On the train, south-bound for San Antonio, I learned something of Thornton's history. The son of a judge of Peoria, Ill., he had until fifteen the advantage of the schools of his city. Then, possessed with a longing for a life of adventure in the West, he ran away from home, worked in various places at various tasks, until, at sixteen (in 1887) he had made his way to Socorro. Arrived there, he attached himself to a small party of prospectors going out into the Black Range, into a region then wild and hostile as Boone found Kentucky. And there for the last five years he had dwelt, ranging through the Datils and the Mogallons, prospecting whenever the frequently raiding Apaches left him and his mates time for work. Indeed, it was Thornton who discovered and first opened the Gallup coal field, and he held it until Victoria ran him out. During this time he was in eight desperate fights—the only man to escape from one of them; but out of them he came unscathed, and trained to a finish in every trick of Apache warfare.

At San Antonio we were met by Sam Cress, who for the last four years had been foreman of my Deadman Ranch. Cress was born on Powell River, Virginia, but had come to Texas as a mere lad and joined a cow outfit. He had really grown up in the Cross Timbers of the Palo Pinto, where, in those years, any who survived were past masters not only of the weird ways and long hours and outlaw broncos, but also of the cunning strategy of the Kiowas and Comanches who in that time were raiding ranches and settlements every "light of the moon." Cress was then twenty-five—just my age—and one of the rare type of men who actually hate and dread a fight, but where necessary, go into it with a jest and come out of it with a laugh, as jolly a camp-mate and as steady a stayer as I ever knew. Charlie Crawford, a half-breed Mexican, taken on for his fluency in Spanish, completed our outfit. Two mornings later the Mexican National Express dropped us at the Lampasos depot about daylight, from which we made our way over a mile of dusty road winding through mesquite thickets to the Hotel Diligencia, on the main plaza.

A norther was blowing that chilled us to the marrow, and of course, according to usual Mexican custom, not a room in the hotel was heated. The best the little Italian proprietor could do for us was a pan of charcoal that warmed nothing beyond our finger tips. As soon as the sun rose, we squatted along the east wall of the hotel and there shivered until Providence or his own necessity brought past us a peon driving a burro loaded with mesquite roots. We bought this wood and dumped it in the central patio of the hotel and there lighted a campfire that made us tolerably comfortable until breakfast.

Ignorant then of Mexico and its customs, I had fancied that when a proper hour arrived for a call on the Alcalde, Don Nemecio Garcia, I should have a chance to warm myself properly and had charitably asked my three mates to accompany me on the visit. But when at ten o'clock Don Nemecio received us in his office, we found him tramping up and down the room, wrapped in the warm folds of an ample cloak; his neck and face swathed in mufflers to the eyes, arctics on his feet, and no stove or fireplace in the room. As leading merchant of the town, he soon supplied us with provisions and various articles, and with four saddle and three pack horses for our journey.

The next day, while my men were busy arranging our camp outfit, I took train for Monterey to get a letter from General Trevino, commanding the Department of Coahuila, to the comandante of the garrison at Musquiz. On this short forenoon's journey I had my first taste of the disordered state of the country.

About ten o'clock our train stopped at the depot of Villaldama, where I observed six guardias aduaneras (customs guards) removing the packs from a dozen mules, and transferring them to the baggage car. Just as this work was nearing completion, a band of fourteen contradistas dashed up out of the surrounding chaparral, dropped off their horses, and opened at thirty yards a deadly fire on the guards. With others in the smoker, next behind the baggage car, I had a fine view of the battle, but a part of the time we were directly in the line of fire, for four of our car windows were smashed by bullets, and many bullets were buried in the car body. Such encounters between guards and smugglers in Mexico were always a fight to the death, for under the law the guards received one-half the value of their captures, while of course the smugglers stood to win or lose all.

As soon as fire opened, the guards jumped for the best cover available, and put up the best fight they could. But the odds were hopelessly against them. In five minutes it was all over. Three of the guards lay dead, one was crippled, and the other two were in flight. To be sure two of the smugglers were bowled over, dead, and two badly wounded, but the remaining ten were not long in repossessing themselves of their goods; and when our train pulled out, the baggage car riddled with bullets till it looked like a sieve, the ten were hurriedly repacking their mules for flight west to the Sierras. Later I learned that early that morning the guards had caught the conducta with only two men in charge, who had shrewdly skipped and scattered to gather the party that arrived just in time to save their plunder.

Mexican import duties in those days were so enormous that very many of the best people then living along the border engaged regularly in smuggling, as the most profitable enterprise offering. American hams, I remember, were then sixty cents a pound, and everything else in proportion. Even in the city of Monterey, stores that displayed on their open shelves little but native products, had warehouses where you could buy (at three times their value in the States) almost any American or European goods you wanted.

Well recommended to General Trevino from kinsmen of his wife, who was a daughter of General Ord of our army, he gave me a letter to Captain Abran de la Garza, commanding at Musquiz, directing him to furnish me any cavalry escort or supplies I might ask for, and the following day we started north from Lampasos on our one-hundred-mile march to Musquiz.

The first two days of the journey, for fully sixty miles, we travelled across the lands of Don Patricio Milmo, who thirty years earlier had arrived in Monterey, a bare-handed Irish lad, as Patrick Miles. Through thrift, cunning trading, and a diplomatic marriage into one of the most powerful families of the city, he had oreid his name and gilded the prospects of his progeny, for he had become the richest merchant of Monterey and the largest landholder of the state.

On this march north Curly's value was well demonstrated. The first two nights I divided our little party into four watches, so that one man should always be awake, and on the qui vive. But it took us no more than these two nights to discover that Curly was a better guard than all of us put together. Throughout the noon and early evening camp he slept, but as soon as we were in our blankets he was on the alert, and nothing could move near the camp that he did not tell us of it in low growls, delivered at the ear of one or another of the sleepers. However, nothing happened on the journey up, save at the camp just north of Progreso, where some of the villagers tried slip up on our horses toward midnight, and Curly's growls kept them off. Their trails about our camp were plain in the morning. The evening of the third day we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border, nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane, irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas.

At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la Garza, the Comandante, to present my letter from General Trevino.

Like the monarch of all he surveyed, he received me in his bed-chamber. As soon as I entered, it became apparent the Captain was a sportsman as well as a soldier.

The room was perhaps thirty by twenty feet in size. Midway of the north wall stood a rude writing table on which were a few official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly outlined. From the headpost of the cot dangled a sword and two pistols. And to every bed, table, stand, and chair was hobbled a gamecock—a rarely high-bred lot by their looks, that joined in saluting my entrance with a volley of questioning crows! It was, I fancy, altogether the most startling reception visitor ever had.

In a momentary pause in the crowing, there issued from a throat riven and deep-seamed from frequent floodings with fiery torrents of mescal, and out of lungs perpetually surcharged with cigarette smoke, a hoarse croaking, but friendly toned, "Buenos dias, senor. Sirvase tomar un asiento. Aqui tiene vd su casa!" and peering more closely into the dusky corner, I beheld a great face, lean to emaciation, dominated by a magnificent Roman nose with two great dark eyes sunk so deep on either side of its base they must forever remain strangers to one another. The nose supported a splendid breadth of high forehead, which was crowned with a shock of coal-black hair, while the jaws were bearded to the eyes. It was the face of an ascetic Crusader, sensualized in a measure by years of isolated frontier service and its attendant vices and degeneration, but still a face full of the noble melancholy of a Quixote.

Propping himself on a great bony knot of an elbow, the Captain made polite inquiry respecting my journey, and then asked in what could he serve me. But when I had explained that I wanted to meet the owner of the Santa Rosa Ranch, and contemplated going out to see it, it was only to learn, to my great disappointment, that it had been sold the week previous to two Scotchmen. Fancy! in a country visited by foreigners, as a rule, not so often as once a year.

Nor was I consoled when, noting my obvious chagrin, the Captain sought to lighten the blow by saying: "But, my dear sir, this is indeed evidence God is guarding you. That ranch has been a legacy of contention and feud for generations. Besides, what good could you get of it? Its nearest line to the town is six miles distant, and no life or property would be safe there a fortnight. Far the best cattle ranch in this section, a fourth of it irrigable, and as fine sugar-cane land as one could find, do you fancy it would be tenantless as when God first made it if safe for occupancy? Why, my dear sir, within the last six months Juan Gaian's Lipans have killed no less than seventy of our townsmen, some in their fields, some in the very suburbs of the town, while Mescaleros are raiding a little lower down the river, and Nicanor Rascon is apt to sweep down any day with his bandidos and plunder strong boxes and stores. It is with shame I admit it, for I, Don Abran, am responsible for the peace and safety of this district. But, mil demonios! what can I do with one troop of cavalry against bandits ruthless as savages, and savages cunning as bandits?

"Oh! but if I only had horses! Those devils take remounts when they like from the remoudas of ranchers, but I, carajo! I am always limited to my troop allotment.

"Burn a hundred candles to the Virgin, amigo mio, as a thank offering for your deliverance, and wait and see what happens to the Scotchmen; and while waiting, it will be my great pleasure to show you some of the grandest cock-fighting you ever saw. Look at them! Beauties, are they not? Purest blood in all Mexico! Kept me poor four years getting them together! But now! Ah! now, it will not be long till they win me ranches and remoudas!

"Ah! me. Time was not so very long ago when Abran de la Garza was called the most dashing jefe de tropa in the service, when senoritas fell to him as alamo leaves shower down to autumn winds; when pride consumed him, and ambition for a Division was burning in his brain. But now this demon of a frontier has scorched and driven him till naught remains to him but the chance of an occasional fruitless skirmish, his thirst for mescal, his greed for aguilas, and his cocks to win them! But, senor, bet no money against them, for it would grieve me to win from a stranger introduced by my General."

Then, with a grave nod of friendly warning, he turned an affectionate gaze upon his pets. Meantime, as if conscious of his pride in them, the cocks were boastfully crowing paeans to their own victories, past and to come, in shrill and ill-timed but uninterrupted concert, bronze wings flapping, crimson crests truculently tossing insolent challenge for all comers.

With the one plan of my trip completely smashed, I felt too much upset to continue the interview, and excused myself. But after a forenoon spent alone beside the broad and swift current the Sabinas was pouring past me, gazing at the dim blue mountain-crests in the west that I had learned marked its source, the irresistible call to penetrate the unknown impressed and then possessed me so completely that, at our midday breakfast, I announced to the Captain I had decided to follow the river to its head, and pass thence into the desert for a thirty-days' circle to the north and west.

"But, valga nu Dios, man," he objected, "I have no force I can spare for sufficient time to give you adequate escort for such a journey. It would be madness to undertake it with less than fifty men. I am responsible to my General for your safety, and cannot sanction it. Beyond the Alamo Canon the only waters are in isolated springs in the plains and in natural rain-fall tanks along the mountain crests, known to none except the Indians and Tomas Alvarez, an old half-breed Kickapoo long attached to my command as scout, who ranged that country years ago with his tribe, and who guides my troop on such short scouts as we have been able to make beyond the Alamo, and—"

"Pardon," I ventured to interrupt, "that will do nicely; give me Alvarez and one good trustworthy soldier, and we'll make the circle without trouble."

"Six of you! Why, you'd never get twenty miles out of town in that direction. I can't permit it."

"Pardon again, Don Abran," I broke in, "but we have for years been accustomed to move in small parties through country that held a hundred times more hostiles than you have here, and you can trust us to take care of ourselves. Go we shall in any event, without your men if you withhold them."

"Well, well, hijo mio," he responded, "if you are bound to go, we will see. Only I shall write my General that I have sought to restrain you."

To us the prevailing local fears seemed absurd. Admittedly there were only sixteen of the Lipans then left, men, women, and children, their chief, Juan Galan, the son by a Lipan squaw, of the father of Garza Galan, then the leading merchant of the town, and later a distinguished Governor of his State. Originally a powerful tribe occupying both banks of the lower Rio Grando to the south of the Comanches, in their wars with Texans and Mexicans the Lipans had dwindled until only this handful remained. Three years earlier the entire band had been captured after a desperate fight, and removed by the Mexican authorities to a small reservation five hundred miles southwest of Musquiz. But at the end of two years, as soon as the guard over them relaxed, indomitable as Dull Knife and his Cheyennes in their desperate fight (in 1879) to regain their northern highland home, Juan Galan and his pathetically small following jumped their reservation and dodged and fought their way back to the Musquiz Mountains; and there for the last ten months, constantly harassed and harassing, they had been fighting for the right to die among the hills they loved. To the natives they were blood-thirsty wolves, beasts to be exterminated; to an impartial onlooker they were a heroic band courting death in a splendid last fight for fatherland. Their bold deeds would fill a book. Even in this town of fifteen hundred people guarded by a troop of cavalry, no one ventured out at night except from the most pressing necessity; and of the seventy killed by them since their return, nearly a third were macheted in the streets of Musquiz during Juan Galan's night raids on the town.

The most effective work against them was done by a band of about a hundred Seminole-negro half-breeds, to whom the Government had made a grant of four square leagues twenty-five miles west of Musquiz, on the Nacimiento. Come originally out of the Indian territory in the United States, where the Seminoles had cross-bred with their negro slaves, this same band a few years earlier had been most efficient scouts for our own troops at Fort dark, and other border garrisons, and it was this record that led the Mexican Government to seek and lodge them on the Nacimiento, as a buffer against the Lipans.

That night arrangements for our trip were concluded: the Captain consented to furnish me old Tomas Alvarez and a young soldier named Manuel, but only on condition that he himself should escort us, with fifty men of his troop, one day's march up the river, which would carry us beyond the recent range of the Lipans. So early the next morning we marched out westward, passing the last house a half-mile outside the centre of the town, along a dim, little-travelled trail that followed the river to the Seminole village on the Nacimiento. The day's journey was without incident, other than our amusement at what seemed to us the Captain's overzealous caution in keeping scouts out ahead and to right and left of the column, and in posting sentries about our night camp.

The following morning, a Sunday, after much good advice, the kindly Captain bade us a reluctant farewell, and led his troops down-river toward home, while our little party of six headed westward up-river. Near noon we sighted the Seminole village, and shortly entered it, a close cluster of low jacals built of poles and mud. Odd it looked, as we entered, a deserted village, no living thing in sight but a few dogs. Thus our surprise was all the greater when, nearing the farther edge of the village, our ears were greeted with the familiar strains of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," issuing from a large jacal which we soon learned was the Seminole church. Fancy it! the last thing one could have dreamed of! An honest old Methodist hymn sung in English by several score devout worshippers in the heart of Mexico, on the very dead line between savagery and civilization, and at that, sung by a people all savage on one side of their ancestry and semi-savage on the other.

Before the singing of the hymn was finished, startled by the barking of their dogs, out of the low doorway sprang half a dozen men, strapping big fellows,—one, the chief, bent half double with age,—all heavily armed. The moment they saw we were Americans we were most cordially received, and even urged to stop a few days with them, and give them news of the Texas border. But for this we had no time; and after a short visit—for which the congregation adjourned service—we filled our canteens, let our horses drink their fill at the great Nacimiento spring that burst forth a veritable young river from beneath a low bluff beside the town, and struck out westward for Alamo Canon. Our afternoon march gave us little concern, for our route lay across rolling, lightly timbered uplands that offered little opportunity for ambush. That night we made a "dry camp" on the divide, preferring to approach the Alamo in daylight.

Having struck camp before dawn the next morning, by noon we saw ahead of us a great gorge dividing the mountain we were approaching—great in its height, but of a scant fifty yards in breadth, perpendicular of sides, a narrow line of brush and timber creeping down along its bottom, but stopping just short of the open plains. Scouting was useless. If there were any Indians about, we certainly had been seen, and they lay in ambush for us in a place of their own choosing. We must have water, and to get it must enter the canon. So straight into the timber that filled the mouth of the gorge we rode at a run, riding a few paces apart to avoid the possible potting of our little bunch, and a hundred yards within the outer fringe of timber we reached the water our animals so badly needed.

And right there, all about the "sink" of the Alamo, where the last drops of the stream sank into the thirsty sands, the bottom was covered thick with fresh moccasin tracks, and in a little opening in the bush near to the sink smouldered the embers of that morning's camp-fire of a band of Lipans. Apparently we were in for it and seriously debated a retreat. Our position could not be worse. Tomas told us that the trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the canon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests, while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could follow our route and pick us off at their leisure. To be sure, the brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection. However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance, Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses. And so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east, toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were probably miles away to the east.

Mounting, therefore, we made the beat pace our pack animals could stand up through the eight miles of the narrows, riding well apart from each other, the only safeguard we could take, all craning our necks for view of the cliff crests ahead of us. But no living thing showed save a few deer and coyotes, and two mountain lions that, alarmed by our clattering pace, slipped past us back down the gorge. When at last we reached the end of the narrows and the canon broadened to a width of several hundred yards, all but fifty or seventy-five yards of the belt of timber lining the stream along the south wall being comparatively level grassy bunch land, nearly devoid of cover, we congratulated ourselves that we had not been scared into a retreat.

Keen to put as much distance as we could between us and the Lipans, we travelled on up the canon at a sharp trot, keeping well to its middle, until about 5 p.m., when we reached a point where it widened into a broad bay, nearly seven hundred yards from crest to crest, with a dense thicket of mesquite trees near its centre that made fine shelter and an excellent point of defence for a night camp. The stream hugged the east wall of the canon, where it had carved out a tortuous bed perhaps one hundred and fifty yards wide, and so deep below the bench we occupied that only the tops of tall cottonwoods were visible from the thicket.

While the rest of us were busy unsaddling and unpacking, Thornton slung all our canteens over his shoulder, and started for the stream. But no sooner had he disappeared below the edge of the bench, a scant two hundred yards from our camp, before a rapid rifle fire opened which, while we knew it must proceed from his direction, echoed back from one cliff wall to the other until it appeared like an attack on our position from all sides, while the echoes multiplied to the volume of cannon fire at the sound of each shot. Indeed, never have I heard such thunderous, crashing, ear-splitting gun-detonations except on one other occasion, when aboard the British battle ship Invincible and in her six-inch gun battery while a salute was being fired.

Frightened by the fire, one of our pack horses stampeded down the canon. Sending Manuel in pursuit, and leaving Tomas at the camp, Crawford, Cress, and I ran for the break of benchland, to reach and aid Thornton. Nearing it, all three dropped flat, and crawled to its edge, just in time to see George make a neat snap shot at a Lipan midway of a flying leap over a log, and drop him dead. Old George was standing quietly on the lower slope of the bench just above the timber, while the shots from eight or ten Lipan rifles were raining all about him! The Lipans lay in the timber only one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards away, and it was a miracle they did not get him. Instantly Cress and Crawford slipped back out of range, made a detour that brought them to the bench edge within fifty yards of the Lipans' position, and opened on them a cross fire, while I lay above George and shelled away at the smoke of their discharge, for not one showed a head after George potted the jumper. Five minutes after Cress and Crawford opened on them, the Lipan fire ceased entirely. For an hour we scouted along the bank trying to locate them, but apparently they had withdrawn.

Then, while the others covered us, George and I slipped through the bush to investigate his kill, and found a great gaunt old warrior at least sixty years old, wrinkled of face as if he might be a hundred, but sound of teeth and coal-black of hair as a youth, his face and body scarred in nearly a score of places from bullet and machete wounds,—the sign manual writ indelibly on his war-worn frame by many a doughty enemy. We carried him to the bench crest, Crawford fetched a spade and we dug a grave and buried him with his weapons laid upon his breast, as his own people would have buried him, and then we fired across his grave the final salute he obviously so well had earned.

More than he would have done for us? Yes, I dare say. But then our points of view were different. Throughout his long life a terror to all whites he doubtless had been; upon us he was stealthily slipping, ruthless as a tiger; but then he and his tribesmen and lands had so long been prey to the greed of white invaders of his domain that it is hard to blame him for fighting, according to the traditions of his race, to the death.

Lying in camp within the thicket that night, naturally without a fire, Thornton made it plain that his voluntary start for water was providentially timed. He told us that, while descending the slope to the timber, he saw the head of a little column of Indians, stealing up the valley through the brush, saw them before they saw him; but just as he saw them, he slipped on some pebbles and nearly fell, making a noise that attracted their attention. Instantly they slid into cover, and opened fire on him.

Asked by me why he himself had not sought cover, George answered, "No show to get one except by keeping out in the open on the high ground, and I wanted one!"

It was plain the Lipans had sighted us when too late to lay an ambush for us in the narrows, had made a short cut through the hills and dropped down into the stream bed with the plan to attack us at our night camp. Evidently they had not expected us to camp so early, and were jogging easily along through the brush, for once off their guard. But for George's chance start for the stream, nothing but faithful old Curly's perpetual watchfulness could have saved us from a bad mix-up that night. Already it had been so well proved that we could safely trust Curly to guard us against surprise, we slept soundly through the night, without disturbance of any sort.

The next forenoon's march to the head waters of the Alamo was an anxious one, and was made with the utmost caution, for we were sure the Lipans would be lying in wait for us; but no sign of them did we again see for three weeks.

Leaving the Alamo, we made a great circle through the desert, swinging first north toward the Sierra Mojada, then south, and ultimately eastward toward Monclova. The trip proved to be one of great hardship and danger, but only from scarcity of water; for while at isolated springs we found recent camps of one sort of desert prowler or another, we neither met nor saw any. Finally, late one night of the fourth week, we reached a little spring called Zacate, out in the open plain only about thirty miles south of Musquiz. But between us and only five miles south of the town stretched a tall range through which Tomas knew of only two passes practicable for horsemen; one, to the west, via the Alamo, the route we had come, would involve a journey of eighty miles, while by the other, an old Indian and smugglers' trail crossing the summit directly south of Musquiz, we could make the town in thirty-two miles. The latter route Tomas strongly opposed as too dangerous. Twelve miles from where we lay it entered the range, and for fifteen miles followed terrible rough canons wherein, every step of the way, we should be right in the heart of the recent range of the Lipans, and where every turn offered chance of a perfect ambush. But with our horses exhausted, worn to more shadows from long marches through country affording scant feed, with not one left that could much more than raise a trot, we finally decided to chance the shorter route. That night we supped on cold antelope meat and biscuits, to avoid building a fire, and rolled up in our blankets, but not to rest long undisturbed.

Shortly after midnight Curly roused us with low growls. Though the moon was full, the night was so clouded one could hardly see the length of a gun-barrel. Curly's warnings continuing, George and Tomas rolled out of their blankets and crawled out among and about the horses, and lay near them an hour or more, till Curly's growls finally ceased. Then we called them in and all lay down, and finished the night in peace. Early the next morning, however, a short circle discovered the trail of three Indians who had crept near to the horses and reconnoitred our position. Their back trail led due northeast, the direction we had to follow; and when we had ridden out half a mile from the Ojo Zacate, we found where their trail joined that of the main band. The "sign" showed they had been south toward Monclova on a successful horse-stealing raid, for it was plain they had passed us in the night with a bunch of at least twenty horses, heading toward a point of the range only five or six miles west of where we should be compelled to enter it.

We were in about as bad a hole as could be conceived. Plainly the Indians knew of our presence in the vicinity. It was equally certain their scouts would be watching our every move throughout the day, and there was not one chance in a thousand of our crossing the range without attack from some ambush of such vantage as to leave small ground for hope that we could survive it. All but Cress and Thornton urged me to turn back, although we were all nearly afoot, and had no food left except two or three pounds of flour, and a little meat. After very short deliberation I decided to go ahead. The Lipans knew precisely where we were, and if they wanted us they could (in the event of a retreat) easily run us down and surround us and hold us off food and water until we were starved out sufficiently to charge their position and be shot down. Better far put up a bold bluff and take chances of cutting through them.

So on we plodded slowly toward the hills, all of us walking most of the way to save our horses all we could. At 2 p.m. we cut the old trail Tomas was heading us toward, and shortly thereafter entered the mouth of a frightfully rough canon, its bottom and slopes thickly covered with nopal, sotol, and mesquite, and, later, higher up, with pines, junipers, oaks, and spruces, with here and there groups of great boulders that would easily conceal a regiment. Two or three miles in, the gorge deepened until tall mountain slopes were rising steeply on either side of us, and narrowed until we had to pick our way over the rough boulders of the dry stream-bed.

Our advance was slow, for it had to be made with the utmost caution. Thornton, Cress, and Tomas scouted afoot, one in the bottom of the gorge, and one half-way up each of its side walls, while Manuel and Crawford followed two hundred yards behind them, also afoot, driving the saddle and pack horses; and I trailed two hundred yards behind the horses, watching for any sign of an attempted surprise from the rear. Thus scattered, we gave them no chance to bowl over several of us at the first fire from any ambush they might have arranged.

From the windings of the canon we were out of sight of each other much of the time; personally, I recall that afternoon as one of the most lonely and uncomfortable I ever passed. I slipped watchfully along, stopping often to listen, eyes sweeping the hillsides and the gulch below me, searching every tree and boulder, with no sound but the soughing of the wind through the tree-tops, and an occasional soft clatter of shingle beneath the slipping hoofs of my unshod horse.

But throughout the afternoon the only sign of man or beast that I saw was a lot of sotol plants recently uprooted, and their roots eaten by bears.

Shortly after dark we reached the only permanent water in the canon, a clear, cold, sweet spring, bursting out from beneath a rock, only to sink immediately into the arid sands of the dry stream-bed. Immediately below the spring and midway of the gorge bottom stood an island-like uplift, twenty yards in length by ten in width, covered with brush, leaving on either side a narrow, rocky channel, and from either side of these two channels the canon walls, heavily timbered, rose very steeply. Just above these narrows, the gorge widened into seven or eight acres of level, park-like, well-grassed benchland, and into this little park we turned our horses loose for the night, for they were too worn to stray.

Having made eight or ten miles up the canon during the afternoon march, we were now within a mile of the summit, and no more than seven miles from Musquiz. Indeed we should have tried to reach the town that night had not Tomas told us the next three miles of the trail were so steep and rough he could not undertake to fetch us over it unless we abandoned our animals, saddles, and packs.

We turned into our blankets early, after a cold supper, for we did not care to chance a fire. Cress and I slept together in the channel to the west of the island; Manuel and Tomas to the east of it quite out of our sight; Thornton and Crawford ten paces north, in sight of both ourselves and the Mexicans. A little moonlight filtered down through the trees, but not enough to enable us to see any distance.

Scarcely were we asleep, it seemed to me, before Curly awakened Cress and myself, growling immediately at our heads. Rising in our blankets, guns in hand, and listening intently, we could hear on the hillside above us what sounded like the movements of a bear. Whatever it might be, it was approaching. Not a word had been spoken, and Curly's growls were so low we had no idea any of the others had been roused. So we sat on the alert for perhaps fifteen minutes, when the sounds above us began receding, and we lay down again. But just as we were passing back into dreamland, Curly again startled us with a sharper, fiercer note that meant trouble at hand.

As we rose to a sitting posture, in the dim moonlight we could plainly see a dark crouching figure twenty yards below, which advanced a step or two, stopped as if to listen, and again advanced and stopped. What it was we could not make out. At first I thought it must be a bear, but presently I felt sure I caught the glimmer of a gun barrel, and nudged Cress with my elbow. We were in the act of raising our rifles to down it, whatever it might be, when Thornton sang out, "Hold on, boys; that's old Tomas!" And, indeed, so it proved. All had been awakened at the first alarm, and Thornton had seen Tomas roll from his blankets into the bottom of the east channel, and crawl away on the scout for the cause of Curly's uneasiness that so nearly had cost him his life. He had been so intent for movement on the hillsides he had not noticed us watching him.

The next morning we were moving by dawn, Tomas, Cress, and myself in the lead, the others trailing along one hundred or two hundred yards behind us. For half a mile the gorge widened, as most mountain gorges do near their heads, into beautiful grassy slopes rising steeply before us, thickly timbered with post oak. Then, issuing from the timber, we saw it was a blind canon we were in, a cul de sac, with no pass through the crest of the range.

Before us rose a very nearly perpendicular wall for probably six hundred feet, up which the old trail zigzagged, climbing from ledge to ledge, so steep that when, later, we were fetching our horses up it, one of the pack horses lost its balance and fell fifty feet, crippling it so badly we had to kill it. The cliff face, about three hundred yards in width, and flanked to right and left by the walls of the canon, was entirely bare of trees, but thickly strewn with boulders. From an enemy on the top of the two flanking walls, climbers up the cliff face could get no shelter whatever. Thus it was important that our advance should reach the summit as quickly as possible. So, up the three of us scrambled, about thirty yards apart, disregarding the trail.

When we were nearly half-way up, and just as we had paused to catch our breath, several rifle shots rang out in quick succession, which, from some peculiar echo of the canon, sounded as if they had been fired beneath us. Upon turning, we could see nothing of our three mates or the horses—they were hidden from our view by the timber. Fancying they were attacked from the rear, I was about to call a return to their relief, when I saw Thornton run to the near edge of the timber, drop on one knee behind a tree, and open fire on the cliff-crest directly above our heads.

Whirling and looking up, I was just in time to see eight or ten men bob up on the crest and take quick snap shots at the three of us in the lead, and then duck to cover. We were so nearly straight under them, however, that they overshot us, although they were barely one hundred yards from us. Dropping behind boulders we peppered back at the flashes of their rifles, which was all we three in the lead thereafter saw of them; for after the first volley most of them lay close and directed their fire at the men in the edge of the timber, but occasionally a rifle was tipped over the edge of a boulder and fired at random in our direction. And all the time they were yelling at us, "Que vienen, puercos! Que vienen!" (Come on, pigs! Come on!)

I was puzzled. Both Cress and I thought they were Mexicans, but Tomas insisted they were Lipans. And sure enough it was the Lipans all spoke Spanish and dressed like Mexican peons. Whoever they might be, we could not stay where we were. By the firing and voices there were at least a dozen of them, and obviously it was only a matter of moments before they would occupy the two flanking walls and have us openly exposed.

It was a bad dilemma. Retreat was impossible, down a gorge commanded at short range from both sides. If we took shelter in it, they could starve us out; if we attempted to descend it, they could easily pick us off; if any of us escaped back to the plain it would only be to incur greater exposure if they pursued, or probably to perish of hunger before we could reach any settlements. Thus the situation called for no reflection—it was charge and dislodge them, or die.

Yelling to the boys below to close up on us, we three settled down to the maintenance of the hottest fire we could deliver at the rifle flashes above us, to cover their advance. Luckily there were many boulders scattered along the grassy treeless slope they had to advance across to reach the foot of the cliff. Thus by darting from one boulder to another they had tolerable cover and were able to reach us with no worse casualties than a comparatively slight flesh wound through Manuel's side and the shooting away of Thornton's belt buckle.

Then we started the charge, led really by Thornton, who, active as a goat, would have raced straight into the downpour of lead if I had not continually restrained him. Three would scramble up fifteen or twenty feet, and then drop behind boulders, while the other three kept up a heavy fire on the summit; and then the rear rank would advance to a line with their position, while they shelled the enemy. All the time a rain of bullets was splashing on the rocks all about us, but luckily for us they did not expose themselves enough to deliver an accurate fire.

After we had made five or six such rushes, and were about half-way up, we could hear the voices of what sounded like the larger part of the band receding. Supposing they were swinging for the two side walls to flank us we doubled our speed and presently dropped beneath the shelter of a wall of rock about four feet high, from behind which our enemy had been firing.

Two or three minutes earlier their fire had ceased, and what to make of it we did not know. We found that an exposure of our hats on our gun-muzzles drew no fire; yet, driven by sheer desperation, and expecting that every man of us would get shot full of holes, we simultaneously sprang over the rock, and dropped flat on the summit—amid utter silence, about the most happily surprised lot of men in all Mexico! The enemy had decamped. But where? And with what purpose? And why had they not flanked us!

Careful scouting soon showed they had retired in a body down the trail we must follow to reach Musquiz, as for nearly three miles the descent was as rough and difficult as the ascent had been.

Leaving Cress, who was ill, and Manuel, who was weak from loss of blood, to hold the summit, the rest of us descended to fetch up our horses, and a hard hour's job we had of it, for we packed on our backs the load of the dead pack horse and those of his mates the last half of the ascent, rather than risk losing another animal.

Upon our return we found Manuel gloating over three trophies—a hat shot through the side by a ball that had evidently "creased" the wearer's head, an old Spanish spur and a gun scabbard—which he seemed to find salve for the burning wound in his side.

Beneath us to the north lay Musquiz, in plain sight, a scant six miles distance. In the clear dry air of the hills, it looked so near that a good running jump might land one in the plaza, and yet none of us expected we all should enter it again. The odds were against it, for below us lay three miles of hill trail any step down which might land us in a worse ambush than the last and we never imagined the enemy would fail to engage us again. But the descent had to be made, and down it we started, Cress and Manuel bringing up the rear with the horses, the rest of us scouting ahead, dodging from rock to tree, advancing slowly, expecting a volley, but receiving none.

For a mile the band followed the trail, and we followed their fresh tracks; then they left the trail and turned west through the timber. However, we never abated our watchfulness until well out of the hills and near the outskirts of the town, which we reached shortly after noon. There, breakfasting generously if not comfortably with Don Abran and his gamecocks, I got news that made me less regretful of my failure to obtain the Santa Rosa Ranch: one of its two Scotch purchasers had been killed two days before my return, in attempting to repel a raid on his camp by Nicanor Rascon!

With Cress too ill to travel, the next morning I left Crawford to care for him, bade farewell to good old Don Abran, and started for Lampasos with Thornton and Curly.

We nooned at Santa Cruz, a big sheep ranch midway between Musquiz and Progreso, leaving there about two o'clock. An hour later, we heard behind us a clatter of racing hoofs, and presently were overtaken by a hatless Mexican, riding bareback at top speed, who told us that shortly after our departure the Lipans had raided Santa Cruz, and that of its twelve inhabitants, men, women and children, he was the only survivor. Thus were the Lipans still levying heavy toll for their wrongs!

Toward evening we entered Progreso a village reputed among the natives to be a nest of thieves and assassins. While Thornton was away buying meat and I was rearranging our pack, six of the ugliest-looking Mexicans I ever saw strolled across the plaza, evidently to size up our outfit. Apparently it was to their liking, for when, twenty minutes later, we were riding into the ford of the Rio Salado just south of the town, the six, all heavily armed, loped past us, and when they emerged from the ford openly and impudently divided, three taking to the brush on one side of the road, and three on the other, riding forward and flanking the trail we had to follow. From then till dark their hats were almost constantly visible, two or three hundred yards ahead of us. Our horses being so jaded, we were sure they were not the prize sought, and it remained certain they were after our saddles and arms.

Riding quietly on behind them until it was too dark to see our move or follow the trail, we slipped off to the westward of the road, and camped in a deep depression in the plain, where we thought we could venture a small fire to cook our supper. But the fire proved a blunder. Before the water was fairly boiling in the coffee pot, Curly signalled trouble, and we jumped out of the fire-light and dropped flat in the bush just as the six fired a volley into the camp, one of the shots hitting the fire and filling our frying-pan with cinders and ashes. For an hour or more they sneaked about the camp, constantly firing into it, while we lay close without returning a single shot, content they would not dare try to rush us while uncertain of our position. And so it proved, for at length Curly's warnings ceased, and we knew they had withdrawn.

Waiting till midnight, we saddled and packed and made a wide detour to the west, striking the road again perhaps four miles nearer Lampasos, which we reached safely late in the next afternoon; our grand old camp-guard, Curly, in better condition than either of us.

Curiously, seven months later, in August, 1883, while on another ranch-hunting trip in Mexico, this time along the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre in northern Chihuahua at least five hundred miles distant from Musquiz, I learned the solution of our puzzle as to whether our last fight in Coahuila was with Lipans or Mexicans. The manager of the Corralitos Ranch, which I was then engaged in examining, was Adolph Munzenberger. The previous Winter he had lived in Musquiz, as Superintendent of the Cedral Coal Mines. While there, however, I had not met him or his family.

One evening at dinner, Mrs. Munzenberger asked me, "Have you ever, perchance, been in Coahuila?"

"Yes," I answered, "I spent several weeks in the State last Winter."

"And how did you like it?" she asked.

"Well, I must say I found rather too many thrills there for comfort," I replied. And when I mentioned affair on the sierra south of Musquiz, she broke in with:

"Indeed! And you are the crazy gringo Don Abran tried to stop from going into the desert! We heard of it; in fact, it was the talk of the town, and no one expected you would ever get back. And by the way, it was a contraband conducta owned by friends of ours who attacked you back of the town! Droll, is it not?"

"Perhaps—now," I doubtfully answered.

"Yes," Mrs. Munzenberger continued, "they were on their way to Monclova. The night before the attack, the wife of the owner (one of the leading merchants of the town) took me to their camp in the brush near town to see their goods; and a lovely lot of American things they had."

"But why did they attack us?" I queried.

"Well, you see, it was this way," she explained. "The smugglers broke camp long before dawn, and started south over the same trail by which you were approaching; they wanted to get over the summit before the Lipans or guards were likely to be stirring, for it was a point at which conductas were often attacked. But shortly after sunrise, and just as they advance guard reached the summit, they discovered your party ascending, and, mistaking your uniformed soldiers for guardias, the leader lined a dozen of his men along the ridge, and opened on you, while his mayordomo rushed the pack mules of the conducta back down the trail they had come. Early in the fight they discovered you wore a party of gringos, and not guards, and decamped as soon as their conducta had time to reach a point where they could leave the rail.

"Had their goods not been at stake, they would have wiped you out, if they could, for the leader's brother got shot in the head of which he died the same day. Indeed, when the two men you left behind started to leave the country, he had planned to follow and kill them, but luckily Don Abran heard of it, and restrained him."

And this explained the mystery why they had not flanked us!

Brave to downright rashness, George Thornton lasted only about two years longer.

The Winter of 1883-84 he spent with me on my Pecos Ranch. Early in the Spring he came to me and said:

"Old man, if you want to do me a favor, get me an appointment as Deputy United States Marshal in the Indian Territory. I'm going to quit you, anyway. My guns are getting rusty. It's too slow for me here."

"Why, George," I replied, "if you are bound to die why don't you blow your brains out yourself?"—for at the time few new marshals in the Indian Territory survived the first year of their appointment.

"Never mind about me," he answered; "I'll take care of George. Anyway, I'd rather get leaded there than rust here."

So I got him the appointment.

A few months later, when the Territory was thrown open to settlement, Thornton homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land which early became a town site, and now is the business centre of the city of Guthrie. Had he lived and retained possession of his homestead, it would have made him a millionaire. But greedy speculators soon started a contest of his title.

While this contest was at its height, one day Thornton learned some Indians living a few miles from the town were selling whiskey, contrary to Federal law. As he was mounting for the raid, having intended to go alone, a man he scarcely knew offered to accompany him, and Thornton finally deputized him.

The story of his end was told by the Indians themselves, who later were captured by a large force of marshals, and tried for his murder. They said that just at dusk they saw two horsemen approaching. Presently they recognized Marshal Thornton and at once opened fire on him, eight of them, from behind the little grove of cottonwoods in which they were camped. Immediately Thornton shifted his bridle to his teeth, and charged them straight, firing with his two ".41" Colts. The moment he charged, his companion dodged into a clump of timber, where they saw him dismount. On came Thornton straight into their fire shooting with deadly accuracy, killing two of their number, and wounding another before he fell.

Presently, at the flash of a rifle from the brush where his companion had dismounted, Thornton pitched from his horse dead. They had done their best to kill him, they frankly swore, but it was his own deputy's shot that laid him low.

All the collateral circumstantial evidence so fully corroborated this that the Indians were acquitted. The shot that killed him hit him in the back of the head and was of a calibre different from that of the Indians' guns; and his deputy never returned to Guthrie.

That it was a murder prearranged by some of the greedy contestants for his land, was further proved by the fact that every scrap of his private papers was found to have disappeared, and, through their loss, his family lost the homestead.

Curly's end is another story. Happily he was spared to me some years.



CHAPTER X

THE THREE-LEGGED DOE AND THE BLIND BUCK

We had just pulled the canoe out of the water and turned it over after a wet day in the bush across Giant's Lake, and were drying ourselves before the camp-fire, when Con taught a lesson and perpetrated a confidence. His keen, shrewd eyes twinkling, and a broad smile shortening his long, lean face till its great Roman nose and pointed chin were hobnobbing sociably together, the best hunter and guide on the Gatineau sat pouring boiling water through the barrel and into the innermost holy of holies of the intricate lock mechanism of his .303 Winchester—to dry it out and prevent rusting from the wetting it had received in the bush.

"Sure! youse never heerd of it before?" he asked in surprise. "Dryin' a gun with hot water 's safest way to keep her from rustin'; carries out all th' old water hangin' round her insides 'n' makes her so damned hot Mr. Rust don't even have time to throw up a lean-to 'n' get to eatin' of her 'fore the new water's all gone; 'n' Mr. Rust can't get to eat none 'thout water, no more'n a deer can stay out of a salt lick, or Erne Moore can keep away from the habitaw gals, or Tit Moody can get his own consent to stop his tongue waggin' off tales 'bout how women winks down t' Tupper Lake—when he's rowin' 'em."

"Shouldn't think such a little water as you have used would make the gun hot enough to dry it out," I suggested.

"Hot! Won't make her hot! Why, she's hotter now 'n' billy Buell got last October when that loony habitaw cook o' ourn made up all our marmalade and currant jelly into pies that looked 'n' bit 'n' tasted like wagon dope wropt in tough brown paper; hot! 's hot this minute 's Elise Lievre's woman got last Spring when she heerd o' him a-sittin' up t' a Otter Lake squaw. Why, say! youse couldn't no more keep a gun from rustin' in this wet bush 'thout hot water than Warry Hilliams can kill anything goin' faster than three-legged deer.

"Rust! Youse might 'a well try to catch a habitaw goin' to a weddin' 'thout more ribbons on his bridle 'n' harness than his gal has on her gown 's hunt for rust in a hot-watered gun!"

Catching a hint of a yarn, I asked if there were many three-legged deer in the bush.

"W'an't but one ever, far 's I know," he replied. "'N' almighty lucky it was for Warry that one come a-limpin' along his way, for it give him th' only chance he'll probably ever have to say he got to shoot a deer.

"Warry? Why he's jest the best ever happened—'t least the best ever happened 'round this end o' the bush. Lives down to——; better not tell you right where he lives, for I stirred up th' letters in his name, so 'f any of his friends heerd you tell th' story they won't know it's on him; fer he's jest that good I'd rather hurt anybody, 'cept my woman or bird, than hurt him.

"Warry! Why, with a rod 'n' line 'n' reel, whether it's with flies, spoons, or minnows, castin' or trollin', or spearin' or nettin', Warry's th' expertest fish-catcher that ever waded the rapids or paddled th' lakes o' this old Province o' Quebec. But it's gettin' a leetle hard for Warry late years—fish 's come to know him so well that after he's made a few casts 'n' hooked one or two that's got away, they know his tricks so well they just passes the word 'round, 'n' it's 'pike' for th' pike, 'beat it' for th' bass, 'trot' for th' trout, 'n' 'skip' for the salmon, until now, after th' first day or two, 'bout all Warry can get in reach of 's mud turtles.

"'N'd that's what comes o' knowin' too much and gettin' too damned smart—nobody or nothin' left to play with! Warry? Why, say, if he'd only knowed it thirty or forty years ago, Warry had th' chance to live 'n die with th' repute o' bein' th' greatest sport specialist that ever busted through the Quebec bush—if he'd only jest kept to fishin'. But the hell o' it is, Warry's always had a fool idee in his head he can hunt, 'n' he can't, can't sort o' begin to hunt! 'N' darned if I could ever quite figure out why, 'n' him so smart, 'nless because he goes poundin' through the bush like a bunch o' shantymen to their choppin', with his head stuck in his stummick, studyin' some new trick to play on a trout, makin' so much noise th' deer must nigh laugh theirselves to death at him a-packin' o' a gun.

"Hunt? Warry? Does he hunt? Sure, every year for th' last thirty years to my knowledge—only that's all; he jest hunts, never kills nothin'. Leastways he never did till three year ago, 'n' I ought t' know, for I always guides for him. Why, I mind one time he was stayin' over on the Kagama, he got so hungry for meat he up 'n' chunks 'n' kills 'n' cooks 'n' eats a porcupine, th' p'rmiscous shootin' o' which is forbid by Quebec law, 'cause they're so slow a feller can run 'em down 'n' get 'em with a stick or stone, 'n' don't need t' starve just 'cause he's got no gun.

"Three years ago he'd been up for the fly fishin' in late June 'n' trollin' for gray trout in September, 'n then here he comes again th' last week in October t' hunt. 'N' she was the same old story: nothing doing!

"I could set him on th' best runways, 'n' Erne 'n' me could dog th' bush till our tongues hung out 'n' we could hardly open our mouths 'thout barkin'; could run deer past him till it must 'a looked—if he'd had a loose look about him—like a Gracefield habitaw weddin' pr'cession, 'n' thar he'd set with his eyes fast on th' end o' his gun, I guess, a-waitin' for a sign of a bite 'fore he'd jerk her up to try 'n' get somethin'. 'N' the queerest part was, he seemed to enjoy it just 's much 's if he'd brought down a three-hundred-pound buck to drag the wind out o' Erne 'n' me at th' end o' a tump-line. Most fellers 'd got mad 'n' cussed their luck. But not him—kindest, sweetest-tempered man I ever knew. Guess he knowed we'd done our best 'n' had some kind o' secret inside information that he hadn't.

"O' course, sometimes Warry'd get his gun on, but by that time th' deer had quit th' runway 'n' was in th' lake up to their bellies pullin' lily pads, or curled up in th' long grass o' a swale fast asleep.

"But all fellers has a day sometime, if they lives long enough—though some o' them seems t' have t' get t' live a almighty long time t' get t' see it. At last Warry's came.

"Erne 'n' me been doggin' a swamp where th' deadfall tangle was so thick we was so nigh stripped o' clothes we couldn't 'a gone t' camp if there'd been any women about. Drivin' toward where a runway crossed a neck 'tween two lakes, a neck so narrow two pike could scarce pass each other on it, there we'd sot Warry 't th' end o' th' neck. Jest 'fore we got t' him we heard a shot, 'n' I remarked t' Erne, 'Guess th' old man thinks he's got a bite.' 'N' then we broke through a thick bunch o' spruce; 'n' we both nigh fell dead to see old Warry sawin' at th' throat o' a doe, tryin' to 'pear 's natural 's if he'd never done nothin' else but kill 'n' dress deer. Mebbe Erne 'n' me wan't pleased none th' old man had made a kill!

"Erne was ahead; 'n' just as Warry rose up from th' throat-cuttin', Erne dropped into th' weeds 'n' rolled 'n' 'round holdin' o' his stummick, laughin' fit t' kill his fool self, till I thought he'd gone crazy. Then my eye lit on th' fore quarters o' th' doe, 'n' I guess I throwed more twists laughin' than Erne did—for that there doe was shy a leg, hadn't but three legs; nigh fore leg gone midway 'tween knee and dewclaw, shot off 'n' healed up Godo'mi'ty knows when.

"Warry? He didn't seem t' care none, too darned glad t' get anythin' shape o' a deer."

That same evening one of us asked Con if he had ever run across any other mutilated game, recovered of old wounds.

"Sure!" he answered, "'specially once when I was almighty glad to git it, 'n' a whole lot gladder still that nobody was 'round t' see 'n' know 'n' tell just what I got 'n' how I got it. She 's been a secret these five year; stuck t' her tighter 'n' Erne Moore holds th' gals down t' Pickanock dances, 'n' that 's closer 'n' a burl on a birch. Fact is, I never told nobody 'fore now; 'n' I wouldn't be tellin' it t' youse now, only just 'fore we come up here I got a letter from one o' th' two brothers we blindfolded, sayin' his brother was dead an' he goin' t' Californy t' live, 'n' wa'n't comin' into th' bush no more.

"If that feller got hold o' her, my brother 'n' me 'd have t' go t' Australia or th' Cape, for him that's still livin' 's just about 's mean a feller 's Warry's a good one; an' any little repute we've built up 's guides 'n' hunters, he'd put in th' rest o' his life tryin' t' smash 's flat 's that fool habitaw cook got when Larry Adams sot on him for cookin' pa'tridges as soup. He'd just par'lyze her till we couldn't even get a job goin' t' hunt 'n' fetch th' cows out o' a ten acre pasture. 'N' th' worst o' 't is I don't know that I'd blame him so almighty much for doin' it, for there was sure somethin' comin' t' us for foolin' them I don't believe we got yet.

"Th' two o' them came up from across th' line—ain't goin' t' tell you what place they come from or even th' State—in late October, for th' two weeks dog-runnin' season; youse know there is only two weeks th' Quebec law lets us run hounds, 'thout a heavy fine. Never 'd seen either o' them before, but friends o' theirs we'd been guidin' for gave brother 'n' me a big recommend, 'n' they wrote up ahead 'n' hired us t' put up th' teams t' haul them 'n' their traps in, 'n' then guide 'em.

"Soon 's they showed up on th' depot platform at Gracefield, I knowed brother 'n' me was up agin it hard. Train must 'a been a half-hour late gettin' to Maniwaki for th' time she lost unloadin' them two fellers' necessities for a two-weeks' deer hunt: 'bout a dozen gun cases, 'n' fishin' tackle 'nough for ten men, 'n' trunks 'n' boxes that took three teams t' haul 'em out t' th' Bertrand farm. Fact is, them boxes held enough ca'tridges t' lick out another Kiel rebellion 'n' leave over 'nough t' run all th' deer 'tween Thirty-one Mile Lake 'n' the Lievre plumb north into James's Bay, for if there's anythin' your average sportin' deer-hunters can be counted on for sure's death 'n' taxes, it's t' begin throwin' lead, at th' rate o' about ten pound apiece a day, the minute they gets into th' bush, at rocks 'n' trees 'n' loons 'n' chipmucks—never killin' nothin' but their chance o' seein' a deer.

"'N' these bloomin' beauties o' our'n was no exception. Th' lead they wasted on th' two-mile portage from th' Government road t' th' lake would equip all the Injuns on the Desert Reservation for a winter's hunt.

"Why, when Tom 'n' me got hold o' th' box they'd been takin' ca'tridges from t' heave her into the boat, she was so light, compared t' th' others we'd been handlin', we landed her plumb over th' boat in th' water; 'n' damned if she didn't nigh float. She was the only thing they had light 'nough t' even try t' float ('cept their own shootin,') which sure wasn't heavy 'nough t' sink none, 'n' could 'a fell out o' a canoe 'n' been picked up a week later bumpin' 'round with th' other worthless drift.

"Took us a whole day to run their stuff over t' th' camp, 'n' it only a mile across th' lake from th' landin'; 'n' when night come we was 's near dead beat 's if we'd been portagin' a man's load apiece on a tump-line—'n' that's a tub o' pork 'n' a sack 'o flour weighin' two hundred and seventy five pounds—over every portage 'tween Pointe a Gatineau 'n' th' Baskatong.

"O' course th' gettin' them fellers over theirselves was a easy diversion, they was that t' home 'bout a canoe! Youse may not believe it, but after tryin' a half-hour 'n' findin' we couldn't even get them into a canoe at th' landin' 'thout upsettin' or knockin' th' bottom outen her, we had t' help them into a thirty-foot 'pointer' made t' carry a crew o' eight shantymen 'n' their supplies on the spring drives, 'n' then had t' pull our damnedest t' get them across th' lake 'fore they upset her, jumpin' 'round 't shoot at somethin' they couldn't hit!

"'N' eat! Well, they ate a few! We was only out for two weeks, 'n' when we loaded th' teams 'peared t' me like we had 'nough feed for six months, but after th' first meal 't looked t' me we'd be down t' eatin' what we could kill inside o' a week. Looked like no human's stummick could hold all they put in their faces, 'n' brother, he said he thought their legs 'n' arms must be holler.

"'N' sleep! When 't come t' wakin' of 'em up th' next mornin' they was like a pair o' bears that 'd holed up for th' winter, 'n' it nigh took violence t' get 'em out at all. We started in runnin' th' hounds, 'n' brother 'n' me had the best on th' Gatineau—Frank 'n' Loud, 'n' old Blue, 'n' Spot—dogs that can scent a deer trail 's far 's Erne Moore can smell supper cookin', 'n' that 's far from home 's Le Blanc farm his father used to own, over Kagama way, 'bout eight miles from Pickanock, where he lives. We run th' dogs for four days, 'n' it was discouragin', most discouragin'. Country was full o' deer when we was last out, three weeks before, 'n' th' dogs voiced 'n' seemed t' run plenty right down to 'n' past where we'd sot th' two on th' runways; but they swore they never see nothin', said th' hounds been runnin' on old scent, sign made the night before.

"Then brother 'n' me took t' doggin' too, makin' six dogs, 'n' givin' us a chance t' see anythin' that jumped up in th' bush. Still nothin' came past 'em, they said, though we saw many a deer jump up out o' th' swamps 'n' go white flaggin' theirselves down th' runways toward the two 'hunters.'

"We just couldn't understand it 'n' made up our minds t' try 'n' find out why they never got t' see none.

"So the sixth day I placed one o' them myself on a runway half as wide 'n' beat most 's hard 's th' Government road, full o' fresh sign, picked a place where a big pine stump stood plumb in th' middle o' th' runway, 'n' sot him behind it where he had a open view thirty yards up th' runway th' direction we'd be doggin' from.

"Then I let on t' break through th' bush t' th' swamp we was goin' t' dog, but 'stead o' that I only went a little piece 'n' left brother to start th' hounds at a time we'd arranged ahead, while I lay quiet behind a bunch o' balsam 'thin fifty yards o' my hunter. After 'bout twenty minutes, the time I was supposed t' need t' get t' th' place t' start th' hounds, I heard old Frank give tongue—must 'a struck a fresh trail th' minute he was turned loose. Then it wa'n't long 'till th' other three began t' sing, runnin' 'n' singin' a chorus that's jest th' sweetest music on earth t' my ears.

"Talk about your war 'n' patriotic songs, your 'Rule Britannias' 'n' 'Maple Leaves,' your church hymns 'n' love songs, 'n' fancy French op'ras like they have down t' Ottawa that Warry Hilliams took me to wonst! Why, say, do youse think any o' them is in it with a hound chorus, th' deep bass o' th' old hounds 'n' th' shrill tenor o' th' young ones—risin' 'n' swellin' 'n' ringin' through th' bush till every idle echo loafin' in th' coves o' th' ridges wakes up 'n' joins in her best, 'n' you'd think all th' hounds in this old Province was runnin' 'n' chorusin' 'tween the Bubs 'n' Mud Bay; 'n' then th' chorus dyin' down softer 'n' softer till she's low 'n' sweet 'n' sorta holy-soundin', like your own woman's voice chantin' t' your youngest—say, do youse think there's any music in th' world 's good 's th' hounds make runnin'?

"Well, I sot there behind th' balsams till th' dogs was drawin' near, 'n' then I slips softly through th' bush t' where I'd left Mr. Hunter; 'n' how do youse s'pose I found him, 'n' it no more'n half past seven in th' mornin'? Youse never 'd guess in a thousand year. I'll jest tumpline th' whole bunch o' youse 't one load from th' landin 't' th' Bertrand farm if that feller wa'n't settin' with his back t' th' stump, facin' up th' runway, his rifle 'tween his knees 'n' his fool head lopped over on one shoulder, dead asleep! No wonder they never see nothin', was it?

"First I thought I'd wake him. Then I heard a deer comin' jumpin' down th' runway, 'n' knowin' 'for I could get him wide awake 'nough t' cock 'n' sight his gun th' deer 'd be on us, I slipped up behind th' stump 'n' laid my rifle 'cross its top, th' muzzle not over a foot above his noddin' head. I was no more'n ready 'fore here come—a buck? No, I guess not, 'cause they was jest crazy for some good buck heads; no, jest a doe, but a good big one. Here she come boundin' along, her head half turned listening t' th' dogs, 'n' never seein' him, he sot so still. When she got 'thin 'bout fifty feet I fired 'n' dropped her—'n' then hell popped th' other side o' th' stump! Guess he thought he was jumped by Injuns. Slung his gun one way 'n' split th' bush runnin' th' other, leapin' deadfalls 'n' crashin' through tangles so fast I had t' run him 'bout fifty acres t' get t' cotch 'n' stop him.

"That feller was with us jest about ten days longer, but he never got time t' tell us jest what he thought was follerin' him or what was goin' t' happen if he got cotched. Likely 's not he'd been runnin' yet if I hadn't collared him.

"O' course they was glad at last t' get some venison—leastways youse'd think so t' see them stuffin' theirselves with it—but they never let up a minute round camp roastin' brother 'n' me for not runnin' them a buck; swore that we hadn't run 'em any was proved by my gettin' nothin' but th' doe.

"Finally, they up 'n' wants a still-hunt! Them still-hunt, that we could scarce get along the broadest runway 'thout makin' noises a deer'd hear half a mile! Still-hunt! Still-hunt, after we'd been runnin' the hounds for a week and they'd shot off 'bout a thousand rounds o' ca'tridges round camp 'n' comin' back from doggin', till there wa'n't a deer within eight miles o' th' lake that wa'n't upon his hind legs listenin' where th' next bunch o' trouble was comin' from. But still-hunt it was for our'n, 'n' at it we went for th' next two days. Don't believe we'd even 'a started, though, if we hadn't known two days at th' most 'd cure them o' still-huntin'. Gettin' out 'fore sun-up, with every log in th' brules frosted slippery 's ice 'n' every bunch o' brush a pitfall, climbin' 'n' slidin' jumpin' 'n' balancin,' any 'n' every kind o' leg motion 'cept plain honest walkin,' was several sizes too big a order for them. So th' second mornin' out settled their still-huntin'.

"Then they wanted brother 'n' me t' still-hunt—while they laid round camp, I guess, 'n' boozed, th' way they smelled 'n' talked nights when we got in.

"'N' still-hunt we did, plumb faithful, 'n' hard 's ever in our lives when we was in bad need o' th' meat, for several days; 'n' would youse believe it? We never got a single shot. Sometimes we saw a white flag for a second hangin' on top o' a bunch o' berry bushes—that was all; most o' th' deer scared out o' th' country, 'n' th' rest wilder 'n' Erne gets when another feller dances with his best gal.

"Well, we just had t' give up 'n' own up beat. 'N' Goda'mi'ty! but didn't them two cheap imitation hunters tell us what they thought o' us pr'fessionals—said 'bout everything anybody could think of, 'cept cuss us. 'N' there was no doubt in our minds they wanted to do that. If they'd been plumb strangers, 'stead o' friends o' one o' our parties, it's more'n likely brother 'n' me'd wore out a pair o' saplings over their fool heads, 'n' paddled off 'n left them t' tump-line theirselves out o' th' bush. But I told brother 't was only a day or two more, 'n' we'd chew our own cheeks 'stead o' their ears.

"The last day we had in camp they asked us t' make one more try with th' hounds. We took th' two ridges north o' th' shanty deer-lick 'n' drove west, with them on a runway sure to get a deer if there was any left t' start runnin'. Scarcely ten minutes after we loosed th' hounds I heard them stopped 'n' bayin', over on th' slope o' th' ridge brother was on, bayin' in a way made me just dead sure they had a bear.

"Now a bear-kill, right then t' go home 'n' lie about, tellin' how they fit with it, would 'a suited our sham hunters better 'n' a whole passle o' antlers; so I busted through th' bush fast as I could, fallin' 'n' rippin' my clothes nigh off—only t' find our hounds snappin' 'n' bayin' round a mighty big buck, that when I first sighted him, seemed to be jest standin' still watchin' th' hounds. Never saw a deer act that way before, 'n' him not wounded, 'n' nobody'd shot. Jest couldn't figure 't out at all. But I was so keen t' get them fellers a bunch o' horns I didn't stop t' study long what p'rsonal private reasons that buck had for stoppin' 'n' facin' th' hounds.

"I was in the act o' throwin' my .303 t' my face, when brother hollered not t' shoot, 'n' t' come over t' him. 'N' by cripes! while I was crossin' over t' brother, what in th' name o' all th' old hunters that ever drawed a sight do youse think I noted about that buck? Darned if that buck wa'n't blind—stone blind—blind 's a bat!

"Poor old warrior! He'd stand with his head on one side listenin' t' th' hounds till he had one located close up, 'n' then he'd rear 'n' plunge at th' hound; 'n' if there happened t' be a tree or dead timber in his way, he'd smash into it, sometimes knockin' himself a'most stiff. But when all was clear th' hounds stood no show agin him, blind as he was. Old Loud 'n' Frank, that naturally put up a better fight than th' young dogs, he tore up with his front hoofs so bad they like t' died.

"Run th' buck knowed he couldn't, 'n' there he stood at bay t' fight to a finish 'n' sell out dear 's he could. If it hadn't been a real kindness t' kill him, I'd never 'a shot that brave old buck, 'n' left our hunters t' buy any horns they had t' have down t' Ottawa. But he was already pore 'n' thin 's deer come out in March, 'n' if we let him go 'd be sure t' starve or be ate by th' wolves. So I put a .303 behind his shoulder, 'n' brother 'n' me ran up 'n' chunked th' dogs off.

"'N' what do youse think we found had blinded that buck? Been lately in a terrible fight with another buck. His head 'n' neck 'n' shoulders was covered with half-healed wounds where he'd been gashed 'n' tore by th' other's horns 'n' hoofs; 'n' somehow in the fight both his eyes 'd got put out! Guess when he lost his eyes th' other buck must a' been 'bout dead himself, or it 'd 'a killed him 'fore quittin'.

"Then it hit brother 'n' me all of a heap that we'd be up agin it jest a leetle bit too hard t' stand if we hauled a blind buck into camp; fellers 'd swear that t' get t' kill a buck at all brother 'n' me had t' range th' bush till we struck a blind one; 'n' then they'd probably want us t' go out 'n' see if we couldn't find some sick or crippled 'nough so we could get to shoot 'em.

"Brother was for leavin' him 'n' sayin' nothin'; but th' old feller had a grand pair o' horns it seemed a pity t' lose, 'n' so I just drove a .303 sideways through his eyes; 'n' when we got t' camp we 'counted for th' two shots in him by tellin' them he was circlin' back past us 'n' we both fired t' wonst.

"'N' by cripes! t' this day nobody but youse knows that Con Teeples dogged 'n' still-hunted th' bush for two weeks for horns 'thout killin' nothin' but a blind buck."



CHAPTER XI

THE LEMON COUNTY HUNT

One crisp winter morning a party of us left New York to spend the week end at the Lemon County Hunt Club. It was there I first met Sol, the dean of Lemon County hunters and for eight seasons the winner, against all comers, of the famous annual Lemon County Steeple Chase. At the hurdles, whether in the great public set events or in private contests, Sol was never beaten, while in the drag hunts it was seldom indeed he was not close up on the hounds from "throw-in" to "worry."

To the Club Mews he had come under the tragic name of Avenger, but such was the marvellous equine wisdom he displayed that at the finish of his third hunt in Lemon County, he was rechristened Solomon by his new owner—soon shortened to Sol for tighter fit among sulphurous hunt expletives. At that night's dinner Sol and his deeds were the chief topic of conversation and also its principal toast. And why not, when no hunting stable in the world holds a horse in all respects his equal? Why not toast a horse now twenty-six years old who has missed no run of the Lemon County hounds for the last eight years, never for a single hunting-day off his feed or legs? Why not toast a horse that takes ordinary timber in his stride and eats up the stiffest stone walls for eight full hunting seasons without a single fall? Why not toast a horse with the prescience and generalship of a Napoleon, a horse who drives straight at all obstacles in a fair field, but who never imperils his rider's head beneath over-hanging boughs; who foresees and evades the "blind ditches" and other perils lurking behind hedges and walls and who lands as steady and safe on ice as he takes off out of muck? Why not toast this venerable but still indomitable King of Hunters?

The next morning it was my privilege to meet him. In midwinter, he of course was not in condition. Descriptions of his weird physique, and jests over his grotesquely large and ill-shaped head, made by half a dozen voluble huntsmen over post-prandial bottles, I thought had prepared me against surprise. Certainly they had described such a horse as I had never seen.

But having come to the door of his box, I was astounded to see slouching lazily in a corner with eyes closed, the nigh hip dropped low, a horse that at first glance appeared to be Don Quixote's Rosinante reincarnate, a gigantic "crow-bait" with a head as long and coarse as an eighteen-hand mule's, an under lip pendulous as a camel's dropping ears nearly long enough to brush flies off his nostrils, with such an ingrowing concavity of under jaw and convexity of face as would have enabled his head to supply the third of a nine-foot circle, a face curved as a scimitar and nearly as sharp. Both in shape and dimensions it was the grossest possible caricature of a Roman-nosed equine head the maddest fancy could conceive.

Slapped lightly on the quarter, Sol was instantly transformed.

Eyes out of which shone wisdom preternatural in a horse, opened and looked down upon us with the calm questioning reproach one might expect from a rude awakening of the Sphinx; then the tall ears straightened and the great bulk rose to the full majesty of its seventeen hands; and while slats, hip bones, and shoulder blades were distressingly prominent, a glance got the full story of Sol's wonderful deeds and matchless record for safe, sure work.

With massive, low-sloping shoulders, tremendous quarters, exceptionally short of cannon bone and long from hock to stifle as a greyhound; with a breadth of chest and a depth of barrel beneath the withers that indicated most unusual lung capacity, behind the throat-latch Sol showed, in extraordinary perfection, all the best points of a thoroughbred hunter that make for speed, jumping ability, and endurance.

And as he so stood, a flea-bitten, speckled white in color, he looked like a section out of the main snowy range of the Rocky Mountains: the two wide-set ears representing the Spanish Peaks; his sloping neck their northern declivity; his high withers, sharply outlined vertebrae, and towering quarters the serrated range crest; his banged tail a glacier reaching down toward its moraine!

Sol needed exercise, and that afternoon I was permitted the privilege of riding him. Mounted from a chair and settled in the saddle, I felt as if I must surely be bestriding St. Patrick's Cathedral. But at a shake of the reins the parallel ceased. His pasterns were supple as an Arab four-year-old's, his muscles steel springs.

Myself quite as gray as Sol and, relatively, of about the same age, as lives of men and horses go, we early fell into a mutual sympathy that soon ripened into a fast friendship. At Christmas I returned to the Club to spend holiday week, in fact sought the invitation to be with Sol. Every day we went out together, Sol and I, morning and afternoon. Bright, warm, open winter days, so soon as the spin he loved was finished, I slid off him, slipped the bit from his mouth (leaving head-stall hanging about his neck), and left him free to nibble the juicy green grasses of some woodland glade and, between nibble times, to spin me yarns of his experiences. For the subtle sympathy that existed between us—sprung of our trust in one another and sublimated in the heat of our mutual affection had sharpened our perceptions until intellectual inter-communication became possible to us. I know Sol understood all I told him, and I don't think I misunderstood much he told me. So here is his tale, as nearly as I can recall it.

"Ye know I'm Irish, and proud of it. It's there they knew best how to make and condition an able hunter. No pamperin', softenin' idleness in box stalls or fat pastures, or light road-joggin', goes in Ireland between huntin' seasons. It's muscle and wind we need at our trade in Ireland, and neither can be more than half diviloped in the few weeks' light conditionin' work that all English and most American cross-country riders give their hunters. Steady gruellin' work is what it takes to toughen sinews and expand lungs, and it's the Irish huntsman that knows it. So between seasons we drag the ploughs and pull the wains, toil at the rudest farm tasks, and thus are kept in condition on a day's notice to make the run or take the jump of our lives.

"Humiliatin'? Hardly, when we find it gives us strength and staying power to lead the best the shires can send against us: they've neither power nor stomach to take Irish stone and timber.

"'It's a royal line of blood, his,' I've often heard Sir Patrick say; 'a clean strain of the best for a hundred years, by records of me own family. His head? There was never a freak in the line till he came; and where the divil and by what misbegotten luck he came by it is the mystery of Roscommon. And it's by that same token we call him Avenger, for no sneerin' stranger ever hunted with him that didn't get the divil's own peltin' with clods off his handy Irish heels.'

"And the head groom had it from the butler and passed it on to me that the old Master of the Roscommon Hounds was ever swearin' over his third bottle, of hunt nights, when I was no more than a five-year-old and the youngsters would be fleerin' at Sir Pat over the shape of me head:

"'Faith, an' it's Avenger's head ye don't like, lads, is it? By the powers o' the holy Virgin but it's me pity ye have that none of ye can show the likes in your stables. By the gray mare that broke King Charlie's neck, it's the head of him holds brains enough to distinguish ten average hunters, brains no ordinary brain pan could hold; an' it's a brain-box shape of a shot sock makin' the disfigurin' hump below his eyes. It's a four-legged gineral is Avenger, with the cunnin' foresight of a Bonaparte and the cool judgment of a Wellington.'

"Ah! but they were happy days on the old sod, buckin' timber, flyin' over brooks, stretchin' over stone or lightin' light as bird atop of walls too broad to carry and springin' on, with a good light-handed man up that knew his work and left ye free to do yours! And a sad night it was for me when Sir Pat, stripped by years of gambling of all he owned but the clothes he stood in and me, staked and lost me to a hunt visitor from Quebec!

"I was a youngster then, only a nine-year-old, but I'll niver forget the two weeks' run from Queenstown to Quebec whereon hunting tables were reversed and I became the rider and the ship me mount, across country the roughest hunter ever lived through: niver a moment of easy flat goin', but an endless series of gigantic leaps that nigh jouted me teeth loose, churned me insides till they wouldn't even hold dry feed, and gave me more of a taste than I liked of what I had been givin' Roscommon huntsmen over lane side wall jumps—a rise and a jolt, a rise and a jolt, till it was wonderin' I was the ears were not shaken from me head.

"Humiliation? It was there at Quebec I got it! In old Roscommon usually it was lords and ladies rode me of hunt days, men and women bred to the game as I meself was.

"But at Quebec, the best—and I had the best—were beefy members of their dinkey colonial Government or fussy, timid barristers I had to carry on me mouth. Seldom it was I carried a good pair of hands and a cool head in me nine years' runnin' with the Quebec and Montreal hounds. And lucky the same was for me, for it forced me to take the bit in me teeth, rely on meself, and regard me rider no more than if he were a sack of flour: I jist had it to do to save me own legs and me rider's neck, for to run by their reinin' and pullin' would have brought us a cropper at about two out of every three obstacles. Faith, and I believe it's an honest leaper's luck I've always had with me, anyway, for me Quebec work was jist what I needed to train me for an honorable finish with the Lemon County Yankees.

"One Autumn night years ago, when I was eighteen, a clever young Yankee visitor from New York appeared at our club. For two days I watched his work on other mounts, and liked it. He was good as any two-legged product of the old sod itself, a handsome youngster a bit heavier than Sir Pat, a reckless, deep drinkin', hard swearin', straight ridin' sort, but with a head and hands ye knew in a minute ye could trust, by name Jack Lounsend. The third hunt after his arrival, it was me delight to carry him, and for the first time in years to allow me rider his will of me. And you can bet your stud and gear, I gave him the best I had, for the sheer love of him, and him so near the likes of me dear Sir Pat.

"Nor was me work to go unvalued, for, to me great delight, he bought me and brought me to the States—straight away to Lemon County—along with two of me huntmates he fancied. And a sweet country I found this same Lemon County, with timber and stone nigh as stiff, and sod as sound as old Roscommon's own.

"But troubles lay ahead of me I'd not foreseen. Instead of goin' into Jack's private string, as I'd hoped, the early record I made for close finishes and safe, sure work made me wanted by the chief patron of the hunt, a New York multi-railroad-aire with a well diviloped habit of gettin' everything he goes after. So, while I venture to believe Jack hated to part with me, the patron got me.

"And a good man up the patron himself proved, one I'd always be proud enough to carry; but, as Jack used to say, the hell of it was the Lemon County Hunt numbered more bunglin' duffers than straight riders, the sort a youngster or a hot-head would be sure to kill.

"So when, as often happened, the patron was busy with faster runs and a hotter 'worry' than our hunt afforded, it frequently fell to me lot to carry the half-broke of all ages, seldom a one bridle wise to our game, as sure to pull me at the take-off of a leap as to give me me head on a run through heavy mud, the sort no horse could carry and finish dacently with except by takin' the bit in his teeth and himself makin' the runnin'. And even so, it was a tough task fightin' their rotten heavy hands and loose seat! But, by the glory of old Roscommon, never once have I been down in me eight years with the Lemons!

"Once, to be sure, on me first run, by the way, I slashed into one of your brutal wire fences, the first I'd ever seen—looked a filmy thing you could smash right through—caught a shoe in it, and nigh wrenched a shoulder blade in two. Sure, I never lost me feet, but it laid me up a few days; and you can gamble any odds you like no wire has ever caught me since; and, more, that I now hold record as the only horse in the County that takes wire as readily as timber, where it's necessary—though sure it is I'll dodge for timber every time where I won't lose too much in place.

"Down they come to Lemon County, a lot of those New York beauties, men and women, togged out so properly you'd think they'd spent their whole lives in the huntin' field; but at the first obstacle you'd see their faces go white as their stocks, and then all over you they'd ride from tail to ears, their arms sawin' at your mouth fit to rip your under jaw off, like they thought it was a backin' contest they were entered for. And sure back to the rear it soon was for them, back till the hounds were mere glintin' specks flyin' across a distant hill-crest, the riders' red coats noddin' poppies; back till only faint echoes reached them of the swellin', quaverin' chorus of the madly racin' pack; back for all but him or her whom old Sol had his will of,—for rider never lived could hold me to the wrong jump or throw me from my stride, nor was fence ever built I'd not find a place to leap without layin' a toe on it.

"Once the hounds give voice, it's the divil himself couldn't hold me, whether it's the short, sharp war-cry of the Irish or the sweet, deep bell-notes of these Yankee hounds that to me ever seem chantin' a mournful dirge for the quarry. Sure, it's the faster Irish hounds that make the grandest runnin', but it's the deep-throated mellow chorus of a Yankee pack I love best to hear.

"Nouveaux riches, whatever kind of bounders that spells, is what Bob Berry calls the lot of mouth-sawers New York sends us; and whenever the patron is out or Jack has his way, it's niver one of them I'm disgraced with.

"Sometimes it's me good old Jack up; sometimes hard swearin', straight goin' Bob; sometimes little Raven, as true a pair of hands and light and tight a seat as hunter ever had; sometimes Lory Ling, as reckless as the old Roscommon sire of him I used to carry when I was a five-year-old, with a ring in his swears, a stab in his heels, and a cut in his crop that can lift a dead-beat one over as tall gates as the best and freshest can take; sometimes it's Priest, that with the language of him and the hell-at-a-split pace he'll hold a tired one to but ill desarves the holy name he wears; and sometimes—my happiest times—it's a daughter of the patron up, with hands like velvet and the nerve and seat of a veteran.

"Horse or human, it's blood that tells, every time, me word for that. Be they old or young, you can niver mistake it. Can't stop anything with good blood in it—gallops straight, takes timber in its stride, and finishes smartly every time. Know it may not, but it balks at nothing, sets its teeth and drives ahead till it learns.

"And perhaps that wasn't driven well home on me last Fall!"

"Out to us came a little woman, a scant ninety-pounder I should say, so frail she wouldn't look safe in a drag, and a good bit away on the off side of middle age; but the mouth of her had a set that showed she'd never run off the bit in her life, and her eye—my eye! but she had an eye, did that woman. And it was hell-bent to hunt she was, bound to follow the bounds, though all she knew of a saddle came of five-mile-an-hour jogs along town park bridle paths, and all her hands looked fit for was holdin' a spaniel.

"Well, it was Lory and Priest took her on, turn about, usually me that carried her, and it was break her slender little neck I thought the divils would in spite of me. Took her at everything and spared her nowhere, bowled her along across meadow and furrow, over water, timber, and walls, like she was a lusty five-year-old, and all the time a guyin' her in a way to take the heart out of anything but a thoroughbred. 'Don't mind the fence!' Lory would sing out, 'if you get a fall, just throw your legs in the air and keep kickin' to show you're not dead; we never want to stop for any but the dead on this hunt.' And smash on my quarters would come her crop, and on we'd go!

"Again, when we'd be nearin' a fence across which two were scramblin' up from croppers, Lory would brace her with: 'Don't git scared at that smoke across the fence; it's nothin' but the boys that couldn't get over burnin' up their chance of salvation!' And into me slats her little heel would sock the steel, and high over the timber I'd lift her for sheer joy of the nerve of her!

"But it was not always me that had her. One day I saw a cold-blood give her a fall you'd think would smash the tiny little thing into bran; landed so low on a ditch bank he couldn't gather, and up over his head she flew and on till I thought she was for takin' the next wall by her lonesome. And when finally she hit the ground it was to so near bury herself among soft furrows that it looked for a second as if she'd taken earth like any other wily old fox tired of the runnin'.

"But tired? She? Not on your bran mash! Up she springs like a yearlin' and asks Lory is her hat on straight—which it was, straight up and down over her nigh ear. 'Oh, damn your hat,' answers Lory; 'give us your foot for a mount if you're not rattled. Why, next year you'll be showin' your friends holes in the ground on this hunt course you've dug with your own head!' And up it was for her and away again on old cold-blood. Faith, but those cold-bloods make it a shame they're ever called hunters. Fall the best must, one day or another; but while the thoroughbred goes down fightin', strugglin' for his feet and ginerally either winnin' out or givin' his rider time to fall free if down he must go, the cold-blood falls loose and flabby as an empty sack, and he and his rider hit the ground like the divil had kicked them off Durham Terrace. Ah, but it was the heart of a true thoroughbred had Mrs. Bruner, and whether up on cold or hot blood, along she'd drive at anything those two hare-brained dare-devils would point her at, spur diggin', crop splashin'!

"Nor is all our fun of hunt days. Between times the lads are always larkin' and puttin' up games on each other out of the stock of divilment that won't keep till the next run, each never quite so happy as when he can git the best of a mate on a trade or a wager.

"One day little Raven and I galloped over to Lory's place.

"'Whatever mischief are you and His Wisdom up to?' sings out Lory to Raven, the minute we stopped at his porch.

"'Nary a mischief,' answers Raven; 'want some help of you.'

"'Give it a name,' says Lory.

"'Easy,' says Raven; 'the master's got a new fad—crazy to mount the hunt on white horses. I've old Sol here, and Jack has a pair of handy white ones for the two whips, but where to get a white mount for Jack stumps us. Jogged over to see if you could help us out.'

"Lory was lollin' in an easy-chair, lookin' out west across his spring lot. Directly I saw a twinkle in his eye, and followin' the line of his glance, there slouchin' in a fence corner I saw Lory's old white work-mare, Molly. Sometimes Molly pulled the buggy and the little Lings, but usually it was a plough or a mower for hers. I'd heard Lory say she was eighteen years old and that once she was gray, but now she's white as a first snow-fall.

"'How would old gray Molly do, Raven?' presently asks Lory.

"'Do? Has she ever hunted?' asks Raven.

"'Divil a hunt of anything but a chance for a rest,' says Lory; 'never had a saddle on, as far as I know, but she has the quarters and low sloping shoulders of a born jumper, and it's you must admit it. Let's have a look at her.'

"So out across the spring lot the three of us went, to the corner where Molly was dozin'. And true for Lory it was, the old lady had fine points; when lightly slapped with Raven's crop she showed spirit and a good bit of action.

"'She's sure got a good strain in her,' says Raven; 'where did you get her, Lory?'

"'Had her twelve years,' says Lory; 'brought her on from my Wyoming ranch; she and a skullful of experience and a heartful of disappointment made up about all two bad winters left of my ranch investments. The freight on her made her look more like a back-set than an asset, but she was a link of the old life I couldn't leave.'

"'Well, give her a try out,' laughs Raven, 'and if she'll run a bit and jump, we may have some fun passin' her up to Jack.'

"So Lory takes her to the stable, has her saddled and mounts, and I hope never to have another rub-down if she didn't gallop on like she'd never done anything else—stiff in the pasterns and hittin' the ground fit to bust herself wide open, but poundin' along a fair pace. Then we went into a narrow lane and I gave her a lead over some low bars, and here came game old Molly stretchin' over after me like fences and her were old stable-mates.