The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp, by Will C. Barnes.

Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard spelling and inconsistent hyphenation. Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text.

Larger versions of many of the plates and the music for 'The Cowboy's "Sweet Bye and Bye"' may be seen by clicking on the images.

Tales From The X-Bar Horse Camp

Published by
THE BREEDERS' GAZETTE
542 So. Dearborn Street
Chicago, Illinois
1920

Illustrations

SUNRISE ON THE DESERT

Towards the east, the God of day,
Like some great red-eyed dragon, tops the rugged range.
Before his golden beams, the gray
Of dawn creeps slowly backward, till the magic change
Sweeps night away.

The desert stirs, and wakes.
Strange-fashioned things come slipping into sight.
High overhead a buzzard idly wings,
A lonely raven robed in shades of night
"Caws" hoarsely to its mates.

Perched on a nearby stone,
A lizard, swift as light, and clad in colors gay,
Pumps slowly up and down.
A horned toad, with crown of thorns, comes slithering by,
And then is gone.

Atop of yonder rocky hill
A lone coyote, skulker of the desert wastes,
Greets the first beams with shrill
And piercing "yips," then hastes
To find his morning kill.

A wandering honeybee,
Drunk with nectar from a Palo Verde's yellow bloom,
Goes stagg'ring by.
The air is heavy with the desert's sweet perfume
From flower and tree.
[Pg xii]
[Pg 1]

The Blue-Roan "Outlaw"
A Tale of the "Hashknife" Range

"Say, Bill, there's that old blue-roan, droop-horned cow that allus runs over on the Coyote wash. Reckon she ain't got a calf somers' hereabout?"

"Like as not," replied Bill, "an' I'll bet it's a blue-roan, too, for she's raised a blue calf reg'lar fer these last four or five years. There's a little hole of water clos't to where she's a-grazin' an' it's a sure shot the calf's hid away in that tall grass down there clos't to it."

The two cowboys rode slowly down the gentle slope toward the cow, which watched them eagerly, but with the cunning of the brute made no sign or motion to show where her baby was hidden. When, however, one of the boys played the time-worn trick on her by barking like a dog, it was too much for her peace of mind. With a mad bellow of defiance she raced toward the spot where the little fellow was hidden, exactly as the boys knew she would.

The calf, with the instinct of the brute already working in his little four-day-old brain, did not move, but lay there as quietly as if he were dead, and, not until the[Pg 2] horsemen rode almost onto him in the deep grass, did they discover his hiding place.

The mother, with the fear of man too strong in her heart to stand by her guns, ran off a few yards from the spot and the calf followed, bawling loudly, the already awakened man-fear strong within him.

"He's a sure blue-roan all right," said Bill. "Say, won't that old Hashknife iron loom up big on them ribs some day?" he asked, for a brand on a roan animal shows much more plainly than on a hide of any other color.

"It sure will," replied his companion; "better leave 'em here till tomorrow an' we can swing around this a-way an' git 'em."

So the boys rode on across the prairie, and the droop-horned blue with her baby rested in peace that day and night.

It was here, away out on the "staked plains," those mysterious regions of the great Southwest, and far back from the thin line of settlements that fringed the Pecos River, in southeastern New Mexico, that the "blue-roan outlaw" first saw the light.

Early next morning the leaders of the roundup party, engaged in gathering up the cattle on the range, swung across the prairie in a great semicircle, sweeping before them in one huge drive, everything of the cow kind. As they divided up into couples to work down the country, the leader said: "Bill, you look out an' catch that ole blue-roan we seen yistiday. The old man wants all them cows to throw into that Arizony drive, an' her an' the calf will make it in all right, I reckon."

So, as they rode along, Bill swung across a little draw toward the water hole they had seen the day before. He picked up the blue-roan, who, with her young son beside her, trotted off, following the rest of the cattle already working down the trails toward the round-up grounds. The two animals fell in with more of their kind as the trails converged until, by the time the roundup ground was reached, there were more than fifteen hundred cattle of all ages and sexes gathered in one great bunch.

The blue-roan's baby kept close to his mother's side; the dust that settled over the herd like a pall, choking him, while the constant bawling of the cattle, fairly deafened him.

Once, when two huge bulls, fighting fiercely, drove through that portion of the herd where he and his mother were, and separated the little family, he added to the din by raising his voice in pitiful outcry for his protector.

Outside of the herd the cowboys rode slowly around, turning back into the center any stragglers that tried to escape.

Gradually the bunch began to stop "milling" and as cow after cow found her calf, the bawling stopped. In half an hour the herd was fairly quiet and the wagon boss dropped off his horse to "cinch up" a little, preparatory to the work of cutting out.

Having reset his saddle, the boss mounted again and, calling to two other men near him, said, "Jack, you go out there a ways and hold 'em up, and Charley and I will get out the cows and the calves." So Jack rode off about one hundred yards from the herd in readiness to receive[Pg 4] the "cut" as they came out; while the boss and Charley rode slowly into the mass of cattle.

"What you want out?" he asked of the boss. "The old man wants every Hashknife cow and calf that will stand the trail trip to Arizony," he replied. "We got to get two thousand for the first herd if we can, so cut 'em close."

"There's that ole blue-roan we seen yistiday," the boss remarked, "let's throw her out first thing, she's a good one to start a bunch on."

Now starting a "cut" is always some little trouble until you get half a dozen head together, because the instinct of the animal is to endeavor to either get back into the herd or to run clear off on the range. In starting a cut, if possible, they pick out some old, sedate cow, and in this case the blue-roan was known to be a good one for the purpose.

So our youngster found himself being followed up by a great fierce-looking man mounted on a small wiry "Paint" pony that kept right at his mother's heels, no matter which way she turned or twisted.

The cow dodged and wound through the herd, while that object behind kept close to her, never hurrying, never crowding, but always, in some inexplicable manner, seeming to force her to the outer rim of the herd.

With the dim hope that possibly she could escape his presence by a break from the herd she worked past half a dozen steers standing idly on the edge and, with a quick dash, broke from the herd out toward the free open prairie, the calf racing at her side.

The man who had so persistently hung to her flank made no further attempt to follow her, but turned his pony and was lost in the mass of the herd.

As she widened the distance from the edge of the herd Jack, who, up to this time had been sitting sideways on his pony some distance from the herd, straightened up, a movement which caught her eye, so she stopped to inspect him and decide what new danger was about to present itself.

To her surprise Jack seemed satisfied with her stopping and made no attempt to come near her. The calf ranged along side of her and began preparations for a lunch, so she, being a sensible animal, decided to stay where she was for a time.

A moment later a second cow and calf were also shot out of the edge of the herd. As she charged across the open space Jack again took interest enough in the proceedings to ride out and turn her over toward the blue-roan, which received her with a short bawl. The two calves eyed each other for a second and then busied themselves with their dinner operations.

The second cow, being young, and with her first calf, was inclined to run off and leave the spot, but in some way every time she did so she met Jack and his pony, who, the instant she turned toward the blue cow, seemed satisfied and took no further steps to interfere with her liberty.

Soon a third and fourth cow joined them and, now that there was a nucleus formed, every new animal turned out of the herd chased straight for the little bunch, which stood quietly for the next three hours, their calves sleeping[Pg 6] at their feet paying little attention to the uproar that was going on in the main herd.

Having cut out some three hundred cows and calves, the "choppers" rode out of the herd, and the "cut" was slowly driven off to water at a near-by windmill, while the main body of cattle was allowed to drift out onto the range at their own pleasure.

That night the blue-roan and her calf, together with the rest of the cut, were "bedded down" near the round-up camp. All night long two men rode around them and any cow which tried to escape was promptly turned back into the herd by the watchful riders.

The next day this bunch was called the "day herd" and three herders looked after them all day long. They were allowed to graze over a piece of open range where the herders could watch them and see that none of them escaped. At noon they were driven into a great prairie lake to water.

That evening another large bunch of cows and calves were brought out to the day herd and turned into it so that they made quite a respectable herd that night.

At the end of ten days' work they had over the required number to make up the "trail herd," and the wagon boss announced one evening that he would send them into the main ranch on the following day to start for the long trail trip to Arizona.

The blue-roan calf had by this time become a seasoned traveler, and found little difficulty in taking care of himself in the herd. A day or two at the ranch and the preparations for the trip were over.

One fine morning about four o'clock the cook, who had been up in the cool morning air since half-past two, awoke the sleepers about his wagon with a long "roll out, roll out, r-o-l-l-o-u-t" which brought the sleepers in the camp beds scattered about the wagon to the campfire in short order.

By sunrise the herd was strung out on the trail for the West. In the lead was the old blue-roan with her blue calf marching steadily along, grazing when the herd was held up for that purpose, resting when the outfit stopped to rest, and altogether behaving themselves remarkably well.

One night as the crew sat about the campfire with the herd resting quietly not far from the wagon, the wagon boss said to one of the boys near him: "Jim, I wish you'd take your hoss in the mawnin' and go ahead and see how the river is. We got to cross it before long and I'm afeard it's going to be pretty high, if all them clouds up toward the head is good for anything."

Late the next night Jim returned with the information that the river was indeed high and that it would be necessary to swim the cattle, or wait for it to run down.

Four days later the herd was bedded down in the valley of the Pecos River, a mile or two back from the stream. About noon the next day, when the cattle were thirsty, the whole herd was drifted down to the river at a place picked out by the wagon boss where the banks were broken down so the cattle could reach the water. On the opposite side the bank was low, making a good "coming out" place.

The river here was half a mile wide and running swiftly. It was, however, not swimming all the way across, and the place was known as a safe ford because of an underlying[Pg 8] rock ledge, which made good footing for the cattle in a river where quicksand was almost everywhere present.

The water was muddy and red and, as the first cattle, eager for a drink, waded out into its depths, the old blue in the lead, the men carefully pointed them out into the stream, keeping them moving.

The others followed, calves bawling, men shouting, the animals plunging and tearing through the swift waters. Soon the leaders were swimming and, as the water deepened, the old blue touched her baby on the nose and told him something in cow language which made him immediately get on the upstream side of her and stay there as they swam across the river. The swift water forced the little fellow against her side, where he hung like a leech, while his mother swam, strong and steadily, for the opposite bank. If the leaders had any desire to turn downstream they met a horseman on that side, swinging his slicker, and shouting with all his might, and keeping just far enough back of the leaders to stop them from turning downstream, and still not check them in their swimming toward the other side.

Soon the old blue and her comrades found footing and she and her little one were among the first to scramble up the muddy bank and stand on dry land on the western side of the Pecos. The whole herd, including a thousand calves, crossed safely. After the saddle horses had swum the river, and the wagon had been floated over, all the beds and plunder were carried across in a small boat, and the westward journey to Arizona was continued.

The day after their arrival on the Arizona range the cattle were turned out to graze early in the morning. When[Pg 9] the calves had all found their mothers and settled down quietly, the boss "cut off" some three hundred cows, each with her calf. These the boys drove to a great stone corral about a mile away, which was almost as large inside as a city block. In one corner a fire of cedar logs was built, into which was stuck a lot of iron affairs with handles three or four feet long, which were the branding irons belonging to the outfit. As he watched the irons in the fire reaching a white heat, the boss remarked that the old man was going to run the same old Hashknife brand and mark in Arizony as he did back in Texas. Finally the boss, throwing away his cigarette, said to the ropers, "Irons hot, fly at 'em boys." Two men on their horses, rode into the mass of cattle crowded against the far side of the corral and, with swift, dextrous throws, began catching the calves. As soon as the rope settled about the neck of one, the horse was turned toward the fire, and as the rope was short and tied to the saddle horn, the unwilling, bawling calf was dragged up to the vicinity of the fire. There two husky cowboys ran out to meet the rider and, following up the rope to the calf dancing and bawling about at the end of it, one of them seized him by the ear or head with one hand and the flank with the other and, with a quick jerk, threw him upon his side. The instant he struck the ground, the other man seized a hind leg and pulled it straight out behind the calf, while the first man, throwing off the rope, sat on the animal's neck and head, and another seared the tender hide with the famous "Hashknife" brand. Still another man with a knife cut off the point of the calf's right ear and took out a little V-shaped piece from the under side of the left ear.[Pg 10] This was the company's earmark. In an instant the operation was over and the calf running back to its mother.

The blue-roan calf was determined he should not be branded. He watched the riders as they rode into the herd and buried himself deep in the middle of the mass, worming under the larger cattle and hiding behind them, until he began to believe he would escape after all.

All morning long the men worked away with the herd until the poor animals were half mad with fear and hunger. As the blue-roan dodged to avoid the whirling, snakelike rope that suddenly shot out from the hand of a man he had not noticed, he felt it draw up on his hind legs. Before he knew it, he was lying on his side and being dragged across the rough ground toward the fire, where he was to receive a mark for life.

"I snared that blue-roan that's been so smart," said the rider as he passed the other man. "Burn him deep Dick," he said, "for he's a roan and it will show up fine when he gets grown."

Released from his torture, the roan staggered back to his mother, who gave him all the comfort she could. His side was bruised and sore where he had been dragged over the rough ground, and the great burn on his ribs pained him beyond measure.

Soon after that the bunch was turned out to graze and, sick at heart, the calf crawled miserably under the shade of a small ironwood bush, while his mother went to water, leaving him alone in his wretchedness. From this time on, the blue-roan became a hater of men. The object on horseback was to him the source of all his suffering and pain—a[Pg 11] thing to be avoided, and upon which to wreak vengeance some day, if possible.

The country in Arizona was very unlike the old range upon the staked plains in Texas, being rough and rocky, with none of those great grassy stretches they had been accustomed to back in their old home. There were trees here, too, a thing they had never known on their old range, and the cows buried themselves deep in the thickets of cedar and piñon. There they found many tanks or reservoirs of rain water, and unless the water gave out they seldom left their hiding places.

Here, the blue-roan calf and his mother made their home, until one day, when he was about a year old, he was accidentally separated from her and never saw her again. Two years of life in the thickets made him shy and wild as a deer; he learned to watch for objects upon horseback, which were his one great fear. Once in the winter before he lost his mother a trio of wolves followed them through the cedars for a whole day, sneaking up on them as closely as they dared, even nipping at their heels. His mother would turn upon them with a bellow of defiance and charge toward the tormentors, head down, returning quickly to the little bunch of friends that stood together, heads to the foe, their calves within the circle.

A two-year-old heifer, with more pluck than judgment, weak from a long winter of short grass and poor range, made a dart toward the wolves, and turning to join the circle of cows, stumbled and fell to her knees. In a moment the wolves were upon her. While they were busy over their feast, the other cattle slipped away from the fear[Pg 12]some place, and a new danger crept into the blue-roan's life.

Three years had passed. The blue-roan was beginning to be a noted character upon the range. He was broad of horn, and the great black Hashknife, outlined against the blue hide, could be seen for a long distance. The sight of a horseman, no matter how far away, was sufficient to send him plunging down the roughest mountainside, into the depths of the cedar brakes, and over rocks and lava flows, where no mounted man could follow. He was too fleet of foot for the older cows, and the roan soon found himself alone in his glory. He then became what is known to the cowboys of the western ranges as an "outlaw," an animal, either horse, bovine, or even human, that, deserted by all its friends, runs alone and has little to do with the rest of his kind; a "cimarron," the Mexicans call them. Such animals are seldom forced into the roundups that take place at regular intervals upon the ranges, and when caught by that dragnet, are very hard to hold in the herd long enough to get them to the stockyards and shipped out of the country.

The next spring, when it was time to start on the roundup, the wagon boss told the men to keep a sharp lookout for that blue-roan outlaw, and "get him or bust him," if the opportunity offered.

It fell to the lot of the boss and another man to run into the blue-roan a few days later. They were working down a grassy draw in a thick cedar country, when out from the trees on one side of it there burst a great blue animal with a grand spread of horns, and fleet as a deer. In an instant[Pg 13] the two men had their ropes down and were after him in full pursuit. "Cut him off from the cedars!" shouted the boss to his partner, who happened to be closest to the cedars, and the boy spurred his pony toward the steer, which now was doing his best to gain the friendly shelter and protection of the trees.

It was but a short distance, and the steer had much the best of the race, but the boy had his pony alongside the animal before he could get his rope into shape for a throw. The steer, with the keen instinct of the hunted, crowded the pony over toward the trees and, just as the rider was ready to drop his rope over the animal's wide-spread horns, an overhanging branch caught the loop, jerking it from his grip. In a vain attempt to turn the steer from the trees into the open, he crowded his pony close up onto the huge bulk of the outlaw. The man's right knee was fairly touching the animal's shoulder, while he rapidly coiled his rope for another throw.

Following them came the boss, cursing his rope, a new "Maguey" which had fouled in his hands and was a mass of snarls and knots, which in his eager haste he only made worse instead of better. At this instant, the blue-roan turned suddenly. With a quick upward thrust of his head, he drove his nearest horn deep into the side of the pony, which was crowding him so closely, tearing a cruel gash in his side and throwing horse and rider into a confused, struggling heap on the ground.

In a moment the steer was lost in the trees, while the boss dropped off his horse to assist his companion, who was working hard to free himself from the body of the pony,[Pg 14] which lay across his leg. The boy cleared himself from his saddle-rigging, and the pony struggled to his feet. It was very evident, however, that the animal was wounded to the death; so the boss, with tears in his eyes, drew his six-shooter and put the poor animal out of its misery.

From that day the "blue-roan outlaw" became a marked animal upon the range, and the story of how he killed "Curly Bill's" pony was told around many a campfire on the round-ups that summer.

Thus the roan outlaw added to his reputation and triumphs until his capture was the dearest hope of every cowpuncher upon that range. The word had gone out not to kill him unless absolutely necessary, but rather to capture him alive just for the satisfaction of the thing.

That fall, when the round-ups were working through the country in which he was known to be, every man was ambitious to be his captor. Around the campfires each night plans were laid for the job and stories told of his prowess and ability to escape from his hunters.

One fine morning, as the riders were working through a country covered densely with cedar and piñon trees, with occasional open glades and grassy valleys, the wagon boss and the man with him heard shouts off to their right. Pulling up their horses they waited to locate the sound, when suddenly from the thicket of trees along the valley there emerged two great animals, a black, and a blue-roan steer. It was the famous blue, together with a black, almost as much an outlaw as himself.

The wagon boss, who had just been lamenting the fact that he was riding a half-broken horse that day, was nearest[Pg 15] to the blue, and professional etiquette, as well as eagerness to be the one to capture the noted steer, drove him straight at the big fellow. The pony he rode was a green one, but he had plenty of speed, and before the steer could reach the shelter of the cedars the rope, tied hard and fast to the horn of a new fifty-dollar saddle, was settling over the head of the outlaw. Unfortunately, however, the rope did not draw up close to the horns, or even on the neck, but slipped back against the mighty shoulders of the steer, giving him a pulling power on the rope that no cow-pony could meet. Then, to quote the words of the man with the boss, "things shore did begin to pop."

Knowing full well that if he crowded the animal too hard he would turn on him and probably kill another horse, the boss made a long throw and consequently had but little rope left in his hand with which to "play" his steer. The jerk that came, when the steer weighing twelve hundred pounds, and running slightly down hill, arrived at the end of the rope, tied to the saddle-horn, was something tremendous. As soon as the strain came on the cinches the pony threw down his head and began some of the most scientific and satisfactory bucking that was ever seen on the Hashknife range, which is compliment enough.

When the boys were gathered about the fire that evening "Windy Bob," who had been with the boss, related the affair.

"Ye see, fellers, me and Ed was a-driftin' down the wash, not expectin' anything pertickler, when out from the cedars busts the ole blue, and a mighty good mate for him.

"'The blue's mine, Windy,' ses Ed, and I, not hankerin'[Pg 16] a bit fer the job, bein' as my shoulder I broke last fall won't stand much funny business, lets him have the big blue all right, and I takes after his mate; which was plenty big 'nuf fer me and the hoss I was a-ridin'.

"I made a good throw and, everything going first rate, had my steer on his side in half a minute, makin' a record throw and tie. Jist as I got my hoggin' rope onto his feet all safe I heered a big doin's up towards Ed's vicinity, and lookin' up seen his hoss jist a-pitchin' and a-sunfishin' like a good feller.

"Ed, he rides him fer about three or four jumps and then, as the saddle was a crawlin' up onto the pony's neck, from his cinches a-bein too loose, and it a-tippin' up behind like a old hen-turkey's tail, runnin' before the wind, Ed, he decides to unload right thar and not go any farther.

"The pony, he keeps up his cavortin' and the steer stripped the saddle right over his head. Away goes Mr. Blue into the thick timber, draggin' that new Heiser Ed got up in Denver over the rocks and through the trees, like as if it want but a picket pin at the end of a stake rope.

"When Ed hit the sod, his Winchester drops out of the scabbard, an' he grabs it up an' sets there on the ground a pumpin' lead after the blue as fast as he could pull the trigger. He never stopped the steer at all, an' when we were trailin' him up, we found the saddle where the rope had dragged between two rocks. The saddle got hung up, but the steer was a runnin' so hard that he jist busted the rope and kept on a goin' an' I reckin is a goin' yet."

"Reckon not," was the reply, "but one of them hit the saddle and made a hole clean through the tree, which didn't help matters much with the boss, I'm here to tell you. You'd orter heerd Ed talk when he sees that there new hull of his all skinned up an' a hole shot plumb through the fork." And Windy grinned at the memory of it.

Not long after this adventure, the blue-roan stood on a high ridge overlooking a valley. Out in that valley was the salt ground where great chinks of pure white rocksalt were placed, not only to satisfy the cravings of the salt-loving brutes, but to coax them out of the cedars into the open where the wilder ones could be captured.

The roan was salt-hungry and, after a careful survey of the surroundings, started down the trail for the salt grounds. Away off to the left, and quite out of his sight, half a dozen cowboys were driving a bunch of cattle down a draw between two ridges. One of them rode up on top of the ridge to take a look over the country. Some distance below him, and well out into the valley, was a single animal. It took but a short look to satisfy the rider that it was the blue-roan. The boy was riding his best rope-horse that morning and, with a wave of his hat to his comrades, he loosened the reins on old "Greyback" and tore off down the valley toward the steer.

He had not gone fifty yards before the roan saw he was pursued, and wheeling out of the trail in which he was traveling struck back towards the sheltering trees on a long swinging trot.

A couple of miles' hard run, and the boy rode his horse out of a deep wash, to see, across another valley, the blue-[Pg 18]roan hurrying majestically up the ridge, the sheltering trees but a few hundred yards away. He spurred his horse down the rocky side of the ridge, across a flat at the bottom, and up the steep side opposite, reaching the top just as the blue was passing. His horse was winded, but the boy "took a long chance" and drove after the animal with his rope down ready for a throw. For an instant the steer hesitated, then plunged off the ridge, down the steep side, just as the boy's rope dropped over his horns. It was a fearful risk to rope a steer such as this, with a badly winded horse; but tenfold more dangerous to do it just as the great animal was starting down the steep slope. The boy knew his only hope was to keep the steer from tightening the rope, for if that happened, no horse on earth could hold the weight of the brute at the end of it, plunging down hill as they were.

"Turn the rope loose," you say? Oh no; he wasn't that kind of a cow puncher. Come what might, he meant to hang onto that steer to the bitter end.

Half way down the hill was a lone piñon tree about twenty feet high, and true to his nature the steer headed for it. The rider realized his danger and tried to keep from straddling it with his rope, but, just as the roan reached the tree, instead of passing it on the same side with the horse, he dodged around it. This brought the horse and man on one side, the steer on the other; between them a fifty foot "Tom Horn" rope fastened firmly; one end to a twelve hundred-pound steer, the other, to a saddle cinched to a thousand-pound horse.

The tremendous force of the pull, when the rope drew[Pg 19] up on the tree, uprooted it. This prevented the rope from breaking, but there was sufficient jerk upon it to bring both horse and steer to the ground in a struggling heap.

The man who was "riding for a fall," with both feet out of the stirrups, in anticipation of just such a wreck, flew off into space, landing in a pile of rocks twenty-five feet away by actual measurement. The horse fell with his head under him in such a way that his neck was instantly broken.

When the other men who were following reached the scene, they found the man just regaining his senses, badly cut about the head, but otherwise unhurt. The blue, in falling, had landed flat on his back, his hind feet down the steep hill, both his long horns buried to the very skull in the ground. Thus he was absolutely helpless and unable to regain his feet, no matter how hard he struggled. To "hog-tie" him in this position, was the work of but a moment, and at last the blue-roan outlaw was a captive.

It was no trouble to roll him down the steep hillside to the level ground below, and inside of half an hour the rest of the men arrived on the scene with the bunch of cattle they had been driving.

In the bunch was a large steer which they roped and dragged up to where the outlaw lay, and, in cowboy parlance "dumped" him on top of the outlaw. They then proceeded to "neck" the two steers together with a short rope they cut for the purpose. Having done this to their satisfaction they untied the hogging ropes and allowed the steers to gain their feet. As this was done the bunch of cattle they had driven up was carefully crowded around the two animals. After a few minutes of pulling and fight[Pg 20]ing the outlaw sulkily allowed himself to be dragged along by his unwilling mate, with the rest of the cattle, and was eventually landed safely in the main herd.

Great was the rejoicing in camp that night over the capture, and the guards about the herd were cautioned not to let the two escape under any circumstances.

At the end of the week the herd had been worked down to the river for shipping. As the country was open and the herd easily handled the "twins," as the boys called them, came apart when the old rope wore out and were not necked up again.

That night one of the men, who had a family in town, hired a town kid to take his place on herd, while he went up and spent the night at home. As the boy rode his guard around the edge of the herd which lay quietly in the cool night air, he found a big blue steer standing at the very edge of the bunch looking off toward the mountains in a dreamy, meditative mood. Kidlike, he could not withstand the temptation to play the "smarty," so, instead of passing him by or gently turning him into the herd, the boy took off his hat and swung it into the steer's face.

It was a distinct challenge to the old warrior, and he rose to the occasion. Gathering himself for one mighty plunge he struck the pony the boy was riding with his powerful head, knocking him flat. Away he dashed over horse and rider, while the herd broke into a mad stampede which carried them five miles in the opposite direction before they could be "milled" into a bunch and held up again. Two men were left with them, the rest returning to camp.

Daylight showed the blue-roan missing, and the wagon boss swore a solemn oath that, if ever again he was captured, he would be necked and also have his head tied down to a foot until he was safely inside the stockyards.

Four weeks later a party of cattle men, gathering steers in the mountains, ran across the blue outlaw, right on the brink of a deep, rough cañon. He was seen, with the aid of a glass, across a bend in the cañon lying under the rim rock in fancied security. Near him were several other steers, and it was determined to make the attempt to capture the lot.

Carefully driving their bunch of gentle steers as close to the place where the outlaw was lying as they could, with the thought that, if he ran up the trail, he would see the steers and possibly go to them and stop; three men rode into the cañon some distance below and started up the trail toward where he was lying.

The instant the blue-roan saw the horsemen he jumped to his feet, hesitated a moment, and instead of taking the smooth trail out, dove down the steep, rocky sides of the cañon where neither horse nor man could follow.

Surefooted as he was, he misjudged his agility and strength, and plunged into a mass of loose rock, which gave him no foothold. The walls of the cañon were frightfully steep and in the loose rock, sliding, slipping, and rolling, he was swiftly hurried towards the edge of a cliff two hundred feet high, over which he dropped to death and destruction. Tons of loose rock followed him to the bottom, making a roar like a thousand cannons. It was the end of the road for the blue-roan.

[Pg 22]When the men climbed down the trail to see just what had happened they found him dead and half buried in the mass of fallen rock.

The cliff was an over-hanging one, smooth and soft enough to show markings, and one of the men, taking a piece of hard flintrock, spent half an hour cutting deep into the smooth, white wall the words:

CAMPIN' OUT
A Bit of Family Correspondence

Dear Daddy: I promised to write every day, if I could, while we are on our vacation; so here goes: My, but we had a hard time getting out here. Say, Dad, did you ever pack a burro? Haven't they got the slipperiest backs? Our pack turned over about twenty times and scattered the stuff all over the country. The sugar spilled out of the bag and wasted. Billy says that don't matter, though, for we can use molasses in our coffee, like the miners up in Alaska.

He kept running into all the open gates along the road (the burro, not Billy). The way he tramped up some of the gardens was awful. Billy got so mad he wouldn't chase him out any more, 'cause once they set a dog on to him as he was chasing the burro out of a frontyard.

We tried leading him (the burro, not Billy), but he wouldn't lead a single step. He ran away last night. Billy hopes he never comes back again.

We are camped under a big fir tree, with branches that[Pg 24] come down to the ground just like an umbrella. The creek is so close to camp that we can hear it tumbling over the rocks all night. I think it's great, but Billy says it's so noisy it keeps him awake. Billy makes me tired, he does; for it takes Jack and me half an hour to wake him up in the morning to build the fire. That's his job.

We called it "Camp Roosevelt." Billy wanted to name it "Camp Bryan," because his father's a democrat, but me and Jack says nothin' doing in the Bryan name, 'cause this camp's got to have some life to it, and a camp named Roosevelt was sure to have something lively happening all the time.

P. S. Tell mother that tea made in a coffee pot tastes just as good as if it was made in a tea pot. She said it wouldn't.

P. S. Pa, did you ever useto sleep with your boots for a pillow out on the plains? Cause if you did I don't see how you got the kinks out of your neck the next day.

Dear Pa: My, but the ground's hard when you sleep on it all night. We all three sleep in one bed, 'cause that gives us more to put under us. I'm sorry for soldiers who have to sleep on one blanket. We toss up to see who[Pg 25] sleeps in the middle, for the blankets are so narrow that the outside fellow gets the worst of it.

The first night the burro ran off, and next morning Jack had to walk two miles before he found him. Jack's the horse-wrangler. Isn't that what you said they used to call the fellow who hunted up the horses every morning on the round-ups?

We staked him out the next night (the burro I mean, not Jack) and we all woke up half scared to death at the worst racket you ever heard in all your life. And what do you think it was? Nothing at all but that miserable burro braying.

Say, Pa, you know that quilt mother let me bring along, the one she said you and she had when you first got married? Well, do you s'pose she'd care if it was tore some? You see, on the way out the burro ran along a barb wire fence and tore it, the quilt I mean. Lots of the stuffing came out, but it don't show if you turn the tore place down.

This morning I woke up most froze, 'cause Billy crowded me clear off the bed and out on to the ground. It's sure great to sleep out of doors and see the stars and things. We put a hair rope in the foot of the bed last night. Gee, but Jack jumped high when his bare feet hit it. He thought it was a tarantula.

P. S. The little red ants got into our condensed milk and spoiled it; leastways there's so many ants we can't[Pg 26] separate the ants from the milk. Billy left the hole in the top of the can open.

Dear Pa: You know Billy's dog Spot? Well, Billy said there was a wildcat about camp, 'cause he saw the tracks. So I went down to a house below on the creek and borrowed a steel trap they had. It was a big one with sharp teeth on the jaws.

I wanted to set it on the ground, but Billy he says, "No, sir; set it on the log acrost the creek, 'cause the cat would walk on the log and couldn't help getting caught.

Besides, he said if we set it on the log and fastened it, when the wildcat got caught he'd fall off into the creek and get drownded and then we wouldn't have to kill him. Billy says that's the way trappers catch mushrats, so they can't eat their feet off, when they get caught, and get away.

In the night we heard the awfulest racket ever was and the biggest splashing going on in the water. It even woke Billy up, and that's going some, as Uncle Tom says.

It was 'most daylight and I sat up in bed, and there in the water was something making a dreadful fuss. Billy he looks at it a minute and says: "Why, it's Spot. Who let him loose?" Then we all jumped up, and sure enough there was poor old Spot in the trap by one front-foot. The chain to the trap was just long enough so he didn't drown, but was hanging in the water by one leg.

Billy, it being his dog, crawled out on the log, unfast[Pg 27]ened the chain and tried to pull Spot up. Some way he lost his balance and fell into the creek right on top of the dog. Billy was real mad 'cause me and Jack laughed so hard we couldn't help him a bit, Spot was pretty mad too, for he grabbed Billy's leg in his teeth and tore a big piece out of them—out of Billy's pajamas I mean.

Then Billy let go of the chain, and Spot climbed out of the water on to the bank and tried to run off with the trap. Billy waded ashore too, and we just laid down on the ground and hollered like real wild Indians. Billy he said it wasn't any laughing matter and to come and help him get Spot out of the trap.

Say, Dad, did you ever try to open a big steel trap—especially one with a spotted dog in it? Spot wouldn't let us come near him. Billy coaxed and coaxed, but, no siree, he wouldn't do anything but just snap at us like a sure enough wild cat. Meantime Spot he howls something dreadful.

Then Jack he remembers how once in a storybook a man caught a mad dog, so he runs to the bed and gets a blanket, and while Billy and me talks nice to Spot from in front, Jack he sneaks up behind and throws it over him. Then Jack grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around the dog's head so he couldn't bite, and we both stood on the trap spring and managed to get it open wide enough so Billy got his foot out (Spot's foot I mean, not Billy's).

Has he come home yet? 'Cause he's gone from here. My goodness, but camping out's sure fun.

P. S. Billy says he don't care anyhow, for Spot had no right to chew the rope in two and get loose so as to get into the trap.

P. S. The wasps are thick here. One stung Jack on the neck and he hollered awful over it. I made a mud poultice for it like you told me once you used to do on the plains.

Dear Pa: It rained last night real hard. We didn't get much wet, and anyhow Jack says camping out wouldn't be any fun unless you slept in wet blankets once, like the cowboys and soldiers do on the plains. Billy says his Uncle John says a wet bed is a warm bed, but I don't believe him, for we 'most froze.

Pa, what makes the red come out of the quilts where they get rained on? Jack says we belong to the improved order of Red Men now, and if my face looks as funny as his does, with red streaks all acrost it, I'd be afraid to go home.

You'd ought to see the fun we had drownding out a chipmonk what ran into a hole in the ground. We packed the water in our hats from the creek. Bimeby, the chipmonk, came out, and I ran after him. He was so wet he couldn't run fast and I made a grab at him and caught him—no, he caught me for he bit my finger horrible hard and I couldn't let go, or else he wouldn't, I'm not sure which.

Billy and Jack laughed at me as if it was a good joke, but I couldn't see where it was so very funny.

P. S. Jack dropped the box of matches out of his shirt pocket into the creek, and I had to go to a house about a mile away to get some more.

P. S. You can't make a fire with two sticks of wood, for we tried it for an hour. All we got was blisters on our hands. The Indians must of had lots of patience if they ever did it.

Dear Daddy: If the burro comes home please shut him up in the lot. He's gone somewhere and we can't find him. Anyhow it don't make much difference, for Jack says he'd rather carry his share of the stuff on his back than bother with a pack burro again. There ain't going to be much grub to take back anyhow. The man down the creek gave us some more bacon for what the hogs ate up and said we were welcome to all the green corn we wanted from his field. We had just corn for supper last night and breakfast today. The salt all got wet in the rain and melted up, so we didn't have any, but Billy says lots of times on the plains people didn't have any salt for weeks at a time. I'll bet they didn't have nothing but green corn to eat, though.

Please tell mother that I burned a hole in one of my shoes trying to dry them out by the campfire. Also about six inches off the bottom of one leg of my pajamas. They were hanging on a stick by the fire drying while we made the bed. Billy said he smelt cloth a-burning, but we never saw where it was till the harm was done.

If mother won't mind I'm sure I won't, for Billy says[Pg 30] no soldier or cowboy ever wore pajamas. It was my old pair of shoes anyhow, and they always hurt my heel when I walked, so they don't matter either.

P. S. The man down the creek says he's going to town pretty soon and if we want to ride in with him we can. I wonder what made him think of it.

P. S. A wasp stung me on the lip yesterday. He lit on an ear of corn just as I went to bite. It don't hurt at all, leastways I'd be ashamed if I made as much fuss about it as Jack did when one bit him. Besides a wasp bite on the lip's lots worser than one on the neck—that's what the man down the creek says.

Dear Daddy: Yesterday we sure had a great time playing "Pirates" without any shirts on—for Billy says pirates always dress that way—just their trousers on, "naked to the waist," he says.

I was the pirate chief, and Billy was my crew. Jack he was the captain of the vessel and stood on the log to defend the gangway of his ship.

We had cutlasses made out of lath and when we told Jack to surrender he called us cowardly pirates and dared us to step on board his ship.

Then we went for him and was having a great old time when Jack's foot slipped and he fell off the log into the creek. He got mad at me and Billy, 'cause we laughed[Pg 31] at him when he bumped his head on the log as he went down.

P. S. What's good for a burnt finger where you burnt it trying to pick the coffee pot off the fire to keep it from boiling over?

Dear Dad: If there's a funny smell to this letter it's on account of the skunk. The man down the creek says if we bury our clothes in the ground for two or three days the smell will all come off.

We are coming home tomorrow in his wagon. We're going to leave the bed clothes hanging in a tree. The man said he wouldn't take them home if he was us. Anyhow it don't matter much for a spark blew onto the bed one day and burnt a hole right through them all clear down to the ground.

We put it out when we smelt it. It didn't hurt very much, for we changed the blankets 'round so the holes didn't all come together, and let in the cold, and it was all right.

Please kiss Mother for me and tell her most of the red's come off my face and arms.

Billy cried last night 'cause he was homesick and wanted his Ma. He's a sissy girl, Billy is. I'll sure be glad to see you and Ma, but I wouldn't cry about it. Please kiss Ma for me.

P. S. Say, Pa, do skunks out on the plains look like little kittens? The one we caught sure did.

POPGUN PLAYS SANTA CLAUS

The pony sidled gingerly toward the mailbox nailed to the trunk of a pine tree, his eyes and ears watching closely the white sheet of paper that lay on the bottom of the open box, held by a small stone which allowed one end to flutter and flap in the wind in a way that excited his suspicions.

When the Widow Miller wished to mail a letter she placed it, properly stamped, in her box and the first neighbor passing that way took it out and mailed it for her, she being some miles off the regular mail route.

He chanted the old familiar frontier quadrille call as he tried to force the pony close to the box to reach the paper without dismounting.

"Stand still, you fool," he spurred the animal vigorously, "that there little piece of paper ain't going to eat you."

But the more he spurred the farther from the box went the animal. "Beats all what a feller will do to save unloading hisself from a hoss," he threw the reins over Mack's head, swung to the ground and strode toward the box.

He sang as he lifted the stone and picked up the paper beneath it, which proved to be a large-sized sheet of writing paper folded three times. A one-cent stamp evidently taken from some old letter was stuck in one corner and beneath it was scrawled in a childish, unlettered hand the words:

Almost reverently Gibson unfolded the paper, feeling he was about to have some youthful heart opened to his curious eyes.

"Deer Sandy Claws," it began, "please bring me a train of railroad cars, an' a pair of spurs an' a 22 rifle to shoot rabits with, an' a big tin horn. An' Sandy, Mary wants a big Teddy bare an' a real doll what shuts her eyes when she lays down. An' Minnie she's the baby, Sandy, so pleas bring her a pictur book an' a doll an' a wolly lam an' bring us all a lot of candy an' apples an' oranges an' nuts, for since Dady went away, we ain't had none of them things much. Mother she says you know jist where we live so[Pg 34] don't forgit us for I've tride to be a good boy this year.

Gibson felt a lump rising in his throat, and took refuge in song to hide his embarrassment.

He wiped something out of the corner of his eyes with the back of his buckskin glove, and blew his nose savagely. "Hm, Shucks, seems like I'm a gittin' a cold in my haid," he remarked sort of confidentially to the pony.

"Hm, Shucks, wants a railroad train, hey? An' a gunchester to kill rabbits, an' a tin horn, an' Mary wants a Teddy bear, does she, an' apples an' oranges an' candy for all of 'em. Say, Bill Gibson, it's up to you to play Santy Claus for these kids an' if you handle the job right maybe you can convince their Aunt Nancy that she'd ought to say 'Yes' to a man about your size an' complexion." Again he broke into song.

"Git up, Mack, les git along to camp and let the bunch in on this Santy Claus game. Hm, Shucks, Nancy said she[Pg 35] wanted a watermelon-pink sweater—whatever color that may be—to wear to the New Year's dance up on Crow Creek. Reckin the thing won't cost more'n a month's pay. I'll jist get her one if it takes my whole roll." Once more he dropped into song.

That night around the table in the bunk house of the Oak Creek Sheep Company, four or five men watched the foreman write a letter to the owner, Mr. Barrington, who was wintering on the coast. Briefly he explained how the letter to Santa Claus fell into their hands and the desire of the men at the ranch to furnish the children with all the things they asked for, and more.

Miller, the foreman explained, had been accidentally killed a couple of years before and his wife was putting up a hard fight to stay on the piece of land he had homesteaded long enough to get title to it from the government.

There were three kids, he continued, James, the oldest, seven years, and two girls, Mary, five, and Minnie, the baby, two.

"The boys ain't a-limiting you in the cost, so please get anything else you and Mrs. Barrington thinks would[Pg 36] please the kids and let me know the cost and I'll charge it up to the boys' pay accounts.

"Also Bill Gibson wants that Mrs. Barrington should pick out what he says is to be a 'watermelon-pink' sweater for Mrs. Miller's kid sister, Nancy. Bill says Nancy is just about Mrs. Barrington's size, and what'd fit her will fit Nancy all right.

"Bill he says he reckons Mrs. B. will savvy what a watermelon-pink sweater is, which is more than any of us do."

Three days before Christmas Bill Gibson set forth for the railroad, twenty-five miles away, to bring back the expected Christmas stuff. There was two feet of snow on the ground and the roads were impassable for wheels; so Bill took with him two pack animals, a horse and a mule.

He figured he would be one day going and one coming and that on Christmas eve, after marking and arranging all the presents, some one would ride down to the cabin and leave the whole business on the porch of the widow's cabin where she would be sure to find it early Christmas morning. At the railroad Gibson found the trains all tied up with snow to the west, and the packages had not arrived.

"Hm, shucks," was his terse comment. "Now wouldn't it jist be hell if the plunder didn't come in time for them kids to have their Christmas tree?" But late that night a train came through which brought the package he had come for.

By unpacking the stuff from the box in which they were shipped Gibson managed to get everything in the two kyacks carried by the mule while upon the horse he packed a load of provisions for the camp.

Barrington and his wife had added liberally to the list of toys and, knowing well the conditions at the sheep ranch, had marked or tagged each article with the name of the child for which it was intended. Even Mrs. Miller had been remembered generously.

The sweater was there, packed carefully in a fancy box. Bill loosed the ribbon that fastened it and slipped a card into the box on which he had laboriously written, "To Miss Nancy, from her true friend, Bill."

But the storm broke out again and it was long after noon the next day before he dared start, for the wind blew great guns and the air was filled with icy particles that no one could face.

Leading the pack horse with the mule "tailed up" to him, Gibson started for home, but made poor progress through the drifted snow. It was almost two o'clock the next morning when he passed the letterbox at the trail to the Widow Miller's place. The moon had gone down behind the trees to the west and it was quite dark, but here the wind had swept the ground bare of snow, and his progress with his rather jaded animals was much better.

Sleepy and tired from his long ride Gibson reached the ranch and rode into the warm stable to unsaddle. There to his great surprise he found he had but one animal behind him, the rope which had been around the mule's neck still dragging at the pack horse's tail, a mute evidence of what had happened.

"Hm, shucks," he commented grimly, "won't them there boys in the bunk house give me particular hell for this night's work?"

Wearily he unsaddled and unpacked the horses. Still more wearily he dragged himself up the path to the house, stirred the fire in the fireplace into a blaze, and when the coffee was hot drank a cup, ate greedily of the food which the cook had left for him, crawled into his blankets and in ten seconds was dead to the world.

In his dreams he was swinging a rosy cheeked girl through the steps of an old-fashioned quadrille, she being attired in a most gorgeous watermelon-pink sweater.

He essayed the kiss only to be awakened on the verge of its attainment by a heavy hand on his shoulder, followed by a voice which demanded in no soft tones, "Where's your Christmas plunder?"

"Come alive, Bill; come alive, an' tell us about the things for the kids. We can't find them nowhere."

Gibson yawned and rubbed his eyes in a vain attempt to delay the castastrophe which he knew would encompass him when he told of the loss of the pack mule.

Before he dropped off to sleep he had planned to get an early start in the morning back on his trail to try to find the lost animal. Popgun had been bought from the widow soon after her husband's demise and he shrewdly guessed that the tired, hungry mule would most likely strike direct for his old and nearby home.

"Hm, shucks," he began. "I reckon I done lost the[Pg 39] mule coming home. Had him tailed up to old Paint and just about the time I passed the trail into Widder Miller's place Paint set back on the lead rope and like to pulled the saddle offen old Mack, me havin' the rope tied hard and fast to the nub. He let up in a minute and come along all right and I'm a figuring 'twere just about there that Popgun gits loose, he probably havin' been leaning back on the pack hosse's tail a right smart causing Paint to pull back hisself. Popgun likely stripped the rope over his head and being about all in turned off down the trail to the widder's and it's dollars to doughnuts he's a eating hay in her shed right now. Me being tired and sleepy I never sensed the loss till I gits here with the mule's rope a dragging along still tied to Paint's tail. Hm, shucks, I'll find him or bust a shoe string."

"An' to think they have to go all the way back to Afriky to git ivory when there's such a lot of it to be had nearer home," was the sarcastic comment of the foreman.

From the windows of the Widow Miller's cabin the whole world seemed wrapped in a mantle of white. Down along the creek in the meadow the rose bushes and willows poked their heads above the snow. Changing their skirts for overalls, she and Nancy soon picked a couple of quarts of the brilliant red berries or fruit of the rose bushes. That night as soon as the children were safely in bed they started in on their Christmas tree preparations. Several days before Nancy had slipped out into the timber and cut a small spruce which she dragged to the stable and hid under some[Pg 40] loose hay, and with an empty canned goods case and some stones they managed to make a very satisfactory base for it. Over the coals in the fireplace they popped a huge dish-pan full of corn and worked late into the night stringing popcorn and the rose berries with which to festoon the tree.

"I've seen my mother use cranberries for the same thing," she told her sister, "but these rose berries look quite as well I think."

From the pages of a mail order catalogue they cut figures from the brilliantly colored fashion plates which, pasted upon stiff cardboard and hung to the tips of the branches, made famous decorations.

Festooned with the long strings of rose berries and popcorn, with these gaily painted ladies of fashion dangling from every bough, it made a very satisfactory Christmas tree. After placing upon it the presents for the children which they had been able to buy or make, together with a few apples and oranges, some stick candy, each done up separately in paper, "just to make it seem more," Nancy said, the two women retired for the night.

How long she had slept or what awakened her, Mrs. Miller could not tell, but as she strained her ears for the slightest sound, she imagined she could hear outside the footfalls of some heavy animal. She knew it could be no bear, for whatever it was the snow was crunching under its feet, nor was it a human, for the steps were those of a four-footed object.

The moon, that earlier in the evening had flooded the valley until it was almost as light as day, was now just dipping behind the mountain to the west, throwing the stable[Pg 41] into deep shadow, from which the sounds now seemed to come.

There was a bare possibility of its being some range cow, although they had all long since drifted down into the lower country, but she finally decided it must be one of the big bull elks which regularly wintered on the wind-swept sides of the mountain above them and sometimes came down to the ranch seeking feed during times of heavy snow.

Shivering with the cold she crept back to bed realizing that daylight would soon come. Rudely her dreams were broken by a sound that at first froze the very marrow in her bones, but which with immense relief she instantly realized could come from the throat of but one animal and that, a mule.

Fortunately the children slept through it all, and dressing as quickly as they could, she and Nancy started for the stable, Mrs. Miller armed with her automatic.

No sooner had they stepped from the porch than the mule that had been hanging about the stable trying to get in spotted them and greeted their coming with a series of brays and nickerings that showed his joy at seeing some human being.

It was Popgun, the pack still on his back. Leading him to the cabin the women quickly loosened the diamond hitch, took off the canvas pack cover and piled the kyacks upon the porch after which he was placed in a vacant stall in the stable and fed.

To the women versed in frontier ways and signs the solution of the visit from their long-eared friend was simple, and they sized up the situation almost exactly as it had oc[Pg 42]curred. Therefore they felt certain some one would be on his trail before very long.

The rattle of the pack rigging on the porch aroused the children, and when the women returned from the stable the two older ones were investigating the pack.

Bidding them not to meddle with the things, Mrs. Miller and her sister went inside the house to get breakfast leaving the kids on the porch. Childish curiosity could not well be stifled, especially on such a day as this. They had been told stories of the coming of Santa Claus and while Jimmie had learned that a reindeer looks very much like a bull elk he had once seen, he also knew that all sorts of things could be packed in a pair of kyacks and knew no reason why Santa should not have availed himself of that means of transporting his gifts under certain conditions.

To loosen the straps that held the kyack covers was an easy matter. To lift up the heavy canvas covers was still easier and the first thing that met the eager eyes of both children was a long tin horn nested down in some excelsior. As he pulled at it a fluttering tag caught his eye. On it he read: "For James—Merry Christmas." One wild shout of delight and he gave a blast on the toy that brought both women to the door just in time to see Mary drag from the kyack a huge Teddy Bear. On this was another tag marked: "To Mary—Merry Christmas."

Before his scandalized mother could collect her senses enough to stop him Jimmie had dropped his horn and gone on a voyage of exploration into the depths of the two kyacks. One of his first discoveries was the box containing the sweater. The tag tied to it cleared up in a measure the[Pg 43] doubts which Mrs. Miller had had as to the propriety of thus making free with other people's property, and that Santa had been sent by the men at the sheep camp.

An hour later a man rode down the trail back of the house and quite out of range of its windows. Tying his horse at the side of the stable away from the house he crept to the corner of the building and cautiously peeped out.

The smoke was curling briskly from the cabin chimney and in the tense stillness he could hear noises which indicated very plainly that the letter to "Sandy Claws" had borne fruit, for the most ear-splitting sounds were coming from the cabin, sounds which he knew to be the natural results of three tin horns in the mouths of three delighted kids.

As he stood there a door slammed, and a girl stepped out on the porch arrayed in the most gorgeous sweater he had ever imagined. On her head was a jaunty cap of the same color and material as the sweater, while in her hands she held a tin bucket in which most unquestionably was the breakfast for the chickens which were making loud demands for release from their log coop near the stable.

In his inmost heart Bill Gibson knew that if ever a man was blessed by the Gods with the one opportunity of his life, it was facing him at this very moment. Nancy came tripping down the snowy path a perfect picture of girlish beauty and happiness. Gibson drew back so she could not see him until she had turned the corner of the stable. As she did so and met his eyes the song turned into a maidenly[Pg 44] shriek. Her cheeks were blazing like two peonies, she tried hard to speak, but the words died on her lips. Mechanically she set the bucket of feed on a small shelf where the chickens could not reach it. Bill interpreted the move as meaning either a fight or complete surrender. He believed it was the latter and took a step toward her.

"Christmas gift, Nancy," he said. His voice had an odd quaver in it. "Old Santy seems to have brung you the sort of sweater you wanted." He was gaining confidence.

"Nancy," he demanded, "ain't you got nothing for me this grand Christmas morning?"

"What you wanting mostly?" her eyes fairly dancing with mischief and telling what her lips dared not.

"You—an' I'm a-going to take it right here." He took a step toward her; she turned to run but with one bound he was at her side, caught her in his arms and fairly smothered her with kisses.

He drew back his head and looked deep into her eyes. "How about it?" he demanded.

He kissed her a dozen times before she replied. Nor did she seem to object to the action.

He drew her closer to him, her arms found their way about his neck. "Bill," she whispered in his ear, "you're an old darling, let's go up to the house and tell the news to sister."

"JUST REGULARS"

In the dark depths of an Arizona cañon, with no light but that which came from the stars, a string of shadowy figures slowly worked its way through tangles of thorny mesquite and cat claw, over rocks and past great bunches of cactus which pierced hands and limbs wherever they touched.

If you looked closer, you saw that the figures were those of men, also horses and mules, most of the men leading their mounts, and here and there the yellow chevrons on some sergeant's blouse, or the broad yellow stripe on an officer's trousers showed them to be cavalry.

There was no talking or unnecessary noise. At times they were fairly on their knees fighting their way up some rocky steep; again they dropped down into the darkness, the well-trained animals following like goats.

At the head of the line, an officer, young in years but old in this kind of work, whispered occasionally to the veteran guide at his left.

Just ahead of him an Apache scout, stripped for the fight, a band of red flannel about his forehead, his body naked except for the white cotton breechclout ("the G string") about his waist, the peculiar moccasins of his tribe[Pg 46] on his feet, led the way, like some bloodhound on the trail.

Out of the darkness ahead came the weird hoot of an owl. Three times did it sound. The scout listened till the last echo died away, and then, with his hands gathered about his mouth, answered the call.

Quietly he slipped away into the night, the command stopping where they were as the whispered order flew back along the line, each man sinking down to the ground, glad of the chance for the moment's rest.

The night was cold, although it was midsummer in a region where at noon the earth is baked and burned with the heat.

The quarry which they sought was not far ahead, and it was best to leave their animals and go the rest of the way without them.

Turning to the tall Sergeant behind him, the officer gave the orders for the movement, and back down the shivering, scattered line went the instructions: "Number fours hold the horses, every one else take all extra ammunition and their canteens and follow the column on foot."

Then came whispered pleadings from the unfortunate "number four men" doomed to remain behind to guard the horses and the rear while the others went on into the darkness to—what? Perhaps death, perhaps a wound from a poisoned arrow; in any event plenty of hardship and suffering.

How those cavalrymen begged for the privilege of get[Pg 47]ting a hole shot through them. They urged the officers to cut down the rearguard and leave but a couple of men to look after the packs and horses.

"Very well, Sergeant," the commanding officer replied, well pleased when told of the men's desire to go with the fighting force, "leave three or four men to guard the animals and let the rest come on; God knows we are very likely to need them."

Then the Sergeant, knowing his men as a schoolmaster his pupils, left behind: fat Corporal Conn whose asthmatic wheezings and puffings had already brought forth many a muttered curse upon his head; Private Hill who couldn't see an inch beyond his nose in the dark and who had fallen over every bush and rock in the trail since they entered the cañon; and two other men whose physical condition was such that he doubted their ability to make the climb which he knew was ahead of them.

Not one of these accepted the detail without as vigorous a protest as soldierly duty made possible. Bless you no! Each of them felt himself an object of especial pity, fat Conn even claiming that the higher he climbed the less the asthma troubled him.

Then the command once more drove into the blackness ahead, following the lithe Apache up a mountain side which seemed almost perpendicular.

Each man carried two belts of cartridges about his waist with a third swung from his shoulder. Most of them wore the Apache moccasin which gave forth no sound as they moved along.

At last they reached the summit of the mountain[Pg 48] breathless and tired. Before them was a mighty cañon, the cañon of the Salt River. To their left four granite peaks, the "Four Peaks" of the maps, pierced the skyline like videttes on guard over the cañon.

From its bed, two thousand feet below, the dull murmur of the river, as it dashed along its rocky way, came softly to the soldiers' ears.

It was the dawning of December 27, 1872. The soldiers were a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry, Major Brown in command.

At a little spring some twenty miles away they had left their supplies and pack train.

Their Christmas holidays had been spent in pursuit of several bands of Apaches, and the scouts had reported that a large band of them was located in a cave on the Salt River cañon.

A pack mule had died in camp that day, and the Indian scouts were allowed to make a great feast upon its remains that they might set out on the expedition with full stomachs.

For years efforts had been made to concentrate the Apaches, who had been the scourge of Arizona and the Southwest, upon one or two reservations where, under guard, they could be watched and kept in bounds.

In the summer of 1872 General George Crook, after having held numerous councils with the Apaches, issued an ultimatum to the effect that, if those who were outside of the reservation did not return by the fifteenth of the coming November, active operations would begin against them. After that date every Indian found outside the reservation was to be treated as a hostile and dealt with accordingly.

The Apaches knew Crook only too well, for the "Old Grey Fox," as they called him, had always kept his word with them in the past.

Promptly on the day set General Crook took the field against the outlaw Apaches and hunted them down relentlessly day and night.

The region in which these operations took place is one of the roughest in the United States. It is located on the western side of the great "Tonto Basin" in central Arizona, and consists of ragged mountain ranges, and isolated peaks, while the whole area is cut and seamed with deep box cañons impassable for miles.

About fifty miles from the city of Phœnix, as the crow flies, and near the great Roosevelt irrigation reservoir and dam, four granite peaks pierce the sky.

Here Nature is found in one of her most inhospitable moods, and in the fastnesses of these "Four Peaks" several bands of the hunted, harassed Apaches took refuge.

In its mighty cañons the Indians knew of caves and cliffs where they had lived in safety from their old enemies for many years; there they believed no white man could possibly reach them.

Crook and his soldiers matched wits with the Indians and beat them at their own game. Wherever the Indians went there the troops followed them. They chased them on foot when their horses played out, lived on the scantiest possible allowance of food, slept in the deep snows with but a single blanket and without fires lest the telltale smoke give the Indians warning of their presence.

It was to surprise the occupants of one of these caves[Pg 50] that Major Brown and his men were making this night march.

There the Apaches had fled, carrying into the cave great quantities of food and other necessary supplies, leaving their ponies behind to shift for themselves.

The cave itself is not a cave in the strict sense of the word, but rather a great weather-worn shelf, similar to those used by the ancient cliff dwellers for their habitations all over the Southwest.

At the outside edge the opening is about fifteen feet high from floor to roof, and sixty feet wide. The roof slopes back into the cliff for some thirty feet to a point where the rear wall is not over three feet high.

At the front, the floor of the cave projects some little distance beyond the overhanging cliff forming a sort of platform. Entirely around this platform the Apaches had raised a stone-wall several feet high, inside of which they rested in fancied security.

On top of the mountain Major Brown's command, which numbered but fifty men and officers, with two civilian guides, waited while the two scouts wormed their way into the blackness of the cañon's depths in an attempt to make sure that the Indians did not have any pickets outside the cave to guard against surprise.

The cool night breeze made the soldiers' teeth chatter. Some dropped off to sleep, while others huddled together under the lee of the great rocks whose surface still gave off some slight warmth stored up during the day. Meantime they cursed, with a soldier's vehemence, the slowness of the scouts in returning.

Finally they came, dropping into the midst of the men as if from above, so quietly did they move.

Five minutes of whispering followed between the guide, the Major and the Indians, and then Lieutenant W. J. Ross and a dozen men crawled away into the darkness with one of the Indians to guide them.

Again, those soldiers had begged to be taken as one of the party. No use to call for volunteers, they were all volunteers and envied the fortunate ones whom the tall First Sergeant named for the trip.

Ross was to endeavor to locate the entrance to the cave in order that the rest of the command might be posted in the most advantageous positions. His party dropped into the cañon and was quickly swallowed up in its sombre shadows. Down they crept, stumbling over rocks, treading on the "Cholla" cactus balls that covered the ground everywhere, and whose sharp needles will often pierce the heaviest buckskin gloves, moccasins or even leather boots. A misstep meant death far below in the cañon, while every minute they looked for the crash of the Indians' rifles.

As they felt their way carefully along, they saw the faint gleam of a campfire. Ross worked his men up as closely as he could, placing them in safe positions behind rocks scattered about. By the light of the fire, they made out some fifteen Indians standing about it while a lot of squaws were preparing food for them. The fire was but a few feet from the cave which could be seen dimly in the background, and it was quite evident the hostiles felt very secure in their retreat.

Scarcely daring to breathe, each picked out a brave for[Pg 52] a target and at a whispered signal, fired. Those of the Indians who were not killed fled into the cave, while the report of the carbines quickly brought the rest of the command down into the cañon.

Major Brown placed his men about the cave so as to prevent the escape of any of the Indians, waiting for daylight before attempting further operations.

One Apache managed to work his way out of the cave and through the cordon by some means. He was seen after he had passed clear through the lines, standing for an instant on a great rock, his figure boldly outlined against the sky. His recklessness in his fancied security was his undoing, for one of the crack shots in the regiment, Private John Cahill, took a hasty shot at the form, and it came tumbling down the steep side of the cañon.

After Major Brown had formed his lines about the cave he called on the Indians to surrender. This they answered with cries of defiance, followed by a few scattering shots which did no harm. Later on Brown again called on them to surrender, or if not that, to send out their women and children, promising no harm should come to them. Again the Indians refused to accept the offer. They heaped epithets, dear to the Apache heart, upon the soldiers, taunting them with cowardice, and assuring them that they would soon be food for the buzzards and ravens. "May the coyotes howl over your grave," is a favorite Apache expression of contempt, which they hurled at their opponents many times during the fight.

Daylight came slowly, and then the siege was on in earnest. Brown again renewed his offer of protection to[Pg 53] the women and children, but to no purpose. Of arrows and lances, as well as fixed ammunition for their rifles, the Indians seemed to have an unlimited supply. They showered arrows upon the soldiers by hundreds, sending them high into the air, so they would fall upon the men lying behind the rocks scattered about. Lances were also thrown in the same manner, but they were unable to inflict any damage upon the besiegers by such tactics. The Indians also played all the tricks belonging to their style of warfare. War bonnets and hats were raised upon lances above the wall with the intention of drawing the fire of some soldier and getting him exposed to a return shot. But Brown warned his men against all such schemes, and no harm was done by them.

Twice did small parties of the Indians make bold dashes out of the cave, evidently with the intention or hope of gaining the rear of the troopers to harass them from the heights above, or else to secure assistance from other bands of hostiles known to be in the vicinity. But these sorties were repulsed by the soldiers with a loss of several Indians.

Whether the trick of the Indians in shooting arrows at such an angle as to drop on the men behind the rocks suggested retaliation in kind, no one can say today; but finding direct firing without any great effect, Brown conceived the idea of having his men aim their carbines so that the bullets would strike against the roof of the cave; by so doing, he believed the bullets would be so deflected as to strike amongst the Indians huddled in the small space below.

For some time the soldiers poured their fire against the rocky roof with no apparent results, although the[Pg 54] shriek of a wounded squaw or the pitiful cry of some child, struck by the spattering lead, convinced them that some of the bullets were finding a mark.

The Indians fought with the desperation of trapped animals, but finally there came a lull in their fire. From the cave came a weird wild chant. It was the death chant of the Apaches, which the scouts warned the officers meant a charge.

Soon they came; about twenty picked warriors clambering over the rocky wall, with the most desperate courage and recklessness. All were armed with both bow and rifle. Each carried on his back a quiver full of the slender reed arrows peculiar to the Apaches and, with a volley from their rifles, charged the soldiers behind their rocky breastworks.

Pandemonium reigned. The death chant was taken up by the squaws in the cave; the crack of guns in the deep cañon, the shrieks of wounded and dying squaws and children, the yells of the soldiers as they met this fierce attack of the desperate savages, the flashing of rifle shots in the darkness, all made what an officer who was present (the late Captain John G. Bourke of the 3rd U. S. Cavalry) once told the writer was the most thrilling as well as the most appalling moment he ever knew during a lifetime full of exciting incidents.

But the efforts of the despairing Indians were fruitless, and they were driven back with heavy losses. Thus the fight went on for hours. The sun rose high in the heavens and beat down on the scene until the soldiers lying in the hot rocks suffered fearfully for water. Major Brown's[Pg 55] scheme was working, however, with frightful success. The death chant was ceaseless and the cries of defiance, rage, and despair rang out constantly from the penned-up savages.

One little Apache boy, possibly not over four years of age, toddled out of the side of the cave where the wall of rock was open, and stood gazing with wide-eyed wonder at the sight before him. One of Major Brown's Indian scouts sprang from his hiding place behind a rock a few yards away, and running to the child, seized him by the arms, dragging him into the soldiers' lines before a single shot could be fired at him.

The small detachment, left behind as a rearguard and anxious to take part in the fighting, worked its way up to the cliff above the caves. Below them they could hear the roar of carbines and the shrieks of the Indians. By means of straps, two adventurous soldiers were lowered far enough over the edge of the cliff to get a clear view of the scene below. The wall erected by the Apaches was several feet outside of the line of the cliff or cave, and from their dizzy height they could see the Indians lying behind their ramparts.

The top of the cliff was covered with boulders of all sizes, and the men at once conceived the idea of dropping boulders down on to the Indians beneath. This forced them to take refuge from the flying rocks, by retiring farther into the cave. When they did this the ricochette fire from the soldiers became more deadly and the end was not far off.

By noon the firing of the Indians had ceased. No[Pg 56] sounds but the cries of the squaws or groans of wounded came from the interior of the cave. Brown now prepared for a charge believing that the cave could be stormed without much if any loss. Corporal Hanlon of G-Troop, 5th Cavalry, was the first man over the stone-wall, the rest following him as rapidly as they could.

Inside the cave was a scene that made the roughest soldier among them shudder. Men, women, and children, either dead or in the agonies of death, were lying in piles three and four deep. At first it appeared as if danger was to be expected from some wounded Indian, and while part of the soldiers worked among the debris on the floor, others watched with guns in hand for signs of hostile intent. But nothing of the kind occurred.

Only one man was alive and he died soon after the soldiers entered the cave. Some seventy-eight dead bodies were lying in the cave, and of the living there were but eighteen, all squaws. Many of the wounded squaws could have been saved had the troops been accompanied by a surgeon or even provided with the necessary medical supplies.

The few that had lived through that awful hail of lead and rocks, were saved by screening themselves from the missiles under great slabs of slate which the squaws had packed into the caves for cooking purposes, or by hiding under or behind the dead bodies of their comrades.

The fight was over; the dead babies lay in their dead mothers' arms. Rough men as they were, the sights made the soldiers sick at heart; such warfare was not to their liking.

As it was impossible to bury the dead, they were left in the cave where they fell and where they lie today, in great heaps of skulls and bones, together with clothing and other camp impedimenta which have survived the years in the dry atmosphere of the region.

After satisfying themselves that no more living were among the bodies the soldiers tramped wearily back to Fort McDowell with their prisoners and wounded, and the brief official report of the affair closed the incident.

It was more than a thousand miles over desert and mountain to the nearest railroad station and civilization. No war correspondent trailed along in their wake, armed with kodak and typewriter, to tell a waiting world of their prowess; no flaming headlines in the morrow's paper would cry out their victory. They were "just regulars," and this was but the day's work.

THE STAMPEDE ON THE TURKEY TRACK RANGE

Dark. Well, it was dark, and no mistake. We had been holding a big herd of steers for a week. It was on the Turkey Track ranch, and they were mostly Turkey Track steers, that is, they were branded with the Santa Maria Cattle Company's brand, which is a design (

) on each side, called Turkey Track by the cowboys, who never think of using any other means of identifying a cow than by giving the name of the brand she carries.

And en passant when a cowboy says "cow," he uses the word as a generic term for everything from a sucking calf up to a ten-year-old bull.

We were in camp in a noble valley some fifteen miles long by ten wide, dotted here and there by cedar groves, and at that season covered with splendid grass, where we were holding a bunch of steers that the company was getting ready to ship; it was a lazy enough life except the night-work. There was plenty of grass to graze them on in the daytime, and a big "dry lake" full of water, where three thousand head could drink at once, and never one bog or give any trouble. Two men on "day herd" at a[Pg 59] time could handle them easily enough, and as there were nine of us, or enough for three guards of three men each, we didn't have anything much to complain of.

"Old Dad," the cook, built pies and puddings that were never excelled anywhere, and occasionally he'd have a plum duff for supper that simply exhausted the culinary art.

The steers were, as the boys say, "a rolicky lot of oxen." Most every night they would take a little run, and it usually took all hands an hour or so to get them back to the bed ground and quieted down, which didn't tend to make us any better natured when the cook yelled, "Roll out, roll out," about 4:30 every morning.

The weather had been lovely ever since we started in, but this evening it had clouded up, and in the west, toward sunset, great "thunder-heads" had piled up and little detached patches had gone scudding across the sky, although below on the prairie not a breath of air was stirring. The muttering roll of heaven's artillery was sounding, and occasionally up toward the mountains a flame of lightning would shoot through the rapidly darkening sky.

By eight o'clock, when the first guard rode out to take the herd for their three hours' watch, it was almost black dark. The foreman or "wagon boss" of the outfit came out with them, asked how the cattle acted, and told the boys to be very careful, and if the herd drifted before the rain, if possible, to try and keep them pointed from the cedars, for fear of losing them.

As we rode back to camp we both agreed that the very first clap of thunder near at hand would send the whole herd flying, and if it rained it would be very hard to hold them. He told all hands not to picket their night horses, but to tie them up to the wagon (much to the cook's disgust), all ready for instant use. Perhaps I should explain a little about this business, so that my readers may understand what a "bed ground" is, and how the cowboy stands guard.

At sunset the day herders work the herd up toward camp slowly, and as the leaders feed along to about three or four hundred yards from camp, one of the boys rides out in front and stops them until the whole herd gradually draws together into a compact body. If they have been well grazed and watered that day they will soon begin to lie down, and in an hour probably nine-tenths of them will be lying quietly and chewing their cuds. All this time the boys are slowly riding around them, each man riding alone, and in opposite directions; so they meet twice in each circuit. If any adventurous steer should attempt to graze off, he is sure to be seen, headed quickly, and sent back into the herd.

The place where the cattle are held at night is called the "bed ground," and it is the duty of the day herders, who have cared for them all day, to have them onto the bed ground and bedded down before dark, when the first guard comes out and takes them off their hands.

Well, as I said at the beginning, it was dark, and although it was not raining when they left camp, the boys had put on their slickers, or oilskin coats, well knowing that they'd have no time to do it when the rain began to fall.

The three men on first guard were typical Texas boys,[Pg 63] almost raised in the saddle, insensible to hardship and exposure, and the hardest and most reckless riders in the outfit. One of them, named Tom Flowers, was a great singer, and usually sang the whole time he was on guard. It's always a good thing, especially on a dark night, for somehow it seems to reassure and quiet cattle to hear the human voice at night, and it's well too that they are not critical, for some of the musical efforts are extremely crude. Many of the boys confine themselves to hymns, picked up probably when they were children.

A great favorite with the Texas boys is a song beginning "Sam Bass was born in Indianer," which consists of about forty verses, devoted to the deeds of daring of a noted desperado named Sam Bass, who, at the head of a gang of cut-throats, terrorized the Panhandle and Staked Plains country, in Western Texas, some years ago.

We used to have a boy in our outfit, a great rough fellow from Montana, who knew only one song, and that was the hymn "I'm a Pilgrim, and I'm a Stranger." I have awakened many a night and heard him bawling it at the top of his voice, as he rode slowly around the herd. He knew three verses of it and would sing them over and over again. It didn't take the boys long to name him "The Pilgrim," and by that name he went for several years. He was killed in a row in town one night, and I'm not sure then that any one knew his right name, for he was carried on the books of the cow-outfit he was working for as "The Pilgrim."

I lost no time in rolling out my bed and turning in, only removing my boots, heavy leather chaps (chaparejos),[Pg 64] and hat, and two minutes later was sound asleep. How long I slept I can't say, but I was awakened by a row among the night-horses tied to the wagon.

THE COWBOY'S "SWEET BYE AND BYE"

1

Last night as I lay on the prairie
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would drift to that sweet bye and bye?

CHORUS

Roll on, roll on,
Roll on little dogies roll on, roll on;
Roll on, roll on,
Roll on little dogies roll on.

2

The road to that bright mystic region
Is narrow and dim, so they say,
But the trail that leads down to perdition
Is staked and is blazed all the way.

3

They say that there'll be a big round-up
Where the cowboys like dogies will stand,
To be cut by those riders from Heaven
Who are posted and know every brand.

4

I wonder was there ever a cowboy
Prepared for that great judgment day
Who could say to the boss of the riders,
"I'm all ready to be driven away."

5

For they're all like the cows from the "Jimpsons"
That get scart at the sight of a hand,
And have to be dragged to the round-up,
Or get put in some crooked man's brand.

6

For they tell of another big owner
Who is ne'er overstocked, so they say,
But who always makes room for the sinner
Who strays from that bright, narrow way.

7

And they say He will never forget you,
That He notes every action and look.
So for safety, you'd better get branded,
And have your name in His big tally book.
[Pg 62]

The storm had for the present cleared away just overhead, the full moon was shining down as it seems to do only in these high altitudes in Arizona; not a breath of air was stirring, and I could hear the measured "chug, chug, chug," of the ponies' feet as the men on guard slowly jogged around the cattle. I was lazily wondering what guard it was, and how long I had slept, when suddenly the clear, full voice of Tom Flowers broke the quiet with one of his cowboy songs. It was set to the air of "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean," and as I lay there half awake and half asleep it seemed to me, with all its surroundings, that it was as charming and musical as the greatest effort of any operatic tenor.

The voice would swell and grow louder as he rode round to the campside of the cattle, and as he reached the far side the words "sweet by and by," came to me faintly and softly, as if the very night was listening to his song.

I had never heard Tom sing this song before, nor had I ever heard him sing so well, and I raised on my elbow to catch every word:

Here an enterprising steer made a sudden break for liberty, and the song was stopped, as Tom raced away over the prairie to bring him back, which being done in a couple of minutes, the song was again taken up:

Another interruption which I judged from the sounds was caused by his pony having stumbled into a prairie-dog hole, and I think Tom was "waking him up," as the boys say, with his heavy quirt.[B]

As the closing words floated out on the cool night air, I turned sleepily in my bed and saw that a huge black cloud had come up rapidly from the West and bid fair to soon shut out the moon. I snuggled down in my blankets, wondering if we would have to turn out to help hold the steers if it rained, when the silence of the night was broken by a peal of thunder that seemed to fairly split the skies. It brought every man in camp to his feet, for high above the reverberation of the thunder was the roar and rattle of a stampede.

It is hard to find words to describe a stampede of a thousand head of long-horned range steers.

It is a scene never to be forgotten. They crowd together in their mad fright, hoofs crack and rattle, horns clash against one another, and a low moan goes through the herd as if they were suffering with pain. Nothing stands in their way: small trees and bushes are torn down as if by a tornado, and no fence was ever built that would turn them. Woe betide the luckless rider who racing recklessly in front of them, waving his slicker or big hat, or shooting in front of them, trying to turn them, has his pony stumble or step into a dog-hole and fall, for he is sure to be trampled to death by their cruel hoofs. And yet they will suddenly stop, throw up their heads, look at one another as if to say, "What on earth were you run[Pg 67]ning for?" and in fifteen minutes every one of them will be lying as quietly as any old, pet milk cow in a country farm-yard.

They bore right down on the camp, and we all ran to the wagon for safety; but they swung off about a hundred feet from camp and raced by us like the wind, horns clashing, hoofs rattling, and the earth fairly shaking with the mighty tread.

Riding well to the front between us and the herd was Tom trying to turn the leaders. As he flew by he shouted in his daredevil way, "Here's trouble, cowboys!" and was lost in the dust and night. Of course all this took but a moment. We quickly recovered ourselves, pulled on boots, flung ourselves into the saddle, and tore out into the dark with the wagon boss in the lead. I was neck and neck with him as we caught up with the end of the herd, and called to him: "Jack, they are headed for the 'cracks.' If we get into them, some of us will get hurt." Just then, "Bang, bang, bang," went a revolver ahead of us, and we knew that Tom had realized where he was going, and was trying to turn the leaders by shooting in their faces.

These cracks are curious phenomena and very dangerous. The hard adobe soil has cracked in every direction. Some of them are ten feet wide and fifty deep, others half a mile long and only six inches or a foot wide. The grass hides them, so a horse doesn't see them 'til he is fairly into them, and every cowboy dreaded that part of the valley.

Jack and I soon came to what, in the dust and darkness, we took to be the leaders. Drawing our revolvers, we began to fire in front of them, and quickly turned them[Pg 68] to the left, and by pressing from that side crowded them round more and more, until we soon had the whole herd running round and round in a circle, or "milling," as it's called, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes got them quieted down enough to be left again in charge of the regular guard.

Jack sent me around the herd to tell the second-guard men to take charge, as it was their time, and for the rest of us to go to camp, which was nearly a mile distant and visible only, because "Dad," the cook, had built up the fire, well knowing we wouldn't be able to find camp without it.

Before we got there the rain began, and we were all wet to the skin; but we tied up our ponies again, and five seconds after I lay down I was sound asleep and heard nothing till the cook started his unearthly yell of "Roll out, roll out, chuck away." I threw back the heavy canvas, that I had pulled over my head to keep the rain out of my face, and got up. The storm was over. In the East the morning star was just beginning to fade, and the sky was taking that peculiar gray look that precedes the dawn and sunrise. The night-horse wrangler was working his horses up toward camp, and the three or four bells in the bunch jingled merrily and musically in the cool, fresh, morning air.

We were all sleepy and cold, and as we gathered around the fire to eat, some one said, "Where's Flowers?" The foreman glanced around the circle of men, set down his plate and cup, and strode over to where Tom had rolled out his bed the evening before. It was empty, and, what[Pg 69] was more, hadn't been slept in at all. A hasty questioning developed the fact that none of us had noticed him after we had come in from the stampede.

"Well," said Jack, "it's one of two things: either he has run into one of those blamed cracks and is hurt, or else he has a bunch of steers that got cut off from the herd in the rain and has had to stay with 'em all night, because he got so far from camp he couldn't work 'em back alone." As this was not an unusual thing we all felt sure it was the case, and after a hasty breakfast, all of us but the men just off guard, struck out to look for him.

Some way I felt a premonition of trouble as I rode out into the prairie, and leaving the rest to scatter out in different directions I rode straight for the cracks. It was an easy matter to trail up the herd, and as I loped along I couldn't get the song out of my head. As I drew near the crack country I saw by the trail that we had not been at the leaders when we thought we were, but had cut in between them and the main herd. I could see our tracks where we had swung them around, leaving probably one hundred head out.

I hurried along their trail, and as the daylight got stronger and the sun began to peep over the hills, I could make out, about a couple of miles from me, a bunch of cattle feeding. I knew this was the bunch I was trailing, and already some of the other boys had seen them also and were hurrying toward them. But, between me and the cattle was, I knew, a dangerous crack. It was some six feet wide and ten deep, and probably half a mile long. If Tom had ridden into that he was either dead or badly hurt.[Pg 70] As I neared the crack my heart sank, for I saw the trail would strike it fairly about the widest place, and my worst fears were realized when I reached it, for there lying under a dozen head of dead and dying steers was poor Tom. The trail told the whole story. He had almost turned them when they reached the crack, and he had ridden into it sideways or diagonally, and some twenty steers had followed, crushing him and his horse to death, and killing about a dozen of them. The balance were wandering about in the bottom of the crack trying to get out, but its sides were precipitous everywhere.

Drawing my six-shooter, I fired two shots, and rode my pony in circles from left to right, which in cowboy and frontier sign language means, "Come to me." The boys quickly rode over to where I was, and we, with great work, managed to get his body out from under his horse and up on top. He still held his pearl-handled Colts in his hand, every chamber empty, and his hat was hanging round his neck by the leather string. Tenderly we laid his body across a saddle, lashed it on with a rope, and taking the boy thus dismounted up behind me, we led the horse with its sad burden back to camp.

I think death, when it strikes among them, always affects rough men more than it does men of finer sensibilities and breeding. They get over it more quickly, but for the time the former seem to be fairly overwhelmed with the mystery of death, and seem dazed and helpless, where the latter would not for a moment lose their heads.

But Jack quickly pulled himself together. It was fifty miles to the nearest town. With our heavy mess-wagon[Pg 71] and slow team over a sandy road, it would take two days to get the body there. Packing it on a horse in that hot Arizona sun was out of the question, and so we decided to bury him right there.

Tom had no relatives in Arizona, nor any nearer friends than us rough "punchers," so that no wrong would be done any one by burying him there.

We laid his crushed form under a cedar tree near by, while Jack and I went out to find a place to dig a grave. About half a mile from camp was a big black rock that stood up on end in the prairie as if it had been dropped from the clouds. Some prehistoric race of people had carved deep into its smooth face dozens and scores of queer hieroglyphics which no man today can decipher or understand. Snakes, lizards, deer, and antelope, turtles, rude imitations of human figures, great suns with streaming rays, human hands and feet, and odd geometrical designs, all drawn in a rude, rough way as if the rock had been the gigantic slate of some Aztec schoolboy which hundreds of years of storm and weather had not rubbed out. This rock was called the "Aztec Rock." It was a landmark for miles around, and as Jack remarked: "It was a blamed sight better headstone than they'd give him if we put him in the little Campo Santo,[C] in the sand at the foot of the mesa, back of town."

So here we dug his grave, and then we wrapped him in a gorgeous Navajo Indian blanket, and laid poor Tom Flowers away as carefully and tenderly as in our rough way we knew how.

The day-herders had grazed the herd up close to the rock, so that they could be at the grave, the cattle were scattered all around us, and the cook had taken out the mess-box and used the mess-wagon to bring the body over in.

When the last sods were placed on the mound, Jack with tears running down his sunburned face, which he vainly tried to stay with the back of his glove, looked around and said: "Boys, it seems pow'ful hard to plant poor Tom and not say a word of Gospel over him. Can't some of ye say a little prayer, or repeat a few lines of Scripter?"

We all looked at one another in a hopeless sort of way, and no one spoke a word until the youngest there, the "horse-wrangler," a boy from Indiana, whom we had named the "Hoosier Kid," spoke up and said: "I kin say the Lord's Prayer, ef that'll be any good."

"Kneel down, fellers, and take off your hats," said Jack; and there in the bright sunshine of an Arizona day, with a thousand long-horned steers tossing their heads and looking at us with wondering and suspicious eyes, with no sound save the occasional hoarse "caw, caw" of a solitary desert raven idly circling above, that dozen of rough cowboys knelt down, their heads reverently bared, while the "Hoosier Kid" with streaming eyes, slowly recited that divinely simple prayer which we had all learned at our mother's knee, "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name."

As we rode slowly back to camp the words of the last song that poor Tom ever sang would come to me again in spite of all I could do.

Ah, me. Poor Tom. It's little religious training you got on the prairies, or the trail, or in the cow camp; but if that "Great Owner" looks into the heart, I am sure He found you worthy to wear His brand, and to be cut into the herd that goes up the "trail that is narrow and dim."

THE NAVAJO TURQUOISE RING

"I tell you, Miss Nell, it's not safe for you to ride over the range so much all alone. That Navajo's plumb crazy about you now, and he's liable to do you some mischief."

The speaker, a handsome, blue-eyed young fellow, clad in the rough garb of a cowboy, with broad sombrero, "chaparejos," his buckskin gloves thrust through his cartridge belt, stood leaning against the door-post of a typical Arizona ranch house. In one hand he held the end of a long hair rope, the other end being fast to his pony, which, all saddled, stood pawing and restless, eager to be away on the range. Slung on the near side of the saddle was a Winchester carbine, for, between white and red thieves, the cowboys had to be ready for all sorts of emergencies, and besides, the big gray wolves were beginning to show up on the range, and a wolf scalp was worth twenty dollars at the county seat.

The person to whom these remarks were addressed stood idly switching her riding-habit with her "quirt," a handsome piece of cowboy work, over which one of her many admirers had spent hours by the light of a campfire plaiting[Pg 75] and decorating it with "Turk's heads" and other fancy knots known to cowboy quirt-makers. She was all ready for a ride and waiting only for her pony to be brought up from the corral, where Juan, the Mexican, was saddling him.

There was a pleading, pathetic tone in the man's voice that spoke the lover, even had his eyes shown no sign of passion; but his words seemed to rouse all the perversity of her sex. Her red lips curled and her brown eyes snapped. "Oh, pshaw, Mr. Cameron, you're always worrying about some imaginary danger. Please return me my ring—that is, if you have finished examining it."

A red wave swept over Cameron's face, like the shadow of a cloud across the prairie on a bright day, and he stood for a full minute idly turning the ring in question upon the very tip of the little finger of his own sun-browned hand. It was a splendid specimen of the Navajo silversmith's art. Now, the Navajo Indians' blankets have made them famous, but they deserve quite as much fame for their cunning as workers in silver.

This ring was indeed a gem. It was wide, as most of their rings are, cut in two on the inner side so that it could be made larger or smaller by "springing" it to fit any finger, and in the top was set a turquoise as blue as a summer sky—a stone precious to the Navajos—that among the tribe would have bought twenty ponies, a hundred sheep, and squaws galore. Around the ring ran the most intricate and delicate carving, and the whole effect was at once unique and barbaric.

The girl's hand was outstretched for the ring, and al[Pg 76]most mechanically the man turned and dropped it into the upturned palm. "Well, Miss Nell, I've warned you, and I'm sure if Mr. Hull were here that he'd feel just as I do." His voice grew tense. "I can't go with you today, for I've got to go over the other side of the mountain to see if I can find those lost horses, and won't be back till dark."

The girl, scarcely heeding his words, took the ring, and in a mock-heroic sort of way kissed and slipped it on to her engagement finger, a gleam of mischief in her eyes, at which action Cameron, stung almost to madness, smothered a groan, and strode across the porch, his spurs clanking on the floor, gathering up his hair rope as he went. With one hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the pony's mane, he leaped lightly into his seat without aid of stirrup and, bringing the coil of rope down on the animal's flank, went off down the line of wire fence on a dead run, and soon turned out of sight around a low hill in the valley.

The girl watched him in silence until he was lost to view, and then, with a gay laugh, turned into the room, saying, "Poor Cam, what fun it is to tease him!"

A moment later, when Juan appeared at the door with her horse, she pulled on her pretty buckskin gloves, and with a "Goodbye, Mary, I'll be home by noon," to the heavy-faced cook, who stood watching her from the door of the log kitchen, she rode off almost as fast as Cameron, but in a different direction.

Three months before these happenings George Hull had gone down to the little railroad station, some thirty miles from the ranch, to meet his wife's only sister, who was coming to spend the summer with them in Arizona, and from her[Pg 77] first day she had taken to the life like a duck to water. She was a fearless horsewoman, and never so happy as when out on the range riding with the cowboys, if they were there, or alone if they were not. Nell Steele was a warm-hearted, impulsive girl, but she could no more help making a slave of every man she met than she could stop breathing.

It was an easy task for her, too, and it mattered not whether it was some high-bred, educated gentleman, or a rough Texas "puncher" who had never in all his life spoken a dozen words to a woman of her class. And naturally with such surroundings, with men unused to women's wiles, she soon had the whole country at her feet.

Of them all, however, young Cameron had by far the worst case of it, and the girl, while in her heart greatly pleased with his attentions, seemed to delight in keeping him in a state of absolute misery by alternately raising him to the very highest pinnacle of happiness, and again dropping him into the bottomless pit of despair. Deep in her heart she knew he was her ideal, but she could not resist the temptation to coquette with and tease him.

Cameron had come west for his health some years before. Too hard application at college had seriously impaired his strength, and he had been ordered to live in the open air for several years. Letters of introduction to George Hull had brought him to this ranch in the high mountain country of northern Arizona, and he had taken to the cowboy life from the very first, until now he was looked upon as one of the most trusted and satisfactory "boys" on the place.

The ranch to which George Hull brought his pretty sister-in-law was located near the line of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and, as the Navajos are great roamers, it was nothing unusual to have them hanging round. One day a party of them came, bringing in some horses the boys had missed for some time. It was Miss Steele's first sight of the Navajo, and she came down to the corral, where they were all gathered, to see them. Among them was a young chief named Chatto, who had attended an Indian school at Albuquerque, and could therefore speak fairly good English. He was a picture of savage finery. Around his waist was buckled a costly belt made of great plates of solid silver; in his ears hung huge silver rings; each arm was clasped by bracelets of the same precious metal; around his neck were yards of the precious silver, turquoise and shell beads so dear to the Navajo heart; and his moccasins and leggings were thickly studded with buttons fashioned from dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Across his shoulders hung a gaudy Navajo blanket, and his horse's bridle was fairly weighted down with glittering trophies of the Indian silversmith's skill.

It was but a few moments before Miss Steele was bartering with him for a bracelet; but it was of no avail, he would not sell it at any price. However, when the other Indians left, he stayed behind, until, as the dinner-hour was nearing, the boys asked him to eat with them. It was soon evident that he had eyes only for Miss Steele; and after dinner she spent an hour talking to him of his school experience and trying to learn a few words of the Navajo tongue.

The next day he returned, and the next, until it was[Pg 79] plainly to be seen that the gay laugh and brown eyes of the girl had completely bewitched him.

One day he came bearing the ring I have described, and shyly offered it to her, insisting that she must place it on her engagement finger, which she did, never dreaming that the boys, keenly watching from the bunk-house, had put him up to it, telling him that that was the way white lovers did, and that once she put on his ring she was his by all the laws and customs of the white man.

When Cameron, who was away at the time, heard of it, he was furious, and went straight to Miss Steele and urged her to return the ring and banish the Indian from the ranch. But she, seeing that back of his lover's eagerness for her safety was a lover's jealousy as well, affected not to believe him, and declared her intention of keeping and wearing the ring. It was this ring that she had kissed so tragically and replaced on her hand.

On leaving the ranch, the girl gave her pony an almost free rein for the first two or three miles. It was a glorious morning in September, when the sun had lost its greatest power, and the air was fairly intoxicating in its freshness. The range never looked finer than it did now, after the summer rains had covered it with a wonderful growth of grass dotted with millions of daisies, black-eyed Susans, purple lupines, and dozens of other varieties of prairie flowers, which, in places, fairly made the air heavy with their perfume. The trail led her over a wide mesa, and at its highest point she stopped her pony and drank in the wondrous scene. Away off to the north the great tablelands, or mesas, where live the snake-loving Moqui Indians, hung in an al[Pg 80]most indescribable grandeur, blue and misty against the sky, more like a mirage than a reality. A couple of saucy prairie dogs barked shrilly at her from their adjacent village; a coyote, disturbed by her coming, skulked hastily away from where he had been trying to surprise a little calf, left lying under a sagebush while its mother went on down the trail to water. Above her, high in the heavens, idly circled half a dozen heavy-winged turkey-buzzards, those scavengers of the prairies, a sure sign that somewhere below them an animal lay dead and they were gathering for a feast. As far as the eye could reach were rolling hills, with here and there parks of cedars, while scattered over the prairie were hundreds of cattle and horses, for George Hull was one of the heaviest cattle-owners in northern Arizona, and this was the heart of his range.

Across the valley below her she could see the figure of a solitary horseman, which, after a few moments she decided to be Cameron, although she had thought him miles away from there by this time. Her pony having recovered his wind, she started down the mesa toward the approaching figure, glad to see some human being in all that waste of loneliness around her. As she drew nearer, she saw that it was no white man, but an Indian, the red sash tied around his head being plainly visible at quite a distance, but undaunted, she kept on her course, presuming him to be the Indian mail-carrier who came in from the agency twice a week with the mail-sack tied behind his saddle.

As the distance between them lessened, she saw with great uneasiness that it was her admirer, Chatto, and, with a sort of guilty fear in her heart, she turned off the trail[Pg 81] and pushed her pony into a lope toward a bunch of horses grazing near, as if she wanted to look at them closer. A glance over her shoulder showed her that the Indian had also turned and was following her, and the girl, now thoroughly alarmed, urged her pony to his fullest speed. The Indian called to her to stop, but she only rode the harder. Chatto, however, was well mounted and slowly gained on the flying figure; her cowboy hat had blown from her head, but was held by the string around her neck as she urged her pony with voice and quirt.

"Stop, I shoot!" called the Navajo, but she rode the faster, expecting every instant to hear the crack of his Winchester. At last he was within thirty feet of her, and she felt that her pony had done his utmost and there was no escape. Another look over her shoulder showed her that the Indian had taken down his long rawhide reata and was swinging it round and round his head preparatory for a throw at her. She remembered hearing Hull tell of Mexican and cowboy fights, where the victim was roped and pulled off his horse and across the prairie, until every semblance of human shape was dragged out of it, and her heart sank within her, for she knew by some woman's instinct that he had realized she had been fooling him, and was thirsting for revenge.

Faster and faster they rode, and nearer and nearer he drew, till she could hear the "swish" of the rope through the air; she crouched low over the saddle to offer as small a mark as possible, meantime praying for deliverance, which in her heart she little thought would come.

Cameron found his horses but a few miles out from the[Pg 82] ranch, and, quickly rounding them up, started the bunch toward home on a sharp run, arriving there not long after Miss Steele had left. Questioning Mary as to the direction she had taken, he struck off again on the range in a course that he shrewdly judged would enable him, as if by accident, to meet Miss Steele on her homeward way.

Some three or four miles from the ranch the mesa he was crossing ended abruptly in a cliff some two hundred feet high, which extended for several miles in an unbroken line with but one or two places where an animal could get up or down. The view from the edge of this cliff or "rim rock," as it was more commonly called, over the wide valley spread out below it for miles and miles was unexcelled, and Cameron, knowing that Miss Steele must come up this cliff at one of two places, headed for the one he felt she would be most likely to take. As he drew near the edge of the mesa he left the trail and rode over to the cliff; and thinking perhaps to surprise a bunch of antelope feeding quietly in the valley below him, as well as to prevent Miss Steele from first seeing him, should she chance to be below, he left his pony under a cedar and, taking his Winchester in his hand, carefully walked up to the edge of the cliff.

The road leading down to the valley ran close under the cliff and was lost to sight around a point of the mesa but a short distance to his right. Carefully scanning the prairie, he could see no one, but, from the way three or four bunches of wild horses were tearing across the valley below him, he felt satisfied, that either she or some one else had started them, and concluded to wait a few moments.

Suddenly, from far below, came a sound that for an in[Pg 83]stant sent his heart to his throat, for it seemed as if he heard a woman's voice, borne upward from around the point to his right, and yet it was far more likely to be the almost human cry of a mountain lion, or even the childish yell of some lone coyote, either of which could readily be mistaken for a female voice in distress. As Cameron stood there, fairly holding his breath in his eagerness to catch the faintest sound from below, one moment assuring himself that his ears were at fault and the next so certain that it was a woman's voice that he could scarcely wait for its repetition in order that he could be sure which way to go, once again there came faintly and yet more definitely than before the cry of distress. The voice was Miss Steele's, and before he was really sure from which quarter it came, there burst into sight around the point of the mesa, not a quarter of a mile away from him but down in the valley, the figure of a girl on horseback leaning low over her pony's neck, and urging him to his utmost speed on the road leading up to the cliff, while some forty or fifty feet behind her, riding as hard as she was the Navajo Chatto, his red head-band gone, his long black hair streaming out in the wind, and whirling over his head in a great loop his rawhide reata.

It took Cameron but an instant to grasp the situation and see that the Indian had tried to overtake the girl, and failing, meant to rope and drag her from her horse. He quickly saw also that busied with his reata, and not having a chance to use the quirt, his pony was falling slightly behind, for the Navajos seldom wear spurs, and the girl was not sparing her pony's flanks, but was using her quirt at every jump. Cameron's first impulse was to spring down[Pg 84] the cliff, and run to her aid, but with a groan he realized that it would take him too long to do this, for it was only by careful climbing that one could get down the first forty or fifty feet of the wall, and then the rest would be slow traveling at the very best. The race below him was in plain view now, and in a few rods more they would pass out of his sight in the little side cañon through which the road led up to the top of the cliff. To ride back to that place would take too long, also, and the man quickly realized that it was no time to delay.

To kill a Navajo meant trouble for everybody around, for the whole tribe would take it up, and wreak vengeance upon any white settlers they could find, hence that was not to be thought of except in the last extremity. But Cameron knew that he could kill the Navajo's pony and save the girl. Throwing his Winchester over a rock for a rest, with a mental estimate of five hundred yards' distance to his mark, he took careful aim at the shoulder of the Indian's pony and sent a shot which sped fair and true to its mark, the animal rolling headlong in the dirt, and the rider sprawling fully twenty feet away, but unharmed.

For an instant the Indian was stunned, then, evidently thinking his pony had fallen by accident, arose and started toward him. Cameron, however, was ready for this move. Presuming the Navajo would try to get his rifle, which was slung in its holster underneath the dead horse, he sent a second shot, before Chatto could get half way to the body, striking the ground close enough to him to convince him as to the cause of the pony's fall. With true Indian instinct he turned and, to disconcert Cameron's aim, ran in a[Pg 85] zig-zag way to a deep ditch, or wash, near the road, into which he threw himself and crawled and wormed his way down to where the sides were high enough to shelter his body.

Meantime Cameron, not daring to leave his place until he knew the girl was safely up the cliff, forced the Navajo to keep to cover by firing an occasional shot in his direction, until, with a sigh of relief, he saw the girl "raise the hill" at his left, and stood up and waved his hat to her. Up to this time she had scarcely known to what cause she owed her deliverance. All she knew was that a shot had been fired, and she heard no more thunder of horse's hoofs behind her, but not being too sure of what it all meant, she never drew rein nor spared her pony until she saw Cameron's figure on the cliff and knew that she was safe.

A few moments later an hysterical, sobbing girl threw herself from her saddle straight into the arms of the man who loved her, and whom, she now knew, she loved.

AN ARIZONA ETUDE

"Las' time I was in Fo't Worth," drawled Peg Leg Russel who was industriously working away, with marlin spike and leather strings, on a new quirt, "I seen a circus band there a-ridin' hosses an' a-playin' at the same time."

"They sure was," replied Peg Leg; "an' what's more, them ole white hosses they was a-ridin' never batted an eye, but jist tromped along like a bunch of hearse horses.

"I'd sure love to see 'em try any such funny business with these yere little ole diggers we're a-ridin'," he continued, "Lordy, but wouldn't they git up an' rag when the first toot come off."

"If ye'd been wid me in the good old 'gallopin' Sixth Cavalry,' ye'd sure had a chanst to observe jist such a performance," said Pat the cook, who was busy at the mess box with supper preparations.

The mess wagon was backed up into the shade of a great, wide-spreading juniper, and the outfit was waiting there a few days for a bunch of fresh saddle horses from the horse camp. Ten or a dozen punchers were lying about in the shade, some asleep, some overhauling "war bags," sun[Pg 87]ning bedding, and others like Russel making quirts or hair ropes.

The old red-headed cook's army experiences were the butt of a great many sly jokes among the men, but he always had something new to relate, and the intimation, that he had seen a band mounted on western horses, was enough to excite their curiosity.

"Tell us about it, Pat," said Tex, "them Sixth Cavalry fellers sure rode the outpitchenest lot of bronks I ever see outside of a cow-outfit. I reckin' I'd oughter know, fer I were a workin' fer old man White down in the San Simon Valley clost to Fort Bowie in them days."

Any reference to the old man's former regiment warmed the cockles of the cook's heart, and he needed no urging to start him off on the story.

"We was all a-layin' up at old Fort Tonto," he said rolling out, with an empty beer bottle, what Russel said was the "lid" of a dried apple pie, "the whole regiment being there after two years spent chasin' over them hills and deserts trying to catch those divils of Apaches.

"'Twere the first time in three years we'd seen the band, an' when the General sent word for them bandsmen to come up from Camp Lowell we sure felt mighty pleased, for, barrin' a couple of fiddles an' Danny Hogan's concertina, there wasn't any music worth mentioning in the whole post.

"The old general had been over in Europe the year before an' picked up a lot of cranky idees about soldiering which didn't set well on the old Sixth, them bein' a bunch of rough ridin' hombres, very divils for fightin', but wid mighty little love for drills an' garrison duty.

"Wan day, I was the gineral's orderly, an' a standin' outside the door to his quarters, I could hear him an' the adjutant a-wranglin' about dress parade for next Sunday.

"The old man he was insistin' that them bandsmen could play mounted instead of afoot. 'Why,' ses he, 'didn't I see wid me own eyes in Paris, a army band all mounted an' a-ridin' an' a-playin' like good fellies?'

"'But, gineral,' says the adjutant, 'them there bandsmen of ours, bein' enlisted solely for musicians, not wan of them knows anything about ridin', an' as for ridin' an' a-playin' at the same time, on top of them there horses of ours, sure every wan of them will git thrown off an' hurted.'

"'So much the worse for them,' snorted the gineral, 'let them learn to ride—that's what they've got horses for. This is no bunch of doughboys I'm commandin', 'tis a regiment of cavalry-men, and cavalry-men we'll make of them or kill them a-tryin'.'

"'Sure,' he ses, ses he 'didn't Custer's band use to play mounted, an' why can't my band do the same?'

"The adjutant he tried to argufy wid the old man, tellin' him them there furrin' mounts were jist like a bunch of old dray hosses, an' edicated like trained pigs. But nothin' would suit the gineral but a mounted dress parade for all hands, includin' the band.

"So the adjutant he calls to me an he ses, 'Orderly,' ses he, 'my compliments to Mr. Schwartz, the band leader, an' ask him to report to the office immediately.'

"Now Schwartz, he was a little old fat Dutchman, about five feet six, an' weighin' over two hundred pounds. When I gave him me message he ses, ses he,

"'Mr. Schwartz,' ses the adjutant when he waddles up to the office, ''tis the orders of the commanding officer that the band attend dress parade next Sunday afternoon, mounted an' wid their instruments ready to play.'

"Schwartz he gasps an' tried hard to say a word, but the adjutant he ses, ses he: 'Git your men out an' drill them every day till they can handle their hosses an' instruments at the same time. An' mind ye,' ses he, 'them there band instruments costs money, an' we want none of thim unnecsarily injured.'

"Schwartz he mumbled somethin' as he went out about them bein' a sight more anxious over not injurin' the instruments than they were the men, men bein' a matter for the recruitin' service, while instruments must be paid for out of the regimental funds.

"For the next four or five days the bandsmen was mighty busy a-drillin' their hosses an' a-gettin' them usened to the sound of the instruments by standin' on the ground in front of them an' a-playin.'

"Comes Saturday, the word goes about the post, that the band would make the first try at playin' on the backs of their hosses that afternoon.

"When they led their steeds out of the corral an' formed on the cavalry prade ground, every soul in the post, officers, sogers, apache injins, dog robbers an' laundresses was there to see the doin's.

"They led them bronks out an' played one chune,[Pg 90] a-standin' at their heads, an' barrin' a few of them what pulled back an' got loose from the men, they stood the racket all right.

"Then the drum major, a-ridin' a white hoss, trots out to the front of them, waves his baton, an' gives the command, 'Prepare to mount.'

"Ivery man, accordin' to the latest tactics, grabs a handful of mane, in his left hand, an' his reins an' the saddle pommel wid his right, his instruments a-hangin' to his anatemy by straps or slings.

"When they gits the word 'mount,' they all swings up into their saddles somehow, some of them fat old musicians clamberin' up more like loadin' a sack of bran than anything else in all the world.

"The chap what played the bass drum, he bowed up when it come to tryin' to use his big drum, an' so they compromised on a pair of kittle drums, wan strapped to each side of the saddle horn.

"Them kittle drums looked for all the world like a pair of twenty-gallon water kaigs on a pack saddle.

"The horse, he eyed the load on his back sort of suspicious-like, an' lets the drummer git settled down into his saddle wid a drumstick in each wan of his two hands, but keepin' his ears a-workin' like a couple of wig-wag signal flags.

"Finally, when every wan was safely on top, an' the horses standin' fairly quiet, the drum major he waves his stick, an' wid a sweep of his arms, gives the signal to play.

"An' right there the fun began. The first rap the drummer give wid his drumsticks was too much for his[Pg 91] horse, an' wid wan wild look at them two great soup kittles a-hangin' onto his back, an' wid the roar of them in his ears, he jist hung his head down, an' began some of the scientifickest buckin' an' pitchin' you ever seen.

"Bustin' through the band, wid them two kittles a-wavin' an' a-thumpin' on his back, the drummer's horse had little trouble in incitin' several more of them to the same line of conduct, an' in about two minutes half the horses in the outfit were a-buckin' an' a-cavortin' around like very divils.

"The kittle drummer an' the Swiss gent, what played the tubey—an' him a-settin' there in the middle of them great silvery coils like some prehistoric monster—they went through that bunch of wild-eyed Dutch musicians, like two shooting stars.

"The drummer tried hard to stay on top of his load, but what wid them two great copper tubs a-knockin' an' a-thumpin' away on his horse's withers, a-barkin' his shins an' knees wid every jump, an' a-floppin' like two big buzzards' wings, 'twas no disgrace that he couldn't stay there, him bein' no bronco buster, but jist a Dutch bandsman.

"He went up into the air wid them two drumsticks, wan in each hand, describin' a lovely circle, an' a comin' down head first in the soft dirt, while the hoss wid them two drums, beatin' a very divil's tattoo on his ribs, tored off down the road an' out of sight.

"As for the tubey player, he tried hard to stay in the middle of his bucker. But, bein' handicapped as it were, wid some thirty odd feet of German silver tubin' wrapped about his anatemy, an' it a-bumpin' an' a-bangin' agin his[Pg 92] head every time the hoss struck the sod, he made hard work of it.

"After makin' some desperate efforts to find somethin' solid to hold onto, an' a-clawin' all the leather offen his saddle pommel in the effort, the wind jammer gives it up for a bad job, turned all holds loose, an' went up into the air like a musical sky rocket. The saddler sergint of G-troop sed he was a Dutch meteor.

"Ony how, he went up, an', encircled wid them great silvery pipes, made a fine landin' in the soft dirt, drivin' the bell of his tubey deep into it.

"The next minute his hoss was a-folerin' the kittle drums like Tam O'Shanter's ghost.

"Then there was a tall hungry Irishman—though what a dacent Irisher was a-doin' in that bunch of Dutchies I dunno—but there he was. He played a clarinet about a yard long, an' when his hoss decided 'twas time for him to do a little stunt of his own, in the buckin' line, he made a wild grab for his reins. But 'twas no good. Ivery time he comes down, he jabbed the sharp pint of that clarinet mouthpiece into the horse's withers, which didn't help matters a little bit.

"He was a-doin' some elegant reachin' for something to hold onto, but some way he couldn't connect wid anything at all. Wan jump an' he lost his cap, the next he landed behind the saddle, which gives his horse an opporchunity for lettin' out a few extry holes in his performance. Back into the saddle he goes, but not findin' conditions there to his likin', he continued on wid a forward movement finally landin' in front of the saddle, then a little furder forward,[Pg 93] workin' out on the horse's neck like some sailor lad a-climbin' out on the bowsprit of a ship.

"Finally, the hoss took time enough to lift his nose from scrapin' the ground bechune his two front feet, an' have a look about him; in doin' which he turned the clarinet player end for end like a tumbler in a circus. Down he comes, wid his precious clarinet grabbed in his hand like a black-thorn shillalah, and when he lit, he bored a place in the dirt deep enough for a post hole.

"Over on the porch of the adjutant's office, a-takin' it all in, was the old gineral wid a bunch of ladies. When the last of the twenty or more riderless bronks disappeared over the brow of the hill down the road toward the creek, the old man turned to his orderly standin' near by an' ses, ses he, 'Orderly, prisint me compliments to the adjutant an' tell him that the band's excused from attindin' dress parade mounted till furder orders.'"

STUTTERIN' ANDY

"Oyez, oyez, o-y-e-z, the Honorable Court of the Third Judicial District of the State of New Mexico is now in session," cried the one-armed bailiff, and the district court in Alamo came to order for the afternoon session.

The judge settled back in his easy chair; the twelve jurymen at his left idly watched the crowd pour into the little courtroom. By the time the prisoner had been escorted in by the sheriff, every inch of space was occupied by eager spectators, both men and women; for the case of Andy Morrow, locally known as "Stutterin' Andy," charged by the grand jury with stealing one red yearling branded X V from Joseph Barker, had attracted the attention of the entire community.

During the morning session, the prosecution had given their side of the case. Old man Barker and a detective from Denver had each testified to finding the hide of a yearling bearing Barker's well-known brand, buried beneath a pile of brush on Morrow's "dry farm" claim.

The resurrected hide was also placed before the jury, the X V on the left ribs being plainly visible and when court adjourned for the noon recess, Barker was jubilant.

"We'll git him, we'll git him," he said to his foreman as they tramped down the narrow staircase leading from the courtroom. "I'll make a shinin' example of Mister Stutterin' Andy, what'll put the fear o' God into a lot of them cow thieves, an' last this here community for some time."

"I reckin' so," replied the foreman who felt that the reputation of the X V outfit was at stake. After lunch, court having been duly opened, the young lawyer, who owing to Morrow's poverty, had been appointed by the court to defend him, addressed the jury with a short statement of the case.

The poverty of the prisoner, his struggles to make a home, the iniquitous "fence law" which forced the little farmer to fence his crops against the wandering herds of the cattlemen, the wealth and standing of Barker, the complaining witness, and his use of a hired detective to hunt up evidence, was all pictured to the jury in his strongest language.

"Say, Barker," whispered a man at his side, nudging him with the point of his elbow, "don't you feel sort of ornery like, to be made out such a consarned old renegade?"

"Don't you be a-feelin' sorry for me," he snapped back, "them what laughs last laughs best, an' I reckon' we got a big ole laugh a-comin' when this here performance is concluded."

"I swear," muttered a man in the audience to his neighbor, "ef that there lawyer chap hopes to make anything out of Andy's testimony that will help him, I miss my guess. Why the pore devil stutters so that nobody kin git a word outa him scarcely, when there's nothin' excitin' goin' on, let alone with all these here people a-settin' there[Pg 96] a-listenin'. I'm a-bettin' he won't be able to tell his own name to say nothin' about explainin' how he didn't kill that there yearlin'."

But the attorney knew his business and Morrow remained quietly in his seat beside the sheriff. Having finished his preliminary statement, the young lawyer whispered to the bailiff, who walked across to a small jury room opening off the main courtroom, and opened a door.

A low-spoken word, and there stepped from the room a woman—the wife of the prisoner.

She was tall, slim and about twenty-five years of age. From the corner of her mouth protruded the "dip-stick," that ever present solace of the sex among her class, and without which she probably never could have faced the crowd.

A faded blue calico dress over which she wore a small shawl, and on her head a bedraggled hat with a few tousled roses stuck on one side, made up a costume which only accentuated her drawn face and sorrowful eyes.

After a few moments of whispered conversation with the lawyer, she took the witness chair.

At first her answers to his questions as to her name, age, etc., were given in a low, scarcely audible voice, and the room was so still it was fairly oppressive.

"You understand, do you," he asked her, "that your husband is charged with killing a yearling belonging to Mr. Barker?"

"Will you, please, tell the jury in your own words, just what you know about this matter," the lawyer said.

"Mought I tell it jist as I want to, jist as I done tole it to you down to the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied very kindly, "tell the jury your story just as you told it to me."

She carefully removed the "dip stick" from her mouth, placing it in a little wooden box which she carried in a battered leather hand bag. Then, turning to the jury, she began her story in a clear firm voice, as if she realized that upon her testimony hung the fate of her husband.

"I want to tell you-all men, the truth about this here thing," she said looking into their faces with unflinching eye, "jist how it happened, an' don't mean to hide narry part of it from nobody.

"Andy an' me's been married now nigh onto six year. We moved into this country about a year ago, comin' from Arkin-saw in a wagon. We had two chillen, a boy an' a gal.

"When we gits here, Andy located down there on the claim an' tried dry farmin'; 'kaffir korners' I reckin' some of them calls us. It tuck mighty nigh every cent we had to git the seed an' some farmin' tools, an' after the crap were in, Andy he gits work in a sawmill up into the mountings, leavin' me an' the kids to make the crap.

"Andy he done built a little loghouse an' a corral, an' puts a brush fence around the land we broke up to keep the critters out, we not havin' any money fer to buy barbed wire fer the fence.

"We had a heap o' trouble with the range stock all summer an' it kep' me a-steppin' pretty lively to keep 'em out, but I managed to fight 'em off, an' we done pretty well that year.

"Andy worked all winter in the sawmill and jist about spring the man closed down, an' tole the boys a-workin' fer him that he couldn't pay 'em anything he was a-owin' 'em. Most of 'em he owed a right smart to, because he kep' a-promisin' he'd pay every month, an' when he done busted up he owed my man 'bout two hundred dollars.

"So Andy he come home to put in the crap, an' we both worked powerful hard to git it in, an' as we owed the store up thar so much, we couldn't git anything more on our account.

"So, 'bout all we had to eat was taters what we raised the year before. Then the little gal took sick, an' we nussed her fer a time till she got powerful weak, an' then Andy he goes to town fer a doctor, tellin' him we ain't got no money to pay him, but fer God's sake to come an' see her.

"'Twas twenty-five miles fer the doctor to ride, but he come along with Andy all right, an' when he sees the little gal he ses, 'Scarlet fever, an' a bad case too.'

"The doctor done give her some medicine he brung with him, an' said she'd orter be carried to town where he could see her, kase he couldn't come out that way very often, even if we done paid him fer it.

"So me an' Andy hooked up the hosses an' brung her in here, an' bein' as it was what the doc calls a contagious disease, we couldn't git no house to live in; so we had to camp down below town in the creek bottom under a big cottonwood. 'Twere powerful hard to take keer of the little gal there, an' Andy had hard work gittin' grub an' medicine, an' 'cept fer Frank Walton, the man what keeps the 'Bucket of Blood' saloon, we'd never a-pulled her through.

"Frank he sends down a lot of stuff fer us an' tells Andy to git all the medicine he needed at the drug store an' he'd pay fer it hisself.

"Bimeby, the little gal gits better, an' Andy he bein' anxious to git back an' look after the crap, we packs our traps an' goes back to the ranch.

"The doc he ses the little gal's all rite if we git her plenty good strengthnin' stuff, an' Frank he gits us considerable to take home.

"When we left the place we done turned the ole milk cow out on the range till we comes back. Andy he rode three days a-lookin' fer her an' finally meets up with her where she lays daid in a little medder up on the mounting. Andy ses he reckoned she was pizened eatin' wild pasnip. She had a big long-eared calf along with her, but 'twan't nowhere about, an', as the round-up passed that-away a few days afore, Andy he 'lowed they done picked it up fer a dogie an' put ole man Barker's brand on it.

"Andy he couldn't git no work, fer he couldn't leave me alone with the two chillen, an' we tried to save the little handful of grub we brung out fer the gal, an' lived mighty nigh on straight taters an' water. One day, the little boy he come sick too an' Andy he gits on a hoss an' rides to town to see the doctor agin'.

"The doctor he ses he reckined 'twas scarlet fever too, 'cause the simptons was about the same an' he give him some medicine to take out an' sed he'd come out hisself soon as he could, but he had a lot of sick folks to look after, an' didn't like to leave 'em to make the trip, he bein' a lunger hisself, an' not fitten to work very hard.

"Somehow the little feller didn't seem to do very well, an' Andy he goes in after the doctor agin', an' he come out to see him. He looks mighty serous when he gits thar an' he sed: 'I reckin' this little chap's mighty porely; what be ye a-feedin' him?' Andy he busted out a-cryin' an' ses; 'Doc,' ses he, 'we ain't got nothin' but taters an' a little hawg meat what Frank Walton sent out when we brung the little gal back, an' we been a-savin' that fer her, not thinkin' that the boy was gittin' sick too.'

"'Ain't ye got no cow,' ses the doc, an' Andy tole him how she done died while we was all in town before.

"The doc he ses fer Andy to git ready an' come on to town with him that night, an' he'd git him some more grub, an' so 'bout a hour afore sun Andy an' the doc sets off fer town leavin' me with the two chillen."

The courtroom was so still excepting for the low, spiritless voice of the woman, that one could hear the muffled sobs of one or two of the women in the room whose hearts were touched with the sorrowful story she was unfolding.

She stopped for a moment to choke back her own tears, and the attorney, leaning towards her as she faced the jury, said almost in a whisper, "What happened that night?"

"The pore little feller died in my arms jist about a hour before sun up next mornin'," she replied without a quaver in her voice, but with both hands clinched in an agony which could find no tongue in her disheartened, hopeless condition of mind.

"Please continue, if you can," said the lawyer kindly, knowing that in her homely recital of their grief and misfortunes lay the open road to her husband's acquittal.

"Well, that mornin' Andy he come home with the grub, but 'twas too late fer the boy.

"He was shore all broke up over it an' sat all day long without sayin' a word 'ceptin' he guessed the Lord 'sort of had it in fer us pore folks an' only looked after the rich ones like ole man Barker an' his kind.

"'Twas fifteen miles to the nearest neighbors, an' anyhow they was all a-skeered of the fever, they havin' a lot of kids of their own, so me an' Andy we reckoned the best thing we could do was to bury him rite in our field whar we could take keer of his little grave.

"'Bout this time, the range stock began to bother us a-gittin' in the field an' a-damagin' the crap. Andy he sent word to Barker to send some of his men down thar an' carry off the worst ones, but the foreman he said 'twan't none of his business, thar was a fence law in this here state, an' we must fence our land ef we wanted to raise a crap.

"Then the grub what we brung down from town done give out an' the little gal she sort of seemed to be a pinin' away right afore our eyes.

"One evenin' some of the cattle broke into the field agin', an' Andy was a-drivin' 'em out, a yearlin' calf breaks back an' dodged into the little pole corral we done made fer a milk pen.

"Andy he vowed he'd put a 'yoke' onto him, he bein' the wust one of em all for breakin' through the fence; so he puts up the bars intendin' to fix him as soon as we got the rest out.

"Bimeby, we goes to the corral meanin' to fix him with a yoke an' turn him out, but when I seed that there brand[Pg 102] of Barker's onto him, an' we ain't nothin' to eat but taters, an' Barker's stock a-ruinin' our crap faster than it could grow; I just got that bitter I didn't much care what did happen.

"Andy he sets down the axe he done brung out to the corral to make the yoke with, an' goes into the cabin fer a piece of balin' wire to tie the yoke on with, an' while he's gone all the bad in me come to the top, an' I drives the yearlin' into the little calf pen where we shuts up the milk calves, an' taken the axe an' hit him a lick on the haid with it as he made a sort of pass at me, which brung him to the ground.

"When Andy come back with the balin' wire, the calf was daid. He were terribly cut up about it but I ses, 'We can't be much wuss off, an' I'm that hongry fer somethin' besides taters, that I don't care what happens to us.'

"As fer the rest of it, I reckin what the detective feller said is about right. We done butchered the calf the best we could, an' buried the hide what was found, an' so I reckin you all men knows now jist who killed that thar yearling of Barker's, fer 'twere me what did it an' not Andy Morrow a-tall."

Her voice was raised as she spoke the last few words, and she threw her head back, and swept a look of defiance around the courtroom.

Directly before her sat old man Barker, his eyes staring straight into hers, his great hairy hands gripping a red bandana until the cords and veins stood out like ropes, while down his face the tears were making their way through the rough stubbly beard that covered it without any effort[Pg 103] on his part to stay their course. Barker moved uneasily in his chair; in the tense stillness of the room its creaking smote the silence like a shot and drew every eye in the room to him. He grasped the back of the chair in front of him, struggled partly to his feet, and then sank back again. His mouth opened; he licked his parched lips like some hunted wild animal.

"The, the—gal," he gasped, never taking his eyes from the woman's face, "the little gal, wh—what come of her?" he demanded hoarsely, a great something in his throat almost choking him, "did-did-sh-he," and his voice failed him completely.

The woman smiled scornfully. "She did not," she said, realizing the drift of his unspoken question, "we done made a pot of soup out of some of that there yearlin' an' fed her some of the meat, an' she perked up an' come through all right." Then—daughter of Eve that she was—she broke down and burst into tears.

Over the face of the old cattleman swept a look of joy and relief that words cannot portray. He mopped his flushed face and streaming eyes with the handkerchief, utterly unconscious that every eye in the courtroom was upon him, then, turning, brought his great hand down upon the back of his foreman beside him with force enough to have almost broken it. His face was wreathed in smiles. "Glory be," he almost shouted, "glory be—thank God for that."

THE PASSING OF BILL JACKSON

"I tell you fellows, 'tain't no fun to swim a bunch of steers when the water is as cold as it is now." The speaker was a short, thick-set cowboy, whose fiery red hair had gained for him the sobriquet of "Colorado," the Mexican name for red, which was frequently shortened to "Colly" among the "punchers."

Colorado, who was carefully rolling a cigarette, glanced around the circle of listeners, as if challenging some one to contradict him. The balance of the boys evidently agreed with him, for no one said a word except the "Kid," and he, after taking his pipe from his lips and carefully knocking out the ashes on the heel of his boot, said:

Colorado by this time had finished rolling his cigarette and was waiting for the cook's pot-hook, which he had thrust into the campfire, to get red-hot, to light it. Having done this and taken a few preliminary puffs, he answered:

"Tell us about it, Colorado," said the cook. "Whar was it, an' how did it happen?"

It was just the time for a story. We had come down to the railroad with a bunch of steers, and found the Little Colorado River, which ran between us and the railroad, swollen to a mighty torrent by the rains in the mountains.

We had waited four days for it to go down, but it seemed rather to rise a little each day. As the feed was poor and we had lots of work to do, the boss was in a hurry to get them shipped and off his hands, and so had just announced, that at daylight the next morning he meant to try to swim the herd across. It was late in October and the weather was snappy cold. Overcoats and heavy clothes were an absolute necessity in the night on guard around the herd, and the idea of going into that cold water was not a pleasant one. But the cow-puncher is much like the sailor, in that he never stops to think of getting wet, or cold, or going into any danger as long as the boss himself will lead the way; so we were all prepared to get a soaking the next day.

It was that pleasant time in the evening between sunset and dark. The herd was bedded down near camp, and the first guard were making their rounds, with never a steer to turn back. The balance of us were lying about the campfire, smoking and talking "hoss," a subject which is never worn threadbare in a cow-camp. Colorado, who had been idly marking out brands in the sand in front of him with the end of his fingers, said:

"Well, boys, 'taint much of a story, but ef you want to hear it, I'll tell you how it was. Dick, gimme a bite of your navy," and having stowed away a huge chunk of Dick's "navy," Colly settled back on the ground and began:

"I was workin' fer the Diamond outfit up in Utah, 'bout three years ago, an' the old man he come off down here into Arizona an' bought a bunch of steers to take up thar. He done written his wagon-boss to come down with an outfit big enough to handle two thousand head, an' we struck the Little Colorado River 'bout the mouth of the Cañon Diablo wash, where we was to receive the herd 'long in June. We didn' have no partickler hap'nin's comin' down, and we got the herd turned over all right, an' built a 'squeeze chute' an' branded 'em all before we started back; so as, if any got lost, the outfit could claim 'em on the brand: an' about the last of June we pushed 'em off the bed-ground one mornin', before daylight, an' pulled our freight for the home ranch.

"The cattle were all good to handle, an' didn't give us no trouble to hold nights, barrin' one or two little stampedes, an' we drifted on down toward Lee's Ferry without any mishaps, 'ceptin' one night it were a-rainin' like all possessed, an' I wakes up a feller named Peck to go on guard. Peck got up an' put on his slicker, walked over to where his pony was tied, an' mounted. We was camped on the banks of a wash called Cottonwood Creek, an' along there the wash had cut down into the 'dobe flat, some ten or fifteen feet deep. Peck he's 'bout half asleep, an' gets off wrong for the herd, an' rides straight up to the edge of the creek, thinkin' all the time he's a-goin' out on the prairie to the herd. His pony sort of balked on him an' give a snort, but Peck bein' a cross-grained sort of cuss, an' only half awake, just bathed him with his quirt, an' jabbed his spurs into him. The pony give a jump an'[Pg 107] landed in the middle of the creek, with six or eight feet of muddy water runnin' in it. Lord, didn't Peck wake up suddenlike, an' squall for help? We all turned out in a hurry, but he swam across, an' the opposite side bein' sort of slopin'like, the pony scrambled out. Then Peck was afeered to cross back in the dark, an' stayed over thar all night, a-shiverin' an' a-shakin' an' a-cursin' like a crazy man. When we got up for breakfast that mornin' at four o'clock it was clear, an' cold, an' dark. The cook he goes down to the creek an' hollers to Peck sort of sarcastic-like, 'Come to breakfast, Peck!' an' Peck he gets mad an' swears at the cocinero pretty plenty, an' said ef he didn't go back he'd turn loose on him with his six-shooter, an' the cook, bein' pretty rollicky hisself, he goes back to the wagon an' pulls his Winchester an' starts fer the creek agin, but Jackson stops him an' turns him back. When it comes daylight Peck went down the creek a mile and finds a place to cross whar it wa'n't so deep, an' so gits back to camp jist as we was pullin' out.

"The Big Colorado were a powerful stream when we reached it, bein' all swollen by heavy rains up in the mountains an' we all kinder hated to tackle it. Before he left, the old man told the wagon-boss to ferry the outfit an' horses over in the boat, but to swim the steers.

"You know how Lee's Ferry is; the river comes out of a box cañon above, an' the sides break away a little, an' then a mile below it goes into the box agin, where the walls is three thousand feet high an' the current runs like a mill-race.

"It was shore a nasty place to swim a bunch of steers,[Pg 108] an' Jackson, he knowed we had a big job on hand when we got there. Jackson was the best wagon-boss I ever see or worked under. He was a tall, slim chap, could outwork any two men in the outfit, wasn't afeerd of nothin', an' though he couldn't read or write, I tell you, boys, he savvyed cows a heap. What he didn't know 'bout cows wa'n't worth knowin'. He didn't let the steers water the day before, so's they'd be powerful dry an' take to the river easier.

"We fust got the wagon over on the ferry boat, which was a big concern, long enuff to drive a four-hoss team onto, an' which was rowed by four men. The cook he was mighty skerry 'bout goin' onto this here boat, 'cause he said 'bout a year afore that he'd been a-punching cows in southern Arizony, an' a feller there shipped a lot of cattle up inter Californey to put on an island in the ocean near Los Angeles. They loaded 'em onto flat scows with a high railin' round 'em, an' put 'bout fifty head on each scow an' a puncher on it to look out fer 'em. Goin' over to the island the tug what was a-towin' 'em by the horn of the saddle, so to speak, busted the string, an' thar bein' quite a wind blowin', an' big ole waves a-floppin' round, the four scows began to butt an' bump up agin' one another like a lot of muley bulls a-fightin', an' the cattle got to runnin' back an' forth an' a-bellerin' an' a-bawlin', an' them punchers, they shore thought their very last day had come. The cook he never expected to see dry land agin', an' he jist vowed if he ever got back to the prairie that he'd punch no more cows on boats.

"Well, bimeby, the tug got a new lariat onto 'em agin' an' corraled 'em all safe enuff at the wharf, but the cook[Pg 109] 'lowed he war a dry-land terrapin an' wouldn't ever agin get into no such scrape, not ef he knowed hisself. However, he did get up 'nuff spunk to tackle the ferry, an' went over safely. After we got the wagon acrost, we went back an' started the cattle down the side cañon what leads into the crossin'.

"Jackson's idee was to git the hosses ahead of the steers an' let 'em follow. You know hosses swim anywheres, an' the cattle will allers foller 'em. So he puts three men in a little boat, two to row an' one to lead a hoss knowin' the balance would foller him right across.

"The hoss-wrangler hed the 'cavvy' all ready, an' jist as the leaders of the herd come down to the water's edge the boys in the boat pulled out, a-leadin' a hoss, an' the other hosses follered right in an' was soon a-swimmin'. Then when they was all strung out an' doin' fine, we crowded the steers into the water after 'em. They was all powerful dry an' took to the water easy 'nuff, an' afore the leaders knowed it they was a-swimmin' in fine shape. Jackson wouldn't let us holler or shoot till we got 'em all inter the water, an' then we jerked our six-shooters an' began to fog 'em an' yell like a bunch of Comanches.

"You all know thar's one thing to be afeered of in swimmin' a lot of cattle, and that's when they gets to millin'. Jackson had swum cattle across the Pecos in Texas, an' the Yellowstone in Montana, an' saveyed 'xactly what to do. But this here Colorado at Lee's Ferry is a bad place to tackle, fer you're bound to get out on the other side afore you get into the box cañon, or your name's Dennis, 'cause once a feller gits into the cañon he's got to go on clean[Pg 110] down about a hundred miles afore he can strike a level place big enuff to crawl out on.

"Soon as the cattle got well strung out, Jackson began to undress hisself. He took off all his clothes but his pants, an' then buckled his six-shooter belt around him, an' pulled the saddle off'n his hoss.

"I says, 'Bill, you ain't a-goin' to try to swim it, are you?' an' he says, 'No, not 'less I have to; but if they gets to millin' out thar we'll lose the whole herd, an' the only way to break it up is to ride out an' shoot among 'em an' skeer 'em.' He knowed it were risky, for if anything went wrong he was shore to be carried into the cañon an' drowned. But Bill Jackson wa'n't the sort of a wagon-boss to stop at anything to save the herd, an' sure 'nuff, 'bout the time the leaders got fairly into the middle of the river, 'long comes a big cottonwood tree a-driftin' an' whirlin' down stream right into 'em. That skeert 'em an' turned 'em, an' 'fore we knowed it they was doubled back on the balance an' swimmin' round an' round, for all the world like driftwood in a big eddy in a creek. This was what Jackson was afeerd of, an' he pushed his hoss into the river an' takes his six-shooter in his hand. He was ridin' a little Pinto pony they called 'Blue Jay,' one of the best all-around cow-ponies I ever see.

"Old Blue Jay he jist seemed to savey what was wanted of him, an' swam 'long without any fuss. When Jackson gits out close to the millin' steers he begin to holler an' shoot, an' he called to the fellers in the boat to come back an' try to stop 'em. Now, you all know what a risky thing it is to go near a steer a-swimmin' in the water, for he's[Pg 111] sure to try to climb up on you. Jackson knowed this, but he swam Blue Jay right slap-dab inter the bunch an' tried to scatter 'em an' stop 'em from millin'.

"Just how it happened we couldn't tell; but first thing we seen Jackson was right in the middle of the millin' critters, an' in a minute they had crowded pore old Blue Jay under, an' all we seen of Jackson was his hands went up an' then he was lost in the whirlin' mass of horns that was goin' round and round. A man had no chance at all to swim, 'cause their hoofs kep' him under all the time, an' they was packed so close a feller couldn't come up between 'em, anyway. The boys in the boat tried to do something, but 'twan't no use, fer he never come up, an' when they got too close one big steer throwed his head over the side of the boat an' purty nigh upset 'em, so they had to keep away to save theirselves. But they kep' up a-shootin' an' a-hollerin' 'till the leaders finally struck out for shore, an' in a few minutes the whole herd was strung out for the opposite side an' sooner than I kin tell it they was all standin' on dry land, an' not a single one missin'.

"Meantime the boys in the boat had watched everywhere for pore Jackson's body, but they never got sight of it, though they went 'most down to the mouth of the box cañon. Thar was lots of big trees an' drift a-runnin', an' we guessed his body had been caught in the branches of a tree an' carried down with it. Pore old Blue Jay come floating past 'em, an' they tried to catch him, but the current was so swift they couldn't do it. All they wanted was to get Jackson's silver-mounted bridle off'n him, 'cause 'twas easy 'nuff to see that the pony was quite dead.

"Well, the rest of us crossed in the big ferry-boat an' rounded up the steers, which was grazin' up the cañon on the other side, an' moved 'em out a couple of miles to camp. Shorty, bein' the oldest hand in the outfit, took charge, an' sent two of us back to the ferry, to try an' see ef Jackson's body could be found, but the feller what runs the ferry said 'tain't no use lookin' fer him, 'cause the swift current would carry him miles and miles down the cañon without ever lodgin' anywhere. So we went back, an' Shorty gave it up an' decided to push the herd on next day. We was a blue ole crowd that night around the campfire, I tell you. All the boys liked Jackson, an' besides, they was a-thinkin' of his wife an' two kids what was a-waitin' for him at the headquarter ranch up in Utah.

"Shorty sent a letter from the ferry settlement to the old man, a-tellin' him what had happened, an' we come along up with the cattle, arrivin' safely at the ranch without any more misfortunes."

"Wal," said Colly, "that's a singular thing, too. When we gets back to the ranch the old man he was orful cut up about it, an' hated to think that the body wasn't found. He'd been down in the Grand Cañon the summer afore with a lot of fellers, an' he said he believed he could find it 'bout a hundred miles below the ferry, 'cause thar were a place down thar in the cañon whar the walls widened out fer some twenty miles, an' thar was quite a valley with grassy meadows an' trees. So he takes one of the boys an' a pack outfit an' goes off down thar. They had to leave every[Pg 113]thing on top of the cañon an' climb down a-foot an' pack their stuff on their backs. The walls was six thousand feet high thar, an' they had a hard time gettin' down. Course, it was jist a scratch, but I'm blest if after four or five days' hunt they didn't find it lodged in a pile of drift along the river. 'Twas easy 'enuff to tell Jackson's body, fer he'd had two fingers of his left hand shot off in a fight once; so they takes it off to a place in the valley whar it was safe from flood, an' buries it as well as they could, an' next year, he went back an' packed the remains out of the cañon an' took them clean to the ranch an' buried 'em jist as if it was his own brother. I tell you, the boys was ready to swear by old man Saunders after that."

Colorado's story was finished, and as it was about ten-thirty the second guard-men began putting on overcoats and heavy gloves preparatory to two hours and a half of watching the herd.

The stars were shining clear and bright, the bells of the horse-herd came softly over the prairie, making a tuneful chime on the frosty night air, and as I untied the rope that bound my roll of bedding and kicked it out on the ground, I could not keep from thinking of poor Jackson's death and wondering if the morrow held a like fate in store for any of us.

THE TENDERFOOT FROM YALE

"The trouble with this here forest service business nowadays is, that they're sendin' out, from the effete and luxurious East, a lot of half-baked kids, what never seen a mountain in all their lives, don't know whether beans is picked from trees or made in a factory at Battle Creek, an' generally ain't got savvy enough to find their way home after dark.

"Now here's this kid we've drawed in the last deal; nice enough boy, I reckon, but who's goin' to play nursey to him up in these here hills?" The speaker glared at his companion as if defying him to meet his charges against the newcomer and his kind.

"But he's got eddication, Jack," replied his listener, "an' that's what counts in these days. We got into the service in them good old days when it was a case of ability to ride a pitchin' bronc, rope a maverick, chase sheep herders off the earth, shoot the eyes out of a wildcat at forty yards an' all them things. Nowadays they picks 'em out by their brand of learnin' an' not by their high-heeled boots."

"Howsomever," he continued, "there's some of them[Pg 115] that makes good in spite of their eddicational handicap. Over on the Sierra last fall we was all a-settin' in camp one Sunday afternoon when the phone rings like they was trying to wake the dead with it. The old man gits up to answer it. When he says, sort of startled-like, 'Fire, where?' we all pricks up our ears. 'Twas a mighty dry time an' every one was a-prayin' for rain, for we'd been fightin' fire for the last month and was all in.

"We had a fire lookout station up on top of a high peak an' a man, with the best glasses money could buy, a-sittin' there who could see all over the range for fifty miles.

"Say, people got so they was afraid to make a campfire anywheres in them hills, an' the rangers swore they had to go behind a tree to light their pipes, lest he'd see the smoke an' send in a fire call.

"'Shut-eye,' said the old man, meaning the lookout, 'Shut-eye says there's a big smoke a-comin' out of the cañon below Gold Gulch to the left of Greyback Peak, an' I reckon we'd better be a-movin' that way.'

"It didn't take us long to saddle up, slap a pack onto a couple of mules, an' hit the trail. 'Twas a good ten-mile over a rough country, an' it was mighty nigh dark afore we gets to where we could see smoke a-boiling out of the cañon over a ridge ahead of us.

"We was all old-timers at the work, 'ceptin' a young feller fresh from the Yale Forestry School, what had come out for a sort of post-graduate course in forestry, an' some of them boys was seein' to it he got it all right.

"He had all the fixin's them fellers bring along with them, fancy ridin' panties, a muley saddle, a wind bed an'[Pg 116] a automatic six-pistol, one of them things what, after she once gits to shootin', you jist got to throw her into the creek to stop her goin'.

"'Bout two miles from the ridge where we reckoned we'd git our first view of the fire we meets up with Hank Strong an' his wife. You know, Hank's woman is just about as crazy to go to a fire as a boy to the circus, an' she always comes in mighty handy to start a camp, take care of the boys' horses an' the packs while we're a-workin'.

"Generally she'd make up a big pot of coffee and fetch it out to the line. Once she comes a-ridin' along carryin' a pot full an' a bear skeered her hoss—but that's nothin' to do with this yarn.

"Hank says that there's also a big smoke comin' up from the vicinity of Granite Basin, an' the old man he says some one better go over there an' see what's goin' on. Thar's a chap named Brown a-livin' in the Basin, an' the Super, he's afraid, mebbe so he'd get caught in the fire an' be singed some, the Basin bein' in the allfiredest lot of chapparal brush you ever see.

"This feller Brown, he's a sort of pet of them boys over that a-way, him bein' a lunger an' not able to do much but draw funny pictures for the Sunday supplements. Seems he broke down back East an' comes West to try an' git over it.

"There he sets a-drawin' pictures for them funny papers an' sendin' 'em in regular, while he ses he's jist a-walkin' around to beat the undertaker.

"Nobody else is a-livin' in the basin, there bein' nothin' but a little old cabin, what a bee-man put up once, an'[Pg 117] a few hives of bees Brown bought along with the cabin. 'Them bees is jist to teach me habits of industry,' ses Brown, when some of the boys asked him if he calculated to git rich on the output of them hives.

"The old man he reckons he can't spare any of us old hands to go over there, an' so he says to the young tenderfoot: 'Son,' he says, 'do you reckon you can make it over there in the dark and find out what's doin' in Granite Basin an' come back an' let us know?'

"The boy he ses he reckoned he could, only he didn't know the trail all the way. Then Hank's wife she speaks up an' says she can go along as far as the top of the mountain, an' show him the trail down into the basin.

"It sort of hacked the kid to have a woman show him the trail, but the old man said it were the very idee, an' so she an' the boy struck off, leavin' us to take care of the fire ahead.

"There wa'n't but one way into the basin an' that was down a graded trail about two miles long from top to bottom that the bee man had made to git in and out on.

"The lower part of this basin was one great mass of brush, an' as thick as the hair on a dog's back, so you couldn't git through it only where the brush had been cut out.

"When they gits to the top an' could see over the basin there wa'n't any doubt but there was a fire all right an' it was mighty plain that if Brown wa'n't already out of there it was time he was startin'.

"Hank's wife were a-dyin' to go down with him, but the kid he ses, 'This here's my job, please,' and bluffed her out.

"'You look out you don't get cut off on the trail,' she warns him, 'the way that fire's a-eatin' along the side of the basin, it's a-goin' to reach the trail inside of an hour, an' there ain't no other way out 'ceptin' a foot path what goes up the side of the basin back of the cabin, but it's more like a ladder than a trail an' you can't take your hoss there a-tall.'

"Down into the basin goes the boy, while instead of goin' back to the outfit the woman stopped there on a little point of rock where she could look all over the basin an' waited to see what'd happen.

"Brown slep' out under a big ole oak-tree, an' as he gits near the cabin the kid he lets out a yell or two to wake him an' finds Brown settin' up in bed sort of half-dazed, what with the yellin' an' onnatural brightness of the skies all abouts.

"Inside of five minutes they was a-ridin' for the trail up the mountain with Brown a-settin' behind on the kid's horse. But it were too late. When they reached the foot of the trail they could see where 'bout half way up the whole blamed mountain was afire. Nothin' could pass through it an' live, so there wa'n't nothin' to do but go back an' try to get out on the foot trail.

"Brown he begs the kid to go an' leave him an' save hisself. 'I'm only a worn-out shell, anyhow,' he ses, 'an' it's jist a question of time till it's all over for me an' I cash in, but you got something to live for ahead of you.'

"'Don't you talk to me 'bout leavin' you here like a rat in a trap,' ses he, 'we'll make it up that trail all right;[Pg 119] jist you hang onto me and we'll make the hoss pack us as far as he can go, an' then we'll take it afoot. If it comes to a showdown I can carry you easy enough.'

"So they rides the hoss up the trail till where it runs into a cliff 'bout twenty feet high. Here thar was a ladder to git up the cliff, an' the kid he strips off the saddle, takes his water bag, an' turns his hoss to shift fer hisself. Time they gits up that ladder pore Brown he were all in an' had to lie down on the ground a-coughin' fit to kill hisself.

"This trail was jist a foot trail cut through the chapparal, an' the smoke an' heat was already a-rollin' down onto 'em where they was like a blast from a furnace. The kid he wets their handkerchiefs from his water bag an' they each tied 'em about their faces to sort of protect 'em a little.

"The boy, he looks mighty anxiouslike at them big high walls of flames a-comin' down toward 'em, an' fairly forced Brown to git on his back 'pick-a-back' like you'd take a little kid, an' started slowly up the trail.

"Foot by foot he climbed to'rd the top. Sometimes the smoke got so thick they had to lie down a minute clost to the ground to git their breath, sometimes the wind dropped big blazin' brands onto 'em an' set their clothes afire, an' he'd have to stop an' rub it out with his hands.

"Every time he took a look up to'rds the top, he'd see the fire a-comin' closter an' closter to the trail. Pore Brown he tried to help him some by walkin', but between the excitement an' the smoke gittin' into his lungs, it were too much for him, an' he dropped down helpless as a newborn baby.

"The kid, he takes a survey of things an', little as he[Pg 120] knowed 'bout fires in the chapparal, he seen mighty plain, that they were at the critical pint, an' if they didn't git past the next hundred feet mighty soon, the fire would cut 'em off, an' it would be good-bye gay world to 'em both.

"Then he hears a moan from Brown an', lookin' round, sees him lyin' flat on the ground with one hand clapped over his mouth, an' tricklin' between his fingers was a stream of blood. Didn't take him but a second to know it were a hemorrhage; beats all what them fellers do learn at them colleges, don't it?

"Brown were a-workin' away with one hand at the little pocket in his shirt an', in his eagerness an' excitement, the button wouldn't come open. The boy jumped to his side, tore the button loose, an' pulled from the pocket a little tobacco sack with something in it. Brown he holds out one hand palm up, an' nodded to the boy to open the sack, which he did, an' then poured out into his hand a little pile of common table salt. You know them lunger-fellers most of 'em carries a little sack of salt agin' jist such emergencies. Brown he throwed his head back an' swallowed every grain of it an', bimeby, the blood stopped running so hard. He struggled to his feet, then waved his hand to'rd the top an', with a beseechin' look in his eyes, tried to git the kid to savvy that he was to go on an' leave him to die.

"But the boy he wa'n't made of that sort of stuff. He's jist about skeered to death at the sight of the blood, but he pulls hisself together, grabs Brown in his arms agin, an' grits his teeth for another fight for their lives.

"Finally, he comes to a place where, about ten feet ahead, the fire was clean acrost the trail. He puts Brown down for a minute, pulls off his coat, lays it on the ground, an' pours over it what water was left in his water bag. Then he wraps Brown's head an' shoulders in the coat an', grabbing him up in his arms, agin makes a last dash through the smoke an' fire.

"Seems like he hears a woman's voice above the roar of the fire an' he sort of wonders is he gittin' a little loco with it all. Next he knows he's a-drawin' in big gulps of air that ain't full of smoke, an' there's a woman a-walkin' longside of him, steadyin' him as he staggers under his load an' a-rubbin' out, with a wet gunny sack, the places where his an' Brown's clothes are a-smokin'.

"It all appears as a horrible dream to him, an' fust thing he knows, he don't know nothin', for he's gone an' keeled over in a dead faint. Don't laugh, you fool; didn't you ever work at a fire till it seemed as if your lungs was a-goin' to bust an' your heart was a-beatin' like a cock patridge on a log?

"Then he gits a quart or more of cold water slap in the face, opens his eyes, an' there's Hank's wife a-standin' over him. Clost by was Brown, alive an' apparently uninjured. She knowed if he got through a-tall he's bound to come out right about there and was a-watchin' for him.

"When we comes along 'bout three hours later, we finds the boy and the woman hard at work, back-firin' along the old stage road an' the fire pretty well under control on that side.

"Say, that kid were a sight to look at. He ain't got no more eyebrows or lashes than a rabbit, an' that there curly mop of his was singed an' scorched like the rats had been a chawin' onto it."

"Oh, Brown, why he come through all right. Saw a lot of his funny pictures in the Sunday supplement last week. 'Peared like the fire done him good."

DUMMY

"Take him, Bob; take him, boy." The woman pointed to a coyote skulking in the sage brush a hundred yards from the camp wagon beside which she stood. The dog raced toward the animal which turned and stopped, a nasty snarl coming from its lips, teeth bared, every hair of its mane erect. Almost as large as a full grown wolf it outweighed the dog by many pounds.

Surprised at the coyote's hostile attitude the Airedale stopped for a moment, then advanced cautiously, realizing that this coyote differed somewhat from those he had met before.

Instantly the coyote flew at the dog, burying its keen teeth deep in his left leg, leaping quickly back to avoid a clinch, its jaws snapping like castanets. The dog, though taken by surprise, fought with all the fury of his breed, but being only a pup was manifestly overmatched. Realizing the dangerous character of the coyote, the woman seized the camp axe standing at the front wheel of the wagon and ran to the aid of her protector.

The coyote tore loose from the dog's grip and jumped at her as she came nearer. She swung the axe as the ani[Pg 124]mal raised in the air, missed its head by six inches, and, before she could gather herself for another blow, it sank its fangs deep into her bare arm. Encouraged by her presence the dog fastened himself to the animal's hindquarters, but shaking him loose it lunged at her again. She stood her ground, thrusting the axe at the brute in an endeavor to keep it at bay. Meantime the door to the camp wagon opened, a boy about fifteen jumped to the ground, in his hand a heavy automatic pistol. As the coyote sprang at the woman's body he thrust the weapon under her arm almost in the animal's face, and the shot that followed blew half its ugly head away.

As the beast sank to the ground the woman dropped the axe, ran to the wagon, picked up a rope hobble that lay on the tongue, tied it around her arm above the wound and, with a short piece of stick, twisted the improvised tourniquet until it sank deep into the white flesh. The boy, the while uttering those strange inarticulate sounds of the deaf and dumb, wrote a few words upon the slate that hung from his neck by a leather thong and handed it to the woman. "The signal—shoot the signal," she read.

She seized the automatic the boy had used, raised it above her head, fired two quick shots, waited a moment, and fired two more. As she listened there came through the still cold air an answer, sharp and staccato as the spark from a wireless.

Then, and not until then, did the woman relax and sink to the ground as if dead.

The physical disabilities of the boy had given him a keenness and comprehension far beyond his years. He[Pg 125] clambered into the wagon, drew from its scabbard a heavy rifle, jumped to the ground and repeated the signal three times. Could his ears have served him he would have heard the answering shots, this time much nearer.

No rider in a Wild West relay race ever quit his pony with greater speed than did Jim Stanley as he reached his camp, where with one quick glance he realized what had happened. As he dropped beside his wife she opened her eyes, grasped his hand and struggled to rise. The boy ran to the wagon returning quickly with a small box, the well known red cross on its black shining side proving it to be a "first aid kit." The woman smiled faintly. Away back in the mountains the forest ranger's wife had once showed her the box the government furnished all its rangers, and when the lambs were shipped in August she coaxed Stanley to bring one back. He rather laughed at the idea, but to please her, bought one and, with a woman's foresight, it had always been kept in the camp wagon.

The prevalence of rabies among the coyotes was the one live topic in every sheep and cattle camp all over the range country and, realizing the serious nature of the wound, the man took the box from the boy, opened it and seized the booklet which told briefly what to do in such an emergency.

The pressure of the tourniquet was lessened, causing the wound to bleed freely, a most valuable aid to its cleansing, and in a few minutes it had been well washed with hot water, flooded with a strong solution of carbolic acid and bound tightly with one of the bandages from the box.

In the meantime, the man had decided on his course.[Pg 126] At a sign from him the boy mounted the horse Stanley had ridden into camp and rode rapidly off across the range. While he was gone, Stanley outlined his plans to his wife. With good luck they could intercept the auto stage, that passed down the road every day, at a point some thirty miles distant. From there it was seventy-five miles to town which they would reach that night in time to catch the midnight train to the nearest Pasteur institute.

"But the sheep, Jim?" and the woman looked anxiously out on the range. "We can't leave them all alone, you better let me make the ride by myself and you stay here, for I can get through all right."

Stanley shook his head. "Not for all the sheep in the world would I let you go alone." He kissed her cheeks.

"But Jim," she pleaded, "it's too much to risk and I'll make it without a bit of trouble."

The boy was just turning the point of a little hill near camp driving before him the two horses hobbled out the night before. Stanley pointed to him. "Dummy can turn the trick all right enough, he's the best herder in this whole range for his age, and he'll get 'em through if any one can. He's only a boy, but he has a lot of good horse-sense and if the weather holds out he'll work the herd from here to the winter range and not lose a sheep."

"But we'll take the team with us; how can he move camp?" and she glanced at the big roomy camp wagon.

"That saddle pony of mine will carry all the grub and bedding he'll need and the wagon can stand right here till some of us can get back and haul it away."

The man hung a nose bag full of oats on each horse,[Pg 127] saddling them as they ate, and while he was getting out the pack outfit, food, and other supplies for the boy, she was writing his instructions on the slate, supplemented by many signs and motions which he read as easily as the written words. He was to stay in this camp two or three days longer, then pack the pony with his camp outfit and drift the sheep slowly toward the winter range seventy-five miles below.

"Take plenty of food," she wrote, "for it may be ten days before some one gets out to relieve you. You know the way, don't you?"

Dummy nodded eagerly. He had come up with the sheep in the spring and knew every camp and bed-ground on the trail.

"Don't you worry about him," Stanley told his wife, when she again spoke of the danger of leaving the boy all alone. "He's short two good ears, that's sure, but he more than makes up for them in gumption and common-sense. If it don't come on to storm, he'll make it through all right and by the time he gets there I'll have a man ready to relieve him, if I'm not there myself."

"And if it does storm," he continued, "he'll probably do just about as well as any one else, for out here, if it comes on a blizzard, all the best man in the world could do would be to let the sheep drift before it till they strike shelter."

Fifteen minutes later, the boy watched them ride out of sight, over a ridge near camp. As the two figures were lost to view he turned toward the wagon and took a short survey of his surroundings. Out on the range twelve[Pg 128] hundred ewes were peacefully grazing with no hand but his to guide and protect them; what a chance to show the stuff in him! Deep down in his heart he hoped that the man who was to come out from the railroad to relieve him would be delayed for many days. It would give him a chance to make good and show his worth.

For three days Dummy led an uneventful life. The dog was recovering from his wounds, the sheep were doing well, and he had shot another rascally coyote that came skulking about the camp one evening.

On the fourth day the sky was overcast with heavy clouds that seemed threatening and, as the feed near camp was about gone, he decided it was time to be moving. In two hours he was off, the dog limping along by his side, the herd slowly grazing their way across the range.

As a precautionary measure he led the pack horse lest old "Slippers" take it into his head to desert him. That night Dummy made camp under the lee of some small hills where a few scattered cedars offered fire-wood and shelter. The sun had set in an angry sky, there was a strange feeling in the air, and the sheep seemed to sense an approaching storm.

He bedded them down in the most sheltered spot he could find, set up his little miner's tent close to a cedar and, after cooking his supper, took the dog into the tent, tied the flaps and slept as only a tired boy of his age can sleep.

The tent was lit with the dim gray of early dawn, when the dog's cold nose on his face awoke him, and he was soon outside, opening up the fire hole he had carefully covered[Pg 129] the night before. The wind was blowing a gale while overhead the sky was that dull leaden color that in the range country means snow.

Late that afternoon he worked the sheep toward a line of low cliffs that cut across the prairie and bedded them down in their lee, finding for himself a snug overhanging shelf of rock, under which he placed his camp outfit, and cooked his first meal since daylight.

Dummy dared not hobble out his horse in such a night, but after giving him a small feed of grain he had brought from the wagon, staked the animal in a little grassy wash near camp.

By dark the snow began to fall heavily and he knew that for him and his woolly companions the morrow would be full of new troubles.

Lost to all sounds of the storm, the lad sat before the little campfire under the overhanging rock and watched the snow drive before the wind. With the confidence of one born and raised amid such conditions, Dummy rather enjoyed the prospect of a struggle against the elements. His parents were Basques from the Spanish Pyrenees, a sturdy dependable race that for centuries have been sheepherders in their own land. Every winter, from the open ranges of the West, come tales of "basco" sheepherders facing death in the storms, rather than desert their herds. Their devotion to their woolly charges, good judgment in handling them and loyalty to their employers' interests, even unto death, is recognized all over the western range country, until the name "basco" stands for the best in sheepherders.

From such as these sprang this boy, deaf and dumb[Pg 130] from his birth. His father and his uncle were among the best herders in the state, and from a child he had been used to the rough life of a sheep camp. Deficient as he was in two vital senses, the remaining ones had been developed until his ability to grasp and understand things about him seemed almost uncanny. It was this knowledge of the boy's breeding and peculiarities that made Stanley feel he would take the best possible care of the sheep left in his charge.

When Dummy opened his eyes the next morning, the air was so full of snow driving before a fifty-mile gale that he could not see a hundred feet from camp. He cooked his breakfast, fed Slippers the last of the grain, and waited for the storm to break, realizing that until it did it would be folly to leave the shelter of the cliffs.

The sheep were getting restless and hungry and occasionally small bunches drifted out into the storm in search of feed, but after buffeting with the wind for a few moments were glad to come back. About noon there came a lull in the gale and the snow came straight down almost in clouds. The sheep were uneasy over the change, and even Slippers seemed to sense some new danger.

Suddenly with a roar the wind swept upon them from a new direction so that they were now exposed to its full fury, whereas, before, they had been sheltered by the cliffs.

The sheep tried to face it, but the fierce wind was too much for them, and they slowly drifted before the gale across the snow-covered range.

All that day Dummy struggled along behind the herd tired, cold, hungry, and almost blinded by the frozen tears, leading the pack horse lest he lose him. As for controlling[Pg 131] the movements of the sheep, he did nothing for they could travel in but one direction, and that was away from the arctic blast which grew in strength as the day wore on. Wherever there was a sign of anything eatable upon which the hungry animals could feed, they ate even the woody stems of the sage or the dry yellow fibre-like leaves of the Yuccas that here and there showed above the snow.

The short winter day began to wane, and darkness was slowly creeping across the white cover that lay over the land. All sense of direction and time had long since left the lad, but he struggled on, the dog limping along at his side.

Just as the last signs of daylight faded away the sheep stopped moving, and he was unable to start them again. He wrapped the lead rope of his horse about a sage bush as best he could, then worked his way through the herd looking for the cause of their stopping. Stumbling and falling over snow-hidden rocks and bushes, he found himself almost stepping off into empty space over a cliff, where the snow had built out from its edge in such a manner as to conceal its presence, and, even as he threw himself back from the step he was about to take, he saw several sheep walk blindly out into the semi-darkness and disappear into the depth below.

The loss of these roused into action every drop of his basco blood. In the dim light he could just make out where the edge of the cliff lay and, carefully working his way along it, beat the stolid mass of animals back from the danger. By this time it was almost dark and he turned back to find his horse, but after half an hour's search gave it up and returned to the herd, hoping the animal might be[Pg 132] with them somewhere. He stumbled around in the snow for some time before he came up with the tail enders of the herd slowly working their way through a break in the cliff down which the leaders had evidently gone. He found the herd huddled up in the shelter of the cliff and eagerly looked through them for the pack horse with its precious burden of food and bedding, but without success.

Once he stumbled over several soft objects in the dark which he made out to be some of the sheep that had fallen over the cliff. When he finally realized that the pack horse was gone, he knew where he could at least get his supper and breakfast, and after starting a fire skinned out a hind quarter of one of the fallen sheep and soon had some of it roasting. Fortunately for the boy, he found piled against the cliff a lot of poles that had evidently been part of an old corral, which made it possible for him to keep the fire going all night and over which he huddled dropping off to sleep only to be awakened by his numbed limbs and body.

Eagerly Dummy peered through the falling snow the next day as the gray dawn came slowly into the east. The snow sweeping over the cliff from above had formed a drift that almost completely shut the sheep in as if with a fence and he knew there was no possibility of leaving the shelter where he was until the sky cleared off enough for him to get his bearings. Even then he doubted if it would be possible for the sheep to travel, so deep was the snow.

About noon the snow stopped falling, and Dummy worked his way up to the top of the cliff from which as far as he could see there was but a broad expanse of snow-covered range.

To his left the view was cut off by a small hill that stood close to the cliff. He went over to it and from its top saw below him in the open plain a small board shack with a rough shed stable near it.

Instantly he remembered that, as they passed up with the sheep in the spring, a man and his wife were busy building the shack preparatory to taking up the land about it for dry farming purposes. Eagerly he watched the house for signs of occupancy, but as there was no smoke coming from the chimney, he decided it was empty. Two things interested him, however. One, the fact that the plowed field near the house, being on a slight elevation, was blown almost clear of snow, and the other, there was something half hidden by the house which looked mightily like a stack of hay, although it scarcely seemed that this could be true.

In the field, which covered perhaps forty acres, he saw the possibility of finding a little feed for the sheep until the snow should settle enough to allow them to travel and, if the stack really was hay or any rough feed, his troubles were over for the present at least.

As the lad turned back to camp he realized only too well the difficulty of moving the herd until the snow settled, it being fully eighteen inches deep on the level, and everywhere there were drifts many feet high through which the sheep in their weakened condition could not make their way.

But it was less than half a mile at the most from the camp to the shack, and he was sure he could work the sheep to the field where there would be some pickings that would keep them from starving.

As he suspected, he found the place deserted, and the[Pg 134] stack proved to be fodder of some description surrounded by a strong fence. The shed, which had a small door hanging on one hinge and about half open, was as dark as a cellar and, as he stepped inside, the nose of his lost horse was fairly pushed into his face, and but for his infirmity he could have heard the most gladsome nickering and whinnying to which a lone hungry horse ever gave tongue. A few threads of canvas on the door post told the story of the trap the animal had walked into. Looking for food and shelter, he had squeezed through the half open door, but, once inside, the wide pack striking it on one side and the door post on the other, held him a prisoner.

Quickly the boy removed the pack, then, armed with the camp shovel and axe, went to investigate the stack. It looked more like weeds than anything else and when he grabbed a handful it was rough and harsh and pricked his hands. It was green, however, and the horse ate it greedily.

With the finding of his horse the lad's spirit rose and he set to work to move the sheep over. Between the camp and the house there was a deep wash which the drifting snow had almost filled, while elsewhere there was fully eighteen inches. With the pack-saddle on the horse, the lash rope for traces, and an old sled, evidently used by the farmer to haul water, he started to break a trail through which the sheep could make their way, the shovel being used on the drifts. With a little coaxing he got them started through this narrow lane, and eventually the whole bunch was inside the field eagerly gnawing every eatable thing in sight.

About half an hour before dark that evening a long[Pg 135] string of pack horses, with a rider in the lead and another following, came ploughing through the snow up to the cliff above where the sheep had been bedded. Two of the horses carried ordinary camp packs, the rest were loaded with hay, three bales to the horse. At the edge of the cliff the leader pulled up while every animal stopped in its tracks.

"If we can't see anything of the sheep from here we might just as well give it up for the night," he called back to his companion. "Come on up and have a look."

For a few minutes they both sat gazing out into the plain below, across which the evening shadows were slowly trailing. As far as they could see there was but a white unbroken sheet of snow, the only living thing visible being half a dozen ravens cawing hoarsely as they drifted into the distance.

"I reckon I do," and Stanley's voice choked. "It's Christmas eve, an' I been a-thinkin' an' a-thinkin' all afternoon of that poor little chap out here a-fightin' his way through a storm, the like of which this range ain't seen in twenty years. Don't seem possible he's pulled through, although I'd back Dummy to make it and save his herd if any kid could."

"Seems like I smell smoke, and cedar smoke at that," he said eagerly. "Don't you git it, Bob?"

"What there is comes from the direction of that there[Pg 136] little hill," pointing to the very hill on which Dummy had stood.

The instant they topped it, each caught sight of the dry farmer's place, the haystack, the sheep in the field and knew they had found that for which they sought.

"I do for a fact," Stanley grinned, "last time I passed this-a-way the old digger what built that shack an' taken up the dry farm was cuttin' an' stackin' Russian thistles. When I laughed at him for a fool he said he ain't raised nothing' else, an' up North Dakota way they used to put 'em up for roughness when the crops failed, an' he's seen many an old Nellie pulled through a hard winter on 'em."

Ten minutes later the two rode up to the shack. A line of scattered fodder from the stack to the shed showed what the boy had been doing. Bob picked up a handful of the stuff: "Roosian thistles by all that's holy," was his comment, "an' whoever before heerd tell of them tumble weeds a-bein' good for anything to eat."

As he spoke the lad came round the corner of the shed in which "Slippers" had been comfortably stabled and fed.

What with smoke from campfires, and the charcoal he had smeared over it to save his eyes, his face was as black as Toby's hat, but to Stanley it was the face of a hero. Uttering those strange guttural sounds, waving his arms towards the sheep, his dark eyes shining with pride and joy the boy ran to Stanley as a child to its father.

The man, too overwhelmed and happy to speak, grabbed the lad close to his heart, stroking the tousled head and[Pg 137] patting tenderly the dirty cheeks down which the child's tears were now cutting deep trails in their extra covering while, as he realized the boy could hear not a word of the praise and thanks he was showering on him for his pluck and fidelity the tears came to his own eyes nor did he try to stop them.

In the shack that night the boy, worn out by his exposure and the reaction, dropped into his bed the instant supper had been eaten and was fast asleep in ten seconds.

"Do you reckon we could make a stab at some sort of a Christmas tree an' kinda s'prise the kid in the morning?" Stanley glanced toward the figure asleep on the floor.

"Jest what I was a studyin' over," was Bob's reply. "These here bascos make a heap of such holidays an' Dummy he'd be the tickledest kid ever, if he was to find something like Christmas time a settin' by his bed when he wakes up in the morning."

"There's a bunch of piñons and cedars down along the wash," he said, "sposin' I take the axe an' git a little branch, or the tip of a piñon an' we set her up here by his bed? What kin we dig up to put onto it that's fittin' for such a thing?"

"For a starter I got them nine silver cart wheels the store keeper give me in change," was Stanley's quick response. Bob was already going through his pockets.

"Here's a handful of chicken feed, that'll help some," handing the change to Stanley, "yep, an' a paper dollar the[Pg 138] postmaster gimme. Reckon the kid'll know what it is? I been skeert I'd use it fer a cigarette paper."

"You hustle out an' git the tree," said he, "an' I'll see what else I can scare up in the packs. I know there's a couple of apples an' a orange I throwed in with the grub when we was packin'."

An hour later the two men stood by the boy's bed, their faces fairly shining with the true Christmas spirit over their efforts to make an acceptable Christmas tree out of such scanty material. On the floor at his head stood a small piñon tree top held erect by several stones. Both men had exhausted their ingenuity to find things with which to decorate it and on its branches hung the oddest lot of plunder that ever old "Santy" left on his rounds.

"I'll never miss them spurs," said Bob pointing to an almost new pair he had recently bought, "an' Dummy, he's been just daffy about 'em."

"Same with that new knife," said Stanley. "I jist bought it to be a doin' somethin' an' I know Dummy ain't got one that'll cut cold butter."

In nine separate little packages wrapped in newspaper the silver dollars were swinging at the end of pieces of thread from a spool in Bob's "war bag," the loose silver had been placed in two empty tobacco sacks each hanging pendant from the tip of a limb, while three unbroken packages of chewing gum, two apples and one rather dilapidated orange swung from other branches.

Stanley picked up the boy's slate. "Less' see," he asked, "what's Dummy's real name?"

Then he propped the slate against the tree in plain sight of the lad's eyes when he woke.

"Beats hell how a man's eyes gits to waterin' this cold weather." Stanley wiped his eyes rather furtively as he turned toward their bed.

"Same here," replied Bob, blowing his nose with more than usual vigor. "Somethin' sure does act onto 'em."

THE MUMMY FROM THE GRAND CAÑON

"Bang, bang, bang!" went three shots in the night air. Sounds like some feller's a huntin' a warm place to sleep," said Little Bob Morris, one of three men who were sitting in front of the fireplace in the snug little dugout at the winter horse camp of the X bar outfit.

"Open the door, Bob, and show 'em a light," said one of the others. In a few minutes, with a wild "whoo-pee," a mounted figure rode out of the darkness and the boys were shaking hands with "Hog-eye" Jackson, who had a pair of eyes that, as one man put it, "didn't track," one being blue, the other black, and both so badly crossed that he looked both ways at once.

After supper had been cooked and the dishes put away, the boys gathered about the fireplace for a smoke.

"I hain't been out this a-way since the time me and Little Bob here was a huntin' for a dead Chinee," said Jackson, with a look about the room.

"Ain't you never heard tell about the Chinee what died over in Williams and was stoled away from the joss house[Pg 141] where the other Chinks had him laid out?" said Jackson, with a look of surprise.

"'Bout two years ago, along in the fall," Jackson began, "after we had shipped the last steers from Williams, a Chinese laundryman there died one night, and was laid out in the little room where the Chinamen of the town kept their joss. The day following there was a tremendous squalling among the heathen, for during the night Ah Yen had disappeared from the coffin, and not a trace of him could be found. The coffin was there all right; it stood just where they left it the night before, surrounded by paper prayers, burning punk sticks, and all the other things used by the heathens to frighten away the devils which are supposed to be lyin' in wait for the spirit of a diseased celestial. But punk or no punk, devils or no devils, Ah Yen was gone, of that there was no doubt. The city marshal and the sheriff both came to investigate and question, the town was scoured, old stables and lofts searched, but still, 'no catch 'em.' After a couple of days' work the sheriff said: 'I'm danged if I'm not clear stumped. The Chink was plum dead, that's a sure thing, so he didn't git up and walk away, and if he was hauled off by some one, they didn't leave any sign that I can find, and, anyhow (which to him was the most convincing thing of all), what'd any one want for to steal a dead Chinaman, I'd like to know?'

"There was a doctor livin' over on Cataract cañon that fall, a sort of lunger chap, and when some one suggested that perhaps he had packed the Chink off for dissectin'[Pg 142] purposes (Ah Yen bein' six feet tall and the best specimen of a Chinaman I'd ever seen), the sheriff, just to make a sort of showin' to the other Chinks, sent me—I bein' a deputy sheriff at that time—to make a sort of scout round and see what I could pick up.

"We dropped into his camp, but nothin' doin', and after prowling around for a day or two I went back to town. The next day Scotty Jones got on a tear and shot up the burg pretty plenty, and in tryin' to ride his horse into a Front Street saloon got a load of buckshot into his countenance. This made so much excitement that by the time the coroner's jury got done with the inquest the loss of Ah Yen's remains had become a matter of past history.

"Meantime the Chinks raised a powerful rookus over the loss of the body of Ah Yen, he bein' a sort of high muck-a-muck among them, but even the offer of a $100 reward for the body didn't get any clews to the disappearance."

"I remember hearin' something about it," said Grimes, "but I was down in the Tonto basin that fall a-huntin' some hosses we lost on the spring work, and never before did hear jist what happened."

"An' didn't they never find out what went with the Chink?" queried Russel, who was a newcomer in the country.

"Well," said Jackson rather evasively, "so fur as I know nobody's ever yit claimed the reward."

"Le's change the subject," said Grimes, lighting his pipe with a long pine sliver. "Hog-eye, where you been sence I seen you last fall a year ago over on the Tonto steer round up?" he asked of the newcomer.

"Me?" said Jackson, with a start, blowing a cloud of smoke skyward. "Oh, I been a driftin' about pretty promiscous like sence then. When we come to ship the last of the steers that fall, old Mose, the Spur boss, axed me if I wanted to go back to Kansas and help take care of 'em where the outfit was going to winter 'em. Well, me not being sure of a winter's job here, and likely to have to ride the chuck line before spring, I reckons I'd best nab the job whilst it was open, so I took it."

"Oh, I hung and rattled with it till about April, and then I begins to git oneasy and sort of hankering for the range agin. One day I was in town for some grub and other plunder and goes down to the depot to see the train come through, and me a wishin' to God I was a goin' off in her, no matter which-a-way she was pointed. When number two comes along, who should drop off but old Pickerell, who used to live out here on the cañon and take tourists out and show 'em the sights. Pick were powerful glad to see me and he sed, ses he, 'What be ye a doin' here, Jackson?'

"'I'm a-feedin' a bunch of hawgs and steers out here on a farm,' ses I, 'where I ain't seen the sun shine but twicet in four months.'

"Pickerell, he laughed sort of tickled like, an' ses to me, 'Why don't you quit and go back to Arizony, where the sun shines all the time?'

"'I'm a goin' to,' ses I, 'just as shore as next pay day[Pg 144] comes.' I didn't like to tell him that I was flat busted count of goin' into K. C. with a load of hawgs an' meetin' up with a bunch of amigos what worked me for a sure enough sucker. They gits all my dinero an' leaves me locked up in a little old room where we went to git a drink."

Hog-eye sighed and sucked vigorously at his pipe, while the boys grinned at each other and waited to hear the rest of the story, which was evidently hanging on his lips.

"Well, go on Hog-eye, tell us the rest. Might as well 'fess up and feel better," said High-pockets encouragingly.

"I reckon so," replied Jackson with a chuckle, as if there was some pleasure in the memories of the past. "You see, after talkin' a few minutes with Pick he up and makes me an offer to go back east, where he was a runnin' a show what were a part of a street carnival outfit and a-makin' all kinds of money. He wanted me to rig up in a 'Montgomery Ward outfit,' big hat, goatskin chaps, spurs an' gloves, with stars and fringe like them fellers in the movie outfits gits onto 'em, an' sort of loaf round the door and git people excited an' toll 'em into the show. So I hits the high places back to the farm, and tells the granger feller to git him a new cornstalk pusher to take my place pretty pronto. When he comes I strikes out for the place back in Illinoy where Pick sed he'd be showin' an' waitin' for my arrival.

"Pick he pays me forty beans a month, an we sleeps on our round-up beds in one of the tents. He shore had a mess of plunder inside the big tent. They was a Navajo squaw weavin' blankets, a couple of loafer wolves, some coyotes, wildcats, badgers, a lot of rattlers, centipedes and[Pg 145] tarantulas, and a whole box full of them heely monsters. Besides this, he had a lot of glass cases in which he had a bunch of them stone axes, metates, mano stones, arrow-heads, and all that sort of plunder which they digs up from them prehistoric ruins all over this country out here.

"But the main drawin' card he had was the mummy which he sed he dug up somewheres out here in the Grand Cañon. He had all sorts of certificates and letters to prove its genuineness, as well as photographs taken when they dug it up in the cave.

"One day a odd-lookin' four-eyed feller comes along, and he ses to Pick, 'Mought I inspect this mummy of your'n?' and Pick he ses, 'Shore, pardner, jist as much as you like. You come round to-morrow mornin' fore the show begins and I'll be glad to have you look the gent over.'

"The old boy ses he'll shore be on hand, for he's powerful interested in them prehistoric things out West. So that evening, after the show closed, Pick ses to me, 'Jackson, you git a screwdriver and take them screws outen the lower lid of that there mummy case.' So I loosens up the screws, and havin' nothin' particular to do, I takes off the lid to get a better look at his Nibs. I ain't never seen a mummy before, an' was sort of curious to know what a shore enuff mummy did look like. He was naked down to his waist, and the skin was as dry and leathery as an old cowhide that's been laying out in the weather for ten years. His eyes were shut tight and his teeth showed through his thin lips with a grin that give me a cold chill for a month afterwards. But, say, boys, talk about a surprise. One look was all I wanted to show me that this here mummy of[Pg 146] old Pick's was nothin' else but the remains of old Ah Yen, the Chink what died in Williams and was stole out of the joss house. Then I remembered the reward offered for it, but old Pick were too square a feller to soak that-a-way. I never said nothin' to nobody about what I'd seen, but slipped the lid back on the case and went off to bed in the other tent.

"Long about midnight I was woke up by somebody a hollerin' fire, and when I busted out of the tent the whole row of shacks was a blazin'. Our big tent was too far gone to save anything, but we drug out our beds and what little baggage we had in the small tent and did well to git that much out. Inside an hour there wasn't nothin' left but a pile of ashes to show where the whole outfit stood.

"Old man Pick, he took on considerable, but 'twan't no use cryin' over spilt milk, an' so we hit the trail for Arizony an' a little sunshine."

"But how did Pickerell git holt of that there Chink's body?" asked Morris, who had listened with amazement at the story.

Jackson grinned as he slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe. "It sort of hacked the old man when he found I was wise to his little game with the Chink," he said. "Over in Albuquerque he met up with a feller who was a-goin' down into Central America on a sort of bug huntin' expedition and he talked Pick into goin' with him. The night before we split at Albuquerque he gits fuller than a goat, an' seein' as how he wasn't comin' back to these parts agin, he give me a great old confidential an' tole me how he turned the trick.

"I disremember all that Pickerell done tole me of the way the job was worked," continued Jackson, "but, howsomever, the day the Chink died the one-lunged doctor was in town. Pickerell he's been a tellin' him about the mummies they occasionally found out in them cliff dwellers' ruins in the cañon, and when the Doc meets Pick hangin' about town that afternoon he suggests carryin' off the Chink's body and makin' a mummy out of it. That hits Pick all right and he didn't let no grass grow under his feet gittin' ready to do it.

"The night of the body snatchin', he gits up about midnight, slips uptown, finds the door of the joss house open and no one watchin' it. Hurryin' back to his cabin, he saddles up one mule and slaps a packsaddle on the other, an' an hour later drifted out of town with a pack on his mule lookin' for all the world like a long roll of bedding. By noon the next day he reached his den in the cañon, where he and the doctor went to work, and between 'em did a mighty good job of embalmin', endin' it all up with a three months' smokin' of the body with green cedar wood.

"Pick ses that then come the tickledest part of the hull job, fer whilst he's got a mummy all right, he's got to git it sort of discovered like to make it of any scientific value, an' he studies the matter aplenty. He knows a bunch of fellers what was a-coming out to the Grand Cañon from the East to poke about an' try an' discover prehistoric things, and he knows them's the very chaps to help him out. So when they shows up he tells 'em sort of accidental like that he knows where they's a bunch of[Pg 148] them there clift dwellings what nobody'd ever yit seen, and they grabs at his bait like hungry trout. They just can't skeercely wait to git out there, and Pick ses the rest were plumb easy, for the whole place looked like it had never been disturbed before, and when they digs out the mummy all buried in the dirt and rubbish in one of the cliff dwellings, the thing was done.

"Them fellers jist nachelly never suspicioned a thing and was perfectly willin' to sign a statement testifyin' to the genuineness of the mummy. Then they took photographs of the cliff dwellings and the mummy as it lay in the room, and all the surroundin's, with all these here scientific chaps a-standin' around, which clinched the thing. Pick ses he'll take the mummy fer his share, and he gits the fellers to take it on east with their plunder when they goes, so no one won't never suspicion him and connect him up with the deal."

"I reckon you and him would have been chasin' 'bout the country back thar to this very yit, if the fire hadn't cleaned up the outfit, wouldn't you?" inquired Russel.

"Sure," replied the ex-showman; "we was makin' all kinds of money at it and makin' of it easier than I ever did in all my life before. But, say, when it comes to makin' mummies, old Pickerell and that there one-lung doctor had 'em old Pharaoh fellers beaten a whole mile."

JUMPING AT CONCLUSIONS

It certainly seemed good to be back on the old range again after a six months' absence. As we "topped" the last hill I pulled up the team. Down in the Valley below us the white adobe walls of the ranch house, like some desert light house, blazed through the glorious green of the cottonwoods that hovered about it. To its right a brown circle marked the big stockade corral. A smooth mirror-like spot out in the flat in front of the house was the stock-watering reservoir, into which the windmill, seconded by an asthmatic little gas engine, pumped water from the depths. Above it the galvanized iron sails of the great mill glittered and flickered and winked in the bright sunlight as if to welcome us home. A cloud of dust stringing off into the distance marked the trail where a bunch of "broom tails" were scurrying out onto the range after filling themselves at the tank with water and salt.

Suddenly, a gleam of color caught our eyes. It was "Old Glory" at the top of the tall pole, stirred by a little gust of wind that shook out its folds, the green of the trees making a splendid background. Evidently the boys were expecting us, for the flag was only run up on holidays, Sundays, and when guests were due to arrive.

A soft hand slipped quietly into mine. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home," she sang, and as the words of the homesick, world-tired Payne came from her lips, there came into my throat a great lump, my eyes filled with tears, and to us both, the sage brush plain shimmering and baking in the bright Arizona sunshine, those brown rugged mountains in the distance and that desert oasis in the foreground were by far the loveliest thing we had seen in all our travels. The team, too, seemed to sense our feelings, for they freshened up and took us across the intervening distance as if they had not already made a good forty miles from the railroad.

Old Dad, the ranch cook, was at the "snorting post" to greet us as we pulled up, and we soon were sitting on the broad veranda plying the old rascal with questions about the work, the men, and all the happenings while we had been away; for of all forlorn, unsatisfactory things on earth the worst are the letters written by the average cow-puncher ranch foreman concerning matters upon which his absent boss has requested full and frequent information.

One of the first anxious inquiries on the part of the madam was as to the whereabouts of her Boston terrier, a bench show prize winner sent out to her shortly before we left. The letter accompanying the dog advised us that, barring accidents, the animal should in a few months bring into the world some offspring, which, considering its parentage, ought to bring fancy prices on the dog market.

"I reckon she done went off with the boys this morning. They's down to Walnut Spring, buildin' a new corral."

"Them pups?" The old man took his pipe from his jaws. A queer look flashed across his brown face; he chuckled as if the words brought up some rather amusing recollection. Now, old Dad was one of the worst practical jokers in the West. Nor did he count the cost or think of the results as long as he could carry his point, and fool some one with one of his wildly improbable yarns. To "pick a load" into some innocent tenderfoot was his most joyous occupation. I waited patiently for him to recover from the fit of mirth into which my innocent question seemed to have plunged him. There was a look of extreme disgust on the face of the lady sitting nearby.

"Ye 'member that there young kid-like chap what drifted in here last spring after the steer gatherin'?" Again that witless chuckle.

"Well, along about the time them there pups came into this here state of Arizony"—the madam's face lighted; there were some pups after all—"the kid and I was here at the ranch all alone, the whole outfit bein' out on the rodeo, an' we havin' been left behind to watch the pasture fence, where a bunch of yearlin's was bein' weaned. One mornin' the kid busted into the kitchen. 'The mut's got four purps! Come an' look at em; they's all de-formed!' ses he, almost breathless with the news."

"I follers the kid out to the shed back of the house, where the dog had a pile of ole saddle blankets for a bed, and sure enough she had four white faced brindle purps all right, whinin' an' sniffin' just as purps allers does.

"The kid picked up two of 'em. 'Lookit them tails then.' He turned one of 'em around. Now Beauty ain't got no great shakes of a tail herself, but what she has is straight. 'By Heck!' ses I, seein' a chanst to have some fun with him, 'sure enough, they is sort of de-formed in their little ole colas. Reckon they's no use botherin' to raise 'em, is they—what with their tails all as crooked as a gimlet. Too bad, too bad,' ses I, 'fer the missus will be monstrously disapp'inted over it.'

"'They's every dad burned one of 'em got a watch eye too, jist like that there ole Pinto hoss I rides.' The kid's sure worried.

"'Nothin', I reckon,' lookin' straight down my nose, 'less'n we drownds 'em—said job not bein' one I'm actually hankerin' fer.'"

(Business of fury, anger and indignation, with signs of approaching tears on part of listening lady.)

"You blithering old idiot!" I shrieked, "do you mean to say that you loaded the kid with that sort of a story till he went off and drowned those valuable pups under the mistaken impression that they were deformed and therefore worthless?" I glared at him as if to wither his old carcass with one look. (More of above mentioned business by lady—with real tears.)

"Well"—and the old renegade emitted that infernal chuckle again—"well, how should I sense that he didn't savvy that crooked tails and a glass eye were sure enough signs of birth an' breedin' with them there Boston terriers?" He looked away; we felt sure he dared not face the wrath in both our eyes.

I stormed up and down the porch for a few moments, speechless. The lady was registering every known phase of indignation. Her voice, however, was silent. Evidently there are times in her life when words fail her. This was one of them.

"Where's that kid?" I finally demanded. "I want to have a little heart to heart talk with that hombre! As for you"—and I tried to look the indignation I knew the madam felt—"it seems to me your fondness for picking loads into idiots green enough to be fooled by such a gabbling old ass as you are has gone just about far enough. After I've seen the kid, I'll talk to you further."

Old Dad was slowly and carefully reloading his pipe. From his shirt pocket he dug a match. With most aggravating deliberation he struck it on the door-post against which[Pg 154] he leaned, held it over the bowl, gave several long pulls at the pipe to assure himself it was well lit before he even deigned to raise his keen gray eyes to mine. The madam's face was a study in expression. "Where's the kid?" I really thought he had not heard my first inquiry as to the whereabouts of that individual.

"Where's he at?" with the grandest look of innocent inquiry on his weather beaten face that could possibly be imagined. For mere facial expression he should be a star performer in some big movie company.

"Yes!" I snapped out the words as if to annihilate him. "I want to hold sweet converse with him, muy pronto, sabe?"

"Well, he's vamosed—drifted yonderly" and he waved his pipe towards the eastern horizon.

"Ahead of the sheriff?" I never did have much faith in the young gentleman from Missouri.

I saw the old man evidently had a story concealed about his person and that, with his usual contrariness the more we crowded him the longer he would be in getting it out of his system. I dropped angrily into the porch swing, where I could watch his face, while the madam sat herself down on the steps of the porch apparently utterly oblivious of everything but the sage-dotted prairie spread out before us. Finally the aged provision spoiler began to emit words.

"The last time the outfit shipped steers over at the railroad," he said slowly, "the kid he tanked up pretty consid'able till he's a feeling his oats, an' imaginin' hisself a reg'lar wild man from Borneo, and everything leading up[Pg 155] to his gittin' into trouble before he was many hours older. Comes trotting down the sidewalk old man Kates, the Justice of the Peace who, on account of his gittin' the fees in all cases brought up before him, was allers on the lookout for biz. Also he done set into a poker game the night before and lose his whole pile, which didn't tend to make him view this here world through no very rosy specs. The kid comes swaggering along and the two meets up jist in front of the 'Bucket of Blood' saloon. You know Kates he allers wears a plug hat, one of them there old timers of the vintage of '73 or thereabouts, an' the kid he bein' a comparative stranger in these parts, and not knowin' who the judge was nor havin' seen any such headgear for some time, he ses to hisself, 'Right here's where I gits action on that sombrero grande,' and he manages to bump into the judge in such a way as to knock off the tile, and before it hits the ground the kid was filling it so full of holes that it looked like some black colander.

"Every one came pouring out of the saloon and nearby stores to see what was up, and the judge he takes advantage of the kid's having to stop and reload his six pistol, to relieve hisself of some of the most expressive and profane language ever heard in the burg before or since, windin' up by informin' the gent from ole Missou that he was goin' straight to his office and swear out a warrant for him and send him down to Yuma by the next train.

"When the boys tells the kid who he's been tamperin' with he gits onto his hoss and tears outa town like hell a-beatin' tanbark, he havin' no particular likin' for court proceedin's, owing to several little happenin's in that line[Pg 156] down on the Pecos in Texas. About a week later the sheriff he gits a tip that the kid's probably hangin' out at Deafy Morris's sheep camp up on Wild Cat, so he saunters up that a-way and nabs the young gent as he's a helpin' Deafy fix up his shearin' pens. Sheriff he sort of throws a skeer into the kid, tellin' him Kates is liable to send him up for ten years for assaultin' the honor and dignity of a J. P., but the kid's mighty foxy and also plumb sober by that time, and he tells the sheriff he's willing to go back to town and take his medicine.

"Next morning Deafy he ses as how he's a-goin' down to town, and the sheriff, havin' got track of somebody else he's a wantin' up on the mountain, and believin' the kid's story about bein' willing to go to town, he deputizes Deafy to take him in and deliver him at the 'Hoosgow.'[D]

"Deafy he tells the sheriff he's not a goin' clean through to town that day, but is a-goin' to camp at the Jacob's Well, a place about half way down, on the edge of the pines, where he's arranged to meet up with the camp rustler of one of his bands of sheep grazin' in that section. Ever been at that there Jacob's Well?" And the old man looked at me inquiringly. I nodded affirmatively.

The Jacob's Well was located in the center of a very large level mass of sandstone covering perhaps three or four acres, with a dense thicket of cedar and piñon trees all about it. It was a fairly round hole about five feet wide and perhaps ten deep, bored down into the sandstone formation either by human agency or some peculiar action of nature. The lay of the rocks all about it was such as[Pg 157] to form a regular watershed, so that the natural drainage from the rain and snow kept it nearly filled almost all the year round.

Just what made this well was a moot question in the country. A scientific investigator promptly put it down to the action of hard flint rocks lying in a small depression and rolled about by the wind until they dug a little basin in the rock, then the water collecting in it continued the attrition until, finally, after what may have been ages, the well was the result. My private opinion was that it was the work of prehistoric or even modern Indians who, wishing to secure a supply of water at this particular point, possibly for hunting purposes, formed the hole by fire. A large fire was built upon the rock, then when at a white heat water was thrown upon it, causing the stone to flake and crack so it could easily be removed. This was a slow process, of course, but having myself once seen a party of Apache squaws by the same primitive means remove over half of a huge boulder that lay directly in the line of an irrigating ditch they were digging, and which they otherwise could not get around, I am convinced the scientific person missed the true methods employed to excavate the hole.

However, without regard to its origin, the well was a fine camping place, for water was scarce in that region and there was always good grass for the horses near it. The old man rambled on.

"Deafy he gits a poor start next mornin' 'count of a pack mule what insisted on buckin' the pack off a couple of times and scatterin' the load rather promisc'ous-like over[Pg 158] the landscape, an' by the time they reached the well it was plumb dark. They unsaddles and hobbles their hosses out, and then Deafy he sets to work buildin' a fire, tellin' the kid to take his saddle rope and the coffee pot and git some water. The kid he's never been there afore, but Deafy tells him the well's only about a hundred feet from where they unpacked, so he moseys out into the dark lookin' for the well, his rope in one hand, the camp coffee pot in 'tother, the idee bein' to let the pot down into the well with the rope.

"It were sure dark in them trees, and the kid he's a blunderin' and stumblin' along, a-cursin' the world by sections, when all to once he stepped off into fresh air, and the next thing he knows he's a standin' at the bottom of the well in about four or five feet of ice-cold water, and him a-still hangin' onto the rope and pot with a death grip. Took him about five minutes to git his breath and realize he done found the well all rightee, and then he sets up a squall like a trapped wildcat. He ain't forgot, neither, that Deafy ain't likely to hear him, the ole man bein' deafer than a rock; so after hollerin' a while and gittin' no results he stops it and begins cussin' jist to relieve his mind and help keep him from shakin' all his teeth outen his head account o' shiverin' so blamed hard.

"Up on top Deafy he's busy startin' a fire and openin' up the packs gittin' ready to cook supper. The kid not bein' back with the water yit, and he bein' obliged to have water fer bread makin' purposes, Deafy finally decides the kid's gone and got hisself lost out there in the dark, and so he takes a pasear out that a-way huntin' fer him. The[Pg 159] ole man's a hollerin' and a trompin' through the cedars an' rocks, thinkin' more how much his wool's a-goin' to fetch than anything else, when he thinks he hears someone a-callin'. He turns to listen, gits a little more sound in his ears, takes a step or two in its direction, and, kerslop, he's into that there well hole, square on top of the young gent from 'ole Missou'. Say, the things them two fellers sed to each other, an' both at the same time, most cracked the walls of the hole."

"Talk about your Kilkenny cats," he continued, "they wan't in it with them two pore devils down in that cold water. Finally, they both run out of mouth ammunition an' set to work to figger out how they was goin' to git outen the well. It was too wide to climb out of by puttin' a foot on each side and coonin' up the walls like a straddle bug, an' it was mostly too deep for either of 'em to reach the top with their hands. So they mighty soon agrees between 'em that there's but one way to git out, an' that's fer one of 'em to stand on 'tother's shoulder so's to git a grip on the edge, pull hisself out, an' then help his shiverin', shakin' amigo what's down in the hole onto terry firmy. Bein' a foot taller than Deafy, Bob agrees that the old man can climb onto his shoulders an' git out first. But Deafy, he's heavy on his feet, an' bein' sixty years old an' none too spry, he cain't seem to make the riffle to git onto the kid's back, so he finally gives it up, an' lets the kid have a try at it. The kid he's soon on Deafy's shoulders, an' one jump an' he's on top.

"Meantime the kid he's been doin' some powerful hard[Pg 160] thinkin'. He ain't hankerin' after a close-up view of that there indignant judge down in town. The sheep man he's got a monstrous fine hoss, a new Heiser saddle, an' a jim dandy pack mule and outfit, while his own hoss an' saddle ain't nothin' much to brag on. He knows the sheep man's dead safe where he's at till some one comes to help him out, which will be when his camp rustler arrives on the scene, which may be in an hour an' may be in ten minutes. Meantime, bein' a cow-puncher bred and born on the Pecos, he ain't lovin' a sheep person any too well, so he makes up his mind he jist as well die for an 'ole sheep as a lamb, and within ten minutes he's hittin' the trail for New Mexico a straddle of Deafy's hoss an' saddle, leadin' his pack mule, with a bully good pack rig onto his back.

"Also the pore old feller down in the well is a holdin' up his hands expectin' every minute the kid will reach down an' help him out; incidentally, as far as his chatterin' teeth will let him, doin' some mighty fancy cussin' along broad an' liberal lines."

Once again that chuckle. "Seems he tole the camp rustler to meet him there that night, but the paisano was late gittin' his sheep bedded down on account of a bear skeerin' of 'em just about sundown, so he didn't git round till the kid had done been gone for two hours. Even then he might not 'a' found him, for the fire was all out an' it was too dark to see much, but the ole man he had his six[Pg 161] shooter with him when he started in to bathe, also about forty beans in his catridge belt. Knowin' mighty well his only hope was in drawin' some one's attention with his shootin', he was mighty economical with his beans, only shootin' about onc't every five minutes. The herder he hears him, runs the sound down, an' finds his ole boss a soakin' in the well, him bein' jist about ready to cash in his chips, he's that numbed and chilled."

"Oh, he done got clean away over the line into New Mexico and they ain't never got no track of him to this very yit."

We heard a raucous squeak from the corral back of the house, indicating the opening of one of the heavy pole gates. Evidently the boys had come in. I was just rising from my seat in the swing, when from around the corner of the house dashed a brindle Boston terrier, followed by four crazy pups about two months old. The mother barked a joyous welcome to the madam, to whom she flew and in whose arms she found a warm reception. I turned to the cook. That same aggravating chuckle again.

"But you told us they were drowned" was the only thing the amazed and perplexed woman could find words to utter.

The old reprobate was gazing into the bowl of his pipe as if in its depths he had found something extremely interesting. I began to see a light.

"You miserable old hot air artist!" I said. "You picked a load into us the very first hour after we landed on the ranch, didn't you? You've been humbugging us[Pg 162] all this time, haven't you?" I tried hard to be fiercely indignant.

"You fooled your own selves," he snickered, "fer I never tole you them there pups was drownded; you jist nachelly jumped at it of your own accord, an' seein' as how you'd find it out anyhow when the boys came in, I jist let it run along."

LOST IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST

When the stockholders of the "Lazy H" outfit met annually in solemn conclave to receive the report of their range manager and find out how much more the expenses for the year had been than the receipts, they called it the "Montezuma Cattle Company," but as their brand was an H lying down on the sides of their cattle thus, (

) everyone on the range called it the "Lazy H" outfit.

We were in the Lazy H winter horse camp looking after a hundred and seventy-five cow-ponies that had seen a hard summer's work, and the job was a snap. Two men rode out every morning and saw that none of the animals strayed too far, bringing them all in for water down the trail in the cañon, salting them once a week, and keeping a sharp lookout for horse thieves, both white and Indian.

The camp was a dugout in the side of a hill, part logs, part hill, with a dirt roof a foot thick. A grand fireplace in one end served alike for heating and cooking purposes, and at night with a fire of pine knots you could lie in the "double decker" bunks and read as if the place was lighted with an arc lamp. There was a heavy door in the end,[Pg 164] while half a dozen loopholes cut in the logs served for windows and for defense if necessary.

Two of the boys were playing a solemn game of "seven-up" to decide which of them should build the fire in the morning, and the balance were smoking or reading some two-weeks-old newspapers that had come out from town with the last load of grub.

Outside the wind was whistling around the corner, and the coyotes, attracted by the scent of a freshly killed yearling hanging in a cedar near the dugout, were howling and shrieking like a lot of school-children at play.

"Just about such a night outside as the night old man Hart's wife and kids got lost two years ago," remarked Peg Leg Russel, who was busy with leather strings and an awl plaiting a fancy quirt.

"Sure thing I did," answered the quirt maker, "and, what's more," he continued, "I hope I never get another such job as long as I live."

"Tell us about it Peg Leg. You know I was over in Kansas looking after a bunch of company steers that fall and never did get the straight of it." The speaker turned from his game of solitaire toward the one-legged cow-puncher. With his knife Russel clipped the end of a leather string from the finished "Turk's head," laid the quirt on the floor and rolled it back and forth under the sole of his boot to give it the proper "set" and finish, finally hanging it on the wall. Then he filled and lighted his pipe, and after a few preliminary puffs, began his story.

"Well, boys, that was one of the toughest nights I've seen in Arizony. We was camped up near the 'Peterified' Forest on our way back to the headquarter ranch. We'd been down to the railroad with a bunch of steers, and expected to bust the outfit up for the winter when we got back to the ranch. It were late in November, an' you all know how everlastin' cold it gits 'long in November an' December.

"Well, 'long comes one of them tearin' howlin' sandstorms 'bout two o'clock in the afternoon, and the wagon boss camped us under the lee of a hill and wouldn't go any furder. And 'twas well he did, too, fer the wind blowed a gale, snow begin to fall, and ag'in sunset it was as ornery a piece of weather as I ever seen anywheres. You all know wood's pow'ful skeerce up thar, too, and all the cook had was sage brush an' 'chips.'

"We put in a mis'able night. The wind blowed every way, an' drifted sand an' snow into our beds in spite of all a feller could do. Me and Sandy, the horse-wrangler, slep' together, an' Sandy he lowed, he did, that the Lord mus' have it in fer us pore ignorant cow-punchers that night, shore. About daylight I heard a shot, then another, an' another. Everybody 'most in camp waked up, an' Wilson, the wagon boss, he takes his six-shooter an' fires a few shots to answer 'em.

"We all speculated as to what it meant at such a time, an' Wilson he says he'd bet a yearlin' ag'in a sack of terbaccer that it were some derned tenderfoot bug-hunter who'd been out to the Petrified Forest an' gone an' lost hisself, an' now was a bellerin' around like a dogie calf.[Pg 166] The cook he lowed 'twan't no bug-hunter, 'cause that was the crack of a forty-five, an' them bug-hunter fellers ginerally packed a little short twenty-two to stand off the Injuns, an' we all laughed at this, fer the night we got the steers shipped the cook went up town an' got full as a goat, an' tried to run a 'sandy' over a meek-looking tenderfoot, who wan't a harmin' nobody; but he wan't near so meek as he looked, an' fust thing the cocinero knowed he war a gazin' in to one of them same little twenty-twos, an' I'm blessed if the stranger didn't take his forty-five away from him an' turned him over to the sheriff to cool off—but I guess you all know about that.

"We could soon hear the 'chug chug' of a pony's feet, an' then a voice a hollerin'. We all gave a yell, and in a few minutes a man named Hart rode into camp. We all knowed him. He was a sheep man with a ranch over on the 'tother side of the Petrified Forest. He was nearly froze an' half crazy with excitment, an' 'twas some minutes afore we could git him to tell what was a hurtin' him.

"An' then he told us he had been away from his ranch all the day before, at one of his sheep camps over on the Milky Holler. When he left in the mornin' his wife tole him she'd hitch up the hosses to the buckboard after dinner an' take the kids an' drive down to the railroad station an' git the mail, an' git back in time for supper. You know it's 'bout eight miles down to the station at Carrizo.

"Comin' home at night in the wust of the storm, Hart had found the shack empty, his wife not home yit an' the[Pg 167] hosses gone. Thinkin' that the storm had kept 'em, he waited an hour or two, when he got so blamed oneasy he couldn't wait no longer, but saddled up his hoss an' drug it for the station. When he got there they told him his wife had left 'bout an hour by sun, an' they hadn't seen nothin' of her sence, although they had begged her not to start back, an' the wind a-blowin' like it was. 'Twas then about as dark as the inside of a cow, and leavin' the men at the station to foller him, Hart struck out across the prairie, ridin' in big circles, and tryin', but without no luck, to cut some 'sign' of the buckboard and hosses. You know, fellers, how them sandy mesas are about there, and, between the driftin' sand and the snow, every mark had been wiped out slick and clean. Then he pulled his freight for the ranch, thinkin' mebbeso she'd got back while he were away; but nary a sign of them was there about the place. He struck out agin, makin' big circles, and firin' his six-shooter and hollerin' like an Apache Injin, all the time a-listenin' an' a-prayin' fer some answer. Then he heerd our shots and thought sure he'd found her, fer she always carried a gun when she went out alone, and he jist hit the high places till he ran onto our camp and he war sure disappointed when he seen us an' not her.

"'Tain't no use for to tell you that we got a move onto ourselves. You've all seen the Cimarron Kid git a move on an' tear round and just bust hisself to get out to the herd in the mornin' to relieve the last guard, along in the fall when the boss was pickin' out men for the winter work. Well, that was the way we all tore round, an' as everybody kep' up a night hoss (you all know what a crank that feller[Pg 168] Wilson was 'bout night hosses; he'd make every man keep one up if he had the whole cavyyard in a ten-acre field), we soon had a cup of coffee into us an' was ready to ride slantin'. Pore Hart was so nigh crazy that he couldn't say nothin', an' 'twas hard to see a big, strong feller as he was all broke up like.

"By this time 'twas gettin' daylight in the east an' we struck out, scatterin' every way, but keepin' in sight an' hearin' of each other. 'Bout two miles from camp I ran slap dab onto the buckboard, with one of the hosses tied up to the wheel, an' 'tother gone. The harness of the other hoss laid on the ground, an' from the sign, she had evidently unharnessed the gentlest hoss of the two, an' got on him, with the kids, an' tried to ride him bareback. I fired a couple of shots, which brought some of the other boys to me, an' we follered up the trail, step by step, 'cause 'twas a hard trail to pick out, owin', as I said, to the sand an' snow.

"Pretty soon we come to where she had got off the hoss an' led him for a ways; then we found the tracks of the kids; an' we judged they'd all got so cold they had to walk to git warm; an' all that time my fingers an' ears was tinglin' an achin', they was so cold, an' what was them pore kids an' that little woman goin' to do, when a big, stout puncher like me was shiverin' an' shakin' like a old cow under a cedar in a norther?

"Bimeby we struck the hoss standin' there all humped up with the cold, the reins hooked over a little sage bush. I sent one of the boys back with the hoss, an' tole him to hitch up to the buckboard an' foller on, fer I knowed shore[Pg 169] we'd need it to put their pore frozen bodies on when we found 'em.

"Here we saw signs where she'd tried to build a fire, but, Lord A'mighty, you know how hard it is to find anything to burn round that there Petrified Forest country, an' she only had three or four matches, an' nothin' to make a fire catch with. Then she started on ag'in, an' I judged she'd got a star to go by, 'cause she kep' almost straight north to'ds the railroad. By the trail, she was a-carryin' the youngest kid, a boy 'bout two years old, an' leadin' the other, which was a little gal 'bout five.

"Right here, fellers, she showed she was fit to be the wife of a man livin' in such a country. She knowed mighty well that she'd be follered, an' that her trail would be hard to find, so what does she do but tear pieces out of the gingham skirt she had on, an' hang 'em along on a sage brush here, an' a Spanish bayonet there, so's we could foller faster. When we struck this sign an' seed what sh'd done, one of the boys says, says he, 'Fellers, ain't she a trump, an' no mistake?' An' so she shore was.

"We jist turned our hosses loose along here, an' one of us would lope ahead an' cut for sign, an' as soon as he found it, another would cut in ahead of him, an' in that way we trailed her up, right peart. We soon ran the trail down to the edge of the big mesa back of the Carrizo station.

"If you remember, it's quite a cliff there, mebbeso two hundred feet down; sort of in steps, from two to six feet high. We seen where she jumped over the fust ledge an' helped the young ones down. She worked her way down the[Pg 170] rocky cliff that way, step by step, an' it must 'a' been a job, too, in the dark, an' as cold as she was. Two of us went on down the cliff, an' I sent the other boys around with the hosses, to a break, where there was a good trail.

"Right here I began to think that p'raps she's been saved, after all. 'Twas only a mile from the foot of the mesa to the station at Carrizo, an' in plain sight from where we were.

"Me an' Little Bob, who was with me, was so sure that she was all right that we quit follerin' the trail an' jist got down the cliff anywhere we could. When we got to the bottom an' clear of the rocks, we set out to cut for her trail ag'in, when Little Bob says, says he, 'There she is, Jack.'

"Lord, how my heart jumped into my mouth. Seemed as if I could most taste it. I looks where Bob was a-p'intin', and shore enough, there she were a-sittin' on a rock with the little boy in her lap, an' the little girl a-leanin' up ag'in her an' a-lookin' into her face.

"We both gave a yell an' started to'ds her, but she never paid no 'tention to us, which seemed to me mighty queer like. But we were a little to one side of her, an' I thought mebbe she were so tired she didn't notice us. Bob he got up to her fust, an' walked up an' put his hand on her shoulder to shake her, but, fellers, you all know how 'twas, the pore little woman an' the two young ones were dead.

"Little Bob was so skeert that he couldn't do nothin', but I fired all the shots in my six-shooter, an' the balance of the outfit soon came up to us.

"Wilson he had a little more savvy than the rest of us,[Pg 171] an' rode back an' met pore Hart, who had got off to one side, an' tells him sort o' kindly like, what we'd found; an' I reckon that Jim never had no harder job in all his life.

"Hart says, says he, 'Jim, old man, you take 'em inter town as tenderly as you kin, an' make all the arrangements for the funeral, an' I'll follow you in tonight.'

"'Course Jim swore we'd all do everything we could, an' Hart rode off to'ds his ranch without comin' nigh the place where his little family was a restin' so peaceful an' quiet.

"Say, fellers, that was the pitifullest sight I ever seed, an' I've seed some sad work in the days when old Geronimo an' his murderin' gang of government pets used to range all over the country.

"'Twas easy enuff to read the whole thing now. She'd come to the edge of the mesa an' seen the lights in the station house, for they get up 'bout four o'clock every mornin' to get breakfast for the section men. Climbin' down the cliff had used her up, an' knowin' she was so clost to help, she had set down on a big flat rock at the bottom to rest a minute before starting to walk the mile from the foot of the mesa to the station. To set down, as cold and tired as she was, meant sleep, an' to sleep was shore death that night, an' she went to sleep an' never woke up no more.

"The little boy was cuddled up ag'in her under her shawl, with the peacefullest look on his little face you ever see, an' the little girl was a-leanin' on her lap an' a-lookin' up into her face, with the big tears frozen on her cheeks, an' so natural that it was hard to believe she was dead.

"One of the boys went over to the station an' got two[Pg 172] wagon sheets and some blankets, an' when the buckboard came we rolled 'em up as carefully an' softly as we could. They was so stiff we had to leave the little feller where he was, but the girl we rolled up separate.

"Now, say, boys, that was a hard thing to do, for a bunch of rough cow-punchers, if you hear me. Hookey Jim he'd been through a yellow fever year down in Memphis once, an' he was more used to such things, so he sort of bossed the job.

"I ain't ashamed to say I bawled like a baby, fellers. Mrs. Hart was awful good to us boys, even if her husband was a sheep man. No puncher ever went there without gettin' a good square meal, no matter when it was; an' when Curly Joe got sick over at the 'Rail N' ranch, she jist made the boys fetch him over to her place, an' she nussed him like his own mammy would have done.

"After we got 'em packed on the buckboard, Wilson sent the rest of the outfit back to camp, an' him an' me rode on into town, leavin' Shorty French to drive the team in. We met everybody in town out on the road to hunt for Mrs. Hart, for the word had got round that she had got lost; an' everyone that could leave had turned out on the search.

"'Twas a sorrowful place that day, an' the next. Everybody in town knew an' loved the little woman, an' her awful death made it seem more pitiful an' sad. They made one coffin an' put her an' the two chillun into it, one on each arm, an' they looked so sweet an' peaceful, like they was only asleep—an', anyway, that's what he read from the book at the grave—that they was only asleep.

"You fellers all know how everybody in town was at the funeral, an' how one of the men in town had to say a little prayer at the grave, 'cause there wasn't no parson, they all bein' away off in Afriky an' Chiney a-prayin' an' a-singin' with niggers an' Chinees, an' not havin' no time to tend to their own kind of people to home, who p'raps needed prayin' for jist as much as the heathen in Chiney.

"Then two sweet little girls sung a hymn 'bout 'Nearer my God to Thee,' an' when they got to the second verse everybody was a-cryin' an' the little girls jist busted out too, an' couldn't finish the song for a long time.

I glanced around the dugout. The fire had burned low and I guess the most of them were glad; for, in the uncertain light, I could see moisture on more than one sunburned cowboy cheek, and my own eyes were, as one of them quaintly put it, "jist a-spillin' clean over with tears."

CAMEL HUNTIN'

"Did any of yez ever go camel huntin'?" asked the cook, who had been listening to some tales of bear and lion hunting that had been going the rounds of the men about the chuck wagon.

"Camel hunting?" cried the horse-wrangler, a look of astonishment on his face. "What on earth do you mean by camel hunting? We ain't none of us ever been to Afriky."

"Camel huntin' is jest what I said," replied the knight of the dish-rag, flourishing that useful article in the air as he mopped off the lid of the chuck box.

"Do you mean sure enough camels, camels with humps on 'em like what we seen at the circus in Albuquerque las' fall?" queried another doubting one.

"Faith an' I do that," answered the cook; "an' what's more, I didn't have to go to no Afriky to hunt 'em neither."

"Whar did ye find any camels hereabouts, 'ceptin in a circus?" asked "Tex," an old-time puncher who had followed the chuck wagon for thirty years.

"Right here in Arizony, me lads," said the cook, with an affirmative nod of his red head.

"Gee!" and the wagon boss looked incredulous. "Camels in Arizony! Who ever heard tell of any of them critters down this-a-way?"

Pat by this time had finished his after-dinner work, and while the team horses were eating their grain, he sat down to peel a panful of potatoes in readiness for the evening meal.

"Sure," with a grin, "I don't mind givin' yez a little bit of enlightenment on the subject of camels, seein' as none of yez ever heern tell of thim before now. When I first came to Arizony, ye know I was a sojer in the regular army, in the Sixth Cavalry, the gallopin' Sixth, they called it in them days."

"Aw, give us a rest, Pat, about your army days, an' tell us about them camels," for the Galloping Sixth and its adventures was an old story to the boys.

"Well," he resumed, "we was scoutin' down the Santy Cruz valley, west of Too-sawn, a lookin' for old Geronimo and his murderin' gang. One night we was camped in a little openin' in the mesquites, wid guards out on all sides ag'in a surprise, when somethin' stampeded every hoss in the herd an' left us plumb afoot, exceptin' them the guards was a-ridin'. Next morning when the captain asked the sargint of the guard what made 'em stampede, he sort of grinned an' looked sheepish like.

"'Captain,' ses he, 'ye'll not be after thinkin' me a dirty liar, but, sor, by the blissid Saint Patrick I'd be willin' to swear that the animiles that set them there crazy hosses off[Pg 176] like a bunch of skeered sheep were nothin' less nor camels—camels, sor, with two humps an' long necks on 'em; the same as I be seein' in the maynageries whin I were a lad.'

"'Camels, sargint?' sez the captain, lookin' sort o' puzzled like. 'Do ye surely mean what ye be a-sayin'?'

"'That I do, sor,' sez the sargint, 'an' the men on guard with me will bear me out—at least them that glimpsed them.'

"Then the captain he sort of grins an' sez, 'That's all right, sargint; I'd plumb forgot there used to be a lot of camels herabouts on these deserts, an' 'twas probably some of thim.'

"Then the captain, he bein' a fine old sojer man, with no frills or grand airs with the men when out on a scout, tells the sargint that before the war Jeff Davis (that same Jeff, by the way, what was Prisident of the Confideracy, he bein' then Secretary of War) gits a fancy that camels was the very trick for usin' out West, for packin' stuff for the troops. So old Jeff he gets Uncle Sam to send 'way off to Afriky an' import a lot of thim an' sint them out to Texas an' Arizony on the deserts.

"But the packers couldn't get used to them, an' besides, they stampeded ev'ry horse an' mule in the entire southwest with their queer ways an' ungainly looks. So one day the quartermaster at Yuma he turns out a lot of thim with a 'Good-bye to yez, an' God bless yez, an' here's hopin' we niver meet ag'in,' slappin' the nearest one with a halter shank to sort of hasten him on his way. They took to the deserts like a duck to water, an' the captain said 'twas doubtless one of thim that the sargint seed."

"How about huntin' of 'em, Pat?" asked an interested listener. "You sure didn't stop to hunt camels then, did you?"

"Hunt camels thin!" snorted the cook with disgust. "By the powers 'twas precious little opportunity we had for camel huntin' thim days, with old Geronimo onto his job ev'ry day from sun-up to dark. No, my son, 'twas ten years or more later whin I went camel huntin'. I was workin' for the M. C. outfit, up to Williams, an' they had a contract to deliver some beef steers to the Injun agent at the Moharvey reservation down below the Needles on the Big Colorado. We'd had an elegant summer for rain, an' the desert was covered with grass an' water. So the old man decides to trail them across the country, an' we takes the herd an' struck off down the mountain towards the head of the big Chino Valley an' then on west till we struck the Bill William's fork of the Big Colorado down which we was to drift till we reached the main river.

"We started with a young moon, an' by the time we hit the Bill William's fork the job of night herding was a plumb picnic, so far as the steers went. We had them all as do-cile as a bunch of trained pigs; an' what with the grand feed to handle them on we'd never yet lost a single one of them nor had a stampoodle of any kind.

"We bedded them oxen down one night in a great open valley after an easy day's drive. There was only five of us, four with the steers, an' me, cook an' horse-wrangler, we havin' everything on four pack mules, which I drove with the remuda.

"That night Billy St. Joe asked me if I wouldn't take[Pg 178] his guard for him, he bein' about sick all day with nuralgy. So when I was called along about midnight to spoon them for two hours I jumps an' was soon joggin' around the bunch, which was all a-lyin' down as decent as one could wish fer. 'Twere hard to keep awake, an' I reckon I must 'a' been a-noddin' in the saddle, for, the first thing I knowed there was a snort an' a cracklin' of horns an' hocks, an' away went me steers like the very old divil himself was behind them.

"I pulled meself together, slapped old Shoestring down the hind leg with me quirt, an' put spurs after them, hopin' to turn them. Old Shoestring snorted an' kept them sharp ears of his workin' an' looking' back over his shoulder like, as if he was a-feered too. I hadn't been sidin' them fer more than a hundred yards when, hearin' a snortin' an' a gruntin' behind me, I takes a look meself over me shoulder, an' such a sight as me eyes did get.

"'Twas sure no wonder them steers was a-runnin away, fer right behind us was three great figures with long necks an' humps on their backs like two water kegs a-settin' up there. They wasn't gallopin', nayther was they trottin', but jist a-shufflin' along over the ground like ghosties, an' every once in a little while one of them gives a grunt an' a gurgle which sent them oxen wild with terror. Hangin' to these creatures was long strings of somethin' more like a lot of ragged clothes than anything else, an' what with the flutterin' an' wavin' they resembled a lot of animated scarecrows.

"When we first set out on our race with thim ugly divils a-follerin' of us, the three night horses tied up in camp,[Pg 179] takin' wan look an' sniff of them teeterin' figgers a-puffin' an' a-gruntin' in our rear, jist quit the flats wid the rest of the live stock, an' as we tore along we picked up every mother's son of the other horses, them all bein' foot-loose, an' a-hangin' round with the pack mules.

"By the blissed saints, but me an' that Shoestring horse was havin' a lovely ole time of it all by ourselves, for, with the night horses gone, thim lads back in camp had nothin' to do but set there an' lave it to me to hang an' rattle with them. Thim shufflin' monsters behind didn't seem to want to git past us, but jist kep' at the heels of the drags, an' it's mesilf's a-tellin' ye that every toime I'd take wan hasty glimpse of thim 'twould be the cold chills I'd be after havin', an' me a-cursin' the night I ever took Billy St. Joe's guard fer him.

"What wid the fear in his heart, an' good work wid me 'pet makers', I makes out to git old Shoestring up clost to the leaders. I'd also managed to get me slicker untied from the back of me saddle an' was wavin' it in their faces, hopin' by thim means to git the bunch turned an' millin', an' maybe thim lost sowls that was a-follerin' us wud leave us in peace an' quiet.

"Thim three saddle horses a-runnin' an' rompin' an' snortin' in the midst of the steers wasn't helpin' matters, ayther. Iv'ry toime wan of the stake ropes what was a-draggin' after thim struck the hocks of a steer he'd give a wild beller of fright, and thin the entire bunch wud put on a few extra bursts of speed, an' thim preambulatin' scarecrows behind wud do a little more gruntin' an' gurglin' an' make matters all the worse.

"'Bout this time old Shoestring, bein' occupied principally wid lookin' over his shoulder an' takin' stock of those wanderin' hoboes behind, failed to notice a big ole badger hole like an open coal hole in a city sidewalk, an' steps wan of his front legs square into it an' turns a hand-spring, landin' in a bunch of cholla cactus, wid me under him. Whin I come to my sinsis, which was some minutes after, I finds meself afoot on the desert an' it just a-gittin' gray in the east.

"Barrin' a big gash across me cheek, where I digs me face into the ground as me old Shoestring lit, I was none the worse for the fall, 'ceptin' of coorse a large an' illigant assortment of cholla barbs in me anatemy. Comes daylight I limps back to camp, for I were in no fix for ridin' till I'd lain fer two mortal hours flat on me stummick on a saddle blanket—an' me as naked as a Yuma Indian kid in July—whilst Billy St. Joe done a grand job of pullin' them divilish cactus barbs from various an' prominent portions of me system. Thim infernal things stuck out of me carcas till, as one of the byes remarked, 'I was more porcupine than human.'

"'What skeered your cows, Pat?' says Jim, the boss, as I come cripplin' into camp. 'Sure an' if I knowed I'd tell ye,' sez I. They was all a-lyin' that ca'm an' peaceful as wan could well wish fer. Thin up they hops an' immigrates. Me an' old Shoestring we busted out after 'em, an' as we tore along I glimpsed a bunch of hairy, wobbly-legged monsters a-follerin' us, a-groanin' an' a-gurglin' like a lot of hobgoblins from hell,' sez I.

"'Git out' sez Jim; ''twas aslape ye were, ye an' old[Pg 181] Shoestring both, an' he had a bad dream an' bucked ye off into a cholla'.

"'Not on yer life,' sez I, mad enough to fight a grizzly between the grin on his face an' the stingin' of the cactus barbs in me back.

"The boys managed to get the horses rounded up, an' all the steers together by noon, but too late to move camp that day. That afternoon Jim sez, 'Git yer gun, Pat, an' come wid me.' So I saddles up me pony, slips me Winchester into me scabbard, an' him an' me rides off from camp.

"'Nothin', sez he, 'only over here a ways I struck the curiousest tracks I ever seen in all me life; an' me a-knowin' the sign of every critter that ever walks on legs in this here country.' We soon struck the trail Jim had seen an' it sure were a new one on both of us. So we follows it up, feelin' it was our juty, as law-abidin' citizens, to run down an' kill all such disorderly, outlandish creatures that was a-runnin' at large. 'Twan't long before we comes to a ridge a-lookin' out over a little valley, an' leadin' our horses we footed it fer the top of the ridge, an' peekin' over we seed down in the middle of the flat three hungry lookin' yaller divils. ''Tis me wanderin' rag-bags what skeered the herd last night,' sez I, triumphant like—after Jim accusin' me of goin' to sleep on guard an' dreamin' things.

"They was a dirty yaller color, an' what wid the bare spots all over thim, like sheep wid the scab, Jim sez they[Pg 182] looked more like a lot of mangy coyotes than anythin' he iver seen in all his life. ''Twas sure no fault wid thim steers that they all gits up an' stampoodles whin such a bad-smellin', evil-lookin' lot of monsters come a-driftin' down on top of them,' sez he.

"'Twere not so hard to git closer to thim, an' whin we finally gits as near as we thought we could, an' not skeer thim, we each picks out wan an' let him have it where we believed it would do the most good. Mine never ran ten feet; Jim's fell down within a quarter; the third wan struck off down the valley at a great rate, an' Jim, bein' hell-bent fer ropin' things, hollered, 'Le's rope it, le's rope it!' an' jabbed his spurs into his pony an' tore off, takin' down his rope an' makin a loop as he wint.

"'Rope him if ye will,' sez I, lammin' me old digger wid me quirt, 'but it's meself that ropes no outlandish heathin thing lookin' more like it come out of old Noah's ark than a daycent, respectable range critter'. But I follered along as fast as I could git me pony to move, him bein' none too anxious to git close to the slobberin' cross between a step-ladder an' a hayrack, that was lumberin' along ahead of us.

"Jim's pony was a darlin' to run, an' as he was a-gittin' closer for a throw I sez to meself, 'If iver that crazy lad ahead puts his line on to that there travelin' maynagerie he's a-follerin' he's a-goin' to need help to turn it loose, sure.' So I waits fer the outcome, feelin' certain I'd be needed before long.

"Bimeby Jim he gits a good chanst fer a throw an' drops his line over the long, ungainly head in front of him;[Pg 183] but the rope, instid of grippin' the critter's throat, slipped back an' drew up ag'in its breast, an' whin Jim tried to check him up the pony couldn't hold him. Whin the hard jerk come Jim's flank cinch busted, the pony begins to pitch, an' between the pitchin' an' the saddle drawin' up on the pony's neck, poor Jim lost out an' went up into the air like a shootin' star, landin' on his head in a pile of rocks. The saddle stripped over the pony's head, an' away went the whole outfit, through brush, over rocks, across washes, like hell a-beatin' tanbark. The rope bein' tied hard an' fast to the horn, Jim's new $50 saddle wint danglin' along behind, like a tin can tied to a dog's tail. When Jim come to, a few minutes later on, he wiped his hand across his face, looked at the blood on it, an' sez to me, sort of foolish like, 'What struck me, Pat?'

THE TRINIDAD KID

The singer was riding slowly around a herd of steers "bedded down" on an open flat about a quarter of a mile from the western, or Mexican bank of the river of which he sang.

It was the first guard, from eight to ten, and the steers, having had a fine day's grazing, were all lying down chewing their cuds as comfortably as a bunch of milk cows in a dairy barn.

Across the herd his "side partner" on the guard was riding toward him, so that twice in each circle of the herd they met for an instant and then each jogged on into the darkness.

As they met this time the singer finished the verse, and his pony acknowledged the slight shifting of his rider's body in the saddle by coming to a stop.

"Gimme a match," demanded the singer as he felt in his vest pocket for the "makings." "Here 'tis," replied the other, "and I reckon I'll just build a smoke myself."

"Let's jog along together," suggested the second man, "and you sing, for if we stand here and strike a match this herd of oxen will just about get up and quit the flats."

Down along the river bank the dim spark of the cook's fire showed where the outfit was camped, while a short distance beyond it the Rio Grande at full flood roared like a sullen yellow monster.

The fringe of cottonwoods and Tornillos along its bank were outlined against the background of the sky like shadow pictures, while an occasional dull crash told of the loss of another slice of the Republic of Mexico where, undermined by the swift flood, a piece of the bank had dropped into the river and was on its way to the gulf.

"Do you reckon we'll have much trouble swimmin' these steers tomorrow?" asked the singer, as, contrary to the rules of night-herding of all cow outfits, they rode along together.

"No, I don't believe we will," was the reply. "Uncle John savvys this river like a native, an' if he looks at it tomorrow an' says 'Cross 'em,' they'll make it all right."

"Well, she's sure high, and 'tain't the water I'm afraid of half so much as the infernal quicksand. I never did like the water, nohow." He shook his head: "Once I got into the quicksand in the Little Colorado over in Arizony and like to ended up in the Campo Santo fer sure."

"Say" and his companion handed him a flaming match—"you smoke up a little an' fergit all that. We got[Pg 186] troubles aplenty without huntin' up imaginary things to git skeered of. Did you hear the yarn that stray man was a-tellin' in camp tonight?" he remarked, with the evident intention of drawing his friend from so gloomy an outlook.

"Never a word; I was shoeing my horse when he was talkin' an' didn't hear what he was sayin'. What was he talkin' about?" the singer queried.

"Well," said the other, "it 'pears like he was workin' fer the Turkey Track outfit in Arizony and him an' another Turkey Track screw comes over the line to git a little touch of high life among the paisanos on this side. Well, they gits it all right, for between half a dozen Mexican women, two or three hombres, an' a kaig of mescal, 'tain't hard to start something; an' when the dust settled down this stray gent finds hisself with a dead man on his hands an' him over here where it's the eagle an' the snake instead of the Stars an' Stripes a-flyin' overhead. I was busy makin' down my bed an' never heerd how he come out 'ceptin' he says there was some fool law these Mexicans has which don't allow the body of any one what dies on Mexican soil to be taken out of the country for five years. So he had to leave his friend there instead of gittin' him acrost an' plantin' him up in the Pan Handle where his folks lived."

"What for don't they let any dead body be taken out of this here country?" And the boy turned uneasily in his saddle.

"Damfino," replied the other; "reckon it's just some cranky notion these Greasers got; maybeso they likes your sassiety an' hates to part with you, but, anyhow, that's the[Pg 187] law all right, all right, an' if you dies here, you stays here, for five years, if no longer."

"Say, Jim," the kid's voice was full of awe; "My old mammy's up yonder in Trinidad, an' by hooky, if I was to die down here an' she couldn't git hold of me to bury me up there where she laid the old man an' my sister, she's like to go plum loco, fer sure."

"Well, you better make your plans to die on 'tother side the line or else so close to it that somebody can haze you across without any of them there Rurales gittin' on to your game," was Jim's reply, as he returned from chasing a steer back into the herd. "So far as I'm concerned," he continued, "I don't reckon it makes much difference where I'm stuck away, for I'm a drifter an' ain't got no kin that I knows of, an' I guess when a feller's dead he kin hear ole Gabe blow his horn on this side the Rio Grande jist as easy as on 'tother."

The next morning the sun was just peeping over the sand hills away to the east when Uncle John, who had been down along the river since the first gray streak in the sky announced the coming of day, rode into camp as the boys were catching out their horses. As the wagon boss glanced at him, he nodded and said, "All right, George, we'll try it this morning; the river has fallen a lot since last night."

"Which means that I turns this here mule loose an' gits me a horse," remarked one of the riders who had just roped a little black saddle mule, "fer a mule ain't no earthly good in water. If they gits their ears wet, they jist lays down on you, an' quits right there."

The singer's voice rose above the shouts of the other boys as they pushed the cattle along toward the river.

"That's right, Kid, sing to 'em. Time you've got through with this here muddy water job she won't know you if she is there to meet you," laughed the horse-wrangler.

As the herd swung down to the river, the horse-wrangler had his entire remuda at the water's edge, and with two men to help him he slowly forced the horses out into the stream, with old Bennie, the crack "cutting horse" of the outfit, in the lead. The old rascal had been used for this work for ten years and well knew that there was a nose bag full of oats waiting for him on the further bank of the river.

As the steers on the O. T. ranch had always been handled by placing the horse herd ahead of them when corraling or taking a narrow trail down some cañon, they followed the horses with little delay.

"Say Dick," shouted the man behind him, "ain't you going to ask us to all the doings when them wedding bells cut loose?"

"I reckon so," was the answer, "and what's more, if I gets me onto the yonderly side of this streak of mud, I'm a going to stay there. I've seen all I want to of this 'mañana land.'"

Just at the critical time, when everything seemed to be working out all right, a great wave of water swept down the stream and broke with a crash right in front of the leading steers. They hesitated for a moment, then another wave broke, and still another, and in an instant the leaders were swinging back on to each other in their senseless panic. In less than a minute a hundred of them were swimming round and round in the muddy waters, a whirling, struggling mass of horns and bodies. They jumped upon one another, bearing the under ones down into the water, until it was boiling with the fighting, maddened animals.

The kid did not wait for orders. Well he knew that it was up to him to break up that milling mighty quick or the whole day's work was lost. Heading his pony toward the struggling mass of animals, he drove at them without an instant's hesitation.

Singing at the top of his voice and swinging his slicker over his head, he swept down on the outside steers, being crowded on to them by the swift current against which his plucky pony struggled hard. Had he abandoned the effort and turned the animal up stream, facing the current, he might have breasted it and held his own, but the kid resolutely kept his place as well as he could.

he sang valiantly as he thrashed the steers with his yellow slicker, trying to turn them from their course. He was rapidly accomplishing his purpose, and a few of the leaders were already turned and about to string out for the shore, when one broad-horned fellow right behind him raised in the water like some huge sea monster, and lunged upon his horse's hips with both front feet.

The weight of the steer drove the horse down into the water, the swift current swept him on to his side, and in a second he was under the mass of steers, his rider hanging to him.

A few minutes later the horse came into view from below the cattle but the boy was missing. Uncle John, at the first sign of trouble had dashed toward the spot, and as the horse came into sight leaned from his saddle, grabbed the bridle rein and pulled the half-drowned animal on to[Pg 191] his feet in the shallower water. Spurring into the deep water again, he and the men with him swung up and down the line of cattle, watching with eager, anxious eyes for the slightest sign of a human form, but they could see nothing.

Meantime the steers were rapidly crossing, and the leaders had already climbed out on to the opposite bank and were working back from the river, coughing and shaking their dripping bodies.

Two other men joined Uncle John in the search for the lost singer, but though they watched every spot, riding up and down the stream for a mile, they were unable to discover any sign of the boy.

Leaving Jim and another man to watch the river, the rest of the outfit pushed the steers out on to the open range to graze.

Up and down the bank all that day the two men rode, reinforced by all the others who could be spared from the herd. Across the seat of the saddle on the horse ridden by the boy was a deep scar where the rowels of his spur had cut the leather, done probably as he slipped from the horse as he went under.

The steers could not be held there long, so the next morning Uncle John, with a heavy heart, started the outfit at daybreak for the railroad loading pens, thirty miles away, leaving Jim, who had asked for the job, behind to keep a lookout for the body of the drowned cowboy. All day long he rode the banks of the river. Every eddy as well as the great rafts of driftwood, was carefully searched. Just a short time before sunset he noticed a couple of[Pg 192] buzzards a little lower down on the river slowly circling overhead. He knew their keen eyes saw something, and both hoping and dreading that it was what he sought, he worked his way down towards the point over which the great birds were hovering. Here the river had cut into the sandy bank and a thicket of willows hung over the yellow water. Getting down onto one knee, Jim peered under them.

Yes, there was "something" there. His heart came into his mouth, he gasped for breath, and the cold sweat stood on his face in great drops. A long, lance like pole from a nearby pile of drift wood, furnished him with a tool to sound the depth of water along the bank. It was not over waist deep, the bottom was firm, and, dropping off the bank, he waded down under the overhanging brush. There, floating in the stream, was the body of the Kid. A bough had caught in the belt of his leather "chaps" and held it firmly. It was the work of a moment for Jim to attach one end of his saddle rope to the belt and carry the other back with him to the open spot above the willows. His first intention was to tow the body up to a place where it could be taken out and then go for help.

Wading up the stream, he climbed out on the bank and sat down to rest for a moment. It was second nature for him to get out his pipe and tobacco, and as he sat there the talk between himself and the singer around the herd the night before the crossing came to his mind. What could he do? The body was found on Mexican soil. About a hundred yards from the bank behind his was a little Mexican jacal, or hut, where he had noticed half a dozen children—even now he could hear their shouts as they[Pg 193] played. To get it away from there was seemingly impossible.

The twilight was nearly over and in the east the sky was glowing with the light of the moon, which almost at the full would soon rise. For half an hour he sat there thinking, the pipe smoked out and dead between his teeth. Then he rose, knocked the ashes out on his boot heel, slipped the pipe into his pocket, and worked his way carefully up to the top of the bank behind him. Peering through the fringe of trees, he saw in the moonlight the mud daubed jacal. A dog barked, in the distance a coyote answered with its shrill "yip, yip," and from the limbs of a mesquite—the family chicken coop—a rooster saluted the rising of the moon with a cheerful crow. In front of the jacal a bright spark glowed where the fire of mesquite limbs over which the evening supper had been cooked, was dying away, and he could dimly make out the forms of the family asleep on the ground near the hut.

Then, satisfied with the condition of things, he carefully worked his way back to the edge of the river, and, having looked to the rope, which he had fastened to a sharp piece of drift driven into the sand, lay down by it and in ten seconds was fast asleep.

About three o'clock the next morning, just as the moon dropped behind the cottonwoods along the river, throwing deep shadows over its sullen tide, four steers, probably lost from the herd the day before, came down to the river to drink. As they reached the edge of the water one raised his head quickly and snuffed the air. The others also threw up their heads and tested the air with their keen noses,[Pg 194] their great ears cocked forward to catch the slightest sound. High headed and suspicious, they all stood for an instant, and then as if with one impulse ran back a few steps and stopped to look again.

Out there in the deep shadow something moved slowly and heavily. Now and then a splash came from the object as the water struck against it.

The steers snuffed and licked their lips as do such animals where fear and curiosity is struggling in them for the mastery. Then as the something moved more distinctly, with terror in their eyes they all turned and burst into the darkness behind them, crashing through the young cottonwoods and over piles of loose driftwood in their mad haste to escape—they knew not what. Still, the "something" came on; slowly it moved through the muddy waters until the form of a man could be distinguished in the uncertain light, carrying some heavy load.

At the edge of the river the man placed his burden on the soft sand and dropped down, panting for breath.

At noon that day, a single horseman rode a tired, sweat-covered animal into a little town on the railroad some thirty miles from the river. Two hours later, away to the north, under the snow-capped Rockies, where the city of Trinidad nestles below the Raton Pass, a lone woman received this brief message:

PABLO

"Señor?" And the boy looked inquiringly at the speaker. "You stay right here around this meadow. Here's plenty of feed and water for your band till I come back from town. Savvey?"

"I won't be gone but three days, Pablo," continued the man, shifting uneasily in his saddle, "an' it's a tough deal to give you, but there's nothing else to do. That misable, onery Mack is drunk down in town an' won't never git out till his money's all gone an' somebody takes him by the scruff of the neck an' kicks him out of the saloon an' loads him onto his horse. You've got twelve hundred ewes an' 'leven hundred of the best lambs that this here range has ever seen. There's ten negros, tres campanas, an' cinco chivos; reckon you can keep track of 'em all?"

"Si, Señor," assented the boy, in whose veins flowed the blood of almost three centuries of sheepherders, "tres bells-campanas," and three fingers indicated the number of belled ewes in the bunch, "cinco goats," and one outspread hand showed the number of goats with the ewes, "diez black-a markers," holding up all ten fingers.

"That's right, muchacho," answered the man; "you keep track of your markers an' bells an' goats, an' you won't lose any sheep. There's plenty of water here for your camp, and the sheep won't need any for some days. There's a lot of poison weeds lower down on the mountain, an' it won't do to graze the band that-a-way. Take 'em up toward the top if you go anywhere; but keep your camp here an' stay with it till I come back, savvey?"

The man dropped off his horse, gave the curly black mop on the boy's head a hasty pat, picked up the lead rope of a pack mule standing near and, mounting, rode off down the trail.

The little meadow was located on a small bench high on the breast of a mountain whose bare granite peaks rose rough and ragged far above the timber line. At one side of the meadow, under a mighty fir tree, stood the herder's tent, a white pyramid among the green foliage. If there was another human being nearer than the little railroad town forty-five miles away, the boy knew it not. He watched the man ride slowly down the trail until he disappeared behind a mass of trees. The dog at his side whined as the man was lost to view and poked his cold muzzle into the boy's hand.

"Ah, perrito mio," and he hugged the fawning animal close to his body, "the patron has gone and left us here all alone to care for the sheep. Think of it, I, Pablo, to be trusted with so much. Shall we not care for them as for our own? Didst hear him say we were not to leave this camp while he was away? Ten black ones for markers,[Pg 197] three bells and five great chivos. Aha, we shall count them each a hundred times a day, and sly indeed will be the ewe that shall escape from us. Is it not so, my brave Pancho?" And for answer the dog barked and romped about the lad as if to show he also appreciated the honor and responsibility thrust upon the two.

Down the trail the sheepman, Hawk, jogged along toward the town where Mac, the recreant herder, was doubtless wasting his substance in riotous living. "If ever I git holt of that there rascal, I'll wear out the ground with him," he soliloquized. "To go off and leave me with a band of ewes on my hands at such a time and not come back as he promised. Serves me right for letting him go, for I might 'a' known he'd not come back in time. That there Pablo's a good kid all right, but it's a pretty big risk to turn over to a twelve-year-old boy that many ewes and lambs. Lucky for me he happened to stay in camp after the lambing was over; his father's about the best sheepherder on the whole range, and them Mexican kids would rather herd a bunch of sheep than ride on a merry-go-round. Well," and he slapped his horse with the end of his rope, "he's got a good dog, the best in the mountains, an' if he keeps track of his bells an' markers 'tain't likely he'll lose any sheep. However, there ain't no use worrying over it, for I couldn't stay there myself any longer, an' the sooner I gits to town an' hustles that there red headed Mac out to camp, the better."

"Big fire over on 'tother side of the mountain," answered the ranger. "Old man phoned me to get over there as soon as ever I could and lend a hand. Mighty dry season now, and if fire ever gets started it'll take a lot more men to stop it than we got in this forest. I been riding now night and day for the last thirty days patroling my district, to lookout for fires, and I hate to have to go clear over on the other side and leave it all uncovered."

"Little over six townships and a half; that's over a hundred and fifty thousand acres, and it's all a-standing on edge too"—he waved his gloved hand toward the range about them—"so there's twice as much, if you count the mountain sides. The Super, he asked for six more rangers last fall when he sent in his annual report, but the high collars back there in Washington said Congress was cutting down expenses and so we'd have to spread ourselves out and cover the ground, and do the best we could. That's why the boss rustled the boys out in such a hurry, for we can't afford to take any chances on a fire getting a start. If it ever does, it's good-bye trees, for once a fire gets under good headway in these mountains, with conditions just right, all the fire fighters in hell couldn't stop it. So long, old man, I've got to be a-drifting."

As the ranger moved off up the cañon, the sheepman turned and glanced up at the sky toward the spot where he had left Pablo and his charges. There were no signs of smoke in the clear blue above, so he touched the horse with his spurs and resumed his journey, content to leave[Pg 199] the fire fighting to the ranger force until he was called on for aid. Anyhow, it was clear over on the other side of the mountain and he wasn't interested there, and it would be time enough to worry when it got over on to his side. Meanwhile, there was that miserable Mac drunk in town and another band of lambs and ewes somewhere on the range, that he ought to look in on before long.

Back on the mountain meadow Pablo and his ewes and lambs got on famously. The boy pushed the band out on to the mountainside, away from camp, telling Pancho to care for them while he went to find the two pack burros and drive them back to camp. All day long the boy watched the herd as a hen watches her chicks. Over and over again he counted the ten black "markers," those black sheep that come in every flock and without which no herder would work. If all ten of them were there in the herd it was safe to presume that none of the ewes had been lost, for, as they grazed back and forth through the timber, "cuts" might happen to the best of herders. Once he counted but nine. Yes, surely there were but nine. He called the dog to his side, pointed to a ridge beyond them and told the animal to go over there and look for the missing ones.

Away Pancho bounded, stopping often to look back at his master for orders. The boy waved his arm and the dog went on until he stood a black speck at the top of the ridge. With foot upraised and ears cocked, he watched again for commands. Another wave of the arm and the dog dashed over the ridge and out of sight. Half an hour later an eager bark came from the ridge, and there, slowly toiling through the trees, came the lost sheep, followed[Pg 200] by the faithful dog, keeping them moving toward the herd and yet not hurrying them beyond the speed of the lambs. In their lead was the black marker. Once more his ten negros were all there.

The next night from over the mountain-top rolled a great wave of black smoke. The sheep, "bedded down" near the camp, were uneasy and kept sniffing at the heavy air. At daylight the boy pushed them from the bed ground and worked them up toward the mountain-top, where the trees stopped growing and there was little danger of fire reaching them. Leaving the dog to care for the sheep, the boy climbed up higher until he could see about him. On every side was a sea of smoke. Great black billows rolled up from below him and the wind blew a gale from the direction of the other side of the mountain. The patron would be back that night, but until then Pablo must stay where he was, for had he not been told to do so? All day he watched the smoke boiling up about him. The sheep were restless and bunched up in spite of his efforts to get them to scatter out and graze as they should.

In the afternoon he worked his way down the mountainside, below the meadow and, perched on a huge boulder, watched the fire licking its way slowly through the forest. As far as he could see the red line stretched like a fiery snake, but unless the wind changed it would not reach his camp for some time yet.

If only the patron would come and relieve him of this responsibility! All those ewes with their fine lambs grazing there, and depending on him, Pablo, for protection and care. What should he do? He must not leave the camp,[Pg 201] and still, if he kept the sheep there and the fire really came to the meadow, they might all die.

Late that evening the wind changed and blew up the cañon like a gale, carrying with it clouds of smoke and burning brands which started fires far in advance of the main line. But the boy stayed with the sheep, wide awake and watchful, hardly taking time to eat his simple meals of frijoles, mutton and bread. Below him, the sky was alight with the flames. Now and then a thunderous crash told where some giant of the forest had given up the fight—three hundred and fifty years' work undone in an hour. Half a dozen coyotes and a wildcat skulked out of the timber that fringed the meadow and buried themselves in the little clump of willows that grew about the spring. By midnight he realized that to stay where he was meant death for himself and his woolly charges. The sheep were restless, constantly moving about on the bed ground, the lambs running and bleating through the herd as if they, too, realized the danger. The dog whined and looked anxiously toward the coming light, which now made the night almost as bright as noonday.

"What would'st thou do, Panchito?" said the boy. "Did not the patron tell us to remain here until he came, and yet, shall we stay and die when the fire comes?" Then the thought came to him that up higher on the mountain the sheep would be safe if once there.

At the first sign of coming day he set about his preparations for leaving. First, he tore from its pins the light tent, spread it out on the ground, swept into it the small supply of food which the camp contained, and rolled the[Pg 202] tent about it. Then, with a short-handled camp shovel he dug a shallow hole in the soft mountain soil into which he placed, first, the sheepskins and blankets which formed his bed and then the bundle of the tent, covering it all with the dirt, thus securing it from the fire.

Having thus protected his food supply, he sent the dog around the sheep to bunch them up and started them up the mountainside. The sheep, frightened by the smoke and approaching fire, moved rapidly, and inside of half an hour the boy had them all bedded down on a great bare granite field in the middle of a little boulder-strewn valley where, ages ago, some slipping, sliding glacier had smoothed and polished the surface of the rocks until they were like some gigantic table top. The valley was far above timber and the sheep safe from fire.

Leaving the dog to watch the sheep, he hastened back to the meadow, there to await the coming of the patron as he had been bidden. Once upon the prairie, where his father lived, he had seen the men go out to meet an approaching fire and by means of back firing keep it away from the houses and fields.

In the camp was a stick of pitch pine which some one had brought for starting fires. Taking the ax, he quickly split off a handful of splinters, which he bound together with a handy piece of baling wire. Going to the lower end of the meadow toward the fire with his improvised torch, he started a line of small fires, hoping they would spread and thus be some slight protection to the meadow.

The wind favored him, and in a short time he had a wide swath burned clear along one side of the meadow and[Pg 203] his fire was eating out into the forest and would keep the flames back some distance.

As the main fire line came along he was smothered with the clouds of smoke and waves of heat which swept down as from a furnace. He stood it as long as he could, fighting back the fire at every point where the flames were eating out into the meadow. Burning brands ate holes in his cotton shirt, and the soles of his "teguas," or rawhide moccasins, were burned through and through. As the mass of fire reached his back-fire line he ran to the little spring in the middle of the meadow and threw himself into it, rolling over and over in the mud and water about it. The coyotes and wildcat that had taken refuge there hardly noticed his presence in the face of the coming danger.

Half an hour or more of stifling smoke and burning heat and he dared to leave his place in the spring. About the meadow some of the trees were burning clear to their tops, and great logs were blazing everywhere, but the force of the fire was spent and had gone on past him and he was left as on an island in midocean.

It was far past noon. Perhaps the patron would come today. He found the shovel and dug up the buried tent with its precious contents and made a hasty meal of bread and meat. Then, taking a piece of the meat for the faithful Pancho, he struck out into the blackened area about him to find the sheep which he had left to the dog's care that morning.

He was very tired and his almost bare feet were badly cut and burned, causing him to stop and rest frequently, but he finally reached the granite ledge, and there found[Pg 204] the sheep, with the dog watching their every movement, and woe unto the ewe or venturesome lamb that attempted to wander too far into the valley, for he was at its heels in a minute to drive it back.

That evening, about dark, two men rode into the upper end of the meadow. The face of each was black and grimy with smoke and sweat. Their eyes were red and swollen and their horses so tired they stumbled as they moved. As they came out of the blackened area about the meadow and were able to see across it the man in advance stopped his horse.

"Lord, I do hate to think of leaving that poor little devil up here all alone with them sheep," he said to his companion. "Naturally I hate to think of losing the sheep, but to have him burnt up too is awful."

Suddenly he straightened up in his saddle and rubbed his eyes. "Say, Bill," he called, "is that a bunch of sheep there, or are my eyes fooling me?" Before Bill could reply a dog barked and came racing toward them.

Then the tinkle of a sheep bell reached their ears. They spurred their tired horses into a trot and soon reached the spot where once stood the camp tent. In the dim light they saw a freshly dug hole with a tent lying beside it, upon which was piled a miscellaneous assortment of food and camping utensils, mutely telling the story of how the camp outfit had been saved.

Nearby on a pile of sheep skins and under an old blanket lay a boy sleeping soundly. The eager barking of[Pg 205] the dog and the heavy tread of the horses awoke him, and with a start he sprang to his feet. His clothing was a mass of mud, his face so black and tear-stained that it was almost unrecognizable, but the sheepman sprang from his horse and grabbed him in his arms with a strange choking in his throat he could hardly conquer.

"Why, Pablo boy, muchacho mio, how did you pull through this hell fire and save yourself and the sheep too?" he asked, patting the dirty cheeks and mud-filled hair.

"The patron told me to stay here till he returned," said the boy, "there are all the sheep, the ten markers, the three campanas, and the five chivos, that the patron left with me. All are there." The child's eyes glowed with the pride of accomplishment.

"Bill," said the sheepman, "what's that little feller's name what we used to recite about in school, him that did the stunt about standing on the burning deck?"

"That's him, that's the chap. Say, Pablo"—his voice choked and he swallowed hard before the words would come to his lips—"Pablo, you're Casabianca all righty, and then some, for that little feller didn't save his bacon by stayin' where he was tole to. You not only saved yours but twelve hundred of the best ewes and lambs in the state besides. I'll promise you that ole Santa Claus'll bring you somethin' mighty fine next Christmas to pay you for this here job."

THE SHOOTING UP OF HORSE HEAD

The town of Horse Head had turned over a new leaf. There was to be no more "shooting up" of the village. Patience ceased to be a virtue when the "Cross J" outfit shipped their last train of steers, and everybody in the gang came into town for a big time, which culminated in a general "shooting up" of the place.

The lights in all the saloons were bored full of holes, the solitary street lamp-post, standing in front of the "Apache House"—and the pride of the heart of the old woman who kept the place—was riddled over and over again, and every woman in town scared into a fit of hysterics. Then the town people rose up in their wrath and called on the marshal to put a stop to it, or resign his office.

Now Jenkins, the marshal, who held the position by virtue of his ability to shoot quick and true, was something of a diplomat. He was not anxious to have a row with any of the boys, if it could be avoided, and he was still further anxious not to lose the confidence of the townspeople, a nominating convention being due before long. Jenkins was a candidate for sheriff on the Democratic ticket, and in[Pg 207] Colorado County, a nomination on that ticket was equivalent to an election. Accordingly, being of a diplomatic turn of mind, as aforesaid, he decided that a little scheming on his part might work to his advantage. To this end, he rode down to the little cottonwood "bosque" a few miles below town, where the Cross J outfit was camped, busily engaged in shoeing horses for another trip into the mountains, and overhauling the wagon generally.

The result of his visit was that he was authorized by the guilty "punchers" to enter into negotiations with the town justice, and make some sort of terms with him, based upon their pleading guilty and promising good behavior for the future. All this Jenkins successfully accomplished, and about three o'clock the next afternoon the wily marshal rode into town accompanied by eight or ten of the boys.

Being arraigned before the town barber, who upheld the dignity of the law as justice of the peace, they gravely plead guilty to disturbing the peace and dignity of the place, were fined one dollar and costs each, which they promptly paid, with many promises of future good conduct.

But alas for such promises! "Cow punchers is pore weak critters, shore," old Dad, the cook, used to say; and before sunset that day every last one of them, unmindful of promises or pledges, was again full of enthusiasm and cheap whiskey.

"Tex," the bartender at the "Bucket of Blood," had all their six-shooters behind the bar, and for safety had slyly removed all the cartridges and inserted empty shells in their place.

About sunset the gang started for camp, their weapons[Pg 208] returned to them with many warnings from Tex not to shoot until clear out of town. They mounted their ponies and struck out on a dead run down the main street, whooping and yelling like a bunch of coyotes, but carefully refraining from firing a shot. About half a mile below town, however, the white "Yard Limit" sign of the railroad company was too good a mark for the crowd to pass unchallenged. True, the heavy piece of boiler iron, some thirty inches across, was pierced in a hundred places from previous attacks, but a few more wouldn't hurt it, and Baldy Peters, the crack shot of the camp, drew his revolver and, spurring his pony into a dead run, took quick aim at the black spot in the center and pulled the trigger. No answering shot came, and, although he tried all five of the chambers (no true cowboy or frontiersman ever carries six cartridges in his revolver) they were all silent.

Baldy jerked his pony up on its haunches, and carefully examined the cylinder. Sure enough every shell was there, but empty. Jack Gibson, who had followed Baldy, had the same luck, and when the rest came up a general investigation followed. It did not take them long to see that they had been tricked by some one. Their indignation knew no bounds. "Jes to think," said Big Pete, "s'posin' one of us ud a got inter a row, and some blame town galoot had a drawed a gun on him, wouldn't he 'a' been in a fine ole fix to 'a' jerked his 'hog-leg,' and nary a bean in the wheel?"

The more they thought about it the madder they got. Revenge they must have. What its form, they scarcely knew, nor cared. Without more talk, they all reloaded[Pg 209] the weapons from their well-filled belts and turned their horses' heads toward town, speculating as they rode along as to just what they would do to show the town of Horse Head the danger of monkeying with a cow puncher's weapons. As they rode, they hatched up a plan, suggested from the fertile brain of Mac, the horse-wrangler, which, they thought, if successfully carried out, would give them the requisite amount of satisfaction for their wounded dignity.

It was on Tex, the bartender, and Jenkins, the town marshal, that they poured out the vials of their wrath. Who else than they would have removed the cartridges from all those cylinders and replaced them with empty shells?

Now, they knew that Tex was the marshal's right-hand man when it came to any trouble, and that, during the shipping season, when the outfits were around town a good deal, each of them kept a horse in the corral back of the "Bucket of Blood," ready for any emergency. Arriving in town, they proceeded to get gloriously full again, while Tex and Jenkins, secure in the knowledge of those empty shells they had placed in their revolvers, enjoyed the fun and allowed them full play.

Along toward ten o'clock the boys drifted down to the only restaurant in Horse Head that kept open all night as well as all day. It was kept by "Chinese Louie," an almond-eyed celestial who ran a store, restaurant, wash-house, and the village photograph gallery, all under one long roof.

Now, when a puncher gets into a restaurant, the only[Pg 210] thing he craves is ham and eggs. Of beef he has a surfeit. The menu of the round-up wagon is coffee, bread, and meat three times a day, with awful regularity. Therefore, the gang was soon busy, seated on high stools at the long counter. After they had eaten their fill each wadded up his paper napkin and fired it at the cook, lit a cigar from the case at the end of the counter, and paid his bill.

Then the fun opened by some one pulling a revolver and taking a shot at the big kerosene lamp that hung from the ceiling. In an instant twenty shots were fired; every lamp in the place was out and bored full of holes; the fancy water cooler that sat in the corner was riddled; and the coffee and tea pots on the big range behind the counter, as well as a lot more tempting marks in the way of copper cooking utensils that hung overhead on a rack, were turned into sieves.

Poor Chinese Louie and his assistant lost no time in making themselves scarce; and, after it got too dark, for want of lamp-light, to see to shoot anything more, the now hilarious punchers swaggered out to their ponies, standing quietly at the "snorting post" in front of the restaurant, and with a parting volley up the main street toward the "Bucket of Blood," rode furiously out of town.

Instead of going straight on down the railroad track they turned sharp to the left, at the first corner, and headed for the county bridge which spanned the river at Horse Head, a wooden structure with huge beams overhead, and some six or seven spans long.

Just as they turned the corner out of the main street a couple of shots whistled past the bunch, proving that[Pg 211] Tex and the marshal were alive and in pursuit. This was what the boys wanted, and they gave shrill yells of defiance as they pounded through the heavy sand that covered the road to the bridge. They slowed down a little along here to give their pursuers a chance to catch up a little; and when the officers announced their coming, by more shots, some of which came rather close to the bunch of riders, they fired a few in reply, and thundered across the bridge at full speed, in spite of the warning sign that promised all sorts of fines and imprisonment for any one "riding across the bridge faster than a walk."

Along about the center span four of the boys, Baldy Peters, Jack Gibson, Dutch Henry, and Long Jim, dropped from their saddles, their ropes in their hands, and two on each side of the roadway, in the shelter of the huge beams, hastily made loops in their ropes, and awaited the coming of the two men. The rest of the gang clattered across the bridge with shrill whoops, and out on to the hard rocky road beyond, with the four loose horses following them, as if their riders were still on their backs.

Now, the four men on the bridge were the most skillful rope-tossers in all that range. Rope-tossers, instead of swinging the rope around their heads before throwing, spread it out behind and to one side of them, and with a quick, graceful throw, or toss, launch it with unerring aim over the head of the animal at which they throw. This method is used almost entirely in catching horses out of the "cavyyard," and also in catching calves out of a herd, as it is done so quietly and easily that the animal is snared before it has a chance to dodge or move.

Tex and the marshal were not quite so foolhardy or ignorant as to feel that they could capture and arrest the crowd they were after, but the marshal wanted that nomination in the fall, and felt it was a good chance to make a "rep" for himself. Tex was to be his chief deputy, if elected, so he was also eager to do something to prove his valor. Their idea, therefore, was to make a sort of grandstand play, follow the boys out a ways, fire a few shots after them at parting, and come back to town. Hearing them rattle across the bridge and out over the rocky road beyond, they feared no trap or ambush, and so kept riding in their wake, firing a shot every few seconds, as much to show the townspeople what they were up to, as anything else.

As they passed the spot where the four boys were awaiting them, four silent ropes settled down over the heads and shoulders of the luckless officers of the law. Going at full speed as they were, there was no chance to throw off those snakelike coils, and the two riders were jerked backward over their horses' hips and landed heavily upon the hard plank flooring of the bridge.

The marshal's six-shooter went off into the air as he wildly threw up his arms to clear his body of that python-like embrace, while the one Tex held in his hands flew off into space and dropped into the muddy waters below. Both men were stunned by the force of the fall, and lay as if dead on the bridge; but no sooner had they struck than they were promptly covered by the four men.

The avengers first took their small "hogging ropes" (a short piece of rope about six feet long, which every[Pg 213] well regulated puncher carries, either in his saddle pocket, or around his waist, to be used in tying together the feet of any cow or steer he might have to tie down on the ranges), and secured their prisoners' wrists firmly behind their backs; then they took a lariat rope and wound it round and round the men's bodies from shoulders to heels, so that moving their feet or arms was an impossibility. To do this was not hard, for both men were stunned from their fearful fall, and lay like logs, while the boys worked on them.

The end of another lariat was passed through under their arms, around the body, and tied in a "bow-line hitch" behind the back. The two luckless officers were by this time regaining consciousness, and began to curse and struggle, but to no avail. At first they feared they were to be hung, and begged for their lives like good fellows; but as they were swung off the edge of the bridge and found how they were lashed with ropes, they pleaded even more fervently, for it looked as if the boys meant to drown them like rats in a cage. All to no avail. The boys never answered a word, but went ahead with their work, in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. The ropes, tied as they were, suspended the men by the arms in such a way that they hung fairly upright, and without any particular pain or suffering from them.

Now, the water of the Puerco is about as vile-smelling and oleaginous stuff as any one ever saw, tasted, or smelled; indeed, the offensiveness of the water suggested the name of the river—"Nasty." Especially in time of floods does it deserve its name. The water then is more like thin gruel[Pg 214] of a yellowish red color, and smells to Heaven. Into this mess the conspirators slowly lowered the two officers of the law, regardless of their prayers, entreaties, threats, or curses, of which each of the two men poured out a liberal supply in tones to wake the dead.

A turn of the rope about one of the bridge rods served to check the speed of their descent, and while Baldy Peters got over the railing and down on to the stone abutment, that he might the better see how far to lower the men, the rest held onto the ropes and let them down.

Baldy, crouching low on the abutment, peered down into the darkness and gave orders for the work, so that when the two ropes were tied to a rod, each man was swinging in the water breast deep. He clambered back onto the bridge, and the four punchers hastened out into the darkness after the rest of the gang, who were waiting for them not far off.

The next morning about daybreak, four horsemen rode out of the camp and headed for the New Mexico line, across which they felt themselves reasonably safe; for they well knew that the marshal would never follow and bring them back to relate in court the way they outwitted him and Tex. All they feared was that he would take a shot at them the first time he got sight of them, as he certainly would have done had he ever "met up with" either of the guilty four.

The boys were "drifters," anyhow, as much at home in one place as another, and good hands were always in demand on the ranches in those days, so it mattered little where they brought up.

As for the marshal and Tex, their first impression was that they were to be lynched; then they thought that they were to drown, which was even worse; finally, however, when they realized what the boys really meant to do, their rage knew no bounds. The marshal would almost have preferred to be hung, for he quickly foresaw that when they were rescued, the ridicule the affair would cause throughout the county would everlastingly kill his chances for any office. Had they been hung, or even drowned, they would have been heroes, even though dead ones; but this trick would turn a laugh against them as long as they lived.

Luckily for the two unfortunates, right below the place from which they were lowered, instead of the river running in its regular channel, there was a great eddy, or swirl, where the water had cut a deep hole in the sandy river bed. Here the water was quite deep and had but little movement, except a slow circling motion. In this they swung at anchor, from midnight until broad daylight. The water caused the ropes to shrink and draw until they suffered a great deal where they cut into their wrists, making it an utter impossibility for them to untie the knots, although they worked diligently trying to get them loose in some way. The water was cold and their limbs soon became so numb that they could hardly move either hands or legs. They wore their voices out calling for help.

The boys, in lowering them down, had been cunning enough to fasten them far enough apart so they could not aid each other to get loose, and while from the motion of the water they occasionally bumped against one another,[Pg 216] they quickly drifted apart, as helpless as if in two strait-jackets.

About sunrise, a Mormon boy, belonging to a freighter outfit, which was camped over in town, going out after the horses which had been taken across the river the night before to graze, came whistling down the road to the bridge, and started to cross. As soon as his footfalls were heard on the flooring of the structure, the almost helpless men below roused and began to call as loudly as they were able with their numb lips and jaws chattering like castanets. It took him a minute or two to locate the voices.

The lad took one hasty look over the railing of the bridge, and, with a shriek of horror, fled toward town as fast as his feet could carry him. Here he told the first man he met that he had seen two bodies hanging to the bridge, and a crowd was soon on the way to the river, expecting to find the results of a vigilance committee suspended from the stringers.

The two men were quickly pulled up on to the bridge and the ropes that bound them like steel bands were cut from their bodies. Both men were so stiff that they had to be carried to town, and the doctor and several men worked over them for more than an hour trying to restore the circulation in their stiffened limbs and almost frozen bodies. The story of their capture set the whole town to laughing, and the more people laughed, the more ridiculous the happening grew. Nor did it lose anything in the telling and soon the entire county was also laughing over the misfortunes of the two peace officers. Jenkins' chief political opponent naturally made the most of it and under[Pg 217] such conditions that gentleman was literally laughed into political obscurity.

About that time the Wells-Fargo Express Company feared a hold-up on the railroad, and Jenkins and Tex, glad to leave the scene of their water-cure adventure, secured positions as guards and soon dropped out of polite society in Horse Head as represented by the gang around the "Bucket of Blood" and its immediate vicinity.

The next time they came to town the "Cross J" boys chipped in a dollar each and gave it to old "Dad," the cook, counted the luckiest "wheel" player in the bunch, who took the coin and with a burst of good luck soon ran it up to something over a hundred dollars at the roulette wheel. This entire amount he gave to Jackson the wagon boss, who went down to Chinese Louie's place, and poured it out on the counter before the heathen's astonished eyes, as a peace offering from the "shoot 'em up" crowd that had wrecked his place.

That night about midnight Louie and his assistant set out to the boys the very swellest "feed" his culinary abilities could prepare, and the affair of the shooting up of Horse Head and the putting of the marshal and his aid-de-camp to soak under the bridge in the cold nasty waters of the Rio Puerco was thus amicably settled over the viands that the Chinaman furnished.

Transcriber's notes:

The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.

she's a-grazin' and' it's a sure shot the calf's hid away in
she's a-grazin' an' it's a sure shot the calf's hid away in

It was the end of the road for the blue roan.
It was the end of the road for the blue-roan.

like videttes on guard over the canon.
like videttes on guard over the cañon.

deep box canons impassable for miles.
deep box cañons impassable for miles.

It brought very man in camp to his feet, for high above
It brought every man in camp to his feet, for high above

the Little Colorado River 'bout the mouth of the Canon
the Little Colorado River 'bout the mouth of the Cañon

"I'll never miss them spurs, said Bob pointing to an
"I'll never miss them spurs," said Bob pointing to an

steer round up" he asked of the new comer.
steer round up?" he asked of the newcomer.

burst from my eager lips."
burst from my eager lips.

I sent one of the boys back with the hoss, an tole him to
I sent one of the boys back with the hoss, an' tole him to

"Then the captain he sort of grins an' sez. 'That's
"Then the captain he sort of grins an' sez, 'That's

Then the captain, he bein' a fine old sojer man, with
"Then the captain, he bein' a fine old sojer man, with

iver seen in all his life. 'Twas sure no fault wid thim steers
iver seen in all his life. ''Twas sure no fault wid thim steers

of the Stars and' Stripes a-flyin' overhead. I was busy
of the Stars an' Stripes a-flyin' overhead. I was busy

Sunrise on the Desert (poem)	xi
The Blue-Roan "Outlaw"	1
Campin' Out	23
Popgun Plays Santa Claus	32
"Just Regulars"	45
The Stampede on the Turkey Track Range	58
The Navajo Turquoise Ring	74
An Arizona Etude	86
Stutterin' Andy	94
The Passing of Bill Jackson	104
The Tenderfoot from Yale	114
"Dummy"	123
The Mummy from the Grand Cañon	140
Jumping at Conclusions	149
Lost in the Petrified Forest	163
"Camel Huntin'"	174
The Trinidad Kid	184
"Pablo"	195
The Shooting up of Horse Head	206

Tales From The X-Bar Horse Camp

Contents

Illustrations

SUNRISE ON THE DESERT

The Blue-Roan "Outlaw"
A Tale of the "Hashknife" Range

CAMPIN' OUT
A Bit of Family Correspondence

POPGUN PLAYS SANTA CLAUS

"JUST REGULARS"

THE STAMPEDE ON THE TURKEY TRACK RANGE

THE COWBOY'S "SWEET BYE AND BYE"

1

CHORUS

2

3

4

5

6

7

THE NAVAJO TURQUOISE RING

AN ARIZONA ETUDE

STUTTERIN' ANDY

THE PASSING OF BILL JACKSON

THE TENDERFOOT FROM YALE

DUMMY

THE MUMMY FROM THE GRAND CAÑON

JUMPING AT CONCLUSIONS

LOST IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST

CAMEL HUNTIN'

THE TRINIDAD KID

PABLO

THE SHOOTING UP OF HORSE HEAD

The whole herd swam the Pecos in safety	8
Say, Dad, did you ever pack a burro?	23
Gibson managed to get everything in the two Kyacks carried by the mule	36
Apache squaw and baby	45
The men on day herd could hold them easily	58
Some prehistoric people had carved queer hieroglyphics on it	71
He was a picture of savage finery	78
Now the Navajos are famous silversmiths	78
The mess wagon was backed up into the shade	86
Andy done built a little log house	97
We had a fire lookout station	115
Out on the range 1200 ewes were grazing	128
He had a Navajo Squaw weaving blankets	144
He knows where there's a bunch of Cliff Dwellings	148
The sails of the wind mill flashed in the sunlight	153
We were camped over in the petrified forest	165
Hawk met a forest ranger leading a pack mule	197
They gave the money to Jackson, the Cross J boss	210

Tales From The X-Bar Horse Camp

Contents

Illustrations

The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" A Tale of the "Hashknife" Range

CAMPIN' OUT A Bit of Family Correspondence

THE COWBOY'S "SWEET BYE AND BYE"

1

CHORUS

2

3

4

5

6

7

CAMEL HUNTIN'

The Blue-Roan "Outlaw"
A Tale of the "Hashknife" Range

CAMPIN' OUT
A Bit of Family Correspondence