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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White
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+Arizona Nights
+
+by Stewart Edward White
+
+December, 1996  [Etext #753]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White
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+
+
+ARIZONA NIGHTS
+by
+STEWART EDWARD WHITE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE 
+THE OLE VIRGINIA
+
+The ring around the sun had thickened all day long, and the
+turquoise blue of the Arizona sky had filmed.  Storms in the dry
+countries are infrequent, but heavy; and this surely meant storm.
+
+We had ridden since sun-up over broad mesas, down and out of
+deep canons, along the base of the mountain in the wildest
+parts of the territory.  The cattle were winding leisurely toward
+the high country; the jack rabbits had disappeared; the quail
+lacked; we did not see a single antelope in the open.
+  
+"It's a case of hole up," the Cattleman ventured his opinion. "I
+have a ranch over in the Double R.  Charley and Windy Bill hold
+it down.  We'll tackle it.  What do you think?"
+  
+The four cowboys agreed.  We dropped into a low, broad
+watercourse, ascended its bed to big cottonwoods and flowing
+water, followed it into box canons between rim-rock carved
+fantastically and painted like a Moorish facade, until at last in
+a widening below a rounded hill, we came upon an adobe house, a
+fruit tree, and a round corral.  This was the Double R.
+
+Charley and Windy Bill welcomed us with soda biscuits.  We turned
+our horses out, spread our beds on the floor, filled our pipes,
+and squatted on our heels.  Various dogs of various breeds
+investigated us.  It was very pleasant, and we did not mind the
+ring around the sun.
+
+"Somebody else coming," announced the Cattleman finally.
+
+"Uncle Jim," said Charley, after a glance.
+
+A hawk-faced old man with a long white beard and long white hair
+rode out from the cottonwoods.  He had on a battered broad hat
+abnormally high of crown, carried across his saddle a heavy
+"eight square" rifle, and was followed by a half-dozen lolloping
+hounds.
+
+The largest and fiercest of the latter, catching sight of our
+group, launched himself with lightning rapidity at the biggest of
+the ranch dogs, promptly nailed that canine by the back of the
+neck, shook him violently a score of times, flung him aside, and
+pounced on the next.  During the ensuing few moments that hound
+was the busiest thing in the West.  He satisfactorily whipped
+four dogs, pursued two cats up a tree, upset the Dutch oven and
+the rest of the soda biscuits, stampeded the horses, and raised a
+cloud of dust adequate to represent the smoke of battle.  We
+others were too paralysed to move.  Uncle Jim sat placidly on his
+white horse, his thin knees bent to the ox-bow stirrups, smoking.
+ 
+In ten seconds the trouble was over, principally because there
+was no more trouble to make.  The hound returned leisurely,
+licking from his chops the hair of his victims.  Uncle Jim shook
+his head.
+ 
+"Trailer," said he sadly, "is a little severe."
+ 
+We greed heartily, and turned in to welcome Uncle Jim with a
+fresh batch of soda biscuits.
+ 
+The old man was ne of the typical"long hairs." He had come to
+the Galiuro Mountains in '69, and since '69 he had remained in
+the Galiuro Mountains, spite of man or the devil.  At present he
+possessed some hundreds of cattle, which he was reputed to water,
+in a dry season, from an ordinary dishpan.  In times past he had
+prospected.
+ 
+That evening, the severe Trailer having dropped to slumber, he
+held forth on big-game hunting and dogs, quartz claims and
+Apaches.
+ 
+"Did you ever have any very close calls?" I asked.
+
+He ruminated a few moments, refilled his pipe with some awful
+tobacco, and told the following experience:
+
+
+In the time of Geronimo I was living just about where I do now;
+and that was just about in line with the raiding.  You see,
+Geronimo, and Ju [1], and old Loco used to pile out of the
+reservation at Camp Apache, raid south to the line, slip over
+into Mexico when the soldiers got too promiscuous, and raid there
+until they got ready to come back.  Then there was always a big
+medicine talk.  Says Geronimo:
+ 
+[1] Pronounced "Hoo."
+
+
+"I am tired of the warpath.  I will come back from Mexico with
+all my warriors, if you will escort me with soldiers and protect
+my people."
+ 
+"All right," says the General, being only too glad to get him
+back at all.
+ 
+So, then, in ten minutes there wouldn't be a buck in camp, but
+next morning they shows up again, each with about fifty head of
+hosses. 
+
+"Where'd you get those hosses?" asks the General, suspicious. 
+
+"Had 'em pastured in the hills," answers Geronimo. 
+
+"I can't take all those hosses with me; I believe they're
+stolen!" says the General. 
+
+"My people cannot go without their hosses," says Geronimo.  
+
+So, across the line they goes, and back to the reservation.  In
+about a week there's fifty-two frantic Greasers wanting to know
+where's their hosses.  The army is nothing but an importer of
+stolen stock, and knows it, and can't help it.  
+
+Well, as I says, I'm between Camp Apache and the Mexican line, so
+that every raiding party goes right on past me.  The point is
+that I'm a thousand feet or so above the valley, and the
+renegades is in such a devil of a hurry about that time that they
+never stop to climb up and collect me.  Often I've watched them
+trailing down the valley in a cloud of dust.  Then, in a day or
+two, a squad of soldiers would come up, and camp at my spring for
+a while.  They used to send soldiers to guard every water hole in
+the country so the renegades couldn't get water.  After a while,
+from not being bothered none, I got thinking I wasn't worth while
+with them.   
+
+Me and Johnny Hooper were pecking away at the old Virginia mine
+then.  We'd got down about sixty feet, all timbered, and was
+thinking of cross-cutting.  One day Johnny went to town, and that
+same day I got in a hurry and left my gun at camp.
+
+I worked all the morning down at the bottom of the shaft, and
+when I see by the sun it was getting along towards noon, I put in
+three good shots, tamped 'em down, lit the fusees, and started to
+climb out.
+ 
+It ain't noways pleasant to light a fuse in a shaft, and then
+have to climb out a fifty-foot ladder, with it burning behind
+you.  I never did get used to it.  You keep thinking, "Now
+suppose there's a flaw in that fuse, or something, and she goes
+off in six seconds instead of two minutes?  where'll you be
+then?"  It would give you a good boost towards your home on high,
+anyway.  
+
+So I climbed fast, and stuck my head out the top without
+looking--and then I froze solid enough.  There, about
+fifty feet away, climbing up the hill on mighty tired hosses, was
+a dozen of the ugliest Chiricahuas you ever don't want to meet,
+and in addition a Mexican renegade named Maria, who was worse
+than any of 'em.  I see at once their bosses was tired out, and
+they had a notion of camping at my water hole, not knowing
+nothing about the Ole Virginia mine.  
+
+For two bits I'd have let go all holts and dropped backwards,
+trusting to my thick head for easy lighting.  Then I heard a
+little fizz and sputter from below.  At that my hair riz right up
+so I could feel the breeze blow under my bat.  For about six
+seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably.  Then
+one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that
+they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim was making of
+himself.  
+
+Then that fuse gave another sputter and one of the Apaches said
+"Un dah."  That means "white man."  It was harder to turn my head
+than if I'd had a stiff neck; but I managed to do it, and I see
+that my ore dump wasn't more than ten foot away.  I mighty near
+overjumped it; and the next I knew I was on one side of it and
+those Apaches on the other.  Probably I flew; leastways I don't
+seem to remember jumping.
+
+That didn't seem to do me much good.  The renegades were grinning
+and laughing to think how easy a thing they had; and I couldn't
+rightly think up any arguments against that notion--at least from
+their standpoint.  They were chattering away to each other in  
+Mexican for the benefit of Maria.  Oh, they had me all
+distributed, down to my suspender buttons!  And me squatting
+behind that ore dump about as formidable as a brush rabbit!
+ 
+Then, all at once, one of my shots went off down in the shaft.
+
+"Boom!" says she, plenty big; and a slather of rock, and stones
+come out of the mouth, and began to dump down promiscuous on the
+scenery.  I got one little one in the shoulder-blade, and found
+time to wish my ore dump had a roof.  But those renegades
+caught it square in the thick of trouble.  One got knocked out
+entirely for a minute, by a nice piece of country rock in the
+head. 
+
+"Otra vez!" yells I, which means "again."  
+
+"Boom!" goes the Ole Virginia prompt as an answer.  
+
+I put in my time dodging, but when I gets a chance to look, the
+Apaches has all got to cover, and is looking scared.
+
+"Otra vez!" yells I again.
+
+"Boom!" says the Ole Virginia.
+
+This was the biggest shot of the lot, and she surely cut loose. 
+I ought to have been half-way up the bill watching things from a
+safe distance, but I wasn't.  Lucky for me the shaft was a little
+on the drift, so she didn't quite shoot my way.  But she
+distributed about a ton over those renegades.  They sort of half
+got to their feet uncertain.
+
+"Otra vez!" yells I once more, as bold as if I could keep her
+shooting all day.
+
+It was just a cold, raw blazer; and if it didn't go through I
+could see me as an Apache parlour ornament.  But it did.  Those
+Chiricahuas give one yell and skipped.  It was surely a funny
+sight, after they got aboard their war ponies, to see them trying
+to dig out on horses too tired to trot.
+
+I didn't stop to get all the laughs, though.  In fact, I give one
+jump off that ledge, and I lit a-running.  A quarter-hoss
+couldn't have beat me to that shack. There I grabbed old
+Meat-in-the-pot and made a climb for the tall country, aiming to
+wait around until dark, and then to pull out for Benson.  Johnny
+Hooper wasn't expected till next day, which was lucky.  From
+where I lay I could see the Apaches camped out beyond my
+draw, and I didn't doubt they'd visited the place.  Along about
+sunset they all left their camp, and went into the draw, so
+there, I thinks, I sees a good chance to make a start before
+dark.  I dropped down from the mesa, skirted the butte, and
+angled down across the country.  After I'd gone a half mile from
+the cliffs, I ran across Johnny Hooper's fresh trail headed
+towards camp!  
+
+My heart jumped right up into my mouth at that. Here was poor old
+Johnny, a day too early, with a pack-mule of grub, walking
+innocent as a yearling, right into the bands of those hostiles. 
+The trail looked pretty fresh, and Benson's a good long day with
+a pack animal, so I thought perhaps I might catch him before he
+runs into trouble.  So I ran back on the trail as fast as I could
+make it.  The sun was down by now, and it was getting dusk.  
+
+I didn't overtake him, and when I got to the top of the canon I
+crawled along very cautious and took a look.  Of course, I
+expected to see everything up in smoke, but I nearly got up and
+yelled when I see everything all right, and old Sukey, the
+pack-mule, and Johnny's hoss hitched up as peaceful as
+babies  to the corral.  
+
+"THAT'S all right!" thinks I, "they're back in their camp, and
+haven't discovered Johnny yet.  I'll snail him out of there."  
+
+So I ran down the hill and into the shack.  Johnny sat in his
+chair--what there was of him.  He must have got in about two
+hours before sundown, for they'd had lots of time to put in on
+him.  That's the reason they'd stayed so long up the draw.  Poor
+old Johnny!  I was glad it was night, and he was dead.  Apaches
+are the worst Injuns there is for tortures.  They cut off the
+bottoms of old man Wilkins's feet, and stood him on an 
+ant-hill--.  
+
+In a minute or so, though, my wits gets to work.
+
+"Why ain't the shack burned?" I asks myself, "and why is the hoss
+and the mule tied all so peaceful to the corral?"  
+
+It didn't take long for a man who knows Injins to answer THOSE
+conundrums.  The whole thing was a trap--for me--and I'd walked
+into it, chuckle-headed as a prairie-dog!
+
+With that I makes a run outside--by now it was dark--and listens.
+Sure enough, I hears hosses.  So I makes a rapid sneak back over
+the trail.
+
+Everything seemed all right till I got up to the rim-rock.  Then
+I heard more hosses--ahead of me.  And when I looked back I could
+see some Injuns already at the shack, and starting to build a
+fire outside.
+
+In a tight fix, a man is pretty apt to get scared till all hope
+is gone.  Then he is pretty apt to get cool and calm.  That was
+my case.  I couldn't go ahead--there was those hosses coming
+along the trail.  I couldn't go back--there was those Injins
+building the fire.  So I skirmished around till I got a bright
+star right over the trail head, and I trained old Meat-in-the-
+pot to bear on that star, and I made up my mind that when the
+star was darkened I'd turn loose.  So I lay there a while
+listening.  By and by the star was blotted out, and I cut loose,
+and old Meat-in-the-pot missed fire--she never did it before nor
+since; I think that cartridge--
+
+Well, I don't know where the Injins came from, but it seemed as
+if the hammer had hardly clicked before three or four of them
+bad piled on me.  I put up the best fight I could, for I wasn't
+figuring to be caught alive, and this miss-fire deal had fooled
+me all along the line.  They surely had a lively time.  I
+expected every minute to feel a knife in my back, but when I
+didn't get it then I knew they wanted to bring me in alive, and
+that made me fight harder.  First and last, we rolled and plunged
+all the way from the rim-rock down to the canon-bed.  Then one
+of the Injins sung out:
+
+"Maria!"
+
+And I thought of that renegade Mexican, and what I'd heard bout
+him, and that made me fight harder yet.  
+
+But after we'd fought down to the canon-bed, and had lost most of
+our skin, a half-dozen more fell on me, and in less than no time
+they had me tied.  Then they picked me up and carried me over to
+where they'd built a big fire by the corral."
+
+
+Uncle Jim stopped with an air of finality, and began lazily to
+refill his pipe.  From the open mud fireplace he picked a coal.
+Outside, the rain, faithful to the prophecy of the wide-ringed
+sun, beat fitfully against the roof.
+
+"That was the closest call I ever had," said he at last. 
+
+"But, Uncle Jim," we cried in a confused chorus, "how did you get
+away?  What did the Indians do to you?  Who rescued you?"
+
+Uncle Jim chuckled. 
+
+"The first man I saw sitting at that fire," said he, "was
+Lieutenant Price of the United States Army, and by
+him was Tom Horn."
+
+"'What's this?' he asks, and Horn talks to the Injins in Apache.
+
+"'They say they've caught Maria,' translates Horn back again. 
+
+"'Maria-nothing!' says Lieutenant Price. 'This is Jim Fox. I know
+him.'"
+
+"So they turned me loose.  It seems the troops had driven off
+the renegades an hour before."
+
+"And the Indians who caught you, Uncle Jim?  You said they were
+Indians."
+
+"Were Tonto Basin Apaches," explained the old  man--"government
+scouts under Tom Horn."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+THE EMIGRANTS
+
+After the rain that had held us holed up at the Double R over one
+day, we discussed what we should do next.  
+
+"The flats will be too boggy for riding, and anyway the cattle
+will be in the high country," the Cattleman summed up the
+situation.  "We'd bog down the chuck-wagon if we tried to get
+back to the J. H.  But now after the rain the weather ought to be
+beautiful.  What shall we do?" 
+
+"Was you ever in the Jackson country?" asked Uncle Jim.  "It's
+the wildest part of Arizona.  It's a big country and rough, and
+no one lives there, and there's lots of deer and mountain lions
+and bear.  Here's my dogs.  We might have a hunt."
+
+"Good!" said we.  
+
+We skirmished around and found a condemned army pack saddle with
+aparejos, and a sawbuck saddle with kyacks.  On these, we managed
+to condense our grub and utensils.  There were plenty of horses,
+so our bedding we bound flat about their naked barrels by means
+of the squaw-hitch.  Then we started.  
+
+That day furnished us with a demonstration of what Arizona horses
+can do.  Our way led first through a canon-bed filled with
+rounded boulders and rocks, slippery and unstable.  Big
+cottonwoods and oaks grew so thick as partially to conceal
+the cliffs on either side of us.  The rim-rock was mysterious
+with caves; beautiful with hanging gardens of tree ferns and
+grasses growing thick in long transverse crevices; wonderful in
+colour and shape.  We passed the little canons fenced off by the
+rustlers as corrals into which to shunt from the herds their 
+choice of beeves.  
+
+The Cattleman shook his head at them.  "Many  a man has come from
+Texas and established a herd with no other asset than a couple of
+horses and a branding-iron," said he.
+
+Then we worked up gradually to a divide, whence we could see a
+range of wild and rugged mountains on our right.  They rose by
+slopes and ledges, steep and rough, and at last ended in the
+thousand-foot cliffs of the buttes, running sheer and unbroken
+for  many miles.  During all the rest of our trip they were to be
+our companions, the only constant factors in the tumult of lesser
+peaks, precipitous canons, and twisted systems in which we were
+constantly involved. 
+
+The sky was sun-and-shadow after the rain.  Each and every
+Arizonan predicted clearing.  
+
+"Why, it almost never rains in Arizona," said Jed Parker.  "And
+when it does it quits before it begins."   
+
+Nevertheless, about noon a thick cloud gathered about the tops of
+the Galiuros above us.  Almost immediately it was dissipated by
+the wind, but when the peaks again showed, we stared with
+astonishment to see that they were white with snow.  It was as
+though a magician had passed a sheet before them the brief
+instant necessary to work his great transformation.  Shortly the
+sky thickened again, and it began to rain.  
+
+Travel had been precarious before; but now its difficulties were
+infinitely increased.  The clay sub-soil to the rubble turned
+slippery and adhesive.  On the sides of the mountains it was
+almost impossible to keep a footing.  We speedily became wet, our
+hands puffed and purple, our boots sodden with the water that had
+trickled from our clothing into them.
+
+"Over the next ridge," Uncle Jim promised us, "is an old shack
+that I fixed up seven years ago.  We can all make out to get in
+it."   
+
+Over the next ridge, therefore, we slipped and slid, thanking the
+god of luck for each ten feet gained.  It was growing cold.  The
+cliffs and palisades near at hand showed dimly behind the falling
+rain; beyond them waved and eddied the storm mists through which
+the mountains revealed and concealed proportions exaggerated into
+unearthly grandeur.  Deep in the clefts of the box canons the
+streams were filling.  The roar of their rapids echoed from
+innumerable precipices.  A soft swish of water usurped the world
+of sound.  
+
+Nothing more uncomfortable or more magnificent could be imagined. 
+We rode shivering.  Each said to himself, "I can stand
+this--right now--at the present moment.  Very well; I will do so,
+and I will refuse to look forward even five minutes to what I may
+have to stand," which is the true philosophy of tough times and
+the only effective way to endure discomfort.  
+
+By luck we reached the bottom of that canon without a fall.  It
+was wide, well grown with oak trees, and belly deep in rich horse
+feed--an ideal place to camp were it not for the fact that a thin
+sheet of water a quarter of an inch deep was flowing over the
+entire surface of the ground.  We spurred on desperately,
+thinking of a warm fire and a chance to steam.
+
+
+The roof of the shack had fallen in, and the floor was six inches
+deep in adobe mud.  
+
+We did not dismount--that would have wet our saddles--but sat on
+our horses taking in the details.  Finally Uncle Jim came to the
+front with a suggestion. 
+
+"I know of a cave," said he, "close under a butte.  It's a big
+cave, but it has such a steep floor that I'm not sure as we could
+stay in it; and it's back the other side of that ridge."
+
+"I don't know how the ridge is to get back over--it was slippery
+enough coming this way--and the cave may shoot us out into space,
+but I'd like to LOOK at a dry place anyway," replied the
+Cattleman.  
+
+We all felt the same about it, so back over the ridge we went. 
+About half way down the other side Uncle Jim turned sharp to the
+right, and as the "hog back" dropped behind us, we found
+ourselves out on the steep side of a mountain, the perpendicular
+cliff over us to the right, the river roaring savagely far down
+below our left, and sheets of water glazing the footing we could
+find among the boulders and debris.  Hardly could the ponies keep
+from slipping sideways on the slope, as we proceeded farther and
+farther from the solidity of the ridge behind us, we experienced
+the illusion of venturing out on a tight rope over abysses of
+space.  Even the feeling of danger was only an illusion, however,
+composite of the falling rain, the deepening twilight, and the
+night that had already enveloped the plunge of the canon below.  
+Finally Uncle Jim stopped just within the drip from the cliffs. 
+
+"Here she is," said he.  
+
+We descended eagerly.  A deer bounded away from the base of the
+buttes.  The cave ran steep, in the manner of an inclined tunnel,
+far up into the dimness.  We had to dig our toes in and scramble
+to make way up it at all, but we found it dry, and after a little
+search discovered a foot-ledge of earth sufficiently broad for a
+seat.  
+
+"That's all right," quoth Jed Parker. "Now, for sleeping places."
+
+We scattered.  Uncle Jim and Charley promptly annexed the slight
+overhang of the cliff whence the deer had jumped.  It was dry at
+the moment, but we uttered pessimistic predictions if the wind
+should change.  Tom Rich and Jim Lester had a little tent, and
+insisted on descending to the canon-bed.  
+
+"Got to cook there, anyways," said they, and departed with the
+two pack mules and their bed horse.  
+
+That left the Cattleman, Windy Bill, Jed Parker, and me.  In a
+moment Windy Bill came up to us whispering and mysterious.  
+
+"Get your cavallos and follow me," said he.  
+
+We did so.  He led us two hundred yards to another cave, twenty
+feet high, fifteen feet in diameter, level as a floor. 
+
+"How's that?" he cried in triumph. "Found her just now while I
+was rustling nigger-heads for a fire." 
+
+We unpacked our beds with chuckles of joy, and spread them
+carefully within the shelter of the cave.  Except for the very
+edges, which did not much matter, our blankets and "so-guns,"
+protected by the canvas "tarp," were reasonably dry.  Every once
+in a while a spasm of conscience would seize one or the other of
+us. 
+
+"It seems sort of mean on the other fellows," ruminated Jed
+Parker.
+
+"They had their first choice," cried we all. 
+
+"Uncle Jim's an old man," the Cattleman pointed out.  
+
+But Windy Bill had thought of that.  "I told him of this yere
+cave first.  But he allowed he was plumb satisfied."  
+
+We finished laying out our blankets.  The result looked good to
+us.  We all burst out laughing. 
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for those fellows," cried the Cattleman.  We
+hobbled our horses and descended to the gleam of the fire, like
+guilty conspirators.  There we ate hastily of meat, bread and
+coffee, merely for the sake of sustenance.  It certainly amounted
+to little in the way of pleasure.  The water from the direct
+rain, the shivering trees, and our hat brims accumulated in our
+plates faster than we could bail it out.  The dishes were thrust
+under a canvas.  Rich and Lester decided to remain with their
+tent, and so we saw them no more until morning.
+
+We broke off back-loads of mesquite and toiled up the hill,
+tasting thickly the high altitude in the severe labour.  At the
+big cave we dumped down our burdens, transported our fuel
+piecemeal to the vicinity of the narrow ledge, built a good fire,
+sat in a row, and lit our pipes.  In a few moments, the blaze was
+burning high, and our bodies had ceased shivering.  Fantastically
+the firelight revealed the knobs and crevices, the ledges and the
+arching walls.  Their shadows leaped, following the flames,
+receding and advancing like playful beasts.  Far above us was a
+single tiny opening through which the smoke was sucked as through
+a chimney.  The glow ruddied the men's features.  Outside was
+thick darkness, and the swish and rush and roar of rising
+waters.  Listening, Windy Bill was reminded of a story.  We
+leaned back comfortably against the sloping walls of the cave,
+thrust our feet toward the blaze, smoked, and hearkened to the
+tale of Windy Bill.
+ 
+
+There's a tur'ble lot of water running loose here, but I've seen
+the time and place where even what is in that drip would be
+worth a gold mine.   That was in the emigrant days.  They used
+to come over south of here, through what they called Emigrant
+Pass, on their way to Californy. I was a kid then, about eighteen
+year old, and what I didn't know about Injins and Agency cattle
+wasn't a patch of alkali.  I had a kid outfit of h'ar bridle,
+lots of silver and such, and I used to ride over and be the
+handsome boy before such outfits as happened along.
+
+They were queer people, most of 'em from Missoury and
+such-like southern seaports, and they were tur'ble sick of
+travel by the time they come in sight of Emigrant Pass.  Up to
+Santa Fe they mostly hiked along any old way, but once there they
+herded up together in bunches of twenty wagons or so, 'count of
+our old friends, Geronimo and Loco.  A good many of 'em had
+horned cattle to their wagons, and they crawled along about two
+miles an hour, hotter'n hell with the blower on, nothin' to
+look at but a mountain a week way, chuck full of alkali, plenty
+of sage-brush and rattlesnakes--but mighty little water.
+
+Why, you boys know that country down there.  Between the
+Chiricahua Mountains and Emigrant Pass it's maybe a three or four
+days' journey for these yere bull-slingers.
+
+Mostly they filled up their bellies and their kegs, hoping to
+last through, but they sure found it drier than cork legs, and
+generally long before they hit the Springs their tongues was
+hangin' out a foot.  You see, for all their plumb nerve in comin'
+so far, the most of them didn't know sic'em.  They were plumb
+innocent in regard to savin' their water, and Injins, and such;
+and the long-haired buckskin fakes they picked up at Santa Fe for
+guides wasn't much better. 
+
+That was where Texas Pete made his killing.  
+
+Texas Pete was a tough citizen from the Lone Star.  He was about
+as broad as he was long, and wore all sorts of big whiskers and
+black eyebrows.  His heart was very bad.  You never COULD tell
+where Texas Pete was goin' to jump next.  He was a side-winder
+and a diamond-back and a little black rattlesnake all rolled
+into one.  I believe that Texas Pete person cared about as little
+for killin' a man as for takin' a drink--and he shorely drank
+without an effort.  Peaceable citizens just spoke soft and minded
+their own business; onpeaceable citizens Texas Pete used to plant
+out in the sagebrush. 
+
+Now this Texas Pete happened to discover a water hole right out
+in the plumb middle of the desert.  He promptly annexed said
+water hole, digs her out, timbers her up, and lays for emigrants.
+
+He charged two bits a head--man or beast--and nobody got a
+mouthful till he paid up in hard coin.  
+
+Think of the wads he raked in!  I used to figure it up, just for
+the joy of envyin' him, I reckon.  An average twenty-wagon
+outfit, first and last, would bring him in somewheres about fifty
+dollars--and besides he had forty-rod at four bits a glass.  And
+outfits at that time were thicker'n spatter.  
+
+We used all to go down sometimes to watch them come in.  When
+they see that little canvas shack and that well, they begun to
+cheer up and move fast.  And when they see that sign, "Water, two
+bits a head," their eyes stuck out like two raw oysters.  
+
+Then come the kicks.  What a howl they did raise, shorely.  But
+it didn't do no manner of good.  Texas Pete didn't do nothin' but
+sit there and smoke, with a kind of sulky gleam in one corner of
+his eye.  He didn't even take the trouble to answer, but his
+Winchester lay across his lap.  There wasn't no humour in the
+situation for him.
+
+"How much is your water for humans?" asks one emigrant.
+
+"Can't you read that sign?" Texas Pete asks him.
+
+"But you don't mean two bits a head for HUMANS!" yells the man.
+"Why, you can get whisky for that!"
+
+"You can read the sign, can't you?" insists Texas Pete.
+
+"I can read it all right?" says the man, tryin' a new deal, "but
+they tell me not to believe more'n half I read."
+
+But that don't go; and Mr. Emigrant shells out with the rest.  
+
+I didn't blame them for raisin' their howl.  Why, at that time
+the regular water holes was chargin' five cents a head from the
+government freighters, and the motto was always "Hold up Uncle
+Sam," at that.  Once in a while some outfit would get mad and go
+chargin' off dry; but it was a long, long way to the Springs, and
+mighty hot and dusty.  Texas Pete and his one lonesome water hole
+shorely did a big business.
+
+Late one afternoon me and Gentleman Tim was joggin' along above
+Texas Pete's place.  It was a tur'ble hot day--you had to prime
+yourself to spit--and we was just gettin' back from drivin' some
+beef up to the troops at Fort Huachuca.  We was due to cross the
+Emigrant Trail--she's wore in tur'ble deep--you can see the ruts
+to-day.  When we topped the rise we see a little old outfit just
+makin' out to drag along.  
+
+It was one little schooner all by herself, drug along by two poor
+old cavallos that couldn't have pulled my hat off.  Their tongues
+was out, and every once in a while they'd stick in a chuck-hole. 
+Then a man would get down and put his shoulder to the wheel, and
+everybody'd take a heave, and up they'd come, all a-trembling and
+weak.  
+
+Tim and I rode down just to take a look at the curiosity. 
+
+A thin-lookin' man was drivin', all humped up.
+
+"Hullo, stranger," says I, "ain't you 'fraid of Injins?"
+
+"Yes," says he.
+
+"Then why are you travellin' through an Injin country all alone?"
+
+"Couldn't keep up," says he. "Can I get water here?"
+
+"I reckon," I answers.  
+
+He drove up to the water trough there at Texas Pete's, me and
+Gentleman Tim followin' along because our trail led that way. 
+But he hadn't more'n stopped before Texas Pete was out. 
+
+"Cost you four bits to water them hosses," says he. 
+
+The man looked up kind of bewildered. 
+
+"I'm sorry," says he, "I ain't got no four bits.  I got my roll
+lifted off'n me."
+
+"No water, then," growls Texas Pete back at him. 
+
+The man looked about him helpless. 
+
+"How far is it to the next water?" he asks me.
+  
+"Twenty mile," I tells him.  
+
+"My God!" he says, to himself-like.
+
+Then he shrugged his shoulders very tired. 
+
+"All right.  It's gettin' the cool of the evenin'; we'll make
+it."  He turns into the inside of that old schooner. 
+
+"Gi' me the cup, Sue."  
+
+A white-faced woman who looked mighty good to us alkalis opened
+the flaps and gave out a tin cup, which the man pointed out to
+fill.
+
+"How many of you is they?" asks Texas Pete.  
+
+"Three," replies the man, wondering.
+
+"Well, six bits, then," says Texas Pete, "cash down."  
+
+At that the man straightens up a little. 
+
+"I ain't askin' for no water for my stock," says he, "but my wife
+and baby has been out in this sun all day without a drop of
+water.  Our cask slipped a hoop and bust just this side of Dos
+Cabesas.  The poor kid is plumb dry."  
+
+"Two bits a head," says Texas Pete.  
+
+At that the woman comes out, a little bit of a baby in her arms. 
+The kid had fuzzy yellow hair, and its face was flushed red and
+shiny.
+ 
+"Shorely you won't refuse a sick child a drink of water, sir," 
+says she.  
+
+But Texas Pete had some sort of a special grouch;  I guess he was
+just beginning to get his snowshoes off after a fight with his
+own forty-rod.  
+
+"What the hell are you-all doin' on the trail without no money at
+all?" he growls, "and how do you expect to get along?  Such plumb
+tenderfeet drive me weary."
+
+"Well," says the man, still reasonable, "I ain't got no money,
+but I'll give you six bits' worth of flour or trade or an'thin' I
+got."
+
+"I don't run no truck-store," snaps Texas Pete, and turns square
+on his heel and goes back to his chair.  
+
+"Got six bits about you?" whispers Gentleman Tim to me.  
+
+"Not a red," I answers.
+
+Gentleman Tim turns to Texas Pete.  
+
+"Let 'em have a drink, Pete.  I'll pay you next time I come
+down."  
+
+"Cash down," growls Pete.
+  
+"You're the meanest man I ever see," observes Tim.  "I wouldn't
+speak to you if I met you in hell carryin' a lump of ice in your
+hand."  
+
+"You're the softest _I_ ever see," sneers Pete.  "Don't they have
+any genooine Texans down your way?"  
+
+"Not enough to make it disagreeable," says Tim.  
+
+"That lets you out," growls Pete, gettin' hostile and handlin' of
+his rifle.
+
+Which the man had been standin' there bewildered, the cup hangin'
+from his finger.  At last, lookin' pretty desperate, he stooped
+down to dig up a little of the wet from an overflow puddle lyin'
+at his feet. At the same time the hosses, left sort of to
+themselves and bein' drier than a covered bridge, drug forward
+and stuck their noses in the trough.  
+
+Gentleman Tim and me was sittin' there on our hosses, a little to
+one side.  We saw Texas Pete jump up from his chair, take a quick
+aim, and cut loose with his rifle.  It was plumb unexpected to
+us.  We hadn't thought of any shootin', and our six-shooters was
+tied in, 'count of the jumpy country we'd been drivin' the steers
+over.  But Gentleman Tim, who had unslung his rope, aimin' to
+help the hosses out of the chuckhole, snatched her off the horn,
+and with one of the prettiest twenty-foot flip throws I ever see
+done he snaked old Texas Pete right out of his wicky-up, gun and
+all.  The old renegade did his best to twist around for a shot at
+us; but it was no go; and I never enjoyed hog-tying a critter
+more in my life than I enjoyed hog-tying Texas Pete.  Then we
+turned to see what damage had been done. 
+
+We were some relieved to find the family all right, but Texas
+Pete had bored one of them poor old crow-bait hosses plumb
+through the head.  
+
+"It's lucky for you you don't get the old man," says Gentleman
+Tim very quiet and polite.
+
+Which Gentleman Tim was an Irishman, and I'd been on the range
+long enough with him to know that when he got quiet and polite it
+was time to dodge behind something.  
+
+"I hope, sir" says he to the stranger, "that you will give your
+wife and baby a satisfying drink.  As for your hoss, pray do not
+be under any apprehension.  Our friend, Mr. Texas Pete, here, has
+kindly consented to make good any deficiencies from his own
+corral."  
+
+Tim could talk high, wide, and handsome when he set out to.  
+
+The man started to say something; but I managed to herd him to
+one side.  
+
+"Let him alone," I whispers.  "When he talks that way, he's mad;
+and when he's mad, it's better to leave nature to supply the
+lightnin' rods."  
+
+He seemed to sabe all right, so we built us a little fire and
+started some grub, while Gentleman Tim walked up and down very
+grand and fierce.
+
+By and by he seemed to make up his mind.  He went over and untied
+Texas Pete. 
+
+"Stand up, you hound," says he.  "Now listen to me.  If you make
+a break to get away, or if you refuse to do just as I tell you, I
+won't shoot you, but I'll march you up country and see that
+Geronimo gets you."  
+
+He sorted out a shovel and pick, made Texas Pete carry them right
+along the trail a quarter, and started him to diggin' a hole.
+  
+Texas Pete started in hard enough, Tim sittin' over him on his
+hoss, his six-shooter loose, and his rope free.  The man and I
+stood by, not darin' to say a word.  After a minute or so Texas
+Pete began to work slower and slower.  By and by he stopped.
+
+"Look here," says he, "is this here thing my grave?"  
+
+"I am goin' to see that you give the gentleman's hoss decent
+interment," says Gentleman Tim very polite.  
+
+"Bury a hoss!" growls Texas Pete.  
+
+But he didn't say any more.  Tim cocked his six-shooter.  
+
+"Perhaps you'd better quit panting and sweat a little," says he. 
+
+Texas Pete worked hard for a while, for Tim's quietness was
+beginning to scare him up the worst way.  By and by he had got
+down maybe four or five feet, and Tim got off his hoss.  
+
+"I think that will do," says he.
+
+"You may come out.  Billy, my son, cover him.  Now, Mr. Texas
+Pete," he says, cold as steel, "there is the grave.  We will
+place the hoss in it.  Then I intend to shoot you and put you in
+with the hoss, and write you an epitaph that will be a comfort to
+such travellers of  the Trail as are honest, and a warnin' to
+such as are not.  I'd as soon kill you now as an hour from now,
+so you may make a break for it if you feel like it."  
+
+He stooped over to look into the hole.  I thought he looked an
+extra long time, but when he raised his head his face had changed
+complete. 
+
+"March!" says he very brisk. 
+
+We all went back to the shack.  From the corral Tim took Texas
+Pete's best team and hitched her to the old schooner.  
+
+"There," says he to the man.  "Now you'd better hit the trail. 
+Take that whisky keg there for water.  Good-bye."  
+
+We sat there without sayin' a word for some time after the
+schooner had pulled out.  Then Tim says, very abrupt:
+
+"I've changed my mind."  
+
+He got up.  
+
+"Come on, Billy," says he to me.  "We'll just leave our friend
+tied up.  I'll be back to-morrow to turn you loose.  In the
+meantime it won't hurt you a bit to be a little uncomfortable,
+and hungry--and thirsty."  
+
+We rode off just about sundown, leavin' Texas Pete lashed tight.
+
+Now all this knocked me hell-west and crooked, and I said so, but
+I couldn't get a word out of Gentleman Tim.  All the answer I
+could get was just little laughs. 
+
+We drawed into the ranch near midnight, but next mornin' Tim had
+a long talk with the boss, and the result was that the whole
+outfit was instructed to arm up with a pick or a shovel apiece,
+and to get set for Texas Pete's.  We got there a little after
+noon, turned the old boy out--without firearms--and then began to
+dig at a place Tim told us to, near that grave of Texas Pete's. 
+In three hours we had the finest water-hole developed you ever
+want to see.  Then the boss stuck up a sign that said:
+            
+                PUBLIC WATER-HOLE.  WATER, FREE.
+
+"Now you old skin," says he to Texas Pete, "charge all you want
+to on your own property.  But if I ever hear of your layin' claim
+to this other hole, I'll shore make you hard to catch."  
+
+Then we rode off home.  You see, when Gentleman Tim inspected
+that grave, he noted indications of water; and it struck him that
+runnin' the old renegade out of business was a neater way of
+gettin' even than merely killin' him.  
+
+
+Somebody threw a fresh mesquite on the fire.  The flames leaped
+up again, showing a thin trickle of water running down the other
+side of the cave.  The steady downpour again made itself
+prominent through the re-established silence.  
+
+"What did Texas Pete do after that?" asked the Cattleman.  
+
+"Texas Pete?" chuckled Windy Bill.  "Well, he put in a heap of
+his spare time lettin' Tim alone."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+THE REMITTANCE MAN
+
+After Windy Bill had finished his story we began to think it time
+to turn in.  Uncle Jim and Charley slid and slipped down the
+chute-like passage leading from the cave and disappeared in the
+direction of the overhang beneath which they had spread their
+bed.  After a moment we tore off long bundles of the nigger-head
+blades, lit the resinous ends at our fire, and with these torches
+started to make our way along the base of the cliff to the other
+cave.  
+
+Once without the influence of the fire our impromptu links cast
+an adequate light.  The sheets of rain became suddenly visible as
+they entered the circle of illumination.  By careful scrutiny of
+the footing I gained the entrance to our cave without mishap.  I
+looked back.  Here and there irregularly gleamed and spluttered
+my companions' torches.  Across each slanted the rain.  All else
+was of inky blackness except where, between them and me, a faint
+red reflection shone on the wet rocks.  Then I turned inside.
+
+Now, to judge from the crumbling powder of the footing, that
+cave had been dry since Noah.  In fact, its roof was nearly a
+thousand feet thick.  But since we had spread our blankets, the
+persistent waters had soaked down and through.  The thousand-foot
+roof had a sprung a leak.  Three separate and distinct streams of
+water ran as from spigots.  I lowered my torch.  The canvas
+tarpaulin shone with wet, and in its exact centre glimmered a
+pool of water three inches deep and at least two feet in
+diameter. 
+
+"Well, I'll be," I began.  Then I remembered those three wending
+their way along a wet and disagreeable trail, happy and peaceful
+in anticipation of warm blankets and a level floor.  I chuckled
+and sat on my heels out of the drip.  
+
+First came Jed Parker, his head bent to protect the fire in his
+pipe.  He gained the very centre of the cave before he looked up.
+
+Then he cast one glance at each bed, and one at me.  His grave,
+hawk-like features relaxed.  A faint grin appeared under his long
+moustache.  Without a word he squatted down beside me. 
+
+Next the Cattleman.  He looked about him with a comical
+expression of dismay, and burst into a hearty laugh.  
+
+"I believe I said I was sorry for those other fellows," he
+remarked.  
+
+Windy Bill was the last.  He stooped his head to enter,
+straightened his lank figure, and took in the situation without
+expression.  
+
+"Well, this is handy," said he; "I was gettin' tur'ble dry, and
+was thinkin' I would have to climb way down to the creek in all
+this rain."  
+
+He stooped to the pool in the centre of the tarpaulin and drank. 
+
+But now our torches began to run low.  A small dry bush grew near
+the entrance.  We ignited it, and while it blazed we hastily
+sorted a blanket apiece and tumbled the rest out of the drip.  
+
+Our return without torches along the base of that butte was
+something to remember.  The night was so thick you could feel the
+darkness pressing on you; the mountain dropped abruptly to the
+left, and was strewn with boulders and blocks of stone. 
+Collisions and stumbles were frequent.  Once I stepped off a
+little ledge five or six feet--nothing worse than a barked shin. 
+And all the while the rain, pelting us unmercifully, searched out
+what poor little remnants of dryness we had been able to retain.
+
+At last we opened out the gleam of fire in our cave, and a
+minute later were engaged in struggling desperately up the slant
+that brought us to our ledge and the slope on which our fire
+burned.
+
+"My Lord!" panted Windy Bill, "a man had ought to have hooks on
+his eyebrows to climb up here!"
+
+We renewed the fire--and blessed the back-load of mesquite we had
+packed up earlier in the evening.  Our blankets we wrapped around
+our shoulders, our feet we hung over the ledge toward the blaze,
+our backs we leaned against the hollow slant of the cave's
+wall.  We were not uncomfortable.  The beat of the rain sprang up
+in the darkness, growing louder and louder, like horsemen passing
+on a hard road.  Gradually we dozed off.
+
+For a time everything was pleasant.  Dreams came fused with
+realities; the firelight faded from consciousness or returned
+fantastic to our half-awakening; a delicious numbness overspread
+our tired bodies. The shadows leaped, became solid, monstrous. 
+We fell asleep.
+
+After a time the fact obtruded itself dimly through our stupor
+that the constant pressure of the hard rock had impeded our
+circulation.  We stirred uneasily, shifting to a better position.
+
+That was the beginning of awakening.  The new position did not
+suit.  A slight shivering seized us, which the drawing closer of
+the blanket failed to end.  Finally I threw aside my hat and
+looked out.  Jed Parker, a vivid patch-work comforter wrapped
+about his shoulders, stood upright and silent by the fire.  I
+kept still, fearing to awaken the others.  In a short time I
+became aware that the others were doing identically the same
+thing.  We laughed, threw off our blankets, stretched, and fed
+the fire.
+
+A thick acrid smoke filled the air.  The Cattleman, rising, left
+a trail of incandescent footprints.  We investigated hastily, and
+discovered that the supposed earth on the slant of the cave was
+nothing more than bat guano, tons of it.  The fire, eating its
+way beneath, had rendered untenable its immediate vicinity.  We
+felt as though we were living over a volcano.  How soon our
+ledge, of the same material, might be attacked, we had no means
+of knowing.  Overcome with drowsiness, we again disposed our
+blankets, resolved to get as many naps as possible before even
+these constrained quarters were taken from us.  
+
+This happened sooner and in a manner otherwise than we had
+expected.  Windy Bill brought us to consciousness by a wild yell.
+
+Consciousness reported to us a strange, hurried sound like the
+long roll on a drum.  Investigation showed us that this cave,
+too, had sprung a leak; not with any premonitory drip, but all at
+once, as though someone had turned on a faucet.  In ten seconds a
+very competent streamlet six inches wide had eroded a course down
+through the guano, past the fire and to the outer slope.  And by
+the irony of fate that one--and only one--leak in all the roof
+expanse of a big cave was directly over one end of our tiny
+ledge.  The Cattleman laughed. 
+
+"Reminds me of the old farmer and his kind friend," said he.
+"Kind friend hunts up the old farmer in the village.
+
+"'John,' says he, 'I've bad news for you. Your barn has burned
+up.'
+
+"'My Lord!' says the farmer.
+
+"'But that ain't the worst.  Your cow was burned, too.'
+
+"'My Lord!' says the farmer.  
+
+"'But that ain't the worst.  Your horses were burned.'  
+
+"'My Lord!' says the farmer.  
+
+"'But, that ain't the worst.  The barn set fire to the house, and
+it was burned--total loss.'  
+
+"'My Lord!' groans the farmer. 
+
+"'But that ain't the worst.  Your wife and child were killed,
+too.'
+
+"'At that the farmer began to roar with laughter.
+
+"'Good heavens, man!' cries his friend, astonished, 'what in
+the world do you find to laugh at in that?'
+
+"'Don't you see?' answers the farmer.  'Why, it's so darn
+COMPLETE!'
+
+"Well," finished the Cattleman, "that's what strikes me about
+our case; it's so darn complete!"
+
+"What time is it?" asked Windy Bill.
+
+"Midnight," I announced.
+
+"Lord!  Six hours to day!" groaned Windy Bill. "How'd you like to
+be doin' a nice quiet job at gardenin' in the East where you
+could belly up to the bar reg'lar every evenin', and drink a
+pussy cafe and smoke tailor-made cigareets?"
+
+"You wouldn't like it a bit," put in the Cattleman with decision;
+whereupon in proof he told us the following story: 
+
+
+Windy has mentioned Gentleman Tim, and that reminded me of the
+first time I ever saw him.  He was an Irishman all right, but he
+had been educated in England, and except for his accent he was
+more an Englishman than anything else.  A freight outfit brought
+him into Tucson from Santa Fe and dumped him down on the plaza,
+where at once every idler in town gathered to quiz him.  
+
+Certainly he was one of the greenest specimens I ever saw in this
+country.  He had on a pair of balloon pants and a Norfolk jacket,
+and was surrounded by a half-dozen baby trunks.  His face was
+red-cheeked and aggressively clean, and his eye limpid as a
+child's.  Most of those present thought that indicated
+childishness; but I could see that it was only utter
+self-unconsciousness.  
+
+It seemed that he was out for big game, and intended to go after
+silver-tips somewhere in these very mountains.  Of course he was
+offered plenty of advice, and would probably have made
+engagements much to be regretted had I not taken a strong fancy
+to him.
+
+"My friend," said I, drawing him aside, "I don't want to be
+inquisitive, but what might you do when you're home?"  
+
+"I'm a younger son," said he. I was green myself in those days,
+and knew nothing of primogeniture.
+
+"That is a very interesting piece of family history," said I,
+"but it does not answer my question."  
+
+He smiled.  
+
+"Well now, I hadn't thought of that," said he, "but in a manner
+of speaking, it does.  I do nothing."  
+
+"Well," said I, unabashed, "if you saw me trying to be a younger
+son and likely to forget myself and do something without meaning
+to, wouldn't you be apt to warn me?"  
+
+"Well, 'pon honour, you're a queer chap.  What do you mean?"  
+
+"I mean that if you hire any of those men to guide you in the
+mountains, you'll be outrageously cheated, and will be lucky if
+you're not gobbled by Apaches."  
+
+"Do you do any guiding yourself, now?" he asked, most innocent of
+manner.
+
+But I flared up.
+
+"You damn ungrateful pup," I said, "go to the devil in your
+own way," and turned square on my heel.
+
+But the young man was at my elbow, his hand on my shoulder.
+
+"Oh, I say now, I'm sorry.  I didn't rightly understand.  Do
+wait one moment until I dispose of these boxes of mine, and then
+I want the honour of your further acquaintance."
+
+He got some Greasers to take his trunks over to the hotel, then
+linked his arm in mine most engagingly. 
+
+"Now, my dear chap," said he, "let's go somewhere for a B & S,
+and find out about each other."
+
+We were both young and expansive.  We exchanged views, names,
+and confidences, and before noon we had arranged to hunt
+together, I to collect the outfit.
+
+The upshot of the matter was that the Honourable Timothy Clare
+and I had a most excellent month's excursion, shot several good
+bear, and returned to Tucson the best of friends.
+
+At Tucson was Schiefflein and his stories of a big strike down
+in the Apache country.  Nothing would do but that we should both
+go to see for ourselves.  We joined the second expedition; crept
+in the gullies, tied bushes about ourselves when monumenting 
+corners, and so helped establish the town of Tombstone.  We made
+nothing, nor attempted to.  Neither  of us knew anything of
+mining, but we were both thirsty for adventure, and took a
+schoolboy delight in playing the game of life or death with the
+Chiricahuas. 
+
+In fact, I never saw anybody take to the wild life as eagerly as
+the Honourable Timothy Clare.  He wanted to attempt everything. 
+With him it was no sooner see than try, and he had such an
+abundance of enthusiasm that he generally succeeded.  The balloon
+pants soon went.  In a month his outfit was irreproachable.  He
+used to study us by the hour, taking in every detail of our
+equipment, from the smallest to the most important.  Then he
+asked questions.  For all his desire to be one of the country, he
+was never ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance.  
+
+"Now, don't you chaps think it silly to wear such high heels to
+your boots?"  he would ask.  "It seems to me a very useless sort
+of vanity."
+
+"No vanity about it, Tim," I explained. "In the first place, it
+keeps your foot from slipping through the stirrup.  In the second
+place, it is good to grip on the ground when you're roping
+afoot."  
+
+"By Jove, that's true!" he cried.
+
+So he'd get him a pair of boots.  For a while it was enough to
+wear and own all these things.  He seemed to delight in his
+six-shooter and his rope just as ornaments to himself and horse. 
+But he soon got over that.  Then he had to learn to use them. 
+
+For the time being, pistol practice, for instance, would absorb
+all his thoughts.  He'd bang away at intervals all day, and
+figure out new theories all night. 
+
+"That bally scheme won't work," he would complain.  "I believe if
+I extended my thumb along the cylinder it would help that side
+jump."  
+
+He was always easing the trigger-pull, or filing the sights.  In
+time he got to be a fairly accurate and very quick shot.  
+
+The same way with roping and hog-tying and all the rest. 
+
+"What's the use?" I used to ask him.  "If you were going to be a
+buckeroo, you couldn't go into harder training."
+
+"I like it," was always his answer. 
+
+He had only one real vice, that I could see.  He would gamble. 
+Stud poker was his favourite; and I never saw a Britisher yet who
+could play poker.  I used to head him off, when I could, and he
+was always grateful, but the passion was strong.  
+
+After we got back from founding Tombstone I was busted and had to
+go to work.  
+
+"I've got plenty," said Tim, "and it's all yours."  
+
+"I know, old fellow," I told him, "but your money wouldn't do for
+me."  
+
+Buck Johnson was just seeing his chance then, and was preparing
+to take some breeding cattle over into the Soda Springs Valley. 
+Everybody laughed at him--said it was right in the line of the
+Chiricahua raids, which was true.  But Buck had been in there
+with Agency steers, and thought he knew.  So he collected a trail
+crew, brought some Oregon cattle across, and built his home ranch
+of three-foot adobe walls with portholes.  I joined the trail
+crew; and somehow or another the Honourable Timothy got
+permission to go along on his own hook.  
+
+The trail was a long one.  We had thirst and heat and stampedes
+and some Indian scares.  But in the queer atmospheric conditions
+that prevailed that summer, I never saw the desert more
+wonderful.  It was like waking to the glory of God to sit up at
+dawn and see the colours change on the dry ranges.  
+
+At the home ranch, again, Tim managed to get permission to stay
+on.  He kept his own mount of horses, took care of them, hunted,
+and took part in  all the cow work.  We lost some cattle from
+Indians, of course, but it was too near the Reservation for them
+to do more than pick up a few stray head on their way through. 
+The troops were always after them full jump, and so they never
+had time to round up the beef.  But of course we had to look out
+or we'd lose our hair, and many a cowboy has won out to the home
+ranch in an almighty exciting race.  This was nuts for the
+Honourable Timothy Clare, much better than hunting silver-tips,
+and he enjoyed it no limit.
+
+Things went along that way for some time, until one evening as
+I was turning out the horses a buckboard drew in, and from it
+descended Tony Briggs and a dapper little fellow dressed all
+in black and with a plug hat.
+
+"Which I accounts for said hat reachin' the ranch, because it's
+Friday and the boys not in town," Tony whispered to me. 
+
+As I happened to be the only man in sight, the stranger addressed
+me.  
+
+"I am looking," said he in a peculiar, sing-song manner I have
+since learned to be English, "for the Honourable Timothy Clare. 
+Is he here?" 
+ 
+"Oh, you're looking for him are you?" said I.  "And who might you
+be?"  
+
+You see, I liked Tim, and I didn't intend to deliver him over
+into trouble.  
+
+The man picked a pair of eye-glasses off his stomach where they
+dangled at the end of a chain, perched them on his nose, and
+stared me over.  I must have looked uncompromising, for after a
+few seconds he abruptly wrinkled his nose so that the glasses
+fell promptly to his stomach again, felt his waistcoat pocket,
+and produced a card.  I took it, and read:  
+
+             JEFFRIES CASE, Barrister.
+
+"A lawyer!" said I suspiciously.  
+
+"My dear man," he rejoined with a slight impatience, "I am not
+here to do your young friend a harm.  In fact, my firm have been
+his family solicitors for generations."
+
+"Very well," I agreed, and led the way to the one-room adobe that
+Tim and I occupied.
+
+If I had expected an enthusiastic greeting for the boyhood friend
+from the old home, I would have been disappointed.  Tim was
+sitting with his back to the door reading an old magazine.  When
+we entered he glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"Ah, Case," said he, and went on reading.  After a moment he said
+without looking up, "Sit down."
+
+The little man took it calmly, deposited himself in a chair and
+his bag between his feet, and looked about him daintily at our
+rough quarters.  I made a move to go, whereupon Tim laid down his
+magazine, yawned, stretched his arms over his head, and sighed.
+
+"Don't go, Harry," he begged.  "Well, Case," he addressed the
+barrister, "what is it this time?  Must be something devilish
+important to bring you--how many thousand miles is it--into such
+a country as this."
+
+"It is important, Mr. Clare," stated the lawyer in his dry
+sing-song tones; "but my journey might have been avoided had you
+paid some attention to my letters."
+
+"Letters!" repeated Tim, opening his eyes. "My dear chap, I've
+had no letters."
+
+"Addressed as usual to your New York bankers."
+
+Tim laughed softly. "Where they are, with my last two quarters'
+allowance.  I especially instructed them to send me no mail.  One
+spends no money in  this country."  He paused, pulling his
+moustache.  "I'm truly sorry you had to come so far," he
+continued, "and if your business is, as I suspect, the old one of
+inducing me to return to my dear uncle's arms, I assure you the
+mission will prove quite fruitless.  Uncle Hillary and I could
+never live in the same county, let alone the same house."  
+
+"And yet your uncle, the Viscount Mar, was very fond of you,"
+ventured Case.  "Your allowances--" 
+
+"Oh, I grant you his generosity in MONEY affairs--" 
+
+"He has continued that generosity in the terms of his will, and
+those terms I am here to communicate to you."  
+
+"Uncle Hillary is dead!" cried Tim.
+
+"He passed away the sixteenth of last June."
+
+A slight pause ensued.
+
+"I am ready to hear you," said Tim soberly, at last.
+
+The barrister stooped and began to fumble with his bag.
+
+"No, not that!" cried Tim, with some impatience.  "Tell me in
+your own words."
+
+The lawyer sat back and pressed his finger points together over
+his stomach.
+
+"The late Viscount," said he, "has been graciously pleased to
+leave you in fee simple his entire estate of Staghurst, together
+with its buildings, rentals, and privileges.  This, besides the
+residential rights, amounts to some ten thousands pounds sterling
+per annum."
+
+"A little less than fifty thousand dollars a year, Harry," Tim
+shot over his shoulder at me.
+
+"There is one condition," put in the lawyer.
+
+"Oh, there is!" exclaimed Tim, his crest falling.  "Well, knowing
+my Uncle Hillary--"
+
+"The condition is not extravagant," the lawyer hastily
+interposed.  "It merely entails continued residence in England,
+and a minimum of nine months on the estate.  This provision is
+absolute, and the estate reverts in its discontinuance, but may I
+be permitted to observe that the majority of men, myself among
+the number, are content to spend the most of their lives, not
+merely in the confines of a kingdom, but between the four walls
+of a room, for much less than ten thousand pounds a year.  Also
+that England is not without its attractions for an Englishman,
+and that Staghurst is a country place of many possibilities."
+
+The Honourable Timothy had recovered from his first surprise.
+
+"And if the conditions are not complied with?" he inquired.
+
+"Then the estate reverts to the heirs at law, and you receive an
+annuity of one hundred pounds, payable quarterly."  
+
+"May I ask further the reason for this extraordinary condition?" 
+
+"My distinguished client never informed me," replied the lawyer,
+"but"--and a twinkle appeared in his eye--"as an occasional
+disburser of funds--Monte Carlo--"  
+
+Tim burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, but I recognise Uncle Hillary there!" he cried. "Well, Mr.
+Case, I am sure Mr. Johnson, the owner of this ranch, can put you
+up, and to-morrow we'll start back."
+
+He returned after a few minutes to find me sitting' smoking a
+moody pipe.  I liked Tim, and I was sorry to have him go.  Then,
+too, I was ruffled, in the senseless manner of youth, by the
+sudden  altitude to which his changed fortunes had lifted him. 
+He stood in the middle of the room, surveying me, then came
+across and laid his arm on my shoulder.
+
+"Well," I growled, without looking up, "you're a very rich man
+now, Mr. Clare."
+
+At that he jerked me bodily out of my seat and stood me up in the
+centre of the room, the Irish blazing out of his eyes.
+
+"Here, none of that!" he snapped. "You damn little fool!  Don't
+you 'Mr. Clare' me!"
+
+So in five minutes we were talking it over.  Tim was very much
+excited at the prospect.  He knew Staghurst well, and told me all
+about the big stone house, and the avenue through the trees; and
+the hedge-row roads, and the lawn with its peacocks, and the
+round green hills, and the labourers' cottages.
+
+"It's home," said he, "and I didn't realise before how much I
+wanted to see it.  And I'll be a man of weight there, Harry, and
+it'll be mighty good."
+
+We made all sorts of plans as to how I was going to visit him
+just as soon as I could get together the money for the passage.  
+He had the delicacy not to offer to let me have it; and that
+clinched my trust and love of him.
+
+The next day he drove away with Tony and the dapper little
+lawyer.  I am not ashamed to say that I watched the buckboard
+until it disappeared in the mirage.  
+
+I was with Buck Johnson all that summer, and the following
+winter, as well.  We had our first round-up, found the natural
+increase much in excess of the loss by Indians, and extended our
+holdings up over the Rock Creek country.  We witnessed the start
+of many Indian campaigns, participated in a few little brushes
+with the Chiricahuas, saw the beginning of the cattle-rustling. 
+A man had not much opportunity to think of anything but what he
+had right on hand, but I found time for a few speculations on
+Tim.  I wondered how he looked now, and what he was doing, and
+how in blazes he managed to get away with fifty thousand a year.
+
+And then one Sunday in June, while I was lying on my bunk, Tim
+pushed open the door and walked in.  I was young, but I'd seen a
+lot, and I knew the expression of his face.  So I laid low and
+said nothing.  
+
+In a minute the door opened again, and Buck Johnson himself came
+in. 
+
+"How do," said he; "I saw you ride up."  
+
+"How do you do," replied Tim.  
+
+"I know all about you," said Buck, without any preliminaries;
+"your man, Case, has wrote me.  I don't know your reasons, and I
+don't want to know--it's none of my business--and I ain't goin'
+to tell you just what kind of a damn fool I think you are--that's
+none of my business, either.  But I want you to understand
+without question how you stand on the ranch."  
+
+"Quite good, sir," said Tim very quietly. 
+
+"When you were out here before I was glad to have you here as a
+sort of guest.  Then you were what I've heerd called a gentleman
+of leisure.  Now you're nothin' but a remittance man.  Your
+money's nothin' to me, but the principle of the thing is.  The
+country is plumb pestered with remittance men, doin' nothin', and
+I don't aim to run no home for incompetents.  I had a son of a
+duke drivin' wagon for me; and he couldn't drive nails in a
+snowbanks.  So don't you herd up with the idea that you can come
+on this ranch and loaf."  
+
+"I don't want to loaf," put in Tim, "I want a job."  
+
+"I'm willing to give you a job," replied Buck, "but it's jest an
+ordinary cow-puncher's job at forty a month.  And if you don't
+fill your saddle, it goes to someone else."
+
+"That's satisfactory," agreed Tim.  
+
+"All right," finished Buck, "so that's understood.  Your friend
+Case wanted me to give you a lot of advice.  A man generally has
+about as much use for advice as a cow has for four hind legs."  
+
+He went out.  
+
+"For God's sake, what's up?" I cried, leaping  from my bunk.  
+
+"Hullo, Harry," said he, as though he had seen me the day before,
+"I've come back."
+
+"How come back?" I asked.  "I thought you couldn't leave the
+estate.  Have they broken the will?"  
+
+"No," said he.
+
+"Is the money lost?"
+  
+"No."  
+
+"Then what?"  
+
+"The long and short of it is, that I couldn't afford that estate
+and that money." 
+
+"What do you mean?"  
+
+"I've given it up."  
+
+"Given it up!  What for?"  
+
+"To come back here."  
+
+ I took this all in slowly.  
+
+"Tim Clare," said I at last, "do you mean to say that you have
+given up an English estate and fifty thousand dollars a year to
+be a remittance man at five hundred, and a cow-puncher on as much
+more?"  
+
+"Exactly," said he.  
+
+"Tim," I adjured him solemnly, "you are a damn fool!"  
+
+"Maybe," he agreed.  
+
+"Why did you do it?" I begged. 
+
+He walked to the door and looked out across the desert to where
+the mountains hovered like soap-bubbles on the horizon.  For a
+long time he looked; then whirled on me. 
+
+"Harry," said he in a low voice, "do you remember the camp we
+made on the shoulder of the mountain that night we were caught
+out?  And do you remember how the dawn came up on the big snow
+peaks across the way--and all the canon below us filled with
+whirling mists--and the steel stars leaving us one by one?  Where
+could I find room for that in English paddocks?  And do you
+recall the day we trailed across the Yuma deserts, and the sun
+beat into our skulls, and the dry, brittle hills looked like
+papier-mache, and the grey sage-bush ran off into the rise of the
+hills; and then came sunset and the hard, dry mountains grew
+filmy, like gauze veils of many colours, and melted and glowed
+and faded to slate blue, and the stars came out?  The English
+hills are rounded and green and curried, and the sky is near, and
+the stars only a few miles up.  And do you recollect that dark
+night when old Loco and his warriors were camped at the base of
+Cochise's Stronghold, and we crept down through the velvet dark
+wondering when we would be discovered, our mouths sticky with
+excitement, and the little winds blowing?"  
+
+He walked up and down a half-dozen times, his breast heaving.
+
+"It's all very well for the man who is brought up to it, and
+who has seen nothing else.  Case can exist in four walls; he
+has been brought up to it and knows nothing different.  But a
+man like me--
+
+"They wanted me to canter between hedge-row,--I who have ridden
+the desert where the sky over me and the plain under me were
+bigger than the Islander's universe!  They wanted me to oversee
+little farms--I who have watched the sun rising over half a
+world!  Talk of your ten thou' a year and what it'll buy!  You
+know, Harry, how it feels when a steer takes the slack of your
+rope, and your pony sits back!  Where in England can I buy that? 
+You know the rising and the falling of days, and the boundless
+spaces where your heart grows big, and the thirst of the desert
+and the hunger of the trail, and a sun that shines and fills
+the sky, and a wind that blows fresh from the wide places! 
+Where in parcelled, snug, green, tight little England could I
+buy that with ten thou'--aye, or an hundred times ten thou'? 
+No, no, Harry, that fortune would cost me too dear.  I have
+seen and done and been too much.  I've come back to the Big
+Country, where the pay is poor and the work is hard and the
+comfort small, but where a man and his soul meet their Maker face
+to face."
+
+
+The Cattleman had finished his yarn.  For a time no one spoke. 
+Outside, the volume of rain was subsiding.  Windy Bill reported
+a few stars shining through rifts in the showers.  The chill that
+precedes the dawn brought us as close to the fire as the
+smouldering guano would permit.
+
+"I don't know whether he was right or wrong," mused the 
+Cattleman, after a while.  "A man can do a heap with that much
+money.  And yet an old 'alkali' is never happy anywhere else. 
+However," he concluded emphatically, "one thing I do know:  rain,
+cold, hunger, discomfort, curses, kicks, and violent deaths
+included, there isn't one of you grumblers who would hold that
+gardening job you spoke of three days!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR 
+THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
+
+Dawn broke, so we descended through wet grasses to the canon. 
+There, after some difficulty, we managed to start a fire, and
+so ate breakfast, the rain still pouring down on us.  About
+nine o'clock, with miraculous suddenness, the torrent stopped. 
+It began to turn cold.  The Cattleman and I decided to climb to
+the top of the butte after meat, which we entirely lacked.  
+
+It was rather a stiff ascent, but once above the sheer cliffs we
+found ourselves on a rolling meadow tableland a half-mile broad
+by, perhaps, a mile and a half in length.  Grass grew high;
+here and there were small live oaks planted park-like; slight and
+rounded ravines accommodated brooklets.  As we walked back, the
+edges blended in the edges of the mesa across the canon.  The
+deep gorges, which had heretofore seemed the most prominent
+elements of the scenery, were lost.  We stood, apparently, in
+the middle of a wide and undulating plain, diversified by little
+ridges, and running with a free sweep to the very foot of the
+snowy Galiuros.  It seemed as though we should be able to ride
+horseback in almost any given direction.  Yet we knew that ten
+minutes' walk would take us to the brink of most stupendous
+chasms--so deep that the water flowing in them hardly seemed to
+move; so rugged that only with the greatest difficulty could a
+horseman make his way through the country at all; and yet so
+ancient that the bottoms supported forests, rich grasses, and
+rounded, gentle knolls.  It was a most astonishing set of double
+impressions.
+
+We succeeded in killing a nice, fat white-tail buck, and so
+returned to camp happy.  The rain, held off.  We dug ditches,
+organised shelters, cooked a warm meal.  For the next day we
+planned a bear hunt afoot, far up a manzanita canon where
+Uncle Jim knew of some "holing up" caves.
+
+But when we awoke in the morning we threw aside our coverings
+with some difficulty to look on a ground covered with snow; trees
+laden almost to the breaking point with snow, and the air filled
+with it.
+
+"No bear today" said the Cattleman. 
+
+"No," agreed Uncle Jim drily.  "No b'ar.  And what's more, unless
+yo're aimin' to stop here somewhat of a spell, we'll have to make
+out to-day."  
+
+We cooked with freezing fingers, ate while dodging avalanches
+from the trees, and packed reluctantly.  The ropes were frozen,
+the hobbles stiff, everything either crackling or wet.  Finally
+the task was finished.  We took a last warming of the fingers and
+climbed on.  
+
+The country was wonderfully beautiful with the white not yet
+shaken from the trees and rock ledges.  Also it was wonderfully
+slippery.  The snow was soft enough to ball under the horses'
+hoofs, so that most of the time the poor animals skated and
+stumbled along on stilts.  Thus we made our way back over ground
+which, naked of these difficulties, we had considered bad enough.
+
+Imagine riding along a slant of rock shelving off to a bad
+tumble, so steep that your pony has to do more or less expert
+ankle work to keep from slipping off sideways.  During the
+passage of that rock you are apt to sit very light.  Now cover it
+with several inches of snow, stick a snowball on each hoof of
+your mount, and try again.  When you have ridden it--or its
+duplicate--a few score of times, select a steep mountain side,
+cover it with round rocks the size of your head, and over that
+spread a concealing blanket of the same sticky snow.  You are
+privileged to vary these to the limits of your imagination.
+
+Once across the divide, we ran into a new sort of trouble.  You
+may remember that on our journey over we had been forced to
+travel for some distance in a narrow stream-bed.  During our
+passage we had scrambled up some rather steep and rough slopes,
+and hopped up some fairly high ledges.  Now we found the
+heretofore dry bed flowing a good eight inches deep.  The steep
+slopes had become cascades; the ledges, waterfalls.  When we
+came to them, we had to "shoot the rapids" as best we could,
+only to land with a PLUNK in an indeterminately deep pool at the
+bottom.  Some of the pack horses went down, sousing again our
+unfortunate bedding, but by the grace of fortune not a saddle
+pony lost his feet.
+
+After a time the gorge widened.  We came out into the box canon
+with its trees.  Here the water spread and shoaled to a depth of
+only two or three inches.  We splashed along gaily enough, for,
+with the exception of an occasional quicksand or boggy spot, our
+troubles were over.  
+
+Jed Parker and I happened to ride side by side, bringing up the
+rear and seeing to it that the pack animals did not stray or
+linger.  As we passed the first of the rustlers' corrals, he
+called my attention to them.
+
+"Go take a look," said he. "We only got those fellows out of
+here two years ago."
+
+I rode over.  At this point the rim-rock broke to admit the
+ingress of a ravine into the main canon.  Riding a short
+distance up the ravine, I could see that it ended abruptly in a
+perpendicular cliff.  As the sides also were precipitous, it
+became necessary only to build a fence across the entrance into
+the main canon to become possessed of a corral completely
+closed in.  Remembering the absolute invisibility of these
+sunken canons until the rider is almost directly over them, and
+also the extreme roughness and remoteness of the district, I
+could see that the spot was admirably adapted to concealment.
+
+"There's quite a yarn about the gang that held this hole," said
+Jed Parker to me, when I had ridden back to him  "I'll tell you
+about it sometime."
+ 
+We climbed the hill, descended on the Double R, built a fire in
+the stove, dried out, and were happy.  After a square meal--and a
+dry one--I reminded Jed Parker of his promise, and so, sitting
+cross-legged on his "so-gun" in the middle of the floor, he told
+us the following yarn:
+
+There's a good deal of romance been written about the "bad man,"
+and there's about the same amount of nonsense.  The bad man is
+justa plain murderer, neither more nor less.  He never does get
+into a real, good, plain, stand-up gunfight if he can possibly
+help it.  His killin's are done from behind a door, or when he's
+got his man dead to rights.  There's Sam Cook.  You've all heard
+of him.  He had nerve, of course, and when he was backed into a
+corner he made good; he was sure sudden death with a gun.  But
+when he went for a man deliberate, he didn't take no special
+chances.  For a while he was marshal at Willets.  Pretty soon it
+was noted that there was a heap of cases of resisting arrest,
+where Sam as marshal had to shoot, and that those cases almost
+always happened to be his personal enemies.  Of course, that
+might be all right, but it looked suspicious.  Then one day he
+killed poor old Max Schmidt out behind his own saloon.  Called
+him out and shot him in the stomach.  Said Max resisted arrest on
+a warrant for keepin' open out of hours!  That was a sweet
+warrant to take out in Willets, anyway!  Mrs. Schmidt always
+claimed that she say that deal played, and that, while they were
+talkin' perfectly peacable, Cook let drive from the hip at about
+two yards' range.  Anyway, we decided we needed another marshal. 
+Nothin' else was ever done, for the Vigilantes hadn't been
+formed, and your individual and decent citizen doesn't care to be
+marked by a gun of that stripe.  Leastwise, unless he wants to go
+in for bad-man methods and do a little ambusheein' on his own
+account.
+
+The point is, that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable
+proposition, and plain, cold-blood murderers, willin' to wait for
+a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatsoever.  The bad
+man takes you unawares, when you're sleepin', or talkin', or
+drinkin', or lookin' to see what for a day it's goin' to be,
+anyway.  He don't give you no show, and sooner or later he's
+goin' to get you in the safest and easiest way for himself. 
+There ain't no romance about that.  
+
+And, until you've seen a few men called out of their shacks for a
+friendly conversation, and shot when they happen to look away; or
+asked for a drink of water, and killed when they stoop to the
+spring; or potted from behind as they go into a room, it's pretty
+hard to believe that any man can he so plumb lackin' in fair play
+or pity or just natural humanity.  
+
+As you boys know, I come in from Texas to Buck Johnson's about
+ten year back.  I had a pretty good mount of ponies that I knew,
+and I hated to let them go at prices they were offerin' then, so
+I made up my mind to ride across and bring them in with me.  It
+wasn't so awful far, and I figured that I'd like to take in what
+New Mexico looked like anyway.  
+
+About down by Albuquerque I tracked up with another outfit headed
+my way.  There was five of them, three men, and a woman, and a
+yearlin' baby.  They had a dozen hosses, and that was about all I
+could see.  There was only two packed, and no wagon.  I suppose
+the whole outfit--pots, pans, and kettles--was worth five
+dollars.  It was just supper when I run across them, and it
+didn't take more'n one look to discover that flour, coffee,
+sugar, and salt was all they carried.  A yearlin' carcass,
+half-skinned, lay near, and the fry-pan was, full of meat. 
+
+"Howdy, strangers," says I, ridin' up.  
+
+They nodded a little, but didn't say nothin'.  My hosses fell to
+grazin', and I eased myself around in my saddle, and made a
+cigareet.  The men was tall, lank fellows, with kind of sullen
+faces, and sly, shifty eyes; the woman was dirty and generally
+mussed up.  I knowed that sort all right.  Texas was gettin' too
+many fences for them.
+ 
+"Havin' supper?" says I, cheerful.  
+
+One of 'em grunted "Yes" at me; and, after a while, the biggest
+asked me very grudgin' if I wouldn't light and eat, I told them
+"No," that I was travellin' in the cool of the evenin'. 
+
+"You seem to have more meat than you need, though," says I.  "I
+could use a little of that."  
+
+"Help yourself," says they.  "It's a maverick we come across."  
+
+I took a steak, and noted that the hide had been mighty well cut
+to ribbons around the flanks and that the head was gone.
+
+"Well," says I to the carcass, "No one's going to be able to
+swear whether you're a maverick or not, but I bet you knew the
+feel of a brandin' iron all right."
+
+I gave them a thank-you, and climbed on again.  My hosses acted
+some surprised at bein' gathered up again, but I couldn't help
+that.
+
+"It looks like a plumb imposition, cavallos," says I to them,
+"after an all-day, but you sure don't want to join that outfit
+any more than I do the angels, and if we camp here we're likely
+to do both." 
+
+I didn't see them any more after that until I'd hit the Lazy Y,
+and had started in runnin' cattle in the Soda Springs Valley. 
+Larry Eagen and I rode together those days, and that's how I got
+to know him pretty well.  One day, over in the Elm Flat, we ran
+smack on this Texas outfit again, headed north.  This time I was
+on my own range, and I knew where I stood, so I could show a
+little more curiosity in the case. 
+
+"Well, you got this far," says I.
+
+"Yes," says they.
+
+"Where you headed?"
+
+"Over towards the hills."
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"Make a ranch, raise some truck; perhaps buy a few cows." 
+
+They went on. 
+
+"Truck" says I to Larry, "is fine prospects in this country." 
+
+He sat on his horse looking after them. 
+
+"I'm sorry for them" says he. "It must he almighty hard
+scratchin'." 
+
+Well, we rode the range for upwards of two year.  In that time we
+saw our Texas friends--name of Hahn--two or three times in
+Willets, and heard of them off and on.  They bought an old brand
+of Steve McWilliams for seventy-five dollars, carryin' six or
+eight head of cows.  After that, from time to time, we heard of
+them buying more--two or three head from one man, and two or
+three from another.  They branded them all with that McWilliams
+iron--T 0--so, pretty soon, we began to see the cattle on the
+range. 
+
+Now, a good cattleman knows cattle just as well as you know
+people, and he can tell them about as far off.  Horned critters
+look alike to you, but even in a country supportin' a good many
+thousand head, a man used to the business can recognise most
+every individual as far as he can see him.  Some is better than
+others at it.  I suppose you really have to be brought up to it. 
+So we boys at the Lazy Y noted all the cattle with the new T 0,
+and could estimate pretty close that the Hahn outfit might own,
+maybe, thirty-five head all told.  
+
+That was all very well, and nobody had any kick comin'.  Then one
+day in the spring, we came across our first "sleeper." 
+
+What's a sleeper?  A sleeper is a calf that has been ear-marked,
+but not branded.  Every owner has a certain brand, as you know,
+and then he crops and slits the ears in a certain way, too.  In
+that manner he don't have to look at the brand, except to
+corroborate the ears; and, as the critter generally sticks his
+ears up inquirin'-like to anyone ridin' up, it's easy to know the
+brand without lookin' at it, merely from the ear-marks.  Once in
+a great while, when a man comes across an unbranded calf, and it
+ain't handy to build a fire, he just ear-marks it and let's the
+brandin' go till later.  But it isn't done often, and our outfit
+had strict orders never to make sleepers.
+
+Well, one day in the spring, as I say, Larry and me was ridin',
+when we came across a Lazy Y cow and calf.  The little fellow was
+ear-marked all right, so we rode on, and never would have
+discovered nothin' if a bush rabbit hadn't jumped and scared the
+calf right across in front of our hosses.  Then we couldn't help
+but see that there wasn't no brand.
+
+Of course we roped him and put the iron on him.  I took the
+chance to look at his ears,, and saw that the marking had been
+done quite recent, so when we got in that night I reported to
+Buck Johnson that one of the punchers was gettin' lazy and
+sleeperin'.  Naturally he went after the man who had done it;
+but every puncher swore up and down, and back and across, that
+he'd branded every calf he'd had a rope on that spring.  We put
+it down that someone was lyin', and let it go at that.  
+
+And then, about a week later, one of the other boys reported a
+Triangle-H sleeper.  The Triangle-H was the Goodrich brand, so we
+didn't have nothin' to do with that.  Some of them might be
+sleeperin' for all we knew.  Three other cases of the same kind
+we happened across that same spring.
+
+So far, so good.  Sleepers runnin' in such numbers was a little
+astonishin', but nothin' suspicious.  Cattle did well that
+summer, and when we come to round up in the fall, we cut out
+maybe a dozen of those T 0 cattle that had strayed out of that
+Hahn country.  Of the dozen there was five grown cows, and seven
+yearlin's.  
+
+"My Lord, Jed," says Buck to me, "they's a heap of these
+youngsters comin' over our way."  
+
+But still, as a young critter is more apt to stray than an old
+one that's got his range established, we didn't lay no great
+store by that neither.  The Hahns took their bunch, and that's
+all there was to it.  
+
+Next spring, though, we found a few more sleepers, and one day we
+came on a cow that had gone dead lame.  That was usual, too, but
+Buck, who was with me, had somethin' on his mind.  Finally he
+turned back and roped her, and threw her. 
+
+"Look here, Jed," says he, "what do you make of this?"  
+
+I could see where the hind legs below the hocks had been burned.
+
+"Looks like somebody had roped her by the hind feet," says I.
+
+"Might be," says he, "but her heels lame that way makes it look
+more like hobbles."
+
+So we didn't say nothin' more about that neither, until just by
+luck we came on another lame cow.  We threw her, too.
+
+"Well, what do you think of this one?" Buck Johnson asks me.
+
+"The feet is pretty well tore up," says I, "and down to the
+quick, but I've seen them tore up just as bad on the rocks when
+they come down out of the mountains."
+
+You sabe what that meant, don't you?  You see, a rustler will
+take a cow and hobble her, or lame her so she can't follow, and
+then he'll take her calf a long ways off and brand it with his
+iron.  Of course, if we was to see a calf of one brand followin'
+of a cow with another, it would be just too easy to guess what
+had happened.
+
+We rode on mighty thoughtful.  There couldn't be much doubt that
+cattle rustlers was at work.  The sleepers they had ear-marked,
+hopin' that no one would discover the lack of a brand.  Then,
+after the calf was weaned, and quit followin' of his mother, the
+rustler would brand it with his own iron, and change its ear-mark
+to match.  It made a nice, easy way of gettin' together a bunch
+of cattle cheap.
+
+But it was pretty hard to guess off-hand who the rustlers might
+be.  There were a lot of renegades down towards the Mexican
+line who made a raid once in a while, and a few oilers [2] livin'
+near had water holes in the foothills, and any amount of little
+cattle holders, like this T 0 outfit, and any of them wouldn't
+shy very hard at a little sleeperin' on the side.  Buck Johnson
+told us all to watch out, and passed the word quiet among the big
+owners to try and see whose cattle seemed to have too many calves
+for the number of cows.
+
+[2] "Oilers"--Greasers--Mexicans.
+
+
+The Texas outfit I'm tellin' you about had settled up above in
+this Double R canon where I showed you those natural corrals
+this morning.  They'd built them a 'dobe, and cleared some land,
+and planted a few trees, and made an irrigated patch for alfalfa.
+Nobody never rode over his way very much, 'cause the country was
+most too rough for cattle, and our ranges lay farther to the
+southward.  Now, however, we began to extend our ridin' a little.
+
+I was down towards Dos Cabesas to look over the cattle there, and
+they used to send Larry up into the Double R country.  One
+evenin' he took me to one side.
+
+"Look here, Jed," says he, "I know you pretty well, and I'm not
+ashamed to say that I'm all new at this cattle business--in fact,
+I haven't been at it more'n a year.  What should be the
+proportion of cows to calves anyhow?"
+
+"There ought to be about twice as many cows as there're calves,"
+I tells him.
+
+"Then, with only about fifty head of grown cows, there ought not
+to be an equal number of yearlin's?"
+
+"I should say not," says I.  "What are you drivin' at?"
+
+"Nothin' yet," says he.
+
+A few days later he tackled me again.
+
+"Jed," says he, "I'm not good, like you fellows are, at knowin'
+one cow from another, but there's a calf down there branded T 0
+that I'd pretty near swear I saw with an X Y cow last month.  I
+wish you could come down with me."
+
+We got that fixed easy enough, and for the next month rammed
+around through this broken country lookin' for evidence.  I saw
+enough to satisfy me to a moral certainty, but nothin' for a
+sheriff; and, of course, we couldn't go shoot up a peaceful
+rancher on mere suspicion.  Finally, one day, we run on a
+four-months' calf all by himself, with the T 0 iron onto him--a
+mighty healthy lookin' calf, too.
+
+"Wonder where HIS mother is!" says I.
+
+"Maybe it's a 'dogie,'" says Larry Eagen--we calls calves whose
+mothers have died "dogies."
+
+"No," says I, "I don't hardly think so.  A dogie is always under
+size and poor, and he's layin' around water holes, and he always
+has a big, sway belly onto him.  No, this is no dogie; and, if
+it's an honest calf, there sure ought to be a T 0 cow around
+somewhere."
+
+So we separated to have a good look.  Larry rode up on the edge
+of a little rimrock.  In a minute I saw his hoss jump back,
+dodgin' a rattlesnake or somethin', and then fall back out of
+sight.  I jumped my hoss up there tur'ble quick, and looked
+over, expectin' to see nothin' but mangled remains.  It was only
+about fifteen foot down, but I couldn't see bottom 'count of some
+brush.
+
+"Are you all right?" I yells.
+
+"Yes, yes!" cries Larry, "but for the love of God, get down here
+as
+quick as you can."
+
+I hopped off my hoss and scrambled down somehow.
+
+"Hurt?" says I, as soon as I lit.
+
+"Not a bit--look here."
+
+There was a dead cow with the Lazy Y on her flank.
+
+"And a bullet-hole in her forehead," adds Larry.  "And, look
+here, that T 0 calf was bald-faced, and so was this cow."
+
+"Reckon we found our sleepers," says I.
+
+So, there we was.  Larry had to lead his cavallo down the
+barranca to the main canon.  I followed along on the rim, waitin'
+until a place gave me a chance to get down, too, or Larry a
+chance to get up.  We were talkin' back and forth when, all at
+once, Larry shouted again.
+
+"Big game this time," he yells. "Here's a cave and a mountain
+lion squallin' in it."
+
+I slid down to him at once, and we drew our six-shooters and went
+up to the cave openin', right under the rim-rock.  There, sure
+enough, were fresh lion tracks, and we could hear a little faint
+cryin' like woman.  
+
+"First chance," claims Larry, and dropped to his hands and knees
+at the entrance.  
+
+"Well, damn me!" he cries, and crawls in at once, payin' no
+attention to me tellin' him to be more cautious.  In a minute he
+backs out, carryin' a three-year-old goat. 
+ 
+"We seem to he in for adventures to-day," says he.  "Now, where
+do you suppose that came from, and how did it get here?" 
+
+"Well," says I, "I've followed lion tracks where they've carried
+yearlin's across their backs like a fox does a goose.  They're
+tur'ble strong."
+
+"But where did she come from?" he wonders.
+
+"As for that," says I, "don't you remember now that T 0 outfit
+had a yearlin' kid when it came into the country?"
+
+"That's right," says he. "It's only a mile down the canon.  I'll
+take it home.  They must be most distracted about it."
+
+So I scratched up to the top where my pony was waitin'.  It was a
+tur'ble hard climb, and I 'most had to have hooks on my eyebrows
+to get up at all.  It's easier to slide down than to climb back. 
+I dropped my gun out of my holster, and she went way to the
+bottom, but I wouldn't have gone back for six guns.  Larry picked
+it up for me.
+
+So we went along, me on the rim-rock and around the barrancas,
+and Larry in the bottom carryin' of the kid.
+
+By and by we came to the ranch house, stopped to wait.  The
+minute Larry hove in sight everybody was out to once, and in two
+winks the woman had that baby.  Thy didn't see me at all, but I
+could hear, plain enough, what they said.  Larry told how he had
+found her in the cave, and all about the lion tracks, and the
+woman cried and held the kid close to her, and thanked him about
+forty times.  Then when she'd wore the edge off a little, she
+took the kid inside to feed it or somethin'.
+
+"Well," says Larry, still laughin', "I must hit the trail."
+
+"You say you found her up the Double R?" asks Hahn. "Was it that
+cave near the three cottonwoods?"
+
+"Yes," says Larry.
+
+"Where'd you get into the canyon?" 
+
+"Oh, my hoss slipped off into the barranca just above." 
+
+"The barranca just above," repeats Hahn, lookin' straight at him.
+
+Larry took one step back.  
+
+"You ought to be almighty glad I got into the canyon at all,"
+says he.  
+
+Hahn stepped up, holdin' out his hand.  
+
+"That's right," says he. "You done us a good turn there."   
+
+Larry took his hand.  At the same time Hahn pulled his gun and
+shot him through the middle.  
+
+It was all so sudden and unexpected that I stood there paralysed.
+
+Larry fell forward the way a man mostly will when he's hit in the
+stomach, but somehow he jerked loose a gun and got it off twice. 
+He didn't hit nothin', and I reckon he was dead before he hit the
+ground.  And there he had my gun, and I was about as useless as a
+pocket in a shirt!  
+
+No, sir, you can talk as much as you please, but the killer is a
+low-down ornery scub, and he don't hesitate at no treachery or
+ingratitude to keep his carcass safe.
+
+
+Jed Parker ceased talking.  The dusk had fallen in the little
+room, and dimly could be seen the recumbent figures lying at
+ease on their blankets.  The ranch foreman was sitting bolt
+upright, cross-legged.  A faint glow from his pipe barely
+distinguished his features.  
+
+"What became of the rustlers?" I asked him.  
+
+"Well, sir, that is the queer part.  Hahn himself, who had done
+the killin', skipped out.  We got out warrants, of course, but
+they never got served.  He was a sort of half outlaw from that
+time, and was killed finally in the train hold-up of '97.  But
+the others we tried for rustling.  We didn't have much of a case,
+as the law went then, and they'd have gone free if the woman
+hadn't turned evidence against them.  The killin' was too much
+for her.  And, as the precedent held good in a lot of other
+rustlin' cases, Larry's death was really the beginnin' of law and
+order in the cattle business."
+
+We smoked.  The last light suddenly showed red against the grimy
+window.  Windy Bill arose and looked out the door.
+
+"Boys," said he, returning. "She's cleared off.  We can get back
+to the ranch tomorrow."
+
+                 
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+THE DRIVE
+
+A cry awakened me.  It was still deep night.  The moon sailed
+overhead, the stars shone unwavering like candles, and a chill
+breeze wandered in from the open spaces of the desert.  I raised
+myself on my elbow, throwing aside the blankets and the canvas
+tarpaulin.  Forty other indistinct, formless bundles on the
+ground all about me were sluggishly astir.  Four figures passed
+and repassed between me and a red fire.  I knew them for the two
+cooks and the horse wranglers.  One of the latter was grumbling.
+    
+"Didn't git in till moon-up last night," he growled.  "Might as
+well trade my bed for a lantern and be done with it."
+     
+Even as I stretched my arms and shivered a little, the two
+wranglers threw down their tin plates with a clatter, mounted
+horses and rode away in the direction of the thousand acres or so
+known as the pasture.
+
+I pulled on my clothes hastily, buckled in my buckskin shirt, and
+dove for the fire.  A dozen others were before me.  It was
+bitterly cold.  In the east the sky had paled the least bit in
+the world, but the moon and stars shone on bravely and
+undiminished.  A band of coyotes was shrieking desperate
+blasphemies against the new day, and the stray herd, awakening,
+was beginning to bawl and bellow. 
+
+Two crater-like dutch ovens, filled with pieces of fried beef,
+stood near the fire; two galvanised water buckets, brimming
+with soda biscuits, flanked them; two tremendous coffee pots
+stood guard at either end.  We picked us each a tin cup and a tin
+plate from the box at the rear of the chuck wagon; helped
+ourselves from a dutch oven, a pail, and a coffee pot, and
+squatted on our heels as close to the fire as possible.  Men who
+came too late borrowed the shovel, scooped up some coals, and so
+started little fires of their own about which new groups formed.
+       
+While we ate, the eastern sky lightened.  The mountains under the
+dawn looked like silhouettes cut from slate-coloured paper; those
+in the west showed faintly luminous.  Objects about us became
+dimly visible.  We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of
+the ranch houses, and the corrals.  The cowboys arose one by one,
+dropped their plates into the dishpan, and began to hunt out
+their ropes.  Everything was obscure and mysterious in the faint
+grey light.  I watched Windy Bill near his tarpaulin.  He stooped
+to throw over the canvas.  When he bent, it was before daylight;
+when he straightened his back, daylight had come.  It was just
+like that, as though someone had reached out his hand to turn on
+the illumination of the world.
+     
+The eastern mountains were fragile, the plain was ethereal, like
+a sea of liquid gases.  From the pasture we heard the shoutings
+of the wranglers, and made out a cloud of dust.  In a moment the
+first of the remuda came into view, trotting forward with the
+free grace of the unburdened horse.  Others followed in
+procession: those near sharp and well defined, those in the
+background more or less obscured by the dust, now appearing
+plainly, now fading like ghosts.  The leader turned
+unhesitatingly into the corral.  After him poured the stream of
+the remuda--two hundred and fifty saddle horses--with an
+unceasing thunder of hoofs.
+
+Immediately the cook-camp was deserted.  The cowboys entered the
+corral.  The horses began to circle around the edge of the
+enclosure as around the circumference of a circus ring.  The men,
+grouped at the centre, watched keenly, looking for the mounts
+they had already decided on.  In no time each had recognised   
+his choice, and, his loop trailing, was walking toward that part
+of the revolving circumference where his pony dodged.  Some few
+whirled the loop, but most cast it with a quick flip.  It was
+really marvellous to observe the accuracy with which the noose
+would fly, past a dozen tossing heads, and over a dozen backs, to
+settle firmly about the neck of an animal perhaps in the very
+centre of the group.  But again, if the first throw failed, it
+was interesting to see how the selected pony would dodge, double
+back, twist, turn, and hide to escape second cast.  And it was
+equally interesting to observe how his companions would help him.
+
+They seemed to realise that they were not wanted, and would push
+themselves between the cowboy and his intended mount with the
+utmost boldness.  In the thick dust that instantly arose, and
+with the bewildering thunder of galloping, the flashing change of
+grouping, the rush of the charging animals, recognition alone
+would seem almost impossible, yet in an incredibly short time
+each had his mount, and the others, under convoy of the
+wranglers, were meekly wending their way out over the plain. 
+There, until time for a change of horses, they would graze in a
+loose and scattered band, requiring scarcely any supervision. 
+Escape?  Bless you, no, that thought was the last in their minds.
+     
+In the meantime the saddles and bridles were adjusted.  Always in
+a cowboy's "string" of from six to ten animals the boss assigns
+him two or three broncos to break in to the cow business.  
+Therefore, each morning we could observe a half dozen or so men
+gingerly leading wicked looking little animals out to the sand
+"to take the pitch out of them."  One small black, belonging to a
+cowboy called the Judge, used more than to fulfil expectations of
+a good time.
+    
+"Go to him, Judge!" someone would always remark.
+    
+"If he ain't goin' to pitch, I ain't goin' to make him", the
+Judge would grin, as he swung aboard.
+     
+The black would trot off quite calmly and in a most matter of
+fact way, as though to shame all slanderers of his lamb-like
+character.  Then, as the bystanders would turn away, he would
+utter a squeal, throw down his head, and go at it.  He was a very
+hard bucker, and made some really spectacular jumps, but the
+trick on which he based his claims to originality consisted in
+standing on his hind legs at so perilous an approach to the
+perpendicular that his rider would conclude he was about to fall
+backwards, and then suddenly springing forward in a series of
+stiff-legged bucks. The first manoeuvre induced the rider to
+loosen his seat in order to be ready to jump from under, and the
+second threw him before he could regain his grip.
+     
+"And they say a horse don't think!" exclaimed an admirer.
+      
+But as these were broken horses--save the mark!--the show was all
+over after each had had his little fling.  We mounted and rode
+away, just as the mountain peaks to the west caught the rays of a
+sun we should not enjoy for a good half hour yet.
+      
+I had five horses in my string, and this morning rode "that C S
+horse, Brown Jug."  Brown Jug was a powerful and well-built
+animal, about fourteen two in height, and possessed of a vast
+enthusiasm for cow-work.  As the morning was frosty, he felt
+good.
+     
+At the gate of the water corral we separated into two groups. 
+The smaller, under the direction of Jed Parker, was to drive the
+mesquite in the wide flats.  The rest of us, under the command of
+Homer, the round-up captain, were to sweep the country even as
+far as the base of the foothills near Mount Graham.  Accordingly
+we put our horses to the full gallop.
+    
+Mile after mile we thundered along at a brisk rate of speed. 
+Sometimes we dodged in and out among the mesquite bushes,
+alternately separating and coming together again; sometimes we
+swept over grassy plains apparently of illimitable extent, 
+sometimes we skipped and hopped and buck-jumped through and over
+little gullies, barrancas, and other sorts of malpais--but always
+without drawing rein.  The men rode easily, with no thought to
+the way nor care for the footing.  The air came back sharp
+against our faces.  The warm blood stirred by the rush flowed
+more rapidly.  We experienced a delightful glow.  Of the morning
+cold only the very tips of our fingers and the ends of our noses
+retained a remnant.  Already the sun was shining low and level
+across the plains.  The shadows of the canons modelled the
+hitherto flat surfaces of the mountains.
+
+After a time we came to some low hills helmeted with the outcrop
+of a rock escarpment.  Hitherto they had seemed a termination of
+Mount Graham, but now, when we rode around them, we discovered
+them to be separated from the range by a good five miles of
+sloping plain.  Later we looked back and would have sworn them
+part of the Dos Cabesas system, did we not know them to be at
+least eight miles' distant from that rocky rampart.  It is always
+that way in Arizona.  Spaces develop of whose existence you had
+not the slightest intimation.  Hidden in apparently plane
+surfaces are valleys and prairies.  At one sweep of the eye you
+embrace the entire area of an eastern State; but nevertheless the
+reality as you explore it foot by foot proves to be infinitely
+more than the vision has promised.
+     
+Beyond the hill we stopped.  Here our party divided again, half
+to the right and half to the left.  We had ridden, up to this
+time, directly away from camp, now we rode a circumference of
+which headquarters was the centre.  The country was pleasantly
+rolling and covered with grass.  Here and there were clumps of
+soapweed.  Far in a remote distance lay a slender dark line
+across the plain.  This we knew to be mesquite; and once entered,
+we knew it, too, would seem to spread out vastly.  And then this 
+grassy slope, on which we now rode, would show merely as an
+insignificant streak of yellow.  It is also like that in Arizona.
+
+I have ridden in succession through grass land, brush land,
+flower land, desert.  Each in turn seemed entirely to fill the
+space of the plains between the mountains.
+    
+From time to time Homer halted us and detached a man.  The
+business of the latter was then to ride directly back to camp,
+driving all cattle before him.  Each was in sight of his right- 
+and left-hand neighbour.  Thus was constructed a drag-net whose
+meshes contracted as home was neared.
+    
+I was detached, when of our party only the Cattleman and Homer
+remained.  They would take the outside.  This was the post of
+honour, and required the hardest riding, for as soon as the
+cattle should realise the fact of their pursuit, they would
+attempt to "break" past the end and up the valley.  Brown
+Jug and I congratulated ourselves on an exciting morning in
+prospect.
+     
+Now, wild cattle know perfectly well what a drive means, and they
+do not intend to get into a round-up if they can help it.  Were
+it not for the two facts, that they are afraid of a mounted man,
+and cannot run quite so fast as a horse, I do not know how the
+cattle business would be conducted.  As soon as a band of them
+caught sight of any one of us, they curled their tails and away
+they went at a long, easy lope that a domestic cow would stare at
+in wonder.  This was all very well; in fact we yelled and
+shrieked and otherwise uttered cow-calls to keep them going, to
+"get the cattle started," as they say.  But pretty soon a little
+band of the many scurrying away before our thin line, began to
+bear farther and farther to the east.  When in their judgment
+they should have gained an opening, they would turn directly back
+and make a dash for liberty.  Accordingly the nearest cowboy
+clapped spurs to his horse and pursued them.
+      
+It was a pretty race.  The cattle ran easily enough, with long,
+springy jumps that carried them over the ground faster than
+appearances would lead one to believe.  The cow-pony, his nose
+stretched out, his ears slanted, his eyes snapping with joy of
+the chase, flew fairly "belly to earth."  The rider sat slightly
+forward, with the cowboy's loose seat.  A whirl of dust,
+strangely insignificant against the immensity of a desert
+morning, rose from the flying group.  Now they disappeared in a
+ravine, only to scramble out again the next instant, pace
+undiminished.  The rider merely rose slightly and threw up his
+elbows to relieve the jar of the rough gully.  At first the
+cattle seemed to hold their, own, but soon the horse began to
+gain.  In a short time he had come abreast of the leading animal.
+
+The latter stopped short with a snort, dodged back, and set out
+at right angles to his former course.  From a dead run the pony
+came to a stand in two fierce plunges, doubled like a shot, and
+was off on the other tack.  An unaccustomed rider would here have
+lost his seat.  The second dash was short.  With a final shake of
+the head, the steers turned to the proper course in the direction
+of the ranch.  The pony dropped unconcernedly to the shuffling
+jog of habitual progression.
+
+Far away stretched the arc of our cordon.  The  most distant
+rider was a speck, and the cattle ahead of him were like maggots
+endowed with a smooth, swift onward motion.  As yet the herd had
+not taken form; it was still too widely scattered.  Its units, in
+the shape of small bunches, momently grew in numbers.  The
+distant plains were crawling and alive with minute creatures
+making toward a common tiny centre.
+    
+Immediately in our front the cattle at first behaved very well. 
+Then far down the long gentle slope I saw a break for the upper
+valley.  The manikin that represented Homer at once became even
+smaller as it departed in pursuit.  The Cattleman moved down to
+cover Homer's territory until he should return--and I in turn
+edged farther to the right.  Then another break from another
+bunch.  The Cattleman rode at top speed to head it.  Before long
+he disappeared in the distant mesquite.  I found myself in sole
+charge of a front three miles long.
+
+The nearest cattle were some distance ahead, and trotting along
+at a good gait.  As they had not yet discovered the chance left
+open by unforeseen circumstance, I descended and took in on my
+cinch while yet there was time.  Even as I mounted, an impatient
+movement on the part of experienced Brown Jug told me that the
+cattle had seen their opportunity.
+    
+I gathered the reins and spoke to the horse.  He needed no
+further direction, but set off at a wide angle, nicely
+calculated, to intercept the truants.   Brown Jug was a powerful
+beast.  The spring of his leap was as whalebone.  The yellow
+earth began to stream past like water.  Always the pace increased
+with a growing thunder of hoofs.  It seemed that nothing could
+turn us from the straight line, nothing check the headlong
+momentum of our rush.  My eyes filled with tears from the wind of
+our going.  Saddle strings streamed behind.  Brown Jug's mane
+whipped my bridle band.  Dimly I was conscious of soapweed,
+sacatone, mesquite, as we passed them.  They were abreast and
+gone before I could think of them or how they were to be dodged. 
+Two antelope bounded away to the left; birds rose hastily from
+the grasses.  A sudden chirk, chirk, chirk, rose all about me. 
+We were in the very centre of a prairie-dog town, but before I
+could formulate in my mind the probabilities of holes and broken
+legs, the chirk, chirk, chirking had fallen astern.  Brown Jug
+had skipped and dodged successfully.
+
+We were approaching the cattle.  They ran stubbornly and well,
+evidently unwilling to be turned until the latest possible
+moment.  A great rage at their obstinacy took possession of us
+both.  A broad shallow wash crossed our way, but we plunged
+through its rocks and boulders recklessly, angered at even the
+slight delay they necessitated.  The hardland on the other side
+we greeted with joy.  Brown Jug extended himself with a snort.
+    
+Suddenly a jar seemed to shake my very head loose.  I found
+myself staring over the horse's head directly down into a
+deep and precipitous gully, the edge of which was so cunningly
+concealed by the grasses as to have remained invisible to my
+blurred vision.  Brown Jug, however, had caught sight of it at
+the  last instant, and had executed one of the wonderful stops
+possible only to a cow-pony.
+    
+But already the cattle had discovered a passage above, and were
+scrambling down and across.  Brown Jug and I, at more sober pace,
+slid off the almost perpendicular bank, and out the other side.
+    
+A moment later we had headed them.  They whirled, and without the
+necessity of any suggestion on my part Brown Jug turned after
+them, and so quickly that my stirrup actually brushed the ground.
+
+After that we were masters.  We chased the cattle far enough to
+start them well in the proper direction, and then pulled down to
+a walk in order to get a breath of air.
+    
+But now we noticed another band, back on the ground over which we
+had just come, doubling through in the direction of Mount
+Graham.  A hard run set them to rights.  We turned.  More had
+poured out from the hills.  Bands were crossing everywhere,
+ahead and behind.  Brown Jug and I went to work.
+   
+Being an indivisible unit, we could chase only one bunch at a
+time; and, while we were after one, a half dozen others would be
+taking advantage of our preoccupation.  We could not hold our
+own.  Each run after an escaping bunch had to be on a longer
+diagonal.  Gradually we were forced back, and back, and back; but
+still we managed to hold the line unbroken.  Never shall I forget
+the dash and clatter of that morning.  Neither Brown Jug nor I
+thought for a moment of sparing horseflesh, nor of picking a
+route.  We made the shortest line, and paid little attention to
+anything that stood in the way.  A very fever of resistance
+possessed us.  It was like beating against a head wind, or
+fighting fire, or combating in any other of the great forces of
+nature.  We were quite alone.  The Cattleman and Homer had
+vanished.  To our left the men were fully occupied in marshalling
+the compact brown herds that had gradually massed--for these
+antagonists of mine were merely outlying remnants.
+   
+I suppose Brown Jug must have run nearly twenty miles with only
+one check.  Then we chased a cow some distance and into the dry
+bed of a stream, where she whirled on us savagely.  By luck her
+horn hit only the leather of my saddle skirts, so we left her;
+for when a cow has sense enough to "get on the peck," there is no
+driving her farther.  We gained nothing, and had to give ground,
+but we succeeded in holding a semblance of order, so that the
+cattle did not break and scatter far and wide.  The sun had by
+now well risen, and was beginning to shine hot.  Brown Jug still
+ran gamely and displayed as much interest as ever, but he was
+evidently tiring. We were both glad to see Homer's grey showing
+in the fringe of mesquite.
+   
+Together we soon succeeded in throwing the cows into the main
+herd.  And, strangely enough, as soon as they had joined a
+compact band of their fellows, their wildness left them and,
+convoyed by outsiders, they set themselves to plodding
+energetically toward the home ranch.
+   
+As my horse was somewhat winded, I joined the "drag" at the rear. 
+Here by course of natural sifting soon accumulated all the lazy,
+gentle, and sickly cows, and the small calves.  The difficulty
+now was to prevent them from lagging and dropping out.  To that
+end we indulged in a great variety of the picturesque cow-calls
+peculiar to the cowboy.  One found an old tin can which by the
+aid of a few pebbles he converted into a very effective rattle.
+   
+The dust rose in clouds and eddied in the sun.  We slouched
+easily in our saddles.  The cowboys compared notes as to the
+brands they had seen.  Our ponies shuffled along, resting, but
+always ready for a dash in chase of an occasional bull calf or
+yearling with independent ideas of its own.
+   
+Thus we passed over the country, down the long gentle slope to
+the "sink" of the valley, whence another long gentle slope ran to
+the base of the other ranges.  At greater or lesser distances we
+caught the dust, and made out dimly the masses of the other herds
+collected by our companions, and by the party under Jed Parker. 
+They went forward toward the common centre, with a slow
+ruminative movement, and the dust they raised went with them.
+   
+Little by little they grew plainer to us, and the home ranch,
+hitherto merely a brown shimmer in the distance, began to take on
+definition as the group of buildings, windmills,and corrals we
+knew.  Miniature horsemen could be seen galloping forward to the
+open white plain where the herd would be held.  Then the mesquite
+enveloped us; and we knew little more, save the anxiety lest we
+overlook laggards in the brush, until we came out on the edge of
+that same white plain.
+   
+Here were more cattle, thousands of them, and billows of dust,
+and a great bellowing, and slim, mounted figures riding and
+shouting ahead of the herd.  Soon they succeeded in turning the
+leaders back.  These threw into confusion those that followed. 
+In a few moments the cattle had stopped.  A cordon of horsemen
+sat at equal distances holding them in.
+   
+"Pretty good haul," said the man next to me; "a good five
+thousand head."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+CUTTING OUT
+
+It was somewhere near noon by the time we had bunched and held
+the herd of some four or five thousand head in the smooth, wide
+flat, free from bushes and dog holes.  Each sat at ease on his
+horse facing the cattle, watching lazily the clouds of dust and
+the shifting beasts, but ready at any instant to turn back the
+restless or independent individuals that might break for liberty.
+   
+Out of the haze came Homer, the round-up captain, on an easy
+lope.  As he passed successively the sentries he delivered to
+each a low command, but without slacking pace.  Some of those
+spoken to wheeled their horses and rode away.  The others settled
+themselves in their saddles and began to roll cigarettes.
+
+"Change horses; get something to eat," said he to me; so I swung
+after  the file traveling at a canter over the low swells beyond
+the plain.
+
+The remuda had been driven by its leaders to a corner of the
+pasture's wire fence, and there held.  As each man arrived he
+dismounted, threw off his saddle, and turned his animal loose. 
+Then he flipped a loop in his rope and disappeared in the eddying
+herd.  The discarded horse, with many grunts, indulged in a
+satisfying roll, shook himself vigorously, and walked slowly
+away.  His labour was over for the day, and he knew it, and took
+not the slightest trouble to get out of the way of the men with
+the swinging ropes.
+   
+Not so the fresh horses, however.  They had no intention of being
+caught, if they could help it, but dodged and twisted, hid and
+doubled behind the moving screen of their friends.  The latter,
+seeming as usual to know they were not wanted, made no effort to
+avoid the men, which probably accounted in great measure for the
+fact that the herd as a body remained compact, in spite of the
+cowboys threading it, and in spite of the lack of an enclosure.
+    
+Our horses caught, we saddled as hastily as possible; and then at
+the top speed of our fresh and eager ponies we swept down on the
+chuck wagon.  There we fell off our saddles and descended on the
+meat and bread like ravenous locusts on a cornfield.  The ponies
+stood where we left them, "tied to the ground", the
+cattle-country fashion.
+   
+As soon as a man had stoked up for the afternoon he rode away. 
+Some finished before others, so across the plain formed an
+endless procession of men returning to the herd, and of those
+whom they replaced coming for their turn at the grub.
+   
+We found the herd quiet.  Some were even lying down, chewing
+their cuds as peacefully as any barnyard cows. Most, however,
+stood ruminative, or walked slowly to and fro in the confines
+allotted by the horsemen, so that the herd looked from a distance
+like a brown carpet whose pattern was constantly changing--a
+dusty brown carpet in the process of being beaten.  I relieved
+one of the watchers, and settled myself for a wait.
+    
+At this close inspection the different sorts of cattle showed
+more distinctly their characteristics.  The cows and calves
+generally rested peacefully enough, the calf often lying down
+while the mother stood guard over it.  Steers, however, were more
+restless.  They walked ceaselessly, threading their way in and
+out among the standing cattle, pausing in brutish amazement at
+the edge of the herd, and turning back immediately to endless
+journeyings.  The bulls, excited by so much company forced on
+their accustomed solitary habit, roared defiance at each other
+until the air fairly trembled.  Occasionally two would clash
+foreheads.  Then the powerful animals would push and wrestle,
+trying for a chance to gore.  The decision of supremacy was a
+question of but a few minutes, and a bloody topknot the worst
+damage.  The defeated one side-stepped hastily and clumsily out
+of reach, and then walked away.
+     
+Most of the time all we had to do was to sit our horses and watch
+these things, to enjoy the warm bath of the Arizona sun, and to
+converse with our next neighbours.  Once in a while some
+enterprising cow, observing the opening between the men, would
+start to walk out.  Others would fall in behind her until the
+movement would become general.  Then one of us would swing his
+leg off the pommel and jog his pony over to head them off.  They
+would return peacefully enough.
+      
+But one black muley cow, with a calf as black and muley as
+herself, was more persistent.  Time after time, with infinite
+patience, she tried it again the moment my back was turned.  I
+tried driving her far into the herd.  No use; she always
+returned.  Quirtings and stones had no effect on her mild and
+steady persistence.
+    
+"She's a San Simon cow," drawled my neighbour.  "Everybody knows
+her.  She's at every round-up, just naturally raisin' hell."
+    
+When the last man had returned from chuck, Homer made the
+dispositions for the cut.  There were present probably thirty men
+from the home ranches round about, and twenty representing owners
+at a distance, here to pick up the strays inevitable to the
+season's drift.  The round-up captain appointed two men to hold
+the cow-and-calf cut, and two more to hold the steer cut. 
+Several of us rode into the herd, while the remainder retained
+their positions as sentinels to hold the main body of cattle in
+shape.
+     
+Little G and I rode slowly among the cattle looking everywhere. 
+The animals moved sluggishly aside to give us passage, and closed
+in as sluggishly behind us, so that we were always closely hemmed
+in wherever we went.  Over the shifting sleek backs, through the
+eddying clouds of dust, I could make out the figures of my
+companions moving slowly, apparently aimlessly, here and there.
+     
+Our task for the moment was to search out the unbranded J H
+calves.  Since in ranks so closely crowded it would be physically
+impossible actually to see an animal's branded flank, we depended
+entirely on the ear-marks.
+     
+Did you ever notice how any animal, tame or wild, always points
+his ears inquiringly in the direction of whatever interests or
+alarms him?  Those ears are for the moment his most prominent
+feature.  So when a brand is quite indistinguishable because, as
+now, of press of numbers, or, as in winter, from extreme length
+of hair, the cropped ears tell plainly the tale of ownership.  As
+every animal is so marked when branded, it follows that an uncut
+pair of ears means that its owner has never felt the iron.
+     
+So, now we had to look first of all for calves with  uncut ears. 
+After discovering one, we had to ascertain his ownership by
+examining the ear-marks of his mother, by whose side he was sure,
+in this alarming multitude, to be clinging faithfully.
+     
+Calves were numerous, and J H cows everywhere to be seen, so in
+somewhat less than ten seconds I had my eye on a mother and son. 
+Immediately I turned Little G in their direction.  At the slap of
+my quirt against the stirrup, all the cows immediately about me
+shrank suspiciously aside.  Little G stepped forward daintily,
+his nostrils expanding, his ears working back and forth, trying
+to the best of his ability to understand which animals I had
+selected.  The cow and her calf turned in toward the centre of
+the herd.  A touch of the reins guided the pony.  At once he
+comprehended.  From that time on he needed no further directions.
+
+Cautiously, patiently, with great skill, he forced the cow
+through the press toward the edge of the herd.  It had to be done
+very quietly, at a foot pace, so as to alarm neither the objects
+of pursuit nor those surrounding them.  When the cow turned back,
+Little G somehow happened always in her way.  Before she knew it
+she was at the outer edge of the herd.  There she found herself,
+with a group of three or four companions, facing the open plain. 
+Instinctively she sought shelter.  I felt Little G's muscles
+tighten beneath me.  The moment for action had come.  Before the
+cow had a chance to dodge among her companions the pony was upon
+her like a thunderbolt.  She broke in alarm, trying desperately
+to avoid the rush.  There ensued an exciting contest of dodgings,
+turnings,and doublings.  Wherever she turned Little G was before
+her.  Some of his evolutions were marvellous.  All I had to do
+was to sit my saddle, and apply just that final touch of judgment
+denied even the wisest of the lower animals.  Time and again the
+turn was so quick that the stirrup swept the ground.  At last the
+cow, convinced of the uselessness of further effort to return,
+broke away on a long lumbering run to the open plain.  She was
+stopped and held by the men detailed, and so formed the nucleus
+of the new cut-herd.  Immediately Little G, his ears working in
+conscious virtue, jog-trotted back into the herd, ready for
+another.
+
+After a dozen cows had been sent across to the  cut-herd, the
+work simplified.  Once a cow caught sight of this new band, she
+generally made directly for it, head and tail up.  After the
+first short struggle to force her from the herd, all I had to do
+was to start her in the proper direction and keep her at it until
+her decision was fixed.  If she was too soon left to her own
+devices, however, she was likely to return.  An old cowman knows
+to a second just the proper moment to abandon her.
+
+Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts a cow succeeded in
+circling us and plunging into the main herd.  The temptation was
+then strong to plunge in also, and to drive her out by main
+force; but the temptation had to be resisted.  A dash into the
+thick of it might break the whole band.  At once, of his own
+accord, Little G dropped to his fast, shuffling walk, and again
+we addressed ourselves to the task of pushing her gently to the
+edge.
+    
+This was all comparatively simple--almost any pony is fast enough
+for the calf cut--but now Homer gave orders for the steer cut to
+begin, and steers are rapid and resourceful and full of natural
+cussedness.  Little G and I were relieved by Windy Bill, and
+betook ourselves to the outside of the herd.
+    
+Here we had leisure to observe the effects that up to this moment
+we had ourselves been producing.  The herd, restless by reason of
+the horsemen threading it, shifted, gave ground, expanded, and
+contracted, so that its shape and size were always changing in
+the constant area guarded by the sentinel cowboys.  Dust arose
+from these movements, clouds of it, to eddy and swirl, thicken
+and dissipate in the currents of air.  Now it concealed all but
+the nearest dimly-outlined animals; again it parted in rifts
+through which mistily we discerned the riders moving in and out
+of the fog; again it lifted high and thin, so that we saw in
+clarity the whole herd and the outriders and the mesas far away. 
+As the afternoon waned, long shafts of sun slanted through this
+dust.  It played on men and beasts magically, expanding them to
+the dimensions of strange genii, appearing and effacing
+themselves in the billows of vapour from some enchanted bottle.
+     
+We on the outside found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched
+from us by the cooler hours.  The cattle, wearied of standing,
+and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more
+impatient.  We rode continually back and forth, turning the slow
+movement in on itself.  Occasionally some particularly
+enterprising cow would conclude that one or another of the
+cut-herds would suit her better than this mill of turmoil.  She
+would start confidently out, head and tail up, find herself
+chased back, get stubborn on the question, and lead her pursuer a
+long, hard run before she would return to her companions.  Once
+in a while one would even have to be roped and dragged back.  For
+know, before something happens to you, that you can chase a cow
+safely only until she gets hot and
+winded.  Then she stands her ground and gets emphatically "on the
+peck."
+
+I remember very well when I first discovered this. It was after I
+had had considerable cow work, too.  I thought of cows as I had
+always seen them--afraid of a horseman, easy to turn with the
+pony, and willing to be chased as far as necessary to the work. 
+Nobody told me anything different.  One day we were making a
+drive in an exceedingly broken country.  I was bringing in a
+small bunch I had discovered in a pocket of the hills, but was
+excessively annoyed by one old cow that insisted on breaking
+back.  In the wisdom of further experience, I now conclude that
+she probably had a calf in the brush.  Finally she got away
+entirely.  After starting the bunch well ahead, I went after her.
+    
+Well, the cow and I ran nearly side by side for as much as half a
+mile at top speed.  She declined to be headed.  Finally she fell
+down and was so entirely winded that she could not get up.
+   
+"Now, old girl, I've got you!" said I, and set myself to urging
+her to her feet.
+    
+The pony acted somewhat astonished, and suspicious of the job. 
+Therein he knew a lot more than I did.  But I insisted, and, like
+a good pony, he obeyed.  I yelled at the cow, and slapped my bat,
+and used my quirt.  When she had quite recovered her wind, she
+got slowly to her feet--and charged me in a most determined
+manner.
+    
+Now, a bull, or a steer, is not difficult to dodge.  He lowers
+his head, shuts his eyes, and comes in on one straight rush.  But
+a cow looks to see what she is doing; her eyes are open every
+minute, and it overjoys her to take a side hook at you even when
+you succeed in eluding her direct charge.
+    
+The pony I was riding did his best, but even then could not avoid
+a sharp prod that would have ripped him up had not my leather
+bastos intervened.  Then we retired to a distance in order to
+plan further; but we did not succeed in inducing that cow to
+revise her ideas, so at last we left her.  When, in some chagrin,
+I mentioned to the round-up captain the fact that I had skipped
+one animal, he merely laughed.
+    
+"Why, kid," said he, "you can't do nothin' with a cow that gets
+on the prod that away 'thout you ropes her; and what could you do
+with her out there if you DID rope her?"
+
+So I learned one thing more about cows.
+    
+After the steer cut had been finished, the men representing the
+neighbouring ranges looked through the herd for strays of their
+brands.  These were thrown into the stray-herd, which had been
+brought up from the bottom lands to receive the new accessions. 
+Work was pushed rapidly, as the afternoon was nearly gone.
+    
+In fact, so absorbed were we that until it was almost upon us we
+did not notice a heavy thunder-shower that arose in the region of
+the Dragoon Mountains, and swept rapidly across the zenith. 
+Before we knew it the rain had begun.  In ten seconds it had
+increased to a deluge, and in twenty we were all to leeward of
+the herd striving desperately to stop the drift of the cattle
+down wind.
+    
+We did everything in our power to stop them, but in vain.
+Slickers waved, quirts slapped against leather, six-shooters
+flashed, but still the cattle, heads lowered, advanced with slow
+and sullen persistence that would not be stemmed.  If we held our
+ground, they divided around us.  Step by step we were forced to
+give way--the thin line of nervously plunging horses sprayed
+before the dense mass of the cattle.
+
+"No, they won't stampede," shouted Charley to my question. 
+"There's cows and calves in them. If they was just steers or
+grown critters, they might."
+   
+The sensations of those few moments were very vivid--the blinding
+beat of the storm in my face, the unbroken front of horned heads
+bearing down on me, resistless as fate, the long slant of rain
+with the sun shining in the distance beyond it.
+   
+Abruptly the downpour ceased.  We shook our hats free of water,
+and drove the herd back to the cutting grounds again.
+   
+But now the surface of the ground was slippery, and the rapid
+manoeuvring of horses had become a matter precarious in the
+extreme.  Time and again the ponies fairly sat on their haunches
+and slid when negotiating a sudden stop, while quick turns meant
+the rapid scramblings that only a cow-horse could accomplish. 
+Nevertheless the work went forward unchecked.  The men of the
+other outfits cut their cattle into the stray-herd.  The latter
+was by now of considerable size, for this was the third week of
+the round-up.
+    
+Finally everyone expressed himself as satisfied.  The largely
+diminished main herd was now started forward by means of shrill
+cowboy cries and beating of quirts.  The cattle were only too
+eager to go.  From my position on a little rise above the
+stray-herd I could see the leaders breaking into a run, their
+heads thrown forward as they snuffed their freedom.  On the mesa
+side the sentinel riders quietly withdrew.  From the rear and
+flanks the horsemen closed in.  The cattle poured out in a steady
+stream through the opening thus left on the mesa side.  The
+fringe of cowboys followed, urging them on.  Abruptly the
+cavalcade turned and came loping back. The cattle continued ahead
+on a trot, gradually spreading abroad over the landscape, losing
+their integrity as a herd.  Some of the slower or hungrier
+dropped out and began to graze.  Certain of the more wary
+disappeared to right or left.
+   
+Now, after the day's work was practically over, we had our first
+accident.  The horse ridden by a young fellow from Dos Cabesas
+slipped, fell, and rolled quite over his rider.  At once the
+animal lunged to his feet, only to he immediately seized by the
+nearest rider.  But the Dos Cabesas man lay still, his arms and
+legs spread abroad, his head doubled sideways in a horribly
+suggestive manner.  We hopped off.  Two men straightened him out,
+while two more looked carefully over the indications on the
+ground.
+
+"All right," sang out one of them, "the horn didn't catch him."
+    
+He pointed to the indentation left by the pommel.  Indeed five
+minutes brought the man to his senses.  He complained of a very
+twisted back.  Homer set one of the men in after the bed-wagon,
+by means of which the sufferer was shortly transported to camp. 
+By the end of the week he was again in the saddle.  How men
+escape from this common accident with injuries so slight has
+always puzzled me.  The horse rolls completely over his rider,
+and yet it seems to be the rarest thing in the world for the
+latter to be either killed or permanently injured.
+     
+Now each man had the privilege of looking through the J H cuts to
+see if by chance steers of his own had been included in them. 
+When all had expressed themselves as satisfied, the various bands
+were started to the corrals.
+     
+From a slight eminence where I had paused to enjoy the evening I
+looked down on the scene.  The three herds, separated by generous
+distance one from the other, crawled leisurely along; the riders,
+their hats thrust back, lolled in their saddles, shouting
+conversation to each other, relaxing after the day's work;
+through the clouds strong shafts of light belittled the living
+creatures, threw into proportion the vastness of the desert.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+A CORNER IN HORSES
+
+It was dark night.  The stay-herd bellowed frantically from one
+of the big corrals; the cow-and-calf-herd from a second.  Already
+the remuda, driven in from the open plains, scattered about the
+thousand acres of pasture.  Away from the conveniences of fence
+and corral, men would have had to patrol all night.  Now,
+however, everyone was gathered about the camp fire.
+    
+Probably forty cowboys were in the group, representing all types,
+from old John, who had been in the business forty years, and had
+punched from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, to the Kid, who would
+have given his chance of salvation if he could have been taken
+for ten years older than he was.  At the moment Jed Parker was
+holding forth to his friend Johnny Stone in reference to another
+old crony who had that evening joined the round-up.
+   
+"Johnny," inquired Jed with elaborate gravity, and entirely
+ignoring the presence of the subject of conversation, "what is
+that thing just beyond the fire, and where did it come from?"
+    
+Johnny Stone squinted to make sure.
+
+"That?" he replied.  "Oh, this evenin' the dogs see something run
+down a hole, and they dug it out, and that's what they got."
+
+The newcomer grinned.
+
+"The trouble with you fellows," he proffered "is that you're so
+plumb alkalied you don't know the real thing when you see it."
+
+"That's right," supplemented Windy Bill drily. "HE come from New
+York."
+   
+"No!" cried Jed. "You don't say so?  Did he come in one box or in
+two?"
+    
+Under cover of the laugh, the newcomer made a raid on the dutch
+ovens and pails.  Having filled his plate, he squatted on his
+heels and fell to his belated meal.  He was a tall, slab-sided
+individual, with a lean, leathery face, a sweeping white
+moustache, and a grave and sardonic eye.  His leather chaps were
+plain and worn, and his hat had been fashioned by time and
+wear into much individuality.  I was not surprised to hear him
+nicknamed Sacatone Bill.
+
+"Just ask him how he got that game foot," suggested Johnny Stone
+to me in an undertone, so, of course, I did not.
+ 
+Later someone told me that the lameness resulted from his refusal
+of an urgent invitation to return across a river.  Mr. Sacatone
+Bill happened not to be riding his own horse at the time.
+ 
+The Cattleman dropped down beside me a moment later.
+   
+"I wish," said he in a low voice, "we could get that fellow
+talking.  He is a queer one.  Pretty well educated apparently. 
+Claims to be writing a book of memoirs.  Sometimes he will open
+up in good shape, and sometimes he will not.  It does no good to
+ask him direct, and he is as shy as an old crow when you try to
+lead him up to a subject.  We must just lie low and trust to
+Providence."
+    
+A man was playing on the mouth organ.  He played excellently
+well, with all sorts of variations and frills.  We smoked in
+silence.  The deep rumble of the cattle filled the air with its
+diapason.  Always the shrill coyotes raved out in the mesquite. 
+Sacatone Bill had finished his meal, and had gone to sit by Jed
+Parker, his old friend.  They talked together low-voiced.  The
+evening grew, and the eastern sky silvered over the mountains in
+anticipation of the moon.
+    
+Sacatone Bill suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
+   
+"Reminds me f the time I went to Colorado!"  he cried.
+   
+"He's off!" whispered the Cattleman.
+
+A dead silence fell on the circle.  Everybody shifted position
+the better to listen to the story of Sacatone Bill.
+
+
+About ten year ago I got plumb sick of punchin' cows around my
+part of the country.  She hadn't rained since Noah, and I'd
+forgot what water outside a pail or a trough looked like.  So I
+scouted around inside of me to see what part of the world I'd
+jump to, and as I seemed to know as little of Colorado and minin'
+as anything else, I made up the pint of bean soup I call my
+brains to go there.  So I catches me a buyer at Henson and turns
+over my pore little bunch of cattle and prepared to fly.  The
+last day I hauled up about twenty good buckets of water and threw
+her up against the cabin.  My buyer was settin' his hoss waitin'
+for me to get ready.  He didn't say nothin' until we'd got down
+about ten mile or so.
+
+"Mr. Hicks," says he, hesitatin' like, "I find it a good rule in
+this country not to overlook other folks' plays, but I'd take it
+mighty kind if you'd explain those actions of yours with the
+pails of water."
+
+"Mr. Jones," says I, "it's very simple.  I built that shack five
+year ago,and it's never rained since.  I just wanted to settle in
+my mind whether or not that damn roof leaked."
+     
+So I quit Arizona, and in about a week I see my reflection in the
+winders of a little place called Cyanide in the Colorado
+mountains.
+     
+Fellows, she was a bird.  They wasn't a pony in sight, nor a
+squar' foot of land that wasn't either street or straight up.  It
+made me plumb lonesome for a country where you could see a long
+ways even if you didn't see much.  And this early in the evenin'
+they wasn't hardly anybody in the streets at all.
+     
+I took a look at them dark, gloomy, old mountains, and a sniff at
+a breeze that would have frozen the whiskers of hope, and I made
+a dive for the nearest lit winder.  They was a sign over it that
+just said:
+
+                 THIS IS A SALOON
+
+I was glad they labelled her.  I'd never have known it. They had
+a fifteen-year old kid tendin' bar, no games goin', and not a
+soul in the place.
+   
+"Sorry to disturb your repose, bub," says I, "but see if you can
+sort out any rye among them collections of sassapariller of
+yours."
+    
+I took a drink, and then another to keep it company--I was
+beginnin' to sympathise with anythin' lonesome.  Then I kind of
+sauntered out to the back room where the hurdy-gurdy ought to be.
+
+Sure enough, there was a girl settin' on the pianner stool,
+another in a chair, and a nice shiny Jew drummer danglin' his
+feet from a table.  They looked up when they see me come in, and
+went right on talkin'.
+   
+"Hello, girls!" says I.
+    
+At that they stopped talkin' complete.
+   
+"How's tricks?" says I.
+   
+"Who's your woolly friend?" the shiny Jew asks of the girls.
+    
+I looked at him a minute, but I see he'd been raised a pet, and
+then, too, I was so hungry for sassiety I was willin' to pass a
+bet or two.
+   
+"Don't you ADMIRE these cow gents?" snickers one of the girls.
+   
+"Play somethin', sister," says I to the one at the pianner.
+    
+She just grinned at me.
+
+"Interdooce me," says the drummer in a kind of a way that made
+them all laugh a heap.
+   
+"Give us a tune," I begs, tryin' to be jolly, too.
+
+"She don't know any pieces," says the Jew.
+   
+"Don't you?" I asks pretty sharp.
+   
+"No," says she.
+   
+"Well, I do," says I.
+    
+I walked up to her, jerked out my guns, and reached around both
+sides of her to the pianner.  I run the muzzles up and down the
+keyboard two or three times, and then shot out half a dozen keys.
+   
+"That's the piece I know," says I.
+    
+But the other girl and the Jew drummer had punched the breeze.
+    
+The girl at the pianner just grinned, and pointed to the winder
+where they was some ragged glass hangin'.  She was dead game.
+
+"Say, Susie," says I, "you're all right, but your friends is
+tur'ble.  I may be rough, and I ain't never been curried below
+the knees, but I'm better to tie to than them sons of guns."
+
+"I believe it," says she. 
+
+So we had a drink at the bar, and started out to investigate the
+wonders of Cyanide.
+
+Say, that night was a wonder.  Susie faded after about three
+drinks, but I didn't seem to mind that.  I hooked up to another
+saloon kept by a thin Dutchman.  A fat Dutchman is stupid, but a
+thin one is all right.
+    
+In ten minutes I had more friends in Cyanide than they is
+fiddlers in hell.  I begun to conclude Cyanide wasn't so
+lonesome.  About four o'clock in comes a little Irishman about
+four foot high, with more upper lip than a muley cow,and enough
+red hair to make an artificial aurorer borealis.  He had big red
+hands with freckles pasted onto them, and stiff red hairs
+standin' up separate and lonesome like signal stations.  Also his
+legs was bowed.
+
+He gets a drink at the bar, and stands back and yells:
+   
+"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!"
+
+Now, this was none of my town, so I just stepped back of the end
+of the bar quick where I wouldn't stop no lead.  The shootin'
+didn't begin.
+   
+"Probably Dutchy didn't take no note of what the locoed little
+dogie DID say," thinks I to myself.
+    
+The Irishman bellied up to the bar again, and pounded on it with
+his fist.
+   
+"Look here!" he yells.  "Listen to what I'm tellin' ye!  God
+bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!  Do ye hear me?"
+   
+"Sure, I hear ye," says Dutchy, and goes on swabbin' his bar with
+a towel.
+    
+At that my soul just grew sick.  I asked the man next to me why
+Dutchy didn't kill the little fellow.
+   
+"Kill him! " says this man. "What for?"
+   
+"For insultin' of him, of course."
+   
+"Oh, he's drunk," says the man, as if that explained anythin'.
+
+That settled it with me.  I left that place, and went home,and it
+wasn't more than four o'clock, neither.  No, I don't call four
+o'clock late.  It may be a little late for night before last, but
+it's just the shank of the evenin' for to-night.
+    
+Well, it took me six weeks and two days to go broke.  I didn't
+know sic em, about minin'; and before long I KNEW that I didn't
+'know sic 'em.  Most all day I poked around them mountains---not
+like our'n--too much timber to be comfortable.  At night I got to
+droppin' in at Dutchy's.  He had a couple of quiet games goin',
+and they was one fellow among that lot of grubbin' prairie dogs
+that had heerd tell that cows had horns.  He was the wisest of
+the bunch on the cattle business.  So I stowed away my
+consolation, and made out to forget comparing Colorado with God's
+country.
+
+About three times a week this Irishman I told you of--name
+O'Toole--comes bulgin' in.  When he was sober he talked minin'
+high, wide, and handsome.  When he was drunk he pounded both
+fists on the bar and yelled for action, tryin' to get Dutchy on
+the peck.
+   
+"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!" he yells about
+six times. "Say, do you hear?"
+   
+"Sure," says Dutchy, calm as a milk cow, "sure, I hears ye!"
+    
+I was plumb sorry for O'Toole.  I'd like to have given him a run;
+but, of course, I couldn't take it up without makin' myself out a
+friend of this Dutchy party, and I couldn't stand for that.  But
+I did tackle Dutchy about it one night when they wasn't nobody
+else there.
+
+"Dutchy," says I, "what makes you let that bow-legged cross
+between a bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so?  It
+looks to me like you're plumb spiritless."
+   
+Dutchy stopped wiping glasses for a minute.
+  
+"Just you hold on" says he.  "I ain't ready yet. Bimeby I make
+him sick; also those others who laugh with him."
+
+He had a little grey flicker in his eye, and I thinks to myself
+that maybe they'd get Dutchy on the peck yet.
+   
+As I said, I went broke in just six weeks and two days.  And I
+was broke a plenty.  No hold-outs anywhere.  It was a heap long
+ways to cows; and I'd be teetotally chawed up and spit out if I
+was goin' to join these minin' terrapins defacin' the bosom of
+nature.  It sure looked to me like hard work.
+   
+While I was figurin' what next, Dutchy came in.  Which I was
+tur'ble surprised at that, but I said good-mornin' and would he
+rest his poor feet.
+  
+"You like to make some money?" he asks.
+
+"That depends," says I, "on how easy it is."
+     
+"It is easy," says he. "I want you to buy hosses for me."
+  
+"Hosses!  Sure!" I yells, jumpin' up. "You bet you!  Why, hosses
+is where I live!  What hosses do you want?"
+     
+"All hosses," says he, calm as a faro dealer.
+     
+"What?" says I.  "Elucidate, my bucko.  I don't take no such
+blanket order.  Spread your cards."
+  
+"I mean just that," says he. "I want you to buy all the hosses in
+this camp, and in the mountains.  Every one."
+  
+"Whew!" I whistles. "That's a large order. But I'm your meat."
+   
+"Come with me, then," says he.  I hadn't but just got up, but I
+went with him to his little old poison factory.  Of course, I
+hadn't had no breakfast; but he staked me to a Kentucky
+breakfast.  What's a Kentucky breakfast?  Why, a Kentucky
+breakfast is a three-pound steak, a bottle of whisky, and a
+setter dog.  What's the dog for?  Why, to eat the steak, of 
+course.
+
+We come to an agreement.  I was to get two-fifty a head
+commission.  So I started out.  There wasn't many hosses in that
+country, and what there was the owners hadn't much use for unless
+it was to work a whim.  I picked up about a hundred head quick
+enough, and reported to Dutchy.
+
+"How about burros and mules?" I asks Dutchy.
+
+"They goes," says he. "Mules same as hosses; burros four bits a
+head to you."
+
+At the end of a week I had a remuda of probably two hundred
+animals.  We kept them over the hills in some "parks," as these
+sots call meadows in that country.  I rode into town and told
+Dutchy.
+  
+"Got them all?" he asks.
+  
+"All but a cross-eyed buckskin that's mean, and the bay mare that
+Noah bred to."
+
+"Get them," says he.
+  
+"The bandits want too much," I explains.
+  
+"Get them anyway," says he.
+   
+I went away and got them.  It was scand'lous; such prices.
+   
+When I hit Cyanide again I ran into scenes of wild excitement. 
+The whole passel of them was on that one street of their'n,
+talkin' sixteen ounces to the pound.  In the middle was Dutchy,
+drunk as a soldier-just plain foolish drunk.
+
+"Good Lord!" thinks I to myself, "he ain't celebratin' gettin'
+that bunch of buzzards, is he?"
+
+But I found he wasn't that bad.  When he caught sight of me, he
+fell on me drivellin'.
+    
+"Look there!" he weeps, showin' me a letter.
+     
+I was the last to come in; so I kept that letter--here she is. 
+I'll read her.
+
+Dear Dutchy:--I suppose you thought I'd flew the coop, but I
+haven't and this is to prove it.  Pack up your outfit and hit the
+trail.  I've made the biggest free gold strike you ever see.  I'm 
+sending you specimens. There's tons just like it, tons and tons.
+I got all the claims I can hold myself; but there's heaps more.
+I've writ to Johnny and Ed at Denver to come on.  Don't give this
+away.  Make tracks.  Come in to Buck Canon in the Whetstones and
+oblige.
+                           Yours truly,
+                                          Henry Smith            
+
+                             
+
+Somebody showed me a handful of white rock with yeller streaks in
+it.  His eyes was bulgin' until you could have hung your hat on
+them.  That O'Toole party was walkin' around, wettin' his lips
+with his tongue and swearin' soft.
+    
+"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!" says he.  "And
+the fool had to get drunk and give it away!"
+
+The excitement was just started, but it didn't last long.  The
+crowd got the same notion at the same time, and it just melted. 
+Me and Dutchy was left alone.
+   
+I went home.  Pretty soon a fellow named Jimmy Tack come around a
+little out of breath.
+
+"Say, you know that buckskin you bought off'n me?" says he, "I
+want to buy him back."
+
+"Oh, you do," says I.
+
+"Yes," says he.  "I've got to leave town for a couple of days,
+and I got to have somethin' to pack."
+
+"Wait and I'll see," says I.
+
+Outside the door I met another fellow.
+
+"Look here," he stops me with.  "How about that bay mare I sold
+you?  Can you call that sale off?  I got to leave town for a day
+or two and--"
+  
+"Wait," says I.  "I'll see."
+   
+By the gate was another hurryin' up.
+  
+"Oh, yes," says I when he opens his mouth.  "I know all your
+troubles.  You have to leave town for a couple of days, and you
+want back that lizard you sold me.  Well, wait."
+
+After that I had to quit the main street and dodge back of the
+hog ranch.  They was all headed my way.  I was as popular as a
+snake in a prohibition town.
+   
+I hit Dutchy's by the back door.
+
+"Do you want to sell hosses?" I asks. "Everyone in town wants to
+buy."
+   
+Dutchy looked hurt.
+  
+"I wanted to keep them for the valley market," says he, "but--How
+much did you give Jimmy Tack for his buckskin?"
+  
+"Twenty," says I.
+  
+"Well, let him have it for eighty," says Dutchy; "and the others
+in proportion."
+   
+I lay back and breathed hard.
+  
+"Sell them all, but the one best hoss," says he--"no, the TWO
+best."
+  
+"Holy smoke!" says I, gettin' my breath. "If you mean that,
+Dutchy, you lend me another gun and give me a drink."
+   
+He done so, and I went back home to where the whole camp of
+Cyanide was waitin'.
+   
+I got up and made them a speech and told them I'd sell them
+hosses all right, and to come back.  Then I got an Injin boy to
+help, and we rustled over the remuda and held them in a blind
+canon.  Then I called up these miners one at a time, and made
+bargains with them.  Roar!  Well, you could hear them at Denver,
+they tell me, and the weather reports said, "Thunder in the
+mountains."  But it was cash on delivery, and they all paid up. 
+They had seen that white quartz with the gold stickin' into it,
+and that's the same as a dose of loco to miner gents.
+    
+Why didn't I take a hoss and start first?  I did think of it--for
+about one second.  I wouldn't stay in that country then for a
+million dollars a minute.  I was plumb sick and loathin' it, and
+just waitin' to make high jumps back to Arizona.  So I wasn't
+aimin' to join this stampede, and didn't have no vivid emotions.
+    
+They got to fightin' on which should get the first hoss; so I
+bent my gun on them and made them draw lots.  They roared some
+more, but done so; and as fast as each one handed over his dust
+or dinero he made a rush for his cabin, piled on his saddle and
+pack, and pulled his freight on a cloud of dust.  It was sure a
+grand stampede, and I enjoyed it no limit.
+
+So by sundown I was alone with the Injin.  Those two hundred head
+brought in about twenty thousand dollars.  It was heavy, but I
+could carry it.  I was about alone in the landscape; and there
+were the two best hosses I had saved out for Dutchy.  I was sure
+some tempted.  But I had enough to get home on anyway; and I
+never yet drank behind the bar, even if I might hold up the
+saloon from the floor.  So I grieved some inside that I was so
+tur'ble conscientious, shouldered the sacks, and went down to
+find Dutchy.
+  
+I met him headed his way, and carryin' of a sheet of paper.
+  
+"Here's your dinero," says I, dumpin' the four big sacks on the
+ground.
+   
+He stooped over and hefted them.  Then he passed one over to me.
+  
+"What's that for?" I asks.
+  
+"For you," says he.
+  
+"My commission ain't that much," I objects.
+
+"You've earned it," says he, "and you might have skipped with the
+whole wad."
+  
+"How did you know I wouldn't?" I asks.
+
+"Well," says he, and I noted that jag of his had flew. "You see,
+I was behind that rock up there, and I had you covered."
+
+I saw; and I began to feel better about bein' so tur'ble
+conscientious.
+
+We walked a little ways without sayin' nothin'.
+   
+"But ain't you goin' to join the game?" I asks.
+
+"Guess not," says he, jinglin' of his gold. "I'm satisfied."
+   
+"But if you don't get a wiggle on you, you are sure goin' to get
+left on those gold claims," says I.
+   
+"There ain't no gold claims," says he.
+   
+"But Henry Smith--" I cries.
+   
+"There ain't no Henry Smith," says he.
+    
+I let that soak in about six inches.
+   
+"But there's a Buck Canon," I pleads. "Please say there's a Buck
+Canon."
+   
+"Oh, yes, there's a Buck Canon," he allows.  "Nice limestone
+formation--make good hard water."
+
+"Well, you're a marvel," says I.
+
+We walked n together down to Dutchy's saloon.
+
+We stopped outside.
+
+"Now," says he, "I'm goin' to take one of those hosses and go
+somewheres else.  Maybe you'd better do likewise on the other."
+
+"You bet I will," says I.
+
+He turned around and taked up the paper he was carryin'.  It was
+a sign.  It read:
+
+            THE DUTCH HAS RUSTLED
+
+"Nice sentiment," says I.  "It will be appreciated when the crowd
+comes back from that little pasear into Buck Canon.  But why
+not tack her up where the trail hits the camp?  Why on this
+particular door?"
+   
+"Well," said Dutchy, squintin' at the sign sideways, "you see I
+sold this place day before yesterday--to Mike O'Toole."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+THE CORRAL BRANDING
+
+All that night we slept like sticks of wood.  No dreams visited
+us, but in accordance with the immemorial habit of those who live
+out--whether in the woods, on the plains, among the mountains, or
+at sea--once during the night each of us rose on his elbow,
+looked about him, and dropped back to sleep.  If there had been a
+fire to replenish, that would have been the moment to do so; if
+the wind had been changing and the seas rising, that would have
+been the time to cast an eye aloft for indications, to feel
+whether the anchor cable was holding; if the pack-horses had
+straggled from the alpine meadows under the snows, this would
+have been the occasion for intent listening for the faintly
+tinkling hell so that next day one would know in which direction
+to look.  But since there existed for us no responsibility, we
+each reported dutifully at the roll-call of habit, and dropped
+back into our blankets with a grateful sigh.
+
+I remember the moon sailing a good gait among apparently
+stationary cloudlets; I recall a deep, black shadow lying before
+distant silvery mountains; I glanced over the stark, motionless
+canvases, each of which concealed a man; the air trembled with
+the bellowing of cattle in the corrals. 
+
+Seemingly but a moment later the cook's howl brought me to
+consciousness again.  A clear, licking little fire danced in the
+blackness.  Before it moved silhouettes of men already eating.  
+
+I piled out and joined the group.  Homer was busy distributing
+his men for the day.  Three were to care for the remuda; five
+were to move the stray-herd from the corrals to good feed; three
+branding crews were told to brand the calves we had collected in
+the cut of the afternoon before.  That took up about half the
+men.  The rest were to make a short drive in the salt grass.  I
+joined the Cattleman, and together we made our way afoot to the
+branding pen.
+    
+We were the only ones who did go afoot, however, although the
+corrals were not more than two hundred yards' distant.  When we
+arrived we found the string of ponies standing around outside. 
+Between the upright bars of greasewood we could see the cattle,
+and near the opposite side the men building a fire next the
+fence.  We pushed open the wide gate and entered.  The three
+ropers sat their horses, idly swinging the loops of their ropes
+back and forth.  Three others brought wood and arranged it
+craftily in such manner as to get best draught for heatin,--a
+good branding fire is most decidedly a work of art.  One stood
+waiting for them to finish, a sheaf of long JH stamping irons in
+his hand.  All the rest squatted on their heels along the fence,
+smoking cigarettes ad chatting together.  The first rays of the
+sun slanted across in one great sweep from the remote mountains.
+    
+In ten minutes Charley pronounced the irons ready.  Homer,
+Wooden, and old California John rode in among the cattle.  The
+rest of the men arose and stretched their legs and advanced.  The
+Cattleman and I climbed to the top bar of the gate, where we
+roosted, he with his tally-book on his knee.
+
+Each rider swung his rope above his head with one hand, keeping
+the broad loop open by a skilful turn of the wrist at the end of
+each revolution.  In a moment Homer leaned forward and threw.  As
+the loop settled, he jerked sharply upward, exactly as one would
+strike to hook a big fish.  This tightened the loop and prevented
+it from slipping off.  Immediately, and without waiting to
+ascertain the result of the manoeuvre, the horse turned and began
+methodically, without undue haste, to walk toward the branding
+fire.  Homer wrapped the rope twice or thrice about the horn, and
+sat over in one stirrup to avoid the tightened line and to
+preserve the balance.  Nobody paid any attention to the calf.
+The critter had been caught by the two hind legs.  As the rope
+tightened, he was suddenly upset, and before he could realise
+that something disagreeable was happening, he was sliding
+majestically along on his belly.  Behind him followed his anxious
+mother, her head swinging from side to side.
+
+Near the fire the horse stopped.  The two "bull-doggers"
+immediately pounced upon the victim.  It was promptly flopped
+over on its right side.  One knelt on its head and twisted back
+its foreleg in a sort of hammer-lock; the other seized one hind
+foot, pressed his boot heel against the other hind leg close to
+the body, and sat down behind the animal.  Thus  the calf was
+unable to struggle.  When once you have had the wind knocked out
+of you, or a rib or two broken, you cease to think this
+unnecessarily rough.  Then one or the other threw off the rope. 
+Homer rode away, coiling the rope as he went.
+     
+"Hot iron!" yelled one of the bull-doggers.
+     
+"Marker!" yelled the other.
+   
+Immediately two men ran forward.  The brander pressed the iron
+smoothly against the flank.  A smoke and the smell of scorching
+hair arose.  Perhaps the calf blatted a little as the heat
+scorched.  In a brief moment it was over.  The brand showed
+cherry, which is the proper colour to indicate due peeling and a
+successful mark.
+   
+In the meantime the marker was engaged in his work.  First, with
+a sharp knife he cut off slanting the upper quarter of one ear. 
+Then he nicked out a swallow-tail in the other.  The pieces he
+thrust into his pocket in order that at the completion of the
+work he could thus check the Cattleman's tally-board as to the
+number of calves branded.[3]  The bull-dogger let go.  The calf
+sprang up, was appropriated and smelled over by his worried
+mother, and the two departed into the herd to talk it over.
+
+[3] For the benefit of the squeamish it might be well to note
+that the fragments of the ears were cartilaginous, and therefore
+not bloody.
+
+
+It seems to me that a great deal of unnecessary twaddle is
+abroad as to the extreme cruelty of branding.  Undoubtedly it is
+to some extent painful, and could some other method of ready
+identification be devised, it might be as well to adopt it in
+preference.  But in the circumstance of a free range, thousands
+of cattle, and hundreds of owners, any other method is out of the
+question.  I remember a New England movement looking toward small
+brass tags to be hung from the ear.  Inextinguishable laughter
+followed the spread of this doctrine through Arizona.  Imagine a
+puncher descending to examine politely the ear-tags of wild
+cattle on the open range or in a round-up.
+   
+But, as I have intimated, even the inevitable branding and
+ear-marking are not so painful as one might suppose.  The
+scorching hardly penetrates below the outer tough skin--only
+enough to kill the roots of the hair--besides which it must be
+remembered that cattle are not so sensitive as the higher nervous
+organisms.  A calf usually bellows when the iron bites, but as
+soon as released he almost invariably goes to feeding or to
+looking idly about.  Indeed, I have never seen one even take the
+trouble to lick his wounds, which is certainly not true in the
+case of the injuries they inflict on each other in fighting. 
+Besides which, it happens but once in a lifetime, and is over in
+ten seconds; a comfort denied to those of us who have our teeth
+filled.
+    
+In the meantime two other calves had been roped by the two other
+men.  One of the little animals was but a few months old, so the
+rider did not bother with its hind legs, but tossed his loop over
+its neck.  Naturally, when things tightened up, Mr. Calf entered
+his objections, which took the form of most vigorous bawlings,
+and the most comical bucking, pitching, cavorting, and bounding
+in the air.  Mr. Frost's bull-calf alone in pictorial history
+shows the attitudes.  And then, of course, there was the gorgeous
+contrast between all this frantic and uncomprehending excitement
+and the absolute matter-of-fact imperturbability of horse and
+rider.  Once at the fire, one of the men seized the tightened
+rope in one hand, reached well over the animal's back to get a
+slack of the loose hide next the belly, lifted strongly, and
+tripped.  This is called "bull-dogging."  As he knew his
+business, and as the calf was a small one, the little beast went
+over promptly, bit the ground with a whack, and was pounced upon
+and held.
+   
+Such good luck did not always follow, however.  An occasional and
+exceedingly husky bull yearling declined to be upset in any such
+manner.  He would catch himself on one foot, scramble vigorously,
+and end by struggling back to the upright.  Then ten to one he
+made a dash to get away.  In such case he was generally snubbed
+up short enough at the end of the rope; but once or twice he
+succeeded in running around a group absorbed in branding.  You
+can imagine what happened next.  The rope, attached at one end to
+a conscientious and immovable horse and at the other to a
+reckless and vigorous little bull, swept its taut and destroying
+way about mid-knee high across that group.  The brander and
+marker, who were standing, promptly sat down hard; the
+bull-doggers, who were sitting, immediately turned several most
+capable somersaults; the other calf arose and inextricably
+entangled his rope with that of his accomplice.  Hot irons, hot
+language, and dust filled the air.
+
+Another method, and one requiring slightly more knack, is to
+grasp the animal's tail and throw it by a quick jerk across the
+pressure of the rope.  This is productive of some fun if it
+fails.
+   
+By now the branding was in full swing.  The three horses came and
+went phlegmatically.  When the nooses fell, they turned and
+walked toward the fire as a matter of course.  Rarely did the
+cast fail.  Men ran to and fro busy and intent.  Sometimes three
+or four calves were on the ground at once.  Cries arose in a
+confusion:  "Marker"  "Hot iron!"  "Tally one!"  Dust eddied and
+dissipated.  Behind all were clear sunlight and the organ roll of
+the cattle bellowing.
+   
+Toward the middle of the morning the bull-doggers began to get a
+little tired.
+   
+"No more necked calves," they announced.  "Catch 'em by the hind
+legs, or bull-dog 'em yourself."
+   
+And that went.  Once in a while the rider, lazy, or careless, or
+bothered by the press of numbers, dragged up a victim caught by
+the neck.  The bull-doggers flatly refused to have anything to do
+with it.  An obvious way out would have been to flip off the loop
+and try again; but of course that would have amounted to a
+confession of wrong.
+    
+"You fellows drive me plumb weary," remarked the rider, slowly
+dismounting.  "A little bit of a calf like that!  What you all
+need is a nigger to cut up your food for you!"
+    
+Then he would spit on his hands and go at it alone.  If luck
+attended his first effort, his sarcasm was profound.
+    
+"There's yore little calf," said he.  "Would you like to have me
+tote it to you, or do you reckon you could toddle this far with
+yore little old iron?"
+   
+But if the calf gave much trouble, then all work ceased while the
+unfortunate puncher wrestled it down.
+   
+Toward noon the work slacked.  Unbranded calves were scarce. 
+Sometimes the men rode here and there for a minute or so before
+their eyes fell on a pair of uncropped ears.  Finally Homer rode
+over to the Cattleman and reported the branding finished.  The
+latter counted the marks in his tally-book.
+  
+"One hundred and seventy-six," he announced.
+  
+The markers, squatted on their heels, told over the bits of ears
+they had saved.  The total amounted to but an hundred and
+seventy-five.  Everybody went to searching for the missing bit. 
+It was not forth-coming.  Finally Wooden discovered it in his hip
+pocket.
+   
+"Felt her thar all the time," said he, "but thought it must
+shorely be a chaw of tobacco."
+
+This matter satisfactorily adjusted, the men all ran for their
+ponies.  They had been doing a wrestler's heavy work all the
+morning, but did not seem to be tired.  I saw once in some crank
+physical culture periodical that a cowboy's life was physically
+ill-balanced, like an oarsman's, in that it exercised only
+certain muscles of the body.  The writer should be turned loose
+in a branding corral.
+   
+Through the wide gates the cattle were urged out to the open
+plain.  There they were held for over an hour while the cows
+wandered about looking for their lost progeny.  A cow knows her
+calf by scent and sound, not by sight.  Therefore the noise was
+deafening, and the motion incessant.
+   
+Finally the last and most foolish cow found the last and most
+foolish calf.  We turned the herd loose to hunt water and grass
+at its own pleasure, and went slowly back to chuck.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+THE OLD TIMER
+
+About a week later, in the course of the round-up, we reached the
+valley of the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the
+dilapidated and abandoned adobe structure that had once been a
+ranch house of some importance.
+  
+Just at dusk one afternoon we finished cutting the herd which our
+morning's drive had collected. The stray-herd, with its new
+additions from the day's work, we pushed rapidly into one big
+stock corral.  The cows and unbranded calves we urged into
+another.  Fifty head of beef steers found asylum from dust, heat,
+and racing to and fro, in the mile square wire enclosure called
+the pasture.  All the remainder, for which we had no further use
+we drove out of the flat into the brush and toward the distant
+mountains.  Then we let them go as best pleased them.
+   
+By now the desert bad turned slate-coloured, and the brush was
+olive green with evening.  The hard, uncompromising ranges,
+twenty miles to eastward, had softened behind a wonderful veil of
+purple and pink, vivid as the chiffon of a girl's gown.  To the
+south and southwest the Chiricahuas and Dragoons were lost in
+thunderclouds which flashed and rumbled.
+   
+We jogged homewards, our cutting ponies, tired with the quick,
+sharp work, shuffling knee deep in a dusk that seemed to
+disengage itself and rise upwards from the surface of the desert. 
+Everybody was hungry and tired.  At the chuck wagon we threw  off
+our saddles and turned the mounts into the remuda.  Some of the
+wisest of us, remembering the thunderclouds, stacked our gear
+under the veranda roof of the old ranch house.
+   
+Supper was ready.  We seized the tin battery, filled the plates
+with the meat, bread, and canned corn, and squatted on our heels. 
+The food was good, and we ate hugely in silence.  When we could
+hold no more we lit pipes.  Then we had leisure to notice that
+the storm cloud was mounting in a portentous silence to the
+zenith, quenching the brilliant desert stars.
+   
+"Rolls" were scattered everywhere.  A roll includes a cowboy's
+bed and all of his personal belongings.  When the outfit includes
+a bed-wagon, the roll assumes bulky proportions.
+   
+As soon as we had come to a definite conclusion that it was going
+to rain, we deserted the camp fire and went rustling for our
+blankets.  At the end of ten minutes every bed was safe within
+the doors of the abandoned adobe ranch house, each owner
+recumbent on the floor claim he had pre-empted, and every man
+hoping fervently that he had guessed right as to the location of
+leaks.
+   
+Ordinarily we had depended on the light of camp fires, so now
+artificial illumination lacked.  Each man was indicated by the
+alternately glowing and waning lozenge of his cigarette fire. 
+Occasionally someone struck a match, revealing for a moment
+high-lights on bronzed countenances, and the silhouette of a
+shading hand.  Voices spoke disembodied.  As the conversation
+developed, we gradually recognised the membership of our own
+roomful.  I had forgotten to state that the ranch house included
+four chambers.  Outside, the rain roared with Arizona ferocity. 
+Inside, men congratulated themselves, or swore as leaks developed
+and localised.   
+
+Naturally we talked first of stampedes.  Cows and bears are the
+two great cattle-country topics.  Then we had a mouth-organ solo
+or two, which naturally led on to songs.  My turn came.  I struck
+up the first verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the
+interest of novelty:
+
+   Oh, once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we,
+     Blow high, blow low, what care we;
+   And we were a-sailing to see what we could see,
+     Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
+
+I had just gone so far when I was brought up short by a
+tremendous oath behind me.  At the same instant a match flared. 
+I turned to face a stranger holding the little light above his
+head, and peering with fiery intentness over the group sprawled
+about the floor.
+   
+He was evidently just in from the storm.  His dripping hat lay at
+his feet.  A shock of straight, close-clipped vigorous hair stood
+up grey above his seamed forehead.  Bushy iron-grey eyebrows
+drawn close together thatched a pair of burning, unquenchable
+eyes.  A square, deep jaw, lightly stubbled with grey, was
+clamped so tight that the cheek muscles above it stood out in
+knots and welts.
+  
+Then the match burned his thick, square fingers, and he dropped
+it into the darkness that ascended to swallow it.
+  
+"Who was singing that song?" he cried harshly.  Nobody answered.
+ 
+"Who was that singing?" he demanded again.
+
+By this time I had recovered from my first astonishment.
+   
+"I was singing," said I.
+   
+Another match was instantly lit and thrust into my very face.  I
+underwent the fierce scrutiny of an instant, then the taper was
+thrown away half consumed.
+  
+"Where did you learn it?" the stranger asked in an altered voice.
+   
+"I don't remember," I replied; "it is a common enough deep-sea
+chantey."
+   
+A heavy pause fell.  Finally the stranger sighed.
+   
+"Quite like," he said; "I never heard but one man sing it."
+   
+"Who in hell are you?" someone demanded out of the darkness.
+   
+Before replying, the newcomer lit a third match, searching for a
+place to sit down.  As he bent forward, his strong, harsh face
+once more came clearly into view.
+
+"He's Colorado Rogers," the Cattleman answered for him; "I know
+him."
+   
+"Well," insisted the first voice, "what in hell does Colorado
+Rogers mean by bustin' in on our song fiesta that way?"
+    
+"Tell them, Rogers," advised the Cattleman, "tell them--just as
+you told it down on the Gila ten years ago next month."
+    
+"What?" inquired Rogers.  "Who are you?"
+    
+"You don't know me," replied the Cattleman, "but I was with Buck
+Johnson's outfit then.  Give us the yarn."
+    
+"Well," agreed Rogers, "pass over the 'makings' and I will."
+    
+He rolled and lit a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of
+his rich, great voice.  It was of the sort made to declaim
+against the sea or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of
+waters and the thunder--full, from the chest, with the caressing
+throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary
+statements.  After ten words we sank back oblivious of the storm,
+forgetful of the leaky roof and the dirty floor, lost in the
+story told us by the Old Timer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+THE TEXAS RANGERS
+
+I came from Texas, like the bulk of you punchers, but a good
+while before the most of you were born.  That was forty-odd years
+ago--and I've been on the Colorado River ever since.  That's why
+they call me Colorado Rogers.  About a dozen of us came out 
+together.  We had all been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke
+out we were out of a job.  We none of us cared much for the
+Johnny Rebs, and still less for the Yanks, so we struck overland
+for the West, with the idea of hitting the California diggings.
+   
+Well, we got switched off one way and another.  When we got down
+to about where Douglas is now, we found that the Mexican
+Government was offering a bounty for Apache scalps.  That looked
+pretty good to us, for Injin chasing was our job, so we started
+in to collect.  Did pretty well, too, for about three months, and
+then the Injins began to get too scarce, or too plenty in
+streaks.  Looked like our job was over with, but some of the boys
+discovered that Mexicans, having straight black hair, you
+couldn't tell one of their scalps from an Apache's.  After that
+the bounty business picked up for a while.  It was too much for
+me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I
+struck the Colorado about where Yuma is now.
+   
+At that time the California immigrants by the southern route used
+to cross just there, and these Yuma Injins had a monopoly on the
+ferry business.  They were a peaceful, fine-looking lot, without
+a thing on but a gee-string.  The women had belts with rawhide
+strings hanging to the knees.  They put them on one over the
+other until they didn't feel too decollotey.  It wasn't until the
+soldiers came that the officers' wives got them to wear
+handkerchiefs over their breasts.  The system was all right,
+though.  They wallowed around in the hot, clean sand, like
+chickens, and kept healthy.  Since they took to wearing clothes
+they've been petering out, and dying of dirt and assorted
+diseases.
+   
+They ran this ferry monopoly by means of boats made of tules,
+charged a scand'lous low price, and everything was happy and
+lovely.  I ran on a little bar and panned out some dust, so I
+camped a while, washing gold, getting friendly with the Yumas,
+and talking horse and other things with the immigrants.
+    
+About a month of this, and the Texas boys drifted in. Seems they
+sort of overdid the scalp matter, and got found out.  When they
+saw me, they stopped and went into camp.  They'd travelled a heap
+of desert, and were getting sick of it.  For a while they tried
+gold washing, but I had the only pocket--and that was about
+skinned.  One evening a fellow named Walleye announced that he
+had been doing some figuring, and wanted to make a speech.  We
+told him to fire ahead.
+    
+"Now look here," said he, "what's the use of going to California? 
+Why not stay here?"
+  
+"What in hell would we do here?" someone asked.  "Collect Gila
+monsters for their good looks?"
+    
+"Don't get gay," said Walleye.  "What's the matter with going
+into business?  Here's a heap of people going through, and more
+coming every day.  This ferry business could be made to pay big. 
+Them Injins charges two bits a head.  That's a crime for the only
+way across.  And how much do you suppose whisky'd be worth to
+drink after that desert?  And a man's so sick of himself by the
+time he gets this far that he'd play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro
+or monte."
+  
+That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded
+right then and there.  They hadn't any whisky yet, but cards were
+plenty, and the ferry monopoly was too easy.  Walleye served
+notice on the Injins that a dollar a head went; and we all set to
+building a tule raft like the others.  Then the wild bunch got
+uneasy, so they walked upstream one morning and stole the Injins'
+boats.  The Injins came after them innocent as babies, thinking
+the raft had gone adrift.  When they got into camp our men opened
+up and killed four of them as a kind of hint.  After that the
+ferry company didn't have any trouble.  The Yumas moved up river
+a ways, where they've lived ever since.  They got the corpses and
+buried them.  That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid
+poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles.  Then they put
+the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off
+and threw it on.  After that they set fire to the outfit, and,
+when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into
+the trench of its own accord.  It was the neatest, automatic,
+self-cocking, double-action sort of a funeral I ever saw.  There
+wasn't any ceremony--only crying.  
+
+The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard
+to collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a
+tur'ble long ways back.  We got us timbers and made a scow; built
+a baile and saloon and houses out of adobe; and called her
+Yuma, after the Injins that had really started her.  We got our
+supplies through the Gulf of California, where sailing boats
+worked up the river.  People began to come in for one reason or
+another, and first thing we knew we had a store and all sorts of
+trimmings.  In fact we was a real live town.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND
+
+At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased
+with miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of
+sound save for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves.  Nobody ventured
+to fill in the pause that followed the stranger's last words, so
+in a moment he continued his narrative.
+
+
+We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was
+lookout at a popular game, I saw them all.  One evening I was on
+my way home about two o'clock of a moonlit night, when on the
+edge of the shadow I stumbled over a body lying part across the
+footway.  At the same instant I heard the rip of steel through
+cloth and felt a sharp stab in my left leg.  For a minute I
+thought some drunk had used his knife on me, and I mighty near
+derringered him as he lay.  But somehow I didn't, and looking
+closer, I saw the man was unconscious.  Then I scouted to see
+what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand.  In
+place of it he wore a sharp steel hook.  This I had tangled up
+with and gotten well pricked.
+  
+I dragged him out into the light.  He was a slim-built young
+fellow, with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean
+face, and big hooked nose.  He had on only a thin shirt, a pair
+of rough wool pants, and the rawhide home-made zapatos the
+Mexicans wore then instead of boots.  Across his forehead ran a
+long gash, cutting his left eyebrow square in two.
+  
+There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard,
+like a man does when he gets hit over the head.  It didn't sound
+good.  When a man breathes that way he's mostly all gone.
+
+Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say.  Men
+got batted over the head often enough in those days.  But for
+some reason I picked him up and carried him to my 'dobe shack,
+and laid him out, and washed his cut with sour wine.  That
+brought him to.  Sour wine is fine to put a wound in shape to
+heal, but it's no soothing syrup.  He sat up as though he'd been
+touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed, and cut loose
+with that song you were singing.  Only it wasn't that verse.
+It was another one further along, that went like this:
+
+  Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,
+    Blow high, blow low, what care we;
+  And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
+    Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
+
+It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still,
+solemn desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows,
+and him sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side
+his big eagle nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut
+across his head.  However, I made out to get him bandaged up and
+in shape; and pretty soon he sort of went to sleep.
+  
+Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks.  Most of
+the time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his
+eyes burning and looking like they saw each one something a
+different distance off, the way crazy eyes do.  That was when he
+was best.  Then again he'd sing that Barbaree song until I'd go
+out and look at the old Colorado flowing by just to be sure I
+hadn't died and gone below.  Or else he'd just talk.  That was
+the worst performance of all.  It was like listening to one end
+of a telephone, though we didn't know what telephones were in
+those days.  He began when be was a kid, and he gave his side of
+conversations, pausing for replies.  I could mighty near furnish
+the replies sometimes.  It was queer lingo--about ships and
+ships' officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and
+whales and islands and birds and skies.  But it was all little
+stuff.  I used to listen by the hour, but I never made out
+anything really important as to who the man was, or where he'd
+come from, or what he'd done.
+   
+At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to
+fix him up with grub.  I didn't pay any attention to him, for he
+was quiet.  As I was bending over the fire he spoke.  Usually I
+didn't bother with his talk, for it didn't mean anything, but
+something in his voice made me turn.  He was lying on his side,
+those black eyes of his blazing at me, but now both of them saw
+the same distance.
+   
+"Where are my clothes?" he asked, very intense.
+
+"You ain't in any shape to want clothes," said I.  "Lie still."
+   
+I hadn't any more than got the words out of my mouth before he
+was atop me.  His method was a winner.  He had me by the throat
+with his hand, and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back
+of my neck. One little squeeze--Talk about your deadly weapons!
+   
+But he'd been too sick and too long abed.  He turned dizzy and
+keeled over, and I dumped him back on the bunk.  Then I put my
+six-shooter on.
+   
+In a minute or so he came to.
+   
+"Now you're a nice, sweet proposition," said I, as soon as I was
+sure he could understand me.  "Here I pick you up on the street
+and save your worthless carcass, and the first chance you get you
+try to crawl my hump. 
+Explain."
+   
+"Where's my clothes?" he demanded again, very fierce.
+   
+"For heaven's sake," I yelled at him, "what's the matter with you
+and your old clothes?  There ain't enough of them to dust a
+fiddle with anyway.  What do you think I'd want with them?
+They're safe enough."'
+
+"Let me have them," he begged.
+
+"Now, look here," said I, "you can't get up to-day.  You ain't
+fit."
+
+"I know," he pleaded, "but let me see them."
+
+Just to satisfy him I passed over his old duds.
+
+"I've been robbed," he cried.
+
+"Well," said I, "what did you expect would happen to you lying
+around Yuma after midnight with a hole in your head?"
+
+"Where's my coat?" he asked.
+
+"You had no coat when I picked you up," I replied.
+
+He looked at me mighty suspicious, but didn't say anything more--
+he wouldn't even answer when I spoke to him.  After he'd eaten a
+fair meal he fell asleep.  When I came back that evening the bunk
+was empty and he was gone.
+   
+I didn't see him again for two days.  Then I caught sight of him
+quite a ways off.  He nodded at me very sour, and dodged around
+the corner of the store.
+
+"Guess he suspicions I stole that old coat of his," thinks I; and
+afterwards I found that my surmise had been correct.
+
+However, he didn't stay long in that frame of mind.  It was along
+towards evening, and I was walking on the banks looking down over
+the muddy old Colorado, as I always liked to do.  The sun had
+just set, and the mountains had turned hard and stiff, as they do
+after the glow, and the sky above them was a thousand million
+miles deep of pale green-gold light.  A pair of Greasers were
+ahead of me, but I could see only their outlines, and they didn't
+seem to interfere any with the scenery.  Suddenly a black figure
+seemed to rise up out of the ground; the Mexican man went down as
+though he'd been jerked with a string, and the woman screeched.
+   
+I ran up, pulling my gun.  The Mex was flat on his face, his arms
+stretched out.  On the middle of his back knelt my one-armed
+friend.  And that sharp hook was caught neatly under the point of
+the Mexican's jaw.  You bet he lay still.
+   
+I really think I was just in time to save the man's life.
+According to my belief another minute would have buried the hook
+in the Mexican's neck.  Anyway, I thrust the muzzle of my Colt's
+into the sailor's face.
+   
+"What's this?" I asked.
+
+The sailor looked up at me without changing his position.  He was
+not the least bit afraid.
+   
+"This man has my coat," he explained.
+  
+"Where'd you get the coat?" I asked the Mex.
+  
+"I ween heem at monte off Antonio Curvez," said he.
+  
+"Maybe," growled the sailor.
+   
+He still held the hook under the man's jaw, but with the other
+hand he ran rapidly under and over the Mexican's left shoulder. 
+In the half light I could see his face change.  The gleam died
+from his eye; the snarl left his lips.  Without further delay he
+arose to his feet.
+  
+"Get up and give it here!" he demanded.
+   
+The Mexican was only too glad to get off so easy.  I don't know
+whether he'd really won the coat at monte or not.  In any case,
+he flew poco pronto, leaving me and my friend together.
+   
+The man with the hook felt the left shoulder of the coat again,
+looked up, met my eye, muttered something intended to be
+pleasant, and walked away.
+   
+This was in December.
+   
+During the next two months he was a good deal about town, mostly
+doing odd jobs.  I saw him off and on.  He always spoke to me as
+pleasantly as he knew how, and once made some sort of a bluff
+about paying me back for my trouble in bringing him around. 
+However, I didn't pay much attention to that, being at the time
+almighty busy holding down my card games.
+   
+The last day of February I was sitting in my shack smoking a pipe
+after supper, when my one-armed friend opened the door a foot,
+slipped in, and shut it immediately.  By the time he looked
+towards me I knew where my six-shooter was.
+  
+"That's all right," said I, "but you better stay right there."
+   
+I intended to take no more chances with that hook.
+   
+He stood there looking straight at me without winking or offering
+to move.
+  
+"What do you want?" I asked.
+  
+"I want to make up to you for your trouble," said he.  "I've got
+a good thing, and I want to let you in on it."
+  
+"What kind of a good thing?" I asked.
+  
+"Treasure," said he.
+  
+"H'm," said I.
+
+I examined him closely.  He looked all right enough, neither
+drunk nor loco.   
+
+"Sit down," said I--"over there; the other side the table."  He
+did so.  "Now, fire away," said I.
+   
+He told me his name was Solomon Anderson, but that he was
+generally known as Handy Solomon, on account of his hook; that he
+had always followed the sea; that lately he had coasted the west
+shores of Mexico; that at Guaymas he had fallen in with Spanish
+friends, in company with whom he had visited the mines in the
+Sierra Madre; that on this expedition the party had been attacked
+by Yaquis and wiped out, he alone surviving; that his
+blanket-mate before expiring had told him of gold buried in a
+cove of Lower California by the man's grandfather; that the man
+had given him a chart showing the location of the treasure; that
+he had sewn this chart in the shoulder of his coat, whence his
+suspicion of me and his being so loco about getting it back.
+   
+"And it's a big thing," said Handy Solomon to me, "for they's not
+only gold, but altar jewels and diamonds.  It will make us rich,
+and a dozen like us, and you can kiss the Book on that."
+
+"That may all be true," said I, "but why do you tell me?  Why
+don't you get your treasure without the need of dividing it?"
+
+"Why, mate," he answered, "it's just plain gratitude.  Didn't you
+save my life, and nuss me, and take care of me when I was nigh
+killed?"
+   
+"Look here, Anderson, or Handy Solomon, or whatever you please to
+call yourself," I rejoined to this, "if you're going to do
+business with me--and I do not understand yet just what it is you
+want of me--you'll have to talk straight.  It's all very well to
+say gratitude, but that don't go with me.  You've been around
+here three months, and barring a half-dozen civil words and twice
+as many of the other kind, I've failed to see any indications of
+your gratitude before.  It's a quality with a hell of a hang-fire
+to it."
+    
+He looked at me sideways, spat, and looked at me sideways again. 
+Then he burst into a laugh.
+   
+"The devil's a preacher, if you ain't lost your pinfeathers,"'
+said he.  "Well, it's this then:  I got to have a boat to get
+there; and she must be stocked.  And I got to have help with the
+treasure, if it's like this fellow said it was.  And the Yaquis
+and cannibals from Tiburon is through the country.  It's money I
+got to have, and it's money I haven't got, and can't get unless I
+let somebody in as pardner."
+  
+"Why me?" I asked.
+  
+"Why not?" he retorted. "I ain't see anybody I like better."
+   
+We talked the matter over at length.  I had to force him to each
+point, for suspicion was strong in him.  I stood out for a larger
+party.  He strongly opposed this as depreciating the shares, but
+I had no intention of going alone into what was then considered a
+wild and dangerous country.  Finally we compromised.  A third of
+the treasure was to go to him, a third to me, and the rest was to
+be divided among the men whom I should select.  This scheme did
+not appeal to him.
+  
+"How do I know you plays fair?" he complained.  "They'll be four
+of you to one of me; and I don't like it, and you can kiss the
+Book on that."
+ 
+"If you don't like it, leave it," said I, "and get out, and be
+damned to you."
+   
+Finally he agreed; but he refused me a look at the chart, saying
+that he had left it in a safe place.  I believe in reality he
+wanted to be surer of me, and for that I can hardly blame him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+THE MURDER ON THE BEACH
+ 
+At this moment the cook stuck his head in at the open door.
+  
+"Say, you fellows," he complained, "I got to be up at three
+o'clock.  Ain't you never going to turn in?"
+  
+"Shut up, Doctor!"  "Somebody kill him!"  "Here, sit down and
+listen to this yarn!" yelled a savage chorus.
+   
+There ensued a slight scuffle, a few objections.  Then silence,
+and the stranger took up his story.
+
+
+I had a chum named Billy Simpson, and I rung him in for
+friendship.  Then there was a solemn, tall Texas young fellow,
+strong as a bull, straight and tough, brought up fighting Injins. 
+He never said much, but I knew he'd be right there when the gong
+struck.  For fourth man I picked out a German named Schwartz.  He
+and Simpson had just come back from the mines together.  I took
+him because he was a friend of Billy's, and besides was young and
+strong, and was the only man in town excepting the sailor,
+Anderson, who knew anything about running a boat.  I forgot to
+say that the Texas fellow was named Denton.
+    
+Handy Solomon had his boat all picked out.  It belonged to some
+Basques who had sailed her around from California.  I must say
+when I saw her I felt inclined to renig, for she wasn't more'n
+about twenty-five feet long, was open except for a little sort of
+cubbyhole up in the front of her, had one mast, and was pointed
+at both ends.  However, Schwartz said she was all right.  He
+claimed he knew the kind; that she was the sort used by French
+fishermen, and could stand all sorts of trouble.  She didn't look
+it.
+   
+We worked her up to Yuma, partly with oars and partly by sails. 
+Then we loaded her with grub for a month.  Each of us had his own
+weapons, of course.  In addition we put in picks and shovels, and
+a small cask of water.  Handy Solomon said that would be enough,
+as there was water marked down on his chart.  We told the gang
+that we were going trading.
+   
+At the end of the week we started, and were out four days.  There
+wasn't much room, what with the supplies and the baggage, for the
+five of us.  We had to curl up 'most anywheres to sleep.  And it
+certainly seemed to me that we were in lots of danger.  The waves
+were much bigger than she was, and splashed on us considerable,
+but Schwartz and Anderson didn't seem to mind.  They laughed at
+us.  Anderson sang that song of his, and Schwartz told us of the
+placers he had worked.  He and Simpson had made a pretty good
+clean-up, just enough to make them want to get rich.  The first
+day out Simpson showed us a belt with about an hundred ounces of
+dust.  This he got tired of wearing, so he kept it in a 
+compass-box, which was empty.
+   
+At the end of the four days we turned in at a deep bay and came
+to anchor.  The country was the usual proposition--very
+light-brown, brittle-looking mountains, about two thousand feet
+high; lots of sage and cactus, a pebbly beach, and not a sign of
+anything fresh and green.
+    
+But Denton and I were mighty glad to see any sort of land. 
+Besides, our keg of water was pretty low, and it was getting
+about time to discover the spring the chart spoke of.  So we
+piled our camp stuff in the small boat and rowed ashore.
+
+Anderson led the way confidently enough up a dry arroyo, whose
+sides were clay and conglomerate.  But, though we followed it to
+the end, we could find no indications that it was anything more
+than a wash for rain floods.
+  
+"That's main queer," muttered Anderson, and returned to the
+beach.
+   
+There he spread out the chart--the first look at it we'd had--and
+set to studying it.
+
+It was a careful piece of work done in India ink, pretty old, to
+judge by the look of it, and with all sorts of pictures of
+mountains and dolphins and ships and anchors around the edge. 
+There was our bay, all right.  Two crosses were marked on the
+land part--one labelled "oro" and the other "agua."
+  
+"Now there's the high cliff," says Anderson, following it out,
+"and there's the round hill with the boulder--and if them
+bearings don't point due for that ravine, the devil's a
+preacher."
+   
+We tried it again, with the same result.  A second inspection of
+the map brought us no light on the question.  We talked it over,
+and looked at it from all points, but we couldn't dodge the
+truth:  the chart was wrong.
+
+Then we explored several of the nearest gullies, but without
+finding anything but loose stones baked hot in the sun.
+   
+By now it was getting towards sundown, so we built us a fire of
+mesquite on the beach, made us supper, and boiled a pot of beans.
+   
+We talked it over.  The water was about gone.
+  
+"That's what we've got to find first," said Simpson, "no question
+of it.  It's God knows how far to the next water, and we don't
+know how long it will take us to get there in that little boat. 
+If we run our water entirely out before we start, we're going to
+be in trouble.  We'll have a good look to-morrow, and if we don't
+find her, we'll run down to Mollyhay[4] and get a few extra
+casks."
+
+[4] Mulege - I retain the Old Timer's pronunciation.
+
+
+"Perhaps that map is wrong about the treasure, too," suggested
+Denton.
+     
+"I thought of that," said Handy Solomon, "but then, thinks I to
+myself, this old rip probably don't make no long stay here--just
+dodges in and out like, between tides, to bury his loot.  He
+would need no water at the time; but he might when he came back,
+so he marked the water on his map.  But he wasn't noways
+particular AND exact, being in a hurry.  But you can kiss the
+Book to it that he didn't make no such mistakes about the swag."
+  
+"I believe you're right," said I.
+   
+When we came to turn in, Anderson suggested that he should sleep
+aboard the boat.  But Billy Simpson, in mind perhaps of the
+hundred ounces in the compass-box, insisted that he'd just as
+soon as not.  After a little objection Handy Solomon gave in, but
+I thought he seemed sour about it.  We built a good fire, and in
+about ten seconds were asleep.
+    
+Now, usually I sleep like a log, and did this time until about
+midnight.  Then all at once I came broad awake and sitting up in
+my blankets.  Nothing had happened--I wasn't even dreaming--but
+there I was as alert and clear as though it were broad noon.
+    
+By the light of the fire I saw Handy Solomon sitting, and at his
+side our five rifles gathered.
+    
+I must have made some noise, for he turned quietly toward me, saw
+I was awake, and nodded.  The moonlight was sparkling on the hard
+stony landscape, and a thin dampness came out from the sea.
+     
+After a minute Anderson threw on another stick of wood, yawned,
+and stood up.
+
+"It's wet," said he; "I've been fixing the guns."
+   
+He showed me how he was inserting a little patch of felt between
+the hammer and the nipple, a scheme of his own for keeping damp
+from the powder.  Then he rolled up in his blanket.  At the time
+it all seemed quite natural--I suppose my mind wasn't fully
+awake, for all my head felt so clear.  Afterwards I realised what
+a ridiculous bluff he was making: for of course the cap already
+on the nipple was plenty to keep out the damp.  I fully believe
+he intended to kill us as we lay.  Only my sudden awakening
+spoiled his plan.
+   
+I had absolutely no idea of this at the time, however.  Not the
+slightest suspicion entered my head.  In view of that fact, I
+have since believed in guardian angels.  For my next move, which
+at the time seemed to me absolutely aimless, was to change my
+blankets from one side of the fire to the other.  And that
+brought me alongside the five rifles.
+   
+Owing to this fact, I am now convinced, we awoke safe at
+daylight, cooked breakfast, and laid the plan for the day. 
+Anderson directed us.  I was to climb over the ridge before us
+and search in the ravine on the other side.  Schwartz was to
+explore up the beach to the left, and Denton to the right. 
+Anderson said he would wait for Billy Simpson, who had overslept
+in the darkness of the cubbyhole, and who was now paddling
+ashore.  The two of them would push inland to the west until a
+high hill would give them a chance to look around for greenery.
+   
+We started at once, before the sun would be hot.  The hill I had
+to climb was steep and covered with chollas, so I didn't get
+along very fast.  When I was about half way to the top I heard a
+shot from the beach.  I looked back.  Anderson was in the small
+boat, rowing rapidly out to the vessel.  Denton was running up
+the beach from one direction and Schwartz from the other.  I slid
+and slipped down the bluff, getting pretty well stuck up with the
+cholla spines.  
+
+At the beach we found Billy Simpson lying on his ace, shot
+through the back.  We turned him over, but he was apparently
+dead.  Anderson had hoisted the sail, had cut loose from the
+anchor, and was sailing away.
+   
+Denton stood up straight and tall, looking.  Then he pulled his
+belt in a hole, grabbed my arm, and started to run up the long
+curve of the beach.  Behind us came Schwartz.  We ran near a
+mile, and then fell among some tules in an inlet at the farther
+point.
+  
+"What is it?" I gasped.
+  
+"Our only chance--to get him-- said Denton.  "He's got to go
+around this point--big wind--perhaps his mast will bust--then
+he'll come ashore--"  He opened and shut his big brown hands.
+   
+So there we two fools lay, like panthers in the tules, taking our
+only one-in-a-million chance to lay hands on Anderson.  Any
+sailor could have told us that the mast wouldn't break, but we
+had winded Schwartz a quarter of a mile back.  And so we waited,
+our eyes fixed on the boat's sail, grudging her every inch, just
+burning to fix things to suit us a little better.  And naturally
+she made the point in what I now know was only a fresh breeze,
+squared away, and dropped down before the wind toward Guaymas.
+   
+We walked back slowly to our camp, swallowing the copper taste of
+too hard a run.  Schwartz we picked up from a boulder, just
+recovering.  We were all of us crazy mad.  Schwartz half wept,
+and blamed and cussed.  Denton glowered away in silence.  I
+ground my feet into the sand in a help less sort of anger, not
+only at the man himself, but also at the whole way things had
+turned out.  I don't believe the least notion of our predicament
+had come to any of us.  All we knew yet was that we had been done
+up, and we were hostile about it.
+    
+But at camp we found something to occupy us for the moment.  Poor
+Billy was not dead, as we had supposed, but very weak and sick,
+and a hole square through him.  When we returned he was
+conscious, but that was about all.  His eyes were shut, and he
+was moaning.  I tore open his shirt to stanch the blood.  He felt
+my hand and opened his eyes.  They were glazed, and I don't think
+he saw me.
+   
+"Water, water!" he cried.
+    
+At that we others saw all at once where we stood.  I remember I
+rose to my feet and found myself staring straight into Tom
+Denton's eyes.  We looked at each other that way for I guess it
+was a full minute.  Then Tom shook his head.
+   
+"Water, water!" begged poor Billy.
+    
+Tom leaned over him.
+   
+"My God, Billy, there ain't any water!" said he.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+BURIED TREASURE
+
+The Old Timer's voice broke a little.  We had leisure to notice
+that even the drip from the eaves had ceased.  A faint, diffused
+light vouchsafed us dim outlines of sprawling figures and
+tumbled bedding.  Far in the distance outside a wolf yelped.
+
+
+We could do nothing for him except shelter him from the sun, and
+wet his forehead with sea-water; nor could we think clearly for
+ourselves as long as the spark of life lingered in him.  His
+chest rose and fell regularly, but with long pauses between. 
+When the sun was overhead he suddenly opened his eyes.
+  
+"Fellows," said he, "it's beautiful over there; the grass is so
+green, and the water so cool; I am tired of marching, and I
+reckon I'll cross over and camp."
+  
+Then he died.  We scooped out a shallow hole above tide-mark,
+and laid him in it, and piled over him stones from the wash.
+    
+Then we went back to the beach, very solemn, to talk it over.
+   
+"Now, boys," said I, "there seems to me just one thing to do, and
+that is to pike out for water as fast as we can."
+   
+"Where?" asked Denton.
+    
+"Well," I argued, "I don't believe there's any water about this
+bay.  Maybe there was when that chart was made.  It was a long
+time ago.  And any way, the old pirate was a sailor, and no
+plainsman,  and maybe he mistook rainwater for a spring.  We've
+looked around this end of the bay.  The chances are we'd use up
+two or three days exploring around the other, and then wouldn't
+be as well off as we are right now."
+   
+"Which way?" asked Denton again, mighty brief.
+   
+"Well," said I, "there's one thing I've always noticed in case of
+folks held up by the desert: they generally go wandering about
+here and there looking for water until they die not far from
+where they got lost.  And usually they've covered a heap of
+actual distance."
+   
+"That's so," agreed Denton.
+   
+"Now, I've always figured that it would be a good deal better to
+start right out for some particular place, even if it's ten
+thousand miles away.  A man is just as likely to strike water
+going in a straight line as he is going in a circle; and then,
+besides, he's getting somewhere."
+     
+"Correct," said Denton,
+     
+"So," I finished, "I reckon we'd better follow the coast south
+and try to get to Mollyhay."
+  
+"How far is that?" asked Schwartz.
+  
+"I don't rightly know.  But somewheres between three and five
+hundred miles, at a guess."
+   
+At that he fell to glowering and grooming with himself, brooding
+over what a hard time it was going to be.  That is the way with a
+German.  First off he's plumb scared at the prospect of suffering
+anything, and would rather die right off than take long chances. 
+After he gets into the swing of it, he behaves as well as any
+man.
+
+"We took stock of what we had to depend on.  The total assets
+proved to be just three pairs of legs.  A pot of coffee had been
+on the fire, but that villain had kicked it over when he left. 
+The kettle of beans was there, but somehow we got the notion they
+might have been poisoned, so we left them.  I don't know now why
+we were so foolish--if poison was his game, he'd have tried it
+before--but at that time it seemed reasonable enough.  Perhaps
+the horror of the morning's work, and the sight of the
+brittle-brown mountains, and the ghastly yellow glare of the sun,
+and the blue waves racing by outside, and the big strong wind
+that blew through us so hard that it seemed to blow empty our
+souls, had turned our judgment.  Anyway, we left a full meal
+there in the beanpot.
+   
+So without any further delay we set off up the ridge I had
+started to cross that morning.  Schwartz lagged, sulky as a muley
+cow, but we managed to keep him with us.  At the top of the ridge
+we took our bearings for the next deep bay.  Already we had made
+up our minds to stick to the sea-coast, both on account of the
+lower country over which to travel and the off chance of falling
+in with a fishing vessel.  Schwartz muttered something about its
+being too far even to the next bay, and wanted to sit down on a
+rock.  Denton didn't say anything, but he jerked Schwartz up by
+the collar so fiercely that the German gave it over and came
+along.
+   
+We dropped down into the gully, stumbled over the boulder wash,
+and began to toil in the ankle-deep sand of a little sage-brush
+flat this side of the next ascent.  Schwartz followed steadily
+enough now, but had fallen forty or fifty feet behind.  This was
+a nuisance, as we bad to keep turning to see if he still kept up.
+
+Suddenly he seemed to disappear.
+   
+Denton and I hurried back to find him on his hands and knees
+behind a sagebrush, clawing away at the sand like mad.
+  
+"Can't be water on this flat," said Denton; "he must have gone
+crazy."
+  
+"What's the matter, Schwartz?" I asked.
+   
+For answer he moved a little to one side, showing beneath his
+knee one corner of a wooden box sticking above the sand.
+   
+At this we dropped beside him, and in five minutes had uncovered
+the whole of the chest.  It was not very large, and was locked. 
+A rock from the wash fixed that, however.  We threw back the lid.
+  
+It was full to the brim of gold coins, thrown in loose, nigh two
+bushels of them.
+  
+"The treasure!" I cried.
+   
+There it was, sure enough, or some of it.  We looked the rest
+through, but found nothing but the gold coins.  The altar
+ornaments and jewels were lacking.
+  
+"Probably buried in another box or so," said Denton.
+   
+Schwartz wanted to dig around a little.
+  
+"No good," said I.  "We've got our work cut out for us as it is."
+   
+Denton backed me up. We were both old hands at the business, had
+each in our time suffered the "cotton-mouth" thirst, and the
+memory of it outweighed any desire for treasure.
+   
+But Schwartz was money-mad.  Left to himself he would have staid
+on that sand flat to perish, as certainly as had poor Billy.  We
+had fairly to force him away, and then succeeded only because we
+let him fill all his pockets to bulging with the coins.  As we
+moved up the next rise, he kept looking back and uttering little
+moans against the crime of leaving it.
+   
+Luckily for us it was winter.  We shouldn't have lasted six hours
+at this time of year.  As it was, the sun was hot against the
+shale and the little stones of those cussed hills.  We plodded
+along until late afternoon, toiling up one hill and down another,
+only to repeat immediately.  Towards sundown we made the second
+bay, where we plunged into the sea, clothes and all, and were
+greatly refreshed.  I suppose a man absorbs a good deal that way. 
+Anyhow, it always seemed to help.
+   
+We were now pretty hungry, and, as we walked along the shore, we
+began to look for turtles or shellfish, or anything else that
+might come handy.  There was nothing.  Schwartz wanted to stop
+for a night's rest, but Denton and I knew better than that.
+  
+"Look here, Schwartz," said Denton, "you don't realise you're
+entered against time in this race--and that you're a damn fool to
+carry all that weight in your clothes."
+   
+So we dragged along all night.
+   
+It was weird enough, I can tell you.  The moon shone cold and
+white over that dead, dry country.  Hot whiffs rose from the
+baked stones and hillsides.  Shadows lay under the stones like
+animals crouching.  When we came to the edge of a silvery hill we
+dropped off into pitchy blackness.  There we stumbled over
+boulders for a minute or so, and began to climb the steep shale
+on the other side.  This was fearful work.  The top seemed always
+miles away.  By morning we didn't seem to have made much of
+anywhere.  The same old hollow-looking mountains with the sharp
+edges stuck up in about the same old places.
+   
+We had got over being very hungry, and, though we were pretty
+dry, we didn't really suffer yet from  thirst.  About this time
+Denton ran across some fishhook cactus, which we cut up and
+chewed.  They have a sticky wet sort of inside, which doesn't
+quench your thirst any, but helps to keep you from drying up and
+blowing away.
+   
+All that day we plugged along as per usual.  It was main hard
+work, and we got to that state where things are disagreeable, but
+mechanical.  Strange to say, Schwartz kept in the lead.  It
+seemed to me at the time that he was using more energy than the 
+occasion called for--just as man runs faster before he comes to
+the giving-out point.  However, the hours went by, and he
+didn't seem to get any more tired than the rest of us.
+   
+We kept a sharp lookout for anything to eat, but there was
+nothing but lizards and horned toads.   Later we'd have been glad
+of them, but by that time we'd got out of their district.  Night
+came.  Just at sundown we took another wallow in the surf, and
+chewed some more fishhook cactus.  When the moon came up we went
+on.
+   
+I'm not going to tell you how dead beat we got.  We were pretty
+tough and strong, for all of us had been used to hard living, but
+after the third day without anything to eat and no water to
+drink, it came to be pretty hard going.  It got to the point
+where we had to have some REASON for getting out besides just
+keeping alive.  A man would sometimes rather die than keep alive,
+anyway, if it came only to that.  But I know I made up my mind I
+was going to get out so I could smash up that Anderson, and I
+reckon Denton had the same idea.  Schwartz didn't say anything,
+but he pumped on ahead of us, his back bent over, and his clothes
+sagging and bulging with the gold he carried.
+   
+We used to travel all night, because it was cool, and rest an
+hour or two at noon.  That is all the rest we did get.  I don't
+know how fast we went; I'd got beyond that.  We must have crawled
+along mighty slow, though, after our first strength gave out. 
+The way I used to do was to collect myself with an effort, look
+around for my bearings, pick out a landmark a little distance
+off, and forget everything but it.  Then I'd plod along, knowing
+nothing but the sand and shale and slope under my feet, until I'd
+reached that landmark.  Then I'd clear my mind and pick out
+another.
+   
+But I couldn't shut out the figure of Schwartz that way.  He used
+to walk along just ahead of my shoulder.  His face was all
+twisted up, but I remember thinking at the time it looked more as
+if he was worried in his mind than like bodily suffering.  The
+weight of the gold in his clothes bent his shoulders over.
+   
+As we went on the country gradually got to be more mountainous,
+and, as we were steadily growing weaker, it did seem things were
+piling up on us. The eighth day we ran out of the fishhook
+cactus, and, being on a high promontory, were out of touch with
+the sea.  For the first time my tongue began to swell a little. 
+The cactus had kept me from that before.  Denton must have been
+in the same fix, for he looked at me and raised one eyebrow kind
+of humorous.
+    
+Schwartz was having a good deal of difficulty to navigate.  I
+will say for him that he had done well, but now I could see that
+his strength was going on him in spite of himself.  He knew it,
+all right, for when we rested that day he took all the gold coins
+and spread them in a row, and counted them, and put them back in
+his pocket, and then all of a sudden snatched out two handfuls
+and threw them as far as he could.
+  
+"Too heavy," he muttered, but that was all he could bring himself
+to throw away.
+   
+All that night we wandered high in the air.  I guess we tried to
+keep a general direction, but I don't know.  Anyway, along late,
+but before moonrise--she was now on the wane--I came to, and
+found myself looking over the edge of a twenty-foot drop.  Right
+below me I made out a faint glimmer of white earth in the
+starlight.  Somehow it reminded me of a little trail I used to
+know under a big rock back in Texas.
+  
+"Here's a trail," I thought, more than half loco; "I'll follow
+it!"
+   
+At least that's what half of me thought.  The other half was
+sensible, and knew better, but it seemed to be kind of standing
+to one side, a little scornful, watching the performance.  So I
+slid and slipped down to the strip of white earth, and, sure
+enough, it was a trail.  At that the loco half of me gave the
+sensible part the laugh.  I followed the path twenty feet and
+came to a dark hollow under the  rock, and in it a round pool of
+water about a foot across.  They say a man kills himself drinking
+too much, after starving for water.  That may be, but it didn't
+kill me, and I sucked up all I could hold.  Perhaps the fishhook
+cactus had helped.  Well, sir, it was surprising how that drink
+brought me around.  A minute before I'd been on the edge of going
+plumb loco, and here I was as clear-headed as a lawyer.
+    
+I hunted up Denton and Schwartz.  They drank, themselves full,
+too.  Then we rested.  It was mighty hard to leave that spring--
+    
+Oh, we had to do it.  We'd have starved sure, there.  The trail
+was a game trail, but that did us no good, for we had no weapons.
+
+How we did wish for the coffeepot, so we could take some away. 
+We filled our hats, and carried them about three hours, before
+the  water began to soak through.  Then we had to drink it in
+order to save it.
+
+The country fairly stood up on end.  We had to climb separate
+little hills so as to avoid rolling rocks down on each other.  It
+took it out of us.  About this time we began to see mountain
+sheep.  They would come right up to the edges of the small cliffs
+to look at us.  We threw stones at them, hoping to hit one in the
+forehead, but of course without any results.
+   
+The good effects of the water lasted us about a day.  Then we
+began to see things again.  Off and on I could see water plain as
+could be in every hollow, and game of all kinds standing around
+and looking at me.  I knew these were all fakes.  By making an
+effort I could swing things around to where they belonged.  I
+used to do that every once in a while, just to be sure we weren't
+doubling back, and to look out for real water.  But most of the 
+time it didn't seem to be worth while.  I just let all these
+visions riot around and have a good time inside me or outside me,
+whichever it was.  I knew I could get rid of them any minute. 
+Most of the time, if I was in any doubt, it was easier to throw a
+stone to see if the animals were real or not.  The real ones ran
+away.
+   
+We began to see bands of wild horses in the uplands.  One day
+both Denton and I plainly saw one with saddle marks on him.  If
+only one of us had seen him, it wouldn't have counted much, but
+we both made him out.  This encouraged us wonderfully, though I
+don't see why it should have.  We had topped the high country,
+too, and had started down the other side of the mountains that
+ran out on the promontory.  Denton and I were still navigating
+without any thought of giving up, but Schwartz was getting in bad
+shape.  I'd hate to pack twenty pounds over that country even
+with rest, food, and water.  He was toting it on nothing.  We
+told him so, and he came to see it, but he never could persuade
+himself to get rid of the gold all at once.  Instead he threw
+away the pieces one by one.  Each sacrifice seemed to nerve him
+up for another heat.  I can shut my eyes and see it now--the
+wide, glaring, yellow country, the pasteboard mountains, we three
+dragging along, and the fierce sunshine flashing from the
+doubloons as one by one they went spinning through the air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN,
+THE CHEWED SUGAR CANE
+
+"I'd like to have trailed you fellows," sighed a voice from the
+corner.
+ 
+"Would you!" said Colorado Rogers grimly.
+
+
+It was five days to the next water.  But they were worse than the
+eight days before.  We were lucky, however, for at the spring we
+discovered in a deep wash near the coast, was the dried-up skull
+of a horse.  It had been there a long time, but a few shreds of
+dried flesh still clung to it.  It was the only thing that could
+be described as food that had passed our lips since breakfast
+thirteen days before.  In that time we had crossed the mountain
+chain, and had come again to the sea.  The Lord was good to us.
+He sent us the water, and the horse's skull, and the smooth hard
+beach, without breaks or the necessity of climbing hills.  And we
+needed it, oh, I promise you, we needed it!
+
+I doubt if any of us could have kept the direction except by such
+an obvious and continuous landmark as the sea to our left.  It
+hardly seemed worth while to focus my mind, but I did it
+occasionally just by way of testing myself.  Schwartz still threw
+away his gold coins, and once, in one of my rare intervals of
+looking about me, I saw Denton picking them up.  This surprised
+me mildly, but I was too tired to be very curious.  Only now,
+when I saw Schwartz's arm sweep out in what had become a
+mechanical movement, I always took pains to look, and always I
+saw Denton search for the coin.  Sometimes he found it, and
+sometimes he did not.
+    
+The figures of my companions and the yellow-brown tide sand under
+my feet, and a consciousness of the blue and white sea to my
+left, are all I remember, except when we had to pull ourselves
+together for the purpose of cutting fishhook cactus.  I kept
+going, and I knew I had a good reason for doing so, but it seemed
+too much of an effort to recall what that reason was.
+    
+Schwartz threw away a gold piece as another man would take a
+stimulant.  Gradually, without really thinking about it, I came
+to see this, and then went on to sabe why Denton picked up the
+coins; and a great admiration for Denton's cleverness seeped
+through me like water through the sand.  He was saving the coins
+to keep Schwartz going.  When the last coin went, Schwartz would
+give out.  It all sounds queer now, but it seemed all right
+then--and it WAS all right, too.
+   
+So we walked on the beach, losing entire track of time.  And
+after a long interval I came to myself to see Schwartz lying on
+the sand, and Denton standing over him.  Of course we'd all been
+falling down a lot, but always before we'd got up again.
+  
+"He's give out," croaked Denton.
+   
+His voice sounded as if it was miles away, which surprised me,
+but, when I answered, mine sounded miles away, too, which
+surprised me still more.
+   
+Denton pulled out a handful of gold coins.
+  
+"This will buy him some more walk," said he gravely, "but not
+much."
+   
+I nodded.  It seemed all right, this new, strange purchasing
+power of gold--it WAS all right, by God, and as real as buying
+bricks--
+  
+"I'll go on," said Denton, "and send back help.  You come after."
+
+"To Mollyhay!" said I.
+  
+This far I reckon we'd hung onto ourselves because it was
+serious.  Now I began to laugh.  So did Denton.  We laughed and
+laughed.
+
+"A damn long way
+To Mollyhay."
+
+said I. Then we laughed some more, until the tears ran down our
+cheeks, and we had to hold our poor weak sides.  Pretty soon we
+fetched up with a gasp.
+
+"A damn long way
+To Mollyhay,"
+
+whispered Denton, and then off we went into more shrieks.  And
+when we would sober down a little, one or the other of us would
+say it again;
+
+"A damn long way
+To Mollyhay,"
+
+and then we'd laugh some more.  It must have been a sweet sight!
+   
+At last I realised that we ought to pull ourselves together, so I
+snubbed up short, and Denton did the same, and we set to laying
+plans.  But every minute or so one of us would catch on some
+word, and then we'd trail off into rhymes and laughter and
+repetition.
+  
+"Keep him going as long as you can," said Denton.
+    
+"Yes."
+    
+"And be sure to stick to the beach."
+   
+That far it was all right and clear-headed.  But the word "beach"
+let us out.
+
+"I'm a peach
+Upon the beach,"
+
+sings I, and there we were both off again until one or the other
+managed to grope his way back to common sense again.  And
+sometimes we crow-hopped solemnly around and around the prostrate
+Schwartz like a pair of Injins.
+  
+But somehow we got our plan laid at last, slipped the coins into
+Schwartz's pocket, and said good-bye.
+
+"Old socks, good-bye,
+You bet I'll try,"
+
+yelled Denton, and laughing fit to kill, danced off up the beach,
+and out into a sort of grey mist that shut off everything beyond
+a certain distance from me now.
+   
+So I kicked Schwartz, he felt in his pocket, threw a gold piece
+away, and "bought a little more walk."
+
+My entire vision was fifty feet or so across.  Beyond that was
+grey mist.  Inside my circle I could see the sand quite plainly
+and Denton's footprints.  If I moved a little to the left, the
+wash of the waters would lap under the edge of that grey curtain.
+
+If I moved to the right, I came to cliffs.  The nearer I drew to
+them, the farther up I could see, but I could never see to the
+top.  It used to amuse me to move this area of consciousness
+about to see what I could find.  Actual physical suffering was
+beginning to dull, and my head seemed to be getting clearer.
+   
+One day, without any apparent reason, I moved at right angles
+across the beach.  Directly before me lay a piece of sugar cane,
+and one end of it had been chewed.
+    
+Do you know what that meant?  Animals don't cut sugar cane and
+bring it to the beach and chew one end.  A new strength ran
+through me, and actually the grey mist thinned and lifted for a
+moment, until I could make out dimly the line of cliffs and the
+tumbling sea.
+   
+I was not a bit hungry, but I chewed on the sugar cane, and made
+Schwartz do the same.  When we went on I kept close to the cliff,
+even though the walking was somewhat heavier.
+   
+I remember after that its getting dark and then light again, so
+the night must have passed, but whether we rested or walked I do
+not know.  Probably we did not get very far, though certainly we
+staggered ahead after sun-up, for I remember my shadow.
+   
+About midday, I suppose, I made out a dim trail leading up a
+break in the cliffs.  Plenty of such trails we had seen before. 
+They were generally made by peccaries in search of cast-up fish--
+I hope they had better luck than we.
+   
+But in the middle of this, as though for a sign, lay another
+piece of chewed sugar cane.
+
+
+          
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+THE CALABASH STEW
+
+I had agreed with Denton to stick to the beach, but Schwartz
+could not last much longer, and I had not the slightest idea how
+far it might prove to be to Mollyhay.  So I turned up the trail.
+   
+We climbed a mountain ten thousand feet high.  I mean that; and I
+know, for I've climbed them that high, and I know just how it
+feels, and how many times you have to rest, and how long it
+takes, and how much it knocks out of you.  Those are the things
+that count in measuring height, and so I tell you we climbed that
+far.  Actually I suppose the hill was a couple of hundred feet,
+if not less.  But on account of the grey mist I mentioned, I
+could not see the top, and the illusion was complete.
+   
+We reached the summit late in the afternoon, for the sun was
+square in our eyes.  But instead of blinding me, it seemed to
+clear my sight, so that I saw below me a little mud hut with
+smoke rising behind it, and a small patch of cultivated ground.
+    
+I'll pass over how I felt about it:  they haven't made the 
+words--
+   
+Well, we stumbled down the trail and into the hut.  At first I
+thought it was empty, but after a minute I saw a very old man
+crouched in a corner.  As I looked at him he raised his bleared
+eyes to me, his head swinging slowly from side to side as though
+with a kind of palsy.  He could not see me, that was evident, nor
+hear me, but some instinct not yet decayed turned him toward a
+new presence in the room.  In my wild desire for water I found
+room to think that here was a man even worse off than myself.
+   
+A vessel of water was in the corner.  I drank it. It was more
+than I could hold, but I drank even after I was filled, and the
+waste ran from the corners of my mouth.  I had forgotten
+Schwartz.  The excess made me a little sick, but I held down what
+I had swallowed, and I really believe it soaked into my system as
+it does into the desert earth after a drought.
+   
+In a moment or so I took the vessel and filled it and gave it to
+Schwartz.  Then it seemed to me that my responsibility had ended. 
+A sudden great dreamy lassitude came over me.  I knew I needed
+food, but I had no wish for it, and no ambition to search it out. 
+The man in the corner mumbled at me with his toothless gums.  I
+remember wondering if we were all to starve there peacefully
+together--Schwartz and his remaining gold coins, the man far gone
+in years, and myself.  I did not greatly care.
+   
+After a while the light was blotted out.  There followed a slight
+pause.  Then I knew that someone had flown to my side, and was
+kneeling beside me and saying liquid, pitying things in Mexican. 
+I swallowed something hot and strong.  In a moment I came back
+from wherever I was drifting, to look up at a Mexican girl about
+twenty years old.
+   
+She was no great matter in looks, but she seemed like an angel to
+me then.  And she had sense.  No questions, no nothing.  Just
+business.  The only thing she asked of me was if I understood
+Spanish.
+   
+Then she told me that her brother would be back soon, that they
+were very poor, that she was sorry she had no meat to offer me,
+that they were VERY poor, that all they had was calabash--a sort
+of squash.  All this time she was bustling things together.  Next
+thing I know I had a big bowl of calabash stew between my knees.
+    
+Now, strangely enough, I had no great interest in that calabash
+stew.  I tasted it, sat and thought a while, and tasted it again. 
+By and by I had emptied the bowl.  It was getting dark.  I was
+very sleepy.  A man came in, but I was too drowsy to pay any
+attention to him.  I heard the sound of voices.  Then I was
+picked up bodily and carried to an out-building and laid on a
+pile of skins.  I felt the weight of a blanket thrown over me--
+   
+I awoke in the night.  Mind you, I had practically had no rest at
+all for a matter of more than two weeks, yet I woke in a few
+hours.  And, remember, even in eating the calabash stew I had
+felt no hunger in spite of my long fast.  But now I found myself
+ravenous.  You boys do not know what hunger is.  It HURTS.  And
+all the rest of that night I lay awake chewing on the rawhide of
+a pack-saddle that hung near me.
+   
+Next morning the young Mexican and his sister came to us early,
+bringing more calabash stew.  I fell on it like a wild animal,
+and just wallowed in it, so eager was I to eat.  They stood and
+watched me--and I suppose Schwartz, too, though I had now lost
+interest in anyone but myself--glancing at each other in pity
+from time to time.
+   
+When I had finished the man told me that they  had decided to
+kill a beef so we could have meat.  They were very poor, but God
+had brought us to them--
+   
+I appreciated this afterward.  At the time I merely caught at the
+word "meat."  It seemed to me I could have eaten the animal
+entire, hide, hoofs, and tallow.  As a matter of fact, it was
+mighty lucky they didn't have any meat.  If they had, we'd
+probably have killed ourselves with it.  I suppose the calabash
+was about the best thing for us under the circumstances.
+   
+The Mexican went out to hunt up his horse.  I called the girl
+back.
+  
+"How far is it to Mollyhay?" I asked her.
+  
+"A league," said she.
+   
+So we bad been near our journey's end after all, and Denton was
+probably all right.
+   
+The Mexican went away horseback.  The girl fed us calabash.  We
+waited.
+   
+About one o'clock a group of horsemen rode over the hill.  When
+they came near enough I recognised Denton at their head.  That
+man was of tempered steel--
+
+They had followed back along the beach, caught our trail where we
+had turned off, and so discovered us.  Denton had fortunately
+found kind and intelligent people.
+   
+We said good-bye to the Mexican girl.  I made Schwartz give her
+one of his gold pieces.
+   
+But Denton could not wait for us to say "hullo" even, he was so
+anxious to get back to town, so we mounted the horses he had
+brought us, and rode off, very wobbly.
+   
+We lived three weeks in Mollyhay.  It took us that long to get
+fed up.  The lady I stayed with made a dish of kid meat and
+stuffed olives--
+   
+Why, an hour after filling myself up to the muzzle I'd be hungry
+again, and scouting round to houses looking for more to eat!
+   
+We talked things over a good deal, after we had gained a little
+strength.  I wanted to take a little flyer at Guaymas to see if I
+could run across this Handy Solomon person, but Denton pointed
+out that Anderson would be expecting just that, and would take
+mighty good care to be scarce.  His idea was that we'd do better
+to get hold of a boat and some water casks, and lug off the
+treasure we had stumbled over.  Denton told us that the idea of
+going back and scooping all that dinero up with a shovel  had
+kept him going, just as the idea of getting even with Anderson
+had kept me going.  Schwartz said that after he'd carried that
+heavy gold over the first day, he made up his mind he'd get the
+spending of it or bust.  That's why he hated so to throw it away.
+          
+There were lots of fishing boats in the harbour, and we hired
+one, and a man to run it for next to nothing a week.  We laid a
+course north, and in six days anchored in our bay.
+    
+I tell you it looked queer.  There were the charred sticks of the
+fire, and the coffeepot lying on its side.  We took off our hats
+at poor Billy's grave a minute, and then climbed over the
+cholla-covered hill carrying our picks and shovels, and the
+canvas sacks to take the treasure away in.
+    
+There was no trouble in reaching the sandy flat.  But when we got
+there we found it torn up from one end to the other.  A few
+scattered timbers and three empty chests with the covers pried
+off alone remained.  Handy Solomon had been there before us.
+    
+We went back to our boat sick at heart.  Nobody said a word.  We
+went aboard and made our Greaser boatman head for Yuma.  It took
+us a week to get there.  We were all of us glum, but Denton was
+the worst of the lot.  Even after we'd got back to town and
+fallen into our old ways of life, he couldn't seem to get over
+it.  He seemed plumb possessed of gloom, and moped around like a
+chicken with the pip.  This surprised me, for I didn't think the
+loss of money would hit him so hard.  It didn't hit any of us
+very hard in those days.
+    
+One evening I took him aside and fed him a drink, and
+expostulated with him.
+   
+"Oh, HELL, Rogers," he burst out, "I don't care about the loot. 
+But, suffering cats, think how that fellow sized us up for a lot
+of pattern-made fools; and how right he was about, it.  Why all
+he did was to sail out of sight around the next corner.  He knew
+we'd start across country; and we did.  All we had to do was to
+lay low, and save our legs.  He was BOUND to come back.  And we
+might have nailed him when he landed."
+
+
+"That's about all there was to it," concluded Colorado Rogers,
+after a pause, "--except that I've been looking for him ever
+since, and when I heard you singing that song I naturally thought
+I'd landed."
+ 
+"And you never saw him again?" asked Windy Bill.
+ 
+"Well," chuckled Rogers, "I did about ten year later.  It was in
+Tucson.  I was in the back of a store, when the door in front
+opened and this man came in.  He stopped at the little cigar-case
+by the door.  In about one jump I was on his neck.  I jerked him
+over backwards before he knew what had struck him, threw him on
+his face, got my hands in his back-hair, and began to jump his
+features against the floor.  Then all at once I noted that this
+man had two arms; so of course he was the wrong fellow.  "Oh,
+excuse me," said I, and ran out the back door."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+THE HONK-HONK BREED
+
+It was Sunday at the ranch.  For a wonder the weather bad been
+favourable; the windmills were all working, the bogs had dried
+up, the beef had lasted over, the remuda had not strayed--in
+short, there was nothing to do.  Sang had given us a baked     
+bread-pudding with raisins in it.  We filled it--in a wash basin
+full of it--on top of a few incidental pounds of chile con, baked
+beans, soda biscuits, "air tights," and other delicacies.  Then
+we adjourned with our pipes to the shady side of the blacksmith's
+shop where we could watch the ravens on top the adobe wall of the
+corral.  Somebody told a story about ravens.  This led to
+road-runners.  This suggested rattlesnakes.  They started Windy 
+Bill.
+       
+"Speakin' of snakes," said Windy, "I mind when they catched the
+great-granddaddy of all the bullsnakes up at Lead in the Black
+Hills.  I was only a kid then.  This wasn't no such tur'ble long
+a snake,  but he was more'n a foot thick.  Looked just like a
+sahuaro stalk.  Man name of Terwilliger Smith catched it.  He
+named this yere bullsnake Clarence, and got it so plumb gentle it
+followed him everywhere.  One day old P. T. Barnum come along and
+wanted to buy this Clarence snake--offered Terwilliger a thousand
+cold--but Smith wouldn't part with the snake nohow.  So finally
+they fixed up a deal so Smith could go along with the show.  They
+shoved Clarence in a box in the baggage car, but after a while
+Mr. Snake gets so lonesome he gnaws out and starts to crawl back
+to find his master.  Just as he is half-way between the baggage
+car and the smoker, the couplin' give way--right on that heavy
+grade between Custer and Rocky Point.  Well, sir, Clarence wound
+his head 'round one brake wheel and his tail around the other,
+and held that train together to the bottom of the grade.  But it
+stretched him twenty-eight feet and they had to advertise him as
+a boa-constrictor."
+    
+Windy Bill's story of the faithful bullsnake aroused to
+reminiscence the grizzled stranger, who thereupon held forth as
+follows:
+
+Wall, I've see things and I've heerd things, some of them ornery,
+and some you'd love to believe, they was that gorgeous and
+improbable.  Nat'ral history was always my hobby and sportin'
+events my special pleasure and this yarn of Windy's reminds me of
+the only chanst I ever had to ring in business and pleasure and
+hobby all in one grand merry-go-round of joy.  It come about like
+this:
+ 
+One day, a few year back, I was sittin' on the beach at Santa
+Barbara watchin' the sky stay up, and wonderin' what to do with
+my year's wages, when a little squinch-eye round-face with big
+bow spectacles came and plumped down beside me.
+  
+"Did you ever stop to think," says he, shovin' back his hat,
+"that if the horsepower delivered by them waves on this beach in
+one single hour could be concentrated behind washin' machines, it
+would be enough to wash all the shirts for a city of four hundred
+and fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-six people?"
+
+"Can't say I ever did," says I, squintin' at him sideways.
+  
+"Fact," says he, "and did it ever occur to you that if all the
+food a man eats in the course of a natural life could be gathered
+together at one time, it would fill a wagon-train twelve miles
+long?"
+  
+"You make me hungry," says I.
+  
+"And ain't it interestin' to reflect," he goes on, "that if all
+the finger-nail parin's of the human race for one year was to be
+collected and subjected to hydraulic pressure it would equal in
+size the pyramid of Cheops?"
+  
+"Look yere," says I, sittin' up, "did YOU ever pause to
+excogitate that if all the hot air you is dispensin' was to be
+collected together it would fill a balloon big enough to waft you
+and me over that Bullyvard of Palms to yonder gin mill on the
+corner?"
+   
+He didn't say nothin' to that--just yanked me to my feet, faced
+me towards the gin mill above mentioned, and exerted considerable
+pressure on my arm in urgin' of me forward.
+  
+"You ain't so much of a dreamer, after all,"  thinks I.  "In
+important matters you are plumb decisive."
+   
+We sat down at little tables, and my friend ordered a beer and a
+chicken sandwich.
+  
+"Chickens," says he, gazin' at the sandwich, "is a dollar apiece
+in this country, and plumb scarce.  Did you ever pause to ponder
+over the returns chickens would give on a small investment?  Say
+you start with ten hens.  Each hatches out thirteen aigs, of
+which allow a loss of say six for childish accidents.  At the end
+of the year you has eighty chickens.  At the end of two years
+that flock has increased to six hundred and twenty.  At the end
+of the third year--"
+
+ He had the medicine tongue!  Ten days later him and me was
+occupyin' of an old ranch fifty mile from anywhere.  When they
+run stage-coaches this joint used to be a roadhouse.  The outlook
+was on about a thousand little brown foothills.  A road two miles
+four rods two foot eleven inches in sight run by in front of us. 
+It come over one foothill and disappeared over another.  I know
+just how long it was, for later in the game I measured it.
+   
+Out back was about a hundred little wire chicken corrals filled
+with chickens.  We had two kinds.  That was the doin's of
+Tuscarora.  My pardner called himself Tuscarora Maxillary.  I
+asked him once if that was his real name.
+  
+"It's the realest little old name you ever heerd tell of," says
+he.  "I know, for I made it myself--liked the sound of her. 
+Parents ain't got no rights to name their children.  Parents
+don't have to be called them names."
+   
+Well, these chickens, as I said, was of two kinds.  The first was
+these low-set, heavyweight propositions with feathers on their
+laigs, and not much laigs at that, called Cochin Chinys.  The
+other was a tall ridiculous outfit made up entire of bulgin'
+breast and gangle laigs.  They stood about two foot and a half
+tall, and when they went to peck the ground their tail feathers
+stuck straight up to the sky.  Tusky called 'em Japanese Games.
+  
+"Which the chief advantage of them chickens is," says he, "that
+in weight about ninety per cent of 'em is breast meat.  Now my
+idee is, that if we can cross 'em with these Cochin Chiny fowls
+we'll have a low-hung, heavyweight chicken runnin' strong on
+breast meat.  These Jap Games is too small, but if we can bring
+'em up in size and shorten their laigs, we'll shore have a
+winner."
+    
+That looked good to me, so we started in on that idee.  The
+theery was bully, but she didn't work out. The first broods we
+hatched growed up with big husky Cochin Chiny bodies and little
+short necks, perched up on laigs three foot long.  Them chickens 
+couldn't reach ground nohow.  We had to build a table for 'em to
+eat off, and when they went out rustlin' for themselves they had
+to confine themselves to sidehills or flyin' insects.  Their
+breasts was all right, though--"And think of them drumsticks for
+the boardinghouse trade!" says Tusky.
+   
+So far things wasn't so bad.  We had a good grubstake.  Tusky and
+me used to feed them chickens twict a day, and then used to set
+around watchin' the playful critters chase grasshoppers up an'
+down the wire corrals, while Tusky figgered out what'd happen if
+somebody was dumfool enough to gather up somethin' and fix it in
+baskets or wagons or such.  That was where we showed our
+ignorance of chickens.
+   
+One day in the spring I hitched up, rustled a dozen of the
+youngsters into coops, and druv over to the railroad to make our
+first sale.  I couldn't fold them chickens up into them coops at
+first, but then I stuck the coops up on aidge and they worked all
+right, though I will admit they was a comical sight.  At the
+railroad one of them towerist trains had just slowed down to a
+halt as I come up, and the towerist was paradin' up and down
+allowin' they was particular enjoyin' of the warm Californy
+sunshine.  One old terrapin, with grey chin whiskers, projected
+over, with his wife, and took a peek through the slats of my
+coop.  He straightened up like someone had touched him off with a
+red-hot poker.
+   
+"Stranger," said he, in a scared kind of whisper, "what's them?"
+   
+"Them's chickens," says I.
+    
+He took another long look.
+   
+"Marthy," says he to the old woman, "this will be about all!  We
+come out from Ioway to see the Wonders of Californy, but I can't
+go nothin' stronger than this.  If these is chickens, I don't
+want to see no Big Trees."
+    
+Well, I sold them chickens all right for a dollar and two bits,
+which was better than I expected, and got an order for more. 
+About ten days later I got a letter from the commission house.
+   
+"We are returnin' a sample of your Arts and Crafts chickens with
+the lovin' marks of the teeth still onto him," says they.  "Don't
+send any more till they stops pursuin' of the nimble grasshopper.
+Dentist bill will foller."
+
+With the letter came the remains of one of the chickens.  Tusky
+and I, very indignant, cooked her for supper.  She was tough, all
+right.  We thought she might do better biled, so we put her in
+the pot over night.  Nary bit.  Well, then we got interested. 
+Tusky kep' the fire goin' and I rustled greasewood.  We cooked
+her three days and three nights.  At the end of that time she was
+sort of pale and frazzled, but still givin' points to
+three-year-old jerky on cohesion and other uncompromisin' forces
+of Nature.  We buried her then, and went out back to recuperate.
+   
+There we could gaze on the smilin' landscape, dotted by about
+four hundred long-laigged chickens swoopin' here and there after
+grasshoppers.
+  
+"We got to stop that," says I.
+  
+"We can't," murmured Tusky, inspired. "We can't.  It's born in
+'em; it's a primal instinct, like the love of a mother for her
+young, and it can't be eradicated!  Them chickens is constructed
+by a divine providence for the express purpose of chasin'
+grasshoppers, jest as the beaver is made for buildin' dams, and
+the cow-puncher is made for whisky and faro-games.  We can't
+keep 'em from it.  If we was to shut 'em in a dark cellar, they'd
+flop after imaginary grasshoppers in their dreams, and die
+emaciated in the midst of plenty.  Jimmy, we're up agin the
+Cosmos, the oversoul--"  Oh, he had the medicine tongue, Tusky
+had, and risin' on the wings of eloquence that way, he had me
+faded in ten minutes.  In fifteen I was wedded solid to the
+notion that the bottom had dropped out of the chicken business. 
+I think now that if we'd shut them hens up, we might have--still,
+I don't know; they was a good deal in what Tusky said.
+
+"Tuscarora Maxillary," says I, "did you ever stop to entertain
+that beautiful thought that if all the dumfoolishness possessed
+now by the human race could be gathered together, and lined up
+alongside of us, the first feller to come along would say to it
+'Why, hello, Solomon!'"
+   
+We quit the notion of chickens for profit right then and there,
+but we couldn't quit the place.  We hadn't much money, for one
+thing, and then we, kind of liked loafin' around and raisin' a
+little garden truck, and--oh, well, I might as well say so, we
+had a notion about placers in the dry wash back of the house you
+know how it is.  So we stayed on, and kept a-raisin' these
+long-laigs for the fun of it.  I used to like to watch 'em
+projectin' around, and I fed 'em twict a day about as usual.
+   
+So Tusky and I lived alone there together, happy as ducks in
+Arizona.  About onc't in a month somebody'd pike along the road. 
+She wasn't much of a road, generally more chuckholes than bumps,
+though sometimes it was the other way around.  Unless it happened
+to be a man horseback or maybe a freighter without the fear of
+God in his soul, we didn't have no words with them; they was too
+busy cussin' the highways and generally too mad for social
+discourses.
+   
+One day early in the year, when the 'dobe mud made ruts to add to
+the bumps, one of these automobeels went past.  It was the first
+Tusky and me had seen in them parts, so we run out to view her. 
+Owin' to the high spots on the road, she looked like one of these
+movin' picters, as to blur and wobble; sounded like a cyclone
+mingled with cuss-words, and smelt like hell on housecleanin'
+day.
+  
+"Which them folks don't seem to be enjoyin' of the scenery," says
+I to Tusky.  "Do you reckon that there blue trail is smoke from
+the machine or remarks from the inhabitants thereof?"
+
+Tusky raised his head and sniffed long and inquirin'.
+
+"It's langwidge," says he. "Did you ever stop to think that all
+the words in the dictionary stretched end to end would reach--"
+
+But at that minute I catched sight of somethin' brass lyin' in
+the road.  It proved to be a curled-up sort of horn with a rubber
+bulb on the end.  I squoze the bulb and jumped twenty foot over
+the remark she made.
+  
+"Jarred off the machine," says Tusky.
+  
+"Oh, did it?" says I, my nerves still wrong.  "I thought maybe it
+had growed up from the soil like a toadstool."
+
+About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals, because we
+needed some of the wire.  Them long-laigs thereupon scattered all
+over the flat searchin' out their prey.  When feed time come I
+had to screech my lungs out gettin' of 'em in, and then sometimes
+they didn't all hear.  It was plumb discouragin', and I mighty
+nigh made up my mind to quit 'em, but they had come to be sort of
+pets, and I hated to turn 'em down.  It used to tickle Tusky
+almost to death to see me out there hollerin' away like an old
+bull-frog.  He used to come out reg'lar, with his pipe lit, just
+to enjoy me.  Finally I got mad and opened up on him.
+  
+"Oh," he explains, "it just plumb amuses me to see the dumfool
+at his childish work.  Why don't you teach 'em to come to that
+brass horn, and save your voice?"
+     
+"Tusky," says I, with feelin', "sometimes you do seem to get a
+glimmer of real sense."
+   
+Well, first off them chickens used to throw back-sommersets over
+that horn.  You have no idee how slow chickens is to learn
+things.  I could tell you things about chickens--say, this yere
+bluff about roosters bein' gallant is all wrong.  I've watched
+'em.  When one finds a nice feed he gobbles it so fast that the
+pieces foller down his throat like yearlin's through a hole in
+the fence.  It's only when he scratches up a measly one-grain
+quick-lunch that he calls up the hens and stands noble and
+self-sacrificin' to one side.  That ain't the point, which is,
+that after two months I had them long-laigs so they'd drop
+everythin' and come kitin' at the HONK-HONK of that horn.  It was
+a purty sight to see 'em, sailin' in from all directions twenty
+foot at a stride.  I was proud of 'em, and named 'em the
+Honk-honk Breed.  We didn't have no others, for by now the
+coyotes and bob-cats had nailed the straight-breds.  There wasn't
+no wild cat or coyote could catch one of my Honk-honks, no, sir!
+   
+We made a little on our placer--just enough to keep interested. 
+Then the supervisors decided to fix our road, and what's more,
+THEY DONE IT!  That's the only part in this yarn that's hard to
+believe, but, boys, you'll have to take it on faith.  They
+ploughed her, and crowned her, and scraped her, and rolled her,
+and when they moved on we had the fanciest highway in the State
+of Californy.
+   
+That noon--the day they called her a job--Tusky and I sat smokin'
+our pipes as per usual, when way over the foothills we seen a
+cloud of dust and faint to our cars was bore a whizzin' sound. 
+The chickens was gathered under the cottonwood for the heat of
+the day, but they didn't pay no attention.  Then faint, but
+clear, we heard another of them brass horns:
+  
+"Honk! honk!" says it, and every one of them chickens woke up,
+and stood at attention.
+  
+"Honk! honk!" it hollered clearer and nearer.
+
+Then over the hill come an automobeel, blowin' vigorous at every
+jump.
+  
+"My God!" I yells to Tusky, kickin' over my chair, as I springs
+to my feet.  "Stop 'em!  Stop 'em!"
+   
+But it was too late.  Out the gate sprinted them poor devoted
+chickens, and up the road they trailed in vain pursuit.  The last
+we seen of 'em was a  mingling of dust and dim figgers goin'
+thirty mile an hour after a disappearin' automobeel.
+
+That was all we seen for the moment.  About three o'clock the
+first straggler came limpin' in, his wings hangin', his mouth
+open, his eyes glazed with the heat.  By sundown fourteen had
+returned.  All the rest had disappeared utter; we never seen 'em
+again.  I reckon they just naturally run themselves into a
+sunstroke and died on the road.
+   
+It takes a long time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap
+longer to unlearn him.  After that two or three of these yere
+automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin' of their horns, all
+kickin' up a hell of a dust.  And every time them fourteen
+Honk-honks of mine took along after 'em, just as I'd taught 'em
+to do, layin' to get to their corn when they caught up.  No more
+of 'em died, but that fourteen did get into elegant trainin'. 
+After a while they got plumb to enjoyin' it.  When you come right
+down to it, a chicken don't have many amusements and relaxations
+in this life.  Searchin' for worms, chasin' grasshoppers, and
+wallerin' in the dust is about the limits of joys for chickens.
+
+It was sure a fine sight to see 'em after they got well into the
+game.  About nine o'clock every mornin' they would saunter down
+to the rise of the road where they would wait patient until a
+machine came along. Then it would warm your heart to see the
+enthusiasm of them.  With, exultant cackles of joy they'd trail
+ in, reachin' out like quarter-horses, their wings half spread
+out, their eyes beamin' with delight.  At the lower turn they'd
+quit.  Then, after talkin' it over excited-like for a few
+minutes, they'd calm down and wait for another.
+   
+After a few months of this sort of trainin' they got purty good
+at it.  I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile
+an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles.  When
+cars didn't come along often enough, they'd all turn out and
+chase jack-rabbits.  They wasn't much fun at that.  After a
+short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified,
+while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances around his
+shrinkin' form.
+   
+Our ranch got to be purty well known them days among
+automobeelists.  The strength of their cars was horse-power, of
+course, but the speed of them they got to ratin' by
+chicken-power.  Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles
+just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for
+pace-makers.  We charged them a little somethin', and then, too,
+we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well. 
+It wasn't necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer. 
+Evenin's we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged
+on my chickens.  The chickens would gather round close to listen.
+
+They liked to hear their praises sung, all right.  You bet they
+sabe!  The only reason a chicken, or any other critter, isn't
+intelligent is because he hasn't no chance to expand. 
+
+Why, we used to run races with 'em.  Some of us would hold two or
+more chickens back of a chalk line, and the starter'd blow the
+horn from a hundred yards to a mile away, dependin' on whether it
+was a sprint or for distance.  We had pools on the results, gave
+odds, made books, and kept records.  After the thing got knowed
+we made money hand over fist.
+
+
+The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll a cigarette.
+
+"What did you quit it for, then?" ventured Charley, out of the
+hushed silence.
+  
+"Pride," replied the stranger solemnly. "Haughtiness of spirit."
+  
+"How so?" urged Charley, after a pause.
+ 
+"Them chickens," continued the stranger, after a moment, "stood
+around listenin' to me a-braggin' of what superior fowls they was
+until they got all puffed up.  They wouldn't have nothin'
+whatever to do with the ordinary chickens we brought in for
+eatin' purposes, but stood around lookin' bored when there wasn't
+no sport doin'.  They got to be just like that Four Hundred you
+read about in the papers.  It was one continual round of
+grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties.  They
+got idle and haughty, just like folks.  Then come race suicide. 
+They got to feelin' so aristocratic the hens wouldn't have no
+eggs."
+  
+Nobody dared say a word.
+
+"Windy Bill's snake--" began the narrator genially.
+ 
+"Stranger," broke in Windy Bill, with great emphasis, "as to
+that snake, I want you to understand this:  yereafter in my
+estimation that snake is nothin' but an ornery angleworm!"
+
+
+
+PART II 
+THE TWO GUN MAN
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
+
+Buck Johnson was American born, but with a black beard and a
+dignity of manner that had earned him the title of Senor.  He had
+drifted into southeastern Arizona in the days of Cochise and
+Victorio and Geronimo.  He had persisted, and so in time had come
+to control the water--and hence the grazing--of nearly all the
+Soda Springs Valley.  His troubles were many, and his
+difficulties great.  There were the ordinary problems of lean and
+dry years.  There were also the extraordinary problems of
+devastating Apaches; rivals for early and ill-defined range
+rights--and cattle rustlers.
+        
+Senor Buck Johnson was a man of capacity, courage, directness of
+method, and perseverance.  Especially the latter.  Therefore he
+had survived to see the Apaches subdued, the range rights
+adjusted, his cattle increased to thousands, grazing the area of
+a principality.  Now, all the energy and fire of his
+frontiersman's nature he had turned to wiping out the third
+uncertainty of an uncertain business.  He found it a task of some
+magnitude.
+   
+For Senor Buck Johnson lived just north of that terra incognita
+filled with the mystery of a double chance of death from man or
+the flaming desert known as the Mexican border.  There, by
+natural gravitation, gathered all the desperate characters of
+three States and two republics.  He who rode into it took good
+care that no one should ride behind him, lived warily, slept
+light, and breathed deep when once he had again sighted the
+familiar peaks of Cochise's Stronghold.  No one professed
+knowledge of those who dwelt therein.  They moved, mysterious as
+the desert illusions that compassed them about.  As you rode, the
+ranges of mountains visibly changed form, the monstrous, snaky,
+sea-like growths of the cactus clutched at your stirrup, mock
+lakes sparkled and dissolved in the middle distance, the sun beat
+hot and merciless, the powdered dry alkali beat hotly and
+mercilessly back--and strange, grim men, swarthy, bearded,
+heavily armed, with red-rimmed unshifting eyes, rode silently out
+of the mists of illusion to look on you steadily, and then to
+ride silently back into the desert haze.  They might be only the
+herders of the gaunt cattle, or again they might belong to the
+Lost Legion that peopled the country.  All you could know was
+that of the men who entered in, but few returned.
+   
+Directly north of this unknown land you encountered parallel
+fences running across the country.  They enclosed nothing, but
+offered a check to the cattle drifting toward the clutch of the
+renegades, and an obstacle to swift, dashing forays.
+   
+Of cattle-rustling there are various forms.  The boldest consists
+quite simply of running off a bunch of stock, hustling it over
+the Mexican line, and there selling it to some of the big Sonora
+ranch owners.  Generally this sort means war.  Also are there
+subtler means, grading in skill from the re-branding through a
+wet blanket, through the crafty refashioning of a brand to the
+various methods of separating the cow from her unbranded calf. 
+In the course of his task Senor Buck Johnson would have to do
+with them all, but at present he existed in a state of warfare,
+fighting an enemy who stole as the Indians used to steal.
+
+Already be had fought two pitched battles and had won them both. 
+His cattle increased, and he became rich.  Nevertheless he knew
+that constantly his resources were being drained.  Time and again
+he and his new Texas foreman, Jed Parker, had followed the trail
+of a stampeded bunch of twenty or thirty, followed them on down
+through the Soda Springs Valley to the cut drift fences, there to
+abandon them.  For, as yet, an armed force would be needed to
+penetrate the borderland.  Once he and his men bad experienced
+the glory of a night pursuit.  Then, at the drift fences, he had
+fought one of his battles.  But it was impossible adequately to
+patrol all parts of a range bigger than some Eastern States.
+   
+Buck Johnson did his best, but it was like stepping with sand the
+innumerable little leaks of a dam.  Did his riders watch toward
+the Chiricahuas, then a score of beef steers disappeared from
+Grant's Pass forty miles away.  Pursuit here meant leaving cattle
+unguarded there.  It was useless, and the Senor soon perceived
+that sooner or later he must strike in offence.
+   
+For this purpose he began slowly to strengthen the forces of his
+riders.  Men were coming in from Texas.  They were good men,
+addicted to the grass-rope, the double cinch, and the ox-bow
+stirrup.  Senor Johnson wanted men who could shoot, and he got
+them.
+  
+"Jed," said Senor Johnson to his foreman, "the next son of a gun
+that rustles any of our cows is sure loading himself full of
+trouble.  We'll hit his trail and will stay with it, and we'll
+reach his cattle-rustling conscience with a rope."
+
+So it came about that a little army crossed the drift fences and
+entered the border country.  Two days later it came out, and
+mighty pleased to be able to do so.  The rope had not been used.
+    
+The reason for the defeat was quite simple.  The thief had run
+his cattle through the lava beds where the trail at once became
+difficult to follow.  This delayed the pursuing party; they ran
+out of water, and, as there was among them not one man well
+enough acquainted with the country to know where to find more,
+they had to return.
+
+"No use, Buck," said Jed.  "We'd any of us come in on a gun play,
+but we can't buck the desert.  We'll have to get someone who
+knows the country."
+   
+"That's all right--but where?" queried Johnson.
+
+"There's Pereza," suggested Parker. "It's the only town down
+near that country."
+  
+"Might get someone there," agreed the Senor.
+   
+Next day he rode away in search of a guide.  The third evening he
+was back again, much discouraged.
+
+"The country's no good," he explained. "The regular inhabitants
+'re a set of Mexican bums and old soaks.  The cowmen's all from
+north and don't know nothing more than we do.  I found lots who
+claimed to know that country, but when I told 'em what I wanted
+they shied like a colt.  I couldn't hire'em, for no money, to go
+down in that country.  They ain't got the nerve.  I took two days
+to her, too, and rode out to a ranch where they said a man lived
+who knew all about it down there.  Nary riffle.  Man looked all
+right, but his tail went down like the rest when I told him what
+we wanted.  Seemed plumb scairt to death.  Says he lives too
+close to the gang.  Says they'd wipe him out sure if he done it. 
+Seemed  plumb SCAIRT."  Buck Johnson grinned. "I told him so and
+he got hosstyle right off.  Didn't seem no ways scairt of me.  I
+don't know what's the matter with that outfit down there. 
+They're plumb terrorised."
+
+That night a bunch of steers was stolen from the very corrals of
+the home ranch.  The home ranch was far north, near Fort Sherman
+itself, and so had always been considered immune from attack.
+Consequently these steers were very fine ones.
+   
+For the first time Buck Johnson lost his head and his dignity. 
+He ordered the horses.
+  
+"I'm going to follow that -- -- into Sonora," he shouted to Jed
+Parker.  "This thing's got to stop!"
+
+"You can't make her, Buck," objected the foreman. "You'll get
+held up by the desert, and, if that don't finish you, they'll
+tangle you up in all those little mountains down there, and
+ambush you, and massacre you.  You know it damn well."
+
+"I don't give a --" exploded Senor Johnson, "if they do. No man
+can slap my face and not get a run for it."
+   
+Jed Parker communed with himself.
+
+"Senor," said he, at last,"it's no good; you can't do it.  You
+got to have a guide.  You wait three days and I'll get you one."
+
+"You can't do it," insisted the Senor. "I tried every man in the
+district."
+
+"Will you wait three days?" repeated the foreman.
+   
+Johnson pulled loose his latigo.  His first anger had cooled.
+  
+"All right," he agreed, "and you can say for me that I'll pay
+five thousand dollars in gold and give all the men and horses he
+needs to the man who has the nerve to get back that bunch of
+cattle, and bring in the man who rustled them.  I'll sure make
+this a test case."
+   
+So Jed Parker set out to discover his man with nerve.
+
+
+              
+CHAPTER TWO
+THE MAN WITH NERVE
+
+At about ten o'clock of the Fourth of July a rider topped the
+summit of the last swell of land, and loped his animal down into
+the single street of Pereza.  The buildings on either side were
+flat-roofed and coated with plaster.  Over the sidewalks extended
+wooden awnings, beneath which opened very wide doors into the
+coolness of saloons.  Each of these places ran a bar, and also
+games of roulette, faro, craps, and stud poker.  Even this early
+in the morning every game was patronised.
+
+The day was already hot with the dry, breathless, but
+exhilarating, beat of the desert.  A throng of men idling at the
+edge of the sidewalks, jostling up and down their centre, or
+eddying into the places of amusement, acknowledged the power of
+summer by loosening their collars, carrying their coats on their
+arms.  They were as yet busily engaged in recognising
+acquaintances.  Later they would drink freely and gamble, and
+perhaps fight.  Toward all but those whom they recognised they
+preserved an attitude of potential suspicion, for here were
+gathered the "bad men" of the border countries.  A certain
+jealousy or touchy egotism lest the other man be considered
+quicker on the trigger, bolder, more aggressive than himself,
+kept each strung to tension.  An occasional shot attracted little
+notice. Men in the cow-countries shoot as casually as we strike
+matches, and some subtle instinct told them that the reports were
+harmless.
+   
+As the rider entered the one street, however, a more definite
+cause of excitement drew the loose population toward the centre
+of the road.  Immediately their mass blotted out what had
+interested them.  Curiosity attracted the saunterers; then in 
+turn the frequenters of the bars and gambling games.  In a very
+few moments the barkeepers, gamblers, and look-out men, held
+aloof only by the necessities of their calling, alone of all the
+population of Pereza were not included in the newly-formed ring.
+   
+The stranger pushed his horse resolutely to the outer edge of the
+crowd where, from his point of vantage, he could easily overlook
+their heads.  He was a quiet-appearing young fellow, rather
+neatly dressed in the border costume, rode a "centre fire," or
+single-cinch, saddle, and wore no chaps.  He was what is known as
+a "two-gun man":  that is to say, he wore a heavy Colt's revolver
+on either hip.  The fact that the lower ends of his holsters were
+tied down, in order to facilitate the easy withdrawal of the
+revolvers, seemed to indicate that he expected to use them.  He
+had furthermore a quiet grey eye, with the glint of steel that
+bore out the inference of the tied holsters.
+   
+The newcomer dropped his reins on his pony's neck, eased himself
+to an attitude of attention, and looked down gravely on what was
+taking place.   He saw over the heads of the bystanders a tall,
+muscular, wild-eyed man, hatless, his hair rumpled into staring
+confusion, his right sleeve rolled to his shoulder, a
+wicked-looking nine-inch knife in his hand, and a red bandana
+handkerchief hanging by one corner from his teeth.
+  
+"What's biting the locoed stranger?" the young man inquired of
+his neighbour.
+   
+The other frowned at him darkly.
+  
+"Dare's anyone to take the other end of that handkerchief in his
+teeth, and fight it out without letting go."
+  
+"Nice joyful proposition," commented the young man.
+   
+He settled himself to closer attention.  The wild-eyed man was
+talking rapidly.  What he said cannot be printed here.  Mainly
+was it derogatory of the southern countries.  Shortly it became
+boastful of the northern, and then of the man who uttered it.
+
+He swaggered up and down, becoming always the more insolent as
+his challenge remained untaken.
+  
+"Why don't you take him up?" inquired the young man, after a
+moment.
+  
+"Not me!" negatived the other vigorously.  "I'll go yore little
+old gunfight to a finish, but I don't want any cold steel in
+mine.  Ugh! it gives me the shivers.  It's a reg'lar Mexican
+trick!  With a gun it's down and out, but this knife work is too
+slow and searchin'."
+
+The newcomer said nothing, but fixed his eye again on the raging
+man with the knife.
+
+"Don't you reckon he's bluffing? "be inquired.
+
+"Not any!" denied the other with emphasis. "He's jest drunk
+enough to be crazy mad."
+
+The newcomer shrugged his shoulders and cast his glance
+searchingly over the fringe of the crowd. It rested on a Mexican.
+  
+"Hi, Tony! come here," he called.
+   
+The Mexican approached, flashing his white teeth.
+  
+"Here," said the stranger, "lend me your knife a minute."
+   
+The Mexican, anticipating sport of his own peculiar kind, obeyed
+with alacrity.
+  
+"You fellows make me tired," observed the stranger, dismounting.
+"He's got the whole townful of you bluffed to a standstill.  Damn
+if I don't try his little game."
+   
+He hung his coat on his saddle, shouldered his way through the
+press, which parted for him readily, and picked up the other
+corner of the handkerchief.
+  
+"Now, you mangy son of a gun," said he.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+THE AGREEMENT
+  
+Jed Parker straightened his back, rolled up the bandana
+handkerchief, and thrust it into his pocket, hit flat with his
+hand the touselled mass of his hair, and thrust the long hunting
+knife into its sheath.
+  
+"You're the man I want," said he.
+
+Instantly the two-gun man had jerked loose his weapons and was
+covering the foreman.
+     
+"AM I!" he snarled.
+     
+Not jest that way," explained Parker. "My gun is on my hoss, and
+you can have this old toad-sticker if you want it.  I been
+looking for you, and took this way of finding you.  Now, let's go
+talk."
+    
+The stranger looked him in the eye for nearly a half minute
+without lowering his revolvers.
+   
+"I go you," said he briefly, at last.
+    
+But the crowd, missing the purport, and in fact the very
+occurrence of this colloquy, did not understand.  It thought the
+bluff had been called, and naturally, finding harmless what had
+intimidated it, gave way to an exasperated impulse to get even.
+     
+"You -- -- -- bluffer!" shouted a voice, "don't you think you can
+run any such ranikaboo here!"
+   
+Jed Parker turned humorously to his companion.
+  
+"Do we get that talk?" he inquired gently.
+    
+For answer the two-gun man turned and walked steadily in the
+direction of the man who had shouted.  The latter's hand strayed
+uncertainly toward his own weapon, but the movement paused when
+the stranger's clear, steel eye rested on it.
+   
+"This gentleman," pointed out the two-gun man softly, "is an old
+friend of mine.  Don't you get to calling of him names."
+    
+His eye swept the bystanders calmly.
+   
+"Come on, Jack," said be, addressing Parker.
+    
+On the outskirts be encountered the Mexican from whom he bad
+borrowed the knife.
+     
+"Here, Tony," said he with a slight laugh, "here's a peso. 
+You'll find your knife back there where I had to drop her." 
+
+He entered a saloon, nodded to the proprietor, and led the way
+through it to a boxlike room containing a board table and two
+chairs.
+
+"Make good,"he commanded briefly.
+
+"I'm looking for a man with nerve," explained Parker, with equal
+succinctness. "You're the man."
+  
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you know the country south of here?"
+   
+The stranger's eyes narrowed.
+  
+"Proceed," said he.
+  
+"I'm foreman of the Lazy Y of Soda Springs Valley range,"
+explained Parker.  "I'm looking for a man with sand enough and
+sabe of the country enough to lead a posse after cattle-rustlers
+into the border country."
+     
+"I live in this country," admitted the stranger.
+     
+"So do plenty of others, but their eyes stick out like two raw
+oysters when you mention the border country.  Will you tackle
+it?"
+  
+"What's the proposition?"
+  
+"Come and see the old man.  He'll put it to you."
+   
+They mounted their horses and rode the rest of the day.  The
+desert compassed them about, marvellously changing shape and
+colour, and every character, with all the noiselessness of
+phantasmagoria.  At evening the desert stars shone steady and
+unwinking, like the flames of candles.  By moonrise they came to
+the home ranch.
+
+The buildings and corrals lay dark and silent against the
+moonlight that made of the plain a sea of mist.  The two men
+unsaddled their horses and turned them loose in the wire-fenced
+"pasture," the necessary noises of their movements sounding     
+sharp and clear against the velvet hush of the night.  After a
+moment they walked stiffly past the sheds and cook shanty, past
+the men's bunk houses, and the tall windmill silhouetted against
+the sky, to the main building of the home ranch under its great
+cottonwoods.  There a light still burned, for this was the third
+day, and Buck Johnson awaited his foreman.
+        
+Jed Parker pushed in without ceremony.
+
+"Here's your man, Buck," said he.
+
+The stranger had stepped inside and carefully closed the door
+behind him.  The lamplight threw into relief the bold, free lines
+of his face, the details of his costume powdered thick with
+alkali, the shiny butts of the two guns in their open holsters
+tied at the bottom.  Equally it defined the resolute countenance
+of Buck Johnson turned up in inquiry.  The two men examined each
+other--and liked each other at once.
+  
+"How are you," greeted the cattleman.
+
+"Good-evening," responded the stranger.
+  
+"Sit down,"invited Buck Johnson.
+   
+The stranger perched gingerly on the edge of a chair, with an
+appearance less of embarrassment than of habitual alertness.
+
+"You'll take the job?" inquired the Senor.
+
+"I haven't heard what it is," replied the stranger.
+
+"Parker here--?"
+
+"Said you'd explain."
+     
+"Very well," said Buck Johnson.  He paused a moment, collecting
+his thoughts. "There's too much cattle-rustling here.  I'm going
+to stop it.  I've got good men here ready to take the job, but no
+one who knows the country south.  Three days ago I had a bunch of
+cattle stolen right here from the home-ranch corrals, and by one
+man, at that.  It wasn't much of a bunch--about twenty head--but
+I'm going to make a starter right here, and now.  I'm going to
+get that bunch back, and the man who stole them, if I have to go
+to hell to do it.  And I'm going to do the same with every case
+of rustling that comes up from now on.  I don't care if it's only
+one cow, I'm going to get it back--every trip.  Now, I want to
+know if you'll lead a posse down into the south country and bring
+out that last bunch, and the man who rustled them?"
+     
+"I don't know--" hesitated the stranger.
+     
+"I offer you five thousand dollars in gold if you'll bring back
+those cows and the man who stole 'em," repeated Buck Johnson.  
+
+"And I'll give you all the horses and men you think you need."
+  
+"I'll do it,"replied the two-gun man promptly.
+  
+"Good!" cried Buck Johnson, "and you better start to-morrow."
+  
+"I shall start to-night--right now."
+
+"Better yet.  How many men do you want, and grub for how long?"
+  
+"I'll play her a lone hand."
+  
+"Alone!" exclaimed Johnson, his confidence visibly cooling. 
+
+"Alone!  Do you think you can make her?"
+
+"I'll be back with those cattle in not more than ten days."
+     
+"And the man," supplemented the Senor.
+     
+"And the man.  What's more, I want that money here when I come
+in.  I don't aim to stay in this country over night."
+   
+A grin overspread Buck Johnson's countenance.  He understood.
+  
+"Climate not healthy for you?" he hazarded.  "I guess you'd be
+safe enough all right with us.  But suit yourself.  The money
+will be here."
+  
+"That's agreed?" insisted the two-gun man.
+  
+"Sure."
+  
+"I want a fresh horse--I'll leave mine--he's a good one.  I want
+a little grub."
+
+"All right.  Parker'll fit you out."
+   
+The stranger rose.
+  
+"I'll see you in about ten days."
+  
+"Good luck," Senor Buck Johnson wished him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+THE ACCOMPLISHMENT
+
+The next morning Buck Johnson took a trip down into the "pasture"
+of five hundred wire-fenced acres.
+  
+"He means business," he confided to Jed Parker, on his return. 
+"That cavallo of his is a heap sight better than the Shorty horse
+we let him take.  Jed, you found your man with nerve, all right. 
+How did you do it?"
+   
+The two settled down to wait, if not with confidence, at least
+with interest.  Sometimes, remembering the desperate character of
+the outlaws, their fierce distrust of any intruder, the wildness
+of the country, Buck Johnson and his foreman inclined to the
+belief that the stranger had undertaken a task beyond the powers
+of any one man.  Again, remembering the stranger's cool grey eye,
+the poise of his demeanour, the quickness of his movements, and
+the two guns with tied holsters to permit of easy withdrawal,
+they were almost persuaded that he might win.
+  
+"He's one of those long-chance fellows," surmised Jed. "He likes
+excitement.  I see that by the way he takes up with my knife
+play.  He'd rather leave his hide on the fence than stay in the
+corral."
+  
+"Well, he's all right," replied Senor Buck Johnson,"and if he
+ever gets back, which same I'm some doubtful of, his dinero'll be
+here for him."
+   
+In pursuance of this he rode in to Willets, where shortly the
+overland train brought him from Tucson the five thousand dollars
+in double eagles.
+   
+In the meantime the regular life of the ranch went on.  Each
+morning Sang, the Chinese cook, rang the great bell, summoning
+the men.  They ate, and then caught up the saddle horses for the
+day, turning those not wanted from the corral into the pasture. 
+Shortly they jingled away in different directions, two by two, on
+the slow Spanish trot of the cow-puncher.  All day long thus they
+would ride, without food or water for man or beast, looking the
+range, identifying the stock, branding the young calves,
+examining generally into the state of affairs, gazing always with
+grave eyes on the magnificent, flaming, changing, beautiful,
+dreadful desert of the Arizona plains.  At evening when the
+coloured atmosphere, catching the last glow, threw across the
+Chiricahuas its veil of mystery, they jingled in again, two by
+two, untired, unhasting, the glory of the desert in their
+deep-set, steady eyes.
+   
+And all the day long, while they were absent, the cattle, too,
+made their pilgrimage, straggling in singly, in pairs, in
+bunches, in long files, leisurely, ruminantly, without haste. 
+There, at the long troughs filled by the windmill of the
+blindfolded pump mule, they drank, then filed away again into the
+mists of the desert.  And Senor Buck Johnson, or his foreman,
+Parker, examined them for their condition, noting the increase,
+remarking the strays from another range.  Later, perhaps, they,
+too, rode abroad.  The same thing happened at nine other ranches
+from five to ten miles apart, where dwelt other fierce, silent
+men all under the authority of Buck Johnson.
+   
+And when night fell, and the topaz and violet and saffron and
+amethyst and mauve and lilac had faded suddenly from the
+Chiricahuas, like a veil that has been rent, and the ramparts had
+become slate-grey and then black--the soft-breathed night
+wandered here and there over the desert, and the land fell under
+an enchantment even stranger than the day's.
+   
+So the days went by, wonderful, fashioning the ways and the
+characters of men.  Seven passed.  Buck  Johnson and his foreman
+began to look for the stranger.  Eight, they began to speculate. 
+Nine, they doubted.  On the tenth they gave him up--and he came.
+   
+They knew him first by the soft lowing of cattle.  Jed Parker,
+dazzled by the lamp, peered out from the door, and made him out
+dimly turning the animals into the corral.  A moment later his
+pony's hoofs impacted softly on the baked earth, he dropped from
+the saddle and entered the room.
+  
+"I'm late," said he briefly, glancing at the clock, which
+indicated ten; "but I'm here."
+
+His manner was quick and sharp, almost breathless, as though he
+had been running.
+  
+"Your cattle are in the corral: all of them.  Have you the
+money?"
+  
+"I have the money here," replied Buck Johnson, laying his hand
+against a drawer, "and it's ready for you when you've earned it. 
+I don't care so much for the cattle.  What I wanted is the man
+who stole them.  Did you bring him?"
+
+"Yes, I brought him," said the stranger. "Let's see that money."
+   
+Buck Johnson threw open the drawer, and drew from it the heavy
+canvas sack.
+  
+"It's here.  Now bring in your prisoner."
+   
+The two-gun man seemed suddenly to loom large in the doorway. 
+The muzzles of his revolvers covered the two before him.  His
+speech came short and sharp.
+  
+"I told you I'd bring back the cows and the one who rustled
+them," he snapped.  "I've never lied to a man yet.  Your stock is
+in the corral.  I'll trouble you for that five thousand.  I'm the
+man who stole your cattle!"
+
+
+
+PART III  THE RAWHIDE
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+THE PASSING OF THE COLT'S FORTY-FIVE
+
+The man of whom I am now to tell you came to Arizona in the early
+days of Chief Cochise.  He settled in the Soda Springs Valley,
+and there persisted in spite of the devastating forays of that
+Apache.  After a time he owned all the wells and springs in the
+valley, and so, naturally, controlled the grazing on that
+extensive free range.  Once a day the cattle, in twos and threes,
+in bands, in strings, could be seen winding leisurely down the
+deep-trodden and converging trails to the water troughs at the
+home ranch, there leisurely to drink, and then leisurely to drift
+away into the saffron and violet and amethyst distances of the
+desert.  At ten other outlying ranches this daily scene was
+repeated.  All these cattle belonged to the man, great by reason
+of his priority in the country, the balance of his even
+character, and the grim determination of his spirit.
+
+When he had first entered Soda Springs Valley his companions had
+called him Buck Johnson.  Since then his form had squared, his
+eyes had steadied to the serenity of a great authority, his
+mouth, shadowed by the moustache and the beard, had closed
+straight in the line of power and taciturnity.  There was about
+him more than a trace of the Spanish.  So now he was known as
+Senor Johnson, although in reality he was straight American
+enough.
+   
+Senor Johnson lived at the home ranch with a Chinese cook, and
+Parker, his foreman.  The home ranch was of adobe, built with
+loopholes like a fort.  In the obsolescence of this necessity,
+other buildings had sprung up unfortified.  An adobe bunkhouse
+for the cow-punchers, an adobe blacksmith shop, a long, low
+stable, a shed, a windmill and pond-like reservoir, a whole
+system of corrals of different sizes, a walled-in vegetable
+garden--these gathered to themselves cottonwoods from the
+moisture of their being, and so added each a little to the green
+spot in the desert.  In the smallest corral, between the stable
+and the shed, stood a buckboard and a heavy wagon, the only
+wheeled vehicles about the place. Under the shed were rows of
+saddles, riatas, spurs mounted with silver, bits ornamented with
+the same metal, curved short irons for the range branding, long,
+heavy "stamps" for the corral branding.  Behind the stable lay
+the "pasture," a thousand acres of desert fenced in with wire. 
+There the hardy cow-ponies sought out the sparse, but nutritious,
+bunch grass, sixty of them, beautiful as antelope, for they were
+the pick of Senor Johnson's herds.
+   
+And all about lay the desert, shimmering, changing, many-tinted,
+wonderful, hemmed in by the mountains that seemed tenuous and
+thin, like beautiful mists, and by the sky that seemed hard and
+polished like a turquoise.
+   
+Each morning at six o'clock the ten cow-punchers of the home
+ranch drove the horses to the corral, neatly roped the dozen to
+be "kept up" for that day, and rewarded the rest with a feed of
+grain.  Then they rode away at a little fox trot, two by two. 
+All day long they travelled thus, conducting the business of the
+range, and at night, having completed the circle, they jingled
+again into the corral.
+ 
+At the ten other ranches this programme had been duplicated.  The
+half-hundred men of Senor Johnson's outfit had covered the area
+of a European principality.  And all of it, every acre, every
+spear of grass, every cactus prickle, every creature on it,
+practically belonged to Senor Johnson, because Senor Johnson
+owned the water, and without water one cannot exist on the
+desert.
+
+This result had not been gained without struggle.  The fact could
+be read in the settled lines of Senor Johnson's face, and the
+great calm of his grey eye.  Indian days drove him often to the
+shelter of the loopholed adobe ranch house, there to await the
+soldiers from the Fort, in plain sight thirty miles away on the
+slope that led to the foot of the Chiricahuas.  He lost cattle
+and some men, but the profits were great, and in time Cochise,
+Geronimo, and the lesser lights had flickered out in the winds of
+destiny.  The sheep terror merely threatened, for it was soon
+discovered that with the feed of Soda Springs Valley grew a burr
+that annoyed the flocks beyond reason, so the bleating scourge
+swept by forty miles away.  Cattle rustling so near the Mexican
+line was an easy matter.  For a time Senor Johnson commanded an
+armed band.  He was lord of the high, the low, and the middle
+justice.  He violated international ethics, and for the laws of
+nations he substituted his own.  One by one he annihilated the
+thieves of cattle, sometimes in open fight, but oftener by
+surprise and deliberate massacre.  The country was delivered. 
+And then, with indefatigable energy, Senor Johnson became a
+skilled detective.  Alone, or with Parker, his foreman, he rode
+the country through, gathering evidence.  When the evidence was
+unassailable he brought offenders to book.  The rebranding
+through a wet blanket he knew and could prove; the ear-marking of
+an unbranded calf until it could be weaned he understood; the
+paring of hoofs to prevent travelling he could tell as far as he
+could see; the crafty alteration of similar brands--as when a
+Mexican changed Johnson's Lazy Y to a Dumb-bell Bar--he saw
+through at a glance.  In short, the hundred and one petty tricks
+of the sneak-thief he ferreted out, in danger of his life.  Then
+he sent to Phoenix for a Ranger--and that was the last of the
+Dumb-bell Bar brand, or the Three Link Bar brand, or the Hour
+Glass Brand, or a half dozen others.  The Soda Springs Valley
+acquired a reputation for good order.
+
+Senor Johnson at this stage of his career found himself dropping
+into a routine.  In March began the spring branding, then the
+corralling and breaking of the wild horses, the summer
+range-riding, the great fall round-up, the shipping of cattle,
+and the riding of the winter range.  This happened over and over
+again.
+
+You and I would not have suffered from ennui. The roping and
+throwing and branding, the wild swing and dash of handling stock,
+the mad races to head the mustangs, the fierce combats to subdue
+these raging wild beasts to the saddle, the spectacle of the
+round-up with its brutish multitudes and its graceful riders, the
+dust and monotony and excitement and glory of the Trail, and
+especially the hundreds of incidental and gratuitous adventures
+of bears and antelope, of thirst and heat, of the joy of taking
+care of one's self--all these would have filled our days with the
+glittering, changing throng of the unusual.
+   
+But to Senor Johnson it had become an old story.  After the days
+of construction the days of accomplishment seemed to him lean. 
+His men did the work and reaped the excitement.  Senor Johnson
+never thought now of riding the wild horses, of swinging the rope
+coiled at his saddle horn, or of rounding ahead of the flying
+herds.  His inspections were business inspections.  The country
+was tame.  The leather chaps with the silver conchas hung behind
+the door.  The Colt's forty-five depended at the head of the bed. 
+Senor Johnson rode in mufti.  Of his cowboy days persisted still
+the high-heeled boots and spurs, the broad Stetson hat, and the
+fringed buckskin gauntlets.
+   
+The Colt's forty-five had been the last to go.  Finally one
+evening Senor Johnson received an express package.  He opened it
+before the undemonstrative Parker.  It proved to contain a pocket
+"gun"--a nickel-plated, thirty-eight calibre Smith & Wesson
+"five-shooter."  Senor Johnson examined it a little doubtfully. 
+In comparison with the six-shooter it looked like a toy.
+  
+"How do you, like her?" he inquired, handing the weapon to
+Parker.
+   
+Parker turned it over and over, as a child a rattle.  Then he
+returned it to its owner.
+
+"Senor," said he, "if ever you shoot me with that little old gun,
+AND I find it out the same day, I'll just raise hell with you!"
+
+"I don't reckon she'd INJURE a man much," agreed the Senor, "but
+perhaps she'd call his attention."
+
+However, the "little old gun" took its place, not in Senor
+Johnson's hip pocket, but inside the front waistband of his
+trousers, and the old shiny Colt's forty-five, with its worn
+leather "Texas style" holster, became a bedroom ornament.
+   
+Thus, from a frontiersman dropped Senor Johnson to the status of
+a property owner.  In a general way he had to attend to his
+interests before the cattlemen's association; he had to arrange
+for the buying and shipping, and the rest was leisure.  He could
+now have gone away somewhere as far as time went.  So can a fish
+live in trees--as far as time goes.  And in the daily riding,
+riding, riding over the range he found the opportunity for
+abstract thought which the frontier life had crowded aside.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+THE SHAPES OF ILLUSION
+
+Every day, as always, Senor Johnson rode abroad over the land. 
+His surroundings had before been accepted casually as a more or
+less pertinent setting of action and condition.  Now he sensed
+some of the fascination of the Arizona desert.
+   
+He noticed many things before unnoticed.  As he jingled loosely
+along on his cow-horse, he observed how the animal waded fetlock
+deep in the gorgeous orange California poppies, and then he
+looked up and about, and saw that the rich colour carpeted the
+landscape as far as his eye could reach, so that it seemed as
+though he could ride on and on through them to the distant
+Chiricahuas.  Only, close under the hills, lay, unobtrusive, a
+narrow streak of grey.  And in a few hours he had reached the
+streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself the centre
+of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valley
+could contain nothing else of importance.
+
+Looking back, Senor Johnson could discern a tenuous ribbon of
+orange--the poppies.  And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted
+the face of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread
+like fire until it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too,
+arrogated to itself the right of typifying Soda Springs Valley as
+a shimmering prairie of mesquite.  Flowered upland, dead lowland,
+brush, cactus, volcanic rock, sand, each of these for the time
+being occupied the whole space, broad as the sea.  In the circlet
+of the mountains was room for many infinities.
+
+Among the foothills Senor Johnson, for the first time,
+appreciated colour.  Hundreds of acres of flowers filled the
+velvet creases of the little hills and washed over the smooth,
+rounded slopes so accurately in the placing and manner of tinted
+shadows that the mind had difficulty in believing the colour not
+to have been shaded in actually by free sweeps of some gigantic
+brush.  A dozen shades of pinks and purples, a dozen of blues,
+and then the flame reds, the yellows, and the vivid greens. 
+Beyond were the mountains in their glory of volcanic rocks, rich
+as the tapestry of a Florentine palace.  And, modifying all the
+others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the
+sun through the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by
+the wind devils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate
+and gauzy veil of lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of
+mauve, according to the time of day.  Senor Johnson discovered
+that looking at the landscape upside down accentuated the colour
+effects.  It amused him vastly suddenly to bend over his saddle
+horn, the top of his head nearly touching his horse's mane.  The
+distant mountains at once started out into redder prominence;
+their shadows of purple deepened to the royal colour; the rose
+veil thickened.
+  
+"She's the prettiest country God ever made!" exclaimed Senor
+Johnson with entire conviction.
+   
+And no matter where he went, nor into how familiar country he
+rode, the shapes of illusion offered always variety.  One day the
+Chiricahuas were a tableland; next day a series of castellated
+peaks; now an anvil; now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a
+magnificent suspension bridge across the heavens to their
+neighbours, the ranges on the west.  Lakes rippling in the wind
+and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephants or small as
+rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests that never
+were, beds of lava along the hills swearing to a cloud shadow,
+while the sky was polished like a precious stone--these, and many
+other beautiful and marvellous but empty shows the great desert
+displayed lavishly, with the glitter and inconsequence of a
+dream.  Senor Johnson sat on his horse in the hot sun, his chin
+in his band, his elbow on the pommel, watching it all with grave,
+unshifting eyes.
+   
+Occasionally, belated, he saw the stars, the wonderful desert
+stars, blazing clear and unflickering, like the flames of
+candles.  Or the moon worked her necromancies, hemming him in by
+mountains ten thousand feet high through which there was no pass. 
+And then as he rode, the mountains shifted like the scenes in a
+theatre, and he crossed the little sand dunes out from the dream
+country to the adobe corrals of the home ranch.
+   
+All these things, and many others, Senor Johnson now saw for the
+first time, although he had lived among them for twenty years. 
+It struck him with the freshness of a surprise.  Also it reacted
+chemically on his mental processes to generate a new power within
+him.  The new power, being as yet unapplied, made him uneasy and
+restless and a little irritable.
+   
+He tried to show some of his wonders to Parker.
+  
+"Jed," said he, one day, "this is a great country."
+  
+"You KNOW it," replied the foreman.
+  
+"Those tourists in their nickel-plated Pullmans call this a
+desert.  Desert, hell!  Look at them flowers!"
+   
+The foreman cast an eye on a glorious silken mantle of purple, a
+hundred yards broad.
+     
+"Sure," he agreed; "shows what we could do if we only had a
+little water."
+   
+And again:  "Jed," began the Senor, "did you ever notice them
+mountains?"
+     
+"Sure," agreed Jed.
+     
+"Ain't that a pretty colour?"
+     
+"You bet," agreed the foreman; "now you're talking!  I always,
+said they was mineralised enough to make a good prospect."
+   
+This was unsatisfactory.  Senor Johnson grew more restless.  His
+critical eye began to take account of small details.  At the
+ranch house one evening he, on a sudden, bellowed loudly for
+Sang, the Chinese servant.
+
+"Look at these!" he roared, when Sang appeared.
+   
+Sang's eyes opened in bewilderment.
+    
+"There, and there!" shouted the cattleman. "Look at them old
+newspapers and them gun rags!  The place is like a cow-yard.  Why
+in the name of heaven don't you clean up here!"
+  
+"Allee light," babbled Sang; "I clean him."
+
+The papers and gun rags had lain there unnoticed for nearly a
+year.  Senor Johnson kicked them savagely.
+     
+"It's time we took a brace here," he growled, "we're livin' like
+a lot of Oilers."[5]
+              
+[5] Oilers: Greasers--Mexicans
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+THE PAPER A YEAR OLD
+
+Sang hurried out for a broom.  Senor Johnson sat where he was,
+his heavy, square brows knit.  Suddenly he stooped, seized one of
+the newspapers, drew near the lamp, and began to read.
+   
+It was a Kansas City paper and, by a strange coincidence, was
+dated exactly a year before.  The sheet Senor Johnson happened to
+pick up was one usually passed over by the average newspaper
+reader.  It contained only columns of little two- and three-line
+advertisements classified as Help Wanted, Situations Wanted, Lost
+and Found, and Personal.  The latter items Senor Johnson
+commenced to read while awaiting Sang and the broom.
+   
+The notices were five in number.  The first three were of the
+mysterious newspaper-correspondence type, in which Birdie
+beseeches Jack to meet her at the fountain; the fourth advertised
+a clairvoyant.  Over the fifth Senor Johnson paused long.  It
+reads
+ 
+"WANTED.-By an intelligent and refined lady of pleasing
+appearance, correspondence with a gentleman of means.  Object
+matrimony.
+
+Just then Sang returned with the broom and began noisily to sweep
+together the debris.  The rustling of papers aroused Senor
+Johnson from his reverie.  At once he exploded.
+  
+"Get out of here, you debased Mongolian," he shouted; "can't you
+see I'm reading?"
+   
+Sang fled, sorely puzzled, for the Senor was calm and unexcited
+and aloof in his everyday habit.
+   
+Soon Jed Parker, tall, wiry, hawk-nosed, deliberate, came into
+the room and flung his broad hat and spurs into the corner.  Then
+he proceeded to light his pipe and threw the burned match on the
+floor.
+  
+"Been over to look at the Grant Pass range," he announced
+cheerfully. "She's no good.  Drier than cork legs.  Th' country
+wouldn't support three horned toads."
+
+"Jed," quoth the Senor solemnly, "I wisht you'd hang up your hat
+like I have.  It don't look good there on the floor."
+  
+"Why, sure," agreed Jed, with an astonished stare.
+
+Sang brought in supper and slung it on the red and white squares
+of oilcloth.  Then he moved the lamp and retired.
+    
+Senor Johnson gazed with distaste into his cup.
+   
+"This coffee would float a wedge," he commented sourly.
+   
+"She's no puling infant," agreed the cheerful Jed.
+   
+"And this!" went on the Senor, picking up what purported to be
+plum duff: "Bog down a few currants in dough and call her
+pudding!"
+    
+He ate in silence, then pushed back his chair and went to the
+window, gazing through its grimy panes at the mountains, ethereal
+in their evening saffron.
+   
+"Blamed Chink," he growled; "why don't he wash these windows?"
+    
+Jed laid down his busy knife and idle fork to gaze on his chief
+with amazement.  Buck Johnson, the austere, the aloof, the grimly
+taciturn, the dangerous, to be thus complaining like a querulous
+woman!
+
+"Senor," said he, "you're off your feed."
+    
+Senor Johnson strode savagely to the table and sat down with a
+bang.
+   
+"I'm sick of it," he growled; "this thing will kill me off.  I
+might as well go be a buck nun and be done with it."
+   
+With one round-arm sweep he cleared aside the dishes.
+  
+"Give me that pen and paper behind you," he requested.
+   
+For an hour he wrote and destroyed.  The floor became littered
+with torn papers.  Then he enveloped a meagre result.  Parker had
+watched him in silence.
+ 
+The Senor looked up to catch his speculative eye.  His own eye
+twinkled a little, but the twinkle was determined and sinister,
+with only an alloy of humour.
+  
+"Senor," ventured Parker slowly, "this event sure knocks me
+hell-west and crooked.  If the loco you have culled hasn't
+paralysed your speaking parts, would you mind telling me what in
+the name of heaven, hell, and high-water is up?"
+  
+"I am going to get married," announced the Senor calmly.
+  
+"What!" shouted Parker; "who to?"
+  
+"To a lady," replied the Senor, "an intelligent and refined lady-
+-of pleasing appearance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+DREAMS
+
+Although the paper was a year old, Senor Johnson in due time
+received an answer from Kansas.  A correspondence ensued.  Senor
+Johnson enshrined above the big fireplace the photograph of a
+woman.  Before this he used to stand for hours at a time slowly
+constructing in his mind what he had hitherto lacked--an ideal of
+woman and of home.  This ideal he used sometimes to express to
+himself and to the ironical Jed.
+  
+"It must sure be nice to have a little woman waitin' for you when
+you come in off'n the desert."
+   
+Or: "Now, a woman would have them windows just blooming with
+flowers and white curtains and such truck."
+
+Or: "I bet that Sang would get a wiggle on him with his little
+old cleaning duds if he had a woman ahold of his jerk line."
+   
+Slowly he reconstructed his life, the life of the ranch, in terms
+of this hypothesised feminine influence.  Then matters came to an
+understanding,  Senor Johnson had sent his own portrait. 
+Estrella Sands wrote back that she adored big black beards, but
+she was afraid of him, he had such a fascinating bad eye:  no
+woman could resist him.  Senor Johnson at once took things for
+granted, sent on to Kansas a preposterous sum of "expense" money
+and a railroad ticket, and raided Goodrich's store at Willets, a
+hundred miles away, for all manner of gaudy carpets, silverware,
+fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen, and gimcracks for the
+adornment of the ranch house.  Furthermore, he offered wages more
+than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young Irish girl,
+named Susie O'Toole, to come out as housekeeper, decorator, boss
+of Sang and another Chinaman, and companion to Mrs. Johnson when
+she should arrive.
+    
+Furthermore, he laid off from the range work Brent Palmer, the
+most skilful man with horses, and set him to "gentling" a
+beautiful little sorrel.  A sidesaddle had arrived from El Paso. 
+It was "centre fire," which is to say it had but the single
+horsehair cinch, broad, tasselled, very genteel in its suggestion
+of pleasure use only.  Brent could be seen at all times of day,
+cantering here and there on the sorrel, a blanket tied around his
+waist to simulate the long riding skirt.  He carried also a sulky
+and evil gleam in his eye, warning against undue levity.
+   
+Jed Parker watched these various proceedings sardonically.
+   
+Once, the baby light of innocence blue in his eye, he inquired if
+he would be required to dress for dinner.
+  
+"If so," he went on, "I'll have my man brush up my low-necked
+clothes."
+   
+But Senor Johnson refused to be baited.
+  
+"Go on, Jed," said he; "you know you ain't got clothes enough to
+dust a fiddle."
+   
+The Senor was happy these days.  He showed it by an unwonted
+joviality of spirit, by a slight but evident unbending of his
+Spanish dignity.  No longer did the splendour of the desert fill
+him with a vague yearning and uneasiness.  He looked upon it
+confidently, noting its various phases with care, rejoicing in
+each new development of colour and light, of form and illusion,
+storing them away in his memory so that their recurrence should
+find him prepared to recognise and explain them.  For soon he
+would have someone by his side with whom to appreciate them.  In
+that sharing be could see the reason for them, the reason for
+their strange bitter-sweet effects on the human soul.
+      
+One evening he leaned on the corral fence, looking toward the
+Dragoons.  The sun had set behind them.  Gigantic they loomed
+against the western light.  From their summits, like an aureola,
+radiated the splendour of the dust-moted air, this evening a deep
+umber.  A faint reflection of it fell across the desert,
+glorifying the reaches of its nothingness.
+     
+"I'll take her out on an evening like this," quoth Senor Johnson
+to himself,"and I'll make her keep her eyes on the ground till we
+get right up by Running Bear Knob, and then I'll let her look up
+all to once.  And she'll surely enjoy this life.  I bet she never
+saw a steer roped in her life.  She can ride with me every day
+out over the range and I'll show her the busting and the branding
+and that band of antelope over by the Tall Windmill.  I'll teach
+her to shoot, too.  And we can make little pack trips off in the
+hills when she gets too hot--up there by Deerskin Meadows 'mongst
+the high peaks."
+      
+He mused, turning over in his mind a new picture of his own life,
+aims, and pursuits as modified by the sympathetic and
+understanding companionship of a woman.  He pictured himself as
+he must seem to her in his different pursuits.  The
+picturesqueness pleased him.  The simple, direct vanity of the
+man--the wholesome vanity of a straightforward nature--awakened
+to preen its feathers before the idea of the mate.
+            
+The shadows fell.  Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star. 
+The plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid
+lands, showed ghostly.  Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit
+adobe, leaned his elbows on the rail in silent company with his
+chief.  He, too, looked abroad.  His mind's eye saw what his
+body's eye had always told him were the insistent notes--the
+alkali, the cactus, the sage, the mesquite, the lava, the choking
+dust, the blinding beat, the burning thirst.  He sighed in the
+dim half recollection of past days.
+           
+"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.
+   
+But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the
+great glory of the desert.
+  
+"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course!  Why
+shouldn't she?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+THE ARRIVAL
+
+The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation
+with white dust.  A porter, in  strange contrast of neatness,
+flung open the vestibule, dropped his little carpeted step, and
+turned to assist someone.  A few idle passengers gazed out on the
+uninteresting, flat frontier town.
+   
+Senor Johnson caught his breath in amazement.  "God!  Ain't she
+just like her picture!" he exclaimed.  He seemed to find this
+astonishing.
+   
+For a moment he did not step forward to claim her, so she stood
+looking about her uncertainly, her leather suit-case at her feet.
+   
+She was indeed like the photograph.  The same full-curved,
+compact little figure, the same round face, the same cupid's bow
+mouth, the same appealing, large eyes, the same haze of doll's
+hair.  In a moment she caught sight of Senor Johnson and took two
+steps toward him, then stopped.  The Senor at once came forward.
+
+"You're Mr. Johnson, ain't you?" she inquired, thrusting her
+little pointed chin forward, and so elevating her baby-blue eyes
+to his.
+   
+"Yes, ma'am," he acknowledged formally.  Then, after a moment's
+pause: "I hope you're well."
+   
+"Yes, thank you."
+    
+The station loungers, augmented by all the ranchmen and cowboys
+in town, were examining her closely.  She looked at them in a
+swift side glance that seemed to gather all their eyes to hers. 
+Then, satisfied that she possessed the universal admiration, she
+returned the full force of her attention to the man before her.
+   
+"Now you give me your trunk checks," he was saying, "and then
+we'll go right over and get married."
+   
+"Oh!" she gasped.
+   
+"That's right, ain't it?" he demanded.
+   
+"Yes, I suppose so," she agreed faintly.
+
+A little subdued, she followed him to the clergyman's house,
+where, in the presence of Goodrich, the storekeeper, and the
+preacher's wife, the two were united.  Then they mounted the
+buckboard and drove from town.
+
+Senor Johnson said nothing, because he knew of nothing to say. 
+He drove skilfully and fast through the gathering dusk.  It was a
+hundred miles to the home ranch, and that hundred miles, by means
+of five relays of horses already arranged for, they would cover
+by morning.  Thus they would avoid the dust and heat and high
+winds of the day.
+    
+The sweet night fell.  The little desert winds laid soft fingers
+on their checks.  Overhead burned the stars, clear, unflickering,
+like candles.  Dimly could be seen the horses, their flanks
+swinging steadily in the square trot.  Ghostly bushes passed
+them; ghostly rock elevations.  Far, in indeterminate distance,
+lay the outlines of the mountains.  Always, they seemed to
+recede.  The plain, all but invisible, the wagon trail quite so,
+the depths of space--these flung heavy on the soul their weight
+of mysticism.  The woman, until now bolt upright in the buckboard
+seat, shrank nearer to the man.  He felt against his sleeve the
+delicate contact of her garment and thrilled to the touch.  A
+coyote barked sharply from a neighbouring eminence, then
+trailed off into the long-drawn, shrill howl of his species.
+     
+"What was that?" she asked quickly, in a subdued voice.
+   
+"A coyote--one of them little wolves," he explained.
+    
+The horses' hoofs rang clear on a hardened bit of the alkali
+crust, then dully as they encountered again the dust of the
+plain.  Vast, vague, mysterious in the silence of night, filled
+with strange influences breathing through space like damp winds,
+the desert took them to the heart of her great spaces.
+   
+"Buck," she whispered, a little tremblingly.  It was the first
+time she had spoken his name.
+   
+"What is it?" he asked, a new note in his voice.
+    
+But for a time she did not reply.  Only the contact against his
+sleeve increased by ever so little.
+   
+"Buck," she repeated, then all in a rush and with a sob, "Oh, I'm
+afraid."
+    
+Tenderly the man drew her to him.  Her head fell against his
+shoulder and she hid her eyes.
+   
+"There, little girl," he reassured her, his big voice rich and
+musical. "There's nothing to get scairt of, I'll take care of
+you.  What frightens you, honey?"
+
+She nestled close in his arm with a sigh of half relief.
+  
+"I don't know," she laughed, but still with a tremble in her
+tones.  "It's all so big and lonesome and strange--and I'm so
+little."
+  
+"There, little girl," he repeated.
+   
+They drove on and on.  At the end of two hours they stopped.  Men
+with lanterns dazzled their eyes.  The horses were changed, and
+so out again into the night where the desert seemed to breathe in
+deep, mysterious exhalations like a sleeping beast.
+   
+Senor Johnson drove his horses masterfully with his one free
+hand.  The road did not exist, except to his trained eves.  They
+seemed to be swimming out, out, into a vapour of night with the
+wind of their going steady against their faces.
+  
+"Buck," she murmured, "I'm so tired."
+   
+He tightened his arm around her and she went to sleep,
+half-waking at the ranches where the relays waited, dozing again
+as soon as the lanterns dropped behind.  And Senor Johnson, alone
+with his horses and the solemn stars, drove on, ever on, into the
+desert.
+
+By grey of the early summer dawn they arrived.  The girl wakened,
+descended, smiling uncertainly at Susie O'Toole, blinking
+somnolently at her surroundings.  Susie put her to bed in the
+little southwest room where hung the shiny Colt's forty-five in
+its worn leather "Texas-style" holster.  She murmured incoherent
+thanks and sank again to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of
+unaccustomed travelling, by the potency of the desert air, by the
+excitement of anticipation to which her nerves had long been
+strung.
+    
+Senor Johnson did not sleep.  He was tough, and used to it.  He
+lit a cigar and rambled about, now reading the newspapers he had
+brought with him, now prowling softly about the building, now
+visiting the corrals and outbuildings, once even the
+thousand-acre pasture where his saddle-horse knew him and came to
+him to have its forehead rubbed.  The dawn broke in good earnest,
+throwing aside its gauzy draperies of mauve.  Sang, the Chinese
+cook, built his fire.  Senor Johnson forbade him to clang the
+rising bell, and himself roused the cow-punchers.  The girl slept
+on.  Senor Johnson tip-toed a dozen times to the bedroom door. 
+Once he ventured to push it open.  He looked long within, then
+shut it softly and tiptoed out into the open, his eyes shining.
+  
+"Jed," he said to his foreman, "you don't know how it made me
+feel.  To see her lying there so pink and soft and pretty, with
+her yaller hair all tumbled about and a little smile on her--
+there in my old bed, with my old gun hanging over her that
+way--By Heaven, Jed, it made me feel almost HOLY!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+THE WAGON TIRE
+
+About noon she emerged from the room, fully refreshed and wide
+awake.  She and Susie O'Toole had unpacked at least one of the
+trunks, and now she stood arrayed in shirtwaist and blue skirt.
+    
+At once she stepped into the open air and looked about her with
+considerable curiosity.
+   
+"So this is a real cattle ranch," was her comment.
+    
+Senor Johnson was at her side pressing on her with boyish
+eagerness the sights of the place.  She patted the stag hounds
+and inspected the garden.  Then, confessing herself hungry, she
+obeyed with alacrity Sang's call to an early meal.  At the table
+she ate coquettishly, throwing her birdlike side glances at the
+man opposite.
+   
+"I want to see a real cowboy," she announced, as she pushed her
+chair back.
+   
+"Why, sure!" cried Senor Johnson joyously.  "Sang! hi, Sang! 
+Tell Brent Palmer to step in here a minute."
+
+After an interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his
+high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his
+chaps impacting softly on the leather.  He stood at ease, his
+broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows fixed on his
+chief.
+  
+"Shake hands with Mrs. Johnson, Brent.  I called you in because
+she said she wanted to see a real cow-puncher."
+  
+"Oh, BUCK!" cried the woman.
+   
+For an instant the cow-puncher's level brows drew together.  Then
+he caught the woman's glance fair.  He smiled.
+  
+"Well, I ain't much to look at," he proffered.
+  
+"That's not for you to say, sir," said Estrella, recovering.
+  
+"Brent, here, gentled your pony for you," exclaimed Senor
+Johnson.
+  
+"Oh," cried Estrella, "have I a pony?  How nice. And it was so
+good of you, Mr. Brent.  Can't I see him?  I want to see him.  I
+want to give him a piece of sugar."  She fumbled in the bowl.
+  
+"Sure you can see him.  I don't know as he'll eat sugar.  He
+ain't that educated.  Think you could teach him to eat sugar,
+Brent?"
+  
+"I reckon," replied the cowboy.
+
+They went out toward the corral, the cowboy joining them as a
+matter of course.  Estrella demanded explanations as she went
+along.  Their progress was leisurely.  The blindfolded pump mule
+interested her.
+
+"And he goes round and round that way all day without stopping,
+thinking he's really getting somewhere!" she marvelled. "I think
+that's a shame!  Poor old fellow, to get fooled that way!"
+   
+"It is some foolish," said Brent Palmer, "but he ain't any worse
+off than a cow-pony that hikes out twenty mile and then twenty
+back."
+
+"No, I suppose not," admitted Estrella.
+   
+"And we got to have water, you know," added Senor Johnson.
+    
+Brent rode up the sorrel bareback.  The pretty animal, gentle as
+a kitten, nevertheless planted his forefeet strongly and snorted
+at Estrella.
+   
+"I reckon he ain't used to the sight of a woman," proffered the
+Senor, disappointed.  "He'll get used to you.  Go up to him
+soft-like and rub him between the eyes."'
+    
+Estrella approached, but the pony jerked back his head with every
+symptom of distrust.  She forgot the sugar she had intended to
+offer him.
+   
+"He's a perfect beauty," she said at last, "but, my! I'd never
+dare ride him.  I'm awful scairt of horses."
+  
+"Oh, he'll come around all right," assured Brent easily. "I'll
+fix him."
+  
+"Oh, Mr. Brent," she exclaimed, "don't think I don't appreciate
+what you've done.  I'm sure he's really just as gentle as he can
+be.  It's only that I'm foolish."
+  
+"I'll fix him," repeated Brent.
+
+The two men conducted her here and there, showing her the various
+institutions of the place.  A man bent near the shed nailing a
+shoe to a horse's hoof.
+
+"So you even have a blacksmith!" said Estrella.  Her guides
+laughed amusedly.
+
+"Tommy, come here!" called the Senor.
+
+The horseshoer straightened up and approached.  He was a lithe,
+curly-haired young boy, with a reckless, humorous eye and a
+smooth face, now red from bending over.
+  
+"Tommy, shake hands with Mrs. Johnson," said the Senor.  "Mrs.
+Johnson wants to know if you're the blacksmith."  He exploded in
+laughter.
+  
+"Oh, BUCK!" cried Estrella again.
+  
+"No, ma'am," answered the boy directly; "I'm just tacking a shoe
+on Danger, here.  We all does our own blacksmithing."
+   
+His roving eye examined her countenance respectfully, but with
+admiration.  She caught the admiration and returned it, covertly
+but unmistakably, pleased that her charms were appreciated.
+   
+They continued their rounds.  The sun was very hot and the dust
+deep.  A woman would have known that these things distressed
+Estrella.  She picked her way through the debris; she dropped her
+head from the burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening
+with perspiration, her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through
+the air.  Over in the large corral a bronco buster, assisted by
+two of the cowboys, was engaged in roping and throwing some wild
+mustangs.  The sight was wonderful, but here the dust billowed in
+clouds.
+   
+"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I
+think I'll go to the house."
+   
+But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of
+herself by a bit of repairing Tommy had under way.  The tire of a
+wagon wheel had been destroyed.  Tommy was mending it.  On the
+ground lay a fresh cowhide.  From this Tommy was cutting a wide
+strip.  As she watched lie measured the strip around the
+circumference of the wheel.
+   
+"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed,
+incredulously.
+   
+"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.
+   
+"Will it wear?"
+   
+"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from
+town."
+    
+Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide.  Tommy was
+fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.
+   
+"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come
+right off as soon as you use it."
+   
+"It'll harden on tight enough."
+    
+"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"
+
+Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking.  "Does it
+shrink?" he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more,
+nor harder.  It'll mighty nigh break that wood."
+    
+Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why,
+stooped again to feel the soft, yielding hide.  She shook her
+head.
+   
+"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused
+brightly.  "I know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a
+lot, but to break wood--that's piling it on a little thick."
+   
+"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer.  "It's awful
+strong.  It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it. 
+You wrap anything up in a piece of that hide and see what
+happens.  Some time you take and wrap a piece around a potato and
+put her out in the sun and see how it'll squeeze the water out of
+her."
+   
+"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are
+making fun of me."
+   
+"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.
+    
+Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her
+wrists.
+
+"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast,"
+she said.
+   
+"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.
+    
+She untwisted the strip, and stood looking at it, her eyes wide.
+   
+"I--I don't know why--" she faltered. "The thought makes me a
+little sick.  Why, isn't it queer?  Ugh! it's like a snake!"  She
+flung it from her energetically and turned toward the ranch
+house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+ESTRELLA
+ 
+The honeymoon developed and the necessary adjustments took place. 
+The latter Senor Johnson had not foreseen; and yet, when the
+necessity for them arose, he acknowledged them right and proper.
+  
+"Course she don't want to ride over to Circle I with us," he
+informed his confidant, Jed Parker.  "It's a long ride, and she
+ain't used to riding yet.  Trouble is I've been thinking of doing
+things with her just as if she was a man.  Women are different.
+They likes different things."
+   
+This second idea gradually overlaid the first in Senor Johnson's
+mind.  Estrella showed little aptitude or interest in the rougher
+side of life.  Her husband's statement as to her being still
+unused to riding was distinctly a euphemism.  Estrella never
+arrived at the point of feeling safe on a horse.  In time she
+gave up trying, and the sorrel drifted back to cow-punching.  The
+range work she never understood.
+
+As a spectacle it imposed itself on her interest for a week; but
+since she could discover no real and vital concern in the welfare
+of cows, soon the mere outward show became an old story.
+Estrella's sleek nature avoided instinctively all that interfered
+with bodily well-being.  When she was cool and well-fed and not
+thirsty, and surrounded by a proper degree of feminine
+daintiness, then she was ready to amuse herself.  But she could
+not understand the desirability of those pleasures for which a
+certain price in discomfort must be paid.  As for firearms, she
+confessed herself frankly afraid of them.  That was the point at
+which her intimacy with them stopped.
+    
+The natural level to which these waters fell is easily seen. 
+Quite simply, the Senor found that a wife does not enter fully
+into her husband's workaday life.  The dreams he had dreamed did
+not come true.
+    
+This was at first a disappointment to him, of course, but the
+disappointment did not last.  Senor Johnson was a man of sense,
+and he easily modified his first scheme of married life.
+   
+"She'd get sick of it, and I'd get sick of it," he formulated his
+new philosophy.  "Now I got something to come back to, somebody
+to look forward to.  And it's a WOMAN; it ain't one of these darn
+gangle-leg cowgirls.  The great thing is to feel you BELONG to
+someone; and that someone nice and cool and fresh and purty is
+waitin' for you when you come in tired.  It beats that other
+little old idee of mine slick as a gun barrel."
+    
+So, during this, the busy season of the range riding, immediately
+before the great fall round-ups, Senor Johnson rode abroad all
+day, and returned to his own hearth as many evenings of the week
+as he could.  Estrella always saw him coming and stood in the
+doorway to greet him.  He kicked off his spurs, washed and dusted
+himself, and spent the evening with his wife.  He liked the sound
+of exactly that phrase, and was fond of repeating it to himself
+in a variety of connections.
+  
+"When I get in I'll spend the evening with my wife."  "If I don't
+ride over to Circle I, I'll spend the evening with my wife," and
+so on.  He had a good deal to tell her of the day's discoveries,
+the state of the range, and the condition of the cattle.  To all
+of this she listened at least with patience.  Senor Johnson, like
+most men who have long delayed marriage, was self-centred without
+knowing it.  His interest in his mate had to do with her
+personality rather than with her doings.
+  
+"What you do with yourself all day to-day?" he occasionally
+inquired.
+   
+"Oh, there's lots to do," she would answer, a trifle listlessly;
+and this reply always seemed quite to satisfy his interest in the
+subject.
+    
+Senor Johnson, with a curiously instant transformation often to
+be observed among the adventurous, settled luxuriously into the
+state of being a married man.  Its smallest details gave him
+distinct and separate sensations of pleasure.
+   
+"I plumb likes it all," he said. "I likes havin' interest in some
+fool geranium plant, and I likes worryin' about the screen doors
+and all the rest of the plumb foolishness.  It does me good.  It
+feels like stretchin' your legs in front of a good warm fire."
+     
+The centre, the compelling influence of this new state of
+affairs, was undoubtedly Estrella, and yet it is equally to be
+doubted whether she stood for more than the suggestion.  Senor
+Johnson conducted his entire life with reference to his wife. 
+His waking hours were concerned only with the thought of her, his
+every act revolved in its orbit controlled by her influence. 
+Nevertheless she, as an individual human being, had little to do
+with it.  Senor Johnson referred his life to a state of affairs
+he had himself invented and which he called the married state,
+and to a woman whose attitude he had himself determined upon and
+whom be designated as his wife.  The actual state of affairs--
+whatever it might be--he did not see; and the actual woman
+supplied merely the material medium necessary to the reality of
+his idea.  Whether Estrella's eyes were interested or bored,
+bright or dull, alert or abstracted, contented or afraid, Senor
+Johnson could not have told you.  He might have replied promptly
+enough--that they were happy and loving.  That is the way Senor
+Johnson conceived a wife's eyes.
+   
+The routine of life, then, soon settled.  After breakfast the
+Senor insisted that his wife accompany him on a short tour of
+inspection.  "A little pasear," he called it, "just to get set
+for the day."  Then his horse was brought, and he rode away on
+whatever business called him.  Like a true son of the alkali, he
+took no lunch with him, nor expected his horse to feed until his
+return.  This was an hour before sunset.  The evening passed as
+has been described. It was all very simple.
+   
+When the business hung close to the ranch house was in the bronco
+busting, the rebranding of bought cattle, and the like--he was
+able to share his wife's day.  Estrella conducted herself
+dreamily, with a slow smile for him when his actual presence
+insisted on her attention.  She seemed much given to staring out
+over the desert.  Senor Johnson, appreciatively, thought he could
+understand this.  Again, she gave much leisure to rocking back
+and forth on the low, wide veranda, her hands idle, her eyes
+vacant, her lips dumb.  Susie O'Toole had early proved
+incompatible and had gone.
+  
+"A nice, contented, home sort of a woman," said Senor Johnson.
+   
+One thing alone besides the deserts on which she never seemed
+tired of looking, fascinated her.  Whenever a beef was killed for
+the uses of the ranch, she commanded strips of the green skin. 
+Then, like a child, she bound them and sewed them and nailed them
+to substances particularly susceptible to their constricting
+power.  She choked the necks of green gourds, she indented the
+tender bark of cottonwood shoots, she expended an apparently
+exhaustless ingenuity on the fabrication of mechanical devices
+whose principle answered to the pulling of the drying rawhide. 
+And always along the adobe fence could be seen a long row of
+potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh and smooth and round;
+some sweating in the agony of squeezing; some wrinkled and dry
+and little, the last drops of life tortured out of them.  Senor
+Johnson laughed good-humouredly at these toys, puzzled to explain
+their fascination for his wife.
+
+"They're sure an amusing enough contraption honey," said he, "but
+what makes you stand out there in the hot sun staring at them
+that way?  It's cooler on the porch."
+   
+"I don't know," said Estrella, helplessly, turning her slow,
+vacant gaze on him.  Suddenly she shivered in a strong physical
+revulsion.  "I don't know!" she cried with passion.
+
+After they had been married about a month Senor Johnson found it
+necessary to drive into Willets.
+   
+"How would you like to go, too, and buy some duds?" he asked
+Estrella.
+   
+"Oh!" she cried strangely. "When?"
+
+"Day after tomorrow."
+
+The trip decided, her entire attitude changed.  The vacancy of
+her gaze lifted; her movements quickened; she left off staring at
+the desert, and her rawhide toys were neglected.  Before
+starting, Senor Johnson gave her a check book.  He explained that
+there were no banks in Willets, but that Goodrich, the
+storekeeper, would honour her signature.
+
+"Buy what you want to, honey," said he. "Tear her wide open.  I'm
+good for it."
+  
+"How much can I draw?" she asked, smiling.
+  
+"As much as you want to," he replied with emphasis.
+  
+"Take care"--she poised before him with the check book extended--
+"I may draw--I might draw fifty thousand dollars."
+  
+"Not out of Goodrich," he grinned; "you'd bust the game.  But
+hold him up for the limit, anyway."
+   
+He chuckled aloud, pleased at the rare, bird-like coquetry of the
+woman.  They drove to Willets.  It took them two days to go and
+two days to return.  Estrella went through the town in a cyclone
+burst of enthusiasm, saw everything, bought everything, exhausted
+everything in two hours.  Willets was not a large place.  On her
+return to the ranch she sat down at once in the rocking-chair on
+the veranda.  Her hands fell into her lap.  She stared out over
+the desert.
+    
+Senor Johnson stole up behind her, clumsy as a playful bear.  His
+eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay
+across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch
+of ink.
+   
+"Pretty, isn't it, honey?" said he. "Glad to get back?"
+    
+She smiled at him her vacant, slow smile.
+   
+"Here's my check book," she said; "put it away for me.  I'm
+through with it."
+   
+"I'll put it in my desk," said he. "It's in the left-hand
+cubbyhole," he called from inside.
+   
+"Very well," she replied.
+    
+He stood in the doorway, looking fondly at her unconscious
+shoulders and the pose of her blonde head thrown back against the
+high rocking-chair.
+   
+"That's the sort of a woman, after all," said Senor Johnson. "No
+blame fuss about her."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+THE ROUND-UP
+ 
+This, as you well may gather, was in the summer routine.  Now the
+time of the great fall round-up drew near.  The home ranch began
+to bustle in preparation.
+   
+All through Cochise County were short mountain ranges set down,
+apparently at random, like a child's blocks.  In and out between
+them flowed the broad, plain-like valleys.  On the valleys were
+the various ranges, great or small, controlled by the different
+individuals of the Cattlemen's Association.  During the year an
+unimportant, but certain, shifting of stock took place.  A few
+cattle of Senor Johnson's Lazy Y eluded the vigilance of his
+riders to drift over through the Grant Pass and into the ranges
+of his neighbour; equally, many of the neighbour's steers watered
+daily at Senor Johnson's troughs. It was a matter of courtesy to
+permit this, but one of the reasons for the fall round-up was a
+redistribution to the proper ranges.  Each cattle-owner sent an
+outfit to the scene of labour.  The combined outfits moved slowly
+from one valley to another, cutting out the strays, branding the
+late calves, collecting for the owner of that particular range
+all his stock, that he might select his marketable beef.  In turn
+each cattleman was host to his neighbours and their men.
+
+This year it had been decided to begin the circle of the round-up
+at the C 0 Bar, near the banks of the San Pedro.  Thence it would
+work eastward, wandering slowly in north and south deviation, to
+include all the country, until the final break-up would occur at
+the Lazy Y.
+   
+The Lazy Y crew was to consist of four men, thirty riding horses,
+a "chuck wagon," and cook.  These, helping others, and receiving
+help in turn, would suffice, for in the round-up labour was
+pooled to a common end.  With them would ride Jed Parker, to
+safeguard his master's interests.
+   
+For a week the punchers, in their daily rides, gathered in the
+range ponies.  Senor Johnson owned fifty horses which he
+maintained at the home ranch for every-day riding, two hundred
+broken saddle animals, allowed the freedom of the range, except
+when special occasion demanded their use, and perhaps half a
+thousand quite unbroken--brood mares, stallions, young horses,
+broncos, and the like.  At this time of year it was his habit to
+corral all those saddlewise in order to select horses for the
+round-ups and to replace the ranch animals.  The latter he turned
+loose for their turn at the freedom of the range.
+
+The horses chosen, next the men turned their attention to outfit. 
+Each had, of course, his saddle, spurs, and "rope."  Of the
+latter the chuck wagon carried many extra.  That vehicle,
+furthermore, transported such articles as the blankets, the
+tarpaulins under which to sleep, the running irons for branding,
+the cooking layout, and the men's personal effects.  All was in
+readiness to move for the six weeks' circle, when a complication
+arose.  Jed Parker, while nimbly escaping an irritated steer,
+twisted the high heel of his boot on the corral fence.  He
+insisted the injury amounted to nothing.  Senor Johnson however,
+disagreed.
+
+"It don't amount to nothing, Jed," he pronounced, after
+manipulation, "but she might make a good able-bodied injury with
+a little coaxing.  Rest her a week and then you'll be all
+right."
+   
+"Rest her, the devil!" growled Jed; "who's going to San Pedro?"
+
+"I will, of course," replied the Senor promptly. "Didje think
+we'd send the Chink?"
+   
+"I was first cousin to a Yaqui jackass for sendin' young Billy
+Ellis out.  He'll be back in a week.  He'd do."
+   
+"So'd the President," the Senor pointed out; "I hear he's had
+some experience."
+   
+"I hate to have you to go," objected Jed.  "There's the missis." 
+He shot a glance sideways at his chief.
+   
+"I guess she and I can stand it for a week," scoffed the latter.
+"Why, we are old married folks by now.  Besides, you can take
+care of her."
+   
+"I'll try," said Jed Parker, a little grimly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+THE LONG TRAIL
+    
+The round-up crew started early the next morning, just about
+sun-up.  Senor Johnson rode first, merely to keep out of the
+dust.  Then followed Torn Rich, jogging along easily in the
+cow-puncher's "Spanish trot" whistling soothingly to quiet the
+horses, giving a lead to the band of saddle animals strung out   
+loosely behind him.  These moved on gracefully and lightly in the
+manner of the unburdened plains horse, half decided to follow
+Tom's guidance, half inclined to break to right or left.  Homer
+and Jim Lester flanked them, also riding in a slouch of apparent
+laziness, but every once in a while darting forward like bullets
+to turn back into the main herd certain individuals whom the
+early morning of the unwearied day had inspired to make a dash
+for liberty.  The rear was brought up by Jerky Jones, the fourth
+cow-puncher, and the four-mule chuck wagon, lost in its own dust.
+
+The sun mounted; the desert went silently through its changes. 
+Wind devils raised straight, true columns of dust six, eight
+hundred, even a thousand feet into the air.  The billows of dust
+from the horses and men crept and crawled with them like a living
+creature.  Glorious colour, magnificent distance, astonishing
+illusion, filled the world.
+   
+Senor Johnson rode ahead, looking at these things.  The
+separation from his wife, brief as it would be, left room in his
+soul for the heart-hunger which beauty arouses in men.  He loved
+the charm of the desert, yet it hurt him.
+   
+Behind him the punchers relieved the tedium of the march, each
+after his own manner.  In an hour the bunch of loose horses lost
+its early-morning good spirits and settled down to a steady
+plodding, that needed no supervision.  Tom Rich led them, now, in
+silence, his time fully occupied in rolling Mexican cigarettes
+with one hand.  The other three dropped back together and
+exchanged desultory remarks.  Occasionally Jim Lester sang.  It
+was always the same song of uncounted verses, but Jim had a
+strange fashion of singing a single verse at a time.  After a
+long interval he would sing another.
+
+  "My Love is a rider
+     And broncos he breaks,
+  But he's given up riding
+     And all for my sake,
+  For he found him a horse
+     And it suited him so
+   That he vowed he'd ne'er ride
+     Any other bronco!"
+
+he warbled, and then in the same breath:  
+
+"Say, boys, did you get onto the pisano-looking shorthorn at
+Willets last week?
+     
+"Nope."
+     
+"He sifted in wearin' one of these hardboiled hats, and carryin'
+a brogue thick enough to skate on.  Says he wants a job drivin'
+team--that he drives a truck plenty back to St. Louis, where he
+comes from.  Goodrich sets him behind them little pinto cavallos
+he has.  Say! that son of a gun a driver!  He couldn't drive
+nails in a snow bank."  An expressive free-hand gesture told all
+there was to tell of the runaway.  "Th' shorthorn landed
+headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's horse trough.  Charlie fishes him
+out.  'How the devil, stranger,' says Charlie, 'did you come to
+fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the shorthorn, just cryin'
+mad, 'I didn't come to fall in here, I come to drive horses.'"
+  
+And then, without a transitory pause:
+
+ "Oh, my love has a gun
+   And that gun he can use,
+ But he's quit his gun fighting
+   As well as his booze.
+ And he's sold him his saddle,
+   His spurs, and his rope,
+ And there's no more cow-punching
+   And that's what I hope."
+
+The alkali dust, swirled back by a little breeze, billowed up and
+choked him.  Behind, the mules coughed, their coats whitening
+with the powder.  Far ahead in the distance lay the westerly
+mountains. They looked an hour away, and yet every man and beast
+in the outfit knew that hour after hour they were doomed, by the
+enchantment of the land, to plod ahead without apparently getting
+an inch nearer.  The only salvation was to forget the mountains
+and to fill the present moment full of little things.
+   
+But Senor Johnson, to-day, found himself unable to do this.  In
+spite of his best efforts he caught himself straining toward the
+distant goal, becoming impatient, trying to measure progress by
+landmarks--in short acting like a tenderfoot on the desert, who
+wears himself down and dies, not from the hardship, but from the
+nervous strain which he does not know how to avoid.  Senor
+Johnson knew this as well as you and I.  He cursed himself
+vigorously, and began with great resolution to think of something
+else.
+    
+He was aroused from this by Tom Rich, riding alongside. "Somebody
+coming, Senor," said he.
+    
+Senor Johnson raised his eyes to the approaching cloud of dust. 
+Silently the two watched it until it resolved into a rider loping
+easily along.  In fifteen minutes he drew rein, his pony dropped
+immediately from a gallop to immobility, he swung into a graceful
+at-ease attitude across his saddle, grinned amiably, and began to
+roll a cigarette.
+
+"Billy Ellis," cried Rich.
+   
+"That's me," replied the newcomer.
+   
+"Thought you were down to Tucson?"
+    
+"I was."
+   
+"Thought you wasn't comin' back for a week yet?"
+      
+"Tommy," proffered Billy Ellis dreamily, "when you go to Tucson
+next you watch out until you sees a little, squint-eyed
+Britisher.  Take a look at him. Then come away.  He says he don't
+know nothin' about poker.  Mebbe he don't, but he'll outhold a
+warehouse."
+    
+But here Senor Johnson broke in:  "Billy, you're just in time. 
+Jed has hurt his foot and can't get on for a week yet.  I want
+you to take charge.  I've got a lot to do at the ranch."
+   
+"Ain't got my war-bag," objected Billy.
+   
+"Take my stuff.  I'll send yours on when Parker goes."
+   
+"All right."
+   
+"Well, so long."
+   
+"So long, Senor."  They moved.  The erratic Arizona breezes
+twisted the dust of their going.  Senor Johnson watched them
+dwindle.  With them seemed to go the joy in the old life.  No
+longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient
+fascination.  He had become a domestic man.
+   
+"And I'm glad of it," commented Senor Johnson.
+    
+The dust eddied aside.  Plainly could be seen the swaying wagon,
+the loose-riding cowboys, the gleaming, naked backs of the herd.
+Then the veil closed over them again.  But down the wind,
+faintly, in snatches, came the words of Jim Lester's song:
+
+   "Oh, Sam has a gun
+     That has gone to the bad,
+   Which makes poor old Sammy
+     Feel pretty, damn sad,
+   For that gain it shoots high,
+     And that gun it shoots low,
+   And it wabbles about
+     Like a bucking bronco!"
+
+Senor Johnson turned and struck spurs to his willing pony.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+THE DISCOVERY
+
+Senor Buck Johnson loped quickly back toward the home ranch, his
+heart glad at this fortunate solution of his annoyance.  The home
+ranch lay in plain sight not ten miles away.  As Senor Johnson
+idly watched it shimmering in the heat, a tiny figure detached
+itself from the mass and launched itself in his direction.
+  
+"Wonder what's eating HIM!" marvelled Senor Johnson, "--and who
+is it?"
+   
+The figure drew steadily nearer.  In half an hour it had
+approached near enough to be recognised.
+  
+"Why, it's Jed!" cried the Senor, and spurred his horse.  "What
+do you mean, riding out with that foot?" he demanded sternly,
+when within hailing distance.
+  
+"Foot, hell!" gasped Parker, whirling his horse alongside. 
+"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer."
+
+For fully ten seconds not the faintest indication proved that the
+husband had heard, except that he lifted his bridle-hand, and the
+well-trained pony stopped.
+     
+"What did you say?" he asked finally.
+     
+"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer," repeated Jed, almost
+with impatience.
+   
+Again the long pause.
+     
+"How do you know?" asked Senor Johnson, then.
+     
+"Know, hell!  It's been going on for a month.  Sang saw them
+drive off.  They took the buckboard.  He heard 'em planning it. 
+He was too scairt to tell till they'd gone.  I just found it out. 
+They've been gone two hours.  Must be going to make the Limited." 
+Parker fidgeted, impatient to be off.  "You're wasting time," he
+snapped at the motionless figure.
+   
+Suddenly Johnson's face flamed.  He reached from his saddle to
+clutch Jed's shoulder, nearly pulling the foreman from his pony.
+   
+"You lie!" he cried. "You're lying to me!  It ain't SO!"
+    
+Parker made no effort to extricate himself from the painful
+grasp.  His cool eyes met the blazing eyes of his chief.
+
+"I wisht I did lie, Buck," he said sadly. "I wisht it wasn't so. 
+But it is."
+   
+Johnson's head snapped back to the front with a groan.  The pony
+snorted as the steel bit his flanks, leaped forward, and with
+head outstretched, nostrils wide, the wicked white of the bronco
+flickering in the corner of his eye, struck the bee line for the
+home ranch.  Jed followed as fast as he was able.
+   
+On his arrival he found his chief raging about the house like a
+wild beast.  Sang trembled from a quick and stormy interrogatory
+in the kitchen.  Chairs had been upset and let lie.  Estrella's
+belongings had been tumbled over.  Senor Johnson there found only
+too sure proof, in the various lacks, of a premeditated and
+permanent flight.  Still he hoped; and as long as he hoped, he
+doubted, and the demons of doubt tore him to a frenzy.  Jed stood
+near the door, his arms folded, his weight shifted to his sound
+foot, waiting and wondering what the next move was to be.
+   
+Finally, Senor Johnson, struck with a new idea, ran to his desk
+to rummage in a pigeon-hole.  But he found no need to do so, for
+lying on the desk was what he sought--the check book from which
+Estrella was to draw on Goodrich for the money she might need. 
+He fairly snatched it open.  Two of the checks had been torn out,
+stub and all.  And then his eye caught a crumpled bit of blue
+paper under the edge of the desk.
+    
+He smoothed it out.  The check was made out to bearer and signed
+Estrella Johnson.  It called for fifteen thousand dollars. 
+Across the middle was a great ink blot, reason for its rejection.
+    
+At once Senor Johnson became singularly and dangerously cool.
+   
+"I reckon you're right, Jed," he cried in his natural voice. 
+"she's gone with him.  She's got all her traps with her, and
+she's drawn on Goodrich for fifteen thousand.  And SHE never
+thought of going just this time of month when the miners are in
+with their dust, and Goodrich would be sure to have that much. 
+That's friend Palmer.  Been going on a month, you say?"
+   
+"I couldn't say anything, Buck," said Parker anxiously.  "A man's
+never sure enough about them things till afterwards."
+   
+"I know," agreed Buck Johnson; "give me a light for my
+cigarette."
+    
+He puffed for a moment, then rose, stretching his legs.  In a
+moment he returned from the other room, the old shiny Colt's
+forty-five strapped loosely on his hip.  Jed looked him in the
+face with some anxiety.  The foreman was not deceived by the
+man's easy manner; in fact, he knew it to be symptomatic of one
+of the dangerous phases of Senor Johnson's character.
+   
+"What's up, Buck?" he inquired.
+   
+"Just going out for a pasear with the little horse, Jed."
+   
+"I suppose I better come along?"
+   
+"Not with your lame foot, Jed."
+    
+The tone of voice was conclusive.  Jed cleared his throat.
+    
+"She left this for you," said he, proffering an envelope.  "Them
+kind always writes."
+   
+"Sure," agreed Senor Johnson, stuffing the letter carelessly into
+his side pocket.  He half drew the Colt's from its holster and
+slipped it back again.  "Makes you feel plumb like a man to have
+one of these things rubbin' against you again," he observed
+irrelevantly.  Then he went out, leaving the foreman leaning,
+chair tilted, against the wall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+THE CAPTURE
+
+Although he had left the room so suddenly, Senor Johnson did not
+at once open the gate of the adobe wall.  His demeanour was gay,
+for he was a Westerner, but his heart was black.  Hardly did he
+see beyond the convexity of his eyeballs.
+    
+The pony, warmed up by its little run, pawed the ground,
+impatient to be off.  It was a fine animal, clean-built,
+deep-chested, one of the mustang stock descended from the Arabs
+brought over by Pizarro.  Sang watched fearfully from the slant
+of the kitchen window.  Jed Parker, even, listened for the beat
+of the horse's hoofs.
+     
+But Senor Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb
+and empty.  His hand brushed against something which fell, to the
+ground.  He brought his dull gaze to bear on it.  The object
+proved to be a black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in
+the sunshine of Estrella's toys, a potato squeezed to dryness by
+the constricting power of the rawhide.  In a row along the fence
+were others.  To Senor Johnson it seemed that thus his heart was
+being squeezed in the fire of suffering.
+   
+But the slight movement of the falling object roused him.  He
+swung open the gate.  The pony bowed his head delightedly.  He
+was not tired, but his reins depended straight to the ground, and
+it was a point of honour with him to stand.  At the saddle born,
+in its sling, hung the riata, the "rope" without which no cowman
+ever stirs abroad, but which Senor Johnson had rarely used of
+late.  Senor Johnson threw the reins over, seized the pony's mane
+in his left hand, held the pommel with his right, and so swung
+easily aboard, the pony's jump helping him to the saddle.  Wheel
+tracks led down the trail.  He followed them.
+   
+Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was
+going to do.  His action was entirely instinctive.  The wheel
+tracks held to the southwest so he held to the southwest, too.
+   
+The pony hit his stride.  The miles slipped by.  After seven of
+them the animal slowed to a walk.  Senor Johnson allowed him to
+get his wind, then spurred him on again.  He did not even take
+the ordinary precautions of a pursuer.  He did not even glance to
+the horizon in search.
+   
+About supper-time he came to the first ranch house.  There he
+took a bite to eat and exchanged his horse for another, a
+favourite of his, named Button.  The two men asked no questions.
+  
+"See Mrs. Johnson go through?" asked the Senor from the saddle.
+  
+"Yes, about three o'clock.  Brent Palmer driving her.  Bound for
+Willets to visit the preacher's wife, she said.  Ought to catch
+up at the Circle I.  That's where they'd all spend the night, of
+course.  So long."
+    
+Senor Johnson knew now the couple would follow the straight road. 
+They would fear no pursuit.  He himself was supposed not to
+return for a week, and the story of visiting the minister's wife
+was not only plausible, it was natural.  Jed had upset
+calculations, because Jed was shrewd, and had eyes in his head. 
+Buck Johnson's first mental numbness was wearing away; he was
+beginning to think.
+    
+The night was very still and very dark, the stars very bright in
+their candle-like glow.  The man, loping steadily on through the
+darkness, recalled that other night, equally still, equally dark,
+equally starry, when he had driven out from his accustomed life
+into the unknown with a woman by his side, the sight of whom
+asleep had made him feel "almost holy."  He uttered a short
+laugh.
+   
+The pony was a good one, well equal to twice the distance he
+would be called upon to cover this night.  Senor Johnson managed
+him well.  By long experience and a natural instinct he knew just
+how hard to push his mount, just how to keep inside the point
+where too rapid exhaustion of vitality begins.
+   
+Toward the hour of sunrise he drew rein to look about him.  The
+desert, till now wrapped in the thousand little noises that make
+night silence, drew breath in preparation for the awe of the
+daily wonder.  It lay across the world heavy as a sea of lead,
+and as lifeless; deeply unconscious, like an exhausted sleeper. 
+The sky bent above, the stars paling.  Far away the mountains
+seemed to wait.  And then, imperceptibly, those in the east
+became blacker and sharper, while those in the west became
+faintly lucent and lost the distinctness of their outline.  The
+change was nothing, yet everything.  And suddenly a desert bird
+sprang into the air and began to sing.
+            
+Senor Johnson caught the wonder of it.  The wonder of it seemed
+to him wasted, useless, cruel in its effect.  He sighed
+impatiently, and drew his hand across his eyes.
+            
+The desert became grey with the first light before the glory.  In
+the illusory revealment of it Senor Johnson's sharp
+frontiersman's eyes made out an object moving away from him in
+the middle distance.  In a moment the object rose for a second
+against the sky line, then disappeared.  He knew it to be the
+buckboard, and that the vehicle had just plunged into the dry bed
+of an arroyo.
+            
+Immediately life surged through him like an electric shock.  He
+unfastened the riata from its sling, shook loose the noose, and
+moved forward in the direction in which he had last seen the
+buckboard.
+            
+At the top of the steep little bank he stopped behind the
+mesquite, straining his eyes; luck had been good to him.  The
+buckboard had pulled up, and Brent Palmer was at the moment
+beginning a little fire, evidently to make the morning coffee.
+             
+Senor Johnson struck spurs to his horse and half slid, half fell,
+clattering, down the steep clay bank almost on top of the couple
+below.
+
+Estrella screamed.  Brent Palmer jerked out an oath, and reached
+for his gun.  The loop of the riata fell wide over him,
+immediately to be jerked tight, binding his arms tight to his
+side.
+   
+The bronco-buster, swept from his feet by the pony's rapid turn,
+nevertheless struggled desperately to wrench himself loose. 
+Button, intelligent at all rope work, walked steadily backward,
+step by step, taking up the slack, keeping the rope tight as he
+had done hundreds of times before when a steer had struggled as
+this man was struggling now.  His master leaped from the saddle
+and ran forward.  Button continued to walk slowly back.  The
+riata remained taut.  The noose held.
+   
+Brent Palmer fought savagely, even then.  He kicked, he rolled
+over and over, he wrenched violently at his pinioned arms, he
+twisted his powerful young body from Senor Johnson's grasp again
+and again.  But it was no use.  In less than a minute he was
+bound hard and fast.  Button promptly slackened the rope.  The
+dust settled.  The noise of the combat died.  Again could be
+heard the single desert bird singing against the dawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+IN THE ARROYO
+
+Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella.  The girl had, during
+the struggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of
+terror.  Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands
+behind her, ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.
+  
+"What are you going to do?" she demanded, her voice unnatural.
+   
+She received no reply.  The man reached out and took her by the
+arm.
+    
+And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch had
+broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had
+overlaid Buck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke
+out.  He twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back,
+and, with the short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries
+to "hog-tie" cattle, he lashed her wrists together.  Then he
+arose panting, his square black beard rising and falling with the
+rise and fall of his great chest.
+
+Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been
+fairly ground into the alkali.  There she had choked and
+strangled and gasped and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with
+terror.  She kept appealing to him in a hoarse voice, but could
+get no reply, no indication that he had even heard.  This
+terrified her still more.  Brent Palmer cursed steadily and
+accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.
+   
+The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson's soul.  When he had
+touched Estrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had
+lost.  It was not the woman--her he despised.  But the dreams! 
+All at once he knew what they had been to him--he understood how
+completely the very substance of his life had changed in response
+to their slow soul-action.  The new world had been blasted--the
+old no longer existed to which to return.
+   
+Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred. 
+Why, it was atrocious!  He had done nothing to deserve it!  Why
+had they not left him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the
+trail?  He had been happy.  His dull eyes fell on the causes of
+the ruin.
+
+And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had been
+tricked of his life, his happiness, his right to well-being, the
+whole force of the man's anger flared.  Brent Palmer lay there
+cursing him artistically.  That man had done it; that man was in
+his power.  He would get even.  How?
+   
+Estrella, too, lay huddled, helpless and defenseless, at his
+feet.  She had done it.  He would get even.  How?
+   
+He had spoken no word.  He spoke none now, either in answer to
+Estrella's appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief
+from suspense, or in response to Brent Palmer's steady stream of
+insults and vituperations.  Such things were far below.  The
+bitterness and anger and desolation were squeezing his heart. 
+He remembered the silly little row of potatoes sewn in the green
+hide lying along the top of the adobe fence, some fresh and
+round, some dripping as the rawhide contracted, some black and
+withered and very small.  A fierce and savage light sprang into
+his eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+THE RAWHIDE
+  
+First of all he unhitched the horses from the buckboard and
+turned them loose.  Then, since he was early trained in Indian
+warfare, he dragged Palmer to the wagon wheel, and tied him so
+closely to it that he could not roll over.  For, though the
+bronco-buster was already so fettered that his only possible
+movement was of the jack-knife variety, nevertheless he might be
+able to hitch himself along the ground to a sharp stone, there to
+saw through the rope about his wrists.  Estrella, her husband
+held in contempt.  He merely supplemented her wrist bands by one
+about the ankles.
+   
+Leisurely he mounted Button and turned up the wagon trail,
+leaving the two.  Estrella had exhausted herself.  She was
+capable of nothing more in the way of emotion.  Her eyes tight
+closed, she inhaled in deep, trembling, long-drawn breaths, and 
+exhaled with the name of her Maker.
+ 
+Brent Palmer, on the contrary, was by no means subdued.  He had
+expected to be shot in cold blood.  Now he did not know what to
+anticipate.  His black, level brows drawn straight in defiance,
+he threw his curses after Johnson's retreating figure.
+   
+The latter, however, paid no attention.  He had his purposes. 
+Once at the top of the arroyo he took a careful survey of the
+landscape, now rich with dawn.  Each excrescence on the plain his
+half-squinted eyes noticed, and with instant skill relegated to
+its proper category of soap-weed, mesquite, cactus.  At length he
+swung Button in an easy lope toward what looked to be a bunch of
+soap-weed in the middle distance.
+    
+But in a moment the cattle could be seen plainly.  Button pricked
+up his ears.  He knew cattle.  Now he proceeded tentatively,
+lifting high his little hoofs to avoid the half-seen inequalities
+of the ground and the ground's growths, wondering whether he were
+to be called on to rope or to drive.  When the rider had
+approached to within a hundred feet, the cattle started. 
+Immediately Button understood that he was to pursue.  No rope
+swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran as fast as he
+could to cut ahead of the bunch.  But his rider with knee and
+rein forced him in.  After a moment, to his astonishment, he
+found himself running alongside a big steer.  Button had never
+hunted buffalo--Buck Johnson had.
+
+The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again. The steer
+staggered, fell to his knees, recovered, and finally stopped, the
+blood streaming from his nostrils.  In a moment he fell heavily
+on his side--dead.
+   
+Senor Johnson at once dismounted and began methodically to skin
+the animal.  This was not easy for he had no way of suspending
+the carcass nor of rolling it from side to side.  However, he was
+practised at it and did a neat job.  Two or three times he even
+caught himself taking extra pains that the thin flesh strips
+should not adhere to the inside of the pelt.  Then he smiled
+grimly, and ripped it loose.
+    
+After the hide had been removed he cut from the edge, around and
+around, a long, narrow strip.  With this he bound the whole into
+a compact bundle, strapped it on behind his saddle, and
+remounted.  He returned to the arroyo.
+    
+Estrella still lay with her eyes closed.  Brent Palmer looked up
+keenly.  The bronco-buster saw the green hide.  A puzzled
+expression crept across his face.
+   
+Roughly Johnson loosed his enemy from the wheel and dragged him
+to the woman.  He passed the free end of the riata about them
+both, tying them close together.  The girl continued to moan, out
+of her wits with terror.
+  
+"What are you going to do now, you devil?" demanded Palmer, but
+received no reply.
+    
+Buck Johnson spread out the rawhide.  Putting forth his huge
+strength, he carried to it the pair, bound together like a bale
+of goods, and laid them on its cool surface.  He threw across
+them the edges, and then deliberately began to wind around and 
+around the huge and unwieldy rawhide package the strip he had cut
+from the edge of the pelt.
+    
+Nor was this altogether easy.  At last Brent Palmer understood.
+He writhed in the struggle of desperation, foaming blasphemies. 
+The uncouth bundle rolled here and there.  But inexorably the
+other, from the advantage of his position, drew the thongs
+tighter.
+     
+And then, all at once, from vituperation the bronco-buster fell
+to pleading, not for life, but for death.
+  
+"For God's sake, shoot me!" he cried from within the smothering
+folds of the rawhide.  "If you ever had a heart in you, shoot me! 
+Don't leave me here to be crushed in this vise.  You wouldn't do
+that to a yellow dog.  An Injin wouldn't do that, Buck.  It's a
+joke, isn't it?  Don't go away and leave me, Buck.  I've done you
+dirt.  Cut my heart out, if you want to; I won't say a word, but
+don't leave me here for the sun--"
+
+ His voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to
+herself and understood.  Always the rawhide had possessed for her
+an occult fascination and repulsion.  She had never been able to
+touch it without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to
+experiment with it.  The terror of her doom had now added to it
+for her all the vague and premonitory terrors which heretofore
+she had not understood.
+   
+The richness of the dawn had flowed to the west.  Day was at
+hand.  Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind
+devils to raise their straight columns.  A first long shaft of
+sunlight shot through a pass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the
+dust-moted air, and laid its warmth on the rawhide.  Senor
+Johnson roused himself from his gloom to speak his first words of
+the episode.
+  
+"There, damn you!" said he. "I guess you'll be close enough
+together now!"
+   
+He turned away to look for his horse.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+THE DESERT
+ 
+Button was a trusty of Senor Johnson's private animals.  He was
+never known to leave his master in the lurch, and so was
+habitually allowed certain privileges.  Now, instead of remaining
+exactly on the spot where he was "tied to the ground," he had
+wandered out of the dry arroyo bed to the upper level of the
+plains, where he knew certain bunch grasses might be found.  Buck
+Johnson climbed the steep wooded bank in search of him.
+   
+The pony stood not ten feet distant.  At his master's abrupt
+appearance he merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the
+corner of his mouth, without attempting to move away.  Buck
+Johnson walked confidently to him, fumbling in his side pocket
+for the piece of sugar with which he habitually soothed Button's
+sophisticated palate.  His hand encountered Estrella's letter. 
+He drew it out and opened it.
+
+"Dear Buck," it read, "I am going away.  I tried to be good, but
+I can't.  It's too lonesome for me. I'm afraid of the horses and
+the cattle and the men and the desert.  I hate it all.  I tried
+to make you see how I felt about it, but you couldn't seem to
+see.  I know you'll never forgive me, but I'd go crazy here.  I'm
+almost crazy now.  I suppose you think I'm a bad woman, but I am
+not.  You won't believe that.  Its' true though.  The desert
+would make anyone bad.  I don't see how you stand it.  You've
+been good to me, and I've really tried, but it's no use.  The
+country is awful.  I never ought to have come.  I'm sorry you are
+going to think me a bad woman, for I like you and admire you, but
+nothing, NOTHING could make me stay here any longer."   She
+signed herself simply Estrella Sands, her maiden name.
+   
+Buck Johnson stood staring at the paper for a much longer time
+than was necessary merely to absorb the meaning of the words. 
+His senses, sharpened by the stress of the last sixteen hours,
+were trying mightily to cut to the mystery of a change going on
+within himself.  The phrases of the letter were bald enough, yet
+they conveyed something vital to his inner being.  He could not
+understand what it was.
+
+Then abruptly he raised his eyes.
+   
+Before him lay the desert, but a desert suddenly and miraculously
+changed, a desert he had never seen before.  Mile after mile it
+swept away before him, hot, dry, suffocating, lifeless.  The
+sparse vegetation was grey with the alkali dust.  The heat hung
+choking in the air like a curtain.  Lizards sprawled in the sun,
+repulsive.  A rattlesnake dragged its loathsome length from under
+a mesquite.  The dried carcass of a steer, whose parchment skin
+drew tight across its bones, rattled in the breeze.  Here and
+there rock ridges showed with the obscenity of so many skeletons,
+exposing to the hard, cruel sky the earth's nakedness.  Thirst,
+delirium, death, hovered palpable in the wind; dreadful,
+unconquerable, ghastly.
+    
+The desert showed her teeth and lay in wait like a fierce beast. 
+The little soul of man shrank in terror before it.
+
+Buck Johnson stared, recalling the phrases of the letter,
+recalling the words of his foreman, Jed Parker.  "It's too
+lonesome for me,"  "I'm afraid,"  "I hate it all,"  "I'd go crazy
+here,"  "The desert would make anyone bad,"  "The country is
+awful."  And the musing voice of the old cattleman,  "I wonder if
+she'll like the country!"  They reiterated themselves over and
+over; and always as refrain his own confident reply, "Like the
+country?  Sure!  Why SHOULDN'T she?"
+   
+And then he recalled the summer just passing, and the woman   
+who had made no fuss.  Chance remarks of hers came back to him,
+remarks whose meaning he had not at the time grasped, but which
+now he saw were desperate appeals to his understanding.  He had
+known his desert.  He had never known hers.
+   
+With an exclamation Buck Johnson turned abruptly back to the
+arroyo.  Button followed him, mildly curious, certain that his
+master's reappearance meant a summons for himself.
+   
+Down the miniature cliff the man slid, confidently, without
+hesitation, sure of himself.  His shoulders held squarely, his
+step elastic, his eye bright, he walked to the fearful, shapeless
+bundle now lying motionless on the flat surface of the alkali.
+   
+Brent Palmer had fallen into a grim silence, but Estrella still
+moaned.  The cattleman drew his knife and ripped loose the bonds. 
+Immediately the flaps of the wet rawhide fell apart, exposing to
+the new daylight the two bound together.  Buck Johnson leaned
+over to touch the woman's shoulder.
+    
+"Estrella," said he gently.
+     
+Her eyes came open with a snap, and stared into his, wild with
+the surprise of his return.
+    
+"Estrella," he repeated, "how old are you?"
+     
+She gulped down a sob, unable to comprehend the purport of his
+question.
+       
+"How old are you, Estrella?" he repeated again.
+       
+"Twenty-one," she gasped finally.
+       
+"Ah!" said he.
+     
+He stood for a moment in deep thought, then began methodically,
+without haste, to cut loose the thongs that bound the two
+together.
+     
+When the man and the woman were quite freed, he stood for a
+moment, the knife in his hand, looking down on them.  Then he
+swung himself into the saddle and rode away, straight down the
+narrow arroyo, out beyond its lower widening, into the vast
+plains the hither side of the Chiricahuas.  The alkali dust was
+snatched by the wind from beneath his horse's feet.  Smaller and
+smaller he dwindled, rising and falling, rising and falling in
+the monotonous cow-pony's lope.  The heat shimmer veiled him for
+a moment, but he reappeared.  A mirage concealed him, but he
+emerged on the other side of it.  Then suddenly he was gone.  The
+desert had swallowed him up.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White
+
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