KING OF 
 
 THE 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
(Copyright, iSgj, by A. Scholl) 
 
THE 
 
 KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 AND 
 
 Other Stones of New Mexico 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. LUMMIS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
P53503 
 
 TO 
 
 A BETTER MAN 
 jfatfjer 
 
 MS098Q 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE KING OP THE BRONCOS 1 
 
 BOGGED DOWN 35 
 
 THE BITE OP THE PICHU-CUATE 63 
 
 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 73 
 
 THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 95 
 
 A PENITENTE FLOWER-POT 115 
 
 BRAVO S DAT OFF . . . . . . .131 
 
 BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 149 
 
 GREEN S BEAR-TRAP . ... . . . . 165 
 
 MY SMALLEST SITTER . . . .... 177 
 
 OUR WORST SNAKE . . . . . . . .187 
 
 KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 199 
 
 THE OLD SHARPE ." .:. 216 
 
 MY FRIEND WILL 231 
 
 vii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 PORTRAIT CHARLES F. LUMMIS . . Frontispiece 
 
 u 
 
 WE SAW HIM DROP THE REIN AND STRAIGHTEN 1 . . 32 
 
 u HE HELD HIS HAND ARM S LENGTH BEFORE HIM, AND 
 
 PULLED THE TRIGGER " . . . . .70 
 
 "ALREADY HER HEAD AND SHOULDERS WERE THROUGH 
 
 THE DOOR" 92 
 
 " HE CLUTCHED A HAND-RAIL AND SWUNG HIMSELF ABOARD 
 
 THE LAST CAR 11 . 110 
 
 " COME, THERE S A GOOD DOG " . . . . . 134 
 " BONIFACIO FAIRLY FLEW DOWN THE STREET " . . 156 
 " SWINGING THE HEAVY RIFLE ABOVE MY HEAD, I 
 
 DASHED IT IN HIS FACE " 228 
 
 " SO THE ONE-ARMED JEHU HAD TO DRAG TO THE BANK 
 
 THE THREE TWO-HUNDRED-POUND SACKS OF CORN" . 244 
 
THE KING OP THE BRONCOS 
 
THE KING OF THE BKONCOS 
 
 So! There was, then, a horse in the world that 
 could run faster than Jovero ? 1 Impossible ! And 
 yet, there you were! The lips of Jovero s rider 
 suddenly puckered in a low whistle, and the vexed 
 ridges in his brow unbent to a frown of wonder. 
 Why, next thing you knew, you would be finding 
 some one braver than Don Ireneo, or a better 
 wrestler than Cuate, or one wiser than the Padre 
 Brun himself, who could run clear through a book 
 and never once stub his toe! 
 
 These were revolutionary thoughts; and Jovero s 
 gait was not conducive to thought of any sort. 
 His small ears were set flat back to his head, his 
 neck was strained forward, his nostrils flared like 
 bells ; and as he thundered on it was evident 
 enough that he was as much put out as his master 
 by yonder impudent runaway. Though Juan no 
 longer sat as the rider sits whose heart is in the 
 chase, Jovero lunged ahead fiercely as ever. He 
 would run down yon upstart on his own hook, or 
 die trying. 
 
 1 Ho-vdy-ro. 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 , * 
 
 * But it was : rit>tas?; and Juan felt it. He turned 
 
 ^tO$* trifle/art the rein, and settled back 
 agamsl *the 4 cattle: * l% Jovero flung his head dis 
 respectfully, but began to slow up. A second 
 later, the strange horse disappeared behind a ridge 
 two hundred yards ahead; and Juan turned his 
 unwilling mount back to the south. 
 
 " Clearly, it will be a most extraordinary beast! " 
 mused the oldest man about the adobe fireplace 
 that evening, when Juan had rehearsed his advent 
 ure. " For if a man had told me there could be 
 a bronco to outrun this cojo l that I myself roped 
 from the wild herd eight years ago, I should have 
 laughed. We all know there is not a horse ridden 
 in New Mexico that can catch this Jovero; and 
 if there is a wild one that Jovero cannot catch, 
 then I will give a thousand dollars of gold to the 
 man who shall lead him to me saddled and 
 bridled." 
 
 " Well said, Don Bartolo ! Of a truth, the horse 
 that could gain from Jovero would be worth his 
 weight in dollars. But it is not I that shall bring 
 him to you. Jovero himself is more swift than 
 my old bones befit." It was another elderly man 
 who spoke. 
 
 " And he that looks to be asleep ! " broke in 
 a younger one, whose frame betokened great 
 
 iC6-ho, "cripple." 
 
THE KING OF THE BBONCOS 5 
 
 strength. "I have tamed many rejiegos; 1 but 
 this Jovero well, seeing him a stranger, I would 
 not proffer ten dollars for him, so lean and drowsy 
 is he, and with that long hoof. But knowing him, 
 I would give for him all the herd of Manuelito, 
 chief of the Navajos ! " 
 
 "So Manuelito himself has offered, more than 
 once," answered Don Bartolo, quietly. "But I 
 would not barter Jovero for all horses that go on 
 feet with yonder bronco thrown in. He is one 
 of the family, and not to be sold. But come, 
 Juan, wouldst thou know thy rejiego, seeing him 
 again ? " 
 
 " How not, senor ? " cried the boy, earnestly. 
 " Among ten thousand I would know him ! For 
 did I not come face to face with him on the trail 
 to Canon Juan Tafoya, and then run him all the 
 thirty miles in to the valley of Acebache ? A pure 
 black, everywhere but upon his forehead a very 
 star of white, and his mane and tail iron-gray, the 
 tail to the ground ! Ay, but he is not to be mis 
 taken nobler than any other, with his head up 
 lifted in pride, and his legs like the legs of an 
 antelope for slender and fine ! I will have him 
 if I die for it ! " 
 
 " It is well," smiled Don Bartolo. In his day 
 he had been the most famous rider in New Mexico, 
 and even yet he was not too old to sympathize 
 
 1 Re-hyay-gos, a New Mexican term for savage horses. 
 
6 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 with Juan. Nay, even his own sober blood began 
 to prickle at what he had just heard of this won 
 drous horse a horse faster than Jovero ! 
 
 " Remember, then, he is worth a thousand 
 pesos" he added. "But now get you home, 
 rogues, for it is very night, and I have much to 
 talk with Don Colas." 
 
 It was long before Juan could go to sleep. The 
 fall winds wailed around the little adobe where he 
 and his mother lived, and every now and again he 
 seemed to hear in them the defiant whinny of that 
 matchless wild horse. And when he began to 
 dream, he saw that iron-gray mane and tail flout 
 ing the wind, and heard the mad tattoo of the 
 black hoofs. 
 
 Not catch him ? He had to be caught ! His 
 name should be Lucero, 1 " Star of the Morning," 
 for that blaze on the forehead and how he would 
 dust the eyes of every rival on San Juan s day ! 
 
 At three of the morning Don Bartolo was wak 
 ened by a tap at his window. 
 
 "I am I, senor Juan. If you will do me the 
 favor to let me go catch that bronco now ? I can 
 not go to sleep for thought of him." 
 
 " Bien ! Go, then ! But not alone. Take also 
 the other vaqueros and make a round-up to the 
 corral at San Miguel. I will send up as many as 
 can be spared to make wings to the trap. But 
 
 1 Loo-sy-ro. 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 7 
 
 much eye, if thou get him to the corral ; for a 
 horse swifter than Jovero will fight as well as he 
 runs. Luck, then ! " 
 
 Juan had worked for Don Bartolo ever since he 
 was big enough to work at all, which was not a 
 great many years. When his father s death left 
 him alone with his mother, he began as house-boy 
 at the Rancho San Marcos, and being a lad of the 
 wilderness, who knew nature and danger and self- 
 reliance, he had risen fast. Now, at eighteen, he 
 was youngest of the dozen vaqueros of the big 
 rancho, and confessedly best though among them 
 were such men as Sivas and Sanchez and Romero. 
 He was also the best paid, and his sixteen dollars 
 a month was counted princely. Best of all, he 
 was allowed to ride Jovero, the old don s proud 
 est possession, the swiftest horse in New Mexico. 
 
 By four A.M. there was great hauling at cinches 
 and clank of spurs out at the stable, and in a few 
 minutes the score of riders were deploying across 
 the plain in a great V, of whose arms one pointed 
 toward El Dado, and the other a little to the right 
 of Canon Juan Tafoya. They would beat up the 
 woods and canons for thirty miles on a side, turn 
 ing whatever wild horses they might find into the 
 valley of San Miguel, and there round them into 
 the V-shaped approach to the corral. 
 
 Juan rode as on pins. His eyes swept the 
 mesas and valleys, peered into every thicket of 
 scrub-oak and behind every rocky butte, while 
 
8 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 his ear craned eagerly at the veriest rustle of a 
 chameleon across the dry leaves of the chaparro. 
 But though he turned many wild horses toward 
 the left, not one bore the faintest resemblance to 
 that matchless black. So he came even to the 
 sandstone pillar of the Zarcillo, and turned dis 
 piritedly to the left, heading now for the north end 
 of the San Miguel valley. 
 
 Over ridge after ridge they trotted, ducking 
 under stubborn branches of the piiion, catching 
 glimpses now and then of furtive coyotes and 
 once riding almost upon a big black bear, which 
 went off in such a scurry of leaves and dust that 
 even Juan s anxious face cracked with a smile. 
 
 They were close to where the last mesa falls 
 away by sprawling slopes to the valley of San 
 Miguel when Jovero flung up his head with a 
 snort; and gathering himself, charged into and 
 through a clump of scrub-oak. Juan flung up 
 both elbows to protect his face, but the crabbed 
 twigs raked savagely. There was a great crash 
 ing ahead, and as they came into the open, the 
 merest flash of a big, dark body up and out and 
 gone. 
 
 Juan shut his teeth. There was no time to 
 stop, and Jovero had no notion of stopping. If 
 rejiegos could jump off the rim-rock, so could he. 
 And so did he ; taking the ten-foot fall in a way 
 that was a wonder, striking on the shaly slope 
 with a tremendous clatter, staggering, snapping to 
 
THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 9 
 
 his feet again, and off down the headlong hillside 
 before Juan fairly came back to the saddle. No 
 use for the bit now! One might as well have 
 tried one s bridle hand on a landslide ! 
 
 Juan needed no introduction to this mental 
 infirmity of the old blaze-face. He had come out 
 whole from several such stampedes before, more 
 thanks to luck than to Jovero ; but perfect horse 
 man as he was, his face paled a little now. 
 
 So they plunged thunderous down the bluff, in 
 a whirlwind of dust and sparks and flying stones 
 and crackling branches. As they burst into a 
 little glade, they almost fell upon the great wild 
 stallion at right angles. He lunged forward 
 mightily, and hurtled down the ravine with Jovero 
 at his heels ; and Juan, paler yet, but now with 
 eyes afire, jockeyed far forward as if he would 
 fairly lift his horse and hurl it upon the fugitive. 
 There was no room to use the "rope." The draw 
 was no more than a smooth gully, its steep banks 
 hedged with a tangle of scrub-oaks and pinons. 
 Nothing for it but a stern chase again, until they 
 should come out to elbow-room. Juan had the 
 reata unknotted from his saddle-horn and held it 
 ready to run out the noose. The reins danced 
 and swung on Jovero s neck, who needed no 
 bridle now. No one could tell this veteran of the 
 round-up anything of the arts of the chase nor 
 was Juan of the riders who need reins to keep 
 them from falling off. 
 
10 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 For a mile the pursuit roared down the draw. 
 Then, around a turn, they whisked into full view 
 of the valley. Here was room and dividing the 
 coil, Juan flung his right arm aloft, and set the 
 long loop to circling about his head. 
 
 But at that strange sight the wild stallion found 
 new wings. The dozen feet between his tail and 
 Jovero s nose spun to twenty in two leaps, and 
 thirty in a breath. Juan stood in the stirrups 
 and threw desperately before he had half the 
 swing of the rope, but the noose fell only across 
 those black withers, and slid off and was trailing 
 far behind in the time you might wink an eye. 
 
 " Plagues ! " groaned the vaquero, for the first 
 time laying spur to Jovero s ribs, while he jerked 
 in the rope with swift coils. " Here is the place 
 to lose him ! For how can I turn him, if he takes 
 for Acebache?" 
 
 And indeed the black swerved to the right and 
 dashed up the swale and then swerved back 
 and went flying down the valley. For just over 
 yonder came Sivas and Chico, snatching their 
 reatas and striking spur and raising a yell of 
 exultation. 
 
 Hemmed by them on the right, and on the left 
 by Juan, who had improved his instant to "cut 
 in," the black sped down the plain. And yonder 
 comes Sanchez on the jump ; and there is Romero ; 
 and on this side Ciriaco and his pock-marked son 
 emerge from a lower draw and take up the chase. 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 11 
 
 And now on each side are footmen, springing 
 from behind rock or bush, waving their blankets 
 and yelling at the top of their lungs. 
 
 So, fairly before he has time to notice what is 
 ahead, the black is suddenly aware of two long 
 lines of sticks some standing up as sticks ought, 
 but some lying across them as he is sure wood 
 never grew before. There must be something 
 wrong here ! 
 
 He stiffens his knees, and tries to stop and turn ; 
 but the Philistines are upon him. He wheels 
 again and plunges blindly forward in a panic of 
 other wild horses. They wedge through a narrow 
 pass, and halt, snorting, or dash madly about, butt 
 ing against the solid piiion trunks set deep in the 
 ground and lashed together at the top with raw 
 hide thongs. They turn to the entrance again ; 
 but there is a huddle of grimy horsemen, swing 
 ing strange, snaky loops and now a fellow 
 runs heavy bars across the gap. The broncos 
 are penned ! 
 
 The lathered "cow-ponies," with loosened 
 cinches, and reins pulled forward over their heads, 
 were turned out to graze the scant tufts of 
 grama. The vaqueros were running out their 
 reatas and handling the loops. As they clambered 
 here and there to the top of the stockade, Don 
 Bartolo rode along on his big bay Pelayo. 
 
 " Care, then ! " he cried. " Rope what you will, 
 
12 THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 
 
 but not the black. It is Juan that is for him ; " 
 and coming to the lad he laid a hand on his 
 shoulder, and said, in a tone one seldom heard 
 from cool Don Bartolo : 
 
 "A thousand? He is worth ten thousand! 
 Never have I seen his peer, nor a nobler chase 
 than thou gavest him ! Poor little Jovero ! how 
 he toiled in vain after that miracle of a beast! 
 But now, cuidado! Yonder is no child s play. 
 It is better thou rest, first." 
 
 " For a favor, seiior ! I am rested ! Let me 
 have it out with him ! " and scarcely waiting for 
 Don Bartolo s deprecatory shrug, the young 
 vaquero vaulted to the top of the fence with his 
 coil of plaited rawhide. 
 
 The broncos were milling round and round in 
 the corral ; now lunging against the stout stock 
 ade till it creaked and sprung, now rearing and 
 trampling one another, as some vaquero swung a 
 tentative noose. 
 
 " Send me them ! " shouted Juan, his loop sail 
 ing lazily. The crush of frenzied animals swung 
 past ; and with a dextrous throw at thirty feet he 
 dropped the noose squarely over the stallion s head 
 in the same breath stooping to take a double 
 turn around a strong post. 
 
 The rawhide rope went taut, lengthened visibly, 
 and twanged like a fiddle-string. The black horse 
 leaped, reared, and fell backward with the spring 
 of the reata. Eager hands were already tugging 
 
THE KING OF THE BBONCOS 13 
 
 at the bars ; and in a moment the broncos were 
 stampeding out of the corral and off up the valley 
 like scared shadows all but the big black and a 
 beautiful sorrel which Sivas had lassoed for his 
 own breaking. 
 
 Now Sanchez got his noose over the black s 
 head, and Romero snared a hind leg. Juan leaped 
 down, loosening his rope and slackening it on the 
 bronco s neck. The choked animal caught a 
 great breath, and staggered to its feet. Then, 
 realizing the presence of its enemies again, it bolted 
 around the enclosure, dragging the three vaqueros, 
 and kicking furiously with the leg strung up by 
 Romero, then with the other, then with both at 
 once until the nooses tightening on its throat 
 threw it a full somersault. 
 
 Another slacking of the ropes, another dragging 
 contest, another fall, and then the same programme 
 over again. Now, when the stallion rose, he stood 
 still and trembled. Clearly, he was learning what 
 those ropes meant. 
 
 " To get him out now ! " grunted Juan, breath 
 lessly. It took half an hour s hard fighting, but at 
 last the vaqueros and their prize were safely out 
 side the corral. Here they threw him again, and 
 braced back on the reatas while Don Bartolo him 
 self ran in, put on the jdquima 1 the bitless bridle 
 for breaking horses, and tied his big bandanna 
 over the staring eyes. 
 
 1 Ha-kee-ma. 
 
14 THE KING OF THE BROXCOS 
 
 Then they eased the ropes. The stallion lay for 
 a moment, groaning dismally. Then he struggled 
 to his feet and stood with that pitiful air of the 
 blind. Ciriaco laid two heavy Navajo blankets 
 across the lathered back gently, gently, and with 
 infinite caution lifted the heavy saddle upon them. 
 At each touch the wild horse shivered, but he stood 
 in his tracks. It is wonderful how much the 
 courage even of the wildest beast depends upon 
 sight ; and how a flimsy cloth made into a blind 
 fold is stronger than a dozen ropes. Even when 
 Juan put knee to that heaving side, and tugged 
 at the cinch with all his power, the horse only 
 staggered and trembled. 
 
 It was a little too much, indeed, when Juan 
 vaulted to the saddle ; the bronco plunged for 
 ward madly but, unable to see, he went to his 
 knees, scrambled up again, and groaned a groan 
 that was almost human. 
 
 The reatas were cast off, and the bystanders got 
 to a distance. Juan shook his feet in the stirrups, 
 gathered the rein firmly, and patted the black, 
 arched neck. " It is thy friend, my Lucero ! " he 
 said soothingly ; and reaching forward between 
 the small, tremulous ears, he pulled the blindfold 
 up, without untying it from the jdquima. 
 
 I have broken a good many broncos and ridden 
 a good many South American earthquakes; and as 
 between the two, my word for it, the earthquake 
 is a drowsy mode of motion. It is more terrifying, 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 15 
 
 indeed, to waken and see the stone-arched roof 
 over your bed yawn and let in the stars ; and to 
 have the pavement surge under you, like an ocean 
 swell, so violently that it is impossible to stand. 
 But as for motion well, the earthquake that will 
 raze a city to the ground in three minutes is a 
 rocking chair compared to a bucking bronco. Did 
 you ever see a horse really buck ? I do not mean 
 the cheap, made-to-order counterfeit seen in Wild 
 West shows, nor the amateur work of Eastern 
 unbroken colts. The meanness or the kittenish- 
 ness of horses born and bred in barns and among 
 people may sometimes be troublesome, but a real 
 "bronco-buster" would merely smile at them. 
 They are as little like the savage terror and 
 rage of the powerful wild beast that never saw 
 man, house, nor rope till an hour ago, as a naughty 
 primary schoolboy is like an Apache on the war 
 path. And if you ever see the real thing, you 
 will find it a fascinating spectacle, indeed, but a 
 rather terrible one. 
 
 In the instant that the blind cleared his eyes, 
 the stallion made a bound of fifteen feet, and 
 " gathered " like a puma for another and another, 
 each longer than the one before. At the third he 
 came down with his fore legs like bars of steel, 
 snapping Juan forward till he split his lips on 
 that bent neck. In the same breath, the black 
 head went down between the slender legs, and 
 horse and rider shot eight feet into the air. They 
 
16 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 came down with a stiff -legged jolt that flung Juan 
 up the full length of the stirrup-straps. He came 
 back to the saddle like a return-ball, even as they 
 went up again ; and clenched the saddle-horn 
 with his left hand and drummed his heels against 
 those reeking ribs, and tugged so mightily upon 
 the rein that the stubborn head could no longer 
 get between the knees which meant the end of 
 effective bucking. 
 
 Off went the stallion like a thunderbolt, " pitch 
 ing " at every other jump, and at every jump kick 
 ing out behind. Across the broad valley he raved, 
 now jumping, now striking, now biting savagely 
 back at his terrifying burden. Then he reared 
 and flung himself mightily backward, to crush 
 this awful forked beast. But Juan was no green 
 horn. When that muscular back smote upon the 
 earth, Juan s feet were on the ground off at the 
 safe side, and one hand was on the saddle-horn 
 and one gripped the flowing mane. 
 
 As the maddened creature sprang up again, its 
 impetus along with the snap in Juan s legs 
 lifted the rider far up, and he dropped back into 
 the saddle, sure as a bullet to its mark. 
 
 If the bronco was terrified before, he was frantic 
 now. Too crazed to buck or kick longer, he went 
 up the valley like a whirlwind. 
 
 A straggly juniper was just yonder ; and tow 
 ard it he lunged, with a sudden inspiration. 
 A big, twisted limb grazed his flattened neck, and 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 17 
 
 caught the saddle-horn, and split the saddle-tree 
 from end to end ; and left upon the ground a boy 
 sprawled motionless across a wreck of wood and 
 leather, down one flap of which a crimson rivulet 
 began to trickle. 
 
 II 
 
 It was Don Bartolo himself who sprang from 
 Jovero s back, and knelt by the wreck a full min 
 ute before the swiftest of the others came up. 
 Juan was already reviving ; and soon he sat up. 
 The gash on his head would be painful for some 
 weeks ; but that was no great matter. 
 
 " And my Lucero ? Where is he ? " the boy 
 stammered. " For but just now I had him and 
 surely he did not shake me off." 
 
 " No, he took the tree and wiped thee off," said 
 the don, kindly. "And so he would have done 
 with any other. Snails ! But he fights like a 
 demon even Jovero never bucked so high, when 
 I was gentling him ! But here are the men. To 
 the house with him, to mend this cracked head." 
 
 But Juan got to his feet, wavering a little and 
 ashen in the face, but with Juan s own steady, 
 steel-gray eyes once more. 
 
 " If you will only let me, senor ! It is nothing 
 see, already I am strong ! Let me get this 
 picaro while still he is tired for so there is some 
 chance. As for Jovero, he is already new again." 
 
18 THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 
 
 Indeed, the old blaze-face with the wonderful 
 wiriness of his Arab blood had in the two hours 
 at the corral quite lost all trace of his tremendous 
 run. Here he stood like a sleepyhead, ears droop 
 ing, his hide already smooth again, his sides rest 
 ful, and his one deformity, that left fore hoof, 
 twice the length of its mate (the result of some 
 accident in colthood) carelessly tilted. To look 
 at him, one would never dream that he had known 
 or ever could know the generous pulse of a 
 desperate race. 
 
 Don Bartolo shrugged his shoulders. " As thou 
 wilt," he said dryly. "Thou rt old enough to 
 answer for thyself, for foolish though it be." But 
 in his heart he remembered when another boy of 
 eighteen would have been quite as foolish. 
 
 Juan waited for no more. Flinging upon 
 Jovero s back the stout saddle of Sivas, and 
 swinging himself stiffly up, he caught the reata 
 Ciriaco tossed, and with a nod and a lift of the 
 rein went loping up the valley. Don Bartolo rode 
 home on Ciriaeo s horse, and Ciriaco behind Sivas, 
 bareback. 
 
 Juan s eyes were with the ground as he loped 
 along at that wavelike gait which I . believe was 
 never quite so perfect in any other horse for I, 
 too, have ridden Jovero, many a hundred league, 
 and marvelled at him and loved him as did every 
 man that ever threw leg across his back. 
 
 Ha ! There at last it must be the stallion s 
 
THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 19 
 
 footprint ! There were a thousand other tracks 
 across the dry, red sandstone dust ; but here was 
 a tag of the bridle, caught and snapped under 
 those flying feet ! The lad dismounted and pored 
 over that special hoof-print with all his eyes. 
 Hm ! Now he would know it anywhere and 
 springing to the saddle not half so sorely, he fil 
 liped the rein, and off they went. 
 
 Sometimes the trail was baffling, and had to be 
 studied out slowly from the maze of other tracks; 
 but, as a rule, he rode straight on. When night 
 closed in, he was among the coal-seamed mesas 
 back of Acebache ; and by the little spring of the 
 Ojo del Pajaro 1 he stretched the scant saddle- 
 blankets for a bed and the saddle for a pillow, 
 staked out Jovero where the dry grama was 
 least thin, and, supperless and aching, cuddled 
 to sleep. 
 
 With dawn he was in the saddle again very 
 stiff now, and faint with fatigue and hunger. 
 But at five miles from the spring, he began to 
 hang forward on Jovero s neck, scanning the trail 
 with a close wrinkle in his brow. Como ? So far 
 the black had been running madly ; but now 
 what could it mean, that the swift footprints had 
 suddenly become wavering, unsure, one might 
 almost say reeling ? 
 
 All at once Juan straightened up with a glad 
 
 1 P^-ha-ro, " Bird s-eye Spring," or " Bird spring." 
 
20 THE SING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 cry. Now he understood the secret of these 
 strangely zigzag, uncertain tracks ! And forget 
 ting weariness, hunger, and pain, he nudged Jo- 
 vero with his knees, and turned the corner of the 
 mesa at a dead gallop. 
 
 As he cleared the ridge of debris and saw full- 
 length that sheer, noble cliff of red sandstone 
 towering five hundred feet aloft, he whooped a 
 shrill, exultant whoop. For there, under a little 
 bay of the cliff, broadside toward him, stood the 
 wild black stallion ! 
 
 At his yell it threw up that gallant head and 
 snorted, but did not stir from its tracks. This 
 wild creature which had fought so savagely and 
 fled so madly, now stood trembling, striking the 
 earth with one angry hoof, with ears forward, and 
 teeth shown menacingly but after all with a 
 strange air of helplessness. 
 
 Even when Juan rode within a rod and tossed 
 his noose over that proud neck, the stallion only 
 shivered and stood still. For you must have 
 guessed it the bandanna had slipped down from 
 his frontlet in that mad run, and was again a 
 blindfold! 
 
 " Bravo, handkerchief ! " cried Juan, gayly, tak 
 ing a full hitch of the reata around his saddle- 
 horn and vaulting to the ground. "Hold him, 
 then, Jovero! " 
 
 Jovero backed off just far enough to draw the 
 lasso half -taut ; and setting his fore legs forward 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 21 
 
 a little stiffly, stood with one lazy eye turned on 
 his prize. He could hold a wild steer so as any 
 perfect " cow-pony " should and no one knew 
 it better than Jovero. He seemed to feel that 
 this tiresome rejiego, which knew no more than to 
 be afraid of Juan, and show a day s heels to its 
 betters, was at last properly come up with. 
 
 As for its getting away, Jovero knew better 
 than to worry about that. The horn of a " Cali 
 fornia " saddle is one-tenth the size of a horse s 
 neck ; but when it comes to a dispute between 
 the two, it is neck or nothing that shall break. 
 
 " S-s ! State ! " Juan murmured persuasively, 
 patting the black neck. "There is no care, 
 Lucero of my heart! It is only to teach thee 
 and then thou rt better set than running between 
 the wolves and the Navajos! " He tightened the 
 blindfold, knotted the broken rein, and cautiously 
 transferred the saddle from Jovero to the stallion, 
 which only trembled and groaned, and once bit 
 fiercely back at its captor. 
 
 Juan took off Jovero s bridle and tied it short 
 about Jovero s neck. " Vaya, compadre ! " he 
 said. "And whatever grass thou wilt by the 
 way ! " But Jovero stood like a graven image. 
 Grass, indeed! Had he come two days on the 
 trail of this black rascal, just to trot home now 
 and not see the fun? Hardly ! 
 
 Now the young vaquero ran a half -hitch of the 
 reata around the bronco s muzzle; coiled twenty 
 
22 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 feet of the rope in his left hand, and with his right 
 held the final coil hard around his hip. Then 
 with a switch of chaparro he poked up the blind 
 fold, dropped the coil, and fell back on the rope, 
 with feet braced far forward. 
 
 The wild horse leaped mightily, and dragged 
 Juan a rod in the first jump. But the second 
 was not quite so long ; and the third was only a 
 few feet. The tightening of the noose on his 
 nostrils had shut off his wind, and he suddenly 
 halted. 
 
 Juan slacked the rope and then sprang back as 
 the stallion made another plunge this time a 
 short one and one only. Again Juan eased up; 
 and this time the bronco reared and tried to fall 
 backward. But the result was the same what 
 ever he did, that strange and terrible forked creat 
 ure out yonder stopped his breathing. 
 
 A wild horse is no great fool ; and in half an 
 hour Juan could edge up and rub the black muzzle 
 always coming side wise and with the reata held 
 hard along the small of his back. There is no 
 other trick so sure to teach a wild horse your 
 mastery. Of all that I have ever broken, and 
 loved, and taught to love me, I have never struck 
 one and never spurred one. That light rope 
 around the nose was the chief argument every 
 time. 
 
 "Well taught!" said Juan at last, breathing 
 hard. And when next he had edged to the 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 23 
 
 bronco s head, he sprang and pulled down the 
 blindfold. The stallion reared, came back to his 
 feet, and stood helpless, while Juan tightened the 
 cinch and vaulted to the saddle. This time he 
 held the rein in his left hand, and in his right the 
 nose-rope. The lifting of the blind was signal for 
 another round of bucking ; but it was wonderful 
 how soon a fair tug on the nose-rope quieted all 
 that. 
 
 Before the overhead sun began to tip their 
 shadows toward the east, old Jovero was plodding 
 soberly down the canon on his own hook; and 
 behind him, in nervous acquiescence, stepped the 
 weary black. Now and then Jovero would look 
 back with simulated sleepiness, or hunch a threat 
 ening heel if the stallion came too close. Well, if 
 Juan preferred to ride that senseless creature, 
 which didn t know a saddle from a sheepskin, or 
 a round-up from monthly mass why, the worst 
 was his own! Certainly it would not become a 
 horse of reputation to find fault ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Where the Canon of the Heart opens into the 
 Canon of Jet in which is found the acebache, 
 so precious to the Indians for amulets and orna 
 ments Juan was ruffled at sight of three horse 
 men coming toward him in single file. Even at a 
 half-league s distance, he needed no glass to tell 
 
24 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 him they were Navajos that was plain enough 
 by the very way they rode. 
 
 As they came nearer, the boy s forehead gath 
 ered deeper wrinkles, and he cast furtive glances 
 up and down the canon. No, it was no use to 
 run even with a horse which could outstrip 
 them and not half try. At the upper end, as 
 every one knows, Acebache Canon is "boxed" 
 and impassable ; and here it was choked with 
 talus from the cliff, all but the narrow bocas 
 through which they were coming. Nothing for it 
 but to ride forward with a bold face. After all, 
 he might be mistaken and if these were not 
 Chi and his brothers well, there was no special 
 objection to any other Navajos. And even these 
 unhanged renegades who lived by stealing from 
 the Mexicans and selling to the Navajos, and then 
 stealing from the Navajos and selling to the 
 Mexicans might not molest him so near the 
 Willow Springs Ranch. 
 
 But his heart went down as Chi drew up across 
 the path, his Spencer carbine in his lap. The two 
 others were armed, also ; and they edged past and 
 fell in a couple of rods behind. 
 
 " What you do my horse ? " demanded Chi, 
 menacingly, in broken Spanish. " Give me! " 
 
 But Juan was not to be " bluffed." " You take 
 me for one innocent ? " he answered dryly. " If 
 this your horse, where s your brand ? " 
 
 "Not mark him, but much mine. Give! " and 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 25 
 
 Chi, dropping his role of injured claimant, returned 
 to the easier one of highwayman, lifting the rifle 
 to his shoulder. 
 
 Juan turned a little paler, but retorted tellingly : 
 " Stupid! You think you can shoot me, and then 
 catch this rejiego with your crow-callers ? Pero, 
 he would be halfway to Arizona before the gun 
 was done echoing! " 
 
 There was no gainsaying this ; and Chi dropped 
 the rifle across his knees and caught up the reata. 
 Juan wheeled ; but the way was narrow, and 
 the noose settled upon Lueero s neck. Chi took 
 a double turn around the saddle-horn, and his 
 brothers spurred forward to lasso the stallion 
 also. 
 
 Now or never, Lucero ! The lad s face suddenly 
 flamed up like a torch. He struck the spurs far 
 under and lifted the rein. The big black, half- 
 reconciled for the time to some things, had never 
 felt the rowels before; and he fairly soared into 
 the air. At the same instant a powerful twist of 
 the rein swerved his head to the left and sure 
 enough, he came down with Chi s reata between 
 his fore legs! Juan s inspiration had worked. 
 
 An instant ago, the Navajo could have broken 
 Lucero s neck; but now, with the rope under his 
 chest, the big wild horse might well drag those 
 three skinny ponies at once, like so many strung 
 grasshoppers. 
 
 Juan laughed shrilly, and bent away forward 
 
26 THE KING OF THE B EON COS 
 
 and touched the spurs ; and the gallant black 
 lunged forward like an avalanche. Chi s pony 
 slid faster and faster, for all he went back on his 
 haunches like the tough and taught little tartar 
 he was. 
 
 There was a loud squee-eech! The ragged cinch 
 had snapped, and the reata flew high in the air 
 with the saddle at its end; and Chi went such a 
 string of somersaults as no horse-thief ever turned 
 before. As for Juan and Lucero, they were two 
 hundred yards down the pass before the two other 
 Navajos could fire a shot ; and when they did fire, 
 a turn in the trail was already throwing so many 
 great rocks behind the fugitives that shooting was 
 waste of lead. Juan touched his belt-knife to the 
 dragging reata; and it and the bumping saddle 
 fell behind; and side by side Lucero, the wild 
 horse, and Jovero, the long-hoof, swept down the 
 winding canon. 
 
 And thus they came at sunset, fifty miles, to the 
 long, low adobe ranch-house; and all the vaqueros 
 were out to welcome yonder approaching dust- 
 cloud ; and Pedro, the crippled wood-chopper, and 
 Lupe, the cook, and Don Bartolo, with all his 
 family. Juan swung from the saddle, holding the 
 nose-rope though really Lucero was too worn, 
 now, to protest even against these new terrors 
 and gasping "Seiior! Here is " fell like a log 
 at Don Bartolo s feet. 
 
THE KINO OF THE BRONCOS 27 
 
 IV 
 
 So the king of all broncos came to the Rancho 
 San Marcos ; and there was a thousand dollars in 
 the Albuquerque bank to the credit of Juan 
 Montoya ; and Don Bartolo was the proudest 
 man in New Mexico with the possible exception 
 of Juan. 
 
 Lucero was intelligent as he was beautiful, and 
 learned swiftly, as a fine bronco will. In a week 
 Juan could ride him up to the very door ; in two, 
 he lifted little Chona to the saddle, and Lucero 
 never offered to jump at the strange flutter of 
 skirts. In a month he would follow Juan all over 
 the pasture, and might almost have been trusted 
 without a fence. That is what a gentle and wise 
 trainer can do with a horse that but the other day 
 was just as much a wild beast as a bear is ; and 
 that is what a nervous or brutal " breaker " could 
 never do in the world. 
 
 "El rey de los broncos," they called Lucero in 
 the village of San Marcos and king he was, not 
 only of the broncos, but among the thorough 
 breds of the few wealthy rancher os. The Arab 
 blood which runs in all genuine " wild horses " of 
 America showed in the small, fine head, the slen 
 der, clean-cut legs, the splendid arched neck, the 
 sinewy, compact barrel. And when Juan exer 
 cised him, even in that land of horsemen, every 
 one turned to watch that matchless horse, whose 
 
28 THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 
 
 tattered rider sat him as only one of the wilder 
 ness can sit a horse, and who looked a very cava 
 lier, for all his armor of shabby jeans. 
 
 I remember that Don Ygnacio Luna promptly 
 sold his five-thousand-dollar Hambletonian for 
 six hundred dollars to an Arizona banker ; and 
 that one Lopez, a Chihuahuan, who hung around 
 with a race -horse which he had probably stolen in 
 Mexico, lost small time in moving to Socorro. 
 What was the use? There was already Jovero, 
 a neck better in a hundred yards than any other 
 horse in New Mexico ; and now was come this 
 black miracle that could almost run around Jo 
 vero ! Would any one kindly point out what 
 business any common horse would have when San 
 Juan s day should come again ? 
 
 But when the 24th of June did come, with all 
 its gallant rivalry, and the very centaurs seemed 
 abroad again, and the one long, wavering street of 
 San Marcos volleyed with the wild tumult of the 
 gallo race, it was Juan, indeed, who first plucked 
 the prize from the sand, and longest defended it 
 from the grappling crowd. But his mount was 
 a blaze-faced sorrel with one long hoof ; and 
 nowhere among the two hundred wild riders was 
 there any apparition that might be mistaken for 
 the king of the broncos. 
 
 No, there is no mystery about it. It is a simple 
 story, and it is many years ago, now ; but I shall 
 
THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 29 
 
 never forget that day, nor the smallest detail 
 in it. 
 
 Lucero was down in the alfalfa-patch in front of 
 the house, grazing near the east fence. He was 
 very gentle now, and knew all the family ; but 
 only Juan could walk in and bridle him. So, 
 for convenience sake, he wore a long trail-rope ; 
 and even little Chenta could overhaul him by 
 that. 
 
 I was a cripple at that time, with a useless arm ; 
 and chanced, on the morning of May 17, to be 
 sunning myself on the porch, plotting against the 
 jack-rabbits that would be in the alfalfa in the 
 edge of the evening. Sport ? I should think ! 
 Even for a single-barrelled invalid, with his single- 
 barrelled gun ! 
 
 But just then the evening hunt went out of my 
 mind. Away down yonder Lucero was plunging 
 strangely, and it seemed to me that some one was 
 pulling up to him on the trail-rope, hand over 
 hand. The garden fence screened the figure, and 
 my eyes no longer count noses at five hundred 
 yards ; but well, in some countries it is better 
 to do your thinking afterwards ! 
 
 " Ladrones 1 " I roared, bursting through the 
 house and into the courtyard. " They are steal 
 ing Lucero ! " 
 
 In three minutes every man of the rancho was 
 in the saddle. Pedro had run out in time to see 
 Lucero take the six-foot fence; and there was a 
 
30 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 man on his back; and yonder far eddy of dust 
 was as much more as any one knew. 
 
 Juan was first, on Jovero; and next behind 
 were Don Bartolo on a visitor s thoroughbred, 
 and I on gallant Pelayo ; and then Ciriaco and 
 Sivas and the rest spurring their leaner ponies. 
 Every man was armed; and Juan carried across 
 his knees the don s new Winchester. I am glad 
 for the boy s sake that he never came in range. 
 
 Thirty miles and odd the chase swept on. We 
 had easily come in sight of the horse-thief, but 
 now he meant not to let us come closer ; and with 
 that horse he could keep his distance easily. 
 Erect and careless he rode the bareback stallion, 
 while we jockeyed far forward with tense faces. 
 
 You do not know the Morro ? But Lucero did ! 
 The wild horses of New Mexico know their range 
 almost as a topographical engineer might ; and I 
 am sure it was no blunder. 
 
 From El Dado a trail leads off westward. The 
 landscape there is like a succession of gigantic 
 breakers suddenly turned to stone. On the north 
 the earth-waves swell smoothly up, up, till they 
 are a thousand feet high. The slope is perhaps 
 ten miles long ; but on the south the mesa breaks 
 off in sudden cliffs down to the natural level 
 again. 
 
 The trail, gaining the crest, winds for leagues 
 along that lofty brink; then creeps down by a 
 
THE KING OF THE BEONCOS 31 
 
 pass to the heart of the Navajo Reservation. 
 Where the cliffs are highest, a great columnar 
 buttress juts forward like a red castle on this 
 giant bastion. That is the Morro. 
 
 It was only when we were nearly at the top of 
 the mesa that we came almost within gunshot of 
 the pursued. For an instant the black silhouette 
 was sharp against the sky, and my heart suddenly 
 tightened. There was no mistaking that figure 
 it was Chi ! And he was getting his revenge I 
 How many days he had lain about in the brush, 
 watching the rancho and biding his chance, we 
 are unlikely to know but he had succeeded ! 
 
 Juan evidently recognized him, too; for he 
 yelled a yell of concentrated rage, and flung the 
 rifle to his shoulder, but dropped it again and set 
 his heels to poor Jovero with a wild, shrill whistle. 
 
 At that familiar sound the great black stallion 
 turned his head and stumbled, and seemed to be 
 wheeling. Even so, against the spotless sky-line 
 we saw Chi twist the rein savagely, and with his 
 carbine deal Lucero a brutal blow along the head. 
 The horse reared, but the savage spurs met him, 
 and the carbine was clubbed again. 
 
 Mad with rage and shame and terror, Lucero 
 launched forward resistlessly. Friendship he had 
 learned, and mastery ; but insult and torture were 
 new to him. From that moment he was the wild 
 stallion again. 
 
 The trail stretched far and yellow along the 
 
32 THE KING OF THE BRONCOS 
 
 plateau. Off to the left a hundred yards or so we 
 could see over the brink to the valley far below ; 
 and a little ahead, across a bay in the cliff, the 
 blood-red Morro shone through the junipers. 
 
 Suddenly there was an indescribable cry. The 
 trail ahead was empty ; but across the flat top of 
 the Morro fled an unmanageable black apparition. 
 Nowadays, when I say " destiny," that is the pict 
 ure that comes back to me. 
 
 And Chi ! I think we all forgave him in the 
 one flash. A renegade among his people, a thief, 
 a murderer, yet he was no cur ! He bestrode that 
 unsaddled thunderbolt like a very king of the 
 storm, sawing mightily at the bit, but steadfast. 
 Only when they came up against the sky, where 
 the rim-rock stood out amid the blue, and his last 
 hope was gone, we saw him drop the rein and 
 straighten superbly stiff ; his black hair outblown, 
 but his arms folded and his far-off profile clear 
 and stern against the sky. 
 
 Talk of cameos ! But in all the museums of 
 Europe there is not another like the one we saw 
 for the instant a sharp, black cameo which 
 looked wondrous tiny when it was all cut upon 
 the southern blue, and no longer seemed like a 
 moving thing. And then then there was noth 
 ing but the blue ! 
 
 No horse has a nobler monument than the 
 Morro. As for Chi, his brother renegades took 
 
WE SAW HIM DROP THE REIN AND STRAIGHTEN 
 
THE KING OF THE BBONCOS 33 
 
 his bones away to the Reservation, more for 
 shame s sake than for love. But Lucero was 
 buried as we would have buried a friend, even 
 there where he found his freedom ; where the 
 huddled pifions are always whispering up to the 
 tall sentinel cliff. 
 
BOGGED DOWN 
 
BOGGED DOWN 
 
 THAT always was a treacherous hole in the 
 Agua Azul that prettiest shallow in all the 
 bluish brook whose source is the great spring that 
 pours from under the edge of the fifty-mile lava- 
 bed, and with its lower course half lost amid the 
 thirsty sands of western New Mexico reappear 
 ing only now and then in disconnected but living 
 pools. This particular spot was a few miles west 
 from the Toltec Cattle Company s "home ranch" 
 headquarters of the score of cowboys who 
 "rode the range" of a hundred thousand acres.. 
 There was a long, shallow arroyo down the middle 
 of the valley, and in it a series of pools connected 
 by a thin trickle of water. To each pool a deep, 
 narrow trail in the turf had been worn by the daily 
 processions of cattle trudging twenty miles to 
 water. 
 
 The middle and largest pool was broad, shallow, 
 clear, with a foot of limpid water lying mirror-like 
 upon its bed of pretty, yellow sand. It was the 
 most innocent-looking shallow in the world ; such 
 a place as would tempt children to wading if there 
 had been children within twenty miles as luckily 
 
 37 
 
38 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 there were not. One wading would have been the 
 last ; for that sunny pool was a smiling grave that 
 had swallowed up more victims than there were 
 inches in its circumference ! 
 
 The whole brook was troublesome to the cattle 
 men, for in its marshy edges the stock was con 
 tinually miring. One thick-chested cowboy on a 
 heavy horse had no other duty than to " ride the 
 creek " for twenty miles, to watch for cattle that 
 had "bogged down," and help them out before 
 they perished. Now the animals seemed to have 
 learned that that particular pool was to be 
 shunned ; and there were seldom hoof -prints 
 along its border. But it had been costly learn 
 ing. Within a week after the company took the 
 ranch and turned in cattle, a huge black bull, the 
 most valuable animal in the great herd, tried to 
 cross there; and midway of the pool suddenly 
 slumped shoulder-deep. In five minutes he had 
 gone, and the clear water rippled innocently as 
 ever over its yellow bed. In the eight years 
 since, several scores of cattle, of all grades and 
 sizes, had been similarly engulfed in this strange, 
 automatic graveyard. Every one about the ranch 
 knew " the Cow Trap ; " and in crossing the creek 
 of dark nights all were very careful to avoid that 
 pool. 
 
 At the close of March the snow still lay in 
 patches among the northern cedars of the Ventana. 
 There was yet no green blade at that high altitude. 
 
BOGGED DOWN 39 
 
 The thin cattle, much the worse for wear by a New 
 Mexican winter, looked in sorry trim. For six 
 months they had wandered at will, unchecked by 
 fences or rivers. Some had strayed off into Ari 
 zona, and some, drifting south before the fierce 
 storms, were down in the Black Range. In a few 
 weeks the cowboys would start on the annual 
 round-up. 
 
 " Pears like them cattle s thet thin yo kin see 
 the brand through from the fur side! " grumbled 
 Baby Bones to himself, as he loped easily past a 
 tired bunch of recumbent cattle on his shaggy 
 bronco. "Et ll shore be a job to round em up, 
 thout we ketch a bit o new grass fore then." 
 And in ruffled humor at the thought the young 
 cowboy loped away on the dim trail to Cebollita, 
 forty miles to the south. 
 
 Baby Bones was by no means a baby, either in 
 mind or body; and Bones was a name which cer 
 tainly did not figure in the record-pages of the old 
 family bible away back on the lonely Texas ranch. 
 But when this tall, ungainly, dangling youth 
 had first shambled into the TOO ranch-house in 
 search of a job, wrinkled Jim had shouted, " Wai, 
 baby, w ere d yo git them bones ? " and " Baby 
 Bones " he had been ever since. It is doubtful if 
 any one on the ranch knew his true name. He was 
 plain Baby Bones on the pay-roll, and in conver 
 sation, and to his face. There was a ludicrous 
 aptness in the title, too as there usually is with 
 
40 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 cowboy nicknames. His head was very small; 
 and his thin, freckled face, with its insignificant 
 pug nose, small mouth, little blue eyes without 
 visible brows or lashes, and a general mildness 
 of expression all gave him a very childish look 
 indeed. He was nearly six feet tall, with a long, 
 thin neck, narrow, sloping shoulders, huge wrists 
 and fists, and a general build, as old Jim said, " like 
 a two-futted brandin iron." But Baby Bones was 
 very good-natured, and took with entire compla 
 cency the numerous rough jokes upon his appear 
 ance. He was aware he "warn t purty, but he 
 knowed cows and bronks from away back." There 
 was no better rider or roper in that company of 
 experts ; and as for deeper qualities, " the boys " 
 had generally come to the conclusion that " thet 
 Baby hed a heap o sand, an lots o savvy." 
 
 It was partly because of these qualities that the 
 foreman had selected Baby Bones to make the 
 rough ride to Cebollita, where there was ticklish 
 work to be done. There were rumors from the 
 friendly Pueblos that a band of Mexican "rus 
 tlers " were hiding in the caves at that end of the 
 great lava-bed with the presumed intention of 
 raiding the herds of the T C C. 
 
 One man could best spy out the matter. If he 
 confirmed the reports, a strong squad of cowboys 
 would take the field at once against the stock 
 thieves. 
 
 The dangers of his mission did not seem to 
 
BOGGED DOWN 41 
 
 weigh upon the young vaquero. He was not 
 more than eighteen years of age; but all those 
 years had been on the frontier, and they had 
 taught him a great many rough lessons. Of 
 course if the rustlers discovered him, they would 
 bushwhack him and hide his body in some gully; 
 but he intended to keep out of sight to " Injun 
 on em a little," as he would have said. If it did 
 come to a fight why, there was the Winchester 
 slung along the saddle and the heavy six-shooter 
 on his hip. 
 
 So he rode up the valley toward Cebollita, 
 keeping a sharp eye to the great, black, con 
 torted swell of lava on his right, and to the 
 cedar-dotted slope from the mesa cliffs on his left. 
 But there was nothing suspicious to be seen. Now 
 and then a cotton-tail scurried into the fissures of 
 the lava; or a coyote, with drooping brush, trotted 
 leisurely out of gunshot. After the first few miles 
 from the creek there were not even these; and the 
 cowboy grew suspicious at seeing nothing. 
 
 "W.ot s up?" he puzzled. "The cattle allus 
 uses in here, fur the grass thet sticks along the 
 malpdis; an I cain t see wot s got em thet the 
 hain t nary head yere to-day Oho! " He sud 
 denly bent over from the saddle to glance at a 
 faint print on a moist spot in the trail. In 
 another instant he was off Tex s back, kneeling 
 beside the telltale marks. Baby Bones had 
 learned trailing from the Comanches; and, de- 
 
42 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 spite his youth, was noted for skill in that diffi 
 cult science. 
 
 " So ! " he muttered, as he rose. " Thet horse 
 shore never was shod in these yere parts. Et s 
 Chihuahua work, or I never want to see the back 
 o my neck ! An he was bein rode tollable hard, 
 too, an them tracks is to-day s ! " 
 
 As he remounted, he pulled his six-shooter and 
 turned the chambers watchfully, to be sure that 
 no grit had got into the bearings, wiped it on the 
 sleeve of his buckskin coat, and then saw to it 
 that the rifle in its scabbard was in equally trust 
 worthy trim. 
 
 Tex had kept up his tireless lope all the after 
 noon, but now the rein checked him to a slow 
 trot, and frequently stopped him altogether as the 
 rider looked and listened. At last Baby turned 
 into a brown, grassy " bay " in the lava. Riding 
 around a point, he staked Tex on the smooth 
 turf, and hid the saddle and other trappings in 
 a crevice of the rocks. Here the horse was out 
 of sight from the trail, and here might safely be 
 left. The sun was just setting. The south end 
 of the lava-flow was not more than three miles 
 away, and there were the caves which were sup 
 posed to shelter the robbers. 
 
 Baby Bones pulled from a capacious pocket a 
 crushed lunch of frying-pan bread and boiled 
 beef, and devoured it hastily. Then he mounted 
 the lava-ridge and began to walk cautiously across 
 
BOGGED DOWN 43 
 
 it. On that fearful, cutting surface the heaviest 
 boots would not outlast a few miles ; but he knew 
 that here the flow was narrow, and not more than 
 a mile across. It was best to approach the camp 
 of the " rustlers " from the west, since they would 
 look for no danger from the pathless wilderness 
 behind them. 
 
 He stumbled along in the thickening night, now 
 crawling around narrow fissures of unknown depth, 
 now falling over broken lava-blocks, now resuming 
 his course with a long, ungainly stride. 
 
 As he reached the farther edge of the lava, he 
 paused to listen. There was a feeling in him that 
 he heard something. He laid his ear to the rocky 
 floor to listen again, but could make out nothing. 
 
 After a moment, he straightened up, dissatisfied, 
 clambered from the lava-swell to the ground, and 
 hurried quietly southward, hugging the strange 
 black wall that loomed above him in the dark 
 ness. But even yet he could not rid himself of 
 the impression that there was something in the 
 air something too tiny for the ears to find, 
 grope as they would, but still something and 
 at last he climbed again to the top of the malpdis, 
 and stood listening. At first there was nothing ; 
 but presently he seemed to feel, rather than to 
 hear, a faint, far-off murmur like bees in swarm- 
 ing-time. Then there came a faint whisper of 
 breeze from the southeast; and on it was a 
 strange, low roll, as of surf on a distant shore. 
 
44 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 So! There was only one thing in the world 
 that could make that sound there it was the 
 roll of many hurrying hoofs over the dry sward. 
 
 " OW-SARN em ! " he groaned under his breath. 
 " Ef they hain t gi n me the sack to hold ! They 
 shore hev rustled up a big bunch o cattle, an* are 
 goin to run em acrost the range to-night an up 
 to Utah ! An me a-ketched up over yer, acrost 
 the malpdis frum them an Tex ! " 
 
 He ran back across that ugly swell, tearing his 
 boots, cutting his feet cruelly on the jagged points, 
 but never thinking of the pain in his anger at 
 being outwitted and his anxiety to thwart the rob 
 bers just how, he had now no clear idea. The 
 muffled tattoo of hoofs was nearer and louder now, 
 and he could even hear occasional calls in Spanish. 
 The thieves were running the cattle up the trail by 
 which he had come, and running them hard. Soon 
 they had passed, and the trampling roar began to 
 sink and sink as the herd drew off into the distance. 
 
 " Good land ! " the cowboy groaned. " I llow 
 the mus be two hundred head ! An ef the ain t 
 hosses in the bunch, too, yo can call my ears a 
 fool. I ll bet they done raided the cavvyard 
 [horse herd] up at Agua Fria ; an ef they did, 
 the mus be a gang of em ! " 
 
 He stumbled on with renewed vigor. But just 
 as he discerned against the dark sky the cliff which 
 walled the valley on the east, he gave a wild howl, 
 and went tumbling into a ragged fissure. 
 
BOGGED DOWN 45 
 
 Luckily, it was not one of the deeper ones that 
 abound in that wild flow, or there would have 
 been an end to the story of Baby Bones. As it 
 was, he fell full twenty feet, and lay stunned 
 and bleeding, wedged between the narrow jaws 
 of the lava-crack. It was a long time before he 
 began to recollect himself and what had hap 
 pened perhaps an hour. But as his senses came 
 back by degrees, and the sharp pain from many 
 cuts and bruises stung him to clearer thought, he 
 did remember ; and at once the strong instinct of 
 the chase filled his mind. It was hard work to 
 drag himself out from that rocky pinch; but at 
 last he did it, and with many groans tried to climb 
 out of his fissure-prison. But the ragged walls 
 were perpendicular a monkey could not have 
 scaled them. After a cruel hour of limping back 
 and forth in the cleft, his feet catching in the 
 narrowing crack below, his hands gashed by the 
 jagged walls, at last he found an angle where he 
 was able to ascend, and drew a deep glad breath 
 once more on the top of the treacherous flow. 
 
 There was no more running now he was too 
 sore and lame, and fearful of further pitfalls. He 
 limped cautiously on, until the edge of the lava 
 came down again to the trail. In a few moments 
 more he was back in the grassy "bay." Tex was 
 still there, grazing contentedly at the end of the 
 reata, and gave a joyful neigh. 
 
 The sore cowboy saddled the pony, and in five 
 
46 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 minutes after regaining the " bay " was galloping 
 along the trail northward. The forty miles of the 
 day was nothing to Tex. He was a horse of the 
 plains, and could do forty more, and twenty on 
 top of that. If the rustlers rode anything that 
 could wear Tex out, they were welcome to get 
 away, thought Baby Bones. And if he did catch 
 up with them well, he would see ! 
 
 Five miles, ten, fifteen, twenty, fell behind the 
 plucky pony s heels. The reins hung loose on his 
 neck. No one could guide a horse in that dark 
 ness and such a horse needed no guide. A "|cow- 
 pony" that would lose a trail, or step into a 
 prairie-dog hole by night, would never be tolerated 
 on any self-respecting cow-range. Tex was no 
 " tenderfoot ; " and he bounded along as confi 
 dently as if he could smell his way. 
 
 " Orter be closin up, I reckon," said the cow 
 boy, patting the hot neck and lifting the reins 
 gently. 
 
 Tex stood still, and his master leaned forward 
 in the saddle to listen. Yes ! There it was, 
 above Tex s hard breathing the long, low roar ! 
 
 " We re gettin there, Tex ! " cried Baby Bones. 
 "Keep it up, old boy, an we ll hev some disap 
 pointed rustlers" and at the word they were off 
 again like an arrow. 
 
 Five miles more, the roar swelling louder and 
 louder until now the pursuer could feel the 
 shake of that multitudinous tread, while its rum- 
 
BOGGED DOWN 47 
 
 ble filled the night. As they swept around a turn 
 of the little valley, Tex snorted and wildly rushed 
 into the thunderous cloud of dust. Here were 
 cattle on the run ; what else was to be done but 
 "cut them out?" 
 
 But Tex s horse-wisdom had led him astray for 
 once. There was a warning yell in Spanish, and 
 an answering chorus from half a dozen sides. A 
 sharp, spiteful flash, a ringing report, and Baby 
 Bones felt a curious numb streak across his leg. 
 A splinter from the horn of his saddle struck his 
 bridle-hand. An instant later there was a flash 
 and a report from below, and a galloping steer 
 plunged forward on its knees. The rustler s 
 bullet had creased Baby s thigh and carried away 
 his saddle-horn. The loosened fonda, swinging 
 downward, had dropped his Winchester to the 
 ground, where it was discharged. No time to stop 
 and pick it up now, even had there been light to 
 find it. A stop there would make a target of 
 man and horse, even in that gloom. The only 
 safety was in the indiscriminate crowd of hurry 
 ing figures. There was little danger then, unless 
 accident should bring him alongside one of the 
 rustlers. In that case he would " stand an even 
 show, anyhow," as he reflected. 
 
 For mile after mile the strange earth-shaking 
 jam of thunderous hoofs swept on. The stolen 
 cattle, the robbers, Baby Bones, were all in one 
 indeterminate jostle ; dumb hearts filled with 
 
48 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 terror, and human ones with hate and deadly 
 thoughts. Baby Bones held his six-shooter cocked 
 down along his hip as Tex galloped on and he 
 knew well that each of his unseen and outnum 
 bering foes was similarly ready. His eyes were 
 loose looking nowhere, but in that peculiar pas 
 sive readiness to be called to keenest scrutiny by 
 the least hint from either side. 
 
 Once his trained ear detected the firm thud of 
 a horse s hoofs behind him. He turned in his 
 saddle just in time to escape the bullet of one of 
 the desperadoes, who had circled the rear of the 
 herd to discover the interloper. Baby Bones 
 fired even as he wheeled, but the rustler was al 
 ready lost in the darkness. 
 
 Then on a sudden he felt that there was some 
 thing wrong with the herd an indefinable change 
 in the roar of hoofs. In another instant he saw 
 in the darkness that the cattle were sweeping to 
 his right and left, like a great torrent suddenly 
 divided by an invisible rock. 
 
 Before he could give a thought to this unex 
 pected occurrence, he and Tex seemed to be fall 
 ing, and a great splash of icy water drenched him 
 from head to foot. 
 
 There was another splash beside him, and an 
 other on the left, and another, and another, fol 
 lowing swifter than thought. 
 
 It was the creek, of course ; but why did Tex 
 flounder so ? And the others ! He had heard 
 
BOGGED DOWN 49 
 
 four of the rustlers ride in, but instead of their 
 hoof-beats on the farther bank now, there was a 
 fearful splashing and cursing Ah ! they were 
 in the Cow Trap ! 
 
 Poor Tex was struggling with desperate strength, 
 but it was of no avail. The water was already at 
 his shoulders in a moment he could not even 
 struggle his feet were gripped in that hideous 
 vise below. The terrified brute, lifting his head 
 high, gave a shriek that was human in its despair. 
 Poor Tex ! 
 
 Baby Bones had been stunned at first, but he 
 was wide awake now. 
 
 To his right, ten feet away, he could make out 
 a dark, struggling mass, from which came wild 
 snorts and husky screams to the saints. 
 
 In an instant the cowboy was on his feet in 
 the saddle. Gathering his ungainly frame, he 
 sprang madly out into the air. Those stilt-like, 
 awkward legs had reckoned their tension well. 
 He landed on the withers of a struggling horse, 
 eliciting a new howl from the terrified robber ; 
 tottered, caught his poise, and made another des 
 perate bound. 
 
 Splash ! He had fallen short of the bank, and 
 he felt the deadly sands clasping above his knees. 
 But he threw himself frantically forward, drag 
 ging his feet up a little as he went over. And 
 hurra ! His hands touched the bank! 
 
 He caught a tiny bunch of sedge-grass, held it 
 
50 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 carefully lest its roots should give way, and pulled 
 gently and steadily. It held. A wave of joy 
 rushed through him as he felt his feet slowly 
 drawing out from that strange clutch. A moment 
 more and he was lying on the bank, weak and 
 trembling with excitement and exertion, but safe. 
 
 The struggling in the pool had grown less. 
 There was only a faint splash to be heard now and 
 then above the chorus of shrieks and oaths and 
 prayers of frantic men. The horses were evidently 
 all drowned or already engulfed ; and the riders 
 would soon share their fate. 
 
 Five minutes before the rough-bred cowboy 
 had had but one desire, a chance to kill or 
 capture these robbers. But the meaner passions 
 stand aside in the presence of the Great Leveller ; 
 and now Baby s only thought was to save his 
 enemies from so hideous a death. He was help 
 less enough. The reata, with which he could 
 have " roped " them all to safety one by one, had 
 gone down with poor Tex. There was not even 
 a bush, whose helpful branches he might stretch 
 out to the doomed wretches. 
 
 He ran up and down the bank, shaking his big 
 fists in despair, yelling, "Saltan! Jump flat! 
 Ill help you! " 
 
 One Mexican leaped; but, weak with terror, 
 struck upon his feet three yards from the shore. 
 The others did not seem to hear the friendly yell, 
 but went floundering off their submerged saddles 
 
BOGGED DOWN 51 
 
 beside their disappearing steeds, still shrieking 
 and praying hoarsely. 
 
 Baby Bones could see the man who had jumped, 
 already waist-deep. Forgetting his own safety, 
 the youth stooped low and shot his long body 
 out upon the water as if swimming. The sink 
 ing rustler made a frantic clutch at him, but the 
 cowboy, turning on his side, dealt him a fearful 
 blow in the face that laid him back motionless 
 upon the water. 
 
 Then with great care, lying on his belly in the 
 shallow water, that the treacherous quicksand 
 might get no hold on him, he tugged and hauled 
 first at one leg of the rustler, then at the other. 
 Now that no weight was pushing them down, he 
 soon had them clear. 
 
 Twisting one hand in the long hair of the un 
 conscious robber, Baby Bones towed him ashore. 
 Laying his limp captive upon the grass, and find 
 ing a faint pulse in the wrist, he cut a couple of 
 thongs from his buckskin jacket and tied the arms 
 and ankles securely. The fellow would soon re 
 cover from the stunning, and Baby Bones had no 
 intention that he should get away. 
 
 As for the others, there was no help for them. 
 No splash longer disturbed the pool s ripples. 
 The Cow Trap had claimed new victims. 
 
 When the foreman and a score of cowboys 
 came with Baby Bones to the deadly pool, just 
 
52 BOGGED DOWN 
 
 as the day was breaking, it was the same placid, 
 purring, limpid pool of old. There were some 
 fresh hoof-prints on its margin, but no more. 
 Even the prisoner was gone. 
 
 Soon the sharp-eyed trailers read the whole 
 story in the soil. The foremost cattle had seen 
 and recognized the dreaded pool, and had swerved 
 to either side, blindly followed by those behind. 
 But in the darkness and the stifling dust-cloud 
 the horses had run straight into the trap. 
 
 A little farther up the creek one rustler had 
 crossed in safety. He had evidently come back, 
 cut the thongs from Baby Bones s captive, and 
 carried him off on his own horse. 
 
 As for the cattle, they were all found in the 
 meadows, worn out with their fearful stampede. 
 
 The two surviving rustlers got safely away; 
 but they never raided the T C C again. To this 
 day, if you drop into the home-ranch of an even 
 ing, you will have little difficulty in persuading 
 Baby Bones now with a straggling beard, but 
 still Baby to tell you about the night when the 
 Cow Trap caught big game. 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 CLEAKLY, Claudio was tired and it took a 
 deal to tire this big, tousle-headed young Mexican. 
 His feet and hands were several sizes too big for 
 the rest of his body, overgrown as that was ; but 
 they seemed capable in proportion. Though but 
 twenty, and with just a dark fuzz upon his lip, 
 he was strong as a mule, and apparently as endur 
 ing. It was a most fortunate thing for Claudio. 
 Had he been as slow as the rest of the shepherds, 
 he might have stayed at home " smoking himself 
 the fingers," as he would say ; for it cost as much 
 to keep him as any two of the others. Such an 
 other appetite as his was not to be found in all 
 western New Mexico, and I do not say that 
 blindly, for I know them all. In the lambing- 
 camp of San Miguel I have seen with these same 
 eyes the cool onslaught of Claudio upon a whole 
 side of sheep, with bread to match ; and his un 
 conditional victory. But coffee was his strong 
 point and not the gentle drink of civilization, 
 but coffee of Southwestern sheep-camps, black as 
 ink and mighty as lye. Don Amado used often 
 to say that Claudio s coffee would pay the wages 
 
 55 
 
56 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 of another shepherd; and I do not doubt it. 
 Thrice at each of his three meals (4 A.M., noon, 
 and dark) the lad used to take his pint-and-a-half 
 tin cup, fill it a third of the way with sugar, and 
 then brim it with the black coffee. No wonder 
 he never got sleepy on duty ; and that while the 
 other shepherds were drowsing under the juni 
 pers, leaving their hatajos l to wander off into 
 trouble, Claudio was always running, always 
 rounding-up his woolly wards into a tolerably 
 compact mass, and keeping them as safe as it is 
 in human power to keep anything so contrary and 
 so brainless. He never seemed to sit down ; and 
 whether he really did or not, his hatajo was always 
 in good shape. So Don Amado continued to keep 
 Claudio and his appetite on the pay-roll. 
 
 But this afternoon the large feet in their clumsy 
 teguas dragged rather heavily, to the imminent 
 danger of a splitting, by the sharp rocks, of sheep- 
 pelt upper from rawhide sole ; and several times 
 Claudio groaned a doleful " ay de mi ! " when he 
 had to run down to the cienega to rescue some 
 lamb from a mud-hole. It was not to be wondered 
 at, after the morning s work. A large flock had 
 come in from El Dado, and there had been the 
 task of separating them in the big corral. Find 
 ing that the directest way, Claudio had simply 
 clutched the heavy wethers by their fleece, one 
 
 i A-tah-ho, a flock. Specifically used in New Mexico of the 
 band of lambs cared for by one herder. 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 57 
 
 by one, and swung them bodily over the gate 
 which closed the gap in the fence. Thus at last 
 all the ewes remained inside the corral, while all 
 the wethers were herded without. For his share, 
 Claudio had lifted three hundred and fifty-seven 
 big sheep over a four-foot gate ; and then, since 
 nine of the morning, had been chasing hither and 
 yon around the outskirts of his perverse hatajo. 
 The lambs in his band were now five days old ; 
 and at that age a New Mexican penco is smart 
 enough in body and impish enough in mind to 
 undo Job himself. But that was not all. The 
 mothers, whose age might have been expected to 
 give them discretion, were as crazy as the lambs. 
 There was always trouble in the family. Ewes 
 did not recognize their own children, and Claudio, 
 who knew the relationships better than they did, 
 had every now and then to throw down an un 
 natural mother and hold her while the lamb 
 nursed else the penco would have starved. 
 Again, one of these irresponsibles, who had dis 
 owned her proper offspring, would assault some 
 better mother and try to take away her lamb. 
 What with these vagaries of old and young, their 
 common perversity in going everywhere that they 
 should not, and nowhere that they should, the 
 pastor had his hands and heart full. 
 
 To add to the worry, the snakes were beginning 
 to come out from their winter nap. The opening 
 of May at the eight-thousand-foot altitude of San 
 
58 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 Miguel is rather early for these long sleepers ; but 
 the spring was forward and the sun warm, and 
 though none had been seen yet, there was no mis 
 taking their presence. The short, brown grama 
 grass of last year was thin ; and the hungry sheep 
 were wild for the few tender blades of green that 
 began to show here and there about the mouths of 
 the tusa holes. There was none elsewhere, nor 
 enough there to make it worth the running any 
 risk ; but the sheep could not be kept away and 
 some paid for their greed. Not that the prairie- 
 dogs (which were also just wakening from their 
 hibernation) quarrelled with the trespassers ; but 
 in some burrows were other tenants than tusas, 
 lying in the sunny mouth of the hole, and sav 
 agely resentful of interruption. Already that day 
 Claudio had found three dead ewes, each lying close 
 beside a burrow, fearfully swollen ; and upon the 
 nose of each were two tiny black marks such as 
 one might make with a tattooing needle. 
 
 " Claro ! " said Claudio. " These ill-said vivoras 
 are touchy now, being so full of poison that their 
 teeth ache, and glad of something to strike. And 
 not at corrientes, but these merinos of four dollars 
 each one. What disgrace ! " 
 
 Into the mouth of each burrow he threw stones 
 and earth, and stamped it down with vicious heel, 
 as much as to say, " Now, Mrs. Rattlesnake, bite 
 your way out ! " Then he carefully took off the 
 pelts of the victims, and hung them to dry upon 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 59 
 
 branches of the junipers, that all this fine fleece 
 might not be wasted. It was not much to save 
 out of four dollars a head ; but even the dimes 
 count when a bad season comes upon the owner 
 of forty thousand sheep. And, quite contrary to 
 the usual run of shepherds, Claudio never neglected 
 things. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on, the hatajo grazed 
 slowly up the draw. They were three miles from 
 the hut and corrals of the lambing-camp of San 
 Miguel a long way for such tender travellers, but 
 nearer home the grass was completely eaten off. 
 Close, now, on the left was the strange red spire 
 of the Cerro de la Alesna, its twenty-five-hundred- 
 foot cliffs glorified by the slanting sun. And just 
 ahead, the woods of the higher slopes came down 
 to the very edge of the draw. 
 
 Claudio was measuring the sun with a sober eye, 
 and trying to make up his mind if it would be 
 better to sleep there, or to take the hatajo back to 
 camp for the night. A May night up there under 
 the Peak of the Awl is no joke, even with blankets 
 which he had not but neither is it any part of a 
 joke to drive, an hatajo three miles. He was rather 
 inclined to stay. If he were not in camp by eight 
 o clock, he knew they would send Filadelfio out to 
 him with supper though he was not quite sure 
 if there would be three full cups of coffee. When 
 he was not there to help himself, they sometimes 
 took a mean advantage of him, and sent not more 
 
60 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 than a quart of coffee. And it was upon this 
 serious point that his decision hung doubtful. 
 
 Just then, as if by preconcerted plan, the ewes 
 raised their heads to sniff the soft breeze ; and in 
 another instant, with a chorus of strange whistles 
 
 which I dare say would be as surprising to an 
 Eastern farmer as the sight of three thousand 
 sheep in a flock and fifty thousand at one shearing 
 
 went tearing and gallopading over the swale as 
 if the very wolves were after them. The only 
 wolves were Claudio and the lambkins, both 
 running with all their legs, and both calling 
 "Wait for me," though in different tongues 
 for while Claudio yelled " coo-ee ! " the orphans 
 only cried " be-eh ! " But the fugitives were deaf 
 to both appeals, and in another moment had dis 
 appeared over the brow of the ridge. 
 
 " Que cosa ? " groaned Claudio. " Are the beasts 
 bewitched? What did they smell? And who 
 knows if they will stop themselves this side Ace- 
 bache ? Presto, pencos I Hurry up, or you have 
 no mothers ! " 
 
 Truly, the ewes seemed bound for Acebache, for 
 getful of their wabbly-legged babies ; for when 
 the shepherd got his lagging band to the top of 
 the ridge, the next draw was empty, and not a 
 sheep in sight. "Ay de mi!" he cried. "To 
 leave the pencos and find the mothers, or let those 
 go and watch these ? For the ewes are worth far 
 more but also they can care better for them- 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 61 
 
 selves. Ldstima ! Either way there will be loss. 
 But at least I will go a little forward and look 
 if by luck I can see the rogues " and he 
 rounded-up the lambs at the bottom of the 
 draw. 
 
 But the moment he started up the farther slope, 
 the stupid little creatures ran after him with un 
 certain steps but very certain voices. Since he 
 was the only mother that remained to them, they 
 had no intention of losing him; and in spite of the 
 bombardment of words and pebbles he directed at 
 them, they pranced up to him and nuzzled against 
 his legs, and dropped contentedly upon his very 
 feet. So I have seen them many a time desert 
 their rightful mothers, and follow, with every 
 filial demonstration, a dog or man or cow, or in 
 fact any other thing that had the quality of 
 motion. In vain Claudio pelted them; in vain 
 he took the voice of a wild beast, and growled 
 and roared and rushed at them with antics fit 
 to have scared a mad bull off the field. Unmoved 
 and confidingly they hung at his heels, merely 
 tumbling down when he charged, but showing 
 neither fright nor disposition to criticise their 
 guardian. 
 
 " It is to run, then," grumbled Claudio, mopping 
 his flushed face with a ragged sleeve. " For when 
 I am out of sight, they will stop. And in a mo 
 ment I will be back, before they can wander." 
 Pulling off his coat, he swung it vigorously about 
 
62 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 him to clear a space ; leaped over the backs of 
 a few loiterers, and went running up the slope 
 at a gait it was a wonder to see such clumsy 
 legs making. The coat dropped from his hand 
 as he jumped a gully ; but without stopping even 
 to look back, he plunged over the ridge and dis 
 appeared. 
 
 As for the pencos, they came straddling and 
 prancing and stumbling along, still "be-ehing." 
 Several tripped on the coat, and, finding it warm, 
 promptly sprawled upon their knees and began to 
 nurse at whatever rag or tag they first found ; and 
 the others, fancying that they were being robbed 
 of their dinner, crowded and jostled about, butt 
 ing, falling down, clambering over one another. 
 
 I am sure that even Claudio, used as he was to 
 the follies of sheep-kind, would have laughed to 
 see his old coat adopting fifty orphan lambs and 
 keeping them as contented as anything can content 
 such stupids. But Claudio saw nothing to laugh 
 at, when, fifteen minutes later, he came toiling back 
 over the ridge, a little out of breath with his run, 
 and quite out of humor with its results. 
 
 " Fools and three kinds of fools ! " he was pant 
 ing. " Not even in the valley of El Dado could 
 I see them. Now there is nothing but to bring 
 the pencos to camp, and then with a horse follow 
 these huidoras till h6! El oso I No wonder they 
 ran, smelling him ! " 
 
 For where the reunion of the coat-family had 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 63 
 
 been, was now a lot of little white patches, 
 smeared with blood. Here and there a lamb was 
 to be seen, wandering disconsolately about the 
 draw or fallen exhausted under a chaparro shrub. 
 And over the farther swale was just disappearing 
 a big, dark, shambling figure with two white 
 objects shining upon it. 
 
 It was all plain enough. The ewes, scenting 
 the bear from afar, as he sneaked through the 
 woods, had fled incontinently; for the actual 
 presence of no other wild beast so terrifies sheep 
 as the mere smell of a bear. And taking advan 
 tage of Claudio s brief absence, bruin had sallied 
 from the jumpers, played havoc among the lambs 
 (which were too stupid to fear even him), and 
 was now making off with a couple "for future 
 reference." 
 
 Claudio did not wait an instant to ponder. 
 His blood, warm enough after a typical shep 
 herd s day of aggravations, leaped to boiling at 
 sight of this fresh outrage ; and as nimbly as if 
 he had just risen from rest, he dashed forward, 
 thinking the Spanish anathemas there was no 
 breath to utter. 
 
 The bear, like bears always, was only anxious 
 to get away, if he decently could, and ran his 
 best. Ordinarily, that would have been far better 
 than Claudio s best or a very fair horse s best, 
 for that matter. But greediness is costly, even for 
 bears. The lamb in his mouth was no handicap 
 
64 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 whatever; and having eaten two or three on the 
 ground, he might have been contented with that. 
 But the one he persisted in carrying hugged under 
 his forearm did seriously impede him. Even 
 then, in the long run, he was more than a match 
 for his pursuer, and had he made for the nearest 
 edge of the timber, would undoubtedly have been 
 safe; but when Claudio came in full view of him, 
 and only a hundred yards behind, he whipped 
 from his belt the venerable and battered six- 
 shooter he carried in lieu of a rifle. " Throwing 
 down," in the swift, instinctive motion of those 
 who really know how to use a revolver and never 
 stop to ask whether it has sights or not, he sent 
 a leaden proxy running for him. It was a good 
 shot, tired and at speed as he was the kind of 
 shooting one has to learn on the frontier, and can 
 not learn in a gallery. The bear turned a com 
 plete somersault, and, gathering itself again, began 
 biting viciously at its rump. Claudio had not 
 stopped at all; but now, within thirty yards, he 
 halted, and watched for the brute to give him a 
 shot at some vital part. But in that very instant 
 the bear, with a snuffle of rage, wheeled and came 
 galloping at his late pursuer. Evidently the 
 heavy ball had broken no bones, for there was no 
 hitch in that grim, shambling gait so ludicrous 
 from a rear or side view, so grotesquely terrible 
 from in front. Only those who have been charged 
 by a wounded bear can understand the ghastly 
 
THE BITE OF THE P1CHU-CUATE 65 
 
 humor of it, the incongruous thoughts, the mingled 
 horror and revulsion of it. 
 
 As the bear came on, there was the poorest of 
 chances for shooting. Not that Claudio s nerve 
 had failed him there was "something in" this 
 clumsy, unlettered Mexican lad. But the atti 
 tude of the beast was the very best defence for 
 his vital parts. Had he been able to reason it 
 out, he could have invented no other posture so 
 safe as that of the charge. Claudio drove a 
 square shot at the skull, not in any notion that he 
 could bore that sloping forehead, but hoping the 
 rap might startle the beast into rising, so that 
 he could get a chance at the throat, the best of 
 all shots at a bear. But the heavy ball merely 
 ploughed a red furrow up the squat skull, and the 
 bear came lurching on. It was worse than useless 
 to run. Slender as was the chance of life now, it 
 all lay in standing firm. Within six feet the huge 
 brute did rear up on his haunches, and, spring 
 ing back a step, Claudio was bringing down his 
 weapon like lightning, to "let go " when it should 
 be on a level with that mighty throat, now fully 
 exposed. But the bear was no innocent; and 
 cleverly judged as was Claudio s move, he had 
 met his match in quick wit. Even the sweep of 
 his swift arm was slow beside the flash of that 
 great paw, as it swooped far forward, met his 
 descending hand with a calculation an Indian eye 
 might have envied, and sent the heavy revolver 
 
66 THE BITE OF TEE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 spinning forty feet, going off as it flew. And in 
 another instant the shepherd wa,s on his back and 
 the bear upon him. 
 
 The great claws had struck only the six-shooter, 
 and Claudio s hand was unhurt, save where the 
 violent wrenching of the guard had cut and 
 twisted his fingers ; and instinctively he gripped 
 deep in the thick fur, where first his hands 
 lighted. Neither had he been hurt by the fall, 
 for here was soft gray sand, which a little re 
 lieved, too, the fearful pressure upon his legs. 
 But none of these things comforted Claudio ; and 
 he fought only as a man fights blindly to the end. 
 His last faint hope had gone when the six-shooter 
 went whirling far beyond reach. 
 
 The bear, which had gone to bed in his cave in 
 the canon of Acebache, rolling fat, in November, 
 had but a few days ago come forth from that long 
 nap, the shadow of his proper self. His long, 
 heavy fur was sadly rusty, and his huge frame 
 lean as a rail. He had been interrupted in the 
 first square meal in five months, and from that 
 long fast came two strange results. One was, 
 that he was not half himself in strength, and that 
 the powerful young Mexican was therefore some 
 thing more than a puppet in his paws. Of the 
 end, certainly, there could be no doubt; but 
 meantime Claudio wrestled mightily, and even 
 succeeded in struggling to his feet, hugging close, 
 to give those paws no chance for one of the swipes 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 67 
 
 that would make an eggshell of his head. His 
 face he snuggled into the bear s chest, and so 
 kept clear of the dripping jaws. And, despite 
 the fearful pressure under which his ribs creaked 
 and sprung, he hunched and tugged and swayed 
 blindly, desperately, as wrestling with some tall 
 man whom he might hope to pitch at last. But 
 it was not for long. 
 
 Finding these close quarters unsatisfactory, the 
 bear brought up its muscular arm, and, clapping 
 its paw upon Claudio s mat of hair, forced his 
 head resistlessly back. The great claws were 
 buried in his scalp, and little streams of red 
 spurted out. The bear s left arm was around his 
 waist, while the right was giving him the "break- 
 hold " as scientifically as any wrestler could have 
 done. And now a villainous warm breath came 
 sickeningly in his face, and he could see the 
 red jaws and white teeth within six inches. He 
 even noticed, with that strange inconsequence 
 which comes upon men in these moments, that 
 blood from the scalp-wound had run down and 
 tinged the froth which dripped from that great 
 mouth. In a frenzy of terror, he caught a clutch 
 under the throat, to hold back that horrible head 
 and the strongest man could scarce have bent 
 against Claudio s desperate arms. But it was 
 only a question of a little longer. Slowly, slowly, 
 those resistless neck muscles bore down Claudio s 
 iron arms ; and the big jaws, working grimly, 
 
68 THE BITE OF TEE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 drew nearer. A deadly faintness began to spread 
 from his stomach, and Claudio shut his eyes. 
 
 Just then a sudden jerk ran through the body 
 of the bear, and there was a sharp snort as of rage 
 or pain. Claudio opened his eyes. He could see 
 nothing but that demoniac face ; but in it he 
 fancied there was a new expression. Then there 
 was a sickening movement of the great claws 
 which had sunk deep into his back and scalp. 
 Surely they were relaxing ! Their withdrawal 
 was far more painful than their entrance had 
 been ; but even with the faintness of the new 
 pain, a sudden wave of joy swept through the shep 
 herd for the first time, now, he hoped, though 
 he knew not why. He shook his head savagely, 
 to clear the blood which streamed down over his 
 eyes (the paw had dropped from his scalp), and 
 dug his fists into the deep-furred throat, and 
 fought with the strength of two Claudios fight 
 ing no longer as a dying rat fights, but like a man 
 for hope of life. 
 
 Then a very wonderful thing befell. The bear 
 was groaning and panting heavily ; and suddenly 
 it lurched and fell to the ground, carrying Claudio 
 with it. But it was no longer trying to get his 
 head between its jaws. For a moment it lay half 
 upon him, writhing, grinding its teeth ; and then 
 flung itself to one side, biting up a great mouth 
 ful of sand. Claudio leaped to his feet, ran to 
 the six-shooter, and fell upon it, crying like a 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 69 
 
 child. It was ten minutes before he could get 
 up ; for loss of blood and, more than all, the 
 frightful strain had left him limp as a rag. 
 At last he staggered to his feet, clutching the 
 six-shooter, and walked unsteadily toward the 
 bear. 
 
 "What thing is this?" he muttered. "For 
 that ball in the rump ought never to kill him. 
 Perhaps he is only making as dead, to fool me." 
 But there was no make-believe about it ; the great 
 brute was lifeless as a stone. 
 
 " But what will it be f " cried Claudio, kicking 
 the gaunt carcass. "Is he perhaps bewitched? 
 Aver!" 
 
 Laying down his revolver, he caught the heavy 
 fur of the rump, to turn the bear over. Ordinarily 
 he would have succeeded. Four hundredweight 
 is no fool of a lump ; but Claudio, as you have 
 seen, was an uncommonly powerful young man. 
 Now, however, worn out by his fearful struggle, 
 and with nerves so unstrung that he trembled all 
 over, it was too much for him. Still, the mystery 
 would not let him rest ; and hunching his shoulder 
 against the bear s back, he ran his hand under, 
 feeling for the wound. He groped and groped ; 
 but suddenly in a hollow felt the touch of some 
 thing very different from fur or sand, and in the 
 same instant an inconceivable pang. And when 
 he jerked away his arm a tiny snake, less than a 
 
70 THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 
 
 foot long, gray-backed, and coppery on the belly, 
 was hanging from his thumb. 
 
 The last vestige of color faded from the brown 
 face and left it gray as ashes between the drying 
 streaks of blood ; for Claudio knew the pichu- 
 cuate, the only real asp in the New World, the 
 deadliest snake in North America. So he had 
 escaped the bear only to die by this tiny foe ; for 
 never yet had one been known to recover from 
 the bite of the pichu-cuate. A rattlesnake was 
 nothing ; but this well, see what it had done for 
 such a monster as the bear, and in the space of 
 less than a minute ! Evidently in their struggle 
 bruin had stepped too close to this unsuspected 
 danger that great lump on his hind leg ex 
 plained all. Had he carried his usual coat of 
 fat, the venom would have taken far longer to 
 operate, and he would have had abundant time 
 to settle accounts with Claudio. But he no 
 longer looked gaunt. He was still swelling 
 already he looked fat as if July were here. 
 
 Already Claudio was reeling. Fearful pains 
 shot up his arm and went forking through his 
 body. Upon the thumb were only two tiny black 
 dots, right at the tip ; but the hand in these five 
 seconds had taken twice its size. If he could 
 only cut it off ! But, alas, his knife was in his 
 coat and before he could get halfway to that 
 he would be a dead shepherd. 
 
 All this had taken not so long as you have been 
 
HE HELD HIS HAND ARM ? S LENGTH BEFORE HIM AND PULLED THE TRIGGER 
 
THE BITE OF THE PICHU-CUATE 71 
 
 in reading it nay, scarce the time in which one 
 might spell the longest word in it ; for in these 
 crises things and thoughts move swiftly, and one 
 lives fast. Claudio was still squeezing his thumb 
 and crying aloud for a knife, when his eye lit on 
 the six-shooter. Quick as a flash, he sprang, and 
 caught it up, and cocked it. There was just one 
 cartridge left. 
 
 His nerves were steady now. He held his hand 
 arm s length before him, the wounded thumb erect, 
 drew the revolver back to his very eye, that the 
 ball might not mangle too much, and thus stop 
 the blood, which must flow, and, with a hand as 
 firm as if it had been carved of stone, pulled the 
 trigger. There was a dull, numb sensation, 
 hardly a pain, in all that side, and when the 
 smoke cleared from his eyes, his right hand was 
 black and bleeding. The thumb was gone clean 
 at the lower joint. 
 
 There is one man in New Mexico who has been 
 bitten by the pichu-cuate, and lives to tell it a 
 tall, powerful, good-natured shepherd, with four 
 grim, gray furrows in his black hair, and the 
 thumb of the right hand missing. But Claudio 
 seems rather proud of these disfigurements, and 
 often says : 
 
 "Who talks of bargains? For so cheaply I 
 bought my life twice in one hour." 
 
POH-HLAIK THE CAVE-BOY 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 FIVE hundred years ago the cloudless sun of 
 New Mexico beat as blinding-white upon the 
 Pu-ye as he does to-day, and played as quaint 
 pranks of hide-and-seek with the shadows in the 
 face of that dazzling cliff ; stealing now behind 
 the royal pines in front, now suddenly leaping 
 out to catch the dark truants that went dodging 
 into the caves. And doubtless he was as unsuc 
 cessful then as now ; for the shadows, none the 
 more decrepit for their centuries, are still mock 
 ing him, still creeping around sly corners, still 
 defying him from their cavern strongholds till 
 Mother Night shall be back with all her invinci 
 ble host, and rout him from the field. It is not 
 that they dislike their sharp-eyed giant of a play 
 fellow the more I watch them the more I am 
 convinced of that. But he is so big, so mighty, 
 so unconscious of his power, that there needs care 
 in romping with him. For with the best inten 
 tions in the world he is too heedless ; and when 
 he catches one of those poor, pigmy playmates 
 under his rushing feet pff there s a shadow 
 
 76 
 
76 POH-HLAIE, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 dead and gone. That s the trouble with having 
 more strength than wit. 
 
 Yes, the sun and the shadows are the same, and 
 play the same old game on one side with eager 
 fire, on the other with timid gentleness. The 
 playground has changed with the centuries, but 
 not so very much. It is the same noble cliff, lofty 
 and long and castellate, towering creamy and beau 
 tiful amid the outpost pine-groves of the Valles 
 wilderness. All around its feet the lordly trees 
 stand whispering, and its head is matted with 
 curly junipers. The wrinkles are no sharper in 
 its immemorial face, and the same myriad dusky 
 dimples are there. From a little way off there 
 seems no bit of change in it. 
 
 But ah ! what a change there has been, after 
 all ! For the very silence of silences lies upon 
 the Pu-ye. Only the deep breath of the pines, 
 the sudden screech of the pinonero l blue jay, ever 
 break it now. And time was when the boy Sun 
 and the Shadow-girls had here a thousand mates 
 in their gambols ; mates whose voices flew like 
 birds, and with pattering feet amid the tufa blocks, 
 and the gleam of young eyes three things that 
 sun and shadows have not, nor had even when 
 they were so much younger. Surely both must 
 miss the noisy playfellows of the old days, and 
 find their own voiceless sports lonely for the 
 
 1 Peen-yone-ay-ro, a large and brilliant blue jay, which lives 
 largely on the delicious little nuts of the pifion. 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 77 
 
 change. Once these jumbled stones were tall 
 houses against the white face of the cliff; and 
 the caves into which the shadows so crowd to rest 
 were homes but of kindly folk that minded not 
 the invasion nor tried to drive the intruders out 
 by boring bigger windows in the rock. They 
 were just as welcome as the equally irresponsible 
 browny babes that swarmed in and out with them, 
 and made all the noise. For in the Pu-ye*, in those 
 days before the world knew printing or gun 
 powder or America, life was life, and love was 
 love, just as they are with us to-day. If ever you 
 live long enough, and wander wide enough to get 
 the one highest education the education of human 
 ity you will learn that man is man, wherever 
 and whenever, be his skin white, brown, or black. 
 The sun paints different faces on him, the moun 
 tains or the plains or the sea give their varying 
 color to his speech and habit ; but when you get 
 under the surface behold, he is the same man 
 
 the world over ! 
 
 *** 
 
 Then the great, white cliff of the Pu-ye* was 
 not lonely. Hundreds of faint smoke-spirals 
 stole up its face. Here and there, among the 
 gray houses, strode a stalwart man with bow-case 
 on shoulder, or a woman bringing water in an 
 earthen jar upon her head. As for children, they 
 were everywhere sitting in the tufa-sand, and 
 sifting it through their fingers ; shouting " Hee- 
 
78 POH-HLAIE, THE CAVE-SOT 
 
 tah-oo* " from their hiding-places among the great 
 pumice blocks fallen from the cliff ; chasing each 
 other over the rocks, into the caves, down the 
 slope, in that very game of tag which was invented 
 before fire was ; making mud-cakes by the pools of 
 the drying brook ; hunting one another in mimic 
 war among the pines, or turning small bows and 
 arrows against the saucy pinonero whose sky-blue 
 feathers should deck bare heads of straight black 
 hair. And they seemed to be just as happy about 
 it all as if they could have understood the colossal 
 ignorance of half a world, and how those poor 
 wise men over .the water hadn t a suspicion that 
 there was such a thing as this American continent, 
 or that any one could sail around the globe with 
 out falling off the under side. That was rather 
 presuming of these swart youngsters to go ahead 
 and be having a good time as impudently as if 
 they had not been heathens in a continent which 
 had no right to exist (since " no one as was any 
 one " knew it existed) ; but so they did, neverthe 
 less. 
 
 Poh-hlaik, up by the cliff-corner near where the 
 estufa of the Eagle Clan showed its dark mouth, 
 was enjoying himself as much as any one and 
 somewhat after the game of the sun and the 
 shadows. He was a tall, sinewy boy, with strong, 
 white teeth coming to light very often, and supple 
 hands that could bend a bow to the arrow-head. 
 Just now he was down on all fours; crouching, 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 79 
 
 pouncing, charging, and roaring in blood-curdling 
 wise when he had time between laughs. Mokeit- 
 cha, indeed! I should like to see the mountain- 
 lion with such contented victims ! Poh-hlaik s 
 were half a dozen brown little sisters and cousins 
 who laughed and shrieked and ran and came back 
 to be devoured again by this insatiate monster. 
 Sometimes, in a particularly ferocious rush, some 
 one got tipped over or had a toe stepped upon by 
 Mokeitcha; and then she would make a lip and 
 start off crying whereat the ravening animal 
 would pat her on the head with clumsy tender 
 ness, and call back her dimples with a still fun 
 nier caper. Really, now, Poh-hlaik was a brother 
 worth having more fun than the other boys, if 
 he was so big and strong and sometimes hurt one. 
 He didn t mean to, anyhow ! 
 
 While this exciting scene was in progress, a 
 very small brown boy, with a very tiny bow, 
 hopped lazily out from a neighboring cave-room, 
 and, seeing the carnage, brightened up at once. 
 He hunched out his small chest with the effort, 
 and sent a wee, headless shaft whizzing with so 
 brave an aim that it smote Mokeitcha quite audibly 
 upon the ribs, and that astounded beast reared up 
 with a howl and began to rub the bruise. 
 
 "Shya-yak! The hunter!" screamed the girls 
 in great glee at this new element in the game, 
 though promptly remorseful that their amiable 
 eater-up had been pained. " Play thou too, Ki-re! 
 
80 PO&-HLAXK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 But not shooting so hard, or thou wilt hurt our 
 lion!" And Poh-hlaik, whose good-natured teeth 
 were already showing again, added, " Yes, be thou 
 the hunter only, much eye how thou shoo test! " 
 
 But before the victims had been devoured many 
 more times apiece, or MoJceitcha too often slain by 
 the avenging Nimrod, a sweet, clear voice of a 
 woman came ringing: 
 
 "Poh-hlaik!" 
 
 "Here, little mother! What wilt thou?" and 
 the cougar of a moment ago rose on his hind legs 
 and ran obediently to where a woman leaned 
 through the tiny doorway of a cave. The adobe 
 floor was spotlessly clean, and her modest cotton 
 tunic shone like snow. Both floor and tunic 
 should have looked strange enough in the un- 
 guessed and unguessing world beyond seas and 
 the features too. But in the face was a presence 
 which any one should know, down to a smallest 
 child and anywhere the mother-look which is 
 the same in all the world. 
 
 " A goodly man will he be," she murmured 
 absently, with soft eyes resting on her strong 
 young son. " Ay ! It is to seek thy father, carry 
 ing this squash and parched corn and dried meat 
 of the deer. For by now he will be hungry, so 
 long as he is in the estufa and thou too, with 
 thy games. And bid him come, if he will, that 
 he may hear the baby, what it says! " Reaching 
 back, she brought forward a little flat cradle, with 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 81 
 
 buckskin flaps laced across it; and from under its 
 buckskin hood peered a brown lump of flesh with 
 big eyes as black as tar. 
 
 " En-nah, handful of a warrior ; En-nah, little 
 great man ! " she crooned, tossing the bundle 
 gently upon level palms. A funny little crack ran 
 across the fatness, and the eyes lighted up almost 
 as if they knew something, and from that un 
 certain cavity came a decided " da-da! " which 
 is just as far as a baby of his age has got 
 with all the civilization and appliances of the 
 year 1897. We start about even ; and it is 
 fairly wonderful in knocking about the world to 
 find how the first sounds that come to baby lips 
 are everywhere the same. There is no home nor 
 blood where "papa" and "mamma" are not under 
 stood. English words? Not a bit of it! They 
 are human words everywhere current, every 
 where dear ; perhaps remnants to us, with a few 
 more of childhood, from before the tower of Babel. 
 And everywhere there is as much joy when the 
 uncertain lips first say " da-da " as was now in the 
 house of Kwe-ya. 
 
 " Already he is to talk ! " cried Poh-hlaik, with 
 a delighted grin ; and patting his mother on the 
 shoulder and the baby on the cheek, he went run 
 ning and leaping over the rocks like a young deer, 
 carrying the buckskin bundle. Directly he was 
 at the estufa of the Eagle People, where the men 
 of his father s clan all slept as well as counselled ; 
 
82 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 for in the queer Indian society, which is not so 
 ciety at all, the men used to live in their big 
 sacred room, but the women and children in their 
 little houses. Poh-hlaik entered the small door 
 and stood a moment before his eyes grew used 
 to the darkness. Then he saw his father sitting 
 against the wall, smoking a rush ; and went to 
 him. "Here is to eat," he said, handing the 
 bundle. " And my mother says if you will come ! 
 For already the small one calls you." 
 
 " He does ? It is good I will go ! " And the 
 tall, stern-faced Indian rose with slow dignity 
 which was belied by something in his eyes and 
 voice. Like some men I have remotely heard of 
 in modern times, Pya-po was not so " weak " as to 
 betray feeling ; but he was strong enough to have 
 it and sometimes a very tiny token of it would 
 leak out in spite of him. Now, though nothing 
 would have induced him to show unseemly haste, 
 he was clearly losing no steps ; and already the 
 stately strides had taken him several yards as he 
 turned his head to say to Poh-hlaik : 
 
 " Son, at the White-Corn People s estufa, if thou 
 see Enque-Enque, tell him I would speak with him 
 before the night." 
 
 " So I will say," answered the boy, respectfully, 
 turning to go to his own estufa; for since his 
 mother was of the White-Corn People, so was 
 Poh-hlaik. With Indians almost everywhere de 
 scent is reckoned from the mother s side, and not, 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 83 
 
 as with us, from the father s. And as a man can 
 not marry into his own clan, his sons inevitably 
 belong to a different estufa. 
 
 Sure enough, Enque-Enque was at the man- 
 house of the White-Corn Clan ; and he received 
 the message with a grunt. He was a little, sharp- 
 faced man, with a look not altogether pleasant. 
 If Pya-po, with his mighty head and frame, had a 
 lion-like air, this other as clearly suggested the 
 fox ; and even the acute features contributed less 
 to this impression than a way he had of cocking 
 his chin down and to one side, and looking at 
 something else, but seeing you from the ends of 
 his eyes. You never could tell just when Enque- 
 Enque was looking at you and when he wasn t. 
 If you were not staring straight at him, you felt 
 his eyes ; but if you looked, they had not moved 
 a wink, but were fixed bias on the ground. And 
 it is a thing I have had occasion to learn, that if 
 you meet one of these men who sees all you do 
 without even using "half an eye," you will have 
 none too many eyes to watch him if you use all 
 you have. 
 
 Enque-Enque did not so much as look at Poh- 
 hlaik ; but the boy, who could have given lessons 
 in such things to any of us, had he been able to 
 phrase what he knew, understood that the sub 
 ordinate shaman had weighed his face to a feather. 
 Not that there was any secret to read there he 
 had merely delivered a message, of which he knew 
 
84 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 no import back of the words. He did not like 
 Enque-Enque; but his face said nothing about that, 
 and his tone was the respectful one that no Pueblo 
 boy ever failed to use to an elder. And now he 
 suddenly felt afraid of his father s fifth assistant 
 suddenly and without the slightest tangible 
 excuse, for nothing whatever had happened. 
 
 " Shall I say to my father anything? " he vent 
 ured. 
 
 " I will go," answered the man, dryly ; which 
 Poh-hlaik needed no interpreter to tell him meant 
 also, "now clear out, boy." 
 
 " But that is a funny one ! " Poh-hlaik was 
 thinking to himself as he went skipping down the 
 slope ; for as he turned to come away he had 
 caught glimpse of about an inch of notched reed 
 projecting from the lion-skin case on Enque- 
 Enque s back. " For the feathers are put differ 
 ently from ours. And it will be longer, too, since 
 it stands above the rest." 
 
 It was a very trifling matter to annoy one ; but 
 that arrow seemed to stick in the boy s mind. 
 At the foot of the slope, where some enormous 
 boulders from the cliff hid the village from him, 
 his gait dropped to a walk; and presently he sat 
 down upon a block of tufa and began looking 
 very intently at his feet. Whatever he saw there 
 did not seem to enlighten the perplexity which 
 knit his brows ; for in a few moments he rose, and 
 with a still clouded face turned to the left and 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 85 
 
 began climbing a zigzag trail. Here the cliff 
 tapers into a long slope ; and after a short trudg 
 ing over the debris, he came upon the brow of the 
 mesa among the junipers. A little farther yet, 
 and he suddenly stepped from the woods into a 
 large clearing, in whose centre stood a great 
 square pueblo, three stories high, built of blocks 
 of the same white tufa from the cliff. Here were 
 other brown folk, little and big ; for this was the 
 " upstairs town " of the cave pueblo, its ultimate 
 refuge and fortress and the permanent home of 
 some of its people. 
 
 "Etfkt!" sung out a voice; and a boy of Poh- 
 hlaik s own age came scrambling down a ladder 
 from the tall house-tops. " I was just to go for 
 thee. Come, let us make a hunt in the canon, if 
 we may find the Little- Old-Mountain-Man 1 ; for 
 he is now very fat." 
 
 "It is well," answered Poh-hlaik, soberly. 
 "And if not him, we shall at least get trout." 
 
 Both boys had their bow-cases on their backs; 
 and in five minutes they had descended the slope 
 and were crossing the plateau to the brink of the 
 canon. This rift, three or four hundred feet deep, 
 was shadowy with royal pines and musical with a 
 lovely brook as it still is. Poh-hlaik and Kah-be 
 descended the precipitous sides noiselessly, and 
 began creeping along the brook in the thick 
 underbrush. Fat trout flashed in the pools ; but 
 
 i Wild turkey. 
 
86 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 the boys paid no attention to them, for from a 
 thicket on the other side of a natural glade came 
 the " gobble-obble-obble " and then the skirr of the 
 wild turkey. 
 
 " No ! " whispered Poh-hlaik to his companion s 
 suggestion. "We will wait here for he will 
 come out to the brook with his family ; and if we 
 try to get to the other side, he can run without 
 our seeing him, for the bushes." 
 
 They lay quietly in a thick clump of alders, 
 grasping each his bow with an arrow at the string. 
 The gobbler repeated his cry and suddenly it 
 was echoed from behind them. The boys ex 
 changed looks, and Kah-be was about to speak; 
 but Poh-hlaik put his finger to his lips, with a 
 flash of the eyes. 
 
 Just then there was a faint sighing sound over 
 head ; and close in front of the thicket whence the 
 first gobble had come, an arrow, falling from the 
 sky, stood quivering, its head buried in the earth. 
 A tiny rustle in the bushes, and a dark arm 
 reached out and plucked the arrow back into 
 shelter. 
 
 Kah-be wore a dumbfounded look, but Poh- 
 hlaik s face showed more of terror. He thought 
 he had seen that arrow before ! Now there were 
 no more turkey-calls ; but dead silence reigned in 
 the canon save for the whisper of the pines to the 
 chuckling brook. 
 
 "Now he will not come," whispered Kah-be. 
 
POH-HLAIE, THE CAVE-BOY 87 
 
 " Let us creep up the brook, and around upon 
 him." 
 
 " For your heart, quiet you ! " breathed Poh- 
 hlaik in the ear of his chum. "Do you not see 
 that these are no turkeys? And that hand is 
 that a hand of the grandchildren of the Sun ? It 
 is for us to get to the pueblo now, and unseen ! 
 For not our lives only, but many more, are in the 
 shadow. See ! " he whispered nervously, pointing 
 at the brook ; for two or three fresh alder-leaves 
 came slipping down the current, and then there 
 was the faintest tinge in the limpid water, as of 
 sand stirred up. " Come, but more noiseless and 
 hidden than the snakes ! " 
 
 He stretched upon his belly and began moving 
 down-stream, lizard-like, the still puzzled Kah-be 
 following him. When they had traversed a few 
 hundred feet in this fashion, Poh-hlaik turned to 
 the right, up a little ravine dense with brush. It 
 led to the top of the canon ; and in a few minutes 
 the two boys peered from the last bush out around 
 the scattered pines of the table-land. There was 
 nothing to be seen or heard. 
 
 " Now, friend, it is to run as for life and not 
 straight, but dodging between the trees. Come ! " 
 And springing from their shelter, Poh-hlaik dashed 
 off. Kah-be was at his heels ; for though his face 
 showed that he was still mystified by these strange 
 performances, he was one of those who fallow. 
 
 There was no living thing in sight, but before 
 
88 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 the runners had made four bounds, there was a 
 vicious ish-oo! and an arrow split the lobe of 
 Poh-hlaik s ear and fell five yards ahead of him. 
 Kah-be gave a wild yell, and sprang ahead like a 
 scared fawn ; but as for Poh-hlaik, he only clapped 
 his hand to his ear even as he swerved past a big 
 pine so as to throw it in line behind him. There 
 was another whizz, but not so near ; and then no fur 
 ther token as the lads sped down the grassy plain. 
 They did not slacken speed till they had turned 
 the corner of the hill and were under the long, 
 white cliff ; and still at a smart run came to the 
 cave-village. 
 
 "Not a word, now!" said Poh-hlaik, sternly. 
 "For none must know save the Men of Power. 
 I go to tell my father, and he will know what to 
 do. Mind not a breath ! " 
 
 Kah-be promised, though a little sullenly at the 
 loss of the sensation he wished to noise abroad, 
 and went off along the cliff. Poh-hlaik drew 
 his father into an inner cave-room and there told 
 him everything just as it had befallen, and with 
 out comment or surmises. Only, at the end, he 
 could not refrain from adding, " As for the arrow 
 which went as message to the bdrbaro, I think I 
 saw it once before." 
 
 "Ahu? was it with Enque-Enque? For if 
 there be a traitor, it is he. It is because he is 
 thought^ to be treating with the Tin-n l that I 
 
 1 The tribe now known as Navajos. 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 89 
 
 have summoned him. Two say that they have 
 seen him coming from where the hostiles were ; 
 and other things point that way for he has 
 never been content since the elders laughed at 
 his pretensions to be chief shaman. In his quiver 
 was the arrow, eh? Well hast thou done, son! 
 Keep the heart of a man, and the still tongue ; 
 and as for me, we will see what is to do." 
 
 There was but one thing to be done, in the 
 opinion of the captain of war. Those who had 
 shot at two boys of the pueblo must be of the 
 savage Tin-ne* who from time immemorial had 
 harassed the pueblo. Since they were in the 
 canon, he would lead a war-party, and teach them ! 
 Old Maquah had been dead but a year ; and this 
 was his successor s first chance. He would have 
 no barbarians prowling around the peace-loving 
 cave-town of the Pu-ye ! 
 
 In half an hour a strong band of warriors, 
 headed by the war-captain and the chief shaman, 
 were stealing down into the canon, noiselessly as 
 so many shadows. " Come thou also," P-ya-po 
 had said to his son; "for to-day may be the chance 
 to prove thyself a man." 
 
 But Poh-hlaik replied, " Let me stay here by the 
 mother ; for in my heart something tells me to." 
 
 "As thou wilt," his father had given short 
 answer. And as he went away he was thinking, 
 " Will it be that my first son is mouse-hearted ? " 
 
90 POH-HLAIK, THE UAVE-BOY 
 
 But it was not that which had kept the boy at 
 home. He dared not confess it to his father, but 
 to him the plan of the war-captain seemed reck 
 less. " Perhaps it is even so that Enque-Enque 
 wishes! For else, why did he shoot at me again, 
 after failing to kill? Was it not that I might 
 report there were bdrbaros in the canon, that he 
 might get the men sent out that way ? But how 
 shall one dare think these things when the Men 
 of Power have decided otherwise ? " 
 
 Yet in spite of the inbred reverence for author 
 ity, Poh-hlaik could not convince himself that 
 all was well ; . and he wandered about restlessly. 
 In the sunset glow the men sat in little knots, 
 talking of the matter, ill at ease ; for after so 
 many months of repose, the savage foe was back 
 at the old game. Dusk was closing in as Enque- 
 Enque came strolling around the western turn of 
 the cliff, his stone hoe in his hand. He had been 
 at his field, up the plateau, he explained care 
 lessly ; and violent were his diatribes against the 
 Navajos when he heard the news. 
 
 Even as he spoke there came a far clamor of 
 yells of rage, mingled with the fierce war-cry. 
 
 " They have trapped ours! " cried Enque-Enque, 
 loudly, leaping upon a rock. " Come! We must 
 run to their help ! For it seems the enemy are many. 
 
 A hundred men sprang forward at the word of 
 the sub-shaman, clutching their bows; but Poh- 
 hlaik stood before them, crying : 
 
POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 91 
 
 "Not so! This same is the traitor who has 
 sold us to the Tin-ne*! And now he would strip 
 the town of its men! Go not, if ye will mind the 
 words of a boy! " 
 
 It was an unheard-of thing thus to defy a medi 
 cine man; and in the swift inspiration of the mo 
 ment Poh-hlaik was committing an unspeakable 
 sacrilege. But even so, he stood erect, so stern 
 and gray-faced that grizzled men looked at him in 
 awe, and back at the accused. 
 
 Enque-Enque s foxy air did not change in the 
 least. " Bewitched is the boy! " he sneered, turn 
 ing his eyes back along the cliff. Then a sudden 
 light broke across his face, and from his throat 
 poured a shrill whoop even as he drove a shaft 
 through the neck of the first lieutenant of war. 
 In answer there rose a hideous yell from all about, 
 and the darkening rocks swarmed with darker 
 forms, and the twilight buzzed with wasps that 
 had need to sting but once. A score of the men 
 of the Pu-ye fell before one had time for thought ; 
 and among them was Poh-hlaik, an obsidian- 
 tipped reed through his shoulder, and another 
 deep in his thigh. 
 
 The conspirator s plans had worked very fairly. 
 His hated chief and a majority of the warriors 
 had gone forth to the ambush he had laid; and 
 though he had failed to send off the rest of the 
 fighting strength of the town, the total surprise 
 was like to balance that. The startled Pueblos 
 
92 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 fought desperately ; but the savages were nearly 
 two to one, and pushed them to the very doors of 
 the caves. 
 
 As for : Poh-hlaik, he had fallen between two 
 great tufa-blocks, faint with the pain and loss of 
 blood. For a few moments he lay there ; and 
 then began dragging himself toward his mother s 
 house. She was alone with the little ones he 
 must try to protect them somehow ! Around him 
 raged the fight. The air hurtled with arrows, 
 and everywhere were savage whoops and dying 
 screams, and the sickly smell of blood. Once two 
 grappled foemen wrestled across him, wringing 
 a howl of pain from him with their tread ; and 
 again he had to crawl over a stark form. But he 
 hunched himself painfully along, behind shelter 
 ing boulders, till he was close to the cave that was 
 his home. He was about to call out, when sud 
 denly against the darkening sky he saw a figure 
 backing out of the low doorway, dragging some 
 thing. Had he been standing, he could not have 
 made it out ; but from his stony bed that dark 
 silhouette against the west was unmistakable. 
 It was Enque-Enque ! His bow was gone ; but 
 between his teeth was something which could be 
 only the cruel obsidian knife, and both his hands 
 were clenched in the long hair of a woman who 
 seemed to be bracing against the doorway to keep 
 from being dragged out. 
 
 Poh-hlaik s heart lost its count for a moment. 
 
ALREADY HER HEAD AND SHOULDERS WERE THROUGH THE DOOR 
 
POH-HLAIE, THE CAVE-BOY 93 
 
 His father s enemy knew well where to strike ! 
 And at the thought of the fate that overhung his 
 mother, he turned deathly sick. But it was only 
 for an instant. 
 
 The victim s hold was slipping already her 
 head and shoulders were through the door. 
 Enque-Enque, as he hauled away, was hidden 
 now by a tall tufa-block only his long, sinewy 
 arms and their prey showed against the sky. 
 
 " The Trues give me eyes ! " breathed Poh- 
 hlaik devoutly, tugging the bow-string to his ear, 
 though the effort seemed to drive a hundred darts 
 through the wounded shoulder. It was an ill 
 mark in that grim dusk and from the ground ; 
 but the twang of the cord was followed by a howl 
 of rage. The head shot within the doorway again ; 
 and Enque-Enque sprawled backward, rose, and 
 fled into the gloom his two hands spitted one 
 to the other by the clever shaft. 
 
 And then there was a new uproar but this 
 time from the east. And arrows rained doubly 
 thick, and the enemy-yell of the Hero-Brothers 
 soared above the savage howls of the Tin-ne*. 
 P-ya-po and his men were back, and the barbarians 
 fled down the slopes, leaving their dead among 
 the rocks. It would be long before they should 
 forget the Pu-ye. P-ya-po s counsel had saved the 
 impetuous war-captain from the full disaster of 
 the ambuscade ; and scattering that small force 
 by a flank movement, they had hurried back to 
 
94 POH-HLAIK, THE CAVE-BOY 
 
 the village, well understanding, now, the whole 
 manoeuvre. 
 
 When all was over, and the chief shaman came 
 to his wife s house, he found a badly wounded lad 
 crouching within the door, his bow clutched tightly 
 and his lips set. " I have kept them safe for thee, 
 father," he said huskily and with the words 
 lurched, fainting, to one side. P-y&-po laid him 
 tenderly along the floor, and sat beside him. " The 
 heart and the hand of a man ! " he said. " And 
 when he is well of these wounds, he shall take the 
 place of him who has gone." 
 
 " He is his father s son ! " whispered Kwe*-ya, 
 proudly. And just then the little one who had 
 slept in the jaws of death, stirred in the buck 
 skin cradle and called 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 THE story-tellers would have us believe that the 
 hero always carries the hero trademark on his face. 
 He is handsome and brilliant-looking and clear- 
 featured and broad-shouldered and all that ; and 
 maybe you have wondered why you did not en 
 counter this type somewhere, to know him for a 
 hero at a glance. 
 
 But I know better. I have run across a good 
 many heroes, boys and men; and hardly one of 
 them "looked it." 
 
 Now there was Patsy. If ever there was a lad 
 whom the romancer would not pick out as a hero, 
 he was the one. He was a sleepy-looking Texas 
 boy, snub-nosed and weak of chin, with clothes that 
 seemed to be barely on speaking terms with him. 
 
 If you had rounded up all the "no-account" 
 looking boys in Arizona, Patsy would have taken 
 the prize as the most unpromising of them all. 
 And no one would have been more satisfied of the 
 justice of the award than Patsy himself. He had 
 as little suspicion as had any one who knew him 
 that he carried about him any claim to special 
 consideration ; which is, after all, a very good 
 starting-point for the real hero. 
 H 97 
 
98 THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 Patsy had gone to Waco at fifteen and learned 
 telegraphy by the sufferance of an operator whom 
 he knew. Study of any sort was not easy to him ; 
 but in his stolid way he had mastered as much 
 as his instructor knew ; and some time later the 
 operator, to get rid of him, helped him into a 
 position over in New Mexico. 
 
 Then he had a chance to go out on the line of 
 the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, to a little station 
 where there was better chance of promotion ; and 
 when he invented the famous Jawbone Telegraph 
 he was night-man at Fairview, the sort of metrop 
 olis still common in Arizona. 
 
 Fairview contained a telegraph office twelve by 
 sixteen ; a section-house which overflowed with 
 the American " boss " and his wife and five Mexi 
 can laborers ; a pig-pen made of worn-out ties ; a 
 pet deer and an outlook. 
 
 The sprawling junipers crowded it on all sides ; 
 and northeast opened the rocky jaws of Johnson s 
 Canon, the long, wild scar in the shoulders of the 
 San Francisco range by which the railroad slid 
 down from the great pitch of the Arizona Divide, 
 more than seven thousand feet above the sea, on 
 its lonely way to the far Rio Colorado. 
 
 The canon was a bad place, and yet the only 
 route by which a railroad could jump off the 
 mountains without breaking its neck. 
 
 The grades ran up to one hundred and thirty- 
 seven feet a hill at which an Eastern engineer 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 99 
 
 would look with horror. The monster ten-wheel 
 ers, each twice to three times as heavy as an East 
 ern locomotive, panted hard in bringing a load of 
 ten cars up the hill ; and coming down that steep 
 twenty miles from Supai, trains crept as if holding 
 their breath. 
 
 The track lay along a narrow shelf hewn from 
 the face of the savage cliff; and from the car 
 windows one looked far down on one side into 
 the gorge, and on the other up to the beetling 
 rocks. 
 
 On the shelf, crowded between the great iron 
 bridge, which spanned a side canon, and the tun 
 nel, was a little box of a house ; and there lived 
 deaf old George, an Englishman, the faithful 
 watchman of that very important stretch of 
 track. 
 
 Ten miles downhill was the eight-house " city " 
 of Ash Fork. Thirteen miles- uphill twenty- 
 three miles from Ash Fork, and at nearly three 
 thousand feet higher altitude was Williams, 
 with threescore people. Outside of these it was 
 forty miles in any direction to a human being. 
 
 Binn, the agent and day-operator, was not a 
 very cheerful companion. But Patsy s best chum 
 was Patsy. Coining off watch at six in the 
 morning, he slept in a blanket on the high 
 counter till early afternoon ; then generally sal 
 lied out alone "fur a pasear wid Patsy" until 
 time to take his task again at six in the evening. 
 
100 THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 There was game back in the hills ; and the echoes 
 came to know well the bark of the battered old 
 Henry rifle. 
 
 One hot August afternoon Patsy woke some 
 what earlier than usual ; and sliding off the 
 counter in the telegraph office took the anti 
 quated brass-mounted rifle from the corner and 
 stroked it. 
 
 " I m goin up yan side o the tunnel," he said. 
 " De Mexicans seed a wild-cat up dere yisterday, 
 V I llow hit s my cat ef I git it." 
 
 Binn said " Mm ! " being too sleepy to care to 
 say anything more important ; and Patsy shuffled 
 out and off. 
 
 It was not exactly the day most people would 
 choose for a walk, as few days of an Arizona 
 summer are ; but Patsy did not particularly mind 
 the blinding glow. It was good to get out, even 
 if the sun did " come down de nigh way ; " and 
 he shambled up the track at a rapid gait. 
 
 In an hour he had crossed the first iron bridge, 
 and was nearing the second and the tunnel. A 
 scurrying cottontail rabbit ran down a cleft of the 
 rocks and out of sight ; and Patsy clambered 
 clumsily down to the bottom of the gorge, hoping 
 for a shot. But the rabbit had disappeared. 
 
 Patsy walked a little way up the dry stream- 
 bed ; and finding nothing, climbed up again the 
 five hundred rocky feet to the track beside the 
 little watch-house. 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 101 
 
 The door was open, but pld^Geirg6 J was oofc to 
 be seen. This was odd, foVh& always /locked & 
 door when he went out, arid at other times ne was 
 generally sitting on the sill. 
 
 Patsy crossed the little twelve-foot shelf which 
 was the old man s front yard, and poked his head 
 into the doorway. The tiny cheerless room was 
 very still and hot. The sunlight through the door 
 made a path of warped gold to the rough bunk 
 with its tattered quilts. 
 
 On the broken chair dozed the fat yellow cat, old 
 George s only companion. The battered frying- 
 pan and the tomato-can which served as a coffee 
 pot stood upon the rusty stove. Funny where 
 George was, though ! These rude belongings 
 were treasures to him, and he always guarded 
 them jealously against tramps who were "fired 
 from the train " and haunted the canon to " jump " 
 another. 
 
 As Patsy marvelled, he caught sight of some 
 thing which made his heart stand still. It was 
 only a large, rough boot projecting from under 
 the bed, whose tumbled covers hid all but the 
 lower half. To Patsy this meant a great deal. 
 George certainly never went out barefoot, and he 
 had but one pair of boots. 
 
 Patsy craned his long neck farther forward. 
 Ah ! Around that boot was a strong, tight cord, 
 that barely showed, touching the very edge of the 
 dragging quilt. 
 
102 THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 Patsy was at>tii& bed in one jump, and clutched 
 f)o!.v;It wasrit empty! He tugged at it, 
 ftncl. a "shabby; * "heavy form yielded reluctantly 
 to his hauling, and appeared from under the 
 bed! 
 
 Poor old George ! With feet lashed tight to 
 gether by a heavy cord, and hands bound behind 
 his back, a jagged lump of coal forced savagely 
 into his mouth for a gag, and an ugly welt across 
 the gray face where they had struck him with a 
 six-shooter before overcoming him ! 
 
 But the sharp old eyes were open he wasn t 
 dead ! 
 
 Patsy pulled out his knife and cut the cruel 
 cords, but the old man was too badly cramped to 
 be able to move his stiffened limbs. Then with a 
 violent wrench Patsy pulled the lump from the 
 distended and bleeding jaws, and brought a cup 
 of water and poured it down the old man s throat, 
 lifting the gray head gently on his arm. 
 
 The boy s instinct had warned him that it was 
 a time for great caution. He laid his lips to the 
 old man s ear and whispered shrilly, " Wot s dey 
 done to yo , George ? " 
 
 The deaf watchman mumbled, painfully low : 
 
 " Hold-ups ! They gave me one with a pistol 
 and tied me hup. I thinks as ow they means to 
 hold up Number Two." 
 
 " But wot ll we do ? " whispered the boy in the 
 same penetrating tone, which George could hear 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 103 
 
 better than a shout. " Dey shore mustn t hold up 
 de train. Whar is dey ? " 
 
 " I donno," answered George. " I f ahncy they re 
 putting rocks into the tunnel, to wreck er, for 
 they ad crowbars. But be awake, lad ! They be 
 bad ! You knows the new law, that train-robbing 
 is death in Harizona, and they won t stop at 
 nothink. They mus know some big shipment o 
 bullion s going heast, and they wants it." 
 
 Patsy thought a moment. There was unusual 
 sparkle in his sleepy eyes. 
 
 " Wai," he said, " we shore hefto try to stop em. 
 Yo cain t walk yet-a-bit, yo re thet cramped. Jes 
 yo lay back dar under de bed tell yo git rested- 
 like, so s ef dey comes dey ll How yo s all fast. 
 Den ef yo gets peart, take a sneak down de rocks 
 into de canon, an vamose for Fairview. I m jes 
 natch ally goin to see ! " 
 
 The boy pitched the severed cords and the lump 
 of coal out of sight, and assisted the old man to 
 dispose himself under the bed in the same position 
 as before. 
 
 " I llow we ll buffaler em," he whispered, en 
 couragingly ; and cocking the old rifle, he tiptoed 
 out and crept down over the edge of the rocky 
 slope. Under its brow he crawled cautiously a 
 few rods ; and then from rock to rock to the east 
 end of the tunnel, into whose dark mouth he 
 peered from behind a lucky ledge. 
 
 Yes ! There were voices ! Patsy strained his 
 
104 THE JAWBONE TELEGEAPH 
 
 ears. In the queer reverberations of the tunnel 
 sounds were sadly jumbled ; but now and then 
 he caught distinct words, even whole phrases 
 enough to be sure that the scoundrels were 
 there, and meant to wreck and rob the express. 
 There were fifty thousand dollars in silver bars 
 going through from San Francisco in the Wells- 
 Fargo treasure-chests, and they knew of it in the 
 strange ways by which robbers find out these 
 things. And a wreck there Patsy shivered to 
 think what it meant. 
 
 The engine, of course, would be shattered in the 
 tunnel, and would bury engineer and fireman in a 
 hideous chaos of steam and writhing iron. The 
 passenger coaches would still be on the great 
 bridge the shock would doubtless hurl them off 
 that narrow footing into the abyss. So there 
 would be very little left to annoy the robbers 
 just the express messenger and mail clerks, if they 
 were not killed in the smash. And at best they 
 would be easy victims, in the surprise. 
 
 By the time these thoughts had chased one 
 another through his head Patsy was at the bottom 
 of the gorge, and running for dear life down its 
 boulder-choked bed. He felt safe enough; it 
 would have been a phenomenal shot to hit him 
 from the track ; and in case any lookout of the 
 robbers saw him, he had a natural fort under the 
 cliff anywhere, and the old Henry wherewith to 
 Defend it. 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 105 
 
 It was three o clock, or thereabouts, by the sun. 
 Number Two was due at four at the tunnel. No 
 time to lose, then, in getting over that rugged 
 three miles to Fairview ; and Patsy kept at a long, 
 slouching trot, despite the slippery boulders and 
 the jagged blocks which crowded his path. 
 
 At the lower bridge he clambered up the cliff to 
 the track, and went skipping along the rock ballast 
 with increased speed. The world was hot and 
 still as an oven, and no living thing in sight. 
 
 In a few minutes more he rounded the last curve 
 and came in sight of Fairview. All seemed well 
 there. The little brown station sweltered quietly 
 in the sun. There was no sound but the singing 
 of the wires overhead r-rm ! r-rm ! r-rm ! And 
 yet, something seemed to pluck at the boy, to 
 hold him back. 
 
 Rather instinctively than because he knew why, 
 Patsy stopped running as he emerged from the 
 cut into view of the station, and walked soberly, 
 even carelessly. He shuffled up to the open door 
 and shuffled in. 
 
 And as he went in he caught his breath. A 
 short, thick-set man, with a hard face, sat in 
 Patsy s rickety chair ; and from under the flap of 
 his leathern coat peeped the butt of a Colt s "44." 
 Hard faces and six-shooters were neither new nor 
 alarming to Patsy ; but he felt instantly that the 
 stranger was not a casual frontiersman. The 
 watchful look he flung at Patsy, the swift glance 
 
106 THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 at Binn and back to Patsy, had something sinister 
 in it. 
 
 Binn was at the telegraph instrument, pounding 
 out a message for the man something about " Big 
 head of stock rounded up. Ship Monday. Meet 
 at Peach Springs." 
 
 That was harmless enough, thought Patsy as he 
 heard it ticked off ; but then er maybe why, 
 of course! The stranger was a lookout who had 
 come to watch the telegraph station, and see that 
 no warning went to the doomed train ; and this 
 despatch was a "blind." 
 
 For once Patsy s mind moved quickly. This 
 fellow must not suspect him. The boy flung his 
 tattered hat into a corner, with an impatient 
 snort. 
 
 " Done tramped all them malpdis, an 7 hain t seen 
 nary hair o thet wil -cat ? " he exclaimed, dropping 
 upon Binn s bed as if worn out and disgusted. 
 
 " Huntin wil -cats ? " asked the stranger, with 
 a keen look. " I How thet rifle ain t no count. 
 Le s see it." 
 
 He held out his left hand with an unpleasant 
 smile. The gun was empty. Patsy had knocked 
 out the cartridge for safety in running over the 
 rocks, and he did not feel in a position to refuse. 
 
 The stranger took the old weapon, looked it over 
 contemptuously, and set it against the wall behind 
 him. 
 
 " H-m ! " thought Patsy. " He shore done dat 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 107 
 
 a-puppose ! Didn t he jes wink to hisself w en he 
 got atween me an my gun? He s lad! He shore 
 is ! " The notes of the tune which Patsy began 
 to whistle through his teeth covered a very ner 
 vous feeling. 
 
 The doleful station clock stood at twenty min 
 utes to four. Number Two was due in ten minutes, 
 if she were on time. What could be done ? The 
 eyes of the stranger were cruelly watchful. Patsy 
 was not a boy to scare easily, but he felt sure that 
 to give the alarm in his presence would mean a 
 "shooting scrape." 
 
 If he could only tell Binn ! Maybe then they 
 could find some way out. But Binn had sent the 
 message and was dozing again, unconscious of the 
 cold eyes and the anxious ones which ought to 
 have burned him. 
 
 Clickety click ! said the ticker. Click ! Click- 
 click! it jabbered for two minutes. 
 
 Patsy drew a long breath. Number Two was 
 late ; this was the operator at Ash Fork reporting 
 to the train despatcher three hundred miles away. 
 
 She was probably still at Ash Fork. Oh, if she 
 could only be warned ! 
 
 There would be no chance to speak to the con 
 ductor when they reached Fair view that des 
 perado was watching him as a cat watches a 
 mouse. A word to the train-men, a motion to 
 go out to them, would mean a bullet. 
 
 Patsy was very nervous now. It was an old 
 
108 TEE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 habit of his to tap his teeth with finger-nails or 
 pencil when thinking ; and just now he was 
 mechanically drumming a tattoo with his bat 
 tered jack-knife against his big, white, uneven 
 teeth, as if in a dream. 
 
 Suddenly the stupid, absorbed face changed. 
 Luckily the stranger was looking down the track 
 for an instant, or his quick eye would have de 
 tected that eloquent flash. For a sound had found 
 Patsy in his dream, and wakened him as great 
 thoughts waken greater minds. 
 
 It was only a dull, metallic click the rattle 
 of his knife between his jaws. But it had said 
 something ! The sound that awakened him was 
 the " A " of the Morse alphabet ! He was tele 
 graphing unconsciously with his teeth ! 
 
 The desperado turned his attention to the room 
 again. The older operator was half asleep over 
 the instrument. The boy looked again as stupid 
 as ever, but he was a trifle paler. 
 
 In that moment he had wakened from boy to 
 man ; and manlike he would carry out his inspira 
 tion. It was to " telegraph " to Binn by rapping 
 with his knife upon his teeth, and tell him thus to 
 warn Ash Fork of the intention of the train-rob 
 bers. If he could do it, and Binn could manage 
 to show no excitement 
 
 " . . . . . " Patsy s teeth ticked out on the 
 old bone handle. Binn did not move. He was 
 almost asleep. 
 
TEE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 109 
 
 " . . . . . " ticked Patsy, more loudly. 
 
 Binn stirred reluctantly. Some one was calling 
 " Vi," the official call of Fairview ; and Binn lazily 
 opened his eyes. 
 
 " This is Patsy," clicked the message. " For 
 life don t look ! This man s a hold-up. Gang in 
 tunnel to wreck and rob Two. Warn Ash Fork 
 quick ! " and there was a perceptible emphasis on 
 the q-u-i-c-k. 
 
 Binn also was very wide awake by this time, 
 and very pale. Luckily, he did not lose his head. 
 He reached out to the key and began to thump 
 it. 
 
 "Ash Fork!" he rattled. "Stop Two! Hold-ups 
 here. Vi." 
 
 "Wot s de matter?" growled the watchful 
 stranger, suddenly suspicious. 
 
 " Oh, orders for Number Two," answered Binn. 
 " She s to meet Thirty-one at Supai side-track." 
 
 The desperado looked at him keenly and sus 
 piciously. Still, there was nothing to fear. The 
 operator had been asleep ; he couldn t have 
 dreamed the truth, and no one had told him. 
 
 It must be all right ; and the furtive hand 
 slipped away from the six-shooter. 
 
 " Tell fully ! " clicked Patsy on his knife ; and 
 Binn sent to Ash Fork the words that Patsy 
 ticked off to him ; Patsy, whose face was stupidly 
 innocent and his manner as carelessly natural as 
 a sheep s. 
 
110 TEE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 
 
 When this startling news came over the wire 
 into the little office at Ash Fork, there was a flurry 
 indeed. Robbins, the operator, having reported 
 his train, had turned for a chat with Long 
 Jack, the foreman of a distant cattle-ranch. The 
 train was already headed up the hill, climbing 
 slowly the heavy grade under a vast cloud of 
 smoke. 
 
 "An* he says, says he," continued Robbins, 
 "thet - hey? Hold on a min ! Whew!" 
 And he shouted to the startled cowboy, " Catch 
 Number Two ! There s hold-ups in the canon ! " 
 
 Jack bolted out of the door, sprang to the 
 back of his tireless "cow-pony," and dashed off 
 north. The trail ran straight up the hill, and 
 intersected the railroad s corkscrew course two 
 miles away. The slowly laboring train could be 
 overtaken there, after rounding one of the long 
 bends which were necessary to overcome the steep 
 ascent. 
 
 Just at this point the passengers, who looked 
 out to see Ash Fork down in the valley to the 
 west, were startled by a wild rider on a lathered 
 horse, who swung his hat and yelled as he gal 
 loped toward them. The engineer saw him, too, 
 but thought, " Only a cowboy on a toot," and 
 pulled the throttle wider. 
 
 Even on the hill the train began to slip past the 
 now winded horse. Jack was desperate. He 
 reined close to the passing coaches, loosened his 
 
E CLUTCHED A HAND-RAIL AND SWUNG HIMSELF " AE<?AR -5 ^THS 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 111 
 
 feet from the stirrups, clutched a hand-rail, and 
 with a superb effort swung himself aboard the 
 last car. The horse loped mournfully along be 
 hind, losing distance, now, at every moment. 
 
 "Hyah! Wat yo doin hyah?" demanded a 
 voice, and a stalwart porter pounced upon Jack. 
 " Dis de gin l manager s special kyar, an we don* 
 want no interlopuses ! " 
 
 "Wai! Yo tell the gen rul manager," re 
 torted the cowboy, shaking off the clutch, "thet 
 I got a messige fur him, an thet this train s 
 shore gwine to be held up, thout he shakes his- 
 self. There s a gang up in the canon a-layin 
 fur it." 
 
 The startled porter rushed into the car with 
 the news, and in a moment the general manager 
 himself was on the rear platform. 
 
 " What s this about robbers ? " he asked sharply ; 
 and the cowboy told what word had come to 
 Ash Fork, and how he had brought it to the 
 train. 
 
 When Number Two stopped at Fairview and 
 the conductor ran into the office to register, Binn 
 was sitting, still very pale, at the desk, and Patsy, 
 pale too, sat kicking his heels against the bed. 
 An alert stranger sat watching them. 
 
 The conductor, now fully warned by Patsy s 
 message, took in the situation at a glance ; he 
 had seen hold-ups before. 
 
 He registered without a word, crumpled the 
 
112 THE JAWBONE 
 
 tissue orders into his pocket, stepped out, and 
 gave the signal to go ahead. 
 
 The stranger followed him closely, having seen 
 that no warning had been given by the operators, 
 and swung up on the car steps just behind him, 
 intending to leap off before the bridge was reached. 
 An instant later he was looking up the muzzle of 
 a six-shooter, and the conductor was saying quietly, 
 " Throw up your hands, or I ll shoot ! I know 
 your game ! " 
 
 At the rear platform of the last car an ungainly 
 boyish figure was clambering over the rail. Inside 
 the car he found several men rubbing up revolvers, 
 who did not welcome his entrance very cordially. 
 
 "Who are you? " demanded one of them sharply, 
 eying the ragged boy and his ancient rifle. 
 
 " I m de night operator at Fair view," stammered 
 Patsy ; and he told the whole story. 
 
 It was an ill day for the train-robbers. Half a 
 mile above Fairview the train stopped, and a posse 
 of men, guided by Patsy, climbed the upper cliff, 
 stole over the hill, crept into the east end of the 
 tunnel, and captured the four surprised ruffians 
 there without a shot. 
 
 It took a couple of hours to remove the boulders 
 from the track, and in that time Patsy had been 
 very much astonished. 
 
 " I want you to go on Number Four to-night to 
 Coolidge," the general manager had said, after 
 questioning the lad closely. " There is a vacancy 
 
THE JAWBONE TELEGRAPH 113 
 
 there to-morrow, and you will take the agency. 
 It will pay you double the salary at Fairview. 
 And, by the way, just leave that rifle with me. I 
 don t shoot much and you ought to have a better 
 gun. Here s a new Ballard, with peep-sights and 
 wind-gage. Suppose we swap." 
 
A PENITENTE FLOWER-POT 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWEK-POT 
 
 IT was a most curious plant to be growing there 
 and curious for any plant to grow so high on 
 the frigid flanks of Mount San Mateo so early. 
 Down in the valleys there was not a token of 
 green ; even the hardy chaparro had not yet dared 
 think of budding. But up in this dark ravine, 
 over eight thousand feet above the sea, with strips 
 of snow still tapering northward from the pine- 
 trunks ! Some one had been at work here very 
 lately; for the soaked earth was newly turned, 
 and muddy finger-prints were still fresh on the 
 neck of an enormous jar which projected a few 
 inches above the surface. One must be crazy to 
 pot flowers so far from home, and in an air so cold 
 that even the rugged cedars had stopped climbing 
 five hundred feet below, and left the heights to 
 the shivering pines. As for the plant, that was 
 even stranger than its garden a great, black, 
 shaggy ball upon a squat, brown stalk, a scant 
 four inches tall, and more than that in thickness. 
 It seemed to be sadly wilted, too, and was droop 
 ing very much to one side, which was small won 
 der considering the icy wind that drew through 
 
 117 
 
118 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 the ravine with dismal sighs and now and then 
 a hollow wail. The toughest plant might well 
 freeze in such weather. 
 
 But what a lloron the wind is to-day ! One ex 
 pects the March airs to screech and wail a bit ; but 
 not play cry-baby the way this is doing. With 
 almost every gust, its voice seems to turn more 
 and more to tears, till one could almost swear it is 
 some one crying bitterly. 
 
 Now the sun, sliding past a pine-top, falls for 
 the first time upon the jar ; and in a few moments 
 there is a new witchcraft for the grotesque, 
 black blossom begins to straighten up on its stalk ; 
 not steadily, but by fits and starts. What new 
 sort of heliotrope is this, that blooms so untimely 
 among the New Mexican peaks, and goes nid-nod 
 ding to the sun like a boy who tries to keep awake 
 in church? 
 
 Suddenly the howls of the wind ceased as 
 well they might, for they were only borrowed. 
 A slender, brown girl, very ragged in the old 
 black dress, and nearly barefoot, despite the cold, 
 had been lending them ; and now, rounding a 
 big pine, she dropped her sobs in the same breath 
 with her steps, and stood as rooted to the ground. 
 She might be fourteen years old, and, but for the 
 tears, very pretty ; for her swollen eyes were still 
 big and dark, and in the soft, olive cheeks was a 
 faint bloom. 
 
 "What flower is that?" she murmured, in a 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 119 
 
 voice still shaky. "And who shall plant here? 
 Holiest Mother ! It is bewitched ! " and, with a 
 scream of terror, she turned to flee down the 
 mountain-side. For, at sound of her voice, the 
 flower had twisted on its clumsy stalk and stared 
 straight at her! 
 
 Her flight might have been more successful had 
 she kept her eyes with her, instead of turning them 
 over her shoulder to see if that horrible blossom 
 were in pursuit. As it was, she had not gone five 
 steps before a big pine ran against her so violently 
 as to fling her to the ground quite breathless. 
 Rise ? Indeed, she could not. Only twenty feet 
 away was that accursed plant glaring at her and 
 holding her spellbound. She could neither move 
 nor cry out, but lay watching with an awful fas 
 cination, in which her very thoughts were far off 
 and unreal. The rude little cabin in the pass, the 
 still form in it, the weeping woman and babes, all 
 faded from her memory and how she, the oldest 
 of the young flock, had bravely tried to bring the 
 news across the mountain to the little Mexican vil 
 lage, and had lost her way amid the errant cattle- 
 trails and wandered for hours crying with cold and 
 terror. All she could think of now was this grim 
 plant, with its wild eyes. 
 
 But were they so wild? Now she began to fancy 
 that they had an imploring look, and, as she gazed, 
 the whole weird flower took for her the guise of a 
 prayer, a plea for mercy. Very black and tousled 
 
120 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 was it ; but, oh, it looked so pitiful ! and the 
 woman in her began to swell above her fears. 
 Perhaps the poor thing needed help. 
 
 In some conditions of the mind, one does quite 
 absurd things in perfect good faith. Cleofes was 
 living in a very unreal world just now ; but in it 
 she acted as seriously as if everything had been the 
 most commonplace affair conceivable. She grew 
 so tender-hearted for this poor vegetable which 
 seemed to be suffering, that she found, to get up 
 and go to its assistance, the strength she had been 
 unable to muster to save her own life which 
 shows that for her years she was already very 
 much a woman. 
 
 " Polrecita de flor" she said softly, laying her 
 slender, brown hand on the great, black shock. 
 "What hast thou? What can I do?" and she 
 knelt to look at what had appeared to be its 
 face. 
 
 A face it certainly was. The wild black hair 
 and beard might do for the spiny wig of some 
 strange cactus or a crazy chrysanthemum, but 
 who ever saw eyes and mouth in chrysanthemum 
 or cactus before? Real eyes, that moved and 
 begged, bloodshot as they were, and blue lips, 
 forced far apart by a cruel gag ! 
 
 " Poor plant ! " repeated Cleofes, without a 
 thought of her own absurdity; and, tugging 
 hard, she tore the pine-cone from between the 
 swollen jaws. The lips were dry and rough as 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 121 
 
 rawhide, but now little red cracks began to show 
 on them. The girl ran to the shadow of a tall 
 tree and caught up a handful of snow. With 
 that she began rubbing the frozen lips, and little 
 by little forced bits into the mouth. 
 
 The eyes began to brighten somewhat, and, in 
 a few minutes, a hoarse, inarticulate sound issued 
 from the mouth whereat Cleofes recoiled in 
 new terror. She had not yet ceased to think of 
 the plant as a plant; for, you must remember, 
 she lived in a land more than half of whose peo 
 ple believe in witchcraft to this day. But, in 
 another moment, her pity again conquered, and 
 she began chafing the cold cheeks and putting 
 more snow to the mouth. 
 
 " Bendita seas!" croaked a husky voice at 
 last. 
 
 "What art thou plant or human?" stam 
 mered the girl, uncertain whether to stand or 
 run. 
 
 " Juan, the Penitente. And they buried 
 me here to die, because I renounced 
 the brotherhood!" 
 
 At this, Cleofes crossed herself and lost color. 
 To meddle in the laws of the fanatic fraternity, 
 whose self-tortures and crucifixions are a barbar 
 ous blot on New Mexico to this day she knew 
 what it meant. There are few men reckless enough 
 to defy, even secretly, that remorseless power. 
 And now she remembered having heard of this 
 
122 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 that brothers who had broken their vows were 
 buried thus in great tinajones, 1 and left to perish. 
 
 " Thou art good, little one ! " groaned the human 
 plant; "but leave me, else will they kill thee, 
 also." The despairing eyes seemed to push her 
 away. 
 
 But now Cleof es was quite herself again the 
 muy mujer who had not lived fourteen years in 
 that wilderness for nothing. The prowling Nava- 
 jos that threatened their lonely hut, the bear killed 
 in the very dooryard, meant no such danger as 
 this. But she could not leave the poor head to 
 perish. 
 
 "No! Though they kill me, I will get thee 
 out ! " she cried impulsively, stamping her tattered 
 foot. " If I had only a spade ! " 
 
 " That is not far. For I saw them hide it under 
 yon scrub-oak," and he thrust out his chin in that 
 direction ; " but what canst t hou? " 
 
 " With help of God ! " answered Cleof es, gravely; 
 and she ran to the bush. There, sure enough, 
 was the spade, burrowed under the dead leaves, 
 and, in a moment more, she was digging around 
 the neck of the great jar. 
 
 The eyes watched her hopelessly. But, really 
 now, she was much woman ! Good spadefuls, 
 sisterling ! With another like thee it might be 
 done ! The girl worked like one possessed ; and 
 
 1 Tee-nah-Ao-nes, earthen jars. 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 123 
 
 there came a ray of light in the eyes that saw the 
 hole slowly widening. 
 
 "But I die of cold," the voice croaked; "for 
 these six hours I am chilled with this dead earth." 
 
 " Tonta that I am ! When there is so much to 
 burn ! " Dropping the spade, she gathered pine- 
 cones and dead branches, and whirled one dry 
 stick in the hollow of another till both began to 
 smoke ; and, laying dry leaves to them, blew from 
 puffed cheeks till a wee flame leaped among them. 
 In a few moments more a smart fire crackled to 
 the leeward of the jar, and its life-giving heat 
 began to thaw the frozen victim. 
 
 "Seest thou not that the saints are with us?" 
 cried the girl, almost gayly; " all goes well, and in 
 time we will have thee free ! " Then she dug 
 away harder than ever, while the eager eyes fol 
 lowed every move of her. 
 
 But they were not the only ones. Both were 
 too much occupied with her work to think of any 
 thing else, or they might have been aware of some 
 thing quite as interesting. A few rods up the 
 hill was a narrow trail, and, over the ridge, a pair 
 of tall ears had just risen. Very big ears they 
 were, indeed, and cocked well forward ; and, from 
 between, a sinister face scowled down at the scene 
 under the blasted pine. There was an ugly glit 
 ter in the eyes ; and suddenly the lips drew into 
 a hard smile, that was even more unpleasant than 
 the frown. 
 
124 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 "See ! We are at the swell of the olla already ! " 
 exclaimed Cleof es, panting with her work and mak 
 ing a wry face at a big blister on her hand. But 
 the head did not answer; and, when she looked 
 down at it, the face was distorted, and the eyes 
 seemed twice their size. She whirled to follow 
 their direction, and, in the moment, sank down 
 with a gasp of terror. " Filomeno, the Brother of 
 Light!" 
 
 Yes, it was Filomeno ! He spurred the reluc 
 tant mule forward, grinning savagely. In good 
 time he had come back from Cerros Cuates. What 
 luck had sent this little she-fool to meddle in the 
 justice of the brotherhood ? 
 
 " God give you good-day ! " he sneered, dis 
 mounting with rifle in hand. " It is slow digging 
 
 no ? But deeper yet they shall dig who would 
 undo the work of the Third Order. At it, little 
 miner ! harder ! Already it is late, and this 
 must I see well done before I leave." 
 
 What ! Was he going to let her finish after all 
 
 this evil Filomeno, whose crimes were known 
 all across the county, and who was one of the most 
 zealous of the Penitentes? The girl looked at 
 him in wonder. 
 
 " Deeper, I tell thee ! It still lacks much. Lds- 
 tima, only, that there is not another jar for so 
 pretty a flower ! " And he gave a strange chuckle 
 at his diabolic wit. 
 
 The spade dropped from Cleof es s hands. Now 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 125 
 
 she understood ! Not for her life could she speak 
 a word ; and, like a tattered statue, she stared at 
 the Brother of Light. 
 
 " Here, give me the spade ! " he said, after en 
 joying her terror for a moment. He began to 
 throw out the earth in great wet lumps; for 
 Filomeno had a back like the trunk of an oak. 
 The hole grew fast, while Cleofes, powerless and 
 speechless, watched as in a dream. As for the 
 head in the jar, it was luckier. It hung down 
 limply to one side, and the horror had all faded 
 from the half-closed eyes. 
 
 " State, mula! Stop him ! " For the animal, 
 wholly suspicious of that strange object, had not 
 ceased to snort and fling its head, and now began 
 to sidle off, pretending to see some new terror. 
 
 " Stop him, daughter of idiots ! " cried Filomeno, 
 angrily. But Cleofes could not move ; and, with 
 a buffet as he passed her, the ruffian caught his 
 beast and dragged it back, dealing it several blows 
 in the face with his heavy fist. 
 
 " Now stand, thrice-accursed ! " he snarled, pick 
 ing up the spade again. But the mule had no 
 notion of standing, and danced and plunged till 
 he was like to break the bridle. 
 
 " Wilt thou not ? To see, beast of infamy ! " 
 roared the enraged owner. Uncoiling the reata 
 from the saddle-horn, he knotted it about the 
 animal s neck and brought the other end back to 
 the hole, twisting it around his fist as he dug. 
 
126 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 Flojo 1 seemed to grow more nervous every moment, 
 as is the way of beasts " broken " with blows and 
 abuse. He kept snorting and backing off and 
 jerking on the hair-rope till it spilled the spade 
 fuls back into the hole. Each time Filomeno 
 stopped to give a curse and a savage yank which 
 was soothing to neither Flojo s neck nor feelings ; 
 and, finally, bracing his heels against the edge of 
 the hole, hauled the unwilling donkey close up to 
 him, hand over hand. 
 
 " Now to stand, or I shoot thee the head off ! " 
 he panted, with a fearful oath ; and, coiling the 
 rope under his feet, he began to ply the spade with 
 redoubled energy. 
 
 Flojo seemed to have concluded that further pro 
 test was useless ; and, with ears and head drooping 
 and a look of utter dejection in his long face, he 
 stood mournfully watching his master. He would 
 be a good mule now it cost too dear to yield to 
 one s feelings, with Filomeno about. 
 
 These good resolutions were all very well, if 
 only Juan s swoon had lasted a little longer. But 
 now there was a faint sigh from the jar, and the 
 bushy head moved feebly and the eyes began to 
 open. Flojo cocked up one ear, and then stole a 
 sidelong glance at the very wrong time. That 
 black thing was alive ! And without waiting for 
 more, the terror-stricken mule reared madly back- 
 
 i F16-ho. 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 127 
 
 ward and started off at a gallop. In an instant 
 there came an unexpected hitch in his gait at 
 the same time that Filomeno s gray sombrero dis 
 appeared and his clumsy feet popped up, as if the 
 two had incontinently changed places. 
 
 " Whoa ! Socorro! " yelled a hoarse voice. But 
 Flojo did not understand the last word and wil 
 fully disregarded the first ; for a new panic seized 
 him at sight of the ungainly dark form that whopped 
 out of the hole and began tearing along the ground 
 after him like a gigantic lizard. He would not 
 have paused for all the " Whoas ! " in Valencia 
 County. 
 
 " Whoa ! Stop him ! Mur-der ! " screeched Filo- 
 meno. But Cleofes could only answer with a peal 
 of hysterical laughter. How he did bump along ! 
 No maromero on a saint s day could ever be half so 
 funny when he tried his hardest. Filomeno had 
 been just a little too smart. The lasso had become 
 tangled about his feet, and now it was in a close 
 hitch which defied his efforts to kick it off. As 
 for doubling up and grasping the rope, Flojo s 
 gait said a final "No" to that. Off down the 
 hillside dashed the maddened mule, dragging his 
 master forty feet behind. 
 
 A rocky ledge here but it was too late to stop. 
 The runaway leaped forward blindly and landed 
 in the mud twenty feet below, all in a heap. A 
 dead pinon stood almost against the rocks so close 
 that Flojo had cleared it safely. But the rope drew 
 
128 A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 
 
 across a stiff branch and caught in a fork and stuck 
 there and there dangled Filomeno ten feet from 
 the ground, head down, his torn moccasins almost 
 touching the branch. Flojo rose painfully and 
 tried to hobble off downhill, but the stout reata 
 would not give, and, turning resignedly, he stood 
 gazing with an interested air at his dangling 
 master. For once he had Filomeno at the right 
 end of the rope. 
 
 Three hours later, the pale March moon, resting 
 a moment on the sturdy shoulder of San Mateo, 
 after her climb from the east, peered down through 
 the pines to an unaccustomed sight. A camp-fire 
 burned ruddily by a deep hole, in which were 
 jumbled the massy fragments of a huge earthen 
 jar. Beside the grateful blaze lay a big, shaggy 
 fellow, his tattered clothing red-caked with mud ; 
 and near him sat a girl. Filomeno had builded 
 better than he knew. A stout hand at work was 
 he ; and when he so abruptly ceased his labors, 
 the digging was so well advanced that, by doing a 
 very little more, Cleofes could batter the olla to 
 pieces with the spade, and presently liberate the 
 captive. He was quite unable to move at first ; 
 but with time the glow of the fire gave back life 
 to his chilled frame, and he was saying : 
 
 " Puce, little one, it is to go for now I am 
 able." 
 
 "But he but Filomeno?" cried Cleofes, as 
 the mournful bray of a mule echoed through the 
 
A PENITENTS FLOWER-POT 129 
 
 woods. The shrieks and howls and imprecations 
 had ceased long ago ; only now and then there 
 was a hollow groan from down yonder. 
 
 " Leave him, demtinio that he is ! well hung 
 up for the crows to-morrow ! " 
 
 " No ! no ! We must not ! Else his blood would 
 be on us. We must let him go and the poor 
 mule that saved us." 
 
 "Ea! When he and his left me to a deeper 
 death ? And even thee he was to bury ! " 
 
 " Even so, let us not be murderers, too ! Come, 
 let him go, there s a good Juan! " 
 
 " How shall I say no to the mujerota who has 
 saved me? But ask it not for if he lives, he 
 will have his revenge ; and at his back is all the 
 brotherhood. For me it is easy to flee, and for 
 my son ; but thy family ? For I tell thee there is 
 no corner in New Mexico where one can hide from 
 the anger of the Penitentes." 
 
 " Oyes, Juan ! Here thou hast his rifle, and, 
 anyway, by now he will be past fighting. Only 
 take him down from the tree, and bind him well 
 by the trail, and let the mule go. When it comes 
 home empty, they will look for Filomeno ; and by 
 Flo jo s trail they will easily find him before he 
 starves. And meantime we shall all be safe ; for 
 my mother has told me she will go to her people 
 in Chihuahua, now that papa is dead, and this 
 only makes it to go a little sooner. Come, good 
 Juan, if you really thank me, do that ! " 
 
130 A PENITENTE FLOWER-POT 
 
 And Juan did even so. I am not at all sure 
 that he did a service to the public ; for horses 
 continue to disappear, and travellers are sometimes 
 waylaid in that part of Valencia County ; and 
 when one speaks of it, the people of San Mateo 
 are wont to shrug their shoulders and say : 
 
 " Quien sale ? But Filomeno was not at home 
 last night, fyala they had left him up the pinon- 
 tree ! " 
 
 But that is not the wish of a demure and very 
 good-looking matron, whose home down among 
 the hills of northern Mexico is undisturbed 
 by anything more desperate than several round- 
 faced youngsters. " Penitentes ? " she says, with 
 a shiver, when her husband tries to tease her. 
 " Boo ! How I hate the very name ! But none 
 the less am I glad I made thy father turn loose 
 that one. No, grandpa ? " 
 
 And a gray and very rheumatic man, smoking 
 in the sunshine by the door, answers : 
 
 " Pues hija, perhaps it is just as well though 
 for me, /would have left him." 
 
BRAVO S DAY OFF 
 
BKAVO S DAY OFF 
 
 " Go home, sir ! Get out, I tell you ! " 
 
 " Bow ! wow ! wow ! " 
 
 " Shoo ! Git ! Go home, you brute ! " 
 
 "Gr-rr-OO-woo!" 
 
 " Here ! Pst ! Nice fellow, come here ! Whst, 
 whst ! Come, there s a good dog ! " 
 
 But the doctor was a base flatterer now. Bravo 
 was not a good dog, nor had he the remotest inten 
 tion of being. He was of that nondescript "breed " 
 peculiar to some of the outlying hamlets of New 
 Mexico a woolly poodle magnified to the size of 
 a large mastiff. Long, dirty curls bobbed all over 
 him, and his head looked more like a mop than a 
 head, the little red eyes nearly hidden in the frowsy 
 mat. For a dog of that aspect even to think of cul 
 tivating amiability was quite too absurd no one 
 would believe it of him, even if he had it. So it 
 was just as well to have fun. Fun he certainly was 
 having now, as he leaped up against the low and 
 straggly juniper with ferocious barks which were 
 really, I think, to cloak an ill-mannered dog laugh 
 at the antics of the strange figure a few inches 
 beyond reach of his jaws. 
 
 133 
 
134 BEAVO S DAY OFF 
 
 It was a disgusting predicament in which Dr. 
 Woodkins found himself. For him, the head of 
 the little colony of farmers of the poorer class that 
 had moved West and settled among the Mexicans, 
 to be thus treed by a miserable Mexican cur was 
 outrage enough. But even that was not the worst 
 of it ; he was terribly afraid the dog s uproar would 
 bring some one to the spot, and the doctor was not 
 prepared to receive visits just now. He anathe 
 matized the dog, the country, the natives, and even 
 muttered " bothers " against the young lady from 
 Albuquerque who was visiting the schoolma am 
 and who certainly was to blame for it all. Yes ! 
 if she had not come to Manzano with those absurdly 
 bright eyes and ways so unlike those of the red- 
 fisted damsels of the colony, all this would never 
 have happened. The doctor would not have plas 
 tered his hair faultlessly down over his brow and 
 combed out his beard with such care, and blacked 
 his best boots so laboriously, and ridden over from 
 the ciSnega for a formal call. Plague take these 
 girls, anyhow! They were a meddlesome lot, 
 always getting one into hot water and the 
 doctor groaned aloud as he realized the full tem 
 perature of that into which he had now tumbled. 
 
 It was a long, dusty horseback ride from the 
 ciSnega ; and as Dr. Woodkins was a precise man, 
 and rather an admirer of the doctor, he had taken 
 precautions to appear at his best. His Sunday 
 broadcloth, carefully wrapped in a newspaper, 
 
COME, THERE S A GOOD DOG" 
 
BRAVO S DAT OFF 135 
 
 hung in one half of the saddle-bags ; his boots, a 
 spotless shirt, and other adornments in the other, 
 and in his hand, also wrapped, had come the well- 
 brushed silk hat. 
 
 This was certainly a very prudent plan. The 
 ceremonial dress escaped all the wear and dust of 
 the journey, and within half a mile of the little 
 Mexican village the doctor reined off amid the 
 junipers. A little away from the road he tied his 
 horse and proceeded to make a dignified change of 
 toilet behind a spreading tree. He took the fresh 
 apparel from the saddle-bags, carefully unrolled it, 
 puffed away a fleck of dust that had fallen on the 
 coat, and then began to divest himself of the rather 
 seedy garments in which he had come, conscien 
 tiously folding each article as he took it off. He 
 would leave them in the saddle-bags in this tree 
 till his return no telltale bundles of old clothes 
 about him when he should ride immaculate up to 
 the teacher s house. 
 
 He was just finding his way into the stiff shirt, 
 with a petulant blessing upon the housekeeper for 
 being so wasteful of starch, when Bravo chanced 
 that way. It might be perfectly proper, back in 
 Hooppole township, to change one s garments 
 behind a pawpaw, but the performance was cer 
 tainly quite contrary to all Bravo s Mexican 
 notions of propriety, and he charged upon the 
 offender with such menacing barks as might have 
 struck terror to a stouter heart. The doctor s 
 
136 BBAVO S DAY OFF 
 
 head had just risen above the collar, and, seeing 
 his danger, he scrambled up into the low-branched 
 tree with unprofessional haste just in time, 
 too ; for the invader caught a generous mouthful 
 from the flaunting garment, and his paws left 
 long red rakes on the doctor s calves. 
 
 Bravo had taken a day off, merely for a rabbit 
 hunt by himself, hoping to catch some unwary 
 cottontail away from its burrow. Meat was 
 scarce at the adobe below the hill, and he was 
 heartily tired of brown beans. He had not needed 
 to ask leave, for no one cared whether he went 
 or stayed ; in fact, he sometimes had suspicions 
 that he was rather in the way at home. But even 
 with so shabby a specimen, the same dog faithful 
 ness to masters, good or bad, held, and Bravo 
 hardly ever left the house, unless to tag soberly 
 after the burros that went for wood. But to-day 
 he had rather made up his mind to a holiday. 
 The rabbits, it is true, had been very disobliging, 
 but now he didn t mind that a bit. Apparently 
 there was no meat in this, but it was so much 
 more fun ! And, like the philosophical dog he 
 was, Bravo proceeded to make the most of it. 
 He barked and howled and leaped up till his white 
 teeth clicked within two inches of the stockinged 
 feet overhead, and the chattering figure drew up 
 in vain attempts to clamber a little higher than 
 the top of the scrubby tree. Then he would sit 
 on his haunches and look up, alternately howling 
 
BRAVO S DAY OFF 137 
 
 and whining and licking his shaggy chops, with 
 an air that said, just as plainly as words, " My ! 
 but I d give what little tail they have left me for 
 just one mouthful of you ! " And then, as a 
 diversion, he would worry the broadcloth awhile, 
 until it was a sight to be seen. 
 
 At this outrage the doctor, who had long ago 
 exhausted his whole dispensary of menaces and 
 cajoleries, frantically twisted off a branch and 
 leaned out to chastise the profaner of his long- 
 saved finery. But Bravo caught the stick in his 
 mouth, and gave so fierce a tug as was like to 
 fetch the enemy sprawling down upon him. Only 
 a precipitate dropping of the switch saved the 
 doctor, and righting himself in the tree he gave 
 way to a tempest of maledictions. He was " mad 
 enough to cry," and no wonder. It was fit to 
 provoke a saint, and Job himself might have 
 found it hard to live up to his reputation had 
 he been in the doctor s place now. Bravo, sud 
 denly discovering another suspicious bundle on 
 a chaparro bush, worried off its wrappings and 
 proceeded to make the cherished "stovepipe" into 
 a ghastly mockery that would have befitted any 
 Eastern procession of "Horribles" on the glori 
 ous Fourth. 
 
 While making the most of this unexpected 
 treat, his attention and his barks were suddenly 
 turned toward the road. A couple of horses 
 clattered round the turn, and from his higher 
 
138 BRAVO S DAY OFF 
 
 perch the doctor caught a glimpse of feathered 
 hats and ribbons. 
 
 "What can the dog be at?" cried a very 
 pleasant voice. 
 
 " A rabbit, maybe," answered another. " Let s 
 ride in and see." 
 
 But at hearing this the figure in the tree fairly 
 shrank into itself, and screamed in an unrecog 
 nizable voice : " Hi, you ! Don t you come here ! 
 Git out ! Shoo ! " 
 
 " What on earth ? " gasped the first young lady. 
 " Say, we d better get away ! I suppose some 
 terrible crime is being committed in the woods 
 there ! " And two pretty riders, rather pale, 
 went galloping down the road. 
 
 " Sic em ! " hissed the prisoner in the tree, hop 
 ing the dog would be tempted to pursue. But 
 Bravo knew a good thing when he had it ; and 
 with only a pretext of going, came bounding back 
 in time to surprise the doctor in a stealthy descent, 
 and sent him scrambling up the rough branches 
 again. 
 
 " How long, O Lord, how long ? " groaned the 
 victim, shivering ; for it was a very fresh after 
 noon. " If I could only get Dandy here ! " His 
 horse stood patiently a few yards away, watching 
 the whole scene with silent disapproval. But 
 Dandy was tied in the doctor s own methodical 
 way, and could not come any nearer even had he 
 been used to showing any affection for his master. 
 
BRAVO S DAT OFF 139 
 
 Another hour dragged by, and the long shadows 
 of the peaks began to steal out into the plain. 
 The doctor was blue with cold, and his teeth 
 chattered too violently to encourage conversation 
 with himself or Bravo. He felt sure the dog 
 would never go and that he should freeze to 
 death. Eh ! It couldn t be yes, it was ! A 
 hollow groan from the tree, as if the victim had 
 given up his last hope. The very dog he had shot 
 at and wounded one night because it barked at 
 him ! 
 
 " Serves me right ! " he thought bitterly. " No 
 more than I deserve for coming to this barbarous 
 country and its barbarous people, and for leaving 
 such a practice as I had at home " for he had so 
 often told the simple New Mexicans about the 
 great clientage he had in the East, that he had 
 come to believe it himself. 
 
 " Help ! You ! " he suddenly bawled at sound 
 of some one whistling in the road. The tune 
 ceased abruptly, and in a moment a tall and 
 tattered boy, with a flint-lock musket over his 
 shoulder, came slouching into view. Santiago 
 certainly was not without a sense of humor, and 
 I leave it to you if a bishop might not have 
 snickered at sight of that white-kilted figure 
 huddled in the tree, with the tousled dog watch 
 ing hungrily below. But Santiago did not laugh. 
 There was not even a smile on his serious face, as 
 he stopped at the foot of the juniper and looked 
 
140 BRAVO S DAT OFF 
 
 up at the doctor ; for even stronger than his 
 humor was the infinite courtesy which is in every 
 fibre of his people. 
 
 " Sefior Doctor," he said, respectfully, in Span 
 ish, " what a pity ! These dogs are very trouble 
 some and unmannered. I hope it is not long he 
 has molested you ? You see he does not under 
 stand English. But Spanish, yes. Choo, Bravo ! 
 Vdyate!" 
 
 As if it were really a matter of language, and 
 he had merely understood the doctor to be invit 
 ing him to come and have a bone, Bravo dropped 
 his stump of a. tail, and scurried off toward home 
 with a reproachful glance at the spoiler of his 
 fun. 
 
 "Now you can come down, Senor Doctor, for 
 he will not come more. He is Blind Juan s dog, 
 and knows me. No hay cuidado." 
 
 "What d ye talk that gibberish to me for?" 
 snapped the doctor, whose humor seemed to be 
 growing worse rather than better, now that his 
 afflictions were over. " You know I don t savvy 
 it. Why don t you greasers learn English, like 
 you ought to ? " 
 
 Santiago s big eyes opened a little wider at this ; 
 for he understood English very well, thanks to 
 the schoolma am, though he was diffident about 
 speaking it. But now he said quite clearly, 
 though with the utmost politeness : 
 
 " Pues, Seiior Doctor, we learn much slow, for 
 
BRAVO 8 DAY OFF 141 
 
 you ten Americans in fifty miles, and we many 
 thousands who always have talk Spanish. An 
 you peoples come here one year now, and not one 
 learn any of that language which speak all in 
 New Mexico." 
 
 " Wai, d ye s pose we re going to bother with 
 your lingo ? You ve got to learn the language of 
 the conquerin Saxon." 
 
 The " conquerin Saxon " had by this time got 
 stiffly down from the tree, and was worrying his 
 cramped limbs into what was left of their proper 
 covering. Santiago looked at him, and the cut 
 ting answer which was on the point of his tongue 
 found no voice only a queer little light danced 
 across his eyes. Perhaps it wasn t worth while 
 to take this gentleman too seriously. 
 
 " Say, brush me off behind, " commanded the 
 doctor, who was now dressed. Santiago hesitated 
 a moment and then rendered the service, saying 
 quietly, " Why not, since you request it ? " 
 
 " And mind you, if you say a word about this 
 to any one I ll break every bone in your skin! 
 Savvy? Here, take that and keep a close mouth," 
 and he tossed a shining silver dollar. 
 
 " Good-evenings, Seiior Doctor," said Santiago, 
 coldly, turning on his heel and marching off with 
 his shoulders very straight. 
 
 "Wai, the impudence of these people," mut 
 tered the doctor, with an uneasy little laugh. 
 " Hm ! The wust s your own, my boy. If you re 
 
142 BRAVO DAT OFF 
 
 too rich, I ain t," and he picked up the coin and 
 put it in his pocket. Then he stood looking down 
 at himself for some moments with an air of one 
 who ponders gravely. 
 
 " N-n! " he soliloquized at last. " I won t back 
 out now. But however will I apologize for yan 
 mess ? Hey ? That s the talk." He slapped his 
 thigh as at some very happy inspiration, and even 
 brightened up enough to whistle a bar of " The 
 Girl I Left Behind Me," as he clambered upon 
 Dandy and rode off to Manzano. 
 
 "Mercy! " Miss Parker was saying half an hour 
 later. " What a Hercules you must be, doctor ! 
 To think of your beating off the mountain lion, 
 after such a terrific hand-to-hand struggle ! Why, 
 if one could have seen you as you throttled the 
 savage beast, I am sure it would have made a 
 heroic picture fine as Samson rending the 
 lion." 
 
 For the doctor had more than acquitted his 
 tattered garb. 
 
 " And do you know ? " cooed Miss Kitty, fixing 
 those dangerous eyes on the doctor, " Miss Parker 
 and I came very near having an adventure, too, 
 while we were out riding this afternoon. There 
 was some dreadful mystery going on in the woods 
 beyond the arroyo we think those desperadoes 
 from San Pedro must have been murdering some 
 one there. And if we had not galloped off, 
 
BEAVO S DAT OFF 143 
 
 there s no knowing but we might have been killed, 
 too." 
 
 " Ah, if I had only been there to protect you, 
 Miss Kitty! I would like to see any of them 
 ruffians molest you while I was round! " And 
 the good doctor s chest expanded and his fists 
 clenched as though he already had the despera 
 does by the throat. 
 
 " All these yere varmints would a been killed 
 out long ago," he said, "if civilized people was 
 here. But them miserable brutes o Mexicans 
 ain t good for anything." 
 
 " Oh, how can you say so, doctor ? " put in Miss 
 Parker, gently. "I have lived three years here 
 among them, a lonely girl, entirely dependent 
 upon their good will, and I think they have 
 taught me more than I shall ever be able to teach 
 them. They are ignorant, it is true, of many 
 things we know ; but they also know some things 
 we do not. Certainly they are the kindest- 
 hearted and most courteous people I have ever 
 found anywhere, and very good neighbors. And 
 some of them are as high-minded as any one I 
 know, despite their lack of education." 
 
 "Well, I ain t no Mexican lover, nor Indian 
 lover, neither. White people s good enough for 
 me. These critters are too lazy even to learn to 
 talk United States." 
 
 "It is less laziness than lack of chance; and 
 I think we haven t any great right to criticise 
 
144 BEAVO^S DAY OFF 
 
 them in this, anyway, they are so enormously in 
 the majority. So few of us ever learn their lan 
 guage. I sometimes wonder that a few dozen of 
 us do not go to France and insist that the French 
 millions shall at once learn English for our benefit." 
 
 Miss Parker spoke so quietly that the doctor 
 lost half the force of her sarcasm. But he 
 changed the subject, and began to dilate upon the 
 beauties of the dSnega; to throw out dark hints 
 of the loneliness of his cabin there and its need of 
 a certain kind of sunshine. 
 
 " Ah, here s Santiago," said Miss Parker, going 
 to answer a knock at the door. " Pase, amigo. 
 Santiago, this is Dr. Woodkins, and this is my 
 friend Miss Wilson." 
 
 "Mees Wilson I like to know, and the Seiior 
 Doctor already we know us much time. Even 
 thees aftonone I meet him." Santiago was en 
 tirely self-possessed, though there was a bit of 
 a twinkle in his eye. His clothing was old, but 
 carefully brushed ; and he had put fresh almagre 
 on the Indian moccasins he wore. 
 
 " Here s a boy that would change some of your 
 opinions, doctor, if you knew him well," said the 
 teacher. "He began coming to school only a 
 year ago, and now he can read and write very 
 well, and talk better English than I do Spanish, 
 as you can see. I don t wish to puff him up ; but 
 he is a good scholar and, more than that, a good 
 boy one of God s gentlemen." 
 
BRAVO S DAY OFF 145 
 
 "There s no accounting for tastes, mum," re 
 joined the doctor, sourly; "I ain t no hand for 
 blacks myself." 
 
 Santiago s brown face was red now with pleas 
 ure and confusion, but he managed to stammer : 
 "It ees that our mees is so good, so paciente. 
 There is no one in Manzano who do not love 
 her." 
 
 " I believe it is half true," said the little school- 
 ma am, blushing in her turn, but with moist 
 ure in her eyes. " It is wonderful how grateful 
 they are for a chance to learn, and every kindness 
 one shows them they pay back tenfold. I really 
 feel proud of their friendship for me, it is so truly 
 from the heart. Why, the other day " 
 
 A rattle of shots outside made every one jump. 
 "Wh-what?" gasped the doctor, looking around 
 the room. 
 
 " I hope no one is hurt," murmured Miss Parker, 
 throwing open the door and peering out into the 
 moonlight. Down the street was a wild clatter 
 of hoofs and a chorus of drunken yells. 
 
 " Queeck ! In ! " Santiago cried, catching the 
 teacher by the arm and whirling her behind him. 
 "It ees that Lee White and hees rustlers 4 shoot- 
 ing-up the town, they call him. They can keel 
 anybody now, woman too, for very dru n-h-h ! " 
 For just then another shot rang out, and Santiago 
 lurched forward across the threshold. 
 
 Then there was a loud snarl, a scurry, a yell of 
 
146 BRAVO S DAY OFF 
 
 pain, a wild scuffle in the road. An exaggerated 
 poodle had dragged down a horseman and held 
 him by the throat in the dust. 
 
 "Shoot the brute he s got Bill foul! " yelled 
 a wild rider. Three or four six-shooters cracked, 
 and Bravo rolled over without a yelp. But the 
 horseman did not rise. Bravo had not been in 
 fun that time. Then rifles began to ring from 
 loopholed shutters here and there. 
 
 "Time to git ! Bill s done for ! Hit the road ! " 
 And the desperadoes swept down the echoing 
 street, firing right and left to discourage pursuit. 
 Their joke of " shooting-up the town to scare the 
 greasers " had not been so funny, after all. 
 
 " Doctor I Kitty ! Help ! " 
 
 But Kitty was in a dead faint and the doctor 
 nowhere to be seen. Miss Parker knelt in the 
 lighted doorway, hardly conscious that another 
 bullet sang close to her head, and clasped her slen 
 der hands under the boy s neck and dragged the 
 limp form into the room and barred the door. 
 But the danger was already over the " rustlers " 
 had gone. 
 
 "Run to the kitchen, Kitty," she cried, at a 
 groan of returning consciousness from the other 
 side of the room, " and bring some water ! Fly- 
 ing!" 
 
 She tore open the collar of his woollen shirt and 
 her lips grew white to see a thin scarlet bubble 
 that swelled and shrank with the heaving of his 
 
BRAVO S DAY OFF 147 
 
 chest. At touch of the cold water a little shiver 
 ran over him and the large dark eyes opened 
 slowly. 
 
 " No le toc6 ? " he quavered. 
 
 "No, Santiago," she whispered softly. "You 
 wouldn t let it pass, brave boy." 
 
 " It not touched you ! Pues me alegro ! An 
 I t ankyou!" 
 
 Then the faint shadow of a smile fell all across 
 the gray face and seemed to become a part of it. 
 But from the eyes it suddenly flickered out. San 
 tiago had paid for his schooling. 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 
 
BONIFACIO S HOKSE-THIEF 
 
 "Z7!z\ro, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco ! " Five big white 
 silver dollars! 
 
 Bonifacio held his breath as he clinked them 
 together, and then reached down and pinched his 
 leg to see if they were wide-awake dollars or only 
 a dream. Ouch \ Evidently they were no dream. 
 And what a remarkably handsome lady, despite 
 the rather severe expression of her face, was this 
 who gazed off sidewise from them as if looking 
 for the next one \ But five pesos ! It was more 
 money than he had ever seen before in his life. 
 He even doubted if Don Pablo had so much, with 
 all his big house and herds and hundred peons. 
 
 Bonifacio walked slowly up the dusty road, tip 
 ping the wonderful discs from one hand to the 
 other, and with a very serious expression upon 
 his chubby face. Evidently he was not one of 
 those who lose their heads at sudden wealth. 
 Not he ; why, he would have been just as demure 
 about it if there had been six dollars I 
 
 No, he would not buy a horse. He could ride 
 whenever he liked, anyhow ; and it was better to 
 
 151 
 
152 BONIFACIO 1 S HOBSE-THIEF 
 
 get something new. Besides, Paca must have 
 half of it, though girls didn t know very well what 
 to do with money, and were apt to spend it fool 
 ishly. And with the remainder maybe he would 
 get well, say a six-shooter! That would be 
 pretty fine, eh ? Or it would be better to buy a 
 calf then presently he would have a herd, and 
 be as great a man as Don Pablo. 
 
 Trudging along with these serious questions 
 see-sawing in his brain first the six-shooter up, 
 and then the calf he was around the corner 
 close to the huddled adobes of Tajique 1 almost 
 before he knew it. " She will be at the hera" he 
 said, with a start, and turned off to a little hill 
 on the right, where the threshing sent up its cloud 
 of dust to the parched sky. Here was a circular 
 floor of hard-pounded adobe, fenced with lashed 
 poles, and in its centre a great stack of wheat. 
 Inside the fence a flock of forty goats was being 
 driven round and round unceasingly, like a living 
 wheel, trampling a bed of straw. Every now and 
 then a man with a rude fork flung more wheat 
 from the stack to the floor ; and sometimes they 
 sent the goats flying about in the opposite direc 
 tion. As Bonifacio approached, a woman let 
 down one of the cross poles, and the goats came 
 scampering out of the enclosure and fell to eating 
 the chaff at one side. 
 
 i Ta-h(5e-ke. 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 153 
 
 " Here, thou! " called old Pancho. " Come and 
 help winnow. What is this, that boys go idle 
 when there is so much to do?" 
 
 To work just now, in the face of his great 
 wealth, was the last thing Bonifacio desired. 
 But Mexican boys are not used to saying no to 
 the command or request of any one older; and so, 
 though Pancho was not even a primo of his grand 
 father, the boy picked up a forked stick and fell 
 to work, first tucking his treasure into his one 
 sound pocket. 
 
 Paca was doing her share of work about as well 
 as any of them, though she still lacked very much 
 of being a woman. She was a brown, round girl 
 of the build which her people call chopo, and 
 which our unpoetic school-day nicknames termed 
 "sawed-off." Soon she went off with her basket 
 of wheat and chaff to the brook. 
 
 Bonifacio watched his chance, and amid the 
 confusion he slipped off behind a gravel hill and 
 struck out toward the arroyo. 
 
 "Ah, where hast thou been so long?" Paca 
 demanded. 
 
 "No-o," drawled Bonifacio. "Not any place, 
 sister. Only down the road a so-little, chasing 
 butterflies. But see what butterflies I caught ! " 
 he broke out, unable to keep the secret any longer, 
 clinking the treasure under her nose. 
 
 " The saints ! What riches ! And we need 
 money so much. But how is this? In the road, 
 
154 BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 
 
 sayest? Then some one will have dropped it. 
 Who could it be?" 
 
 " I don t know. Only it was in the road. Oh, 
 yes ! " he added, with supernatural gravity 
 "perhaps, it was the Americano who came from 
 the way of the estancia this morning." 
 
 " Unashamed ! " cried Paca. " Of whom else 
 could it be? Who else carries so much money 
 but the Americanos ? Go, rascal, and seek him, to 
 see if it is his." 
 
 Bonifacio hesitated a moment, with a pleading 
 look, and two big drops rolled down his cheeks. 
 It certainly was hard to tumble from affluence to 
 poverty so suddenly. But then he shut his lips 
 bravely, and marched off along the uncertain foot 
 path without a word. 
 
 The Americano was standing in front of the 
 little trading-store. He was a tall bearded fellow 
 in sadly worn horse-hide coat and leggins, and 
 with a big six-shooter at his belt. A Winchester 
 hung at the horn of his saddle ; and the aspect of 
 the handsome horse that stood in the street, un 
 tied, indicated that he and his master understood 
 one another very well. 
 
 " Hey ? Yo found it in the road, and llowed 
 twas mine ? " the stranger ejaculated on hearing 
 Bonifacio s stammering message. " I hope I never 
 may see the back o my neck ! Say, Gow ! " call 
 ing to the storekeeper, "yere s a little Mexican 
 rat as hez fetched me five dollars I lost on the 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 155 
 
 road. Yd* w udn t do no sech a trick, wud yo ? 
 Well, yo kid ! Yo re the first white man I ve 
 seen in a week ! Ef yo reck n yo kin handle 
 them shiners, jest yo freeze to em. I done lost 
 em, and we ll jest How I spent em. Stick em 
 down in yo r clo es ! " 
 
 Bonifacio looked open-eyed at the stranger. 
 This was a very good man, certainly; but he 
 must be a little wrong in the forehead. Giving 
 away five dollars ! Why, Don Pablo never did 
 such a thing in his life ; and as for Gow, he would 
 foreclose a mortgage for less ! 
 
 " Gracias, seiior," he stuttered. " But are you 
 sure ? Probably you will need it." 
 
 "Go and take et to yo r mammy, kid!" and 
 the big Texan turned to cinch up his saddle, 
 while Bonifacio fairly flew down the street, with 
 a face quite transfigured. He felt twice as rich 
 as before, for now there was no question about 
 it. 
 
 " Good-day, Don Abran l ! " he sang out gayly, 
 as he pattered past a tumble-down adobe at the 
 corner. But Don Abran, squatting in his doorway, 
 only scowled. It was all very well for these irre 
 sponsible brats to go smiling all over ; they didn t 
 know the burdens of life. But he saw nothing to 
 smile at. Surely there never was such an unlucky 
 man in the world before. Everybody admitted 
 that. 
 
 1 The Spanish form of Abraham. 
 
156 BONIFACIO 1 8 HOESE-TU1EF 
 
 It was a very quiet, lonely country, over there 
 on the east slope of the Manzanos, looking out to 
 the boundless plains, and trouble rarely came 
 near. But when it did, it was sure to pick out 
 Abran. No one else ever lost animals, save now and 
 then one by the bog-holes or a bear ; but a dozen 
 times within current memory Abran s two gaunt 
 " buckskin " ponies and his blind mule had been 
 stolen. It was true that in the long run he had 
 not been the loser. On the contrary, the three 
 sorry hacks had swelled to a score of animals, and 
 among them were several very fine horses which 
 shows how much can be saved from disaster by 
 using one s brains and eyesight. Just now the 
 dark-browed gentleman in the doorway was groan 
 ing inwardly. Over this ? Oh no ! He was 
 wishing some one would happen along to steal his 
 horses ! 
 
 The next morning s sun was barely cracking 
 from behind the peak of the Pedernal, ninety 
 miles down the plain, when Bonifacio was already 
 some leagues up the mountain, carelessly riding 
 the old blaze-face sorrel. Volante suddenly pricked 
 up his ears and whinnied vociferously. He had 
 made no mistake, for in an instant there came an 
 answer from away off to the right. 
 
 " You old silly ! " cried his rider. " But at 
 least I will see what horses they are, and maybe 
 the burros are with them." Volante needed no 
 
BONIFACIO FAIRLY FLEW DOWN THE STREET 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 157 
 
 guidance, and in a matter of three minutes was 
 rubbing noses across a brash fence with an atten 
 uated "buckskin." 
 
 As for Bonifacio, he acted as if glued to his 
 seat. His big eyes were bigger than ever, and 
 the mischievous face was twisted to a solemnity 
 that would have fitted a judge upon the bench. 
 What on earth could it all mean ? 
 
 It was a peculiar spot. The ravine, down 
 which a brief torrent ran in time of rains, headed 
 here in a miniature " box-canon " a natural 
 " blind alley " shut on three sides by overhanging 
 ledges. In front two big pines had been felled 
 so that they closed the ravine, all but a narrow 
 passage, which was now piled full of brush. But 
 this was not what gave the boy so perplexed a 
 look. 
 
 " Don Abran s broncos ! " he mused, wagging 
 his head. "What are they shut up here for, 
 where is neither water nor grass, and so far from 
 home ? Why, no one would ever find them, unless 
 knowing the way ! And the corral is much used 
 too, for the ground is worn out with their hoofs. 
 A Dios ! It cannot be ! " he cried, suddenly chang 
 ing color a little. And he pounded his heels with 
 might and main upon Volante s lean ribs, while 
 his eyes fairly snapped with excitement. 
 
 It was nearly six in the evening when a big 
 bearded fellow, riding slowly down Dead Man s 
 
158 BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 
 
 Canon behind two patient-footed pack-mules, 
 drew rein and turned about at a clatter of hoofs 
 and a shrill hail from the rear. A disreputable- 
 looking sorrel, plastered with foam and dust, and 
 a hardly immaculate boy drew alongside. 
 
 " My leg ! " laughed Hank, after a puzzled stare. 
 " What yo doin yere, kid ? Find some more ? " 
 
 " No, seiior," the boy stammered. " But I think 
 you you will be killed." 
 
 " Who ? Me f Wot with, yo little grasshopper ? " 
 And the big fellow laughed again. He llowed it 
 would be some time before Happy Hank was in 
 any such box as that! Twenty years in the 
 mining camps and cow camps of the frontier 
 are apt to give one the notion that one is danger- 
 proof. 
 
 "Oh, but you know not Abran! He is not so 
 strong as you, senor, but very sly. And he is 
 very bad, too. No one says anything, for he is 
 ugly. But all have seen that whenever a stranger 
 passes this way, where so few come, and if his 
 horse is good, or his rifle, or if he shows money, 
 then in the act Abran s horses are lost. He is 
 very angry, and makes much noise of seeking 
 them. But when they are not found he swears : 
 Olaro ! That Gringo who passed here yester 
 day, Tie is the thief ! Then he gets a horse and 
 takes his rifle and starts off on the trail. And in 
 a day or two he comes back riding the stranger s 
 horse, and with the stranger s rifle, sometimes 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 159 
 
 even wearing his hat and boots. Behind him 
 come following his own horses. So no one can 
 answer anything when he says : $, he was the 
 thief ! I overtook him yonder driving off my 
 beasts, and when I demanded them he shot at 
 me. Then, of course, I could do nothing but 
 kill him. It is a thing unpleasant, but we must 
 protect our own. Thus says Abran ; and no one 
 dares dispute him, since he brings back the horses 
 for proof. But many wink the eye, and say apart, 
 4 Ay ! but with having his beasts robbed, Abr&n 
 grows rich ! As for me, I never dared think it. 
 But this very morning I found a secret corral in 
 the mountain, where he hides his animals that 
 they may seem stolen ; and when I saw them 
 there I understood it was for you, sefior, so I 
 came to tell you." 
 
 Bonifacio stopped, quite out of breath with the 
 longest speech he had ever made in his life. The 
 stranger reached from horse to horse, and gave 
 him such a slap on the back as made him wince. 
 
 " F I never see the back o my neck ! " he 
 growled. " Yo do beat my time. How old are 
 JO ?" 
 
 "I don t know, sefior. Perhaps Don Pedro 
 knows, since he was my godfather." 
 
 44 Bout leven, I reckon. Wai, yo ve got head 
 enough fur a man, and I hope never to strike a 
 pay-streak again ef yo ain t one and a white 
 one ! Ez fur Mister Abran, we ll more or less 
 
160 BONIFACIO 1 S HORSE-THIEF 
 
 discumfigurate his game. He might a potted 
 me, though, easy as lyin abed, from behind. 
 Now yo salt down this yere dust, then we ll 
 play back, and let Mister Slick run his nose into 
 trouble." 
 
 He drew from an inner pocket a small buckskin 
 bag, and thrust it into Bonifacio s hand. It was 
 astonishingly heavy for its size. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked the boy, stupidly. 
 
 "Hey? Don t yo know the feel o gold-dust? 
 Thet s fur yo to take home, with the best ree- 
 gards o Happy Hank fur a plucky kid he hez 
 a call to thank." 
 
 " Oh, senor ! " and Bonifacio s tone was choky. 
 " Please not ! I did not come to be paid, but be 
 cause you are so good. And already we have a 
 deal of money five dollars ! So that Paca is to 
 have a new dress, and I think I shall buy a six- 
 shooter." 
 
 "Wai, I ll be never mind, kid, I didn t go 
 fur to hurt yo r feelin s. Why, this ain t nothin ! 
 See them mules? Wai, their four chipas carries 
 about seventeen thousan dollars, nigh ez I kin 
 reckon it, in gold-dust. I struck it rich in the 
 Oscuros, and now I m gettin to Albukerk with 
 the clean-up. Ef it hedn t a been fur yo , thet 
 Abran might a got the whole outfit and me 
 too. Don t be a fool, now. I ain t payin yo 
 I couldn t. This is jest friendly. An yere s a 
 better six-shooter n yo d likely get fur three 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 161 
 
 dollars, and it s an extry load in my saddle-bag, 
 seem I got one in my belt. Take em, now or 
 I ll jump down yo r throat ! " 
 
 Bonifacio had to laugh at the thought of such 
 an extraordinary acrobatic feat ; and he took the 
 proffered gifts, the gold a little reluctantly still. 
 But what frontier boy could refuse a six-shooter 
 and such a one, big and silver-mounted and 
 with an ivory grip? 
 
 "Now," said the miner, "it s sundown, and it 
 gits dark early yere in the canon. By wot yo* 
 say o yo r amigo^ I don t How he ll tackle a 
 consumptive-lookin feller like me till he hez 
 everything comin his way. Right yonder s a 
 dead-proper place to camp, and we ll sort o bait 
 it up fur him." 
 
 At seven o clock it was quite dark down there 
 in the high-walled, deep-wooded gorge. There 
 was no sound save the far wail of a wild-cat, nor 
 token of anything astir in the canon. 
 
 At eight a dark face peered from the bushes 
 under the north cliff, and two restless eyes swept 
 the woods. Just in front was a flickering camp- 
 fire, whose unsteady light revealed a horse picketed 
 with two mules, a saddle and two packs piled 
 under a tree, and pillowed on them, with heavy 
 boots to the fire, a recumbent figure. 
 
 " Sleep well ! " muttered Abran, between his 
 teeth. There was a click in the bushes; and a 
 
162 BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 
 
 slender object slowly straightened out before him 
 as one keen eye ran along the dark barrel. 
 
 Crack ! At the report of the rifle the horse and 
 mules plunged and snorted, but the prostrate 
 figure did not move. Only there was a faint low 
 groan. Abran watched catlike for a moment, and 
 then leaped out into the firelight, a long knife 
 gleaming in his hand. But even as he pounced 
 upon his victim there was a rustle in the branches 
 overhead, and some one dropped on the assassin s 
 back. 
 
 " Yo need a gumdeen, I llow ! " chuckled Hank, 
 when he had bound his prisoner securely. "To 
 git ketched thet-a-way with a trick older n the 
 seventeen hills ! I ought to bio wed yo r head off, 
 an I shore would, ef twa n t fur the kid. Yo re 
 a plum nuisance, but I ll jest lug yo in to Albu- 
 kerk for the sake o seein ef they will give yo a 
 spell in the pen. An ef they don t, I ll make yo 
 wishtthey hed!" 
 
 That was several years ago, and some changes 
 have come in that time even to the sleepy out- 
 corners of New Mexico. But since the day 
 Bonifacio took a certain long ride there have been 
 no more complaints of " stolen horses " about Ta- 
 jique, and no more mysterious disappearances of 
 strangers who passed that way. If there were 
 any such lawlessnesses, I am sure they would be 
 promptly corrected, for the new alcalde of the 
 
BONIFACIO S HORSE-THIEF 163 
 
 village is no such sleepy-head as they had there 
 when I was younger, nor any such stuffed pom 
 posity either. No ! Though to have become al 
 calde is the height of human ambition in such a 
 village, the new man is not a bit puffed up, but 
 smiles, and calls out, " Oomo le va> Don Carlos ? " 
 as affably as you can imagine, when I lope by 
 with : 
 
 "A Dios, Don Bonif4cio ! " 
 
GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
 THE Agua Fria ranch-house, in its strange and 
 romantic setting amid the pine forests and ancient 
 lava-flows of the Zuni Mountains in western New 
 Mexico, is a place not soon forgotten. Those who 
 know it are, of course, comparatively few, for it 
 is a long way from the railroad and from any 
 town ; and hardly any one goes there except the 
 cowboys of the A L C and an occasional uneasy 
 rover like myself. But of us few, different as 
 are our notions about most things, every mother s 
 son, I am sure, has a soft spot in his heart for that 
 cool hut in the wilderness. And down here where 
 I write this, to-day among the blazing sands of 
 the Peruvian deserts, to-morrow toiling up the 
 naked slopes of the Andes, there is no part of 
 all the dear old Southwest that oftener comes 
 up in mind than this same Agua Fria. If only 
 one tall pine of them all could come to whisper 
 with me by night in the torrid ruins of Pachaca- 
 mac ; or if the dust of the mummy-mining could 
 be forgotten in one long swallow from that match 
 less spring which rolls ice-cold from under the 
 lava behind the cabin ! It is the very dream of 
 
 167 
 
168 GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
 Tantalus. Sometimes there is even a feeling that 
 the crude and dirty cookery of these South Amer 
 ican tambos might well be traded for some of 
 " Gene s " frying-pan bread and greasy bear-steak. 
 
 And speaking of bear-steak, reminds me. That 
 is one of the things wherein tastes differ. Some 
 of us like Agua Fria partly because it is a great 
 bear country ; and Manager Saint s shrewd face 
 never twinkled jollier than when there was a fair 
 excuse for visiting that utmost corner of the 
 ninety-seven-thousand-acre ranch ; the bolstered 
 rifle hanging in reach at the side of the stout buck- 
 board, while Ned and Jerry, the two old grays, 
 rattled up hill and down, all day long. It is a 
 great region for game. One may often see deer, 
 antelope, and wild turkey, and sometimes even kill 
 them, from the buckboard. As for bear, it is one 
 of the best hunting-grounds in New Mexico. A 
 place where bear rob your pantry regularly, and 
 even pull you out of bed at night, would be pretty 
 good for the sportsman, even without the noble 
 pineries and the old volcanoes and the canons 
 which endear that lonely spot to all who can feel 
 the love of Nature. The bears of Agua Fria have 
 been known to do that very thing. If you doubt 
 it at all, you can ask Green, who could tell the 
 details much more eloquently than I, but for his 
 modesty. 
 
 That seemed to be a regular bargain-year for 
 Tbear (it is seven years ago, now); for I never 
 
GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 169 
 
 knew the clumsy but witty brutes to be so trouble 
 some, at Agua Fria or anywhere else. The whole 
 region is full of lava-beds and craters of extinct 
 volcanoes; and bears, wild-cats, and mountain lions 
 are always plentiful enough in those interminable 
 safe hiding-places. But that year, as Jimmy 
 Frye remarked to me, " Yo jest cain t walk with 
 out steppin on b ar ! " We must allow a trifle 
 for the cowboy license of the stanchest old cook 
 that ever followed a round-up ; but Jimmy s 
 statement was not so wild as it looks. How we 
 all laughed when Fred Wool " stepped on a 
 bear ! " Fred was a station agent, down on the 
 railroad, and had come up here to rest from the 
 hard work of doing nothing all day. He was a 
 splendid rifle-shot I have often seen him fetch 
 a running or a flying quail and was eager to 
 prove his hand on nobler game than he had yet 
 encountered. A few days before his arrival the 
 "boys" had lassoed a bear, over in a valley to 
 the west, had branded it with the brand of the 
 A L C, and turned it loose. That fired Fred s 
 ambition, and, borrowing an ancient horse, he 
 started off, with his latest investment in rifles 
 strapped at the saddle-horn. All day long old 
 Bess picked her conservative way among the 
 jagged lava-blocks, over round swales and down 
 beautiful " draws ; " and Fred grew discouraged, 
 for nothing bigger than a cottontail had he seen. 
 He had turned back toward camp, down a little 
 
170 GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
 canon, and was riding along the side of a huge 
 fallen pine. 
 
 Suddenly from the other side of the log, less 
 than ten feet away, uprose a shaggy brown mass. 
 It was a creature as big as the biggest steer on 
 the A L C range ; but no one ever knew one of 
 Saint s cattle to sit up on its haunches and gaze 
 questioningly into the face of a stranger. Decid 
 edly, it was not a steer, and decidedly it was the 
 very thing Fred had been looking for so eagerly. 
 Maybe you have noticed that when the thing for 
 which we have been wishing with all our might 
 unexpectedly comes true, it sometimes doesn t 
 seem so nice, after all, as we had figured that it 
 would. Perhaps this wasn t as fat a bear as Fred 
 had made up his mouth for ; or maybe the color 
 was not just what he wished to match his carpet 
 in the little bedroom over the station. At any 
 rate, I feel safe in saying that he was disappointed 
 and it certainly wasn t that the bear was too 
 small. 
 
 For some seconds the two strangers stared at 
 each other with a fixity that in some company 
 would be deemed wholly rude. Then blind 
 Bess chanced to turn her good eye and discovered 
 the meaning of the halt whereupon she dis 
 played an agility no one had seen in her in twenty 
 years. After two hundred yards Fred remem 
 bered that the specific purpose for which he had 
 been hunting a bear was to kill it ; and having 
 
GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 171 
 
 stopped Bess, he tied her to a stump. Holding 
 his Winchester ready, he walked back about half 
 way to bruin, and climbed a pine- reflecting 
 that from its fork he could take surer aim than 
 off-hand. But somehow the height made the bear 
 look bigger than ever ; and gazing first at this 
 huge beast, and then back at poor bony Bess, one 
 must have been a less thoughtful person than 
 Fred is not to think how small a chance the horse 
 would stand if the bear went that way. So, like 
 the merciful boy he is, Fred climbed down from 
 his tree, walked to Bess, led her a few hundred 
 yards further away, and tied her to a pine limb. 
 Such consideration ought to have been rewarded ; 
 but alas, when Fred got back to his tree, the 
 wearied bear had gone and he never saw an 
 other. 
 
 But Green, being less considerate, had better 
 luck and more sport. A few weeks after Fred s 
 adventure, the cowboys began to prepare for 
 winter. The weather grew very cold Agua 
 Fria is over seven thousand feet above sea-level 
 and appetites began to sharpen, inside the house 
 as well as outside. The average rapidity with 
 which five cowboys can eat their way through 
 a whole beef is rather bewildering ; and now the 
 quarters of meat did not last even as long as 
 usual. The only refrigerator used in Agua Fria 
 at any time of year was the shady side of the 
 
172 GBEEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
 house. In that rare, arid air, meat hung outside 
 keeps indefinitely, even in summer. But the 
 bears were hungry too, and got in the way of rob 
 bing the refrigerator every night. Green thought 
 to stop this thievery by lashing the meat solidly 
 to the logs of the eaves. But the ropes did not 
 count if they had not given way, then the roof 
 would have had to. The most provoking part of 
 it was that the sly rascals never came till every 
 one was asleep. Then one swipe with their terrific 
 forearms, and they were off with the meat and 
 into the lava (which begins within twenty feet of 
 the house) before any one could snatch a gun. 
 And a bear is so clever ! If any one sat up in the 
 dark, rifle in hand, that night no bear came near. 
 But just so sure as every one fell asleep, every one 
 was wakened by a great wrenching and creaking 
 of the log-house, and heard a vague patter and 
 a curious snuffle and next day there was the 
 job of hunting, killing, and cleaning another steer 
 to take the place of the stolen meat. 
 
 In a word, the bears became an unbearable nui 
 sance, and no one saw a clear way out of it. No 
 one, that is, except Green; and he determined 
 that he would "fix em." Green was not exactly 
 a cowboy yet and we all had serious doubts if 
 he ever would be. By profession he was a tele 
 graph operator on the Atlantic and Pacific Rail 
 road; but, having trouble with his lungs and wish 
 ing to rough it a little, he had arranged to " ride " 
 
GREEN S SEAR-TRAP 173 
 
 on the A L C for his board. The last time I 
 saw Green which was when my wife and I had 
 broken into his cabin at Cebollita, and he returned 
 to find us making havoc with his bacon and fri- 
 joles 1 the piney air and the outdoor life had 
 made a new man of him; and he had learned a 
 few things, too. But at the time of the plague 
 of bears, he was still very "new." 
 
 Green had not been idle in his lonely telegraph 
 office. He had read a good deal, and had gathered 
 ideas ; and, thus educated on the exploits of paper 
 travellers, he felt his invention much superior to 
 that of the unread veterans of the range. 
 
 When the next steer was cut up, Green begged 
 the head. Taking a turn around the horns with 
 his reata, he wound the free end of the rope on 
 his saddle-horn, and set spurs to his horse. In 
 this fashion, he dragged the bumping head around 
 a circuit of four or five miles, finally bringing it 
 back to the south door of the cabin. He had 
 trailed a scent which was pretty sure to attract 
 some brute; and now all that remained was to 
 shoot his game when it should arrive. 
 
 " But s posen yo re asleep when the b ar comes ? " 
 growled Hank. 
 
 "Never you fret about that," retorted Green. 
 " I ve got it down fine. I m going to leave the 
 loop on the horns, and the other end I ll tie to 
 
 1 Which was etiquette in the good days of the frontier. 
 
174 GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 
 
 my foot. So when Mr. Bear goes to walk off 
 with the bait, he ll wake me up, and I ll give 
 him lead enough to start a mine." 
 
 I know Hank turned pale, and I have a notion 
 that I did. Then, I am positive, we both turned 
 red. It is lucky Hank was there; for he is a 
 sober, kindly fellow, and I might have done a 
 very wrong thing. But Hank spoke out in his 
 quiet way: 
 
 " Say, son ! F I wus yo , I d jest sorto hitch 
 thet larriat onto the bedpost. A man cain t sleep, 
 nohow, with his hind foot roped like a yearlin ." 
 
 Green accepted the reasonable suggestion with 
 a little demur. 
 
 " But suppose he don t wake me, that way ? " 
 
 " Don t yo lose no sleep, son. He ll shore wake 
 yo ef he takes the head." 
 
 The bedsteads were of ponderous pine logs 
 far heavier than any four-poster of our great 
 grandfathers ; and Green s was in the farther 
 corner of the room from the door. Hank s bunk 
 was nearer the door, and my camp-bed was on 
 the floor close by. 
 
 Green hauled the frayed steer-head up within 
 twenty feet of the door, brought in the end of 
 his rope and tied it in a " three-ply " to the bed- 
 frame. Then he filled the magazine of his Win 
 chester, and set the rifle up at the head of his 
 bed, where it would be in easy reach. He also 
 gave his six-shooter a careful oiling. 
 
GREEN S BEAR-TRAP 175 
 
 Cowboy evenings are short, for the day has 
 always been a hard one, and to-morrow will be 
 gin at four o clock. An unusual interest kept 
 every one awake until after ten. Then the talk 
 grew more and more "scattering." Suddenly 
 Hank s serious snore broke out; and, a little 
 later, Green s husky breathing told that he, too, 
 had succumbed. My last memory is of a drowsy 
 glance through the open door into the broad, 
 white moonlight, and hearing the tiny ripple of 
 the spring and the whisper of the pines. 
 
 It must have been two in the morning when 
 something happened. There was a terrible creak 
 and roar the peculiar sound, unlike anything 
 else on earth, of a heavy pine frame in agony. 
 And the picture to which that wild sound awoke 
 us was never to be forgotten. Green s bed was 
 galloping toward the door, half its legs off the 
 floor at once; and Green, startled from sleep, 
 sitting upright and dazed on his strange vehicle, 
 crying, " Wha what?" His rifle, touched by 
 a sarcastic moonbeam, leaned lazily against the 
 wall in the farther corner. 
 
 That remarkable pageant marched as far as the 
 door ; and had the house been one of our flimsy 
 shells, it is very probable that the ponderous bed 
 stead would have taken out the casing, if not the 
 whole side. But when it crashed against that 
 mighty wall of forty-foot logs, sixteen inches 
 square, the rope broke, and the bed stopped. 
 
176 GBEEN S EEAE-TEAP 
 
 Only Green kept on and finally sat down among 
 the rocks and tin cans nearly twenty feet in front 
 of the house. 
 
 That is all we saw. By the time we could clam 
 ber over the upturned bedstead and get out of the 
 door, all was still, except for some groans from 
 Green. The steer s head was gone ; and we have 
 always suspected that something must have walked 
 away with it not forgetting to waken Green in 
 so doing. Green shares this opinion, and for some 
 reason has always since that time spoken of bears 
 in a tone of regret. 
 
 The incident for this is a true story, except 
 the names has become a proverb in that part of 
 New Mexico ; and if " Pete " or " Indian Charley " 
 or " Handsome Anse," or even " the Old Man " 
 himself were to run across me in Peru to-morrow, 
 we should not get far past the greetings before 
 one or the other would be sure to say : " And 
 Green s bear-trap ! Say, I reckon he d be travel 
 ling yet if he d tied the bait the way he was going 
 to!" 
 
MY SMALLEST SITTER 
 
MY SMALLEST SITTER 
 
 THROUGH ten years of wanderings, upon the 
 frontiers of North and South America, my camera 
 has been my inseparable chum. What hard knocks 
 we have taken together, too ! In one way it was 
 almost as much of a nuisance as a human compan 
 ion ; for it was no toy, but a full-grown camera, 
 and hard to carry. We have together jolted over 
 hundreds of thousands of miles in New Mexico and 
 Arizona alone, on trains, engines, hand-cars ; in 
 sulkies, buckboards, farm wagons and clumsy 
 carretas ; on mules, on horses, on burros, on foot. 
 
 We have "caught" the savage dances of half- 
 known Indians with living rattlesnakes in their 
 hands and mouths ; the crucifixion of a fanatic, 
 and the inconceivable self-tortures of his flagellant 
 brethren ; witches and bewitched ; and a thousand 
 other remarkable sights. 
 
 We have " focussed " in the face of inhospitable 
 six-shooters and with our own lying cocked 
 across the top of the "box." And while the 
 results chanced to be very satisfactory, I must 
 admit that I prefer photography without that sort 
 of a "finder." We have been very ill-mannered 
 
 179 
 
180 MY SMALLEST SITTER 
 
 many times, I fear, and pictured many people 
 against their will sometimes by the mild per 
 suasion above referred to, and sometimes merely 
 by winging them with the instantaneous shutter as 
 they ran away. Enthusiasts are always liable to 
 sin a little in this fashion, and to place their own 
 zeal ahead of the rights of others. I cannot fully 
 apologize for these things ; but, though the col 
 lector s mania was probably the strongest motive, 
 it was then and is now a little comfort to know 
 that the results were of value to science and to 
 history. When it comes to extraordinary rites 
 which never were pictured before, and never can 
 be pictured again, perhaps the student may be 
 pardoned for photographing people who have very 
 serious objections to being photographed. 
 
 Thousands of miles I carried my mahogany chum 
 pickaback, when there was no pack-beast to be 
 had in the wilderness. Once, on such a trip, the 
 camera had a curious escape. My left arm was at 
 that time powerless and everything had to be done 
 with one hand. My beautiful horse Alazan was 
 a young bronco, lassoed out of a herd of wild 
 horses, broken by my own hand, and learning very 
 well indeed but still retaining many traits of 
 the days when he had been just as really a wild 
 beast as a bear is. He had never seen a house, nor 
 a rope, nor a man unless at a distance, till the day 
 I first rode him. And he had not quite forgotten 
 how to " buck ; " that is, leap five or six feet in 
 
MY SMALLEST SITTER 181 
 
 the air and come down with his legs stiff and his 
 feet in a bunch, with a jar calculated to send the 
 rider very high indeed. Hundreds of times he 
 performed this tumbling, and on this day, for the 
 second time in his career, threw me. We were 
 jogging across the arid plain so contentedly, when 
 a big jack-rabbit sprang out from under our very 
 feet and went streaking down the desert. I 
 snatched the light shot-gun from its holster and 
 sent Don Jack turning half a dozen somersaults ; 
 and in the same instant Alazan who had not yet 
 learned the proper spirit about shooting from the 
 saddle lifted me certainly ten feet aloft. I also 
 turned several times on my own axis, and alighted 
 squarely on my shoulders and therefore upon 
 the camera in my knapsack. The fall jarred me 
 so that it was some minutes before I could rise ; 
 but by a strange fortune did not break even the 
 ground glass of the camera. It was doubtless due 
 to the fact that the knapsack was one I had made 
 of sheep pelts, with the wool inward, which " took 
 up " the recoil. 
 
 Another time, in the Navajo wilderness, the 
 precious machine was in one end of my sleeping- 
 bag, balanced across a pack-mule, with our pro 
 visions in the other end. The mule took fright 
 when a rifle-ball from a prowling Navajo creased 
 her head, and ran away with an agility which 
 would have been delightfully humorous if rather 
 unlaughable matters had not just then claimed my 
 
182 MY SMALLEST SITTER 
 
 thoughts. When I finally overhauled her, after 
 a ten-mile chase, the scrub junipers had torn my 
 blanket-bag to pieces, the camera in its box had 
 fallen down a gully, and our bread, coffee, and 
 beans were strewn along a league. And still 
 nothing was broken. That box with its precious 
 freight has rolled down a young precipice, now 
 over and now under the pack-mule ; it has been 
 shot at and cursed and kicked and abused and 
 yet, in its more than three -fourths of a million 
 miles of travels, I have never broken a glass plate 
 en route, and only three ground glasses ! 
 
 Yes, it is rather a travelled camera. It has 
 made photographs three hundred feet below the 
 level of the sea in the deserts of the Rio Colo 
 rado and 19,600 feet nearer the sky, in the 
 Andes. It has worked amid lava-beds and in 
 eternal snow. It has pictured life and death, 
 animal and man, the highest civilization and the 
 wildest savagery. It has recorded for me the 
 faces of my own babies and of thousands of quaint 
 brown babies that are just as human and just as 
 well-beloved as mine and a lot funnier. It has 
 shared with me a thousand humors, a thousand 
 tendernesses, and not a few tragedies. 
 
 And after all this, the smallest and perhaps the 
 prettiest object on which we ever focussed our 
 joint attention came to us only a little while 
 before we left our dear old adobe home in New 
 Mexico to try farther and wilder lands. 
 
MY SMALLEST SITTER 183 
 
 We had been revelling for the fortieth time in 
 the wonders of high-perched Acoma, the strangest 
 little city in the world, amid whose peerless cliffs 
 one never wearies of picture-making. Coming 
 down to its daughter pueblo of Laguna, I was 
 passing the evening in one of the rare oases of 
 New Mexico, talking disjointed Queres to a deep- 
 eyed two-year-old Laguna maiden. 
 
 In the midst of our chatter there came a curious 
 buzzing, and my little Indian friend began to clap 
 her hands at something which was whirring along 
 the vigas of the roof. 
 
 It was a humming-bird the tiny chuparosa^ 
 which my aboriginal neighbors declare has been 
 nearer than any other creature to the sun. In the 
 mythical Contest of Wings, the turkey-buzzard 
 flew higher than the eagle, but lost the race 
 because the sly chuparosa had all the time been 
 quietly perched on the turkey-buzzard s head, and 
 so had been higher than he ! 
 
 This little visitor, who had come by the open 
 door into the light and laughter so late at night, 
 was a female of the tiniest species of humming 
 bird, not nearly so large as the two first joints of 
 my finger. Her exquisite brown plumage was 
 almost as small as butterflies feathers ; she was 
 mottled under the throat, and iridescent with 
 emerald on head and neck. 
 
 Weary of beating her translucent wings against 
 the walls, she alighted upon the top of a cupboard. 
 
184 MY SMALLEST SITTER 
 
 I stole up and put my forefinger under her breast, 
 lifting very gently. The ruse worked in a 
 moment she fluttered up lightly and perched upon 
 my finger. 
 
 I walked carefully to the lamp at the other end 
 of the room ; and there we all stood looking at 
 our tiny visitor, our big faces within a foot of her. 
 
 She was perfectly self-possessed. Cocking her 
 little head to one side, she returned our stare from 
 an eye so tiny as to be barely visible, and kept her 
 strange perch for more than a quarter of an hour 
 before she decided to explore the room more fully. 
 
 " Say! " I cried to my wife, "I believe we can 
 get this lady s picture. Let s try it." 
 
 We got out the camera, marked a spot on the 
 ^eso-whitened wall, and focussed. Then I gently 
 poked la chuparosa, who at once cheerfully re 
 sumed her perch on my finger. 
 
 It was a queer contrast my squat, hard hand, 
 rough and rope-burned with the breaking of a 
 savage bronco, upholding that tiniest, tenderest, 
 and loveliest of all the feathered world. 
 
 Here was a sitter whose head I could not 
 clamp, and to whom I could not say, " Now look 
 pleasant ; " but never was artist more concerned 
 than I about a pose. 
 
 The flash-lamp refused to work, and we had to 
 burn the magnesium powder on a paper, with 
 many struggles. There was strong probability 
 that our puzzled sitter would fly away, or turn 
 
MY SMALLEST SITTER 185 
 
 the back of her head to us, or in some other way 
 spoil the desired effect. But just as the flash 
 went off, she was watching us out of a corner of 
 her eye, and the magic glass caught the very 
 image we wished. 
 
 In the morning I took our little guest out into 
 a field breast-high with the purple guaco. She 
 poised an instant on my hand, and then flew off 
 as blithely as if she had been all her life used to 
 sitting for her photograph. 
 
OUR WORST SNAKE 
 
OUE WORST SNAKE 
 
 THE Southwest is more liberally supplied with 
 venomous things than any other area in the 
 Union. In the burning deserts, in the inhabited 
 but arid expanses of New Mexico and Arizona, 
 the rattlesnake abounds, and in several varieties, 
 including the strange and deadly " sidewinder," 
 Crotalus cerastes. The so-called tarantula really 
 only a gigantic bush spider, but none the less 
 dangerous because of the misnomer is fairly 
 common. Scorpions are none too rare in the 
 southern portions of the territories, and in all 
 parts centipedes of seven to eight inches long are 
 frequent and neighborly. I shall never forget 
 the shock a well-known Eastern artist received in 
 1890, when he was visiting me in the pueblo of 
 Isleta. My house was an adobe, rented from one 
 of my Indian fellow-citizens ; and for the first 
 time the mice had begun to annoy me. On dis 
 covering their first tunnel through the wall, I 
 procured a trap one of the sort which snaps 
 up with a wire noose under the throat of his 
 mouseship and set it snugly against the mouth 
 of the hole. We had just come in from a trip to 
 
 189 
 
190 CUE WORST SNAKE 
 
 the wonderful Indian pueblo of Acoma, " the city 
 in the sky," eaten one of my "bach " suppers, and 
 were smoking and conversing, when suddenly I 
 heard the click of the trap. Still talking, I walked 
 over to the corner, reached down behind my 
 trunk, picked up the trap, and came back to the 
 table with it. A howl from my guest as he 
 sprang from his chair caused me to glance for 
 the first time at the trap and to drop it and my 
 unfinished sentence together. For the catch was 
 no mouse, but a huge centipede ! He had crawled 
 through the hole and against the trigger of the 
 trap, which promptly wired him near the head. 
 Good luck that my careless hand had grasped the 
 trap and not its wriggling captive ! After the 
 " baching " days were over, and the adobe had be 
 come rather more a home, my wife killed several of 
 these ugly creatures some on the floor, and one 
 as it was crawling out from a crack in the casing 
 of the kitchen door. 
 
 But it should not be imagined that life in the 
 Southwest is a constant menace on account of these 
 disagreeable neighbors. On the contrary, far more 
 people are killed and injured in the East just by 
 slipping on sidewalks than in New Mexico by all 
 noxious creatures put together ; and no one would 
 think of saying, "No, I wouldn t dare live in 
 New York, because there are sidewalks there ! " 
 The chance is too infinitesimal in both cases to 
 be taken into sober account. Many people live 
 
OUR WORST SNAKE 191 
 
 for years in the territory and never once see one 
 of these pests. Still, there are plenty of unpleas 
 ant reptiles and insects in the territory ; and once 
 in a very great while some one suffers by them. 
 I have seen one Mexican boy whose whole hand 
 and forearm were ruined withered and wasted 
 to a dreadful sight by the crawling of a centi 
 pede across his hand. He brushed it off, and paid 
 bitterly for that very natural but unwise action. 
 Had he shut his teeth and let the ugly thing pass 
 on, it would have done him little if any harm ; but 
 at the first sign of hostilities, it buried in his skin 
 the tiny fangs with which its scores of feet are 
 tipped. The flesh sloughed away until the hand 
 and arm were only a distorted skeleton ; and only 
 a careful doctor saved the lad s life. There have 
 been cases of death from the bite of a bush spider, 
 and others of serious maiming ; but they are very 
 rare, and the result seems to depend largely upon 
 the condition of the victim s blood. 
 
 Rattlesnakes are much commoner than I have 
 found them in any other country, and I gathered 
 there a great many of their beautiful skins and 
 strange rattles. But people are almost never hurt 
 by them. The rattlesnake is the fairest I had al 
 most said the manliest of all reptiles, and it would 
 be well if all humankind were as free from sneak 
 ing as he is. He never attacks wantonly ; and 
 even when provoked will not strike without first 
 giving warning. The danger of a bite depends 
 
192 OUR WORST SNAKE 
 
 upon so many things that it is hard to classify. 
 The age of the snake, the weather, the long or 
 short time since he has struck at anything, the 
 condition of the person bitten and, above all, the 
 location of the bite cause a variation of result 
 from death in a few minutes to a painful but not 
 dangerous sickness of a fortnight. The venom of 
 the rattler is not so powerful as that of the cobra ; 
 and unless it enters a considerable blood-vessel, so 
 as to reach the whole circulation quickly, a man 
 of sound blood need not scare himself to death 
 over the bite. The "sidewinder," or horned 
 rattlesnake, peculiar to the desert, seems to have 
 a more vicious arsenal ; and recovery from his 
 bite is rarer. 
 
 But the deadliest snake in North America is 
 the tiny and devilish little pichu-cuate, who quite 
 matches the worst serpent of India. Not only 
 the most highly venomous, but the most treacher 
 ous, he would be also the most dangerous were he 
 not, luckily, the rarest. He is the only true asp 
 on this continent ; and in the United States is 
 never found outside New Mexico and Arizona. 
 That he was also known to the ancient Mexicans 
 is apparent from his name, which was brought up 
 to our territory by the Spanish conquerors. 1 In 
 all my explorations of the two territories, covering 
 hundreds of thousands of miles of travel and into 
 
 1 Pichu-coatl, an Aztec word. The present name is pro 
 nounced Pltchoo-kwdh-te. 
 
OUR WORST SNAKE 193 
 
 the remotest corners, I have seen but three pichu- 
 cuates and all, unluckily, where it was impossi 
 ble to preserve them. In the same time I found 
 and killed hundreds of rattlesnakes, of all sorts and 
 sizes a sport of which I must confess myself 
 very fond. But used as I am to snakes, the pichu- 
 cuate always gives me a shock. 
 
 My first meeting with one was in Valencia 
 County, New Mexico, in June, 1889, on the sandy 
 flanks of the Cerro del Aire. I was out hunting 
 jack-rabbits, in company with some Indian friends, 
 and had dismounted to stalk, leading my pet horse 
 by the bridle. My eyes were on a small chaparro 
 bush ahead, when suddenly Alazan snorted, and 
 reared backward so violently as almost to unhinge 
 my arm. I looked about in surprise, for Alazan 
 was too good a horse to mind trifles. As there 
 was nothing to be seen, I started to pull him for 
 ward. Again he protested and with evident terror, 
 and, chancing to look at my very feet, I under 
 stood his fear, and felt very grateful that his senses 
 were better than mine, for in another step I should 
 have walked upon my death. 
 
 The only thing visible was a tiny object, not 
 nearly so large as a good stag-beetle merely a 
 head, and perhaps an inch of neck. But it was 
 the most frightful object in its kind that I had 
 ever seen. The head, certainly neither so broad 
 nor so long as my thumb-nail, had a shape and an 
 air of condensed malignity impossible to describe. 
 
194 OUR WORST SNAKE 
 
 It seemed the very essence of wickedness and hate, 
 fairly bulging with deadly spite, and growing upon 
 one until it looked several times its actual size. 
 The ugly triangle (which is the distinguishing 
 mark of all venomous snakes, being formed by the 
 poison gland back of each eye) told me at once 
 that Alazan was keeping up his reputation 
 never did he shy at a harmless snake and the 
 tiny horns, which added a peculiar and grotesque 
 hideousness, left no doubt that this was a pichu- 
 cuate. He had buried himself almost to the head 
 in the gray sand, against which his upper skin was 
 barely distinguishable, and thus in ambush was 
 waiting for something to turn up. 
 
 Turning Alazan loose, I knelt at the safe dis 
 tance of a yard to study the little creature, which 
 fairly swelled with murderous rage. It not only 
 struck madly at the chaparro switch I thrust out 
 to it, but at last, evidently discerning that the 
 blame lay back of the switch, actually followed 
 it up, and with such agility that I had to jump up 
 and back without loss of time. The idea of re 
 treat never seemed to enter that flat head. Some 
 times he would lie and puff out with impotent rage, 
 throwing his mouth so wide open that it seemed 
 the venom must start, and sometimes he glided 
 toward me, his head an inch above the ground, 
 with an attitude which seemed to say, "Stand 
 still there, and we ll see who laughs ! " 
 
 At last I killed him. He was neither larger 
 
OUR WORST SNAKE 195 
 
 round nor longer than an ordinary lead-pencil ; a 
 cold, leaden gray on the back, but underneath 
 rosy as the mouth of a conch shell. The fangs 
 were tiny, not much more than an eighth of an 
 inch long, and as delicate as the tiniest needle. 
 A wondrous mechanism, this mouth, with its two 
 automatic needles, so infinitesimal, yet so perfectly 
 competent ! I opened the ugly little jaws wide, 
 pressing upon the sides of the head ; and when 
 the recurving fangs had risen from their grooves 
 in the roof of the mouth, and stood tense, a stream 
 so inconceivably fine that the eye could barely note 
 it spurted from each, and in the space of two or 
 three inches melted into invisible spray. Yet that 
 jet, finer than a cobweb strand, was enough to give 
 swift death to the largest and strongest animal 
 that walks. 
 
 When the hunt was over, I told my Indian 
 chums of the pichu-cuate, and asked them many 
 questions. They all knew of the snake, though 
 several had never seen one, and all agreed that it 
 is extremely rare. The crotalus ranks among the 
 Pueblo divinities, and their charmers have no dif 
 ficulty with that steady-going and respectable rep 
 tile. But even among these people, with whom 
 the cult of the rattlesnake has such astounding 
 features, and where, until recent years, every Pue 
 blo village kept a sacred rattlesnake in a sacred 
 room, with special priests to attend him, the vil 
 lainous little sand viper is accursed. Even those 
 
196 OUR WORST SNAKE 
 
 who have " the power of the snakes " can do noth 
 ing with him. He scorns to be tamed, even by 
 the dropping upon his head of the mystic pollen 
 of the corn-blossom. 
 
 And he was more dangerous than the rattle 
 snake ? Oh, yes ! A thousand times worse than 
 Ch a-ra-ra-deh ! No one ever got well if the 
 pichu-cuate bit him. Even a medicine man once, 
 who knew all the sacred herbs, and so was 
 proof against snakes, brought a pichu-cuate in 
 his blanket to the pueblo to tame it. But when 
 he let it out upon the floor and sang to it, and 
 went to take it up, it struck him in the wrist, and 
 he fell down and died in the time one could count 
 fifty. All remembered, too, the fate of Cruz 
 Abeita, a young man who had gone out to the 
 llano to herd cattle. Clearly, he had seen a rabbit 
 run down its burrow, and had tried to get it out 
 with a switch, for when they found him he was 
 lying there, terribly swollen and black, with his 
 arm still down in the hole ; and in his other hand, 
 clenched with the grip of the dead, was a crushed 
 pichu-cuate. Hidden in the sand, it had struck 
 him in the face while he was reaching after the 
 rabbit, and both had died together. They had 
 heard of other cases (and so have I) of the bite of 
 the American asp, and always with fatal results. 
 
 " No ! But there was a man, and he is the only 
 one that was ever struck by Pichu-cuate with 
 out dying," said Francisco. "And he was a 
 
OUR WORST SNAKE 197 
 
 Moqui that I knew. He is of the snake-men 
 there, who make the rattlesnake dance, so he has 
 the power of the snakes. But it was not for this 
 that he escaped ; and though he lives, he can no 
 longer weave he who was before one of the best 
 mania weavers of the People of Peace. 
 
 " He chanced to be coming one day from Ohua- 
 tu-e, and, sitting down in the desert to rest, put 
 his hand back, and felt himself struck in the 
 knuckles. Thinking it to be a rattlesnake, he 
 rose and turned to charm it, but when he saw it 
 was Pichu-cuate, against which even the mdh-que- 
 beh is no remedy, he took his hunting-knife like 
 lightning and chopped off his right hand at the 
 wrist, afterward killing the snake. And for many 
 weeks we looked for him to die. Since then he 
 can no longer charm even the rattlesnakes, for 
 when he sees any snake his heart dies in him, and 
 the snake, beholding that he is afraid, will not 
 obey him, but always fights. Ay ! such is Pichu- 
 cuate ! Buena suerte that yonder one pricked you 
 not ! " 
 
 And I heartily agreed with Francisco. 
 
KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
KELLEY S GKOUND-SLUICE 
 
 How the water sang down through the sluice- 
 boxes ! How it leaped, and rattled the pebbles 
 against the riffles, and kicked the scurrying sand 
 along, and rollicked and winked back at the brill 
 iant New Mexican sky, as if it knew very well the 
 golden secrets it was packing away on the upper 
 ledge of each riffle those yellow seeds of hap 
 piness or of ill that it had wheedled from their 
 hiding-places in the gloomy heart of the earth, and 
 now brought tumbling forth to meet their long- 
 forgotten sun-brother ! Truly, it was a very rich 
 little brook, this which the panting ram at the bot 
 tom of the great well in the canon lifted to the light 
 through the big pipes, and which ran but a mile to 
 lose itself in the thirsty sands of the Tuerto arroyo. 
 Many a mighty river scours the stingy soil for 
 thousands of miles, and, after all, pockets less of 
 that golden plaything which all the world is never 
 done with chasing, than had this short, artificial 
 rivulet in an arid land. And it never seemed to 
 mind a bit that nearly all its short life was between 
 rough, high banks that would not let it aside 
 the banks of the great Tuerto placers of auriferous 
 
 201 
 
202 KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
 gravel. Nay, it laughed and danced in the sun 
 light as merrily as any unprisoned brooklet of 
 them all. 
 
 At the upper end of the quarter-mile trough of 
 sluice-boxes, half a dozen shaggy men were work 
 ing at the bottom of the deep ravine. There the 
 brook came tumbling heels over head down the 
 thirty-foot bank, shouting as it fell, splashing 
 the men to their very hats as they stood knee- 
 deep in the foaming current, gnawing busily at 
 the hard-packed gravel, washing clean the big 
 boulders which the men pried out, and then run 
 ning away down the sluices with its precious find. 
 There was not a lazy drop in it. From morning 
 to morning again, the whole year through, it was 
 always at work ; and already, though but two 
 years old, it had eaten out such a great mouthful 
 of the long gravel slope of the New Placers that 
 all the way from the Sandias one could see the 
 scar a wild gully more than half a mile long, 
 and almost wide enough and deep enough to have 
 swallowed a street of city houses. By night and 
 on Sundays the brook had to feed itself, and made 
 but a small bite into that great bank ; but at other 
 times the men were there to feed it with pick 
 and crowbar loosening the gravel, and prying out 
 the big rocks, so that by close of day it had eaten 
 back and back into the hill so far that a new 
 twelve-foot sluice could be added at the head 
 of the old ones. That was certainly a good 
 
KELLEY S GKOUND-SLUICE 203 
 
 day s work for a stream so small that it all ran 
 through a wooden trough only sixteen inches wide 
 and a foot deep carrying off daily forty or fifty 
 tons of gravel, to scatter it miles down the hill ; 
 besides picking out from it, and hiding in its own 
 pockets, every particle of gold. And when the 
 men had gone away for the night, the brook still 
 kept pushing the grumbling pebbles down through 
 the sluice, and chewed away at the bank as hard 
 as ever it could, and chuckled away through the 
 dark hours over every yellow grain it gathered. 
 
 But to-day the brook had a notion that all was 
 not well. In the first place, Kelley was not there 
 huge, shuffling, big-hearted Kelley, with whom 
 the brook felt a sort of partnership to watch the 
 men, and throw in the daily charge of quicksilver 
 which was such a help in arresting such of the 
 smallest golden truants as tried to escape the riffles. 
 And the men were not working very hard, but 
 half the time left the brook to feed itself while 
 they put their mouths to each others ears and said 
 things which the brook could hardly hear for its 
 own noise. They were a new set, with whom it 
 did not feel acquainted. There had been big 
 " strikes " at the mines of San Pedro, and all the 
 old " boys " had turned from Kelley s wages to 
 look for a fortune with one turn of the pick ; so 
 he had to hire whom he could. They were a 
 rough, hard-looking crew ; and the brook did not 
 half like their faces and still less the scraps of 
 
204 KELLEY S GEOUND-SLUICE 
 
 their talk which it caught now and then: " in 
 Santa Fe . . . , won t be back before Saturday 
 night . . . lots of stuff . . . knock off and sneak 
 a clean-up he ll never know." 
 
 That is what the brook heard ; and what a very 
 small and very ragged boy, who sat at the edge 
 of the bank dabbling his bare feet in the water 
 just where it jumped out to the pit below, heard 
 also. The men paid no attention to Vicente he 
 was part of Kelley s ground-sluice. He had been 
 there when they came, and always since, trotting 
 at Kelley s heels from well to sluice-box, or playing 
 with the brook, which was a great friend of his. 
 He had come to regard the rito almost as a person; 
 to talk to it confidentially in soft Spanish, and to 
 read its thoughts very much as we have been do 
 ing. He was always there to watch the clean-up 
 which came every two weeks : when the brook 
 was shut up awhile in its reservoir, and the rocks 
 and the pebbles were cleaned out of the sluice- 
 boxes, and then the finer sand and gravel behind 
 hundreds of riffles was carefully scraped out to be 
 run through a " rocker " and then " panned " for its 
 golden contents and Vicente was never so 
 happy as when he could help at this. He could 
 rocker or pan as well as any of them, and it was 
 such fun to run down the little yellow fugitives in 
 that golden hide-and-seek at the bottom of the 
 gold-pan ! Kelley always gave him a little nugget 
 then, to carry home to the little adobe cabin where 
 
KELLEY S GROUND- stiiW^ 205 
 
 old Juan lay always groaning and the nana was 
 always tired and pale ; and once he had given him 
 a riffle to clean up, and keep all he found behind 
 it which kept the poor cabin in flour and beans 
 for many a grateful day. 
 
 No, the men did not mind Vicente ; they would 
 as soon have thought of fearing his playmate, the 
 brook. He was too little to notice them ; and if 
 he did bah ! he would never dare tell ! 
 
 But Vicente did notice them ; and when he had 
 heard so much he pulled his feet out of the brook 
 and was going to run to Golden. But on the 
 frontier, wits grow sharp very early ; and in a 
 moment he put his toes back in the water and sat 
 thinking very hard, and with a queer shade in his 
 dark young face. 
 
 " Then they are to rob the patr6n" he whispered 
 softly to the noisy brook. " Already it makes two 
 weeks since the clean-up, and there will be three 
 or four thousand pesos [dollars] of gold in the 
 boxes for so much the patrtin always gets. But 
 what shall we do, friend rito ? For if I tell it in 
 Golden, there be some wickeds who would say I 
 told, and then they would kill me. And of the 
 good there are none at home. But I cannot go to 
 warn the patrtin, for he is in Santa Fe, and comes 
 not until Saturday, and now we are only at Thurs 
 day. But wait me, till I come where it is better to 
 speak to thee ! " 
 
 Vicente slowly got up, whistling the merry 
 
206 KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
 folk-song of "The Young Old Man," to saunter 
 leisurely along the bank, with a careless word to 
 the men. He looked down awhile at the sluice- 
 boxes in the bottom of the ravine, and then turned 
 away toward home. But as soon as he was away 
 from the edge of the bank, and out of sight of the 
 men, he turned toward the hill and ran until he 
 came to the reservoir. There he threw himself 
 on the ground beside the trench into which the 
 brook was pouring from the pipe, and began 
 to pat the hurrying current with a brown little 
 fist. 
 
 " Oiga, friend brook ! what shall I do to stop 
 those ladrones? Come, tell me, for I know not. 
 There is none to help me but thou, for many are 
 hungry for the gold of the patrtin. If only In 
 truth ! Thou art the one ! How shall they make 
 the clean-up without water? Ail So we will 
 make them to be laughed at ! " And Vicente got 
 upon his feet and danced and showed his white 
 teeth at the brook, which smiled back at him as it 
 hurried down to where the men were. 
 
 They had stopped working altogether now, 
 though it was not nearly night, and were talk 
 ing earnestly. "We ll shut off the water this 
 evenin ," said a fellow with a great knife-scar 
 across his face, who seemed to be the leader, 
 " an clean up all night. We can get the dirt all 
 through the rockers by daylight ; an then we 
 can pan out in a couple o hours, .an go to work 
 
EELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 207 
 
 sluicin again as if nothin d happened. But 
 won t the OF Man make a roar when he takes a 
 clean-up Monday, an finds her short ? But then, 
 he cain t prove nothin , and we ll have the stuff 
 hid away where he don t never find it. An if he 
 does make a fuss, it s easy to set him quiet ; " and 
 the ruffian significantly touched the heavy knife 
 in his belt. 
 
 The ragged Mexican lad was still dancing be 
 side the brook when he saw one of the men climb 
 ing out of the arroyo and coming toward him. 
 The fellow evidently saw his antics, and Vicente, 
 with an affected unconcern which would have 
 tried an older diplomat, kept up his jig. The 
 man passed him surlily, and shut down the "gate" 
 which let the brook out from the reservoir. 
 
 "Wot are yo dancin for, yo little beggar?" 
 he asked gruffly, as he was going back to the 
 sluices. " Pears like yo re mighty contento over 
 something." 
 
 " I was dancing with the brook," said the boy, 
 coolly, "for we are amigos. But now you have 
 stopped us." 
 
 " Wai," said the man, " we re tired, n we How 
 to quit work early to-night. An mind ! Ef yo 
 say anything to the boss, I ll throw yo down the 
 well! Savvy?" 
 
 When he was gone, Vicente sat down by the 
 trench again to think ; but the brook was no 
 longer there, and the still water in the reservoir 
 
208 KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
 was no company. Presently he arose and strolled 
 over the eastern ridge and down into the mouth 
 of the canon to the well. No one was about. 
 The rough shed was very lonely and still, save for 
 the low chug ! chug ! chug ! of the hydraulic ram, 
 away down in the bowels of the earth. Vicente 
 sat down on a boulder which was inside the shed, 
 and listened to the slow, monotonous pant of the 
 machine. To balk the robbers, there were two 
 things he must do empty the reservoir, and stop 
 the ram. But older heads might well have hesi 
 tated at either undertaking. To get at the ma 
 chine he must go down three hundred feet into 
 that dreadful well, darker than midnight, by a 
 slippery, perpendicular ladder. Luckily, he knew 
 what to do when he got there. He had seen the 
 ram when it came from the far-off railroad ; 
 and kindly Kelley, finding the boy interested in 
 mechanics, had taken the little giant of an engine 
 to pieces, and put it together again for him, ex 
 plaining all its mysteries. As to the reservoir, 
 there was a four-foot bank to dig through ; since 
 there was no waste-way, and he dared not open 
 the sluice-gate, for even the brook could not then 
 help hurrying down to tell the robbers what he 
 was doing. But if he could dig through the em 
 bankment on the south side, the water would run 
 off through another arroyo, and never go near 
 them at all. And if they should happen to come 
 up to the reservoir to turn their water into the 
 
EELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 209 
 
 sluices for their rockering and panning before he 
 was done ? 
 
 Vicente t shivered, and went out to look at the 
 sun. It was almost down to the dark whaleback 
 of the Sandias. In half an hour it would be dark 
 enough to work at the reservoir. But first, the 
 ram. He set an old, long-handled miner s shovel 
 against the wall of the shed, where he could find 
 it in the dark, and went to the edge of the well. 
 
 How deep and black it was ! His young knees 
 almost knocked together, so tremulous were they. 
 But he never thought of drawing back ; and there 
 was no time to lose. With a stifled gasp, and a 
 whispered prayer to the Saint-Mother, he grasped 
 the top round of the ladder, which was level with 
 the curb, and began to back down cautiously but 
 swiftly. How slippery the old rounds were ! 
 How dark and damp the well ! Down, down, 
 down, with the nervous fingers clutching the 
 slimy wood so hard it numbed them, and chilled 
 bare feet slipping and clinging to their treacher 
 ous hold. The darkness crowded closer about him 
 the little round light overhead grew smaller 
 and smaller. The wrench he had tied to his belt 
 bumped cruelly against elbow and knee. Would 
 he never come to the bottom ? He began to fear 
 not. It seemed that his tired body could hold on 
 no longer that he must give up, after all, and 
 fall to death. And then, as he put down his cold 
 foot once more, it touched colder water, and he 
 
210 KELLET S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
 drew back with a shiver. But he would not give 
 up now ; and mustering all his courage, with a 
 long breath, he clung to the lower round and let 
 himself slowly down into the water. Was it too 
 deep? Would he drown there in that awful 
 abyss ? He did not know. He could not let him 
 self much deeper into that deadly chill, which 
 was already at his waist. But at last he felt the 
 gravel with his bare toes ; and, gasping for breath, 
 let go the ladder, and unfastened the wrench. 
 
 The spark of daylight above now seemed no 
 bigger around than the tip of his own slender 
 finger, and it was fast growing dimmer. It did 
 not light up his prison in the least, and he was 
 in utter night. The water was very deep to work 
 in. He was wet all through, and his teeth chat 
 tered with the chill ; but he fumbled away in the 
 water with his wrench. There was one nut off, 
 and then another and another ; and at last, with a 
 glad cry, he straightened up. The valves were in 
 his hand and the pump had stopped. 
 
 Tying the wrench to his waist again, bestowing 
 the disconnected parts in his tattered pockets, he 
 found the ladder and began the grim ascent to the 
 world. His daylight hole was quite dark now, and 
 he had not even that to cheer him. But chilled 
 and wet and trembling, he climbed on and on ; 
 and at last he felt the dear fresh air again, and 
 stumbled over the coping into the shed. 
 
 For a long time he lay there shivering with 
 
KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 211 
 
 cold but too weak to get up. Surely he would 
 not be able to dig through that great bank of the 
 reservoir to-night. It would be the work of a 
 strong man for hours. Ah ! But quizd he could 
 blow it up! He knew where there were giant- 
 powder cartridges and fuse in the tool-house ; 
 and, born and bred in a mining camp, he knew 
 how to use them, for he had seen nearly every 
 " shot " fired in Golden in the last five years. 
 
 The thought gave him new strength. In five 
 minutes he was stumbling in the dark toward 
 the reservoir, carrying the deadly cylinder in his 
 right hand, and with a long roll of fuse around 
 his neck, while in his left hand he carried the 
 shovel. He dug a deep, round hole well into 
 the bottom of the embankment, laid the cartridge 
 gently therein, with the fuse attached, and then 
 filled the hole with earth, which he tamped and 
 rammed with the shovel-handle. Then he drew 
 the long fuse down a little gully, and built a 
 ridge beside it where it entered the ground, that 
 the robbers might not see its fiery trail if they 
 came too soon. Drawing from his pocket old 
 Juan s flint and steel, which he always carried, 
 he found a bit of dry cedar-bark in place of his 
 wet tinder, struck a spark into it and fanned it 
 with his breath till it was a spreading coal, and 
 put it to the end of the fuse ; and then, trembling 
 more than ever, went running over the hill away 
 from the placers and from Golden. 
 
212 EELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 
 
 The six conspirators, hard at work on the sluice- 
 boxes, had thrown out all the rocks from the up 
 per half where most of the coarse gold would 
 be found and were scraping the sand from the 
 riffles into buckets, which they emptied into the 
 screens of the rockers. The gray of dawn was 
 already spreading behind the Delgado hill. 
 
 " Say, yo Pete," said the leader, " go an turn 
 on the water. By the time we kin git this rock- 
 ered out, it ll be light enough to pan, an we ve 
 got to hump, fur ef anybody shud light on " 
 
 Boom! There was a fearful roar that shook 
 the rocks from the arroyo banks rattling down 
 upon them; and, a couple of seconds later, a 
 shower of fine earth fell from the very sky. The 
 robbers scrambled up the bank in consternation. 
 
 "Et s from the reservoir," cried one, and they 
 all ran thither. The tiny lake was empty, and 
 on the south side was a great, ragged gap in the 
 embankment, below which stretched the long, 
 deep gully which the water had torn out in its 
 mad rush. 
 
 "Et s all up! " shouted the scar-faced desperado 
 furiously. " Somebody s onto our game, an they ve 
 let us out. No water in three mile ! An the 
 wust is, the feller ll blow an we ll be ketched. 
 We got to git! Every man fur himself, an don t 
 let sun-up find yo in ten miles o yere ! " 
 
 Two days later when Kelley s buckskin pony 
 
KELLEY S GROUND-SLUICE 213 
 
 came loping with him into Dolores, there was 
 Vicente, raggeder than ever, awaiting him. 
 
 " What in the world be yo a-doin here, pard ? " 
 asked the good-natured giant, stooping to swing 
 Vicente into the saddle in front of him. 
 
 " They were to rob you, senor, but the brook 
 and I would not let them; " and the boy told his 
 story very simply. 
 
 " By the Big Nugget! But we ll see ! Come on 
 cain t leave yo here nohow. They might find 
 yo ." And Kelley struck spurs to the buckskin, 
 and away they went. 
 
 There was the deserted ground-sluice, and the 
 broken reservoir; and from under a sprawling 
 cedar Vicente dragged forth the parts he had 
 taken from the ram. Kelley s brow was very 
 black when he saw the rockers full of fresh 
 gravel and half the sluice-boxes stripped; but 
 when he had looked at it all in silence, he put his 
 huge hand on the lad s head and said: 
 
 "By the Big Nugget, little pard! But yo re 
 gold all through! I tell yo I hain t got chick 
 nor child, and yo re folks hez more youngsters n 
 they can feed. Ef they ll say the word, I ll take 
 yo for mine, and the even half of this clean-up I ll 
 put in the bank at Santa Fe for yo r own! " 
 
 The parents did " say the word," very gratefully; 
 and I presume that is the reason why in his maturer 
 years Vicente is still generally know as " Kelley s 
 Chick." 
 
THE OLD SHARPS 
 
THE OLD SHARPS 
 
 THAT rifle ? No, I hardly think it would look 
 so well in your collection of firearms as it does in 
 mine. Yours is doubtless more extensive, but 
 every piece here has a history and all personal 
 to me, except yonder wonderful piece of Eibar 
 work of gold on steel. It was made, as you can 
 see by its ancient legend in gold, for a descend 
 ant of the man who discovered the Mississippi, 
 Hernando de Soto. You might as well try to 
 buy it as this modern arm you are handling. 
 
 What? You have a $10,000 collection of fire 
 arms and you ask " what make is this ? " Don t 
 you really think a man might get more pleasure 
 out of his hobby if he had a little more knowl 
 edge of it than he can buy from the curio 
 dealers? That, sir, is the Sharpe s "buffalo 
 gun." Twenty pounds weight, .50 caliber a 
 full half -inch, you know, yet the bore looks like 
 a pea-shooter in that mass of metal. Shoots 550 
 grains of lead and 125 of powder. Oh, " you ve 
 heard of it ? " I should sincerely hope you had. 
 It s a dozen years or more since they ceased to 
 be made, but even an amateur should know the 
 
 217 
 
218 THE OLD SHARPS 
 
 best hunter s guns that ever were made the 
 old Sharpe barrels. And these were the best of 
 the Sharpes. Shoot? Well, what do you pre 
 sume a man packs twenty pounds of gun-metal 
 over the mountains for? 
 
 Really, now, we dislike to be impolite, here on 
 the frontier ; but you will kindly not talk maga 
 zine gun in this particular adobe. Those reservoir 
 pop-guns are good playthings and handy to carry, 
 and not bad when it comes to an Apache rush. 
 But for real marksmanship well, how do you 
 imagine you re going to shoot when your gun 
 changes weight every time you pull trigger? Hit 
 a flock of barns flying low, very likely. But how 
 about driving nails at one hundred yards, and 
 dropping antelope at one thousand? 
 
 Did you ever figure out how the hunter s need 
 is exactly the reverse of the soldier s ? Hm ! In 
 my small collecting I have found the best part of 
 it was that it gave me a chance to learn something 
 more than price-lists. 
 
 Well, in war the object is not to kill, but to 
 wound. A dead man is one off the field ; a 
 wounded man is two off since he has to be 
 carried away and attended to. That is why the 
 armies of the world are coming nowadays to small 
 calibers (about. 30), great penetration, and "clean 
 wounds." 
 
 But the hunter wants to "kill dead." For 
 ordinary game he must, or lose the profit ; for 
 
THE OLD SHARPS 219 
 
 extraordinary game he must, or lose his life. 
 He needs a weapon which gives the greatest 
 "surgical shock." Only big lead will do. I 
 have shot a mule deer through the heart with a 
 44-70 Winchester, and lost him in the brush. He 
 ran only one hundred yards ; but just there, that 
 was far enough. But with this old piece I ll 
 wager my head against a split shell that I can 
 hit a wild steer in the hoof, and he will lie down 
 there until I can come and sit upon him. That s 
 the surgical shock. 
 
 Eh ? And pray why should I not know about 
 " surgical shock ? " What was your college ? 
 Mine was Harvard. "Doing out here in the 
 wilderness?" Why, if you must know liv 
 ing ! Also, trying to get an education the 
 plains are the last university, after all. 
 
 But never mind. You never saw shooting, ex 
 cept at targets ? Then you cannot imagine what 
 this chunk of lead, two inches long, really means 
 when it gets going. It is a roving little buzz-saw, 
 which needs no belting. The first time I ever 
 saw this gun was a good many years ago, up in 
 the edge of Colorado, when a crowd of robbers 
 tried to " clean out " Jack Frazier. The old man 
 took a crack at them at fifteen hundred yards and 
 I was close to their camp. The first ball struck 
 one of them halfway between shoulder and elbow. 
 I saw that arm drop to the ground ! Cut it off ? 
 As if you had taken a meat axe to it. I have 
 
220 THE OLD SHAEPE 
 
 beheaded a coyote with it myself at a thousand 
 yards. 
 
 But that is not why I feel rich enough to afford 
 this rifle better than you can. Frazier and I got 
 to be great partners after that, and hunted and 
 trapped together three years, over in the Tierra 
 Amarilla. It was the last year we were there 
 that made me feel I needed this particular gun in 
 my business ; and it was a cinnamon bear that 
 settled it. 
 
 Ye es, so they are. But any hunter out here 
 can tell you that the grizzly has to thank the 
 arm-chair naturalists for part of his reputation. 
 He is savage as any animal can be, and at close 
 quarters as dangerous. But he is not so large as 
 the cinnamon, no more ferocious, and not a tenth 
 part so knowing. He is merely a terrible brute 
 and it is a stupid man that can be fooled by 
 him. But the cinnamon why, he knows more 
 in a minute than a grizzly will know this side of 
 judgment. 
 
 No, there is no great story to it. I have seen 
 a dozen cases as convincing. But this special 
 case concerned me, you understand. Me, and 
 the gun. 
 
 Certainly, if you wish it. Jack and I were on 
 the Chama that spring. There were some beaver, 
 and plenty of everything else. We had made a 
 pretty decent log-cabin, and had the pelts up 
 in a sort of loft in it, on poles. About two 
 
THE OLD SHARPE 221 
 
 hundred beaver-skins were up there " skinned 
 round " you know, and stretched on willow hoops 
 and a good stack of ermine, blue fox, and the 
 like. Jack had killed a mountain sheep the day 
 before, and the meat hung inside the doorway, 
 for which we had no door except a blanket. We 
 were just turning out, that morning. Jack was 
 blowing up the embers, and I sitting up and 
 yawning when the blanket suddenly bellied 
 and a big, shaggy arm reached in. Our unloaded 
 guns leaned against the wall nearer to the door 
 than to us. Jack went up our crazy ladder in 
 a gray whisk and I wasn t much behind him. And 
 none too soon it was a month before that rake 
 on my heel was well enough to be comfortable. 
 
 It was not just an easy seat up there on the 
 alder poles ; but it felt mighty good when we 
 looked down. Mr. Bear gave the ladder a swipe 
 that smashed both uprights, and then reared his 
 best and tried to brush us down. I would say his 
 paw missed our perch by about three inches we 
 had to hold our feet out straight to keep them 
 clear of him. Tall ? Well, you could fairly call 
 him tall. He was the size of a fat steer, and his 
 hide measured eleven feet and one inch by the rule. 
 
 Finding that we roosted a little too high for 
 him, he dropped on all fours and began sniffing 
 around the room. He spluttered a good deal at 
 the fire, overturned the coffee-pot, and then sud 
 denly noticed the meat. 
 
222 THE OLD SHAEPE 
 
 " Dog your cats ! " growled Jack, when he saw 
 the fat quarters of wild mutton clawed down. 
 " Yo must reckon I clumb them three miles arter 
 thet yer bighorn fur fun ! Why don t yo go 
 ketch one yo r own self, yo ramshackle thief-in- 
 the-night? Do I look like I wuz contract huntin 
 to feed a cinnymon orphan asylum? " 
 
 It made me angry, too and I was younger 
 than Frazier. I wrenched a short pole out of the 
 loft, leaned down, and gave bruin a stiff jab on the 
 ribs. The pole end was a clean cut of the axe, and 
 therefore tolerably sharp. And though it did not 
 really scratch him, of course, the hint was pointed 
 enough to be irritating. He gave a great snort 
 and whopped the pole out of my hands with so 
 swift and resistless a cuff that I very nearly fol 
 lowed it. Jack caught me back just in time to 
 get my swinging head up before the bear was up 
 and trying to reach us again. 
 
 Any one would have been mad by then, and 
 maybe I ve a little more hair-trigger in my tem 
 per than the law requires. I drew my hunting- 
 knife, leaned forward, and fetched the enemy one 
 across the nose. Just the point reached, and it 
 only severed a nostril for him. 
 
 " Yo free-milling ijjit ! " cried Jack, catching 
 me by the arm. " Don t yo know enough to fall 
 off the back end of a pack-mule ? He ain t never 
 goin to forgive yo for thet. Ef he don t play 
 quits, yo can call me a coffee-cooler ! Ef he wuz 
 
THE OLD SHARPE 223 
 
 a grizzly, now, he d just try to rip the cabin down, 
 and when he found he couldn t he d quit. But 
 cinnymon youngster, yo re shore goin to reckon 
 for this." 
 
 The bear ramped up and down and slammed the 
 guns around and cuffed the fireplace empty and 
 made rags of the beds and the door-blanket. Then 
 he bolted out on a sudden, never stopping at the 
 meat even long enough to say " this mouth is 
 mine." I started to jump down and grab my gun, 
 but Jack snapped : 
 
 " Hold yo r hosses ! Yo cain t seem to get yo r 
 mind sot thet this yer s a cinnymon ! They re 
 plumb ba-ad ! " 
 
 " Don t be a granny ! " I retorted. " Let me 
 get that gun once, and if he s a whole South Park 
 of cinnamons he s welcome ! " and I ducked over 
 the poles we sat on before Jack could stop me. 
 But ere my legs were fairly a-swing, there was a 
 scuffle and rush. Luckily my arms were still so 
 far bent as to have their best spring. I caught 
 up the downward motion, did a short-arm swing 
 up over the " bar," and lay there on my stomach 
 across the pole, looking down almost nose-to-nose 
 with the bear. 
 
 Well, it was high noon before the brute was so 
 certainly gone that we ventured down from our 
 cramped perch. We snatched up our guns, and 
 each threw in a cartridge. We sneaked to the 
 door. No sound. We sneaked out. Nothing in 
 
224 THE OLD SHARPE 
 
 sight but an impudent magpie that cocked his 
 head at us. The ground was still wet from a 
 light snow ; and from the maze of tracks around 
 the door we saw a trail leading off down the 
 hill. Each footprint was longer than my foot 
 and twice as wide and mine are not exactly 
 lady s feet. 
 
 " I like a fool ! " grumbled Frazier, looking at 
 the cabin, "but our years [ears] are sort o over 
 long. I d druther the wuz a door to this yer 
 shack." 
 
 " Door nothing ! " said I, crossly. " When I 
 get back, we won t need any door for that beast 
 of Bashan ! " 
 
 Jack glowered at me under his shaggy brows. 
 
 " Et ain t no skin off n my shins," he said slowly, 
 44 but I wisht yo d not foller him. He ll shore 
 bushwhack yo ." 
 
 But I was keen for the marauder s scalp, and off 
 I went, while Jack shouldered " Old Buff " and 
 started away to the beaver traps. 
 
 The tracks led off to the southeast, toward a 
 pinon-furred hill. I noted that they did not loiter, 
 as I expected bruin had gone straight and rather 
 swiftly, as if on an errand. I trailed him over the 
 swales three or four miles in fact, clear around 
 the end of the hill. Now the tracks made off 
 northwest again. Curious ! Only once or twice 
 had he stopped at all, and then only as if to think 
 for he had not stepped aside from his course. 
 
THE OLD SHAEPE 225 
 
 My perplexity grew; and when, from the last 
 ridge, the trail led straight down to the cabin, a 
 little uneasiness came over me. It was uncanny 
 for the brute to have come back so never had I 
 known a bear to do such a thing. And Frazier s 
 warning about the viiidictiveness of a cinnamon 
 began to seem more real. 
 
 No, the bear was not in the cabin when I stole 
 down with rifle at a ready. But he had been 
 there. The beds were absolutely shredded to 
 pieces, the coffee-pot and frying-pan battered out 
 of recognition ; our crude, massive table of hewn 
 logs was simply smashed. What a grudge the 
 monster had brought with him ! That mute evi 
 dence of his vindictiveness and his power really 
 awed me more than his most furious presence 
 could have done. 
 
 But in the absence of the chief objects of his 
 spite he had not stayed long ; and there were his 
 tracks leading off down the hill southwestwardly 
 to where the rains had gullied back into the 
 slope. Down into the wash the trail plumped; 
 and down I went on it. 
 
 For several hundred yards the ravine ran in 
 plain sight from the cabin, always growing deeper. 
 Where it turned toward the western hills, it was, 
 maybe, fifteen feet deep, and still so narrow that 
 a first-class jumper might have cleared it. The 
 trail was so clear any one might have followed 
 it by night ; not exactly footprints, of course, on 
 Q 
 
226 THE OLD SHARPE 
 
 the damp sand, but where those great feet had 
 patted was sign enough. 
 
 " Wonder if he holes-up in the canon ? " I was 
 thinking. The " draw " led to a deep, wild gorge 
 so choked with brush that we had never explored 
 it. 
 
 Just then I heard a faint, faint whisper. You 
 would not have heard it neither would I, be 
 fore my ear took a post-graduate course and 
 learned to know when a caterpillar crossed dry 
 leaves within a rod. I wheeled instantly, for a 
 creepy feeling came in me at that vague breath. 
 Ah, it was merely a handful of sand slipping 
 down the north bank but at the top of the 
 sand was a great yellow-brown paw, and above 
 that a vast head peering around a greasewood. 
 I noticed in that swift, photographic flash that 
 the beast was lying flat, and also saw a thick 
 red clot pendant on the gray muzzle. 
 
 He saw he was seen, and with no more attempt 
 at concealment plunged down the bank like an 
 avalanche. Clumsy ? Yes, a bear is the clumsiest 
 wild animal in North America. He moves rather 
 as if he had no bones. But do not deceive your 
 self with thinking it takes him long to be clumsy. 
 Before I could jerk the rifle to my shoulder he had 
 ploughed down the steep bank, heels over head, I 
 should say, found his feet, and started for me at five 
 yards away. 
 
 A rifle in hand I count just as good as a stone 
 
THE OLD SHAEPE 227 
 
 wall between us if the father of all bears were 
 after me ; and I waited. At two yards he half 
 reared, to get in boxing attitude ; for a bear always 
 cuffs if he can. His broad throat was in sight 
 at last and the ivory " bead " drawn squarely on 
 its centre, when I pulled the trigger. But there 
 was no report and all the confidence of habit fell 
 off me like a husk. For the first time in my life 
 I was a whole coward. Not that I am brave any 
 how, but custom serves very well for courage. But 
 now I felt suddenly faint, and the ebbing blood 
 began to tingle in my scalp. The brute seemed 
 to me to understand and to grin a ghastly grin as 
 he shuffled nearer. Then the blood and anger 
 leaped up in my veins again and I went from cow 
 ard to maniac. Swinging the heavy rifle above 
 my head, I dashed it in his face with a wild 
 " N-r-r-r ! " of rage. It smote him squarely 
 upon the muzzle and he fairly shrieked and stag 
 gered with pain, and leaped forward and reared a 
 head above me, and I saw the flexion of that huge 
 forearm as it drew back for the blow. 
 
 Then there was a far yell oh, how far and 
 unreal it seemed! Away up at the bend I saw 
 something that ran and stopped and flung towards 
 us a little puff of white ; and there was the blessed 
 boo-oor-r-r that nothing but a " Sharpe s buffalo " 
 ever made ; and a curious tap as upon a wet drum. 
 I have asked a hundred men, who know the taste 
 of a bullet, if they heard it strike ; and all say they 
 
228 THE OLD 8HARPE 
 
 don t remember, except one, and he declares a spent 
 ball struck his thigh once and he heard it strike, 
 /have, at any rate a small ball on my ribs ; and 
 the sound at first was the only way I knew I was 
 hurt. 
 
 But this time the pat was not on me. A great 
 jet of something dark and warm spurted out as if 
 from a hydrant, and drenched and blinded me. I 
 staggered and fell forward not upon the ground, 
 but across a great furry mound that heaved feebly 
 a few times and was still. 
 
 Eh ? Why, simply this. Frazier got back from 
 his traps, found the bear had been to the cabin and 
 gone, and that I was still on the trail, and like the 
 clear-headed woodsman he was, had concluded that 
 he had better take the road too. 
 
 The bear had set me a nice trail down the ra 
 vine for half a mile. Then he had clambered out, 
 sneaked back a short distance, and set his am 
 bush at the top of the bank. His ruse had suc 
 ceeded perfectly. Even if my rifle had not failed 
 (we found the firing-pin sprung by his rough treat 
 ment of it in the cabin), he would undoubtedly 
 have killed me before dying himself. 
 
 When I was a little "freshed up," we paced 
 from the body to the marks where Frazier had 
 dropped to one knee and fired. Four hundred 
 yards. He had made the one possible shot that 
 could do me any good. That whirling mass of 
 lead had struck the bear s neck a little " quarter- 
 
SWINGING THE HEAVY RIFLE ABOVE MY HEAD, I DASHED IT IN HIS FACE 
 
THE OLD SHAEPE 229 
 
 ing," severed the spine and jugular and tunnelled 
 a hole through which I could thrust my arm. No 
 other rifle could have done it twenty Winchester 
 bullets would not have stopped him from me. And 
 though I have known nearly all the crack shots of 
 the Southwest, I do not believe any other man than 
 Jack Frazier could have done it. 
 
 Perhaps you understand now why you really 
 could not afford a buffalo gun for your collection 
 just at present. This was the only sweetheart 
 poor old Frazier ever had, and when he was 
 dying by a treacherous stab up at Alamosa, they 
 tell me the last words he said were : 
 
 " Give her to the Youngster, and tell him to 
 keer for her like he loved her." 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 " UGH ! " cried Dick ; " isn t it horrible to see a 
 man in that condition ? I should think he d want 
 to die ! What is he good for? " 
 
 The gentleman who hobbled past was not a 
 pleasant sight, truly. Paralysis had smitten down 
 one of his arms, and weighed upon a side of his 
 face, and he moved very unsteadily on his crutch. 
 But to me he was not horrible, and I answered 
 the last question only with : 
 
 " Well, that depends on what he thinks he is 
 good for." 
 
 But it set me to thinking, for tall and handsome 
 Dick was not the only one I had found with such 
 heresy in him. So few of us ever find out what 
 we really are "good for." And the outcome of 
 my thinking was that perhaps I might just as 
 well tell you the true story of my friend Will 
 or at least the outline of a few years of his varie 
 gated life. His experience has taught me more 
 than all the books I ever read ; and perhaps there 
 are others who can learn a little from it, too. 
 
 To begin with, he was the hardest-headed fel- 
 
234 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 low you ever saw ; maybe " mulish " would not 
 be too harsh a word. The trait brought him no 
 end of troubles, though it is only fair to add that 
 it generally got him out of them, too. His bull 
 dog persistence in having his own way used some 
 times to make me laugh ; but he was so dead in 
 earnest about everything that it was impossible to 
 laugh at him for long. 
 
 You see, I knew him better than any one else 
 did ; and, while our intimacy made it impossible 
 that I should not realize his faults, I was inclined 
 to be charitable to them, and perhaps also to over 
 estimate his virtues somewhat. 
 
 This great obstinacy of his was the first ele 
 ment in the curious true story I shall try to tell 
 you ; and a second was his physique, which was as 
 hard as his head. He was hardly five feet seven 
 inches, but sinewy and agile as a panther, and of 
 really extraordinary strength. All over his body 
 the knots and strands of muscle stood out like 
 whipcords. He never bragged of this ; but he 
 knew his strength, and was proud of it, and 
 gloried in it. 
 
 Of all the people I have ever known, no other 
 got so much comfort and quiet joy out of the 
 possession of a perfect body that answered every 
 call upon it. It had been sorely tried, too, in 
 hardships and dangers that never come near the 
 average life, and it had never failed him. More 
 than once aye, more than a score of times it 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 235 
 
 had wrenched him loose from the very clutch of 
 death. So it is not surprising that he had come 
 to look upon it with unlimited confidence. The 
 vanity of a woman s beauty is as nothing com 
 pared to the vanity of a man s strength. 
 
 At the time when the story begins, the obsti 
 nacy and the strength had an ample field. My 
 friend was then twenty-eight years old, in the 
 very perfection of health and vigor. He had 
 bought an interest in a young daily newspaper. 
 The small city in California where it was pub 
 lished was just beginning to "boom." Immigra 
 tion from the East had barely started in that 
 wonderful tide which swelled the population of 
 that town from twelve thousand to fifty thousand 
 in five years, and worked almost equal miracles in 
 all southern California. 
 
 With his partners, Will had a double ambition 
 to upbuild the town and the paper in the right 
 way. It was still rather a frontier city, and al 
 most entirely in the hands of the rougher element. 
 The saloons and gambling-houses had everything 
 their own way, and were so powerful that it was 
 deemed hopeless to oppose them. 
 
 My friend s daily pitched in by itself to fight 
 for a new order of things, and waged a relentless 
 war on lawlessness and wrong. It was an un 
 pleasant as well as an arduous three years, for 
 the conflict was unremitting and to the knife. 
 The lawless, so long in power, had no notion of 
 
236 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 yielding, and spared no pains to retaliate directly 
 upon the editors. 
 
 But the paper, besides being right, had more 
 " bull-dog " than its adversaries ; and municipal 
 and state election after election scored invariably 
 a new victory for the law and order party. Step 
 by hard-fought step the gambling-houses were 
 closed, the saloons repressed and restrained, the 
 most dangerous dives shut up, and, in a word, the 
 swift-growing city became noted far and wide for 
 its good government. 
 
 Of course, only an infinitesimal part of this was 
 my friend s .doing ; the votes that made such a 
 striking change were those of the sober, intelli 
 gent people who had been coming in to settle. 
 But it is probably fair to say that without a fear 
 less newspaper to lead off, the reforms could not 
 have been accomplished so soon ; and certainly 
 none of the voters had to do with the threats, 
 persecutions, and assaults, which were the con 
 stant share of the editors of the only paper which 
 cared to raise its voice. 
 
 This apparent straying from the story may give 
 you to understand how a hard-headed young man 
 with all his impulses in favor of decency and 
 maybe a little fondness for fighting in a good 
 cause would here become so interested as to 
 make violent efforts. The paper, too, was push 
 ing ahead ; its circulation swelled and its influ 
 ence grew stronger daily, since people found that 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 237 
 
 though it might be mistaken, it was never dis 
 honest nor cowardly. 
 
 For his share of these results Will had worked 
 like a Berserker. To him there was no day of 
 rest in the year, and four hours, at most, in the 
 twenty-four. He was up early, working at top 
 tension all day long, and nearly all through the 
 night. The last form had always gone down 
 stairs and the presses were roaring, before he 
 thought of leaving the office. He not only did 
 not ask, but would not allow, any of his reporters 
 to work one-half so hard. For months at a stretch 
 I have known him to work twenty-two hours a 
 day. 
 
 " What a fool ! " you will say, and quite rightly. 
 
 But it did not seem so to him. He was not 
 slaving for money a thing he never greatly 
 worshipped but working for love of his work. 
 And you must remember, too, that with such a 
 constitution he could do it ! He was never tired 
 never ! The months and the years did not 
 abate his energy, but rather seemed to add to it. 
 Other people broke down, but he 
 
 Three years went by. The paper was so far in 
 the lead that one of its presses alone would have 
 bought out the whole establishment of either of 
 its former rivals. 
 
 Now my friend had a curious hint. His left 
 forefinger "went to sleep" (as one s foot does) 
 and stayed so for a week. Then his legs, then 
 
238 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 his head, then his trunk, began to have the same 
 odd tingling numbness. But he took it rather as 
 a poor practical joke on him than as a matter to 
 think over. 
 
 Warnings had been showered on him for years 
 by his friends, by his many acquaintances among 
 the doctors, but one might just as well have talked 
 to a steel spring. He would laugh with good- 
 natured tolerance, and say : " Oh, yes, I know ; 
 but there are exceptions to every rule, and a con 
 stitution like mine thrives on it. I ve been at it 
 all these years, and never felt better in my life." 
 Then his chest would take its four-and-a-half inch 
 expansion, as if to prove his words. Even now, 
 when the telegraph editor said to him one night, 
 apropos of the " sleepy " finger : " Mr. Will, if you 
 don t let up, you are going to be paralyzed ! " my 
 friend looked at him in unfeigned admiration. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me, Bates," he cried im 
 petuously, knotting his left arm till the biceps 
 actually split the sleeve, " you mean to say that 
 when I tell this arm to do so and so it will disobey 
 me ? By heaven, I would like to see it ! " And 
 there was a glare in his eyes as if he would make 
 short work with such unheard-of mutiny. 
 
 A week later he did see it. 
 
 That strange numbness kept coming, at times 
 creeping so close about the heart that the strong 
 thumps seemed like to cease ; but he felt perfectly 
 well that evening, as he drew up to his own fire- 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 239 
 
 side for a moment after supper and suddenly 
 toppled to the floor. The next thing he knew he 
 was lying on the sofa, and a tearful face bent over 
 him. 
 
 "Take it off me! " he gasped, for he seemed to 
 be held down by a weight of tons. 
 
 There was only a sad shake of the head for 
 answer. 
 
 "But I will get up! " he cried, the old comba- 
 tiveness coming back to the dazed brain. 
 
 " Don t! " begged the watcher ; but he began to 
 heave and strain till the big veins knotted in his 
 forehead and throat and every muscle was rigid 
 as steel. 
 
 He had wrestled with the strongest men, he 
 had fought with main strength for his life, but 
 never before with so desperate an effort as now to 
 throw off a weight no one else could see. 
 
 After twenty minutes struggle he did get up, 
 weak and trembling, but victorious. 
 
 In a few moments his exultation fell at a 
 terrible discovery. His left arm had mutinied. 
 Struggle as he would he could not move a muscle 
 of it. 
 
 I leave it to you, with what you know of him, 
 whether it was a blow to this young athlete to 
 find himself paralyzed! The perfect body now 
 a wreck, the perfect health a broken dream, and 
 he a thing for people to point at pityingly. 
 
 But no one ever knew from him what he did 
 
240 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 feel. Even to me, his best friend, he said only, 
 "Ah, old boy, tough luck; no?" That first 
 glimpse I got of his face he was very pale, but 
 his lips were set, and there was more token of 
 fire than water in his eyes. 
 
 "Do! I ll go to the wilderness and live out 
 doors till I m well," he said; and off he packed 
 to New Mexico, though barely able to waddle. 
 " Medicine ? No, indeed ! My constitution is 
 doctor enough, if it has half a chance, and I ll 
 try to give it that now." 
 
 From first to last he refused all doses and treat 
 ment, which indicates that, despite that disaster 
 in the brain, the skull retained most of its hard 
 ness. 
 
 Some very lovely Spanish people in the terri 
 tory had been his friends for years, and now they 
 gladly welcomed him to their hacienda, a day s 
 ride from the railroad. They would have put 
 him to bed and nursed him, for he could scarcely 
 walk, and his speech was more or less affected ; 
 but that was not his notion of the necessary 
 treatment. "In bed," he has told me since, "I 
 couldn t have got away from myself, and that is 
 what I had to do, or go crazy." 
 
 Every morning he sallied out into the sage 
 brush to escape himself with hunting. I fear it 
 was a rather ludicrous sight, this tottering, wab 
 bly Nimrod, clumsily wielding the gun with one 
 hand, and missing far more rabbits than he killed, 
 
MY FEIEND WILL 241 
 
 and often dropping under a bush in sheer exhaus 
 tion. But no one laughed at it, except himself ; 
 indeed, I have seen friendly eyes turn misty on a 
 sudden, when he " guyed " himself about it. 
 
 As the weeks went on, he got further and further 
 from the house ; at first a few hundred yards wore 
 him out. Juan Rey and the other boys had more 
 and more jack-rabbits and cottontails to dress ; 
 Will was getting steadier on his legs, and already 
 could use the light shot-gun skilfully with his one 
 hand. He carried it on his shoulder, grasping it 
 at the guard and " throwing down," just as one 
 would a six-shooter. 
 
 His natural amusement would have been writ 
 ing, but now that was out of the question ; for on 
 the top of his brain there seemed to be an actual 
 iron floor, against which his thoughts bumped 
 their heads in vain. Sometimes it lifted a bit, 
 then it would sink, lower and heavier, till it seemed 
 about to crush out his very life. 
 
 So the evenings he passed with the family, play 
 ing quaint Spanish games, learning sweet Spanish 
 songs - and something of the Spanish heart which 
 he will never forget. If misfortune had taught 
 him but that one lesson of the brotherhood of man, 
 I am not sure it would not have been worth while ; 
 for I must say of my friend that before this he had 
 been very ignorant and bigoted in such things. 
 
 With March came " lambing-time," and Will 
 went up to the sheep-camps and lived that hard 
 
242 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 life for months, keeping the shepherds in meat 
 with his gun, and, at a pinch, working as hard as 
 any of them. Sometimes after chasing a perverse 
 lamb he would fall down, so weak was he, and lie 
 several minutes before he had strength to rise; 
 but then he would up again and at it. 
 
 One day it became necessary to send a wagon 
 fifty miles to the interior, and there was no one 
 who could be spared to take it. Don Amado was 
 in a quandary. 
 
 " Let me go," said Will. 
 
 " You ! " cried Don Amado, in horror. " Do 
 you take me for a murderer ? What could you do? " 
 
 " I could try," was Will s answer, and he seemed 
 really glad to be allowed, after long refusal, the 
 dubious privilege. 
 
 He scrambled to the high seat, tied the reins at 
 the back of his neck so that he could guide the 
 horses by a tug on either line shook off the 
 brake, and sent the broncos flying down the hill. 
 
 I fancy Will had some doubts about the out 
 come himself, but he didn t "let on." 
 
 He steered the shaky vehicle and its wild span 
 over the rocky trail, crossed a very dangerous and 
 difficult arroyo, and, after many troubles, finally 
 reached Acebache. 
 
 Next day he had to start back, bringing six 
 hundred pounds of corn and the meat of a steer, 
 which he had assisted to round up in the moun 
 tains and dress. 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 243 
 
 In the bad arroyo the wagon stuck, and the 
 water was rising. So the one-armed Jehu had 
 to drag to the bank, with his right hand and 
 teeth, the three two-hundred-pound sacks of corn 
 and the ponderous quarters of beef and he did 
 it. Then, with his bowie-knife, he dug away the 
 bank until the tired horses could pull the wagon 
 out to safety. Then he reloaded his cargo, and, 
 at three o clock in the morning, came clattering 
 in triumph up to the camp at San Miguel. 
 
 The superstitious shepherds began to look upon 
 him as a wizard, but my friend found in these 
 successes food for something deeper than vanity. 
 He was learning a vital lesson that he was still 
 good for something after all. If he could do this, 
 then something else ; and he began to find a keen 
 delight in overcoming the obstacles that naturally 
 beset a cripple. 
 
 One very trifling conquest, just now, seemed to 
 give him a disproportionate encouragement and 
 buoyancy. He was a sad smoker, and, in the 
 wilderness, had no recourse except the little 
 brown-paper cigarettes of the Mexicans. At first 
 the boys rolled them for him, but one day he cried, 
 " No, if I can t smoke without help I won t smoke 
 at all ! " 
 
 Then he looked sorry he had said it, for he was 
 a fellow of his word, and every one needed two 
 hands for the cigarette-making. Rather anx 
 iously he took a paper and a pinch of granulated 
 
244 M Y FRIEND WILL 
 
 tobacco. Hm ! Not so impossible after all ; for, 
 twisting partly with his right thumb and fore 
 finger and partly with his lips, lo ! he had a rude 
 but smokable roll. In a little while he grew ex 
 pert at it, and for years was known all over the 
 Southwest as "the Americano that rolls cigarro* 
 with one hand." 
 
 From this point he made rapid progress. No 
 hunter in western New Mexico killed more game ; 
 and he began to take long walks, and horseback 
 rides of hundreds of miles, and to carry his big 
 camera into all the corners of the frontier, and to 
 make such intimate pictures of the Southwest as 
 no one else has ever succeeded in getting. There 
 was a good deal of hardship in it, and some danger. 
 Several of his photographs were made at the point 
 of the six-shooter. He developed all the plates 
 himself often getting ugly cuts in the one- 
 handed work and made many thousand prints 
 a year. 
 
 He was now beginning to get back some of his 
 old-time vigor thanks to determination and out 
 doors and, as for handiness, quite ceased in time 
 to miss the lost member. For that matter, a great 
 many strangers never noticed his misfortune, for 
 what he could not help himself in, he preferred to 
 go without. I remember that in the beginning 
 he often went without meat, if he could not cut 
 it himself ; never would he let any one cut it for 
 him. But by now he could handle the toughest 
 
M T FEIEND WILL 245 
 
 steak on the frontier, as plenty of cow-camps can 
 testify. 
 
 A few months later a second but milder shock 
 threw him back very seriously ; and, quite as hard 
 to be borne, a strange turn of fortune left him 
 without a cent in the world. 
 
 I rather expected to see him weaken then, but 
 he only shut his lips and went to work with a cer 
 tain fierceness, but no longer blindly. He had 
 already learned something, and, perhaps, these 
 misfortunes were really a good thing ; for they 
 gave his inborn pugnacity a worthy foe and a 
 beneficial struggle. The " floor " was still in his 
 head, but a little more buoyant, and, as nothing 
 else seemed feasible, he began literary work, a very 
 little at a stretch. 
 
 For the next two years my friend had a pretty 
 hard time. Any steady or confining work was 
 not to be thought of, and what writing he could 
 do brought in very small returns and far between. 
 Sometimes he had even to borrow postage stamps 
 to send off his articles. But he seemed never to 
 get blue. 
 
 Between " works " he tramped and rode a great 
 deal in all the wildest recesses of the frontier, 
 made thousands of photographs, broke his own 
 broncos from wild beasts to horses that loved him, 
 cooked for himself, and was, in general, a very 
 contented hermit, as well as a rather lively para 
 lytic. 
 
246 M T FRIEND WILL 
 
 He had left his Spanish friends, to go and live 
 in a Pueblo village, for the sake of studying these 
 remarkable Indians. He became very fond of his 
 brown neighbors and they of him, but a band of 
 Mexican murderers and desperadoes were not so 
 friendly. He ventured to testify against them 
 for a cruel and cowardly assassination, and there 
 after, for more than a year, he knew how it felt to 
 be hunted ; for the ruffians did not care to meet 
 him face to face, but were watching their chance 
 to strike from behind. 
 
 Several times in his lonely journeys he was fired 
 on from ambush, but only keeping a sharper look 
 out, he went on with his work. At last, one Val 
 entine s eve, they waylaid him at his own door, 
 and so riddled him with buckshot that it was a 
 miracle he ever recovered. After that, the super 
 stitious fellows decided that he must lead a 
 charmed life, and they let him alone. 
 
 Here, one day, a letter came to him with the 
 deadliest news a letter could tell. A flood of fire 
 roared through his head, and he rolled from his 
 chair. 
 
 This third paralytic shock seemed to have 
 finished even the cabezudo (hardhead), as the 
 Indians called him. It left him unable to stand, 
 or to speak a word. He could move only by drag 
 ging himself along the floor with his right elbow, 
 something like a dog with three legs broken. He 
 was very close to death ; had he " lost his grip " 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 247 
 
 even for a little while, it would have been all up 
 with him. But he never did. He kept alive by 
 sheer obstinacy, and to the bewilderment of the 
 doctors. 
 
 While he lay in the hospital in Santa Fe, he 
 held his unwilling mind by the throat and made 
 it serve him. Story after story, verse after verse, 
 he forced out from the aching and oppressed head, 
 and so kept from going mad. He even wrote for 
 the humorous papers a great many sketches and 
 jingles and quips funny enough to make the public 
 laugh, when he was farthest from laughing him 
 self. 
 
 How he hated this wretched hulk! How his 
 eyes flashed if any stranger presumed to look at 
 him when he was taken out in the wheel-chair ! 
 Pity him, would they ? Well, he would fool them, 
 and the doctors, too ! 
 
 "How are you, old man?" asked a friend, dur 
 ing this crisis. Will reached for his scratch-pad, 
 tore off a leaf on which a verse was growing, and 
 wrote : 
 
 "All right. And bigger than anything that 
 can happen to me. All these things are outside 
 my door, and I ve got the key. Thank you." 
 
 I came across this paper afterward and saved it. 
 When I have any bad luck myself, it rather does 
 me good to look at it. 
 
 A few weeks later he watched with hungry 
 eyes the goings and comings of gallant Perfecto, 
 
248 M Y FRIEND WILL 
 
 the secretary s horse. One day he wrote on his 
 tablet, the only tongue left him, you know : 
 
 " Lend me. I want to ride." 
 
 " You ? " cried the secretary. " Are you crazy ? 
 What would you do on a horse like that ? " 
 
 "Put me on and see," answered the pencil 
 scratches. 
 
 It took a long argument, that spoiled several 
 sheets of paper ; but at last the tall secretary 
 lifted Will bodily into the saddle, tucked his left 
 foot into the stirrup, and away he went. Perfecto 
 was fast and mettlesome ; but, after all, he was 
 nothing to the broncos, and no casualties occurred. 
 
 Next day riding out again, my friend met a 
 Mexican boy, carrying a string of trout. Whew ! 
 ^en his eyes did brighten. There was nothing on 
 earth he loved quite so well as trout, ever since 
 the four-year-old days when gran pa carried him 
 along the New Hampshire trout-brooks and talked 
 to him even as he fished. Now Will reined up in 
 front of the lad and grunted " N-h ? " (which was 
 as near as he could come to articulate sound), 
 jogging his chin forward at the fish. 
 
 The boy looked puzzled, but he was too much a 
 boy to be stupid long. " N-h ? " could mean only 
 " Where d you get them ? " So he promptly re 
 plied, " El rito arriba." 
 
 Trout in the Santa Fe Canon ? Hm ! 
 
 At four o clock next morning my friend and 
 Perfecto were clattering past the hospital, and 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 249 
 
 something suspiciously like a rod stood whip- 
 fashion in one of the tall boots. 
 
 When the sun came up they had made ten 
 miles. A horse could go no farther up the canon 
 for the cliffs. Will picked out a leafy spot, wrig 
 gled about in the saddle until he overbalanced 
 and fell to the ground, alighting on that hard 
 head and sound arm. He tied Perfecto s reata to 
 a tree, and the rest of the day was dragging him 
 self over the rough ground, fishing. 
 
 At sunset he crawled up a half-fallen tree, 
 pulled Perfecto to him, scrambled into the saddle 
 with infinite difficulty, and rode home with 
 twenty-nine trout in his basket. 
 
 That sort of thing was repeated daily for about 
 four months. Then the helpless leg began to 
 have a bit of life, so that by taking hold of some 
 thing Will could rise. What pleased him quite 
 as much was that he became able again to hum 
 the Spanish songs he had collected with such 
 labor, which had seemed utterly wiped out by the 
 third shock. 
 
 And at last, one blessed autumn day, as he rode 
 up the canon humming the air of 
 
 " Me es precise el despedirme," 
 
 he suddenly heard himself singing the words ! 
 Some Mexicans who met him there have told me 
 that he looked like a ghost, but he said nothing to 
 them. I presume he wished to ; but there was 
 
250 M T FKIEND WILL 
 
 one at home who had a right to the first words, 
 and he wheeled and rode back in silence. 
 
 44 What on earth makes his face shine so ? " 
 queried the family as he rode into the yard. 
 
 But no one knew until he was safe in the room 
 with the One and burst like a bomb with : 
 
 44 1 can talk ! " 
 
 After that the tide turned. He came in time 
 to walk and speak as well as ever, though the 
 dwindled left arm still hung lifeless at his side. 
 
 He returned to the pueblo, to his hunting and 
 exploring, his making of pictures and breaking of 
 broncos. He even built a couple of log-houses 
 for friends who had taken a crazy notion to plant 
 a home on the top of a ten-thousand-foot peak ; 
 felling the trees himself, peeling, hewing, and 
 placing them, making tin roofs, and all that sort 
 of thing. His writings found a market now, so 
 the miseries of poverty disappeared. 
 
 Then a very great change came into his life 
 one good fortune that he did not hew out for him 
 self. A pair of very beautiful blue eyes, that had 
 been first to bend over him when he was paralyzed 
 for the third time, that had watched him through 
 the pale days after that midnight shooting, came 
 to be the daily light of the humble adobe, where 
 he had taken care of -himself over two years. 
 
 Two heads certainly are better than one, in 
 such a case. Under the new order of things the 
 hermit s den had a great transformation. Will 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 251 
 
 tore out walls, made windows, planed and sawed 
 and hammered and squared like one possessed 
 till the one hand, what with blisters and cracks, 
 was a sight to be seen and the Lady of the Eyes 
 seemed to make everything fall into its due place. 
 Soon the dark old adobe had become a home, still 
 humble, but very comfortable, and doubly dear 
 because they had made it all themselves. 
 
 That summer Will and his girl- wife started out 
 for a long, long journey on their pet horses, and 
 for most of six months were ransacking the out- 
 of-the-way corners of New Mexico. He had be 
 come really powerful again. The right arm, 
 from doing double duty, had grown an inch 
 around the biceps, and seemed to have added to 
 its own strength that of the lost left. 
 
 On the 5th of July they were halting with some 
 of the dear old Spanish friends. 
 
 " What a lovely day it has been, dear ! " said 
 his wife, kneeling by Will s chair, and she added 
 some complimentary remarks, which I am not at 
 all sure my friend deserved. But wives of the 
 right kind are apt to see a great many more 
 virtues than any one else can ; and husbands, I 
 fear, are not always severely modest about accept 
 ing these estimates. At any rate, instead of dis 
 claiming the compliment, Will looked quite happy 
 over it. 
 
 But just then his wife saw him turn white as a 
 sheet, while his eyes stared as if in horror, and 
 
252 M T FRIEND WILL 
 
 she caught him just in time to keep him from the 
 floor. 
 
 For a few minutes there was great consternation 
 in the room, and then a rapid change ; and Span 
 ish friends and husband and wife were all tangled 
 in a muddle of hugs and tears and exclamations. 
 
 And what do you imagine had scared him so ? 
 
 Merely this his unthinking eyes had taken 
 note that his hand was stroking his wife s hair. 
 Well? Yes, but it was the left hand the 
 withered arm that in three years and seven 
 months to that very day had never moved a 
 muscle, nor had a sensation ! 
 
 The little clot of blood in the brain had wholly 
 moved on, at last, and left my friend a well man 
 again. 
 
 He will never be quite so powerful as ten years 
 back, but he is strong enough for all practical 
 purposes and when I found him, not long ago, 
 in South America, on the top of a peak over 
 nineteen thousand feet high, I concluded that he 
 was, indeed, " worth several dead men yet," as he 
 said. 
 
 All this was some time ago, and nowadays every 
 thing seems to go swimmingly with my friend. 
 He is, perhaps, about as hard-headed as ever, but 
 he has found good uses for persistence. And he 
 learned it all in those cruel years in New Mexico, 
 as he himself admits. 
 
 " The great lesson it taught me," he says, " is 
 
MY FRIEND WILL 253 
 
 that man was meant to be, and ought to be, 
 stronger and more than anything that can happen 
 to him. Circumstances, fate, luck, are all out 
 side, and if he cannot always change them, he 
 can always beat them. If it had not worked its 
 way into my broken brain that Captain I held the 
 fort ; that the only key was my own volition, and 
 that unless I wilfully surrendered, nothing could 
 take the citadel, I should have been dead long 
 ago. If I couldn t have what I wanted, I decided 
 to want what I had and that simple philosophy 
 saved me. Yes, and it has turned my most ter 
 rible misfortunes into good, right along. My 
 paralysis, for instance, was the luckiest thing that 
 ever befell me. It not only turned me to my 
 proper work, but it taught me what I was good 
 for, and how to make the best of myself. And 
 but for it I never should have found them" 
 and he looks across to his smiling wife and a very 
 young lady who, by the shape of her small 
 skull, is apt to be as cabezudo as her father. 
 
 I have taken these experiences of Will s a good 
 deal to heart, seeing how much good they have 
 done him ; and you can understand why I do not 
 look at paralytics or other unfortunates as some 
 people do. Whether they are "good for any 
 thing" to the world or themselves, depends on 
 what they think about it. Will was as badly off 
 as the worst of them, and he continued to be a 
 decidedly active and not wholly useless person. 
 
254 MY FRIEND WILL 
 
 But perhaps he will object to my free use of 
 him to point a moral? 
 
 N no, I m quite sure not he rarely finds fault 
 with what I do. In fact, such close friends are 
 we that I sometimes affectionately call him "My 
 Will." 
 
M60980 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
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