COMPROMISE"></a>THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE</h2>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p>The Legislature had sat up all night, much absorbed, having taken off
+its coat because of the stove. This was the fortieth and final day of
+its first session under an order of things not new only, but novel. It
+sat with the retrospect of forty days&#8217; duty done, and the prospect of
+forty days&#8217; consequent pay to come. Sleepy it was not, but wide and
+wider awake over a progressing crisis. Hungry it had been until after a
+breakfast fetched to it from the Overland at seven, three hours ago. It
+had taken no intermission to wash its face, nor was there just now any
+apparatus for this, as the tin pitcher commonly used stood not in the
+basin in the corner, but on the floor by the Governor&#8217;s chair; so the
+eyes of the Legislature, though earnest, were dilapidated. Last night
+the pressure of public business had seemed over, and no turning back the
+hands of the clock likely to be necessary. Besides Governor Ballard, Mr.
+Hewley, Secretary and Treasurer, was sitting up too, small, iron-gray,
+in feature and bearing every inch the capable, dignified official, but
+his necktie had slipped off during the night. The bearded Councillors
+had the best of it, seeming after their vigil less stale in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>face
+than the member from Silver City, for instance, whose day-old black
+growth blurred his dingy chin, or the member from Big Camas, whose
+scantier red crop bristled on his cheeks in sparse wandering
+arrangements, like spikes on the barrel of a musical box. For comfort,
+most of the pistols were on the table with the Statutes of the United
+States. Secretary and Treasurer Hewley&#8217;s lay on his strong-box
+immediately behind him. The Governor&#8217;s was a light one, and always hung
+in the arm hole of his waistcoat. The graveyard of Bois&eacute; City this year
+had twenty-seven tenants, two brought there by meningitis, and
+twenty-five by difference of opinion. Many denizens of the Territory
+were miners, and the unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air,
+breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed
+against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until
+they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the
+night&#8217;s untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its
+shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had
+appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a
+good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it
+from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare
+into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be
+sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides;
+but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the
+idle, and this was counted a sensible thing by the law-makers. They took
+the ground that shaping any government for a raw wilderness community
+needed seclusion, and they set a high value upon unworried privacy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p><p>The sun had set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that
+looked momentous. Only the Governor&#8217;s and Treasurer&#8217;s were impassive,
+and they concealed something even graver than the matter in hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll take a hun&#8217;red mo&#8217;, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said the member from Silver City,
+softly, his eyes on space. His name was Powhattan Wingo.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor counted out the blue, white, and red chips to Wingo,
+pencilled some figures on a thickly ciphered and cancelled paper that
+bore in print the words &#8220;Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber,&#8221; and then
+filled up his glass from the tin pitcher, adding a little sugar.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;ll trouble you fo&#8217; the toddy,&#8221; Wingo added, always softly, and
+his eyes always on space. &#8220;Raise you ten, suh.&#8221; This was to the
+Treasurer. Only the two were playing at present. The Governor was kindly
+acting as bank; the others were looking on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And ten,&#8221; said the Treasurer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And ten,&#8221; said Wingo.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And twenty,&#8221; said the Treasurer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And fifty,&#8221; said Wingo, gently bestowing his chips in the middle of the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>The Treasurer called.</p>
+
+<p>The member from Silver City showed down five high hearts, and a light
+rustle went over the Legislature when the Treasurer displayed three twos
+and a pair of threes, and gathered in his harvest. He had drawn two
+cards, Wingo one; and losing to the lowest hand that could have beaten
+you is under such circumstances truly hard luck. Moreover, it was almost
+the only sort of luck that had attended Wingo since about half after
+three that morning. Seven hours of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>cards just a little lower than your
+neighbor&#8217;s is searching to the nerves.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gove&#8217;nuh, I&#8217;ll take a hun&#8217;red mo&#8217;,&#8221; said Wingo; and once again the
+Legislature rustled lightly, and the new deal began.</p>
+
+<p>Treasurer Hewley&#8217;s winnings flanked his right, a pillared fortress on
+the table, built chiefly of Wingo&#8217;s misfortunes. Hewley had not counted
+them, and his architecture was for neatness and not ostentation; yet the
+Legislature watched him arrange his gains with sullen eyes. It would
+have pleased him now to lose; it would have more than pleased him to be
+able to go to bed quite a long time ago. But winners cannot easily go to
+bed. The thoughtful Treasurer bet his money and deplored this luck. It
+seemed likely to trap himself and the Governor in a predicament they had
+not foreseen. All had taken a hand at first, and played for several
+hours, until Fortune&#8217;s wheel ran into a rut deeper than usual. Wingo
+slowly became the loser to several, then Hewley had forged ahead, winner
+from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go
+home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. It was an extraordinary
+run, a rare specimen, a breaker of records, something to refer to in the
+future as a standard of measure and an embellishment of reminiscence;
+quite enough to keep the Idaho Legislature up all night. And then it was
+their friend who was losing. The only speaking in the room was the brief
+card talk of the two players.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Five better,&#8221; said Hewley, winner again four times in the last five.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ten,&#8221; said Wingo.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And twenty,&#8221; said the Secretary and Treasurer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Call you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Three kings.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They are good, suh. Gove&#8217;nuh, I&#8217;ll take a hun&#8217;red mo&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this the wealthy and weary Treasurer made a try for liberty and
+bed. How would it do, he suggested, to have a round of jack-pots, say
+ten&mdash;or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred&mdash;and then stop?
+It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor
+looked at him. But Wingo&#8217;s large countenance remained inexpressive, his
+black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips
+were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall.
+The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon
+he should have a disclosure to make; something that would need the most
+cheerful and contented feelings in Wingo and the Legislature to be
+received with any sort of calm. Wingo was behind the game to the tune
+of&mdash;the Governor gave up adding as he ran his eye over the figures of
+the bank&#8217;s erased and tormented record, and he shook his head to
+himself. This was inadvertent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May I inquah who yo&#8217;re shakin&#8217; yoh head at, suh?&#8221; said Wingo, wheeling
+upon the surprised Governor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly,&#8221; answered that official. &#8220;You.&#8221; He was never surprised for
+very long. In 1867 it did not do to remain surprised in Idaho.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And have I done anything which meets yoh disapprobation?&#8221; pursued the
+member from Silver City, enunciating with care.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have met my disapprobation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Wingo&#8217;s eye was on the Governor, and now his friends drew a little
+together, and as a unit sent a glance of suspicion at the lone bank.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You will gratify me by being explicit, suh,&#8221; said Wingo to the bank.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;ve emptied the toddy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ha-ha, Gove&#8217;nuh! I rose, suh, to yoh little fly. We&#8217;ll awduh some mo&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Time enough when he comes for the breakfast things,&#8221; said Governor
+Ballard, easily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As you say, suh. I&#8217;ll open for five dolluhs.&#8221; Wingo turned back to his
+game. He was winning, and as his luck continued his voice ceased to be
+soft, and became a shade truculent. The Governor&#8217;s ears caught this
+change, and he also noted the lurking triumph in the faces of Wingo&#8217;s
+fellow-statesmen. Cheerfulness and content were scarcely reigning yet in
+the Council Chamber of Idaho as Ballard sat watching the friendly game.
+He was beginning to fear that he must leave the Treasurer alone and take
+some precautions outside. But he would have to be separated for some
+time from his ally, cut off from giving him any hints. Once the
+Treasurer looked at him, and he immediately winked reassuringly, but the
+Treasurer failed to respond. Hewley might be able to wink after
+everything was over, but he could not find it in his serious heart to do
+so now. He was wondering what would happen if this game should last till
+noon with the company in its present mood. Noon was the time fixed for
+paying the Legislative Assembly the compensation due for its services
+during this session; and the Governor and the Treasurer had put their
+heads together and arranged a surprise for the Legislative Assembly.
+They were not going to pay them.</p>
+
+<p>A knock sounded at the door, and on seeing the waiter from the Overland
+enter, the Governor was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>seized with an idea. Perhaps precaution could
+be taken from the inside. &#8220;Take this pitcher,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and have it
+refilled with the same. Joseph knows my mixture.&#8221; But Joseph was night
+bar-tender, and now long in his happy bed, with a day successor in the
+saloon, and this one did not know the mixture. Ballard had foreseen this
+when he spoke, and that his writing a note of directions would seem
+quite natural.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The receipt is as long as the drink,&#8221; said a legislator, watching the
+Governor&#8217;s pencil fly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He don&#8217;t know where my private stock is located,&#8221; explained Ballard.
+The waiter departed with the breakfast things and the note, and while
+the jack-pots continued the Governor&#8217;s mind went carefully over the
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>Until lately the Western citizen has known one every-day experience that
+no dweller in our thirteen original colonies has had for two hundred
+years. In Massachusetts they have not seen it since 1641; in Virginia
+not since 1628. It is that of belonging to a community of which every
+adult was born somewhere else. When you come to think of this a little
+it is dislocating to many of your conventions. Let a citizen of Salem,
+for instance, or a well-established Philadelphia Quaker, try to imagine
+his chief-justice fresh from Louisiana, his mayor from Arkansas, his
+tax-collector from South Carolina, and himself recently arrived in a
+wagon from a thousand-mile drive. To be governor of such a community
+Ballard had travelled in a wagon from one quarter of the horizon; from
+another quarter Wingo had arrived on a mule. People reached Bois&eacute; in
+three ways: by rail to a little west of the Missouri, after which it was
+wagon, saddle, or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>walk for the remaining fifteen hundred miles; from
+California it was shorter; and from Portland, Oregon, only about five
+hundred miles, and some of these more agreeable, by water up the
+Columbia. Thus it happened that salt often sold for its weight in
+gold-dust. A miner in the Bannock Basin would meet a freight teamster
+coming in with the staples of life, having journeyed perhaps sixty
+consecutive days through the desert, and valuing his salt highly. The
+two accordingly bartered in scales, white powder against yellow, and
+both parties content. Some in Bois&eacute; to-day can remember these bargains.
+After all, they were struck but thirty years ago. Governor Ballard and
+Treasurer Hewley did not come from the same place, but they constituted
+a minority of two in Territorial politics because they hailed from north
+of Mason and Dixon&#8217;s line. Powhattan Wingo and the rest of the Council
+were from Pike County, Missouri. They had been Secessionists, some of
+them Knights of the Golden Circle; they had belonged to Price&#8217;s Left
+Wing, and they flocked together. They were seven&mdash;two lying unwell at
+the Overland, five now present in the State-House with the Governor and
+Treasurer. Wingo, Gascon Claiborne, Gratiot des P&egrave;res, Pete Cawthon, and
+F. Jackson Gilet were their names. Besides this Council of seven were
+thirteen members of the Idaho House of Representatives, mostly of the
+same political feather with the Council, and they too would be present
+at noon to receive their pay. How Ballard and Hewley came to be a
+minority of two is a simple matter. Only twenty-five months had gone
+since Appomattox Court-House. That surrender was presently followed by
+Johnston&#8217;s to Sherman, at Durhams Station, and following this <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>the
+various Confederate armies in Alabama, or across the Mississippi, or
+wherever they happened to be, had successively surrendered&mdash;but not
+Price&#8217;s Left Wing. There was the wide open West under its nose, and no
+Grant or Sherman infesting that void. Why surrender? Wingos, Claibornes,
+and all, they melted away. Price&#8217;s Left Wing sailed into the prairie and
+passed below the horizon. To know what it next did you must, like
+Ballard or Hewley, pass below the horizon yourself, clean out of sight
+of the dome at Washington to remote, untracked Idaho. There, besides
+wild red men in quantities, would you find not very tame white ones,
+gentlemen of the ripest Southwestern persuasion, and a Legislature to
+fit. And if, like Ballard or Hewley, you were a Union man, and the
+President of the United States had appointed you Governor or Secretary
+of such a place, your days would be full of awkwardness, though your
+difference in creed might not hinder you from playing draw-poker with
+the unreconstructed. These Missourians were whole-souled, ample-natured
+males in many ways, but born with a habit of hasty shooting. The
+Governor, on setting foot in Idaho, had begun to study pistolship, but
+acquired thus in middle life it could never be with him that spontaneous
+art which it was with Price&#8217;s Left Wing. Not that the weapons now lying
+loose about the State-House were brought for use there. Everybody always
+went armed in Bois&eacute;, as the gravestones impliedly testified. Still, the
+thought of the bad quarter of an hour which it might come to at noon did
+cross Ballard&#8217;s mind, raising the image of a column in the morrow&#8217;s
+paper: &#8220;An unfortunate occurrence has ended relations between esteemed
+gentlemen hitherto the warmest personal friends.... They will <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>be laid
+to rest at 3 p.m.... As a last token of respect for our lamented
+Governor, the troops from Bois&eacute; Barracks....&#8221; The Governor trusted that
+if his friends at the post were to do him any service it would not be a
+funeral one.</p>
+
+<p>The new pitcher of toddy came from the Overland, the jack-pots
+continued, were nearing a finish, and Ballard began to wonder if
+anything had befallen a part of his note to the bar-tender, an enclosure
+addressed to another person.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ha, suh!&#8221; said Wingo to Hewley. &#8220;My pot again, I declah.&#8221; The chips had
+been crossing the table his way, and he was now loser but six hundred
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; to whip Mizzooruh all night an&#8217; all day, ez a rule,&#8221;
+observed Pete Cawthon, Councillor from Lost Leg.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis a long road that has no turnin&#8217;, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said F. Jackson Gilet,
+more urbanely. He had been in public life in Missouri, and was now
+President of the Council in Idaho. He, too, had arrived on a mule, but
+could at will summon a rhetoric dating from Cicero, and preserved by
+many luxuriant orators until after the middle of the present century.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;True,&#8221; said the Governor, politely. &#8220;But here sits the long-suffering
+bank, whichever way the road turns. I&#8217;m sleepy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You sacrifice yo&#8217;self in the good cause,&#8221; replied Gilet, pointing to
+the poker game. &#8220;Oneasy lies the head that wahs an office, suh.&#8221; And
+Gilet bowed over his compliment.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor thought so indeed. He looked at the Treasurer&#8217;s strong-box,
+where lay the appropriation lately made by Congress to pay the Idaho
+Legislature <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>for its services; and he looked at the Treasurer, in whose
+pocket lay the key of the strong-box. He was accountable to the Treasury
+at Washington for all money disbursed for Territorial expenses.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Eleven twenty,&#8221; said Wingo, &#8220;and only two hands mo&#8217; to play.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Governor slid out his own watch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll scahsely recoup,&#8221; said Wingo.</p>
+
+<p>They dealt and played the hand, and the Governor strolled to the window.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Three aces,&#8221; Wingo announced, winning again handsomely. &#8220;I struck my
+luck too late,&#8221; he commented to the on-lookers. While losing he had been
+able to sustain a smooth reticence; now he gave his thoughts freely to
+the company, and continually moved and fingered his increasing chips.
+The Governor was still looking out of the window, where he could see far
+up the street, when Wingo won the last hand, which was small. &#8220;That ends
+it, suh, I suppose?&#8221; he said to Hewley, letting the pack of cards linger
+in his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t let him off yet,&#8221; said Ballard to Wingo from the window,
+with sudden joviality, and he came back to the players. &#8220;I&#8217;d make him
+throw five cold hands with me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Gove&#8217;nuh, that&#8217;s yoh spo&#8217;tin&#8217; blood! Will you do it, Mistuh
+Hewley&mdash;a hun&#8217;red a hand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hewley did it; and winning the first, he lost the second, third, and
+fourth in the space of an eager minute, while the Councillors drew their
+chairs close.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me see,&#8221; said Wingo, calculating, &#8220;if I lose this&mdash;why still&mdash;&#8221; He
+lost. &#8220;But I&#8217;ll not have to ask you to accept my papuh, suh. Wingo
+liquidates. Fo&#8217;ty days at six dolluhs a day makes six times fo&#8217; is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>twenty-fo&#8217;&mdash;two hun&#8217;red an&#8217; fo&#8217;ty dolluhs spot cash in hand at noon,
+without computation of mileage to and from Silver City at fo&#8217; dolluhs
+every twenty miles, estimated according to the nearest usually travelled
+route.&#8221; He was reciting part of the statute providing mileage for Idaho
+legislators. He had never served the public before, and he knew all the
+laws concerning compensation by heart. &#8220;You&#8217;ll not have to wait fo&#8217; yoh
+money, suh,&#8221; he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Mr. Wingo,&#8221; said Governor Ballard, &#8220;it depends on yourself
+whether your pay comes to you or not.&#8221; He spoke cheerily. &#8220;If you don&#8217;t
+see things my way, our Treasurer will have to wait for his money.&#8221; He
+had not expected to break the news just so, but it made as easy a
+beginning as any.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See things yoh way, suh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. As it stands at present I cannot take the responsibility of paying
+you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The United States pays me, suh. My compensation is provided by act of
+Congress.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I confess I am unable to discern your responsibility, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said
+F. Jackson Gilet. &#8220;Mr. Wingo has faithfully attended the session, and
+is, like every gentleman present, legally entitled to his emoluments.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can all readily become entitled&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All? Am I&mdash;are my friends&mdash;included in this new depa&#8217;tyuh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The difficulty applies generally, Mr. Gilet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do I understand the Gove&#8217;nuh to insinuate&mdash;nay, gentlemen, do not rise!
+Be seated, I beg.&#8221; For the Councillors had leaped to their feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whar&#8217;s our money?&#8221; said Pete Cawthon. &#8220;Our money was put in thet yere
+box.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>Ballard flushed angrily, but a knock at the door stopped him, and he
+merely said, &#8220;Come in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A trooper, a corporal, stood at the entrance, and the disordered Council
+endeavored to look usual in a stranger&#8217;s presence. They resumed their
+seats, but it was not easy to look usual on such short notice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Captain Paisley&#8217;s compliments,&#8221; said the soldier, mechanically, &#8220;and
+will Governor Ballard take supper with him this evening?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank Captain Paisley,&#8221; said the Governor (his tone was quite usual),
+&#8220;and say that official business connected with the end of the session
+makes it imperative for me to be at the State-House. Imperative.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The trooper withdrew. He was a heavy-built, handsome fellow, with black
+mustache and black eyes that watched through two straight, narrow slits
+beneath straight black brows. His expression in the Council Chamber had
+been of the regulation military indifference, and as he went down the
+steps he irrelevantly sang an old English tune:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Since first I saw your face I resolved<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To honor and re&mdash;&#8217;</span></div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess,&#8221; he interrupted himself as he unhitched his horse, &#8220;parrot and
+monkey hev broke loose.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Legislature, always in its shirt-sleeves, the cards on the table,
+and the toddy on the floor, sat calm a moment, cooled by this brief
+pause from the first heat of its surprise, while the clatter of Corporal
+Jones&#8217;s galloping shrank quickly into silence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>Captain Paisley walked slowly from the adjutant&#8217;s office at Bois&eacute;
+Barracks to his quarters, and his orderly walked behind him. The captain
+carried a letter in his hand, and the orderly, though distant a
+respectful ten paces, could hear him swearing plain as day. When he
+reached his front door Mrs. Paisley met him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; cried she, &#8220;two more chickens froze in the night.&#8221; And the
+delighted orderly heard the captain so plainly that he had to blow his
+nose or burst.</p>
+
+<p>The lady, merely remarking &#8220;My goodness, Jim,&#8221; retired immediately to
+the kitchen, where she had a soldier cook baking, and feared he was not
+quite sober enough to do it alone. The captain had paid eighty dollars
+for forty hens this year at Bois&eacute;, and twenty-nine had now passed away,
+victims to the climate. His wise wife perceived his extreme language not
+to have been all on account of hens, however; but he never allowed her
+to share in his professional worries, so she stayed safe with the
+baking, and he sat in the front room with a cigar in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Bois&eacute; was a two-company post without a major, and Paisley, being senior
+captain, was in command, an office to which he did not object. But his
+duties so far this month of May had not pleased him in the least.
+Theoretically, you can have at a two-company post the following
+responsible people: one major, two captains, four lieutenants, a doctor,
+and a chaplain. The major has been spoken of; it is almost needless to
+say that the chaplain was on leave, and had never <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>been seen at Bois&eacute; by
+any of the present garrison; two of the lieutenants were also on leave,
+and two on surveying details&mdash;they had influence at Washington; the
+other captain was on a scout with General Crook somewhere near the
+Malheur Agency, and the doctor had only arrived this week. There had
+resulted a period when Captain Paisley was his own adjutant,
+quartermaster, and post surgeon, with not even an efficient sergeant to
+rely upon; and during this period his wife had stayed a good deal in the
+kitchen. Happily the doctor&#8217;s coming had given relief to the hospital
+steward and several patients, and to the captain not only an equal, but
+an old friend, with whom to pour out his disgust; and together every
+evening they freely expressed their opinion of the War Department and
+its treatment of the Western army.</p>
+
+<p>There were steps at the door, and Paisley hurried out. &#8220;Only you!&#8221; he
+exclaimed, with such frank vexation that the doctor laughed loudly.
+&#8220;Come in, man, come in,&#8221; Paisley continued, leading him strongly by the
+arm, sitting him down, and giving him a cigar. &#8220;Here&#8217;s a pretty how de
+do!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;More Indians!&#8221; inquired Dr. Tuck.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bother! they&#8217;re nothing. It&#8217;s Senators&mdash;Councillors&mdash;whatever the
+Territorial devils call themselves.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gone on the war-path?&#8221; the doctor said, quite ignorant how nearly he
+had touched the Council.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Precisely, man. War-path. Here&#8217;s the Governor writing me they&#8217;ll be
+scalping him in the State-House at twelve o&#8217;clock. It&#8217;s past 11.30.
+They&#8217;ll be whetting knives about now.&#8221; And the captain roared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know you haven&#8217;t gone crazy,&#8221; said the doctor, &#8220;but who has?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The lot of them. Ballard&#8217;s a good man, and&mdash;what&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>his name?&mdash;the
+little Secretary. The balance are just mad dogs&mdash;mad dogs. Look here:
+&#8216;Dear Captain&#8217;&mdash;that&#8217;s Ballard to me. I just got it&mdash;&#8216;I find myself
+unexpectedly hampered this morning. The South shows signs of being too
+solid. Unless I am supported, my plan for bringing our Legislature to
+terms will have to be postponed. Hewley and I are more likely to be
+brought to terms ourselves&mdash;a bad precedent to establish in Idaho. Noon
+is the hour for drawing salaries. Ask me to supper as quick as you can,
+and act on my reply.&#8217; I&#8217;ve asked him,&#8221; continued Paisley, &#8220;but I haven&#8217;t
+told Mrs. Paisley to cook anything extra yet.&#8221; The captain paused to
+roar again, shaking Tuck&#8217;s shoulder for sympathy. Then he explained the
+situation in Idaho to the justly bewildered doctor. Ballard had confided
+many of his difficulties lately to Paisley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He means you&#8217;re to send troops?&#8221; Tuck inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What else should the poor man mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure it&#8217;s constitutional?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hang constitutional! What do I know about their legal quibbles at
+Washington?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, Paisley&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re unsurrendered rebels, I tell you. Never signed a parole.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the general amnesty&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bother general amnesty! Ballard represents the Federal government in
+this Territory, and Uncle Sam&#8217;s army is here to protect the Federal
+government. If Ballard calls on the army it&#8217;s our business to obey, and
+if there&#8217;s any mistake in judgment it&#8217;s Ballard&#8217;s, not mine.&#8221; Which was
+sound soldier common-sense, and happened to be equally good law. This is
+not always the case.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You haven&#8217;t got any force to send,&#8221; said Tuck.</p>
+
+<p>This was true. General Crook had taken with him both Captain Sinclair&#8217;s
+infantry and the troop (or company, as cavalry was also then called) of
+the First.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A detail of five or six with a reliable non-commissioned officer will
+do to remind them it&#8217;s the United States they&#8217;re bucking against,&#8221; said
+Paisley. &#8220;There&#8217;s a deal in the moral of these things. Crook&mdash;&#8221; Paisley
+broke off and ran to the door. &#8220;Hold his horse!&#8221; he called out to the
+orderly; for he had heard the hoofs, and was out of the house before
+Corporal Jones had fairly arrived. So Jones sprang off and hurried up,
+saluting. He delivered his message.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Um&mdash;umpra&mdash;what&#8217;s that? Is it <i>imperative</i> you mean?&#8221; suggested
+Paisley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir,&#8221; said Jones, reforming his pronunciation of that unaccustomed
+word. &#8220;He said it twiced.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What were they doing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blamed if I&mdash;beg the captain&#8217;s pardon&mdash;they looked like they was
+waitin&#8217; fer me to git out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on&mdash;go on. How many were there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Seven, sir. There was Governor Ballard and Mr. Hewley and&mdash;well, them&#8217;s
+all the names I know. But,&#8221; Jones hastened on with eagerness, &#8220;I&#8217;ve saw
+them five other fellows before at a&mdash;at&mdash;&#8221; The corporal&#8217;s voice failed,
+and he stood looking at the captain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well? Where?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At a cock-fight, sir,&#8221; murmured Jones, casting his eyes down.</p>
+
+<p>A slight sound came from the room where Tuck was seated, listening, and
+Paisley&#8217;s round gray eyes <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>rolled once, then steadied themselves
+fiercely upon Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you notice anything further unusual, corporal?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, sir, except they was excited in there. Looked like they might be
+goin&#8217; to hev considerable rough house&mdash;a fuss, I mean, sir. Two was in
+their socks. I counted four guns on a table.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take five men and go at once to the State-House. If the Governor needs
+assistance you will give it, but do nothing hasty. Stop trouble, and
+make none. You&#8217;ve got twenty minutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Captain&mdash;if anybody needs arrestin&#8217;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must be judge of that.&#8221; Paisley went into the house. There was no
+time for particulars.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Snakes!&#8221; remarked Jones. He jumped on his horse and dashed down the
+slope to the men&#8217;s quarters.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Crook may be here any day or any hour,&#8221; said Paisley, returning to the
+doctor. &#8220;With two companies in the background, I think Price&#8217;s Left Wing
+will subside this morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Supposing they don&#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go myself; and when it gets to Washington that the commanding
+officer at Bois&eacute; personally interfered with the Legislature of Idaho,
+it&#8217;ll shock &#8217;em to that extent that the government will have to pay for
+a special commission of investigation and two tons of red tape. I&#8217;ve got
+to trust to that corporal&#8217;s good sense. I haven&#8217;t another man at the
+post.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo12" id="illo12"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 409px;">
+<img src="images/i186.jpg" class="smallgap" width="409" height="500" alt="&#8220;HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Corporal Jones had three-quarters of a mile to go, and it was ten
+minutes before noon, so he started his five men at a run. His plan was
+to walk and look quiet as soon as he reached the town, and thus excite
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>no curiosity. The citizens were accustomed to the sight of passing
+soldiers. Jones had thought out several things, and he was not going to
+order bayonets fixed until the final necessary moment. &#8220;Stop trouble and
+make none&#8221; was firm in his mind. He had not long been a corporal. It was
+still his first enlistment. His habits were by no means exemplary; and
+his frontier personality, strongly developed by six years of vagabonding
+before he enlisted, was scarcely yet disciplined into the military
+machine of the regulation pattern that it should and must become before
+he could be counted a model soldier. His captain had promoted him to
+steady him, if that could be, and to give his better qualities a chance.
+Since then he had never been drunk at the wrong time. Two years ago it
+would not have entered his free-lance heart to be reticent with any man,
+high or low, about any pleasure in which he saw fit to indulge; to-day
+he had been shy over confessing to the commanding officer his leaning to
+cock-fights&mdash;a sign of his approach to the correct mental attitude of
+the enlisted man. Being corporal had wakened in him a new instinct, and
+this State-House affair was the first chance he had had to show himself.
+He gave the order to proceed at a walk in such a tone that one of the
+troopers whispered to another, &#8220;Specimen ain&#8217;t going to forget he&#8217;s
+wearing a chevron.&#8221;</p>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<p>The brief silence that Jones and his invitation to supper had caused
+among the Councillors was first broken by F. Jackson Gilet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; he said, &#8220;as President of the Council <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>I rejoice in an
+interruption that has given pause to our haste and saved us from
+ill-considered expressions of opinion. The Gove&#8217;nuh has, I confess,
+surprised me. Befo&#8217; examining the legal aspect of our case I will ask
+the Gove&#8217;nuh if he is familiar with the sundry statutes applicable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; Ballard replied, pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I had supposed,&#8221; continued the President of the Council&mdash;&#8220;nay, I had
+congratulated myself that our weightiuh tasks of law-making and so fo&#8217;th
+were consummated yesterday, our thirty-ninth day, and that our friendly
+game of last night would be, as it were, the finis that crowned with
+pleashuh the work of a session memorable for its harmony.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was not wholly accurate, but near enough. The Governor had vetoed
+several bills, but Price&#8217;s Left Wing had had much more than the required
+two-thirds vote of both Houses to make these bills laws over the
+Governor&#8217;s head. This may be called harmony in a manner. Gilet now went
+on to say that any doubts which the Governor entertained concerning the
+legality of his paying any salaries could easily be settled without
+entering upon discussion. Discussion at such a juncture could not but
+tend towards informality. The President of the Council could well
+remember most unfortunate discussions in Missouri between the years 1856
+and 1860, in some of which he had had the honor to take part&mdash;<i>minima
+pars</i>, gentlemen! Here he digressed elegantly upon civil dissensions,
+and Ballard, listening to him and marking the slow, sure progress of the
+hour, told himself that never before had Gilet&#8217;s oratory seemed more
+welcome or less lengthy. A plan had come to him, the orator next
+announced, a way out of the present dilemma, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>simple and regular in
+every aspect. Let some gentleman present now kindly draft a bill setting
+forth in its preamble the acts of Congress providing for the
+Legislature&#8217;s compensation, and let this bill in conclusion provide that
+all members immediately receive the full amount due for their services.
+At noon both Houses would convene; they would push back the clock, and
+pass this bill before the term of their session should expire.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said Gilet, &#8220;you can amply vindicate yo&#8217;self by a
+veto, which, together with our votes on reconsideration of yoh
+objections, will be reco&#8217;ded in the journal of our proceedings, and
+copies transmitted to Washington within thirty days as required by law.
+Thus, suh, will you become absolved from all responsibility.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The orator&#8217;s face, while he explained this simple and regular way out of
+the dilemma, beamed with acumen and statesmanship. Here they would make
+a law, and the Governor must obey the law!</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been more to Ballard&#8217;s mind as he calculated the
+fleeting minutes than this peaceful, pompous farce. &#8220;Draw your bill,
+gentlemen,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I would not object if I could.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Statutes of the United States were procured from among the pistols
+and opened at the proper page. Gascon Claiborne, upon another sheet of
+paper headed &#8220;Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber,&#8221; set about
+formulating some phrases which began &#8220;Whereas,&#8221; and Gratiot des P&egrave;res
+read aloud to him from the statutes. Ballard conversed apart with
+Hewley; in fact, there was much conversing aside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Third March, 1863, c. 117, s. 8, v. 12, p. 811,&#8217;&#8221; dictated Des P&egrave;res.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Skip the chaptuhs and sections,&#8221; said Claiborne. &#8220;We only require the
+date.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Third March, 1863. The sessions of the Legislative Assemblies of the
+several Territories of the United States shall be limited to forty days&#8217;
+duration.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wise provision that,&#8221; whispered Ballard. &#8220;No telling how long a poker
+game might last.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Hewley could not take anything in this spirit. &#8220;Genuine business was
+not got through till yesterday,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;The members of each branch of the Legislature,&#8217;&#8221; read Des P&egrave;res,
+&#8220;&#8216;shall receive a compensation of six dollars per day during the
+sessions herein provided for, and they shall receive such mileage as now
+provided by law: <i>Provided</i>, That the President of the Council and the
+Speaker of the House of Representatives shall each receive a
+compensation of ten dollars a day.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this the President of the Council waved a deprecatory hand to signify
+that it was a principle, not profit, for which he battled. They had
+completed their <i>Whereases</i>, incorporating the language of the several
+sections as to how the appropriation should be made, who disbursed such
+money, mileage, and, in short, all things pertinent to their bill, when
+Pete Cawthon made a suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ain&#8217;t there anything &#8217;bout how much the Gove&#8217;nuh gits?&#8221; he asks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the Secretary?&#8221; added Wingo.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you can leave us out,&#8221; said Ballard.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pardon me, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said Gilet. &#8220;You stated that yoh difficulty was
+not confined to Mr. Wingo or any individual gentleman, but was general.
+Does it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>not apply to yo&#8217;self, suh? Do you not need any bill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh no,&#8221; said Ballard, laughing. &#8220;I don&#8217;t need any bill.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And why not?&#8221; said Cawthon. &#8220;You&#8217;ve jist ez much earned yoh money ez us
+fellers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite as much,&#8221; said Ballard. &#8220;But we&#8217;re not alike&mdash;at present.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gilet grew very stately. &#8220;Except certain differences in political
+opinions, suh, I am not awah of how we differ in merit as public
+servants of this Territory.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The difference is of your own making, Mr. Gilet, and no bill you could
+frame would cure it or destroy my responsibility. You cannot make any
+law contrary to a law of the United States.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Contrary to a law of the United States? And what, suh, has the United
+States to say about my pay I have earned in Idaho?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Gilet, there has been but one government in this country since
+April, 1865, and as friends you and I have often agreed to differ as to
+how many there were before then. That government has a law compelling
+people like you and me to go through a formality, which I have done, and
+you and your friends have refused to do each time it has been suggested
+to you. I have raised no point until now, having my reasons, which were
+mainly that it would make less trouble now for the Territory of which I
+have been appointed Governor. I am held accountable to the Secretary of
+the Treasury semiannually for the manner in which the appropriation has
+been expended. If you will kindly hand me that book&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gilet, more and more stately, handed Ballard the Statutes, which he had
+taken from Des P&egrave;res. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>others were watching Ballard with gathering
+sullenness, as they had watched Hewley while he was winning Wingo&#8217;s
+money, only now the sullenness was of a more decided complexion.</p>
+
+<p>Ballard turned the pages. &#8220;&#8216;Second July, 1862. Every person elected or
+appointed to any office of honor or profit, either in the civil,
+military, or naval service, ... shall before entering upon the duties of
+such office, and before being entitled to any salary or other emoluments
+thereof, take and subscribe the following oath: I&mdash;&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does this mean, suh?&#8221; said Gilet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It means there is no difference in our positions as to what
+preliminaries the law requires of us, no matter how we may vary in
+convictions. I as Governor have taken the oath of allegiance to the
+United States, and you as Councillor must do the same before you can get
+your pay. Look at the book.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I decline, suh. I repudiate yoh proposition. There is a wide difference
+in our positions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you understand it to be, Mr. Gilet?&#8221; Ballard&#8217;s temper was
+rising.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you have chosen to take an oath that did not go against yoh
+convictions&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Mr. Gilet!&#8221; said Ballard, smiling. &#8220;Look at the book.&#8221; He would not
+risk losing his temper through further discussion. He would stick to the
+law as it lay open before them.</p>
+
+<p>But the Northern smile sent Missouri logic to the winds. &#8220;In what are
+you superior to me, suh, that I cannot choose? Who are you that I and
+these gentlemen must take oaths befo&#8217; you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not before me. Look at the book.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll look at no book, suh. Do you mean to tell <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>me you have seen me day
+aftuh day and meditated this treacherous attempt?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is no attempt and no treachery, Mr. Gilet. You could have taken
+the oath long ago, like other officials. You can take it to-day&mdash;or take
+the consequences.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What? You threaten me, suh? Do I understand you to threaten me?
+Gentlemen of the Council, it seems Idaho will be less free than Missouri
+unless we look to it.&#8221; The President of the Council had risen in his
+indignant oratorical might, and his more and more restless friends
+glared admiration at him. &#8220;When was the time that Price&#8217;s Left Wing
+surrendered?&#8221; asked the orator. &#8220;Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their
+shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo&#8217; that! Others have
+crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning.
+As fo&#8217; myself, two grandfathers who fought fo&#8217; our libuhties rest in the
+soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in
+the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I
+will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern rule and dictation. I will
+risk all to be with the Southern people, and if defeated I can, with a
+patriot of old, exclaim,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;More true joy an exile feels<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Than C&aelig;suh with a Senate at his heels.&#8217;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, gentlemen! And we will not be defeated! Our rights are here and
+are ours.&#8221; He stretched his arm towards the Treasurer&#8217;s strong-box, and
+his enthusiastic audience rose at the rhetoric. &#8220;Contain yo&#8217;selves,
+gentlemen,&#8221; said the orator. &#8220;Twelve o&#8217;clock and our bill!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve said my say,&#8221; said Ballard, remaining seated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;An&#8217; what&#8217;ll ye do?&#8221; inquired Pete Cawthon from the agitated group.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I forbid you to touch that!&#8221; shouted Ballard. He saw Wingo moving
+towards the box.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen, do not resort&mdash;&#8221; began Gilet.</p>
+
+<p>But small, iron-gray Hewley snatched his pistol from the box, and sat
+down astraddle of it, guarding his charge. At this hostile movement the
+others precipitated themselves towards the table where lay their
+weapons, and Governor Ballard, whipping his own from his armhole, said,
+as he covered the table: &#8220;Go easy, gentlemen! Don&#8217;t hurt our Treasurer!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t nobody hurt anybody,&#8221; said Specimen Jones, opening the door.</p>
+
+<p>This prudent corporal had been looking in at a window and hearing
+plainly for the past two minutes, and he had his men posted. Each member
+of the Council stopped as he stood, his pistol not quite yet attained;
+Ballard restored his own to its armhole and sat in his chair; little
+Hewley sat on his box; and F. Jackson Gilet towered haughtily, gazing at
+the intruding blue uniform of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll hev to take you to the commanding officer,&#8221; said Jones, briefly,
+to Hewley. &#8220;You and yer box.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my stars and stripes, but that&#8217;s a keen move!&#8221; rejoiced Ballard to
+himself. &#8220;He&#8217;s arresting <i>us</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo13" id="illo13"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i196.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="354" alt="&#8220;&#8216;DON&#8217;T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,&#8217; SAID SPECIMEN JONES&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;&#8216;DON&#8217;T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,&#8217; SAID SPECIMEN JONES&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In Jones&#8217;s judgment, after he had taken in the situation, this had
+seemed the only possible way to stop trouble without making any, and
+therefore, even now, bayonets were not fixed. Best not ruffle Price&#8217;s
+Left Wing just now, if you could avoid it. For a new corporal it was
+well thought and done. But it was high noon, the clock not pushed back,
+and punctual Representatives strolling innocently towards their expected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>pay. There must be no time for a gathering and possible reaction. &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+hev to clear this State-House out,&#8221; Jones decided. &#8220;We&#8217;re makin&#8217; an
+arrest,&#8221; he said, aloud, &#8220;and we want a little room.&#8221; The outside
+bystanders stood back obediently, but the Councillors delayed. Their
+pistols were, with Ballard&#8217;s and Hewley&#8217;s, of course in custody. &#8220;Here,&#8221;
+said Jones, restoring them. &#8220;Go home now. The commanding officer&#8217;s
+waitin&#8217; fer the prisoner. Put yer boots on, sir, and leave,&#8221; he added to
+Pete Cawthon, who still stood in his stockings. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hev to
+disperse anybody more&#8217;n what I&#8217;ve done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Disconcerted Price&#8217;s Left Wing now saw file out between armed soldiers
+the Treasurer and his strong-box; and thus guarded they were brought to
+Bois&eacute; Barracks, whence they did not reappear. The Governor also went to
+the post.</p>
+
+<p>After delivering Hewley and his treasure to the commanding officer,
+Jones with his five troopers went to the sutler&#8217;s store and took a drink
+at Jones&#8217;s expense. Then one of them asked the corporal to have another.
+But Jones refused. &#8220;If a man drinks much of that,&#8221; said he (and the
+whiskey certainly was of a livid, unlikely flavor), &#8220;he&#8217;s liable to go
+home and steal his own pants.&#8221; He walked away to his quarters, and as he
+went they heard him thoughtfully humming his most inveterate song, &#8220;Ye
+shepherds tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But poisonous whiskey was not the inner reason for his moderation. He
+felt very much like a responsible corporal to-day, and the troopers knew
+it. &#8220;Jones has done himself a good turn in this fuss,&#8221; they said. &#8220;He&#8217;ll
+be changing his chevron.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon the Legislature sat in the State-House <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>and read to
+itself in the Statutes all about oaths. It is not believed that any of
+them sat up another night; sleeping on a problem is often much better.
+Next morning the commanding officer and Governor Ballard were called
+upon by F. Jackson Gilet and the Speaker of the House. Every one was
+civil and hearty as possible. Gilet pronounced the captain&#8217;s whiskey
+&#8220;equal to any at the Southern, Saint Louey,&#8221; and conversed for some time
+about the cold season, General Crook&#8217;s remarkable astuteness in dealing
+with Indians, and other topics of public interest. &#8220;And concernin&#8217; yoh
+difficulty yesterday, Gove&#8217;nuh,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been consulting the
+laws, suh, and I perceive yoh construction is entahley correct.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so the Legislature signed that form of oath prescribed for
+participants in the late Rebellion, and Hewley did not have to wait for
+his poker money. He and Wingo played many subsequent games; for, as they
+all said in referring to the matter, &#8220;A little thing like that should
+nevuh stand between friends.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus was accomplished by Ballard, Paisley&mdash;and Jones&mdash;the Second
+Missouri Compromise, at Bois&eacute; City, Idaho, 1867&mdash;an eccentric moment in
+the eccentric years of our development westward, and historic also. That
+it has gone unrecorded until now is because of Ballard&#8217;s modesty,
+Paisley&#8217;s preference for the sword, and Jones&#8217;s hatred of the pen. He
+was never known to write except, later, in the pages of his company
+roster and such unavoidable official places; for the troopers were
+prophetic. In not many months there was no longer a Corporal Jones, but
+a person widely known as Sergeant Jones of Company A; called also the
+&#8220;Singing Sergeant&#8221;; but still familiar to his intimate friends as
+&#8220;Specimen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LA_TINAJA_BONITA" id="LA_TINAJA_BONITA"></a>LA TINAJA BONITA</h2>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up,
+because there had been no rain in the land.&#8221;&mdash;1 Kings xvii. 7.</p>
+
+<p>A pretty girl was kneeling on the roof of a flat mud cabin, a harvest of
+red peppers round her knees. On the ground below her stood a swarthy
+young man, the bloom on his Mexican cheeks rich and dusky, like her own.
+His face was irresponsible and winning, and his watching eyes shone upon
+her with admiration and desire. She on the roof was entertained by her
+visitor&#8217;s attention, but unfavorable to it. Through the live-long sunny
+day she had parried his love-talk with light and complete skill,
+enjoying herself, and liking him very well, as she had done since they
+were two children playing together in the Arizona desert. She was quite
+mistress of the situation, because she was a woman, and he as yet merely
+a boy; he was only twenty-two; she was almost sixteen. The Mexican man
+at twenty-two may be as experienced as his Northern brother of thirty,
+but at sixteen the Mexican woman is also mature, and can competently
+deal with the man. So this girl had relished the thoughtless morning and
+noon as they passed; but twice lately she had glanced across the low
+tree-tops of her garden down the trail, where the ca&ntilde;on descended to the
+silent plain below.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I think I must go back now,&#8221; said the young man, not thinking so. He
+had a guitar from the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; said she, diverted by his youthful feint. &#8220;Well, if you think it
+is so late.&#8221; She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchief
+and strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her head
+to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole
+roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer
+with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting
+and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her most
+wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not precisely late&mdash;yet,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To be sure not,&#8221; she assented, consulting the sky. &#8220;We have still three
+hours of day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. &#8220;But after night it
+is so very dark on the trail to camp,&#8221; he insincerely objected.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is for the horse&#8217;s legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quite
+suddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have a
+good figure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am much heavier than last year,&#8221; said he. &#8220;My arm&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can see, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you kiss me any more.
+You didn&#8217;t offer to when you came this morning&mdash;and that shows you men
+perceive things more quickly than we can. But don&#8217;t go yet. You can lead
+your horse. His legs will come to no harm, eased of your weight. I
+should have been lonely to-day, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>and you have made it pass so quickly.
+You have talked so much that my peppers are not half spread.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We could finish them in five minutes together,&#8221; said the youth, taking
+a step.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread on
+them, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, go
+bring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very well, then,&#8221; said Lolita. &#8220;If you like this better, finish the
+peppers, and I&#8217;ll go for the water.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you look down the trail so often?&#8221; said the baffled love-maker,
+petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day,&#8221; the girl
+replied, softly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221; She shaded her eyes, and looked where the ca&ntilde;on&#8217;s widening
+slit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changeless
+waste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of the
+gaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes
+and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled
+to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or
+even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the
+dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does he come here for?&#8221; demanded Luis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!&#8221; Luis
+lounged back against his water-barrel, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>and was silent. As he watched
+Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little
+with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and
+unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing
+from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita
+knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling
+her peppers:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Soy purita mejicana;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Nada tengo espa&ntilde;ol.&#8217;&#8221;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this
+melodious inattention of Lolita&#8217;s Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you seen him lately?&#8221; he asked, sourly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead,&#8221; snapped Luis.</p>
+
+<p>But she made no sign. &#8220;That would be a pity,&#8221; she said, humming gayly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that
+white flour.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they
+were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross
+with a sense of failure. &#8220;El telele se muri&oacute;,&#8221; he sang.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;The hunchback is dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ay! Ay! Ay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And no one could be found to bury him except&mdash;&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Luis, aren&#8217;t you going to get my water for me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poco tiempo: I&#8217;ll bring it directly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p><p>The Pretty Spring&mdash;or water-hole, or tank&mdash;was half a mile from the
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,
+where it is pleasant.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;And no one could be found to bury him except<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Five dragoons and a corporal<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the sacristan&#8217;s cat.&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.
+Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fenced
+irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a
+nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air
+that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their
+varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed
+and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a
+holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see
+or think of Arizona, just outside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?&#8221; inquired Luis, dropping his music.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. &#8220;He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is
+no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last
+week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don&#8217;t know what
+is going to happen to us.&#8221; The anxiety in the girl&#8217;s face seemed to come
+outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent
+abiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to
+Maricopa,&#8221; chirped the bird on the ground.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>She made no answer to this. &#8220;What are you doing nowadays?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American
+soldiers,&#8221; he replied, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By Tucson?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No. Huachuca.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But it&#8217;s October now!&#8221; Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and
+broke into laughter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you asked any one for work?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not my way to beg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Luis, I don&#8217;t believe you&#8217;re quite a man yet, in spite of your
+mustache. You complain there&#8217;s no money for Mexicans in Arizona because
+the Americans get it all. Why don&#8217;t you go back to Sonora, then, and be
+rich in five minutes? It would sound finely: &#8216;Luis Romero, Merchant,
+Hermosillo.&#8217; Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap at
+Guaymas. You would live in a big house, perhaps with two stories, and I
+would come and visit you at Easter&mdash;if your wife would allow it.&#8221; Here
+Lolita threw a pepper at him.</p>
+
+<p>The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told the
+American contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. He
+didn&#8217;t say much about you,&#8221; added the little lady.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages to
+pay for the food he supplied <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>us. They charge you extra for starvation,
+those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so he
+may strive to win a home for her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could strive
+to win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of their
+gringo customs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You speak truly indeed,&#8221; murmured Lolita.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is you who know about them,&#8221; the boy said, angry like a child. He
+had seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. &#8220;They say you
+prefer gringos to your own people.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who dares say that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. He had touched her that
+time.</p>
+
+<p>But Lolita&#8217;s eye softened at the instant of speaking, and she broke into
+her sweet laugh. &#8220;There!&#8221; she said, recapturing the situation; &#8220;is it
+not like old times for you and me to be fighting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Me? I am not fighting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You relieve me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not consider a gringo worth my notice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sensible boy! You speak as wisely as one who has been to school in a
+large city. Luis, do you remember the day Uncle Ramon locked me up for
+riding on the kicking burro, and you came and unlocked me when uncle was
+gone? You took me walking, and lost us both in the mountains. We were
+really only a little, little way from home, but I thought we had got
+into another country where they eat children. I was six, and I beat you
+for losing me, and cried, and you were big, and you kissed me till I
+stopped crying. Do you remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t remember child&#8217;s tricks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Luis, I have come to a conclusion. You are still young enough for me to
+kiss quite safely. Every time you fight with me&mdash;I shall kiss you. Won&#8217;t
+you get me some fresh water now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He lounged, sulky, against his barrel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come, querido! Must I go all that way myself? Well, then, if you intend
+to stand and glare at me till the moon rises&mdash;Ah! he moves!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Luis laid the guitar gradually down, and gradually lifting a pail in
+which the dipper rattled with emptiness, he proceeded to crawl on his
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know that is not the one we use, muchacho,&#8221; (little boy), remarked
+Lolita.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Keep your kisses for your gringo,&#8221; the water-carrier growled, with his
+back to her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall always save some for my little cousin.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pail clattered on the stones, and the child stopped crawling. She on
+the roof stared at this performance for an open-mouthed moment, gloves
+idle among the spicy peppers. Then, laughing, she sprang to her feet,
+descended, and, catching up the water-jar (the olla de agua), overtook
+him, and shook it in his face with the sweetest derision. &#8220;Now we&#8217;ll go
+together,&#8221; said she, and started gayly through the green trees and the
+garden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing at
+her red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did they
+cross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of the
+leaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation into
+Arizona&#8217;s domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground&mdash;dead
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>cattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought,
+killed in the sanctuary by cold water.</p>
+
+<p>A wise, quiet man, with a man&#8217;s will, may sometimes after three days of
+thirst still hold grip enough upon his slipping mind to know, when he
+has found the water, that he must not drink it, must only dampen his
+lips and tongue in a drop-by-drop fashion until he has endured the
+passing of many slow, insidious hours. Even a wise man had best have a
+friend by his side then, who shall fight and tear him from the perilous
+excesses that he craves, knock him senseless if he cannot pin him down;
+but cattle know nothing of drop by drop, and you cannot pin down a
+hundred head that have found water after three days. So these hundred
+had drunk themselves swollen, and died. Cracked hide and white bone they
+lay, brown, dry, gaping humps straddled stiff askew in the last
+convulsion; and over them presided Arizona&mdash;silent, vast, all sunshine
+everlasting.</p>
+
+<p>Luis saw these corpses that had stumbled to their fate, and he
+remembered; with Lolita in those trees all day, he had forgotten for a
+while. He pointed to the wide-strewn sight, familiar, monotonous as
+misfortune. &#8220;There will be many more,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Another rainy season is
+gone without doing anything for the country. It cannot rain now for
+another year, Lolita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God help us and our cattle, and travellers!&#8221; she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Luis musingly repeated a saying of the country about the Tinaja Bonita,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;When you see the Black Cross dry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fill the wagon cisterns high&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p><p>&mdash;a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom,
+stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded
+wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath the
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the Black Cross has never been dry yet,&#8221; Luis said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have not seen it lately,&#8221; said Lolita.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lolita! do you mean&mdash;&#8221; He looked in her troubled eyes, and they went on
+in silence together. They left behind them the bones and the bald level
+on which they lay, and came to where the ca&ntilde;on&#8217;s broader descent
+quickened until they sank below that sight of the cattle, and for a time
+below the home and trees. They went down steeply by cactus and dry rock
+to a meeting of several ca&ntilde;ons opening from side rifts in the Sierra,
+furrowing the main valley&#8217;s mesa with deep watercourses that brought no
+water. Finding their way in this lumpy meeting-ground, they came upon
+the lurking-place of the Tinaja Bonita. They stood above it at the edge
+of a pitch of rock, watching the motionless crystal of the pool.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How well it hides down there in its own ca&ntilde;on!&#8221; said Luis. &#8220;How pretty
+and clear! But there&#8217;s plenty of water, Lolita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you see the Black Cross?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not from here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They began descending around the sides of the crumbled slate-rock face
+that tilted too steep for foothold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The other well is dry, of course,&#8221; said Lolita. In the slaty,
+many-ledged formation a little lower down the ca&ntilde;on, towards the peep of
+outlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second round
+hole, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in this
+place, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size and
+depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed
+man&#8217;s rather than nature&#8217;s design, it might have been the real Tinaja&#8217;s
+reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully
+represented except the water.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It must have been a real well once,&#8221; said Luis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once, yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And what made it go dry?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who knows?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How strange it should be the lower well that failed, Lolita!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The boy and girl were climbing down slowly, drawing near each other as
+they reached the bottom of the hollow. The peep of open country was
+blocked, and the tall tops of the mountains were all of the outer world
+to be seen down here below the mesa&#8217;s level. The silence was like
+something older than this world, like the silence of space before any
+worlds were made.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you believe it ever can go dry?&#8221; asked Luis. They were now on the
+edge of the Tinaja.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Father Rafael says that it is miraculous,&#8221; said the girl, believingly.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite, and everywhere except where they were, the walls went sheer
+down, not slate-colored, but white, with a sudden up-cropping formation
+of brick-shaped stones. These also were many-layered and crumbling,
+cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them.
+No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven,
+tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita
+looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that
+white formation shot <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>up from the earth&#8217;s bowels, arbitrary and
+irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones
+were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand&mdash;four small stones
+shaping a cross, back against the white, symmetrical and plain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It has come farther&mdash;more uncovered since yesterday,&#8221; Lolita whispered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can the Tinaja sink altogether?&#8221; repeated Luis. The arms of the cross
+were a measurable space above the water-line, and he had always seen it
+entirely submerged.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How could it sink?&#8221; said Lolita, simply. &#8220;It will stop when the black
+stones are wholly dry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You believe Father Rafael,&#8221; Luis said, always in a low voice; &#8220;but it
+was only Indians, after all, who told the mission fathers at the first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was very long ago,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and there has always been water in
+the Tinaja Bonita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Boy and girl had set the jar down, and forgotten it and why they had
+come. Luis looked uneasily at the circular pool, and up from this
+creviced middle of the ca&ntilde;on to the small high tops of the mountains
+rising in the free sky.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is an evil place,&#8221; he said. &#8220;As for the water&mdash;no one, no three,
+can live long enough to be sure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But it was part of Lolita&#8217;s religion. &#8220;I am sure,&#8221; said she.</p>
+
+<p>The young Mexican&#8217;s eyes rested on the face of the girl beside him, more
+beautiful just then with some wave of secret fear and faith.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come away with me, Lolita!&#8221; he pleaded, suddenly. &#8220;I can work. I can be
+a man. It is fearful for you to live here alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Alone, Luis?&#8221; His voice had called her from her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>reverie back to her
+gay, alert self. &#8220;Do you consider Uncle Ramon nobody to live with?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. Nobody&mdash;for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Promise me never to tell that to uncle. He is so considerate that he
+might make me marry somebody for company. And then, you know, my husband
+would be certain to be stupid about your coming to see me, querido.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you always mock me, Lolita?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mock you? What a fancy! Oh, see how the sun&#8217;s going! If we do not get
+our water, your terrible Tinaja will go dry before supper. Come, Luis, I
+carried the olla. Must I do everything?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her disconsolate. &#8220;Ah!&#8221; he vibrated, revelling in deep
+imaginary passion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go! go!&#8221; she cried, pushing him. &#8220;Take your olla.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Upon the lightest passing puff of sentiment the Southern breast can
+heave with every genuine symptom of storm, except wreck. Of course she
+stirred his gregarious heart. Was she not lovely and he twenty-two? He
+went down the natural stairs and came slowly up with the water, stopping
+a step below her. &#8220;Lolita,&#8221; he said, &#8220;don&#8217;t you love me at all? not a
+very little?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are my dearest, oldest friend, Luis,&#8221; she said, looking at him with
+such full sweetness that his eyes fell. &#8220;But why do you pretend five
+beans make ten?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course they only make ten with gringos.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She held up a warning finger.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh yes, oh yes! Strangers make fine lovers!&#8221; With this he swelled to a
+fond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, &#8220;It is not difficult to kill a
+man, Lolita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fighting! after what I told you!&#8221; Lolita stooped <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>and kissed her cousin
+Luis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As often as you please,&#8221; he said, as she released herself angrily, and
+then a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart,
+trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into the
+Tinaja with a gulping resonance. Loitering strings of sand strewed after
+it, and the boy&#8217;s and girl&#8217;s superstitious eyes looked up from the
+ringed, waving water to the ledge. Lolita&#8217;s single shriek of terror
+turned to joy as she uttered it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought&mdash;I thought you would not come!&#8221; she cried out.</p>
+
+<p>The dismounted horseman above made no sign of understanding her words.
+He stepped carefully away from the ledge his foot had crumbled, and they
+saw him using his rifle like a staff, steadying its stock in successive
+niches, and so working back to his horse. There he slid the rifle into
+its leather sling along the left side of his saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So he is not dead,&#8221; murmured Luis, &#8220;and we need not live alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come down!&#8221; the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comer
+stood by his horse like an apparition.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps he is dead, after all,&#8221; Luis said. &#8220;You might say some of the
+Mass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the
+stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To
+him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the
+sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had
+started and stared to see&mdash;not a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>spirit, but a man, dismounted from his
+horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in
+the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture&mdash;smoke from the rifle, and
+himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did not
+believe the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff,
+and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him,
+and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, and
+ready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing without
+concealment of her heart&#8217;s desire.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come down!&#8221; she repeated. &#8220;Come round the side.&#8221; And, lifting the olla,
+she tapped it, and signed the way to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care to
+climb more than he must,&#8221; said Luis. But the man had stirred at last
+from his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presently
+he was near enough for Luis to read his face. &#8220;Your gringo is a handsome
+fellow, certainly,&#8221; he commented. &#8220;But he does not like me to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like you! He doesn&#8217;t think about you,&#8221; said Lolita.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ha! That&#8217;s your opinion?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is also his opinion&mdash;if you&#8217;ll ask him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is afraid of Cousin Luis,&#8221; stated the youth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you&mdash;if he could see you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your
+gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How little he knows you!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is you he does not know very well,&#8221; the boy said, with a pang.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>The scornful girl stared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, the innocent one!&#8221; sneered Luis. &#8220;Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one
+man can always recognize another, and the women don&#8217;t know much.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to
+read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no
+thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and
+to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. &#8220;You
+have come just in time,&#8221; she called out to him. At the voice, he looked
+at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a
+tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his
+bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his
+blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above,
+getting a grip of himself. &#8220;Luis was becoming really afraid that he
+might have to do some work,&#8221; continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill.
+&#8220;You know Luis?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us,&#8221; she pursued,
+arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when she
+had come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile fluttered
+on her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; nor
+could she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping him
+keep his grip.</p>
+
+<p>Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita&#8217;s thoughts away from
+him and all other men. &#8220;No, indeed, he does not understand her very
+well,&#8221; he repeated, bitter in knowing the man&#8217;s suspicion and its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>needlessness. Something&mdash;disappointment, it may be&mdash;had wrought more
+reality in the young Mexican&#8217;s easy-going love. &#8220;And she likes this
+gringo because&mdash;because he is light-colored!&#8221; he said, watching the
+American&#8217;s bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but of
+sterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himself
+forewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, his
+mustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health by
+the weather. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode to
+the Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolita
+unclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushing
+coldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slighting
+touch changed the Mexican boy&#8217;s temper to diversion and malice. Here
+were mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with a
+vengeance!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Give me that,&#8221; said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar to
+him with such feline politeness that the American&#8217;s blue eyes filled
+with fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quite
+ready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of his
+Saxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail out
+to the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.</p>
+
+<p>As the three went silent up the ca&ntilde;on, Luis caught sight of Lolita&#8217;s
+eyes shining with the hurt of her lover&#8217;s rebuff, and his face sparkled
+with further mischief. &#8220;She has been despising me all day,&#8221; he said to
+himself. &#8220;Very well, very well.&mdash;Se&ntilde;or Don Ruz,&#8221; he began aloud,
+elaborately, &#8220;we are having a bad drought.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American rode on, inspecting the country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I know at least four sorts of kisses,&#8221; reflected the Mexican trifler.
+&#8220;But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the top
+of a rock.&#8221; He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his
+pistol, and his knife. &#8220;How clumsy these gringos are when it&#8217;s about a
+girl!&#8221; thought Luis. &#8220;Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much
+care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical
+gringo!&mdash;Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American continued to inspect the country, his supple,
+flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz,&#8221; persisted the gadfly, lighting
+again. &#8220;Don Ramon&#8217;s spring does not run now, and so we must come to the
+Tinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday.
+Everybody absent from home, except Lolita.&#8221; Luis thought he could see
+his Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile over
+himself and his skill grew more engaging. &#8220;Lolita has been telling me
+all to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was you said that!&#8221; exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagree
+about.&#8221; The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to his
+tormentor. &#8220;No sabe cuantos son cinco,&#8221; Luis whispered, stepping close
+to Lolita. &#8220;Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now.&#8221; Lolita
+drew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his head
+slightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. &#8220;But what do you
+say yourself, Don Ruz?&#8221; inquired <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>Luis, pleased at this slight
+coincidence&mdash;&#8220;will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I expect guessing won&#8217;t interfere with the water&#8217;s movements much,&#8221;
+finally remarked Don Ruz&mdash;Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in his
+voice were not much like the Mexican&#8217;s light fluency. They were music to
+Lolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. The
+bitter Luis relished this too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wondering
+about this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen so
+much of the cross out of water. Lolita says&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s that place,&#8221; said Genesmere, roughly.</p>
+
+<p>Luis looked inquiring.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Down there,&#8221; Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back along
+the road they had come.</p>
+
+<p>Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, should
+never have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d have seen it if I&#8217;d had any use for it,&#8221; said Genesmere.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To be sure, it lay off the road of travel,&#8221; Luis assented. And of
+course Don Ruz knew all that was needful&mdash;how to find it. He knew what
+people said&mdash;did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolita
+perhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above the
+water, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty.
+Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they could
+judge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolita
+were surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubt
+what the Indians said about the great underground <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>snake that came and
+sucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence was
+nearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.</p>
+
+<p>To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressed
+contempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of it
+before, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed the
+desert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where he
+expected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the ca&ntilde;on, suffering the
+glib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings still
+smouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in his
+cheeks; but of Luis&#8217;s chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, a
+single English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit.
+It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and,
+overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easily
+he could play this simple, unskilful American.</p>
+
+<p>They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees,
+where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?&#8221; said Luis, perceiving the
+American&#8217;s pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at Gun
+Sight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita&#8217;s and her cousin&#8217;s
+trail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above the
+Tinaja. &#8220;You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know,
+Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probably
+frijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here.&#8221; He was giving his
+pony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted.
+&#8220;I must be going back, or they will decide I am not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>coming till
+to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper.&#8221; He spoke jauntily from his horse,
+arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day&#8217;s courting, gray
+steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil
+severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body
+together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft
+on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for
+Luis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcerted
+the most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to his
+galled self-esteem. &#8220;Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I
+shall come to-morrow, ma&ntilde;ana en la ma&ntilde;ana.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-night,&#8221; said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; &#8220;I cannot
+stop you from passing my house.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded
+upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease,
+ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American
+was not the man to wait until his enemy&#8217;s back was turned.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;El telele se muri&oacute;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A enterrar ya le llevan&mdash;&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Ay! Ay! Ay!&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other,
+looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. The
+minstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than the
+American&#8217;s shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant with
+thoughtlessness. Like most of his basking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Southern breed, he had no
+visible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer than
+three minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough to
+sleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thing
+to sell some other man&#8217;s horses over the border and get a fine coat and
+hat.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Cinco dragones y un cabo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, no no no no no!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Y un gato de sacristan.&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Coat and hat were getting up the ca&ntilde;on&#8217;s side among the cactus, the
+little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider;
+and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they
+went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in
+Genesmere&#8217;s brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew,
+and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the
+sun&mdash;the sun of Arizona at the day&#8217;s transfigured immortal
+passing&mdash;became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating
+like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep,
+and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over
+earth and sky.</p>
+
+<p>Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t
+shoot because I was afraid of hitting you,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the
+Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her
+stupid and slow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going to eat?&#8221; she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh yes. I guess I&#8217;ll eat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been
+Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and
+with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules,
+coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is getting dark,&#8221; said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it,
+and sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never hurt a woman,&#8221; he said, presently, the vision of his rifle&#8217;s
+white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more
+flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you have a good chance now,&#8221; said Lolita, quickly, busy over her
+cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in
+her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and
+sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I wouldn&#8217;t hurt a woman&#8221;&mdash;he was hardly talking to her&mdash;&#8220;not if I
+could think in time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Men do it,&#8221; she said, with the same defiance. &#8220;But it makes talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Talk&#8217;s nothing to me,&#8221; said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. &#8220;Do I
+care for opinions? Only my own.&#8221; The fierceness passed from his face,
+and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud,
+changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t want to have to
+remember a thing like that.&#8221; He stretched himself, and leaned his elbows
+on his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding his
+fingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not a
+sign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreck
+of faith and passion. &#8220;I have to live a heap of my life <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>alone,&#8221; the
+lounger went on. &#8220;Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And I
+don&#8217;t propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of.&#8221; Lolita was
+throwing a cloth over the table and straightening it. &#8220;I&#8217;m twenty-five,
+and I&#8217;ve laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might say
+different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is ready,&#8221; said Lolita, finishing her preparations.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chair
+to the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She moved
+about the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him,
+seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was a
+peon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparatively
+well. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were several
+dishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to his
+plate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionally
+looking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again in
+words. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: &#8220;So, you see, you
+saved his life down there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she said
+nothing, but waited for what next.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t believe that. You don&#8217;t know that. He knows that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again, more briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can tell him so. From me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita&#8217;s lips and hinder each
+other&#8217;s escaping.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn&#8217;t have stopped. He&#8217;d have
+shot. Say that. From me. He&#8217;d have shot, because he&#8217;s a Spaniard, like
+you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You lie!&#8221; This side issue in some manner set free the girl&#8217;s tongue, &#8220;I
+am not Spanish. I care <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am
+Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood.
+But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him
+go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell
+him it is Lolita&#8217;s. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had
+enough of men&#8217;s talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. &#8220;I
+suppose,&#8221; he said, very slowly, &#8220;that folks like you folks can&#8217;t
+understand about love&mdash;not about the kind I mean.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Lolita&#8217;s two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon
+her gods. &#8220;Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make
+you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved
+me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always,
+since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day,
+having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear
+his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you
+would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house
+to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is
+you who are the fool.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to
+bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lolita!&#8221; he whispered. &#8220;Lolita!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when
+presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way
+that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the
+desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>savage triumph drew
+her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and
+changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. &#8220;My
+life!&#8221; she said. &#8220;Toda mi vida! All my life!&#8221; Through the open door the
+air of the ca&ntilde;on blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire
+and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the
+trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased
+to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes
+of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five
+planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the
+keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards
+the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere&#8217;s eye, and Lolita felt
+him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing.&#8221; He was staring at the hill. &#8220;Nothing,&#8221; he replied to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dreamer, come!&#8221; said Lolita, pulling him. &#8220;It is cold here in the
+night&mdash;and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does this girl want now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The cards! our cards!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, to be sure!&#8221; He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the
+fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,
+laughing for delight at her lover&#8217;s being himself again&mdash;his own right
+self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take it!&#8221; she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep
+his distance. &#8220;There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You
+shall buy <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>me another.&#8221; She flung the light instrument, that fell in a
+corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to
+a blurred hollow humming, and silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now you have done it!&#8221; said Genesmere, mock serious.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and
+you shall give me a new one.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Yo soy purita mejicana;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Nada tengo espa&ntilde;ol,&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herself
+at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. &#8220;You
+sit there!&#8221; She nodded to the opposite side of the table. &#8220;Very well,
+move the lamp then.&#8221; Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from
+him. &#8220;He thinks I cheat! Now, Se&ntilde;or Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar.
+Do you hear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Too many pesos, se&ntilde;orita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, oh! the miser!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not going broke on any se&ntilde;oritas&mdash;not even my own girl!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you no newer thing than poverty to tell me? Now if you look at me
+like that I cannot shuffle properly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How am I to look, please?&#8221; He held his glance on her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not foolish like a boy. There, take them, then!&#8221; She threw the cards at
+him, blushing and perturbed by his eyes, while he scrambled to punish
+her across the table.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Generous one!&#8221; she said. &#8220;Ardent pretender! He won&#8217;t let me shuffle
+because he fears to lose.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You shall have a silk handkerchief with flowers on it,&#8221; said he,
+shuffling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have two already. I can see you arranging those cards, miser!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether she
+stole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for her
+when he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and the
+cards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, his
+oldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself.
+Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon to
+forget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of the
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say my name!&#8221; he ordered; and at the child effort she made over &#8220;Russ&#8221;
+he smiled with delight. &#8220;Again!&#8221; he exclaimed, bending to catch her R
+and the whole odd little word she made. &#8220;More!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; pouted the girl, and beat at him, blushing again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Make your bet!&#8221; he said, laying out the Mexican cards before him.
+&#8220;Quick! Which shall it be?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The caballo. Oh, my dear, I wanted to die this afternoon, and now I am
+so happy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It brought the tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly
+declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows
+and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out
+of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her
+win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the
+guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at
+last Genesmere began to speak of the next time, and Lolita to forbid
+such talk as that so soon. She laid her hand <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>over his lips, at which he
+yielded for a little, and she improvised questions of moment to ask him,
+without time for stopping, until she saw that this would avail no
+longer. Then she sighed, and let him leave her to see to his animals,
+while she lighted the fire again to make breakfast for him. At that
+parting meal an anxiety slowly came in her face, and it was she that
+broke their silence after a while.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which road do you go this time, querido?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tucson, Maricopa, and then straight here to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From Maricopa? That is longer across the desert.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shorter to my girl.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I wish you would not come that way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&mdash;that desert!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s desert both ways&mdash;all ways. The other road puts an extra week
+between you and me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, yes. I have counted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is all this, Lolita?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once more she hesitated, smiling uneasily beneath his scrutiny. &#8220;Yo no
+se&#8221; (I don&#8217;t know). &#8220;You will laugh. You do not believe the things that
+I believe. The Tinaja Bonita&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That again!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she half whispered. &#8220;I am afraid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her steadily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Return the same road by Tucson,&#8221; she urged. &#8220;That way is only half so
+much desert, and you can carry water from Poso Blanco. Do not trust the
+Coyote Wells. They are little and shallow, and if the Black Cross&mdash;Oh,
+my darling, if you do not believe, do this for me because you love me,
+love me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak at once. The two had risen, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>stood by the open
+door, where the dawn was entering and mixing with the lamp. &#8220;Because I
+love you,&#8221; he repeated at length, slowly, out of his uncertain thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She implored him, and he studied her in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly hardness stamped his face. &#8220;I&#8217;ll come by Tucson, then&mdash;since I
+love you!&#8221; And he walked at once out of the door. She followed him to
+his horse, and there reached up and pulled him round to her, locking her
+fingers behind his neck. Again his passion swept him, and burned the
+doubt from his eyes. &#8220;I believe you love me!&#8221; he broke out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, why need you say that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Adios, chiquita.&#8221; He was smiling, and she looked at his white teeth and
+golden mustache. She felt his hands begin to unlock her own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not yet&mdash;not yet!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Adios, chiquita.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;O mi querido!&#8221; she murmured; &#8220;with you I forget day and night!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bastante!&#8221; He kissed her once for all.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye! good-bye! Mis labios van estar frios hasta que tu los toques
+otra vez&#8221; (My lips will be cold until you touch them again).</p>
+
+<p>He caught her two hands, as if to cling to something. &#8220;Say that once
+more. Tell me that once more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She told him with all her heart and soul, and he sprang into his saddle.
+She went beside him through the cold, pale-lighted trees to the garden&#8217;s
+edge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren ground
+among the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that came
+beyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strong
+figure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>When the steeper fall of the ca&ntilde;on hid him from her she ran to the
+house, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sight
+again below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, the
+white horse and dark rider and the mules, until they became a mere line
+of something moving, and so vanished into the increasing day.</p>
+
+<p>Genesmere rode, and took presently to smoking. Coming to a sandy place,
+he saw prints of feet and of a shod horse in the trail heading the other
+way. That was his own horse, and the feet were Lolita&#8217;s and Luis&#8217;s&mdash;the
+record and the memory of yesterday afternoon. He looked up from the
+trail to the hills, now lambent with violet and shifting orange, and
+their shapes as they moved out into his approaching view were the shapes
+of yesterday afternoon. He came soon to the forking of the trails, one
+for Tucson and the other leading down into the lumpy country, and here
+again were the prints in the sand, the shod horse, the man and the
+woman, coming in from the lumpy country that lay to the left; and
+Genesmere found himself stock-still by the forking trails, looking at
+his watch. His many-journeyed mules knew which was the Tucson trail,
+and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walked
+asunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They went
+along a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came to
+an end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footing
+looking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master sat
+quiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; and
+the sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So far had he come
+yesterday with that mind easy over his garnered <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>prosperity, free and
+soaring on its daily flight among the towers of his hopes&mdash;those
+constructions that are common with men who grow fond: the air-castle
+rises and reaches, possessing the architect, who cherishes its slow
+creation with hourly changes and additions to the plan. A house was part
+of Genesmere&#8217;s castle, a home with a wife inside, and no more camping
+alone. Thus far, to this exact ledge, the edifice had gone forward
+fortunately, and then a blast had crumbled house and days to come into
+indistinguishable dust. The heavy echo jarred in Genesmere, now that he
+had been lured to look again upon the site of the disaster, and a
+lightning violence crossed his face. He saw the two down there as they
+had stood, the man with his arms holding the woman, before the falling
+stone had startled them. Were the Mexican present now in the flesh, he
+would destroy him just for what he had tried to do. If she were
+true&mdash;She was true&mdash;that was no thanks to the Mexican. Genesmere was
+sorry second thoughts had spared that fellow yesterday, and he looked at
+his watch again. It was time to be starting on the Tucson trail, and the
+mules alertly turned their steps from the Tinaja Bonita. They could see
+no good in having come here. Evidently it was not to get water. Why,
+then? What use was there in looking down a place into a hole? The mules
+gave it up. Genesmere himself thought the Tinaja poorly named. It was
+not pretty. In his experience of trail and ca&ntilde;on he knew no other such
+hole. He was not aware of the twin, dried up, thirty yards below, and
+therefore only half knew the wonders of the spot.</p>
+
+<p>He rode back to the forks across the rolling steepness, rebuilding the
+castle; then, discovering something <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>too distant to be sure about, used
+his glass quickly. It was another rider, also moving slowly among the
+knolls and gullies of the mesa, and Genesmere could not make him out. He
+was going towards the cabin, but it was not the same horse that Luis had
+ridden yesterday. This proved nothing, and it would be easy to circle
+and see the man closer&mdash;only not worth the trouble. Let the Mexican go
+to the cabin. Let him go every day. He probably would, if she permitted.
+Most likely she would tell him to keep away from her. She ought to. She
+might hurt him if he annoyed her. She was a good shot with a pistol. But
+women work differently from men&mdash;and then she was Mexican. She might
+hide her feelings and make herself pleasant for three weeks. She would
+tell him when he returned, and they would laugh together over how she
+had fooled this Luis. After all, shooting would have been too much
+punishment. A man with a girl like Lolita must expect to find other men
+after her. It depends on your girl. You find that out when you go after
+other men&#8217;s girls. When a woman surely loves some other man she will not
+look at you. And Lolita&#8217;s love was a sure thing. A woman can say love
+and a man will believe her&mdash;until he has experienced the genuine article
+once; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with her
+inside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not to
+be accounted for. If anybody had said last year&mdash;why, as late as the
+20th of last March&mdash;that settling down was what you were coming to&mdash;and
+now&mdash;Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding a
+horse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. &#8220;No longer
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>alone!&#8221; he said aloud, suddenly, and surprised the white horse.</p>
+
+<p>The song about the hunchback and the sacristan&#8217;s cat stirred its rhythm
+in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it,
+naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion
+to piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick after
+slow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again;
+would never want to&mdash;not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head back
+to take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountains
+like a picture, and himself far out in the flat country, and the bare
+sun in the sky. He had come six miles on the road since he had last
+noticed. Six miles, and the air-castle was rebuilt and perfect, with no
+difference from the old one except its foundation, which was upon sand.
+To see the unexpected plain around him, and the islands of blue, sharp
+peaks lying in it, drove the tune from his head, and he considered the
+well-known country, reflecting that man could not be meant to live here.
+The small mountain-islands lay at all distances, blue in a dozen ways,
+amid the dead calm of this sand archipelago. They rose singly from it,
+sheer and sudden, toothed and triangled like icebergs, hot as stoves.
+The channels to the north, Santa Rosa way, opened broad and yellow, and
+ended without shore upon the clean horizon, and to the south narrowed
+with lagoons into Sonora. Genesmere could just see one top of the Sierra
+de la Quitabac jutting up from below the earth-line, splitting the main
+channel, the faintest blue of all. They could be having no trouble over
+their water down there, with the Laguna Esperanca and the Poso de Mazis.
+Genesmere <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>killed some more of the way rehearsing the trails and
+water-holes of this country, known to him like his pocket; and by-and-by
+food-cooking and mule-feeding and the small machine repetitions of a
+camp and a journey brought the Quijotoa Mountains behind him to replace
+Gun Sight and the Sierra de la Naril; and later still the Cababi hid the
+Quijotoa, and Genesmere counted days and nights to the good, and was at
+the Coyote Wells.</p>
+
+<p>These were holes in rocks, but shallow, as Lolita said. No shallower
+than ordinary, however; he would see on the way back if they gave signs
+of failing. No wonder if they did, with this spell of drought&mdash;but why
+mix up a plain thing with a lot of nonsense about a black cross down a
+hole? Genesmere was critically struck with the words of the tune he now
+noticed steadily running in his head again, beneath the random surface
+of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;Cinco dragones y un cabo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Y un gato de sacristan.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That made no sense either; but Mexicans found something in it. Liked it.
+Now American songs had some sense:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;They bathed his head in vinegar<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To fetch him up to time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And now he drives a mule team on<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The Denver City line.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A man could understand that. A proud stage-driver makes a mistake about
+a female passenger. Thinks he has got an heiress, and she turns out to
+peddle sarsaparilla. &#8220;So he&#8217;s naturally used up,&#8221; commented Genesmere.
+&#8220;You estimate a girl as one thing, and she&mdash;&#8221; Here the undercurrent
+welled up, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>breaking the surface. &#8220;Did she mean that? Was that her
+genuine reason?&#8221; In memory he took a look at his girl&#8217;s face, and
+repeated her words when she besought him to come the longer way and
+hesitated over why. Was that shame at owning she believed such stuff?
+True, after asking him once about his religion and hearing what he said,
+she had never spoken of these things again. That must be a woman&#8217;s way
+when she loved you first&mdash;to hide her notions that differed from yours,
+and not ruffle happy days. &#8220;Return the same road by Tucson!&#8221; He
+unwrapped a clean, many-crumpled handkerchief, and held Lolita&#8217;s
+photograph for a while. Then he burst into an unhappy oath, and folded
+the picture up again. What if her priest did tell her? He had heard the
+minister tell about eternal punishment when he was a boy, and just as
+soon as he started thinking it over he knew it was a lie. And this quack
+Tinaja was worse foolishness, and had nothing to do with religion.
+Lolita afraid of his coming to grief in a country he had travelled
+hundreds, thousands of miles in! Perhaps she had never started thinking
+for herself yet. But she had. She was smarter than any girl of her age
+he had ever seen. She did not want him back so soon. That was what it
+was. Yet she had looked true; her voice had sounded that way. Again he
+dwelt upon her words and caresses; and harboring these various thoughts,
+he killed still more of the long road, until, passing after awhile Poso
+Blanco, and later Marsh&#8217;s ranch-well at the forks where the Sonora road
+comes in, he reached Tucson a man divided against himself. Divided
+beyond his will into two selves&mdash;one of faith besieged, and one of
+besieging inimical reason&mdash;the inextricable error!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>Business and pleasure were waiting in Tucson, and friends whose ways and
+company had not been of late for him; but he frequented them this time,
+tasting no pleasure, yet finding the ways and company better than his
+own. After the desert&#8217;s changeless, unfathomed silence, in which nothing
+new came day or night to break the fettering spell his mind was falling
+under, the clink and knocking of bottles was good to hear, and he
+listened for more, craving any sound that might liven or distract his
+haunted spirit. Instead of the sun and stars, here was a roof; instead
+of the pitiless clear air, here was tobacco smoke; and beneath his
+boot-heels a wooden floor wet with spilled liquids instead of the
+unwatered crumbling sand. Without drinking, he moved his chair near the
+noisiest drinkers, and thus among the tobacco smoke sought to hide from
+his own looming doubt. Later the purring tinkle of guitars reminded him
+of that promised present, and the next morning he was the owner of the
+best instrument that he could buy. Leaving it with a friend to keep
+until he should come through again from Maricopa, he departed that way
+with his mules, finding in the new place the same sort of friends and
+business, and by night looking upon the same untasted pleasures. He went
+about town with some cattlemen&mdash;carousing bankrupts, who remembered
+their ruin in the middle of whiskey, and broke off to curse it and the
+times and climate, and their starved herds that none would buy at any
+price. Genesmere touched nothing, yet still drew his chair among these
+drinkers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t you feeling good to-night, Russ?&#8221; asked one at length.</p>
+
+<p>And Genesmere&#8217;s eyes roused from seeing visions, and his ears became
+aware of the loud company. In <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>Tucson he had been able to sit in the
+smoke, and compass a cheerful deceit of appearance even to himself.
+Choosing and buying the guitar had lent reality to his imitated peace of
+mind; he had been careful over its strings, selecting such as Lolita
+preferred, wrapt in carrying out this spiritual forgery of another
+Genesmere. But here they had noticed him; appearances had slipped from
+him. He listened to a piece of late Arizona news some one was in the
+middle of telling&mdash;the trial of several Mormons for robbing a paymaster
+near Cedar Springs. This was the fourth time he had heard the story,
+because it was new; but the present narrator dwelt upon the dodgings of
+a witness, a negress, who had seen everything and told nothing,
+outwitting the government, furnishing no proofs. This brought Genesmere
+quite back.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No proofs!&#8221; he muttered. &#8220;No proofs!&#8221; He laughed and became alert. &#8220;She
+lied to them good, did she?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They looked at him, because he had not spoken for so long; and he was
+told that she had certainly lied good.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fooled them clean through, did she? On oath! Tell about her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The flattered narrator, who had been in court, gave all he knew, and
+Genesmere received each morsel of perjury gravely with a nod. He sat
+still when the story was done.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, after a time. &#8220;Yes.&#8221; And again, &#8220;Yes.&#8221; Then he briefly
+bade the boys good-night, and went out from the lamps and whiskey into
+the dark.</p>
+
+<p>He walked up and down alone, round the corral where his mules stood,
+round the stable where his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>bed-blankets were; and one or two carousers
+came by, who suggested further enjoyments to him. He went to the edge of
+the town and walked where passers would not meet him, turning now and
+then to look in the direction of Tucson, where the guitar was waiting.
+When he felt the change of dawn he went to the stable, and by the first
+early gray had his mules packed. He looked once again towards Tucson,
+and took the road he had promised not to take, leaving the guitar behind
+him altogether. His faith protested a little, but the other self
+invented a quibble, the mockery that he had already &#8220;come by Tucson,&#8221;
+according to his literal word; and this device answered. It is a comfort
+to be divided no longer against one&#8217;s self. Genesmere was at ease in his
+thraldom to the demon with whom he had wrestled through the dark hours.
+As the day brightened he wondered how he had come to fool a night away
+over a promise such as that. He took out the face in the handkerchief,
+and gave it a curious, defiant smile. She had said waiting would be
+long. She should have him quickly. And he was going to know about that
+visitor at the cabin, the steeple-hatted man he saw in his visions. So
+Maricopa drew behind him, small, clear-grouped in the unheated morning,
+and the sun found the united man and his mules moving into the desert.</p>
+
+<p>By the well in the bottom of the Santa Cruz River he met with cattle and
+little late-born calves trying to trot. Their mothers, the foreman
+explained, had not milk enough for them, nor the cursed country food or
+water for the mothers. They could not chew cactus. These animals had
+been driven here to feed and fatten inexpensively, and get quick money
+for the owner. But, instead, half of them had died, and the men were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>driving the rest to new pastures&mdash;as many, that is, as could still
+walk. Genesmere knew, the foreman supposed, that this well was the last
+for more than a hundred miles? Funny to call a thing like that Santa
+Cruz a river! Well, it was an Arizona river; all right enough, no doubt,
+somewhere a thousand feet or so underground. Pity you weren&#8217;t a
+prairie-dog that eats sand when he gets a thirst on him. Got any
+tobacco? Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>Think of any valleys that you know between high mountains. Such was
+southern Arizona once&mdash;before we came. Then fill up your valleys with
+sand until the mountains show no feet or shoulders, but become as men
+buried to the neck. That is what makes separate islands of their
+protruding peaks, and that is why water slinks from the surface whenever
+it can and flows useless underneath, entombed in the original valley.
+This is Arizona now&mdash;since the pterodactyls have gone. In such a place
+the traveller turns mariner, only, instead of the stars, he studies the
+water-wells, shaping his course by these. Not sea-gulls, but ravens, fly
+over this waste, seeking their meal. Some were in front of Genesmere
+now, settled black in the recent trail of the cattle. He did not much
+care that the last well was gone by, for he was broken in by long travel
+to the water of the &#8217;dobe-holes that people rely upon through this
+journey. These &#8217;dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and
+men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and
+they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck,
+and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but
+will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and
+Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>night,
+carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it
+but a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached his
+calculated &#8217;dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,
+dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade
+at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the
+mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose
+loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the
+other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the
+mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid
+in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twenty
+yards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, when
+they clouded back again round their carrion.</p>
+
+<p>This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoon
+brought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty of
+time for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promise
+had changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in the
+steeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along the
+road nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wetting
+the beasts&#8217; tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next
+&#8217;dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went through
+before coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The posted
+plants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legions
+and legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling at
+the top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck the
+blossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded to
+pods ten feet in the air. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>Genesmere&#8217;s horse started and nearly threw
+him, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmere
+could tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to hunt
+water, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try at
+running away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.
+Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding
+the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their
+water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the
+stranger&#8217;s approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostile
+sound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passing
+enemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas,
+an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some rose
+to look after him; some lifted their heads from the ground, and seeing,
+laid them down again. He came upon a calf watching its mother, who had
+fallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow&#8217;s
+foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from
+rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings;
+her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her
+pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her
+tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He
+placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse
+the calf came to its mother, who began to lick it. He presently marked
+ahead the position of the coming &#8217;dobe-hole by the ravens assembled in
+the air, continually rising and lighting. The white horse and mules
+quickened their step, and the trail became obliterated by hundreds of
+hoof-marks <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>leading to the water. As a spider looks in the centre of an
+empty web, so did the round wallow sit in the middle of the plain, with
+threaded feet conducting from everywhere to it. Mules and white horse
+scraped through the scratching mesquite, and the ravens flapped up. To
+Genesmere their croaking seemed suddenly to fill all space with loud
+total clamor, for no water was left, only mud. He eased the animals of
+their loads and saddles, and they rolled in the stiff mud, squeezing
+from it a faint ooze, and getting a sort of refreshment. Genesmere
+chewed the mud, and felt sorry for the beasts. He turned both canteens
+upside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well,
+that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; but
+spilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal after
+animal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at this
+spot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards away
+to be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. He
+lay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animals
+now that last hole might be used up by the cattle before he got
+there&mdash;and then it was two stages more to the Santa Cruz well. And the
+man would be gaining just so many more days unhindered at the cabin. Out
+of the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. If
+that were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cut
+for that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as the
+animals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun got
+bad. What business had October to be hot like this? So in the darkness
+he mounted again, and noon found him with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>eyes shut under a yucca. It
+was here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sitting
+in a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by the
+window, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was no
+fool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a man
+more a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in bright
+light, and said, &#8220;No proofs.&#8221; The bright light was the real sun coming
+round the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cows
+were here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his own
+beasts, and spoke to them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!&#8221; He stopped at the pain. It was in his lips
+and mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightened
+him. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signs
+that it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands were
+showing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaseless
+sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in
+the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest
+island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away to
+a transparent fringe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod,&#8221; remarked Genesmere, aloud, and
+remembered his thickened mouth again. &#8220;I can stand it off for a while
+yet, though&mdash;if they can travel.&#8221; His mules looked at him when he
+came&mdash;looked when he tightened their cinches. &#8220;I know, Jeff,&#8221; he said,
+and inspected the sky. &#8220;No heaven&#8217;s up there. Nothing&#8217;s back of that
+thing, unless it&#8217;s hell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo14" id="illo14"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i244.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="353" alt="&#8220;&#8216;YOU DON&#8217;T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU&#8217;RE ALONE&#8217;&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;&#8216;YOU DON&#8217;T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU&#8217;RE ALONE&#8217;&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He got the animals going, and the next &#8217;dobe-hole <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>was like the last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. &#8220;You
+didn&#8217;t fool me,&#8221; said Genesmere, addressing the mud. &#8220;I knew you&#8217;d be
+dry.&#8221; His eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. &#8220;That
+foreman was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country,&#8221; he
+continued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made his words. &#8220;This
+live-stock here&#8217;s not enjoying itself like its owners in town. This
+live-stock was intended for Eastern folks&#8217; dinner.&mdash;But you&#8217;ve got ahead
+of &#8217;em this trip,&#8221; he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly, and,
+hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. &#8220;You don&#8217;t want to
+talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You&#8217;re alone.&mdash;I wish I&#8217;d
+never known!&#8221; he suddenly cried out.</p>
+
+<p>He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping his
+hands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow with
+their loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for some
+little while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had brought
+these beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against the
+divine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,
+and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinite
+sadness. &#8220;If she&#8217;ll tell me it&#8217;s not so,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I&#8217;ll believe her. I
+will believe her now. I&#8217;ll make myself. She&#8217;ll help me to.&#8221; He took what
+rest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,
+having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It
+was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his
+increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the
+mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a
+mule fell and could <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for
+all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky
+at the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his hand
+reached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into a
+pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away
+and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and
+shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man&#8217;s throat; and then he
+saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted
+his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his
+eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.
+Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of
+his eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not experienced,&#8221; said Genesmere. &#8220;I&#8217;m not dead yet. But I&#8217;m
+obliged to you for being so enterprising. You&#8217;ve cleared my head. Quit
+that talk, Russ Genesmere.&#8221; He went to the mule that had given out
+during the night. &#8220;Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if that
+hunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for him
+without help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or only
+thinking it? I know I&#8217;m alone. I&#8217;ve travelled that way in this world.
+Why?&#8221; He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answer
+came in a fierce voice: &#8220;Because you&#8217;re a man, and can stand this world
+off by yourself. You look to no one.&#8221; He suddenly took out the
+handkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. &#8220;That&#8217;s lightened my
+pack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they&#8217;ll never make camp.&#8221; He
+took what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefully
+between <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>stones&mdash;for they had come near the mountain country&mdash;and,
+looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. &#8220;Ha, ha!&#8221; he said,
+slyly; &#8220;you&#8217;re not there, though. And I&#8217;ll prove it to you.&#8221; He chose
+another direction, and saw another flowing river. &#8220;I was expecting you,&#8221;
+he stated, quietly. &#8220;Don&#8217;t bother me. I&#8217;m thirsty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile
+place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. &#8220;Peaches too!&#8221; he sang
+out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+seem able to stop your foolish talking,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but you shall not
+chase around like that. You&#8217;ll stay with me. I tell you that&#8217;s a sham.
+Look at it.&#8221; Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks
+thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the
+same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting
+until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,
+and he ran half-way there, calling his mother&#8217;s name. &#8220;Why, you fool,
+she&#8217;s dead!&#8221; He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among
+stones. &#8220;Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago,&#8221; he murmured, softly.
+&#8220;Didn&#8217;t stay to see you get wicked.&#8221; Then he grew stern again. &#8220;You&#8217;ve
+showed yourself up, and you can&#8217;t tell land from water. You&#8217;re going to
+let the boys take you straight. I don&#8217;t trust you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse&#8217;s tail, and they set
+out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for
+the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man
+brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet
+sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,
+and the peaks <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below,
+gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monuments
+slanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead in
+space, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness.
+The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere&#8217;s attention. &#8220;Toll on!&#8221;
+he cried to them. &#8220;Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summer
+and winter, night and day, I&#8217;ve known you, and I&#8217;ve heard you all along.
+A man can&#8217;t look but he sees you walling God&#8217;s country from him, ringing
+away with your knell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the full
+moon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himself
+had evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open.
+He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life,
+and he heard something somewhere screaming &#8220;Water! water! water!&#8221; fast
+and unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn,
+and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet,
+and the screaming stopped. &#8220;Round &#8217;em up, Russ Genesmere! It&#8217;s getting
+late!&#8221; he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. They
+dodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horse
+urging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of a
+log that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, and
+Genesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinging
+his rope and yelling in the full moon: &#8220;Round &#8217;em up! round &#8217;em up!
+Don&#8217;t you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd&#8217;s bedded down
+along with the ravens.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>a round hole, but he
+did not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and the
+mountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beat
+into his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the broken natural
+stairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver&#8217;s, and ground his
+forehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled once
+up round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began to
+tear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbing
+with his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him in
+the ca&ntilde;on his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, having
+slaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where he
+now lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.</p>
+
+<p>He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. He
+was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead,
+and a moist rag on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Water!&#8221; He could just make the whisper.</p>
+
+<p>But Lolita made a sign of silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Water!&#8221; he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be all
+just now.</p>
+
+<p>His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolita
+screamed at his leap for the living well.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not yet! Not yet!&#8221; she said in terror, grappling with him. &#8220;Help!
+Luis!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So this was their plot, the demon told him&mdash;to keep him from water! In a
+frenzy of strength he seized Lolita. &#8220;Proved! Proved!&#8221; he shouted, and
+struck his knife into her. She fell at once to the earth and lay calm,
+eyes wide open, breathing in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>bright sun. He rushed to the water and
+plunged, swallowing and rolling.</p>
+
+<p>Luis ran up from the cows he was gathering, and when he saw what was
+done, sank by Lolita to support her. She pointed to the pool.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is killing himself!&#8221; she managed to say, and her head went lower.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;ll help you die, caberon! I&#8217;ll tear your tongue. I&#8217;ll&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Lolita, hearing Luis&#8217;s terrible words, had raised a forbidding hand.
+She signed to leave her and bring Genesmere to her.</p>
+
+<p>The distracted Luis went down the stone stairs to kill the American in
+spite of her, but the man&#8217;s appearance stopped him. You could not raise
+a hand against one come to this. The water-drinking was done, and
+Genesmere lay fainting, head and helpless arms on the lowest stone, body
+in the water. The Black Cross stood dry above. Luis heard Lolita&#8217;s
+voice, and dragged Genesmere to the top as quickly as he could. She,
+seeing her lover, cried his name once and died; and Luis cast himself on
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fool! fool!&#8221; he repeated, catching at the ground, where he lay for some
+while until a hand touched him. It was Genesmere.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m seeing things pretty near straight now,&#8221; the man said. &#8220;Come close.
+I can&#8217;t talk well. Was&mdash;was that talk of yours, and singing&mdash;was that
+bluff?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God forgive me!&#8221; said poor Luis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You mean forgive me,&#8221; said Genesmere. He lay looking at Lolita. &#8220;Close
+her eyes,&#8221; he said. And Luis did so. Genesmere was plucking at his
+clothes, and the Mexican helped him draw out a handkerchief, which the
+lover unfolded like a treasure. &#8220;She <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>used to look like this,&#8221; he began.
+He felt and stopped. &#8220;Why, it&#8217;s gone!&#8221; he said. He lay evidently seeking
+to remember where the picture had gone, and his eyes went to the hills
+whence no help came. Presently Luis heard him speaking, and, leaning to
+hear, made out that he was murmuring his own name, Russ, in the way
+Lolita had been used to say it. The boy sat speechless, and no thought
+stirred in his despair as he watched. The American moved over, and put
+his arms round Lolita, Luis knowing that he must not offer to help him
+do this. He remained so long that the boy, who would never be a boy
+again, bent over to see. But it was only another fainting-fit. Luis
+waited; now and then the animals moved among the rocks. The sun crossed
+the sky, bringing the many-colored evening, and Arizona was no longer
+terrible, but once more infinitely sad. Luis started, for the American
+was looking at him and beckoning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s not here,&#8221; Genesmere said, distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>Luis could not follow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not here, I tell you.&#8221; The lover touched his sweetheart. &#8220;This is not
+her. My punishment is nothing,&#8221; he went on, his face growing beautiful.
+&#8220;See there!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Luis looked where he pointed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you see her? Don&#8217;t you see her fixing that camp for me? We&#8217;re
+going to camp together now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But these were visions alien to Luis, and he stared helpless, anxious to
+do anything that the man might desire. Genesmere&#8217;s face darkened
+wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Am I not making camp?&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>Luis nodded to please him, without at all comprehending.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t see her.&#8221; Reason was warring with the departing spirit until
+the end. &#8220;Well, maybe you&#8217;re right. I never was sure. But I&#8217;m mortal
+tired of travelling alone. I hope&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That was the end, and Russ Genesmere lay still beside his sweetheart. It
+was a black evening at the cabin, and a black day when Luis and old
+Ramon raised and fenced the wooden head-stone, with its two forlorn
+names.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_PILGRIM_ON_THE_GILA" id="A_PILGRIM_ON_THE_GILA"></a>A PILGRIM ON THE GILA</h2>
+
+<p>Midway from Grant to Thomas comes Paymaster&#8217;s Hill, not much after Cedar
+Springs and not long before you sight the valley where the Gila flows.
+This lonely piece of road must lie three thousand miles from Washington;
+but in the holiday journey that I made they are near together among the
+adventures of mind and body that overtook me. For as I turned southward
+our capital was my first stopping-place, and it was here I gathered the
+expectations of Arizona with which I continued on my way.</p>
+
+<p>Arizona was the unknown country I had chosen for my holiday, and I found
+them describing it in our National House of Representatives, where I had
+strolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hot
+to make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that the
+place had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk and
+replies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in the
+sharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had not
+thought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories were
+rumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neither
+cattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order and
+prosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>lost his
+temper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey and
+enlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well on
+to three times the size of New York&mdash;had a hundred and thirteen thousand
+square miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice as
+big as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of the
+earth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as the
+town of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus was
+Arizona&#8217;s chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and the
+Apache her leading citizen.</p>
+
+<p>And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgot
+his sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his single
+gesture&mdash;that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during the
+suspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at the
+full stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of manner
+from my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would add
+famine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, but
+it was all told in Mr. Pumpelly&#8217;s book, true as life, thirty years
+ago&mdash;doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this report
+discouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go there
+to-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals in
+security. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowing
+their particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay in
+their minds.</p>
+
+<p>At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my first
+sight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly and
+smilingly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits of
+the railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, the
+leap into civilization that the Territory had taken. &#8220;Let Pennsylvania
+see those blossoming fields for herself,&#8221; said he, &#8220;those boundless
+contiguities of shade.&#8221; And a sort of cluck went off down inside my
+neighbor&#8217;s throat, while the speaker with rising heat gave us the
+tonnage of plums exported from the Territory during the past fiscal
+year. Wool followed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sock it to &#8217;em, Limber Jim!&#8221; murmured the man in the duster, and
+executed a sort of step. He was plainly a personal acquaintance of the
+speaker&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>Figures never stick by me, nor can I quote accurately the catalogue of
+statistic abundance now recited in the House of Representatives; but as
+wheat, corn, peaches, apricots, oranges, raisins, spices, the rose and
+the jasmine flowered in the Boy Orator&#8217;s eloquence, the genial antics of
+my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as
+&#8220;He&#8217;s a stud-horse,&#8221; and &#8220;Put the kybosh on &#8217;em,&#8221; and many more that
+have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator&#8217;s peroration I am glad to
+remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of
+metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for
+enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I should
+have voted to make the Territory a State that very day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With her snow-clad summits, with the balm of her Southern vineyards,
+she loudly calls for a sister&#8217;s rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor any
+cycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her Salt
+River, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>her hundred irrigated
+valleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, where
+thousands of noble men and elegantly educated ladies have already
+located, and to which thousands more, like patient monuments, are
+waiting breathless to throng when the franchise is proclaimed. And if my
+death could buy that franchise, I would joyfully boast such martyrdom.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The orator cracked his hands together in this supreme moment, and the
+bulky gentleman in the duster drove an elbow against my side, whispering
+to me at the same time behind his hand, in a hoarse confidence:
+&#8220;Deserted Jericho! California only holds the record on stoves now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I do not catch your allusion,&#8221; I began. But at my voice he
+turned sharply, and, giving me one short, ugly stare, was looking about
+him, evidently at some loss, when a man at his farther side pulled at
+his duster, and I then saw that he had all along been taking me for a
+younger companion he had come in with, and with whom he now went away.
+In the jostle we had shifted places while his eyes were upon the various
+speakers, and to him I seemed an eavesdropper. Both he and his friend
+had a curious appearance, and they looked behind them, meeting my gaze
+as I watched them going; and then they made to each other some laughing
+comment, of which I felt myself to be the inspiration. I was standing
+absently on the same spot, still in a mild puzzle over California and
+the record on stoves. Certainly I had overheard none of their secrets,
+if they had any; I could not even guess what might be their true opinion
+about admitting Arizona to our Union.</p>
+
+<p>With this last memory of our Capitol and the statesmen <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>we have
+collected there to govern us, I entered upon my holiday, glad that it
+was to be passed in such a region of enchantment. For peaches it would
+be too early, and with roses and jasmine I did not importantly concern
+myself, thinking of them only as a pleasant sight by the way. But on my
+gradual journey through Lexington, Bowling Green, Little Rock, and Forth
+Worth I dwelt upon the shade of the valleys, and the pasture hills
+dotted with the sheep of whose wool the Boy Orator had spoken; and I
+wished that our cold Northwest could have been given such a bountiful
+climate. Upon the final morning of railroad I looked out of the window
+at an earth which during the night had collapsed into a vacuum, as I had
+so often seen happen before upon more Northern parallels. The evenness
+of this huge nothing was cut by our track&#8217;s interminable scar, and
+broken to the eye by the towns which now and again rose and littered the
+horizon like boxes dumped by emigrants. We were still in Texas, not
+distant from the Rio Grande, and I looked at the boxes drifting by, and
+wondered from which of them the Boy Orator had been let loose. Twice or
+three times upon this day of sand I saw green spots shining sudden and
+bright and Biblical in the wilderness. Their isolated loveliness was
+herald of the valley land I was nearing each hour. The wandering
+Mexicans, too, bright in rags and swarthy in nakedness, put me somehow
+in mind of the Old Testament.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I sat at whiskey with my first acquaintance, a Mr. Mowry,
+one of several Arizona citizens whom my military friend at San Carlos
+had written me to look out for on my way to visit him. My train had
+trundled on to the Pacific, and I sat in a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>house once more&mdash;a saloon on
+the platform, with an open door through which the night air came
+pleasantly. This was now the long-expected Territory, and time for roses
+and jasmine to begin. Early in our talk I naturally spoke to Mr. Mowry
+of Arizona&#8217;s resources and her chance of becoming a State.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d have got there by now,&#8221; said he, &#8220;only Luke Jenks ain&#8217;t half that
+interested in Arizona as he is in Luke Jenks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I reminded Mr. Mowry that I was a stranger here and unacquainted with
+the prominent people.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Luke&#8217;s as near a hog as you kin be and wear pants. Be with you in
+a minute,&#8221; added Mr. Mowry, and shambled from the room. This was because
+a shot had been fired in a house across the railroad tracks. &#8220;I run two
+places,&#8221; he explained, returning quite soon from the house and taking up
+the thread of his whiskey where he had dropped it. &#8220;Two outfits. This
+side for toorists. Th&#8217; other pays better. I come here in &#8217;sixty-two.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I trust no one has been&mdash;hurt?&#8221; said I, inclining my head towards the
+farther side of the railroad.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hurt?&#8221; My question for the moment conveyed nothing to him, and he
+repeated the word, blinking with red eyes at me over the rim of his
+lifted glass. &#8220;No, nobody&#8217;s hurt. I&#8217;ve been here a long while, and seen
+them as was hurt, though.&#8221; Here he nodded at me depreciatingly, and I
+felt how short was the time that I had been here. &#8220;Th&#8217; other side pays
+better,&#8221; he resumed, &#8220;as toorists mostly go to bed early. Six bits is
+about the figger you can reckon they&#8217;ll spend, if you know anything.&#8221; He
+nodded again, more solemn over his whiskey. &#8220;That kind&#8217;s no help to
+business. I&#8217;ve been in this Territory from the start, and Arizona ain&#8217;t
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>what it was. Them mountains are named from me.&#8221; And he pointed out of
+the door. &#8220;Mowry&#8217;s Peak. On the map.&#8221; With this last august statement
+his mind seemed to fade from the conversation, and he struck a
+succession of matches along the table and various parts of his person.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has Mr. Jenks been in the Territory long?&#8221; I suggested, feeling the
+silence weigh upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Luke? He&#8217;s a hog. Him the people&#8217;s choice! But the people of Arizona
+ain&#8217;t what they was. Are you interested in silver?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I answered, meaning the political question. But before I could
+say what I meant he had revived into a vigor of attitude and a
+wakefulness of eye of which I had not hitherto supposed him capable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You come here,&#8221; said he; and, catching my arm, he took me out of the
+door and along the track in the night, and round the corner of the
+railroad hotel into view of more mountains that lay to the south. &#8220;You
+stay here to-morrow,&#8221; he pursued, swiftly, &#8220;and I&#8217;ll hitch up and drive
+you over there. I&#8217;ll show you some rock behind Helen&#8217;s Dome that&#8217;ll beat
+any you&#8217;ve struck in the whole course of your life. It&#8217;s on the wood
+reservation, and when the government abandons the Post, as they&#8217;re going
+to do&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is no need for my entering at length into his urgence, or the
+plans he put to me for our becoming partners, or for my buying him out
+and employing him on a salary, or buying him out and employing some
+other, or no one, according as I chose&mdash;the whole bright array of
+costumes in which he presented to me the chance of making my fortune at
+a stroke. I think that from my answers he gathered presently a
+discouraging but perfectly false impression. My Eastern hat <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>and
+inexperienced face (I was certainly young enough to have been his
+grandchild) had a little misled him; and although he did not in the
+least believe the simple truth I told him, that I had come to Arizona on
+no sort of business, but for the pleasure of seeing the country, he now
+overrated my brains as greatly as he had in the beginning despised them,
+quite persuaded I was playing some game deeper than common, and either
+owned already or had my eye upon other silver mines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pleasure of seeing the country, ye say?&#8221; His small wet eyes blinked as
+he stood on the railroad track bareheaded, considering me from head to
+foot. &#8220;All right. Did ye say ye&#8217;re going to Globe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No. To San Carlos to visit an army officer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Carlos is on the straight road to Globe,&#8221; said Mr. Mowry, vindictively.
+&#8220;But ye might as well drop any idea of Globe, if ye should get one. If
+it&#8217;s copper ye&#8217;re after, there&#8217;s parties in ahead of you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Desiring, if possible, to shift his mind from its present unfavorable
+turn, I asked him if Mr. Adams did not live between here and
+Solomonsville, my route to Carlos. Mr. Adams was another character of
+whom my host had written me, and at my mention of his name the face of
+Mr. Mowry immediately soured into the same expression it had taken when
+he spoke of the degraded Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So you&#8217;re acquainted with him! He&#8217;s got mines. I&#8217;ve seen &#8217;em. If you
+represent any Eastern parties, tell &#8217;em not to drop their dollars down
+old Adams&#8217;s hole in the ground. He ain&#8217;t the inexperienced juniper he
+looks. Him and me&#8217;s been acquainted these thirty years. People claim it
+was Cyclone Bill held up the Ehrenberg stage. Well, I guess I&#8217;ll be
+seeing how the boys are getting along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p><p>With that he moved away. A loud disturbance of chairs and broken glass
+had set up in the house across the railroad, and I watched the
+proprietor shamble from me with his deliberate gait towards the
+establishment that paid him best. He had left me possessor of much
+incomplete knowledge, and I waited for him, pacing the platform; but he
+did not return, and as I judged it inexpedient to follow him, I went to
+my bed on the tourist side of the track.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the stage went early, and as our road seemed to promise
+but little variety&mdash;I could see nothing but an empty plain&mdash;I was glad
+to find my single fellow-passenger a man inclined to talk. I did not
+like his mustache, which was too large for his face, nor his too careful
+civility and arrangement of words; but he was genial to excess, and
+thoughtful of my comfort.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I beg you will not allow my valise to incommode you,&#8221; was one of his
+first remarks; and I liked this consideration better than any Mr. Mowry
+had shown me. &#8220;I fear you will detect much initial primitiveness in our
+methods of transportation,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>This again called for gracious assurances on my part, and for a while
+our polite phrases balanced to corners until I was mentally winded
+keeping up such a pace of manners. The train had just brought him from
+Tucson, he told me, and would I indulge? On this we shared and
+complimented each other&#8217;s whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From your flask I take it that you are a Gentile,&#8221; said he, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you mean tenderfoot,&#8221; said I, &#8220;let me confess at once that flask and
+owner are from the East, and brand-new in Arizona.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I mean you&#8217;re not a Mormon. Most strangers to me up this way are. But
+they carry their liquor in a plain flat bottle like this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you a&mdash;a&mdash;&#8221; Embarrassment took me as it would were I to check
+myself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger if he had
+ever embezzled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m no Mormon,&#8221; my new friend said, with a chuckle, and I was glad
+to hear him come down to reasonable English. &#8220;But Gentiles are in the
+minority in this valley.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know we&#8217;d got to the valleys yet,&#8221; said I, eagerly, connecting
+Mormons with fertility and jasmine. And I lifted the flaps of the stage,
+first one side and then the other, and saw the desert everywhere flat,
+treeless, and staring like an eye without a lid.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is the San Simon Valley we&#8217;ve been in all the time,&#8221; he replied.
+&#8220;It goes from Mexico to the Gila, about a hundred and fifty miles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;South it&#8217;s rockier. Better put the flap down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see where people live,&#8221; I said, as two smoky spouts of sand
+jetted from the tires and strewed over our shoes and pervaded our
+nostrils. &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing&mdash;yes, there&#8217;s one bush coming.&#8221; I fastened
+the flaps.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s Seven-Mile Mesquite. They held up the stage at this point last
+October. But they made a mistake in the day. The money had gone down the
+afternoon before, and they only got about a hundred.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose it was Mormons who robbed the stage?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t talk quite so loud,&#8221; the stranger said, laughing. &#8220;The driver&#8217;s
+one of them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;A Mormon or a robber?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, we only know he&#8217;s a Mormon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t look twenty. Has he many wives yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, they keep that thing very quiet in these days, if they do it at
+all. The government made things too hot altogether. The Bishop here
+knows what hiding for polygamy means.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bishop who?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meakum,&#8221; I thought he answered me, but was not sure in the rattle of
+the stage, and twice made him repeat it, putting my hand to my ear at
+last. &#8220;Meakum! Meakum!&#8221; he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir,&#8221; said the driver.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have some whiskey?&#8221; said my friend, promptly; and when that was over
+and the flat bottle passed back, he explained in a lower voice, &#8220;A son
+of the Bishop&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Indeed!&#8221; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So was the young fellow who put in the mail-bags, and that
+yellow-headed duck in the store this morning.&#8221; My companion, in the
+pleasure of teaching new things to a stranger, stretched his legs on the
+front seat, lifted my coat out of his way, and left all formality of
+speech and deportment. &#8220;And so&#8217;s the driver you&#8217;ll have to-morrow if
+you&#8217;re going beyond Thomas, and the stock-tender at the sub-agency where
+you&#8217;ll breakfast. He&#8217;s a yellow-head too. The old man&#8217;s postmaster, and
+owns this stage-line. One of his boys has the mail contract. The old man
+runs the hotel at Solomonsville and two stores at Bowie and Globe, and
+the store and mill at Thacher. He supplies the military posts in this
+district with hay and wood, and a lot of things on and off through the
+year. Can&#8217;t write his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>own name. Signs government contracts with his
+mark. He&#8217;s sixty-four, and he&#8217;s had eight wives. Last summer he married
+number nine&mdash;rest all dead, he says, and I guess that&#8217;s so. He has
+fifty-seven recorded children, not counting the twins born last week.
+Any yellow-heads you&#8217;ll see in the valley&#8217;ll answer to the name of
+Meakum as a rule, and the other type&#8217;s curly black like this little
+driver specimen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How interesting there should be only two varieties of Meakum!&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s interesting. Of course the whole fifty-seven don&#8217;t class up
+yellow or black curly, but if you could take account of stock you&#8217;d find
+the big half of &#8217;em do. Mothers don&#8217;t seem to have influenced the type
+appreciably. His eight families, successive and simultaneous, cover a
+period of forty-three years, and yellow and black keeps turning up right
+along. Scientifically, the suppression of Mormonism is a loss to the
+student of heredity. Some of the children are dead. Get killed now and
+then, and die too&mdash;die from sickness. But you&#8217;ll easily notice Meakums
+as you go up the valley. Old man sees all get good jobs as soon as
+they&#8217;re old enough. Places &#8217;em on the railroad, places &#8217;em in town, all
+over the lot. Some don&#8217;t stay; you couldn&#8217;t expect the whole fifty-seven
+to be steady; but he starts &#8217;em all fair. We have six in Tucson now, or
+five, maybe. Old man&#8217;s a good father.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re not all boys?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly not; but more than half are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you say he can&#8217;t write?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Or read, except print, and he has to spell out that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, my goodness, he&#8217;s postmaster!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that got to do with it? Young Meakums all read like anything. He
+don&#8217;t do any drudgery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Well, you wouldn&#8217;t catch me signing any contracts I couldn&#8217;t read.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think you&#8217;d catch anybody reading a contract wrong to old
+Meakum? Oh, momma! Why, he&#8217;s king round here. Fixes the county elections
+and the price of tomatoes. Do you suppose any Tucson jury&#8217;ll convict any
+of his Mormons if he says nay? No, sir! It&#8217;s been tried. Why, that man
+ought to be in Congress.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If he&#8217;s like that I don&#8217;t consider him desirable,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, he is desirable,&#8221; said my friend, roughly. &#8220;Smart, can&#8217;t be
+fooled, and looks after his people&#8217;s interests. I&#8217;d like to know if that
+don&#8217;t fill the bill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If he defeats justice&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, rats!&#8221; This interruption made me regret his earlier manner, and I
+was sorry the polish had rubbed through so quickly and brought us to a
+too precipitate familiarity. &#8220;We&#8217;re Western out here,&#8221; he continued,
+&#8220;and we&#8217;re practical. When we want a thing, we go after it. Bishop
+Meakum worked his way down here from Utah through desert and starvation,
+mostly afoot, for a thousand miles, and his flock to-day is about the
+only class in the Territory that knows what prosperity feels like, and
+his laws are about the only laws folks don&#8217;t care to break. He&#8217;s got a
+brain. If he weren&#8217;t against Arizona&#8217;s being admitted&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He should know better than that,&#8221; said I, wishing to be friendly. &#8220;With
+your fruit exports and high grade of citizens you&#8217;ll soon be another
+California.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He gave me an odd look.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am surprised,&#8221; I proceeded, amiably, &#8220;to hear you speak of Mormons
+only as prosperous. They think better of you in Washington.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Now, see here,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been pleasant to you and I&#8217;ve enjoyed
+this ride. But I like plain talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I don&#8217;t care for Eastern sarcasm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There was no intention&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t take offence where offence is not intended. As for high-grade
+citizens, we don&#8217;t claim to know as much as&mdash;I suppose it&#8217;s New York you
+come from? Gold-bugs and mugwumps&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you can spare the time,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and kindly explain what has
+disturbed you in my remarks, we&#8217;ll each be likely to find the rest of
+these forty miles more supportable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess I can stand it,&#8221; said he, swallowing a drink. He folded his
+arms and resettled his legs; and the noisome hatefulness of his laugh
+filled me with regret for the wet-eyed Mowry. I would now gladly have
+taken any amount of Mowry in exchange for this; and it struck me afresh
+how uncertainly one always reckons with those who suspect their own
+standing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Till Solomonsville,&#8221; said I, &#8220;let us veil our estimation of each other.
+Once out of this stage and the world will be large enough for both of
+us.&#8221; I was wrong there; but presentiments do not come to me often. So I,
+too, drank some of my own whiskey, lighted a cigar, and observed with
+pleasure that my words had enraged him.</p>
+
+<p>Before either of us had devised our next remark, the stage pulled up to
+change horses at the first and last water in forty miles. This station
+was kept by Mr. Adams, and I jumped out to see the man Mr. Mowry had
+warned me was not an inexperienced juniper. His appearance would have
+drawn few but missionaries to him, and I should think would have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>warning enough to any but an over-trustful child of six.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you the geologist?&#8221; he said at once, coughing heavily; and when I
+told him I was simply enjoying a holiday, he looked at me sharply and
+spat against the corner of the stable. &#8220;There&#8217;s one of them fellers
+expected,&#8221; he continued, in a tone as if I need not attempt to deny
+that, and I felt his eye watching for signs of geology about me. I told
+him that I imagined the geologist must do an active business in Arizona.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t hire &#8217;em!&#8221; he exclaimed. &#8220;They can&#8217;t tell me nothing about
+mineral.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you have been here a long while, Mr. Adams?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s just three living that come in ahead of&mdash;&#8221; The cough split his
+last word in pieces.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Mowry was saying last night&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve seen that old scamp, have you? Buy his mine behind Helen&#8217;s
+Dome?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My mirth at this turned him instantly confidential, and rooted his
+conviction that I was a geologist. &#8220;That&#8217;s right!&#8221; said he, tapping my
+arm. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you let &#8217;em fool you. I guess you know your business. Now,
+if you want to look at good paying rock, thousands in sight, in sight,
+mind you&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you coming along with us?&#8221; called the little Meakum driver, and I
+turned and saw the new team was harnessed and he ready on his box, with
+the reins in his hands. So I was obliged to hasten from the disappointed
+Adams and climb back in my seat. The last I saw of him he was standing
+quite still in the welter of stable muck, stooping to his cough, the
+desert sun beating on his old body, and the desert wind <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>slowly turning
+the windmill above the shadeless mud hovel in which he lived alone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor old devil!&#8221; said I to my enemy, half forgetting our terms in my
+contemplation of Adams. &#8220;Is he a Mormon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My enemy&#8217;s temper seemed a little improved. &#8220;He&#8217;s tried most everything
+except jail,&#8221; he answered, his voice still harsh. &#8220;You needn&#8217;t invest
+your sentiment there. He used to hang out at Twenty Mile in Old Camp
+Grant days, and he&#8217;d slit your throat for fifty cents.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But my sentiment was invested somehow. The years of the old-timers were
+ending so gray. Their heyday, and carousals, and happy-go-luckiness all
+gone, and in the remaining hours&mdash;what? Empty youth is such a grand easy
+thing, and empty age so grim!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has Mowry tried everything, too?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Including jail,&#8221; said my companion; and gave me many entertaining
+incidents of Mowry&#8217;s career with an ill-smelling saloon cleverness that
+put him once more into favorable humor with me, while I retained my
+opinion of him. &#8220;And that uneducated sot,&#8221; he concluded, &#8220;that hobo with
+his record of cattle-stealing and claim-jumping, and his acquittal from
+jail through railroad influence, actually undertook to run against me
+last elections. My name is Jenks; Luke Jenks, Territorial Delegate from
+Arizona.&#8221; He handed me his card.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m just from Washington,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ve not been there this session. Important law business has
+detained me here. Yes, they backed Mowry in that election. The old
+spittoon had quite a following, but he hadn&#8217;t the cash. That gives you
+some idea of the low standards I have to combat. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>But I hadn&#8217;t to spend
+much. This Territory&#8217;s so poor they come cheap. Seventy-five cents a
+head for all the votes I wanted in Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma; and up
+here the Bishop was my good friend. Holding office booms my business
+some, and that&#8217;s why I took it, of course. But I&#8217;ve had low standards to
+fight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Territorial Delegate now talked freely of Arizona&#8217;s frontier life.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s all dead,&#8221; he said, forgetting in his fluency what he had told me
+about Seven-Mile Mesquite and last October. &#8220;We have a community as high
+toned as any in the land. Our monumental activity&mdash;&#8221; And here he went
+off like a cuckoo clock, or the Boy Orator, reciting the glories of
+Ph&oelig;nix and Salt River, and the future of silver, in that special
+dialect of platitudes which is spoken by our more talkative statesmen,
+and is not quite Latin, quite grammar, or quite falsehood. &#8220;We&#8217;re not
+all Mowrys and Adamses,&#8221; said he, landing from his flight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In a population of fifty-nine thousand,&#8221; said I, heartily, &#8220;a stranger
+is bound to meet decent people if he keeps on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Again he misinterpreted me, but this time the other way, bowing like one
+who acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in such
+peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I
+had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not
+prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny
+plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes,
+he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I could have reached Thomas that evening, but after our noon dinner let
+the stage go on, and delayed a night for the sake of seeing the Bishop
+hold service <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>next day, which was Sunday, some few miles down the
+valley. I was curious to learn the Mormon ritual and what might be the
+doctrines that such a man as the Bishop would expound. It dashed me a
+little to find this would cost me forty-eight hours of Solomonsville, no
+Sunday stage running. But one friendly English-speaking family&mdash;the town
+was chiefly Mexican&mdash;made some of my hours pleasant, and others I spent
+in walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritual
+was well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I was
+obliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middle
+of his discourse.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs,&#8221; he
+was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his
+voice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly a
+leader of men. &#8220;Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that
+thoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has not
+ceased because they&#8217;re rotten. That&#8217;s the error of the ignorant, who
+know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant
+stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not.
+The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly and
+die. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in her
+blood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to the
+man. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathe
+the tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad for
+us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes
+deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are
+sick because <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see this
+sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house,
+with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving each
+day, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers in
+the door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing the
+twenty-ninth hymn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The scales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizona
+clear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been a
+politician&#8217;s way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, and
+I willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for my
+holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me,
+and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well
+pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a
+blessing&mdash;the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with
+the Mormons stand&mdash;I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow
+duster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merely
+said to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And I
+knew that we should speak together soon, and he would tell me why
+California only held the record on stoves.</p>
+
+<p>But oh, my friends, what a country we live in, and what an age, that the
+same stars and stripes should simultaneously wave over this and over
+Delmonico&#8217;s! This too I kept thinking as I killed more hours in walking
+the neighborhood of Solomonsville, an object of more false hope to
+natives whom I did not then observe. I avoided Jenks, who had business
+clients in the town. I went among the ditches and the fields thus turned
+green by the channelled Gila; and though <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>it was scarce a paradise
+surpassing the Nile, it was grassy and full of sweet smells until after
+a few miles each way, when the desert suddenly met the pleasant verdure
+full in the face and corroded it to death like vitriol. The sermon came
+back to me as I passed the little Mormon homes, and the bishop rose and
+rose in my esteem, though not as one of the children of light. That
+sagacious patriarch told his flock the things of week-day wisdom down to
+their level, the cleanly things next to godliness, to keep them from the
+million squalors that stain our Gentile poor; and if he did not sound
+much like the Gospel, he and Deuteronomy were alike as two peas. With
+him and Moses thus in my thoughts, I came back after sunset, and was
+gratified to be late for supper. Jenks had left the dining-room, and I
+ate in my own company, which had become lively and full of intelligent
+impressions. These I sat recording later in my journal, when a
+hesitating knock came at my bedroom, and two young men in cowboy costume
+entered like shy children, endeavoring to step without creaking.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meakums!&#8221; my delighted mind exclaimed, inwardly; but the yellow one
+introduced the black curly one as Mr. Follet, who, in turn, made his
+friend Mr. Cunningham known to me, and at my cordial suggestion they sat
+down with increasing awkwardness, first leaving their hats outside the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We seen you walking around,&#8221; said one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lookin&#8217; the country over,&#8221; said the other.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fine weather for travelling,&#8221; said the first.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dusty though,&#8221; said the second.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving them to need my help in coming to their point, I said, &#8220;And
+now about your silver mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve called the turn on us!&#8221; exclaimed yellow, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>and black curly
+slapped his knee. Both of them sat looking at me, laughing
+enthusiastically, and I gathered they had been having whiskey this
+Sunday night. I confess that I offered them some more, and when they
+realized my mildness they told me with length and confidence about the
+claims they had staked out on Mount Turnbull. &#8220;And there&#8217;s lots of lead,
+too,&#8221; said yellow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not smelt,&#8221; said I, &#8220;or deal in any way with ore. I have come here
+without the intention of buying anything.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ain&#8217;t the paymaster?&#8221; burst out black curly, wrinkling his forehead
+like a pleasant dog.</p>
+
+<p>Yellow touched his foot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Course he ain&#8217;t!&#8221; said curly, with a swerve of his eye. &#8220;He ain&#8217;t due.
+What a while it always is waitin&#8217;!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Now the paymaster was nothing to me, nor whom he paid. For all I knew,
+my visitors were on his roll; and why yellow should shy at the mention
+of him and closely watch his tipsy mate I did not try to guess. Like
+every one I had met so far in Arizona, these two evidently doubted I was
+here for my pleasure merely; but it was with entire good-humor that they
+remarked a man had the right to mind his own business; and so, with a
+little more whiskey, we made a friendly parting. They recommended me to
+travel with a pistol in this country, and I explained that I should do
+myself more harm than good with a weapon that any one handled more
+rapidly than I, with my inexperience.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-night, Mr. Meakum,&#8221; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Follet,&#8221; corrected black curly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cunningham,&#8221; said yellow, and they picked up their hats in the hall and
+withdrew.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p><p>I think now those were their names&mdash;the time was coming when I should
+hear them take oath on it&mdash;yet I do not know. I heard many curious oaths
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>I was glad to see black curly in the stage next day, not alone for his
+company, but to give him a right notion of what ready money I had about
+me. Thinking him over, and his absence of visible means of support, and
+his interest in me, I took opportunity to mention, quite by the way,
+that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, the
+rest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And I
+looked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of my
+nickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidence
+when we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, and
+the Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He nodded
+to me and gave Follet a message.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell your brother&#8221; (wouldn&#8217;t a father have said Tom or Dick?) &#8220;that
+I&#8217;ve given him chances enough and he don&#8217;t take &#8217;em. He don&#8217;t feed my
+horses, and my passengers complain he don&#8217;t feed them&mdash;though that&#8217;s not
+so serious!&#8221; said he to me, with a jovial wink. &#8220;But I won&#8217;t have my
+stock starved. You&#8217;ll skip the station and go through to Thomas with
+this pair,&#8221; he added to the driver in his voice of lusty command.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ll get supper at Thomas. Everything&#8217;s moved on there from to-day.
+That&#8217;s the rule now.&#8221; Then he returned to black curly, who, like the
+driver, had remained cowed and respectful throughout the short harangue.
+&#8220;Your brother could have treated me square and made money by that
+station. Tell him that, and to see me by Thursday. If he&#8217;s thinking of
+peddling vegetables this season I&#8217;ll let him sell to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>Fort Bowie.
+Safford takes Carlos, and I won&#8217;t have two compete in the same market,
+or we&#8217;ll be sinking low as Eastern prices,&#8221; said he to me, with another
+wink. &#8220;Drive on now. You&#8217;re late.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He shut the flap, and we were off quickly&mdash;too quickly. In the next few
+moments I could feel that something all wrong went on; there was a
+jingle and snapping of harness, and such a voice from the Bishop behind
+us that I looked out to see him. We had stopped, and he was running
+after us at a wonderful pace for a man of sixty-four.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t drive better than that,&#8221; said the grizzled athlete,
+arriving cool and competent, &#8220;you&#8217;ll saw wood for another year. Look how
+you&#8217;ve got them trembling.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was a young pair, and they stood and steamed while the broken gear
+was mended.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did California hold the record in before the Boy Orator broke it?&#8221;
+said I, getting out.</p>
+
+<p>He shot at me the same sinister look I had seen in the Capitol, the look
+he must always wear, I suppose, when taken aback. Then he laughed
+broadly and heartily, a strong pleasant laugh that nearly made me like
+him. &#8220;So you&#8217;re that fellow! Ho, ho! Away down here now. Oh, ho, ho!
+What&#8217;s your business?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t believe if I told you,&#8221; said I, to his sudden sharp
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Me? Why, I believe everything I&#8217;m told. What&#8217;s your name?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you believe I haven&#8217;t come to buy anybody&#8217;s silver mine?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Silver! I don&#8217;t keep it. Unloaded ten years ago before the rabbit
+died.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you&#8217;re the first anti-silver man I&#8217;ve met.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m anti anything I can&#8217;t sell, young man. Here&#8217;s all there is to
+silver: Once upon a time it was hard to get, and we had to have it. Now
+it&#8217;s easy. When it gets as common as dirt it&#8217;ll be as cheap as dirt.
+Same as watermelons when it&#8217;s a big crop. D&#8217;you follow me? That&#8217;s silver
+for you, and I don&#8217;t want it. So you&#8217;ve come away down here. Well, well!
+What did you say your name was?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I told him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Politician?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God forbid!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. I took a look at those buzzards there in
+Washington. Our Senate and Representatives. They were screeching a heap.
+All about ratios. You&#8217;ll be sawing wood yet!&#8221; he shouted to the driver,
+and strode up to help him back a horse. &#8220;Now ratio is a good-sounding
+word too, and I guess that&#8217;s why they chew on it so constant. Better
+line of language that they get at home. I&#8217;ll tell you about Congress.
+Here&#8217;s all there is to it: You can divide them birds in two lots. Those
+who know better and those who don&#8217;t. D&#8217;you follow me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And which kind is the Boy Orator?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Limber Jim? Oh, he knows better. I know Jim. You see, we used to have a
+saying in Salt Lake that California had the smallest stoves and the
+biggest liars in the world. Now Jim&mdash;well, there&#8217;s an old saying busted.
+But you&#8217;ll see Arizona&#8217;ll go back on the Democrats. If they put wool on
+the free list she&#8217;ll stay Republican, and they won&#8217;t want her admitted,
+which suits me first-rate. My people here are better off as they stand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But your friend Mr. Jenks favors admission!&#8221; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Luke? He&#8217;s been talking to you, has he? Well now, Luke. Here&#8217;s all
+there is to him: Natural gas. That&#8217;s why I support him, you see. If we
+sent a real smart man to Washington he might get us made a State. Ho,
+ho! But Luke stays here most of the time, and he&#8217;s no good anyway. Oh,
+ho, ho! So you&#8217;re buying no mines this season?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once more I found myself narrating the insignificance of my visit to
+Arizona&mdash;the Bishop must have been a hard inquisitor for even the deeply
+skilful to elude&mdash;and for the first time my word was believed. He
+quickly took my measure, saw that I had nothing to hide, and after
+telling me I could find good hunting and scenery in the mountains north,
+paid me no further attention, but masterfully laid some final commands
+on the intimidated driver. Then I bade good-bye to the Bishop, and
+watched that old locomotive moving vigorously back along the road to his
+manifold business.</p>
+
+<p>The driver was ill pleased to go hungry for his supper until Thomas, but
+he did not dare complain much over the new rule, even to black curly and
+me. This and one other thing impressed me. Some miles farther on we had
+passed out of the dust for a while, and rolled up the flaps.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s waiting for you,&#8221; said the driver to black curly, and that
+many-sided youth instantly dived to the bottom of the stage, his boots
+and pistol among my legs.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Throw your coat over me,&#8221; he urged.</p>
+
+<p>I concealed him with that and a mail-sack, and stretched my head out to
+see what lioness stood in his path. But it was only a homelike little
+cabin, and at the door a woman, comely and mature, eying the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>stage
+expectantly. Possibly wife, I thought, more likely mother, and I asked,
+&#8220;Is Mrs. Follet strict?&#8221; choosing a name to fit either.</p>
+
+<p>The driver choked and chirruped, but no sound came from under the
+mail-sack until we had passed the good-day to the momentous female,
+whose response was harsh with displeasure as she wheeled into her door.
+A sulky voice then said, &#8220;Tell me when she&#8217;s gone, Bill.&#8221; But we were a
+safe two hundred yards on the road before he would lift his head, and
+his spirits were darkened during the remainder of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come and live East,&#8221; said I, inviting him to some whiskey at the same
+time. &#8220;Back there they don&#8217;t begin sitting up for you so early in the
+evening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This did not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bring
+another fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first had
+been. &#8220;She tires a man&#8217;s spirit,&#8221; said black curly, and with this rueful
+utterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas in
+the dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to this
+new place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had taken
+himself off, and the driver sat at the table with me, still occasionally
+snickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him until
+the gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said,
+with a nervous, hasty relish, &#8220;The Widow Sproud is slick,&#8221; and departed.</p>
+
+<p>Consoled by no better clew than this I went to bed in a down-stairs
+room, and in my strange rising next day I did not see the driver again.
+Callings in the air awaked me, and a wandering sound of wheels. The
+gaunt woman stood with a lamp in my room saying <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>the stage was ready,
+and disappeared. I sprang up blindly, and again the callings passed in
+the blackness outside&mdash;long cries, inarticulate to me. Wheels heavily
+rolled to my door, and a whip was struck against it, and there loomed
+the stage, and I made out the calling. It was the three drivers, about
+to separate before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they were
+wailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, in
+whatever place they lay sleeping. &#8220;Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!&#8221; came from
+somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating
+antiphonal, &#8220;Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!&#8221; and in the chill black air my
+driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, &#8220;Car-los! Car-los!&#8221;
+One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let me
+dress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash cold
+water in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat among
+the leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having four
+hours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faint
+reveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and I
+pushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myself
+and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the
+sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and
+both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my
+frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the
+mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after
+the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we
+went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came
+from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>Indian would appear,
+running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had
+yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas.
+With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain,
+and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired
+desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper
+body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the
+thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide
+continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until
+breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the
+driver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks had
+told me they would be.</p>
+
+<p>It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila,
+and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend Captain
+Stirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the news
+was in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in any
+previous part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed my
+having no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to do
+with it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some had
+thought I was the paymaster.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Folks up here,&#8221; he explained, &#8220;are liable to know who&#8217;s coming.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I lived here,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I should be anxious for the paymaster to
+come early and often.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here,
+and us civilians profit some by it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo15" id="illo15"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i282.jpg" class="smallgap" width="500" height="347" alt="&#8220;EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE&#8221;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>the subject of black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but
+before I had compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited
+me. Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I was
+stranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to see an
+old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and the
+quartermaster&#8217;s hearty will to help me to do so could not cure my
+blankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round at
+Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other
+friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at
+an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for good
+or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in gloom I
+retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged back
+along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed my
+Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably slipshod
+morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that in reality
+only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the ancient
+presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go to
+house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed legally
+married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve months, and ten had run
+against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signs of leaving
+her. The driver did not think her much entitled to sympathy, and
+certainly she showed later that she could devise revenge. As I thought
+over these things we came again to the cattle herd, where my
+reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor did the variance
+between my movements and my reported plans <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>seem wholly explained to
+them by Stirling&#8217;s absence, and at the station where I had breakfasted I
+saw them question the driver about me. This interest in my affairs
+heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when next day I came to it
+after another waking to the chanted antiphonals and another faint
+reveille from Camp Thomas in the waning dark, extreme comfort spread
+through me. I sat in the club with the officers, and they taught me a
+new game of cards called Solo, and filled my glass. Here were
+lieutenants, captains, a major, and a colonel, American citizens with a
+love of their country and a standard of honor; here floated our bright
+flag serene against the lofty blue, and the mellow horns sounded at
+guard-mounting, bringing moisture to the eyes. The day was punctuated
+with the bright trumpet, people went and came in the simple dignity of
+duty, and once again I talked with good men and women. God bless our
+soldier people! I said it often.</p>
+
+<p>They somewhat derided my uneasiness in the Gila Valley, and found my
+surmisings sensational. Yet still they agreed much ready money was an
+unwise thing on a stage journey, although their profession (I suppose)
+led them to take being &#8220;held up&#8221; less seriously than I with my peaceful
+traditions of elevators and the down-town lunch. In the wide Sulphur
+Springs valley where I rode at large, but never so long or so far that
+Fort Grant lay not in sight across that miracle of air, it displeased me
+to come one morning upon yellow and black curly jogging along beneath
+the government telegraph line.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You cover a wide range,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cowboys have to,&#8221; they answered. &#8220;So you&#8217;ve not quit us yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking of taking a hunt and fish towards Fort Apache.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re your men, then. You&#8217;ll find us at Thomas any time. We&#8217;re
+gathering stock up these draws, but that&#8217;ll be through this week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They spurred their horses and vanished among the steep little hills that
+run up to Mount Graham. But indeed they should be no men of mine!
+Stirling had written me his scout was ended, and San Carlos worth a
+longer visit than I had made there, promising me an escort should I
+desire to camp in the mountains. An escort it should be, and no yellow
+or black curly, over-curious about my private matters! This fell in
+excellently with the coming paymaster&#8217;s movements. Major Pidcock was
+even now on his way to Fort Grant from Fort Bowie; and when he went to
+Thomas and Carlos I would go, too, in his ambulance; and I sighed with
+pleasure at escaping that stage again.</p>
+
+<p>Major Pidcock arrived in a yellow duster, but in other respects differed
+from the Bishop, though in his body a bulky man. We were introduced to
+each other at the club.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am glad, sir, to meet you at last,&#8221; I said to him. &#8220;The whole Gila
+Valley has been taking me for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;ah!&#8221; said Pidcock, vaguely, and pulling at some fat papers in his
+coat; &#8220;indeed. I understand that is a very ignorant population. Colonel
+Vincent, a word with you. The Department Commander requests me&mdash;&#8221; And
+here he went off into some official talk with the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>I turned among the other officers, who were standing by an open locker
+having whiskey, and Major Evlie put his hand on my shoulder. &#8220;He doesn&#8217;t
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>mean anything,&#8221; he whispered, while the rest looked knowingly at me.
+Presently the Colonel explained to Pidcock that he would have me to keep
+him company to Carlos.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;ah, Colonel. Of course we don&#8217;t take civilians not employed by the
+government, as a rule. But exceptions&mdash;ah&mdash;can be made,&#8221; he said to me.
+&#8220;I will ask you to be ready immediately after breakfast to-morrow.&#8221; And
+with that he bowed to us all and sailed forth across the parade-ground.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel&#8217;s face was red, and he swore in his quiet voice; but the
+lips of the lieutenants by the open locker quivered fitfully in the
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t mind Pidcock,&#8221; Evlie remarked. &#8220;He&#8217;s a paymaster.&#8221; And at this
+the line officers became disorderly, and two lieutenants danced
+together; so that, without catching Evlie&#8217;s evidently military joke, I
+felt pacified.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;ve got to have him to dinner,&#8221; sighed the Colonel, and wandered
+away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll get on with him, man&mdash;you&#8217;ll get on with him in the ambulance,&#8221;
+said my friend Paisley. &#8220;Flatter him, man. Just ask him about his great
+strategic stroke at Cayuse Station that got him his promotion to the pay
+department.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Well, we made our start after breakfast, Major Pidcock and I, and
+another passenger too, who sat with the driver&mdash;a black cook going to
+the commanding officer&#8217;s at Thomas. She was an old plantation mammy,
+with a kind but bewildered face, and I am sorry that the noise of our
+driving lost me much of her conversation; for whenever we slowed, and
+once when I walked up a hill, I found her remarks to be steeped in a
+flighty charm.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Fo&#8217; Lawd&#8217;s sake!&#8221; said she. &#8220;W&#8217;at&#8217;s dat?&#8221; And when the driver told her
+that it was a jack-rabbit, &#8220;You go &#8217;long!&#8221; she cried, outraged. &#8220;I&#8217;se
+seed rabbits earlier &#8217;n de mawnin&#8217; dan yo&#8217;self.&#8221; She watched the animal
+with all her might, muttering, &#8220;Law, see him squot,&#8221; and &#8220;Hole on, hole
+on!&#8221; and &#8220;Yasser, he done gone fo&#8217; sho. My grashus, you lemme have a
+scatter shoot-gun an&#8217; a spike-tail smell dog, an&#8217; I&#8217;ll git one of dey
+narrah-gauge mules.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not notice it,&#8221; said Major Pidcock to me, with dignity. &#8220;But
+they should have sent such a creature by the stage. It&#8217;s unsuitable,
+wholly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Unquestionably,&#8221; said I, straining to catch the old lady&#8217;s song on the
+box:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Don&#8217;t you fo&#8217;git I&#8217;s a-comin&#8217; behind you&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Lam slam de lunch ham.&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is insufferable,&#8221; said Pidcock. &#8220;I shall put her off at Cedar
+Springs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the drive was long to him, but to me it was not. Noon and
+Cedar Springs prematurely ended the first half of this day most
+memorable in the whole medley of my excursion, and we got down to dine.
+Two travellers bound for Thomas by our same road were just setting out,
+but they firmly declined to transport our cook, and Pidcock moodily saw
+them depart in their wagon, leaving him burdened still; for this was the
+day the stage made its down trip from Thomas. Never before had I seen
+water paid for. When the Major, with windy importance, came to settle
+his bill, our dozen or fourteen escort horses and mules made an item,
+the price of watering two head being two bits, quite separate from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>feed; and I learned that water was thus precious over most of the
+Territory.</p>
+
+<p>Our cook remounted the box in high feather, and began at once to comment
+upon Arizona. &#8220;Dere ain&#8217;t no winter, nor no spring, nor no rain de hole
+year roun&#8217;. My! what a country fo&#8217; to gib de chick&#8217;ns courage! Dey hens
+must jus&#8217; sit an&#8217; lay an&#8217; lay. But de po&#8217; ducks done have a mean time.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;O&mdash;Lawd!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sinner is in my way, Daniel.&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would not permit a cook like that inside my house,&#8221; said Major
+Pidcock.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She may not be dangerous,&#8221; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Land! is dey folks gwineter shoot me?&#8221; Naturally I looked, and so did
+the Major; but it was two of our own mounted escort that she saw out to
+the right of us among the hills. &#8220;Tell dem nigger jockeys I got no
+money. Why do dey triflin&#8217; chillun ride in de kerridge?&#8221; She did not
+mean ourselves, but the men with their carbines in the escort wagon in
+front of us. I looked out at them, and their mouths were wide open for
+joy at her. It was not a stately progress for twenty-eight thousand
+dollars in gold and a paymaster to be making. Major Pidcock unbuttoned
+his duster and reclined to sleep, and presently I also felt the
+after-dinner sloth shutting my eyes pleasantly to this black road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Heave it, chillun! can&#8217;t you heave?&#8221; I heard our cook say, and felt us
+stop.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that?&#8221; I asked, drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Seems to be a rock fallen down,&#8221; the Major answered. &#8220;Start it, men;
+roll it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I roused myself. We were between rocks and banks <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>on the brow of a hill,
+down which the narrow road descended with a slight turn. I could see the
+escort wagon halted ahead of us, and beyond it the men stooping at a
+large stone, around which there was no possible room to drive. This
+stone had fallen, I reflected, since those travellers for Thomas&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There was a shot, and a mule rolled over.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget that. It was like the theatre for one paralyzed
+second! The black soldiers, the mule, the hill, all a clear picture seen
+through an opera-glass, stock-still, and nothing to do with me&mdash;for a
+congealed second. And, dear me, what a time we had then!</p>
+
+<p>Crackings volleyed around us, puffs of smoke jetted blue from rock
+ramparts which I had looked at and thought natural&mdash;or, rather, not
+thought of at all&mdash;earth and gravel spattered up from the ground, the
+bawling negress spilled off her box and ran in spirals, screaming, &#8220;Oh,
+bless my soul, bless my soul!&#8221; and I saw a yellow duster flap out of the
+ambulance. &#8220;Lawd grashus, he&#8217;s a-leavin&#8217; us!&#8221; screeched the cook, and
+she changed her spirals for a bee-line after him. I should never have
+run but for this example, for I have not naturally the presence of mind,
+and in other accidents through which I have passed there has never been
+promptness about me; the reasoning and all has come when it was over,
+unless it went on pretty long, when I have been sometimes able to leap
+to a conclusion. But yes, I ran now, straight under a screen of rocks,
+over the top of which rose the heads of yellow and black curly. The
+sight of them sent rushing over me the first agreeable sensation I had
+felt&mdash;shapeless rage&mdash;and I found myself shouting at them, &#8220;Scoundrels!
+scoundrels!&#8221; while shooting continued <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>briskly around me. I think my
+performance would have sincerely entertained them could they have spared
+the time for it; and as it was, they were regarding me with obvious
+benevolence, when Mr. Adams looked evilly at me across the stones, and
+black curly seized the old devil&#8217;s rifle in time to do me a good turn.
+Mr. Adams&#8217;s bullet struck short of me ten feet, throwing the earth in my
+face. Since then I have felt no sympathy for that tobacco-running
+pioneer. He listened, coughing, to what black curly said as he pointed
+to me, and I see now that I have never done a wiser thing than to go
+unarmed in that country. Curly was telling Mr. Adams that I was
+harmless. Indeed, that was true! In the bottom of this cup, target for a
+circled rim of rifles, separated from the widely scattered Major and his
+men, aware of nothing in particular, and seeing nothing in particular
+but smoke and rocks and faces peering everywhere, I walked to a stone
+and sat upon it, hypnotized again into a spectator. From this
+undisturbed vantage I saw shape itself the theft of the gold&mdash;the first
+theft, that is; for it befell me later to witness a ceremony by which
+these eagles of Uncle Sam again changed hands in a manner that stealing
+is as good a name for as any.</p>
+
+<p>They had got two mules killed, so that there could be no driving away in
+a hurry, and I saw that killing men was not a part of their war, unless
+required as a means to their end. Major Pidcock had spared them this
+necessity; I could see him nowhere; and with him to imitate I need not
+pause to account for the members of our dismounted escort. Two soldiers,
+indeed, lay on the ground, the sergeant and another, who had evidently
+fired a few resisting shots; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>but let me say at once that these poor
+fellows recovered, and I saw them often again through this adventure
+that bound us together, else I could not find so much hilarity in my
+retrospect. Escort wagon and ambulance stood empty and foolish on the
+road, and there lay the ingenious stone all by itself, and the carbines
+all by themselves foolish in the wagon, where the innocent soldiers had
+left them on getting out to move the stone. Smoke loitered thin and blue
+over this now exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. How
+secure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless of
+identification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, an
+escort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at the
+top of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed into
+sight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I had
+never seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow and
+black curly looked so natural that I wondered if Jenks and the Bishop
+would come climbing down too. But no more old friends turned up that
+day. Some went to the ambulance swift and silent, while others most
+needlessly stood guard. Nothing was in sight but my seated inoffensive
+form, and the only sound was, somewhere among the rocks, the voice of
+the incessant negress speeding through her prayers. I saw them at the
+ambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,
+ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill&#8217;s brow.
+Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouring
+negress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Oh&mdash;Lawd!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sinner is in my way, Daniel.&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>All this while I sat on the stone. &#8220;They have done us brown,&#8221; I said
+aloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.
+My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. I
+should not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,
+brought from several quarters by the fusillade&mdash;two in a wagon from
+Cedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with in
+the hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistance
+to any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what we
+all should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatory
+with pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to them
+than any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaseless
+discourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge of
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let yer men quit the&#8217;r guns, did ye, general?&#8221; piped the very old man.
+&#8220;Escort oughtn&#8217;t never to quit the&#8217;r guns. I seen that at Molino del
+Rey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn&#8217;t crawl out in the
+road like a turtus to git the sunshine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where were you?&#8221; thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who now
+appeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they had
+been protecting at an immense distance. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you know your duty&#8217;s to
+be on hand when you hear firing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Law, honey!&#8221; said the cook, with a guffaw, &#8220;lemme git my han&#8217;s over my
+mouf.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See them walls they fooled yer with!&#8221; continued the old man, pointing
+with his stick. &#8220;I could have told yer them wasn&#8217;t natural. Them doesn&#8217;t
+show like country rock;&#8221; by which I found that he meant their faces were
+new-exposed and not weather-beaten.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;No doubt you could have saved us, my friend,&#8221; said the Major, puffing
+blandly.</p>
+
+<p>But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. &#8220;Yes, I could have told
+yer that,&#8221; assented the sage, with senile complacence. &#8220;My wife could
+have told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements,&#8221; announced Pidcock. &#8220;Tap
+the telegraph wire,&#8221; he ordered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have to repawt to the Major,&#8221; said a soldier, saluting, &#8220;dat de line
+is cut.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this I was taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while
+ninety summers observed, &#8220;Of course them boys would cut the wire if they
+knew their business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Swearing capably, the Major now accounted clearly to us for the whole
+occurrence, striding up and down, while we lifted the hurt men into the
+ranch wagon, and arranged for their care at Cedar Springs. The escort
+wagon hurried on to Thomas for a doctor. The ambulance was, of course,
+crippled of half its team, and the dead mules were cleared from their
+harness and got to the road-side. Having satisfactorily delivered
+himself of his explanation, the Major now organized a party for
+following the trail of the robbers, to learn into what region they had
+betaken themselves. Incredible as it may seem, after my late
+unenterprising conduct, I asked one of the riders to lend me his horse,
+which he did, remarking that he should not need it for an hour, and that
+he was willing to risk my staying absent longer than that.</p>
+
+<p>So we rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble to
+follow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth of
+hillocks, puny <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in the
+trough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty about
+three of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and was
+something less than civil at what he called my suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I have ascertained their route,&#8221; he said, &#8220;it will be time enough
+to talk of their identity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In this way we went for a mile or so, the trail leading us onward, frank
+and straight, to the top of a somewhat higher hill, where it suddenly
+expired off the earth. No breath vanishes cleaner from glass, and it
+brought us to a dead halt. We retraced the tracks to make sure we had
+not lost them before, but there was no mistake, and again we halted dead
+at the vanishing-point. Here were signs that something out of the common
+had happened. Men&#8217;s feet and horseshoe prints, aimless and superimposed,
+marked a trodden frame of ground, inside which was nothing, and beyond
+which nothing lay but those faint tracks of wandering cattle and horses
+that scatter everywhere in this country. Not one defined series, not
+even a single shod horse, had gone over this hill, and we spent some
+minutes vainly scouring in circles wider and wider. Often I returned to
+stare at the trodden, imperturbable frame of ground, and caught myself
+inspecting first the upper air, and next the earth, and speculating if
+the hill were hollow; and mystery began to film over the hitherto sharp
+figures of black curly and yellow, while the lonely country around grew
+so unpleasant to my nerves that I was glad when Pidcock decided that he
+must give up for to-day. We found the little group of people beginning
+to disperse at the ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fooled yer ag&#8217;in, did they?&#8221; said the old man. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>&#8220;Played the blanket
+trick on yer, I expect. Guess yer gold&#8217;s got pretty far by now.&#8221; With
+this parting, and propped upon his stick, he went as he had come. Not
+even at any time of his youth, I think, could he have been
+companionable, and old age had certainly filled him with the impartial
+malevolence of the devil. I rejoice to say that he presided at none of
+our further misadventures.</p>
+
+<p>Short twenty-eight thousand dollars and two mules, we set out anew, the
+Major, the cook, and I, along the Thomas road, with the sun drawing
+closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made.
+The site of my shock lay behind me&mdash;I knew now well enough that it had
+been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel
+the earth spatter from Mr. Adams&#8217;s bullet against my ear and sleeve
+whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again&mdash;and the present
+comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase
+continually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling of
+the wheels many subjects for talk came into my mind, and had I been
+seated on the box beside the cook we should have found much in common.
+Ever since her real tenderness to those wounded men I had wished to ask
+the poor old creature how she came in this weary country, so far from
+the pleasant fields of cotton and home. Her hair was gray, and she had
+seen much, else she had never been so kind and skilful at bandaging. And
+I am quite sure that somewhere in the chambers of her incoherent mind
+and simple heart abided the sweet ancient fear of God and love of her
+fellow-men&mdash;virtues I had met but little in Arizona.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;De hole family, scusin&#8217; two,&#8221; she was saying, &#8220;dey <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>bust loose and tuck
+to de woods.&#8221; And then she moralized upon the two who stayed behind and
+were shot. &#8220;But de Gennul he &#8217;low dat wuz mighty pore reasonin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I should have been glad to exchange views with her, for Major Pidcock
+was dull company. This prudent officer was not growing distant from his
+disaster, and as night began to come, and we neared Thomas, I suppose
+the thought that our ambulance was driving him perhaps to a
+court-martial was enough to submerge the man in gloom. To me and my news
+about the robbers he was a little more considerate, although he still
+made nothing of the fact that some of them lived in the Gila Valley, and
+were of the patriarchal tribe of Meakum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Scoundrels like that,&#8221; he muttered, lugubriously, &#8220;know every trail in
+the country, and belong nowhere. Mexico is not a long ride from here.
+They can get a steamer at Guaymas and take their choice of ports down to
+Valparaiso. Yes, they&#8217;ll probably spend that money in South America. Oh,
+confound that woman!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For the now entirely cheerful negress was singing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#8220;&#8216;Dar&#8217;s de gal, dar&#8217;s my Susanna.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">How by gum you know?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Know her by de red bandanna,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An&#8217; de shoestring hangin&#8217; on de flo&#8217;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Dad blam her!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An&#8217; de shoestring hangin&#8217;&mdash;&#8217;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Goodness grashus! what <i>you</i> gwineter do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this sudden cry and the stopping of the ambulance I thought more
+people were come for our gold, and my spirit resigned itself. Sit still
+was all I should <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>do now, and look for the bright day when I should
+leave Arizona forever. But it was only Mrs. Sproud. I had clean
+forgotten her, and did not at once take in to what an important turn the
+affairs of some of us had come. She stepped out of the darkness, and put
+her hand on the door of the ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you&#8217;re the Paymaster?&#8221; Her voice was soft and easy, but had
+an ample volume. As Pidcock was replying with some dignity that she was
+correct, she caught sight of me. &#8220;Who is this man?&#8221; she interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My clerk,&#8221; said Pidcock; and this is the promptest thing I can remember
+of the Major, always excepting his conduct when the firing began on the
+hill. &#8220;You&#8217;re asking a good many questions, madam,&#8221; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to know who I&#8217;m talking to,&#8221; said she, quietly. &#8220;I think I&#8217;ve
+seen property of yours this evening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You had better get in, madam; better get in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is the Paymaster&#8217;s team from Fort Grant?&#8221; said Mrs. Sproud to the
+driver.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, yes, madam. Major Pidcock&mdash;I am Major Pidcock, Paymaster to the
+United States army in the Department of Colorado. I suppose I understand
+you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Seven canvas sacks,&#8221; said Mrs. Sproud, standing in the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Get in, madam. You can&#8217;t tell who may be within hearing. You will find
+it to your advantage to keep nothing&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sproud laughed luxuriously, and I began to discern why black curly
+might at times have been loath to face her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I merely meant, madam&mdash;I desired to make it clear that&mdash;a&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think I know what you meant. But I have no call to fear the law. It
+will save you trouble to believe that before we go any further.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly, madam. Quite right.&#8221; The man was sweating. What with
+court-martial and Mrs. Sproud, his withers were wrung. &#8220;You are entirely
+sure, of course, madam&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am entirely sure I know what I am about. That seems to be more than
+some do that are interested in this gold&mdash;the folks, for instance, that
+have hid it in my hay-stack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hay-stack! Then they&#8217;re not gone to Mexico!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mexico, sir? They live right here in this valley. Now I&#8217;ll get in, and
+when I ask you, you will please to set me down.&#8221; She seated herself
+opposite us and struck a match. &#8220;Now we know what we all look like,&#8221;
+said she, holding the light up, massive and handsome. &#8220;This young man is
+the clerk, and we needn&#8217;t mind him. I have done nothing to fear the law,
+but what I am doing now will make me a traveller again. I have no
+friends here. I was acquainted with a young man.&#8221; She spoke in the
+serenest tone, but let fall the match more quickly than its burning made
+needful. &#8220;He was welcome in my home. He let them cook this up in my
+house and never told me. I live a good ways out on the road, and it was
+a safe place, but I didn&#8217;t think why so many met him, and why they sat
+around my stable. Once in a while this week they&#8217;ve been joking about
+winning the soldiers&#8217; pay&mdash;they often win that&mdash;but I thought it was
+just cowboy games, till I heard horses coming quick at sundown this
+afternoon, and I hid. Will hunted <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>around and said&mdash;and said I was on
+the stage coming from Solomonsville, and so they had half an hour yet.
+He thought so. And, you see, nobody lives in the cabin but&mdash;but me.&#8221;
+Mrs. Sproud paused a moment here, and I noticed her breathing. Then she
+resumed: &#8220;So I heard them talk some; and when they all left, pretty
+soon, I went to the hay-stack, and it was so. Then the stage came along
+and I rode to Thomas.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You left the gold there!&#8221; groaned the wretched Major, and leaned out of
+the ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not caring to touch what&#8217;s none of mine. Wait, sir, please; I get
+out here. Here are the names I&#8217;m sure of. Stop the driver, or I&#8217;ll
+jump.&#8221; She put a paper in the Major&#8217;s hand. &#8220;It is Mrs. Sproud&#8217;s
+hay-stack,&#8221; she added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you&mdash;this will never&mdash;can I find you to-morrow?&#8221; he said,
+helplessly, holding the paper out at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have told you all I know,&#8221; said Mrs. Sproud, and was gone at once.</p>
+
+<p>Major Pidcock leaned back for some moments as we drove. Then he began
+folding his paper with care. &#8220;I have not done with that person,&#8221; said
+he, attempting to restore his crippled importance. &#8220;She will find that
+she must explain herself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Our wheels whirled in the sand and we came quickly to Thomas, to a crowd
+of waiting officers and ladies; and each of us had an audience that
+night&mdash;the cook, I feel sure, while I myself was of an importance second
+only to the Major&#8217;s. But he was at once closeted with the commanding
+officer, and I did not learn their counsels, hearing only at breakfast
+that the first step was taken. The detail sent out had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>returned from
+the hay-stack, bringing gold indeed&mdash;one-half sackful. The other six
+were gone, and so was Mrs. Sproud. It was useless to surmise, as we,
+however, did that whole forenoon, what any of this might mean; but in
+the afternoon came a sign. A citizen of the Gila Valley had been paying
+his many debts at the saloon and through the neighborhood in gold. In
+one well known for the past two years to be without a penny it was the
+wrong moment to choose for honest affluence, and this citizen was the
+first arrest. This further instance of how secure the robbers felt
+themselves to be outdid anything that had happened yet, and I marvelled
+until following events took from me the power of astonishment. The men
+named on Mrs. Sproud&#8217;s paper were fewer than I think fired upon us in
+the attack, but every one of them was here in the valley, going about
+his business. Most were with the same herd of cattle that I had seen
+driven by yellow and black curly near the sub-agency, and they two were
+there. The solvent debtor, I should say, was not arrested this morning.
+Plans that I, of course, had no part in delayed matters, I suppose for
+the sake of certainty. Black curly and his friends were watched, and
+found to be spending no gold yet; and since they did not show sign of
+leaving the region, but continued with their cattle, I imagine every
+effort was being made to light upon their hidden treasure. But their
+time came, and soon after it mine. Stirling, my friend, to whom I had
+finally gone at Carlos, opened the wire door of his quarters where I sat
+one morning, and with a heartless smile introduced me to a gentleman
+from Tucson.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll have a chance to serve your country,&#8221; said Stirling.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p><p>I was subp&oelig;naed!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly not!&#8221; I said, with indignation. &#8220;I&#8217;m going East. I don&#8217;t live
+here. You have witnesses enough without me. We all saw the same thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Witnesses never see the same thing,&#8221; observed the man from Tucson.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s the government that&#8217;s after you. But you&#8217;ll not have to wait. Our
+case is first on the list.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can take my deposition,&#8221; I began; but what need to dwell upon this
+interview? &#8220;When I come to visit you again,&#8221; I said to Stirling, &#8220;let me
+know.&#8221; And that pink-faced, gray-haired captain still shouted
+heartlessly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re an egotist,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Think of the scrape poor old Pidcock has
+got himself into.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The government needs all the witnesses it can get,&#8221; said the man from
+Tucson. &#8220;Luke Jenks is smart in some ways.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Luke Jenks?&#8221; I sat up in my canvas extension-chair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Territorial Delegate; firm of Parley and Jenks, Tucson. He&#8217;s in it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By heavens!&#8221; I cried, in unmixed delight. &#8220;But I didn&#8217;t see him when
+they were shooting at us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man from Tucson stared at me curiously. &#8220;He is counsel for the
+prisoners,&#8221; he explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Delegate to Washington defends these thieves who robbed the United
+States?&#8221; I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Says he&#8217;ll get them off. He&#8217;s going to stay home from Washington and
+put it through in shape.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was here that my powers of astonishment went into their last decline,
+and I withheld my opinion upon the character of Mr. Jenks as a public
+man. I settled comfortably in my canvas chair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;The prisoners are citizens of small means, I judge,&#8221; said I. &#8220;What fee
+can they pay for such a service?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah!&#8221; said Stirling,</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s about it, I guess,&#8221; said the man from Tucson. &#8220;Luke is mighty
+smart in his law business. Well, gents, good-day to you. I must be
+getting after the rest of my witnesses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you seen Mrs. Sproud?&#8221; I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s quit the country. We can&#8217;t trace her. Guess she was scared.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that gold!&#8221; I exclaimed, when Sterling and I were alone. &#8220;What in
+the world have they done with those six other bags?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah!&#8221; said he, as before. &#8220;Do you want to bet on that point? Dollars to
+doughnuts Uncle Sam never sees a cent of that money again. I&#8217;ll stake my
+next quarter&#8217;s pay&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pooh!&#8221; said I. &#8220;That&#8217;s poor odds against doughnuts if Pidcock has the
+paying of it.&#8221; And I took my turn at laughing at the humorous Stirling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That Mrs. Sproud is a sensible woman to have gone,&#8221; said he,
+reflectively. &#8220;They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn&#8217;t
+be safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are found
+dead in this country&mdash;but you&#8217;ll have government protection.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you kindly,&#8221; said I. &#8220;That&#8217;s what I had on the hill.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection. At
+seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmas and
+Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase which they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>sometimes print in capitals upon their bills&mdash;Combination
+Extraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, and
+the old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and our
+coal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including Sergeant
+Brown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, you
+can see what appearance we made descending together from the mean
+Southern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to have
+been the town&#8217;s whole population, numbering five thousand.</p>
+
+<p>Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflage
+immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,
+speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than
+half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy
+shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled
+cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these
+the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,
+express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers from
+Lowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color and
+dust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door of
+the Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of the
+same idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,
+as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found the
+wet-eyed Mowry standing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;s business on the other side of the track?&#8221; I said to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fair to middlin&#8217;. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve forgotten I told you they&#8217;re a property I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>don&#8217;t care for, Mr.
+Mowry. I suppose it&#8217;s interest in this recent gold discovery that brings
+you to Tucson.&#8221; He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glance
+that flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, &#8220;So many of
+your Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now,&#8221; I wrote
+my name in the hotel book, while he looked to remind himself what it
+was.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, you&#8217;re not to stay here,&#8221; said Stirling, coming up. &#8220;You&#8217;re
+expected at the Barracks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He presented me at once to a knot of officers, each of whom in turn made
+me known to some additional by-stander, until it seemed to me that I
+shook a new hand sixty times in this disordered minute by the hotel
+book, and out of the sixty caught one name, which was my own.</p>
+
+<p>These many meetings could not be made perfect without help from the
+saloon-keeper, who ran his thriving trade conveniently at hand in the
+office of the San Xavier. Our group remained near him, and I silently
+resolved to sleep here at the hotel, away from the tempting confusion of
+army hospitality upon this eve of our trial. We were expected, however,
+to dine at the post, and that I was ready to do. Indeed, I could
+scarcely have got myself out of it without rudeness, for the ambulance
+was waiting us guests at the gate. We went to it along a latticed
+passage at the edge of a tropical garden, only a few square yards in
+all, but how pretty! and what an oasis of calm in the midst of this
+teeming desolation of unrest! It had upon one side the railway station,
+wooden, sordid, congesting with malodorous packed humanity; on the next
+the rails themselves and the platform, with steam and bells and baggage
+trucks <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>rolling and bumping; the hotel stood on the third, a confusion
+of tongues and trampings; while a wide space of dust, knee-deep, and
+littered with man&oelig;uvring vehicles, hemmed in this silent garden on
+the fourth side. A slender slow little fountain dropped inaudibly among
+some palms, a giant cactus, and the broad-spread shade of trees I did
+not know. This was the whole garden, and a tame young antelope was its
+inhabitant. He lay in the unchanging shade, his large eyes fixed
+remotely upon the turmoil of this world, and a sleepy charm touched my
+senses as I looked at his domain. Instead of going to dinner, or going
+anywhere, I should have liked to recline indefinitely beneath those
+palms and trail my fingers in the cool fountain. Such enlightened
+languor, however, could by no happy chance be the lot of an important
+witness in a Western robbery trial, and I dined and wined with the
+jovial officers, at least talking no business.</p>
+
+<p>With business I was sated. Pidcock and the attorney for the United
+States&mdash;I can remember neither his name nor the proper title of his
+office, for he was a nobody, and I had forgotten his features each new
+time that we met&mdash;had mapped out the trial to me, preparing and
+rehearsing me in my testimony until they had pestered me into a hatred
+of them both. And when word was brought me here, dining at Lowell
+Barracks, where I had imagined myself safe from justice, that this same
+attorney was waiting to see me, I rose and I played him a trick.
+Possibly I should not have done it but for the saloon-keeper in the
+afternoon and this sustained dining now; but I sent him word I should be
+with him directly&mdash;and I wandered into Tucson by myself!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p><p>Faithful to my last strong impression there, I went straight to the tiny
+hotel garden, and in that darkness lay down in a delicious and torpid
+triumph. The attorney was most likely waiting still. No one on earth
+knew where I was. Pidcock could not trace me now. I could see the stars
+through the palms and the strange trees, the fountain made a little
+sound, somewhere now and then I could hear the antelope, and, cloaked in
+this black serenity, I lay smiling. Once an engine passed heavily,
+leaving the station utterly quiet again, and the next I knew it was the
+antelope&#8217;s rough tongue that waked me, and I found him nibbling and
+licking my hand. People were sitting in the latticed passage, and from
+the light in the office came Mr. Mowry, untying a canvas sack that he
+held. At this sight my truancy to discretion was over, and no head could
+be more wakeful or clear than mine instantly became.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How much d&#8217;yer want this time, Mr. Jenks?&#8221; inquired Mowry.</p>
+
+<p>I could not hear the statesman&#8217;s reply, but thought, while the sound of
+clinking came to me, how a common cause will often serve to reconcile
+the most bitter opponents. I did not dare go nearer to catch all their
+talk, and I debated a little upon my security even as it was, until my
+own name suddenly reached me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Him?&#8221; said Mowry; &#8220;that there tailor-made boy? They&#8217;ve got him sleepin&#8217;
+at the Barracks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nobody but our crowd&#8217;s boarding here,&#8221; said some one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They think we&#8217;re laying for their witnesses,&#8221; said the voice of Jenks.
+And among the various mingled laughs rose distinct a big one that I
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. Tell you about witnesses. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>Here&#8217;s all there is
+to them: spot cash to their figure, and kissing the Book. You&#8217;ve done no
+work but what I told you?&#8221; he added, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;t needed to worry about witnesses in any shape, Bishop.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s good. That&#8217;s economy. That little Eastern toorist is harmless.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Leave him talk, Bishop. Leave &#8217;em all tell their story.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to cost the whole stake, though,&#8221; said Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Deserted Jericho!&#8221; remarked old Meakum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t try cases for nothing, Bishop. The deal&#8217;s covered. My clients
+have publicly made over to me their horses and saddles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, ho, ho!&#8221; went the Bishop. But this last word about the horses was
+the only part of the talk I could not put a plain meaning upon.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mowry I now saw re-enter the lighted door of the office, with his
+canvas sack in his hand. &#8220;This&#8217;ll be right here in the safe,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; answered Jenks. &#8220;I&#8217;ll not be likely to call on you any more
+for a day or so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221; said the office clerk, appearing in his shirt-sleeves. &#8220;You
+fellows have made me forget the antelope.&#8221; He took down a lantern, and I
+rose to my feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Give us a drink before you feed him,&#8221; said Jenks. Then I saw the whole
+of them crowd into the door for their nightcap, and that was all I
+waited for.</p>
+
+<p>I climbed the garden fence. My thoughts led me at random through
+quantities of soft dust, and over the rails, I think, several times,
+until I stood between empty and silent freight trains, and there sat
+down. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>Harmless! It seemed to me they would rate me differently in the
+morning. So for a while my mind was adrift in the turbulent
+cross-currents of my discovery; but it was with a smooth, innocent
+surface that I entered the hotel office and enjoyed the look of the
+clerk when he roused and heard me, who, according to their calculations,
+should have been in slumber at the Barracks, asking to be shown my room
+here. I was tempted to inquire if he had fed the antelope&mdash;such was the
+pride of my elation&mdash;and I think he must have been running over
+questions to put me; but the two of us marched up the stairs with a lamp
+and a key, speaking amiably of the weather for this time of year, and he
+unlocked my door with a politeness and hoped I would sleep well with a
+consideration that I have rarely met in the hotel clerk. I did not sleep
+well. Yet it seemed not to matter. By eight I had breakfast, and found
+the attorney&mdash;Rocklin I shall name him, and that will have to
+answer&mdash;and told him how we had become masters of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>He made me repeat it all over, jotting memoranda this second time; and
+when my story was done, he sat frowning at his notes, with a cigar
+between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This ain&#8217;t much,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Luckily I don&#8217;t need anything more. I&#8217;ve
+got a dead open-and-shut case without it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you make it deader, then?&#8221; said I. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you see what it all
+means?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, what does it all mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Either the man was still nettled at my treatment of him last evening, or
+had no liking for amateur opinions and help; otherwise I see no reason
+for the disparagement with which he regarded me while I interpreted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>what I had overheard, piece by piece, except the horse and saddle
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since that don&#8217;t seem clear, I&#8217;ll explain it to you,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and
+then you&#8217;ll know it all. Except their horses and saddles, the accused
+haven&#8217;t a red cent to their names&mdash;not an honest one, that is. So it
+looks well for them to be spending all they&#8217;ve apparently got in the
+world to pay counsel fees. Now I have this case worked up,&#8221; he pursued,
+complacently, &#8220;so that any such ambiguous stuff as yours is no good to
+me at all&mdash;would be harmful, in fact. It&#8217;s not good policy, my friend,
+to assail the character of opposing counsel. And Bishop Meakum! Are you
+aware of his power and standing in this section? Do you think you&#8217;re
+going to ring him in?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Great goodness!&#8221; I cried. &#8220;Let me testify, and then let the safe be
+opened.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rocklin looked at me a moment, the cigar wagging between his teeth, and
+then he lightly tossed his notes in the waste-paper basket.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Open your safe,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and what then? Up steps old Mowry and says,
+&#8216;I&#8217;ll thank you to let my property alone.&#8217; Where&#8217;s your proof? What word
+did any of them drop that won&#8217;t bear other constructions? Mowry&#8217;s well
+known to have money, and he has a right to give it to Jenks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If the gold could be identified?&#8221; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s been all attended to,&#8221; he answered, with increasing complacence.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m obliged to you for your information, and in a less sure case I
+might risk using it, but&mdash;why, see here; we&#8217;ve got &#8217;em hands down!&#8221; And
+he clapped me on the knee. &#8220;If I had met you last evening I was going to
+tell you our campaign. Pidcock&#8217;ll come first, of course, and his
+testimony&#8217;ll <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>cover pretty much the whole ground. Then, you see, the
+rest of you I&#8217;ll use mainly in support. Sergeant Brown&mdash;he&#8217;s very
+strong, and the black woman, and you&mdash;I&#8217;ll probably call you third or
+fourth. So you&#8217;ll be on hand sure now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Certainly I had no thought of being anywhere else. The imminence of our
+trial was now heralded by the cook&#8217;s coming to Rocklin&#8217;s office punctual
+to his direction, and after her Pidcock almost immediately. It was not
+many minutes before the more important ones of us had gathered, and we
+proceeded to court, once again a Combination Extraordinary&mdash;a spectacle
+for Tucson. So much stir and prosperity had not blossomed in the town
+for many years, its chief source of life being the money that Lowell
+Barracks brought to it. But now its lodgings were crowded and its
+saloons and Mexican dens of entertainment waked to activity. From a
+dozing sunburnt village of adobe walls and almond-trees it was become
+something like those places built in a single Western day of riot
+extravagance, where corner lots are clamored for and men pay a dollar to
+be shaved.</p>
+
+<p>Jenks was before us in the room with his clients. He was practising what
+I always think of as his celluloid smile, whispering, and all-hail with
+everybody. One of the prisoners had just such another mustache as his
+own, too large for his face; and this had led me since to notice a type
+of too large mustaches through our country in all ranks, but of similar
+men, who generally have either stolen something or lacked the
+opportunity. Catching sight of me, Jenks came at once, friendly as you
+please, shaking my passive hand, and laughing that we should meet again
+under such circumstances.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;When we&#8217;re through this nuisance,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you must take dinner with
+me. Just now, you understand, it wouldn&#8217;t look well to see me hobnobbing
+with a government witness. See you again!&#8221; And he was off to some one
+else.</p>
+
+<p>I am confident this man could not see himself as others&mdash;some others, at
+least&mdash;saw him. To him his whole performance was natural and
+professional, and my view that he was more infamous by far than the
+thieves would have sincerely amazed him. Indeed, for one prisoner I felt
+very sorry. Young black curly was sitting there, and, in contrast to Mr.
+Adams, down whose beard the tobacco forever ran, he seemed downcast and
+unhardened, I thought. He was getting his deserts through base means. It
+was not for the sake of justice but from private revenge that Mrs.
+Sproud had moved; and, after all, had the boy injured her so much as
+this? Yet how could I help him? They were his deserts. My mood was
+abruptly changed to diversion when I saw among our jury specimens of
+both types of Meakum, and prominent among the spectator throng their
+sire, that canny polygamist, surveying the case with the same forceful
+attention I had noticed first in the House of Representatives, and ever
+since that day. But I had a true shock of surprise now. Mrs. Sproud was
+in court. There could be no mistake. No one seemed to notice her, and I
+wondered if many in the town knew her face, and with what intent she had
+returned to this dangerous neighborhood. I was so taken up with watching
+her and her furtive appearance in the almost concealed position she had
+chosen that I paid little heed to the government&#8217;s opening of its case.
+She had her eyes upon black curly, but he could not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>see her. Pidcock
+was in the midst of his pompous recital when the court took its noon
+intermission. Then I was drawn to seek out black curly as he was
+conducted to his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-day,&#8221; said he, as I came beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish I didn&#8217;t have to go on oath about this,&#8221; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oath away,&#8221; he answered, doggedly. &#8220;What&#8217;s that got to do with me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, come!&#8221; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come where?&#8221; He looked at me defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When people don&#8217;t wish to be trailed,&#8221; I went on, &#8220;do I understand they
+sometimes spread a blanket and lead their horses on it and take off
+their shoes? I&#8217;m merely asking out of a traveller&#8217;s curiosity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess you&#8217;ll have to ask them that&#8217;s up on such tricks,&#8221; he answered,
+grinning.</p>
+
+<p>I met him in the eyes, and a strong liking for him came over me. &#8220;I
+probably owe you my life,&#8221; I said, huskily. &#8220;I know I do. And I
+hate&mdash;you must consider me a poor sort of bird.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blamed if I know what you&#8217;re drivin&#8217; at,&#8221; said black curly. But he
+wrinkled his forehead in the pleasant way I remembered. &#8220;Yer whiskey was
+good all right,&#8221; he added, and gave me his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look here,&#8221; said I. &#8220;She&#8217;s come back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This took the boy unguarded, and he swore with surprise. Then his face
+grew sombre. &#8220;Let her,&#8221; he remarked; and that was all we said.</p>
+
+<p>At the afternoon sitting I began to notice how popular sympathy was not
+only quite against the United States, but a sentiment amounting to
+hatred was shown against all soldiers. The voice of respectability
+seemed entirely silent; decent citizens were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>there, but not enough of
+them. The mildest opinion was that Uncle Sam could afford to lose money
+better than poor people, and the strongest was that it was a pity the
+soldiers had not been killed. This seemed inappropriate in a Territory
+desiring admission to our Union. I supposed it something local then, but
+have since observed it to be a prevailing Western antipathy. The
+unthinking sons of the sage-brush ill tolerate a thing which stands for
+discipline, good order, and obedience, and the man who lets another
+command him they despise. I can think of no threat more evil for our
+democracy, for it is a fine thing diseased and perverted&mdash;namely,
+independence gone drunk.</p>
+
+<p>Pidcock&#8217;s examination went forward, and the half-sack of gold from the
+hay-stack brought a great silence in court. The Major&#8217;s identification
+of the gold was conducted by Rocklin with stage effect, for it was an
+undoubted climax; but I caught a most singular smile on the face of
+Bishop Meakum, and there sat Mrs. Sproud, still solitary and engulfed in
+the throng, her face flushed and her eyes blazing. And here ended the
+first day.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning came the Major&#8217;s cross-examination, with the room more
+crowded than before, but I could not find Mrs. Sproud. Rocklin did not
+believe I had seen her, and I feared something had happened to her. The
+Bishop had walked to the court with Jenks, talking and laughing upon
+general subjects, so far as I could hear. The counsel for the prisoners
+passed lightly over the first part of the evidence, only causing an
+occasional laugh on the score of the Major&#8217;s military prowess, until he
+came to the gold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You said this sack was one of yours, Major?&#8221; he now inquired.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;It is mine, sir.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A large bundle of sacks was brought. &#8220;And how about these? Here are ten,
+fifteen&mdash;about forty. I&#8217;ll get some more if you say so. Are they all
+yours?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your question strikes me as idle, sir.&#8221; The court rapped, and Jenks
+smiled. &#8220;They resemble mine,&#8221; said Pidcock. &#8220;But they are not used.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; not used.&#8221; Jenks held up the original, shaking the gold. &#8220;Now I&#8217;m
+going to empty your sack for a moment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I object,&#8221; said Rocklin, springing up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s all counted,&#8221; laughed Jenks; and the objection was not
+sustained. Then Jenks poured the gold into a new sack and shook that
+aloft. &#8220;It makes them look confusingly similar, Major. I&#8217;ll just put my
+card in your sack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I object,&#8221; said Rocklin, with anger, but with futility. Jenks now
+poured the gold back into the first, then into a third, and thus into
+several, tossing them each time on the table, and the clinking pieces
+sounded clear in the room. Bishop Meakum was watching the operation like
+a wolf. &#8220;Now, Major,&#8221; said Jenks, &#8220;is your gold in the original sack, or
+which sack is my card in?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was the first time that the room broke out loudly; and Pidcock,
+when the people were rapped to order, said, &#8220;The sack&#8217;s not the thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course not. The gold is our point. And of course you had a private
+mark on it. Tell the jury, please, what the private mark was.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He had none. He spoke about dates, and new coins, he backed and filled,
+swelled importantly, and ended like a pricked bladder by recanting his
+identification.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;That is all I have to say for the present,&#8221; said Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t complicate the issue by attempting to prove too much, Mr.
+Rocklin,&#8221; said the judge.</p>
+
+<p>Rocklin flushed, and called the next witness, whispering sulkily to me,
+&#8220;What can you expect if the court starts out against you?&#8221; But the court
+was by no means against him. The judge was merely disgusted over
+Rocklin&#8217;s cardinal folly of identifying coin under such loose
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>And now came the testimony of Sergeant Brown. He told so clear a story
+as to chill the enthusiasm of the room. He pointed to the man with the
+mustache, black curly, and yellow. &#8220;I saw them shooting from the right
+of the road,&#8221; he said. Jenks tried but little to shake him, and left him
+unshaken. He was followed by the other wounded soldier, whose story was
+nearly the same, except that he identified different prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who did you say shot you?&#8221; inquired Jenks. &#8220;Which of these two?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t say. I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t know a man when he shoots you in broad daylight?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Plenty was shooting at me,&#8221; said the soldier. And his testimony also
+remained unshaken.</p>
+
+<p>Then came my own examination, and Jenks did not trouble me at all, but,
+when I had likewise identified the men I knew, simply bowed smilingly,
+and had no questions to ask his friend from the East.</p>
+
+<p>Our third morning began with the negress, who said she was married, told
+a scattered tale, and soon stated that she was single, explaining later
+that she had two husbands, and one was dead, while the other had
+disappeared <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>from her ten years ago. Gradually her alarm subsided and
+she achieved coherence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did this gentleman do at the occurrence?&#8221; inquired Jenks,
+indicating me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dat gemman? He jes flew, sir, an&#8217; I don&#8217; blame him fo&#8217; bein&#8217; no wusser
+skeer&#8217;d dan de hole party. Yesser, we all flew scusin&#8217; dey two pore
+chillun; an&#8217; we stayed till de &#8217;currence was ceased.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the gentleman says he sat on a stone, and saw those men firing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Land! I seed him goin&#8217; like he was gwineter Fo&#8217;t Grant. He run up de
+hill, an&#8217; de Gennul he run down like de day of judgment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The General ran?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lawd grashus, honey, yo&#8217; could have played checkers on dey coat tails
+of his.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The court rapped gently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the gold must have been heavy to carry away to the horses. Did not
+the General exert his influence to rally his men?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, sah. De Gennul went down de hill, an&#8217; he took his inflooence with
+him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have no further questions,&#8221; said Jenks. &#8220;When we come to our alibis,
+gentlemen, I expect to satisfy you that this lady saw more correctly,
+and when she is unable to recognize my clients it is for a good reason.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve not got quite so far yet,&#8221; Rocklin observed. &#8220;We&#8217;ve reached the
+hay-stack at present.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t you going to make her describe her own confusion more?&#8221; I began,
+but stopped, for I saw that the next witness was at hand, and that it
+was Mrs. Sproud.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;s this?&#8221; I whispered to Rocklin. &#8220;How did you get her?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;She volunteered this morning, just before trial. We&#8217;re in big luck.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The woman was simply dressed in something dark. Her handsome face was
+pale, but she held a steady eye upon the jury, speaking clearly and with
+deliberation. Old Meakum, always in court and watchful, was plainly
+unprepared for this, and among the prisoners, too, I could discern
+uneasiness. Whether or no any threat or constraint had kept her
+invisible during these days, her coming now was a thing for which none
+of us were ready.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do I know?&#8221; she repeated after the counsel. &#8220;I suppose you have
+been told what I said I knew.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d like to hear it directly from you, Mrs. Sproud,&#8221; Rocklin
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where shall I start?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, there was a young man who boarded with you, was there not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I object to the witness being led,&#8221; said Jenks. And Bishop Meakum moved
+up beside the prisoners&#8217; counsel and began talking with him earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nobody is leading me,&#8221; said Mrs. Sproud, imperiously, and raising her
+voice a little. She looked about her. &#8220;There was a young man who boarded
+with me. Of course that is so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Meakum broke off in his confidences with Jenks, and looked sharply at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you see your boarder anywhere here?&#8221; inquired Rocklin; and from his
+tone I perceived that he was puzzled by the manner of his witness.</p>
+
+<p>She turned slowly, and slowly scrutinized the prisoners one by one. The
+head of black curly was bent down, and I saw her eyes rest upon it while
+she stood <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>in silence. It was as if he felt the summons of her glance,
+for he raised his head. His face was scarlet, but her paleness did not
+change.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is the one sitting at the end,&#8221; she said, looking back at the jury.
+She then told some useless particulars, and brought her narrative to the
+afternoon when she had heard the galloping. &#8220;Then I hid. I hid because
+this is a rough country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When did you recognize that young man&#8217;s voice?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not recognize it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Black curly&#8217;s feet scraped as he shifted his position.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Collect yourself, Mrs. Sproud. We&#8217;ll give you all the time you want. We
+know ladies are not used to talking in court. Did you not hear this
+young man talking to his friends?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I heard talking,&#8221; replied the witness, quite collected. &#8220;But I could
+not make out who they were. If I could have been sure it was him and
+friends, I wouldn&#8217;t have stayed hid. I&#8217;d have had no call to be scared.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rocklin was dazed, and his next question came in a voice still more
+changed and irritable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you see any one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you hear them say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They were all talking at once. I couldn&#8217;t be sure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you go to the hay-stack?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because they said something about my hay-stack, and I wanted to find
+out, if I could.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you not write their names on a paper and give it to this gentleman?
+Remember you are on oath, Mrs. Sproud.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By this time a smile was playing on the features of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>Jenks, and he and
+Bishop Meakum talked no longer together, but sat back to watch the
+woman&#8217;s extraordinary attempt to undo her work. It was shrewd, very
+shrewd, in her to volunteer as our witness instead of as theirs. She was
+ready for the paper question, evidently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wrote&mdash;&#8221; she began, but Rocklin interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On oath, remember!&#8221; he repeated, finding himself cross-examining his
+own witness. &#8220;The names you wrote are the names of these prisoners here
+before the court. They were traced as the direct result of your
+information. They have been identified by three or four persons. Do you
+mean to say you did not know who they were?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not know,&#8221; said Mrs. Sproud, firmly. &#8220;As for the paper, I acted
+hasty. I was a woman, alone, and none to consult or advise me. I thought
+I would get in trouble if I did not tell about such goings on, and I
+just wrote the names of Will&mdash;of the boys that came round there all the
+time, thinking it was most likely them. I didn&#8217;t see him, and I didn&#8217;t
+make out surely it was his voice. I wasn&#8217;t sure enough to come out and
+ask what they were up to. I didn&#8217;t stop to think of the harm I was doing
+on guess-work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For the first time the note of remorse conquered in her voice. I saw how
+desperation at what she had done when she thought her love was cured was
+now bracing the woman to this audacity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Remember,&#8221; said Rocklin, &#8220;the gold was also found as the direct result
+of your information. It was you who told Major Pidcock in the ambulance
+about the seven sacks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never said anything about seven sacks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p><p>This falsehood was a master-stroke, for only half a sack had been found.
+She had not written this down. There was only the word of Pidcock and me
+to vouch for it, while against us stood her denial, and the actual
+quantity of gold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have no further questions,&#8221; said Rocklin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I have,&#8221; said Jenks. And then he made the most of Mrs. Sproud,
+although many in the room were laughing, and she herself, I think, felt
+she had done little but sacrifice her own character without repairing
+the injury she had done black curly. Jenks made her repeat that she was
+frightened; not calm enough to be sure of voices, especially many
+speaking together; that she had seen no one throughout. He even
+attempted to show that the talk about the hay-stack might have been
+purely about hay, and that the half-sack of gold might have been put
+there at another time&mdash;might belong to some honest man this very moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever know the young man who boarded with you to do a
+dishonorable thing?&#8221; inquired Jenks. &#8220;Did you not have the highest
+opinion of him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She had not expected a question like this. It nearly broke the woman
+down. She put her hand to her breast, and seemed afraid to trust her
+voice. &#8220;I have the highest opinion of him,&#8221; she said, word painfully
+following word. &#8220;He&mdash;he used to know that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have finished,&#8221; said Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can I go?&#8221; asked the witness, and the attorneys bowed. She stood one
+hesitating moment in the witness-stand, and she looked at the jury and
+the court; then, as if almost in dread, she let her eyes travel to black
+curly. But his eyes were sullenly averted. Then Mrs. Sproud slowly made
+her way <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>through the room, with one of the saddest faces I have ever
+seen, and the door closed behind her.</p>
+
+<p>We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of them
+doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis
+were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the
+charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge&#8217;s cold
+statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly
+at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during
+any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He
+dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. &#8220;Now three witnesses
+have between them recognized all the prisoners but one,&#8221; he continued.
+&#8220;That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in
+gold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceeds
+of a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man,
+and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until this
+trial began. The prisoner&#8217;s name was on Mrs. Sproud&#8217;s paper. The
+statement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other of
+the prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who described
+herself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who are
+admitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Their
+statements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on the
+record unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believe
+them&mdash;and remember that not a word they said has been questioned&mdash;&#8221; here
+the judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with the
+various alternatives of fact according <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>to which the jury must find its
+several possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen and
+still, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutes
+away. It seemed one to me.</p>
+
+<p>When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oracular
+eye in most of them unchanged. &#8220;Not guilty,&#8221; said the foreman.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What!&#8221; shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. &#8220;None
+of &#8217;em?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not guilty,&#8221; monotonously repeated the foreman.</p>
+
+<p>We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the
+laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots
+that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we
+went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. &#8220;There&#8217;s a certain
+natural justice done here in spite of them,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They are not one
+cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out
+free, but penniless.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How about Jenks and that jury?&#8221; said I. And Stirling shrugged his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street,
+the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel
+emerging from a photographer&#8217;s studio. The Territorial Delegate had been
+taken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to
+be in this souvenir.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a picture I want,&#8221; said I. &#8220;Only I&#8217;ll be sorry to see your face
+there,&#8221; I added to black curly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Indeed!&#8221; put in Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I. &#8220;You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way,
+Mr. Jenks, I suppose you&#8217;ll return their horses and saddles now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p><p>Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp
+thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his
+clients. &#8220;I had hoped to,&#8221; he said; &#8220;that is, as many as were not needed
+to defray necessary costs. But it&#8217;s been an expensive suit, and I&#8217;ve
+found myself obliged to sell them all. It&#8217;s little enough to pay for
+clearing your character, boys.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated.
+Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it
+seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They look disappointed,&#8221; I remarked. &#8220;I shall value the picture very
+highly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that&#8217;s Eastern sarcasm,&#8221; said Jenks, &#8220;it&#8217;s beyond me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, Mr. Jenks,&#8221; I answered. &#8220;In your presence sarcasm drops dead. I
+think you&#8217;ll prosper in politics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events,
+though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddly
+prosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses;
+two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in so
+many of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruits
+increase that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed their
+dollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He had
+stayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with the
+title, &#8220;What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona.&#8221; Inside were twenty blank
+pages, and he failed of re-election.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoning
+Camp Thomas and Lowell <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>Barracks, those important sources of revenue for
+the neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and left
+it poorer than ever.</p>
+
+<p>At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking to
+the other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that she
+was too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east as
+Willcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.</p>
+
+<p>But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened to
+black curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of the Gila
+Valley and of the Boy Orator, I recall Bishop Meakum&#8217;s remark about our
+statesmen at Washington: &#8220;You can divide them birds in two lots&mdash;those
+who know better, and those who don&#8217;t. D&#8217;you follow me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Footnote</span></h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Let me no longer pervert General Crook&#8217;s military tactics.
+It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend
+who was present has written me since the first publication of this
+story.
+</p><p>
+<i>Mr. Remington&#8217;s illustration was made to suit the text in its original
+form.</i>&mdash;Publisher&#8217;s Note.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</span></h3>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters&#8217; errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author&#8217;s words and intent.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9234 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
+
+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: Red Men and White
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Illustrator: Frederic Remington
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2009 [EBook #28675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED MEN AND WHITE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ RED MEN AND WHITE
+
+ BY
+
+ OWEN WISTER
+
+ ILLUSTRATED
+
+ BY FREDERIC REMINGTON
+
+ NEW YORK AND LONDON
+ HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+ Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+ _Printed in the United States of America._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SPECIMEN JONES (Page 36)]
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+
+ S. B. W. AND O. J. W.
+
+ FROM THEIR SON
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in a
+past as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; so
+swiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of life
+and manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here and
+there a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separate
+parts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weight
+of length; and they have been received by my closest friends with
+suspicion.
+
+Many sorts of Americans live in America; and the Atlantic American, it
+is to be feared, often has a cautious and conventional imagination. In
+his routine he has lived unaware of the violent and romantic era in
+eruption upon his soil. Only the elk-hunter has at times returned with
+tales at which the other Atlantic Americans have deported themselves
+politely; and similarly, but for the assurances of Western readers, I
+should have come to doubt the truth of my own impressions. All this is
+most natural.
+
+If you will look upon the term "United States" as describing what we
+are, you must put upon it a strict and Federal construction. We
+undoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office,
+and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should stand
+bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. But
+as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in
+its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.
+Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled
+together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the
+boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their
+processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our
+wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States
+date our letters 18--, and speak of ourselves as living in the present
+era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be
+writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of
+this nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving among
+us. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennessee
+mountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father to
+son? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even before
+the day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.
+This sprout of the Middle Ages flourishes fresh and green some five
+hundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single State
+of Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not long
+ago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people to
+see, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness this
+scene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroad
+ran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might that
+audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno
+Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous
+crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such
+monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for
+American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a
+holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,
+unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women
+who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from using
+such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will
+say, instead, _male cow_ and _caviard horse_ (a term spelled as they
+pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this
+lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far to
+spread.
+
+It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remote
+centuries that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enough
+to show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States and
+Territories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? I
+know that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belong
+among the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in all
+the others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of making
+my country's acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gather
+conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at
+heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always
+ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,
+knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet
+undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that
+general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that
+seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether
+branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and
+oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,
+"There's too much politics in this country"; and we shake hands.
+
+But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.
+They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.
+They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you will
+find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take
+my view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,
+are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit of
+Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise and
+fall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook's surprise of E-egante,
+and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they were
+told to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,
+is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call
+upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit
+these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such
+realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which
+it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless
+hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri
+who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories
+entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+ LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE                                3
+
+ SPECIMEN JONES                                         36
+
+ THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU                               64
+
+ THE GENERAL'S BLUFF                                    82
+
+ SALVATION GAP                                         115
+
+ THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE                        131
+
+ LA TINAJA BONITA                                      159
+
+ A PILGRIM ON THE GILA                                 211
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ SPECIMEN JONES                             _Frontispiece_
+
+ "BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION"              _Facing page_ 6
+
+ "HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE
+ OF THE MEDICINE-MAN"                            "      14
+
+ "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"                     "      34
+
+ AN APACHE                                       "      38
+
+ CUMNOR'S AWAKENING                              "      52
+
+ THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON                       "      58
+
+ "'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'"            "      90
+
+ THE CHARGE                                      "     102
+
+ "HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN"                "     112
+
+ THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER                          "     122
+
+ "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"                    "     128
+
+ "HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET"           "     148
+
+ "'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN
+ JONES"                                          "     156
+
+ "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY.
+ YOU'RE ALONE'"                                  "     204
+
+ "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"               "     238
+
+
+
+
+RED MEN AND WHITE
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE
+
+
+Something new was happening among the Crow Indians. A young pretender
+had appeared in the tribe. What this might lead to was unknown alike to
+white man and to red; but the old Crow chiefs discussed it in their
+councils, and the soldiers at Fort Custer, and the civilians at the
+agency twelve miles up the river, and all the white settlers in the
+valley discussed it also. Lieutenants Stirling and Haines, of the First
+Cavalry, were speculating upon it as they rode one afternoon.
+
+"Can't tell about Indians," said Stirling. "But I think the Crows are
+too reasonable to go on the war-path."
+
+"Reasonable!" said Haines. He was young, and new to Indians.
+
+"Just so. Until you come to his superstitions, the Indian can reason as
+straight as you or I. He's perfectly logical."
+
+"Logical!" echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that
+the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.
+
+"You'd know better," remarked Stirling, "if you'd been fighting 'em for
+fifteen years. They're as shrewd as AEsop's fables."
+
+Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff--one old and shabby, the
+other young and very gaudy--riding side by side.
+
+"That's Cheschapah," said Stirling. "That's the agitator in all his
+feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively."
+
+The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the
+two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too
+close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.
+
+"Nice manners," commented Haines. "Seems to have a chip on his
+shoulder."
+
+But Stirling looked thoughtful. "Yes," he muttered, "he has a chip."
+
+Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad,
+and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. "How!" he said,
+pleasantly, and ambled on his way.
+
+"Now there you have an object-lesson," said Stirling. "Old Pounded Meat
+has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run
+the Crow Nation?"
+
+"Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?" inquired Haines.
+
+"I didn't notice it. For his supper, probably--probably he's getting up
+a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and
+can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no
+stock in him--not yet. They've seen soda-water before. But I'm told this
+water-boiling astonishes the young."
+
+"You say the old chiefs take no stock in him _yet_?"
+
+"Ah, that's the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason."
+
+"And I was amused."
+
+"Because you're an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn't my
+business to shoot Indians I'd study them."
+
+"You're a crank," said Haines.
+
+But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere
+animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his
+primal brain--nearer nature than our own--the directness of a child
+mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of
+light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this;
+but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah
+would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would
+strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that
+the white man was more comfortable as a friend than as a foe, that
+rations and gifts of clothes and farming implements were better than
+battles and prisons. Once their superstition was set alight, these three
+thousand Crows might suddenly follow Cheschapah to burn and kill and
+destroy.
+
+"How does he manage his soda-water, do you suppose?" inquired Haines.
+
+"That's mysterious. He has never been known to buy drugs, and he's
+careful where he does his trick. He's still a little afraid of his
+father. All Indians are. It's queer where he was going with that dog."
+
+Hard galloping sounded behind them, and a courier from the Indian agency
+overtook and passed them, hurrying to Fort Custer. The officers hurried
+too, and, arriving, received news and orders. Forty Sioux were reported
+up the river coming to visit the Crows. It was peaceable, but untimely.
+The Sioux agent over at Pine Ridge had given these forty permission to
+go, without first finding out if it would be convenient to the Crow
+agent to have them come. It is a rule of the Indian Bureau that if one
+tribe desire to visit another, the agents of both must consent. Now,
+most of the Crows were farming and quiet, and it was not wise that a
+visit from the Sioux and a season of feasting should tempt their hearts
+and minds away from the tilling of the soil. The visitors must be taken
+charge of and sent home.
+
+"Very awkward, though," said Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to
+take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. "The
+Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how
+like the way we manage Indian affairs!" And so they started.
+
+Thirty miles away, by a stream towards which Stirling with his command
+was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered.
+There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth.
+Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young
+Cheschapah's talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw
+acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain
+distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness.
+Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their
+eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued
+the older chiefs.
+
+[Illustration: "BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION"]
+
+"And more than that, I, Cheschapah, can do," said he, boasting in
+Indian fashion. "I know how to make the white man's heart soft so
+he cannot fight." He paused for effect, but his hearers seemed
+uninterested. "You have come pretty far to see us," resumed the
+orator, "and I, and my friend Two Whistles, and my father, Pounded
+Meat, have come a day to meet you and bring you to our place. I have
+brought you a fat dog. I say it is good the Crow and the Sioux shall
+be friends. All the Crow chiefs are glad. Pretty Eagle is a big chief,
+and he will tell you what I tell you. But I am bigger than Pretty
+Eagle. I am a medicine-man."
+
+He paused again; but the grim old chiefs were looking at the fire, and
+not at him. He got a friendly glance from his henchman, Two Whistles,
+but he heard his father give a grunt.
+
+That enraged him. "I am a medicine-man," he repeated, defiantly. "I have
+been in the big hole in the mountains where the river goes, and spoken
+there with the old man who makes the thunder. I talked with him as one
+chief to another. I am going to kill all the white men."
+
+At this old Pounded Meat looked at his son angrily, but the son was not
+afraid of his father just then. "I can make medicine to bring the rain,"
+he continued. "I can make water boil when it is cold. With this I can
+strike the white man blind when he is so far that his eyes do not show
+his face."
+
+He swept out from his blanket an old cavalry sabre painted scarlet.
+Young Two Whistles made a movement of awe, but Pounded Meat said, "My
+son's tongue has grown longer than his sword."
+
+Laughter sounded among the old chiefs. Cheschapah turned his impudent
+yet somewhat visionary face upon his father. "What do you know of
+medicine?" said he. "Two sorts of Indians are among the Crows to-day,"
+he continued to the chiefs. "One sort are the fathers, and the sons are
+the other. The young warriors are not afraid of the white man. The old
+plant corn with the squaws. Is this the way with the Sioux?"
+
+"With the Sioux," remarked a grim visitor, "no one fears the white man.
+But the young warriors do not talk much in council."
+
+Pounded Meat put out his hand gently, as if in remonstrance. Other
+people must not chide his son.
+
+"You say you can make water boil with no fire?" pursued the Sioux, who
+was named Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, and had been young once.
+
+Pounded Meat came between. "My son is a good man," said he. "These words
+of his are not made in the heart, but are head words you need not count.
+Cheschapah does not like peace. He has heard us sing our wars and the
+enemies we have killed, and he remembers that he has no deeds, being
+young. When he thinks of this sometimes he talks words without sense.
+But my son is a good man."
+
+The father again extended his hand, which trembled a little. The Sioux
+had listened, looking at him with respect, and forgetful of Cheschapah,
+who now stood before them with a cup of cold water.
+
+"You shall see," he said, "who it is that talks words without sense."
+
+Two Whistles and the young bucks crowded to watch, but the old men sat
+where they were. As Cheschapah stood relishing his audience, Pounded
+Meat stepped up suddenly and upset the cup. He went to the stream and
+refilled it himself. "Now make it boil," said he.
+
+Cheschapah smiled, and as he spread his hand quickly over the cup, the
+water foamed up.
+
+"Huh!" said Two Whistles, startled.
+
+The medicine-man quickly seized his moment. "What does Pounded Meat
+know of my medicine?" said he. "The dog is cooked. Let the dance begin."
+
+The drums set up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and
+less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council.
+Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre
+of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart
+with the empty cup, having words among themselves. The flame reared high
+into the dark, and showed the rock wall towering close, and at its feet
+the light lay red on the streaming water. The young Sioux stripped naked
+of their blankets, hanging them in a screen against the wind from the
+jaws of the canon, with more constant shouts as the drumming beat
+louder, and strokes of echo fell from the black cliffs. The figures
+twinkled across each other in the glare, drifting and alert, till the
+dog-dance shaped itself into twelve dancers with a united sway of body
+and arms, one and another singing his song against the lifted sound of
+the drums. The twelve sank crouching in simulated hunt for an enemy back
+and forth over the same space, swinging together.
+
+Presently they sprang with a shout upon their feet, for they had taken
+the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began
+a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and
+after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and
+crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were
+ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog
+pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests
+heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as the excited crew filed
+and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting
+uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with
+knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from
+the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The
+dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating
+their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of
+the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.
+
+The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the
+dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go
+to their beds.
+
+"It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends," said Pounded
+Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. "But we want no war with the
+white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now."
+
+"We have not come for war," replied the Sioux. "We have come to eat much
+meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little
+Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers."
+
+Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.
+
+"We shall have war," said the confident son to his father. "My medicine
+is good."
+
+"Peace is also pretty good," said Pounded Meat. "Get new thoughts. My
+son, do you not care any more for my words?"
+
+Cheschapah did not reply.
+
+"I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be.
+The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong."
+
+"They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards."
+
+"Have done," said the father, sternly. "If you are a medicine-man, do
+not talk like a light fool."
+
+The Indian has an "honor thy father" deep in his religion too, and
+Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay
+brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the
+tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane
+into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked,
+and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to
+wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be
+surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he
+sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.
+
+"Go quick, Kinney," he said to the interpreter, "and tell them it's
+peace, or they'll be firing on us."
+
+Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign,
+they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose
+and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long
+explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to
+allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but
+after the firing's done, you must justify it to important personages who
+live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their
+lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.
+
+Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was
+fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without
+obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and
+recognizing him, Stirling understood about the dog. The medicine-man,
+with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners
+as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.
+
+Stirling sent for Kinney. "Send that rascal away," he said. "I'll not
+have him bothering here."
+
+The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he
+had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and
+Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled
+again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his
+business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to
+say that business was always slow in time of peace.
+
+By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there
+was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine
+Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night
+fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah's hour, and
+the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for
+thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy
+preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their
+guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not
+listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the
+agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling
+its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on
+being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of
+the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all.
+Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz
+about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.
+
+"It's an interesting state of affairs," said Stirling to Haines. "There
+are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming.
+We've got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite
+early in your career."
+
+"Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking."
+
+"Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave
+them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice."
+
+The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in
+the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was
+composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them
+rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This
+little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it
+listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in
+English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are
+pungent, and far from complimentary.
+
+"It's got to stop here," said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as
+Reno's Crossing. "They've got to be kept on this side."
+
+"Can it be done without gunpowder?" Haines asked.
+
+"If a shot is fired now, my friend, it's war, and a court of inquiry in
+Washington for you and me, if we're not buried here. Sergeant, you will
+take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with
+me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends."
+
+The fording began, and the two officers went over to the east bank to
+see that the instructions were carried out.
+
+"See that?" observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped
+into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the
+Crows. "Every man jack of them is armed. And here's an interesting
+development," he continued.
+
+It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles.
+The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the
+officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine--the two Indian
+police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of
+the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick
+painted swarm that yelled across the ford.
+
+"Bet you there's a hundred," remarked Haines.
+
+"You forget I never gamble," murmured Stirling. Two of the five long
+boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted;
+and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered
+multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a
+small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear,
+pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came
+tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side
+drew forward a little.
+
+"You tell them," said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, "that
+they must go back."
+
+Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.
+
+"Take them over, then," the officer ordered.
+
+[Illustration: "HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE OF THE
+MEDICINE-MAN"]
+
+The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing.
+His horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now
+launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck the
+man's horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed
+from the other bank.
+
+"Looks like the court of inquiry," remarked Stirling. "Don't shoot,
+boys," he commanded aloud.
+
+The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. "You not shoot?" he said. "But he hit
+that man's horse--all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you."
+
+"Right. Quite right," growled Stirling. "All the same hit Uncle Sam. But
+we soldier devils have orders to temporize." His eye rested hard and
+serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular
+unconcern. "Tem-po-rize, Johnny," said he. "You savvy temporize?"
+
+"Ump! Me no savvy."
+
+"Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he's hit that
+horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There's Two
+Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And
+there's a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that--it's
+very catching--Yes, we're going to have a circus. Attention! Now what's
+that, do you suppose?"
+
+An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing
+through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth,
+full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the
+tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and
+melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford's edge grew bare of
+dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the
+wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in
+the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers
+firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the water, his face
+brightened with a last flare of command.
+
+"Make your medicine!" he said. "Why are the white men not blind? Is the
+medicine bad to-day?" And he whipped his son's horse to the right, and
+to the left he slashed the horse of Two Whistles, and, whirling the
+leather quirt, drove them cowed before him and out of the stream, with
+never a look or word to the white men. He crossed the sandy margin, and
+as a man drives steers to the corral, striking spurs to his horse and
+following the frightened animals close when they would twist aside, so
+did old Pounded Meat herd his son down the valley.
+
+"Useful old man," remarked Stirling; "and brings up his children
+carefully. Let's get these prisoners along."
+
+"How rural the river looks now!" Haines said, as they left the deserted
+bank.
+
+So the Sioux went home in peace, the lieutenants, with their command of
+twenty, returned to the post, and all white people felt much obliged to
+Pounded Meat for his act of timely parental discipline--all except one
+white person.
+
+Sol Kinney sauntered into the agency store one evening. "I want ten
+pounds of sugar," said he, "and navy plug as usual. And say, I'll take
+another bottle of the Seltzer fizz salts. Since I quit whiskey," he
+explained, "my liver's poorly."
+
+He returned with his purchase to his cabin, and set a lamp in the
+window. Presently the door opened noiselessly, and Cheschapah came in.
+
+"Maybe you got that now?" he said, in English.
+
+The interpreter fumbled among bottles of liniment and vaseline, and from
+among these household remedies brought the blue one he had just bought.
+Cheschapah watched him like a child, following his steps round the
+cabin. Kinney tore a half-page from an old Sunday _World_, and poured a
+little heap of salts into it. The Indian touched the heap timidly with
+his finger. "Maybe no good," he suggested.
+
+"Heap good!" said the interpreter, throwing a pinch into a glass. When
+Cheschapah saw the water effervesce, he folded his newspaper with the
+salt into a tight lump, stuck the talisman into his clothes, and
+departed, leaving Mr. Kinney well content. He was doing his best to
+nourish the sinews of war, for business in the country was
+discouragingly slack.
+
+Now the Crows were a tribe that had never warred with us, but only with
+other tribes; they had been valiant enough to steal our cattle, but
+sufficiently discreet to stop there; and Kinney realized that he had
+uphill work before him. His dearest hopes hung upon Cheschapah, in whom
+he thought he saw a development. From being a mere humbug, the young
+Indian seemed to be getting a belief in himself as something genuinely
+out of the common. His success in creating a party had greatly increased
+his conceit, and he walked with a strut, and his face was more unsettled
+and visionary than ever. One clear sign of his mental change was that he
+no longer respected his father at all, though the lonely old man looked
+at him often with what in one of our race would have been tenderness.
+Cheschapah had been secretly maturing a plot ever since his humiliation
+at the crossing, and now he was ready. With his lump of newspaper
+carefully treasured, he came to Two Whistles.
+
+"Now we go," he said. "We shall fight with the Piegans. I will make big
+medicine, so that we shall get many of their horses and women. Then
+Pretty Eagle will be afraid to go against me in the council. Pounded
+Meat whipped my horse. Pounded Meat can cut his hay without Cheschapah,
+since he is so strong."
+
+But little Two Whistles wavered. "I will stay here," he ventured to say
+to the prophet.
+
+"Does Two Whistles think I cannot do what I say?"
+
+"I think you make good medicine."
+
+"You are afraid of the Piegans."
+
+"No, I am not afraid. I have hay the white man will pay me for. If I go,
+he will not pay me. If I had a father, I would not leave him." He spoke
+pleadingly, and his prophet bore him down by ridicule. Two Whistles
+believed, but he did not want to lose the money the agent was to pay for
+his hay. And so, not so much because he believed as because he was
+afraid, he resigned his personal desires.
+
+The next morning the whole band had disappeared with Cheschapah. The
+agent was taken aback at this marked challenge to his authority--of
+course they had gone without permission--and even the old Crow chiefs
+held a council.
+
+Pretty Eagle resorted to sarcasm. "He has taken his friends to the old
+man who makes the thunder," he said. But others did not feel sarcastic,
+and one observed, "Cheschapah knows more than we know."
+
+"Let him make rain, then," said Pretty Eagle. "Let him make the white
+man's heart soft."
+
+The situation was assisted by a step of the careful Kinney. He took a
+private journey to Junction City, through which place he expected
+Cheschapah to return, and there he made arrangements to have as much
+whiskey furnished to the Indian and his friends as they should ask for.
+It was certainly a good stroke of business. The victorious raiders did
+return that way, and Junction City was most hospitable to their thirst.
+The valley of the Big Horn was resonant with their homeward yells. They
+swept up the river, and the agent heard them coming, and he locked his
+door immediately. He listened to their descent upon his fold, and he
+peeped out and saw them ride round the tightly shut buildings in their
+war-paint and the pride of utter success. They had taken booty from the
+Piegans, and now, knocking at the store, they demanded ammunition,
+proclaiming at the same time in English that Cheschapah was a big man,
+and knew a "big heap medicine." The agent told them from inside that
+they could not have any ammunition. He also informed them that he knew
+who they were, and that they were under arrest. This touched their
+primitive sense of the incongruous. On the buoyancy of the whiskey they
+rode round and round the store containing the agent, and then rushed
+away, firing shots at the buildings and shots in the air, and so
+gloriously home among their tribe, while the agent sent a courier
+packing to Fort Custer.
+
+The young bucks who had not gone on the raid to the Piegans thronged to
+hear the story, and the warriors told it here and there, walking in
+their feathers among a knot of friends, who listened with gay
+exclamations of pleasure and envy. Great was Cheschapah, who had done
+all this! And one and another told exactly and at length how he had seen
+the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man's hand; it could
+not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah's had been
+accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in
+his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that
+surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been
+like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed
+among the groups, alone and aloof; he spoke to none, and he looked at
+none, and he noted how their voices fell to whispers as he passed; his
+ear caught the magic words of praise and awe; he felt the gaze of
+admiration follow him away, and a mist rose like incense in his brain.
+He wandered among the scattered tepees, and, turning, came along the
+same paths again, that he might once more overhear his worshippers.
+Great was Cheschapah! His heart beat, a throb of power passed through
+his body, and "Great is Cheschapah!" said he, aloud; for the fumes of
+hallucination wherewith he had drugged others had begun to make him
+drunk also. He sought a tepee where the wife of another chief was alone,
+and at his light call she stood at the entrance and heard him longer
+than she had ever listened to him before. But she withstood the
+temptation that was strong in the young chief's looks and words. She did
+not speak much, but laughed unsteadily, and, shaking her head with
+averted eyes, left him, and went where several women were together, and
+sat among them.
+
+Cheschapah told his victory to the council, with many sentences about
+himself, and how his medicine had fended all hurt from the Crows. The
+elder chiefs sat cold.
+
+"Ump!" said one, at the close of the oration, and "Heh!" remarked
+another. The sounds were of assent without surprise.
+
+"It is good," said Pretty Eagle. His voice seemed to enrage Cheschapah.
+
+"Heh! it is always pretty good!" remarked Spotted Horse.
+
+"I have done this too," said Pounded Meat to his son, simply. "Once,
+twice, three times. The Crows have always been better warriors than the
+Piegans."
+
+"Have you made water boil like me?" Cheschapah said.
+
+"I am not a medicine-man," replied his father. "But I have taken horses
+and squaws from the Piegans. You make good medicine, maybe; but a cup of
+water will not kill many white men. Can you make the river boil? Let
+Cheschapah make bigger medicine, so the white man shall fear him as well
+as the Piegans, whose hearts are well known to us."
+
+Cheschapah scowled. "Pounded Meat shall have this," said he. "I will
+make medicine to-morrow, old fool!"
+
+"Drive him from the council!" said Pretty Eagle.
+
+"Let him stay," said Pounded Meat. "His bad talk was not to the council,
+but to me, and I do not count it."
+
+But the medicine-man left the presence of the chiefs, and came to the
+cabin of Kinney.
+
+"Hello!" said the white man. "Sit down."
+
+"You got that?" said the Indian, standing.
+
+"More water medicine? I guess so. Take a seat."
+
+"No, not boil any more. You got that other?"
+
+"That other, eh? Well, now, you're not going to blind them yet? What's
+your hurry?"
+
+"Yes. Make blind to-morrow. Me great chief!"
+
+A slight uneasiness passed across the bantering face of Kinney. His
+Seltzer salts performed what he promised, but he had mentioned another
+miracle, and he did not want his dupe to find him out until a war was
+thoroughly set agoing. He looked at the young Indian, noticing his eyes.
+
+"What's the matter with you, anyway, Cheschapah?"
+
+"Me great chief!" The raised voice trembled with unearthly conviction.
+
+"Well, I guess you are. I guess you've got pretty far along," said the
+frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose
+primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking
+at him with intent black eyes. "Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again.
+Medicine heap better after a while."
+
+The Indian's quick ear caught the insincerity without understanding it.
+"You give me that quick!" he said, suddenly terrible.
+
+"Oh, all right, Cheschapah. You know more medicine than me."
+
+"Yes, I know more."
+
+The white man brought a pot of scarlet paint, and the Indian's staring
+eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and
+set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. "Stand back," he said, in
+mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now
+Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had
+committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other
+poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of
+them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation
+it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah
+if he should recite "The Battle of Hohenlinden." He was drawing squares
+and circles with the point of the sabre.
+
+"No," he said to himself, "that piece won't do. He knows too much
+English. Some of them words might strike him as bein' too usual, and
+he'd start to kill me, and spoil the whole thing. 'Munich' and
+'chivalry' are snortin', but 'sun was low' ain't worth a damn. I
+guess--"
+
+He stopped guessing, for the noon recess at school came in his mind,
+like a picture, and with it certain old-time preliminaries to the game
+of tag.
+
+     "'Eeny, meeny, money, my,'"
+
+said Kinney, tapping himself, the sabre, the paint-pot, and Cheschapah
+in turn, one for each word. The incantation was begun. He held the sabre
+solemnly upright, while Cheschapah tried to control his excited
+breathing where he stood flattened against the wall.
+
+     "'Butter, leather, boney, stry;
+     Hare-bit, frost-neck,
+     Harrico, barrico, whee, why, whoa, whack!'
+
+"You're it, Cheschapah." After that the weapon was given its fresh coat
+of paint, and Cheschapah went away with his new miracle in the dark.
+
+"He is it," mused Kinney, grave, but inwardly lively. He was one of
+those sincere artists who need no popular commendation. "And whoever he
+does catch, it won't be me," he concluded. He felt pretty sure there
+would be war now.
+
+Dawn showed the summoned troops near the agency at the corral, standing
+to horse. Cheschapah gathered his hostiles along the brow of the ridge
+in the rear of the agency buildings, and the two forces watched each
+other across the intervening four hundred yards.
+
+"There they are," said the agent, jumping about. "Shoot them, colonel;
+shoot them!"
+
+"You can't do that, you know," said the officer, "without an order from
+the President, or an overt act from the Indians."
+
+So nothing happened, and Cheschapah told his friends the white men were
+already afraid of him. He saw more troops arrive, water their horses in
+the river, form line outside the corral, and dismount. He made ready at
+this movement, and all Indian on-lookers scattered from the expected
+fight. Yet the white man stayed quiet. It was issue day, but no families
+remained after drawing their rations. They had had no dance the night
+before, as was usual, and they did not linger a moment now, but came and
+departed with their beef and flour at once.
+
+"I have done all this," said Cheschapah to Two Whistles.
+
+"Cheschapah is a great man," assented the friend and follower. He had
+gone at once to his hay-field on his return from the Piegans, but some
+one had broken the little Indian's fence, and cattle were wandering in
+what remained of his crop.
+
+"Our nation knows I will make a war, and therefore they do not stay
+here," said the medicine-man, caring nothing what Two Whistles might
+have suffered. "And now they will see that the white soldiers dare not
+fight with Cheschapah. The sun is high now, but they have not moved
+because I have stopped them. Do you not see it is my medicine?"
+
+"We see it." It was the voice of the people.
+
+But a chief spoke. "Maybe they wait for us to come."
+
+Cheschapah answered. "Their eyes shall be made sick. I will ride among
+them, but they will not know it." He galloped away alone, and lifted his
+red sword as he sped along the ridge of the hills, showing against the
+sky. Below at the corral the white soldiers waited ready, and heard him
+chanting his war song through the silence of the day. He turned in a
+long curve, and came in near the watching troops and through the agency,
+and then, made bolder by their motionless figures and guns held idle, he
+turned again and flew, singing, along close to the line, so they saw his
+eyes; and a few that had been talking low as they stood side by side
+fell silent at the spectacle. They could not shoot until some Indian
+should shoot. They watched him and the gray pony pass and return to the
+hostiles on the hill. Then they saw the hostiles melt away like magic.
+Their prophet had told them to go to their tepees and wait for the great
+rain he would now bring. It was noon, and the sky utterly blue over the
+bright valley. The sun rode a space nearer the west, and the thick black
+clouds assembled in the mountains and descended; their shadow flooded
+the valley with a lake of slatish blue, and presently the sudden
+torrents sluiced down with flashes and the ample thunder of Montana.
+Thus not alone the law against our soldiers firing the first shot in an
+Indian excitement, but now also the elements coincided to help the
+medicine-man's destiny.
+
+Cheschapah sat in a tepee with his father, and as the rain splashed
+heavily on the earth the old man gazed at the young one.
+
+"Why do you tremble, my son? You have made the white soldier's heart
+soft," said Pounded Meat. "You are indeed a great man, my son."
+
+Cheschapah rose. "Do not call me your son," said he. "That is a lie."
+He went out into the fury of the rain, lifting his face against the
+drops, and exultingly calling out at each glare of the lightning. He
+went to Pretty Eagle's young squaw, who held off from him no longer, but
+got on a horse, and the two rode into the mountains. Before the sun had
+set, the sky was again utterly blue, and a cool scent rose everywhere in
+the shining valley.
+
+The Crows came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers
+obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move
+across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river
+twelve miles to the post.
+
+"They are afraid," said new converts. "Cheschapah's rain has made their
+hearts soft."
+
+"They have not all gone," said Pretty Eagle. "Maybe he did not make
+enough rain." But even Pretty Eagle began to be shaken, and he heard
+several of his brother chiefs during the next few days openly declare
+for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains,
+and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence
+followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of
+them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate
+audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same
+day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers
+were struck by lightning.
+
+When the officers at Fort Custer heard of this they became serious.
+
+"If this was not the nineteenth century," said Haines, "I should begin
+to think the elements were deliberately against us."
+
+"It's very careless of the weather," said Stirling. "Very inconsiderate,
+at such a juncture."
+
+Yet nothing more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was
+an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave
+the hostiles time to increase both in faith and numbers.
+
+Among the excited Crows only a few wise old men held out. As for
+Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird
+enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who
+believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing
+mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved
+for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and,
+desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day
+there came an order from the agent to all the Indians: they were to come
+in by a certain fixed day. The department commander had assembled six
+hundred troops at the post, and these moved up the river and went into
+camp. The usually empty ridges, and the bottom where the road ran,
+filled with white and red men. Half a mile to the north of the
+buildings, on the first rise from the river, lay the cavalry, and some
+infantry above them with a howitzer, while across the level, three
+hundred yards opposite, along the river-bank, was the main Indian camp.
+Even the hostiles had obeyed the agent's order, and came in close to the
+troops, totally unlike hostiles in general; for Cheschapah had told them
+he would protect them with his medicine, and they shouted and sang all
+through this last night. The women joined with harsh cries and
+shriekings, and a scalp-dance went on, besides lesser commotions and
+gatherings, with the throbbing of drums everywhere. Through the
+sleepless din ran the barking of a hundred dogs, that herded and hurried
+in crowds of twenty at a time, meeting, crossing from fire to fire among
+the tepees. Their yelps rose to the high bench of land, summoning a
+horde of coyotes. These cringing nomads gathered from the desert in a
+tramp army, and, skulking down the bluffs, sat in their outer darkness
+and ceaselessly howled their long, shrill greeting to the dogs that sat
+in the circle of light. The general sent scouts to find the nature of
+the dance and hubbub, and these brought word it was peaceful; and in the
+morning another scout summoned the elder chiefs to a talk with the
+friend who had come from the Great Father at Washington to see them and
+find if their hearts were good.
+
+"Our hearts are good," said Pretty Eagle. "We do not want war. If you
+want Cheschapah, we will drive him out from the Crows to you."
+
+"There are other young chiefs with bad hearts," said the commissioner,
+naming the ringleaders that were known. He made a speech, but Pretty
+Eagle grew sullen. "It is well," said the commissioner; "you will not
+help me to make things smooth, and now I step aside and the war chief
+will talk."
+
+"If you want any other chiefs," said Pretty Eagle, "come and take them."
+
+"Pretty Eagle shall have an hour and a half to think on my words," said
+the general. "I have plenty of men behind me to make my words good. You
+must send me all those Indians who fired at the agency."
+
+The Crow chiefs returned to the council, which was apart from the war
+party's camp; and Cheschapah walked in among them, and after him,
+slowly, old Pounded Meat, to learn how the conference had gone.
+
+"You have made a long talk with the white man," said Cheschapah. "Talk
+is pretty good for old men. I and the young chiefs will fight now and
+kill our enemies."
+
+"Cheschapah," said Pounded Meat, "if your medicine is good, it may be
+the young chiefs will kill our enemies to-day. But there are other days
+to come, and after them still others; there are many, many days. My son,
+the years are a long road. The life of one man is not long, but enough
+to learn this thing truly: the white man will always return. There was a
+day on this river when the dead soldiers of Yellow Hair lay in hills,
+and the squaws of the Sioux warriors climbed among them with their
+knives. What do the Sioux warriors do now when they meet the white man
+on this river? Their hearts are on the ground, and they go home like
+children when the white man says, 'You shall not visit your friends.' My
+son, I thought war was good once. I have kept you from the arrows of our
+enemies on many trails when you were so little that my blankets were
+enough for both. Your mother was not here any more, and the chiefs
+laughed because I carried you. Oh, my son, I have seen the hearts of the
+Sioux broken by the white man, and I do not think war is good."
+
+"The talk of Pounded Meat is very good," said Pretty Eagle. "If
+Cheschapah were wise like his father, this trouble would not have come
+to the Crows. But we could not give the white chief so many of our
+chiefs that he asked for to-day."
+
+Cheschapah laughed. "Did he ask for so many? He wanted only Cheschapah,
+who is not wise like Pounded Meat."
+
+"You would have been given to him," said Pretty Eagle.
+
+"Did Pretty Eagle tell the white chief that? Did he say he would give
+Cheschapah? How would he give me? In one hand, or two? Or would the old
+warrior take me to the white man's camp on the horse his young squaw
+left?"
+
+Pretty Eagle raised his rifle, and Pounded Meat, quick as a boy, seized
+the barrel and pointed it up among the poles of the tepee, where the
+quiet black fire smoke was oozing out into the air. "Have you lived so
+long," said Pounded Meat to his ancient comrade, "and do this in the
+council?" His wrinkled head and hands shook, the sudden strength left
+him, and the rifle fell free.
+
+"Let Pretty Eagle shoot," said Cheschapah, looking at the council. He
+stood calm, and the seated chiefs turned their grim eyes upon him.
+Certainty was in his face, and doubt in theirs. "Let him send his bullet
+five times--ten times. Then I will go and let the white soldiers shoot
+at me until they all lie dead."
+
+"It is heavy for me," began Pounded Meat, "that my friend should be the
+enemy of my son."
+
+"Tell that lie no more," said Cheschapah. "You are not my father. I have
+made the white man blind, and I have softened his heart with the rain. I
+will call the rain to-day." He raised his red sword, and there was a
+movement among the sitting figures. "The clouds will come from my
+father's place, where I have talked with him as one chief to another. My
+mother went into the mountains to gather berries. She was young, and the
+thunder-maker saw her face. He brought the black clouds, so her feet
+turned from home, and she walked where the river goes into the great
+walls of the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the
+lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah." He dealt Pounded Meat
+a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound
+of Cheschapah's galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk
+everything. Their scepticism was conquered.
+
+The medicine-man galloped to his camp of hostiles, and, seeing him, they
+yelled and quickly finished plaiting their horses' tails. Cheschapah had
+accomplished his wish; he had become the prophet of all the Crows, and
+he led the armies of the faithful. Each man stripped his blanket off and
+painted his body for the fight. The forms slipped in and out of the
+brush, buckling their cartridge-belts, bringing their ponies, while many
+families struck their tepees and moved up nearer the agency. The spare
+horses were run across the river into the hills, and through the yelling
+that shifted and swept like flames along the wind the hostiles made
+ready and gathered, their crowds quivering with motion, and changing
+place and shape as more mounted Indians appeared.
+
+"Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?" said Cheschapah
+to Two Whistles. "That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from
+the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They
+are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any
+more than they saw me when I rode among them that day."
+
+He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened
+them to their painted bodies.
+
+"You will let me go with you?" said Two Whistles.
+
+"You are my best friend," said Cheschapah, "and to-day I will take you.
+You shall see my great medicine when I make the white man's eyes grow
+sick."
+
+The two rode forward, and one hundred and fifty followed them, bursting
+from their tepees like an explosion, and rushing along quickly in
+skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw
+the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky,
+and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride
+put him in a sort of trance.
+
+"The medicine is beginning!" shouted Cheschapah; and at that Two
+Whistles saw the day grow large with terrible shining, and heard his
+own voice calling and could not stop it. They left the hundred and
+fifty behind, he knew not where or when. He saw the line of troops
+ahead change to separate waiting shapes of men, and their legs and
+arms become plain; then all the guns took clear form in lines of
+steady glitter. He seemed suddenly alone far ahead of the band, but
+the voice of Cheschapah spoke close by his ear through the singing
+wind, and he repeated each word without understanding; he was watching
+the ground rush by, lest it might rise against his face, and all the
+while he felt his horse's motion under him, smooth and perpetual.
+Something weighed against his leg, and there was Cheschapah he had
+forgotten, always there at his side, veering him around somewhere. But
+there was no red sword waving. Then the white men must be blind
+already, wherever they were, and Cheschapah, the only thing he could
+see, sat leaning one hand on his horse's rump firing a pistol. The
+ground came swimming towards his eyes always, smooth and wide like a
+gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it
+sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue
+smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers
+moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke
+into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and
+empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two Whistles
+saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there was
+nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah's head-dress in the middle.
+The horse's even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
+head-dress fell out of Two Whistles' sight, and the earth returned.
+They were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead
+horse on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people
+everywhere outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump
+on a gray pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a
+red sword lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then
+took it in his hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it
+savagely, and fell again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass.
+But he got on his horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at
+the blood running on his body. The horse moved always, and Two
+Whistles followed with his eye a little deeper gush of blood along a
+crease in his painted skin, noticed the flannel, and remembering the
+lie of his prophet, instantly began tearing the red rags from his
+body, and flinging them to the ground with cries of scorn. Presently
+he heard some voices, and soon one voice much nearer, and saw he had
+come to a new place, where there were white soldiers looking at him
+quietly. One was riding up and telling him to give up his pistol. Two
+Whistles got off and stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol.
+The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved
+slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as
+the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol
+uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the
+straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre, and the white
+man's blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own naked, clotted
+body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it into his
+breast.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARGE]
+
+Far away up the river, on the right of the line, a lieutenant with two
+men was wading across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with
+his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had
+dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up
+their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing
+breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets'-nest, and the
+lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life;
+he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in
+among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to
+be sure no hornets remained. Finding them gone, and their dead spirited
+away, he came back on the bank to the one dead Indian, who had a fine
+head-dress, and was still ribanded with gay red streamers of flannel,
+and was worth all the rest of the dead put together, and much more. The
+head lay in the water, and one hand held the rope of the gray pony, who
+stood quiet and uninterested over his fallen rider. They began carrying
+the prize across to the other bank, where many had now collected, among
+others Kinney and the lieutenant's captain, who subsequently said, "I
+found the body of Cheschapah;" and, indeed, it was a very good thing to
+be able to say.
+
+[Illustration: "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"]
+
+"This busts the war," said Kinney to the captain, as the body was
+being lifted over the Little Horn. "They know he's killed, and they've
+all quit. I was up by the tepees near the agency just now, and I
+could see the hostiles jamming back home for dear life. They was
+chucking their rifles to the squaws, and jumping in the river--ha!
+ha!--to wash off their war-paint, and each ---- ---- would crawl out
+and sit innercint in the family blanket his squaw had ready. If you
+was to go there now, cap'n, you'd find just a lot of harmless Injuns
+eatin' supper like all the year round. Let me help you, boys, with
+that carcass."
+
+Kinney gave a hand to the lieutenant and men of G troop, First United
+States Cavalry, and they lifted Cheschapah up the bank. In the tilted
+position of the body the cartridge-belt slid a little, and a lump of
+newspaper fell into the stream. Kinney watched it open and float away
+with a momentary effervescence. The dead medicine-man was laid between
+the white and red camps, that all might see he could be killed like
+other people; and this wholesome discovery brought the Crows to terms at
+once. Pretty Eagle had displayed a flag of truce, and now he surrendered
+the guilty chiefs whose hearts had been bad. Every one came where the
+dead prophet lay to get a look at him. For a space of hours Pretty Eagle
+and the many other Crows he had deceived rode by in single file,
+striking him with their whips; after them came a young squaw, and she
+also lashed the upturned face.
+
+This night was untroubled at the agency, and both camps and the valley
+lay quiet in the peaceful dark. Only Pounded Meat, alone on the top of a
+hill, mourned for his son; and his wailing voice sounded through the
+silence until the new day came. Then the general had him stopped and
+brought in, for it might be that the old man's noise would unsettle the
+Crows again.
+
+
+
+
+SPECIMEN JONES
+
+
+Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a
+man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had
+left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Canon
+del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim
+might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the canon, and ended
+among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away by
+this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his
+saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and
+the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him; for
+the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling this
+sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was not
+in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.
+
+Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside
+that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and
+Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to
+widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be
+nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with
+tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at the boy's heels,
+and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was
+really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of this--excepting the
+boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place
+of entertainment.
+
+Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and
+full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his
+funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile--the only water for twoscore of
+miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the
+southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the
+Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray
+floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two
+desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else.
+Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and
+selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was
+brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the
+glaring vacant months--some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding
+a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes
+they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons.
+Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore
+knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for
+the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next
+man, and their names, when they had any, would be O'Rafferty, Angus,
+Schwartzmeyer, Jose Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some
+longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one
+stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and
+whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after
+sundown--a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
+
+On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in
+Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally.
+This one had paid for everybody's drink several times, because he felt
+friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had
+played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him
+dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand
+round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the
+opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the
+beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they
+therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you
+may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good
+tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that
+he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own
+revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster
+at the necessary moment.
+
+"Tried to draw on me, did yer?" said the old gentleman. "Step higher!
+Step, now, or I'll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin's egg."
+
+"Thinks he's having a bad time," remarked Ephraim. "Wonder how he'd like
+to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?"
+
+"Weren't his ear funny?" said one who had helped bury the man.
+
+"Ear?" said Ephraim. "You boys ought to been along when I found him,
+and seen the way they'd fixed up his mouth." Ephraim explained the
+details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a
+humorist. "Wonder how it feels," he continued, "to have--"
+
+[Illustration: AN APACHE]
+
+Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
+hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
+with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
+no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
+often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
+over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
+singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
+in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
+
+"Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf," remarked the old gentleman to
+the tenderfoot. "High-yer!" And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
+scraped the boy's boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
+that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
+
+"'Drink to me only with thine eyes,'" sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
+did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
+nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he
+was but twenty-six now.
+
+The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played "Matamoras,"
+Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
+the concertina stopped with a quack.
+
+"Quit it!" said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
+weapon. "I don't want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We've
+just got cleaned up."
+
+It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of
+Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now
+for the first time he noticed the boy.
+
+"Blamed if he ain't neat," he said. But interest faded from his eye, and
+he turned again to the wall. "'Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,'" he
+melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang
+he was always grammatical.
+
+"Ye kin stop, kid," said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved
+his pistol into his belt.
+
+The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and
+strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling
+with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. "Set 'em
+up," he said to Ephraim. "Set 'em up again all round."
+
+His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the
+old gentleman, still benevolent, said, "Yer langwidge means pleasanter
+than it sounds, kid." He glanced at the boy's holster, and knew he need
+not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it
+once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the
+boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot's hand
+might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated.
+The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to
+glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the
+line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster,
+handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled
+and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
+
+"Well, my regards," he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the
+old gentleman's arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy
+reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman's own pistol,
+and jammed it in his face.
+
+"Now you'll dance," said he.
+
+"Whoop!" exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. "_Blamed_ if he ain't
+neat!" And Jones's handsome face lighted keenly.
+
+"Hold on!" the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was
+mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had
+forgotten their drinks. "Not one swallow," the boy continued. "No,
+you'll not put it down either. You'll keep hold of it, and you'll dance
+all round this place. Around and around. And don't you spill any. And
+I'll be thinking what you'll do after that."
+
+Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. "Why, he ain't bigger
+than a pint of cider," said he.
+
+"Prance away!" commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the
+old gentleman's not widely straddled legs.
+
+"You hev the floor, Mr. Adams," Jones observed, respectfully, at the old
+gentleman's agile leap. "I'll let no man here interrupt you." So the
+capering began, and the company stood back to make room. "I've saw juicy
+things in this Territory," continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to himself,
+"but this combination fills my bill."
+
+He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye.
+That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud
+as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though
+his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He
+had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna,
+with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
+among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and
+always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no
+receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood,
+he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all his
+might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His
+buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman's fervent skipping,
+had cooled, and a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave young
+nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no notion that there
+was another American wanderer there, whose reserved and whimsical nature
+he had touched to the heart.
+
+The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment, since he
+was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in that room was
+distinctly against him. The old gentleman was dancing with an ugly eye;
+he had glanced down to see just where his knife hung at his side, and he
+had made some calculations. He had fired four shots; the boy had fired
+one. "Four and one hez always made five," the old gentleman told himself
+with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was going to stop his
+double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy fell straight into
+it. He squandered his last precious bullet on the spittoon near which
+Mr. Adams happened to be at the moment, and the next moment Mr. Adams
+had him by the throat. They swayed and gulped for breath, rutting the
+earth with sharp heels; they rolled to the floor and floundered with
+legs tight tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr. Adams with the
+pistol-butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose nothing, when the
+bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised, and flew across the room,
+harmless, for a foot had driven into Mr. Adams's arm, and he felt a
+cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth, chilly muzzle of
+Specimen Jones's six-shooter.
+
+"That's enough," said Jones. "More than enough."
+
+Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
+sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
+the over-strained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
+With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
+plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
+first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
+while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
+ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
+dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like
+a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy's wrist.
+
+"Go easy, son," said he. "I know how you're feelin'."
+
+The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the quietness
+of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones.
+He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and
+he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern
+revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still
+holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end,
+careless of the risk to his first joint.
+
+"Why, you little ---- ----," said Specimen Jones, caressingly, to the
+hypnotized youth, "if you was to pop that squirt off at me, I'd turn you
+up and spank y'u. Set 'em up, Ephraim."
+
+But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones remembered. His last
+cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim's. He had stopped, having
+a little money, on his way to Tucson, where a friend had a job for him,
+and was waiting. He was far too experienced a character ever to sell his
+horse or his saddle on these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as
+if he might, but he never did; and this was what disappointed business
+men like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.
+
+But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and
+Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. "Why, so I
+haven't," he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. "I guess,"
+he continued, hastily, "this is worth a dollar or two." He drew a chain
+up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a
+little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of years--not,
+indeed, since it had been placed there originally. "It ain't brass," he
+added, lightly, and strewed it along the counter without looking at it.
+Ephraim did look at it, and, being satisfied, began to uncork a new
+bottle, while the punctual audience came up for its drink.
+
+"Won't you please let me treat?" said the boy, unsteadily. "I ain't
+likely to meet you again, sir." Reaction was giving him trouble inside.
+
+"Where are you bound, kid?"
+
+"Oh, just a ways up the country," answered the boy, keeping a grip on
+his voice.
+
+"Well, you _may_ get there. Where did you pick up that--that thing? Your
+pistol, I mean."
+
+"It's a present from a friend," replied the tenderfoot, with dignity.
+
+"Farewell gift, wasn't it, kid? Yes; I thought so. Now I'd hate to get
+an affair like that from a friend. It would start me wondering if he
+liked me as well as I'd always thought he did. Put up that money, kid.
+You're drinking with me. Say, what's yer name?"
+
+"Cumnor--J. Cumnor."
+
+"Well, J. Cumnor, I'm glad to know y'u. Ephraim, let me make you
+acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you're rested from your
+quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend. Step around, you Miguels
+and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever y'u claim your names are. This is
+Mr. J. Cumnor."
+
+The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the spirit of these
+American words, but they drank their drink, and the concertina resumed
+its acrid melody. The boy had taken himself off without being noticed.
+
+"Say, Spec," said Ephraim to Jones, "I'm no hog. Here's yer chain.
+You'll be along again."
+
+"Keep it till I'm along again," said the owner.
+
+"Just as you say, Spec," answered Ephraim, smoothly, and he hung the
+pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-colored lady with
+bright straw hair holding out a bottle of somebody's champagne. Specimen
+Jones sang no more songs, but smoked, and leaned in silence on the bar.
+The company were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a
+bucket to clean them for the morrow.
+
+"Know anything about that kid?" inquired Jones, abruptly.
+
+Ephraim shook his head as he washed.
+
+"Travelling alone, ain't he?"
+
+Ephraim nodded.
+
+"Where did y'u say y'u found that fellow layin' the Injuns got?"
+
+"Mile this side the canon. 'Mong them sand-humps."
+
+"How long had he been there, do y'u figure?"
+
+"Three days, anyway."
+
+Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. "Your clock needs wiping,"
+he remarked. "A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way
+the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it'll say
+three. That's the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy."
+
+"Well, that ain't a bad thing to be in this country," said Ephraim,
+rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the hands. "If that man
+had been crazy he'd been livin' right now. Injuns'll never touch
+lunatics."
+
+"That band have passed here and gone north," Jones said. "I saw a smoke
+among the foot-hills as I come along day before yesterday. I guess
+they're aiming to cross the Santa Catalina. Most likely they're that
+band from round the San Carlos that were reported as raiding down in
+Sonora."
+
+"I seen well enough," said Ephraim, "when I found him that they wasn't
+going to trouble us any, or they'd have been around by then."
+
+He was quite right, but Specimen Jones was thinking of something else.
+He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and doubtful. He saw the
+tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans, looming and silent, and a
+little way off the new fence where the man lay. An odd sound startled
+him, though he knew it was no Indians at this hour, and he looked down
+into a little dry ditch. It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach
+among the stones, sobbing.
+
+"Oh, snakes!" whispered Specimen Jones, and stepped back. The Latin
+races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among Saxons tears are a
+horrid event. Jones never knew what to do when it was a woman, but this
+was truly disgusting. He was well seasoned by the frontier, had tried a
+little of everything: town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving,
+marriage occasionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked
+out, and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing upon
+their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very slight. That is
+why he was called Specimen Jones. He had exhausted all the important
+sensations, and did not care much for anything any more. Perfect health
+and strength kept him from discovering that he was a saddened, drifting
+man. He wished to kick the boy for his baby performance, and yet he
+stepped carefully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his
+presence. He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken
+desert.
+
+"Why, hell," complained Specimen Jones, "he played the little man to
+start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about
+dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep' him from bein' buried early
+to-morrow. I've been wild that way myself, and wantin' to shoot up the
+whole outfit." Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to
+be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. "But I never--" He glanced
+towards the ditch, perplexed. "What's that mean? Why in the world does
+he git to cryin' for _now_, do you suppose?" Jones took to singing
+without knowing it. "'Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora
+pass this way?'" he murmured. Then a thought struck him. "Hello, kid!"
+he called out. There was no answer. "Of course," said Jones. "Now he's
+ashamed to hev me see him come out of there." He walked with elaborate
+slowness round the corral and behind a shed. "Hello, you kid!" he called
+again.
+
+"I was thinking of going to sleep," said the boy, appearing quite
+suddenly. "I--I'm not used to riding all day. I'll get used to it, you
+know," he hastened to add.
+
+"'Ha-ve you seen my Flo'--Say, kid, where y'u bound, anyway?"
+
+"San Carlos."
+
+"San Carlos? Oh. Ah. 'Flora pass this way?'"
+
+"Is it far, sir?"
+
+"Awful far, sometimes. It's always liable to be far through the Arivaypa
+Canon."
+
+"I didn't expect to make it between meals," remarked Cumnor.
+
+"No. Sure. What made you come this route?"
+
+"A man told me."
+
+"A man? Oh. Well, it _is_ kind o' difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan
+not to lie to a stranger. But I think I'd have told you to go by Tres
+Alamos and Point of Mountain. It's the road the man that told you would
+choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?"
+
+Cumnor snapped eagerly.
+
+"Of course y'u do. And you've never saw one in the whole
+minute-and-a-half you've been alive. I know all about it."
+
+"I'm not afraid," said the boy.
+
+"Not afraid? Of course y'u ain't. What's your idea in going to Carlos?
+Got town lots there?"
+
+"No," said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones.
+"There's a man there I used to know back home. He's in the cavalry.
+What sort of a town is it for sport?" asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario
+tone.
+
+"_Town_?" Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral.
+"_Sport?_ Now I'll tell y'u what sort of a town it is. There ain't no
+streets. There ain't no houses. There ain't any land and water in the
+usual meaning of them words. There's Mount Turnbull. It's pretty near a
+usual mountain, but y'u don't want to go there. The Creator didn't make
+San Carlos. It's a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after
+slickin' up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He
+found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come
+along. He 'ain't done any work around that spot at all, He 'ain't. Mix
+up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and
+rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer
+stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place
+chasin' Apaches, and you've got San Carlos."
+
+Cumnor was silent for a moment. "I don't care," he said. "I want to
+chase Apaches."
+
+"Did you see that man Ephraim found by the canon?" Jones inquired.
+
+"Didn't get here in time."
+
+"Well, there was a hole in his chest made by an arrow. But there's no
+harm in that if you die at wunst. That chap didn't, y'u see. You heard
+Ephraim tell about it. They'd done a number of things to the man before
+he could die. Roastin' was only one of 'em. Now your road takes you
+through the mountains where these Injuns hev gone. Kid, come along to
+Tucson with me," urged Jones, suddenly.
+
+Again Cumnor was silent. "Is my road different from other people's?" he
+said, finally.
+
+"Not to Grant, it ain't. These Mexicans are hauling freight to Grant.
+But what's the matter with your coming to Tucson with me?"
+
+"I started to go to San Carlos, and I'm going," said Cumnor.
+
+"You're a poor chuckle-headed fool!" burst out Jones, in a rage. "And
+y'u can go, for all I care--you and your Christmas-tree pistol. Like as
+not you won't find your cavalry friend at San Carlos. They've killed a
+lot of them soldiers huntin' Injuns this season. Good-night."
+
+Specimen Jones was gone. Cumnor walked to his blanket-roll, where his
+saddle was slung under the shed. The various doings of the evening had
+bruised his nerves. He spread his blankets among the dry cattle-dung,
+and sat down, taking off a few clothes slowly. He lumped his coat and
+overalls under his head for a pillow, and, putting the despised pistol
+alongside, lay between the blankets. No object showed in the night but
+the tall freight-wagon. The tenderfoot thought he had made altogether a
+fool of himself upon the first trial trip of his manhood, alone on the
+open sea of Arizona. No man, not even Jones now, was his friend. A
+stranger, who could have had nothing against him but his inexperience,
+had taken the trouble to direct him on the wrong road. He did not mind
+definite enemies. He had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and
+would not object to shooting them here; but this impersonal, surrounding
+hostility of the unknown was new and bitter: the cruel, assassinating,
+cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom the vigilantes
+had driven from California. He thought of the nameless human carcass
+that lay near, buried that day, and of the jokes about its mutilations.
+Cumnor was not an innocent boy, either in principles or in practice, but
+this laughter about a dead body had burned into his young, unhardened
+soul. He lay watching with hot, dogged eyes the brilliant stars. A
+passing wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and
+ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly, for the next he
+knew it was the cold air of dawn that made him open his eyes. A numb
+silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot had that moment of
+curiosity as to where he was now which comes to those who have journeyed
+for many days. The Mexicans had already departed with their
+freight-wagon. It was not entirely light, and the embers where these
+early starters had cooked their breakfast lay glowing in the sand across
+the road. The boy remembered seeing a wagon where now he saw only chill,
+distant peaks, and while he lay quiet and warm, shunning full
+consciousness, there was a stir in the cabin, and at Ephraim's voice
+reality broke upon his drowsiness, and he recollected Arizona and the
+keen stress of shifting for himself. He noted the gray paling round the
+grave. Indians? He would catch up with the Mexicans, and travel in their
+company to Grant. Freighters made but fifteen miles in the day, and he
+could start after breakfast and be with them before they stopped to
+noon. Six men need not worry about Apaches, Cumnor thought. The voice of
+Specimen Jones came from the cabin, and sounds of lighting the stove,
+and the growling conversation of men getting up. Cumnor, lying in his
+blankets, tried to overhear what Jones was saying, for no better reason
+than that this was the only man he had met lately who had seemed to care
+whether he were alive or dead. There was the clink of Ephraim's
+whiskey-bottles, and the cheerful tones of old Mr. Adams, saying, "It's
+better 'n brushin' yer teeth"; and then further clinking, and an inquiry
+from Specimen Jones.
+
+"Whose spurs?" said he.
+
+"Mine." This from Mr. Adams.
+
+"How long have they been yourn?"
+
+"Since I got 'em, I guess."
+
+"Well, you've enjoyed them spurs long enough." The voice of Specimen
+Jones now altered in quality. "And you'll give 'em back to that kid."
+
+Muttering followed that the boy could not catch. "You'll give 'em back,"
+repeated Jones. "I seen y'u lift 'em from under that chair when I was in
+the corner."
+
+"That's straight, Mr. Adams," said Ephraim. "I noticed it myself, though
+I had no objections, of course. But Mr. Jones has pointed out--"
+
+"Since when have you growed so honest, Jones?" cackled Mr. Adams, seeing
+that he must lose his little booty. "And why didn't you raise yer
+objections when you seen me do it?"
+
+"I didn't know the kid," Jones explained. "And if it don't strike you
+that game blood deserves respect, why it does strike me."
+
+[Illustration: CUMNOR'S AWAKENING]
+
+Hearing this, the tenderfoot, outside in his shed, thought better of
+mankind and life in general, arose from his nest, and began preening
+himself. He had all the correct trappings for the frontier, and his
+toilet in the shed gave him pleasure. The sun came up, and with a
+stroke struck the world to crystal. The near sand-hills went into
+rose, the crabbed yucca and the mesquite turned transparent, with
+lances and pale films of green, like drapery graciously veiling the
+desert's face, and distant violet peaks and edges framed the vast
+enchantment beneath the liquid exhalations of the sky. The smell of
+bacon and coffee from open windows filled the heart with bravery and
+yearning, and Ephraim, putting his head round the corner, called to
+Cumnor that he had better come in and eat. Jones, already at table,
+gave him the briefest nod; but the spurs were there, replaced as
+Cumnor had left them under a chair in the corner. In Arizona they do
+not say much at any meal, and at breakfast nothing at all; and as
+Cumnor swallowed and meditated, he noticed the cream-colored lady and
+the chain, and he made up his mind he should assert his identity with
+regard to that business, though how and when was not clear to him. He
+was in no great haste to take up his journey. The society of the
+Mexicans whom he must sooner or later overtake did not tempt him. When
+breakfast was done he idled in the cabin, like the other guests, while
+Ephraim and his assistant busied about the premises. But the morning
+grew on, and the guests, after a season of smoking and tilted silence
+against the wall, shook themselves and their effects together,
+saddled, and were lost among the waste thorny hills. Twenty Mile
+became hot and torpid. Jones lay on three consecutive chairs,
+occasionally singing, and old Mr. Adams had not gone away either,
+but watched him, with more tobacco running down his beard.
+
+"Well," said Cumnor, "I'll be going."
+
+"Nobody's stopping y'u," remarked Jones.
+
+"You're going to Tucson?" the boy said, with the chain problem still
+unsolved in his mind. "Good-bye, Mr. Jones. I hope I'll--we'll--"
+
+"That'll do," said Jones; and the tenderfoot, thrown back by this
+severity, went to get his saddle-horse and his burro.
+
+Presently Jones remarked to Mr. Adams that he wondered what Ephraim was
+doing, and went out. The old gentleman was left alone in the room, and
+he swiftly noticed that the belt and pistol of Specimen Jones were left
+alone with him. The accoutrement lay by the chair its owner had been
+lounging in. It is an easy thing to remove cartridges from the chambers
+of a revolver, and replace the weapon in its holster so that everything
+looks quite natural. The old gentleman was entertained with the notion
+that somewhere in Tucson Specimen Jones might have a surprise, and he
+did not take a minute to prepare this, drop the belt as it lay before,
+and saunter innocently out of the saloon. Ephraim and Jones were
+criticising the tenderfoot's property as he packed his burro.
+
+"Do y'u make it a rule to travel with ice-cream?" Jones was inquiring.
+
+"They're for water," Cumnor said. "They told me at Tucson I'd need to
+carry water for three days on some trails."
+
+It was two good-sized milk-cans that he had, and they bounced about on
+the little burro's pack, giving him as much amazement as a jackass can
+feel. Jones and Ephraim were hilarious.
+
+"Don't go without your spurs, Mr. Cumnor," said the voice of old Mr.
+Adams, as he approached the group. His tone was particularly civil.
+
+The tenderfoot had, indeed, forgotten his spurs, and he ran back to get
+them. The cream-colored lady still had the chain hanging upon her, and
+Cumnor's problem was suddenly solved. He put the chain in his pocket,
+and laid the price of one round of drinks for last night's company on
+the shelf below the chromo. He returned with his spurs on, and went to
+his saddle that lay beside that of Specimen Jones under the shed. After
+a moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his
+pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in
+the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale
+bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile
+said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference,
+and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for a last look
+at Jones, he turned once, and saw the three standing, and the chocolate
+brick of the cabin, and the windmill white and idle in the sun.
+
+"He'll be gutted by night," remarked Mr. Adams.
+
+"I ain't buryin' him, then," said Ephraim.
+
+"Nor I," said Specimen Jones. "Well, it's time I was getting to Tucson."
+
+He went to the saloon, strapped on his pistol, saddled, and rode away.
+Ephraim and Mr. Adams returned to the cabin; and here is the final
+conclusion they came to after three hours of discussion as to who took
+the chain and who had it just then:
+
+    _Ephraim._ Jones, he hadn't no cash.
+
+    _Mr. Adams._ The kid, he hadn't no sense.
+
+    _Ephraim._ The kid, he lent the cash to Jones.
+
+    _Mr. Adams._ Jones, he goes off with his chain.
+
+    _Both._ What damn fools everybody is, anyway!
+
+And they went to dinner. But Mr. Adams did not mention his relations
+with Jones's pistol. Let it be said, in extenuation of that
+performance, that Mr. Adams supposed Jones was going to Tucson, where he
+said he was going, and where a job and a salary were awaiting him. In
+Tucson an unloaded pistol in the holster of so handy a man on the drop
+as was Specimen would keep people civil, because they would not know,
+any more than the owner, that it was unloaded; and the mere possession
+of it would be sufficient in nine chances out of ten--though it was
+undoubtedly for the tenth that Mr. Adams had a sneaking hope. But
+Specimen Jones was not going to Tucson. A contention in his mind as to
+whether he would do what was good for himself, or what was good for
+another, had kept him sullen ever since he got up. Now it was settled,
+and Jones in serene humor again. Of course he had started on the Tucson
+road, for the benefit of Ephraim and Mr. Adams.
+
+The tenderfoot rode along. The Arizona sun beat down upon the deadly
+silence, and the world was no longer of crystal, but a mesa, dull and
+gray and hot. The pony's hoofs grated in the gravel, and after a time
+the road dived down and up among lumpy hills of stone and cactus, always
+nearer the fierce glaring Sierra Santa Catalina. It dipped so abruptly
+in and out of the shallow sudden ravines that, on coming up from one of
+these into sight of the country again, the tenderfoot's heart jumped at
+the close apparition of another rider quickly bearing in upon him from
+gullies where he had been moving unseen. But it was only Specimen Jones.
+
+"Hello!" said he, joining Cumnor. "Hot, ain't it?"
+
+"Where are you going?" inquired Cumnor.
+
+"Up here a ways." And Jones jerked his finger generally towards the
+Sierra, where they were heading.
+
+"Thought you had a job in Tucson."
+
+"That's what I have."
+
+Specimen Jones had no more to say, and they rode for a while, their
+ponies' hoofs always grating in the gravel, and the milk-cans lightly
+clanking on the burro's pack. The bunched blades of the yuccas bristled
+steel-stiff, and as far as you could see it was a gray waste of mounds
+and ridges sharp and blunt, up to the forbidding boundary walls of the
+Tortilita one way and the Santa Catalina the other. Cumnor wondered if
+Jones had found the chain. Jones was capable of not finding it for
+several weeks, or of finding it at once and saying nothing.
+
+"You'll excuse my meddling with your business?" the boy hazarded.
+
+Jones looked inquiring.
+
+"Something's wrong with your saddle-pocket."
+
+Specimen saw nothing apparently wrong with it, but perceiving Cumnor was
+grinning, unbuckled the pouch. He looked at the boy rapidly, and looked
+away again, and as he rode, still in silence, he put the chain back
+round his neck below the flannel shirt-collar.
+
+"Say, kid," he remarked, after some time, "what does J stand for?"
+
+"J? Oh, my name! Jock."
+
+"Well, Jock, will y'u explain to me as a friend how y'u ever come to be
+such a fool as to leave yer home--wherever and whatever it was--in
+exchange for this here God-forsaken and iniquitous hole?"
+
+"If you'll explain to me," said the boy, greatly heartened, "how you
+come to be ridin' in the company of a fool, instead of goin' to your job
+at Tucson."
+
+The explanation was furnished before Specimen Jones had framed his
+reply. A burning freight-wagon and five dismembered human stumps lay in
+the road. This was what had happened to the Miguels and Serapios and the
+concertina. Jones and Cumnor, in their dodging and struggles to exclude
+all expressions of growing mutual esteem from their speech, had
+forgotten their journey, and a sudden bend among the rocks where the
+road had now brought them revealed the blood and fire staring them in
+the face. The plundered wagon was three parts empty; its splintered,
+blazing boards slid down as they burned into the fiery heap on the
+ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them,
+bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed
+in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the
+garbage of combat and murder littered the earth, and in the air hung an
+odor that Cumnor knew, though he had never smelled it before. Morsels of
+dropped booty up among the rocks showed where the Indians had gone, and
+one horse remained, groaning, with an accidental arrow in his belly.
+
+"We'll just kill him," said Jones; and his pistol snapped idly, and
+snapped again, as his eye caught a motion--a something--two hundred
+yards up among the bowlders on the hill. He whirled round. The enemy was
+behind them also. There was no retreat. "Yourn's no good!" yelled Jones,
+fiercely, for Cumnor was getting out his little, foolish revolver. "Oh,
+what a trick to play on a man! Drop off yer horse, kid; drop, and do
+like me. Shootin's no good here, even if I was loaded. _They_ shot, and
+look at them now. God bless them ice-cream freezers of yourn, kid! Did
+y'u ever see a crazy man? If you 'ain't, _make it up as y'u go along_!"
+
+More objects moved up among the bowlders. Specimen Jones ripped off
+the burro's pack, and the milk-cans rolled on the ground. The burro
+began grazing quietly, with now and then a step towards new patches of
+grass. The horses stood where their riders had left them, their reins
+over their heads, hanging and dragging. From two hundred yards on the
+hill the ambushed Apaches showed, their dark, scattered figures
+appearing cautiously one by one, watching with suspicion. Specimen
+Jones seized up one milk-can, and Cumnor obediently did the same.
+
+[Illustration: THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON]
+
+"You kin dance, kid, and I kin sing, and we'll go to it," said Jones. He
+rambled in a wavering loop, and diving eccentrically at Cumnor, clashed
+the milk-cans together. "'Es schallt ein Ruf wie Donnerhall,'" he
+bawled, beginning the song of "Die Wacht am Rhein." "Why don't you
+dance?" he shouted, sternly. The boy saw the terrible earnestness of his
+face, and, clashing his milk-cans in turn, he shuffled a sort of jig.
+The two went over the sand in loops, toe and heel; the donkey continued
+his quiet grazing, and the flames rose hot and yellow from the
+freight-wagon. And all the while the stately German hymn pealed among
+the rocks, and the Apaches crept down nearer the bowing, scraping men.
+The sun shone bright, and their bodies poured with sweat. Jones flung
+off his shirt; his damp, matted hair was half in ridges and half glued
+to his forehead, and the delicate gold chain swung and struck his broad,
+naked breast. The Apaches drew nearer again, their bows and arrows held
+uncertainly. They came down the hill, fifteen or twenty, taking a long
+time, and stopping every few yards. The milk-cans clashed, and Jones
+thought he felt the boy's strokes weakening. "Die Wacht am Rhein" was
+finished, and now it was "'Ha-ve you seen my Flora pass this way?'"
+"Y'u mustn't play out, kid," said Jones, very gently. "Indeed y'u
+mustn't;" and he at once resumed his song. The silent Apaches had now
+reached the bottom of the hill. They stood some twenty yards away, and
+Cumnor had a good chance to see his first Indians. He saw them move, and
+the color and slim shape of their bodies, their thin arms, and their
+long, black hair. It went through his mind that if he had no more
+clothes on than that, dancing would come easier. His boots were growing
+heavy to lift, and his overalls seemed to wrap his sinews in wet,
+strangling thongs. He wondered how long he had been keeping this up. The
+legs of the Apaches were free, with light moccasins only half-way to the
+thigh, slenderly held up by strings from the waist. Cumnor envied their
+unencumbered steps as he saw them again walk nearer to where he was
+dancing. It was long since he had eaten, and he noticed a singing
+dulness in his brain, and became frightened at his thoughts, which were
+running and melting into one fixed idea. This idea was to take off his
+boots, and offer to trade them for a pair of moccasins. It terrified
+him--this endless, molten rush of thoughts; he could see them coming in
+different shapes from different places in his head, but they all joined
+immediately, and always formed the same fixed idea. He ground his teeth
+to master this encroaching inebriation of his will and judgment. He
+clashed his can more loudly to wake him to reality, which he still could
+recognize and appreciate. For a time he found it a good plan to listen
+to what Specimen Jones was singing, and tell himself the name of the
+song, if he knew it. At present it was "Yankee Doodle," to which Jones
+was fitting words of his own. These ran, "Now I'm going to try a bluff.
+And mind you do what I do"; and then again, over and over. Cumnor waited
+for the word "bluff"; for it was hard and heavy, and fell into his
+thoughts, and stopped them for a moment. The dance was so long now he
+had forgotten about that. A numbness had been spreading through his
+legs, and he was glad to feel a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. It
+was a piece of gravel that had somehow worked its way in, and was
+rubbing through the skin into the flesh. "That's good," he said, aloud.
+The pebble was eating the numbness away, and Cumnor drove it hard
+against the raw spot, and relished the tonic of its burning friction.
+The Apaches had drawn into a circle. Standing at some interval apart,
+they entirely surrounded the arena. Shrewd, half convinced, and yet with
+awe, they watched the dancers, who clashed their cans slowly now in
+rhythm to Jones's hoarse, parched singing. He was quite master of
+himself, and led the jig round the still blazing wreck of the wagon, and
+circled in figures of eight between the corpses of the Mexicans,
+clashing the milk-cans above each one. Then, knowing his strength was
+coming to an end, he approached an Indian whose splendid fillet and
+trappings denoted him of consequence; and Jones was near shouting with
+relief when the Indian shrank backward. Suddenly he saw Cumnor let his
+can drop, and without stopping to see why, he caught it up, and, slowly
+rattling both, approached each Indian in turn with tortuous steps. The
+circle that had never uttered a sound till now receded, chanting almost
+in a whisper some exorcising song which the man with the fillet had
+begun. They gathered round him, retreating always, and the strain, with
+its rapid muttered words, rose and fell softly among them. Jones had
+supposed the boy was overcome by faintness, and looked to see where he
+lay. But it was not faintness. Cumnor, with his boots off, came by and
+walked after the Indians in a trance. They saw him, and quickened their
+pace, often turning to be sure he was not overtaking them. He called to
+them unintelligibly, stumbling up the sharp hill, and pointing to the
+boots. Finally he sat down. They continued ascending the mountain,
+herding close round the man with the feathers, until the rocks and the
+filmy tangles screened them from sight; and like a wind that hums
+uncertainly in grass, their chanting died away.
+
+The sun was half behind the western range when Jones next moved. He
+called, and, getting no answer, he crawled painfully to where the boy
+lay on the hill. Cumnor was sleeping heavily; his head was hot, and he
+moaned. So Jones crawled down, and fetched blankets and the canteen of
+water. He spread the blankets over the boy, wet a handkerchief and laid
+it on his forehead; then he lay down himself.
+
+The earth was again magically smitten to crystal. Again the sharp cactus
+and the sand turned beautiful, and violet floated among the mountains,
+and rose-colored orange in the sky above them.
+
+"Jock," said Specimen at length.
+
+The boy opened his eyes.
+
+"Your foot is awful, Jock. Can y'u eat?"
+
+"Not with my foot."
+
+"Ah, God bless y'u, Jock! Y'u ain't turruble sick. But _can_ y'u eat?"
+
+Cumnor shook his head.
+
+"Eatin's what y'u need, though. Well, here." Specimen poured a judicious
+mixture of whiskey and water down the boy's throat, and wrapped the
+awful foot in his own flannel shirt. "They'll fix y'u over to Grant.
+It's maybe twelve miles through the canon. It ain't a town any more than
+Carlos is, but the soldiers'll be good to us. As soon as night comes you
+and me must somehow git out of this."
+
+Somehow they did, Jones walking and leading his horse and the
+imperturbable little burro, and also holding Cumnor in the saddle. And
+when Cumnor was getting well in the military hospital at Grant, he
+listened to Jones recounting to all that chose to hear how useful a
+weapon an ice-cream freezer can be, and how if you'll only chase Apaches
+in your stocking feet they are sure to run away. And then Jones and
+Cumnor both enlisted; and I suppose Jones's friend is still expecting
+him in Tucson.
+
+
+
+
+THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU
+
+
+Unskilled at murder and without training in running away, one of the two
+Healy boys had been caught with ease soon after their crime. What they
+had done may be best learned in the following extract from a certain
+official report:
+
+    "The stage was within five miles of its destination when it
+    was confronted by the usual apparition of a masked man
+    levelling a double-barrelled shot-gun at the driver, and the
+    order to 'Pull up, and throw out the express box.' The driver
+    promptly complied. Meanwhile the guard, Buck Montgomery, who
+    occupied a seat inside, from which he caught a glimpse of
+    what was going on, opened fire at the robber, who dropped to
+    his knees at the first shot, but a moment later discharged
+    both barrels of his gun at the stage. The driver dropped from
+    his seat to the foot-board with five buckshot in his right
+    leg near the knee, and two in his left leg; a passenger by
+    his side also dropped with three or four buckshot in his
+    legs. Before the guard could reload, two shots came from
+    behind the bushes back of the exposed robber, and Buck fell
+    to the bottom of the stage mortally wounded--shot through the
+    back. The whole murderous sally occupied but a few seconds,
+    and the order came to 'Drive on.' Officers and citizens
+    quickly started in pursuit, and the next day one of the
+    robbers, a well-known young man of that vicinity, son of a
+    respectable farmer in Fresno County, was overtaken and
+    arrested."
+
+Feeling had run high in the streets of Siskiyou when the prisoner was
+brought into town, and the wretch's life had come near a violent end at
+the hands of the mob, for Buck Montgomery had many friends. But the
+steadier citizens preserved the peace, and the murderer was in the
+prison awaiting his trial by formal law. It was now some weeks since the
+tragedy, and Judge Campbell sat at breakfast reading his paper.
+
+"Why, that is excellent!" he suddenly exclaimed.
+
+"May I ask what is excellent, judge?" inquired his wife. She had a big
+nose.
+
+"They've caught the other one, Amanda. Got him last evening in a
+restaurant at Woodland." The judge read the paragraph to Mrs. Campbell,
+who listened severely. "And so," he concluded, "when to-night's train
+gets up, we'll have them both safe in jail."
+
+Mrs. Campbell dallied over her eggs, shaking her head. Presently she
+sighed. But as Amanda often did this, her husband finished his own eggs
+and took some more. "Poor boy!" said the lady, pensively. "Only
+twenty-three last 12th of October. What a cruel fate!"
+
+Now the judge supposed she referred to the murdered man. "Yes," he said.
+"Vile. You've got him romantically young, my dear. I understood he was
+thirty-five."
+
+"I know his age perfectly, Judge Campbell. I made it my business to find
+out. And to think his brother might actually have been lynched!"
+
+"I never knew that either. You seem to have found out all about the
+family, Amanda. What were they going to lynch the brother for?"
+
+The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the
+table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. "Judge Campbell!"
+she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain
+herself, if possible.
+
+"Well, my dear?"
+
+"You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who
+was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I
+ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail--"
+
+"Oh!" said the enlightened judge.
+
+"--Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of
+Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those
+yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails,
+and made those wicked men stop and go home?"
+
+"Amanda, I believe I recognize myself."
+
+"I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they've caught the
+other one, and he'll be up with the sheriff on to-night's train, and I
+suppose they'll lynch _him_ now!"
+
+"There's not the slightest danger," said the judge. "The town wants them
+to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an
+atrocious act--"
+
+"Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,"
+interrupted Amanda.
+
+"But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Mrs. Campbell, with impatience. "I saw the hole in his
+back. You needn't tell me all that again. If he'd thrown out the express
+box quicker they wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head. Wells and
+Fargo's messengers know that perfectly. It was his own fault. Those boys
+had no employment, and they only wanted money. They did not seek human
+blood, and you needn't tell me they did."
+
+"They shed it, however, Amanda. Quite a lot of it. Stage-driver and a
+passenger too."
+
+"Yes, you keep going back to that as if they'd all been murdered instead
+of only one, and you don't care about those two poor boys locked in a
+dungeon, and their gray-haired father down in Fresno County who never
+did anything wrong at all, and he sixty-one in December."
+
+"The county isn't thinking of hanging the old gentleman," said the
+judge.
+
+"That will do, Judge Campbell," said his lady, rising. "I shall say no
+more. Total silence for the present is best for you and best for me.
+Much best. I will leave you to think of your speech, which was by no
+means silver. Not even life with you for twenty-five years this coming
+10th of July has inured me to insult. I am capable of understanding whom
+they think of hanging, and your speaking to me as if I did not does you
+little credit; for it was a mere refuge from a woman's just accusation
+of heartlessness which you felt, and like a man would not acknowledge;
+and therefore it is that I say no more but leave you to go down the
+street to the Ladies' Lyceum where I shall find companions with some
+spark of humanity in their bosoms and milk of human kindness for those
+whose hasty youth has plunged them in misery and delivered them to the
+hands of those who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of
+nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be
+shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by cruelty and
+despair."
+
+It had begun stately as a dome, with symmetry and punctuation, but the
+climax was untrammelled by a single comma. The orator swept from the
+room, put on her bonnet and shawl, and the judge, still sitting with his
+eggs, heard the front door close behind her. She was president of the
+Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum, and she now trod thitherward through
+Siskiyou.
+
+"I think Amanda will find companions there," mused the judge. "But her
+notions of sympathy beat me." The judge had a small, wise blue eye, and
+he liked his wife more than well. She was sincerely good, and had been
+very courageous in their young days of poverty. She loved their son, and
+she loved him. Only, when she took to talking, he turned up a mental
+coat-collar and waited. But if the male sex did not appreciate her
+powers of eloquence her sister citizens did; and Mrs. Campbell, besides
+presiding at the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum in Siskiyou, often
+addressed female meetings in Ashland, Yreka, and even as far away as
+Tehama and Redding. She found companions this morning.
+
+"To think of it!" they exclaimed, at her news of the capture, for none
+had read the paper. They had been too busy talking of the next debate,
+which was upon the question, "Ought we to pray for rain?" But now they
+instantly forgot the wide spiritual issues raised by this inquiry, and
+plunged into the fascinations of crime, reciting once more to each other
+the details of the recent tragedy. The room hired for the Lyceum was in
+a second story above the apothecary and book shop--a combined enterprise
+in Siskiyou--and was furnished with fourteen rocking-chairs. Pictures of
+Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott ornamented the wall, with a photograph
+from an old master representing Leda and the Swan. This typified the
+Lyceum's approval of Art, and had been presented by one of the husbands
+upon returning from a three days' business trip to San Francisco.
+
+"Dear! dear!" said Mrs. Parsons, after they had all shuddered anew over
+the shooting and the blood. "With so much suffering in the world, how
+fulsome seems that gay music!" She referred to the Siskiyou brass-band,
+which was rehearsing the march from "Fatinitza" in an adjacent room in
+the building. Mrs. Parsons had large, mournful eyes, a poetic
+vocabulary, and wanted to be president of the Lyceum herself.
+
+"Melody has its sphere, Gertrude," said Mrs. Campbell, in a wholesome
+voice. "We must not be morbid. But this I say to you, one and all: Since
+the men of Siskiyou refuse, it is for the women to vindicate the town's
+humanity, and show some sympathy for the captive who arrives to-night."
+
+They all thought so too.
+
+"I do not criticise," continued their president, magnanimously, "nor do
+I complain of any one. Each in this world has his or her mission, and
+the most sacred is Woman's own--to console!"
+
+"True, true!" murmured Mrs. Slocum.
+
+"We must do something for the prisoner, to show him we do not desert him
+in his hour of need," Mrs. Campbell continued.
+
+"We'll go and meet the train!" Mrs. Slocum exclaimed, eagerly. "I've
+never seen a real murderer."
+
+"A bunch of flowers for him," said Mrs. Parsons, closing her mournful
+eyes. "Roses." And she smiled faintly.
+
+"Oh, lilies!" cried little Mrs. Day, with rapture. "Lilies would look
+_real_ nice."
+
+"Don't you think," said Miss Sissons, who had not spoken before, and sat
+a little apart from the close-drawn clump of talkers, "that we might
+send the widow some flowers too, some time?" Miss Sissons was a pretty
+girl, with neat hair. She was engaged to the captain of Siskiyou's
+baseball nine.
+
+"The widow?" Mrs. Campbell looked vague.
+
+"Mrs. Montgomery, I mean--the murdered man's wife. I--I went to see if I
+could do anything, for she has some children; but she wouldn't see me,"
+said Miss Sissons. "She said she couldn't talk to anybody."
+
+"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Campbell. "I dare say it was a dreadful shock to
+her. Yes, dear, we'll attend to her after a while. We'll have her with
+us right along, you know, whereas these unhappy boys may--may be--may
+soon meet a cruel death on the scaffold." Mrs. Campbell evaded the
+phrase "may be hanged" rather skilfully. To her trained oratorical sense
+it had seemed to lack dignity.
+
+"So young!" said Mrs. Day.
+
+"And both so full of promise, to be cut off!" said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"Why, they can't hang them both, I should think," said Miss Sissons. "I
+thought only one killed Mr. Montgomery."
+
+"My dear Louise," said Mrs. Campbell, "they can do anything they want,
+and they will. Shall I ever forget those ruffians who wanted to lynch
+the first one? They'll be on the jury!"
+
+The clump returned to their discussion of the flowers, and Miss Sissons
+presently mentioned she had some errands to do, and departed.
+
+"Would that that girl had more soul!" said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"She has plenty of soul," replied Mrs. Campbell, "but she's under the
+influence of a man. Well, as I was saying, roses and lilies are too
+big."
+
+"Oh, _why_?" said Mrs. Day. "They would _please_ him so."
+
+"He couldn't carry them, Mrs. Day. I've thought it all out. He'll be
+walked to the jail between strong men. We must have some small bokay to
+pin on his coat, for his hands will be shackled."
+
+"You don't say!" cried Mrs. Slocum. "How awful! I must get to that
+train. I've never seen a man in shackles in my life."
+
+So violets were selected; Mrs. Campbell brought some in the afternoon
+from her own borders, and Mrs. Parsons furnished a large pin. She
+claimed also the right to affix the decoration upon the prisoner's
+breast because she had suggested the idea of flowers; but the other
+ladies protested, and the president seemed to think that they all should
+draw lots. It fell to Mrs. Day.
+
+"Now I declare!" twittered the little matron. "I do believe I'll never
+dare."
+
+"You must say something to him," said Amanda; "something fitting and
+choice."
+
+"Oh dear no, Mrs. Campbell. Why, I never--my gracious! Why, if I'd known
+I was expected--Really, I couldn't think--I'll let _you_ do it!"
+
+"We can't hash up the ceremony that way, Mrs. Day," said Amanda,
+severely. And as they all fell arguing, the whistle blew.
+
+"There!" said Mrs. Slocum. "Now you've made me late, and I'll miss the
+shackles and everything."
+
+She flew down-stairs, and immediately the town of Siskiyou saw twelve
+members of the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum follow her in a hasty
+phalanx across the square to the station. The train approached slowly up
+the grade, and by the time the wide smoke-stack of the locomotive was
+puffing its wood smoke in clouds along the platform, Amanda had
+marshalled her company there.
+
+"Where's the gals all goin', Bill?" inquired a large citizen in boots of
+the ticket-agent.
+
+"Nowheres, I guess, Abe," the agent replied. "Leastways, they 'ain't
+bought any tickets off me."
+
+"Maybe they're for stealin' a ride," said Abe.
+
+The mail and baggage cars had passed, and the women watched the
+smoking-car that drew up opposite them. Mrs. Campbell had informed her
+friends that the sheriff always went in the smoker; but on this
+occasion, for some reason, he had brought his prisoner in the Pullman
+sleeper at the rear, some way down the track, and Amanda's vigilant eye
+suddenly caught the group, already descended and walking away. The
+platoon of sympathy set off, and rapidly came up with the sheriff, while
+Bill, Abe, the train conductor, the Pullman conductor, the engineer, and
+the fireman abandoned their duty, and stared, in company with the
+brakemen and many passengers. There was perfect silence but for the
+pumping of the air-brake on the engine. The sheriff, not understanding
+what was coming, had half drawn his pistol; but now, surrounded by
+universal petticoats, he pulled off his hat and grinned doubtfully. The
+friend with him also stood bareheaded and grinning. He was young Jim
+Hornbrook, the muscular betrothed of Miss Sissons. The prisoner could
+not remove his hat, or he would have done so. Miss Sissons, who had come
+to the train to meet her lover, was laughing extremely in the middle of
+the road.
+
+"Take these violets," faltered Mrs. Day, and held out the bunch, backing
+away slightly at the same time.
+
+"Nonsense," said Amanda, stepping forward and grasping the flowers. "The
+women of Siskiyou are with you," she said, "as we are with all the
+afflicted." Then she pinned the violets firmly to the prisoner's flannel
+shirt. His face, at first amazed as the sheriff's and Hornbrook's,
+smoothed into cunning and vanity, while Hornbrook's turned an angry red,
+and the sheriff stopped grinning.
+
+"Them flowers would look better on Buck Montgomery's grave, madam," said
+the officer. "Maybe you'll let us pass now." They went on to the jail.
+
+"Waal," said Abe, on the platform, "that's the most disgustin' fool
+thing I ever did see."
+
+"All aboa-rd!" said the conductor, and the long train continued its way
+to Portland.
+
+The platoon, well content, dispersed homeward to supper, and Jim
+Hornbrook walked home with his girl.
+
+"For Lord's sake, Louise," he said, "who started that move?"
+
+She told him the history of the morning.
+
+"Well," he said, "you tell Mrs. Campbell, with my respects, that she's
+just playing with fire. A good woman like her ought to have more sense.
+Those men are going to have a fair trial."
+
+"She wouldn't listen to me, Jim, not a bit. And, do you know, she really
+didn't seem to feel sorry--except just for a minute--about that poor
+woman."
+
+"Louise, why don't you quit her outfit?"
+
+"Resign from the Lyceum? That's so silly of you, Jim. We're not all
+crazy there; and that," said Miss Sissons, demurely, "is what makes a
+girl like me so valuable!"
+
+"Well, I'm not stuck on having you travel with that lot."
+
+"They speak better English than you do, Jim dear. Don't! in the street!"
+
+"Sho! It's dark now," said Jim. "And it's been three whole days since--"
+But Miss Sissons escaped inside her gate and rang the bell. "Now see
+here, Louise," he called after her, "when I say they're playing with
+fire I mean it. That woman will make trouble in this town."
+
+"She's not afraid," said Miss Sissons. "Don't you know enough about us
+yet to know we can't be threatened?"
+
+"You!" said the young man. "I wasn't thinking of you." And so they
+separated.
+
+Mrs. Campbell sat opposite the judge at supper, and he saw at once from
+her complacent reticence that she had achieved some triumph against his
+principles. She chatted about topics of the day in terms that were
+ingeniously trite. Then a letter came from their son in Denver, and she
+forgot her role somewhat, and read the letter aloud to the judge, and
+wondered wistfully who in Denver attended to the boy's buttons and
+socks; but she made no reference whatever to Siskiyou jail or those
+inside it. Next morning, however, it was the judge's turn to be angry.
+
+"Amanda," he said, over the paper again, "you had better stick to socks,
+and leave criminals alone."
+
+Amanda gazed at space with a calm smile.
+
+"And I'll tell you one thing, my dear," her husband said, more
+incisively, "it don't look well that I should represent the law while my
+wife figures" (he shook the morning paper) "as a public nuisance. And
+one thing more: _Look out!_ For if I know this community, and I think I
+do, you may raise something you don't bargain for."
+
+"I can take care of myself, judge," said Amanda, always smiling. These
+two never were angry both at once, and to-day it was the judge that
+sailed out of the house. Amanda pounced instantly upon the paper. The
+article was headed "Sweet Violets." But the editorial satire only
+spurred the lady to higher efforts. She proceeded to the Lyceum, and
+found that "Sweet Violets" had been there before her. Every woman held a
+copy, and the fourteen rocking-chairs were swooping up and down like
+things in a factory. In the presence of this blizzard, Mount Shasta,
+Lucretia Mott, and even Leda and the Swan looked singularly serene on
+their wall, although on the other side of the wall the "Fatinitza" march
+was booming brilliantly. But Amanda quieted the storm. It was her gift
+to be calm when others were not, and soon the rocking-chairs were merely
+rippling.
+
+"The way my boys scolded me--" began Mrs. Day.
+
+"For men I care not," said Mrs. Parsons. "But when my own sister
+upbraids me in a public place--" The lady's voice ceased, and she raised
+her mournful eyes. It seemed she had encountered her unnatural relative
+at the post-office. Everybody had a tale similar. Siskiyou had denounced
+their humane act.
+
+"Let them act ugly," said Mrs. Slocum. "We will not swerve."
+
+"I sent roses this morning," said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+"_Did_ you, dear?" said Mrs. Day. "My lilies shall go this afternoon."
+
+"Here is a letter from the prisoner," said Amanda, producing the
+treasure; and they huddled to hear it. It was very affecting. It
+mentioned the violets blooming beside the hard couch, and spoke of
+prayer.
+
+"He had lovely hair," said Mrs. Slocum.
+
+"_So_ brown!" said Mrs. Day.
+
+"Black, my dear, and curly."
+
+"Light brown. I was a good deal closer, Susan--"
+
+"Never mind about his hair," said Amanda. "We are here not to flinch. We
+must act. Our course is chosen, and well chosen. The prison fare is a
+sin, and a beefsteak goes to them both at noon from my house."
+
+"Oh, why didn't we ever think of that before?" cried the ladies, in an
+ecstasy, and fell to planning a series of lunches in spite of what
+Siskiyou might say or do. Siskiyou did not say very much; but it looked;
+and the ladies waxed more enthusiastic, luxuriating in a sense of
+martyrdom because now the prisoners were stopped writing any more
+letters to them. This was doubtless a high-handed step, and it set
+certain pulpits preaching about love. The day set for the trial was
+approaching; Amanda and her flock were going. Prayer-meetings were held,
+food and flowers for the two in jail increased in volume, and every day
+saw some of the Lyceum waiting below the prisoners' barred windows till
+the men inside would thrust a hand through and wave to them; then they
+would shake a handkerchief in reply, and go away thrilled to talk it
+over at the Lyceum. And Siskiyou looked on all the while, darker and
+darker.
+
+Then finally Amanda had a great thought. Listening to "Fatinitza" one
+morning, she suddenly arose and visited Herr Schwartz, the band-master.
+Herr Schwartz was a wise and well-educated German. They had a lengthy
+conference.
+
+"I don't pelief dot vill be very goot," said the band-master.
+
+But at that Amanda talked a good deal; and the worthy Teuton was soon
+bewildered, and at last gave a dubious consent, "since it would blease
+de ladies."
+
+The president of the Lyceum arranged the coming event after her own
+heart. The voice of Woman should speak in Siskiyou. The helpless victims
+of male prejudice and the law of the land were to be flanked with
+consolation and encouragement upon the eve of their ordeal in court. In
+their lonely cell they were to feel that there were those outside whose
+hearts beat with theirs. The floral tribute was to be sumptuous, and
+Amanda had sent to San Francisco for pound-cake. The special quality she
+desired could not be achieved by the Siskiyou confectioner.
+
+Miss Sissons was not a party to this enterprise, and she told its
+various details to Jim Hornbrook, half in anger, half in derision. He
+listened without comment, and his face frightened her a little.
+
+"Jim, what's the matter?" said she.
+
+"Are you going to be at that circus?" he inquired.
+
+"I thought I might just look on, you know," said Miss Sissons. "Mrs.
+Campbell and a brass-band--"
+
+"You'll stay in the house that night, Louise."
+
+"Why, the ring isn't on my finger yet," laughed the girl, "the fatal
+promise of obedience--" But she stopped, perceiving her joke was not a
+good one. "Of course, Jim, if you feel that way," she finished. "Only
+I'm grown up, and I like reasons."
+
+"Well--that's all right too."
+
+"Ho, ho! All right! Thank you, sir. Dear me!"
+
+"Why, it ain't to please me, Louise; indeed it ain't. I can't swear
+everything won't be nice and all right and what a woman could be mixed
+up in, but--well, how should you know what men are, anyway, when they've
+been a good long time getting mad, and are mad all through? That's what
+this town is to-day, Louise."
+
+"I don't know," said Miss Sissons, "and I'm sure I'd rather not know."
+And so she gave her promise. "But I shouldn't suppose," she added, "that
+the men of Siskiyou, mad or not, would forget that women are women."
+
+Jim laughed. "Oh no," he said, "they ain't going to forget that."
+
+The appointed day came; and the train came, several hours late, bearing
+the box of confectionery, addressed to the Ladies' Reform and Literary
+Lyceum. Bill, the ticket-agent, held his lantern over it on the
+platform.
+
+"That's the cake," said he.
+
+"What cake?" Abe inquired.
+
+Bill told him the rumor.
+
+"Cake?" repeated Abe. "Fer them?" and he tilted his head towards the
+jail. "Will you say that again, friend? I ain't clear about it. _Cake_,
+did ye say?"
+
+"Pound-cake," said Bill. "Ordered special from San Francisco."
+
+Now pound-cake for adults is considered harmless. But it is curious how
+unwholesome a harmless thing can be if administered at the wrong time.
+The gaunt, savage-looking Californian went up to the box slowly. Then he
+kicked it lightly with his big boot, seeming to listen to its
+reverberation. Then he read the address. Then he sat down on the box to
+take a think. After a time he began speaking aloud. "They hold up a
+stage," he said, slowly. "They lay up a passenger fer a month. And they
+lame Bob Griffiths fer life. And then they do up Buck. Shoot a hole
+through his spine. And I helped bury him; fer I liked Buck." The speaker
+paused, and looked at the box. Then he got up. "I hain't attended their
+prayer-meetin's," said he, "and I hain't smelt their flowers. Such
+perfume's liable to make me throw up. But I guess I'll hev a look at
+their cake."
+
+He went to the baggage-room and brought an axe. The axe descended, and a
+splintered slat flew across the platform. "There's a lot of cake," said
+Abe. The top of the packing-case crashed on the railroad track, and
+three new men gathered to look on. "It's fresh cake too," remarked the
+destroyer. The box now fell to pieces, and the tattered paper wrapping
+was ripped away. "Step up, boys," said Abe, for a little crowd was there
+now. "Soft, ain't it?" They slung the cake about and tramped it in the
+grime and oil, and the boards of the box were torn apart and whirled
+away. There was a singular and growing impulse about all this. No one
+said anything; they were very quiet; yet the crowd grew quickly, as if
+called together by something in the air. One voice said, "Don't forgit
+we're all relyin' on yer serenade, Mark," and this raised a strange
+united laugh that broke brief and loud, and stopped, leaving the silence
+deeper than before. Mark and three more left, and walked towards the
+Lyceum. They were members of the Siskiyou band, and as they went one
+said that the town would see an interesting trial in the morning. Soon
+after they had gone the crowd moved from the station, compact and swift.
+
+Meanwhile the Lyceum had been having disappointments. When the train was
+known to be late, Amanda had abandoned bestowing the cake until morning.
+But now a horrid thing had happened: the Siskiyou band refused its
+services! The rocking-chairs were plying strenuously; but Amanda strode
+up and down in front of Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott.
+
+Herr Schwartz entered. "It's all right, madam," said he. "My trombone
+haf come back, und--"
+
+"You'll play?" demanded the president.
+
+"We blay for de ladies."
+
+The rocking-chairs were abandoned; the Lyceum put on its bonnet and
+shawl, and marshalled down-stairs with the band.
+
+"Ready," said Amanda.
+
+"Ready," said Herr Schwartz to his musicians. "Go a leedle easy mit der
+Allegro, or we bust 'Fatinitza.'"
+
+The spirited strains were lifted in Siskiyou, and the procession was
+soon at the jail in excellent order. They came round the corner with the
+trombone going as well as possible. Two jerking bodies dangled at the
+end of ropes, above the flare of torches. Amanda and her flock were
+shrieking.
+
+"So!" exclaimed Herr Schwartz. "Dot was dose Healy boys we haf come to
+gif serenade." He signed to stop the music.
+
+"No you don't," said two of the masked crowd, closing in with pistols.
+"You'll play fer them fellers till you're told to quit."
+
+"Cerdainly," said the philosophical Teuton. "Only dey gif brobably very
+leedle attention to our Allegro."
+
+So "Fatinitza" trumpeted on while the two on the ropes twisted, and grew
+still by-and-by. Then the masked men let the band go home. The Lyceum
+had scattered and fled long since, and many days passed before it
+revived again to civic usefulness, nor did its members find comfort from
+their men. Herr Schwartz gave a parting look at the bodies of the
+lynched murderers. "My!" said he, "das Ewigweibliche haf draw them apove
+sure enough."
+
+Miss Sissons next day was walking and talking off her shock and
+excitement with her lover. "And oh, Jim," she concluded, after they had
+said a good many things, "you hadn't anything to do with it, had you?"
+The young man did not reply, and catching a certain expression on his
+face, she hastily exclaimed: "Never mind! I don't want to know--ever!"
+
+So James Hornbrook kissed his sweetheart for saying that, and they
+continued their walk among the pleasant hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENERAL'S BLUFF
+
+
+The troops this day had gone into winter-quarters, and sat down to kill
+the idle time with pleasure until spring. After two hundred and forty
+days it is a good thing to sit down. The season had been spent in
+trailing, and sometimes catching, small bands of Indians. These had
+taken the habit of relieving settlers of their cattle and the tops of
+their heads. The weather-beaten troops had scouted over some two
+thousand aimless, veering miles, for the savages were fleet and mostly
+invisible, and knew the desert well. So, while the year turned, and the
+heat came, held sway, and went, the ragged troopers on the frontier were
+led an endless chase by the hostiles, who took them back and forth over
+flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or
+a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze
+at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were
+glad to march into Boise Barracks this morning by eleven, and see a
+stove.
+
+They rolled for a moment on their bunks to get the feel of a bunk again
+after two hundred and forty days; they ate their dinner at a table;
+those who owned any further baggage than that which partially covered
+their nakedness unpacked it, perhaps nailed up a photograph or two, and
+found it grateful to sit and do nothing under a roof and listen to the
+grated snow whip the windows of the gray sandstone quarters. Such
+comfort, and the prospect of more ahead, of weeks of nothing but post
+duty and staying in the same place, obliterated Dry Camp, Cow Creek
+Lake, the blizzard on Meacham's Hill, the horse-killing in the John Day
+Valley, Saw-Tooth stampede, and all the recent evils of the past; the
+quarters hummed with cheerfulness. The nearest railroad was some four
+hundred miles to the southeast, slowly constructing to meet the next
+nearest, which was some nine hundred to the southeast; but Boise City
+was only three-quarters of a mile away, the largest town in the
+Territory, the capital, not a temperance town, a winter resort; and
+several hundred people lived in it, men and women, few of whom ever died
+in their beds. The coming days and nights were a luxury to think of.
+
+"Blamed if there ain't a real tree!" exclaimed Private Jones.
+
+"Thet eer ain't no tree, ye plum; thet's the flag-pole 'n' th' Merrickin
+flag," observed a civilian. His name was Jack Long, and he was
+pack-master.
+
+Sergeant Keyser, listening, smiled. During the winter of '64-65 he had
+been in command of the first battalion of his regiment, but, on a theory
+of education, had enlisted after the war. This being known, held the men
+more shy of him than was his desire.
+
+Jones continued to pick his banjo, while a boyish trooper with tough
+black hair sat near him and kept time with his heels. "It's a
+cottonwood-tree I was speakin' of," observed Jones. There was one--a
+little, shivering white stalk. It stood above the flat where the
+barracks were, on a bench twenty or thirty feet higher, on which were
+built the officers' quarters. The air was getting dim with the fine,
+hard snow that slanted through it. The thermometer was ten above out
+there. At the mere sight and thought Mr. Long produced a flat bottle,
+warm from proximity to his flesh. Jones swallowed some drink, and looked
+at the little tree. "Snakes! but it feels good," said he, "to get
+something inside y'u and be inside yerself. What's the tax at Mike's
+dance-house now?"
+
+"Dance 'n' drinks fer two fer one dollar," responded Mr. Long,
+accurately. He was sixty, but that made no difference.
+
+"You and me'll take that in, Jock," said Jones to his friend, the
+black-haired boy. "'Sigh no more, ladies,'" he continued, singing. "The
+blamed banjo won't accompany that," he remarked, and looked out again at
+the tree. "There's a chap riding into the post now. Shabby-lookin'.
+Mebbe he's got stuff to sell."
+
+Jack Long looked up on the bench at a rusty figure moving slowly through
+the storm. "Th' ole man!" he said.
+
+"He ain't specially old," Jones answered. "They're apt to be older, them
+peddlers."
+
+"Peddlers! Oh, ye-es." A seizure of very remarkable coughing took Jack
+Long by the throat; but he really had a cough, and, on the fit's leaving
+him, swallowed a drink, and offered his bottle in a manner so cold and
+usual that Jones forgot to note anything but the excellence of the
+whiskey. Mr. Long winked at Sergeant Keyser; he thought it a good plan
+not to inform his young friends, not just yet at any rate, that their
+peddler was General Crook. It would be pleasant to hear what else they
+might have to say.
+
+The General had reached Boise City that morning by the stage, quietly
+and unknown, as was his way. He had come to hunt Indians in the district
+of the Owyhee. Jack Long had discovered this, but only a few had been
+told the news, for the General wished to ask questions and receive
+answers, and to find out about all things; and he had noticed that this
+is not easy when too many people know who you are. He had called upon a
+friend or two in Boise, walked about unnoticed, learned a number of
+facts, and now, true to his habit, entered the post wearing no uniform,
+none being necessary under the circumstances, and unattended by a single
+orderly. Jones and the black-haired Cumnor hoped he was a peddler, and
+innocently sat looking out of the window at him riding along the bench
+in front of the quarters, and occasionally slouching his wide, dark
+hat-brim against the stinging of the hard flakes. Jack Long, old and
+much experienced with the army, had scouted with Crook before, and knew
+him and his ways well. He also looked out of the window, standing behind
+Jones and Cumnor, with a huge hairy hand on a shoulder of each, and a
+huge wink again at Keyser.
+
+"Blamed if he 'ain't stopped in front of the commanding officer's," said
+Jones.
+
+"Lor'!" said Mr. Long, "there's jest nothin' them peddlers won't do."
+
+"They ain't likely to buy anything off him in there," said Cumnor.
+
+"Mwell, ef he's purvided with any _kind_ o' Injun cur'os'tees, the
+missis she'll fly right on to 'em. Sh' 'ain't been merried out yere only
+haff'n year, 'n' when she spies feathers 'n' bead truck 'n' buckskin fer
+sale sh' hollers like a son of a gun. Enthoosiastic, ye know."
+
+"He 'ain't got much of a pack," Jones commented, and at that moment
+"stables" sounded, and the men ran out to form and march to their
+grooming. Jack Long stood at the door and watched them file through the
+snow.
+
+Very few enlisted men of the small command that had come in this morning
+from its campaign had ever seen General Crook. Jones, though not new to
+the frontier, had not been long in the army. He and Cumnor had enlisted
+in a happy-go-lucky manner together at Grant, in Arizona, when the
+General was elsewhere. Discipline was galling to his vagrant spirit, and
+after each pay-day he had generally slept off the effects in the
+guard-house, going there for other offences between-whiles; but he was
+not of the stuff that deserts; also, he was excellent tempered, and his
+captain liked him for the way in which he could shoot Indians. Jack Long
+liked him too; and getting always a harmless pleasure from the mistakes
+of his friends, sincerely trusted there might be more about the peddler.
+He was startled at hearing his name spoken in his ear.
+
+"_Nah!_ Johnny, how you get on?"
+
+"Hello, Sarah! Kla-how-ya, six?" said Long, greeting in Chinook the
+squaw interpreter who had approached him so noiselessly. "Hy-as kloshe
+o-coke sun" (It is a beautiful day).
+
+The interpreter laughed--she had a broad, sweet, coarse face, and
+laughed easily--and said in English, "You hear about E-egante?"
+
+Long had heard nothing recently of this Pah-Ute chieftain.
+
+"He heap bad," continued Sarah, laughing broadly. "Come round ranch up
+here--"
+
+"Anybody killed?" Long interrupted.
+
+"No. All run away quick. Meester Dailey, he old man, he run all same
+young one. His old woman she run all same man. Get horse. Run away
+quick. Hu-hu!" and Sarah's rich mockery sounded again. No tragedy had
+happened this time, and the squaw narrated her story greatly to the
+relish of Mr. Long. This veteran of trails and mines had seen too much
+of life's bleakness not to cherish whatever of mirth his days might
+bring.
+
+"Didn't burn the house?" he said.
+
+"Not burn. Just make heap mess. Cut up feather-bed hy-as ten-as (very
+small) and eat big dinner, hu-hu! Sugar, onions, meat, eat all. Then
+they find litt' cats walkin' round there."
+
+"Lor'!" said Mr. Long, deeply interested, "they didn't eat _them_?"
+
+"No. Not eat litt' cats. Put 'em two--man-cat and woman-cat--in
+molasses; put 'em in feather-bed; all same bird. Then they hunt for
+whiskey, break everything, hunt all over, ha-lo whiskey!" Sarah shook
+her head. "Meester Dailey he good man. Hy-iu temperance. Drink water.
+They find his medicine; drink all up; make awful sick."
+
+"I guess 'twar th' ole man's liniment," muttered Jack Long.
+
+"Yas, milinut. They can't walk. Stay there long time, then Meester
+Dailey come back with friends. They think Injuns all gone; make noise,
+and E-egante he hear him come, and he not very sick. Run away. Some more
+run. But two Injuns heap sick; can't run. Meester Dailey he come round
+the corner; see awful mess everywhere; see two litt' cats sittin' in
+door all same bird, sing very loud. Then he see two Injuns on ground.
+They dead now."
+
+"Mwell," said Long, "none of eer'll do. We'll hev to ketch E-egante."
+
+"A--h!" drawled Sarah the squaw, in musical derision. "Maybe no catch
+him. All same jack rabbit."
+
+"Jest ye wait, Sarah; Gray Fox hez come."
+
+"Gen'l Crook!" said the squaw. "He come! Ho! He heap savvy." She
+stopped, and laughed again, like a pleased child. "Maybe no catch
+E-egante," she added, rolling her pretty brown eyes at Jack Long.
+
+"You know E-egante?" he demanded.
+
+"Yas, one time. Long time now. I litt' girl then." But Sarah remembered
+that long time, when she slept in a tent and had not been captured and
+put to school. And she remembered the tall young boys whom she used to
+watch shoot arrows, and the tallest, who shot most truly--at least, he
+certainly did now in her imagination. He had never spoken to her or
+looked at her. He was a boy of fourteen and she a girl of eight. Now she
+was twenty-five. Also she was tame and domesticated, with a white
+husband who was not bad to her, and children for each year of wedlock,
+who would grow up to speak English better than she could, and her own
+tongue not at all. And E-egante was not tame, and still lived in a tent.
+Sarah regarded white people as her friends, but she was proud of being
+an Indian, and she liked to think that her race could outwit the soldier
+now and then. She laughed again when she thought of old Mrs. Dailey
+running from E-egante.
+
+"What's up with ye, Sarah?" said Jack Long, for the squaw's laughter had
+come suddenly on a spell of silence.
+
+"He!" said she. "All same jack-rabbit. No catch him." She stood shaking
+her head at Long, and showing her white, regular teeth. Then abruptly
+she went away to her tent without any word, not because she was in
+ill-humor or had thought of something, but because she was an Indian and
+had thought of nothing, and had no more to say. She met the men
+returning from the stables; admired Jones and smiled at him, upon which
+he murmured "Oh fie!" as he passed her. The troop broke ranks and
+dispersed, to lounge and gossip until mess-call. Cumnor and Jones were
+putting a little snow down each other's necks with friendly profanity,
+when Jones saw the peddler standing close and watching them. A high
+collar of some ragged fur was turned up round his neck, disguising the
+character of the ancient army overcoat to which it was attached, and
+spots and long stains extended down the legs of his corduroys to the
+charred holes at the bottom, where the owner had scorched them warming
+his heels and calves at many camp-fires.
+
+"Hello, uncle," said Jones. "What y'u got in your pack?" He and Cumnor
+left their gambols and eagerly approached, while Mr. Jack Long, seeing
+the interview, came up also to hear it. "'Ain't y'u got something to
+sell?" continued Jones. "Y'u haven't gone and dumped yer whole outfit at
+the commanding officer's, have y'u now?"
+
+"I'm afraid I have." The low voice shook ever so little, and if Jones
+had looked he would have seen a twinkle come and go in the gray-blue
+eyes.
+
+"We've been out eight months, y'u know, fairly steady," pursued Jones,
+"and haven't seen nothing; and we'd buy most anything that ain't too
+damn bad," he concluded, plaintively.
+
+Mr. Long, in the background, was whining to himself with joy, and he now
+urgently beckoned Keyser to come and hear this.
+
+"If you've got some cheap poker chips," suggested Cumnor.
+
+"And say, uncle," said Jones, raising his voice, for the peddler was
+moving away, "decks, and tobacco better than what they keep at the
+commissary. Me and my friend'll take some off your hands. And if you're
+comin' with new stock to-morrow, uncle" (Jones was now shouting after
+him), "why, we're single men, and y'u might fetch along a couple of
+squaws!"
+
+"Holy smoke!" screeched Mr. Long, dancing on one leg.
+
+"What's up with you, y'u ape?" inquired Specimen Jones. He looked at the
+departing peddler and saw Sergeant Keyser meet him and salute with
+stern, soldierly aspect. Then the peddler shook hands with the sergeant,
+seemed to speak pleasantly, and again Keyser saluted as he passed on.
+"What's that for?" Jones asked, uneasily. "Who is that hobo?"
+
+But Mr. Long was talking to himself in a highly moralizing strain. "It
+ain't every young enlisted man," he was saying, "ez hez th' privilege of
+explainin' his wants at headquarters."
+
+"Jones," said Sergeant Keyser, arriving, "I've a compliment for you.
+General Crook said you were a fine-looking man."
+
+"General?--What's that?--Where did y'u see--What? _Him?_" The
+disgusting truth flashed clear on Jones. Uttering a single
+disconcerted syllable of rage, he wheeled and went by himself into
+the barracks, and lay down solitary on his bunk and read a newspaper
+until mess-call without taking in a word of it. "If they go to put
+me in the mill fer that," he said, sulkily, to many friends who brought
+him their congratulations, "I'm going to give 'em what I think about
+wearin' disguises."
+
+[Illustration: "'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'"]
+
+"What do you think, Specimen?" said one.
+
+"Give it to us now, Specimen," said another.
+
+"Against the law, ain't it, Specimen?"
+
+"Begosh!" said Jack Long, "ef thet's so, don't lose no time warnin' the
+General, Specimen. Th' ole man'd hate to be arrested."
+
+And Specimen Jones told them all to shut their heads.
+
+But no thought was more distant from General Crook's busy mind than
+putting poor Jones in the guard-house. The trooper's willingness, after
+eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to
+his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight
+months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often
+dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of
+life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The
+American "statesman" does not care about our army until it becomes
+necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew all
+this well; and realizing that these soldiers, who had come into
+winter-quarters this morning at eleven, had earned a holiday, he was
+sorry to feel obliged to start them out again to-morrow morning at two;
+for this was what he had decided upon.
+
+He had received orders to drive on the reservation the various small
+bands of Indians that were roving through the country of the Snake and
+its tributaries, a danger to the miners in the Bannock Basin, and to
+the various ranches in west Idaho and east Oregon. As usual, he had
+been given an insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he
+had been instructed by the "statesmen" to do it without violence--that
+is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor
+Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to,
+pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a "statesman"
+would achieve it. The force at the General's disposal was the garrison
+at Boise Barracks--one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The
+latter was not adapted to the matter in hand--rapid marching and
+surprises; all it could be used for was as a reinforcement, and,
+moreover, somebody must be left at Boise Barracks. The cavalry had had
+its full dose of scouting and skirmishing and long exposed marches, the
+horses were poor, and nobody had any trousers to speak of. Also, the
+troop was greatly depleted; it numbered forty men. Forty had deserted,
+and three--a sergeant and three privates--had cooked and eaten a
+vegetable they had been glad to dig up one day, and had spent the
+ensuing forty-five minutes in attempting to make their ankles beat the
+backs of their heads; after that the captain had read over them a
+sentence beginning, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time
+to live, and is full of misery"; and after that the camp was referred to
+as Wild Carrot Camp, because the sergeant had said the vegetable was
+wild carrot, whereas it had really been wild parsnip, which is quite
+another thing.
+
+General Crook shook his head over what he saw. The men were
+ill-provided, the commissary and the quartermaster department were
+ill-provided; but it would have to do; the "statesmen" said our army
+was an extravagance. The Indians must be impressed and intimidated by
+the unlimited resources which the General had--not. Having come to this
+conclusion, he went up to the post commander's, and at supper astonished
+that officer by casual remarks which revealed a knowledge of the
+surrounding country, the small streams, the best camps for pasture,
+spots to avoid on account of bad water, what mules had sore backs, and
+many other things that the post commander would have liked dearly to ask
+the General where and when he had learned, only he did not dare. He did
+not even venture to ask him what he was going to do. Neither did Captain
+Glynn, who had been asked to meet the General. The General soon told
+them, however. "It may be a little cold," he concluded.
+
+"To-morrow, sir?" This from Captain Glynn. He had come in with the forty
+that morning. He had been enjoying his supper very much.
+
+"I think so," said the General. "This E-egante is likely to make trouble
+if he is not checked." Then, understanding the thoughts of Captain
+Glynn, he added, with an invisible smile, "_You_ need no preparations.
+You're in marching order. It's not as if your men had been here a long
+time and had to get ready for a start."
+
+"Oh no," said Glynn, "it isn't like that." He was silent. "I think, if
+you'll excuse me, General," he said next, "I'll see my sergeant and give
+some orders."
+
+"Certainly. And, Captain Glynn, I took the liberty of giving a few
+directions myself. We'll take an A tent, you know, for you and me. I see
+Keyser is sergeant in F troop. Glad we have a non-commissioned officer
+so competent. Haven't seen him since '64, at Winchester. Why, it's
+cleared off, I declare!"
+
+It had, and the General looked out of the open door as Captain Glynn,
+departing, was pulling at his cigar. "How beautiful the planets are!"
+exclaimed Crook. "Look at Jupiter--there, just to the left of that
+little cottonwood-tree. Haven't you often noticed how much finer the
+stars shine in this atmosphere than in the East? Oh, captain! I forgot
+to speak of extra horseshoes. I want some brought along."
+
+"I'll attend to it, General."
+
+"They shouldn't be too large. These California fourteen-and-a-half
+horses have smallish hoofs."
+
+"I'll see the blacksmith myself, General."
+
+"Thank you. Good-night. And just order fresh stuffing put into the
+aparejos. I noticed three that had got lumpy." And the General shut the
+door and went to wipe out the immaculate barrels of his shot-gun; for
+besides Indians there were grouse among the hills where he expected to
+go.
+
+Captain Glynn, arriving at his own door, stuck his glowing cigar against
+the thermometer hanging outside: twenty-three below zero. "Oh Lord!"
+said the captain, briefly. He went in and told his striker to get
+Sergeant Keyser. Then he sat down and waited. "'Look at Jupiter!'" he
+muttered, angrily. "What an awful old man!"
+
+It was rather awful. The captain had not supposed generals in the first
+two hours of their arrival at a post to be in the habit of finding out
+more about your aparejos than you knew yourself. But old the General was
+not. At the present day many captains are older than Crook was then.
+
+Down at the barracks there was the same curiosity about what the "Old
+Man" was going to do as existed at the post commander's during the early
+part of supper. It pleased the cavalry to tell the infantry that the
+Old Man proposed to take the infantry to the Columbia River next week;
+and the infantry replied to the cavalry that they were quite right as to
+the river and the week, and it was hard luck the General needed only
+mounted troops on this trip. Others had heard he had come to superintend
+the building of a line of telegraph to Klamath, which would be a good
+winter's job for somebody; but nobody supposed that anything would
+happen yet awhile.
+
+And then a man came in and told them the General had sent his boots to
+the saddler to have nails hammered in the soles.
+
+"That eer means business," said Jack Long, "'n' I guess I'll nail up mee
+own cowhides."
+
+"Jock," said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, "you and me 'ain't got any soles
+to ourn because they're contract boots, y'u see. I'll nail up yer feet
+if y'u say so. It's liable to be slippery."
+
+Cumnor did not take in the situation at once. "What's your hurry?" he
+inquired of Jack Long. Therefore it was explained to him that when
+General Crook ordered his boots fixed you might expect to be on the road
+shortly. Cumnor swore some resigned, unemphatic oaths, fondly supposing
+that "shortly" meant some time or other; but hearing in the next five
+minutes the definite fact that F troop would get up at two, he made use
+of profound and thorough language, and compared the soldier with the
+slave.
+
+"Why, y'u talk almost like a man, Jock," said Specimen Jones. "Blamed if
+y'u don't sound pretty near growed up."
+
+Cumnor invited Jones to mind his business.
+
+"Yer muss-tache has come since Arizona," continued Jones, admiringly,
+"and yer blue eye is bad-lookin'--worse than when we shot at yer heels
+and y'u danced fer us."
+
+"I thought they were going to give us a rest," mumbled the youth,
+flushing. "I thought we'd be let stay here a spell."
+
+"I thought so too, Jock. A little monotony would be fine variety. But a
+man must take his medicine, y'u know, and not squeal." Jones had lowered
+his voice, and now spoke without satire to the boy whom he had in a
+curious manner taken under his protection.
+
+"Look at what they give us for a blanket to sleep in," said Cumnor. "A
+fellow can see to read the newspaper through it."
+
+"Look at my coat, Cumnor." It was Sergeant Keyser showing the article
+furnished the soldier by the government. "You can spit through that." He
+had overheard their talk, and stepped up to show that all were in the
+same box. At his presence reticence fell upon the privates, and Cumnor
+hauled his black felt hat down tight in embarrassment, which strain
+split it open half-way round his head. It was another sample of
+regulation clothing, and they laughed at it.
+
+"We all know the way it is," said Keyser, "and I've seen it a big sight
+worse. Cumnor, I've a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get
+back."
+
+And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected
+to sleep in for some undisturbed weeks, and by four o'clock had eaten
+its well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee, and was following
+the "awful old man" down the north bank of the Boise, leaving the
+silent, dead, wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile
+behind in the darkness. The mountains south stood distant, ignoble,
+plain-featured heights, looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing
+stars and the slice of hard, sharp-edged moon, and the surrounding
+plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and
+nothing with desolate perpetuity. The snowfall was light and dry as
+sand, and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or
+knoll. The column moved through the dead polar silence, scarcely
+breaking it. Now and then a hoof rang on a stone, here and there a
+bridle or a sabre clinked lightly; but it was too cold and early for
+talking, and the only steady sound was the flat, can-like tankle of the
+square bell that hung on the neck of the long-eared leader of the
+pack-train. They passed the Dailey ranch, and saw the kittens and the
+liniment-bottle, but could get no information as to what way E-egante
+had gone. The General did not care for that, however; he had devised his
+own route for the present, after a talk with the Indian guides. At the
+second dismounting during march he had word sent back to the pack-train
+not to fall behind, and the bell was to be taken off if the rest of the
+mules would follow without the sound of its shallow music. No wind moved
+the weeds or shook the stiff grass, and the rising sun glittered pink on
+the patched and motley-shirted men as they blew on their red hands or
+beat them against their legs. Some were lucky enough to have woollen or
+fur gloves, but many had only the white cotton affairs furnished by the
+government. Sarah the squaw laughed at them: the interpreter was warm as
+she rode in her bright green shawl. While the dismounted troopers
+stretched their limbs during the halt, she remained on her pony talking
+to one and another.
+
+"Gray Fox heap savvy," said she to Mr. Long. "He heap get up in the
+mornin'."
+
+"Thet's what he does, Sarah."
+
+"Yas. No give soldier hy-as Sunday" (a holiday).
+
+"No, no," assented Mr. Long. "Gray Fox go teh-teh" (trot).
+
+"Maybe he catch E-egante, maybe put him in skookum-house (prison)?"
+suggested Sarah.
+
+"Oh no! Lor'! E-egante good Injun. White Father he feed him. Give him
+heap clothes," said Mr. Long.
+
+"A--h!" drawled Sarah, dubiously, and rode by herself.
+
+"You'll need watchin'," muttered Jack Long.
+
+The trumpet sounded, the troopers swung into their saddles, and the line
+of march was taken up as before, Crook at the head of the column, his
+ragged fur collar turned up, his corduroys stuffed inside a wrinkled
+pair of boots, the shot-gun balanced across his saddle, and nothing to
+reveal that he was any one in particular, unless you saw his face. As
+the morning grew bright, and empty, silent Idaho glistened under the
+clear blue, the General talked a little to Captain Glynn.
+
+"E-egante will have crossed Snake River, I think," said he. "I shall try
+to do that to-day; but we must be easy on those horses of yours. We
+ought to be able to find these Indians in three days."
+
+"If I were a lusty young chief," said Glynn, "I should think it pretty
+tough to be put on a reservation for dipping a couple of kittens in the
+molasses."
+
+"So should I, captain. But next time he might dip Mrs. Dailey. And I'm
+not sure he didn't have a hand in more serious work. Didn't you run
+across his tracks anywhere this summer?"
+
+"No, sir. He was over on the Des Chutes."
+
+"Did you hear what he was doing?"
+
+"Having rows about fish and game with those Warm Spring Indians on the
+west side of the Des Chutes."
+
+"They're always poaching on each other. There's bad blood between
+E-egante and Uma-Pine."
+
+"Uma-Pine's friendly, sir, isn't he?"
+
+"Well, that's a question," said Crook. "But there's no question about
+this E-egante and his Pah-Utes. We've got to catch him. I'm sorry for
+him. He doesn't see why he shouldn't hunt anywhere as his fathers did. I
+shouldn't see that either."
+
+"How strong is this band reported, sir?"
+
+"I've heard nothing I can set reliance upon," said Crook, instinctively
+levelling his shot-gun at a big bird that rose; then he replaced the
+piece across his saddle and was silent. Now Captain Glynn had heard
+there were three hundred Indians with E-egante, which was a larger
+number than he had been in the habit of attacking with forty men. But he
+felt discreet about volunteering any information to the General after
+last night's exhibition of what the General knew. Crook partly answered
+what was in Glynn's mind. "This is the only available force I have,"
+said he. "We must do what we can with it. You've found out by this time,
+captain, that rapidity in following Indians up often works well. They
+have made up their minds--that is, if I know them--that we're going to
+loaf inside Boise Barracks until the hard weather lets up."
+
+Captain Glynn had thought so too, but he did not mention this, and the
+General continued. "I find that most people entertained this notion," he
+said, "and I'm glad they did, for it will help my first operations very
+materially."
+
+The captain agreed that there was nothing like a false impression for
+assisting the efficacy of military movements, and presently the General
+asked him to command a halt. It was high noon, and the sun gleamed on
+the brass trumpet as the long note blew. Again the musical strain
+sounded on the cold, bright stillness, and the double line of twenty
+legs swung in a simultaneous arc over the horses' backs as the men
+dismounted.
+
+"We'll noon here," said the General; and while the cook broke the ice on
+Boise River to fill his kettles, Crook went back to the mules to see how
+the sore backs were standing the march. "How d'ye do, Jack Long?" said
+he. "Your stock is travelling pretty well, I see. They're loaded with
+thirty days' rations, but I trust we're not going to need it all."
+
+"Mwell, General, I don't specially kyeer meself 'bout eatin' the hull
+outfit." Mr. Long showed his respect for the General by never swearing
+in his presence.
+
+"I see you haven't forgotten how to pack," Crook said to him. "Can we
+make Snake River to-day, Jack?"
+
+"That'll be forty miles, General. The days are pretty short."
+
+"What are you feeding to the animals?" Crook inquired.
+
+"Why, General, _you_ know jest 's well 's me," said Jack, grinning.
+
+"I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five
+pounds next ten, and you're out of grain for the next ten. Is that the
+way still?"
+
+"Thet's the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs."
+
+Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the
+horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now
+returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.
+
+They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals
+could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a
+little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road,
+trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren
+height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs
+of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey
+had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and
+trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General
+Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were
+their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have
+been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three
+hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the
+column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the
+gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two
+days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the
+mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging
+of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and
+there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.
+
+Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of
+willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh
+of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close,
+nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight blue
+smoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The
+whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and
+the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent
+in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching
+a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with
+pines above.
+
+The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts
+forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready;
+and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The
+horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress,
+sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies,
+and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs.
+They could not wedge a man's length into that pliant labyrinth, and the
+General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above,
+Crook's cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood,
+hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared
+at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows,
+with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene
+and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds--not birds of prey--and the
+quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the
+liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.
+
+"What do you suppose they're doing?" inquired Glynn.
+
+"Looking at us," said Crook.
+
+"I wish we could return the compliment," said the captain.
+
+Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would
+have been less worth watching. Two willow branches shook, making a
+vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train
+was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an
+orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and
+were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses
+and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little
+light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in
+different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye
+fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from
+the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of
+long grass tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short
+while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable
+tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising
+always into the quiet afternoon.
+
+"Can you see 'em?" said Glynn.
+
+"Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this
+band?"
+
+Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.
+
+It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be
+pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty
+troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the
+thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to
+wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.
+
+"It's his bet, and he holds poor cards," murmured Specimen Jones; and
+the neighbors grinned.
+
+And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent
+the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in
+consequence, disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of
+sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn
+wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his
+amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.
+
+"You tell E-egante," he said, "that I am not going to fight with his
+people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm,
+and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask
+E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante
+and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine
+o'clock."
+
+And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer,
+and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or
+showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further
+sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. "Say that I am
+Gray Fox," said he.
+
+On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going
+opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow
+entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread
+aside for three figures to stand there.
+
+"E-egante!" said Sarah, eagerly. "See him big man!" she added to Crook,
+pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with
+fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She,
+being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.
+
+"He is counting our strength," said Glynn.
+
+"He's done that some time ago," said Crook. "Tell E-egante," he
+continued to the squaw, "that I will not send for more soldiers than he
+sees here. I do not wish anything but peace unless he wishes
+otherwise."
+
+Sarah's musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched
+her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length.
+He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often.
+All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble.
+There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had
+not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was
+raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the
+horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come
+to-morrow with Gray Fox.
+
+And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as
+innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.
+
+"My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,"
+the General admitted. "And that fellow put his finger right on the
+place. I'll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more
+soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told
+him I lied; she's an uncertain quantity, I find. But I told him the
+exact truth--that I had no more--and he won't believe it, and that's
+what I want."
+
+So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely
+exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force
+was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an
+impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command.
+Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men's village, and the troops
+went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze
+ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people in the thicket should
+have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules
+pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered
+among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of
+the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the
+flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built
+irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended
+glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little
+blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook's tent, and Sergeant
+Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his
+camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket
+below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By
+eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a
+little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on
+the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water
+running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant
+Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the
+dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack
+Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar,
+because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command
+of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master--the
+instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and
+Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they
+stood at the fire, but away from him.
+
+"How do you like this compared with barracks?" the sergeant asked,
+conversationally.
+
+"It's all right," said Jones.
+
+"Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn't enjoy it
+much myself. Sit down and get warm, won't you?"
+
+The men came and stood awkwardly. "I 'ain't never found any excitement
+in getting up early," said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted,
+and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones
+kicked the log into better position. "But this affair's gettin'
+inter-esting," he added.
+
+"Don't you smoke?" Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his
+tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going
+better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.
+
+"Arizona's the most outrageous outrage in the United States," declared
+Jones.
+
+"Why did you stay there six years, then?" said Cumnor.
+
+"Guess I'd been there yet but for you comin' along and us both enlistin'
+that crazy way. Idaho's better. Only," said Jones, thoughtfully, "coming
+to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it's a wonder a man
+don't just split like a glass chimbly."
+
+The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.
+
+"How! how!" said a strange, propitiating voice.
+
+It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself.
+They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not
+running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and "How!
+how!" he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who
+remained seated.
+
+"Good-evening," said the sergeant.
+
+"Christmas is coming," said Jones, amicably.
+
+"How! how!" said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his
+horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and
+beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly
+jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp
+and shaken his head; but the Indian's nerves were evidently on the
+sharpest strain.
+
+"Sit down!" said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started
+suspiciously.
+
+"Warm here!" Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.
+
+The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed
+almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with
+heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for
+vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and
+pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers
+only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount,
+looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got
+off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they
+smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the
+magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.
+
+"He's a jim-dandy," said Cumnor.
+
+"You bet the girls think so," said Jones. "He gets his pick. For you're
+a fighter too, ain't y'u?" he added, to E-egante.
+
+"How! how!" said that personage, looking at them with grave affability
+from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the
+sergeant's pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,
+the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of
+being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning
+embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp,
+crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante
+gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had
+come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it
+would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview.
+Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but
+she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had
+taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay
+wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances.
+The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice
+made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant
+on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.
+
+By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty
+waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten
+o'clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the
+squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to
+do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn
+smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking
+wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she
+served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven,
+and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He
+gave the orders himself.
+
+"Sergeant."
+
+Keyser saluted.
+
+"You will detail eight men to go with you into the Indian camp. The men
+are to carry pistols under their overcoats, and no other arms. You will
+tell the Indians to come out. Repeat what I said to them last night.
+Make it short. I'll give them ten minutes. If they don't come by then a
+shot will be fired out here. At that signal you will remain in there and
+blaze away at the Indians."
+
+So Keyser picked his men.
+
+The thirty-one remaining troopers stopped joking, and watched the squad
+of nine and the interpreter file down the bank to visit the three
+hundred. The dingy overcoats and the bright green shawl passed into the
+thicket, and the General looked at his watch. Along the bend of the
+stream clear noises tinkled from the water and the ice.
+
+"What are they up to?" whispered a teamster to Jack Long. Long's face
+was stern, but the teamster's was chalky and tight drawn. "Say," he
+repeated, insistently, "what are we going to do?"
+
+"We're to wait," Long whispered back, "till nothin' happens, and then
+th' Ole Man'll fire a gun and signal them boys to shoot in there."
+
+"Oh, it's to be waitin'?" said the teamster. He fastened his eyes on the
+thicket, and his lips grew bloodless. The running river sounded more
+plainly. "---- ---- it!" cried the man, desperately, "let's start the
+fun, then." He whipped out his pistol, and Jack Long had just time to
+seize him and stop a false signal.
+
+"Why, you must be skeered," said Long. "I've a mind to beat yer skull
+in."
+
+"Waitin's so awful," whimpered the man. "I wisht I was along with them
+in there."
+
+Jack gave him back his revolver. "There," said he; "ye're not skeered, I
+see. Waitin' ain't nice."
+
+The eight troopers with Keyser were not having anything like so
+distasteful a time. "Jock," said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, as they
+followed the sergeant into the willows and began to come among the
+lodges and striped savages, "you and me has saw Injuns before, Jock."
+
+"And we'll do it again," said Cumnor.
+
+Keyser looked at his watch: Four minutes gone. "Jones," said he, "you
+patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There
+must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with
+side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It's a big
+one--all brothers." Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick
+through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all
+the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle,
+fleeting visions of yellow and red through the quiet-colored twigs.
+Others squatted stoically, doing nothing. A few had guns, but most used
+arrows, and had these stacked beside them where they squatted. Keyser
+singled out a somewhat central figure--Fur Cap was his name--as his
+starting-point if the signal should sound. It must sound now in a second
+or two. He would not look at his watch lest it should hamper him. Fur
+Cap sat by a pile of arrows, with a gun across his knees besides. Keyser
+calculated that by standing close to him as he was, his boot would catch
+the Indian under the chin just right, and save one cartridge. Not a red
+man spoke, but Sarah the squaw dutifully speechified in a central place
+where paths met near Keyser and Fur Cap. Her voice was persuasive and
+warning. Some of the savages moved up and felt Keyser's overcoat. They
+fingered the hard bulge of the pistol underneath, and passed on,
+laughing, to the next soldier's coat, while Sarah did not cease to
+harangue. The tall, stately man of last night appeared. His full dark
+eye met Sarah's, and the woman's voice faltered and her breathing grew
+troubled as she gazed at him. Once more Keyser looked at his watch:
+Seven minutes. E-egante noticed Sarah's emotion, and his face showed
+that her face pleased him. He spoke in a deep voice to Fur Cap,
+stretching a fringed arm out towards the hill with a royal gesture, at
+which Fur Cap rose.
+
+"He will come, he will come!" said the squaw, running to Keyser. "They
+all come now. Do not shoot."
+
+"Let them show outside, then," thundered Keyser, "or it's too late. If
+that gun goes before I can tell my men--"
+
+He broke off and rushed to the entrance. There were skirmishers
+deploying from three points, and Crook was raising his hand slowly.
+There was a pistol in it. "General! General!" Keyser shouted, waving
+both hands, "No!" Behind him came E-egante, with Sarah, talking in low
+tones, and Fur Cap came too.
+
+[Illustration: "HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN"]
+
+The General saw, and did not give the signal. The sight of the
+skirmishers hastened E-egante's mind. He spoke in a loud voice, and at
+once his warriors began to emerge from the willows obediently. Crook's
+bluff was succeeding. The Indians in waiting after nine were
+attempting a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of
+nine men appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance
+left them. They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. And they came,
+and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The troopers had
+all they could do to form an escort and keep up the delusion, but by
+degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding along the edge
+of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and saying, "How!
+how!" to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony ambled, and
+sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning to wonder,
+when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the thicket,
+leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away, round the
+curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he hesitated to
+kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and scurrying,
+the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed. Sarah had
+been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and now she
+vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind, and
+leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.
+
+"I don't feel so mad as I ought," said Specimen Jones.
+
+Crook laughed to Glynn about it. "We've got a big balance of 'em," he
+said, "if we can get 'em all to Boise. They'll probably roast me in the
+East." And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one
+escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of
+the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington,
+and explained to each other how they would have done it.
+
+And so the General's bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom,
+"all along o' thet yere pizen squaw," as Mr. Long judiciously remarked.
+It was not until many years after that the chief's destiny overtook
+him; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Let me no longer pervert General Crook's military tactics.
+It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend
+who was present has written me since the first publication of this
+story.
+
+_Mr. Remington's illustration was made to suit the text in its original
+form._--Publisher's Note.]
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION GAP
+
+
+After cutting the Gazelle's throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent,
+secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was
+the other man--the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine
+morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He
+was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously
+made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.
+
+The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on
+account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer
+Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested
+in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn's relations with the
+Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was
+genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling
+him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of
+the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn's "rusted mustache
+had livened up; same ez flow'rs ye've kerried a long ways when yer girl
+puts 'em in a pitcher o' water." Being the sentiment of a placer miner,
+the lover's feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the
+Gazelle's that was purely official; it was for him that she personally
+cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her
+trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits--gold,
+coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust--that her hall of entertainment
+earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton'
+needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to
+ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money
+until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting
+her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once,
+on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry
+the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain
+shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to
+the right place. A woman's name and an address at San Antonio were
+certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the
+stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave
+him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that
+young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his
+knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold
+inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at
+that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was
+forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all,
+though, it was silly, just for the sake of a laugh, to let the old lover
+learn the face of his secret rival. It was one of those early unimagined
+nails people sometimes drive in their own coffins. An ancient series of
+events followed: continued abject faith and passion on the miner's part;
+continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued
+trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her
+very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of
+doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final
+accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to
+the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the
+instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever,
+calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and
+dead. He had managed well. The whole game had shown instantly like a
+picture on his brain, complete at a stroke, with every move clear. He
+had let the man go down the hill--just for the present. The camp had got
+up, eaten its breakfast, and gone out to the ditches, Drylyn along with
+the rest. Owing to its situation, neighbors could not see him presently
+leave his claim and walk back quickly to the Gap at an hour when the
+dance-hall was likely to be lonely. He had ready what to say if the
+other women should be there; but they were away at the creek below,
+washing, and the luxurious, unsuspecting Gazelle was in bed in her own
+tent, not yet disturbed. The quiet wild beast walked through the
+deserted front entrance of the hall in the most natural manner, and so
+behind among the empty bottles, and along the plank into the tent; then,
+after a while, out again. She would never be disturbed now, and the wild
+beast was back at his claim, knee-deep, and busy among the digging and
+the wetness, in another pair of overalls just like the ones that were
+now under some stones at the bottom of a mud-puddle. And then one very
+bad long scream came up to the ditches, and Drylyn knew the women had
+returned from their washing.
+
+He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man;
+had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could
+remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew
+that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was
+going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with
+his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone
+out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered,
+for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package
+of gold-dust--some of it very likely his own--to the smooth-faced
+messenger at Folsom, Drylyn's stolid body trembled from head to foot,
+and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.
+
+But down below there the screams were sounding. A brother miner came
+running by. Drylyn realized that he ought to be running too, of course,
+and so he ran. All the men were running from their various scattered
+claims, and Salvation Gap grew noisy and full of people at once. There
+was the sheriff also, come up last evening on the track of some
+stage-robbers, and quite opportune for this, he thought. He liked things
+to be done legally. The turmoil of execration and fierce curiosity
+thrashed about for the right man to pitch on for this crime. The
+murdered woman had been so good company, so hearty a wit, such a robust
+songstress, so tireless a dancer, so thoroughly everybody's friend, that
+it was inconceivable to the mind of Salvation Gap that anybody there had
+done it. The women were crying and wringing their hands--the Gazelle had
+been good to them too; the men were talking and cursing, all but Drylyn
+there among them, serious and strange-looking; so silent that the
+sheriff eyed him once or twice, though he knew nothing of the miner's
+infatuation. And then some woman shrieked out the name of Drylyn, and
+the crowd had him gripped in a second, to let him go the next, laughing
+at the preposterous idea. Saying nothing? Of course he didn't feel like
+talking. To be sure he looked dazed. It was hard luck on him. They told
+the sheriff about him and the Gazelle. They explained that Drylyn was
+"sort of loony, anyway," and the sheriff said, "Oh!" and began to wonder
+and surmise in this half-minute they had been now gathered, when
+suddenly the inevitable boot-prints behind the tent down the hill were
+found. The shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had
+never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was
+this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a
+straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged
+thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He
+was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of
+calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen
+that consequences were going to rise and burst like this. The next thing
+he knew he was in a pursuit, with pine-trees passing, and the hurrying
+sheriff remarking to the band that he proposed to maintain order. Drylyn
+heard his neighbor, a true Californian, whose words were lightest when
+his purpose was most serious, telling the sheriff that order was
+certainly Heaven's first law, and an elegant thing anywhere. But the
+anxious officer made no retort in kind, and only said that
+irregularities were damaging to the county's good name, and would keep
+settlers from moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylyn and asked him
+when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be
+unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went
+along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had
+never sized up the true state of Drylyn's feeling for the Gazelle, and
+that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they
+found the man they were hunting, but he doubted if the sheriff would be
+persuading enough for Drylyn. They came out on a road, and the
+sleep-walker recognized a rock and knew how far they had gone, and that
+this was the stage-road between Folsom and Surprise Springs. They
+followed the road, and round a bend came on the man. He had been taking
+it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the
+night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to
+Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small
+creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous
+compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into
+cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was
+really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he
+recognized the sheriff's voice, telling him it would go better with him
+if he did not try to kill any more people, he was greatly relieved that
+it was not highwaymen after him and his little gold, and he put up his
+pistol and waited for them, smiling, secure in his identity; and when
+they drew nearer he asked them how many people he had killed already.
+They came up and caught him and found the gold in a moment, ripping it
+from his pocket; and the yell they gave at that stopped his smiling
+entirely. When he found himself in irons and hurried along, he began to
+explain that there was some mistake, and was told by the chatty neighbor
+that maybe killing a woman was always a mistake, certainly one this
+time. As they walked him among them they gave small notice to his
+growing fright and bewilderment, but when he appealed to the sheriff on
+the score of old acquaintanceship, and pitifully begged to know what
+they supposed he had done, the miners laughed curiously. That brought
+his entreating back to them, and he assured them, looking in their
+faces, that he truly did need to be told why they wanted him. So they
+held up the gold and asked him whose that had been, and he made a
+wretched hesitation in answering. If anything was needed to clinch their
+certainty, that did. They could not know that the young successful lover
+had recognized Drylyn's strange face, and did not want to tell the truth
+before him, and hence was telling an unskilful lie instead. A rattle of
+wheels sounded among the pines ahead, and the stage came up and stopped.
+Only the driver and a friend were on it, and both of them knew the
+shot-gun messenger and the sheriff, and they asked in some astonishment
+what the trouble was. It had been stage-robbers the sheriff had started
+after, the driver thought. And--as he commented in friendly tones--to
+turn up with Wells and Fargo's messenger was the neatest practical joke
+that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and
+anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry
+of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at
+feeling the ghastly chain of probability that had wound itself about
+him.
+
+The sheriff wondered if there were a true ring in the man's voice. It
+certainly sounded so. He was talking with rapid agony, and it was the
+whole true story that was coming out now. But the chatty neighbor nudged
+another neighbor at the new explanation about the gold-dust. That there
+was no great quantity of it, after all, weighed little against this
+double accounting for one simple fact; moreover, the new version did not
+do the messenger credit in the estimation of the miners, but gave them a
+still worse opinion of him. It is scarcely fair to disbelieve what a man
+says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it.
+Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening
+sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the
+deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way.
+It had even been in the miners' heads to finish the business here on the
+Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there
+was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff's plea
+that something further might have turned up at the Gap; but at the
+driver's more forcible suggestion that the Gap would feel disappointed
+at being left out, they consented to take the man back there. Drylyn
+never offered any opinion, or spoke at all. It was not necessary that he
+should, and they forgot about him. It was time to be getting along, they
+said. What was the good in standing in the road here? They nodded
+good-day to the stage-driver, and took themselves and the prisoner into
+the pines. Once the sheriff had looked at the driver and his friend
+perched on the halted stage, but he immediately saw too much risk in his
+half-formed notion of an alliance with them to gallop off with the
+prisoner; his part must come later, if at all.
+
+But the driver had perfectly understood the sheriff's glance, and
+he was on the sheriff's side, though he showed no sign. As he drove
+along he began thinking about the way the prisoner had cried out just
+now, and the inconsiderable value of the dust, and it became clear in
+his mind that this was a matter for a court and twelve quiet men. The
+friend beside him was also intent upon his own thoughts, and neither
+said a word to the other upon the lonely road. The horses soon knew
+that they were not being driven any more, and they slackened their
+pace, and finding no reproof came for this, they fell to a comfortable
+walk. Presently several had snatched a branch in passing, and it waved
+from their mouths as they nibbled. After that they gave up all
+pretence at being stage-horses, and the driver noticed them. From
+habit he whipped them up into shape and gait, and the next moment
+pulled them in short, at the thought that had come to him. The
+prisoner must be got away from the Gap. The sheriff was too
+single-handed among such a crowd as that, and the driver put a
+question to his friend. It could be managed by taking a slight liberty
+with other people's horses; but Wells and Fargo would not find fault
+with this when the case was one of their own servants, hitherto so
+well thought of. The stage, being empty and light, could spare two
+horses and go on, while those two horses, handled with discretion and
+timeliness, might be very useful at the Gap. The driver had best not
+depart from rule so far as to leave his post and duty; one man would
+be enough. The friend thought well of this plan, and they climbed down
+into the road from opposite sides and took out the wheelers. To be
+sure these animals were heavy, and not of the best sort for escaping
+on, but better than walking; and timeliness and discretion can do a
+great deal. So in a little while the driver and his stage were gone
+on their way, the friend with the two horses had disappeared in the
+wood, and the road was altogether lonely.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER]
+
+The sheriff's brain was hard at work, and he made no protest now as he
+walked along, passive in the company of the miners and their prisoner.
+The prisoner had said all that he had to say, and his man's firmness,
+which the first shock and amazement had wrenched from him, had come to
+his help again, bringing a certain shame at having let his reserve and
+bearing fall to pieces, and at having made himself a show; so he spoke
+no more than his grim captors did, as they took him swiftly through the
+wood. The sheriff was glad it was some miles they had to go; for though
+they went very fast, the distance and the time, and even the becoming
+tired in body, might incline their minds to more deliberation. He could
+think yet of nothing new to urge. He had seen and heard only the same
+things that all had, and his present hopes lay upon the Gap and what
+more might have come to light there since his departure. He looked at
+Drylyn, but the miner's serious and massive face gave him no suggestion;
+and the sheriff's reason again destroyed the germ of suspicion that
+something plainly against reason had several times put in his thoughts.
+Yet it stuck with him that they had hold of the wrong man.
+
+When they reached the Gap, and he found the people there as he had left
+them, and things the same way, with nothing new turned up to help his
+theory, the sheriff once more looked round; but Drylyn was not in the
+crowd. He had gone, they told him, to look at _her_; he had set a heap
+of store by her, they repeated.
+
+"A heap of store," said the sheriff, thinking. "Where is she now?"
+
+"On her bed," said a woman, "same as ever, only we've fixed her up
+some."
+
+"Then I'll take a look at her--and him. You boys won't do anything till
+I come back, will you?"
+
+"Why, if ye're so anxious to see us do it, sheriff," said the chatty
+neighbor, "I guess we can wait that long fer ye."
+
+The officer walked to the tent. Drylyn was standing over the body, quiet
+and dumb. He was safe for the present, the sheriff knew, and so he left
+him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front
+of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that
+they had a rope there.
+
+"Once upon a time," said the sheriff, "there was a man in Arkansaw that
+had no judgment."
+
+"They raise 'em that way in Arkansaw," said the chatty neighbor, as the
+company made a circle to hear the story--a tight, cautious circle--with
+the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.
+
+"The man's wife had good judgment," continued the narrator, "but she
+went and died on him."
+
+"Well, I guess that _was_ good judgment," said the neighbor.
+
+"So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry,
+which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of
+setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being
+shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the
+hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on 'em, and also a heap of
+hens' eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no
+judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it's her I'm
+chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the
+eggs hatched out, she didn't stop to notice, but up and takes them down
+to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they
+drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and
+come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck
+figured out she'd made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the
+chickens were in heaven."
+
+The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage
+a little. "Now," said he, "ain't you boys just a trifle like that duck?
+I don't know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I
+don't know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for
+him we've got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it's
+an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and--God
+forgive me!--I was one of them. I'll tell you how that was. He looked
+enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We
+came on a cabin we'd never known of before, pretty far up in the
+hills--a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a
+man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought.
+We knew we had caught him--that's the way we felt. So we got our guns
+ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin.
+We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he'd
+been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!--we gave him no time!
+He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got
+tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted
+some words: 'Where the wicked cease from troubling.' He had figured
+that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And
+ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me
+second. Now this afternoon I'm alone here. You know I can't do much. And
+I'm going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don't say that in
+this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times,
+when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and
+when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is
+that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can't name
+me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that
+being so, don't we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can
+see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at
+our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience--and we shot him
+down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you
+insist--"
+
+The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him.
+Some of the men knew the story of the prospector--it had been in the
+papers--but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite
+well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner.
+The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and
+discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out
+of the dead woman's tent, and, looking down, realized the intended
+rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with
+a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he
+was trying to escape.
+
+"That's the man!" he shouted savagely to the ring.
+
+Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying
+Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong
+two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised
+scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the
+dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind,
+thrown down, and held.
+
+"So ye were alone, were ye?" said the chatty neighbor. "Well, ye made a
+good talk. Keep quiet--we don't want to hurt ye."
+
+At this supposed perfidy the Gap's rage was at white-heat again; the men
+massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger's fate
+was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and
+death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over
+for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black
+against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and
+when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention
+to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him
+go, and the sheriff too. The driver's friend had left his horses among
+the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now
+joined the crowd.
+
+"You meant well," the sheriff said to him. "I wish you would tell the
+boys how you come to be here. They're thinking I lied to them."
+
+"Maybe I can change their minds." It was Drylyn's deep voice. "I am the
+man you were hunting," he said.
+
+[Illustration: "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"]
+
+They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness
+has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap
+was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill
+the mountain air.
+
+"You boys think I'm touched in the head," said Drylyn, and paused. "This
+knife done it," said he. "This one I'm showing you."
+
+They looked at the knife in his hand.
+
+"He come between me and her," Drylyn pursued. "I was aiming to give him
+his punishment myself. That would have been square." He turned the knife
+over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their
+eyes. "You don't believe me!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Well, I'm going
+to make you. Sheriff, I'll bring you some evidence."
+
+He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned.
+Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing
+beneath the dead man.
+
+"Does them look like being touched in the head?" inquired Drylyn, and he
+threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. "I
+don't seem to mind telling you," he said. "I feel as quiet--as quiet as
+them tall pines the sun's just quittin' for the night." He looked at the
+men expectantly, but none of them stirred. "I'd like to have it over,"
+said he.
+
+Still no one moved.
+
+"I have a right to ask it shall be quick," he repeated. "You were quick
+enough with him." And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.
+
+They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the
+right one. The chatty neighbor shook his head. "Seems curious," he
+said, slowly. "It ought to be done. But I couldn't no more do it--gosh!
+how _can_ a man fire his gun right after it's been discharged?"
+
+The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. "You won't?" he
+said.
+
+"You better quit us," suggested the neighbor. "Go somewheres else."
+
+Drylyn's eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and
+the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. "Him and me," he
+muttered. "It ain't square. Him and me--" Suddenly he broke out, "I
+don't choose him to think I was that kind of man!"
+
+Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his
+fingers. "Sheriff," he began, but his tone changed. "I'm overtakin'
+him!" he said. "He's going to know now. Lay me alongside--"
+
+And so they did.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE
+
+I
+
+
+The Legislature had sat up all night, much absorbed, having taken off
+its coat because of the stove. This was the fortieth and final day of
+its first session under an order of things not new only, but novel. It
+sat with the retrospect of forty days' duty done, and the prospect of
+forty days' consequent pay to come. Sleepy it was not, but wide and
+wider awake over a progressing crisis. Hungry it had been until after a
+breakfast fetched to it from the Overland at seven, three hours ago. It
+had taken no intermission to wash its face, nor was there just now any
+apparatus for this, as the tin pitcher commonly used stood not in the
+basin in the corner, but on the floor by the Governor's chair; so the
+eyes of the Legislature, though earnest, were dilapidated. Last night
+the pressure of public business had seemed over, and no turning back the
+hands of the clock likely to be necessary. Besides Governor Ballard, Mr.
+Hewley, Secretary and Treasurer, was sitting up too, small, iron-gray,
+in feature and bearing every inch the capable, dignified official, but
+his necktie had slipped off during the night. The bearded Councillors
+had the best of it, seeming after their vigil less stale in the face
+than the member from Silver City, for instance, whose day-old black
+growth blurred his dingy chin, or the member from Big Camas, whose
+scantier red crop bristled on his cheeks in sparse wandering
+arrangements, like spikes on the barrel of a musical box. For comfort,
+most of the pistols were on the table with the Statutes of the United
+States. Secretary and Treasurer Hewley's lay on his strong-box
+immediately behind him. The Governor's was a light one, and always hung
+in the arm hole of his waistcoat. The graveyard of Boise City this year
+had twenty-seven tenants, two brought there by meningitis, and
+twenty-five by difference of opinion. Many denizens of the Territory
+were miners, and the unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air,
+breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed
+against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until
+they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the
+night's untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its
+shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had
+appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a
+good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it
+from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare
+into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be
+sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides;
+but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the
+idle, and this was counted a sensible thing by the law-makers. They took
+the ground that shaping any government for a raw wilderness community
+needed seclusion, and they set a high value upon unworried privacy.
+
+The sun had set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that
+looked momentous. Only the Governor's and Treasurer's were impassive,
+and they concealed something even graver than the matter in hand.
+
+"I'll take a hun'red mo', Gove'nuh," said the member from Silver City,
+softly, his eyes on space. His name was Powhattan Wingo.
+
+The Governor counted out the blue, white, and red chips to Wingo,
+pencilled some figures on a thickly ciphered and cancelled paper that
+bore in print the words "Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber," and then
+filled up his glass from the tin pitcher, adding a little sugar.
+
+"And I'll trouble you fo' the toddy," Wingo added, always softly, and
+his eyes always on space. "Raise you ten, suh." This was to the
+Treasurer. Only the two were playing at present. The Governor was kindly
+acting as bank; the others were looking on.
+
+"And ten," said the Treasurer.
+
+"And ten," said Wingo.
+
+"And twenty," said the Treasurer.
+
+"And fifty," said Wingo, gently bestowing his chips in the middle of the
+table.
+
+The Treasurer called.
+
+The member from Silver City showed down five high hearts, and a light
+rustle went over the Legislature when the Treasurer displayed three twos
+and a pair of threes, and gathered in his harvest. He had drawn two
+cards, Wingo one; and losing to the lowest hand that could have beaten
+you is under such circumstances truly hard luck. Moreover, it was almost
+the only sort of luck that had attended Wingo since about half after
+three that morning. Seven hours of cards just a little lower than your
+neighbor's is searching to the nerves.
+
+"Gove'nuh, I'll take a hun'red mo'," said Wingo; and once again the
+Legislature rustled lightly, and the new deal began.
+
+Treasurer Hewley's winnings flanked his right, a pillared fortress on
+the table, built chiefly of Wingo's misfortunes. Hewley had not counted
+them, and his architecture was for neatness and not ostentation; yet the
+Legislature watched him arrange his gains with sullen eyes. It would
+have pleased him now to lose; it would have more than pleased him to be
+able to go to bed quite a long time ago. But winners cannot easily go to
+bed. The thoughtful Treasurer bet his money and deplored this luck. It
+seemed likely to trap himself and the Governor in a predicament they had
+not foreseen. All had taken a hand at first, and played for several
+hours, until Fortune's wheel ran into a rut deeper than usual. Wingo
+slowly became the loser to several, then Hewley had forged ahead, winner
+from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go
+home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. It was an extraordinary
+run, a rare specimen, a breaker of records, something to refer to in the
+future as a standard of measure and an embellishment of reminiscence;
+quite enough to keep the Idaho Legislature up all night. And then it was
+their friend who was losing. The only speaking in the room was the brief
+card talk of the two players.
+
+"Five better," said Hewley, winner again four times in the last five.
+
+"Ten," said Wingo.
+
+"And twenty," said the Secretary and Treasurer.
+
+"Call you."
+
+"Three kings."
+
+"They are good, suh. Gove'nuh, I'll take a hun'red mo'."
+
+Upon this the wealthy and weary Treasurer made a try for liberty and
+bed. How would it do, he suggested, to have a round of jack-pots, say
+ten--or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred--and then stop?
+It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor
+looked at him. But Wingo's large countenance remained inexpressive, his
+black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips
+were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall.
+The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon
+he should have a disclosure to make; something that would need the most
+cheerful and contented feelings in Wingo and the Legislature to be
+received with any sort of calm. Wingo was behind the game to the tune
+of--the Governor gave up adding as he ran his eye over the figures of
+the bank's erased and tormented record, and he shook his head to
+himself. This was inadvertent.
+
+"May I inquah who yo're shakin' yoh head at, suh?" said Wingo, wheeling
+upon the surprised Governor.
+
+"Certainly," answered that official. "You." He was never surprised for
+very long. In 1867 it did not do to remain surprised in Idaho.
+
+"And have I done anything which meets yoh disapprobation?" pursued the
+member from Silver City, enunciating with care.
+
+"You have met my disapprobation."
+
+Wingo's eye was on the Governor, and now his friends drew a little
+together, and as a unit sent a glance of suspicion at the lone bank.
+
+"You will gratify me by being explicit, suh," said Wingo to the bank.
+
+"Well, you've emptied the toddy."
+
+"Ha-ha, Gove'nuh! I rose, suh, to yoh little fly. We'll awduh some mo'."
+
+"Time enough when he comes for the breakfast things," said Governor
+Ballard, easily.
+
+"As you say, suh. I'll open for five dolluhs." Wingo turned back to his
+game. He was winning, and as his luck continued his voice ceased to be
+soft, and became a shade truculent. The Governor's ears caught this
+change, and he also noted the lurking triumph in the faces of Wingo's
+fellow-statesmen. Cheerfulness and content were scarcely reigning yet in
+the Council Chamber of Idaho as Ballard sat watching the friendly game.
+He was beginning to fear that he must leave the Treasurer alone and take
+some precautions outside. But he would have to be separated for some
+time from his ally, cut off from giving him any hints. Once the
+Treasurer looked at him, and he immediately winked reassuringly, but the
+Treasurer failed to respond. Hewley might be able to wink after
+everything was over, but he could not find it in his serious heart to do
+so now. He was wondering what would happen if this game should last till
+noon with the company in its present mood. Noon was the time fixed for
+paying the Legislative Assembly the compensation due for its services
+during this session; and the Governor and the Treasurer had put their
+heads together and arranged a surprise for the Legislative Assembly.
+They were not going to pay them.
+
+A knock sounded at the door, and on seeing the waiter from the Overland
+enter, the Governor was seized with an idea. Perhaps precaution could
+be taken from the inside. "Take this pitcher," said he, "and have it
+refilled with the same. Joseph knows my mixture." But Joseph was night
+bar-tender, and now long in his happy bed, with a day successor in the
+saloon, and this one did not know the mixture. Ballard had foreseen this
+when he spoke, and that his writing a note of directions would seem
+quite natural.
+
+"The receipt is as long as the drink," said a legislator, watching the
+Governor's pencil fly.
+
+"He don't know where my private stock is located," explained Ballard.
+The waiter departed with the breakfast things and the note, and while
+the jack-pots continued the Governor's mind went carefully over the
+situation.
+
+Until lately the Western citizen has known one every-day experience that
+no dweller in our thirteen original colonies has had for two hundred
+years. In Massachusetts they have not seen it since 1641; in Virginia
+not since 1628. It is that of belonging to a community of which every
+adult was born somewhere else. When you come to think of this a little
+it is dislocating to many of your conventions. Let a citizen of Salem,
+for instance, or a well-established Philadelphia Quaker, try to imagine
+his chief-justice fresh from Louisiana, his mayor from Arkansas, his
+tax-collector from South Carolina, and himself recently arrived in a
+wagon from a thousand-mile drive. To be governor of such a community
+Ballard had travelled in a wagon from one quarter of the horizon; from
+another quarter Wingo had arrived on a mule. People reached Boise in
+three ways: by rail to a little west of the Missouri, after which it was
+wagon, saddle, or walk for the remaining fifteen hundred miles; from
+California it was shorter; and from Portland, Oregon, only about five
+hundred miles, and some of these more agreeable, by water up the
+Columbia. Thus it happened that salt often sold for its weight in
+gold-dust. A miner in the Bannock Basin would meet a freight teamster
+coming in with the staples of life, having journeyed perhaps sixty
+consecutive days through the desert, and valuing his salt highly. The
+two accordingly bartered in scales, white powder against yellow, and
+both parties content. Some in Boise to-day can remember these bargains.
+After all, they were struck but thirty years ago. Governor Ballard and
+Treasurer Hewley did not come from the same place, but they constituted
+a minority of two in Territorial politics because they hailed from north
+of Mason and Dixon's line. Powhattan Wingo and the rest of the Council
+were from Pike County, Missouri. They had been Secessionists, some of
+them Knights of the Golden Circle; they had belonged to Price's Left
+Wing, and they flocked together. They were seven--two lying unwell at
+the Overland, five now present in the State-House with the Governor and
+Treasurer. Wingo, Gascon Claiborne, Gratiot des Peres, Pete Cawthon, and
+F. Jackson Gilet were their names. Besides this Council of seven were
+thirteen members of the Idaho House of Representatives, mostly of the
+same political feather with the Council, and they too would be present
+at noon to receive their pay. How Ballard and Hewley came to be a
+minority of two is a simple matter. Only twenty-five months had gone
+since Appomattox Court-House. That surrender was presently followed by
+Johnston's to Sherman, at Durhams Station, and following this the
+various Confederate armies in Alabama, or across the Mississippi, or
+wherever they happened to be, had successively surrendered--but not
+Price's Left Wing. There was the wide open West under its nose, and no
+Grant or Sherman infesting that void. Why surrender? Wingos, Claibornes,
+and all, they melted away. Price's Left Wing sailed into the prairie and
+passed below the horizon. To know what it next did you must, like
+Ballard or Hewley, pass below the horizon yourself, clean out of sight
+of the dome at Washington to remote, untracked Idaho. There, besides
+wild red men in quantities, would you find not very tame white ones,
+gentlemen of the ripest Southwestern persuasion, and a Legislature to
+fit. And if, like Ballard or Hewley, you were a Union man, and the
+President of the United States had appointed you Governor or Secretary
+of such a place, your days would be full of awkwardness, though your
+difference in creed might not hinder you from playing draw-poker with
+the unreconstructed. These Missourians were whole-souled, ample-natured
+males in many ways, but born with a habit of hasty shooting. The
+Governor, on setting foot in Idaho, had begun to study pistolship, but
+acquired thus in middle life it could never be with him that spontaneous
+art which it was with Price's Left Wing. Not that the weapons now lying
+loose about the State-House were brought for use there. Everybody always
+went armed in Boise, as the gravestones impliedly testified. Still, the
+thought of the bad quarter of an hour which it might come to at noon did
+cross Ballard's mind, raising the image of a column in the morrow's
+paper: "An unfortunate occurrence has ended relations between esteemed
+gentlemen hitherto the warmest personal friends.... They will be laid
+to rest at 3 p.m.... As a last token of respect for our lamented
+Governor, the troops from Boise Barracks...." The Governor trusted that
+if his friends at the post were to do him any service it would not be a
+funeral one.
+
+The new pitcher of toddy came from the Overland, the jack-pots
+continued, were nearing a finish, and Ballard began to wonder if
+anything had befallen a part of his note to the bar-tender, an enclosure
+addressed to another person.
+
+"Ha, suh!" said Wingo to Hewley. "My pot again, I declah." The chips had
+been crossing the table his way, and he was now loser but six hundred
+dollars.
+
+"Ye ain't goin' to whip Mizzooruh all night an' all day, ez a rule,"
+observed Pete Cawthon, Councillor from Lost Leg.
+
+"'Tis a long road that has no turnin', Gove'nuh," said F. Jackson Gilet,
+more urbanely. He had been in public life in Missouri, and was now
+President of the Council in Idaho. He, too, had arrived on a mule, but
+could at will summon a rhetoric dating from Cicero, and preserved by
+many luxuriant orators until after the middle of the present century.
+
+"True," said the Governor, politely. "But here sits the long-suffering
+bank, whichever way the road turns. I'm sleepy."
+
+"You sacrifice yo'self in the good cause," replied Gilet, pointing to
+the poker game. "Oneasy lies the head that wahs an office, suh." And
+Gilet bowed over his compliment.
+
+The Governor thought so indeed. He looked at the Treasurer's strong-box,
+where lay the appropriation lately made by Congress to pay the Idaho
+Legislature for its services; and he looked at the Treasurer, in whose
+pocket lay the key of the strong-box. He was accountable to the Treasury
+at Washington for all money disbursed for Territorial expenses.
+
+"Eleven twenty," said Wingo, "and only two hands mo' to play."
+
+The Governor slid out his own watch.
+
+"I'll scahsely recoup," said Wingo.
+
+They dealt and played the hand, and the Governor strolled to the window.
+
+"Three aces," Wingo announced, winning again handsomely. "I struck my
+luck too late," he commented to the on-lookers. While losing he had been
+able to sustain a smooth reticence; now he gave his thoughts freely to
+the company, and continually moved and fingered his increasing chips.
+The Governor was still looking out of the window, where he could see far
+up the street, when Wingo won the last hand, which was small. "That ends
+it, suh, I suppose?" he said to Hewley, letting the pack of cards linger
+in his grasp.
+
+"I wouldn't let him off yet," said Ballard to Wingo from the window,
+with sudden joviality, and he came back to the players. "I'd make him
+throw five cold hands with me."
+
+"Ah, Gove'nuh, that's yoh spo'tin' blood! Will you do it, Mistuh
+Hewley--a hun'red a hand?"
+
+Mr. Hewley did it; and winning the first, he lost the second, third, and
+fourth in the space of an eager minute, while the Councillors drew their
+chairs close.
+
+"Let me see," said Wingo, calculating, "if I lose this--why still--" He
+lost. "But I'll not have to ask you to accept my papuh, suh. Wingo
+liquidates. Fo'ty days at six dolluhs a day makes six times fo' is
+twenty-fo'--two hun'red an' fo'ty dolluhs spot cash in hand at noon,
+without computation of mileage to and from Silver City at fo' dolluhs
+every twenty miles, estimated according to the nearest usually travelled
+route." He was reciting part of the statute providing mileage for Idaho
+legislators. He had never served the public before, and he knew all the
+laws concerning compensation by heart. "You'll not have to wait fo' yoh
+money, suh," he concluded.
+
+"Well, Mr. Wingo," said Governor Ballard, "it depends on yourself
+whether your pay comes to you or not." He spoke cheerily. "If you don't
+see things my way, our Treasurer will have to wait for his money." He
+had not expected to break the news just so, but it made as easy a
+beginning as any.
+
+"See things yoh way, suh?"
+
+"Yes. As it stands at present I cannot take the responsibility of paying
+you."
+
+"The United States pays me, suh. My compensation is provided by act of
+Congress."
+
+"I confess I am unable to discern your responsibility, Gove'nuh," said
+F. Jackson Gilet. "Mr. Wingo has faithfully attended the session, and
+is, like every gentleman present, legally entitled to his emoluments."
+
+"You can all readily become entitled--"
+
+"All? Am I--are my friends--included in this new depa'tyuh?"
+
+"The difficulty applies generally, Mr. Gilet."
+
+"Do I understand the Gove'nuh to insinuate--nay, gentlemen, do not rise!
+Be seated, I beg." For the Councillors had leaped to their feet.
+
+"Whar's our money?" said Pete Cawthon. "Our money was put in thet yere
+box."
+
+Ballard flushed angrily, but a knock at the door stopped him, and he
+merely said, "Come in."
+
+A trooper, a corporal, stood at the entrance, and the disordered Council
+endeavored to look usual in a stranger's presence. They resumed their
+seats, but it was not easy to look usual on such short notice.
+
+"Captain Paisley's compliments," said the soldier, mechanically, "and
+will Governor Ballard take supper with him this evening?"
+
+"Thank Captain Paisley," said the Governor (his tone was quite usual),
+"and say that official business connected with the end of the session
+makes it imperative for me to be at the State-House. Imperative."
+
+The trooper withdrew. He was a heavy-built, handsome fellow, with black
+mustache and black eyes that watched through two straight, narrow slits
+beneath straight black brows. His expression in the Council Chamber had
+been of the regulation military indifference, and as he went down the
+steps he irrelevantly sang an old English tune:
+
+     "'Since first I saw your face I resolved
+     To honor and re--'
+
+"I guess," he interrupted himself as he unhitched his horse, "parrot and
+monkey hev broke loose."
+
+The Legislature, always in its shirt-sleeves, the cards on the table,
+and the toddy on the floor, sat calm a moment, cooled by this brief
+pause from the first heat of its surprise, while the clatter of Corporal
+Jones's galloping shrank quickly into silence.
+
+
+II
+
+Captain Paisley walked slowly from the adjutant's office at Boise
+Barracks to his quarters, and his orderly walked behind him. The captain
+carried a letter in his hand, and the orderly, though distant a
+respectful ten paces, could hear him swearing plain as day. When he
+reached his front door Mrs. Paisley met him.
+
+"Jim," cried she, "two more chickens froze in the night." And the
+delighted orderly heard the captain so plainly that he had to blow his
+nose or burst.
+
+The lady, merely remarking "My goodness, Jim," retired immediately to
+the kitchen, where she had a soldier cook baking, and feared he was not
+quite sober enough to do it alone. The captain had paid eighty dollars
+for forty hens this year at Boise, and twenty-nine had now passed away,
+victims to the climate. His wise wife perceived his extreme language not
+to have been all on account of hens, however; but he never allowed her
+to share in his professional worries, so she stayed safe with the
+baking, and he sat in the front room with a cigar in his mouth.
+
+Boise was a two-company post without a major, and Paisley, being senior
+captain, was in command, an office to which he did not object. But his
+duties so far this month of May had not pleased him in the least.
+Theoretically, you can have at a two-company post the following
+responsible people: one major, two captains, four lieutenants, a doctor,
+and a chaplain. The major has been spoken of; it is almost needless to
+say that the chaplain was on leave, and had never been seen at Boise by
+any of the present garrison; two of the lieutenants were also on leave,
+and two on surveying details--they had influence at Washington; the
+other captain was on a scout with General Crook somewhere near the
+Malheur Agency, and the doctor had only arrived this week. There had
+resulted a period when Captain Paisley was his own adjutant,
+quartermaster, and post surgeon, with not even an efficient sergeant to
+rely upon; and during this period his wife had stayed a good deal in the
+kitchen. Happily the doctor's coming had given relief to the hospital
+steward and several patients, and to the captain not only an equal, but
+an old friend, with whom to pour out his disgust; and together every
+evening they freely expressed their opinion of the War Department and
+its treatment of the Western army.
+
+There were steps at the door, and Paisley hurried out. "Only you!" he
+exclaimed, with such frank vexation that the doctor laughed loudly.
+"Come in, man, come in," Paisley continued, leading him strongly by the
+arm, sitting him down, and giving him a cigar. "Here's a pretty how de
+do!"
+
+"More Indians!" inquired Dr. Tuck.
+
+"Bother! they're nothing. It's Senators--Councillors--whatever the
+Territorial devils call themselves."
+
+"Gone on the war-path?" the doctor said, quite ignorant how nearly he
+had touched the Council.
+
+"Precisely, man. War-path. Here's the Governor writing me they'll be
+scalping him in the State-House at twelve o'clock. It's past 11.30.
+They'll be whetting knives about now." And the captain roared.
+
+"I know you haven't gone crazy," said the doctor, "but who has?"
+
+"The lot of them. Ballard's a good man, and--what's his name?--the
+little Secretary. The balance are just mad dogs--mad dogs. Look here:
+'Dear Captain'--that's Ballard to me. I just got it--'I find myself
+unexpectedly hampered this morning. The South shows signs of being too
+solid. Unless I am supported, my plan for bringing our Legislature to
+terms will have to be postponed. Hewley and I are more likely to be
+brought to terms ourselves--a bad precedent to establish in Idaho. Noon
+is the hour for drawing salaries. Ask me to supper as quick as you can,
+and act on my reply.' I've asked him," continued Paisley, "but I haven't
+told Mrs. Paisley to cook anything extra yet." The captain paused to
+roar again, shaking Tuck's shoulder for sympathy. Then he explained the
+situation in Idaho to the justly bewildered doctor. Ballard had confided
+many of his difficulties lately to Paisley.
+
+"He means you're to send troops?" Tuck inquired.
+
+"What else should the poor man mean?"
+
+"Are you sure it's constitutional?"
+
+"Hang constitutional! What do I know about their legal quibbles at
+Washington?"
+
+"But, Paisley--"
+
+"They're unsurrendered rebels, I tell you. Never signed a parole."
+
+"But the general amnesty--"
+
+"Bother general amnesty! Ballard represents the Federal government in
+this Territory, and Uncle Sam's army is here to protect the Federal
+government. If Ballard calls on the army it's our business to obey, and
+if there's any mistake in judgment it's Ballard's, not mine." Which was
+sound soldier common-sense, and happened to be equally good law. This is
+not always the case.
+
+"You haven't got any force to send," said Tuck.
+
+This was true. General Crook had taken with him both Captain Sinclair's
+infantry and the troop (or company, as cavalry was also then called) of
+the First.
+
+"A detail of five or six with a reliable non-commissioned officer will
+do to remind them it's the United States they're bucking against," said
+Paisley. "There's a deal in the moral of these things. Crook--" Paisley
+broke off and ran to the door. "Hold his horse!" he called out to the
+orderly; for he had heard the hoofs, and was out of the house before
+Corporal Jones had fairly arrived. So Jones sprang off and hurried up,
+saluting. He delivered his message.
+
+"Um--umpra--what's that? Is it _imperative_ you mean?" suggested
+Paisley.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Jones, reforming his pronunciation of that unaccustomed
+word. "He said it twiced."
+
+"What were they doing?"
+
+"Blamed if I--beg the captain's pardon--they looked like they was
+waitin' fer me to git out."
+
+"Go on--go on. How many were there?"
+
+"Seven, sir. There was Governor Ballard and Mr. Hewley and--well, them's
+all the names I know. But," Jones hastened on with eagerness, "I've saw
+them five other fellows before at a--at--" The corporal's voice failed,
+and he stood looking at the captain.
+
+"Well? Where?"
+
+"At a cock-fight, sir," murmured Jones, casting his eyes down.
+
+A slight sound came from the room where Tuck was seated, listening, and
+Paisley's round gray eyes rolled once, then steadied themselves
+fiercely upon Jones.
+
+"Did you notice anything further unusual, corporal?"
+
+"No, sir, except they was excited in there. Looked like they might be
+goin' to hev considerable rough house--a fuss, I mean, sir. Two was in
+their socks. I counted four guns on a table."
+
+"Take five men and go at once to the State-House. If the Governor needs
+assistance you will give it, but do nothing hasty. Stop trouble, and
+make none. You've got twenty minutes."
+
+"Captain--if anybody needs arrestin'--"
+
+"You must be judge of that." Paisley went into the house. There was no
+time for particulars.
+
+"Snakes!" remarked Jones. He jumped on his horse and dashed down the
+slope to the men's quarters.
+
+"Crook may be here any day or any hour," said Paisley, returning to the
+doctor. "With two companies in the background, I think Price's Left Wing
+will subside this morning."
+
+"Supposing they don't?"
+
+"I'll go myself; and when it gets to Washington that the commanding
+officer at Boise personally interfered with the Legislature of Idaho,
+it'll shock 'em to that extent that the government will have to pay for
+a special commission of investigation and two tons of red tape. I've got
+to trust to that corporal's good sense. I haven't another man at the
+post."
+
+[Illustration: "HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET"]
+
+Corporal Jones had three-quarters of a mile to go, and it was ten
+minutes before noon, so he started his five men at a run. His plan was
+to walk and look quiet as soon as he reached the town, and thus
+excite no curiosity. The citizens were accustomed to the sight of
+passing soldiers. Jones had thought out several things, and he was not
+going to order bayonets fixed until the final necessary moment. "Stop
+trouble and make none" was firm in his mind. He had not long been a
+corporal. It was still his first enlistment. His habits were by no
+means exemplary; and his frontier personality, strongly developed by
+six years of vagabonding before he enlisted, was scarcely yet
+disciplined into the military machine of the regulation pattern that
+it should and must become before he could be counted a model soldier.
+His captain had promoted him to steady him, if that could be, and to
+give his better qualities a chance. Since then he had never been drunk
+at the wrong time. Two years ago it would not have entered his
+free-lance heart to be reticent with any man, high or low, about any
+pleasure in which he saw fit to indulge; to-day he had been shy over
+confessing to the commanding officer his leaning to cock-fights--a
+sign of his approach to the correct mental attitude of the enlisted
+man. Being corporal had wakened in him a new instinct, and this
+State-House affair was the first chance he had had to show himself. He
+gave the order to proceed at a walk in such a tone that one of the
+troopers whispered to another, "Specimen ain't going to forget he's
+wearing a chevron."
+
+
+III
+
+The brief silence that Jones and his invitation to supper had caused
+among the Councillors was first broken by F. Jackson Gilet.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "as President of the Council I rejoice in an
+interruption that has given pause to our haste and saved us from
+ill-considered expressions of opinion. The Gove'nuh has, I confess,
+surprised me. Befo' examining the legal aspect of our case I will ask
+the Gove'nuh if he is familiar with the sundry statutes applicable."
+
+"I think so," Ballard replied, pleasantly.
+
+"I had supposed," continued the President of the Council--"nay, I had
+congratulated myself that our weightiuh tasks of law-making and so fo'th
+were consummated yesterday, our thirty-ninth day, and that our friendly
+game of last night would be, as it were, the finis that crowned with
+pleashuh the work of a session memorable for its harmony."
+
+This was not wholly accurate, but near enough. The Governor had vetoed
+several bills, but Price's Left Wing had had much more than the required
+two-thirds vote of both Houses to make these bills laws over the
+Governor's head. This may be called harmony in a manner. Gilet now went
+on to say that any doubts which the Governor entertained concerning the
+legality of his paying any salaries could easily be settled without
+entering upon discussion. Discussion at such a juncture could not but
+tend towards informality. The President of the Council could well
+remember most unfortunate discussions in Missouri between the years 1856
+and 1860, in some of which he had had the honor to take part--_minima
+pars_, gentlemen! Here he digressed elegantly upon civil dissensions,
+and Ballard, listening to him and marking the slow, sure progress of the
+hour, told himself that never before had Gilet's oratory seemed more
+welcome or less lengthy. A plan had come to him, the orator next
+announced, a way out of the present dilemma, simple and regular in
+every aspect. Let some gentleman present now kindly draft a bill setting
+forth in its preamble the acts of Congress providing for the
+Legislature's compensation, and let this bill in conclusion provide that
+all members immediately receive the full amount due for their services.
+At noon both Houses would convene; they would push back the clock, and
+pass this bill before the term of their session should expire.
+
+"Then, Gove'nuh," said Gilet, "you can amply vindicate yo'self by a
+veto, which, together with our votes on reconsideration of yoh
+objections, will be reco'ded in the journal of our proceedings, and
+copies transmitted to Washington within thirty days as required by law.
+Thus, suh, will you become absolved from all responsibility."
+
+The orator's face, while he explained this simple and regular way out of
+the dilemma, beamed with acumen and statesmanship. Here they would make
+a law, and the Governor must obey the law!
+
+Nothing could have been more to Ballard's mind as he calculated the
+fleeting minutes than this peaceful, pompous farce. "Draw your bill,
+gentlemen," he said. "I would not object if I could."
+
+The Statutes of the United States were procured from among the pistols
+and opened at the proper page. Gascon Claiborne, upon another sheet of
+paper headed "Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber," set about
+formulating some phrases which began "Whereas," and Gratiot des Peres
+read aloud to him from the statutes. Ballard conversed apart with
+Hewley; in fact, there was much conversing aside.
+
+"'Third March, 1863, c. 117, s. 8, v. 12, p. 811,'" dictated Des Peres.
+
+"Skip the chaptuhs and sections," said Claiborne. "We only require the
+date."
+
+"'Third March, 1863. The sessions of the Legislative Assemblies of the
+several Territories of the United States shall be limited to forty days'
+duration.'"
+
+"Wise provision that," whispered Ballard. "No telling how long a poker
+game might last."
+
+But Hewley could not take anything in this spirit. "Genuine business was
+not got through till yesterday," he said.
+
+"'The members of each branch of the Legislature,'" read Des Peres,
+"'shall receive a compensation of six dollars per day during the
+sessions herein provided for, and they shall receive such mileage as now
+provided by law: _Provided_, That the President of the Council and the
+Speaker of the House of Representatives shall each receive a
+compensation of ten dollars a day.'"
+
+At this the President of the Council waved a deprecatory hand to signify
+that it was a principle, not profit, for which he battled. They had
+completed their _Whereases_, incorporating the language of the several
+sections as to how the appropriation should be made, who disbursed such
+money, mileage, and, in short, all things pertinent to their bill, when
+Pete Cawthon made a suggestion.
+
+"Ain't there anything 'bout how much the Gove'nuh gits?" he asks.
+
+"And the Secretary?" added Wingo.
+
+"Oh, you can leave us out," said Ballard.
+
+"Pardon me, Gove'nuh," said Gilet. "You stated that yoh difficulty was
+not confined to Mr. Wingo or any individual gentleman, but was general.
+Does it not apply to yo'self, suh? Do you not need any bill?"
+
+"Oh no," said Ballard, laughing. "I don't need any bill."
+
+"And why not?" said Cawthon. "You've jist ez much earned yoh money ez us
+fellers."
+
+"Quite as much," said Ballard. "But we're not alike--at present."
+
+Gilet grew very stately. "Except certain differences in political
+opinions, suh, I am not awah of how we differ in merit as public
+servants of this Territory."
+
+"The difference is of your own making, Mr. Gilet, and no bill you could
+frame would cure it or destroy my responsibility. You cannot make any
+law contrary to a law of the United States."
+
+"Contrary to a law of the United States? And what, suh, has the United
+States to say about my pay I have earned in Idaho?"
+
+"Mr. Gilet, there has been but one government in this country since
+April, 1865, and as friends you and I have often agreed to differ as to
+how many there were before then. That government has a law compelling
+people like you and me to go through a formality, which I have done, and
+you and your friends have refused to do each time it has been suggested
+to you. I have raised no point until now, having my reasons, which were
+mainly that it would make less trouble now for the Territory of which I
+have been appointed Governor. I am held accountable to the Secretary of
+the Treasury semiannually for the manner in which the appropriation has
+been expended. If you will kindly hand me that book--"
+
+Gilet, more and more stately, handed Ballard the Statutes, which he had
+taken from Des Peres. The others were watching Ballard with gathering
+sullenness, as they had watched Hewley while he was winning Wingo's
+money, only now the sullenness was of a more decided complexion.
+
+Ballard turned the pages. "'Second July, 1862. Every person elected or
+appointed to any office of honor or profit, either in the civil,
+military, or naval service, ... shall before entering upon the duties of
+such office, and before being entitled to any salary or other emoluments
+thereof, take and subscribe the following oath: I--'"
+
+"What does this mean, suh?" said Gilet.
+
+"It means there is no difference in our positions as to what
+preliminaries the law requires of us, no matter how we may vary in
+convictions. I as Governor have taken the oath of allegiance to the
+United States, and you as Councillor must do the same before you can get
+your pay. Look at the book."
+
+"I decline, suh. I repudiate yoh proposition. There is a wide difference
+in our positions."
+
+"What do you understand it to be, Mr. Gilet?" Ballard's temper was
+rising.
+
+"If you have chosen to take an oath that did not go against yoh
+convictions--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gilet!" said Ballard, smiling. "Look at the book." He would not
+risk losing his temper through further discussion. He would stick to the
+law as it lay open before them.
+
+But the Northern smile sent Missouri logic to the winds. "In what are
+you superior to me, suh, that I cannot choose? Who are you that I and
+these gentlemen must take oaths befo' you?"
+
+"Not before me. Look at the book."
+
+"I'll look at no book, suh. Do you mean to tell me you have seen me day
+aftuh day and meditated this treacherous attempt?"
+
+"There is no attempt and no treachery, Mr. Gilet. You could have taken
+the oath long ago, like other officials. You can take it to-day--or take
+the consequences."
+
+"What? You threaten me, suh? Do I understand you to threaten me?
+Gentlemen of the Council, it seems Idaho will be less free than Missouri
+unless we look to it." The President of the Council had risen in his
+indignant oratorical might, and his more and more restless friends
+glared admiration at him. "When was the time that Price's Left Wing
+surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their
+shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have
+crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning.
+As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the
+soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in
+the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I
+will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern rule and dictation. I will
+risk all to be with the Southern people, and if defeated I can, with a
+patriot of old, exclaim,
+
+     "'More true joy an exile feels
+     Than Caesuh with a Senate at his heels.'
+
+"Aye, gentlemen! And we will not be defeated! Our rights are here and
+are ours." He stretched his arm towards the Treasurer's strong-box, and
+his enthusiastic audience rose at the rhetoric. "Contain yo'selves,
+gentlemen," said the orator. "Twelve o'clock and our bill!"
+
+"I've said my say," said Ballard, remaining seated.
+
+"An' what'll ye do?" inquired Pete Cawthon from the agitated group.
+
+"I forbid you to touch that!" shouted Ballard. He saw Wingo moving
+towards the box.
+
+"Gentlemen, do not resort--" began Gilet.
+
+But small, iron-gray Hewley snatched his pistol from the box, and sat
+down astraddle of it, guarding his charge. At this hostile movement the
+others precipitated themselves towards the table where lay their
+weapons, and Governor Ballard, whipping his own from his armhole, said,
+as he covered the table: "Go easy, gentlemen! Don't hurt our Treasurer!"
+
+"Don't nobody hurt anybody," said Specimen Jones, opening the door.
+
+This prudent corporal had been looking in at a window and hearing
+plainly for the past two minutes, and he had his men posted. Each member
+of the Council stopped as he stood, his pistol not quite yet attained;
+Ballard restored his own to its armhole and sat in his chair; little
+Hewley sat on his box; and F. Jackson Gilet towered haughtily, gazing at
+the intruding blue uniform of the United States.
+
+"I'll hev to take you to the commanding officer," said Jones, briefly,
+to Hewley. "You and yer box."
+
+"Oh, my stars and stripes, but that's a keen move!" rejoiced Ballard to
+himself. "He's arresting _us_."
+
+[Illustration: "'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN JONES"]
+
+In Jones's judgment, after he had taken in the situation, this had
+seemed the only possible way to stop trouble without making any, and
+therefore, even now, bayonets were not fixed. Best not ruffle Price's
+Left Wing just now, if you could avoid it. For a new corporal it was
+well thought and done. But it was high noon, the clock not pushed
+back, and punctual Representatives strolling innocently towards their
+expected pay. There must be no time for a gathering and possible
+reaction. "I'll hev to clear this State-House out," Jones decided.
+"We're makin' an arrest," he said, aloud, "and we want a little room."
+The outside bystanders stood back obediently, but the Councillors
+delayed. Their pistols were, with Ballard's and Hewley's, of course in
+custody. "Here," said Jones, restoring them. "Go home now. The
+commanding officer's waitin' fer the prisoner. Put yer boots on, sir,
+and leave," he added to Pete Cawthon, who still stood in his
+stockings. "I don't want to hev to disperse anybody more'n what I've
+done."
+
+Disconcerted Price's Left Wing now saw file out between armed soldiers
+the Treasurer and his strong-box; and thus guarded they were brought to
+Boise Barracks, whence they did not reappear. The Governor also went to
+the post.
+
+After delivering Hewley and his treasure to the commanding officer,
+Jones with his five troopers went to the sutler's store and took a drink
+at Jones's expense. Then one of them asked the corporal to have another.
+But Jones refused. "If a man drinks much of that," said he (and the
+whiskey certainly was of a livid, unlikely flavor), "he's liable to go
+home and steal his own pants." He walked away to his quarters, and as he
+went they heard him thoughtfully humming his most inveterate song, "Ye
+shepherds tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way."
+
+But poisonous whiskey was not the inner reason for his moderation. He
+felt very much like a responsible corporal to-day, and the troopers knew
+it. "Jones has done himself a good turn in this fuss," they said. "He'll
+be changing his chevron."
+
+That afternoon the Legislature sat in the State-House and read to
+itself in the Statutes all about oaths. It is not believed that any of
+them sat up another night; sleeping on a problem is often much better.
+Next morning the commanding officer and Governor Ballard were called
+upon by F. Jackson Gilet and the Speaker of the House. Every one was
+civil and hearty as possible. Gilet pronounced the captain's whiskey
+"equal to any at the Southern, Saint Louey," and conversed for some time
+about the cold season, General Crook's remarkable astuteness in dealing
+with Indians, and other topics of public interest. "And concernin' yoh
+difficulty yesterday, Gove'nuh," said he, "I've been consulting the
+laws, suh, and I perceive yoh construction is entahley correct."
+
+And so the Legislature signed that form of oath prescribed for
+participants in the late Rebellion, and Hewley did not have to wait for
+his poker money. He and Wingo played many subsequent games; for, as they
+all said in referring to the matter, "A little thing like that should
+nevuh stand between friends."
+
+Thus was accomplished by Ballard, Paisley--and Jones--the Second
+Missouri Compromise, at Boise City, Idaho, 1867--an eccentric moment in
+the eccentric years of our development westward, and historic also. That
+it has gone unrecorded until now is because of Ballard's modesty,
+Paisley's preference for the sword, and Jones's hatred of the pen. He
+was never known to write except, later, in the pages of his company
+roster and such unavoidable official places; for the troopers were
+prophetic. In not many months there was no longer a Corporal Jones, but
+a person widely known as Sergeant Jones of Company A; called also the
+"Singing Sergeant"; but still familiar to his intimate friends as
+"Specimen."
+
+
+
+
+LA TINAJA BONITA
+
+
+     "And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up,
+     because there had been no rain in the land."--1 Kings xvii. 7.
+
+A pretty girl was kneeling on the roof of a flat mud cabin, a harvest of
+red peppers round her knees. On the ground below her stood a swarthy
+young man, the bloom on his Mexican cheeks rich and dusky, like her own.
+His face was irresponsible and winning, and his watching eyes shone upon
+her with admiration and desire. She on the roof was entertained by her
+visitor's attention, but unfavorable to it. Through the live-long sunny
+day she had parried his love-talk with light and complete skill,
+enjoying herself, and liking him very well, as she had done since they
+were two children playing together in the Arizona desert. She was quite
+mistress of the situation, because she was a woman, and he as yet merely
+a boy; he was only twenty-two; she was almost sixteen. The Mexican man
+at twenty-two may be as experienced as his Northern brother of thirty,
+but at sixteen the Mexican woman is also mature, and can competently
+deal with the man. So this girl had relished the thoughtless morning and
+noon as they passed; but twice lately she had glanced across the low
+tree-tops of her garden down the trail, where the canon descended to the
+silent plain below.
+
+"I think I must go back now," said the young man, not thinking so. He
+had a guitar from the cabin.
+
+"Oh!" said she, diverted by his youthful feint. "Well, if you think it
+is so late." She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchief
+and strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her head
+to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole
+roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer
+with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting
+and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her most
+wistfully.
+
+"It is not precisely late--yet," said he.
+
+"To be sure not," she assented, consulting the sky. "We have still three
+hours of day."
+
+He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. "But after night it
+is so very dark on the trail to camp," he insincerely objected.
+
+"I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark."
+
+"It is for the horse's legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing."
+
+"Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quite
+suddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have a
+good figure."
+
+"I am much heavier than last year," said he. "My arm--"
+
+"I can see, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you kiss me any more.
+You didn't offer to when you came this morning--and that shows you men
+perceive things more quickly than we can. But don't go yet. You can lead
+your horse. His legs will come to no harm, eased of your weight. I
+should have been lonely to-day, and you have made it pass so quickly.
+You have talked so much that my peppers are not half spread."
+
+"We could finish them in five minutes together," said the youth, taking
+a step.
+
+"Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread on
+them, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, go
+bring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty."
+
+But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof.
+
+"Very well, then," said Lolita. "If you like this better, finish the
+peppers, and I'll go for the water."
+
+"Why do you look down the trail so often?" said the baffled love-maker,
+petulantly.
+
+"Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day," the girl
+replied, softly.
+
+"Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?"
+
+"Why not?" She shaded her eyes, and looked where the canon's widening
+slit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changeless
+waste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of the
+gaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes
+and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled
+to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or
+even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the
+dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.
+
+"What does he come here for?" demanded Luis.
+
+"The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes."
+
+"Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luis
+lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched
+Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little
+with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and
+unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing
+from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita
+knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling
+her peppers:
+
+     "'Soy purita mejicana;
+     Nada tengo espanol.'"
+
+(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this
+melodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.
+
+"Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly.
+
+"Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa."
+
+"I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis.
+
+But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly.
+
+"Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that
+white flour."
+
+Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they
+were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross
+with a sense of failure. "El telele se murio," he sang.
+
+     "'The hunchback is dead.
+     Ay! Ay! Ay!
+     And no one could be found to bury him except--'"
+
+"Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?"
+
+"Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly."
+
+"You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it."
+
+The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from the
+cabin.
+
+"Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,
+where it is pleasant.
+
+     "'And no one could be found to bury him except
+     Five dragoons and a corporal
+     And the sacristan's cat.'"
+
+Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.
+Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fenced
+irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a
+nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air
+that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their
+varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed
+and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a
+holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see
+or think of Arizona, just outside.
+
+"Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?" inquired Luis, dropping his music.
+
+She sighed. "He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is
+no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last
+week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know what
+is going to happen to us." The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to come
+outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent
+abiding-place.
+
+"There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to
+Maricopa," chirped the bird on the ground.
+
+She made no answer to this. "What are you doing nowadays?" she asked.
+
+"I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American
+soldiers," he replied, promptly.
+
+"By Tucson?"
+
+"No. Huachuca."
+
+"Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May."
+
+"It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita."
+
+"But it's October now!" Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and
+broke into laughter.
+
+"I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since."
+
+"Have you asked any one for work?"
+
+"It is not my way to beg."
+
+"Luis, I don't believe you're quite a man yet, in spite of your
+mustache. You complain there's no money for Mexicans in Arizona because
+the Americans get it all. Why don't you go back to Sonora, then, and be
+rich in five minutes? It would sound finely: 'Luis Romero, Merchant,
+Hermosillo.' Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap at
+Guaymas. You would live in a big house, perhaps with two stories, and I
+would come and visit you at Easter--if your wife would allow it." Here
+Lolita threw a pepper at him.
+
+The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.
+
+"And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told the
+American contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. He
+didn't say much about you," added the little lady.
+
+"Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages to
+pay for the food he supplied us. They charge you extra for starvation,
+those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so he
+may strive to win a home for her."
+
+"I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could strive
+to win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way."
+
+"I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of their
+gringo customs."
+
+"You speak truly indeed," murmured Lolita.
+
+"It is you who know about them," the boy said, angry like a child. He
+had seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. "They say you
+prefer gringos to your own people."
+
+"Who dares say that?"
+
+The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. He had touched her that
+time.
+
+But Lolita's eye softened at the instant of speaking, and she broke into
+her sweet laugh. "There!" she said, recapturing the situation; "is it
+not like old times for you and me to be fighting."
+
+"Me? I am not fighting."
+
+"You relieve me."
+
+"I do not consider a gringo worth my notice."
+
+"Sensible boy! You speak as wisely as one who has been to school in a
+large city. Luis, do you remember the day Uncle Ramon locked me up for
+riding on the kicking burro, and you came and unlocked me when uncle was
+gone? You took me walking, and lost us both in the mountains. We were
+really only a little, little way from home, but I thought we had got
+into another country where they eat children. I was six, and I beat you
+for losing me, and cried, and you were big, and you kissed me till I
+stopped crying. Do you remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't you remember?"
+
+"I don't remember child's tricks."
+
+"Luis, I have come to a conclusion. You are still young enough for me to
+kiss quite safely. Every time you fight with me--I shall kiss you. Won't
+you get me some fresh water now?"
+
+He lounged, sulky, against his barrel.
+
+"Come, querido! Must I go all that way myself? Well, then, if you intend
+to stand and glare at me till the moon rises--Ah! he moves!"
+
+Luis laid the guitar gradually down, and gradually lifting a pail in
+which the dipper rattled with emptiness, he proceeded to crawl on his
+journey.
+
+"You know that is not the one we use, muchacho," (little boy), remarked
+Lolita.
+
+"Keep your kisses for your gringo," the water-carrier growled, with his
+back to her.
+
+"I shall always save some for my little cousin."
+
+The pail clattered on the stones, and the child stopped crawling. She on
+the roof stared at this performance for an open-mouthed moment, gloves
+idle among the spicy peppers. Then, laughing, she sprang to her feet,
+descended, and, catching up the water-jar (the olla de agua), overtook
+him, and shook it in his face with the sweetest derision. "Now we'll go
+together," said she, and started gayly through the green trees and the
+garden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing at
+her red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did they
+cross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of the
+leaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation into
+Arizona's domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground--dead
+cattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought,
+killed in the sanctuary by cold water.
+
+A wise, quiet man, with a man's will, may sometimes after three days of
+thirst still hold grip enough upon his slipping mind to know, when he
+has found the water, that he must not drink it, must only dampen his
+lips and tongue in a drop-by-drop fashion until he has endured the
+passing of many slow, insidious hours. Even a wise man had best have a
+friend by his side then, who shall fight and tear him from the perilous
+excesses that he craves, knock him senseless if he cannot pin him down;
+but cattle know nothing of drop by drop, and you cannot pin down a
+hundred head that have found water after three days. So these hundred
+had drunk themselves swollen, and died. Cracked hide and white bone they
+lay, brown, dry, gaping humps straddled stiff askew in the last
+convulsion; and over them presided Arizona--silent, vast, all sunshine
+everlasting.
+
+Luis saw these corpses that had stumbled to their fate, and he
+remembered; with Lolita in those trees all day, he had forgotten for a
+while. He pointed to the wide-strewn sight, familiar, monotonous as
+misfortune. "There will be many more," he said. "Another rainy season is
+gone without doing anything for the country. It cannot rain now for
+another year, Lolita."
+
+"God help us and our cattle, and travellers!" she whispered.
+
+Luis musingly repeated a saying of the country about the Tinaja Bonita,
+
+     "'When you see the Black Cross dry,
+     Fill the wagon cisterns high'"
+
+--a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom,
+stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded
+wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath the
+desert.
+
+"But the Black Cross has never been dry yet," Luis said.
+
+"You have not seen it lately," said Lolita.
+
+"Lolita! do you mean--" He looked in her troubled eyes, and they went on
+in silence together. They left behind them the bones and the bald level
+on which they lay, and came to where the canon's broader descent
+quickened until they sank below that sight of the cattle, and for a time
+below the home and trees. They went down steeply by cactus and dry rock
+to a meeting of several canons opening from side rifts in the Sierra,
+furrowing the main valley's mesa with deep watercourses that brought no
+water. Finding their way in this lumpy meeting-ground, they came upon
+the lurking-place of the Tinaja Bonita. They stood above it at the edge
+of a pitch of rock, watching the motionless crystal of the pool.
+
+"How well it hides down there in its own canon!" said Luis. "How pretty
+and clear! But there's plenty of water, Lolita."
+
+"Can you see the Black Cross?"
+
+"Not from here."
+
+They began descending around the sides of the crumbled slate-rock face
+that tilted too steep for foothold.
+
+"The other well is dry, of course," said Lolita. In the slaty,
+many-ledged formation a little lower down the canon, towards the peep of
+outlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second round
+hole, twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in this
+place, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size and
+depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed
+man's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja's
+reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully
+represented except the water.
+
+"It must have been a real well once," said Luis.
+
+"Once, yes."
+
+"And what made it go dry?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+"How strange it should be the lower well that failed, Lolita!"
+
+The boy and girl were climbing down slowly, drawing near each other as
+they reached the bottom of the hollow. The peep of open country was
+blocked, and the tall tops of the mountains were all of the outer world
+to be seen down here below the mesa's level. The silence was like
+something older than this world, like the silence of space before any
+worlds were made.
+
+"Do you believe it ever can go dry?" asked Luis. They were now on the
+edge of the Tinaja.
+
+"Father Rafael says that it is miraculous," said the girl, believingly.
+
+Opposite, and everywhere except where they were, the walls went sheer
+down, not slate-colored, but white, with a sudden up-cropping formation
+of brick-shaped stones. These also were many-layered and crumbling,
+cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them.
+No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven,
+tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita
+looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that
+white formation shot up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary and
+irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones
+were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand--four small stones
+shaping a cross, back against the white, symmetrical and plain.
+
+"It has come farther--more uncovered since yesterday," Lolita whispered.
+
+"Can the Tinaja sink altogether?" repeated Luis. The arms of the cross
+were a measurable space above the water-line, and he had always seen it
+entirely submerged.
+
+"How could it sink?" said Lolita, simply. "It will stop when the black
+stones are wholly dry."
+
+"You believe Father Rafael," Luis said, always in a low voice; "but it
+was only Indians, after all, who told the mission fathers at the first."
+
+"That was very long ago," said she, "and there has always been water in
+the Tinaja Bonita."
+
+Boy and girl had set the jar down, and forgotten it and why they had
+come. Luis looked uneasily at the circular pool, and up from this
+creviced middle of the canon to the small high tops of the mountains
+rising in the free sky.
+
+"This is an evil place," he said. "As for the water--no one, no three,
+can live long enough to be sure."
+
+But it was part of Lolita's religion. "I am sure," said she.
+
+The young Mexican's eyes rested on the face of the girl beside him, more
+beautiful just then with some wave of secret fear and faith.
+
+"Come away with me, Lolita!" he pleaded, suddenly. "I can work. I can be
+a man. It is fearful for you to live here alone."
+
+"Alone, Luis?" His voice had called her from her reverie back to her
+gay, alert self. "Do you consider Uncle Ramon nobody to live with?"
+
+"Yes. Nobody--for you."
+
+"Promise me never to tell that to uncle. He is so considerate that he
+might make me marry somebody for company. And then, you know, my husband
+would be certain to be stupid about your coming to see me, querido."
+
+"Why do you always mock me, Lolita?"
+
+"Mock you? What a fancy! Oh, see how the sun's going! If we do not get
+our water, your terrible Tinaja will go dry before supper. Come, Luis, I
+carried the olla. Must I do everything?"
+
+He looked at her disconsolate. "Ah!" he vibrated, revelling in deep
+imaginary passion.
+
+"Go! go!" she cried, pushing him. "Take your olla."
+
+Upon the lightest passing puff of sentiment the Southern breast can
+heave with every genuine symptom of storm, except wreck. Of course she
+stirred his gregarious heart. Was she not lovely and he twenty-two? He
+went down the natural stairs and came slowly up with the water, stopping
+a step below her. "Lolita," he said, "don't you love me at all? not a
+very little?"
+
+"You are my dearest, oldest friend, Luis," she said, looking at him with
+such full sweetness that his eyes fell. "But why do you pretend five
+beans make ten?"
+
+"Of course they only make ten with gringos."
+
+She held up a warning finger.
+
+"Oh yes, oh yes! Strangers make fine lovers!" With this he swelled to a
+fond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, "It is not difficult to kill a
+man, Lolita."
+
+"Fighting! after what I told you!" Lolita stooped and kissed her cousin
+Luis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.
+
+"As often as you please," he said, as she released herself angrily, and
+then a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart,
+trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into the
+Tinaja with a gulping resonance. Loitering strings of sand strewed after
+it, and the boy's and girl's superstitious eyes looked up from the
+ringed, waving water to the ledge. Lolita's single shriek of terror
+turned to joy as she uttered it.
+
+"I thought--I thought you would not come!" she cried out.
+
+The dismounted horseman above made no sign of understanding her words.
+He stepped carefully away from the ledge his foot had crumbled, and they
+saw him using his rifle like a staff, steadying its stock in successive
+niches, and so working back to his horse. There he slid the rifle into
+its leather sling along the left side of his saddle.
+
+"So he is not dead," murmured Luis, "and we need not live alone."
+
+"Come down!" the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comer
+stood by his horse like an apparition.
+
+"Perhaps he is dead, after all," Luis said. "You might say some of the
+Mass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer."
+
+Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the
+stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To
+him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the
+sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had
+started and stared to see--not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his
+horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in
+the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture--smoke from the rifle, and
+himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did not
+believe the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff,
+and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him,
+and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, and
+ready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing without
+concealment of her heart's desire.
+
+"Come down!" she repeated. "Come round the side." And, lifting the olla,
+she tapped it, and signed the way to him.
+
+"He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care to
+climb more than he must," said Luis. But the man had stirred at last
+from his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presently
+he was near enough for Luis to read his face. "Your gringo is a handsome
+fellow, certainly," he commented. "But he does not like me to-day."
+
+"Like you! He doesn't think about you," said Lolita.
+
+"Ha! That's your opinion?"
+
+"It is also his opinion--if you'll ask him."
+
+"He is afraid of Cousin Luis," stated the youth.
+
+"Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you--if he could see you."
+
+"There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your
+gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not."
+
+"How little he knows you!"
+
+"It is you he does not know very well," the boy said, with a pang.
+
+The scornful girl stared.
+
+"Oh, the innocent one!" sneered Luis. "Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one
+man can always recognize another, and the women don't know much."
+
+But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to
+read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no
+thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and
+to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. "You
+have come just in time," she called out to him. At the voice, he looked
+at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a
+tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his
+bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his
+blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above,
+getting a grip of himself. "Luis was becoming really afraid that he
+might have to do some work," continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill.
+"You know Luis?"
+
+"I know him."
+
+"You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us," she pursued,
+arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.
+
+"I can."
+
+At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when she
+had come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile fluttered
+on her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; nor
+could she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping him
+keep his grip.
+
+Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita's thoughts away from
+him and all other men. "No, indeed, he does not understand her very
+well," he repeated, bitter in knowing the man's suspicion and its
+needlessness. Something--disappointment, it may be--had wrought more
+reality in the young Mexican's easy-going love. "And she likes this
+gringo because--because he is light-colored!" he said, watching the
+American's bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but of
+sterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himself
+forewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, his
+mustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health by
+the weather. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode to
+the Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolita
+unclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushing
+coldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slighting
+touch changed the Mexican boy's temper to diversion and malice. Here
+were mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with a
+vengeance!
+
+"Give me that," said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar to
+him with such feline politeness that the American's blue eyes filled
+with fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quite
+ready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of his
+Saxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail out
+to the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.
+
+As the three went silent up the canon, Luis caught sight of Lolita's
+eyes shining with the hurt of her lover's rebuff, and his face sparkled
+with further mischief. "She has been despising me all day," he said to
+himself. "Very well, very well.--Senor Don Ruz," he began aloud,
+elaborately, "we are having a bad drought."
+
+The American rode on, inspecting the country.
+
+"I know at least four sorts of kisses," reflected the Mexican trifler.
+"But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the top
+of a rock." He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his
+pistol, and his knife. "How clumsy these gringos are when it's about a
+girl!" thought Luis. "Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much
+care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical
+gringo!--Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!"
+
+The American continued to inspect the country, his supple,
+flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.
+
+"Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz," persisted the gadfly, lighting
+again. "Don Ramon's spring does not run now, and so we must come to the
+Tinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday.
+Everybody absent from home, except Lolita." Luis thought he could see
+his Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile over
+himself and his skill grew more engaging. "Lolita has been telling me
+all to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry."
+
+"It was you said that!" exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.
+
+"So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagree
+about." The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to his
+tormentor. "No sabe cuantos son cinco," Luis whispered, stepping close
+to Lolita. "Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now." Lolita
+drew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his head
+slightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. "But what do you
+say yourself, Don Ruz?" inquired Luis, pleased at this slight
+coincidence--"will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?"
+
+"I expect guessing won't interfere with the water's movements much,"
+finally remarked Don Ruz--Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in his
+voice were not much like the Mexican's light fluency. They were music to
+Lolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. The
+bitter Luis relished this too.
+
+"You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wondering
+about this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen so
+much of the cross out of water. Lolita says--"
+
+"So that's that place," said Genesmere, roughly.
+
+Luis looked inquiring.
+
+"Down there," Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back along
+the road they had come.
+
+Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, should
+never have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.
+
+"I'd have seen it if I'd had any use for it," said Genesmere.
+
+"To be sure, it lay off the road of travel," Luis assented. And of
+course Don Ruz knew all that was needful--how to find it. He knew what
+people said--did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolita
+perhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above the
+water, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty.
+Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they could
+judge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolita
+were surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubt
+what the Indians said about the great underground snake that came and
+sucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence was
+nearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.
+
+To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressed
+contempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of it
+before, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed the
+desert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where he
+expected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the canon, suffering the
+glib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings still
+smouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in his
+cheeks; but of Luis's chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, a
+single English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit.
+It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and,
+overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easily
+he could play this simple, unskilful American.
+
+They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees,
+where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.
+
+"So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?" said Luis, perceiving the
+American's pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at Gun
+Sight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita's and her cousin's
+trail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above the
+Tinaja. "You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know,
+Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probably
+frijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here." He was giving his
+pony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted.
+"I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming till
+to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper." He spoke jauntily from his horse,
+arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day's courting, gray
+steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil
+severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body
+together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft
+on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for
+Luis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcerted
+the most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to his
+galled self-esteem. "Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I
+shall come to-morrow, manana en la manana."
+
+"Good-night," said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; "I cannot
+stop you from passing my house."
+
+Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded
+upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease,
+ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American
+was not the man to wait until his enemy's back was turned.
+
+     "'El telele se murio
+     A enterrar ya le llevan--'"
+
+The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.
+
+     "'Ay! Ay! Ay!'"
+
+Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other,
+looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. The
+minstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than the
+American's shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant with
+thoughtlessness. Like most of his basking Southern breed, he had no
+visible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer than
+three minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough to
+sleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thing
+to sell some other man's horses over the border and get a fine coat and
+hat.
+
+     "'Cinco dragones y un cabo,
+     Oh, no no no no no!
+     Y un gato de sacristan.'"
+
+Coat and hat were getting up the canon's side among the cactus, the
+little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider;
+and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they
+went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in
+Genesmere's brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew,
+and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the
+sun--the sun of Arizona at the day's transfigured immortal
+passing--became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating
+like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep,
+and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over
+earth and sky.
+
+Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. "I didn't
+shoot because I was afraid of hitting you," he said.
+
+So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the
+Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her
+stupid and slow.
+
+"Are you going to eat?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh yes. I guess I'll eat."
+
+She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been
+Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and
+with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules,
+coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
+
+"It is getting dark," said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it,
+and sat down again.
+
+"I've never hurt a woman," he said, presently, the vision of his rifle's
+white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more
+flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.
+
+"Then you have a good chance now," said Lolita, quickly, busy over her
+cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in
+her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and
+sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.
+
+"And I wouldn't hurt a woman"--he was hardly talking to her--"not if I
+could think in time."
+
+"Men do it," she said, with the same defiance. "But it makes talk."
+
+"Talk's nothing to me," said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. "Do I
+care for opinions? Only my own." The fierceness passed from his face,
+and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud,
+changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. "I wouldn't want to have to
+remember a thing like that." He stretched himself, and leaned his elbows
+on his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding his
+fingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not a
+sign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreck
+of faith and passion. "I have to live a heap of my life alone," the
+lounger went on. "Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And I
+don't propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of." Lolita was
+throwing a cloth over the table and straightening it. "I'm twenty-five,
+and I've laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might say
+different."
+
+"It is ready," said Lolita, finishing her preparations.
+
+He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chair
+to the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She moved
+about the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him,
+seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was a
+peon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparatively
+well. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were several
+dishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to his
+plate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionally
+looking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again in
+words. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: "So, you see, you
+saved his life down there."
+
+She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she said
+nothing, but waited for what next.
+
+"You don't believe that. You don't know that. He knows that."
+
+She laughed again, more briefly.
+
+"You can tell him so. From me."
+
+Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita's lips and hinder each
+other's escaping.
+
+"And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn't have stopped. He'd have
+shot. Say that. From me. He'd have shot, because he's a Spaniard, like
+you."
+
+"You lie!" This side issue in some manner set free the girl's tongue, "I
+am not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am
+Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood.
+But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him
+go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell
+him it is Lolita's. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had
+enough of men's talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!"
+
+Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. "I
+suppose," he said, very slowly, "that folks like you folks can't
+understand about love--not about the kind I mean."
+
+Lolita's two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon
+her gods. "Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make
+you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved
+me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always,
+since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day,
+having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear
+his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you
+would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house
+to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is
+you who are the fool."
+
+She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to
+bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to
+him.
+
+"Lolita!" he whispered. "Lolita!"
+
+But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when
+presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way
+that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the
+desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew
+her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and
+changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "My
+life!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door the
+air of the canon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire
+and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the
+trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased
+to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes
+of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five
+planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the
+keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards
+the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere's eye, and Lolita felt
+him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.
+
+"What is it?" she said.
+
+"Nothing." He was staring at the hill. "Nothing," he replied to himself.
+
+"Dreamer, come!" said Lolita, pulling him. "It is cold here in the
+night--and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember."
+
+"What does this girl want now?"
+
+"The cards! our cards!"
+
+"Why, to be sure!" He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the
+fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,
+laughing for delight at her lover's being himself again--his own right
+self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.
+
+"Take it!" she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep
+his distance. "There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You
+shall buy me another." She flung the light instrument, that fell in a
+corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to
+a blurred hollow humming, and silence.
+
+"Now you have done it!" said Genesmere, mock serious.
+
+"I don't care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and
+you shall give me a new one.
+
+     "'Yo soy purita mejicana;
+     Nada tengo espanol,'"
+
+sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herself
+at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. "You
+sit there!" She nodded to the opposite side of the table. "Very well,
+move the lamp then." Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from
+him. "He thinks I cheat! Now, Senor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar.
+Do you hear?"
+
+"Too many pesos, senorita."
+
+"Oh, oh! the miser!"
+
+"I'm not going broke on any senoritas--not even my own girl!"
+
+"Have you no newer thing than poverty to tell me? Now if you look at me
+like that I cannot shuffle properly."
+
+"How am I to look, please?" He held his glance on her.
+
+"Not foolish like a boy. There, take them, then!" She threw the cards at
+him, blushing and perturbed by his eyes, while he scrambled to punish
+her across the table.
+
+"Generous one!" she said. "Ardent pretender! He won't let me shuffle
+because he fears to lose."
+
+"You shall have a silk handkerchief with flowers on it," said he,
+shuffling.
+
+"I have two already. I can see you arranging those cards, miser!"
+
+It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether she
+stole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for her
+when he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and the
+cards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, his
+oldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself.
+Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon to
+forget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of the
+moment.
+
+"Say my name!" he ordered; and at the child effort she made over "Russ"
+he smiled with delight. "Again!" he exclaimed, bending to catch her R
+and the whole odd little word she made. "More!"
+
+"No," pouted the girl, and beat at him, blushing again.
+
+"Make your bet!" he said, laying out the Mexican cards before him.
+"Quick! Which shall it be?"
+
+"The caballo. Oh, my dear, I wanted to die this afternoon, and now I am
+so happy!"
+
+It brought the tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly
+declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows
+and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out
+of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her
+win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the
+guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at
+last Genesmere began to speak of the next time, and Lolita to forbid
+such talk as that so soon. She laid her hand over his lips, at which he
+yielded for a little, and she improvised questions of moment to ask him,
+without time for stopping, until she saw that this would avail no
+longer. Then she sighed, and let him leave her to see to his animals,
+while she lighted the fire again to make breakfast for him. At that
+parting meal an anxiety slowly came in her face, and it was she that
+broke their silence after a while.
+
+"Which road do you go this time, querido?" she asked.
+
+"Tucson, Maricopa, and then straight here to you."
+
+"From Maricopa? That is longer across the desert."
+
+"Shorter to my girl."
+
+"I--I wish you would not come that way."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That--that desert!"
+
+"There's desert both ways--all ways. The other road puts an extra week
+between you and me."
+
+"Yes, yes. I have counted."
+
+"What is all this, Lolita?"
+
+Once more she hesitated, smiling uneasily beneath his scrutiny. "Yo no
+se" (I don't know). "You will laugh. You do not believe the things that
+I believe. The Tinaja Bonita--"
+
+"That again!"
+
+"Yes," she half whispered. "I am afraid."
+
+He looked at her steadily.
+
+"Return the same road by Tucson," she urged. "That way is only half so
+much desert, and you can carry water from Poso Blanco. Do not trust the
+Coyote Wells. They are little and shallow, and if the Black Cross--Oh,
+my darling, if you do not believe, do this for me because you love me,
+love me!"
+
+He did not speak at once. The two had risen, and stood by the open
+door, where the dawn was entering and mixing with the lamp. "Because I
+love you," he repeated at length, slowly, out of his uncertain thoughts.
+
+She implored him, and he studied her in silence.
+
+Suddenly hardness stamped his face. "I'll come by Tucson, then--since I
+love you!" And he walked at once out of the door. She followed him to
+his horse, and there reached up and pulled him round to her, locking her
+fingers behind his neck. Again his passion swept him, and burned the
+doubt from his eyes. "I believe you love me!" he broke out.
+
+"Ah, why need you say that?"
+
+"Adios, chiquita." He was smiling, and she looked at his white teeth and
+golden mustache. She felt his hands begin to unlock her own.
+
+"Not yet--not yet!"
+
+"Adios, chiquita."
+
+"O mi querido!" she murmured; "with you I forget day and night!"
+
+"Bastante!" He kissed her once for all.
+
+"Good-bye! good-bye! Mis labios van estar frios hasta que tu los toques
+otra vez" (My lips will be cold until you touch them again).
+
+He caught her two hands, as if to cling to something. "Say that once
+more. Tell me that once more."
+
+She told him with all her heart and soul, and he sprang into his saddle.
+She went beside him through the cold, pale-lighted trees to the garden's
+edge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren ground
+among the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that came
+beyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strong
+figure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter.
+When the steeper fall of the canon hid him from her she ran to the
+house, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sight
+again below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, the
+white horse and dark rider and the mules, until they became a mere line
+of something moving, and so vanished into the increasing day.
+
+Genesmere rode, and took presently to smoking. Coming to a sandy place,
+he saw prints of feet and of a shod horse in the trail heading the other
+way. That was his own horse, and the feet were Lolita's and Luis's--the
+record and the memory of yesterday afternoon. He looked up from the
+trail to the hills, now lambent with violet and shifting orange, and
+their shapes as they moved out into his approaching view were the shapes
+of yesterday afternoon. He came soon to the forking of the trails, one
+for Tucson and the other leading down into the lumpy country, and here
+again were the prints in the sand, the shod horse, the man and the
+woman, coming in from the lumpy country that lay to the left; and
+Genesmere found himself stock-still by the forking trails, looking at
+his watch. His many-journeyed mules knew which was the Tucson trail,
+and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walked
+asunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They went
+along a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came to
+an end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footing
+looking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master sat
+quiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; and
+the sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So far had he come
+yesterday with that mind easy over his garnered prosperity, free and
+soaring on its daily flight among the towers of his hopes--those
+constructions that are common with men who grow fond: the air-castle
+rises and reaches, possessing the architect, who cherishes its slow
+creation with hourly changes and additions to the plan. A house was part
+of Genesmere's castle, a home with a wife inside, and no more camping
+alone. Thus far, to this exact ledge, the edifice had gone forward
+fortunately, and then a blast had crumbled house and days to come into
+indistinguishable dust. The heavy echo jarred in Genesmere, now that he
+had been lured to look again upon the site of the disaster, and a
+lightning violence crossed his face. He saw the two down there as they
+had stood, the man with his arms holding the woman, before the falling
+stone had startled them. Were the Mexican present now in the flesh, he
+would destroy him just for what he had tried to do. If she were
+true--She was true--that was no thanks to the Mexican. Genesmere was
+sorry second thoughts had spared that fellow yesterday, and he looked at
+his watch again. It was time to be starting on the Tucson trail, and the
+mules alertly turned their steps from the Tinaja Bonita. They could see
+no good in having come here. Evidently it was not to get water. Why,
+then? What use was there in looking down a place into a hole? The mules
+gave it up. Genesmere himself thought the Tinaja poorly named. It was
+not pretty. In his experience of trail and canon he knew no other such
+hole. He was not aware of the twin, dried up, thirty yards below, and
+therefore only half knew the wonders of the spot.
+
+He rode back to the forks across the rolling steepness, rebuilding the
+castle; then, discovering something too distant to be sure about, used
+his glass quickly. It was another rider, also moving slowly among the
+knolls and gullies of the mesa, and Genesmere could not make him out. He
+was going towards the cabin, but it was not the same horse that Luis had
+ridden yesterday. This proved nothing, and it would be easy to circle
+and see the man closer--only not worth the trouble. Let the Mexican go
+to the cabin. Let him go every day. He probably would, if she permitted.
+Most likely she would tell him to keep away from her. She ought to. She
+might hurt him if he annoyed her. She was a good shot with a pistol. But
+women work differently from men--and then she was Mexican. She might
+hide her feelings and make herself pleasant for three weeks. She would
+tell him when he returned, and they would laugh together over how she
+had fooled this Luis. After all, shooting would have been too much
+punishment. A man with a girl like Lolita must expect to find other men
+after her. It depends on your girl. You find that out when you go after
+other men's girls. When a woman surely loves some other man she will not
+look at you. And Lolita's love was a sure thing. A woman can say love
+and a man will believe her--until he has experienced the genuine article
+once; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with her
+inside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not to
+be accounted for. If anybody had said last year--why, as late as the
+20th of last March--that settling down was what you were coming to--and
+now--Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding a
+horse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. "No longer
+alone!" he said aloud, suddenly, and surprised the white horse.
+
+The song about the hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythm
+in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it,
+naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion
+to piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick after
+slow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again;
+would never want to--not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head back
+to take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountains
+like a picture, and himself far out in the flat country, and the bare
+sun in the sky. He had come six miles on the road since he had last
+noticed. Six miles, and the air-castle was rebuilt and perfect, with no
+difference from the old one except its foundation, which was upon sand.
+To see the unexpected plain around him, and the islands of blue, sharp
+peaks lying in it, drove the tune from his head, and he considered the
+well-known country, reflecting that man could not be meant to live here.
+The small mountain-islands lay at all distances, blue in a dozen ways,
+amid the dead calm of this sand archipelago. They rose singly from it,
+sheer and sudden, toothed and triangled like icebergs, hot as stoves.
+The channels to the north, Santa Rosa way, opened broad and yellow, and
+ended without shore upon the clean horizon, and to the south narrowed
+with lagoons into Sonora. Genesmere could just see one top of the Sierra
+de la Quitabac jutting up from below the earth-line, splitting the main
+channel, the faintest blue of all. They could be having no trouble over
+their water down there, with the Laguna Esperanca and the Poso de Mazis.
+Genesmere killed some more of the way rehearsing the trails and
+water-holes of this country, known to him like his pocket; and by-and-by
+food-cooking and mule-feeding and the small machine repetitions of a
+camp and a journey brought the Quijotoa Mountains behind him to replace
+Gun Sight and the Sierra de la Naril; and later still the Cababi hid the
+Quijotoa, and Genesmere counted days and nights to the good, and was at
+the Coyote Wells.
+
+These were holes in rocks, but shallow, as Lolita said. No shallower
+than ordinary, however; he would see on the way back if they gave signs
+of failing. No wonder if they did, with this spell of drought--but why
+mix up a plain thing with a lot of nonsense about a black cross down a
+hole? Genesmere was critically struck with the words of the tune he now
+noticed steadily running in his head again, beneath the random surface
+of his thoughts.
+
+     "Cinco dragones y un cabo,
+     Y un gato de sacristan."
+
+That made no sense either; but Mexicans found something in it. Liked it.
+Now American songs had some sense:
+
+     "They bathed his head in vinegar
+       To fetch him up to time,
+     And now he drives a mule team on
+       The Denver City line."
+
+A man could understand that. A proud stage-driver makes a mistake about
+a female passenger. Thinks he has got an heiress, and she turns out to
+peddle sarsaparilla. "So he's naturally used up," commented Genesmere.
+"You estimate a girl as one thing, and she--" Here the undercurrent
+welled up, breaking the surface. "Did she mean that? Was that her
+genuine reason?" In memory he took a look at his girl's face, and
+repeated her words when she besought him to come the longer way and
+hesitated over why. Was that shame at owning she believed such stuff?
+True, after asking him once about his religion and hearing what he said,
+she had never spoken of these things again. That must be a woman's way
+when she loved you first--to hide her notions that differed from yours,
+and not ruffle happy days. "Return the same road by Tucson!" He
+unwrapped a clean, many-crumpled handkerchief, and held Lolita's
+photograph for a while. Then he burst into an unhappy oath, and folded
+the picture up again. What if her priest did tell her? He had heard the
+minister tell about eternal punishment when he was a boy, and just as
+soon as he started thinking it over he knew it was a lie. And this quack
+Tinaja was worse foolishness, and had nothing to do with religion.
+Lolita afraid of his coming to grief in a country he had travelled
+hundreds, thousands of miles in! Perhaps she had never started thinking
+for herself yet. But she had. She was smarter than any girl of her age
+he had ever seen. She did not want him back so soon. That was what it
+was. Yet she had looked true; her voice had sounded that way. Again he
+dwelt upon her words and caresses; and harboring these various thoughts,
+he killed still more of the long road, until, passing after awhile Poso
+Blanco, and later Marsh's ranch-well at the forks where the Sonora road
+comes in, he reached Tucson a man divided against himself. Divided
+beyond his will into two selves--one of faith besieged, and one of
+besieging inimical reason--the inextricable error!
+
+Business and pleasure were waiting in Tucson, and friends whose ways and
+company had not been of late for him; but he frequented them this time,
+tasting no pleasure, yet finding the ways and company better than his
+own. After the desert's changeless, unfathomed silence, in which nothing
+new came day or night to break the fettering spell his mind was falling
+under, the clink and knocking of bottles was good to hear, and he
+listened for more, craving any sound that might liven or distract his
+haunted spirit. Instead of the sun and stars, here was a roof; instead
+of the pitiless clear air, here was tobacco smoke; and beneath his
+boot-heels a wooden floor wet with spilled liquids instead of the
+unwatered crumbling sand. Without drinking, he moved his chair near the
+noisiest drinkers, and thus among the tobacco smoke sought to hide from
+his own looming doubt. Later the purring tinkle of guitars reminded him
+of that promised present, and the next morning he was the owner of the
+best instrument that he could buy. Leaving it with a friend to keep
+until he should come through again from Maricopa, he departed that way
+with his mules, finding in the new place the same sort of friends and
+business, and by night looking upon the same untasted pleasures. He went
+about town with some cattlemen--carousing bankrupts, who remembered
+their ruin in the middle of whiskey, and broke off to curse it and the
+times and climate, and their starved herds that none would buy at any
+price. Genesmere touched nothing, yet still drew his chair among these
+drinkers.
+
+"Aren't you feeling good to-night, Russ?" asked one at length.
+
+And Genesmere's eyes roused from seeing visions, and his ears became
+aware of the loud company. In Tucson he had been able to sit in the
+smoke, and compass a cheerful deceit of appearance even to himself.
+Choosing and buying the guitar had lent reality to his imitated peace of
+mind; he had been careful over its strings, selecting such as Lolita
+preferred, wrapt in carrying out this spiritual forgery of another
+Genesmere. But here they had noticed him; appearances had slipped from
+him. He listened to a piece of late Arizona news some one was in the
+middle of telling--the trial of several Mormons for robbing a paymaster
+near Cedar Springs. This was the fourth time he had heard the story,
+because it was new; but the present narrator dwelt upon the dodgings of
+a witness, a negress, who had seen everything and told nothing,
+outwitting the government, furnishing no proofs. This brought Genesmere
+quite back.
+
+"No proofs!" he muttered. "No proofs!" He laughed and became alert. "She
+lied to them good, did she?"
+
+They looked at him, because he had not spoken for so long; and he was
+told that she had certainly lied good.
+
+"Fooled them clean through, did she? On oath! Tell about her."
+
+The flattered narrator, who had been in court, gave all he knew, and
+Genesmere received each morsel of perjury gravely with a nod. He sat
+still when the story was done.
+
+"Yes," he said, after a time. "Yes." And again, "Yes." Then he briefly
+bade the boys good-night, and went out from the lamps and whiskey into
+the dark.
+
+He walked up and down alone, round the corral where his mules stood,
+round the stable where his bed-blankets were; and one or two carousers
+came by, who suggested further enjoyments to him. He went to the edge of
+the town and walked where passers would not meet him, turning now and
+then to look in the direction of Tucson, where the guitar was waiting.
+When he felt the change of dawn he went to the stable, and by the first
+early gray had his mules packed. He looked once again towards Tucson,
+and took the road he had promised not to take, leaving the guitar behind
+him altogether. His faith protested a little, but the other self
+invented a quibble, the mockery that he had already "come by Tucson,"
+according to his literal word; and this device answered. It is a comfort
+to be divided no longer against one's self. Genesmere was at ease in his
+thraldom to the demon with whom he had wrestled through the dark hours.
+As the day brightened he wondered how he had come to fool a night away
+over a promise such as that. He took out the face in the handkerchief,
+and gave it a curious, defiant smile. She had said waiting would be
+long. She should have him quickly. And he was going to know about that
+visitor at the cabin, the steeple-hatted man he saw in his visions. So
+Maricopa drew behind him, small, clear-grouped in the unheated morning,
+and the sun found the united man and his mules moving into the desert.
+
+By the well in the bottom of the Santa Cruz River he met with cattle and
+little late-born calves trying to trot. Their mothers, the foreman
+explained, had not milk enough for them, nor the cursed country food or
+water for the mothers. They could not chew cactus. These animals had
+been driven here to feed and fatten inexpensively, and get quick money
+for the owner. But, instead, half of them had died, and the men were
+driving the rest to new pastures--as many, that is, as could still
+walk. Genesmere knew, the foreman supposed, that this well was the last
+for more than a hundred miles? Funny to call a thing like that Santa
+Cruz a river! Well, it was an Arizona river; all right enough, no doubt,
+somewhere a thousand feet or so underground. Pity you weren't a
+prairie-dog that eats sand when he gets a thirst on him. Got any
+tobacco? Good-bye.
+
+Think of any valleys that you know between high mountains. Such was
+southern Arizona once--before we came. Then fill up your valleys with
+sand until the mountains show no feet or shoulders, but become as men
+buried to the neck. That is what makes separate islands of their
+protruding peaks, and that is why water slinks from the surface whenever
+it can and flows useless underneath, entombed in the original valley.
+This is Arizona now--since the pterodactyls have gone. In such a place
+the traveller turns mariner, only, instead of the stars, he studies the
+water-wells, shaping his course by these. Not sea-gulls, but ravens, fly
+over this waste, seeking their meal. Some were in front of Genesmere
+now, settled black in the recent trail of the cattle. He did not much
+care that the last well was gone by, for he was broken in by long travel
+to the water of the 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through this
+journey. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and
+men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and
+they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck,
+and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but
+will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and
+Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night,
+carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it
+but a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached his
+calculated 'dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,
+dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade
+at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the
+mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose
+loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the
+other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the
+mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid
+in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twenty
+yards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, when
+they clouded back again round their carrion.
+
+This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoon
+brought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty of
+time for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promise
+had changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in the
+steeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along the
+road nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wetting
+the beasts' tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next
+'dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went through
+before coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The posted
+plants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legions
+and legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling at
+the top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck the
+blossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded to
+pods ten feet in the air. Genesmere's horse started and nearly threw
+him, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmere
+could tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to hunt
+water, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try at
+running away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.
+Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding
+the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their
+water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the
+stranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostile
+sound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passing
+enemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas,
+an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some rose
+to look after him; some lifted their heads from the ground, and seeing,
+laid them down again. He came upon a calf watching its mother, who had
+fallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow's
+foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from
+rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings;
+her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her
+pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her
+tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He
+placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse
+the calf came to its mother, who began to lick it. He presently marked
+ahead the position of the coming 'dobe-hole by the ravens assembled in
+the air, continually rising and lighting. The white horse and mules
+quickened their step, and the trail became obliterated by hundreds of
+hoof-marks leading to the water. As a spider looks in the centre of an
+empty web, so did the round wallow sit in the middle of the plain, with
+threaded feet conducting from everywhere to it. Mules and white horse
+scraped through the scratching mesquite, and the ravens flapped up. To
+Genesmere their croaking seemed suddenly to fill all space with loud
+total clamor, for no water was left, only mud. He eased the animals of
+their loads and saddles, and they rolled in the stiff mud, squeezing
+from it a faint ooze, and getting a sort of refreshment. Genesmere
+chewed the mud, and felt sorry for the beasts. He turned both canteens
+upside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well,
+that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; but
+spilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal after
+animal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at this
+spot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards away
+to be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. He
+lay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animals
+now that last hole might be used up by the cattle before he got
+there--and then it was two stages more to the Santa Cruz well. And the
+man would be gaining just so many more days unhindered at the cabin. Out
+of the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. If
+that were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cut
+for that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as the
+animals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun got
+bad. What business had October to be hot like this? So in the darkness
+he mounted again, and noon found him with eyes shut under a yucca. It
+was here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sitting
+in a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by the
+window, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was no
+fool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a man
+more a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in bright
+light, and said, "No proofs." The bright light was the real sun coming
+round the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cows
+were here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his own
+beasts, and spoke to them.
+
+"Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!" He stopped at the pain. It was in his lips
+and mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightened
+him. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signs
+that it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands were
+showing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaseless
+sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in
+the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest
+island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away to
+a transparent fringe.
+
+"Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod," remarked Genesmere, aloud, and
+remembered his thickened mouth again. "I can stand it off for a while
+yet, though--if they can travel." His mules looked at him when he
+came--looked when he tightened their cinches. "I know, Jeff," he said,
+and inspected the sky. "No heaven's up there. Nothing's back of that
+thing, unless it's hell."
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU'RE ALONE'"]
+
+He got the animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like the
+last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't fool
+me," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." His
+eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foreman
+was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," he
+continued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made his words. "This
+live-stock here's not enjoying itself like its owners in town. This
+live-stock was intended for Eastern folks' dinner.--But you've got
+ahead of 'em this trip," he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly,
+and, hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. "You don't
+want to talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You're
+alone.--I wish I'd never known!" he suddenly cried out.
+
+He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping his
+hands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow with
+their loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for some
+little while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had brought
+these beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against the
+divine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,
+and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinite
+sadness. "If she'll tell me it's not so," he said, "I'll believe her. I
+will believe her now. I'll make myself. She'll help me to." He took what
+rest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,
+having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It
+was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his
+increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the
+mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a
+mule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for
+all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky
+at the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his hand
+reached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into a
+pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away
+and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and
+shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he
+saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted
+his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his
+eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.
+Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of
+his eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.
+
+"You're not experienced," said Genesmere. "I'm not dead yet. But I'm
+obliged to you for being so enterprising. You've cleared my head. Quit
+that talk, Russ Genesmere." He went to the mule that had given out
+during the night. "Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if that
+hunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for him
+without help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or only
+thinking it? I know I'm alone. I've travelled that way in this world.
+Why?" He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answer
+came in a fierce voice: "Because you're a man, and can stand this world
+off by yourself. You look to no one." He suddenly took out the
+handkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. "That's lightened my
+pack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they'll never make camp." He
+took what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefully
+between stones--for they had come near the mountain country--and,
+looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. "Ha, ha!" he said,
+slyly; "you're not there, though. And I'll prove it to you." He chose
+another direction, and saw another flowing river. "I was expecting you,"
+he stated, quietly. "Don't bother me. I'm thirsty."
+
+But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile
+place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang
+out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't
+seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not
+chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham.
+Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks
+thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the
+same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting
+until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,
+and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool,
+she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among
+stones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly.
+"Didn't stay to see you get wicked." Then he grew stern again. "You've
+showed yourself up, and you can't tell land from water. You're going to
+let the boys take you straight. I don't trust you."
+
+He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse's tail, and they set
+out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for
+the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man
+brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet
+sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,
+and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below,
+gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monuments
+slanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead in
+space, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness.
+The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere's attention. "Toll on!"
+he cried to them. "Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summer
+and winter, night and day, I've known you, and I've heard you all along.
+A man can't look but he sees you walling God's country from him, ringing
+away with your knell."
+
+He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the full
+moon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himself
+had evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open.
+He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life,
+and he heard something somewhere screaming "Water! water! water!" fast
+and unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn,
+and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet,
+and the screaming stopped. "Round 'em up, Russ Genesmere! It's getting
+late!" he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. They
+dodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horse
+urging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of a
+log that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, and
+Genesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinging
+his rope and yelling in the full moon: "Round 'em up! round 'em up!
+Don't you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd's bedded down
+along with the ravens."
+
+The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of a round hole, but he
+did not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and the
+mountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beat
+into his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the broken natural
+stairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver's, and ground his
+forehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled once
+up round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began to
+tear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbing
+with his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him in
+the canon his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, having
+slaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where he
+now lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.
+
+He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. He
+was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead,
+and a moist rag on his lips.
+
+"Water!" He could just make the whisper.
+
+But Lolita made a sign of silence.
+
+"Water!" he gasped.
+
+She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be all
+just now.
+
+His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolita
+screamed at his leap for the living well.
+
+"Not yet! Not yet!" she said in terror, grappling with him. "Help!
+Luis!"
+
+So this was their plot, the demon told him--to keep him from water! In a
+frenzy of strength he seized Lolita. "Proved! Proved!" he shouted, and
+struck his knife into her. She fell at once to the earth and lay calm,
+eyes wide open, breathing in the bright sun. He rushed to the water and
+plunged, swallowing and rolling.
+
+Luis ran up from the cows he was gathering, and when he saw what was
+done, sank by Lolita to support her. She pointed to the pool.
+
+"He is killing himself!" she managed to say, and her head went lower.
+
+"And I'll help you die, caberon! I'll tear your tongue. I'll--"
+
+But Lolita, hearing Luis's terrible words, had raised a forbidding hand.
+She signed to leave her and bring Genesmere to her.
+
+The distracted Luis went down the stone stairs to kill the American in
+spite of her, but the man's appearance stopped him. You could not raise
+a hand against one come to this. The water-drinking was done, and
+Genesmere lay fainting, head and helpless arms on the lowest stone, body
+in the water. The Black Cross stood dry above. Luis heard Lolita's
+voice, and dragged Genesmere to the top as quickly as he could. She,
+seeing her lover, cried his name once and died; and Luis cast himself on
+the earth.
+
+"Fool! fool!" he repeated, catching at the ground, where he lay for some
+while until a hand touched him. It was Genesmere.
+
+"I'm seeing things pretty near straight now," the man said. "Come close.
+I can't talk well. Was--was that talk of yours, and singing--was that
+bluff?"
+
+"God forgive me!" said poor Luis.
+
+"You mean forgive me," said Genesmere. He lay looking at Lolita. "Close
+her eyes," he said. And Luis did so. Genesmere was plucking at his
+clothes, and the Mexican helped him draw out a handkerchief, which the
+lover unfolded like a treasure. "She used to look like this," he began.
+He felt and stopped. "Why, it's gone!" he said. He lay evidently seeking
+to remember where the picture had gone, and his eyes went to the hills
+whence no help came. Presently Luis heard him speaking, and, leaning to
+hear, made out that he was murmuring his own name, Russ, in the way
+Lolita had been used to say it. The boy sat speechless, and no thought
+stirred in his despair as he watched. The American moved over, and put
+his arms round Lolita, Luis knowing that he must not offer to help him
+do this. He remained so long that the boy, who would never be a boy
+again, bent over to see. But it was only another fainting-fit. Luis
+waited; now and then the animals moved among the rocks. The sun crossed
+the sky, bringing the many-colored evening, and Arizona was no longer
+terrible, but once more infinitely sad. Luis started, for the American
+was looking at him and beckoning.
+
+"She's not here," Genesmere said, distinctly.
+
+Luis could not follow.
+
+"Not here, I tell you." The lover touched his sweetheart. "This is not
+her. My punishment is nothing," he went on, his face growing beautiful.
+"See there!"
+
+Luis looked where he pointed.
+
+"Don't you see her? Don't you see her fixing that camp for me? We're
+going to camp together now."
+
+But these were visions alien to Luis, and he stared helpless, anxious to
+do anything that the man might desire. Genesmere's face darkened
+wistfully.
+
+"Am I not making camp?" he said.
+
+Luis nodded to please him, without at all comprehending.
+
+"You don't see her." Reason was warring with the departing spirit until
+the end. "Well, maybe you're right. I never was sure. But I'm mortal
+tired of travelling alone. I hope--"
+
+That was the end, and Russ Genesmere lay still beside his sweetheart. It
+was a black evening at the cabin, and a black day when Luis and old
+Ramon raised and fenced the wooden head-stone, with its two forlorn
+names.
+
+
+
+
+A PILGRIM ON THE GILA
+
+
+Midway from Grant to Thomas comes Paymaster's Hill, not much after Cedar
+Springs and not long before you sight the valley where the Gila flows.
+This lonely piece of road must lie three thousand miles from Washington;
+but in the holiday journey that I made they are near together among the
+adventures of mind and body that overtook me. For as I turned southward
+our capital was my first stopping-place, and it was here I gathered the
+expectations of Arizona with which I continued on my way.
+
+Arizona was the unknown country I had chosen for my holiday, and I found
+them describing it in our National House of Representatives, where I had
+strolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hot
+to make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that the
+place had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk and
+replies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in the
+sharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had not
+thought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories were
+rumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neither
+cattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order and
+prosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently lost his
+temper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey and
+enlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well on
+to three times the size of New York--had a hundred and thirteen thousand
+square miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice as
+big as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of the
+earth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as the
+town of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus was
+Arizona's chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and the
+Apache her leading citizen.
+
+And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgot
+his sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his single
+gesture--that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during the
+suspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at the
+full stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of manner
+from my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would add
+famine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, but
+it was all told in Mr. Pumpelly's book, true as life, thirty years
+ago--doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this report
+discouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go there
+to-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals in
+security. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowing
+their particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay in
+their minds.
+
+At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my first
+sight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly and
+smilingly watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits of
+the railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, the
+leap into civilization that the Territory had taken. "Let Pennsylvania
+see those blossoming fields for herself," said he, "those boundless
+contiguities of shade." And a sort of cluck went off down inside my
+neighbor's throat, while the speaker with rising heat gave us the
+tonnage of plums exported from the Territory during the past fiscal
+year. Wool followed.
+
+"Sock it to 'em, Limber Jim!" murmured the man in the duster, and
+executed a sort of step. He was plainly a personal acquaintance of the
+speaker's.
+
+Figures never stick by me, nor can I quote accurately the catalogue of
+statistic abundance now recited in the House of Representatives; but as
+wheat, corn, peaches, apricots, oranges, raisins, spices, the rose and
+the jasmine flowered in the Boy Orator's eloquence, the genial antics of
+my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as
+"He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more that
+have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad to
+remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of
+metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for
+enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I should
+have voted to make the Territory a State that very day.
+
+"With her snow-clad summits, with the balm of her Southern vineyards,
+she loudly calls for a sister's rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor any
+cycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her Salt
+River, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, her hundred irrigated
+valleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, where
+thousands of noble men and elegantly educated ladies have already
+located, and to which thousands more, like patient monuments, are
+waiting breathless to throng when the franchise is proclaimed. And if my
+death could buy that franchise, I would joyfully boast such martyrdom."
+
+The orator cracked his hands together in this supreme moment, and the
+bulky gentleman in the duster drove an elbow against my side, whispering
+to me at the same time behind his hand, in a hoarse confidence:
+"Deserted Jericho! California only holds the record on stoves now."
+
+"I'm afraid I do not catch your allusion," I began. But at my voice he
+turned sharply, and, giving me one short, ugly stare, was looking about
+him, evidently at some loss, when a man at his farther side pulled at
+his duster, and I then saw that he had all along been taking me for a
+younger companion he had come in with, and with whom he now went away.
+In the jostle we had shifted places while his eyes were upon the various
+speakers, and to him I seemed an eavesdropper. Both he and his friend
+had a curious appearance, and they looked behind them, meeting my gaze
+as I watched them going; and then they made to each other some laughing
+comment, of which I felt myself to be the inspiration. I was standing
+absently on the same spot, still in a mild puzzle over California and
+the record on stoves. Certainly I had overheard none of their secrets,
+if they had any; I could not even guess what might be their true opinion
+about admitting Arizona to our Union.
+
+With this last memory of our Capitol and the statesmen we have
+collected there to govern us, I entered upon my holiday, glad that it
+was to be passed in such a region of enchantment. For peaches it would
+be too early, and with roses and jasmine I did not importantly concern
+myself, thinking of them only as a pleasant sight by the way. But on my
+gradual journey through Lexington, Bowling Green, Little Rock, and Forth
+Worth I dwelt upon the shade of the valleys, and the pasture hills
+dotted with the sheep of whose wool the Boy Orator had spoken; and I
+wished that our cold Northwest could have been given such a bountiful
+climate. Upon the final morning of railroad I looked out of the window
+at an earth which during the night had collapsed into a vacuum, as I had
+so often seen happen before upon more Northern parallels. The evenness
+of this huge nothing was cut by our track's interminable scar, and
+broken to the eye by the towns which now and again rose and littered the
+horizon like boxes dumped by emigrants. We were still in Texas, not
+distant from the Rio Grande, and I looked at the boxes drifting by, and
+wondered from which of them the Boy Orator had been let loose. Twice or
+three times upon this day of sand I saw green spots shining sudden and
+bright and Biblical in the wilderness. Their isolated loveliness was
+herald of the valley land I was nearing each hour. The wandering
+Mexicans, too, bright in rags and swarthy in nakedness, put me somehow
+in mind of the Old Testament.
+
+In the evening I sat at whiskey with my first acquaintance, a Mr. Mowry,
+one of several Arizona citizens whom my military friend at San Carlos
+had written me to look out for on my way to visit him. My train had
+trundled on to the Pacific, and I sat in a house once more--a saloon on
+the platform, with an open door through which the night air came
+pleasantly. This was now the long-expected Territory, and time for roses
+and jasmine to begin. Early in our talk I naturally spoke to Mr. Mowry
+of Arizona's resources and her chance of becoming a State.
+
+"We'd have got there by now," said he, "only Luke Jenks ain't half that
+interested in Arizona as he is in Luke Jenks."
+
+I reminded Mr. Mowry that I was a stranger here and unacquainted with
+the prominent people.
+
+"Well, Luke's as near a hog as you kin be and wear pants. Be with you in
+a minute," added Mr. Mowry, and shambled from the room. This was because
+a shot had been fired in a house across the railroad tracks. "I run two
+places," he explained, returning quite soon from the house and taking up
+the thread of his whiskey where he had dropped it. "Two outfits. This
+side for toorists. Th' other pays better. I come here in 'sixty-two."
+
+"I trust no one has been--hurt?" said I, inclining my head towards the
+farther side of the railroad.
+
+"Hurt?" My question for the moment conveyed nothing to him, and he
+repeated the word, blinking with red eyes at me over the rim of his
+lifted glass. "No, nobody's hurt. I've been here a long while, and seen
+them as was hurt, though." Here he nodded at me depreciatingly, and I
+felt how short was the time that I had been here. "Th' other side pays
+better," he resumed, "as toorists mostly go to bed early. Six bits is
+about the figger you can reckon they'll spend, if you know anything." He
+nodded again, more solemn over his whiskey. "That kind's no help to
+business. I've been in this Territory from the start, and Arizona ain't
+what it was. Them mountains are named from me." And he pointed out of
+the door. "Mowry's Peak. On the map." With this last august statement
+his mind seemed to fade from the conversation, and he struck a
+succession of matches along the table and various parts of his person.
+
+"Has Mr. Jenks been in the Territory long?" I suggested, feeling the
+silence weigh upon me.
+
+"Luke? He's a hog. Him the people's choice! But the people of Arizona
+ain't what they was. Are you interested in silver?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, meaning the political question. But before I could
+say what I meant he had revived into a vigor of attitude and a
+wakefulness of eye of which I had not hitherto supposed him capable.
+
+"You come here," said he; and, catching my arm, he took me out of the
+door and along the track in the night, and round the corner of the
+railroad hotel into view of more mountains that lay to the south. "You
+stay here to-morrow," he pursued, swiftly, "and I'll hitch up and drive
+you over there. I'll show you some rock behind Helen's Dome that'll beat
+any you've struck in the whole course of your life. It's on the wood
+reservation, and when the government abandons the Post, as they're going
+to do--"
+
+There is no need for my entering at length into his urgence, or the
+plans he put to me for our becoming partners, or for my buying him out
+and employing him on a salary, or buying him out and employing some
+other, or no one, according as I chose--the whole bright array of
+costumes in which he presented to me the chance of making my fortune at
+a stroke. I think that from my answers he gathered presently a
+discouraging but perfectly false impression. My Eastern hat and
+inexperienced face (I was certainly young enough to have been his
+grandchild) had a little misled him; and although he did not in the
+least believe the simple truth I told him, that I had come to Arizona on
+no sort of business, but for the pleasure of seeing the country, he now
+overrated my brains as greatly as he had in the beginning despised them,
+quite persuaded I was playing some game deeper than common, and either
+owned already or had my eye upon other silver mines.
+
+"Pleasure of seeing the country, ye say?" His small wet eyes blinked as
+he stood on the railroad track bareheaded, considering me from head to
+foot. "All right. Did ye say ye're going to Globe?"
+
+"No. To San Carlos to visit an army officer."
+
+"Carlos is on the straight road to Globe," said Mr. Mowry, vindictively.
+"But ye might as well drop any idea of Globe, if ye should get one. If
+it's copper ye're after, there's parties in ahead of you."
+
+Desiring, if possible, to shift his mind from its present unfavorable
+turn, I asked him if Mr. Adams did not live between here and
+Solomonsville, my route to Carlos. Mr. Adams was another character of
+whom my host had written me, and at my mention of his name the face of
+Mr. Mowry immediately soured into the same expression it had taken when
+he spoke of the degraded Jenks.
+
+"So you're acquainted with him! He's got mines. I've seen 'em. If you
+represent any Eastern parties, tell 'em not to drop their dollars down
+old Adams's hole in the ground. He ain't the inexperienced juniper he
+looks. Him and me's been acquainted these thirty years. People claim it
+was Cyclone Bill held up the Ehrenberg stage. Well, I guess I'll be
+seeing how the boys are getting along."
+
+With that he moved away. A loud disturbance of chairs and broken glass
+had set up in the house across the railroad, and I watched the
+proprietor shamble from me with his deliberate gait towards the
+establishment that paid him best. He had left me possessor of much
+incomplete knowledge, and I waited for him, pacing the platform; but he
+did not return, and as I judged it inexpedient to follow him, I went to
+my bed on the tourist side of the track.
+
+In the morning the stage went early, and as our road seemed to promise
+but little variety--I could see nothing but an empty plain--I was glad
+to find my single fellow-passenger a man inclined to talk. I did not
+like his mustache, which was too large for his face, nor his too careful
+civility and arrangement of words; but he was genial to excess, and
+thoughtful of my comfort.
+
+"I beg you will not allow my valise to incommode you," was one of his
+first remarks; and I liked this consideration better than any Mr. Mowry
+had shown me. "I fear you will detect much initial primitiveness in our
+methods of transportation," he said.
+
+This again called for gracious assurances on my part, and for a while
+our polite phrases balanced to corners until I was mentally winded
+keeping up such a pace of manners. The train had just brought him from
+Tucson, he told me, and would I indulge? On this we shared and
+complimented each other's whiskey.
+
+"From your flask I take it that you are a Gentile," said he, smiling.
+
+"If you mean tenderfoot," said I, "let me confess at once that flask and
+owner are from the East, and brand-new in Arizona."
+
+"I mean you're not a Mormon. Most strangers to me up this way are. But
+they carry their liquor in a plain flat bottle like this."
+
+"Are you a--a--" Embarrassment took me as it would were I to check
+myself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger if he had
+ever embezzled.
+
+"Oh, I'm no Mormon," my new friend said, with a chuckle, and I was glad
+to hear him come down to reasonable English. "But Gentiles are in the
+minority in this valley."
+
+"I didn't know we'd got to the valleys yet," said I, eagerly, connecting
+Mormons with fertility and jasmine. And I lifted the flaps of the stage,
+first one side and then the other, and saw the desert everywhere flat,
+treeless, and staring like an eye without a lid.
+
+"This is the San Simon Valley we've been in all the time," he replied.
+"It goes from Mexico to the Gila, about a hundred and fifty miles."
+
+"Like this?"
+
+"South it's rockier. Better put the flap down."
+
+"I don't see where people live," I said, as two smoky spouts of sand
+jetted from the tires and strewed over our shoes and pervaded our
+nostrils. "There's nothing--yes, there's one bush coming." I fastened
+the flaps.
+
+"That's Seven-Mile Mesquite. They held up the stage at this point last
+October. But they made a mistake in the day. The money had gone down the
+afternoon before, and they only got about a hundred."
+
+"I suppose it was Mormons who robbed the stage?"
+
+"Don't talk quite so loud," the stranger said, laughing. "The driver's
+one of them."
+
+"A Mormon or a robber?"
+
+"Well, we only know he's a Mormon."
+
+"He doesn't look twenty. Has he many wives yet?"
+
+"Oh, they keep that thing very quiet in these days, if they do it at
+all. The government made things too hot altogether. The Bishop here
+knows what hiding for polygamy means."
+
+"Bishop who?"
+
+"Meakum," I thought he answered me, but was not sure in the rattle of
+the stage, and twice made him repeat it, putting my hand to my ear at
+last. "Meakum! Meakum!" he shouted.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the driver.
+
+"Have some whiskey?" said my friend, promptly; and when that was over
+and the flat bottle passed back, he explained in a lower voice, "A son
+of the Bishop's."
+
+"Indeed!" I exclaimed.
+
+"So was the young fellow who put in the mail-bags, and that
+yellow-headed duck in the store this morning." My companion, in the
+pleasure of teaching new things to a stranger, stretched his legs on the
+front seat, lifted my coat out of his way, and left all formality of
+speech and deportment. "And so's the driver you'll have to-morrow if
+you're going beyond Thomas, and the stock-tender at the sub-agency where
+you'll breakfast. He's a yellow-head too. The old man's postmaster, and
+owns this stage-line. One of his boys has the mail contract. The old man
+runs the hotel at Solomonsville and two stores at Bowie and Globe, and
+the store and mill at Thacher. He supplies the military posts in this
+district with hay and wood, and a lot of things on and off through the
+year. Can't write his own name. Signs government contracts with his
+mark. He's sixty-four, and he's had eight wives. Last summer he married
+number nine--rest all dead, he says, and I guess that's so. He has
+fifty-seven recorded children, not counting the twins born last week.
+Any yellow-heads you'll see in the valley'll answer to the name of
+Meakum as a rule, and the other type's curly black like this little
+driver specimen."
+
+"How interesting there should be only two varieties of Meakum!" said I.
+
+"Yes, it's interesting. Of course the whole fifty-seven don't class up
+yellow or black curly, but if you could take account of stock you'd find
+the big half of 'em do. Mothers don't seem to have influenced the type
+appreciably. His eight families, successive and simultaneous, cover a
+period of forty-three years, and yellow and black keeps turning up right
+along. Scientifically, the suppression of Mormonism is a loss to the
+student of heredity. Some of the children are dead. Get killed now and
+then, and die too--die from sickness. But you'll easily notice Meakums
+as you go up the valley. Old man sees all get good jobs as soon as
+they're old enough. Places 'em on the railroad, places 'em in town, all
+over the lot. Some don't stay; you couldn't expect the whole fifty-seven
+to be steady; but he starts 'em all fair. We have six in Tucson now, or
+five, maybe. Old man's a good father."
+
+"They're not all boys?"
+
+"Certainly not; but more than half are."
+
+"And you say he can't write?"
+
+"Or read, except print, and he has to spell out that."
+
+"But, my goodness, he's postmaster!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it? Young Meakums all read like anything. He
+don't do any drudgery."
+
+"Well, you wouldn't catch me signing any contracts I couldn't read."
+
+"Do you think you'd catch anybody reading a contract wrong to old
+Meakum? Oh, momma! Why, he's king round here. Fixes the county elections
+and the price of tomatoes. Do you suppose any Tucson jury'll convict any
+of his Mormons if he says nay? No, sir! It's been tried. Why, that man
+ought to be in Congress."
+
+"If he's like that I don't consider him desirable," said I.
+
+"Yes, he is desirable," said my friend, roughly. "Smart, can't be
+fooled, and looks after his people's interests. I'd like to know if that
+don't fill the bill?"
+
+"If he defeats justice--"
+
+"Oh, rats!" This interruption made me regret his earlier manner, and I
+was sorry the polish had rubbed through so quickly and brought us to a
+too precipitate familiarity. "We're Western out here," he continued,
+"and we're practical. When we want a thing, we go after it. Bishop
+Meakum worked his way down here from Utah through desert and starvation,
+mostly afoot, for a thousand miles, and his flock to-day is about the
+only class in the Territory that knows what prosperity feels like, and
+his laws are about the only laws folks don't care to break. He's got a
+brain. If he weren't against Arizona's being admitted--"
+
+"He should know better than that," said I, wishing to be friendly. "With
+your fruit exports and high grade of citizens you'll soon be another
+California."
+
+He gave me an odd look.
+
+"I am surprised," I proceeded, amiably, "to hear you speak of Mormons
+only as prosperous. They think better of you in Washington."
+
+"Now, see here," said he, "I've been pleasant to you and I've enjoyed
+this ride. But I like plain talk."
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"And I don't care for Eastern sarcasm."
+
+"There was no intention--"
+
+"I don't take offence where offence is not intended. As for high-grade
+citizens, we don't claim to know as much as--I suppose it's New York you
+come from? Gold-bugs and mugwumps--"
+
+"If you can spare the time," said I, "and kindly explain what has
+disturbed you in my remarks, we'll each be likely to find the rest of
+these forty miles more supportable."
+
+"I guess I can stand it," said he, swallowing a drink. He folded his
+arms and resettled his legs; and the noisome hatefulness of his laugh
+filled me with regret for the wet-eyed Mowry. I would now gladly have
+taken any amount of Mowry in exchange for this; and it struck me afresh
+how uncertainly one always reckons with those who suspect their own
+standing.
+
+"Till Solomonsville," said I, "let us veil our estimation of each other.
+Once out of this stage and the world will be large enough for both of
+us." I was wrong there; but presentiments do not come to me often. So I,
+too, drank some of my own whiskey, lighted a cigar, and observed with
+pleasure that my words had enraged him.
+
+Before either of us had devised our next remark, the stage pulled up to
+change horses at the first and last water in forty miles. This station
+was kept by Mr. Adams, and I jumped out to see the man Mr. Mowry had
+warned me was not an inexperienced juniper. His appearance would have
+drawn few but missionaries to him, and I should think would have been
+warning enough to any but an over-trustful child of six.
+
+"Are you the geologist?" he said at once, coughing heavily; and when I
+told him I was simply enjoying a holiday, he looked at me sharply and
+spat against the corner of the stable. "There's one of them fellers
+expected," he continued, in a tone as if I need not attempt to deny
+that, and I felt his eye watching for signs of geology about me. I told
+him that I imagined the geologist must do an active business in Arizona.
+
+"I don't hire 'em!" he exclaimed. "They can't tell me nothing about
+mineral."
+
+"I suppose you have been here a long while, Mr. Adams?"
+
+"There's just three living that come in ahead of--" The cough split his
+last word in pieces.
+
+"Mr. Mowry was saying last night--"
+
+"You've seen that old scamp, have you? Buy his mine behind Helen's
+Dome?"
+
+My mirth at this turned him instantly confidential, and rooted his
+conviction that I was a geologist. "That's right!" said he, tapping my
+arm. "Don't you let 'em fool you. I guess you know your business. Now,
+if you want to look at good paying rock, thousands in sight, in sight,
+mind you--"
+
+"Are you coming along with us?" called the little Meakum driver, and I
+turned and saw the new team was harnessed and he ready on his box, with
+the reins in his hands. So I was obliged to hasten from the disappointed
+Adams and climb back in my seat. The last I saw of him he was standing
+quite still in the welter of stable muck, stooping to his cough, the
+desert sun beating on his old body, and the desert wind slowly turning
+the windmill above the shadeless mud hovel in which he lived alone.
+
+"Poor old devil!" said I to my enemy, half forgetting our terms in my
+contemplation of Adams. "Is he a Mormon?"
+
+My enemy's temper seemed a little improved. "He's tried most everything
+except jail," he answered, his voice still harsh. "You needn't invest
+your sentiment there. He used to hang out at Twenty Mile in Old Camp
+Grant days, and he'd slit your throat for fifty cents."
+
+But my sentiment was invested somehow. The years of the old-timers were
+ending so gray. Their heyday, and carousals, and happy-go-luckiness all
+gone, and in the remaining hours--what? Empty youth is such a grand easy
+thing, and empty age so grim!
+
+"Has Mowry tried everything, too?" I asked.
+
+"Including jail," said my companion; and gave me many entertaining
+incidents of Mowry's career with an ill-smelling saloon cleverness that
+put him once more into favorable humor with me, while I retained my
+opinion of him. "And that uneducated sot," he concluded, "that hobo with
+his record of cattle-stealing and claim-jumping, and his acquittal from
+jail through railroad influence, actually undertook to run against me
+last elections. My name is Jenks; Luke Jenks, Territorial Delegate from
+Arizona." He handed me his card.
+
+"I'm just from Washington," said I.
+
+"Well, I've not been there this session. Important law business has
+detained me here. Yes, they backed Mowry in that election. The old
+spittoon had quite a following, but he hadn't the cash. That gives you
+some idea of the low standards I have to combat. But I hadn't to spend
+much. This Territory's so poor they come cheap. Seventy-five cents a
+head for all the votes I wanted in Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma; and up
+here the Bishop was my good friend. Holding office booms my business
+some, and that's why I took it, of course. But I've had low standards to
+fight."
+
+The Territorial Delegate now talked freely of Arizona's frontier life.
+"It's all dead," he said, forgetting in his fluency what he had told me
+about Seven-Mile Mesquite and last October. "We have a community as high
+toned as any in the land. Our monumental activity--" And here he went
+off like a cuckoo clock, or the Boy Orator, reciting the glories of
+Phoenix and Salt River, and the future of silver, in that special
+dialect of platitudes which is spoken by our more talkative statesmen,
+and is not quite Latin, quite grammar, or quite falsehood. "We're not
+all Mowrys and Adamses," said he, landing from his flight.
+
+"In a population of fifty-nine thousand," said I, heartily, "a stranger
+is bound to meet decent people if he keeps on."
+
+Again he misinterpreted me, but this time the other way, bowing like one
+who acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in such
+peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I
+had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not
+prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny
+plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes,
+he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done with
+him.
+
+I could have reached Thomas that evening, but after our noon dinner let
+the stage go on, and delayed a night for the sake of seeing the Bishop
+hold service next day, which was Sunday, some few miles down the
+valley. I was curious to learn the Mormon ritual and what might be the
+doctrines that such a man as the Bishop would expound. It dashed me a
+little to find this would cost me forty-eight hours of Solomonsville, no
+Sunday stage running. But one friendly English-speaking family--the town
+was chiefly Mexican--made some of my hours pleasant, and others I spent
+in walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritual
+was well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I was
+obliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middle
+of his discourse.
+
+"Don't empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs," he
+was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his
+voice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly a
+leader of men. "Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that
+thoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has not
+ceased because they're rotten. That's the error of the ignorant, who
+know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant
+stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not.
+The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly and
+die. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in her
+blood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to the
+man. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathe
+the tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad for
+us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes
+deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are
+sick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see this
+sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house,
+with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving each
+day, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers in
+the door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing the
+twenty-ninth hymn."
+
+The scales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizona
+clear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been a
+politician's way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, and
+I willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for my
+holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me,
+and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well
+pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a
+blessing--the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with
+the Mormons stand--I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow
+duster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merely
+said to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And I
+knew that we should speak together soon, and he would tell me why
+California only held the record on stoves.
+
+But oh, my friends, what a country we live in, and what an age, that the
+same stars and stripes should simultaneously wave over this and over
+Delmonico's! This too I kept thinking as I killed more hours in walking
+the neighborhood of Solomonsville, an object of more false hope to
+natives whom I did not then observe. I avoided Jenks, who had business
+clients in the town. I went among the ditches and the fields thus turned
+green by the channelled Gila; and though it was scarce a paradise
+surpassing the Nile, it was grassy and full of sweet smells until after
+a few miles each way, when the desert suddenly met the pleasant verdure
+full in the face and corroded it to death like vitriol. The sermon came
+back to me as I passed the little Mormon homes, and the bishop rose and
+rose in my esteem, though not as one of the children of light. That
+sagacious patriarch told his flock the things of week-day wisdom down to
+their level, the cleanly things next to godliness, to keep them from the
+million squalors that stain our Gentile poor; and if he did not sound
+much like the Gospel, he and Deuteronomy were alike as two peas. With
+him and Moses thus in my thoughts, I came back after sunset, and was
+gratified to be late for supper. Jenks had left the dining-room, and I
+ate in my own company, which had become lively and full of intelligent
+impressions. These I sat recording later in my journal, when a
+hesitating knock came at my bedroom, and two young men in cowboy costume
+entered like shy children, endeavoring to step without creaking.
+
+"Meakums!" my delighted mind exclaimed, inwardly; but the yellow one
+introduced the black curly one as Mr. Follet, who, in turn, made his
+friend Mr. Cunningham known to me, and at my cordial suggestion they sat
+down with increasing awkwardness, first leaving their hats outside the
+door.
+
+"We seen you walking around," said one.
+
+"Lookin' the country over," said the other.
+
+"Fine weather for travelling," said the first.
+
+"Dusty though," said the second.
+
+Perceiving them to need my help in coming to their point, I said, "And
+now about your silver mine."
+
+"You've called the turn on us!" exclaimed yellow, and black curly
+slapped his knee. Both of them sat looking at me, laughing
+enthusiastically, and I gathered they had been having whiskey this
+Sunday night. I confess that I offered them some more, and when they
+realized my mildness they told me with length and confidence about the
+claims they had staked out on Mount Turnbull. "And there's lots of lead,
+too," said yellow.
+
+"I do not smelt," said I, "or deal in any way with ore. I have come here
+without the intention of buying anything."
+
+"You ain't the paymaster?" burst out black curly, wrinkling his forehead
+like a pleasant dog.
+
+Yellow touched his foot.
+
+"Course he ain't!" said curly, with a swerve of his eye. "He ain't due.
+What a while it always is waitin'!"
+
+Now the paymaster was nothing to me, nor whom he paid. For all I knew,
+my visitors were on his roll; and why yellow should shy at the mention
+of him and closely watch his tipsy mate I did not try to guess. Like
+every one I had met so far in Arizona, these two evidently doubted I was
+here for my pleasure merely; but it was with entire good-humor that they
+remarked a man had the right to mind his own business; and so, with a
+little more whiskey, we made a friendly parting. They recommended me to
+travel with a pistol in this country, and I explained that I should do
+myself more harm than good with a weapon that any one handled more
+rapidly than I, with my inexperience.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Meakum," I said.
+
+"Follet," corrected black curly.
+
+"Cunningham," said yellow, and they picked up their hats in the hall and
+withdrew.
+
+I think now those were their names--the time was coming when I should
+hear them take oath on it--yet I do not know. I heard many curious oaths
+taken.
+
+I was glad to see black curly in the stage next day, not alone for his
+company, but to give him a right notion of what ready money I had about
+me. Thinking him over, and his absence of visible means of support, and
+his interest in me, I took opportunity to mention, quite by the way,
+that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, the
+rest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And I
+looked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of my
+nickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidence
+when we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, and
+the Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He nodded
+to me and gave Follet a message.
+
+"Tell your brother" (wouldn't a father have said Tom or Dick?) "that
+I've given him chances enough and he don't take 'em. He don't feed my
+horses, and my passengers complain he don't feed them--though that's not
+so serious!" said he to me, with a jovial wink. "But I won't have my
+stock starved. You'll skip the station and go through to Thomas with
+this pair," he added to the driver in his voice of lusty command.
+"You'll get supper at Thomas. Everything's moved on there from to-day.
+That's the rule now." Then he returned to black curly, who, like the
+driver, had remained cowed and respectful throughout the short harangue.
+"Your brother could have treated me square and made money by that
+station. Tell him that, and to see me by Thursday. If he's thinking of
+peddling vegetables this season I'll let him sell to Fort Bowie.
+Safford takes Carlos, and I won't have two compete in the same market,
+or we'll be sinking low as Eastern prices," said he to me, with another
+wink. "Drive on now. You're late."
+
+He shut the flap, and we were off quickly--too quickly. In the next few
+moments I could feel that something all wrong went on; there was a
+jingle and snapping of harness, and such a voice from the Bishop behind
+us that I looked out to see him. We had stopped, and he was running
+after us at a wonderful pace for a man of sixty-four.
+
+"If you don't drive better than that," said the grizzled athlete,
+arriving cool and competent, "you'll saw wood for another year. Look how
+you've got them trembling."
+
+It was a young pair, and they stood and steamed while the broken gear
+was mended.
+
+"What did California hold the record in before the Boy Orator broke it?"
+said I, getting out.
+
+He shot at me the same sinister look I had seen in the Capitol, the look
+he must always wear, I suppose, when taken aback. Then he laughed
+broadly and heartily, a strong pleasant laugh that nearly made me like
+him. "So you're that fellow! Ho, ho! Away down here now. Oh, ho, ho!
+What's your business?"
+
+"You wouldn't believe if I told you," said I, to his sudden sharp
+question.
+
+"Me? Why, I believe everything I'm told. What's your name?"
+
+"Will you believe I haven't come to buy anybody's silver mine?"
+
+"Silver! I don't keep it. Unloaded ten years ago before the rabbit
+died."
+
+"Then you're the first anti-silver man I've met."
+
+"I'm anti anything I can't sell, young man. Here's all there is to
+silver: Once upon a time it was hard to get, and we had to have it. Now
+it's easy. When it gets as common as dirt it'll be as cheap as dirt.
+Same as watermelons when it's a big crop. D'you follow me? That's silver
+for you, and I don't want it. So you've come away down here. Well, well!
+What did you say your name was?"
+
+I told him.
+
+"Politician?"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. I took a look at those buzzards there in
+Washington. Our Senate and Representatives. They were screeching a heap.
+All about ratios. You'll be sawing wood yet!" he shouted to the driver,
+and strode up to help him back a horse. "Now ratio is a good-sounding
+word too, and I guess that's why they chew on it so constant. Better
+line of language that they get at home. I'll tell you about Congress.
+Here's all there is to it: You can divide them birds in two lots. Those
+who know better and those who don't. D'you follow me?"
+
+"And which kind is the Boy Orator?"
+
+"Limber Jim? Oh, he knows better. I know Jim. You see, we used to have a
+saying in Salt Lake that California had the smallest stoves and the
+biggest liars in the world. Now Jim--well, there's an old saying busted.
+But you'll see Arizona'll go back on the Democrats. If they put wool on
+the free list she'll stay Republican, and they won't want her admitted,
+which suits me first-rate. My people here are better off as they stand."
+
+"But your friend Mr. Jenks favors admission!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Luke? He's been talking to you, has he? Well now, Luke. Here's all
+there is to him: Natural gas. That's why I support him, you see. If we
+sent a real smart man to Washington he might get us made a State. Ho,
+ho! But Luke stays here most of the time, and he's no good anyway. Oh,
+ho, ho! So you're buying no mines this season?"
+
+Once more I found myself narrating the insignificance of my visit to
+Arizona--the Bishop must have been a hard inquisitor for even the deeply
+skilful to elude--and for the first time my word was believed. He
+quickly took my measure, saw that I had nothing to hide, and after
+telling me I could find good hunting and scenery in the mountains north,
+paid me no further attention, but masterfully laid some final commands
+on the intimidated driver. Then I bade good-bye to the Bishop, and
+watched that old locomotive moving vigorously back along the road to his
+manifold business.
+
+The driver was ill pleased to go hungry for his supper until Thomas, but
+he did not dare complain much over the new rule, even to black curly and
+me. This and one other thing impressed me. Some miles farther on we had
+passed out of the dust for a while, and rolled up the flaps.
+
+"She's waiting for you," said the driver to black curly, and that
+many-sided youth instantly dived to the bottom of the stage, his boots
+and pistol among my legs.
+
+"Throw your coat over me," he urged.
+
+I concealed him with that and a mail-sack, and stretched my head out to
+see what lioness stood in his path. But it was only a homelike little
+cabin, and at the door a woman, comely and mature, eying the stage
+expectantly. Possibly wife, I thought, more likely mother, and I asked,
+"Is Mrs. Follet strict?" choosing a name to fit either.
+
+The driver choked and chirruped, but no sound came from under the
+mail-sack until we had passed the good-day to the momentous female,
+whose response was harsh with displeasure as she wheeled into her door.
+A sulky voice then said, "Tell me when she's gone, Bill." But we were a
+safe two hundred yards on the road before he would lift his head, and
+his spirits were darkened during the remainder of the journey.
+
+"Come and live East," said I, inviting him to some whiskey at the same
+time. "Back there they don't begin sitting up for you so early in the
+evening."
+
+This did not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bring
+another fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first had
+been. "She tires a man's spirit," said black curly, and with this rueful
+utterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas in
+the dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to this
+new place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had taken
+himself off, and the driver sat at the table with me, still occasionally
+snickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him until
+the gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said,
+with a nervous, hasty relish, "The Widow Sproud is slick," and departed.
+
+Consoled by no better clew than this I went to bed in a down-stairs
+room, and in my strange rising next day I did not see the driver again.
+Callings in the air awaked me, and a wandering sound of wheels. The
+gaunt woman stood with a lamp in my room saying the stage was ready,
+and disappeared. I sprang up blindly, and again the callings passed in
+the blackness outside--long cries, inarticulate to me. Wheels heavily
+rolled to my door, and a whip was struck against it, and there loomed
+the stage, and I made out the calling. It was the three drivers, about
+to separate before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they were
+wailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, in
+whatever place they lay sleeping. "Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!" came from
+somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating
+antiphonal, "Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!" and in the chill black air my
+driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, "Car-los! Car-los!"
+One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let me
+dress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash cold
+water in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat among
+the leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having four
+hours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faint
+reveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and I
+pushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myself
+and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the
+sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and
+both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my
+frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the
+mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after
+the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we
+went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came
+from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear,
+running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had
+yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas.
+With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain,
+and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired
+desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper
+body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the
+thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide
+continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until
+breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the
+driver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks had
+told me they would be.
+
+It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila,
+and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend Captain
+Stirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the news
+was in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in any
+previous part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed my
+having no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to do
+with it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some had
+thought I was the paymaster.
+
+"Folks up here," he explained, "are liable to know who's coming."
+
+"If I lived here," said I, "I should be anxious for the paymaster to
+come early and often."
+
+"Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here,
+and us civilians profit some by it."
+
+[Illustration: "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"]
+
+Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce the subject
+of black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but before I
+had compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited me.
+Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I was
+stranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to see
+an old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and the
+quartermaster's hearty will to help me to do so could not cure my
+blankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round at
+Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other
+friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at
+an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for
+good or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in
+gloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged
+back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed
+my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably
+slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that
+in reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the
+ancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go
+to house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed
+legally married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve months, and
+ten had run against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signs
+of leaving her. The driver did not think her much entitled to
+sympathy, and certainly she showed later that she could devise
+revenge. As I thought over these things we came again to the cattle
+herd, where my reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor did
+the variance between my movements and my reported plans seem wholly
+explained to them by Stirling's absence, and at the station where I
+had breakfasted I saw them question the driver about me. This interest
+in my affairs heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when next
+day I came to it after another waking to the chanted antiphonals and
+another faint reveille from Camp Thomas in the waning dark, extreme
+comfort spread through me. I sat in the club with the officers, and
+they taught me a new game of cards called Solo, and filled my glass.
+Here were lieutenants, captains, a major, and a colonel, American
+citizens with a love of their country and a standard of honor; here
+floated our bright flag serene against the lofty blue, and the mellow
+horns sounded at guard-mounting, bringing moisture to the eyes. The
+day was punctuated with the bright trumpet, people went and came in
+the simple dignity of duty, and once again I talked with good men and
+women. God bless our soldier people! I said it often.
+
+They somewhat derided my uneasiness in the Gila Valley, and found my
+surmisings sensational. Yet still they agreed much ready money was an
+unwise thing on a stage journey, although their profession (I suppose)
+led them to take being "held up" less seriously than I with my peaceful
+traditions of elevators and the down-town lunch. In the wide Sulphur
+Springs valley where I rode at large, but never so long or so far that
+Fort Grant lay not in sight across that miracle of air, it displeased me
+to come one morning upon yellow and black curly jogging along beneath
+the government telegraph line.
+
+"You cover a wide range," said I.
+
+"Cowboys have to," they answered. "So you've not quit us yet?"
+
+"I'm thinking of taking a hunt and fish towards Fort Apache."
+
+"We're your men, then. You'll find us at Thomas any time. We're
+gathering stock up these draws, but that'll be through this week."
+
+They spurred their horses and vanished among the steep little hills that
+run up to Mount Graham. But indeed they should be no men of mine!
+Stirling had written me his scout was ended, and San Carlos worth a
+longer visit than I had made there, promising me an escort should I
+desire to camp in the mountains. An escort it should be, and no yellow
+or black curly, over-curious about my private matters! This fell in
+excellently with the coming paymaster's movements. Major Pidcock was
+even now on his way to Fort Grant from Fort Bowie; and when he went to
+Thomas and Carlos I would go, too, in his ambulance; and I sighed with
+pleasure at escaping that stage again.
+
+Major Pidcock arrived in a yellow duster, but in other respects differed
+from the Bishop, though in his body a bulky man. We were introduced to
+each other at the club.
+
+"I am glad, sir, to meet you at last," I said to him. "The whole Gila
+Valley has been taking me for you."
+
+"Oh--ah!" said Pidcock, vaguely, and pulling at some fat papers in his
+coat; "indeed. I understand that is a very ignorant population. Colonel
+Vincent, a word with you. The Department Commander requests me--" And
+here he went off into some official talk with the Colonel.
+
+I turned among the other officers, who were standing by an open locker
+having whiskey, and Major Evlie put his hand on my shoulder. "He doesn't
+mean anything," he whispered, while the rest looked knowingly at me.
+Presently the Colonel explained to Pidcock that he would have me to keep
+him company to Carlos.
+
+"Oh--ah, Colonel. Of course we don't take civilians not employed by the
+government, as a rule. But exceptions--ah--can be made," he said to me.
+"I will ask you to be ready immediately after breakfast to-morrow." And
+with that he bowed to us all and sailed forth across the parade-ground.
+
+The Colonel's face was red, and he swore in his quiet voice; but the
+lips of the lieutenants by the open locker quivered fitfully in the
+silence.
+
+"Don't mind Pidcock," Evlie remarked. "He's a paymaster." And at this
+the line officers became disorderly, and two lieutenants danced
+together; so that, without catching Evlie's evidently military joke, I
+felt pacified.
+
+"And I've got to have him to dinner," sighed the Colonel, and wandered
+away.
+
+"You'll get on with him, man--you'll get on with him in the ambulance,"
+said my friend Paisley. "Flatter him, man. Just ask him about his great
+strategic stroke at Cayuse Station that got him his promotion to the pay
+department."
+
+Well, we made our start after breakfast, Major Pidcock and I, and
+another passenger too, who sat with the driver--a black cook going to
+the commanding officer's at Thomas. She was an old plantation mammy,
+with a kind but bewildered face, and I am sorry that the noise of our
+driving lost me much of her conversation; for whenever we slowed, and
+once when I walked up a hill, I found her remarks to be steeped in a
+flighty charm.
+
+"Fo' Lawd's sake!" said she. "W'at's dat?" And when the driver told her
+that it was a jack-rabbit, "You go 'long!" she cried, outraged. "I'se
+seed rabbits earlier 'n de mawnin' dan yo'self." She watched the animal
+with all her might, muttering, "Law, see him squot," and "Hole on, hole
+on!" and "Yasser, he done gone fo' sho. My grashus, you lemme have a
+scatter shoot-gun an' a spike-tail smell dog, an' I'll git one of dey
+narrah-gauge mules."
+
+"I shall not notice it," said Major Pidcock to me, with dignity. "But
+they should have sent such a creature by the stage. It's unsuitable,
+wholly."
+
+"Unquestionably," said I, straining to catch the old lady's song on the
+box:
+
+     "'Don't you fo'git I's a-comin' behind you--
+          Lam slam de lunch ham.'"
+
+"This is insufferable," said Pidcock. "I shall put her off at Cedar
+Springs."
+
+I suppose the drive was long to him, but to me it was not. Noon and
+Cedar Springs prematurely ended the first half of this day most
+memorable in the whole medley of my excursion, and we got down to dine.
+Two travellers bound for Thomas by our same road were just setting out,
+but they firmly declined to transport our cook, and Pidcock moodily saw
+them depart in their wagon, leaving him burdened still; for this was the
+day the stage made its down trip from Thomas. Never before had I seen
+water paid for. When the Major, with windy importance, came to settle
+his bill, our dozen or fourteen escort horses and mules made an item,
+the price of watering two head being two bits, quite separate from the
+feed; and I learned that water was thus precious over most of the
+Territory.
+
+Our cook remounted the box in high feather, and began at once to comment
+upon Arizona. "Dere ain't no winter, nor no spring, nor no rain de hole
+year roun'. My! what a country fo' to gib de chick'ns courage! Dey hens
+must jus' sit an' lay an' lay. But de po' ducks done have a mean time.
+
+     "'O--Lawd!
+     Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"
+
+"I would not permit a cook like that inside my house," said Major
+Pidcock.
+
+"She may not be dangerous," I suggested.
+
+"Land! is dey folks gwineter shoot me?" Naturally I looked, and so did
+the Major; but it was two of our own mounted escort that she saw out to
+the right of us among the hills. "Tell dem nigger jockeys I got no
+money. Why do dey triflin' chillun ride in de kerridge?" She did not
+mean ourselves, but the men with their carbines in the escort wagon in
+front of us. I looked out at them, and their mouths were wide open for
+joy at her. It was not a stately progress for twenty-eight thousand
+dollars in gold and a paymaster to be making. Major Pidcock unbuttoned
+his duster and reclined to sleep, and presently I also felt the
+after-dinner sloth shutting my eyes pleasantly to this black road.
+
+"Heave it, chillun! can't you heave?" I heard our cook say, and felt us
+stop.
+
+"What's that?" I asked, drowsily.
+
+"Seems to be a rock fallen down," the Major answered. "Start it, men;
+roll it!"
+
+I roused myself. We were between rocks and banks on the brow of a hill,
+down which the narrow road descended with a slight turn. I could see the
+escort wagon halted ahead of us, and beyond it the men stooping at a
+large stone, around which there was no possible room to drive. This
+stone had fallen, I reflected, since those travellers for Thomas--
+
+There was a shot, and a mule rolled over.
+
+I shall never forget that. It was like the theatre for one paralyzed
+second! The black soldiers, the mule, the hill, all a clear picture seen
+through an opera-glass, stock-still, and nothing to do with me--for a
+congealed second. And, dear me, what a time we had then!
+
+Crackings volleyed around us, puffs of smoke jetted blue from rock
+ramparts which I had looked at and thought natural--or, rather, not
+thought of at all--earth and gravel spattered up from the ground, the
+bawling negress spilled off her box and ran in spirals, screaming, "Oh,
+bless my soul, bless my soul!" and I saw a yellow duster flap out of the
+ambulance. "Lawd grashus, he's a-leavin' us!" screeched the cook, and
+she changed her spirals for a bee-line after him. I should never have
+run but for this example, for I have not naturally the presence of mind,
+and in other accidents through which I have passed there has never been
+promptness about me; the reasoning and all has come when it was over,
+unless it went on pretty long, when I have been sometimes able to leap
+to a conclusion. But yes, I ran now, straight under a screen of rocks,
+over the top of which rose the heads of yellow and black curly. The
+sight of them sent rushing over me the first agreeable sensation I had
+felt--shapeless rage--and I found myself shouting at them, "Scoundrels!
+scoundrels!" while shooting continued briskly around me. I think my
+performance would have sincerely entertained them could they have spared
+the time for it; and as it was, they were regarding me with obvious
+benevolence, when Mr. Adams looked evilly at me across the stones, and
+black curly seized the old devil's rifle in time to do me a good turn.
+Mr. Adams's bullet struck short of me ten feet, throwing the earth in my
+face. Since then I have felt no sympathy for that tobacco-running
+pioneer. He listened, coughing, to what black curly said as he pointed
+to me, and I see now that I have never done a wiser thing than to go
+unarmed in that country. Curly was telling Mr. Adams that I was
+harmless. Indeed, that was true! In the bottom of this cup, target for a
+circled rim of rifles, separated from the widely scattered Major and his
+men, aware of nothing in particular, and seeing nothing in particular
+but smoke and rocks and faces peering everywhere, I walked to a stone
+and sat upon it, hypnotized again into a spectator. From this
+undisturbed vantage I saw shape itself the theft of the gold--the first
+theft, that is; for it befell me later to witness a ceremony by which
+these eagles of Uncle Sam again changed hands in a manner that stealing
+is as good a name for as any.
+
+They had got two mules killed, so that there could be no driving away in
+a hurry, and I saw that killing men was not a part of their war, unless
+required as a means to their end. Major Pidcock had spared them this
+necessity; I could see him nowhere; and with him to imitate I need not
+pause to account for the members of our dismounted escort. Two soldiers,
+indeed, lay on the ground, the sergeant and another, who had evidently
+fired a few resisting shots; but let me say at once that these poor
+fellows recovered, and I saw them often again through this adventure
+that bound us together, else I could not find so much hilarity in my
+retrospect. Escort wagon and ambulance stood empty and foolish on the
+road, and there lay the ingenious stone all by itself, and the carbines
+all by themselves foolish in the wagon, where the innocent soldiers had
+left them on getting out to move the stone. Smoke loitered thin and blue
+over this now exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. How
+secure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless of
+identification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, an
+escort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at the
+top of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed into
+sight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I had
+never seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow and
+black curly looked so natural that I wondered if Jenks and the Bishop
+would come climbing down too. But no more old friends turned up that
+day. Some went to the ambulance swift and silent, while others most
+needlessly stood guard. Nothing was in sight but my seated inoffensive
+form, and the only sound was, somewhere among the rocks, the voice of
+the incessant negress speeding through her prayers. I saw them at the
+ambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,
+ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill's brow.
+Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouring
+negress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:
+
+     "'Oh--Lawd!
+     Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"
+
+All this while I sat on the stone. "They have done us brown," I said
+aloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.
+My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. I
+should not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,
+brought from several quarters by the fusillade--two in a wagon from
+Cedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with in
+the hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistance
+to any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what we
+all should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatory
+with pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to them
+than any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaseless
+discourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge of
+everything.
+
+"Let yer men quit the'r guns, did ye, general?" piped the very old man.
+"Escort oughtn't never to quit the'r guns. I seen that at Molino del
+Rey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn't crawl out in the
+road like a turtus to git the sunshine."
+
+"Where were you?" thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who now
+appeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they had
+been protecting at an immense distance. "Don't you know your duty's to
+be on hand when you hear firing?"
+
+"Law, honey!" said the cook, with a guffaw, "lemme git my han's over my
+mouf."
+
+"See them walls they fooled yer with!" continued the old man, pointing
+with his stick. "I could have told yer them wasn't natural. Them doesn't
+show like country rock;" by which I found that he meant their faces were
+new-exposed and not weather-beaten.
+
+"No doubt you could have saved us, my friend," said the Major, puffing
+blandly.
+
+But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. "Yes, I could have told
+yer that," assented the sage, with senile complacence. "My wife could
+have told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that."
+
+"I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements," announced Pidcock. "Tap
+the telegraph wire," he ordered.
+
+"I have to repawt to the Major," said a soldier, saluting, "dat de line
+is cut."
+
+At this I was taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while
+ninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire if they
+knew their business."
+
+Swearing capably, the Major now accounted clearly to us for the whole
+occurrence, striding up and down, while we lifted the hurt men into the
+ranch wagon, and arranged for their care at Cedar Springs. The escort
+wagon hurried on to Thomas for a doctor. The ambulance was, of course,
+crippled of half its team, and the dead mules were cleared from their
+harness and got to the road-side. Having satisfactorily delivered
+himself of his explanation, the Major now organized a party for
+following the trail of the robbers, to learn into what region they had
+betaken themselves. Incredible as it may seem, after my late
+unenterprising conduct, I asked one of the riders to lend me his horse,
+which he did, remarking that he should not need it for an hour, and that
+he was willing to risk my staying absent longer than that.
+
+So we rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble to
+follow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth of
+hillocks, puny and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in the
+trough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty about
+three of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and was
+something less than civil at what he called my suggestions.
+
+"When I have ascertained their route," he said, "it will be time enough
+to talk of their identity."
+
+In this way we went for a mile or so, the trail leading us onward, frank
+and straight, to the top of a somewhat higher hill, where it suddenly
+expired off the earth. No breath vanishes cleaner from glass, and it
+brought us to a dead halt. We retraced the tracks to make sure we had
+not lost them before, but there was no mistake, and again we halted dead
+at the vanishing-point. Here were signs that something out of the common
+had happened. Men's feet and horseshoe prints, aimless and superimposed,
+marked a trodden frame of ground, inside which was nothing, and beyond
+which nothing lay but those faint tracks of wandering cattle and horses
+that scatter everywhere in this country. Not one defined series, not
+even a single shod horse, had gone over this hill, and we spent some
+minutes vainly scouring in circles wider and wider. Often I returned to
+stare at the trodden, imperturbable frame of ground, and caught myself
+inspecting first the upper air, and next the earth, and speculating if
+the hill were hollow; and mystery began to film over the hitherto sharp
+figures of black curly and yellow, while the lonely country around grew
+so unpleasant to my nerves that I was glad when Pidcock decided that he
+must give up for to-day. We found the little group of people beginning
+to disperse at the ambulance.
+
+"Fooled yer ag'in, did they?" said the old man. "Played the blanket
+trick on yer, I expect. Guess yer gold's got pretty far by now." With
+this parting, and propped upon his stick, he went as he had come. Not
+even at any time of his youth, I think, could he have been
+companionable, and old age had certainly filled him with the impartial
+malevolence of the devil. I rejoice to say that he presided at none of
+our further misadventures.
+
+Short twenty-eight thousand dollars and two mules, we set out anew, the
+Major, the cook, and I, along the Thomas road, with the sun drawing
+closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made.
+The site of my shock lay behind me--I knew now well enough that it had
+been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel
+the earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleeve
+whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again--and the present
+comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase
+continually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling of
+the wheels many subjects for talk came into my mind, and had I been
+seated on the box beside the cook we should have found much in common.
+Ever since her real tenderness to those wounded men I had wished to ask
+the poor old creature how she came in this weary country, so far from
+the pleasant fields of cotton and home. Her hair was gray, and she had
+seen much, else she had never been so kind and skilful at bandaging. And
+I am quite sure that somewhere in the chambers of her incoherent mind
+and simple heart abided the sweet ancient fear of God and love of her
+fellow-men--virtues I had met but little in Arizona.
+
+"De hole family, scusin' two," she was saying, "dey bust loose and tuck
+to de woods." And then she moralized upon the two who stayed behind and
+were shot. "But de Gennul he 'low dat wuz mighty pore reasonin'."
+
+I should have been glad to exchange views with her, for Major Pidcock
+was dull company. This prudent officer was not growing distant from his
+disaster, and as night began to come, and we neared Thomas, I suppose
+the thought that our ambulance was driving him perhaps to a
+court-martial was enough to submerge the man in gloom. To me and my news
+about the robbers he was a little more considerate, although he still
+made nothing of the fact that some of them lived in the Gila Valley, and
+were of the patriarchal tribe of Meakum.
+
+"Scoundrels like that," he muttered, lugubriously, "know every trail in
+the country, and belong nowhere. Mexico is not a long ride from here.
+They can get a steamer at Guaymas and take their choice of ports down to
+Valparaiso. Yes, they'll probably spend that money in South America. Oh,
+confound that woman!"
+
+For the now entirely cheerful negress was singing:
+
+     "'Dar's de gal, dar's my Susanna.
+     How by gum you know?
+     Know her by de red bandanna,
+     An' de shoestring hangin' on de flo'--
+     Dad blam her!--
+     An' de shoestring hangin'--'
+
+"Goodness grashus! what _you_ gwineter do?"
+
+At this sudden cry and the stopping of the ambulance I thought more
+people were come for our gold, and my spirit resigned itself. Sit still
+was all I should do now, and look for the bright day when I should
+leave Arizona forever. But it was only Mrs. Sproud. I had clean
+forgotten her, and did not at once take in to what an important turn the
+affairs of some of us had come. She stepped out of the darkness, and put
+her hand on the door of the ambulance.
+
+"I suppose you're the Paymaster?" Her voice was soft and easy, but had
+an ample volume. As Pidcock was replying with some dignity that she was
+correct, she caught sight of me. "Who is this man?" she interrupted him.
+
+"My clerk," said Pidcock; and this is the promptest thing I can remember
+of the Major, always excepting his conduct when the firing began on the
+hill. "You're asking a good many questions, madam," he added.
+
+"I want to know who I'm talking to," said she, quietly. "I think I've
+seen property of yours this evening."
+
+"You had better get in, madam; better get in."
+
+"This is the Paymaster's team from Fort Grant?" said Mrs. Sproud to the
+driver.
+
+"Yes, yes, madam. Major Pidcock--I am Major Pidcock, Paymaster to the
+United States army in the Department of Colorado. I suppose I understand
+you."
+
+"Seven canvas sacks," said Mrs. Sproud, standing in the road.
+
+"Get in, madam. You can't tell who may be within hearing. You will find
+it to your advantage to keep nothing--"
+
+Mrs. Sproud laughed luxuriously, and I began to discern why black curly
+might at times have been loath to face her.
+
+"I merely meant, madam--I desired to make it clear that--a--"
+
+"I think I know what you meant. But I have no call to fear the law. It
+will save you trouble to believe that before we go any further."
+
+"Certainly, madam. Quite right." The man was sweating. What with
+court-martial and Mrs. Sproud, his withers were wrung. "You are entirely
+sure, of course, madam--"
+
+"I am entirely sure I know what I am about. That seems to be more than
+some do that are interested in this gold--the folks, for instance, that
+have hid it in my hay-stack."
+
+"Hay-stack! Then they're not gone to Mexico!"
+
+"Mexico, sir? They live right here in this valley. Now I'll get in, and
+when I ask you, you will please to set me down." She seated herself
+opposite us and struck a match. "Now we know what we all look like,"
+said she, holding the light up, massive and handsome. "This young man is
+the clerk, and we needn't mind him. I have done nothing to fear the law,
+but what I am doing now will make me a traveller again. I have no
+friends here. I was acquainted with a young man." She spoke in the
+serenest tone, but let fall the match more quickly than its burning made
+needful. "He was welcome in my home. He let them cook this up in my
+house and never told me. I live a good ways out on the road, and it was
+a safe place, but I didn't think why so many met him, and why they sat
+around my stable. Once in a while this week they've been joking about
+winning the soldiers' pay--they often win that--but I thought it was
+just cowboy games, till I heard horses coming quick at sundown this
+afternoon, and I hid. Will hunted around and said--and said I was on
+the stage coming from Solomonsville, and so they had half an hour yet.
+He thought so. And, you see, nobody lives in the cabin but--but me."
+Mrs. Sproud paused a moment here, and I noticed her breathing. Then she
+resumed: "So I heard them talk some; and when they all left, pretty
+soon, I went to the hay-stack, and it was so. Then the stage came along
+and I rode to Thomas."
+
+"You left the gold there!" groaned the wretched Major, and leaned out of
+the ambulance.
+
+"I'm not caring to touch what's none of mine. Wait, sir, please; I get
+out here. Here are the names I'm sure of. Stop the driver, or I'll
+jump." She put a paper in the Major's hand. "It is Mrs. Sproud's
+hay-stack," she added.
+
+"Will you--this will never--can I find you to-morrow?" he said,
+helplessly, holding the paper out at her.
+
+"I have told you all I know," said Mrs. Sproud, and was gone at once.
+
+Major Pidcock leaned back for some moments as we drove. Then he began
+folding his paper with care. "I have not done with that person," said
+he, attempting to restore his crippled importance. "She will find that
+she must explain herself."
+
+Our wheels whirled in the sand and we came quickly to Thomas, to a crowd
+of waiting officers and ladies; and each of us had an audience that
+night--the cook, I feel sure, while I myself was of an importance second
+only to the Major's. But he was at once closeted with the commanding
+officer, and I did not learn their counsels, hearing only at breakfast
+that the first step was taken. The detail sent out had returned from
+the hay-stack, bringing gold indeed--one-half sackful. The other six
+were gone, and so was Mrs. Sproud. It was useless to surmise, as we,
+however, did that whole forenoon, what any of this might mean; but in
+the afternoon came a sign. A citizen of the Gila Valley had been paying
+his many debts at the saloon and through the neighborhood in gold. In
+one well known for the past two years to be without a penny it was the
+wrong moment to choose for honest affluence, and this citizen was the
+first arrest. This further instance of how secure the robbers felt
+themselves to be outdid anything that had happened yet, and I marvelled
+until following events took from me the power of astonishment. The men
+named on Mrs. Sproud's paper were fewer than I think fired upon us in
+the attack, but every one of them was here in the valley, going about
+his business. Most were with the same herd of cattle that I had seen
+driven by yellow and black curly near the sub-agency, and they two were
+there. The solvent debtor, I should say, was not arrested this morning.
+Plans that I, of course, had no part in delayed matters, I suppose for
+the sake of certainty. Black curly and his friends were watched, and
+found to be spending no gold yet; and since they did not show sign of
+leaving the region, but continued with their cattle, I imagine every
+effort was being made to light upon their hidden treasure. But their
+time came, and soon after it mine. Stirling, my friend, to whom I had
+finally gone at Carlos, opened the wire door of his quarters where I sat
+one morning, and with a heartless smile introduced me to a gentleman
+from Tucson.
+
+"You'll have a chance to serve your country," said Stirling.
+
+I was subpoenaed!
+
+"Certainly not!" I said, with indignation. "I'm going East. I don't live
+here. You have witnesses enough without me. We all saw the same thing."
+
+"Witnesses never see the same thing," observed the man from Tucson.
+"It's the government that's after you. But you'll not have to wait. Our
+case is first on the list."
+
+"You can take my deposition," I began; but what need to dwell upon this
+interview? "When I come to visit you again," I said to Stirling, "let me
+know." And that pink-faced, gray-haired captain still shouted
+heartlessly.
+
+"You're an egotist," said he. "Think of the scrape poor old Pidcock has
+got himself into."
+
+"The government needs all the witnesses it can get," said the man from
+Tucson. "Luke Jenks is smart in some ways."
+
+"Luke Jenks?" I sat up in my canvas extension-chair.
+
+"Territorial Delegate; firm of Parley and Jenks, Tucson. He's in it."
+
+"By heavens!" I cried, in unmixed delight. "But I didn't see him when
+they were shooting at us."
+
+The man from Tucson stared at me curiously. "He is counsel for the
+prisoners," he explained.
+
+"The Delegate to Washington defends these thieves who robbed the United
+States?" I repeated.
+
+"Says he'll get them off. He's going to stay home from Washington and
+put it through in shape."
+
+It was here that my powers of astonishment went into their last decline,
+and I withheld my opinion upon the character of Mr. Jenks as a public
+man. I settled comfortably in my canvas chair.
+
+"The prisoners are citizens of small means, I judge," said I. "What fee
+can they pay for such a service?"
+
+"Ah!" said Stirling,
+
+"That's about it, I guess," said the man from Tucson. "Luke is mighty
+smart in his law business. Well, gents, good-day to you. I must be
+getting after the rest of my witnesses."
+
+"Have you seen Mrs. Sproud?" I asked him.
+
+"She's quit the country. We can't trace her. Guess she was scared."
+
+"But that gold!" I exclaimed, when Sterling and I were alone. "What in
+the world have they done with those six other bags?"
+
+"Ah!" said he, as before. "Do you want to bet on that point? Dollars to
+doughnuts Uncle Sam never sees a cent of that money again. I'll stake my
+next quarter's pay--"
+
+"Pooh!" said I. "That's poor odds against doughnuts if Pidcock has the
+paying of it." And I took my turn at laughing at the humorous Stirling.
+
+"That Mrs. Sproud is a sensible woman to have gone," said he,
+reflectively. "They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn't
+be safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are found
+dead in this country--but you'll have government protection."
+
+"Thank you kindly," said I. "That's what I had on the hill."
+
+But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.
+
+Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection.
+At seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmas
+and Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase which
+they sometimes print in capitals upon their bills--Combination
+Extraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, and
+the old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and our
+coal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including Sergeant
+Brown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, you
+can see what appearance we made descending together from the mean
+Southern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to have
+been the town's whole population, numbering five thousand.
+
+Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflage
+immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,
+speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than
+half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy
+shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled
+cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these
+the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,
+express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers from
+Lowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color and
+dust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door of
+the Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of the
+same idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,
+as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found the
+wet-eyed Mowry standing.
+
+"How's business on the other side of the track?" I said to him.
+
+"Fair to middlin'. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?"
+
+"You've forgotten I told you they're a property I don't care for, Mr.
+Mowry. I suppose it's interest in this recent gold discovery that brings
+you to Tucson." He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glance
+that flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, "So many of
+your Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now," I wrote
+my name in the hotel book, while he looked to remind himself what it
+was.
+
+"Why, you're not to stay here," said Stirling, coming up. "You're
+expected at the Barracks."
+
+He presented me at once to a knot of officers, each of whom in turn made
+me known to some additional by-stander, until it seemed to me that I
+shook a new hand sixty times in this disordered minute by the hotel
+book, and out of the sixty caught one name, which was my own.
+
+These many meetings could not be made perfect without help from the
+saloon-keeper, who ran his thriving trade conveniently at hand in the
+office of the San Xavier. Our group remained near him, and I silently
+resolved to sleep here at the hotel, away from the tempting confusion of
+army hospitality upon this eve of our trial. We were expected, however,
+to dine at the post, and that I was ready to do. Indeed, I could
+scarcely have got myself out of it without rudeness, for the ambulance
+was waiting us guests at the gate. We went to it along a latticed
+passage at the edge of a tropical garden, only a few square yards in
+all, but how pretty! and what an oasis of calm in the midst of this
+teeming desolation of unrest! It had upon one side the railway station,
+wooden, sordid, congesting with malodorous packed humanity; on the next
+the rails themselves and the platform, with steam and bells and baggage
+trucks rolling and bumping; the hotel stood on the third, a confusion
+of tongues and trampings; while a wide space of dust, knee-deep, and
+littered with manoeuvring vehicles, hemmed in this silent garden on
+the fourth side. A slender slow little fountain dropped inaudibly among
+some palms, a giant cactus, and the broad-spread shade of trees I did
+not know. This was the whole garden, and a tame young antelope was its
+inhabitant. He lay in the unchanging shade, his large eyes fixed
+remotely upon the turmoil of this world, and a sleepy charm touched my
+senses as I looked at his domain. Instead of going to dinner, or going
+anywhere, I should have liked to recline indefinitely beneath those
+palms and trail my fingers in the cool fountain. Such enlightened
+languor, however, could by no happy chance be the lot of an important
+witness in a Western robbery trial, and I dined and wined with the
+jovial officers, at least talking no business.
+
+With business I was sated. Pidcock and the attorney for the United
+States--I can remember neither his name nor the proper title of his
+office, for he was a nobody, and I had forgotten his features each new
+time that we met--had mapped out the trial to me, preparing and
+rehearsing me in my testimony until they had pestered me into a hatred
+of them both. And when word was brought me here, dining at Lowell
+Barracks, where I had imagined myself safe from justice, that this same
+attorney was waiting to see me, I rose and I played him a trick.
+Possibly I should not have done it but for the saloon-keeper in the
+afternoon and this sustained dining now; but I sent him word I should be
+with him directly--and I wandered into Tucson by myself!
+
+Faithful to my last strong impression there, I went straight to the tiny
+hotel garden, and in that darkness lay down in a delicious and torpid
+triumph. The attorney was most likely waiting still. No one on earth
+knew where I was. Pidcock could not trace me now. I could see the stars
+through the palms and the strange trees, the fountain made a little
+sound, somewhere now and then I could hear the antelope, and, cloaked in
+this black serenity, I lay smiling. Once an engine passed heavily,
+leaving the station utterly quiet again, and the next I knew it was the
+antelope's rough tongue that waked me, and I found him nibbling and
+licking my hand. People were sitting in the latticed passage, and from
+the light in the office came Mr. Mowry, untying a canvas sack that he
+held. At this sight my truancy to discretion was over, and no head could
+be more wakeful or clear than mine instantly became.
+
+"How much d'yer want this time, Mr. Jenks?" inquired Mowry.
+
+I could not hear the statesman's reply, but thought, while the sound of
+clinking came to me, how a common cause will often serve to reconcile
+the most bitter opponents. I did not dare go nearer to catch all their
+talk, and I debated a little upon my security even as it was, until my
+own name suddenly reached me.
+
+"Him?" said Mowry; "that there tailor-made boy? They've got him sleepin'
+at the Barracks."
+
+"Nobody but our crowd's boarding here," said some one.
+
+"They think we're laying for their witnesses," said the voice of Jenks.
+And among the various mingled laughs rose distinct a big one that I
+knew.
+
+"Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. Tell you about witnesses. Here's all there is
+to them: spot cash to their figure, and kissing the Book. You've done no
+work but what I told you?" he added, sharply.
+
+"We haven't needed to worry about witnesses in any shape, Bishop."
+
+"That's good. That's economy. That little Eastern toorist is harmless."
+
+"Leave him talk, Bishop. Leave 'em all tell their story."
+
+"It's going to cost the whole stake, though," said Jenks.
+
+"Deserted Jericho!" remarked old Meakum.
+
+"I don't try cases for nothing, Bishop. The deal's covered. My clients
+have publicly made over to me their horses and saddles."
+
+"Oh, ho, ho!" went the Bishop. But this last word about the horses was
+the only part of the talk I could not put a plain meaning upon.
+
+Mr. Mowry I now saw re-enter the lighted door of the office, with his
+canvas sack in his hand. "This'll be right here in the safe," said he.
+
+"All right," answered Jenks. "I'll not be likely to call on you any more
+for a day or so."
+
+"Hello!" said the office clerk, appearing in his shirt-sleeves. "You
+fellows have made me forget the antelope." He took down a lantern, and I
+rose to my feet.
+
+"Give us a drink before you feed him," said Jenks. Then I saw the whole
+of them crowd into the door for their nightcap, and that was all I
+waited for.
+
+I climbed the garden fence. My thoughts led me at random through
+quantities of soft dust, and over the rails, I think, several times,
+until I stood between empty and silent freight trains, and there sat
+down. Harmless! It seemed to me they would rate me differently in the
+morning. So for a while my mind was adrift in the turbulent
+cross-currents of my discovery; but it was with a smooth, innocent
+surface that I entered the hotel office and enjoyed the look of the
+clerk when he roused and heard me, who, according to their calculations,
+should have been in slumber at the Barracks, asking to be shown my room
+here. I was tempted to inquire if he had fed the antelope--such was the
+pride of my elation--and I think he must have been running over
+questions to put me; but the two of us marched up the stairs with a lamp
+and a key, speaking amiably of the weather for this time of year, and he
+unlocked my door with a politeness and hoped I would sleep well with a
+consideration that I have rarely met in the hotel clerk. I did not sleep
+well. Yet it seemed not to matter. By eight I had breakfast, and found
+the attorney--Rocklin I shall name him, and that will have to
+answer--and told him how we had become masters of the situation.
+
+He made me repeat it all over, jotting memoranda this second time; and
+when my story was done, he sat frowning at his notes, with a cigar
+between his teeth.
+
+"This ain't much," he said. "Luckily I don't need anything more. I've
+got a dead open-and-shut case without it."
+
+"Why don't you make it deader, then?" said I. "Don't you see what it all
+means?"
+
+"Well, what does it all mean?"
+
+Either the man was still nettled at my treatment of him last evening, or
+had no liking for amateur opinions and help; otherwise I see no reason
+for the disparagement with which he regarded me while I interpreted
+what I had overheard, piece by piece, except the horse and saddle
+remark.
+
+"Since that don't seem clear, I'll explain it to you," he said, "and
+then you'll know it all. Except their horses and saddles, the accused
+haven't a red cent to their names--not an honest one, that is. So it
+looks well for them to be spending all they've apparently got in the
+world to pay counsel fees. Now I have this case worked up," he pursued,
+complacently, "so that any such ambiguous stuff as yours is no good to
+me at all--would be harmful, in fact. It's not good policy, my friend,
+to assail the character of opposing counsel. And Bishop Meakum! Are you
+aware of his power and standing in this section? Do you think you're
+going to ring him in?"
+
+"Great goodness!" I cried. "Let me testify, and then let the safe be
+opened."
+
+Rocklin looked at me a moment, the cigar wagging between his teeth, and
+then he lightly tossed his notes in the waste-paper basket.
+
+"Open your safe," said he, "and what then? Up steps old Mowry and says,
+'I'll thank you to let my property alone.' Where's your proof? What word
+did any of them drop that won't bear other constructions? Mowry's well
+known to have money, and he has a right to give it to Jenks."
+
+"If the gold could be identified?" I suggested.
+
+"That's been all attended to," he answered, with increasing complacence.
+"I'm obliged to you for your information, and in a less sure case I
+might risk using it, but--why, see here; we've got 'em hands down!" And
+he clapped me on the knee. "If I had met you last evening I was going to
+tell you our campaign. Pidcock'll come first, of course, and his
+testimony'll cover pretty much the whole ground. Then, you see, the
+rest of you I'll use mainly in support. Sergeant Brown--he's very
+strong, and the black woman, and you--I'll probably call you third or
+fourth. So you'll be on hand sure now?"
+
+Certainly I had no thought of being anywhere else. The imminence of our
+trial was now heralded by the cook's coming to Rocklin's office punctual
+to his direction, and after her Pidcock almost immediately. It was not
+many minutes before the more important ones of us had gathered, and we
+proceeded to court, once again a Combination Extraordinary--a spectacle
+for Tucson. So much stir and prosperity had not blossomed in the town
+for many years, its chief source of life being the money that Lowell
+Barracks brought to it. But now its lodgings were crowded and its
+saloons and Mexican dens of entertainment waked to activity. From a
+dozing sunburnt village of adobe walls and almond-trees it was become
+something like those places built in a single Western day of riot
+extravagance, where corner lots are clamored for and men pay a dollar to
+be shaved.
+
+Jenks was before us in the room with his clients. He was practising what
+I always think of as his celluloid smile, whispering, and all-hail with
+everybody. One of the prisoners had just such another mustache as his
+own, too large for his face; and this had led me since to notice a type
+of too large mustaches through our country in all ranks, but of similar
+men, who generally have either stolen something or lacked the
+opportunity. Catching sight of me, Jenks came at once, friendly as you
+please, shaking my passive hand, and laughing that we should meet again
+under such circumstances.
+
+"When we're through this nuisance," said he, "you must take dinner with
+me. Just now, you understand, it wouldn't look well to see me hobnobbing
+with a government witness. See you again!" And he was off to some one
+else.
+
+I am confident this man could not see himself as others--some others, at
+least--saw him. To him his whole performance was natural and
+professional, and my view that he was more infamous by far than the
+thieves would have sincerely amazed him. Indeed, for one prisoner I felt
+very sorry. Young black curly was sitting there, and, in contrast to Mr.
+Adams, down whose beard the tobacco forever ran, he seemed downcast and
+unhardened, I thought. He was getting his deserts through base means. It
+was not for the sake of justice but from private revenge that Mrs.
+Sproud had moved; and, after all, had the boy injured her so much as
+this? Yet how could I help him? They were his deserts. My mood was
+abruptly changed to diversion when I saw among our jury specimens of
+both types of Meakum, and prominent among the spectator throng their
+sire, that canny polygamist, surveying the case with the same forceful
+attention I had noticed first in the House of Representatives, and ever
+since that day. But I had a true shock of surprise now. Mrs. Sproud was
+in court. There could be no mistake. No one seemed to notice her, and I
+wondered if many in the town knew her face, and with what intent she had
+returned to this dangerous neighborhood. I was so taken up with watching
+her and her furtive appearance in the almost concealed position she had
+chosen that I paid little heed to the government's opening of its case.
+She had her eyes upon black curly, but he could not see her. Pidcock
+was in the midst of his pompous recital when the court took its noon
+intermission. Then I was drawn to seek out black curly as he was
+conducted to his dinner.
+
+"Good-day," said he, as I came beside him.
+
+"I wish I didn't have to go on oath about this," I said.
+
+"Oath away," he answered, doggedly. "What's that got to do with me?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Come where?" He looked at me defiantly.
+
+"When people don't wish to be trailed," I went on, "do I understand they
+sometimes spread a blanket and lead their horses on it and take off
+their shoes? I'm merely asking out of a traveller's curiosity."
+
+"I guess you'll have to ask them that's up on such tricks," he answered,
+grinning.
+
+I met him in the eyes, and a strong liking for him came over me. "I
+probably owe you my life," I said, huskily. "I know I do. And I
+hate--you must consider me a poor sort of bird."
+
+"Blamed if I know what you're drivin' at," said black curly. But he
+wrinkled his forehead in the pleasant way I remembered. "Yer whiskey was
+good all right," he added, and gave me his hand.
+
+"Look here," said I. "She's come back."
+
+This took the boy unguarded, and he swore with surprise. Then his face
+grew sombre. "Let her," he remarked; and that was all we said.
+
+At the afternoon sitting I began to notice how popular sympathy was not
+only quite against the United States, but a sentiment amounting to
+hatred was shown against all soldiers. The voice of respectability
+seemed entirely silent; decent citizens were there, but not enough of
+them. The mildest opinion was that Uncle Sam could afford to lose money
+better than poor people, and the strongest was that it was a pity the
+soldiers had not been killed. This seemed inappropriate in a Territory
+desiring admission to our Union. I supposed it something local then, but
+have since observed it to be a prevailing Western antipathy. The
+unthinking sons of the sage-brush ill tolerate a thing which stands for
+discipline, good order, and obedience, and the man who lets another
+command him they despise. I can think of no threat more evil for our
+democracy, for it is a fine thing diseased and perverted--namely,
+independence gone drunk.
+
+Pidcock's examination went forward, and the half-sack of gold from the
+hay-stack brought a great silence in court. The Major's identification
+of the gold was conducted by Rocklin with stage effect, for it was an
+undoubted climax; but I caught a most singular smile on the face of
+Bishop Meakum, and there sat Mrs. Sproud, still solitary and engulfed in
+the throng, her face flushed and her eyes blazing. And here ended the
+first day.
+
+In the morning came the Major's cross-examination, with the room more
+crowded than before, but I could not find Mrs. Sproud. Rocklin did not
+believe I had seen her, and I feared something had happened to her. The
+Bishop had walked to the court with Jenks, talking and laughing upon
+general subjects, so far as I could hear. The counsel for the prisoners
+passed lightly over the first part of the evidence, only causing an
+occasional laugh on the score of the Major's military prowess, until he
+came to the gold.
+
+"You said this sack was one of yours, Major?" he now inquired.
+
+"It is mine, sir."
+
+A large bundle of sacks was brought. "And how about these? Here are ten,
+fifteen--about forty. I'll get some more if you say so. Are they all
+yours?"
+
+"Your question strikes me as idle, sir." The court rapped, and Jenks
+smiled. "They resemble mine," said Pidcock. "But they are not used."
+
+"No; not used." Jenks held up the original, shaking the gold. "Now I'm
+going to empty your sack for a moment."
+
+"I object," said Rocklin, springing up.
+
+"Oh, it's all counted," laughed Jenks; and the objection was not
+sustained. Then Jenks poured the gold into a new sack and shook that
+aloft. "It makes them look confusingly similar, Major. I'll just put my
+card in your sack."
+
+"I object," said Rocklin, with anger, but with futility. Jenks now
+poured the gold back into the first, then into a third, and thus into
+several, tossing them each time on the table, and the clinking pieces
+sounded clear in the room. Bishop Meakum was watching the operation like
+a wolf. "Now, Major," said Jenks, "is your gold in the original sack, or
+which sack is my card in?"
+
+This was the first time that the room broke out loudly; and Pidcock,
+when the people were rapped to order, said, "The sack's not the thing."
+
+"Of course not. The gold is our point. And of course you had a private
+mark on it. Tell the jury, please, what the private mark was."
+
+He had none. He spoke about dates, and new coins, he backed and filled,
+swelled importantly, and ended like a pricked bladder by recanting his
+identification.
+
+"That is all I have to say for the present," said Jenks.
+
+"Don't complicate the issue by attempting to prove too much, Mr.
+Rocklin," said the judge.
+
+Rocklin flushed, and called the next witness, whispering sulkily to me,
+"What can you expect if the court starts out against you?" But the court
+was by no means against him. The judge was merely disgusted over
+Rocklin's cardinal folly of identifying coin under such loose
+conditions.
+
+And now came the testimony of Sergeant Brown. He told so clear a story
+as to chill the enthusiasm of the room. He pointed to the man with the
+mustache, black curly, and yellow. "I saw them shooting from the right
+of the road," he said. Jenks tried but little to shake him, and left him
+unshaken. He was followed by the other wounded soldier, whose story was
+nearly the same, except that he identified different prisoners.
+
+"Who did you say shot you?" inquired Jenks. "Which of these two?"
+
+"I didn't say. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know a man when he shoots you in broad daylight?"
+
+"Plenty was shooting at me," said the soldier. And his testimony also
+remained unshaken.
+
+Then came my own examination, and Jenks did not trouble me at all, but,
+when I had likewise identified the men I knew, simply bowed smilingly,
+and had no questions to ask his friend from the East.
+
+Our third morning began with the negress, who said she was married, told
+a scattered tale, and soon stated that she was single, explaining later
+that she had two husbands, and one was dead, while the other had
+disappeared from her ten years ago. Gradually her alarm subsided and
+she achieved coherence.
+
+"What did this gentleman do at the occurrence?" inquired Jenks,
+indicating me.
+
+"Dat gemman? He jes flew, sir, an' I don' blame him fo' bein' no wusser
+skeer'd dan de hole party. Yesser, we all flew scusin' dey two pore
+chillun; an' we stayed till de 'currence was ceased."
+
+"But the gentleman says he sat on a stone, and saw those men firing."
+
+"Land! I seed him goin' like he was gwineter Fo't Grant. He run up de
+hill, an' de Gennul he run down like de day of judgment."
+
+"The General ran?"
+
+"Lawd grashus, honey, yo' could have played checkers on dey coat tails
+of his."
+
+The court rapped gently.
+
+"But the gold must have been heavy to carry away to the horses. Did not
+the General exert his influence to rally his men?"
+
+"No, sah. De Gennul went down de hill, an' he took his inflooence with
+him."
+
+"I have no further questions," said Jenks. "When we come to our alibis,
+gentlemen, I expect to satisfy you that this lady saw more correctly,
+and when she is unable to recognize my clients it is for a good reason."
+
+"We've not got quite so far yet," Rocklin observed. "We've reached the
+hay-stack at present."
+
+"Aren't you going to make her describe her own confusion more?" I began,
+but stopped, for I saw that the next witness was at hand, and that it
+was Mrs. Sproud.
+
+"How's this?" I whispered to Rocklin. "How did you get her?"
+
+"She volunteered this morning, just before trial. We're in big luck."
+
+The woman was simply dressed in something dark. Her handsome face was
+pale, but she held a steady eye upon the jury, speaking clearly and with
+deliberation. Old Meakum, always in court and watchful, was plainly
+unprepared for this, and among the prisoners, too, I could discern
+uneasiness. Whether or no any threat or constraint had kept her
+invisible during these days, her coming now was a thing for which none
+of us were ready.
+
+"What do I know?" she repeated after the counsel. "I suppose you have
+been told what I said I knew."
+
+"We'd like to hear it directly from you, Mrs. Sproud," Rocklin
+explained.
+
+"Where shall I start?"
+
+"Well, there was a young man who boarded with you, was there not?"
+
+"I object to the witness being led," said Jenks. And Bishop Meakum moved
+up beside the prisoners' counsel and began talking with him earnestly.
+
+"Nobody is leading me," said Mrs. Sproud, imperiously, and raising her
+voice a little. She looked about her. "There was a young man who boarded
+with me. Of course that is so."
+
+Meakum broke off in his confidences with Jenks, and looked sharply at
+her.
+
+"Do you see your boarder anywhere here?" inquired Rocklin; and from his
+tone I perceived that he was puzzled by the manner of his witness.
+
+She turned slowly, and slowly scrutinized the prisoners one by one. The
+head of black curly was bent down, and I saw her eyes rest upon it while
+she stood in silence. It was as if he felt the summons of her glance,
+for he raised his head. His face was scarlet, but her paleness did not
+change.
+
+"He is the one sitting at the end," she said, looking back at the jury.
+She then told some useless particulars, and brought her narrative to the
+afternoon when she had heard the galloping. "Then I hid. I hid because
+this is a rough country."
+
+"When did you recognize that young man's voice?"
+
+"I did not recognize it."
+
+Black curly's feet scraped as he shifted his position.
+
+"Collect yourself, Mrs. Sproud. We'll give you all the time you want. We
+know ladies are not used to talking in court. Did you not hear this
+young man talking to his friends?"
+
+"I heard talking," replied the witness, quite collected. "But I could
+not make out who they were. If I could have been sure it was him and
+friends, I wouldn't have stayed hid. I'd have had no call to be scared."
+
+Rocklin was dazed, and his next question came in a voice still more
+changed and irritable.
+
+"Did you see any one?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"What did you hear them say?"
+
+"They were all talking at once. I couldn't be sure."
+
+"Why did you go to the hay-stack?"
+
+"Because they said something about my hay-stack, and I wanted to find
+out, if I could."
+
+"Did you not write their names on a paper and give it to this gentleman?
+Remember you are on oath, Mrs. Sproud."
+
+By this time a smile was playing on the features of Jenks, and he and
+Bishop Meakum talked no longer together, but sat back to watch the
+woman's extraordinary attempt to undo her work. It was shrewd, very
+shrewd, in her to volunteer as our witness instead of as theirs. She was
+ready for the paper question, evidently.
+
+"I wrote--" she began, but Rocklin interrupted.
+
+"On oath, remember!" he repeated, finding himself cross-examining his
+own witness. "The names you wrote are the names of these prisoners here
+before the court. They were traced as the direct result of your
+information. They have been identified by three or four persons. Do you
+mean to say you did not know who they were?"
+
+"I did not know," said Mrs. Sproud, firmly. "As for the paper, I acted
+hasty. I was a woman, alone, and none to consult or advise me. I thought
+I would get in trouble if I did not tell about such goings on, and I
+just wrote the names of Will--of the boys that came round there all the
+time, thinking it was most likely them. I didn't see him, and I didn't
+make out surely it was his voice. I wasn't sure enough to come out and
+ask what they were up to. I didn't stop to think of the harm I was doing
+on guess-work."
+
+For the first time the note of remorse conquered in her voice. I saw how
+desperation at what she had done when she thought her love was cured was
+now bracing the woman to this audacity.
+
+"Remember," said Rocklin, "the gold was also found as the direct result
+of your information. It was you who told Major Pidcock in the ambulance
+about the seven sacks."
+
+"I never said anything about seven sacks."
+
+This falsehood was a master-stroke, for only half a sack had been found.
+She had not written this down. There was only the word of Pidcock and me
+to vouch for it, while against us stood her denial, and the actual
+quantity of gold.
+
+"I have no further questions," said Rocklin.
+
+"But I have," said Jenks. And then he made the most of Mrs. Sproud,
+although many in the room were laughing, and she herself, I think, felt
+she had done little but sacrifice her own character without repairing
+the injury she had done black curly. Jenks made her repeat that she was
+frightened; not calm enough to be sure of voices, especially many
+speaking together; that she had seen no one throughout. He even
+attempted to show that the talk about the hay-stack might have been
+purely about hay, and that the half-sack of gold might have been put
+there at another time--might belong to some honest man this very moment.
+
+"Did you ever know the young man who boarded with you to do a
+dishonorable thing?" inquired Jenks. "Did you not have the highest
+opinion of him?"
+
+She had not expected a question like this. It nearly broke the woman
+down. She put her hand to her breast, and seemed afraid to trust her
+voice. "I have the highest opinion of him," she said, word painfully
+following word. "He--he used to know that."
+
+"I have finished," said Jenks.
+
+"Can I go?" asked the witness, and the attorneys bowed. She stood one
+hesitating moment in the witness-stand, and she looked at the jury and
+the court; then, as if almost in dread, she let her eyes travel to black
+curly. But his eyes were sullenly averted. Then Mrs. Sproud slowly made
+her way through the room, with one of the saddest faces I have ever
+seen, and the door closed behind her.
+
+We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of them
+doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis
+were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the
+charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold
+statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly
+at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during
+any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He
+dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. "Now three witnesses
+have between them recognized all the prisoners but one," he continued.
+"That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in
+gold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceeds
+of a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man,
+and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until this
+trial began. The prisoner's name was on Mrs. Sproud's paper. The
+statement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other of
+the prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who described
+herself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who are
+admitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Their
+statements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on the
+record unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believe
+them--and remember that not a word they said has been questioned--" here
+the judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with the
+various alternatives of fact according to which the jury must find its
+several possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen and
+still, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutes
+away. It seemed one to me.
+
+When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oracular
+eye in most of them unchanged. "Not guilty," said the foreman.
+
+"What!" shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. "None
+of 'em?"
+
+"Not guilty," monotonously repeated the foreman.
+
+We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the
+laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots
+that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we
+went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. "There's a certain
+natural justice done here in spite of them," he said. "They are not one
+cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out
+free, but penniless."
+
+"How about Jenks and that jury?" said I. And Stirling shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street,
+the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel
+emerging from a photographer's studio. The Territorial Delegate had been
+taken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to
+be in this souvenir.
+
+"That's a picture I want," said I. "Only I'll be sorry to see your face
+there," I added to black curly.
+
+"Indeed!" put in Jenks.
+
+"Yes," said I. "You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way,
+Mr. Jenks, I suppose you'll return their horses and saddles now?"
+
+Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp
+thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his
+clients. "I had hoped to," he said; "that is, as many as were not needed
+to defray necessary costs. But it's been an expensive suit, and I've
+found myself obliged to sell them all. It's little enough to pay for
+clearing your character, boys."
+
+They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated.
+Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it
+seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.
+
+"They look disappointed," I remarked. "I shall value the picture very
+highly."
+
+"If that's Eastern sarcasm," said Jenks, "it's beyond me."
+
+"No, Mr. Jenks," I answered. "In your presence sarcasm drops dead. I
+think you'll prosper in politics."
+
+But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events,
+though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddly
+prosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses;
+two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in so
+many of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruits
+increase that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed their
+dollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He had
+stayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with the
+title, "What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona." Inside were twenty blank
+pages, and he failed of re-election.
+
+Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoning
+Camp Thomas and Lowell Barracks, those important sources of revenue for
+the neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and left
+it poorer than ever.
+
+At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking to
+the other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that she
+was too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east as
+Willcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.
+
+But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened to
+black curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of the Gila
+Valley and of the Boy Orator, I recall Bishop Meakum's remark about our
+statesmen at Washington: "You can divide them birds in two lots--those
+who know better, and those who don't. D'you follow me?"
+
+                         THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
+intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Men and White, by Owen Wister
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