At that time I was assistant night city editor, and a special detail to interview the Man in the Moon was not precisely in the line of my normal duties. I was therefore greatly surprised (to put it conservatively) when, the morning before the ascent, Mr. Shanks, in whose family I was then living, routed me out of bed to say:

"See here, Ted, you know Barnum's balloon starts tomorrow on her trial for the record, but what you don't know is that we are in a hole. Before the ticket came every one wanted to go, from John R. G. Hassard down to the office boy. Now no one will go—all have funked it, and I suppose you will want to follow suit!"

Thus diplomatically put, the hinted assignment was not to be refused without too much personal chagrin.

So it happened that about 3.30 p.m. the next day I arrived at the Hippodrome, loaded down with wraps and a heavy basket nigh bursting with good things to eat and drink, which dear Mrs. Shanks had insisted on providing.

The Barnum was already filled with gas, tugging at her leash and swaying restlessly as if eager for the start. And right here, at first sight of the great sphere, I felt more nearly a downright fright than at any stage of the actual voyage; the balloon appeared such a hopelessly frail fabric to support even its own car and equipment. The light cord net enclosing the great gas-bag looked, aloft, where it towered above the roof, little more substantial than a film of lace; and to ascend in that balloon appeared about as safe a proposition as to enmesh a lion in a cobweb.

Already my four mates for the voyage were assembled about the basket, and Donaldson himself was busy with the last details of the equipment. My weighty lunch basket had from my mates even a heartier reception than I received, but their joy over the prospect of delving into its generous depths was short-lived. The load as Donaldson had planned it was all aboard, weight carefully adjusted to what he considered a proper excess lifting power to carry us safely up above any chance of a collision with another flagstaff, as on the day before above the Gilsey House. Thus the basket and all its bounty (save only a small flask of brandy I smuggled into a hip pocket) were given to a passing acrobat.

At 4 p.m. the old Hippodrome rang with applause; a brilliant equestrian act had just been finished. Suddenly the applause ceased and that awful hush fell upon the vast audience which is rarely experienced except in the presence of death or of some impending disaster! We had been seen to enter the basket, and people held their breath.

Released, the balloon bounded seven hundred feet the air, stood stationary for a moment, and then drifted northwest before the prevailing wind.

In this prodigious leap there was naught of the disagreeable sensation one experiences in a rapidly rising elevator. Instead it rather seemed that we were standing motionless, stationary in space, and that the earth itself had gotten loose and was dropping away beneath us to depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon, with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine, and hempen ropes and willow wands (the latter forming the basket), has always, while floating in mid-air free of the drag rope's tricks, the rigid homogeneity of a rock, a solidity that quickly inspires the most timid with perfect confidence in her security.

Ballast was thrown out by Donaldson,—a little. At Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street our altitude was 2,000 feet. The great city lay beneath us like an unrolled scroll. White and dusty, the streets looked like innumerable strips of Morse telegraph paper—the people the dots, the vehicles the dashes. Central Park, with its winding waters, was transformed into a superb mantle of dark green velvet splashed with silver, worthy of a royal fete. Behind us lay the sea, a vast field of glittering silver. Before us lay a wide expanse of Jersey's hills and dales that from our height appeared a plain, with many a reddish-gray splash upon its verdant stretches that indicated a village or a town.

Above and about us lay an immeasurable space of which we were the only tenants, and over which we began to feel a grand sense of dominion that wrapped us as in royal ermine: if we were not lords of this aerial manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay—home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith and gaze at the sun?

Indeed our sense of confidence became such that, while sitting on the edge of the basket to reach and pass Donaldson a rope he asked for, I leaned so far over that the bottle of brandy resting in my hip pocket slipped out and fell into the Hudson.

Oddly, Ford, who was the most experienced balloonist of the party after Donaldson himself, seemed most nervous and timid, but it was naught but an expression of that constitutional trouble (dizziness) so many have when looking down from even the minor height of a step-ladder. In all the long hours he was with us, I do not recall his once standing erect in the basket, and when others of us perched upon the basket's edge, he would beg us to come down. But mind, there was no lack of stark courage in Alfred Ford, sufficiently proved by the fact that he never missed a chance for an ascent.

But safe? Confident? Why, before we were up ten minutes, Lyons and MacKeever were sitting on the edge of the basket, with one hand holding to a stay, tossing out handfuls of small tissue paper circulars bearing "News from the Clouds." Many-colored, these little circulars as they fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant butter-flies, and we kept on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were wasting so much weight we should soon be out of easy view of the earth! Indeed, the balance of the balloon is so extremely fine that when a single handful of these little tissue circulars was thrown out, increased ascent was shown on the dial of our aneroid barometer!

At 4.30 p.m. we had drifted out over the Hudson at an altitude of 2,500 feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he hoped to be able to sail the Barnum at least three or four days.

"But," he added, "I shall certainly be unable, to carry all of you for so long a journey, and shall be compelled to drop you one by one. So you had best draw lots to settle whom I shall drop first, and in what order the rest shall follow."

Sailing then 2,500 feet above the earth, Lyons voiced a thought racing from my own brain for utterance when he blurted out: "What the deuce do you mean by 'drop' us?" Indeed, the question must have been on three other tongues as well, for Donaldson's reply, "Oh, descend to the earth and let you step out then," was greeted by all five of us with a salvo of deep, lusty sighs of relief.

Then we drew lots for the order of our going, MacKeever drawing first, Austin second, Lyons third, Ford fourth, and I fifth.

Meantime, beneath us on the river vessels which from our height looked like the toy craft on the lake in Central Park were whistling a shrill salute that, toned down by the distance, was really not unmusical.

Having crossed the Hudson and swept above Weehawken, we found ourselves cruising northwest over the marshes of the Hackensack.

As the heat of the declining sun lessened, our cooling gas contracted and the balloon sank steadily until at 5.10 we were 250 feet above the earth and 100 feet of our great drag rope was trailing on the ground. Within hailing distance of people beneath us, a curious condition was observed. We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not make them understand a word; our voices had to fill a sphere of air; theirs, with the earth beneath them, only a hemisphere. Thus the modern megaphone is especially useful to aeronauts.

Hereabouts our fun began. Many countrymen thought the balloon running away with us and tried to stop and save us—always by grasping the drag rope, bracing themselves, and trying literally to hold us; when the slack of the rope straightened, they performed somersaults such as our pilot vowed no acrobat could equal. And yet the balance of the balloon is so fine that even a child of ten can pull one down, if only it has strength enough to withstand occasional momentary lifts off the ground. Occasionally one more clever would run and take a quick turn of the rope about a gate or fence—and then spend the rest of the evening gathering the scattered fragments and repairing the damage.

And when there was not fun enough below, Donaldson himself would take a hand and put his steed through some of her fancy paces—as when, approaching a large lake, he told us to hold tightly to the stays, let out gas and dropped us, bang! upon the lake. Running at a speed of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, we hit the water with a tremendous shock, bounded thirty or forty feet into the air, descended again and literally skipped in great leaps along the surface of the water, precisely like a well-thrown "skipping stone." Then out went ballast and up and on we went, no worse for the fun beyond a pretty thorough wetting!

At 6.20 p.m. we landed on the farm of Garrett Harper in Bergen County, twenty-six miles from New York. After drinking our fill of milk at the farmhouse, we rose again and drifted north over Ramapo until, at 7.30, a dead calm came upon us and we made another descent. We then found that we had landed near Bladentown on the farm of Miss Charlotte Thompson, a charming actress of the day whose "Jane Eyre" and "Fanchon" are still pleasant memories to old theatre-goers. Loading our balloon with stones to anchor it, our party paid her a visit and were cordially received. An invitation to join us hazarded by Donaldson, Miss Thompson accepted with delight. I do not know if she is still living, but it she is, she cannot have forgotten her half-hour's cruise in the good airship Barnum, wafted silently by a gentle evening breeze, the lovely panorama beneath her half hid, half seen through the purple haze of twilight.

After landing Miss Thompson at 8.18 we ascended for the night, for a night's bivouac among the stars. The moon rose early. We were soon sailing over the Highlands of the Hudson. Off in the east we could see the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing through meadows, roaring over fences, crashing through tree-tops. And all night long we were continually ascending and descending, sinking into valleys and rising over hills, following closely the contours of the local topography.

During the more equable temperature of night the balloon's height is governed by the drag rope. Leaving a range of hills and floating out over a valley, the weight of the drag pulls the balloon down until the same length of rope is trailing through the valley that had been dragging on the hill. This habit of the balloon produces startling effects. Drifting swiftly toward a rocky precipitous hillside against which it seems inevitable you must dash to your death, suddenly the trailing drag rope reaches the lower slopes and you soar like a bird over the hill, often so low that the bottom of the basket swishes through the tree-tops.

But, while useful in conserving the balloon's energy, the drag rope is a source of constant peril to aeronauts, of terror to people on the earth, and of damage to property. It has a nasty clinging habit, winding round trees or other objects, that may at any moment upset basket and aeronauts. On this trip our drag rope tore sections out of scores of fences, upset many haystacks, injured horses and cattle that tried to run across it, whipped off many a chimney, broke telegraph wires, and seemed to take malicious delight in working some havoc with everything it touched.

At ten o'clock we sighted Cozzen's Hotel, and shortly drifted across the parade ground of West Point, its huge battlemented gray walls making one fancy he was looking down into the inner court of some great mediaeval castle. Then we drifted out over the Hudson toward Cold Spring until, caught by a different current, we were swept along the course of the river.

As we sailed over mid-stream and two hundred feet above it, with the tall cliffs and mysterious, dark recesses of the Highlands on either hand, the waters turned to a livid gray under the feeble light of the waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome shadows as no fancy could people with aught but gaunt goblins and dread demons, come down to us through generations untold, an unspent legacy of terror, from half-savage, superstitious ancestors.

Suddenly Ford spoke in a low voice: "Boys, I was in nine or ten battles of the Civil War, from Gaines's Mill to Gettysburg, but in none of them was there a scene which impressed me as so terrible as this, no situation that seemed to me so threatening of irresistible perils."

Nearing Fishkill at eleven, a land breeze caught and whisked us off eastward. At midnight we struck the town of Wappinger's Falls—and struck it hard. Our visitation is doubtless remembered there yet. The town was in darkness and asleep. We were running low before a stiff breeze, half our drag rope on the ground. The rope began to roar across roofs and upset chimneys with shrieks and crashes that set the folk within believing the end of the world had come. Instantly the streets were filled with flying white figures and the air with men's curses and women's screams. Three shots were fired beneath us. Two of our fellows said they heard the whistle of the balls, so Donaldson thought it prudent to throw out ballast and rise out of range.

Here the moon left us and we sailed on throughout the remainder of the night in utter darkness and without any extraordinary incident, all but the watch lying idly in the bottom of the basket viewing the stars and wondering what new mischief the drag rope might be planning.

The only duty of the watch was to lighten ship upon too near descent to the earth, and for this purpose a handful of Hippodrome circulars usually proved sufficient. Indeed, only eight pounds of ballast were used from the time we left Miss Thompson till dawn, barring a half-sack spent in getting out of range of the Wappinger's Falls sportsmen, who seemed to want to bag us.

Ford and Austin were assigned as the lookout from 12.00 to 2.00, Lyons and myself from 2.00 to 3.00, and Donaldson and MacKeever from 3.00 to 4.00.

From midnight till 3.00 a.m. Donaldson slept as peaceful as a baby, curled up in the basket with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us slept little through the night and talked less, each absorbed in the reflections and speculations inspired by our novel experience.

At the approach of dawn we had the most unique and extraordinary experience ever given to man. The balloon was sailing low in a deep valley. To the east of us the Berkshires rose steeply to summits probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under the mists of early morning and the shadows of the hills. No flush of dawn yet lit the sky. Donaldson had been consulting his watch, suddenly he rose and called, pointing eastward across the range:

"Watch, boys! Look there!"

He then quickly dumped overboard half the contents of a ballast bag. Flying upward like an arrow, the balloon soon shot up above the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a distant Berkshire hill, as if startled by our temerity.

Shortly thereafter, when we had descended to our usual level and were running swiftly before a stiff breeze over a rocky hillside, Donaldson yelled:

"Hang on, boys, for your lives!"

The end of the drag rope had gotten a hitch about a large tree limb. Luckily Donaldson had seen it in time to warn us, else we had there finished our careers. We had barely time to seize the stays when the rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down, spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and myself hanging in space by our hands, and the other four on the lower side of the basket, scrambling to save themselves. Instantly, of course, the basket righted and dropped back beneath us.

And then began a terrible struggle.

The pressure of the wind bore us down within a hundred feet of the ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out. The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood empty, and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry.

It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death. But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.

Happily the struggle was brief. The limb that held us snapped, and the balloon sprang forward in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-lash. But we were free, safe, and our stout vessel soon settled down to the velocity of the wind.

By this time we all were beginning to feel hungry, for we had supped the night before in mid-air from a lunch basket that held more delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and began looking for a likely place. At last he chose a little village, which upon near approach we learned lay in Columbia County of our own good State.

We called to two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a section or two of the fence fly into the air as if in pursuit of us.

Presently the heat of the rising sun expanded our gas and sent us up again 2,000 feet, making breakfast farther off than ever. Thus, it being clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas, Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely landed on mother earth, but not until after we had received a pretty severe pounding about, for such a high wind blew that the anchor was slow in holding.

This landing was made at 5.24 a.m. on the farm of John W. Coons near the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson City, and about one hundred and thirty miles from New York.

Here our pilot decided our vessel must be lightened of two men, and thus the lot drawn the night before compelled us to part, regretfully, with MacKeever of the Herald, and Austin of the World. Ford, however, owing allegiance to an afternoon paper, the Graphic, and always bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw an opportunity to win satisfaction greater even than that of keeping on with us. So he, too, left us here, with the result that the Graphic published a full story of the voyage up to this point, Saturday afternoon, the twenty-fifth, the Herald and the World trailed along for second place in their Sunday editions, while Sun and Tribune readers had to wait till Monday morning for such "News from the Clouds" as Lyons and I had to give them, for wires were not used as freely then as now.

Our departing mates brought us a rare good breakfast from Mr. Coons' generous kitchen—a fourteen-quart tin pail well-nigh filled with good things, among them two currant pies on yellow earthen plates, gigantic in size, pale of crust, though anything but anaemic of contents. Lyons finished nearly the half of one before our reascent, to his sorrow, for scarcely were we off the earth before he developed a colic that seemed to interest him more, right up to the finish of the trip, than the scenery.

Bidding our mates good-bye, we prepared to reascend. Many farmers had been about us holding to our ropes and leaning on the basket, and later we realized we had not taken in sufficient ballast to offset the weight of the three men who had left us.

Released, the balloon sprang upward at a pace that all but took our breath away. Instantly the earth disappeared beneath us. We saw Donaldson pull the safety valve wide open, draw his sheath knife ready to cut the drag rope, standing rigid, with his eyes riveted upon the aneroid barometer. The hand of the barometer was sweeping across the dial at a terrific rate. I glanced at Donaldson and saw him smile. Then I looked back the barometer and saw the hand had stopped—at 10,200 feet! How long we were ascending we did not know. Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in little more than a minute.

Presently Donaldson observed the anchor and grapnel had come up badly clogged with sod, and a good heavy tug he and I had of it to pull them in, for Lyons was still much too busy with his currant pie to help us. Nor indeed were the currant pies yet done with us, for at the end of our tug at the anchor rope, I found had been kneeling very precisely in the middle of pie No. 2, and had contrived to absorb most of it into the knees of my trousers. Thus at the end of the day, come to Saratoga after all shops were closed, I had to run the gauntlet of the porch and office crowd of visitors at the United States Hotel in a condition that only needed moccasins and a war bonnet to make me a tolerable imitation of an Indian.

We remained aloft at an altitude of one or two and one half miles for three hours and a half, stayed there until the silence became intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have been music to our ears. Here was absolute silence, the silence of the grave and death, a silence never to be experienced by living man in any terrestrial condition.

Occasionally the misty clouds in which we hung enshrouded parted beneath us and gave us glimpses of distant earth, opened and disclosed landscapes of infinite beauty set in grey nebulous frames. Once we passed above a thunderstorm, saw the lightning play beneath us, felt our whole fabric tremble at its shock—and were glad enough when we had left it well behind. Seen from a great height, the earth looked to be a vast expanse of dark green velvet, sometimes shaded to a deeper hue by cloudlets floating beneath the sun, splashed here with the silver and there with the gold garniture reflected from rippling waters.

Toward noon we descended beneath the region of clouds into the realm of light and life, and found ourselves hovering above the Mountain House of the Catskills. And thereabouts we drifted in cross-currents until nearly 4.00 p.m., when a heavy southerly gale struck us and swept us rapidly northward past Albany at a pace faster than I have ever travelled on a railway.

We still had ballast enough left to assure ten or twelve hours more travel. But we did not like our course. The prospects were that we would end our voyage in the wilderness two hundred or more miles north of Ottawa. So we rose to 12,500 feet, seeking an easterly or westerly current, but without avail. We could not escape the southerly gale. Prudence, therefore, dictated a landing before nightfall. Landing in the high gale was both difficult and dangerous, and was not accomplished until we were all much bruised and scratched in the oak thicket Donaldson chose for our descent.

Thus the first voyage of the good airship Barnum ended at 6.07 p.m. on the farm of E. R. Young, nine miles north of Saratoga.

A year later the Barnum rose for the last time—from Chicago—and to this day the fate of the stanch craft and her brave captain remains an unsolved mystery.



CHAPTER VII

THE EVOLUTION OF A TRAIN ROBBER

Life was never dull in Grant County, New Mexico, in the early eighties. There was always something doing—usually something the average law-abiding, peace-loving citizen would have been glad enough to dispense with. To say that life then and there was insecure is to describe altogether too feebly a state of society and an environment wherein Death, in one violent form or another, was ever abroad, seldom long idle, always alert for victims.

When the San Carlos Apaches, under Victoria, Ju, or Geronimo, were not out gunning for the whites, the whites were usually out gunning for one another over some trivial difference. Everybody carried a gun and was more or less handy with it. Indeed, it was a downright bad plan to carry one unless you were handy. For with gunning—the game most played, if not precisely the most popular—every one was supposed to be familiar with the rules and to know how to play; and in a game where every hand is sure to be "called," no one ever suspected another of being out on a sheer "bluff." Thus the coroner invariably declared it a case of suicide where one man drew a gun on another and failed to use it.

This highly explosive state of society was not due to the fact that there were few peaceable men in the country for there were many of them, men of character and education, honest, and as law-abiding as their peculiar environment would permit. Moreover, the percentage of professional "bad men"—and this was a profession then—was comparatively small. It was due rather to the fact that every one, no matter how peaceable his inclinations, was compelled to carry arms habitually for self-defence, for the Apaches were constantly raiding outside the towns, and white outlaws inside. And with any class of men who constantly carry arms, it always falls out that a weapon is the arbiter of even those minor personal differences which in the older and more effete civilization of the East are settled with fists or in a petty court.

The prevailing local contempt for any man who was too timid to "put up a gun fight" when the etiquette of a situation demanded it, was expressed locally in the phrase that one "could take a corncob and a lightning bug and make him run himself to death trying to get away." It is clearly unnecessary to explain why the few men of this sort in the community did not occupy positions of any particular prominence. Their opinions did not seem to carry as much weight as those of other gentlemen who were known to be notably quick to draw and shoot.

I even recall many instances where the pistol entered into the pastimes of the community. One instance will stand telling:

A game of poker (rather a stiff one) had been going on for about a fortnight in the Red Light Saloon. The same group of men, five or six old friends, made up the game every day. All had varying success but one, who lost every day. And, come to think of it, his luck varied too, for some days he lost more than others. While he did not say much about his losings, it was observed that temper was not improving.

This sort of thing went on for thirteen days. The thirteenth day the loser happened to come in a little late, after the game was started. It also happened that on this particular day one of the players had brought in a friend, a stranger in the town, to join the game, When the loser came in, therefore, he was introduced to the stranger and sat down. A hand was dealt him. He started to play it, stopped, rapped on the table attention, and said:

"Boys, I want to make a personal explanation to this yere stranger. Stranger, this yere game is sure a tight wad for a smoothbore. I'm loser in it, an' a heavy one, for exactly thirteen days, and these boys all understand that the first son of a gun I find I can beat, I'm going to take a six-shooter an' make him play with me a week. Now, if you has no objections to my rules, you can draw cards."

Luckily for the stranger, perhaps, the thirteenth was as bad for the loser as its predecessors.

Outside the towns there were only three occupations in Grant County in those years, cattle ranching, mining and fighting Apaches, all of a sort to attract and hold none but the sturdiest types of real manhood, men inured to danger and reckless of it. In the early eighties no faint-heart came to Grant County unless he blundered in—and any such were soon burning the shortest trail out. These men were never better described in a line than when, years ago, at a banquet of California Forty-niners, Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, speaking of the splendid types the men of forty-nine represented, said:

"The cowards never started, and all the weak died on the road!"

Within the towns, also, there were only three occupations: first, supplying the cowmen and miners whatever they needed, merchandise wet and dry, law mundane and spiritual, for although neither court nor churches were working overtime, they were available for the few who had any use for them; second, gambling, at monte, poker, or faro; and, third, figuring how to slip through the next twenty-four hours without getting a heavier load of lead in one's system than could be conveniently carried, or how to stay happily half shot and yet avoid coming home on a shutter, unhappily shot, or, having an active enemy on hand, how best to "get" him.

Thus, while plainly the occupations of Grant County folk were somewhat limited in variety, in the matter of interest and excitement their games were wide open and the roof off.

Nor did all the perils to life in Grant County lurk within the burnished grooves of a gun barrel, according to certain local points of view, for always it is the most unusual that most alarms, as when one of my cowboys "allowed he'd go to town for a week," and was back on the ranch the evening of the second day. Asked why he was back so soon, he replied:

"Well, fellers, one o' them big depot water tanks burnt plumb up this mawnin', an' reckonin' whar that'd happen a feller might ketch fire anywhere in them little old town trails, I jes' nachally pulled my freight for camp!"

But a cowboy is the subject of this story—Kit Joy. His genus, and striking types of the genus, have been cleverly described, especially by Lewis and by Adams (some day I hope to meet Andy) that I need say little of it here. Still, one of the cowboy's most notable and most admirable traits has not been emphasized so much as it deserves: I mean his downright reverence and respect for womanhood. No real cowboy ever wilfully insulted any woman, or lost a chance to resent any insult offered by another. Indeed, it was an article of the cowboy creed never broken, and all well knew it. So it happened that when one day a cowboy, in a crowded car of a train held up by bandits, was appealed to by an Eastern lady in the next seat,—

"Heavens! I have four hundred dollars in my purse which I cannot afford to lose; please, sir, tell me how I can hide it."

Instantly came the answer:

"Shucks! miss, stick it in yer sock; them fellers has nerve enough to hold up a train an' kill any feller that puts up a fight, but nary one o' them has nerve enough to go into a woman's sock after her bank roll!"

Kit Joy was a cowboy working on the X ranch on the Gila. He was a youngster little over twenty. It was said of him that he had left behind him in Texas more or less history not best written in black ink, but whether this was true or not I do not know. Certain it is that he was a reckless dare-devil, always foremost in the little amenities cowboys loved to indulge in when they came to town such as shooting out the lights in saloons and generally "shelling up the settlement,"—which meant taking a friendly shot at about everything that showed up on the streets. Nevertheless, Kit in the main was thoroughly good-natured and amiable.

Early in his career in Silver City it was observed that perhaps his most distinguishing trait was curiosity. Ultimately his curiosity got him into trouble, as it does most people who indulge it. His first display of curiosity in Silver was a very great surprise, even to those who knew him best. It was also a disappointment.

A tenderfoot, newly arrived, appeared on the streets one day in knickerbockers and stockings. Kit was in town and was observed watching the tenderfoot. To the average cowboy a silk top hat was like a red flag to a bull, so much like it in fact that the hat was usually lucky to escape with less than half a dozen holes through it. But here in these knee-breeches and stockings was something much more bizarre and exasperating than a top hat, from a cowboy's point of view. The effect on Kit was therefore closely watched by the bystanders.

No one fancied for a moment that Kit would do less than undertake to teach the tenderfoot "the cowboy's hornpipe," not a particularly graceful but a very quick step, which is danced most artistically when a bystander is shooting at the dancer's toes. Indeed, the ball was expected to open early. To every one's surprise and disappointment, it did not. Instead, Kit dropped in behind the tenderfoot and began to follow him about town—followed him for at least an hour. Every one thought he was studying up some more unique penalty for the tenderfoot. But they were wrong, all wrong.

As a matter of fact. Kit was so far consumed with curiosity that he forgot everything else, forgot even to be angry. At last, when he could stand it no longer, he walked up to the tenderfoot, detained him gently by the sleeve and asked in a tone of real sympathy and concern: "Say, mistah! 'Fo' God, won't yo' mah let yo' wear long pants?"

Naturally the tenderfoot's indignation was aroused and expressed, but Kit's sympathies for a man condemned to such a juvenile costume were so far stirred that he took no notice of it.

Kit was a typical cowboy, industrious, faithful, uncomplaining, of the good old Southern Texas breed. In the saddle from daylight till dark, riding completely down to the last jump in them two or three horses a day, it never occurred to him even to growl when a stormy night, with thunder and lightning, prolonged his customary three-hour's turn at night guard round the herd to an all-night's vigil. He took it as a matter of course. And his rope and running iron were ever ready, and his weather eye alert for a chance to catch and decorate with the X brand any stray cattle that ventured within his range. This was a peculiar phase of cowboy character. While not himself profiting a penny by these inroads on neighboring herds, he was never quite so happy as when he had added another maverick to the herd bearing his employer's brand, an increase always obtained at the expense of some of the neighbors.

One night on the Spring round-up, the day's work finished, supper eaten, the night horses caught and saddled, the herd in hand driven into a close circle and bedded down for the night in a little glade in the hills, Kit was standing first relief. The day's drive had been a heavy one, the herd was well grazed and watered in the late afternoon, the night was fine; and so the twelve hundred or fifteen hundred cattle in the herd were lying down quietly, giving no trouble to the night herders. Kit, therefore, was jogging slowly round the herd, softly jingling his spurs and humming some rude love song of the sultry sort cowboys never tire of repeating. The stillness of the night superinduced reflection. With naught to interrupt it, Kit's curiosity ran farther afield than usual.

Recently down at Lordsburg, with the outfit shipping a train load of beeves, he had seen the Overland Express empty its load of passengers for supper, a crowd of well-dressed men and women, the latter brilliant with the bright colors cowboys love and with glittering gems. To-night he got to thinking about them.

Wherever did they all come from? How ever did they get so much money? Surely they must come from 'Frisco. No lesser place could possibly turn out such magnificence. Then Kit let his fancy wander off into crude cowboy visions of what 'Frisco might be like, for he had never seen a city.

"What a buster of a town 'Frisco must be!" Kit soliloquized. "Must have more'n a hundred saloons an' more slick gals than the X brand has heifers. What a lot o' fun a feller could have out thar! Only I reckon them gals wouldn't look at him more'n about onct unless he was well fixed for dough. Reckon they don't drink nothin' but wine out thar, nor eat nothin' but oysters. An' wine an' oysters costs money, oodles o' money! That's the worst of it! S'pose it'd take more'n a month's pay to git a feller out thar on the kiars, an' then about three months' pay to git to stay a week. Reckon that's jes' a little too rich for Kit's blood. But, jiminy! Wouldn't I like to have a good, big, fat bank roll an' go thar!"

Here was a crisis suddenly come in Kit's life, although he did not then realize it. It is entirely improbable he had ever before felt the want of money. His monthly pay of thirty-five dollars enabled him to sport a pearl-handled six-shooter and silver-mounted bridle bit and spurs, kept him well clothed, and gave him an occasional spree in town. What more could any reasonable cowboy ask?

But to-night the very elements and all nature were against him. Even a light dash of rain to rouse the sleeping herd, or a hungry cow straying out into the darkness, would have been sufficient to divert and probably save him; but nothing happened. The night continued fine. The herd slept on. And Kit was thus left an easy prey, since covetousness had come to aid curiosity in compassing his ruin.

"A bank roll! A big, fat, full-grown, long-horned, four-year-old roll! That's what a feller wants to do 'Frisco right. Nothin' less. But whar's it comin' from, an' when? S'pose I brands a few mavericks an' gits a start on my own? No use, Kit; that's too slow! Time you got a proper roll you'd be so old the skeeters wouldn't even bite you, to say nothin' of a gal a-kissin' of you. 'Pears like you ain't liable to git thar very quick, Kit, 'less you rustles mighty peart somewhar. Talkin' of rustlin', what's the matter with that anyway?"

A cold glitter came in Kit's light blue eyes. The muscles of his lean, square jaws worked nervously. His right hand dropped caressingly on the handle of his pistol.

"That's the proper caper, Kit. Why didn't you think of it before? Rustle, damn you, an', ef you're any good, mebbe so you can git to 'Frisco afore frost comes, or anywhere else you likes. Rustle! By jiminy, I've got it; I'll jes' stand up that thar Overland Express. Them fellers what rides on it's got more'n they've got any sort o' use for. What's the matter with makin' 'em whack up with a feller! 'Course they'll kick, an' thar'll be a whole passle o' marshals an' sheriffs out after you, but what o' that? Reckon Old Blue'll carry you out o' range. He's the longest-winded chunk o' horse meat in these parts. Then you'll have to stay out strictly on the scout fer a few weeks, till they gits tired o' huntin' of you, so you can slip out o' this yere neck o' woods 'thout leavin' a trail.

"An' Lord! but won't it be fun! 'Bout as much fun, I reckon, as doin' 'Frisco. Won't them tenderfeet beller when they hears the guns a-crackin' an' the boys a-yellin'! Le' see; wonder who I'd better take along?"

Scruples? Kit had none. Bred and raised a merry freebooter on the unbranded spoils of the cattle range, it was no long step from stealing a maverick to holding up a train.

With a man of perhaps any other class, a plan to engage in a new business enterprise of so much greater magnitude than any of those he had been accustomed to would have been made the subject of long consideration. Not so with Kit. Cowboy life compels a man to think quickly, and often to act quicker than he finds it convenient to think. The hand skilled to catch the one possible instant when the wide, circling loop of the lariat may be successfully thrown, and the eye and finger trained to accurate snap-shooting, do not well go with a mind likely to be long in reaching a resolution or slow to execute one.

So Kit at once began to cast about for two or three of the right sort of boys to join him. Three were quickly chosen out of his own and a neighboring outfit. They were Mitch Lee and Taggart, two white cowboys of his own type and temper, and George Cleveland, a negro, known as a desperate fellow, game for anything. It needed no great argument to secure the co-operation of these men. A mere tip of the lark and the loot to be had was enough.

The boys saw their respective bosses. They "allowed they'd lay off for a few days and go to town." So they were paid off, slung their Winchesters on their saddles, mounted their favorite horses, and rode away. They met in Silver City, coming in singly. There they purchased a few provisions. Then they separated and rode singly out of town, to rendezvous at a certain point on the Miembres River.

The point of attack chosen was the little station of Gage (tended by a lone operator), on the Southern Pacific Railway west of Deming, a point then reached by the west-bound express at twilight. The evening of the second day after leaving the Gila, Kit and his three compadres rode into Gage. One or two significant passes with a six-shooter hypnotized the station agent into a docile tool. A dim red light glimmered away off in the east. As the minutes passed, it grew and brightened fast. Then a faint, confused murmur came singing over the rails to the ears of the waiting bandits. The light brightened and grew until it looked like a great dull red sun, and then the thunder of the train was heard.

Time for action had come!

The agent was made to signal the engineer to stop. With lever reversed and air brakes on, the train was nearly stopped when the engine reached the station. But seeing the agent surrounded by a group of armed men, the engineer shut off the air and sought to throw his throttle open. His purpose discovered, a quick snapshot from Mitch Lee laid him dead, and, springing into the cab, Mitch soon persuaded the fireman to stop the train.

Instantly a fusillade of pistol shots and a mad chorus of shrill cowboy yells broke out, that terrorized train crew and passengers into docility.

Within fifteen minutes the express car was sacked, the postal car gutted, the passengers were laid under unwilling contribution, and Kit and his pals were riding northward into the night, heavily loaded with loot. Riding at great speed due north, the party soon reached the main travelled road up the Miembres, in whose loose drifting sands they knew their trail could not be picked up. Still forcing the pace, they reached the rough hill-country east of Silver early in the night, cached their plunder safely, and a little after midnight were carelessly bucking a monte game in a Silver City saloon. The next afternoon they quietly rode out of town and joined their respective outfits, to wait until the excitement should blow over.

Of course the telegraph soon started the hue and cry. Officers from Silver, Deming, and Lordsburg were soon on the ground, led by Harvey Whitehill, the famous old sheriff of Grant County. But of clue there was none. Naturally the station agent had come safely out of his trance, but with that absence of memory of what had happened characteristic of the hypnotized. The trail disappeared in the sands of the Miembres road. Shrewd old Harvey Whitehill was at his wits' end.

Many days passed in fruitless search. At last, riding one day across the plain at some distance from the line of flight north from Gage, Whitehill found a fragment of a Kansas newspaper. As soon as he saw it he remembered that a certain merchant of Silver came from the Kansas town where this paper was published. Hurrying back to Silver, Whitehill saw the merchant, who identified the paper and said that he undoubtedly was its only subscriber in Silver. Asked if he had given a copy to any one, he finally recalled that some time before, about the period of the robbery, he had wrapped in a piece this newspaper some provisions he had sold to a negro named Cleveland and a white man he did not know.

Here was the clue, and Whitehill was quick to follow it. Meeting a negro on the street, he pretended to want to hire a cook. The negro had a job. Well, did he not know some one else? By the way, where was George Cleveland?

"Oh, boss, he done left de Gila dis week an' gone ober to Socorro," was the answer.

Two days later Whitehill found Cleveland in a Socorro restaurant, got the "drop" on him, told him his pals were arrested and had confessed that they were in the robbery, but that he, Cleveland, had killed Engineer Webster. This brought the whole story.

"'Foh God, boss, I nebber killed dat engineer. Mitch Lee done it, an' him an' Taggart an' Kit Joy, dey done lied to you outrageous."

Within a few days, caught singly, in ignorance of Cleveland's arrest, and taken completely by surprise, Joy, Taggart, and Lee were captured on the Gila and jailed, along with Cleveland, at Silver City, held to await the action of the next grand jury.

But strong walls did not a prison make adequate hold these men. Before many weeks passed, an escape was planned and executed. Two other prisoners, one a man wanted in Arizona, and the other a Mexican horse-thief, were allowed to participate in the outbreak.

Taken unawares, their guard was seized and bound with little difficulty. Quickly arming themselves in the jail office, these six desperate men dashed out of the jail and into a neighboring livery stable, seized horses, mounted, and rode madly out of town, firing at every one in sight. In Silver in those days no gentleman's trousers fitted comfortably without a pistol stuck in the waistband. Therefore, the flying desperadoes received as hot a fire as they sent. By this fire Cleveland's horse was killed before they got out of town, but one of his pals stopped and picked him up.

Instantly the town was in an uproar of excitement. Every one knew that the capture of these men meant a fight to the death. As usual in such emergencies, there were more talkers than fighters. Nevertheless, six men were in pursuit as soon as they could saddle and mount. The first to start was the driver of an express wagon, a man named Jackson, who cut his horse loose from the traces, mounted bareback, and flew out of town only a few hundred yards behind the prisoners. Six others, led by Charlie Shannon and La Fer, were not far behind Jackson. The men of this party were greatly surprised to find that a Boston boy of twenty, a tenderfoot lately come to town, who had scarcely ever ridden a horse or fired a rifle, was among their number, well mounted and armed—a man with a line of ancestry worth while, and himself a worthy survival of the best of it.

The chase was hot. Jackson was well in advance, engaging the fugitives with his pistol, while the fugitives were returning the fire and throwing up puffs of dust all about Jackson. Behind spurred Shannon and his party.

At length the pursuit gained. Five miles out of Silver, in the Pinon Hills to the northwest, too close pressed to run farther, the fugitives sprang from their horses and ran into a low post oak thicket covering about two acres, where, crouching, they could not be seen. The six pursuers sent back a man to guide the sheriff's party and hasten reinforcements, and began shelling the thicket and surrounding it. A few minutes later Whitehill rode up with seven more men, and the thicket was effectually surrounded. To the surprise of every one, a hot fire poured into the thicket failed to bring a single answering shot. Whitehill was no man to waste ammunition on such chance firing, so he ordered a charge. His little command rode into and through the thicket at full speed, only to find their quarry gone, gone all save one. The Mexican lay dead, shot through the head! Kit's party had dashed through the thicket without stopping, on to another, and their trail was shortly found leading up a rugged canon of the Pinos Altos Range.

Whitehill divided his party. Three men followed up the bottom of the canon on foot, five mounted flankers were thrown out on either side. At last, high up the canon, Kit's party was found at bay, lying in some thick underbrush. It was a desperate position to attack, but the pursuers did not hesitate. Dismounting, they advanced on foot with rifles cocked, but with all the caution of a hunter trailing a wounded grizzly. The negro opened the ball at barely twenty yards' range with a shot that drove a hole through the Boston boy's hat. Dropping at first with surprise, for he had not seen the negro till the instant he rose to fire, the Boston boy returned a quick shot that happened to hit the negro just above the centre of the forehead and rolled him over dead.

Approaching from another direction, Shannon was first to draw Taggart's file. Taggart was lying hidden in the brush; Shannon standing out in the open. Shot after shot they exchanged, until presently a ball struck the earth in front of Taggart's face and filled his eyes full of gravel and sand. Blinded for the time, he called for quarter, and came out of the brush with his hands up and another man with him. Asked for his pistol, Taggart replied:

"Damn you, that's empty, or I'd be shooting yet."

Meantime, Whitehill was engaging Mitch Lee. In a few minutes, shot through and helpless, Lee surrendered.

It was quick, hot work!

All but Kit were now killed or captured. He had been separated from his party, and La Fer was seen trailing him on a neighboring hillside.

At this juncture the sheriff detailed Shannon to return to town and get a wagon to bring in the dead and wounded, while he started to join La Fer in pursuit of Kit.

An hour later, as Shannon was leaving town with a wagon to return to the scene of the fight, a mob of men, led by a shyster lawyer, joined him and swore they proposed to lynch the prisoners. This was too much for Shannon's sense of frontier proprieties. So, rising in his wagon, he made a brief but effective speech.

"Boys, none of our men are hurt, although it is no fault of our prisoners. A dozen of us have gone out and risked our lives to capture these men. You men have not seen fit, for what motives we will not discuss, to help us. Now, I tell you right here that any who want can come, but the first man to raise a hand against a prisoner I'll kill."

Shannon's return escort was small.

But once more back in the hills of the Pinos Altos, Shannon found a storm raised he could not quell, even if his own sympathies had not drifted with it when he learned its cause. His friend La Fer lay dead, filled full of buckshot by Kit before Whitehill's reinforcements had reached him, while Kit had slipped away through the underbrush, over rocks that left no trail.

La Fer's death maddened his friends. There was little discussion. Only one opinion prevailed. Taggart and Lee must die.

Nothing was known of the prisoner wanted in Arizona, so he was spared.

Taggart and Lee were put in the wagon, the former tightly bound, the latter helpless from his wound. Short rope halters barely five feet long were stripped from the horses, knotted round the prisoners' necks, and fastened to the limb of a juniper tree. Taggart climbed to the high wagon seat, took a header and broke his neck. The wagon was then pulled away and Lee strangled.

With Cleveland, Lee, and Taggart dead, Engineer Webster and La Fer were fairly well avenged. But Kit was still out, known as the leader and the man who shot La Fer, and for days the hills were full of men hunting him. Hiding in the rugged, thickly timbered hills of the Gila, taking needed food at night, at the muzzle of his gun, from some isolated ranch, he was hard to capture.

Had Kit chosen to mount himself and ride out of the country, he might have escaped for good. But this he would not do. Dominated still by the fatal curiosity and covetousness that first possessed him, later mastered him, and then drove him into crime, bound to repossess himself of his hidden treasure and go out to see the world, Kit would not leave the Gila. He was alone, unaided, with no man left his friend, with all men on the alert to capture or to kill him, the unequal contest nevertheless lasted for many weeks.

There was only one man Kit at all trusted, a "nester" (small ranchman) named Racketty Smith. One day, looking out from a leafy thicket in which he lay hid, saw Racketty going along the road. A lonely outcast, craving the sound of a human voice, believing Racketty at least neutral, Kit hailed him and approached. As he drew near, Racketty covered him with his rifle and ordered him to surrender. Surprised, taken entirely unawares, Kit started to jump for cover, when Racketty fired, shattered his right leg and brought him to earth. To spring upon and disarm Kit was the work of an instant.

Kit was sentenced to imprisonment at Santa Fe. A few years ago, having gained three years by good behavior, Kit was released, after having served fourteen years.

However Kit may still hanker for "a big, fat, four-year-old, long-horned bank roll," and whatever may be his curiosity to "do 'Frisco proper," it is not likely he will make any more history as a train robber, for at heart Kit was always a better "good man" than "bad man."



CHAPTER VIII

CIRCUS DAY AT MANCOS

Cowboys were seldom respecters of the feelings of their fellows. Few topics were so sacred or incidents so grave they were not made the subject of the rawest jests. Leading a life of such stirring adventure that few days passed without some more or less serious mishap, reckless of life, unheedful alike of time and eternity, they made the smallest trifles and the biggest tragedies the subjects of chaff and badinage till the next diverting occurrence. But to the Cross Canon outfit Mat Barlow's love for Netty Nevins was so obviously a downright worship, an all-absorbing, dominating cult, that, in a way, and all unknown to her, she became the nearest thing to a religion the Cross Canonites ever had.

Eight years before Mat had come among them a green tenderfoot from a South Missouri village, picked up in Durango by Tom McTigh, the foreman, on a glint of the eye and set of the jaw that suggested workable material. Nor was McTigh mistaken. Mat took to range work like a duck to water. Within a year he could rope and tie a mossback with the best, and in scraps with Mancos Jim's Pah-Ute horse raiders had proved himself as careless a dare-devil as the oldest and toughest trigger-twitcher of the lot.

But persuade and cajole as much as they liked, none of the outfit were ever able to induce Mat to pursue his education as a cowboy beyond the details incident to work and frolic on the open range. Old past-masters in the classics of cowboy town deportment, expert light shooters, monte players, dance-hall beaux, elbow-crookers, and red-eye riot-starters labored faithfully with Mat, but, all to no purpose. To town with them he went, but with them in their debauches he never joined; indeed as a rule he even refused to discuss such incidents with them academically. Thus he delicately but plainly made it known to the outfit that he proposed to keep his mind as clean as his conduct.

Such a curiosity as Mat was naturally closely studied. The combined intelligence of the outfit was trained upon him, for some time without result. He was the knottiest puzzle that ever hit Cross Canon. At first he was suspected of religious scruples and nicknamed "Circuit Rider." But presently it became apparent that he owned ability and will to curse a fighting outlaw bronco till the burning desert air felt chill, and it became plain he feared God as little as man. Mat had joined the outfit in the Autumn, when for several weeks it was on the jump; first gathering and shipping beeves, then branding calves, lastly moving the herd down to its Winter range on the San Juan. Throughout this period Cross Canon's puzzle remained hopeless; but the very first evening after the outfit went into Winter quarters at the home ranch, the puzzle was solved.

Ranch mails were always small, no matter how infrequent their coming or how large the outfit. The owner's business involved little correspondence, the boys' sentiments inspired less. Few with close home-ties exiled themselves on the range. Many were "on the scout" from the scene of some remote shooting scrape and known by no other than a nickname. For most of them such was the rarity of letters that often have I seen a cowboy turning and studying an unopened envelope for a half-day or more, wondering whoever it was from and guessing whatever its contents could be. Thus it was one of the great sensations of the season for McTigh and his red-sashers, when the ranch cook produced five letters for Circuit Rider, all addressed in the same neat feminine hand, all bearing the same post mark. And when, while the rest were washing for supper, disposing of war sacks, or "making down" blankets, Mat squatted in the chimney corner to read his letters, Lee Skeats impressively whispered to Priest:

"Ben, I jest nachally hope never to cock another gun ef that thar little ol' Circuit hain't got a gal that's stuck to him tighter'n a tick makin' a gotch ear, or that ain't got airy damn thing to do to hum but write letters. Size o' them five he's got must 'a kept her settin' up nights to make 'em ever since Circuit jumped the hum reservation. Did you ever hear of a feller gettin' five letters from a gal to wonst?"

"I shore never did," answered Ben; "Circuit must 'a been 'prentice to some big Medicine Man back among his tribe and have a bagful o' hoodoos hid out somewhere. He ain't so damn hijus to look at, but he shore never knocked no gal plum loco that away with his p'rsn'l beauty. Must be some sort o' Injun medicine he works."

"Ca'n't be from his mother," cogitated Lee. "Writin' ain't trembly none—looks like it was writ by a school-marm, an' a lally-cooler at that. Circuit will have to git one o' them pianer-like writin' makers and keep poundin' it on the back till it hollers, ef he allows to lope close up in that gal's writin' class.

"Lord! but won't thar be fun for us all Winter he'pin' him 'tend to his correspondence!

"Let's you an' me slip round and tip off the outfit to shet up till after supper, an' then all be ready with a hot line o' useful hints 'bout his answerin' her."

Ben joyously fell in with Lee's plan. The tips were quickly passed round. But none of the hints were ever given, not a single one. A facer lay ahead of them beside which the mere receipt of the five letters was nothing. To be sure, the letters were the greatest sensation the outfit had enjoyed since they stood off successfully two troops of U. S. Cavalry, come to arrest them for killing twenty maurauding Utes. But what soon followed filled them with an astonishment that stilled their mischievous tongues, stirred sentiments long dormant, and ultimately, in a measure, tuned their own heart-strings into chord with the sweet melody ringing over Circuit's own.

Supper was called, and upon it the outfit fell—all but Circuit. They attacked it wolf-fashion according to their habit, bolting the steaming food in a silence absolute but for the crunching of jaws and the shrill hiss of sipped coffee. The meal was half over before Circuit, the last letter finished, tucked his five treasures inside his shirt, stepped over the bench to a vacant place at the table, and hastily swallowed a light meal; in fact he rose while the rest were still busy gorging themselves. And before Lee or the others were ready to launch at Circuit any shafts of their rude wit, his manoeuvres struck them dumb with curiosity.

Having hurried from the table direct to his bunk, Circuit was observed delving in the depths of his war sack, out of which he produced a set of clean under-clothing, complete from shirt to socks, and a razor. Besides these he carefully laid out his best suit of store clothes, and from beneath the "heading" of the bunk he pulled a new pair of boots. All this was done with a rapidity and method that evinced some set purpose which the outfit could not fathom, a purpose become the more puzzling when, five minutes later, Circuit returned from the kitchen bearing the cook's wash-tub and a pail of warm water. The tub he deposited and filled in an obscure corner of the bunkroom, and shortly thereafter was stripped to the buff, laboriously bathing himself. The bath finished, Circuit carefully shaved, combed his hair, and dressed himself in his cleanest and best.

While he was dressing, Bill Ball caught breath enough to whisper to Lee: "By cripes! I've got it. Circuit's got a hunch some feller's tryin' to rope an' hobble his gal, an' he's goin' to ask Tom for his time, fork a cayuse, an' hit a lope for a railroad that'll take him to whatever little ol' humanyville his gal lives at."

"Lope hell," answered Lee; "it's a run he's goin' to hit, with one spur in the shoulder an' th' other in th' flank. Why, th' way he's throwin' that whisker-cutter at his face, he's plumb shore to dewlap and wattle his fool self till you could spot him in airy herd o' humans as fer as you could see him."

But Bill's guess proved wide of the mark.

As soon as Circuit's dressing was finished and he had received assurance from the angular fragment of mirror nailed above the wash-basin that his hair was smoothly combed and a new neckerchief neatly knotted, he produced paper and an envelope from his war sack, seated himself at the end of the long dinner-table, farthest from the fireplace, lighted a fresh candle, spread out his five treasures, carefully sharpened a stub pencil, and duly set its lead end a-soak in his mouth, preparatory to the composition of a letter. The surprise was complete. Such painstaking preparation and elaborate costuming for the mere writing of a letter none present—or absent, for that matter—had ever heard of. But it was all so obviously eloquent of a most tender respect for his correspondent that boisterous voices were hushed, and for at least a quarter of an hour the Cross Canonites sat covertly watching the puckered brows, drawn mouth, and awkwardly crawling pencil of the writer.

Presently Lee gently nudged Ball and passed a wink to the rest; then all rose and softly tiptoed their way to the kitchen.

Comfortably squatted on his heels before the cook's fireplace, Lee quietly observed: "Fellers, I allow it's up to us to hold a inquest on th' remains o' my idee about stringin' Circuit over that thar gal o' his'n. I moves that th' idee's done died a-bornin', an' that we bury her. All that agrees, say so; any agin it, say so, 'n' then git their guns an' come outside."

There were no dissenting votes. Lee's motion was unanimously carried.

"Lee's plumb right," whispered McTigh; "that kid's got it harder an' worse than airy feller I ever heerd tell of, too hard for us to lite in stringin' him 'bout it. Never had no gal myself; leastways, no good one; been allus like a old buffalo bull whipped out o' th' herd, sorta flockin' by my lonesome, an'—an'—" with a husky catch of the voice, "an' that thar kid 'minds me I must a' been missin' a hell of a lot hit 'pears to me I wouldn't have no great trouble gittin' to like."

Then for a time there was silence in the kitchen.

Crouching over his pots, the black cook stared in surprised inquiry at the semicircle of grim bronzed faces, now dimly lit by the flickering embers and then for a moment sharply outlined by the flash of a cigarette deeply inhaled by nervous lips. The situation was tense. In each man emotions long dormant, or perhaps by some never before experienced, were tumultuously surging; surging the more tumultuously for their long dormancy or first recognition. Presently in a low, hoarse voice that scarcely carried round the semicircle, Chillili Jim spoke:

"Fellers, Circuit shore 'minds me pow'ful strong o' my ol' mammy. She was monstrous lovin' to we-uns; an' th' way she scrubbed an' fixed up my ol' pa when he comes home from the break-up o' Terry's Rangers, with his ol' carcass 'bout as full o' rents an' holes as his ragged gray war clothes! Allus have tho't ef I could git to find a gal stuck on me like mammy on pa, I'd drop my rope on her, throw her into th' home ranch pasture, an' nail up th' gate fer keeps."

"'Minds me o' goin' to meetin' when I was a six-year-old," mused Mancos Mitch; "when Circuit's pencil got to smokin' over th' paper an' we-uns got so dedburned still, 'peared to me like I was back in th' little ol' meetin'-house in th' mosquito clearin', on th' banks o' th' Lee in ol' Uvalde County. Th' air got that quar sort o' dead smell 'ligion allus 'pears to give to meetin'-houses, a' I could hear th' ol' pa'son a-tellin' us how it's th' lovinest that allus gits th' longest end o' th' rope o' life. Hits me now that ther ol' sky scout was 'bout right. Feller cain't possibly keep busy all th' love in his system, workin' it off on nothing but a pet hoss or gun; thar's allus a hell of a lot you didn't know you had comes oozin' out when a proper piece o' calico lets you next."

"Boys," cut in Bill Ball, the dean of the outfit's shooters-up of town and shooters-out of dance-hall lights; "boys, I allow it 's up to me to 'pologize to Circuit. Ef I wasn't such a damned o'nery kiyote I'd o' caught on befo'. But I hain't been runnin' with th' drags o' th' she herd so long that I can't 'preciate th' feelin's o' a feller that's got a good gal stuck on him, like Circuit. Ef I had one, you-all kin gamble yer alce all bets would be off with them painted dance-hall beer jerkers, an' it would be out in th' brush fo' me while th' corks was poppin', gals cussin', red-eye flowin', an' chips rattlin'. That thar little ol' kid has my 'spects, an' ef airy o' th' Blue Mountain outfit tries to string him 'bout not runnin' with them oreide propositions, I'll hand 'em lead till my belt's empty."

Ensued a long silence; at length, by common consent the inquest was adjourned, and the members of the jury returned to the bunk-room, quiet and solemn as men entering a death chamber. There at the table before the guttering candle still sat Circuit, his hair now badly tousled, his upper lip blackened with pencil lead, his brows more deeply puckered, his entire underlip apparently swallowed, the table littered with rudely scrawled sheets.

Slipping softly to their respective bunks, the boys peeled and climbed into their blankets. And there they all lay, wide-awake but silent, for an hour or two, some watching Circuit curiously, some enviously, others staring fixedly into the dying fire until from its dull-glowing embers there rose for some visions of bare-footed, nut-brown, fustian-clad maids, and for others the finer lines of silk and lace draped figures, now long since passed forever out of their lives. Those longest awake were privileged to witness Circuit's final offering at the shrine of his love.

His letter finished, enclosed, addressed, and stamped, he kissed it and laid it aside, apparently all unconscious of the presence of his mates, as he had been since beginning his letter. Then he drew from beneath his shirt something none of them had seen before, a buckskin bag, out of which he pulled a fat blank memorandum book, into which he proceeded to copy, in as small a hand as he could write, every line of his sweetheart's letters. Later they learned that this bag and its contents never left Circuit's body, nestled always over his heart, suspended by a buckskin thong!

Out of the close intimacies cow-camp life promotes, it was not long before the well-nigh overmastering curiosity of the outfit was satisfied. They learned how the "little ol' blue-eyed sorrel top," as Bill Ball had christened her, had vowed to wait faithfully till Circuit could earn and save enough to make them a home, and how Circuit had sworn to look into no woman's eyes till he could again look into hers. Before many months had passed, Circuit's regular weekly letter to Netty—regular when on the ranch—and the ceremonial purification and personal decking that preceded it, had become for the Cross Canon outfit a public ceremony all studiously observed. None were ever too tired, none too grumpy, to wash, shave, and "slick up" of letter nights, scrupulously as Moslems bathe their feet before approaching the shrine of Mahomet and still as Moslems before their shrine all sat about the bunk-room while Circuit wrote his letter and copied Netty's last. Indeed, more than one well-started wild town orgy was stopped short by one of the boys remarking: "Cut it, you kiyotes! Netty wouldn't like it!"

And thus the months rolled on till they stacked up into years, but the interchange of letters never ceased and the burden of Circuit's buckskin bag grew heavier.

Twice Circuit ventured a financial coup, and both times lost—invested his savings in horses, losing one band to Arizona rustlers, and the other to Mancos Jim's Pah-Utes. After the last experience he took no further chances and settled down to the slow but sure plan of hoarding his wages.

Come the Fall of the eighth year of his exile from Netty, Circuit had accumulated two thousand dollars, and it was unanimously voted by the Cross Canon outfit, gathered in solemn conclave at Circuit's request, that he might venture to return to claim her. And before the conclave was adjourned, Lee Skeats, the chairman, remarked: "Circuit, ef Netty shows airy sign o' balkin' at th' size o' your bank roll, you kin jes' tell her that thar 's a bunch out here in Cross Canon that's been lovin' her sort o' by proxy, that'll chip into your matrimonial play, plumb double the size o' your stack, jest fo' th' hono' o' meetin' up wi' her an' th' pleasure o' seein' their pardner hitched."

The season's work done and the herd turned loose on its Winter range on the San Juan, the outfit decided to escort Circuit into Mancos and there celebrate his coming nuptials. For them the one hundred and seventy intervening miles of alternating canon and mesa, much of the journey over trails deadly dangerous for any creature less sure-footed than a goat, was no more than a pleasant pasear. Thus it was barely high noon of the third day when the thirty Cross Canonites reached their destination.

Deep down in a mighty gorge, nestled beside the stream that gave its name alike to canon and to town, Mancos stewed contentedly in a temperature that would try the strength and temper of any unaccustomed to the climate of southwestern Colorado. Framed in Franciscan-gray sage brush, itself gray as the sage with the dust of pounding hoofs and rushing whirlwinds, at a little distance Mancos looked like an aggregation of dead ash heaps, save where, here and there, dabs of faded paint lent a semblance of patches of dying embers.

While raw, uninviting, and even melancholy in its every aspect, for the scattered denizens of a vast region round about Mancos's principal street was the local Great White Way that furnished all the fun and frolic most of them ever knew. To it flocked miners from their dusky, pine-clad gorges in the north, grangers from the then new farming settlement in the Montezuma Valley, cowboys from Blue Mountain, the Dolores, and the San Juan; Navajos from Chillili, Utes from their reservation—a motley lot burning with untamed elemental passions that called for pleasure "straight."

Joyously descending upon the town at a breakneck lope before a following high wind that completely shrouded them in clouds of dust, it was not until they pulled up before their favorite feed corral that the outfit learned that Mancos was revelling in quite the reddest red-letter day of its existence, the day of its first visitation by a circus—and also its last for many a year thereafter.

In the eighties Mancos was forty miles from the nearest railway, but news of the reckless extravagances of its visiting miners and cowboys tempted Fells Brothers' "Greatest Aggregation on Earth of Ring Artists and Monsters" to visit it. Dusted and costumed outside of town, down the main street of Mancos the circus bravely paraded that morning, its red enamelled paint and gilt, its many-tinted tights and spangles, making a perfect riot of brilliant colors over the prevailing dull gray of valley and town.

Streets, stores, saloons, and dance halls were swarming with the outpouring of the ranches and the mines, men who drank abundantly but in the main a rollicking, good-natured lot.

While the Cross Canonites were liquoring at the Fashion Bar (Circuit drinking sarsaparilla), Lame Johny, the barkeeper, remarked: "You-uns missed it a lot, not seein' the pr'cesh. She were a ring-tailed tooter for fair, with the damnedest biggest noise-makin' band you ever heard, an' th' p'rformers wearin' more pr'tys than I ever allowed was made. An' say, they've got a gal in th' bunch, rider I reckon, that's jest that damned good to look at it hurts. Damned ef I kin git her outen my eyes yet. Say, she's shore prittier than airy red wagon in th' show built like a quarter horse, got eyes like a doe, and a sorrel mane she could hide in. She 's sure a chile con carne proposition, if I ever see one."

"Huh!" grunted Lee; "may be a good-looker, but I'll gamble she ain't in it with our Sorrel-top; hey, boys? Here 's to our Sorrel-top, fellers, an' th' day Circuit prances into Mancos wi' her."

Several who tried to drink and cheer at the same time lost much of their liquor, but none of their enthusiasm. After dinner at Charpiot's, a wretched counterfeit of the splendid old Denver restaurant of that name, the Cross Canonites joined the throng streaming toward the circus.

For his sobriety designated treasurer of the outfit for the day and night, Circuit marched up to the ticket wagon, passed in a hundred dollar bill and asked for thirty tickets. The tickets and change were promptly handed him. On the first count the change appeared to be correct, but on a recount Circuit found the ticket-seller had cunningly folded one twenty double, so that it appeared as two bills instead of one. Turning immediately to the ticket-seller, Circuit showed the deception and demanded correction.

"Change was right; you can't dope and roll me; gwan!" growled the ticket-agent.

"But it's plumb wrong, an' you can't rob me none, you kiyote," answered Circuit; "hand out another twenty, and do it sudden!"

"Chase yourself to hell, you bow-legged hold-up," threatened the ticket-seller.

When, a moment later, the ticket man plunged out of the door of his wagon wildly yelling for his clan, it was with eyes flooding with blood from a gash in his forehead due to a resentful tap from the barrel of Circuit's gun.

Almost in an instant pandemonium reigned and a massacre was imminent. Stalwart canvasmen rushed to their chief's call till Circuit's bunch were outnumbered three to one by tough trained battlers on many a tented field, armed with hand weapons of all sorts. Victors these men usually were over the town roughs it was customarily theirs to handle; but here before them was a bunch not to be trifled with, a quiet group of thirty bronzed faces, some grinning with the anticipated joy of the combat they loved, some grim as death itself, each affectionately twirling a gleaming gun. One overt act on the part of the circus men, and down they would go like ninepins and they knew it—knew it so well that, within two minutes after they had assembled, all dodged into and lost themselves in the throng of onlookers like rabbits darting into their warrens.

"Mighty pore 'pology for real men, them elephant-busters," disgustedly observed Bill Ball. "Come fellers, le's go in."

"Nix for me," spoke up Circuit; "I'm that hot in the collar over him tryin' to rob me I've got no use for their old show. You-all go in, an' I'll go down to Chapps' and fix my traps to hit the trail for the railroad in the mornin'."

On the crest of a jutting bastion of the lofty escarpment that formed the west wall of the canon, the sun lingered for a good-night kiss of the eastern cliffs which it loved to paint every evening with all the brilliant colors of the spectrum; it lingered over loving memories of ancient days when every niche of the Mancos cliffs held its little bronze-hued line of primitive worshippers, old and young, devout, prostrate, fearful of their Red God's nightly absences, suppliant of his return and continued largess; over memories of ceremonials and pastimes barbaric in their elemental violence, but none more primitively savage than the new moon looked down upon an hour later.

Supper over, on motion of Lee Skeats the Cross Canonites had adjourned to the feed corral and gone into executive session.

Lee called the meeting to order.

"Fellers," he said, "that dod-burned show makes my back tired. A few geezers an' gals flipfloopin' in swings an' a bunch o' dead ones on ol' broad-backed work hosses that calls theirselves riders! Shucks! thar hain't one o' th' lot could sit a real twister long enough to git his seat warm; about th' second jump would have 'em clawin' sand.

"Only thing in their hull circus wo'th lookin' at is that red-maned gal, an' she looks that sweet an' innercent she don't 'pear to rightly belong in that thar bare-legged bunch o' she dido-cutters. They-all must 'a mavericked her recent. Looks like a pr'ty ripe red apple among a lot o' rotten ones.

"Hated like hell to see her thar, specially with next to nothin' on, fer somehow I couldn't help her 'mindin' me o' our Sorrel-top. Reckon ef we busted up their damn show, that gal'd git to stay a while in a decent woman's sort o' clothes. What say, shall we bust her!"

"Fer one, I sits in an' draw cards in your play cheerful," promptly responded Bill Ball; "kind o' hurt me too to see Reddy thar. An' then them animiles hain't gittin' no squar' deal. Never did believe in cagin' animiles more'n men. Ef they need it bad, kill 'em; ef they don't, give 'em a run fo' their money, way ol' Mahster meant 'em to have when He made 'em. Let's all saddle up, ride down thar, tie onto their tents, an' pull 'em down, an' then bust open them cages an' give every dod-blamed animile th' liberty I allows he loves same as humans! An' then, jest to make sure she's a good job, le's whoop all their hosses ove' to th' Dolores an' scatter 'em through th' pinons!"

This motion was unanimously carried, even Circuit cheerfully consenting, from memories of the outrage attempted upon him earlier in the day. Ten minutes later the outfit charged down upon the circus at top speed, arriving among the first comers for the evening performance. Flaming oil torches lit the scene, making it bright almost as day.

By united action, thirty lariats were quickly looped round guy ropes and snubbed to saddle horns, and then, incited by simultaneous spur digs and yells, thirty fractious broncos bounded away from the tent, fetching it down in sheets and ribbons, ropes popping like pistols, the rent canvas shrieking like a creature in pain, startled animals threshing about their cages and crying their alarm. Cowboys were never slow at anything they undertook. In three minutes more the side shows were tentless, the dwarfs trying to swarm up the giant's sturdy legs to safety or to hide among the adipose wrinkles of the fat lady, and the outfit tackled the cages.

In another three minutes the elephant, with a sociable shot through his off ear to make sure he should not tarry, was thundering down Mancos's main street, trumpeting at every jump, followed by the lion, the great tuft of hair at the end of his tail converted, by a happy thought of Lee Skeats, into a brightly blazing torch that, so long as the fuel lasted, lighted the shortest cut to freedom for his escaping mates—for the lion hit as close a bee-line as possible trying to outrun his own tail. For the outfit, it was the lark of their lives. Crashing pistol shots and ringing yells bore practical testimony to their joy. But they were not to have it entirely their own way.

Just as they were all balled up before the rhinoceros, staggered a bit by his great bulk and threatening horn, out upon them charged a body of canvasmen, all the manager could contrive to rally, for a desperate effort to stop the damage and avenge the outrage. In their lead ran the ticket seller, armed with a pistol and keen for evening up things with the man who had hit him, dashing straight for Circuit. Circuit did not see him, but Lee did; and thus in the very instant Circuit staggered and dropped to the crack of his pistol, down beside Circuit pitched the ticket man with a ball through his head. Then for two minutes, perhaps, a hell of fierce hand-to-hand battle raged, cowboy skulls crunching beneath fierce blows, circus men falling like autumn leaves before the cowboys' fire. And so the fight might have lasted till all were down but for a startling diversion.

Suddenly, just as Circuit had struggled to his feet, out from among the wrecked wagons sprang a dainty figure in tulle and tights, masses of hair red as the blood of the battlers streaming in waves behind her, and fired at the nearest of the common enemy, which happened to be poor Circuit. Swaying for a moment with the shock of the wound, down to the ground he settled like an empty sack, falling across the legs of the ticket-seller.

Startled and shocked, it seemed, by the consequences of her deed, the woman approached and for a moment gazed down, horror-stricken, into Circuit's face. Then suddenly, with a shriek of agony, she dropped beside him, drew his head into her lap, wiped the gathering foam from his lips, fondled and kissed him. Ripping his shirt open at the neck to find his wound, she uncovered Circuit's buckskin bag and memorandum book, showing through its centre the track of a bullet that had finally spent itself in fracturing a rib over Circuit's heart, the ticket-seller's shot, that would have killed him instantly but for the shielding bulk Netty's treasured letters interposed. Moved, perhaps, by some subtle instinctive suspicion of its contents, she glanced within the book, started to remove it from Circuit's neck, and then gently laid it back above the heart it so long had lain next and so lately had shielded.

Meantime about this little group gathered such of the Cross Canonites as were still upon their legs, while, glad of the diversion, their enemies hurriedly withdrew; round about the outfit stood, their fingers still clutching smoking guns, but pale and sobered.

Circuit lay with eyes closed, feebly gasping for breath, and just as the girl's nervous fingers further rent his shirt and exposed the mortal wound through the right lung made by her own tiny pistol, Circuit half rose on one elbow and whispered: "Boys, write—write Netty I was tryin' to git to her."

And then he fell back and lay still.

For five minutes, perhaps, the girl crouched silent over the body, gazing wide-eyed into the dead face, stunned, every faculty paralyzed.

Presently Lee softly spoke:

"Sis, if, as I allows, you're Netty, you shore did Mat a good turn killin' him 'fore he saw you. Would 'a hurt him pow'ful to see you in this bunch; hurts us 'bout enough, I reckon."

Roused from contemplation of her deed, the girl rose to her knees, still clinging to Circuit's stiffening fingers, and sobbingly murmured, in a voice so low the awed group had to bend to hear her:

"Yes, I'm Netty, and every day while I live I shall thank God Mat never knew. This is my husband lying dead beneath Mat. They made me do it—my family—nagged me to marry Tom, then a rich horse-breeder of our county, till home was such a hell I couldn't stand it. It was four long years ago, and never since have I had the heart to own to Mat the truth. His letters were my greatest joy, and they breathed a love I little have deserved.

"Reckon that's dead right, Netty," broke in Bill Ball; "hain't a bit shore myself airy critter that ever stood up in petticoats deserved a love big as Circuit's. Excuse us, please."

And at a sign from Bill, six bent and gently lifted the body and bore it away into the town.

In the twilight of an Autumn day that happened to be the twenty-second anniversary of Circuit's death, two grizzled old ranchmen, ambling slowly out of Mancos along the Dolores trail, rode softly up to a corner of the burying ground and stopped. There within, hard by, a woman, bent and gnarled and gray as the sage-brush about her, was tenderly decking a grave with pinon wreaths.

"Hope to never cock another gun, Bill Ball, ef she ain't thar ag'in!"

"She shore is, Lee," answered Bill; "provin' we-all mislaid no bets reconsiderin', an' stakin' Sorrel-top to a little ranch and brand."

Thus, happily, does time sweeten the bitterest memories.



CHAPTER IX

ACROSS THE BORDER

Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was no mistaking the lean but sturdy figure and alert step.

From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he winced and shrank, crying: "Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from Lampadasos with the assurance that my ambulance was generously provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the first day's journey came, I found the food limited to tortillas, chorisos, and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin—no more. Stupid of an old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it not?"

"Worse than that, I should say—sheer madness," I answered. "How did it happen?"

"Well, you see, Don Nemecio is the Alcalde, of his city, and he showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.

"But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.

"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives call El Desierto, known on the map as Bolson de Mapini, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry details.

"Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been examining—but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is, are you game for a new ranch deal?"

When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:

"Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily grassed, abundantly watered by its two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfect climate, it is an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think? Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.

"Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks—else the place would not be going so cheap—but no more than you have been taking the last five years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the bandits seem to need a good many prestamos; but all that you have been up against. Better take a pretty strong party, for the authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country."

Details were settled at breakfast, and there Gardiner resumed his journey eastward, while I took the next train for Denver. A fortnight later found me in Socorro, plodding through its sandy streets to an adobe house in the suburbs where Thornton lodged.

As I neared the door a big black dog sprang fiercely out at me to the full length of his chain, and directly thereafter the door framed an extraordinary figure. Then barely twenty-one, and downy still of lip, Thornton's gray eyes were as cold and calculating, the lines of his face as severe and even hard, his movements as deliberate and expressive of perfect self-mastery as those of any veteran of half a dozen wars. Six feet two in height, straight as a white pine, ideally coupled for great strength without sacrifice of activity, he looked altogether one of the most capable and safe men one could wish for in a scrap; and so, later, he well proved himself.

He greeted me in carefully correct English; and while quiet, reserved, and cold of speech as of manner, the tones in which he assured me any friend of Mr. Gardiner was welcome, conveyed faint traces of cordiality that roused some hope that he might prove a more agreeable campmate than his dour mien promised. We were not long coming to terms; indeed the moment I outlined the trip contemplated, and its possible hazards, it became plain he was keen to come on any terms. To my surprise, he proposed bringing his dog, Curly. I objected that so heavy a dog would be likely to play out on our forced marches, and, anyway, would be no mortal use to us. His reply was characteristic:

"Curly goes if I go, sir; but any time you can tell me you find him a nuisance, I'll shoot him myself. I've had him four years, had him out all through Victoria's raid of the Gila, and he's a safer night guard than any ten men you can string around camp: nothing can approach he won't nail or tell you of. With Curly, a night-camp surprise is impossible."

Whatever cross Curly represented was a mystery. Two-thirds the height and weight of a mastiff, he had the broad narrow pointed muzzle of a bear, and a shaggy reddish-black coat that further heightened his resemblance to a cinnamon, with great gray eyes precisely the color of his master's, and as fierce. Whichever character was formed on that of the other I never learned—the man's on the dog's, or the dog's on the man's. Certain it is that not even the luckiest chance could have brought together man and beast so nearly identical in all their traits. Both were honest, almost to a fault. Neither possessed any vice I ever could discover. Each was wholly happy only when in battle, the more desperate the encounter the happier they. Neither ever actually forced a quarrel, or failed to get in the way of one when there was the least color of an attempt to fasten one on them. And yet both were always considerate of any weaker than themselves, and quick to go to their defence. Many a time have I seen old Curly seize and throttle a big dog he caught rending a little one—as I have seen George leap to the aid of the defenceless. Each weighed carefully his kind, and found most wanting in something requisite to the winning of his confidence; and such as they did admit to familiar intimacy, man or beast, were the salt of their kind.