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FRONTIER 
 
 ARMY SKETCHES 
 
 By JAMES W^ STEELE, \ ^^0-^'^Oi::y 
 
 * * * " Vulgar, again ! everybody ha.s a different sense for that 
 word, I think. What is vulgar? '^ 
 
 Christie. "Voolgar folk sit on an chair, ane, twa, whiles three 
 hours, eatin' an' abune a' drinkin\ as still as hoegs, or gruntin' puir 
 every -day clashes, goessip, rubbich ; w'hen ye are aside them, ye might 
 as weel be aside a cuddy ; they canna gie ye a sang, they canna gie 
 ye a story, they canna think ye a thoucht, to save their useless lives ; 
 that's voolgar folk." — Charles Reade. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY, 
 
 ' 1883, 
 

 Copyright, 
 
 By JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 
 
 A.D. 1882. 
 
 KNISHT i^ I.EDNAH.D 
 
j,^Ub««' 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THERE is an interesting phase of American life that 
 has hitherto had its chief chronicler in the dime 
 novel and its most frequent interpreter in the blood-and- 
 terror drama. Only two or three authors, and among 
 them the foremost humorists of their time, seem to have 
 truly seen, and having seen, to have been able to make 
 others see, the unwritten and unconscious poetry and the 
 dramatic character of those isolated lives that, care- 
 less of themselves, pass away in the process of erect- 
 ing an empire whose boundless horizon, whose toils and 
 pains, whose untrodden loneliness, have all combined to 
 form a class in which the characters of the desperado 
 and the gentleman have strangely united their charac- 
 teristics; where love, longing, and hope exist without 
 any of their appropriate surroundings, and where grim 
 humor and deep feeling, lacking all their usual forms, 
 find expression not in words alone but in every act of 
 life. 
 
 Beneath all the melancholy loneliness of wide plains, 
 and the monotonous and oppressive sternness of moun- 
 tains that lie changeless forever, there is a subtle some- 
 thing that cannot be described, or drawn, or clearly 
 defined; a something that distinguishes everything from 
 that which it most resembles; that makes a portrait to 
 differ from the cold outlines of a photograph, and a face 
 to differ from both. To capture this essence of descrip- 
 tion and cause it to appear in words upon the printed 
 page, is the task of genius; and the author does not 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 flatter himself that he has accomplished it. He is only 
 certain that it is not enough to reproduce the impres- 
 sions made upon the eye and ear, and that if there be 
 something more than that between the lines of these 
 sketches, the public will discover it. 
 
 These scenes are not inventions, and these men and 
 women not mere figments of the brain. During years of 
 association with them, they produced certain impressions 
 that time has not dissipated, that have ripened with 
 absence, and that, given in fragments imperfectly, and 
 touched upon in transient articles, are now for the first 
 time, but finally, given to the public in a form of some 
 arrangement and compactness. They have been valu- 
 able as a private and personal possession. They have 
 furnished food for pleasant thought amid the vicissi- 
 tudes, labors, perplexities, and endless changes that 
 come to every man. It may be a mistake to suppose 
 that the aroma exhaled from such Recollections may be 
 conveyed to the reader's senses also; yet it is with 
 something of that hope, that these legends of the camp- 
 fire, and sketches of the soldier, the borderer, and the 
 dumb denizens of the wilderness, are given to the read- 
 ing world. 
 
 General Orders and the reports of district command- 
 ers are but dull reading, and there is no colder volume 
 than the " Regulations." Officers of the army are not 
 greatly given to the platform and the monthly magazine, 
 and what they know and might so easily relate they 
 seem purposely to be silent about. Yet they have had 
 most to do with the development of Western civiliza- 
 tion, have mingled with all the characters of the border, 
 are themselves members of the unique community to 
 which they do not seem to belong, and, leading lives 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 apart, are yet intimate with all their surroundings. As 
 a very unimportant member of the military brotherhood, 
 the author gathered the impressions which, once written 
 and arranged, seemed yet to lack the essential of a 
 name. Many years of association with all classes, pro- 
 fessions, and conditions have passed since then. All the 
 impressions of the soldier have been modified, and have 
 taken the form of conviction. And that conviction is, 
 that, with all his little and great failings, the American 
 regular officer is the most accomplished of his calling 
 among all the varied uniforms of the world, and that he 
 remains, through all vicissitudes, the most self-sacrificing 
 and uncomplaining of all the life-long servants of the 
 Republic. He is a frontiersman in the best sense of 
 that word, and, unspoiled by association, he remains 
 true to his untarnished record of a hundred years — a 
 gentleman. He has been always respected, and not 
 seldom loved, by the turbulent and impatient characters 
 who have constantly surrounded him. As all the inci- 
 dents and characters that go to make up these chapters 
 have been seen and understood from the military stand- 
 point and gathered from the inexhaustible fund of mili- 
 tary narrative, while they are not stories of "battles, 
 sieges, fortunes," they are yet what they are called — 
 " Frontier Army Sketches." 
 
 I may add, finally, that it seems impossible to explain 
 the interest that clings about lives that are the poorest 
 and humblest that this world knows, except upon the 
 hypothesis that poverty and hope have ever an uncon- 
 scious pathos* of their own. If it be true that men and 
 women are ever and always the same — the helpless vic- 
 tims of circumstance that seems intention and of a 
 fatality that seems a plan — still everything that this 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 whirling cinder bears upon lier wrinkled surface fades 
 into insignificance when compared with the myriad- 
 minded being whose loves and hopes, whose toils and 
 disappointments, make up the sum of life. These are 
 all of that class whom the world might well spare, if by 
 the world we mean only those who fill the largest places 
 in life, but who at last do but take their places with all 
 the rest, in the commingled dust of beggars and of 
 heroes. It was humble life as the author knew it, in 
 that terra incognita of the far Southwest. That land 
 of dreams and shadows and disappointing realities has 
 changed its superficial character by having been opened 
 to the world by railways that stretch their iron length 
 through valleys that were voiceless when the material 
 of these sketches was acquired, and beside reluctant 
 streams that have crawled slowly over their leagues of 
 sand since the soldier and the priest came together and 
 encamped beside them. Yet not advancing civilization, 
 nor anything, can materially change that realm of rain- 
 less years; of rivers without verdure; of brown moun- 
 tains; of wide and silent deserts; of thorns, and cactus, 
 and wind-blown sands; of indolence, idleness, and peace; 
 of cloud shadows and the brightness of a sky forever 
 blue; of the hopeless sadness of perishing races stranded 
 at last upon those tideless shores. As reminiscences 
 born in such a land, touched here and there with the 
 recollections wrought by a faded uniform and a rusty 
 sword, this little volume is offered to the reader. 
 
COT^TENTS. 
 
 I. Captain Jinks ----- 9 
 
 II. Jornada Del Muerto - - - 24 
 
 III. Men of the Border - - - - 43 
 
 lY. Brown's Revenge - - - - 58 
 
 Y. Copper Distilled - - - - 80 
 
 YI. Joe's Pocket ----- 105 
 
 YII. New Mexican Comaion Life - - 148 
 
 YIII. ''Peg,"— The Story of a Dog - 163 
 
 IX. A Good Indian - - - - - 183 
 
 X. Jack's Divorce _ . . - 198 
 
 XL Coyotes - 210 
 
 XII. A Guard-House Gentleman - - 220 
 
 XIII. Woman Under Difficulties - - 240 
 
 XIY. The Priest of El Paso - - - 254 
 
 XY. A Fight Between Buffaloes - - 272 
 
 XYL Chicquita - - - - - 282 
 
 XYII. Army Mules 301 
 
 XYIII. A Lonesome Christian - - - 314 
 
FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 CAPTAIN JINKS. 
 
 IT is necessary to caution the reader against mis- 
 apprehension at the beginning. This chapter 
 does not contemplate a discussion of the merits or 
 peculiarities of that ancient gem in the repertory of 
 opera houffe^ which has sometime since been sung 
 and acted to its death, but which may still linger in 
 the recollections of some of the elders. But there 
 is a great deal of truth told in broad burlesque; if 
 it makes a palpable impression upon the public there 
 must always be truth as a basis. The genius, who- 
 ever he was, who wrote "Captain Jinks," had in 
 his mind a portrait, more or less truthful, when he 
 concocted the atrocious jingle and called it a song. 
 Yery few of those who have heard it, and still fewer 
 of those who have sung it, ever saw anything in it 
 beyond a little fun, and an opportunity for some 
 stalwart actress, with startling physical development 
 and a wonderful yellow wig, to mince before the 
 footlights, and display her misconception of him 
 who, even more than the lamented Dundreary, is 
 the ideal of gentlemanly snobbery. 
 
10 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 As hinted, Captain Jinks is not entirely a myth; 
 but there may have been many portraits of the profes- 
 sional soldier in more lasting literature that were 
 scarcely nearer the truth. Thackeray must have 
 watched him as he sauntered down tlie street, and 
 gone home and made a sketch of him. Dickens 
 had an inkling of him, though he, too, knew liim 
 only from afar. It is more than probable that the 
 large class of men who are apparently idle, careless, 
 dressy, nonchalant, in time of peace, and brave, 
 enduring and self-sacrificing in time of war, are 
 much the same the world over. There has ever 
 been among mankind a weakness for the sound of 
 the drum, the strains of martial music, and the rus- 
 tle of a banner that represented a common cause, 
 whatever that cause might be ; for the glint of 
 bullion and the measured tread of battalions, and 
 the touch of that slender glittering thing that in all 
 time has stood for justice and honor, and not infre- 
 quently for that right which, with a change of its 
 initial letter, means a very different thing. It is 
 this common passion which makes the varied uni- 
 forms of the world cover hearts very nearly alike in 
 what they love and hate. 
 
 But there is one individual of this type who is 
 especially the present subject of discourse. Of 
 all the soldiers of the world, he is least known on 
 fashionable streets, and most seldom seen at select 
 parties and in the choice seats at the opera. With 
 civilization and its pleasures and occupations he has 
 little to do. There are few gay seasons or long 
 leaves-of-absence for him. Of all the homes along 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 11 
 
 tlie far border of a growing republic, liis is farthest 
 and most isolated. He is the soldier of a country 
 that has the brightest and newest banner of all, dyed 
 though it has been with the stains of many a desper- 
 ate iield; and those silken folds represent to him all 
 there is of abstract devotion and love. It is that of 
 a country which in its supreme struggle raised and 
 sent to the field the most intelligent, enduring, un- 
 daunted and brilliant armies the world has ever 
 seen; which in a single year, in the midst of divided 
 sentiment, could rouse in her sons all the traditional 
 skill, courage, valor and patriotism which lurked in 
 the hearts of a long-peaceful but fighting and glory- 
 loving race. But at the end they sank again into 
 the office, the shop, and the furrow, as mysteriously 
 as sank the targe and plaid of the followers of Rod- 
 erick Dhu upon the mountain side; and he, the last 
 remainder of the host, thinks, not without cause, 
 that his cold-shouldered country has almost forgot- 
 ten him. 
 
 Under all these disadvantages, the United States 
 army officer claims intimate kinship with his breth- 
 ren of the buttons the world over. There are none 
 who wear with more jauntiness a modest blue coat 
 and the very nattiest trousers and boots, or whose 
 caps are more perilously perched upon the forward 
 right-hand corners of ambrosial heads. In the mat- 
 ter of mustaches he excels the German, and in viva- 
 city of movement he is beyond the Frenchman. He 
 is a rattling shot at billiards, and very cool and 
 silent at whist. He has an eye to the points of 
 horses, an acute judgment as to the qualities of 
 
12 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 liquors, and really and truly adores womankind with 
 a devotion and strength that cavils at nothing they 
 may do, think, or say, and which, had he no other 
 virtue, is sufficient to keep him forever in the great 
 brotherhood of gentlemen. He is isolated and ut- 
 terly cut off from that world which is all there is to 
 most of us, and his world comprises as its chiefest 
 features only arms, orders, and duty, and the apt 
 surroundings he has contrived for himself in the 
 midst of a thousand difficulties and disadvantages. 
 
 But here, in mountain fastnesses and the dreary 
 isolation of the wilderness, you strangely come upon 
 the only genuine chivalry extant in American life. 
 I may be taken to task for this wholesale statement ; 
 for the over-busy, nervous, money-getting citizens 
 of this great country claim all good qualities as 
 their own. Therefore I will explain : Chivalry, in 
 its essence, means not a careless but a careful regard 
 for the opinions, feelings, and personal comfort of 
 others, but more especially of women. Besides 
 that, it means entire but polite candor, and no 
 tricks in trade or anything else. It means that 
 the affairs of life are conducted "on honor." Cap- 
 tain Jinks in the wilderness practises this code, 
 and has done so for so long that while staid and 
 respectable citizens might smile at his punctilious- 
 ness, they, together with their wives and daughters, 
 would find him a very pleasant companion, and 
 might do well to try to find time to imitate some 
 of his YQYj foolish airs. 
 
 Do the gentlemen who sit a-row at attractive 
 loitering-places rise up en masse when one poor 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 13 
 
 little woman passes by ? And if they do not, and 
 are excused from that, are they ever careful lest 
 some masculine phrase should reach her ear, or 
 the cigar smoke should blow in her face ? Is a 
 woman's request a binding law if it be a possible 
 thing ? Most of these questions must be answered 
 in the negative. Yery often the American gentle- 
 man accosts his lady friend in the street with his 
 hat over his eyes, his hands in his pockets, and 
 with a lazy politeness which indicates that he is 
 anxious she should not make the mistake of im- 
 agining she is any better than he. 
 
 We may go further, and, leaving out women, 
 inquire how Captain Jinks possibly excels us. He 
 takes off his hat in his own office or room, and 
 does likewise when he comes into yours. He 
 expects to be requested to seat himself, and if you 
 allow him to stand he goes away and does not 
 come back so long as he can avoid it. He does 
 not often back-bite and insinuate, and you cannot 
 always know upon your first acquaintance with him 
 what and whom he especially dislikes and hates. 
 Such things, with him, lead to rapid settlements of 
 difficulties ; and Jinks is therefore, as we should all 
 be, careful. There is no need of any action for 
 slander where Jinks and his companions live, for 
 words and opinions are supposed to be valuable, 
 and are cautiously used. He will endeavor to lend 
 or give you anything you ask, — but you must not 
 ask. There are other things he will do upon proper 
 invitation, which are not so much to his credit. A 
 little sip of something out of a mahogany case is 
 
14 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 seldom oiFered at the wrong time o' day. A little 
 shuffling of a clean deck, and an unimportant trans- 
 fer of currency, is generally agreeable when he is 
 not busy, — and he never is. Jinks is somewhat 
 frivolous, over-polite, and nonchalant, and carries a 
 very high nose ; but he will iight. Any intimation 
 that he would not, would hasten matters very fast in 
 that direction. And the ugliest antagonist in the 
 world is this same tender-handed fop, because it is 
 in his line of business. He stands in the same rela- 
 tion to other men in this respect that the terrier 
 does to other dogs ; he spends no time in carefully 
 considering the size of his antagonist. Only of late 
 years has the duello come to be looked upon as 
 wrong and foolish by the great majority of army 
 officers. Elderly gentlemen, long since retired" to 
 office-chairs, have recollections of that sort which 
 they sometimes mention ; and it appears that even 
 in these instances death was more often bargained 
 for than achieved. 
 
 Captain Jinks is a strictly professional man, and 
 after some years of military life knows more of his 
 specialty — which is a good deal to know — than he 
 generally gets fair credit for. There is a common 
 impression that to own a commission signed by the 
 President, and to wear a uniform, is to be a soldier. 
 Many an inchoate hero has had this impression dis- 
 sipated by a few months' association with the old 
 ones. The traditional routine, the customs, the 
 business, and the exact drill, require years in their 
 mastery. The army is almost wholly governed by 
 an unwritten code, which has, in its place, as much 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 15 
 
 binding force as the common law. You would not 
 suspect that Jinks was ever a business man ; jet 
 the complicated system of accountability for public 
 property requires something very little short of 
 business talent for its proper comprehension. It 
 is the most endless and intricate bundle of red tape 
 imaginable, at least to the beginner ; but, if not 
 clear, it is at least accurate, to the practised quarter- 
 master. The government is an uncompromising 
 creditor, and will stop Jinks's pay for an old camp- 
 kettle, ten years after the loss occurred, if things 
 come to the worst. He is accountable for all the 
 houses, fuel, forage, animals, tools, wagons, and 
 scattered odds and ends of a post as large as a 
 respectable village, the residence of some hundreds 
 of people. They are all on his "papers," and must 
 be cared for and kept straight. Every company com- 
 mander must of necessity be a business man, and 
 has a running account with a hundred men. Mili- 
 tary efficiency means money, in the sense that there 
 can be no efficiency without it ; and the first quali- 
 fication of an officer of any grade or station is econ- 
 omy and good judgment in the care of property and 
 the expenditure of funds. 
 
 ]^or is this all. Like an editor. Jinks must have 
 a very varied and extensive fund of general infor- 
 mation. He is alike autocrat and justice of the peace. 
 He is the head and leader of a hundred careless, 
 irresponsible men, who in time become human 
 automatons, obeying orders and doing nothing more. 
 He learns, through his intercourse with them, to 
 know intimately each one, though at a distance. 
 
16 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 He is often called upon to exercise the functions of 
 pliysician, priest, and executor, to the same man. 
 He must know how to exercise at once kindness and 
 firmness, and to command the fullest respect with 
 some degree of love. If there is a foible, a weak- 
 ness, a want of courage or capacity, on the part of 
 the commander, be sure the ranks will find it out. 
 Jinks is a tyrant as well, and the fact need not be 
 disguised from a thousand who know at least that 
 much of him. So are railroad managers, the heads 
 of manufacturing establishments, and "bosses" the 
 world over. But the even tenor of his tyranny is 
 assured by those ''regulations" under which the 
 common soldier's rights and privileges are as fully 
 guaranteed to him as are those of his commander. 
 Jinks and his companions have made some of the 
 most daring and careful explorations of modern 
 times. They traversed the mountain passes of an 
 unknown world more than fifty years ago, and 
 mapped and described the routes of travel and im- 
 migration long before railways and immigration 
 were thought of. They did it faithfully and skil- 
 fully, and without any reward. There is even at 
 this late day a more accurate knowledge of the cli- 
 mates, characteristics, geography, and natural history 
 of the world west of the Missouri, among the ofiicers 
 of the army, than among all the savans. 
 
 Perhaps it may not be uninteresting to know how 
 Captain Jinks lives. The changeless empire of 
 monotony and silence hedges him in. ]N"owhere 
 within reaching distance are any of those things 
 that the majority of mankind value most. He has 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 17 
 
 but to go a little waj from the flag-staff to be utterly 
 alone. Yet, so far as liis little acre of actual occu- 
 pancy goes, he has transformed the desert. Here 
 is a quadrangular space, as neatly kept as a parlor 
 floor. In the centre floats always the slieeny repre- 
 sentative of that for which the soldier lives. On 
 every hand are the oddly-shaped houses, sometimes 
 handsome and costly, often only log cabins or 
 adobes. But you will find nothing like squalor 
 within. There is comfort and neatness always, and 
 not infrequently elegance, and a very successful 
 attempt at luxury. As a rule. Jinks and his wife 
 care little for the house itself, if only the furnishing 
 reaches the proper standard of luxury and taste. 
 There are books, music, curtains, carj^ets, a very 
 well-furnished table, and a very fair display of china 
 and silver. Jinks is something of an epicure, and 
 frequently dines upon dainties which an alderman 
 could not procure. He saves himself from an hour 
 of inanity every afternoon by thinking what he will 
 have for dinner, and then asks every disengaged 
 person he can find to come and help him eat it. 
 You wonder, as you watch this hospitable soldier in 
 his wanderings, where he obtains the spice of con- 
 tent. In these houses are to be found elegant and 
 well-dressed women, though peradventure their 
 gowns may not be in the latest fashion, and their 
 social gossip not of the latest sensation. 
 
 Around this nucleus cluster the thousand belong- 
 ings of military civilization. Horses neigh in popu- 
 lous stables, and mules perform their characteristic 
 antics in the corral. The sound of hammer and file 
 3 
 
18 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 is heard, and the woodyard and warehouse are 
 open. There is the trader's store — an immensely 
 attractive spot, which may be called the chib-room 
 of the border. 'There the loafing instinct which 
 Jinks has in common with the rest of mankind is , 
 gratified by the clatter of ivory balls and the aroma 
 of tobacco. These are the only features of Jinks's 
 life which make that life like that of the world to 
 which he no longer pertains, and which, with all its 
 enjoyable things, he has by no means forgotten, 
 although it seems to have almost forgotten him. 
 There is no danger that he will ever degenerate. 
 The discipline of his daily life would keep him from 
 that. His military ceremonies are performed in full 
 dress, and midnight on the lonely guard-beat sees 
 the untimely ceremony of "grand rounds" per- 
 formed with as much punctiliousness as though in 
 view of the commander-in-chief. 
 
 But the incorrigible Captain Jinks will swagger, 
 will insist on regarding all professions below par in 
 comparison with his, and will so persist in carrying 
 an air of careless superiority with him wherever he 
 goes that the more sombre-clad and fogyish portions 
 of mankind will look slightly askance at him, and in 
 some instances conceive quite a dislike to him. But 
 we must be allowed to remark that he would be 
 rather a poor soldier if he were not more or less 
 guilty of these things. It is only when he is placed 
 among civilians that they are noticeable; and they 
 are the direct result of an isolated professional train- 
 ing. Is not the sailor known of all men at sight ? 
 And did anyone ever think of it as strange that he 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. "19 
 
 was not in all particulars like themselves ? A man 
 who has spent years in the acquirement of certain 
 unconscious personal traits and ways cannot be ex- 
 pected to divest himself of them as he would put off 
 a garment. He is no soldier who is not proud of his 
 uniform, and in nine cases in ten the American 
 officer will be found to be an honest man, and in the . 
 strictest sense a gentleman. His life in peace is one 
 long preparation for that hour of his country's need 
 when he shall lead up to the battery the blue ranks 
 he has so often drilled, and follow into the jaws of 
 death the starry emblem he has so often gathered in 
 his arms as it came down at the sunset gun. Every 
 year he endures hardships at the camp-fire and upon 
 the march, of which he gives no sign as you see him 
 passing by. We cannot blame him if he be, or 
 seem, a little proud of the slender blade which, after 
 all, is not his but his country's. Let us not be too 
 much mistaken in our Captain Jinks. Of such as 
 he — just such foppish, careless fellows — have ere 
 now been made great generals, lamented heroes, 
 statesmen, and presidents. Useless ornament though 
 he might be if the millennium were only come, and 
 reminder of the strength of monarchies rather than 
 of peaceful republics, the time has been when a few 
 more available Jinkses would have saved the coun- 
 try many a life and many a million of treasure, when, 
 in impending peril, we scarcely knew the equipment 
 of a camp or the duties of a picket-guard. 
 
 It would be easy to discourse upon the lights and 
 shadows of Jinks's life in a manner that, while it 
 would do no harm, and might even be considered 
 
20 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 flattering to him, he would resent as an unwarranta- 
 ble intrusion into his private affairs; for one of his 
 characteristics is, that he has never seemed anxious 
 to have himself and his belongings — his tastes, 
 traits, loves, hates, and the details of liis private 
 life — inquired into and discussed by mankind. He 
 has, I think, seldom been heard to complain that 
 people do not understand him. If it is because he 
 has long ceased to expect that they should, the con- 
 clusion has given him little pain, for he has also 
 ceased to care. The army is, indeed, a little world 
 by itself, that is unaffected by stocks and trade, by 
 flood, fire, or disaster, by changes in politics or revi- 
 vals of religion. In it the lines are drawn very 
 straight, and are not often crossed. It has its own 
 news, its own gossip, its own penalties, and its es- 
 pecial pleasures. One would not suppose that the 
 element of domesticity had much place there; yet 
 under singular difficulties this is one of its strongest 
 features. Jinks, as a family man, seems capable of 
 mingling with great skill the characters of jpater 
 familias and the occasional roisterer. He has a 
 vivid conception and a keen appreciation of home 
 for its own sake — a home that he never made and 
 cannot own, that does not suit him and cannot be 
 altered, and that he leaves, in his innumerable pil- 
 grimages from post to post, without a sigh, cheered 
 by the hope of a better. Yet one may recall, among 
 his recollections of that frontier that is a thousand 
 miles beyond the crudest civilization, homes that 
 were bright with the refinements of the highest type 
 of our social life, that were filled with cheerfulness 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 21 
 
 and wanned by the indescribable felicities that made 
 the place restful and luxuriant with that rest and 
 luxury that do not depend upon the price of the fur- 
 niture. Jinks has absorbed all the good there is in 
 the peculiar form of aristocracy he affects. His 
 dining-table possesses a social and material charm 
 quite irresistible to all who are so fortunate as to get 
 their legs under it. One goes away and asks him- 
 self where all these things came from, and ever after 
 remembers that spot in the coyote-haunted desert 
 which offered him so restful a glimpse of the beauty 
 of woman and home, and a taste of the clean hospi- 
 tality of a gentleman about whom there was neither 
 effort nor pretence. 
 
 Aladdin is a character of childish fable. There 
 are no fairies; alchemy was a dream; men are only 
 men. From whence does Jinks derive the myste- 
 rious quality that enables him to survive the crudest 
 associations, the wildest surroundings, the hardest 
 fare upon the weariest marches, the slenderest re- 
 sources, the most thankless services, and still remain 
 the inimitable Jinks — clean, quiet, nonchalant, 
 transforming the spot where he is bidden to abide, 
 changing all the sensations of the place where he 
 has pitched his tents ? It seems a marked pecu- 
 liarity of the American soldier. He is Jinks uncon- 
 sciously. That celebrated charge of "conduct 
 unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," upon which 
 the plumed and buttoned and intensely official court- 
 martial assembles, hints at the deepest infamy of 
 military life ; and that is a most damning specifica- 
 tion, if proven, which asserts that "in this the said 
 
22 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 Lieutenant So-and-so wilfully lied." It is so 
 arranged that Captain Jinks may be guilty of a thou- 
 sand peccadilloes ; may spend his nights at poker, 
 and his leisure hours at any gallantry that may be 
 at hand; but he must do his whole duty in camp 
 and field, and privately and officially must keep 
 himself clear of any possible entanglement in sly 
 deception or private crookedness. He does not 
 always succeed in this; err are est humanum. But 
 then he gets himself cashiered. 
 
 If Jinks were better known, he might travel long 
 and far upon his character as ''a good fellow." He 
 may if he will, and often does, acquire an inexhausti- 
 ble fund of anecdote and personal reminiscence. 
 He knows well the by-ways and corners, not of 
 cities, but of the wide domain of the republic. The 
 dews and damps of innumerable midnights, the 
 grays of a thousand mornings, the shadows of moun- 
 tain pines, the wide loneliness of trackless wastes, 
 the vicissitudes of the camp and the march, the 
 familiar touch of earth and the companionship of 
 nature, have all combined in his education, and 
 allied themselves with that imaginativeness of his 
 without which he would be but a mere frontiersman 
 like the rest. There are few reminiscences more 
 charming than those he can call up when he will, 
 and it seems to please him to clothe the most dole- 
 ful and disappointing of his experiences in the garb 
 of the ridiculous, and to burlesque the tragic ele- 
 ment of all his adventures by flood and field. 
 
 There seems to be, in Jinks' s case, neither ade- 
 quate incentive nor sufficient reward for the desper- 
 
CAPTAIN JINKS. 23 
 
 ate bravery in behalf of country and cause which he 
 often displays. There are no spectators, no press 
 bulletins, no medals or stars, not even promotion, as 
 his reward. Plain and mountain-pass have wit- 
 nessed many a heroic death that was never men- 
 tioned in the newspapers, and that no one cared for 
 but a wife, a mother, or a far-away sweetheart. 
 Many a pallid face amid the grasses of the prairie, 
 and many a bloody blue coat, have the stars looked 
 down upon after a day of thirst and hopelessness 
 and desperate defence. Unknown amid the eter- 
 nal silences that are his battle-fields, there is many a 
 mound unmarked by so much as an inscription, 
 washed by the rains and digged by the wolves, 
 where some liero of the republic sleeps. He at 
 least does his first and last great duty unhesitatingly 
 and always. So long as there was a cartridge or 
 a man, there is no instance of vacillation or surren- 
 der in the annals of far western warfare. As Custer 
 died, with all his men around him, so are all the 
 Jinkses expected to go when the occasion calls. The 
 universal civilian should remember, and be no more 
 than just, that his fair record of courage has never 
 had a stain, that his life challenges the admiration of 
 every man whose heart swells at the story of daunt- 
 less valor, and that he is, after all, as fair an exam- 
 ple as our civilization can show of what, for want of 
 a better name, we call a Gentleman. 
 
n. 
 
 JORNADA DEL MUEETO. 
 
 ONE evening, about sunset, the vehicle which is 
 bj courtesy called a coach, drawn by four little 
 mules, with its driver and expressman, and four pas- 
 sengers inside, started out of the obscure village of 
 Peralta on that southward journey which few who 
 have made it will ever forget, and which afterwards 
 seems a strange adventure, undertaken under cover 
 of darkness, and for some purpose that was itself a 
 dream. 
 
 Peralta is the very dogsburg of a land of squalid 
 towns. It is as though it had been gently shaken 
 in a blanket, and indiscriminately dropped in the 
 midst of a few acres of sand. Sand is there an ele- 
 ment. It blows through every chink and cranny, 
 and lies ankle deep in the street. It pervades all 
 that is eaten and drunk and breathed, and lies in 
 windrows and heaps in the meandering street. This 
 is all in accordance with the Mexican idea; for a few 
 hundred yards away the ground is grass-grown and 
 hard, and that which stands in the changing sand 
 from chance might easily have been placed upon 
 solid ground by purpose. Worse than all, it stands 
 at the hither end of that ninety miles of treeless 
 and waterless wilderness that to many has been in 
 fact all that its name implies: Jornada del muerto — 
 " the journey of death." 
 
 34 
 
JORNADA DEL MTJERTO. 25 
 
 Of the four passengers, one was a medical officer of 
 tlie army, one was a trader, one a man who was any- 
 thing and had no characteristics save that he wore a 
 blue blouse and had a gold bar on his shoulder. 
 The fourth, a large man in middle life, who sat with 
 his back to the front and his long limbs thrown 
 across the middle seat, was as evidently a genuine 
 borderer as though that fact had been placarded 
 upon him. His great beard was plentifully sprin- 
 kled with gray, and the soles of his huge boots, 
 upright before his audience, seemed as though they 
 might serve as tombstones should he chance to fol- 
 low an old-time fashion of his kind and be buried in 
 them. His slouch hat was pulled low over a pair of 
 gray eyes and a kindly and honest face, and he held 
 his "Winchester gun across his knee with that con- 
 stant yet careless grasp which is one of the small 
 signs betokening the man accustomed to danger and 
 to the vigilance which in these regions becomes a 
 habit. 
 
 The gold and purple and amber faded, and the 
 far snow grew pink and gray, then whiter than be- 
 fore in the starlight, and soon there was notliing of 
 earth in the scene save the tall cactuses that took 
 fantastic shapes as they nodded against the glow of 
 the horizon, and the vague and misty undulations 
 of a wilderness that, clothed in night and silence, 
 seemed a part of some other and unreal world. 
 
 Four women together, strange to each other, and 
 without some slight counterpoise of masculinity, 
 would either have kept silence for a long time at 
 first, or have politely and distantly chatted. But 
 
26 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 men do not so; and each of our travellers liad in a 
 short time given his fellows some vague idea of who 
 he was, where he was born, and what he liked best 
 in men, horses, climates, and cookery; — not specifi- 
 cally and in order, but as men are sure to talk of 
 such things. Then comes ^ little modest bragging 
 on the part of each; and he who goes too far in that 
 is straightway snubbed into ill-humor or docility, as 
 the case may be, either of which conditions answers 
 the purpose equally well. After this comes silence, 
 yawning, and finally sleep. Only part of this pro- 
 gramme could be carried out here. Sociability was a 
 necessity; for if four men sleep on the Jornada, 
 popular tradition would make it seem probable that 
 they might not awake again. ]^o man in those days 
 became absorbed in his neighbor's story or his own, 
 to the extent that his ear was not also open to the 
 far-away galloping or the sudden shout that pro- 
 claims that ubiquitous Apache who is so much 
 dreaded and talked about and so seldom seen. 
 
 The desire for something outside of one's own 
 ever-revolvdng thoughts is as common as humanity. 
 To this end is all that immense literature that is 
 born in a night and dies in the morning. For the 
 gratification of the appetite which is insatiable, are 
 the remotest corners of the earth ransacked, and all 
 that is done and suffered in all climes and races con- 
 densed into paragraphs and laid at even the day- 
 laborer's door. But where this is impossible and 
 unknown, its place is taken by an art the oldest and 
 most graceful in the world — the art of story-telling. 
 To the dweller in remote and unfrequented corners 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 27 
 
 of the earth the ability to wander easily through the 
 past of his life, to talk of the eternal ego without 
 egoism, to cause his limited audience to see his 
 situations as plainly as he remembers them, and to 
 call out the laugh or the curse which is his applause 
 and reward, is considered as a matter of course. 
 The silent man is looked upon with general sus- 
 picion, and has few friends. But no man is asked 
 formally or in turn to tell a story. He begins as 
 soon as he can get an audience by cutting in upon 
 his neighbor's fast-waning discourse, and he con- 
 tinues through a running fire of comments, jokes, 
 and minor adventures. This, with the addition of 
 some show of form, is the much-vaunted Indian 
 oratory. This is that art of talking in which rough 
 men sometimes attain a smoothness and proficiency 
 that might well be envied in the politest circles of 
 the great world in which it is popularly supposed 
 everything is done that is ever done, everything 
 known that is within the bounds of human attain- 
 ment and endeavor. It is the art that is simplest 
 and most attractive where form is absent, and where 
 humor and pathos lack egoism and consciousness. 
 
 For the most part, the large man was silent. His 
 companions seemed none of them to be of the class 
 with which he was most at home. The trader told 
 of events which had occurred in a country neighbor- 
 hood in some Eastern state, and duly mentioned 
 the names and relationships of all his characters, 
 with other important and interesting details. The 
 medical man told of college adventures and flirta- 
 tions, and touched a little upon science. The man 
 
28 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wlio was notliing and had no particular character, 
 sat silent, only occasionally throwing in an interjec- 
 tion or an exclamation of mild astonishment. He 
 was not yet acclimated, and his course of action 
 undoubtedly tended to make him popular with the 
 doctor and the trader. 
 
 Imally, that waning blood-red morning moon — 
 that ghost of brightness so seldom seen by a sleepy 
 world, and which seems to steal around the Yerge 
 of the universe at late hours to avoid observation 
 and remark — began to show her gibbous face above 
 the horizon and add a little light. The dreary 
 undulations of the landscape began to grow more 
 distinct. Thirty miles of the journey lay behind ; 
 and the lonely backward track, and the still lonelier 
 route to come, oppressed the party with that vague 
 and weary uneasiness that one at least of them had 
 never felt before. 
 
 But now a change seemed to have come over the 
 big and silent frontiersman. As his companions 
 grew silent he grew active and uneasy. He peered 
 curiously out upon the road, and seemed intent 
 upon the outlines of the hills. He arose and stood 
 with his foot upon the step, and looked ahead and 
 behind, and close beside the track. He excited the 
 curiosity of his companions, who had long since set 
 him down as stupid ; and they improved the oppor- 
 tunity presented for new amusement. 
 
 ^' Ever been here before? " said the doctor. 
 
 "You bet." 
 
 '' Oh ! " said the trader ; "lived here ? " 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 29 
 
 "I rec'n I spent ten thousand dollars not a mile 
 from this 'ere spot." 
 
 ' ' Looking for it ? " 
 
 The big man bent his head, and doubled his 
 huge figure beneath the curtain, lounged back into 
 his seat, drew a long breath, pushed back his hat, 
 and remarked : 
 
 ''I'll tell je all about it." 
 
 There was the general and impressive silence of 
 consent and waiting. 
 
 "I've heerd you boys talk for about six hours. 
 Now I'm a goin' to talk myself, but I wouldn't 
 'nless this 'ere place didn't remind me of it. Fust 
 of all, there aint nothin' — nary thing — in this 'ere 
 that people calls grit, an' pluck, an' sense, an'' all 
 that. There's nothin' but luck — jest luck. 
 
 "I come out from Missouri to Californy in them 
 times they calls '49, — I'm a forty-niner myself. 
 They was flush times then, an' money was as plenty 
 as water, an' plentier. But still a man couldn't 
 save nothin', an' after a year or two I hadn't much 
 more money than I've got now, wich the same aint 
 much. But wile I stayed there I spent, more, an' 
 had more fun an' more fights, an' cared less, than 
 any man in all Californy. An' then, as was nat'ral 
 in sech cases, things got to goin' bad with me, an' 
 times to git close, an' in '54 I come down through 
 Arizony an' them parts. In Tooson, in two weeks, 
 I won ten thousan' dollars at poker, — jest luck 
 ag'in. Then I stopped short. I laid low for three 
 or four days, till I got a chance, an' then come on 
 to this 'ere infernal countrv with mv monev. I had 
 
30 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 a mind to stop gamblin' an' try an' make a livin' 
 like some folks I've lieerd of — honestly. I knowed 
 a man's luck didn't do liim a good turn more'n 
 once, an- I concluded to go back on it in time. I 
 got down there to Cruces, an' some fellers pusuaded 
 me to come out here to this infernal hornado an' 
 dig fur water.- A passel of us come out here, an' 
 found a swale." 
 
 Here the speaker painfully extricated himself 
 from the combinations of the vehicle, crowded him- 
 self out again, and for some moments was engaged 
 in looking for some feature of the landscape. 
 
 "I thought I seed the place," he said, as he 
 resumed his seat. 
 
 '' Where you left the money? " said the doctor. 
 
 ''This thing I'm a tellin' ain't no joke to m^," 
 he quietly said. "Both of you young fellers has 
 said somethin' smart now about the on'y pile I 
 ever had, an' the next smart thing I sh'd like to 
 say myself ef possible. As I was say in', we found 
 a swale where it looked damp. Me an' my party 
 we dug, an' dug. There ain't no man knows any 
 better'n me how to make a hole in the groun'. I 
 larnt that in Californy. But we didn't find no 
 water. Afore we wus through, we dug all over 
 
 this desert, an' finally I tumbled to the fact 
 
 that there wa'nt no water, an' w'at's wus, no more 
 money." 
 
 "Is that so?" chirped the medical man. 
 
 "Wait till I tell ye. D — n it, it riles me to 
 think of it!" bellowed the speaker. "That wan't 
 the wust of it. Afore that missable fool diggin', I 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. • 31 
 
 had gone an' — an' married. She wus the puttiest 
 thing in all this diggins. I tell ye I ain't never seed 
 no woman to suit me sence, an' she's — gentlem^^i, 
 she's been dead this fourteen year, an' that's the 
 wust luck I ever had." 
 
 The story-teller cleared his throat and went on : 
 "Well, arter that I went down to the settlements 
 ag'in, an' then the guv'ment sent some people here, 
 an' they dug, an' dug, an' didn't find no water — nary 
 drop. The hull thing looked like a bad job, an' 
 folks made up their minds to go without water. 
 Plenty of 'em did. This 'ere road 's been the death 
 of many a mule, to say nothin' of other folks. An' 
 now w'at do ye think they tell me in Santy Fee? 
 Wy, they say a man named suthin', I forgit w'at, — 
 a feller that never had no luck, an' hadn't orter 
 had, — come out here 'cos he kinder hadn't nowhere 
 else to go, an' commenced a diggin', an' struck water 
 in forty foot. He has a ranch now, an' a guv'ment 
 contract. Congress give him all the wuthless land in 
 sight, an' he's sometimes sober, an' makes lots o' 
 money. Ain't that luck ? " 
 
 The speaker seemed irritable, and brought his 
 great fist down with a thump upon the seat beside 
 him. 
 
 " Why, yes," said the doctor, " everybody knows 
 that; we'll reach there about five o'clock. I wish I 
 was there now." 
 
 Silent men sometimes make up for lost time when 
 once they are started ; and the speaker continued : 
 
 "An' do ye know w'at I come down here for^ 
 Don't? Then I'll perceed to tell ye. 'Cause I'm a 
 
32 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 fool. There's people as visits graveyards an' things 
 w'ere ther friends is. I'm a goin' to visit my cime- 
 try. I've tried evervthiu' else sence I was there 
 last, an' sometimes I've concluded I'd nigh forgot all 
 about it. 'Pears to me I'm a gittin' old now, an' the 
 hankerin' comes stronger. I don't know purciselj 
 where the grave is I'm a huntin'. P'raps there 
 ain't none; but I want to see the place where I lost 
 — lost my woman I hadn't had a year." 
 
 The big man seemed not so strong as he appeared. 
 He was silent a moment, and nervously fanned him- 
 self with his hat. Then he sat for a few minutes 
 looking dreamily out upon the vast plain, and in the 
 midst of his reverie muttered disconnected anathe- 
 mas upon the Apaches. After being left alone by 
 the rest for awhile, he began again : 
 
 ''Ye see, I went back to the settlements frum 
 here, an' jined a party goin' back to Californy. I 
 tuk one more chance, an' owned one team out'n 
 the twenty-odd there wus in the train, — me an' my 
 wife. I wan't broke any then. I wus big an' 
 strong, an' didn't mind my luck much, it seemed 
 like. We got a start early in September, an' wus a 
 goin' back by way of Arizony, naterally. Thar is 
 a place about a hundred mile from here on t'other 
 trail, called somebody's cafion — the allfiredest place 
 fui Injuns in the world. We camped at a spring at 
 this eend all night, an' airly in the mornin' started 
 through. Arter we got along a little ways, at a 
 suddint turn in the road, the fust team come chuck 
 up ag'in a barricade o' rocks, an' a swarm o' 'Paclies 
 come down on us frum all sides. We 'd passed a 
 
JORNADA DEL 3IUERT0. 33 
 
 passel o' soldiers on the road, but as luck ud hev it, 
 of course tliey wa'n't there. That ere, gQuilemen^ 
 wus the wust massa(?r^ that ever I've knowed of. 
 There wa'nt no help, an' they jest hed the drop on 
 us. I 'member at the first, seein' some o' the 
 women jump out'n the wagons, an' run a screamin' 
 down amongst the chapparal, a try in' to hide. I 
 wus up in the lead, an' started back to where my 
 outfit wus, fust thing. I never got there. Suthin' 
 or somebody struck me over the head from behind." 
 
 Here the speaker added greatly to the delineation 
 of his narrative by leaning forward and bidding his 
 auditors place their fingers in a deep and ugly scar 
 upon his head. 
 
 "I fell down, an' I rec'lect gittin' up ag'in an' 
 runnin' on an' on. It seemed as though I never got 
 to where I wanted to, an' I turned dizzy, an' com- 
 menced a gittin' blind. But I kep' a goin', till all of 
 a suddint I forgot everythin'. When I come to my 
 senses it must 'a been a week arterwards. I never 
 edzackly knowed, but it wus on a narrer bed in a 
 orspital. Ye see, them soldiers keni along arter 
 us — arter everybody wus killed. But they found 
 me somewhere, and toted me along wi' 'em, an' one 
 day I kinder woke up, a lyin' on this 'ere bed, an' a 
 feller in a uniform wus a holdin' of my wrist, an' a 
 lookin' down at me, an' a smilin' as ef he war nigh 
 tickled to death. I tell you," with a glance toward 
 the doctor, "A^ wus a doctor as knowed his bizness. 
 I crawled roun' that place till I was middlin' strong 
 agin', and kep' a thinkin' it all over. From all I 
 could hear, I concluded I was the only man left. I 
 
34 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wus riled, an' I went an' 'listed in the Third Cav'lry 
 a purpus for to kill Injuns. I didn't keer fur jiuthin' 
 else fur a long time, an' I sarved out five years 'list- 
 ment. Then I went back to Californj. But I ain't 
 had no luck. I ain't done no good fur years. I'm 
 a thinkin' now contin'ally o' that day in the caiion. 
 I tell ye, sometimes I think maybe some o' them 
 women got away. 'Tain't so; I know^ 'tain't so, an' 
 it's no use to specerlate. But she wus sech a purty 
 thing, an' sly, an' smart. But what makes me think 
 o' her is bey ant that. Ye see she wa'n't very well, 
 an' wus ailin' a little, an' — " 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, but leaned for- 
 ward and placed his face between his great hands 
 and was silent. But after awhile he resumed the 
 tale, to which thus far there had been -no replies or 
 questions. 
 
 " Gentlem^?i, 'twouldn't be no use fur any of ye 
 to tell me I'm a fool. I've been a thinkin' o' this 
 fur fourteen year, an' now it's got to be thet I ain't 
 good fur nothin' else. Other men has ther young- 
 sters, an' never thinks of it ; but I can't hear a 
 little 'un cry — wich I hain't often — 'thout gittin' 
 kind o' weak. But ther's one thing I kin do ; I 
 kin go back an' find that place in the canon. I've 
 as good a right to visit my fam'h^ cimetry as any 
 man a livin', an' I'm a goin' to do it." But his 
 voice grew tremulous as he added, in a milder tone, 
 "But I'd give all that ten thousan' an' all the water 
 on the hornado, ef I cud on'y see, jest once, that 
 baby that never wus born." 
 
 None of the men to whom he had spoken were 
 
JORNADA DEL MUEBTO. 35 
 
 dull, but all had evidently been mistaken in their 
 conception of this man's character. He was now 
 invested with a degree of interest that had not at 
 first attached to him. So far as they knew, he was 
 the sole snrvivor of one of the historic massacres of 
 the country. They silently respected the story, 
 and the feelings of one to whom it seemed to have 
 been a brooding memoiy for so many years. The 
 medical man, at least, was a gentleman of some 
 learning, culture, and delicacy of feeling. He 
 divined the vulnerable and very tender spot upon 
 this coarse giant, and now perhaps felt the pecu- 
 liar leaning toward him which all his cloth expe- 
 rience in regard to what bids fair to prove a special 
 case. 
 
 " See here, my friend," said he, "who told you 
 that your — ah, your wife — was certainly killed? 
 I wouldn't raise your hopes, you know ; but then 
 there's no telling about such things unless they 
 have been actually proven. Now, I have heard 
 that there were survivors of that massacre still 
 living somewhere in the country.' You are alive, 
 you see, and — ah, well, you can't 'most always 
 tell." He had thought he would say something 
 comforting, and had broken down and ended with 
 an expression that, critically considered, was little 
 short of ordinary slang. But presently he contin- 
 ued : "Now, you see, the chances are that if things 
 were as you state, that — ah, in view of the scare 
 and the excitement, the little one would come into 
 the world without any great delay, and if the 
 mother was very strong, you know, why, such a 
 
36 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 tiling is not impossible as that you might yet see 
 the " 
 
 He suddenly stopped, for the frontiersman was 
 leaning forward in his seat, and with quick breath 
 was drinking every fateful word. "My God!" he 
 said, "do ye think so? Air you in yearnest? 
 Nobody told me she was dead — and everybody 
 . . . . But she is — she is; an' ef she wa'nt, 
 it wouldn't know sech as me." 
 
 For a few moments, everybody sat silent. The 
 doctor seemed trying to look, as closely as the dark- 
 ness would permit, into the countenance of the man 
 in whose mind hope very dim and far, and despair 
 very imminent and immediate, seemed struggling 
 for the mastery. But at last he seemed to have 
 come to a conclusion, and beginning very cau- 
 tiously, remarked : 
 
 "I have travelled this road many times. I know 
 of such a case as this would seem to be, not far 
 from here. Everybody knows of it, in fact. I am 
 satisfied, my friend, that your journey may not be 
 for nothing — I say m«y not be. I am very cer — " 
 He stopped again, for the big man seemed to be 
 getting into a dazed condition, rubbing his eyes, 
 and pulling himself together, as one who believes 
 he has been dreaming. The doctor placed his 
 hand upon his arm. "Be calm," he said; "I 
 will tell you all I know, now that I have begun." 
 
 "All what?" thundered \,he frontiersman. "Say 
 it quick an' fast, an' be done with it. How am I 
 to live thisaway ? An' here, you, there wus one o' 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 37 
 
 you doctors as saved my wutliless life a long ago. 
 Fur God's sake, don't another of ye kill me." 
 
 "I'll tell you all I know," said the doctor, 
 "after breakfast. Meantime, my friend, if you 
 don't wish another of my tribe to take charge of 
 you, you must be calm. You are no child; you 
 should be able to restrain yourself if you wish to be 
 considered a man." 
 
 Thereupon the medical man tried to divert the 
 channels of conversation. He was not successful. 
 The j^arty was constrained and silent, and tlie big 
 man looked out upon a landscape to which the 
 growing light added no charm, with an expression 
 upon his face that made more than one of the party 
 pity him. 
 
 Tlie short summer night had faded, and that rare 
 first touch of sunlight upon mountain snow, wliich 
 more than anything in nature bears the similitude 
 of a kiss, began to appear. The tired beasts seemed 
 to take new life, and pushed eagerly on. Far in 
 the distance could be faintly heard the first crowing 
 of the cocks, the bleating of goats, and the cry of 
 asses, while the thin blue breakfast-smoke could be 
 seen curling from the chimney of the little adobe 
 castle which was the lucky man's ranch. 
 
 All that the frontiersman had heard of him was 
 true. He had a well of unfailing water, that was 
 better than all the gold mines of the surrounding 
 mountains, and a government contract, and was 
 happy in his first luck. He ushered the four trav- 
 ellers into the house as though he had known them 
 for years. He had a protegee^ the child of a Mexican 
 
38 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 woman who was a dependent of the establishment, 
 whom he considered one of the attractions of the 
 phace, and of wliom he never ceased to talk. For 
 lie was of that class commonly known as "good- 
 liearted," and was capable of a generous apprecia- 
 tion of things not always and entirely his own. 
 AVhen the child came into the room at these eaply 
 breakfasts provided for passengers in the stage, he 
 always dilated upon the girl and her peculiar his- 
 tory. The facts bore him out. She was a creature 
 of fourteen, who looked eighteen. Slie had an 
 enormous quantity of that red hair which is crimson 
 in the sunshine, and eyes of the variety which, for 
 want of some better term, are called brown, being 
 in reality both brown and black. She was round, 
 lithe, graceful, and, in fact, a very favorable speci- 
 men of the being who is sometimes the result of tlie 
 admixture of the blood of two dissimilar races 
 
 "Do you see that garl, gentlemen?" said he. 
 "That's the loveliest little thing in Mexico, and 
 diifers from them all in her birthplace and her 
 nussin'. Her mother's my cook, an' nothin' to me 
 more 'n that; an' I've plenty of my own, but they 
 was born in a house." And therewith the garrulous 
 good fellow hurried away to attend to some neces- 
 sary affair, intending to hasten back and finish his 
 proud tale. 
 
 The four travellers sat and watched, with some 
 pardonable impatience, the preparations for break- 
 fast. The doctor stealthily kept his eye upon the 
 big frontiersman, to whom ihe sight of the pretty 
 child did not seem to be in any way interesting. 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. . 39 
 
 From time to time the mother entered and busied 
 herself with the aifairs of breakfast. Slie seemed 
 an almost middle-aged Mexican woman of the better 
 class, care-worn and wrinkled with the world and 
 its struggle, as all her kind are when youth fades. 
 She was accustomed to strangers, and did not per- 
 ceive that the frontiersman had regarded her from 
 her first entrance with a dreamy stare. T\\q frijole.^ 
 and the chile-Gon-came had occupied her attention, 
 and she started when the big man rose up in her 
 way, his gray eyes glittering and his lips white, and 
 faintly spoke a word in Spanish — so faintly that 
 none understood. 
 
 She did not let fall the brown dish she held in 
 her hand ; she was ignorant of all nerves and proper 
 sensations. But she placed it upon the table, and 
 looked steadily at him. Her face began to pale a 
 little with fear and horror. As slow recognition 
 dawned upon her, she sank down upon the floor 
 and turned away her head, praying rapidly after the 
 fashion of her race. '-^Ave Maria T'' she muttered. 
 ^^Soy la desdicJia de este tnundo. Soy tit liija ahan- 
 donaday rae socerras en tu merced^ y me salvas de 
 las visitas de los aparecidos ; ah^ Madre de Crista^ 
 me salvas .^ " 
 
 ' ' But I am no ghost, " he said. ' ' Don' t you know 
 me ? W'y, now look here, — say, don't go 'way. 
 I'm drunk, or crazy, or dreamin', or else you are 
 my wife^ 
 
 She rose while he spoke, and the look of terror 
 changed to one of anxiety and consternation. " Oh, 
 go away," she said, in her lisping English. "It is 
 
40 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 YQYy long. Tengo otro hornbre^ y mocJios mucha- 
 chos.^^ And mingling her Spanish and English, 
 horrified and distressed, she passed backward 
 through the door. What wonder ? Dead husbands 
 are not wanted to return and interrupt the arrange- 
 ments that have come about through their deaths. 
 This poor woman had a second living husband, even 
 then in the door-yard, and acted as many another 
 would have done in a situation so strange and so 
 improbable. 
 
 Then the proprietor returned, and attempted to 
 finish his interesting remarks upon the child. He 
 had at last got to the curious manner of her birth in 
 the chapparal, when she came in again. The fron- 
 tiersman listened as one who dreams. His eyes 
 rested lovingly upon the child, who knew and cared 
 as little for him as though he were indeed dead in 
 the canon. 
 
 "Chicquita," said he, as he advanced and held 
 out to her a trembling hand, "do ye know who I 
 am? Yer mother does. W'y, now, come, — can't 
 ye?" His fond and confident expression changed 
 to one of pitiable suffering, as the girl ran from him 
 with a scared and wondering look and took refuge 
 beside the proprietor. 
 
 "Look here. Mister," said that person, "I don't 
 know you, but ye're actin' like a fool. What are ye 
 a skeerin' this one for? IS'ow stop yer foolin' an' eat 
 yer breakfast ef ye want to, an' ef not, be done with 
 yer nonsense in my house." 
 
 "She's my own little one," gasped the other. 
 
JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 41 
 
 "I'm her fatlier. Go call her mother to tell ye, — 
 an' mind yer jaw, or I'll — " 
 
 Then the woman, with red eyes and a face in 
 which the evidence of a strange contest was visible, 
 again entered the room. 
 
 "No, Senor," she said, "I not know you, — go." 
 And she sank into the uttermost corner of the room, 
 and covering her face with her dingy shawl, rocked 
 herself to and fro. 
 
 The proprietor seemed reassured, and advanced 
 upon his antagonist. "Who are ye?" he said. 
 "The man you claim to be is as dead as Moses. 
 He wus dead w'en this garl wus born. Ye can't 
 play no sicli stuff as that. She won't look at ye. 
 Chuck, who is this feller, anyhow? " 
 
 The spoiled beauty looked at the frontiersman 
 disdainfully, contemplated him for a moment, and 
 broke into a careless laugh. The victim sank into 
 a seat like one stricken. The actions of the child 
 were but natural, for the instinctive recognition of 
 relationships is but a fable. The broken man, de- 
 nied by his wife, and derided by the child of whose 
 dear existence he had dreamed for so many years, 
 insulted and defied by an officious stranger, crept 
 away and hid himself in the coach, and was there 
 when it passed out upon its onward journey. 
 
 The remaining miles were passed in the glow 
 and cheerfulness of day; but the party was now a 
 silent and constrained one. There sat with them a 
 man who seemed very old, and who was seemingly 
 crushed by that century of suffering which it is pos- 
 sible to concentrate into a single hour. 
 
42 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 There came an autumn afternoon in that saii?e 
 year, when the yellowing leaves beside the ashen 
 stream trembled in a wind that bore the slightest 
 breath of cold. The imperturbable mountains still 
 lay about the scene, casting long shadows across the 
 low valley. He had gone to the bad, and had gone 
 very quickly. But his stage-journey friend stuck to 
 him while the colossal strength gradually became 
 childish weakness, and the pillow upon which the 
 white head lay was softer than any it had ever felt 
 before. It was he who held the big, emaciated hand 
 on that afternoon, and smiled sadly as his patient 
 talked. "Ye can't save me this time," he said. 
 "Ye' re good ones, but there's no use in it now." 
 
 It were fitting if that mother and daughter could 
 have been near then, while, as the shadows length- 
 ened, he said good-bye. There was no hope of 
 glory, no illumined path stretching out before him 
 and across the river. " Good-bye. I'm glad to go. 
 I couldn't help it. I never had no luck. It's all 
 right nowy 
 
 And for the last time — lonely now, indeed, but as. 
 he had lived, without fear — the frontiersman started 
 out upon la Jornada del muerto. 
 
III. 
 
 MEI^ OF THE BORDER. 
 
 NO one would ever learn from innumerable vol 
 umes that our country had developed anything 
 characteristic, save that which, as Americans, we are 
 bound to consider as abstract greatness. Of course 
 not ; America is yet too young to have developed 
 classes whose peculiarities serve to separate them 
 from the great mass of their countrymen, or to give 
 them a place of their own in the annals of change 
 and progress. In this supposition, if it be as com- 
 mon as it would seem, there is a mistake. 
 
 There is a life where habits, prejudices and tastes 
 which have been bred in the bone are forgotten ; 
 where the grooves are turned a-wry and broken, and 
 in whose strongly defined yet fleeting characteristics 
 are to be seen the most wonderful of all the changes 
 that peculiar surroundings are capable of working 
 uj)on personal character. 
 
 The borderer is a man, not born, but uncon- 
 sciously developed by his associations, surroundings, 
 and necessities. He may have seen tlie light first on 
 the Chesapeake or the banks of the Juniata; he may 
 hail from Lincolnshire or Cork. Far Western life 
 will clothe him with a new individuality, make him 
 forget the tastes and habits of early life, and trans- 
 form him into one of that restless horde of cosmopo- 
 lites who are the foam of that slow wave of human- 
 
 43 
 
44 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 itj which creeps toward the setting sun, and subsides 
 at last in tliat green and abiding peace whicli has 
 changed the wilderness into homes and farms, built 
 railways and cities, and in a quarter of a century 
 added one-third to the wealth of a people in compar- 
 ison with whose greatness the Roman Empire was a 
 mimic show. 
 
 The life of the border is necessarily a transitory 
 one, and is fast passing away. The peculiarities of 
 existence and men there will disappear before fast- 
 advancing civilization, and leave no record of them- 
 selves, even as the backwoodsman has left none. 
 And yet the frontier may be said to have a lan- 
 guage, a religion, and a social life of its own. It 
 has a habit of thought and action unique, vigorous, 
 and not wanting in the elements of that which every- 
 where expresses religion, honor, and pathos. The 
 people whose tastes or whose fates lead them hither 
 have a world to themselves alone : a world of loneli- 
 ness and lost comforts, where cities, banks, railroads, 
 theatres, churches, and scandals have not yet come ; 
 a world where births and weddings are few, funeral 
 ceremonies are short, and tears are almost unknown. 
 There is here so close an affinity between nature and 
 man that nature is an hourly teacher in a land that 
 is as solemn as the sea, and where, as upon the sea, 
 the mists of the horizon bound the world. The days, 
 unchanged by the ceremonies and observances of 
 civilization, are all alike, each one as melancholy as 
 a Puritan Sabbath. Nature is herself, and spreads 
 her feasts and acts her orderly caprices at her own 
 pleasure. Acres of flowers, leagues of beauty, bloom 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 45 
 
 and fade and come again, unseen bj man, who does 
 not as yet understand his own dominion. Solitary 
 birds ily silently by. The animals stare at the new 
 animal — the passing man — almost unscared ; and 
 silence is a power. 
 
 And yet the borderer is not a ^' child of nature." 
 Men never are. It is a fiction of the poets. He is, 
 in his wildest state and his nearest approach to sim- 
 plicitj^ a creature of education, but of an education 
 so peculiar that the term scarcely expresses it. He 
 is undoubtedly a very different character from the 
 backwoodsman who has been called his prototype, 
 and in all respects a much more modern one of that 
 large class who are the unconscious victims of cir- 
 cumstance. He who a generation ago was engaged 
 in hewing out openings in the vast forests of Ohio 
 and Indiana was clad in buckskin and moccasins, and 
 practised in a homely manner, but conscientiously, 
 the virtues of hospitality, uncouth but disinterestea 
 kindness, and general and strict personal honesty. If 
 he was ignorant of the graces of civilization, he also 
 knew few of its vices. He had not been in cities and 
 had not carried their characteristic vices with him 
 into the wilderness. The weapon of his day was 
 an honest rifle, and he had not an arsenal of deatli 
 slung about his w^aist. In all these things the mod- 
 ern frontiersman sets at naught the idealisms of 
 Cooper, the time-honored traditions of the middle 
 states, and the well-established ideas of novel-read- 
 ing mankind. 
 
 The ideal borderer, the type of his class from 
 eastern Kansas to the Kio Grande, you are apt to 
 
46 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 find in calf-skin boots, with wide-brimmed liat worn 
 askew, and nether limbs encased in fancy cassi meres. 
 There are often rings upon his fingers and blazing 
 jewels upon his breast. lie is inclined to be loud 
 and defiant in dress, manners, and general deport- 
 ment. He clings with the tenacity of second nature 
 to the language of the dance-house and the brothel, 
 and uses in his discourse the picturesque phraseol- 
 ogy of draw-poker. The unhappy thought of Oolonel 
 Colt, w^hich has filled more unmarked graves than 
 the plague and eternally settled more disputes than 
 all juries, is his constant and valued companion, and 
 he wears his rakish hat a- wry upon his oily locks 
 witli the air of the king of all the loafers. 
 
 But he is not a loafer. He is quarrelsome, jeal- 
 ous of honor, and still very much of a man and a 
 friend to those who understand him. He scorns to 
 conceal actual impressions and thoughts, but in this 
 he is only very unnecessarily sincere and independ- 
 ent. He will take a stranger's last dollar at a game 
 w^hicli he does not understand, but he will likewise 
 lend and share to the last cent and the last morsel. 
 He hates what he is pleased to consider "airs," 
 cannot abide to be patronized, and is intolerant 
 tow^ard all who chance to disagree with him. His 
 great fault is a disposition to bluster, to assert him- 
 self, to deny to the rest of mankind the privilege of 
 being ever or by any chance in the right. But he 
 is brave, sincere, and faithful, when once enlisted in 
 any causCo 
 
 This kind of man, with the many variations 
 which exist among classes always, is the frontiers- 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 47 
 
 man. California has seen liini these twenty years. 
 He is here and there in all the villages of Colo- 
 rado and IS^ew Mexico, and his habitation is in 
 every sheltered nook in many thousands of ndles of 
 plains-country. "With all his faults, it may be justly 
 said of him that he is a man who depends upon his 
 courage, who has chosen his life and will never 
 leave it, and who is the fit and capable vedette 
 who stands upon the verge of the mighty civiliza- 
 tion which is destined to follow him when he and his 
 unconscious work shall have passed into that dim 
 limbo that has no historian, and leaves no record, 
 monument, nor representative. It is not necessa- 
 rily a startling announcement, that the. borderer 
 does not feel called upon to live entirely without 
 the solace and comfort of woman. We may be 
 saddened, but hardly astonished, to know that the 
 bold-faced curse of the by-streets of the most pop- 
 ulous and enlightened of the cities of the world 
 is also here, bolder, gaudier, and more shameless 
 than ever. Ministering to every baseness, inciting 
 to every crime, worse 'than her male associates by 
 so much as woman fallen is always worse than 
 man, the tipsy queen of the demi-monde flaunts 
 her finery among the shanties of every border town. 
 But there is another class who, in a feminine 
 way, are like unto their husbands and brothers. 
 They are indeed few, and it will be long before 
 there will be complaints of a surplus of maiden 
 ladies on the border. How or why any of them 
 ever came there, is something of a mystery. But 
 they live in the ranche and the adobe, and are 
 
48 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wives and mothers, and are content — and, it is 
 liardlj superlative to say, as happy as their more 
 elegant sisters of the East. Their nearest neighbor 
 may be twenty miles away, their chances for gossip 
 few and far between, and all their amusements and 
 occupations masculine and homely. They know 
 more of the economy of the camp-fire, the qualities 
 of oxen, and the habits of the coyote, than they do 
 of the prevailing fashions, or of cunning variations 
 in the style of bonnets and the color of hosiery. 
 But the neat bed in the corner, the clean hearth, 
 the neatness of dingy adobe or sod walls, and the 
 trailing vine over the low roof, in many a frontier 
 house, proclaim the touch, the taste, the love and 
 care, with which, in loneliness, poverty, and isola- 
 tion, a woman ^ still adorns the spot which is her 
 home. 
 
 There are children too. You need not think to 
 escape the cry of infancy by going westward. They 
 never heard the sound of the school-house bell, and 
 are ignorant of the functions of a Sunday-school 
 superintendent. They are even deprived of the 
 ordinary amusements of children. They ride no 
 gates, slide upon no cellar doors, and make no 
 small escapades, to be found and carried home by 
 the police. But the mud-pie proprietorship of a 
 hundred leagues is theirs. All their lives they 
 have heard the bark of the coyote, and watched 
 for the coming and going of the bison, and in the 
 majority of instances are the tow-headed, boggle- 
 eyed urchins that children of the English blood the 
 world over are ever apt to be. 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 49 
 
 Partly to circumstances attending trade, particu- 
 larly freighting, but mainly to what may be called 
 the migratory instinct, most of the people of the far 
 frontier owe the fact of their residence there. So 
 far east as western Kansas, there is yet a more 
 natural motive — the desire to obtain a home and 
 land. There is no more natural illustration than is 
 here apparent of how the human mind goes back in 
 its desires to the original source of all wealth, and 
 to the first meaning of the word home — a home that 
 is ours because we have made it. In the search for 
 this, there is no danger that can daunt, no difficulty 
 that can discourage. The pertinacity with which 
 the pre-emptors and squatters have clung to the 
 idea of home-getting, amid surroundings in which 
 there seems so little present happiness and so little 
 future hope, is not the least surprising feature of 
 their hard lives. But with regard to a large class 
 with which this article has mainly to do, the ques- 
 tion as to why they are there, and what they find to 
 do, is harder to answer. The plains ranch proper 
 is always a small store, in which is sold bacon, 
 flour, and a very bad article of whiskey. The travel 
 is mainly confined to certain roads, and, notwith- 
 standing the trans-continental lines of railway, is at 
 certain seasons of the year by no means inconsider- 
 able. By this travel the rancher lives. The brown 
 walls of his hovel, seen from afar, are hailed with 
 delight by men who have not drunk nor smoked 
 since the night at the last stopping-place. To pass 
 without moistening his clay, would be to the aver- 
 
50 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 age plains-man an act strongly indicating mental 
 decay. 
 
 But the proportion of people who manage to live 
 on the border without any visible means of support 
 is larger than it is anywhere else outside of the 
 great cities. The hangers-on of the ranches go and 
 come unquestioned. Their dark and bearded faces 
 disappear, and they are gone, perhaps only for a 
 day, — though if forever, it leads to no inquiry and 
 excites no alarm. It is certain that the Anglo- 
 Saxon can become anything. He can be Indianized 
 and Mexicanized, and upon the frontier he becomes 
 an Arab — not a weak imitation or intentional pat- 
 tern, but of his own kind, and after his own fancies 
 and necessities. Taciturn, suspicious, and coura- 
 geous, hospitable in peace and unscrupulous in 
 enmity, the Bedouin of the border is a man who 
 wears clothes of a familiar pattern, and speaks 
 English ; and there his resemblance to the race 
 from which he sprung almost ends. 
 
 Yet the verge of civilization is a field for the 
 gathering together of all kinds and classes. Here 
 is the patient, plodding, phlegmatic German, fast 
 forgetting every tradition of his fatherland in the 
 absorbing wildness that makes all men alike. 
 Here is the Irishman, with the rich brogue of Tip- 
 perary still upon his tongue, but changed in all else 
 which tells of the green isle of peat, potatoes, and 
 blarney. Here is the down-east Yankee, oblivious 
 of all the ideas of the land of baked beans and hard 
 cider, turning his native cunning to account at poke)- 
 and California jack. Here is the characteristic son 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 51 
 
 of the Sgutli, still speaking tlie inincing dialect that 
 has been borrowed in the name of gentility from the 
 thick tongue of the negro, but, for a wonder, forget- 
 ting to insert ''Sir" at the ending of every sen 
 tence. But all are changed, at least in name. Tlie 
 German has become "Dutch Bill," or "Dutch" 
 something, no matter what ; the Irislnnan is always 
 "Pat." The New Englander often answers to the 
 name of "Yank," and the Southerner is willing and 
 proud to be called "Ivaintuck," or "Tennessee," or 
 even "Cracker." Thus is true democracy made 
 manifest. The real names of individuals are often 
 unknown to acquaintances of years. Any peculiarity 
 of person or history brings about its apt cognomen 
 of recognition. The man who squints is "Cock- 
 eye" for all time. The lame man is "Limpy," 
 and the slender and attenuated one is "Slim" 
 Dick, or Tom, or whatever the name that was once 
 his may be. The surprising thing is that these 
 names are accepted and gloried in. Indeed, those 
 that are born of some peculiarity of personal history 
 are proudly borne. To be Buffalo Bill, or Fighting 
 Joe, is to be famous. "Mister" is the designation 
 of a stranger ; but if a borderer calls an individual 
 "Mister" after he has known him a week, it means 
 that he does not particularly like him, to say the 
 least. 
 
 Brusque and rude as all this seems, there is no 
 country where the established forms are more rigidly 
 observed. If you are invited to "take sutliin'," it 
 is offensive to refuse. If you are aslvcd to "set up 
 and eat," it is not a mere form; you are not only 
 
52 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 really welcome, but expected to return tlie compli- 
 ment should your host ever come your way. In 
 the immense expanse of country, men who live a 
 liundred miles apart are often near neighbors and 
 intimate friends. The necessities of the frontier 
 produce a freemasonry in comparison with which 
 the actual brotherhood is a tame and meaningless 
 thing. If a ranchman lends his neighbor a mule 
 and tells him to leave it at Sims' s or Slocum's, a 
 hundred miles away, he is certain of finding the 
 animal there when wanted. Honesty and punctual- 
 ity are the current exchange of the country, and a 
 short shrift and a sudden ending is the meed of 
 absolute necessity to him who habitually wrongs his 
 neighbor. 
 
 Another bond of union among all white men on 
 the border is common enmity to the Indian. Hatred 
 of the Apache and the Kiowa will be the uj^permost 
 feeling in the borderer's mind so long as there is a 
 disputed territory claimed alike by him and his 
 enemy. Year by year the ranks are thinned in many 
 an encounter that is never heard of in the world 
 of newspapers, and year by year the frontiersman 
 counts fresh accessions to his ranks. While right 
 and justice and policy are discussed elsewhere, the 
 contest proceeds without any abatement between the 
 parties interested. The sentence of doom that is 
 written against the red man, while it is slow in its 
 operation, seems utterly irrevocable. The horde of 
 adventurers who invade his hunting-grounds are 
 hardy, bold, and cunning as he. Within a century 
 one of the great divisions of a common family will 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 53 
 
 have passed away, and its only liistory will be a 
 liistory of decadence and death, j)i"<^served in the 
 meagre annals of its first and last enemy, the bor- 
 derer. 
 
 So much isolation and habitual loneliness has 
 been the cause of curious relationships, and of these 
 the fashion of partnerships is a remarkable one. 
 Two men, often very unlike, will associate them- 
 selves, not so much as sharers in the gains of busi- 
 ness or adventure — though that is also included — 
 but simply as "pards," adopted brethren. Each 
 one's quarrel is also the quarrel of the other. They 
 are always encountered together, and hold all trou- 
 bles in common, together with all pleasures. In 
 most cases, a genuine affection seems to exist be- 
 tween them. There is rather an opinion that who- 
 ever has no "pard" is, until cause be shown, a 
 rather "mean cuss," "who can't live with nobody." 
 A separation of two partners, and a dissolution of 
 the mysterious tie, causes as great a scandal as a 
 divorce case in other regions. 
 
 But there is yet another side to the frontiersman's 
 friendship. His neighborly obligations are all out- 
 side the obligations imposed by the sixth command- 
 ment. The revolver is not always carried about for 
 nothing, and its owner is quick of hand and eye, and 
 generally sure of his weapon and his aim. There is 
 no man upcm whom a reckless code of honor is so 
 fatally and foolishly binding. An insult, fancied or 
 real, is settled then and there with a life, and the 
 bystanders are the judges of the fairness of tlie 
 transaction. To maul and pummel is childish, and 
 
54 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 leads to no adequate result ; to murder is gentle- 
 inanlj and proper, and, withal, the fashion. The 
 old code of tlie duello was a tame and insipid thing 
 compared with a row in a "saloon" in a border 
 town. There is no code, no law, no jury. Each 
 man, in the heat of passion, is the judge of the 
 gravity of the foolish word, the drunken insult, the 
 hastily-spoken taunt, or the ancient grudge, and 
 therefore gives his own life or takes another for it, 
 as depends upon his soberness, his quickness, or his 
 courage. We talk of the fasliions which rule society, 
 where there is society ; of hoops, panniers, chignons, 
 and bustles, with all their accompanying bonnets 
 and trains. On the border, men willingly die to be 
 in the fashion. 
 
 Human nature becomes accustomed to all sur- 
 roundings that are forced upon it, and to solitude 
 easiest of all. The frontiersman would smile if you 
 told him that his life was a monotonous one. Want- 
 ing even the newspaper, he is more gregarious than 
 other men are, and makes a companion of some- 
 thing, and even an animal is made to serve in that 
 capacity when there is no one else. The dog, dear 
 as he is to many men everywhere, is doubly a friend 
 in the wilderness. His master sleeps and eats and 
 talks with him. He may be the mangiest cur that 
 evpr barked. Ko matter ; it is not a country in 
 which to be too particular. There is another animal 
 that commonly leads a persecuted life and dies a 
 violent death among Christian people, that here 
 fmds a better lot and more appreciation. Our friend 
 will search long and far for a surplus and unneces- 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 55 
 
 sary cat, and name him comically, and teach him 
 innumerable tricks, and make him altogether an 
 important member of his household. Sometimes, in 
 the Southwest, a long-eared and solemn-counte- 
 nanced little ass will be found making himself very 
 much at home upon the premises, clumping clumsily 
 about the shanty, investigating the cookery, climb- 
 ing upon the bed, and going in and out with an 
 irresistibly comic air of proprietorship. But the 
 opportunity for companionship with his own kind 
 never passes unused with the hermit of the wilder- 
 ness. There are nightly gatherings at every ranch, 
 and the resource for amusement is usually the pas- 
 time that is as old as Babel : that of story-telling. 
 Each man has something to say, mostly upon the 
 interesting subject of his own adventures and past 
 life, and palms his narratives off for very truth, and, 
 as every listener knows, usually makes them as he 
 goes, out of whole cloth. Some of the most out- 
 rageous travesties upon truth ever said or sung have 
 beguiled the dull hours in the frontier cabin. The 
 next resource is the card-table, and in mining dis- 
 tricts the sums that sometimes change hands would 
 startle the visitors at Saratoga. With most frontiers- 
 men gambling is a passion, and some of them are 
 most accomplished members of the card-dealing 
 fraternity. 
 
 It should not be imagined that this man is impa- 
 tiently waiting the coming of a higher civilization, 
 or that he even wishes it to come. It suits him as it 
 is, and when the change comes he will go. It is 
 better not to need a thing than to have it. The 
 
66 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 unknown life of every man is more or less a protest 
 against law, refinement, obedience, and the odious 
 "duty." Habit has accustomed these men to free- 
 dom from the restraints of civilization ; from a bond- 
 age that all men sometimes feel, and which these, at 
 least, will never renew. They have discovered that 
 the refinements of life may be purchased at too high 
 a price. For them the veneer and the varnish have 
 cracked, and the original man shows through, the 
 savage that each one of us really is. In these, the 
 unconquerable impulses of eternal nature have found 
 permanent expression. They are those who will 
 tolerate never again the monotony of society. They 
 have abandoned forever the daily paper, polished 
 boots, books, insincere conversation, politics, in- 
 trigue, and the treadmill endlessness of that routine 
 which we call domestic life. 
 
 Our frontiersman has his excitements and his 
 pleasures, ferocious and deep, and for which he 
 refuses to be called to account by society or any 
 earthly authority. The man who shall transfer to 
 canvas some one of the scenes which each midnight 
 brings to the inner room of the trader's store in a 
 ]!^ew Mexican mining camp, and shall do it well, 
 will preserve for all time the most striking feature 
 of American frontier life. We shall see the dead 
 silence and the rapt attention, as the guttering can- 
 dles or smoking lamps flare upon each sun-browned 
 and grizzled face ; the hard hands and hairy arms ; 
 the look of covert exultation, as the winner draws 
 toward him the coin and the bags of yellow dust. 
 We shall read the quick glance that suspects a cheat, 
 
MEN OF THE BORDER. 57 
 
 and the deep curse that records a mistake. And 
 standing there, ahnost as intent as the players, will 
 be those who watch the fascinating passion in its 
 varying record of gain or loss. The dim light will 
 throw the rough beams along the roof into shadows 
 and lights with grotesque alternations, and blackness 
 will lurk among the lounging figures in nooks and 
 corners. But pervading all — the essence of the 
 picture — will be that suggestion of folly and ruin 
 which mere words cannot paint : that look upon 
 faces that tells of tlie homelessness of years, the 
 days of toil and sacrifice, the months of delving and 
 hoping, all gone in a single night ; and also of that 
 bewitching hope that ever waits upon the devotees 
 of the god of chance, and the end of which is 
 despair, broken hearts, and death. 
 
lY 
 
 BROWN'S REVENGE. 
 
 OJO CALIENTE was of itself a prominent fea- 
 ture in a landscape bare and brown, and 
 stretching in rocky monotony and silence for leagues 
 on every hand. Even to those wise ones who find 
 among the " ologies " a sufiicient explanation for all 
 the strange things this old world did when she was 
 very young and soft, the decided eccentricities of 
 nature are always invested with something of the 
 terror of mystery and the charm of strangeness. As 
 for this particular spot, many thoughtful eyes had^ 
 looked upon it ; many wise heads had speculated at 
 its brink. A conical mound, very symmetrical in 
 shape, and some thirty feet in height, rose from the 
 surrounding plain. Its top was a circular basin, 
 about fifteen feet in diameter and of unknown depth, 
 always full of limpid, sparkling, bubbling water. 
 There alone in all the thirsty land the delicious ele- 
 ment abounded, rejoiced, and ran over. Clear, pure, 
 and — cold, of course? No, it was scalding hot. 
 There was the wonder. It was one of the myste- 
 rious openings into our common mother's fervid 
 heart. Through a notch in the rocky basin's edge 
 the stream ran over, as large as a man's body, — a 
 volume that might have supplied a town with hot 
 baths, and almost have cleansed the grimy denizens 
 of Constantinople itself. But it did not seethe and 
 
 58 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 59 
 
 rage, and then compose itself in intervals of fitful 
 and deceptive slumber. Through all seasons and 
 all times, through heat and cold, the stream was as 
 constant as woman's love, or wickedness. Where 
 the torrent spread itself out and cooled in the plain 
 below, the tall grass and coarse weeds, and some 
 hardy ferns, grew rank and luxuriant, with their 
 roots constantly bathed in a frost-defying warmth. 
 And the terrapins and w^art-grown lizards and long- 
 legged mottled toads gathered there and lived a 
 fortunate life. Amid the dense growth and balmy 
 vapors the rattlesnake forgot to stiffen his odious 
 coils in a half-year's slumber, and lay content and 
 stupid, but still venomous, all the season througli. 
 The rough bowlders gathered a green coat of slini}^ 
 moss as they lay in the ooze; and in winter, when 
 the hoar-frost or the light snow lay on all the hills, 
 that bit of verdure was like a flowery acre strayed 
 from the tropics. 
 
 Such a place, lying as it did on the main road 
 from the low country to the hills, had not failed to 
 attract attention and suggest a use. And that use 
 was, of course, in accord with the ideas of the coun- 
 try. Ojo Caliente was a ranch ; and while to a cer- 
 tainty the ranch idea could not be left out, there was 
 also connected with it a new idea in the wilderness : 
 it was a watering-place. The scalding flood was 
 supposed to possess medicinal properties, and an 
 enterprising man occupied the slope of the hill with 
 a rambling adobe, the front of which, standing next 
 the travelled road, was the "store," while an array 
 of rude chambers straggled up the slope toward the 
 
60 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 spring. Each room was farnislied with a h^ng 
 wooden tub, into which the water was conducted by 
 a trough. Some tall cottonwoods flourished beside 
 tlie wall, and, gaining vigorous growth from the 
 warm stream that touched their roots, gave an oasis 
 charm to this one spot in the treeless landscape. 
 
 The place was likewise a hotel, and the smoke of 
 some camp-fire arose each night from the trampled 
 and dusty spot beside the garden, and mules brayed 
 within the square enclosure which was supposed to 
 be a sufficient protection against the Apache. Here 
 and there a limping rheumatic sat and chafed his 
 limbs, and talked of his complaint, and waited for 
 health. Other than the waters, there was no physi- 
 cian there. IS'either was there any pretence of infirm- 
 ity as an excuse for idleness and pleasure. There 
 was no need of pretended illness in this region as an 
 excuse for dissipation. 
 
 The proprietor of the place — the inventor and 
 maker of all save the scalding spring itself — was a 
 man whom every denizen of the country knew, and 
 none knew well. He had come from no one knew 
 or ever found out where, and had improved his pos- 
 sessions with a lavish hand and no small expenditure 
 of money. He was called w^ealthy, and daily added 
 to his store. His cattle grazed upon the surround- 
 ing hills, and with rare skill and vigilance he kept 
 them safe from the universal enemy. His place 
 was known as a good place, and his meals were 
 "square" meals. As neighbors go in that country, 
 he was a good neighbor ; and many a mule was lent, 
 many a broken wheel mended, and many a meal 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 61 
 
 given away, for men whom he had never seen 
 before. Personally, he had failed to take upon liim 
 the likeness of the border. Middle-aged and grave, 
 he dressed in a civilized garb, and his oddly-sliaven 
 face had in it a look of settled melanclioly. By a 
 stranger, all these things were seen and forgotten. 
 " Odd feller," they said, as they passed on ; "won- 
 der where he come from ? " and that was all. 
 
 But those who had known him longer had stud- 
 ied these peculiarities to better purpose. There 
 was a rumor in the country that his name was not 
 really Denliam, and in many a camp-fire talk it had 
 been remarked that no man had ever heard him 
 mention the place of his nativity or speak of his 
 family. Yet the unconquerable dialect of his youth 
 betrayed him as an Englishman ; and this was the 
 only circumstance they could absolutely claim as 
 knowledge. Yet he was never questioned ; for, 
 liking him well, there was still something about 
 him that forbade familiarity. 
 
 He was proverbially quiet, and even timid. He 
 carried not the accustomed arsenal upon his belt, 
 and was never known to take up a gun. In these 
 things his servants acted for him ; and while he had 
 been known to stand calmly at his door and watch 
 an Indian running-fight for the possession of his 
 herds, the idea of actual participation in the 
 defence seemed never to have ejitered his mind. 
 So they sometimes called him "the preacher," and 
 the irreverent nicknamed him "padre ;" and when 
 by chance he heard them, he turned and walked 
 
62 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 away witli a peculiar and unwonted look upon his 
 melancholy face. 
 
 Once when a miner died at his house, and was 
 filled with that late repentance that usually comes 
 to torment the closing hours of a hard life, Den- 
 ham stood with others in the room. They told 
 afterward how " the preacher " seemed to restrain 
 himself in the desire to say or do something at the 
 dying sinner's bedside. He came, hesitated, went 
 away again. He again returned, bringing with him 
 a small worn volume, which he opened and tried to 
 read. His lips were dry and his face grew pale, as 
 he read: "I am the resurrection and the life; he 
 that believeth in me — ." His voice choked in the 
 utterance of the words that take in all there is of 
 hope ; and he closed the book and left the place. 
 There were those who were ready thereafter to 
 declare, in their rough fashion, that if he were not 
 a preacher he ouglit to be. 
 
 Frontiersmen are not inclined to love men who 
 are not of their kind. But in this case, after four 
 years of divided opinion, the larger portion of that 
 scattered population who had aught to do with the 
 proprietor of Ojo Caliente were ready to light for 
 him. He did not swear, he refused to drink, he 
 avoided slang. His language was such as some few 
 of them could hardly understand; and with every 
 temptation that the reckless and devil-may-care 
 spirit of the country offered, there was no suspi- 
 cion of a single slip in his conduct. He counselled 
 ])eace in the midst of strife. He gave advice to 
 those who asked it, but meddled with the affairs of 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 63 
 
 none. Each man believed liimself to be his chief 
 friend. He was accounted acute and far-sighted, 
 and a crowd of men, ever ready to act more from 
 impulse than reason, made discovery of that fact. 
 He was the depository of the confidence of every 
 bearded fellow in a radius of a hundred miles, and 
 he kept the secrets like a priest. But none could 
 divest him of his strangeness. He read books — 
 or, rather, a book. For a long time they thought 
 it must be one some of them had heard of, mayliaj) 
 seen : the Bible. But when one of their number 
 once slyly looked at the open page, he discovered 
 that other scarcely less wonderful volume, Shak- 
 speare. Once, on a frosty night, he read to the 
 story-tellers around the fire a tale that had in it 
 rather more of that wonderful "touch of nature" 
 than they were accustomed to in theirs, and they 
 clamored for more, and listened until the moon 
 v/ent down. And each rough son of the wilder- 
 ness carried ever after a bright imagining of her 
 who would have borne the logs for Ferdinand, and 
 fancied he could sometimes hear Ariel sing among 
 the pines. 
 
 Men who lead a strange life are generally uncon- 
 scious of that life's strong peculiarities. Had his 
 friends been critical, they would have questioned the 
 motives of a man who, while so unlike them, yet 
 chose to live among them. "With all his kindness he 
 was still a man apart. You could tell, as he sat with 
 thoughtful face at his door in the shimmering sum- 
 mer afternoon, that his heart was not in this country. 
 He started at the slightest sound. He scrutinized 
 
64 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 strange faces witli a kind of covert interest, and 
 seemed ever ready to fly, abandoning all. The long- 
 looked-for mail that brought letters — evidently pre- 
 cious things even to the coarse and apparently hard- 
 ened men around him; — brought nothing to him. If 
 Ojo Caliente and its lonesome landscape was not his 
 home, then where could it be, since he had no inter- 
 est in any .other? 
 
 It is well known that the lonely graves of the 
 border sometimes hide strange histories — strange 
 and untold. The boundless waste of plain and 
 mountain is the great refuge of those who would 
 hide from themselves. It is not the man doomed 
 to spend the days of his years between granite walls, 
 not he who sees his last goods go down under the 
 sheriif 's hammer, not even he to whom law is inter- 
 preted as the grim code which puts a halter upon 
 his neck and his coffin before him, who knows most 
 of remorse, most of fear, or most of despair. Of all 
 suffering men, he suffers most who, burdened with 
 unpunished crimes, hides froin the world. There is 
 a punishment that comes at midnight, that no man 
 may avoid. This is hell. There is need of none 
 more fiery. You think faces will tell the tale; but 
 there is no such incomparable liar as the human 
 countenance. The man who scowls and frowns at 
 the fit of his collar or the quality of his dinner may 
 live long and carry a gnawing devil in his heart, and 
 give no sign. 
 
 Thus Denham ate and slept well, and looked 
 after his affairs, and had only a melancholy face. 
 JBut he was Qv^r watching. As he sat at his door, 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 65 
 
 and the evening shadows crept downward from the 
 mountain-tops, he could see the dim specks upon the 
 brown road grow larger and larger, and they were 
 never out of his sight or thoughts until nearness 
 demonstrated their character and showed him their 
 faces. This watchfulness was the man's characteris- 
 tic ; a sign of long-past trouble or crime, whatever that 
 trouble or crime was. Not that his friends thought 
 so. Uneasy watchfulness might have a thousand 
 causes, and is oftenest not regarded at all. Once 
 convict, once even suspect, and all signs are easily 
 read and exaggerated by those whose function it is to 
 suspect expertly. And yet there is ever more than 
 natural oddity in the man who walks with bent head, 
 and locked hands, and upon whose ordinary occupa- 
 tion creeps ever in the absent action, the muttered 
 word, the startled look, and the sudden change of 
 countenance. The man Denham had these charac- 
 teristics. "I reckon he's the feardest of Injins of 
 any man in these parts," his neighbors sometimes 
 remarked. He was afraid, but not of Indians. There 
 was but one man of whom Denham stood in mortal 
 fear, and he knew not if that one terrible creature 
 were alive or dead. 
 
 And in the long and tedious hours that wait upon 
 an order of events that men may never control lest 
 they should interrupt retribution, it occurred that 
 Denham'^ ghost came at last and sat himself down 
 like Banquo at the feast. Even his far home in the 
 wilderness was doomed to be the lure of fate and the 
 cause of his discomfiture. For with grim pertinacity 
 men's crimes, even their mistakes, do often hunt 
 5 
 
Q6 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 tliem out. One evening, business, or a not uncom- 
 mon desire to be alone, took him over the hill and 
 far down bj the sedgy garden. It may have been 
 that his brooding mind had that anticipation of evil 
 which we imagine our inner consciousness sometimes 
 has. But in an hour he returned slowly toward 
 the house, his hands behind him, and his bent and 
 prematurely gray head regarding only his own slow 
 footsteps.' Entering at the rear, he passed slowly 
 through the low rooms, pushing aside the canvas 
 that hung as a door before the entrance to each 
 apartment. The frost of the late autumn of a pros- 
 perous year had come, and upon rude benches a half 
 dozen frontiersmen sat before the blazing fire in the 
 public room, engaged in the old business of story- 
 telling. He approached the strip of soiled canvas 
 which hung between him and them, slowly, as was 
 his wont ; and as he came a voice, that was not a 
 familiar one fell upon his ear. It was not familiar, 
 for the man was a stranger; and yet that coarse and 
 strident laugh was like a knell to George Denham, 
 and his face flushed and paled as he sank upon a 
 seat. Then, as he cautiously peered through upon 
 the group, he saw the stranger, lately arrived, full 
 of talk, and the only man whose coming had ever 
 escaped those watchful eyes. He was not a creature 
 to be frightened at, only a bearded fellow of forty, 
 red-faced and brawny-handed, — as evidently a man 
 whose best years had been spent upon the border 
 as though the fact had been placarded upon him. 
 Already he was on familiar terms with the men 
 around him, and had begun the narration of his 
 
BBOWN'S REVENGE. 6Y 
 
 adventures. As Denliam waited and listened behind 
 the curtain lor confirmation of his fears, he knew the 
 stranger did not lie as he talked. 
 
 ''Gentlemen," said he, "I never were here 
 before, but I'm usen to this kind o' thing. I kim to 
 Californy when I were kind o' young, about '50, 
 an' kinder struck a lead, an' made money mity fast. 
 I stayed 'round thar fur twelve year, — yes, I reckon 
 it wus twelve year, — an' all the time, gentlemen, I 
 had a woman back in Injiany whar I come frum. I 
 don't know how's this might strike some o' you ; 
 but I had, an' it were a long time to wait, you bet 
 ye. An' so finally I concluded I'd go back an' see 
 my old gal, awaitin' so long, ye know. Well (any 
 gent as liafs a chaw o' terbacker kin accommodate 
 me), as I was a say in' (tliank ye, boss), I started 
 fur to go back agin, an' when I got down to Saccer- 
 mento, thinks I, what ud I be doin' to be a carryin' 
 around about ten thousan' dollars an' suthin' more ? 
 ' Buy a draft,' sez they. 'A draft?' sez I ; ' we ain't 
 usen to no sicli in my part o' the countr^^' But the 
 war wuz broke out, ye know, an' I see some mity 
 purty bills — they called 'em treas'ry notes — as 
 they said wuz as good's the old gold. Sez I, ' Mis- 
 ter, them'll do,' an' I chucked my dust inter ten o' 
 the biggest. 'Twar a mighty small roll, I tell ye, 
 for to be wuth ten thousan', an' I jest folded 'em into 
 a slip o' paper an' chucked 'em into my jacket pocket, 
 an' started. It war careless, I know, but I 'lowed I 
 needn't tell of 'em bein' thar. Well, I come clear 
 across, an' war a' most home, 'till I got on a road in 
 the state of Missoury. We wuz a hoopin' it up one 
 
68 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 night, scootin' over the peraiy at about forty mile a 
 hour, an' I went to sleep. In the mornin', gentle- 
 men, when I felt fur my money, it war gone. It's 
 been long ago now, an' all past an' done ; but I tell 
 you it mighty nigh got me. I wuz a thinkin' of the 
 old gal — dreamin' of her, in fact,— an' to wake in- 
 the mornin' a sittin' in a seat a rattlin' to'ards home 
 arter twelve year o' hard work, an' busted — teetotal 
 busted, — it war too bad. Gentlemen, I ain't much 
 on the weakness, but I could a' cried. I tackled the 
 conductor. Sez he, 'There ain't no man got off this 
 'ere train sence two o'clock, an' you got on at one.' 
 Then he ask 'em, sez he, ' Will any man objec' to 
 bein' sarched ? ' An' they sez no. Ther wuz no 
 crack or chink o' that car we didn't sai»ch. Ther 
 wuz no wimmin on, an' hadn't been, an' no man cud 
 naterally objec'. Finally, sez the conductor, sez he, 
 'You ain't never had it.' I jest knocked him inter 
 a cocked hat. I wuz 2'iled, an' it wuz a comfort for 
 to do it. An' then I jest clim' down oiPn that train 
 an' started back. I hain't seen my old woman — 
 shan't never see her — she's dead. Gentlemen, I'm 
 a busted man. I don't claim to be nuthin' else. 
 . . . . Kin you accommodate me, pard ? — thank 
 ye." 
 
 As the speaker, with indescribable gusto, placed 
 another quid in his mouth, there was a perceptible 
 feeling around the circle of listeners. It is mistaken 
 philosophy, and mistaken religion, to speak of the 
 hardness of the human heart. It is careless and 
 selfish, but there is no more responsive thing when 
 awakened by that unstudied strain which is like the 
 
BROWN'S REVENaE. 
 
 harmony we may liear wlieii the chords of a harp 
 are touched by a baby's fingers or by a passing 
 robe. It was not intended, and a thousand attempts 
 might not reproduce it. It was music, nevertheless. 
 
 " But," said one, who was younger than the rest, 
 '' why did you not go home ? What did ye act that- 
 a-way for ? " 
 
 Then the stranger turned his head slightly to one 
 side, and closed his opposite eye, and regarded the 
 speaker for a brief moment. It was the pantomime 
 which means, "What ails youf^ 
 
 "Air ye aware, young feller, that a man can't go 
 home arter twelve year, poor an' ragged an' ornery, 
 an' tell 'cm he had a lot o' money stole from him 
 night afore last? Do ye think a man's mother-in- 
 law 'd b'lieve any sich thin stuff? " Then, as the 
 younger one retired into the shade of contempt, the 
 speaker turned again toward the circle of silent lis- 
 teners, and continued : "Ye see, under sich circum- 
 stances, a feller keeps his ragged britches on a 
 purpose. He thinks he's a goin' for to hug his wife, 
 an' kiss his babies, an' be independenter'n a mule, 
 an' play it low down on 'em all fur about a week, 
 an' then tell 'em all about it, so's to 'stonish 'em, 
 and finally buy a farm. A feller kind o' wants to 
 make it as creamy as possible, ye know. An' then 
 to be tee total busted. Them's hard lines, gentle- 
 men ; I say them's hard lines." 
 
 And all this time Dcnham sat unseen behind the 
 narrow curtain, and watched and listened. It was 
 dark there, and only one lance of yellow light from 
 the bright fire lay across his face. At first his coun- 
 
70 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 tenance liad a look of consternation, as lie glanced 
 at his new guest, and felt liis pockets, and looked 
 into a far dark corner where lav an expressman's 
 portable safe, probably purchased at some quarter- 
 master's auction sale. Then, as the conversation 
 went on, his look changed, his mood melted, and 
 the dim shadow of a strong resolve came into his 
 eyes. But no one can describe the emotional pan- 
 orama a man's face is supposed to present under 
 such circumstances ; because, if these changes occur 
 at all, it is only when the restraint of other eyes is 
 taken away. I have already said, with the man 
 Denham as an example, that men's faces are great 
 liars. But a change came over him as he listened, 
 whether perceptible or not. He arose quietly and 
 went to the safe that lay in the corner. He 
 took a key from his pocket, and very silently and 
 cautiously took from the safe a packet, seemingly 
 a folded written document of some length. Then 
 he went quietly back, and seated himself again, 
 listening intently to the stranger's story. 
 
 They were hard lines, he had said ; and almost 
 as he uttered the words, Denham came among the 
 group. He did not sit down, but where the light 
 fell full upon his face, stood regarding the stranger. 
 
 "Do you know me ? " said he. 
 
 "Wy — well, no — not adzactly. How'd do?" 
 and the good fellow rose and proffered his hand 
 with a look of inquiry and anticipation. 
 
 Denham feigned not to see the hand, which it 
 seemed he dare not take ; and when the stranger 
 had seated himself again he stood looking at the 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 11 
 
 fire ill forced calmness, but his eyes were anxious, 
 and liis voice was hoarse. Presently, as by a 
 mighty eiFort, he said : 
 
 "Friends, I have something to say to this man, 
 William Brown," — the stranger started, — "and to 
 you alL Please listen to me, and understand that 
 I do appoint you all to be my judges and my jury. 
 Some of you tried and hanged the horse-thief at 
 Pin OS Altos, and two of you captured and brought 
 back the man wlio killed Tom Hicks, and he was 
 tried and condemned. I am ready to stand by your 
 verdict. God knows, I want no better men." 
 
 The bronzed and bearded group upon whom tlie 
 firelight glanced as this man seemed to place liis 
 life in their hands, sat silent. It may not have 
 seemed as strange to them as it does to the reader. 
 They were the law-makers, as well as the execu- 
 tives, of the country in which they lived ; good men 
 and true. IN'o cringing prayers, no promises, no 
 tears, availed with them. Yet the American history 
 which is yet to be written will not deny justice to 
 the grim law-makers of the border. Every man's 
 life was in his brother's hands. They dealt justly, 
 not as under the abstract obligations of an oath, 
 but as every man himself hoped for justice. 
 
 Perhaps they did not quite understand the speak- 
 er's words ; but they sat unmoved, and waited. It 
 was not a hasty court, — they would see it all clearly 
 by and by. The speaker continued : 
 
 "William Brown, I have heard your story, and 
 I declare to these men that it is true. See here," 
 and he held up in his hand a small square volume ; 
 
72 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 ''this is a Bible. I believe this book to be God's 
 book, and on it I solemnly swear that / am the 
 man that robbed William Br own. '^'^ 
 
 A look passed from one to the other round the 
 circle, but no man spoke. Only the stranger rose 
 up. Some who read this may imagine the ease 
 with which a man comes at last to handle a long- 
 accustomed tool. The soldier and his musket are 
 almost one, and there is a flash-like celerity with 
 which the Lascar slips his crooked knife from its 
 greasy scabbard into the bowels of his antagonist. 
 Such as this is the intimacy of the borderer with 
 his weapon. Ere Denh^m could speak again, or 
 scarcely look round, the slender muzzle of Brown's 
 pistol was in his face. 
 
 But there were other eyes and hands equally 
 quiclc, and as the avenger hesitated a moment to 
 say something, old Joe Maxwell's hand was upon 
 his arm. "Sit down, stranger," he said; "we're 
 a tryin' this case, an' don't want no interferin'," 
 and his gray eye had a look which meant more than 
 his words. 
 
 Borne up by the sense of his lofty purpose. Den- 
 ham stood calm, and in the silence which ensued 
 took from his pocket the packet, wliich he unfolded, 
 and handed it to old Maxwell. 
 
 "Can you read it? " said he. 
 
 The old frontiersman looked doubtfully at it, 
 handed it back, and remarked, " Eead it yerself, an' 
 I reckon we'll git the sense on it." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Denham, "this is my will 
 and my story together. I wrote it more than a year 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 7S 
 
 ago, for a man may die, and though I never tliought 
 to divulge- its contents during my life, yet the time 
 is come when it is best that it should be known. I 
 can remedy my QfFence, die happier, and be tliought 
 better of when I am dead. As between this man 
 and me, I have suffered most, and justly. I could 
 tell my story, but it is already written here." 
 
 His auditors were probably not conscious of it, 
 but as he stood there, close by the guttering candle, 
 with a peculiar and glorifying light upon his face, he 
 greatly impressed them. His manner was that of a 
 man who has overcome — who has conquered himself. 
 He opened the paper and solemnly read what is here 
 set down : 
 
 "In the Name of God, Amen. I, James Dodd, 
 clergyman of the Church of England, of Witham, in 
 the county of Essex, and now of the United States 
 of America, do herein write my last Will and Tes- 
 tament, and do hereby enjoin upon all that it shall be 
 duly executed, though wanting legal form, and with- 
 out witnesses, for I would that I might die without 
 shame, and that none should read until I am dead. 
 
 "I give unto William Brown, once of the state 
 of Indiana and now of parts unknown, and unto his 
 heirs and assigns, my property of Ojo Caliente, and 
 all lands, houses, appurtenances, and fixtures thereto 
 belonging. And I give unto him my strong-box and 
 all therein, namely, twenty-three thousand dollars in 
 coin ar.d dust. I give unto him and them all my 
 cattle and goods, and all property of all kinds, to 
 have, hold, and use the same forever. 
 
74 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 ''And I liereby enjoin upon all to whom this shall 
 come when I am dead, that they by no means hinder 
 the nijunctions of this my Testament; for I do most 
 solemnly declare that what I give J:o the said Will- 
 iam Brown is already his, and to the doubting I 
 commend the following, my confession : 
 
 ''I am fifty-four years of age. I was born in the 
 county of Essex, in England, and came to America 
 iu the year 184-8. I was a clergyman, and all my 
 life, until the time whereof I speak, I have feared 
 God, and, praying alwaj^s, walked in Ilis law. If 
 they yet live, I have a wife and two daughters, 
 whereof the eldest must now be twenty years old. 
 More of theui I will not speak; for since my fall they 
 have not seen my face, and I would that they and I 
 should suffer all manner of apprehension and sorrow, 
 and that they should mourn me as dead, rather than 
 know of my sin and crime. 
 
 " I was poor ; and though I urge not that as any 
 excuse, God knows the longing of a man for his fam- 
 ily's sake. I thought often of how T should improve 
 my condition, and dreamed of wealth. Yet I could 
 not attain it. I dare not abandon a calling for which 
 God and not my flock knew how little I was fitted, 
 for it secured at least my bread. Thinking these 
 thoughts, I was on a railway train in the state of 
 Missouri, on the night of December 22, 1862. On 
 the car were only eleven persons — males ; for it was 
 a bitter night. I arose and stood near the stove, 
 where a lamp burned dimly above my head. And 
 as I stood there, there came a man, and standing 
 beneath the light, and seemingly careless of my 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 75 
 
 presence, he took from the pocket of his vest a small 
 liat package, folded in a slip of yellow paper, upon 
 which was a name. He unfolded the package, and 
 as I looked he covmted certain notes, called, as I 
 knew, treasury notes. I perceived that there were 
 ten of them, and that each was of the denomination 
 of one thousand dollars. 
 
 "I went again to my seat, and the man to his. 
 But I pondered what I had seen. In my heart I 
 tliought that God had not been just to me. The 
 man I saw was a rough and uneducated man, and 
 he, I thought, will spend all this in the pleasures of 
 his kind, while I, knowing so much more of the good 
 that money may be made to do, am deprived of all. 
 
 "And I thought further. How, said I, might a 
 man obtain this money and go happy and unpun- 
 ished ? I knew that mere criminals were fools, easily 
 detected, and betraying guilt that any skill would 
 enable them to hide; but I thought I could do better 
 than a common thief. Where should I hide it, that 
 I might calmly defy search ? I arose and went near 
 the man, and I saw that one small corner of the 
 package was above his pocket. My face burned ; I 
 could feel the blood rushing through my veins. So 
 near it seemed, so easy. I went again and looked 
 into my small and poorly-furnished travelling-bag. 
 There was no hiding-place there, for men look keenly 
 into linings and corners wherever they may be, and 
 there is where mere thieves make mistakes. But I 
 unconsciously took into my hand the commonest 
 article in life: a piece of soap — only a small square, 
 new and unused. I carried this with me to the plat- 
 
76 FRONTIER ARMV SKETCHES. 
 
 form, a place where I remember the wind howled 
 and the fine snow drifted and cut my face. I cut 
 from the end a small mortise and carefully saved the 
 piece. Then I hollowed out the interior, not too 
 much, and threw away the crumbs. I remember the 
 simple and childish piece of work as vividly as 
 though with the same knife I had cut a throat. I 
 again approached the sleeping man, snoring heavily 
 upright in his seat. I looked about me ; there was 
 not a wakeful person in the car. As I gently drew 
 from his pocket the packet, and knew that I held ten 
 thousand dollars in my hand, my hair seemed to rise 
 upon my head, and all my life, with everything good 
 in it, went backward. But it seemed too late to 
 retreat. It was done, and I sealed the money in the 
 soap-cake, bruised the end that had been cut, as 
 though by falling, and placed the whole in my bag. 
 
 " Very soon, it seemed to me, the man awoke 
 and called out that he had been robbed. The doors 
 were locked, the train stopped, and every one 
 offered himself for search. Every nook was inves- 
 tigated. I offered myself and all my belongings 
 with avidity, for having yielded to crime, I became 
 hardened. The cake of soap fell upon the floor; a 
 man picked it up, smelled of it, and finally it was 
 tossed upon a seat and lay there for many minutes. 
 
 "Finally it became apparent that the money 
 could not be found, and there was a general impres- 
 sion that the man had lost none. But when he was 
 told as much, the speaker was stricken a blow that 
 might almost have killed him, and the cruelly 
 
BROWN' 8 REVENGE. 77 
 
 wronged man left the train and went away, raving 
 and cursing, into tlie bitter night. 
 
 ''But as the train sped on its way, there was one 
 even more wretclied than he. I was afraid of my 
 shadow. I dared not return to my innocent wife 
 and prattling children, and attempt to account for 
 my wealth. Since then, I have not seen them, — 
 no, nor any creature who could remind me of the 
 days of my innocence and happiness. I have been 
 punished, for I would give my life to see those 
 toward whom I may never again turn." 
 
 The reader ceased, and turning from his manu- 
 script, said: "And now may God, through Christ, 
 forgive all my sins, and restore this man his own, 
 and let me die.-' 
 
 There was a deep silence. The stranger had 
 changed from red to pale, and sat gazing at the fire, 
 his fingers twitching nervously, and an indescribable 
 look in his eyes. Perhaps years had quenched the 
 bitterness of his wrong; and as he heard the story 
 of the man who had suffered more than he, he 
 seemed to forget vengeance. Finally, old Maxwell 
 rose, hitched up his waist-band, and desired to hear 
 the opinion of his comj)eers, adding, "It are bad, 
 
 an' sneakin, an' a d d low-down game all 
 
 through ; but 'tain't no killin' 'fence, in my opin- 
 ion." But when he sat down, there was no 
 response. The groups sat silent, looking into the 
 dying fire, their heads bent, and each man evidently 
 thinking more of the strangeness of the story tlian 
 of his function as juryman. Finally the stranger 
 
78 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 arose slowly, buttoned his ragged coat, looked 
 around upon the group, and advanced slowly toward 
 Denhani. 
 
 "Parson," said he, "I told ye all I wuz busted. 
 I ain't got no luck. My gaPs dead years ago, an' 
 my friends is forsook me. It's been so long sence I 
 had a raise I don't know how sech a thing 'ud feel. 
 You done it, — done it sneakin'ly on a sleepin' man. 
 I don't want nothin' now, — I don't want yer bilin' 
 spring, nor yer orspital, nor yer money, notuth- 
 standin' it's more than I ever had. Ye kin burn 
 yer will, — ye kin keep yer curse; an' I'd even 
 scorn to kill ye. Let me tell you suthin that, with 
 all yer smartness, ye ain't learned yit. Ye can't 
 blarst a man's life, an' cure it all by givin' back. I 
 hain't no children, no wife, no home, no character, 
 no nuthin'; an' ye can't give them things to me. I 
 tell ye I'm busted, an' you done it. I want none of 
 yer trumpery ; keep it, — an' be damned eternally 
 to ye!" 
 
 And hurling this frightful anathema behind him, 
 he strode through the open door and out into the 
 night, and his footsteps died away upon the road. 
 
 One by one the men arose, and silently, with no 
 glance aside, went away, leaving James Dodd, cler- 
 gyman and thief, alone in his stolen house and with 
 his stolen wealth. They spent no time in parleying ; 
 they passed no sentence, and it may be that thej^ 
 even pitied him ; but at least he was forsaken and 
 despised in the midst of disgrace and crime. 
 
 Some passing traveller found him there; for 
 when the frosty sunlight streamed through the 
 
BROWN'S REVENGE. 79 
 
 dusty panes in tlie early morning, the face it slione 
 upon was a dead man's waxen mask. The suicide 
 had ended all with one ghastly gash from ear to ear. 
 It was long ago. The spring murmurs on, and 
 the tall cotton woods grow green and beautiful in 
 the desert. Nature and truth alone are triumphant. 
 "With all the characters of its little tragedy dead and 
 forgotten, Ojo Caliente is still a green oasis in the 
 brown landscape, in no way more remarkable for 
 having been the scene of Brown's Revenge. 
 
OOPPEK DISTILLED. 
 
 THE most extraordinary of all the efforts of 
 American romance are those which, without 
 any foundation in truth, have created the widely- 
 accepted picture of the American Indian. When 
 confronted with the actual hero, the beautiful char- 
 acters of Cooper cease to attract, and, indeed, 
 become in a sense ridiculous. Lordly, reticent, 
 content, eloquent, brave, faithful, magnanimous, 
 and truthful, he made those sons of the forest 
 seem, whose scattered descendants now linger upon 
 coveted reservations, and, in unhappy squalor, seem 
 patiently, if not lazily, to await final oblivion. 
 Filthy, brutal, cunning, and very treacherous and 
 thievish, are their descendants and relatives who 
 still wander in a condition of marauding indepen- 
 dence west of us. Every tradition repeating the 
 story of Indian bravery, generosity, and hospitality, 
 fades like mist before the actual man. The quality 
 of moral degradation, inborn and unmitigated, runs 
 through the whole kindred, from King Philip and 
 Ked Jacket down to Sa-tan-te, Sitting Bull, Kicking 
 Bird, and Spotted Tail. The common instincts of 
 savagery, as illustrated in all the tribes and kin- 
 dreds of the world, are intensified in these. Brave 
 only in superior numbers or in ambush, honest only 
 in being a consummate hypocrite, merry only at the 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 81 
 
 sight of suiFering inflicted by liis own hand, friendly 
 only through cunning, and hospitable never, and, 
 above all, sublimely mendacious and a liar always, 
 the Indian, as he really is to those who unfortunately 
 know him, seems poor material out of which to 
 manufacture a hero or frame a romance. All mis- 
 sionary and philanthropic efforts made in his behalf 
 have thus far failed to amend his life or change his 
 morals. Always prominent in the history of the 
 country, ever to the fore in philanthropic literature 
 and high-plane oratory, always the impediment to 
 be removed, and afterward the dependant to be sup- 
 ported, mollified by semi-annual gifts, and oiled and 
 pacified by periodical talks about the Great Father 
 and blarney about "brothers," through campaigns, 
 councils, treaties, and tribal relations, he has finally 
 come to almost the last years of his career, with 
 only the one redeeming fact upon his record, that he 
 has never been tamed and never been a servant. 
 Neither has the hyena. 
 
 The ordinary reservation Indian is not a curi- 
 osity. The greasy red blanket, the variegated shirt, 
 the extraordinary hat, the shanky -legs, the brass 
 jewelry, the shuffling gait and inturned toes, the 
 encrusted rancidity, are seen every circus-day, and 
 give such other evidences of nearness as even a 
 blind man need not mistake. He sometimes indulges 
 himself with a change of scene, and travels for his 
 health, and threads the usual one long street of the 
 Western town with his motley cavalcade of lean 
 ponies, rawhide paniers, squaws, young ones, and 
 colts. But the details of an unsought and irksome 
 
82 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 acquaintance with the wilder tribes of the plains and 
 mountains may more probably contain here and 
 there au item of interest. 
 
 And if one knows the Indian of eastern Kansas 
 one need have no difficulty in recognizing on sight 
 his brother of the plains. The family resemblance 
 is complete. Stolidity, and a surly indiiference 
 that passes for dignity, are noticeable traits of 
 first acquaintance. To sit around, to loaf, to be 
 always present where not wanted, to go and come 
 as though all hours and seasons and all enclosures 
 were his own, are some of the endearing amiabili- 
 ties that he practises when not on the war-path, 
 and while he is on speaking terms with that other 
 power, the government of the United States. When 
 not oifended by some dereliction in etiquette undis- 
 coverable by any but himself, he is, contrary to the 
 general opinion, garrulous as a magpie and inquisi- 
 tive as a coyote. He does not go home when he 
 can find any other place, and will make a long sit- 
 ting on the agent's door-step, without much apparent 
 anxiety about the welfare of his family. I have 
 written the word "home" with a knowledge of its 
 great inappropriateness to anything that may be an 
 Indian's. If he has any, it is the lodge, erected in 
 the open prairie, and apparently as far as possible 
 from any water. It is the " tepee " from which was 
 taken the idea of that cumbersome and elaborate 
 tent familiar to all during the first year or two of the 
 great war. The clean and carefully-sewed skins 
 which form the cover represent many weeks of hard 
 squaw labor. The poles were brought from the 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 83 
 
 mountains, perhaps hundreds of miles awaj, and 
 are worn smooth with constant dragging. Within 
 this lodge is gathered all there is of Indian comfort. 
 Around the walls lie piles of skins — the beds and 
 clothing of a numerous family indeed, if both Indians 
 and insects are to be counted. In the intervals of 
 occupation by the first-named, they are usurped by 
 a horde of dogs, who are less to be blamed than 
 pitied. If there be a fire, it is of that curious fuel 
 called "buffalo chips." It is kindled in the centre, 
 and the fuel is left to burn, or merely to smoke, as 
 shall happen on that particular day, and the smoke 
 is left to find its way out on the supposition tliat the 
 interior must finally become too full to hold any 
 more. 
 
 Between the straggling lodges loiter the popula- 
 tion who by chance find themselves there in the 
 intervals of looking after the agent, and the soldiers' 
 and ofiicers' quarters; children, young men, and the 
 variety known under the disrespectful headi\ig of 
 "bucks." Dangling from " saddles, tied to poles, 
 and hung to every available projection, are ragged 
 pieces and bloody lumps of bufi'alo-meat, the whole 
 sum of the ordinary commissariat, in all stages of 
 odorous decay. 
 
 Everywhere and always the men are idle and 
 the squaws at work. The hideous and tootliless 
 crone, the picture of unpitied age and misery, is 
 never too old to toil, never old enough to rest. 
 To her and her daughters fall all the endless tasks 
 of a nomadic life. Her place is that of a slave ; a 
 sli^ve born and predestined, to whojn rest and liberty 
 
84 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 shall never come. She is beaten, abused, reviled, 
 driven like any other beast of burden. She is 
 bought and sold ; wife, mother, and pack-animal, 
 joined in one hideous and hopeless whole — a 
 squaw. Slie must know but one lesson : to toil 
 and be silent. ]N"evertheless, in all that is pecul- 
 iarly Indianesque, she excels her master. In cun- 
 ning, hatred, and revenge, in the specialties of 
 cruelty and the refinements of torture, she has no 
 equal on earth or in Hades. The saddest fate that 
 can befall the captive is to be given over to the 
 squaws. 
 
 There is really no more beauty to be found 
 among Indian "maidens" than there is among 
 gorillas. IN^ever. were the features that pertain to 
 the unmixed race modified for beauty's sake. More 
 false than even Cooper's wonderful tales, are the 
 poems which descant upon the charms of dusky love 
 and the romance of wilderness afifection. Poetic 
 license is a wanton and wayward thing, and has 
 been made to caper nimbly to strange tunes ere 
 now. But the man who invented those charming 
 but plienomenally false Indian ideals, and first 
 crowned the universal squaw — squat, angular, pig- 
 eyed, ragged, wretched, and insect-haunted — with 
 the roses of love, ought to see the woman once, 
 and, as a punishment, to be subjected for a season 
 to her indescribable blandishments. 
 
 It is an experience probably not to be objected 
 to for once, but a repetition of which is not desir- 
 able, to watch for an hour the operations in prog- 
 I'ess among this assemblage of heroes and nymphs. 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 85 
 
 There is a young squaw, who has become the pos- 
 sessor of a little flour, and therewith she is up to 
 her elbows in the process of making bread. She 
 has a small fire, a battered iron pan, and sits by 
 a little pool of muddy water in which the young 
 ones have been wading, and out of which the dogs 
 have lapped. She pours in quantum sufficit of 
 water, and stirs the pasty and streaked mass into 
 proper congruity with one unwashed fore-finger. 
 Presently she wipes this upon her encrusted piece 
 of a blanket, and places the mass in the ashes. 
 J^ear by sits an old woman preparing a freshly- 
 killed carcass for that process after which it becomes 
 jerked beef. Her task it is to cut the whole of the 
 animal into long thin strips for drying. But the 
 ancient operator is the curiosity, not the beef or 
 the process. Grey-haired, wrinkled^ and haggard, 
 her dried limbs scarcely concealed by sodden rags, 
 she is the picture of hopeless and toiling wretched- 
 ness. You may stand an hour by these two; you 
 may talk, laugh, pity, or question, and they will 
 never betray by sign or look the least knowledge of 
 your presence. 
 
 Yet, if you would see the very pink of hauteur 
 and personal pride, you have but to observe yon 
 gaunt and greasy son of the wilderness, who 
 believes himself to be the glass of fashion and the 
 mould of form. He is as unconscious of his odors 
 as though redolent of patchouly and white rose. 
 He is truly unwashed, and nearly naked save in 
 the respect of paint, and, if the impolite truth must 
 be told, swarming with that enterprising insect to 
 
86 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wliich the Scottish poet wrote an apostrophe. He 
 regards you with folded arms and defiant face, and 
 desires to impress you with the idea that lie is 
 indeed "heap." 
 
 I am not discussing the digger, celebrated in 
 California annals ; nor any of the bug-eating pieces 
 of tribes that are regarded with so much contempt 
 until they begin to fight, like the Modocs. These, 
 pliilanthropic reader, are those plains Apaches who 
 have made us wish we were somewhere else with 
 the baggage so many times, and who stand unex- 
 celled in all the qualities so unpleasantly admirable 
 in Indian character — endurance, cunning, ferocity, 
 and vindictiveness. 
 
 In Indian society, each family is the producer of 
 all the articles required in daily life. Clothing, 
 food, and weapons are all manufactured from the 
 raw material. Barter and exchange were intro- 
 duce'cl by the white men, and even yet there is little 
 wanted in exchange by the Indian that he is not 
 much better without. It is true that so many 
 ponies and robes were necessary always in that very 
 particular negotiation, the purchase of a wife. But 
 ea'ch family is self-supporting, and comprises within 
 itself the whole theory of patriarchal government. 
 Resources are few, and actual wants as well ; and in 
 this or any encampment may be seen in an hour the 
 whole Indian economy. There are squaws who 
 bring fuel and water, and others who are engaged 
 in the tedious and laborious process of stretcliing 
 and scraping that finally results in the white, 
 pliable, and elaborately-ornamented "robe," which 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 
 
 is the representative of Indian comfort, wealth, and 
 art. There is the crudely-awful process of savage 
 cookerj' constantly going on, and the ponies to 
 watch, catch, and saddle. There is the endless 
 packing and unj)acking of a nomadic life. There 
 are lodges to build and to take down again, and a 
 hideous master to wait upon and please. The 
 squaw does it all. Early in life she becomes old, 
 and adds innumerable wrinkles, that attain to the 
 dimensions of cracks, to a face that was repulsive 
 even in babyhood. She is stoop-shouldered, bow- 
 legged, fiat-hipped, shambling, and when at last she 
 dies, nobody cares or cries, and she is even denied 
 a soul and a hereafter. Through all her tasks and 
 toils, she carries, strapped to a board and slung 
 upon her back, the little, winking, brown-faced, 
 silent babe, who seems never to laugh and never to 
 cry She loves it, too, with a love that is the one 
 human trait in her character. 
 
 I once had for some months the indirect charge of 
 three Apache children. During that time, and until 
 they ran away, they were in malice, cruelty, filth, ill- 
 temper, and general hatefulness, the nearest approach 
 to little fiends I have ever encountered. It was 
 necessary to watch them to keep them from killing 
 each other. But they never cried, and were quiet, 
 sly, and predator}^ as so many weasels ; and while 
 there was plenty of beef and bread, it was found 
 impossible to keep them from eating out of the 
 waste barrel. 
 
 In the manufacturing processes of the Indian, 
 nothing is wasted. His hunting is not pleasure- 
 
88 FRONTIER ARMY SkETCHi:^. 
 
 seeking slaughter, as ours is, but a means of liveli- 
 hood. He is, or was, as cautious to prevent waste 
 of numbers among the shaggj herds of the plains 
 as the white man is of the thrift and well-being 
 of his tame kine ; and for the same economical 
 reasons. For from the buffalo, aided by a little 
 wood, all his life's necessities may be supplied. 
 
 Indian life is full of tawdry pomp and barbarous 
 ceremonial, and in every camp, while the women 
 steadily toil, the men are engaged in some noisy rite 
 necessary to the proper celebration of some late feat, 
 or to jDropitiate success in some contemplated ex- 
 ploit. He is a tremendous braggart, our red friend, 
 and he who boasts longest and loudest is generally 
 taken at his word, as is usual everywhere. It is to 
 obtain opportunity for this advertisement of per- 
 sonal prowess, that a "dance" of some kind is 
 always going on. Their names and purposes are 
 nearly innumerable, and the candid uninitiated is 
 not able to perceive any great difference in the 
 screams, leapings, and horrible hootings, which 
 characterize them all. Some of these noisy cere- 
 monials, are said to be religious, but all there is of 
 religious sentiment is condensed into the one word 
 "medicine." Everything in life has its place in 
 one or the other of two classes: it is either "good" 
 or "bad" medicine. Camping-places where some 
 evil has befallen are ever after bad medicine ; and 
 all days and places where some defeat, sickness, or 
 loss was suffered, are classed in the same category. 
 All things that were fortunate are placed on the 
 opposite side. In this book-keeping and running 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 89 
 
 account with fate, I do not know if there is a column 
 for tilings indifferent and belonging nowhere, to 
 finally balance with. The high-priest of this relig- 
 ion is the celebrated " medicine- man." The pre- 
 cise qualifications of this dread person are somewhat 
 indefinite. I am forced to confess, after knowing 
 him personally, that the only perceptible differ- 
 ence between him and his fellows seems to be that 
 he is, if possible, idler, raggeder, and lazier than 
 they are. But, dance or no dance, the buck usually 
 wears the scalps he has taken, dangling from the 
 greasy waist-band of the unique article in pantaloons 
 known as his breech-clout. This sketch may seem 
 to tlie Eastern reader somewhat one-sided, though it 
 is not so. What soft and twilight picture of She- 
 mah-ga, the white dove, and We-up-mukh, the swift 
 one, could be expected from one who has so often 
 seen dangling from the waist of some loud heathen 
 the long brown hair of his countrywomen ? 
 
 One would naturally infer that begging would 
 be incompatible with, the Indian character. By no 
 means; he is the most persistent and importunate 
 beggar on this continent. Governmental manage- 
 ment of him seems to have produced the impression 
 upon his mind that there are constantly large arrears 
 due him which he ought to have, and that every 
 white man owes him something. Failing in his 
 demands, he immediately proposes to "swap." He 
 is apparently surprised at the white man's inability 
 to always see the advantages accruing from these 
 business operations, since one of the articles fre- 
 quently offered in exchange is his squaw. One of 
 
90 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 the strongest evidences of idiocy to him is the fact 
 that lie can get more for a robe, a pony, or even for 
 a paltry bow-and-arrows, than he could for a whole 
 family of squaws. 
 
 The language of all Indians is peculiar. The com- 
 paratively few words used are coarse and guttural, 
 and so useful a part of it is action and gesture that 
 any man may talk Indian — not speak it — who is at 
 all skilful in the use of pantomime. The mellifluous 
 names of mountains, lakes, and rivers must not be 
 taken as examples, as they were probably never pro- 
 nounced by the aboriginals as we spell them. In lieu 
 of a complete vocabulary they use many signs, even 
 in conversation among themselves. A class of deaf 
 mutes are scarcely more skilful than they in com- 
 municating ideas without words. I have seen long 
 conversations carried on between very communi- 
 cative specimens of copper-color and officers of the 
 army, only prefaced by the word ''how" and a most 
 demonstrative and cordial shaking of hands. A cir- 
 cular movement of the hand over the head aptly 
 indicates a day, a jog-trot movement describes a 
 horse, and the two together express that prominent 
 idea of a wide and desolate region, a day's journey. 
 A yet different movement of the hand indicates a 
 buffalo — showing, in a way not to be mistaken, the 
 peculiar gait of that animal. Kumbers are indicated 
 by rapidly throwing up the hands, displaying as 
 many fingers as answer to the number to be indi- 
 cated. Of course there are words enough to defi- 
 nitely specify all things common to Indian life, and in 
 a great many dialects. I have the idea, without any 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. dl 
 
 pretensions to aboriginal scliolarsliip, tliat these sav- 
 age tongues comprise but little beyond tlie ordinary 
 forms of speech not capable of being written. 
 
 There are many ideas of Indian skill and cunning 
 that, while tliey are correct to some extent, are over- 
 drawn and extravagant. The curious fact is that the 
 trapper and miner and the hunter of the border, the 
 voyagem\ and, indeed, most of those whose strange 
 tastes have led them to follow and find pleasure in a 
 frontier life, are capable of outwitting liim in almost 
 every instance. They understand what lie is sure to 
 do in a given case, and so either do it themselves or 
 take measures to render his manoeuvre harmless. 
 The trade they have learned from him they excel 
 him in. By nature the Indian is possessed of a 
 genius for stealth, like the cats, gaining his liveli- 
 hood by still-hunting. He has an instinct of cunning 
 that has sometimes been dignified by the name of 
 strategy, but in his operations against an enemy he 
 exercises but little strategy that is nobler than lying. 
 He can cover his head with brown eartli and lie 
 among tlie coarse grass at the roadside, and, liaving 
 thus concealed his sinister visage, speed an arrow 
 after the traveller. He can occupy thirty-six hours 
 in crawling a few rods to steal a mule he must have 
 wanted very much, as I have known him to do, and 
 finally succeed in his purpose. He will smoke the 
 pipe which is the universally recognized sign of 
 amity and peace, with many signs of good-will and 
 much pacific grunting, and the same day lance you 
 in the back, if there be fitting opportunity. He will 
 be at great pains to make a false trail, and will imi- 
 
92 FRONTlFAl ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 ttite the sounds of nature, and by a thousand devices 
 attempt to mislead. But he has not a fraud in liis 
 repertory in which the white man has not long since 
 learned to outwit him. 
 
 The few white men who have abandoned civiliza- 
 tion and race for Indian society, aiding their adopted 
 friends by a superior knowledge of civilized modes, 
 are leaders, not followers. It is quite superfluous to 
 add tliat they are the worse of the two, and have just 
 humanity enough left to cause them to desire rather 
 to reign in hell than serve in heaven. 
 
 The art of reading the face of nature, so common 
 in frontier life, is one so strange that we are apt to 
 regard it as an instinct. To the Indian the track of 
 the antelope is as plain as the path of a tornado. 
 He tells the number and kind of his enemies, and 
 the hours since they passed, ^^le invented a system 
 of signals before the days of Morse, and the smoke 
 upon the distant hill, or the brief fire upon the 
 mountain-side, convey to him tales he never misun- 
 derstands. He traverses the vast surface of the 
 monotonous wilderness, and, with an instinct as 
 unerring as that of the bison, reaches his destina- 
 tion. He hovers for days upon the path of his 
 enemy, always near and always watching, yet never 
 seen or heard save by those who have learned his 
 art. All these things the white man has stolen 
 from him. There are many men on the border who 
 earn a livelihood by outwitting the Indian at his 
 own game. 
 
 It is a misapprehension to regard the weapons of 
 the Indian as inefficient, and to wonder how he 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 93 
 
 managed to live aud perpetually fight before he 
 became acquainted with fire-arms. These he uses, 
 and very efiiciently, in warfare ; but he has never 
 discarded his own. The ancient bow-and-arrow, 
 probably the first efiicient weapon made by men, 
 and used in all climes and races, is yet, in the hands 
 of a Comanche, one of the most effective of weapons. 
 A great American philosopher was ridiculed for 
 recommending that the colonial troops should be 
 furnished with this arm — for this among other 
 things ; and yet the great genius of common sense 
 was right, for it is infinitely more effective than that 
 flint-cocked blunderbuss, the Queen Anne musket. 
 Our Indian uses it in its simplest and rudest form — 
 merely a piece of elastic wood, with a string made of 
 sinew. The arrow is often an elaborate specimen of 
 savage handicraft, being about twenty-eight inches 
 in length, and elaborately feathered and ornamented. 
 The ornamentation is peculiar to the tribe that made 
 it, and the head is of iron, sometimes of flint, and is 
 fastened in a cleft of the stick in a very neat and 
 effective wa}^ by a wrapping of fine sinew. This 
 slight and fragile sliaft will transfix the huge body 
 of the buffalo, coming out on the opposite side, and 
 penetrates where the huge modern bullet is flattened 
 or turned aside. It is almost noiseless,'-^ and at 
 thirty yards seldom misses its mark. Once wounded, 
 there is small chance of recovery, for the dried sinew 
 relaxes in moisture, and the wood comes away and 
 leaves an inextricable triangle of iron behind. 
 
 * He who has heard the swish of an Apache arrow is no more likely to 
 forget it than he is the shriek of a shell, 
 
94 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES 
 
 Indian fighting is not tlie placid and time-killing 
 amusement it is sometimes imagined to be. Unless 
 taken in mid-winter and bj surprise, we have been 
 passably well castigated at least half the time in all 
 our little, cruel, revengeful and doubly costly wars 
 with them. And taking him by surprise is very 
 much like catching a weasel asleep. The plains 
 Indian is a master of horsemanship, and his brother 
 of the mountains knows every tepid water-hole and 
 every pass, and climbs like a goat. He of the prai- 
 ries has a trick of being always upon that side of the 
 horse that is opposite his enemy, and almost entirely 
 concealed. Rapidly riding- in a circle, he discharges 
 his arrows under his horse's neck or over his back. 
 He is here and there like a flash, and his great 
 endeavor is to invest his enemy on every side, and 
 ofler him every possible inducement to exhaust his 
 ammunition. I have no advice to offer that gallant 
 handful of skilful men known as the army of the 
 United States. They are acquainted fully with all 
 there is of the Indian, and have reason to be. The 
 modern soldier, trained in the mysteries of the skir- 
 mish drill, lies quietly in his place and speeds after 
 his foe the messenger that weighs four hundred 
 grains, and that, singing as it flies, tumbles many a 
 savage rider six hundred yards away. To fire delib- 
 erately, to waste no bullets, and to have a sufiiciency 
 of cartridges and of water, means generally drawn 
 battle, or, rarely, absolute victory. How ver}^ easy 
 it is to write recipes ! 
 
 This is plains fighting. There is a slightly vary- 
 ing system among the mountains of i^ew JMexico, 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 96 
 
 There, all is concealment. The Indian of that 
 region never meets the soldier, and the latter very 
 rarely gets v^ithin hailing distance of the Indian. 
 There is no noise, and from behind the rocks in 
 the canon, or concealed by the sage and cacti, the 
 arrow is sped that cuts short many an unsuspecting 
 life. Indian dead are seldom left on the field. A 
 prudence that is natural enough makes it desirable 
 that losses should not be counted, and scalps should 
 not be taken to be danced and exulted over. 
 
 The name of the Great Spirit figures largely in 
 all reports of Indian eloquence, just as the name of 
 the Deity does in the fervid eloquence of the com- 
 mon politician. It seems probable that the great 
 Idea is as much a myth to the one as to the other. 
 The theology of the Indian is simply a superstitious 
 fear of something he does not understand. What 
 kind of a heaven or hell he has imagined for himself, 
 no man can precisely tell. There are no strictly 
 religious forms, and certainly no idea of worship 
 as we understand the term, and nothing that is 
 regarded as especially sacred. The religious idea is 
 not prominent, and seems almost entirely included 
 in the "medicine" business before referred to. Of 
 that which we call superstition, there is plenty ; 
 and, as with ourselves, luck is extensively pro- 
 pitiated. 
 
 Of course, in speaking of the Indian, the com- 
 mon class is the just criterion. Yet, as is well 
 known, the red race, and every other, is not want- 
 ing in examples of force, dignity, and comparative 
 greatness. King Philip, Tocumseh, Ked Jacket, 
 
96 FRONTIEli ARMY SKETCHES, 
 
 Billy Bowlegs, are historic characters. Sa-tan-te, 
 Kieking-Bird, Sitting Bull, and a grotesque category 
 of their like, have been very extensively mentioned 
 in later times. In some of them, the common farce 
 of Indian dignity has been condensed into some- 
 thing like the genuine article. The Indian has 
 never been humble, and is unlikely to be much 
 abashed in the presence of dignitaries, unless some 
 one of them has become known to him to his great 
 cost ; his firm conviction being that the meanest of 
 his race stands at the head of all created intelli- 
 gences. His is a race egoism, like that of the 
 Chinese. When he goes to Washington, and 
 attracts attention, and is interviewed and stared at, 
 he believes it is because he is great and envied. 
 In his mental constitution there is prominently 
 wanting the faculty of appreciation. He knows 
 that the wires that are stretched across the great 
 country that once was his, "whisper" mysterious 
 messages in the ear of the white man, and that 
 insensate paper "talks." But the knowledge pro- 
 duces in his mind no respect for the people to 
 whom the strange communings come. He does 
 them the honor to accept them as facts, without 
 further care or inquiry about them ; and the idea 
 that they are any evidence of knowledge superior 
 to his never enters his mind. 
 
 With the old story of barbarity, cruelty, and 
 rapine, the world is long since familiar. Nor is 
 the conclusion just, that is so often prompted by 
 philanthropy and by pity ibr the poor Indian, that 
 the terrible story has been exaggerated. Indian 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 97 
 
 atrocities that have come directly under the notice 
 of hundreds of law-abiding, charitable, and truthful 
 men, would, truthfully delineated, be unfit for the 
 ears of any but those whose business it might be 
 to investigate them. It would be almost impossi- 
 ble for any man personally cognizant of the doings 
 in portions of the Southwest for the last few years, 
 to look his neighbor in the face and calmly tell 
 what he has seen. The burnings, the ravishings, 
 the impalements upon charred stakes, the cutting 
 off of eyelids, the chewing of finger-joints, the 
 knocking out of teeth and drawing of nails, and 
 nameless mutilations of the dead; — are these things 
 told in daily newspapers ? They have occurred in 
 hundreds of instances that the reader has never 
 heard of, and, I trust, will never hear of. But the 
 frontiersman has not only heard — he has seen; 
 and hardy and accustomed as he may be, his 
 dreams are made hideous by the remembrance of 
 indescribable scenes. 
 
 The man who is there, and who cannot go away, 
 understands that last and chiefest trait of the Indian 
 character which is either unknown or disregarded 
 by all the divines and all the philanthropists : the 
 inborn love of killing. There are animals whose 
 strongest instinct is a thirst for slaughter that can- 
 not be permanently assuaged. We know this, and 
 accept the fact, but many of us do not understand 
 and will not believe that there are men of the same 
 kind, and whole tribes of them ; that the Indian, 
 in his natural condition, and before he has been 
 fenced about by those surroundings of civilization 
 7 
 
98 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 which lie cannot break, has this as his strongest trait, 
 and that he has never, under any circumstances, 
 entirely changed his character. This is why each 
 tribe is, compared with the territory it occupies, a 
 mere handful in the desert. A great incentive to 
 war is the pleasure of torturing the captives. The 
 whole history of the Indian is a history of blood. 
 We have only glimpses of it, gory and incarna- 
 dine, lurid with devastating flame and ghastly with 
 agony. Tribes and races have been utterly exter- 
 minated by other tribes, leaving only rude tumuli 
 and broken pottery to tell of them and all their 
 works. They are in unknown regions fighting now. 
 They live and fight and die alone, their great vic- 
 tories celebrated by a midnight orgy, with shouts 
 and groans alike dying among echoes that never 
 speak again. It is contrary to Indian nature to 
 desire to be at peace when war is possible. The 
 tribal glory that he loves comes from war, and it 
 is his only passion. If offended, even causelessly, 
 he does not seek redress save sometimes as an 
 excuse, and does not ask to have his wrongs righted 
 with any desire that they should be. He begins 
 to kill — and complains afterward. His massacres 
 are sudden and unexpected in the midst of appar- 
 ent harmony. The hunger for murder and torture 
 is sated for a time, and all the tedious explana- 
 tions and theories come afterward. 
 
 And yet this chapter is but the ultra-Missouri 
 view of the case — conclusions gathered from actual 
 contact. By a strange inversion of logic and the 
 meaning of words, I have heard such views of the 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 99 
 
 Indian called prejudices ; which must mean, if any- 
 thing, that they are conclusions formed without 
 knowledge — pre-judgments. Yet it is quite appa- 
 rent that a good deal that is said on the other side, 
 and in support of the directly opposite view, is said 
 by those who have many of them never seen an 
 Indian in his native and unconverted state. They 
 have attained to a high plane of right, justice, and 
 truth. They measure the Indian question by gen- 
 eral rules, that, though enlightened and just beyond 
 dispute, yet do not suit the hard facts of the case. 
 They have had no adequate experience with the 
 noble red man, who, if they could see him and 
 know him well, would be found to possess a vast 
 capacity for astonishing his best friends, by a yawn- 
 ing gulf of want in every noble trait. I believe I 
 understand something of the philanthropists, and, 
 instead of reviling them, I honor their views upon a 
 subject of which they seem to stand upon one verge 
 and I and my fellows upon the other. There is 
 another side to the story, and these I conceive to be 
 some of the items of it: 
 
 The Indian is a ward of the government, and yet, 
 in his tribal capacity, a sovereign power capable of 
 making treaties and ceding his vast and unused pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 He is a man independent in his own nationality, 
 governed by his own laws, and neither knowing nor 
 bound to know anything of ours, and who must yet 
 be held amenable to trial and punishment in our 
 courts, under laws of which he knows no more than 
 he does of logarithms and the Greek particle. 
 
100 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 He is the victim of a complicated system of com- 
 pensations for liis various surrenders, wliicli he does 
 not understand, and which seem to have been spe- 
 cially framed for the benefit of unscrupulous com- 
 merce and the fostering of trading schemes, and the 
 formation of rings stronger than the government 
 itself. 
 
 With phenomenal short-sightedness and unwis- 
 dom, he has been located upon new reservations 
 where in the course of a few years he w^ould be pre- 
 cisely in the way again; and what is more, he has 
 an absolute right to stay there which no reasonable 
 man can deny him. 
 
 He is the ancient and time-worn subject of polit- 
 ical experiments, that are adopted and then lost 
 sight of at once. Notable among these is that which 
 seems to be based upon the idea that the piety of 
 an agent would inoculate a tribe and chemically 
 change an atmosphere in which everybody was sup- 
 posed to be bent upon doing everything that was 
 wrong and avoiding everj^thing that was right, and 
 to be spoiling for a fight always. 
 
 He has been fed, coaxed, and fought at the same 
 time. He has consequently become a vicious boy, 
 bad enough by nature and spoiled by management 
 that would demoralize an angel. He has drawn 
 rations in Arizona, in the midst of hostilities vigor- 
 ously^ conducted by him in New Mexico ; and has 
 consequently been occupied during his intervals of 
 rest and refreshment in laughing at his enemies, 
 and reviling those two antipodal ofiacials, the Secre- 
 tary of War and the Secretary of the Interior. 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 101 
 
 It has been seemingly forgotten that he is rather 
 a quarrelsome person, to whom revenge is religion. 
 Consequently tliose in whose hands it entirely rested 
 to bring him to terms, and rectify his somewhat 
 savage notions of right and wrong, have been left 
 without any jurisdiction over or control of the 
 causes of his numerous complaints ; and this, while 
 his revenges are always directed against his readiest 
 victims, the defenceless. A woman's long scalp-lock 
 is as valuable and honorable to him as a warrior's. 
 He has never been made to understand that the 
 dispensers of his rations are able also to light him, 
 and willing. If he were given to know that the 
 ability to feed was combined with the power to con- 
 trol, he would, were he but an animal — which he is 
 not — be careful of his behavior. 
 
 In addition to this, it is time that it should be 
 understood that there is no human power tliat can 
 stop the migration from east to west. That situa- 
 tion must be accepted not only because it must^ but 
 because civilization is of more consequence than 
 barbarism, and homes of greater importance than 
 the preservation of vast hunting-grounds — a million 
 acres to each hunter. After years of vacillation and 
 costly experiment, it is time that some rational 
 attempt were made to meet and improve a situation 
 that is unavoidable. There is one man who can do 
 it, understanding, as he does, more of the frontier, 
 more of the immigrant and of the Indian, than 
 statesmen and secretaries have either leisure or 
 opportunity for. It is Captain Jinks, the careless, 
 and jaunty one, whose qualities and capacities not 
 
102 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 one in a thousand understands. He is the hardiest 
 frontiersman of his times, and over countless leagues 
 of drear J marching, and beside innumerable camp- 
 fires, he has done what it would seem no other man 
 who had aught to do with the Indian business has 
 done : he has kept his honor and his uniform clean. 
 He is court-martialed and dismissed sometimes, for 
 petty offences not criminal save to "an officer and a 
 gentleman,'' or for a human disobedience of petty 
 orders. But have you lately heard of him as specu- 
 lating in Indian supplies, or as a member of any 
 "ring?" He is not good, and could seldom be 
 accurately described by the somewhat worn phrase, 
 "a Christian gentleman." He takes cocktails, and 
 plays at cards sometimes, and is guilty of many a 
 peccadillo. But his environment is peculiar. Nine 
 times in ten he believes that death is better than 
 dishonor. He does not want the Indian manage- 
 ment, because he says he believes it to be demoral- 
 izing. It is no more than one of Jinks's peculiar 
 reasons. It is his business to obey orders; and when 
 he must he will take it. Then, by degrees, the 
 "young men," whom the chief is always saying he 
 cannot control, will find themselves restrained by 
 the relentless doors of the post guard-house, in 
 company with the man who has been selling them 
 whiskey, until reflection shall have cooled their 
 ardor. The preparations for a raid or an escapade 
 will be observed, and the parties thereto required to 
 give bail. Every ration and every dollar will go to 
 those entitled to them, and to no others. He does 
 not take sides ; he does not argue the case ; he 
 
COPPER DISTILLED. 103 
 
 obeys orders, and is interested in having others do 
 ]3reciselj the same thing. A few dozen of him will 
 keep a thousand citizens ont of the Indian Territory, 
 where they say they are determined to go, and yet 
 have no especial love for either Creeks, Choctaws, 
 or Seminoles, whose rights he is protecting. He is 
 in a fight every summer — a fight that is never of 
 his own making ; and we do not object theii to his 
 methods of persuasion, or to the fact that he repre- 
 sents the power of tlie sword, and not that of the 
 hymn-book and the gospel of peace. 
 
 It is time that we should cease to indulge in theo- 
 ries and hopes. It is getting to be a very old ques- 
 tion to be still unsolved ; and undoubtedly we have 
 made a failure thus far in our management of it — a 
 failure that is as ridiculous as anything we have ever 
 done as a nation, and that has resulted in infinite 
 wrong. Our Indian is bad, and we insist that he is 
 good. Our management is equally bad, and we 
 practically insist that that is also good. The man- 
 agement of her colonies by England has always been 
 a reproach to her. She did not persuade when they 
 were determined not to be persuaded. But she has 
 managed them, and also her Indians. There is no 
 iTiore ineffective treatment for savages than the reci- 
 pes of philanthropy. These are not the days of cru- 
 elty, conquest, and extermination, with which Chris- 
 tian philanthropy has contended so long. There 
 seems to be no cause for the application of the rule 
 of submissive quiet and gentle persuasiveness under 
 all circumstances. If we wish to prevent sudden 
 raids, reprisals, massacres, the burning of homes 
 
104 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and tlie violation of women, and wide-spread horror 
 and dismay, we must find a way not only to be just, 
 but also to be strong. If we feed and clothe, we 
 must also govern and prevent. 
 
Yl. 
 JOE'S POCKET. 
 
 ''^r^RUKK ag'in! I swar, Joe Biggs, you air the 
 -L^ ornery est human as lives. Don't say nuthin' 
 to me, fur I can't stand it. Thar's the bed ! " And 
 the maligned Joe Biggs blindly flung himself upon 
 the creaking cords of a not very luxurious couch, 
 aided thereto by a movement on the part of the 
 speaker that was too vigorous to be regarded, even 
 by a person in Mr. Joseph Biggs' s condition, as a 
 caress. 
 
 The people outside laughed a little at their com- 
 rade's reception, though in all likelihood expecting 
 something of the kind as they escorted him home 
 from the sutler's store, and began an irregular 
 retreat as the tumbled flaxen head of the woman 
 appeared at the door. Moonlight is kind to any- 
 thing at all resembling beauty; but homeliness, as 
 embodied in a chalky face, untidy hair, a scowl 
 which bodes no kindness, and over all a shabby 
 night-dress, has no friend in the beams that seem to 
 cover all homeliness save such as this. The woman 
 turned away again, and retired into the darkness of 
 the cabin ; the retreating footsteps of the roisterers 
 died away in the distance, and soon, under the placid 
 beams, it was as though there were no drunken men 
 or cross women in all the mountain world. 
 
 105 
 
106 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 It was a cabin beside a rock-littered path. The 
 pine logs of which it was constructed had been 
 cut from the stumps that dotted the hill-side hard 
 by, and, so far as rude skill could make it so, the 
 place was comfortable enough. It was tlie ancient 
 model of the frontier cabin, strangely placed in a 
 country of adobes and earthen roofs. There was one 
 door, one window, a chimney of mud and stones, and 
 a small yard, enclosed by a homely and crooked 
 apology for a fence. It was such a house as one 
 might easily find at this day in the Green River 
 region of Kentucky or in southern Indiana, and 
 looked as though it might have been taken up bodily 
 and brought thither as an architectural curiosity. 
 The surroundings were pines, verdure, and general 
 mountain coolness, in strong contrast with the tire- 
 some adobe villages and low fields which lay in the 
 valley below. J^or was the cabin entirely alone. A 
 quarter of a mile away was the quadrangle of green 
 grass, in the centre of which arose a slender flag- 
 staff, surrounded by houses but little better than 
 Joe's, but in which dwelt men and women so differ- 
 ent that he saw them only from afar, and never 
 heard their names. There were glimpses of white 
 canvas, horses neighed in long sheds, and, as if to 
 guard the bare standard of authority, a sentinel 
 paced back and forth before the flag-staff, and two 
 brass guns stood open-mouthed and glittering on 
 either side. In a word, it was that universal condi- 
 tion of settlement and safety throughout the land — 
 a military post. A spot than which it would have 
 been hard to find one more green and brilliant, was 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 107 
 
 enlivened all the year by the parade of arms, and the 
 incense of military devotion arose each morning and 
 evening in the sullen growl and lingering blue 
 smoke of a gun at whose echoes the deer started and 
 listened and the rabbit bounded away to his cover in 
 the copse. 
 
 But if you followed the road that struggled indis- 
 tinctly past Joe's cabin, you would soon find yourself 
 among balsamic odors in glades and dells, rocks 
 which had been rolled from their original beds and 
 tumbled down the hill, and hill-sides whose brown 
 earth showed signs of curious work. It was a land 
 of wild scenes and wilder men, protected only by 
 force from the Apache, and where the dwellers, even 
 in their worst estate, could dream of nothing better. 
 But it was also the land of gold. Where the stream 
 ran through the valley, a mile away, the little mule 
 drew, in an endless path, the shaft of the primitive 
 arrastra; the Mexican patiently rocked his cradle 
 with dirt carried thither upon a donkey's back ; and 
 over all the scene brooded the restless spirit of 
 American enterprise, keeping ill-assorted company 
 with ancient peace, wandering, prospecting, specu- 
 lating, and gambling, — rough, vindictive, generous, 
 and ever athirst for wild adventure and possible 
 wealth. 
 
 Joe Biggs was that sort of person who needs no 
 particular description to those acquainted with his 
 species in a mining country. He was, or had once 
 been, a Tennessean, though so long absent from his 
 native country as almost to have forgotten the fact. 
 Though still a robust and middle-aged man, he had 
 
108 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 been for many years a mountaineer, and a constant 
 victim of all the vicissitudes which liere, as else- 
 where, befall a man whose principal characteristic is 
 recklessness. It would seem to be an unfavorable 
 soil for the growth of domestic infelicities, and that 
 any kind of prudence ought to enable a man to leave' 
 them out of his category of sorrows. But Joe had 
 not that prudence, and in the appearance and temper 
 of his last wife he was the most unfortunate man in 
 these diggings. He was the kind of man that is 
 always married — married without regard to place, 
 circumstances, or compatibility. There are many 
 men like Joe. The world could easily be deluged 
 with narratives of domestic sorrow; only the afflicted 
 parties seem to agree at least upon the point of suc- 
 cessful concealment. 
 
 Years before, when the mountaineer's tall figure 
 was very straight and his tawny beard knew no 
 thread of gray, in his saunterings in and about the 
 village he one day came upon a maid of the nut- 
 brown variety, whose eyes were very black and 
 whose brown shoulders were very shapely ; and as 
 she milked goats in the little corral, he leaned upon 
 the adobe wall and tried to twist his Teunessean 
 dialect into something like Spanish. It is useless 
 to tell the rest. The dead-and-gone beauty who 
 was his wife for a few years had long been among 
 the memories and regrets that men everywhere" 
 carry about with them. We cannot tell what 
 thoughts were at work in Joe's heart, as he delved 
 in the mountain side, while the daughter she had 
 left him sat near and watched the work, or how 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 100 
 
 sweet the water tasted that the little one brought 
 him from the spring, or what weighty and import- 
 ant aiFairs were discussed as her lively chatter went 
 continuously on through all the work, and Joe's 
 kindly bass came in between. Fathers and daugh- 
 ters are an exclusive company; all the world knows 
 their proverbial intimacy, and how in this perfect 
 equality of June and December, June is generally 
 conceded to be, if not the bigger, at least the wiser 
 of the two. 
 
 But Joe's last matrimonial venture was of a dif- 
 ferent kind. He sadly knew it was so, and made no 
 especial concealment of the fact among his numer- 
 ous and very festive acquaintances. She was an 
 attenuated and awkward Texan belle when he first 
 saw her — one of the kind that is constantly wan- 
 dering westward, and is ever ready to be married 
 upon a day's acquaintance, and to almost anyone. 
 A man is a man; and their tastes have not been 
 liighly educated by their surroundings. Joe must 
 have been demented. He often thought of the cir- 
 cumstance as one that might have that extenuating 
 possibility as an excuse ; for he came, saw, con- 
 queredj and led his angular bride away from the 
 Cottonwood beneath wliich the ceremony had been 
 performed, all within three days from his first sight 
 of her "folks's " camp. Then the imprudent man's 
 troubles began; and for about a year he staggered 
 home from the trader's store, in manner and form, 
 and meeting with the same deserved reception, as 
 set forth in the beginning of this history. 
 
 So, as the woman comforted her wakefulness 
 
110 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 with muttered words that were only a compromise 
 with profanity^ and her man Joe snored in fortu- 
 nate unconsciousness of the storm, there was still 
 another person in the cabin, who, more than any 
 of the three, was the sufferer through habitual 
 drunkenness and domestic strife. The daughter 
 was fifteen years old; an age which, with such as 
 she, means all the softness, tenderness, and beauty 
 of youth, with the almost mature attractiveness of 
 womanhood. That her trainhig had thus far been 
 peculiar and imperfect was not her fault, nor that 
 of her uncouth tutor. He was rough and coarse, 
 as his kind ever are ; but years of roughness and 
 coarseness sometimes fail to blot out in a man's 
 heart the time when he himself was young and 
 untouched by the iron that sears and hardens. As 
 he went daily to delve in the hill-sides, ever search- 
 ing for the yellow dust and ever finding only 
 enough to feed desire, the child went with him, 
 grasping his big finger with her tender childish 
 clasp. As she lay asleep on his ragged coat in the 
 pine-shadows, while the noon heats baked the bare 
 brown hills that were dotted with pine stumps like 
 huge nails half-driven, the long lashes trailing her 
 flushed cheek and the withering mountain fiowers in 
 her little tired pudgy hand, old Joe's heart warmed 
 toward her with a feeling that brought back every- 
 thing that was good in the early youth of a wild 
 life. The mountaineer was not utterly bad, nor 
 entirely weak ; and day by day her fingers twined 
 in his beard, and her immeasurable love crept into 
 his heart, and a consciousness of his trust grew 
 
JOE'S POCKET. Ill 
 
 upon him. And then the little one had the virtue 
 of a generation of East Tennessee mountain virtue 
 in her veins. But Joe never thought of that. The 
 rough miners sometimes saw their neighbor en- 
 gaged in strange occupations, as they passed bj. 
 Leaning on his pick, the child's bright ejes fixed 
 upon his face, and forgetful in his earnestness 
 that not only walls but mountains and trees have 
 ears, he told her of the country and the people 
 where he was born ; of coon-hunts and log-roll- 
 ings ; of the few months during which he had 
 learned all he ever knew of the hardness of the 
 benches of a primitive school-house; and, more 
 than all, of his mother. He tried to make the 
 wondering infant understand that such as he could 
 have a mother, and he tried to teach her some of 
 the things that mother had taught him. Perhaps 
 there were other listeners than the passing miners 
 or the wondering child, as, in his blundering way, 
 he told her of those mysteries we all do but dream 
 of and hope for, but with dreams and hopes that 
 are not as the visions of the night. But Joe told 
 his daughter of that Maker of all things, whose 
 presence seemed to rest like a shadow upon these 
 primeval silences, and of the Christmas of so many 
 hundred years ago, and, indefinitely and with many 
 blunders, of right, wrong, love, kindness, and duty. 
 But in the end he always came back to the begin- 
 ning of his stor}^; to what he "used to was" and 
 "had orter be now," and to his mother. He seemed 
 to fancy that she might be living yet. "When 
 
112 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 your daddy finds a pocket, we'll go back there, little 
 'un," he often said. 
 
 Joe's bad ways had begun but lately; and his 
 daughter, still his companion, but no longer a child, 
 began to have the dawn of trouble upon her fair 
 childish face. ^Now, when the woman's tongue had 
 abated its vigor, and she too seemed to have at 
 last forgotten her husband's oifence in slumber, the 
 girl arose and glided through the open door into the 
 brilliant night. The conventionalities of the world 
 had little place in her life, and as she leaned upon 
 the broken fence and looked down the mountain 
 road, her feet bare in the dew and her round arms 
 lying listlessly upon the to23most rail, she was not 
 conscious of herself, or that the beautiful light, so 
 unkind to her step-mother's features, transformed 
 hers into those of .a Madonna, as she looked up into 
 the blue depths with the tears upon her lashes. By 
 and by, in the vague unhappiness she could hardly 
 define, and for which she knew no remedy, she laid 
 her head upon her arms and did what the woman of 
 all times and races is apt to do : she cried. It was 
 past midnight. She heard faintly the sentinel's 
 challenge, as the nightly pomp of the "grand 
 rounds " came and passed ; the faint clink of arms 
 and the small commotion at the guard-house, as the 
 surly crew of prisoners fell into line to be counted; 
 and, lastly, the retreating footsteps and settled silence 
 thatproclaimed'the untimely ceremony done. She 
 had heard these sounds a hundred times ; they were 
 not curious, and she straightway forgot them in her 
 girlish tears. 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 113 
 
 Presently the sound of a quick footstep came 
 nearer and nearer up the road. It was a jaunty 
 figure that came rapidly toward her, as she raised 
 her sorrowful head to look. The crimson scarf 
 upon his shoulder proclaimed him only officer-of- 
 the-day, but it was worn like the baldric of an earl. 
 The moonlight played upon button and epaulet, and 
 kissed the sombre plume in his hat, and flashed up 
 and down the bright scabbard he carried upon his 
 arm. But all this was not so much the fault of 
 Lieutenant Thurston, U.S.A., as of the moonlight. 
 He was only a soldier, but he was young, and had 
 about him a certain elan that should distinguish 
 every man that follows the flag for love of arms. 
 As he came he timed his footsteps to the tune he 
 whistled — something that had in it a suggestion of 
 life-let-US-cherish and devil-may-caredness that was 
 strangely at variance with the sleepy hour at which 
 he marched. 
 
 This blithesome son of Mars had flnished his 
 rounds as required in regulations, and under the 
 influence of wakefulness, and stimulated by the 
 night's balmy splendor, had continued his walk up 
 the mountain road. Was that all ? Young men's 
 actions sometimes flnd unconscious excuses in what 
 they are pleased to call tlieir hearts. He had often 
 been here before ; so often, that every gaunt cactus 
 and every gray stone in the rugged road was a famil- 
 iar thing. As he came blithely, so he always 
 returned thoughtfully. About the hardest thinking 
 the lieutenant did was when he was returning from 
 Joe's house. Then the remembrance of a homq 
 
114 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 three thousand miles away used to come unsatisfac- 
 torily into his mind. He thought of the starchy 
 respectability, the gold-spectacled and precise pro- 
 priety, of the middle-aged gentleman whom he des- 
 ignated as "the governor." Then, there was a fair 
 sister or two, and a circle of acquaintances. But 
 the crowning reflection was, "What would mother 
 think?" This lady the lieutenant knew very well, 
 and all her prominent characteristics were long since 
 so well memorized that he thought with a compunc- 
 tive pang of the pain he might inflict by an alliance 
 with anything that lacked the grand essential of 
 "respectable connections." That there was another 
 side to the question was also true. He was far away 
 from anything that touched family respectability. 
 He was literally owned, and all his hours and move- 
 ments were governed, by the great republic whose 
 uniform he wore. His home was his quarters, his 
 profession his sword. Long years would probably 
 pass before he would even see the home or the peo- 
 ple who, little as they suspected it, had almost 
 passed out of his life. 
 
 Joe's daughter was not in the habit of waiting 
 for this young man beside the fence — not by any 
 means ; and if you had questioned her, she would 
 have deliberately, not to say indignantly, denied it. 
 But the young soldier had reached that stage of his 
 experience when he often came so far merely to see 
 the homely house in which lived and slept the crea- 
 ture who was most in his mind. He had often seen 
 her, and spent a half-hour in listening to her lisping 
 English, watching the flushes come and go upon her 
 
JOWS POCKET. 115 
 
 cheek, weighing her tact and evident intelligence, 
 and, after a careless fashion, falling more deeply in 
 love. But it had always been upon seemingly casual 
 occasions, and by daylight. 
 
 As he espied her, he stopped suddenly in his 
 tune, and said, as usual, '' By Jove !" 
 
 She, after hesitating a moment between inclina- 
 tion and a natural sense of propriety, stayed where 
 she was, and the flush on her cheek was strangely 
 at variance with the tear-marks that were also there. 
 
 This rash young man could not have felt more 
 intense pleasure at meeting any of the queens of 
 society than he did then. It was reason enough to 
 him, as it would have been to most of us under 
 similar circumstances; and he came near and held 
 out his hand. Then he also leaned carelessly upon 
 the fence, and looked at the sweet oval face, red and 
 brown, glorified by the moonlight and stained with 
 tears. 
 
 "You've been crying," said he. 
 
 ^''Si^ Sefior; — yes," and then, grateful for the 
 listening ear, she began to tell the cause of her 
 unhappiness. In the attempt, her sorrows overcame 
 her, and she laid her head down upon her arms 
 again, and cried harder than ever. 
 
 There was, indeed, little use for her to do aught 
 but cry. Her friend already knew, or guessed, the 
 story. But the effect was such as might have been 
 expected under the circumstances. The pretence of 
 comforting, combined with a secret desire to have 
 the pretty trouble go on as long as possible, came to 
 
116 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 the lieutenant on this occasion as naturally as it 
 does to all men. 
 
 "Don't cry," he said. " It will all come right 
 in the morning." 
 
 Such miserable platitudes are not expected to 
 amount to much in any case ; and they did not in 
 tliis. 
 
 "The — the woman b-b-eats me," she said, and 
 the sobs became more violent. 
 
 Then the usual remarks were at an end. "Beats 
 you! — do you mean to say that the miserable old 
 — ah, — that she has ever struck you ?" and his face 
 grew to an unseemly red at once. 
 
 "Look here!" he continued, as she made no 
 reply; "why don't you and the old — and your 
 father — cut loose from this sort of thing? You and 
 he can live together, can't you ? Go somewhere ; 
 do something; but," he added, "don't go very 
 far." 
 
 Then he came a little nearer — so near that a 
 tress of the girl's long black hair lay beneath his 
 hand. "You must not imagine that because your 
 
 disr that because your father gets drunk every 
 
 night, and the — the other creature strikes you, that 
 you have no friends. If this kind of thing occurs 
 again, we'll make it warm for them;" and the lieu- 
 tenant placed his hand caressingly upon her shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Perhaps he meant well — we will suppose he 
 could hardly help it; but it was a mistake. The 
 girl arose from her bent posture, and turning toward 
 him a haughty and indignant face, and eyes that 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 117 
 
 showed a remarkable capacity for the expression of 
 anger, without a word, went into the house. 
 
 As Lieutenant Thurston walked slowly home- 
 ward, he was not thinking so much of respectable 
 connections as of something else. His mind was 
 very much occupied with a new idea of the woman 
 he had just left. Our military friend was learning 
 that womanliness, and the indescribable and invis- 
 ible virtue that clothes it, are, regardless of associa- 
 tions and education, an instinct and inheritance. 
 Old Joe's beautiful child was not a mere half- 
 Spanish girl. On this night at least, if never again, 
 her Saxon blood and her father's homely teachings 
 had come to her aid. The soldier pondered these 
 things. He was deeply stung, and his face burned 
 with mortification. But he was not ignoble, and 
 the unspoiled honor of his fresh manhood asserted 
 itself. "If that is the kind of woman she is going 
 to be," he mused, "then, by Jove! I can't see what 
 family respectability has to do with it all." And 
 he was more deeply in love than ever. 
 
 In the morning, Joe's spouse awoke sullen and 
 sour, and berated him more than ever. The girl 
 went about with a sad face, over which came at 
 intervals a red flush, possibly caused by recollec- 
 tions of last night. The miner went away silent 
 and sad, and the girl stood in the morning sun- 
 shine again by the broken fence, and watched the 
 guard-mount afar off, and thought she discerned a 
 tall figure there, and almost wished he would come 
 again. How small her world was, and how large a 
 
118 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCITES. 
 
 figure one man could make in it, she never reflected. 
 It is ever so. A woman's world may be filled by a 
 very tiny dot, so she but loves it. 
 
 When Joe Biggs came again, at noon, he talked 
 aside to his daughter: 
 
 "We can't stand this much longer, kin we, Sis?" 
 and as she only answered by a look, he continued : 
 
 "I've done made up my mind. We'll quit. It 
 was a mistake o' mine" — pointing with his thumb 
 over his shoulder toward the house — "but I meant 
 it well. Do ye 'member the place over the mountain 
 I showed you once when we wus thar? Well, there's 
 suthin' thar that's wuth goin' after. How do I know? 
 Well, I don't jest Tcnow; but this kind o' thing can't 
 last alius, — luck'll come to a man sometime, an' I'm 
 a mind to go an' try fur it thar. Git ye ready. Sis ; 
 we'll go fur it now — to-night; an' mind, now, don't 
 be a tellin' nobody." 
 
 When Lieutenant Thurston passed the miner's 
 cabin, soon after sunset, he thought he saw a laden 
 donkey, whose rider was a woman, far up among the 
 pine-shadows on the mountain road. It was indis- 
 tinct in the gloaming, but the man who plodded 
 behind reminded him of Joe. The matter passed 
 from his mind, and he forgot it in thinking of some- 
 thing he did not see; for the only living thing at the 
 cabin was the woman who sat upon the step, her 
 chin in her hands, eyeing him, as he sauntered past, 
 with all the vindictiveness of her kind toward any- 
 thing that looks like respectable humanity — that is, 
 "stuck up." 
 
 The days passed, and the weeks, and nobody 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 119 
 
 seemed able to answer the question, "Where is 
 Joe?" The woman came to the commandant for 
 bread, and declared herself cruelly deserted, and very 
 badly wounded as to her feelings ; and finally she 
 departed, with a party of her countrymen who wan- 
 dered like Midianites over the land, for some region 
 where men were more faithful. As for Lieutenant 
 Thurston, he kept his thoughts, whatever they were, 
 to himself. He was suspected of a careless weakness 
 for Joe's daughter — and small blame to him; and 
 he was rallied upon that point by his companions. 
 But he seemed to fail to see anything particularly 
 pleasant in their careless remarks about the "lost 
 child,'' and they desisted. It would not be strange 
 if he should think of his wise advice to her that 
 moonlight night, as somehow connected with her 
 and her father's departure, and suspect that the 
 character of his last interview with her was such as 
 to render him rather odious to her thoughts than 
 otherwise. 
 
 The summer months, with their glory of air and 
 sunshine and balm, passed away, and when the earli- 
 est snowflakes of a mountain winter were sifted over 
 the land Joe and his daughter were well-nigh for- 
 gotten. But the dames and gentlemen of the garri- 
 son would have been much surprised had they 
 known that the gayest and brightest of them all, the 
 life of their limited social gatherings, had a greater 
 regard for the mere recollection of the old miner's 
 beautiful child than he had for all of them, or for the 
 names and faces in the far-away land where he had 
 spent his boyhood and which he still called "home." 
 
120 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 The lieutenant, his fellow-officers thought, was grow- 
 ing "odd." He borrowed the topographical charts 
 from the adjutant's office and applied himself to the 
 geography of the wild mountain ranges. He ques- 
 tioned the wandering hunters and prospectors, with 
 the private hope that they might tell him something 
 of the persons he was thinking of. But all were 
 ignorant. Joe and his daughter had strangely 
 dropped out of the world. 
 
 The young soldier began to think he had reached 
 that period in life in which a man seems no longer 
 to have any use for himself He had grown tired of 
 his daily life and his routine duties. His pleasures 
 had become very tame and insipid, and the winter's 
 inactivity, though only begun, seemed endless and 
 irksome. His constant thought of the miner's 
 daughter, which was the real cause of all this, he 
 excused to himself under the plea of ordinary curios- 
 ity. But it was a curiosity which wondered if she 
 had gone because of him, and if he ever occurred to 
 her thoughts. The idea gained possession of him that 
 he might find her, and that he would like to try. As 
 he thought of it, it seemed that by some rare chance 
 he might come upon her hidden among the hills 
 of that almost unknown stream whose waters ran 
 toward the Pacific thirty miles to the westward. All 
 that men knew of the head-waters of the Gila then 
 was told by returning explorers, of a mysterious 
 stream whose current was disturbed only by the 
 leaping of the trout, of uplands smiling in the green- 
 ness of almost perpetual summer, and valleys in 
 which the traveller seemed to have entered upon a 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 121 
 
 new world. The hills were full of precious things, 
 and the unhunted game which started from almost 
 every brake made it a kind" of hunter's paradise. 
 Lieutenant Thurston had heard much of this current 
 geography. For a long time he had heard carelessly; 
 but of late it had seemed to oifer a fair excuse for 
 getting rid of himself. When he had asked of the 
 commandant a scouting party, and had been refused, 
 he bethought himself of a hunting expedition, and 
 asked for leave of absence and an escort. These he 
 managed to obtain; and after three days of careful 
 preparation, with eight men and laden mules, he 
 wended his way, through the slush of melting snow, 
 up the mountain; where old Joe and his daughter 
 had gone before. The man upon whom depended 
 his safety and final return was a Mexican guide, who 
 confirmed all the stories of the Gila country, and 
 who had led explorers there, he said, before Thurston 
 was born. 
 
 Were this a journal of a traveller's adventures, 
 the frosty solitudes of mountains where perhaps a 
 traveller's foot had never been before might well 
 furnish a page. Men write of the Adirondacks, and 
 the strange wildness of regions where every summer 
 the tourists come. But those experiences in which 
 man becomes a companion of the silence that has 
 been unbroken since time was young, are seldom 
 told. The slant winter sunshine lingered along the 
 aisles of pine, and tinged with a melancholy glory 
 white peaks unseen and unnamed before. They 
 drank of snow-born streams that passed in cold and 
 tasteless purity away to unknown depth and dis- 
 
122 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 tance. The holly hung its drapery of green and 
 crimson upon the hoary ledges, and the greenbriar 
 and bramble lay in matted impenetrability across 
 the cavern's mouth. Great bowlders sat poised 
 upon the edges of abysmal depths, seeming as 
 though the mountain wind or the finger of a child 
 might hurl them headlong. The hanging creepers 
 and the gray liioss clung to dizzy acres of perpen- 
 dicular granite with tenacious fingers that defied 
 time and the storm. Here and there the cold blue 
 depths of a mountain tarn lay silent between gray 
 peaks that had been mirrored there ten thousand 
 years ; and in its oozy edges were the sharp inden- 
 tures made by the hoofs of ,the mountain sheep, the 
 round imprint of the wild-cat's cushioned tread, the 
 dog-track of the fox, and, hardening in the crust, the 
 curious marks that always seem to have been made 
 by some wandering barefoot child, where the bear's 
 cub has come to lap before his winter slumber. And 
 over all there brooded a magnificent silence that 
 seemed a fitting respite from the volcanic thunders 
 which, wlien the world was young, had strewn the 
 valley with its fire-scarred rocks and thrust the bold 
 peaks into the smoky air. The gray bird of solitude 
 sat upon the crag and plumed his wing so near that 
 the lone wanderers could see the yellow ring in his 
 relentless eye, and winged his silent way to his 
 unknown eyrie ; and save him there seemed to be 
 no inhabitant of earth or air. In glens so deep that 
 only the sun at midday looked into their recesses, 
 the hardy mountain flowers still bloomed, and the 
 coarse grass was green and brilliant. The ledges 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 123 
 
 dripped with the ooze of melting snow, and the 
 slender icicles which grew each night fell tinkling 
 into the rocky depths in the morning's sun. On the 
 far summits, where tlie foot of man shall never rest, 
 winter held unbroken sway. The gathered snow 
 which propped itself against the pines on the moun- 
 tain-side sometimes broke loose from its fastenings, 
 and tumbled, a fleecy cataract, which flung its spray 
 into their faces, and buried an acre in its rest. And 
 then the muffled echoes died away, and the wander- 
 ers turned aside to wonder when the hour would 
 come that should wrap them in cold suffocation and 
 chill their senses into drowsy death. 
 
 Lineal distance is not to be measured in moun- 
 tain wanderings. After many days of devious jour- 
 neying, the lieutenant knew that the warm fires of 
 the post were glowing scarce fifty miles away. He 
 knew, too, that somewhere among the rocks, per- 
 haps scarce a hundred feet away, were the dim trails, 
 the blazed trees, the remembered landmarks by 
 which men had come and gone before, and which 
 shortened distance and made intricacies plain. But 
 to be lost in the mountains is to be dazed, bewil- 
 dered, insane. Men lose the faculty of observation, 
 and wander in an endless and hopeless round. They 
 sit down in final despair, when only a ledge shuts 
 out the sight of home, and the voices of friends 
 might almost reach their ears. The lieutenant was 
 lost. He knew it, and grimly bit his lips. The 
 guide was lost ; and while he claimed familiarity 
 with each shadowy glen, and old friendship with 
 each cliff's imperturbable face, the leader knew that 
 
124 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 he also was wandering at random amid rocks and 
 liills that had not known the presence of him or any 
 man. With a contempt for unwarranted pretences 
 that men do not cease to feel even in despair, he 
 addressed the Mexican no word, as he himself qui- 
 etly took the lead. The party rode on in silence. 
 In the face of every man except the leader was the 
 knowledge of a hopeless bewilderment amid scenes 
 never known before save to the unclouded vision of 
 the immortals. But when he spoke, he gave his 
 orders with the bluff distinctness of the parade- 
 ground. For himself, he did not think he cared. 
 He had in his heart that high courage which, regard- 
 less of physical strength, is the result of early train- 
 ing in the family, the school, and the traditions of a 
 courageous race. He was one of that throng of 
 gladiators whose skill, rather than whose strength, 
 the world is beginning to understand, and in whom 
 is illustrated the contrast between him who saluted 
 IRero in the arena, and him whose weapon is given 
 him first by his mother, to be sharpened afterwards 
 by himself at school, at play, and in the first lessons 
 of a life whose prizes are open to every man. Yet 
 this young soldier was not a remarkable man. He 
 was only one of those who are carving out the desti- 
 nies of a brilliant century through the difliculties of 
 daily life. He knew that beyond those wild and 
 rugged fastnesses there was a river, an open coun- 
 try, a plain, or some change that could aiford view 
 and hope ; and as he rode silently at the head of his 
 party, he fixed his eye upon some distant land-mark 
 that might keep them from wandering in the end- 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 125 
 
 less circle of bewildered men, and help them to the 
 end at last, whatever that end might be. 
 
 So long as the snow melted in the morning sun, 
 thej need not thirst ; so long as the startled hare 
 sprang up before them, they need not want for 
 food ; and the wilderness-beleagured commander 
 led his followers on. At night, in some sheltered 
 spot, the blaze of cedar boughs threw its ruddy 
 glare into the brooding darkness. The fox drew 
 near to wonder at the illumination, and the green 
 light of the deer's bright eye flashed upon them 
 from beyond the fire-lit circle. It was a wilder- 
 ness where even the Indian seemed never to have 
 come, and, in the tameness of astonishment, the 
 beasts came near to them in seeming friendship. 
 
 Then the soldier would sometimes leave his com- 
 panions in tlie silence of slumber or thought, and 
 wander away among the rocks and shadows. He 
 did not go to brood and think alone. Perhaps it 
 seemed to him, as it has seemed to many men ere 
 now, that He whose hand had reared these pinna- 
 cles drew near and filled with an unseen presence 
 the sinless solitudes of the primeval and uncursed 
 world. In helplessness, almost in despair, he may 
 have looked upward through the mighty shadows to 
 the sailing clouds and the calm stars. It is in the 
 desert, amid vast solitudes and* awful silences, that 
 men may reach upward and almost touch the 
 mighty hand. There are hours when no man is 
 an atheist. 
 
 And one night, as he walked in the gloom, he 
 ]ooked back and saw the silent group painted in 
 
126 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 striking colors by the ruddy light of tliat camp- 
 fire which has seemed so often to the wanderer the 
 light of home. A faint glow went before him into 
 the darkness, and he fancied he dimly saw the out- 
 line of a path. A little further, and that was again 
 lost ; but he thought he perceived the faint odor of 
 new-delved earth. Here and there a huge bowlder 
 lay in his way, and as he touched it with his liand 
 he could feel the slimy dampness of the surface 
 that had lately lain in the earth of the hillside. 
 Then he sat down upon the dry, dead pine-fringes, 
 beneath an overhanging rock. Here was almost a 
 link with the world. The morning would be begun 
 with a new hope. A blessed some-one had been 
 here before him, and he longed for light to see 
 those human signs again, and follow them to 
 wherever they might lead. He had almost started 
 up to return to the fire again, when a strange sound 
 fell upon his ear, and he .stopped to listen. It was 
 as a whirlwind heard from far. "It is the wind 
 in the pines," he said to himself, and still listened 
 as it drew nearer and nearer. Then a crackling 
 sound mingled with the roar, and presently a great 
 white bulk in the darkness leaped with a dull 
 sound into the valley before him, and spread itself 
 out upon the ground. Then another fell with a 
 mighty crash almosf at his feet, and he crept still 
 nearer to the protecting rock. And while the great 
 roar gathered in sound, and the foaming white sea 
 came down like a relentless doom, the pallid face 
 of the one frail mortal who stood in its way was 
 turned aside, and as the white pall settled at th^ 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 127 
 
 mountain's base, its cold folds shut in a figure poor 
 and weak as compared witli the mighty' force that 
 overwhelmed it, but grander, indeed, than all, in 
 capacity for a heroic struggle with death. 
 
 In the morning, the soldiers and guide looked 
 upon a great heap of snow, whose outer edge 
 reached nearly to their camp-fire. "He is dead," 
 said they, as they counselled among themselves. 
 At noon they started back toward home. . . Was 
 it indeed backward 1 The eagles that watched their 
 wanderings, and the gray wolves who gnawed their 
 bones, will never tell. 
 
 But he was not dead. The hollow rock was 
 upon one side and the white wall of snow upon the 
 other, and between lay his bed of dry pine-leaves, 
 prepared for him by the angel of the winds, and 
 softened by unseen hands. As the hours passed 
 by, a dim blue light came through to him, and 
 showed him the crystal outline of his hopeless 
 house. He called, and the dull sound he heard 
 mocked his own voice. But he did not lack air ; 
 neither was he wanting in hope and energy. He 
 could touch the mossy rock, and the earth ; and 
 they seemed of the world, and friendly. He was 
 hungry, and the blue-white light smote upon his 
 eyes and seemed to benumb his faculties. As lie 
 reflected, he would have given "all his knowledge 
 of geography — nay, all he knew beside — for the 
 topography of the snowy world in which he was 
 buried, so that he might tell upon which side the 
 white barrier was thinnest. 
 
 Then, as the first gnawing and weakness of liun- 
 
128 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 ger came upon him, he began to delve. He knew 
 that strength would fail in experiment, and that 
 where he begun he must continue. As his fingers 
 grew numb and stiff in his work, he wished he 
 might barter all his hopes of ease and affluence for 
 a despised spade. Yet his prison was not cold. 
 The snow was a thousand blankets, and the radi- 
 ating heat of the earth became a steam. 
 
 After many hours, the opaline mass grew slowly 
 dark again, and he crawled backwards through his 
 narrow tunnel, to chafe and warm his hands, and 
 rest. Rest came with sleep. "He giveth his be- 
 loved sleep," and the angels must have looked 
 kindly upon the place where, beneath his spotless 
 tapestry, one lonely pilgrim lay, like a play-wearied 
 child, with his head upon his arm in tired slumber. 
 
 When he awoke, he knew from his watch that he 
 had slept five hours. He was frightened to think 
 how the time was passing and he not saved. Hun- 
 ger waits not upon efifort, and already the enemy 
 was insidiously gnawing. But he did not imme- 
 diately set to work again. On the contrary, he did 
 something that, to the uninitiated, would seem the 
 very opposite. He was not utterly without a solace 
 and comforter, and this comforter is one that has 
 accompanied men in much toil and weariness in this 
 world. It comes to every camp-fire, and stills like 
 a balm the cry of hunger and cold. It was a brown 
 pipe. He leaned against the rock, and the incense 
 of the Virginia weed ascended and was absorbed in 
 the roof of virgin snow. After a while, calmness 
 c^me to him, ar4d he again crept into the narrow 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 129 
 
 tunnel he had begun. Lying prone, he pressed the 
 snow beneath him, creeping slowly forward. Wearily 
 the hours passed. Sixty feet — seventy — ninety — 
 a hundred. He looked backward through the long 
 passage, and thought of the unknown distance yet 
 to go, and his strong heart almost failed him. A 
 hundred and ten — twenty. His head swam, and 
 the blood from his numb fingers stained the snow. 
 Ten feet more, and his hands were like sensitive 
 sticks, and almost refused tlieir office. Then he 
 crept slowly back, and crawling to his couch, tried 
 to chafe his stiffened fingers into something like life 
 and feeling. Darkness had come again, and he lay 
 there, not knowing if he slept, or if indeed he saw 
 visions of another country, witli orchards in white 
 bloom, and paths beside rivers, and shining spires 
 of fair cities above the mists of morning. Afterward 
 his raw hands were swollen until at sight of them 
 he almost smiled; yet he crept into the long tunnel 
 again, and, with pain at every stroke, worked at his 
 task for life. A huge bowlder intervened, and with 
 infinite pains he delved around it. The slow hours 
 passed, and he was still another hundred feet nearer 
 the far-off world. He ate the snow from thirst, and 
 the thirst grew as he ate, and his throat was sore 
 and swollen. He was chilled, and drowsiness nearly 
 overpowered him. He was afraid to sleep, for he 
 dimly knew that sleep was death. He was weary 
 with a languor he had never felt before, and the nar- 
 row backward track seemed too long to be traversed 
 again. Weariness had overcome hunger, and all 
 feelings had given place to utter exhaustion. And 
 9 
 
130 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 still with weary strokes he plied his task. He knew 
 that light must soon come, or death. He could not 
 waste strength in crawling back to his bed. He 
 could not wind his watch with his numb fingers, and 
 the long hours passed uncounted; and still, with 
 that dogged energy with which strong men fight 
 death, he delved on,* with movements so slow and 
 tired that with remaining consciousness he almost 
 doubted if he were not asleep. Three hundred feet, 
 — and when morning came again and shone dimly 
 through the snow, he hardly noticed, and did not 
 care, that, white and strong, it lit with the radi- 
 ance of spring the confines of his living grave. 
 
 The March sunshine lights up the narrow valley 
 with a blithesome glitter, that seems brighter by con- 
 trast with the lingering snow upon the higher hills. 
 The air is full of the balm and sweetness of the 
 southern mountain ranges, and upon every hand are 
 the evidences of that strange mingling of perennial 
 spring and eternal cold which in more level coun- 
 tries seems a fable. 
 
 Strewn along the edges of a noisy stream are four 
 or five log houses. Spots of brown earth dot the 
 hillside ; the uprooted bowlders have tumbled into 
 the torrent, and on every hand are evidences of the 
 spade and the pick. The little settlement, in the 
 very heart of the southern Sierras, is very new, and 
 as yet unheard of in the world of stocks and trade. 
 Everything necessary to the rude life of the place is 
 carried tliither upon the backs of donkeys, and costs 
 almost its weight in the precious dust — of which 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 131 
 
 there is some considerable quantity hidden in these 
 cabins. All around lie the peaks and valleys of an 
 unknown wilderness, through which even the miner 
 has hardly yet wandered. You might pass and re- 
 pass many times within a few hundred yards of 
 Biggs' s gulch, and not suspect its existence. The 
 veritable Biggs himself, accompanied by his daugh- 
 ter, passed around the spur and near the new snow- 
 bank, about nine o'clock in the morning, on this 
 tenth day of March. It was Sunday, and he carried 
 nothing but a stick. Their errand was not this time 
 the perpetual gold, but wild flowers for her and 
 trout for him. But, after all, there was something 
 in their Sunday's pleasure unsuspected by them. 
 As they passed by, the old man stopped to look at 
 the huge heap that had come so suddenly and so 
 late, and whose outer crust was fast melting under 
 the rays of the valley sun. As they stood there, his 
 eyes, ever accustomed to notice the small things of 
 nature, discovered a curious cavity in the snow, fast 
 widening in the sun. He stooped to obtain a better 
 view. "Suthin inside begun that hole, sis, an' the 
 meltin' is a finishin' of it," he said, and inserted his 
 fishing- stick. At the very entrance, it touched some- 
 thing soft. Then he broke away the crust, and 
 there, before tlieir astonished eyes, lay a blue-clad 
 figure, the face downward and resting upon an out- 
 stretched arm. 
 
 It were useless to note the ejaculations of aston- 
 ishment, some of which had a strong though un- 
 meant touch of irreverence, as the mountaineer drew 
 fortli into the sunlight the limp figure, and the 
 
132 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 bright rays kissed the pallid and suffering face of the 
 soldier who had fought with death and been almost 
 conquered. It would have been entirely in order if 
 the girl had screamed or swooned. She did neither, 
 but her face took at once a flush and a pallor. 
 "Wait a minnit," shouted the old man, somewhat 
 flurried, and started off as fast as his elderly limbs 
 would carry him. As he passed around the spur, 
 the girl stood looking at the unconscious form, and 
 her face showed a curious mingling of emotions. 
 Then her eye caught sight of one bleeding, swollen 
 hand, and as she knelt and lifted it she began to 
 cry. "Then she took the other; and it would seem 
 that she thought to warm and heal them by contact 
 with her fresh, wet cheek. As the moments passed, 
 she drew nearer and nearer to him. She touched 
 his cheek with hers, and smoothed back the damp 
 hair. Then she suddenly left him, and ran to the 
 bank round which her father had disappeared, and 
 looked up toward the village, l^o one was coming. 
 She glanced apprehensively around; not even a bird 
 was near. Then, as if fearful of the loss of time, 
 she darted back to where he lay, and, kneeling, lifted 
 his shoulders in her arms, and pressed his head to 
 her bosom as a mother would press her little child. 
 Even as the tears fell down upon his face, a rosiness 
 of pity and love overspread her own. "Ay di mi^'''' 
 she said, " poor theeng, poor theeng." But in the 
 midst of her caresses and lamentations, the soldier 
 opened his eyes. He said long afterwards that he 
 would have done so had he really been, as she 
 thought him, dead. She just laid him down again, 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 133 
 
 and sat apart in shame, daring neither to look at 
 him nor leave him. Her father came with his com- 
 panions, and as they carried him to the cabin the 
 girl followed far behind — glad as a guardian angel 
 for the saving of a soul, ashamed as Eve at the 
 voice in the garden. 
 
 It is strange, indeed, how near the brink of the 
 great gulf a man may go, and yet return. An hour 
 more in the snow-bank, and the soldier had never 
 seen the sunlight again. As it was, the sluggish 
 blood was slow enough to resume its flow through 
 chilled and stiifened veins. But as he lay beside 
 the one window in Joe's cabin and looked out upon 
 the scenes of a new life, it seemed as though he did 
 not much care. The distant post, guard-mount and 
 dress parade, the midnight tour on the guard-line, 
 his loved profession, and the charm and glitter of 
 arms, all seemed to be far-away and almost forgotten 
 things. Day by day his strength came slowly back, 
 and he was indifferent as to whether his friends 
 knew of his fate or only guessed and wondered. He 
 was enjoying the only absolute and unquestioned 
 dominion a man ever exercises in this democratic 
 land — the dominion of the convalescent. He 
 seemed almost to have forgotten his lady mother ; 
 and the mild terrors of an infringement of the Dra- 
 conian statutes regarding respectable connections no 
 longer troubled him. Joe Biggs went his daily way 
 to his digging, and the girl, who sat demurely at the 
 little fire and occupied herself with the endless 
 stitching of her sex, was his physician, if he had 
 any. Sometimes, as he watched her, there was the 
 
134 FUONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 old merry twinkle in liis eye, and a sly smile dawned 
 in liis face. Perhaps lie was thinking of how very 
 cunningly he had found her again, or of the great 
 ridiculousness of the current supposition that he 
 came near dying in the snow-bank. 
 
 But he talked to her, and was rewarded by the 
 interest with which she listened to the strange story 
 he told her. And then he feigned to sulk, by no 
 means adding to his general agreeableness thereby, 
 and grew tyrannical, and declared that unless she 
 came near, nay, even sat upon the bed-side, he 
 would probably never recover. Once, as she sat 
 there, he told her of his far-away home, and of his 
 mother and sisters; and then he entered more largely 
 into the subject, and described, even more clearly 
 than her father had done, the characteristics of tlie 
 two great races from which she had distantly, and 
 very fortunately, come. 
 
 Upon bright days of the advancing spring, he 
 walked about the little mountain hamlet that had as 
 yet scarce so much as a fortuitous name, and was 
 apparently much interested in the life of the mines. 
 He went with the girl to his last camp, and they two 
 looked with curious eyes at the camp-fire ashes that 
 lay there leached and sodden, with a broken knife 
 and a lost bayonet as mementos of the bewildered 
 wanderers who had last been there. And they stood 
 together at the shelving rock, and her face flushed, 
 and her black eyes sparkled with pitying tears, as 
 he told her of his days and nights in the snow. No 
 wonder that he became to her the central object of 
 all thoughts, and the great concern and care of her 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 135 
 
 life. For slie still cliose to believe lie was not 
 strong, and made him savory dishes of mountain 
 quails, and demurely cautioned him about his vari- 
 ous imprudences. She believed she knew men, and 
 their" ways and doings. She had had the care of one, 
 and a wayward one, for some years. As for Lieu- 
 tenant Thurston, and his masculine submissiveness 
 to all this tyranny, he was conscious of but one 
 defined and positive feeling in regard to it : he had 
 made up his mind that an indefinite continuance of 
 it would suit him precisely. 
 
 One day he followed Joe to his hole in the hill- 
 side, and they sat together upon a log at the mouth 
 of the shaft. 
 
 '*My friend," said he, "I must go back to the 
 post; will you lend me that mule ? " It really was a 
 diminutive donkey of which he spoke. 
 
 '* Well, now, — sho," said Joe, "ye needn't 
 hurry. Besides, ye can't find the way 'thout I go, 
 an' I ain't got time." 
 
 "I'll find a guide, Mr. Biggs. Will you lend me 
 the mule ? " ' • 
 
 " Y-e-s, of course," said Joe; "but," he added, 
 with a twinkle in his eye, "how '11 I git the animal 
 ag'in?" 
 
 "I'll bring it to you." 
 
 "An' come ag'in yerself? " 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 The elder man looked at the younger keenly and 
 inquiringly. He was peculiar in the respect that all 
 his kind are, and cared no whit for any man's dig- 
 nity. So, between two who by this time understood 
 
136 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 each other thoroughly, the conversation was con- 
 tinued. 
 
 ' ' What would you come back here for ? You don't 
 belong to this kind." 
 
 "I do not belong to any kind; and," desper- 
 ately, "I would come back for your daughter." 
 
 " Don't ye do it 'nless ye come fair an' square, — 
 I advise ye, now. I like ye, young man ; I saved 
 yer life, an' I'd do it ag'in. But if ye ever use what 
 I done for you for anything as isn't square an' fair 
 between my folks and yourn, it 'ud a been better for 
 ye never to a come out'n the snow-pile." 
 
 "I tell you I will come again, and that I am an 
 honest man, and a grateful one. What I mean is 
 plainly what I say," — and he rose to go away. 
 
 " Hold on, youngster !" cried Joe ; "I knowed it, 
 but I wanted to make sartin'. Bless ye, I ain't 
 blind. Does she know it, — have you said anything 
 to her?" he continued, in a lower voice. 
 
 "Well, — yes ; I think I have said too much. I 
 am afraid there is one thing that I have not suffi- 
 ciently thought of. If I should do precisely as I 
 wish, it would be very imprudent. I — I have not 
 much money." 
 
 "Come with me ; I want to show ye sutliin' 
 purty," and Biggs laid hold of the young man's 
 sleeve, and started back toward the cabin. When 
 there, he lighted the greasy implement contrived 
 to do duty as a lamp, and crept under the rude 
 bedstead. "Come on!" he cried from unknown 
 depths; and the soldier went down after him and 
 found himself in a kind of cellar, the earthen roof of 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 137 
 
 which was supported bj cedar beams, as mines are, 
 — for the cabin had no floor but earth. ''This is 
 whar I lived afore I built the cabin on top," said 
 the okl man. "I've been poor all my life, an' now 
 the luck has turned at last. This is whar I keep the 
 stuff." Then he threw aside sundry old blankets, 
 gunny-sacks, and dried skins, and disclosed three or 
 four large glass jars, such as are used in packing 
 relishes, and some small sacks made of canvas. He 
 took up a quart bottle, and as he held it to the 
 smoking light the dull yellow gleam of the metal 
 showed it to be full. Then he lifted another, which 
 held the same yellow hoard. They were all full. 
 There, before his eyes, the soldier saw many thou- 
 sands of dollars. The old man sat down upon a 
 broken box, and eyed his treasures, and talked. 
 He told how he had run away from whiskey and a 
 cross woman, and, coming to this s]3ot, had found 
 "signs." He had made a dug-out, and killed game 
 for food, and opened a drift into the hill-side. He 
 said he had "sloshed around" the bottom of the 
 hill a good while before he had concluded to really 
 go at it. He had found pockets before, and "kinder 
 knowed " there was one somewhere about here. He 
 had a hard time, but finally " struck it rich," and at 
 last came upon the pocket he had been looking for 
 all his life. He was glad he had come ; for, he 
 argued, what good would it do a man "to hev a 
 million, an' that 'ar woman too?" When his luck 
 came, he was afraid, as men often are under such 
 circumstances, and for a month did not even tell his 
 daughter. Day after day he took out the veined 
 
138 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and crumbling rock, sometimes almost pure gold. 
 He crushed it in a rude mortar, and subjected it to 
 the clumsy chemistry of the mountains, witli instru- 
 ments of his own contriving, and at night. Then 
 he needed help, and took his daughter into the 
 somewhat miserly secret. Finally he induced some 
 wandering miners to settle in his neighborhood, for 
 the sake of company and protection. They had all 
 been successful to some extent, but none of them 
 could do more than guess at the old man's success, 
 with the peculiar miner's intuition in respect to such 
 things. In the course of his conversation in the 
 cellar, he made the startling announcement that he 
 had twice been back to the post, and that it was 
 only sixty miles away by his trail. When asked 
 what he had gone there for, he answered, "quick- 
 silver" and " suthin' to wear," and told how his 
 daughter had remained "cached" in the mountains 
 until his return. As he told this story, with evi- 
 dences of its truthfulness all around him, the soldier 
 wondered if this was not Aladdin, and if he were 
 not dreaming. " J^ow, youngster," said the miner, 
 in conclusion, "I've told ye this, so'st the arrange- 
 ment needn't be one-sided. I tell it to ye, 'cause I 
 think ye're honest. The pocket's petered, an' ain't 
 wuth much now; but my lead's wuth more than I'm 
 just now willin' to lay myself out on. I'm gettin' 
 old, an' am goin' to quit." 
 
 They climbed the ladder and emerged again into 
 the outer air. As they stood in the sunlight, it 
 seemed more than ever a dream. 
 
 But to the old frontiersman must necessarily 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 139 
 
 come some relief after socli earnest discourse. He 
 turned away at the door, and as he departed, looked 
 back and said, " Ye kin hev the jackass, an' be 
 d d to ye. I only said it to try ye." 
 
 The night passed to the lieutenant as a waking 
 dream. He had lighted upon a wonder, and through 
 the moonlit hours he tossed, questioning if morning- 
 would find all tliose jars of yellow metal real things. 
 The wealth of this poor girl of the mountains 
 exceeded his mother's dreams of monied respecta- 
 bility, — though he did that lady the strict justice to 
 remember that she required of her ideals a little 
 more than mere money. Aside from all this, was 
 he willing to forego all there was for him in tlie 
 far-off world, for this sweet child of the desert, 
 and to accept her, and her alone, and forever, as 
 just and full compensation for all there might be 
 besides'^ A week ago he had deliberately concluded 
 upon his course, and was surprised to find himself 
 questioning now. 
 
 In the morning, a donkey stood at the door, 
 accompanied by a companion. He was assured 
 that the miner wlio was to go with him knew the 
 way; and as he started, the girl stood in the door- 
 way, shading her eyes with her little brown hand, 
 with pleasure and regret striving for the mastery in 
 her face. She knew he would return. He had 
 told her that, and she believed him. In truth, she 
 did not see why he should not. A young woman 
 cannot be expected to understand the mysteries of 
 a life she has never known or even dreamed of. 
 
 They met the old man in the path. He was 
 
140 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wiser, and had not much to say; but as they passed 
 by, he shouted after them : '' Bring me some quick- 
 silver when you come." He had never been very 
 romantic, even in his own affairs of the heart. It 
 was not surprising that he should insist upon look- 
 ing upon this as mere matter of fact. Old Joe was 
 a man of very hard sense, after all. 
 
 For two days they plodded steadily on, the 
 returning wanderer paying little heed to the road, 
 and absorbed in his own thoughts, following in the 
 trail of his leader. On the third day they caught 
 sight of tlie floating banner on the slender flag-staff, 
 idly flaunting its glories to the green world of 
 silence and sunshine. The sight gave him a chok- 
 ing sensation. When he alighted at his quarters, 
 they were inhabited by another ; and the whole gar- 
 rison, from the commandant down, and including 
 that class with whom he had always been most pop- 
 ular, the ladies, looked at him as at one risen from 
 the dead. He briefly told them his story, saying 
 not a word of the personality of his rescuers. He 
 learned then that his companions had not returned. 
 But he had grown accustomed to startling things, 
 and was not surprised. He had been dropped from 
 the rolls, and his record closed as one dead. Even 
 that failed to shock him now. He confessed to him- 
 self, with some surprise, that he wished above all 
 things to get back to Old Joe's little cabin, and see 
 that little uncultured womanly woman, who, he had 
 almost come to believe, was the one angel of the 
 universe. 
 
 The same night the commandant received a com- 
 
JOE'S POCKET. 141 
 
 munication, addressed through him to the Secretary 
 of War, tendering the unconditional resignation of 
 First Lieutenant Thurston, Third Cavalry; and at 
 the end was the startling declaration that, after so 
 long an absence, he had returned to his post only to 
 perform the duty necessary to a soldier's honor. 
 
 That night he locked his door and read his let- 
 ters. There were several from his mother, and two 
 or three from female friends who inquired when he 
 intended to pay the long-deferred visit to his home. 
 He read the delicate lines, and the faint perfume of 
 old association touched his senses. But he laid 
 them upon the fire, and moodily watched them turn 
 to ashes. Perhaps they were never answered. 
 
 Four slow weeks went by, and the communica- 
 tion came that ended his military career forever. 
 He carried it to his quarters, and locked himself in, 
 and tried to realize his situation. He had been lost 
 in the mountains ; he had looked death, slow and 
 cold, steadily in the face. In a few weeks he had 
 tasted nearly all there is in life's cup, the bitter and 
 the sweet. But through it all, there was no moment 
 more full of regret than this. 
 
 Then, at the trader's store, there was the busy 
 outfitting of a train of mules with all things neces- 
 sary to a mountain life ; and clad in homely gray, 
 with slouched hat and spurred heel, citizen Thurs- 
 ton directed the enterprise. It began to be said 
 among his brethren that after all Thurston was a 
 shrewd fellow, and had undoubtedly found among 
 the mountains something rich. But to the last he 
 told no tales ; and as the tinkling procession passed 
 
142 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 the house known as "Joe's cabin," the blue-clad 
 throng looked their last upon a man who had once 
 been one of them, but now passed out of their world 
 forever. 
 
 There is a certain town on the far Pacific tjoast 
 which has grown up of late years with the strange 
 growth which is born of traffic in an opening mining 
 country, and which agricultural communities never 
 know. There is an elegant mansion there, and its 
 proprietor is reputed very wealthy. Within are 
 luxurious carpets, and shining wood, and marble, 
 and plate glass. Fruits ripen in the yard, and rare 
 flowers bloom on the terrace. He is a man, too, not 
 alone of luxurious tastes, but of intelligence and 
 public spirit. But he is mostly envied because of 
 his wife. The curious people who have frequently 
 scrutinized her elegant attire have also noticed that 
 she speaks English with a little lisp, and apparently 
 regards her husband in the light of a demigod. But 
 they little know how the lady has changed under the 
 tireless lessons of love, or by what slow processes the 
 mountain nymph became at last the w^oman as cul- 
 tured as she was always beautiful. And the man 
 who sometimes looks thoughtfully at the old sword 
 and crimson scarf that hang, somewhat out of place, 
 over the mantlepiece, himself scarcely realizes how 
 much he has accomplished, and how far-away and 
 valueless is that respectability which comes by birth, 
 as compared with that which, by faithfulness and 
 honor, and sometimes through danger and suffering, 
 a man may win for himself. 
 
YIL 
 I^EW MEXIOAI^ OOMMO]^ LIFE. 
 
 THERE is a country far to the southwest in 
 which everything is new, crude, and undevel- 
 oped, where the evidences of enterprise and the set- 
 tlements of white men are few, but which is the seat 
 of an ancient and Christian civilization, and whose 
 capital is the oldest town in America but one. 
 
 Several centuries have elapsed since the Spanish 
 tongue and Catholic faith came together to N^ew 
 Mexico. They antedate the settlement of James- 
 town and the romance of Pocahontas. The then 
 mighty Spanish power had founded a government 
 here before the city of New Amsterdam had passed 
 from the hands of its Dutch founders. The roads 
 and mountain passes, traversed with such precaution 
 now, were the routes of extensive trade long before 
 the first wagon-road had been made across the Alle- 
 ghanies. When the Delawares and Hurons were 
 still engaged in their desperate attempt to hold 
 their ancient possessions against the aggressions of 
 the white men, the aborigines of this country had 
 been converted to slavery and Christianity, always 
 excepting those implacable and unconquerable tribes 
 whose hands are against every man, and ,who were 
 then, as they are now, the scourges of advancing 
 civilization. There are churches here in which the 
 
 143 
 
144 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 disciples of the sword and the cross said mass more 
 tlian two hundred years ago, and mines whose shafts 
 have been closed almost three centuries. 
 
 Interesting as are the present aspects of this 
 strangest of all the countries h^ing within the 
 shadow of the American flag, the I^ew Mexico of 
 the past would be still more curious could we but 
 read the story that is everywhere written in unde- 
 cipherable ruin. The very names of the ancient 
 towns, whose walls are now grass-grown ridges of 
 earth, have been forgotten with their inhabitants. 
 Almost the last vestige of the civilization of con- 
 quest is gone. All that the Mexican now knows he 
 could easily have learned since the country came 
 under the control of the United States, and in the 
 comparatively short time during which American 
 enterprise has had a foothold. Everywhere, even 
 in places so wild and inaccessible that they will be 
 among the last reclaimed, there are dim signs of a 
 curious past which has gone without monuments 
 and without a history. 
 
 The great feature of the country geographically is 
 mountains — nothing but mountains ; not the pictur- 
 esque and tree-clad hills of the East, but bold and 
 bare and brown, and piled peak upon peak, with the 
 high plateaux lying hidden between for hundreds 
 of silent and desolate miles. Here and there is a 
 spring, and sometimes a ragged cluster of huts 
 beside a few fertile acres. But on every hand the 
 yellow and rugged peaks cut a frowning outline 
 against a sky, the bluest and fairest in the world. 
 These mountains are, however, the repositories of 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 145 
 
 immense and varied supplies of mineral wealth, 
 mostly undeveloped, and probably undiscovered. 
 And they are not without inhabitants, for they are 
 the domain, the inaccessible and chosen home, of the 
 Apache. None but the Apache knows them, and 
 none but he would be able to find sustenance there. 
 
 The centres of life and trade in the country are 
 the small towns in the great valley of the Kio Grande, 
 for miles along whose sandy and insect-haunted 
 stream continuous villages extend. There are also 
 many settlements under the shadow and protection 
 of the military posts. Places most remote and dan- 
 gerous are naturally the location of the military ; 
 and it is curious to note how soon a small settle- 
 ment will grow up among the mountains or beside 
 some tepid stream under the auspices of armed pro- 
 tection. 
 
 It is a land where nature in all her forms seems 
 to delight in coarseness and ruggedness. Every 
 shrub is thorny, and every undeveloped twig has a 
 horny and needle-like point. The flowers are few 
 and addicted to a universal yellow color, and trees 
 there are none save those that grow sparsely on the 
 banks of the streams, or stand dwarfed and crooked 
 on the cliifs. But there is an interminable wilder- 
 ness of mezquit — a thorny and ugly shrub whose 
 beans furnish a staple article of savage food, whose 
 roots are fuel, and from whose tough branches are 
 made the bows which in the hands of the Apache so 
 often send an unexpected and noiseless death to the 
 traveller. 
 
 From topography, and discussion of resources 
 
146 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and prospects, all of wliicli claim their share of inter- 
 est for the future, and will be very carefully looked 
 after and accurately described, we will turn to what 
 is always a central point of interest in a strange 
 land — the character and habits of its people. 
 
 In the question of the annexation of the immense 
 territory, a part of which included New Mexico, to 
 the United States, there were no more uninterested 
 people than the ^N'ew Mexicans themselves. They 
 are not of that class who of their ov/n accord long 
 for freedom and sigh for the privilege of self-govern- 
 ment. The difference between that rule that for so 
 many years has been alternately a republic and an 
 anarchy, and one whose great struggle for life was 
 fought out almost unheard on these far shores, is 
 one upon which the Mexican never speculates, and 
 which it is doubtful if he ever perceived. To him, 
 educated as he might be supposed to be by more 
 than three centuries of residence in the new world, 
 still cling all the peculiarities of the Latin race. 
 Everything around him has changed. The power 
 that sent his ancestors across the seas has long since 
 sunk under that slow disease of which old monar- 
 chies linger and die, or perpetually slumber. The 
 traditions of his country and his race are lost to 
 him. His land has long since been invaded by Yan- 
 kee dominion. He has seen the people who are 
 here to-day and gone to-morrow — the weary and 
 disheartened gold-hunter, and the adventurer of 
 every name and class, — and they have smitten him 
 with their vices and taught him none of their vir- 
 tues. The alert and vivacious Saxon has established 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 147 
 
 himself at the corner of every street in his chiefest 
 villages ; has brought him into contact with a new 
 language, which, however, he has not learned to 
 speak ; has threatened him with new ideas ; has 
 changed his ancient real and doubloon to paper 
 promises printed in green, and, withal, derides the 
 religion of his fathers and is disposed to laugh at his 
 saving ceremonies. But through all the Mexican 
 clings unmoved to his religion, his language, and his 
 social life. The plough with which he tediously 
 prepares the soil is such as was used in the days of 
 the patriarchs. His oxen are yoked with thongs bind- 
 ing the straight piece of w^ood to the horns, as was 
 done in Yirgil's time. He harvests his grain with 
 a sickle of crooked iron, dull and toothless as that 
 held by Ceres in a group of statuary. The wild hay 
 upon the swale or mountain-side he is content to cut 
 with a hoe, and carry to market upon the back of a 
 diminutive donkey. The irregular, squalid and 
 straggling village in which he lives is ancient beyond 
 memory, and in its crooked streets generations - of 
 his ancestors have lived and walked, and left it 
 unchanged. The bells which swing and jangle on 
 an iron bar upon his church gable are perhaps pious 
 gifts of some dead and forgotten cardinal of a hun- 
 dred years ago. His Spanish ancestor was a man 
 remarkable for his highly cultivated qualities of con- 
 servatism, jealousy, and love of dominion. His 
 descendant is remarkable only for placidity. The 
 supreme content with which the Mexican sits upon 
 the sheep-skin in front of his door and watches the 
 current of passing life, the satisfaction he takes in a 
 
148 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 life which has in it only the humblest lot and the 
 hardest fare, is nowhere else to be found in nervous, 
 restless, wandering America. 
 
 Rain is, or was, an unusual phenomenon of this 
 arid country; and yet the Mexican's crops seldom 
 fail him. The region is checkered with innumerable 
 ditches, which twist themselves around hills and 
 traverse sandy valleys, and are bank-full of turbid 
 water. His squalid little villages gain their only 
 charm from rivulets of water trickling everywhere, 
 and 'his little farm glows with a peculiar greenness 
 amid the browns and grays that lie around it in 
 mountain and rock and plain. He solved the prob^ 
 lem of irrigation a very long time ago, and did what 
 the impatient Yankee would probably never have 
 done. He is not an engineer any more than the 
 beaver is one, and has been so far very successful 
 without any admeasurement of gradients and curves, 
 and without the use of transit or level; so that it 
 has often been said, and more than half believed, 
 that a Mexican can make water run up hill. With- 
 out the issue of municipal bonds or the forming of 
 any joint-stock companies, he seems to have caused 
 these snow-born mountain streams to follow him 
 into the heart of primeval barrenness, and has made 
 the desolation to bloom as the rose. 
 
 And yet his plow is his chief curiosity. Agri- 
 culturally it is no better than the Zulu adze, or the 
 squaw's incompetent hazel eradicator. It is just a 
 pole, with a second one fastened at a slight angle 
 across the end of it. One end of this shortened 
 stick serves for an upright handle, and the other 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 149 
 
 end, sharpened, is the plow. A single pig, depre- 
 dating in a meadow, on a wet afternoon, will turn 
 up more ground, and do it more thoroughly than a 
 New Mexican farmer can in two days. The contrast 
 between this Egyptian tool and the glittering and 
 elaborate instrument used by the Mexican's neigh- 
 bor, the Kansas farmer, is as great as that existing 
 between the clepsydra with which tlie gentle Nero 
 beguiled his leisure hours, and the modern eight- 
 day calendar clock. And yet the Mexican is in all 
 probability the more successful agriculturist of the 
 two. He knows ; he deals with certainties. No 
 farm journal will ever change his views as to soiling 
 versus pasturage, fall plowing, the profit of wheat 
 growing, Hereford and Shorthorn, or whether it 
 pays to hoe potatoes. As to his plow, he is not so 
 much to blame. All Spain uses the same model to 
 this day. So do Cuba, Cliili, and Old Mexico. 
 
 As might be inferred, the class which comes first 
 and oftenest under the observation of the traveller 
 is the common one of laborers and burro-drivers. 
 But it is impossible that there should be no grada- 
 tions in society among people of Spanish blood. 
 Here and there through the country are pretentious 
 houses, whose doors are closed to the common vil- 
 lager, and whose Dons and Seiioras hold themselves 
 aloof from common contamination. These are the 
 thoroughbreds, who, amid these strange surround- 
 ings, trace back a lineage which is supposed to have 
 had its origin among the kniglits and ladies of Arra- 
 gon and Castile. In this wilderness exclusiveness, 
 what dreams of renewed Spanish splendor, what 
 
150 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 regret for departed power, are indulged in, none 
 may know. But sometimes the necessities of life 
 bring about some intercourse with the commandant 
 of a neighboring post, or some young army officer 
 gains admittance under cover of his uniform, and 
 then the stories that reach the waiting military 
 world are to the effect that family greatness, as 
 exemplified in these instances, is a myth and a 
 flimsy dream, and exclusiveness a cloak beneath 
 which is concealed a kind of respectable poverty. 
 Tessellated marble, the carved balustrade and classic 
 fountain, colonnade and balcony, have all been left 
 out of the reputed demi-palace in which the grandees 
 are spending their exile. It is the same earthen 
 floor, the same unreliable roof, the same chile-con- 
 carne^ the same frijoles^ the identical clammy 
 cheese, that give to the villager his shelter, his fare, 
 and his supreme content, through all his life. 
 
 To dance and to smoke seem to be the two great 
 objects of Mexican life. In the village, the sound of 
 the festive guitar is always heard, and the dance is 
 well-nigh continuous. Not alone in the evening, 
 but at midday, beneath some shade, or in an open 
 court-yard, the passer-by stops, dances his fill, and 
 passes on. Males and females, on whatever errand 
 bent, join in the dance without hesitation, and quite 
 as a matter of course. It is a habit that has become 
 chronic, — the first amusement a child learns, and 
 tlie last manoeuvre his decrepit legs are made to 
 perform. 
 
 Equally inveterate is the habit of constant and 
 continuous smoking, and the corn-husk cigarette is 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 151 
 
 the universal article. Men and women alike mingle 
 smoke with every employment. Sefioritas employ 
 the intervals of the fandango in making and lighting 
 cigarras^ and the celerity with which the Mexican 
 manufactures the small roll of corn-husk and 
 tobacco, never once looking at it, and chattering 
 and gesticulating all the time, is astonishing. 
 
 The New Mexican village is a complete nonde- 
 script. It has not its likeness among all the sordid 
 villages under the palms, or the ice-huts of shores 
 where shines the midnight sun. At the distance of 
 a mile it has the appearance of an unburned brick- 
 kiln. The sun-dried adobe is the universal building 
 material, and there is almost no diversity in plan, 
 pattern, or style. No attempt is made at regularity 
 in the streets, which are simply narrow and zig-zag 
 alleys, intended only for donkey travel and the con- 
 venience of the goats. The description of a Mexican 
 town invented by some border humorist, describes 
 them all: ''Nine inches high, eighteen inches long, 
 and a mile and a half wide." And this is really a 
 description so far as appearances go. The luxury of 
 a floor, of bedsteads and chairs, is almost entirely 
 unknown. Wooden doors, stoves, and iron utensils 
 are nearly so. Everything is of the earth, earthy. 
 Beds and benches are banks of earth against the 
 wall. Fire-places are slender arches, in which the 
 fuel is placed on end. Cooking is performed in 
 earthenware, and the favorite and standard dish of 
 beans is quietly and thoroughly stewed for two or 
 three days in an earthen jug. 
 
 In these villages, the sounds of industry heard 
 
152 ' FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 everywhere else in Christendom are unknown. 
 Til ere are no shops, and every man is his own car- 
 penter, joiner, and shoemaker. Iron is the great 
 necessity of civilization, yet here its use is scarcely 
 known. The only wheeled vehicle the Mexican 
 uses of his own choice is a cart in wJiich there is not 
 so much as a nail ; and this unique triumph of the 
 endeavor to make the ugliest, heaviest, and most 
 inconvenient of earthly vehicles, creeps with shriek- 
 ing axles over the mountain roads, eternally oilless. 
 The Mexican mode of life is almost entirely 
 agricultural, and these villages are simply collections 
 of people pertaining to lands that are tilled in com- 
 mon. There is a personage who is complacently 
 designated as M Indio^ constantly on the alert for 
 spoil, and from whose incursions there is no escape 
 save in union. Wealth here consists in a multitude 
 of goats, together with a limited number of donkeys 
 and oxen. In his use and treatment of these ani- 
 mals, the native is as peculiar as he is in other 
 respects. Everything pays tribute to his larder and 
 is included in his resources, except those things in 
 general use with the majority of mankind. Cows 
 are seldom milked and goats always are, and even 
 sometimes the small j)igs go short of the mother's 
 milk, for which, however, they cry as lustily as do 
 infant swine the world over. Pigs, lean and un- 
 happy, are fastened to a stake by a lariat, while the 
 donkeys are confined in pens. Dogs, innumerable 
 and ill-favored, swarm everywhere, and domestic 
 fowls roost among the household utensils and lay 
 eggs in convenient corners. Eed pepper, the famous 
 
NEW 3IEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 153 
 
 chile Colorado^ the hottest sauce ever invented, is a 
 standard dish, eaten by everybody. The manu- 
 facture of common soap seems not to be understood 
 or attempted, and its place is supplied by a plant 
 that requires no preparation for use, and that grows 
 wild in the country. Wood for fuel is not cut, but 
 dug, being the huge roots of the insignificant but 
 universal mezquit. Butter is almost unknown, but 
 cheese from goat's milk is a staple. There are 
 dishes in the Mexican bill of fare of which the name 
 conveys no idea, and which were never known 
 among the gourmands and epicures. There is a 
 beverage that is the very concoction of Beelzebub 
 himself, made from that gigantic herb called by us 
 the century plant. Acrid as turpentine, fiery as 
 proof-spirits, its effect is more like insanity than 
 drunkenness, and its use adds nothing to the gen- 
 eral agreeableness of the race that, even when 
 sober, is the very opposite of ingenuous. 
 
 What is a country in which the two articles 
 leather and iron are not in general use?- asks the 
 political economist. Yet here the utility of both 
 these articles in e very-day life is practically un- 
 known. Chains, tires, straps, hinges, braces, every- 
 thing that requires lightness, strength, and tough- 
 ness, is made of raw-hide; and, applied to the 
 Mexican's uses, it is nearly indestructible. A dozen 
 mules will chew a long summer night through upon 
 a single lariat, and leave it unscathed ; which, to 
 one accustomed to examples of the perseverance of 
 that sagacious animal in tasks of the kind, is sufS- 
 cient testimony. The shoes of the Mexican, made 
 
154 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 of a tliinner variety of the same material, always 
 last until they share the fate of most articles of the 
 kind in this country, and are stolen by the coyotes. 
 Everything broken is mended with hide, or not 
 mended at all, and without it the common operations 
 of life could hardly be carried on. 
 
 The ancient primitiveness of New Mexican life is 
 more particularly displayed by the dress of the com- 
 mon class than by any other one sign. Stockings 
 and gloves are seldom seen, any more than they 
 are among the peasantry of southern Europe. Gen- 
 erally, neither sex is encumbered with more than 
 two distinct articles of clothing besides tlie head- 
 dress, which last is with both sexes as elaborate as 
 possible. The females wear a skirt and a single 
 upper garment, in which, in maid and matron alike, 
 at all times and places, is displayed a great vari- 
 ety of arms, shoulders, and bosoms. But no one 
 ever caught a man without his so7nhrero^ or a woman 
 without the rebosa. The first-named is the most 
 elaborate article of the hat kind, sometimes pro- 
 fusely adorned with gold embroidery. A Mexi- 
 can's hat is a matter of profound importance, as 
 indicating his respectability. It costs four times 
 as much as his whole wardrobe besides, and even 
 more than the donkey he rides. Shabby as he may 
 be in other respects, his Sunday hat should insure 
 him the respect due to a well-dressed man. 
 
 The rebosa is a garment as old as Spanish civili- 
 zation, once of costly lace, but now a shawl, more 
 or less gay, ^ and sometimes elaborate, in which, 
 indoors and out, the Mexican woman covers 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 155 
 
 her modest head and hides her captivating face. 
 Shoulders, arms and feet may be bare, but all that 
 can be seen of her countenance is one eye and the 
 end of her nose. Peculiarly graceful, as the females 
 of her race generally are, long habit renders her 
 especially adroit in the management of her head- 
 dress. Eating, smoking, drinking, talking, this 
 constant shawl never falls, never becomes disar- 
 ranged, never gets blown away. If ever in this 
 country the traveller espies in the distance a figure 
 upon whose head is neither hat nor shawl, he may 
 begin to study the means of defence; for it is no 
 friend, but an Apache. 
 
 Leaving out of account the goat, which seems to 
 be a peculiarly Spanish animal, all the beasts of the 
 field are of small importance as compared with the 
 hurro. These are very small, many of them not 
 so large as the smallest pony, and many a cuff 
 bestowed in lieu of forage from colthood up, has 
 made him even more diminutive than nature 
 intended. He is a melancholy brute, much given 
 to forlornness of countenance and leanness of flank. 
 Appearances indicate that, with all his reverence 
 for sacred things, the Mexican has forgotten that 
 the burro carries upon his shoulders the sign of 
 the cross, and once played a prominent part in the 
 most memorable ecclesiastical procession in the his- 
 tory of the church. He is tied in the street by 
 having a blanket thrown over his eyes, and guided 
 in his wanderings with his master by vigorous 
 thwacks on either side of his patient head. He is- 
 loaded with everything that can be tied to him or 
 
156 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 hung upon liim, and in such quantity that fre- 
 quently all that can be seen of him are his four 
 little feet, and those enormous ears that in all his 
 kind have ever refused to be hidden, even by a 
 lion's skin. He is the carrier of hay, of stones, 
 of bales of goods, casks of water, firewood, and 
 sometimes of a whole family of small children. 
 His owner has a confidence in his powers of loco- 
 motion that would honor an elephant. Burdened 
 with humanity or merchaiidise, faithful of disposi- 
 tion, frugal of habit, and tough of hide, the little 
 slave toils through his hard life with an uncom- 
 plaining patience that makes him the martyr of 
 the brute creation. 
 
 The small commercial transactions of the native 
 remind one of the shrewd dealings of a schoolboy. 
 Should the*purchase of eggs become desirable, you 
 must be content to buy them two, three, or half a 
 dozen at a time. He will expend an immense 
 amount of eloquence in attempting to convince the 
 purchaser that they are worth fifty cents per dozen, 
 while all the time he is really anxious to take half 
 that sum. Should milk be wanted, he will swear 
 by all the saints that the yellow and unctuous fluid 
 is the milk of a cow, and not that of the goat from 
 whose udders it is yet warm. If it be fowls, the 
 hoarse old master of the harem will be extolled as 
 young, tender, and precisely the bird for Senor's 
 supper. Discovered in his small rascality, the var- 
 let disarms resentment by a smile so bland and a 
 shrug so expressive that you are convinced he 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 157 
 
 means no harm in being an inveterate and incura- 
 ble liar. 
 
 The female of every race and tribe differs from 
 the male by a greater difference than is expressed 
 by masculinity and femininity, and the E"ew Mexi- 
 can woman is in many respects more a woman and 
 less a heathen than could be expected of her from 
 her surroundings. Always neat in attire and cleanly 
 in person and surroundings, comely and sometimes 
 handsome in face and figure, always trying to look 
 pretty, with a very weak side for flattery and admi- 
 ration, coquettish in her ways and suave in her man- 
 ners, tender and kind to those she loves, with a 
 laugh or a tear always at hand, as have her sisters all 
 the world over, she is in striking contrast with the 
 sordidness of her daily life, the surly uselessness of 
 her degenerated kindred, and the habits of the 
 country in which she lives. * 
 
 And while all this is true, there follows it a truth 
 which is in itself a problem for the socialist and the 
 student of human nature. Stated as a proposition, 
 any form of society not cemented by a peculiar and 
 almost indescribable spirit of chastity is sure to fall. 
 Virtue must be regarded, venerated, inherited, — 
 taught by the schoolmaster, the priest, and the 
 mother. Such is not the case here. Prostitution 
 and adultery go unregarded and shameless. Faith- 
 fulness to the marriage vow is not deemed essential, 
 and the idea of absolute virtue seems not to be 
 extant. The ]S"ew Mexican women present the 
 unusual spectacle of almost universally modest 
 demeanor and gentle manners, fulfilling the ordi- 
 
158 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 nary duties of home and life in a manner far better 
 than could be expected of them with their training 
 and education, and yet without an idea of the mean- 
 ing, as it is generally understood, of the word virtue. 
 The fact is, so far as I ever heard, an undisputed 
 one. It is undoubtedly a study worthy the attention 
 of those who are given to social questions, and who 
 have attained to advanced ideas upon free love, affin- 
 ities, etc. The train of social debauchery passes by, 
 and the grand result comes thundering after ; for a 
 lai'ge proportion of the population is more or less 
 affected by that malady which is one of the direst 
 strokes inflicted by the angel with the flaming sword 
 who stands at the gate of the garden of forbidden 
 pleasure. 
 
 No one need go to Rome to acquire a knowledge 
 of what Catholicism is at home. The seat of the 
 papal government, w^itli the old man of infallibility 
 throned in its midst, is not more thoroughly Catho- 
 lic than is New Mexico. The passion for saints, 
 relics, images, candles, and processions is universal 
 throughout the country. Nearly all the villages are 
 named "Saint" somebody, and Jesuitism may be 
 said to be the established rule. The worst social 
 vices are coupled with the deepest regard for every- 
 thing that tastes of saintship and sacredness. Every 
 hamlet has its church, or a building that was erected 
 for that purpose. Each churchyard is a Golgotha 
 which in some instances has been dug over many 
 times for the purpose of burying the dead within 
 sacred precincts. Exhumed skulls and large bones 
 — a cheerful sight for those whose friends have been 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 159 
 
 interred here — are piled in a corner, or within the 
 railing that surrounds the grave of some occupant 
 who has not yet been ousted from that limited free- 
 hold to which the poorest of us are supposed to be 
 entitled at last. 
 
 Convenient appliances for the doing of penance 
 are includtrd in nearly every sacerdotal outfit. There 
 are crosses large enough for practical utility, which 
 penitents are requested to carry far out among the 
 hills and back to atone for some unwonted sin. 
 There are whips and ropes' ends for much-needed 
 flagellation, and sometimes barefoot pilgrimages are 
 prescribed to be made through a country where it 
 would be difficult to find a rood that is not thorny. 
 Lighter sins are purged away by lying all night upon 
 a gravestone — a thing at the bare idea of which the 
 soul of the Mexican qu-akes within him — or some- 
 times by bumping the head a great many times con- 
 secutively upon the church steps. Whether this 
 last-named exercise is a mere form, or whether tlie 
 saving thumps are given with faithfulness and vigor, 
 manifestly depends upon the thickness of the skull 
 and the thinness of the penitent's conscience. 
 
 T\\Q fiestas^ or sacred days, come so often and are 
 observed so generally that the ill-natured remark 
 has been frequently made that they were invented to 
 avoid the necessity of work, and lay the blame for 
 all consequent poverty upon the saints. The motley 
 procession that parades the streets on these occa- 
 sions, firing guns, yelling, and singing, behind a 
 tawdry image of the Virgin that is usually arrayed 
 in pink muslin, with a black mantilla and cotton 
 
100 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 gloves, is one of the raggedest, noisiest, and most 
 ludicrous performances ever called by the name of 
 religion. Yet this unique form of the Christian faith 
 is not wanting in its consolations. There are no 
 free-thinkers and sceptics here. Under its influence 
 the Mexican becomes, if not very courageous in dan- 
 ger, at least hopeful and resigned in death. Upon 
 those occasions, unfortunately not infrequent in 
 this country, when his companions flee in despera- 
 tion from the Apache, still hoping to escape when 
 there is no chance of life, he drops upon his knees 
 and awaits his fate, calmly dying w4th a prayer upon 
 his lips to that mother of Christ whose name is 
 dearer than all others to the Catholic heart. Never- 
 theless, this statement is a reminder that we should 
 be thankful that the sturdy Protestant is apt upon 
 such occasions to die fighting if necessary — running 
 if possible. A course of conduct the opposite of the 
 Mexican's has saved a great many lives in these 
 lonely canons, and the desperate survivors of unre- 
 corded skirmishes are not impressed by the religious 
 aspect of the Mexican's case. 
 
 The love of isolation, the contentment with the 
 condition to which they were born, the desire to 
 remain forever environed by that changelessness 
 that lias sat brooding over his primitive world for 
 centuries, which is the characteristic of the Spanish 
 peasant in the old country, seems also to cling to 
 the character of his descendants wherever they are 
 scattered. Of all the homes of America this is 
 the happiest ; of all her citizens this is the most 
 satisfied. The land that is new to us is very old to 
 
NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 161 
 
 him, and all his straggling villages belong to another 
 age and have remained to this. As he is ignorant, 
 so is he^ careless of all things outside of his sierra- 
 bounded horizon. He cannot be awakened. He 
 refuses to submit to that pain which accompanies 
 the parturition of an idea. He does not even under- 
 stand that the skies are changing over his head, 
 and that he or his children will be called upon to 
 take step with the march of a great people, or be 
 left by the wayside forgetting and forgot. Time 
 will bring about none of its revenges for him; a 
 changed life none of its compensations. There is 
 something in race, and a great deal in what we call 
 "blood." There are five kinds of us whose traits 
 and faces are known to every school-child. But 
 it is a mistake that there are not six. The 
 Spaniard and his children are apart from all the 
 rest, for six hundred years changeless at home and 
 abroado The land that has come under his domin- 
 ion, wherever it may lie, has been from the day of 
 his conquest under a spell also. 
 
 It is so with this. Even at this distance of time 
 and space, with every vivid recollection blunted, it 
 is easy to recall the old, familiar summer afternoon 
 in Mexico. I remember how the sefioras sat with 
 folded hands about the doors, and looked with one 
 unveiled and furtive eye upon the passers. Ancient 
 and parchment-faced crones chattered and smoked 
 at the corners of the little dusty plaza, and impish 
 boys played at noisy games in the quiet street. 
 The cocks and hens sauntered in and out of their 
 owner's houses with an air of satisfied ownership, 
 H 
 
162 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and venerable and bearded goats perambulated the 
 crumbling garden walls. Unhappy pigs whined and 
 pulled at their tethers, and kids furtively nibbled at 
 the tail of a solemn old donkey who stood with 
 closed eyes and hanging lip, asleep. There are 
 rows of white tents, and moving figures, and curling 
 blue smoke, and the distant laughter and careless 
 song of soldiers. These are they who have come 
 from far, whose lives are not the lives of peace, and 
 wlio seem the invaders of a region that was ever 
 before the land of dreams. I see the white tops of 
 the Sierras gleam in the slant sunshine, and slowly 
 the long shadows of afternoon creep over the scene, 
 and finally there is nothing left in the gloom but the 
 twinkle of the camp-fires, and the outline of the cold 
 peaks against the fading purple of the sky. There 
 is the red glow of open doorways at intervals far 
 down the village street, but no sound save the tink- 
 ling of a guitar, the faint laughter of the dancers, 
 and thin and far the bleating of the flocks. All is 
 the perfect peace of contented poverty. All is to- 
 day, and there is no to-morrow. 
 
 I wonder, as I recall such scenes, whether I shall 
 live to see the day when these dry bones shall be 
 stirred. The land is already touched by the farthest 
 ripple of that wave which slowly creeps horizon- 
 ward, burdened with life, energy, and change. 
 There already is the camp of the advance guard 
 who steadily widen the borders of that civilization 
 which is destined to include within its boundaries a 
 hundred millions of freemen. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ''peg;' the story of a dog. 
 
 GIT out'n hyar, Peg Watkins ! Ef I come 
 thar, I'll" — and there was a sound as of a 
 broom ligliting upon its brushy end, and the handle 
 thereof striking the outer wall with a vigorous 
 thwack. 
 
 "IS'ow, in the name of wonder, who can this 
 much-berated female be?" asked the doctor, as he 
 heard the words and their accompanying emphasis. 
 The doctor was the latest arrival. He was strange 
 to the post and all its surroundings, having only six 
 weeks before entered into a solemn contract with 
 the high and mighty Medical Director U.S. A. in the 
 city of Philadelphia, to do duty as acting Assistant 
 Surgeon at any post to which he might be ordered, 
 and to receive regularly therefor the sum of one 
 hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, quarters, 
 and a ration. The doctor was not in delicate health, 
 and did not pretend to think that the air of the 
 frontier would be beneficial in restoring a constitu- 
 tion shattered by hard work in his profession. This 
 was what most of his kind had reported of them- 
 selves, together with other details of extensive prac- 
 tice and infiuential connections, and the regrets they 
 felt at leaving it all at the demands of physical 
 debility. The brusque sunburnt fellows he was 
 
 163 
 
164 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 hereafter to associate with had known many acting 
 assistant surgeons in their time, and were not to be 
 imposed upon. A new doctor means to the officers 
 of a frontier military post a some one out of whom 
 is at first to be fairly had a considerable amount of 
 fun, and afterwards, if he should prove a good fel- 
 low, a new companion, considerable hospital brandy, 
 and the service for which a doctor is supposed to 
 exist. He is welcomed and treated accordingly, and 
 with all these various ends in view. 
 
 When the doctor had alighted from the ambu- 
 lance which had been sent to bring him three days 
 before, his appearance was as startling in these soli- 
 tudes as though he had just escaped from another 
 world — which, indeed, he in some sense had. He 
 was dressed in a gray suit, wore neat brown gloves, 
 and, to crown all, a tall white hat of the "plug" 
 A^ariety, deeply and solemnly bound with black. 
 The air of Chestnut street and the Continental Ho^el 
 seemed to emanate from him, as he stood there 
 looking through the inevitable spectacles at the 
 curious place that was for an indefinite time to be 
 his official residence. A group of young fellows, all 
 clad in blue, and each wearing the emblem of some 
 comfortable military grade upon his shoulder, saun- 
 tered out to welcome him from the trader's store. 
 "Here is Pills," said one. "Remark the tile," said 
 a second. "Bad health — large practice," chimed 
 a third, epitomizing the usual story. "Wish I was 
 where he came from," sighed a fourth, "wherever 
 it is." But they ceased to laugh as he came nearer, 
 and greeted him with that solemn courtesy which 
 
''PEO;' THE STORY OF A DOG. 165 
 
 is the usual thing when the object of it has been 
 expected, and when previous remarks have not been 
 of a character to be considered entirely respectful. 
 As these really kind-hearted fellows shook hands 
 with "Pills," one by one, the prospect for a great 
 amount of fun out of a greenhorn did not seem to 
 brighten. The new doctor was a kind of blonde 
 Nazarite, whose face, it seemed, had never known a 
 razor. He was so tall that the men around him 
 looked up into his open eyes, and felt for a consider- 
 able time thereafter the impression of a hand that 
 was anything but flaccid. " Bad health," remarked 
 Thompson to his companions, shortly after, "bad 
 
 health be d d.". 
 
 With the air of a man who did not think his sur- 
 roundings very remarkable, the doctor sat oiling liis 
 gun when the broom was thrown at Peg Watkins, as 
 aforesaid. The voice and the missile he knew were 
 the personal property of the quadroon — or a shade 
 darker — who did the culinary offices of the mess. 
 But having been there but three days, he believed 
 he might not yet have seen all the female denizens 
 of the post. So, with the remark mentioned, lie 
 arose and went to the door, in expectation of seeing 
 tliis creature, who had apparently been caught i7i 
 flagrante delicto^ make a hasty exit from the rear of 
 the premises. What he actually saw was an immense 
 yellow-and-white dog, with bristles standing like the 
 spines of a roach along her back, and her head 
 turned aside with that curious pretence of looking 
 the other way that angry canines are apt to practise, 
 while the pendent lip, drawn away from her square 
 
166 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 jaws displayed to some antagonist at the kitchen 
 door a glittering array of ivory. This was the female. 
 The doctor laughed as he thought of it; — "Peg" 
 was only a dog. 
 
 But he was one of those men who are prone to 
 have an extensive acquaintance among the hairy 
 beasts who, in all ages and with all races, have chosen 
 to be beaten, spurned, misunderstood, and murdered, 
 as the humble friends and followers of man, rather 
 than live in savage independence without liim. As 
 he watched her, with an amused expression upon his 
 face, it doubtless seemed to him that the shaggy 
 creature was one possessed of rather more than the 
 ordinary amount of canine character. " Come here. 
 Peg," he said, in rather a conversational tone, as he 
 held out his hand. Peg was visibly disconcerted, 
 and lowered her bristles and seemed astonished at 
 hearing her name called in a tone of kindness. She 
 crept humbly toward her new friend, and when she 
 felt the touch of his hand fairly grovelled in the dust 
 before him, and at last deprecatingly followed him 
 into the house. For a long time she had been 
 accustomed to be addressed with missiles and epi- 
 thets, and driven away whenever her shaggy form 
 appeared in a doorway, and had presumably stolen 
 from the butcher and the waste-barrel whatever she 
 had to eat. And through it all she had lain in the 
 sally-port every night, watching and listening, the 
 most vigilant sentinel of the command. She was 
 an outcast, so entirely abandoned that it w^as only 
 through inadvertence that she was permitted to live 
 at all. As she crouched close beside the wall, with 
 
''feg;' the story of a dog. . 167 
 
 forlorn countenance and haggard, watcliful eye, it 
 seemed, had any cared to notice, that she felt, with 
 such a feeling as her human masters often lack, her 
 utter ignominy and disgrace. E'ow, in less than two 
 hours after her first acquaintance with him, she lay 
 in the twilight at the doctor's doorway, with self- 
 conscious importance, and disputed the entrance of 
 the 'commandant himself. So are dogs — and men — 
 wont to forget themselves upon a sudden change of 
 fortune. 
 
 There is a road, a monotonous and desolate 
 yellow line across the desert, which leads west- 
 ward from the Rio Grande across the southern 
 border of New Mexico. There is many a long 
 day's journey upon it in which there is no water, 
 ifo shade, no house, no passing traveller — nothing. 
 Over it have passed hundreds who never saw the 
 end, and other hundreds who, if they did see it, 
 never cared to return. Over plateaux where the 
 tall cacti stand like ghosts, through canons Indian- 
 haunted and lined with graves and crosses, the 
 melancholy path stretches for hundreds of lone- 
 some miles. Yet it does not want wayfarers. Here, 
 through the summer, thousands of long-horned 
 Texas cattle drag their gaunt limbs along on the 
 journey to California. Here is the man whose des- 
 tiny it is to wander from place to place through life 
 unsatisfied, surrounded by his dozen white-haired 
 and boggle-eyed urchins who seem to have been born 
 b}^ the roadside, and ever accompanied by a woman 
 whose most serious troubles are cured by a pipe, 
 and whose amazing fecundity seems to be no bar 
 
168 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 to constant wandering. Sometimes, too, there are 
 those who have a more definite purpose in their 
 journeyings, and who escape from the ties of family 
 and the law, and the manifold difficulties of civiliza- 
 tion and old associations. But to all there is the 
 same fatuous certainty of something better beyond, 
 the same proneness to underestimate the length and 
 peril of the road and the hard facts that lie at the 
 end. But it is one of the roads of destiny, and by 
 it do southern Arkansas, Texas, and other of the 
 southwestern states empty themselves of their more 
 unstable population. 
 
 Some months before the doctor's arrival at the 
 post, several families of such had encamped at the 
 spring, whose semi-circular disc of stone opened the 
 tepid waters to the light a few hundred yards from 
 the southern w^all of the military enclosure. The 
 circumstance was not an unusual one, and would 
 have attracted no attention had not the party stayed 
 so long and been possessed of unusual attractions. 
 They wanted an escort of soldiers, and waited for the 
 return of a scouting party, so that troops might be 
 spared them — provided some other excuse for not 
 furnishing a guard did not meantime occur to the 
 mind of the commandant. The men were well- 
 dressed and independent, and the women were some 
 of them comely and all of them quite exclusive. 
 There was one tall girl, who attracted universal 
 attention as well on account of her beauty as her 
 demure reserve, who turned a cold eye upon Thomp- 
 S(m himself, who in his day had been (the word of 
 a soldier must be taken in this matter) a famous 
 
peg:' the story of a dog, 169 
 
 woman-tamer. Tuck, the butclier's man — contract- 
 or's agent, lie designated himself — had, with cosmo- 
 politan impudence, visited the new-comer's camp the 
 very first evening, and, contrary to all his expecta- 
 tions, had fallen des23erately in love with this young 
 woman, and would have been quite willing to forego 
 all other attractions and sacrifice himself for her 
 sake, but when he ventured upon his first remark to 
 her, she not only failed to reply, but turned to the 
 man who seemed to be her father or her guardian 
 and addressed to him a question which left Tuck in 
 no uncertainty as to the rejection of his overtures. 
 " Miss Margaret " the rest of them called her; and 
 though thereafter Tuck called her "stuck up," he 
 nevertheless worshipped Miss Margaret from afar. 
 She "didn't do nothin'," he said, and he noticed 
 that when she was not reading a book whose bind- 
 ing suggested a difi'erent kind of literature from that 
 to which he was accustomed, she sat apart, with her 
 uncommonly white hands in her lap, and looked, as 
 he was pleased to imagine, very unhappy indeed. 
 Had this most unconscionable ass but known that 
 she was only angry, and that even her anger never 
 touched his most distant neighborhood, he would 
 have been sorely puzzled to know how to account 
 for it. 
 
 In the course of a few days it began to be sus- 
 pected that the young lady held no relationship, 
 unless a very distant one, with any of her party. The 
 gallant and polite officers of the post were treated 
 by her with some consideration, and they acutely 
 made this important discovery : Thompson averred 
 
170 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 that she was a well-educated northern girl, who had 
 gone to the south as a school-mistress, and had been 
 jilted by some person to the said acute joung officer 
 entirely unknown. He acknowledged that she had 
 not told him so, or in any way given him her confi- 
 dence. But the Thompsons are all shrewd people. 
 When asked if she intended making a residence in 
 far-off California she said she did not know, and 
 hinted that she did not care. The longer the party 
 stayed the more imminent became the prospect of a 
 sensation of some 'kind, on account of this fair- 
 haired and blue- eyed young woman, who seemed 
 strangely out of place amid her surroundings, and 
 who had captivated all hands down to the butcher's 
 man. There had never passed through these regions 
 a traveller upon this most desolate of roads, one 
 whose footsteps were so dainty, whose skirts and 
 collars were so preternaturally white, and who coiled 
 her hair round her head with so much feminine 
 skill. But she was ''queer." She was, in a sense, 
 homeless among her companions. Disregarding 
 the supposed danger from prowling Apaches, she 
 took long walks alone ; and Tuck subsequently 
 stated that iie once saw her far down towards the 
 canon, sitting upon a bowlder in the moonlight, 
 apparently '^tbinkin','' ^^md that beside her, alert 
 and watchful, sat her sole companion on such occa- 
 sions, an ugly yellow dog, who had always seemed 
 to have an especial dislike to the contractor's agent. 
 One night, after tattoo, the man with whose fam- 
 ily Miss Margaret seemed somehow connected came 
 breathless to the commandant with the statement 
 
''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 171 
 
 that she had "gone walkin' " early in the evening, 
 and had not returned. JN'or did she ever return. 
 The most accomplished trailer of the post failed to 
 account for the manner of her taking oif. After a 
 day and a night of fruitless search, all further efforts 
 were abandoned as useless, and thereafter the theme 
 was avoided, as a horrible reminiscence whose every 
 detail was sufficiently expressed by the hated word, 
 'vApaches." Thompson was most severely afflicted, 
 and much exercised in the necessary concealment of 
 a grief which this time was not one of that shrewd 
 young officer's pretences. 
 
 But had she indeed been captured by the Apa- 
 ches ? Had her reckless walks ended at last iu 
 sudden capture, and a fate worse than death ? Mari- 
 ano, the scout, said not; and he knew. He declared 
 that there had never been an Indian near the emi- 
 grants' camp, nor between there and the canon, for 
 three moons. Men would no doubt sometimes arrive 
 at conclusions more nearly correct if they would 
 study probabilities less and improbabilities more. 
 If the commandant had been asked if there were 
 any other means by which a young lady might be 
 spirited away, he would have said unhesitatingly 
 that there were not. He would have been, uncon- 
 sciously all the time, thinking of the lost one as a 
 woman. ]\fen, here as elsewhere, go where they 
 list, and there is little thought of how or of when 
 they may choose to return. 
 
 Every Friday night, at an hour when the wilder- 
 ness itself was asleep, there came rattling down the 
 hill from the eastward a canvas-covered vehicle 
 
172 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 drawn bj four vicious little mules. The officer of 
 tlie day often heard the driver's coyote-bark, by 
 means of whicli signal he and all his fellows are 
 accustomed to arouse the sleepy officials of the 
 desert post-offices as they approach. The sentinel, 
 as he walked back and forth before the sally-port, 
 watched it as the wheels ground over the gravel at 
 the door, and heard the leathern sound of the falling 
 mail bag. A sleepy word or two between the driver 
 and the trader's clerk, the shutting of a door, the 
 renewed grinding of wheels, and the overland stage 
 had come and gone, so like a border phantom that 
 it seemed doubtful, when the day came again, if 
 such an institution existed. Sometimes there were 
 passengers, but not often. Occasionally a desperate 
 man, whose absolute necessities called him across a 
 continent, loaded himself with weapons, and ran 
 the gauntlet of discomfort and danger in the over- 
 land. People wondered sometimes why or how the 
 line was run at all. The doubt was hardly a perti- 
 nent one. Some hundreds of thousands of dollars 
 for a semi-weekly mail service, coupled with an 
 agreement that the line must be prepared to carry 
 passengers, will accomplish wonders. 
 
 The man who reported Miss Margaret's taking-off 
 to the commandant confessed that she was not in 
 any way related to him or to his family; that she 
 became connected with them in eastern Texas by 
 liaving been a teacher in his neighborhood. She 
 had money, he said, was "offish an' book-larned," 
 had started with him for California because she had 
 some concealed purpose in going, and added that 
 
''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 173 
 
 " she never tuk to liim or liis faniily much, an' 
 war a leetle quar in her ways." He prudently for- 
 got to state that on the night of her departure she 
 had told the whole partly distinctly that, in her 
 opinion, they would never see California, and in 
 terse and elegant terms expressed her opinion of 
 the slowness of Texans in general, and of these in 
 particular. He also failed to state that she had 
 taken with her a travelling bag, but had left behind 
 her an immense trunk, which, with all its unknown 
 finery, might be regarded as a legacy to his own not 
 uncomely daughters. In fine, Miss Margaret's 
 guardian lied ; and the day following left the post 
 with all his belongings, going westward. 
 
 More than a week after these events had occurred, 
 and when the tender hearts of the gentlemen of the 
 garrison had assumed that shade of subdued regret- 
 fulness for Miss Margaret's fate, that is said to be 
 characteristic of the sex, early one morning while 
 Tuck was plying his vocation at the slaughter-pen, 
 he was surprised by the apparition of an immense 
 yellow-and-white mastiff, gaunt, tired, and almost 
 starved, who came crouching toward him, urged by 
 hunger, and mutely begging for the merest taste of 
 the raw meat in which the churl was at work. He 
 was greatly astonished, for he had no great difficulty 
 in recognizing Miss Margaret's surly guardian. He 
 paused, with his bloody hands upon his hips, and as 
 he looked, conceived a new hatred of the dog for 
 her mistress' sake. ''You kin come back, kin you? 
 Drat your ugly eyes !" and he threw a stone at her. 
 The creature yelped, and limped away toward the 
 
1Y4 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 sally-port, too tired and hungry to even show lier 
 teeth to that other cur who refused a bone to a 
 starving dog. Wlien he saw her again, he said : 
 "There goes that Peg." This was very brilliant 
 irony on the part of Tuck, and he laughed a good 
 deal to himself at the thought that the friendless 
 dog should hereafter bear what he chose to con- 
 sider the nickname of her lost mistress. Then, 
 because the name of Miss Margaret's whilom pro- 
 tector was understood to have been Watkins, the 
 servant, wdth unconscious drollery peculiar to her 
 kind, had called her "Peg Watkins" the evening 
 she became the doctor's friend. 
 
 As time passed, the doctor dissipated all the 
 theories upon which the officers of the post had con- 
 structed their conclusions as to what, as a contract 
 doctor, he ought to be. He accommodated himself 
 to surroundings that might well be considered 
 curious, in an hour's time. He seemed to have 
 travelled much, knew his fellow-men very well, 
 and was cool in all emergencies. He was not 
 afraid of sun or rain, was a keen hunter, and an 
 excellent companion, and could tell stories like 
 Othello. He seemed to know the miner of Cali- 
 fornia, the ranchman of Texas, and spoke familiarly 
 of Paris and Rome. In a word, he was very far 
 from being as "green" as his companions, having 
 observed carefully the habits of many doctors, had 
 expected. But there was something about the man 
 that, after all, *tliey could not quite understand. 
 Thompson thought he was "curious" in that he 
 seemed to have no earthly interest in those crea- 
 
"P^(7," THE STORY OF A DOG. ITS 
 
 tares who were ever to Thompson so near and yet 
 so far. He never spoke of women at all. He 
 seemed never to have had an affair. He never 
 amused or entertained his auditors with stories of 
 past flirtations. One night, not long after his 
 arrival, the presence of the outcast mastifl* at his 
 feet suggested to some one of his companions the 
 story of the lost lady — Thompson alluded to her 
 poetically as "the loved and lost," — and it was 
 added that her name among her ill-assorted friends 
 sounded like a schoolma'm's — "Miss Margaret." 
 The doctor looked up quickly, relapsed into thought- 
 ful silence, and without a single comment upon the 
 sad story, began presently to talk of something else. 
 In other respects also did they think him rather 
 queer; for like many men of his kind, he liked 
 very well to be left alone. Often, accompanied by 
 Peg, he passed the sentinel at midnight, coming 
 home from some purposeless wandering. He was, 
 it seemed, not unaccustomed to life on the frontier. 
 Only a year ago he had visited California, and 
 within a few months had been in Texas. He did 
 not allude to anything as the specific object of his 
 wanderings, but he left the impression upon his 
 listeners that he was either running away from, or 
 chasing, some fleeting shadow round the world. 
 Often, far beyond the midnight, when tlie officer of 
 the day passed in his rounds, he could see the lonely 
 man sitting in the lamplight, and Peg crouched 
 watchfully in the open window. 
 
 The understanding between the brute and the 
 man was so remarkable as to attract some attention. 
 
176 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 Wherever tlie doctor's footsteps led liim, the dog 
 awkwardly waddled behind. Peg was now clean, 
 well-fed, and carried her content to the extreme of 
 being somewhat saucy. Her master was her world, 
 and she cared for nothing and no one else. The 
 inhabitants of the little community might pat her on 
 the head if they would, and she reciprocated by 
 hardly so much as the wagging of her tail. Hun- 
 dreds of times her name was called from open doors 
 and across the parade-ground. She scarcely so 
 mucli««as turned her head, and usually walked with 
 great dignity in the opposite direction. All this 
 may have been a kind of negative revenge for past 
 indignities; for she had the general good at heart. 
 Often in the watches of the night her bark came 
 faintly back from the surrounding hills. There was 
 a legend that she never slept. But she did — at 
 midday, upon the doctor's bed. 
 
 The saying that time at last makes all things 
 even, is only poetry, which is often far from true. 
 But there was a notable instance in which the state- 
 ment was fairly demonstrated. Tuck possessed two 
 curs as ugly as himself, one of which was of Peg's 
 own sex. Early one morning, as the butcher went 
 to his avocation, accompanied by his two compan- 
 ions, they three met Peg walking with great stateli- 
 ness beside the w^all. With his dogs beside him. 
 Tuck could not resist the temptation to utter a 
 vicious '•^ sicJc^m! ^^ With much more valor than 
 judgment, the two dogs rushed to the onset. If Peg 
 was frightened, she made no sign of it ; and quietly 
 taking tlie female by the neck, with one great shake 
 
''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 17T 
 
 she covered her white breast with her enemy's blood. 
 A few minutes after, she appeared at her master's 
 bedside, apparently unconscious of the stain. After- 
 wards, when told of the outrage by Tuck, the doctor 
 called his grim friend to liim, and, as he patted her, 
 remarked: "Margaret, did you kill the meat-man's 
 dog?" And the "meat-man" went away convinced 
 that dogs and men may sometimes have a singular 
 mutuality of interests. 
 
 The long summer passed, and autumn came with 
 its nights of frosty sparkle and moonlit glory. The 
 little walled post, with its bare parade-ground and 
 its monotonous routine, dulled by daily use, seemed 
 to grow irksome to the doctor. It was not strange 
 that he liked better to wander through the long 
 evenings among the near foot-hills, accompanied 
 always by Peg. His associates had long since 
 become accustomed to his vagaries, and paid small 
 heed to his absence, as they whiled the dull night 
 away with social games at cards — - chiefly that cap- 
 tivating one that for some unexplained reason has 
 been named "poker." True, they had concluded 
 long ago that there was "something on the man's 
 mind," and guessed, with a nearness to the truth 
 they hardly suspected, that the position of "contract 
 doctor" at a frontier post was, to a man of his 
 attainments, little more than an excuse to rid him- 
 self of himself. 
 
 One night he lay on his back by the roadside, a 
 
 gaunt cactus lifting its thin spire at his feet, and Peg 
 
 beside him, looking at the stars. His thoughts were 
 
 dreamy, but they were busy. This refuge in the 
 
 13 
 
178 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 wilderness was not satisfactory. Go where he would, 
 he could not rid himself of a thought that had been 
 with him so long that it was a part of him. He had 
 lain there three hours, and in all that time had not 
 evolved anj new idea as to his further profitable 
 disposal of that troublesome person, himself. He 
 had already resigned his appointment, and ques- 
 tioned within himself where he 'should go. "If I 
 could only find her," he ejaculated, ''I would start 
 for China." 
 
 The moonlight on his watch-dial showed it was 
 one o'clock. The silence of the wilderness seemed 
 to close around him impenetrably. Everything was 
 asleep. The social game at the trader's store was 
 undoubtedly played out, and he wondered, as he 
 walked slowly homeward, whither the ofiScer of the 
 day, whose business it was to be up, had betaken 
 himself. But he thought he heard afar off the 
 sound of Avheels amid the rocks of the canon. 
 When he arrived at the trader's store, the sound 
 grew louder, and he paused, out of mere wakeful- 
 ness and curiosity, until the phantom mail, which so 
 seldom brought him any letters, should come. Soon 
 the four little black heads were dancing along above 
 the roadside chaparral, and the driver, his hand 
 upon his mouth, had begun to utter his hideous 
 coyote-calls. Jehu seemed merry ; for the mail was 
 from the west, the worst was passed, and home and 
 rest were only twenty miles away. That is a long 
 distance upon which to congratulate oneself at two 
 o'clock in the morning, the moody physician 
 thought; but happiness is a merely relative terra. 
 
''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 179 
 
 A strap was broken, and while the driver mended 
 it, and the sleepy clerk stood at the door, Peg 
 inspected the wheels, the boot, and, cautiously, the 
 heels of the mules. Presently she seemed strangely 
 attracted by something inside. She arose upon her 
 hinder legs, and with her paws upon the broken 
 window-frame, struggled, yelping, to climb higher. 
 This amazed the doctor, and he also came near. 
 Then a feminine voice was heard inside, and a hand 
 appeared in the moonlight, which the dog devotedly 
 licked. Presently the door was flung open, and a 
 somewhat muffled face appeared, and before the 
 clumsy efforts of the dog could effect an entrance, 
 her shaggy neck was clasped in some one's arms, 
 and audible kisses rained upon her hairy face. "Oh, 
 you dear old dog! where did you come from?" 
 were words the doctor thought he heard. It 
 occurred to liim as being rather an eccentric pro- 
 ceeding also. He went to the window, and said 
 "Peg, — old girl, "and Peg thumped her large tail 
 upon the floor, and turned from one to the other, 
 and displayed the whole immense length of her 
 tongue, and seemed agonized between two great 
 happinesses. 
 
 Then occurred the following conversation, inter- 
 rupted by little gasps and swallo wings : 
 
 "Doctor — Daniels ! Who — who — My goodness" 
 (evidently recovering), " is it you ? " 
 
 "ISTow, Maggie" (somewhat huskily and leaning 
 very far into the vehicle), " where have you been ? " 
 
 "Everywhere, sir" (entirely recovered); "to 
 California last." 
 
180 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 " Well, but where ? — how ? " 
 
 ''This is what I have to say to you, Ed," — and 
 the lady's voice grew strong in its tone of injury, — 
 '^ihat no matter how you or I came here, or where 
 from, you must go with me here and now, or I shall 
 just get out and stay here, as I'm sure I've a right 
 to do. And then I've been so far, and am so tired, 
 and — and — I think I must be dreaming, after all." 
 And then this Amazon broke down, and began to 
 cry. 
 
 The doctor never looked more earnest at the 
 bedside of a very doubtful case than he did at this 
 moment. He took off his hat solemnly, and wiped 
 his forehead, looking down at the ground as though 
 he had lost something there. With all that he had 
 been looking for so long, there in the shabby vehi- 
 cle, — with what he had been willing to go to China 
 for there within arm's length, — he stood fighting 
 his pride outside. Then a hand came forth and 
 touched his shoulder, and a*voice said "I'm very 
 sorry, Ed;" and immediately Doctor Edward Dan- 
 iels turned resolutely and climbed into the coach. 
 It would seem that after so many years of estrange- 
 ment and regret, after a thousand maledictions by 
 each upon all the stars and fates that preside over 
 matrimony, after a trial by each of every quack 
 medicine for unhappiness that human nature is wont 
 to suggest to itself, it only required four little words 
 to do the business ; and it was the woman, of course, 
 who said them. He left everything behind, caring 
 nothing for the morning astonishment of his late 
 associates at the post, for the criticisms of his ene- 
 
''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 181 
 
 mies, or the regrets of his friends. He was very 
 glad to take up again the burden of a love that 
 had been wilful, capricious and exacting, which had 
 defied him twenty times in a day, which was noth- 
 ing that he would have it to be, but which was 
 nevertheless the love of a beautiful woman whose 
 slave he was and wished to remain. 
 
 Jehu had been listening and chuckling to him- 
 self. "I reckon she's got him now," he said. 
 ^'Hudup thar!" and he brought the long whip to 
 bear with a keen snap under the off leader's traces. 
 
 The dumb friend lay at inconvenient length along 
 tlie bottom of the coach, quite content to have her 
 wrinkled neck used as an imperious lady's footstooL 
 "I'm sure it's all very curious," said she, "and her 
 name is not Peg at all. And Ed, — there were a 
 great many nice things in that trunk. To think of 
 the Watson girls wearing my dresses ! — the hateful 
 things." 
 
 "The Watson girls are very fortunate if some 
 Apache squaw is not wearing them by this time," 
 said the doctor ; "and you — well, you are equally 
 lucky that the same amiable savages did not get 
 your back hair, especially when you consider the 
 extraordinary beauty of it ; " and the doctor felt 
 obliged to satisfy himself as to whether the brown 
 coils were yet his by placing a rather large hand 
 upon the lady's head. 
 
 "I should not have cared if they had — at one 
 time," said she. 
 
 Thompson strenuously asserted for a long time 
 that he suspected Miss Margaret was a married 
 
182 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 lady. "Now, I never knew a girl to act just so," 
 he said; " at least, not to me. Tliey usually tumble 
 to the racket sooner or later, and — " 
 
 But here the lieutenant was assailed with jeers and 
 laughter to the extent that he rose in a huif, and 
 walked out of the room — the back room at the 
 trader's store. 
 
IX. 
 A GOOD I]SrDIAN. 
 
 IF the Lieutenant General of the United States 
 Army ever made the epigrammatic remark that 
 has been attributed to him, that "the only good In- 
 dian is a dead one,^' it is probable that he was not 
 at the moment thinking of that lone and solitary 
 variety of the Child of Nature in the West who has 
 never given the military any trouble. 
 
 It is true that the Pueblo is only an Indian by 
 the general classification ; but it is hoped that the 
 reader will not therefore prematurely imagine that 
 he is again to be taken by a button and made to 
 understand the author's views of the rights, wrongs, 
 and general character of the dun-colored Ishmaelite 
 who, with no history of his own making, has entered 
 so largely and so falsely into American literature. 
 The Pueblo is included among the tribes only by a 
 mistake made in the beginning, and perpetuated 
 tlirough time. There is, indeed, no distinction of 
 race more jDcrceptible than that which exists between 
 the patient and home-loving farmer of the Pio 
 Grande, and the lawless freebooter who from time 
 immemorial has been his inveterate enemy. 
 
 Those long, low, grass-grown mounds that lie in 
 sequestered valleys and beside streams in all the 
 nooks and corners of 'New Mexico and Arizona are 
 
 183 
 
184 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 all that now remain to mark the outlines of those 
 cities whose names are long since forgotten, and 
 whose last burgher died four or five misty centuries 
 ago. Kor were these their only or most enduring 
 dwellings. They hewed out of the living rock of 
 the canon's sheer walls, cities for the shelter of 
 many thousand souls. They once peopled these 
 regions, and hundreds of miles to the northward of 
 them, with a race who lived under a common head, 
 who practised many of the arts of civilization, who 
 builded for permanence and beauty, who erected 
 temples and monuments, who tilled the soil, who 
 owned the ties of duty, family, and religion, and 
 whose ancestors, still more remote and far than all 
 these desolate remains, anticipated the oldest legends 
 of discovery, and crossed the Straits of Behring 
 before the Norsemen or Portuguese had dreamed of 
 another world. The Pueblo is the small remainder 
 of that people who preceded all that we call Ameri- 
 can antiquity, and who were more brave and more 
 prosperous than any of the tribes and races that 
 have occupied the land since they passed away as a 
 people. You might not suspect it, as you see him 
 in his humble village, and engaged in his patient 
 toil. He is the pathetic last man. 
 
 In contradistinction from the Indian, as we know 
 the man usually meant by that term, the Pueblo is 
 purely a farmer, and has been so from time imme- 
 morial. All his tastes and inclinations are peace- 
 ful. In his intimate knowledge of his business, 
 his laborious patience, his industrious contentment 
 in what the sunshine brings and the soil yields, 
 
A GOOD mm AN. 185 
 
 he is the model farmer of America, and reminds one 
 of all he has ever heard of the patient husbandmen 
 of Egypt and China. It is surprising to note how- 
 he is the teacher of those whose ancestors were his 
 latest conquerors and oppressors. The whole curi- 
 ous routine of Mexican husbandry is borrowed from 
 the Pueblo. His plough is made of two pieces of 
 wood, the one mortised to the other at such an 
 angle as makes at once the coulter and the beam. 
 Sometimes, indeed, it is only tlie crotch of a tree, 
 found suited to the purpose. Yoked to this are the 
 gaunt, long-horned, patient oxen, tied together by 
 a straight piece of wood bound to the horns. As 
 one sees the brown-faced son of toil holding his rude 
 plough by its one straight handle, walking beside 
 the lengthening mark which can scarcely be called 
 a furrow, through the low field yet wet and shining 
 from recent inundations, urging his beasts with gro- 
 tesque cries and a long rod, one can hardly help 
 tliinking that the rude wood-cuts that illustrate Ori- 
 ental agriculture in the Biblical commentaries have 
 come out of their respective pages and are there 
 before him. 
 
 And it is the Pueblo who has modelled the 
 universal architecture of the country. The low 
 houses of sun-dried brick, with earthen roof and 
 earthen beds and benches and floors, have an ori- 
 gin far back of the conquest, and though some- 
 what modified by it, are by no means the result 
 of Spanish ideas of comfort and taste exclusively. 
 The Pueblo, a farmer by nature, has from early 
 times been surrounded by the Apache, his enemy 
 
IM FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 always. Therefore the cluster of liouses which 
 formed the common village was each one a castle. 
 He made no doors, and when he and his family 
 retired for the night, they climbed a ladder to the 
 roof and drew the stairway after them. 
 
 Their villages are still the nuclei of farming com- 
 munities, and their inhabitants, in the majority of 
 instances, yet enter their houses through the roof. 
 The orchards of peach and apricot, and the laden 
 grape-vines, as well as the low-lying little fields, 
 are, with immense pains, surrounded by an almost 
 inaccessible wall. The Pueblo shuts in his life fr6m 
 the world, and delights in personal isolation. His 
 curious house and closely fenced garden are not so 
 from motives of fear alone. In common with all the 
 aborigines of the continent, he seems bent npon 
 solitude amid the thousand changes which encroach 
 upon him, and desirous of passing away silently to 
 join his fathers, without a memento, a monument, 
 or a word of history, save the meagre annals of his 
 decline and death, told only by his conquerors. For 
 hundreds of years it has been so, and the picture 
 presented seems almost an impossible one to the 
 restless American mind. For centuries beyond 
 which the poor Pueblo has still his traditions, with 
 decreasing numbers, with new surroundings, with 
 the predatory Apache and the tyrannical and covet- 
 ous Spaniard, and latterly the Yankee stranger ever 
 peering over his garden wall, he has toiled on, 
 clinging to ancient habits, intensely occupied with 
 the sordid details of the humblest of all lives, and, 
 through all, content. Nor will it be considered 
 
A GOOD INDIAK. 187 
 
 strange if, as tliey tell, the light required by liis 
 ancient faith is still kept burning upon his hearth, 
 and in his heart he still cherishes a faith that in tlie 
 light of some radiant morning the immortal One, 
 King of all the faithful, will come again from tlie 
 East, bringing deliverance with him. 
 
 But it is the recollection of a harvest-day among 
 tliese patient and pathetic people that suggested all 
 this. Far down the sandy valley, as one approaches, 
 stand the long lines of brown wall, and far to the 
 right glitter in the noon sunshine the slimy pools 
 and yellow current of the mosquito-haunted river. 
 The settlement, with the village for its centre, seems 
 a large one. On every hand are the evidences' of 
 unwonted activity. The cumbrous carts, with their 
 framework of osier, howl dismally on oilless axles as 
 they pass you on the roadside, to return laden with 
 yellow bundles. Here are four women, the eldest 
 old indeed, and the youngest almost a child, who 
 trudge along in the sand, each one's back loaded 
 with fresh fruit. Did you ask for peaches ? The 
 eldest deliberately unloads herself by the roadside, 
 opens her bag, selects a double handful of the 
 largest and ripest, and presents them, with a moth- 
 erly suiile upon her wrinkled old face. She will 
 take no money, and trudges on, leaving you to look 
 after her and reflect that courtesy is by no means 
 confined to the Christians who have white faces. 
 Perhaps the small incident is characteristic; for with 
 just such kindness did this poor woman's ancestors 
 welcome the strangers from across the sea, so many 
 centuries ago. 
 
188 FRONTIER ARMY SKF.TCHES. 
 
 In the fields on either hand the reapers wade 
 slowly along, patiently gathering each yellow stalk. 
 Some distance away, a cloud of dust, and straw 
 tossed high in air, and uncommon noises, proclaim 
 tlie active operation of a primitive threshing- 
 machine. Around a circular space some twenty feet 
 in diameter tall poles are set in the ground, and 
 between these, from one to the other, are drawn 
 thongs of raw-hide. Within, the ground is covered 
 with wheat, which is being trodden out by some 
 twenty unbridled donkeys. The small urchins tum- 
 ble and halloo in the straw outside of the enclosure, 
 like children in a straw-pile anywhere in the world ; 
 and two women and a man in the centre of the ring 
 so work upon the feelings of the donkeys that, what 
 with gestures, and shouts, and sundry long poles, 
 they go fast and faster, as diabolically mixed as Tam 
 O'Shanter's witch-dance. To a man accustomed to 
 close intimacy with the kind, there is ever some- 
 thing ridiculous and grotesque in the long ears and 
 solemn countenance of the ass. Stir intense dignity 
 and preternatural solemnity into unbecoming friski- 
 ness, and the scene becomes pitiably ludicrous. As 
 you watch these who tread out the corn on the 
 ancient threshing-iloor that seems translated out of 
 the Old Testament, you find yourself intent upon 
 seeing how, with long ears laid back and flying 
 heels, they revenge upon each other the indignities 
 of their masters. 
 
 Somehow, as you approach the village, you gather 
 the impression that all the women you meet are very 
 large and all the men are very small. For aught I 
 
A GOOD INDIAN. 189 
 
 know it is a fallacy ; but the average Pueblo woman 
 is a creature whose dignity would not suffer by com- 
 parison with some of the queens of civilization. And 
 you begin to discover that there are also girls, among 
 whom the selling of fruit is a specialty. A row of 
 heads are just visible above the wall, and before 
 each there is a huge melon and a fruit basket. This 
 is the temporary market, instituted without issue of 
 bonds or previous arrangement, upon the arrival of 
 every government train. I would there were some 
 lone spot upon the habitable globe where the tricks 
 of traffic were unknown. Here the fruit trade is 
 rendered considerably more lively by the merry 
 eyes, white teeth, and brown and sturdy shoulders 
 of a company of merry market-women. Surely the 
 long train of wrongs that have pressed to the verge 
 of extinction a hospitable and gallant race have by 
 these creatures been but seldom heard of, or are 
 poorly remembered. 
 
 The village has the appearance of being com- 
 posed of blank walls. Only the square tops of the 
 houses, and none of the domestic operations, can 
 be seen. But the loaded boughs of trees droop 
 over the walls, and here and there are glimpses of 
 trailing vines and pleasant vistas. But it is in the 
 midst of a dreary land ; and the stretch of yellow 
 stubble between you and the bank, where the Cot- 
 tonwood leaves tremble lazily in the summer wind, 
 the suggestion of rest, quiet, contentment and plenty 
 behind the drab walls, and the holiday faces around 
 you, contrast strongly with the bare brown moun- 
 tains that rise on every hand. In any more favored 
 
190 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 country the simple pastoral scene, wliicli remains 
 long with you in the hundreds of monotonous miles 
 yet to come, might scarcely be remembered at all. 
 From villages such as this, fenced about with walls, 
 upon one side of which grows the cactus, and upon 
 the other verdure, fruit and content, the very name 
 of this curious people is taken. "Pueblo" means 
 only a town. The old name by which they call 
 themselves, the name which expresses lineage and 
 a country, I know not, and there are few who care 
 what it may be. 
 
 Yet a little further, and there is another oriental 
 threshing floor, upon which the scene is difierent 
 from the last. The children and the persecuted 
 and revengeful donkeys have vanished together, 
 and the hands and minds of the two stoical persons 
 there are occupied in an operation so striking and 
 important in the operations of simple life that it was 
 inore frequently used than any other as a simile to 
 teach the sons of the patriarchs the lessons which 
 all men ought to know. It is the winnowing of the 
 wheat. One of the persons is an old man, so with- 
 ered of shank and so lean of face that he would 
 seem to have been subjected to some process of dry- 
 ing for the sake of preservation. The other is a 
 woman, and directly his opposite in all things. I 
 cannot tell if it is always so, or if the picture was 
 only made for me ; but I lingered and studied it. 
 She too was tall, and had a stolid and determined, 
 but rather comelj-, face. Her head was bound in a 
 folded shawl, but her hair escaped unconfincd and 
 lay about her shoulders. Her outer garment was 
 
.1 GOOD INDIAN, 191 
 
 not a gown, but the dress of her kind, so universally 
 worn that it seemed a kind of uniform, being a bhm- 
 ket of black wool, bound about with a red sash. 
 From the knee her limbs were bare, as were also 
 her arms and shoulders. She stood with her left 
 foot advanced, and her large arms held high above 
 her head the saucer-shaped basket, over the edge of 
 which poured the slow stream of mingled chaff and 
 wheat. Considered merely as a bronze statue en- 
 dowed with life, and without reference to any other 
 faculties or qualities, this stalwart woman, who was 
 entirely unconscious of herself, was the most perfect 
 specimen of grace conceivable. When the padded 
 queen of the ballet stands in the tableau, in an atti- 
 tude meant to be the embodiment of gracefulness, 
 but which is but a mincing and studied artificiality, 
 then I know how far is any attempt of art from the 
 grace that untaught nature attains, and think of the 
 Pueblo squaw who winnowed wheat by the roadside 
 in the afternoon sunsliine. 
 
 There was still another personage there, who at 
 first escaped notice. His presence was not essential 
 to the work in hand, but it would be a mistake to 
 underestimate his personal importance. In the slant 
 shadow of the straw-pile lay a big baby boy, in the 
 entire nakedness of nature. He flung his brown, 
 round limbs high in air, in the lissome gymnastics 
 of infancy, and while he gathered mysterious sus- 
 tenance from the sucking of one of his fists, with the 
 other he clutched awkw\ardly at the sunshine and 
 other imaginai'y nothings that float in the air before 
 the eyes of infancy. 
 
192 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 It is a question whether the much-discussed sub- 
 ject of woman's rights really had its origin in the 
 minds of cultivated and highly-educated people. 
 Among all the aboriginal tribes of America, women 
 have had their "rights" time whereof the memory 
 of their brutes of husbands runs not to the contrary. 
 And the truth is that those rights entail upon the 
 sex, as well in civilization as in savagery, that con- 
 comitant of equal dinidgery which the Logans and 
 the Stantons and the Miss Dickinsons would be 
 very unwilling to assume. To the privileges and 
 labors of masculinity, the conditions of civilization 
 seem to be an eternal bar. Once a robust Pueblo 
 woman was selling pinons at the corner of the plaza 
 at Albuquerque, and a sleek-looking infant lay in a 
 blanket beside her. I asked her how old the 
 youngster was. She complacently answered, "Day 
 before yesterday," and pointed with her finger to 
 that j)ai*t of the heavens where the moon was at 
 that inconvenient hour in the early morning, at 
 which, as I am credibly informed, babies every- 
 where are in the habit of coming into the world. 
 She was proud of the urchin, too, as all women are, 
 and slipping her finger through his waistbanc), held 
 him dangling and kicking like a large spider for our 
 closer inspection. Such women as these are alone 
 physically comj)etent to maintain ''rights." 
 
 So many strange stories are told and believed of 
 the Pueblos — of their religion, social customs, and 
 domestic life, — that it is almost impossible to sift 
 truth from romance. But they are, at least, the 
 only ones of the original races who have always 
 
A GOOD INDIAN. 193 
 
 been friendly to the white man. When General 
 Kearney took possession of the Territory in 1850, 
 in the name of the United States, the immediate 
 release from the peonage and semi-slavery of so 
 many years so affected the hearts of the simple 
 people that for a long time they are said to have 
 clung to the belief that the commandant was the 
 long-looked-for "man from the East," come for 
 their deliverance. ^Repeated enforcements of equal 
 laws, protection from Apaches, and general and 
 reciprocal good treatment, have conspired to place 
 them in such relations with the great power destined 
 before many years to absorb the whole central con- 
 tinent as none others of the aborigines enjoy. 
 
 It will not do to imagine that because the Pueb- 
 los are purely agricultural, they are incapable of 
 defence. On the contrary, their whole history has 
 been one of turmoil and strife. The Mexicans op- 
 pressed and the Comanches and Apaches murdered 
 them ; and these ancient and unremitting contests 
 are the cause of that air of ancient ruin and dead 
 history that so much of ]N"ew Mexico now wears. It 
 is not the crumbling church, and the foot-worn and 
 dilapidated village street, that are the oldest things 
 in Mexico. Far back of the conquest existed the 
 semi-civilization seen in the Pueblo village of to-day. 
 Almost unchanged, we see it still. The cities whose 
 walls are grass-grown ridges now, perhaps had 
 bustling thoroughfares and a teeming population 
 while the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley 
 were at their strange work. 
 
 But these are questions for the savans. It is 
 13 
 
194 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 with the present, and with such things as are appa- 
 rent in daily life, that this sketch has to do. I 
 said that through all these centuries of conflict and 
 change, it was strange to note that manners and 
 dress had remained so nearly unchanged. But that 
 remark needs this further explanation : that it is of 
 course impossible that contact with others should 
 have absolutely no effect, and here is an instance. 
 It is not missionary effort — not even of the invin- 
 cible phalanx of Jesuitism, — not Bibles, tracts, and 
 preaching, that come nearest the heart of the pagan. 
 The Indian of every tribe and latitude has obtained 
 for himself a new character as the autocrat of the 
 speckled shirt, and these conservative people are 
 long since clothed upon with the new idea. Of all 
 the girls, women, old men, and babies, in sight, 
 there is not one, except the last, who does not wear 
 calico as the material of some queerly-cut garment. 
 The old man who stands watching the winnowing, 
 with the somewhat imbecile attempt at helping, has 
 on only three articles of apparel, and two of them 
 are cotton. The statuesque woman wears beneath 
 the black woollen uniform a snow-white garment of 
 a not unfamiliar pattern, which, when worn alone, 
 seems ever to have the indisputable merit of loose- 
 ness without any corresponding virtue as a covering. 
 The girls who stand a-row behind the wall are all 
 clad in the material whose familiar print takes one 
 back at a bound to the square stone buildings that 
 are the wealth and pride of the diminutive common- 
 wealth of Khode Island. But scarcely as dresses 
 
A GOOD INDIAN. 195 
 
 are tliej worn, and it is only the material that is 
 fashionable with these. 
 
 Here the idea of communism lias been practically 
 carried out for all the^e years. The village, with its 
 walls and gardens and curious houses, has one com- 
 mon purpose in its occupancy — that of protection 
 and society. There is no industry but agriculture. 
 There are no stores, no shops, no sound of hammer 
 and file. Every house was contrived for but two 
 purposes : residence and defence. There are not 
 even streets, and only narrow paths wind between 
 onion-beds and currant bushes from house to house. 
 Each ftimily is self-productive of every needed article 
 of domestic economy, even to the fire-baked potter}^ 
 from which they eat and drink. The black woollen 
 garment was dyed after nature's recipe, upon the 
 back of the sheep, and the moccasins were made 
 by the wearer. The clumsy cart, upon which the 
 Mexican has been unable to improve, is shaped and 
 pinned and tied together by the unaided skill of the 
 man who expects to use it. The only article of any 
 constant use or importance, not actually made upon 
 the premises, is the cotton cloth heretofore referred 
 to. It is a community in which there are no ques- 
 tions of finance, and that could live without money. 
 
 Strangely enough, in all these things there is no 
 diversity of style. Like birds' nests, as they are 
 made now, so have they been made from time 
 immemorial. The porous earthen water-jug which 
 hangs from the rafters in every house is of the sanie 
 shape, with the same ornamentation, in every case. 
 The old idea of the Biblical commentaries comes 
 
196 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 back again, when two women sit grinding at the 
 mill, the loaf is baked upon the hearth, and the girls 
 are seen returning from the spring, each with her 
 tall water-jar upon her head. These people only 
 need to live in dingy striped tents, surrounded by 
 their goats and asses, and to be a little less heathen- 
 ish in their faith, to reproduce within the bounds of 
 an overgrown republic the days when Jacob worked 
 for that grasping patriarch, his future father-in-law, 
 and was cheated at last, and the father of the patri- 
 archs sat at his tent door and watched the countless 
 flocks that grazed the future inheritance of his 
 descendants. 
 
 As these primitive agriculturists produce within 
 themselves all they need, so they are learned in all 
 that it is needful for them to know. Long before 
 the little monkish knowledge they may have con- 
 sented to acquire came to them from across the sea, 
 they knew the times and seasons, and had a calen- 
 dar in which the days were three hundred and sixty- 
 five. They practised then, as now, their patient 
 agriculture with a skill and success some part of 
 which would be a boon to farmers who subscribe for 
 agricultural journals and are engaged in the polem- 
 ics of farming as a means of disseminating the sur- 
 plus of information that they have acquired. They 
 knew how to take the crude metals from their native 
 beds, and mould them into forms for ornament and 
 use. Their brethren of the south built colossal 
 piles of hewn stone. The fountains they made in 
 thirsty lands are playing yet, and the roads they 
 built still lead to the gates of the Mexican capital. 
 
A GOOD INDIAN. 197 
 
 Thej have, indeed, through all these centuries, 
 gone backward and not forward. But the truth 
 whicli is even now apparent, that for not one of all 
 the original tribes of America is there any hope, will 
 probably not be accepted as such until, within a 
 few generations, the end shall have come. There 
 is an isolation in the midst of surrounding life and 
 activity, that accepts no compromise with death. 
 Ever the patient victim of change, himself unchang- 
 ing, and never the aggressor, with the material for 
 a hundred histories, no one may know how heroic 
 or pathetic, gone in the past, when the poor Pueblo 
 shall finally leave his seed to be sown with a patent 
 drill and his harvest to be reaped with a clattering 
 machine, he will merit at least the remembrance 
 that his hands were never red with Saxon blood 
 and that his hearth was abandoned without reprisal. 
 
 But before he goes he will see the white man's 
 magic in the engine rushing before its train down 
 the valley of the Rio Grande, and the iron rail will 
 usurp the place of the donkey-path before his door.^ 
 And soon the denizens of whitewashed towns will 
 have scared the husbandman from his plough and 
 the fruit-seller from the wall ; and the noisy civilized 
 crowd will forget, if they ever knew, that in these 
 transformed regions there existed so peaceful and 
 pleasant a thing as the home and farm of the Pueblo. 
 
 * Written ten years ago. The railway daily performs the feat described, 
 and the time for studying the modern life of this last of his interesting race 
 has forever passed. 
 
X. 
 
 JACK'S DIYOEOE. 
 
 HE was not black, though universally known as 
 "Blackjack," and except that he had upon 
 him the ineffaceable marks of sun and wind, miglit 
 have been considered more than ordinarily fair. His 
 hair was of a reddish brown, and his eyes had that 
 steady and unflinching gaze wliich bespeaks for their 
 owner honesty without blemish and vision without 
 flaw. 
 
 It is not enough to say that Jack was merely a 
 frontiersman, because in many instances that only 
 expresses an accident and not a character. He had 
 about him that something which, wliile it can only 
 exist on the border, is yet a part of the man. 
 Though not a negative person, he was one of those 
 of whom a clearer idea may be given by stating 
 what he was not than by explaining what he was. 
 There is a whole world in which all the famous and 
 remarkable doings of mankind are performed, of 
 wliich Jack knew absolutely nothing ; and in him I 
 do but describe a class, of which he was a repre- 
 sentative man. 
 
 Woman, in all the splendor of pearls of the 
 ocean and gems of the mine, endowed with all the 
 refinements of civilization, and the inheritor of all 
 the tact and delicacy that result from ages of refine- 
 
 198 
 
JACICS DIVORCE. 199 
 
 ment — bland, bewitching^ and fearfully and won- 
 derfully made up, — he had never even seen. Fem- 
 ininity conveyed no such idea to him. The women 
 he had known were only women in tlie broad sense 
 in which female is not male. The wharfs and streets 
 of crowded cities, the throng of the pavement and 
 the exchange, the crowd and jam and bustle of trade, 
 blooming fields and paved roads, were all crowded 
 out of his conceptions of life and men, and he for- 
 tunately had no speculations and opinions to digest 
 concerning them. He had never even heard the 
 sound of the church bells, and, perhaps also happily 
 for him, was steeped in Fijian ignorance of all the 
 fateful differences in creeds which exist among those 
 who diligently seek after the truth. He was 
 benighted, but he was perpetually free from any 
 attack of odium theologlcmni. 
 
 In his ignorance of all that is fashionable and 
 most that is good among civilized mankind, he was 
 even ignorant of the praises and luxuries men some- 
 times earn by dying, and the fair monuments and 
 flattering epitaphs of Greenwood and Olivet would 
 have filled him with astonishment. His was the 
 rock-piled and lonely grave of the wilderness ; and 
 it had never occurred to him that a palace was neces- 
 sary to the welfare of mouldering clay. 
 
 If the schoolmasteij was ever abroad in western 
 Arkansas, where Jack first saw the light, the benign 
 influence never reached his mind. He could not 
 read, and was ignorant of the primary rules of arith- 
 metic and of everything else in the way of books. 
 The immense literature of fiction and newspaperdom 
 
200 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 lie had never even heard of; and yet ho knew, tra- 
 ditionally as it were, some of Watts' s hymns, and 
 would repeat them wdth the same unction and pathos 
 with which the childish and immortal lines are said 
 by all who speak the English tongue. 
 
 But he was not a grown-up child. He lacked 
 none of the great essentials that go to make up the 
 remarkable biped whose ancestor was an ape and 
 whose future is very doubtful. He spoke his mother 
 tongue with a fluency equal to all the requirements 
 of his life, and he spiced and strengthened it with 
 that piquant slang which expresses so much in so 
 few words that it is almost to be regretted that it is 
 very vulgar to use it. His most peculiar character- 
 istic, however, was not an educational one. It con- 
 sisted in the seeming absence of anything like per- 
 sonal fear. Whole armies of men, surging masses 
 that number many thousands, may, and often do, 
 go through a long day of carnage witlioiit any 
 instance of cowardice. But this is not the variety of 
 courage meant. He limped, had lost a finger, and 
 carried an ugly scar upon his cheek. But all these 
 he had obtained at different times, and all in fight- 
 ing with Indians. But not for glory. With no 
 particular interest at stake, pecuniary or otherwise, 
 he still wandered through the canons and over the 
 hills, alone, and solely bent upon killing the game 
 he loved to hunt, unmoved by repeated encounters 
 and escapes. Unless questioned, he never alluded 
 to his adventures. He seemed to be ignorant of 
 any manner of life among the conditions of which 
 
JACETS DIVORCE. 201 
 
 was included the common essential of personal 
 safety. 
 
 There is a certain weapon which all have seen 
 and with which far too many are familiar. The 
 name of its inventor has gone down to posterity 
 with something like renown. Skilfully handled, it 
 is a weapon that few like to face. It is a small 
 arsenal of rapid and sudden death, and a single 
 man, skilled in the use of Colt's revolver, is almost 
 equal to six men with old-fashioned arms that fire 
 but a single shot. In the use of this pretty toy. 
 Jack was a miracle even among his own compan- 
 ions. He was a walking Gatling, and the pair that 
 were continually upon his person were worn smooth 
 with constant handling. 
 
 This v/as one reason why Jack was not afraid of 
 Indians. There was no moment when eye and ear 
 were not alert. He frequently remarked: "They 
 ain't got me yit ; a man can't die nohow till his 
 time comes." And in that bit of profound philoso- 
 phy he believed with so profound and simple a faith 
 that it seemed a pity it had not more sense in it. 
 
 But simple and honest as was the life of this 
 gentle savage, he became the victim of one great 
 trouble, and that of course had a woman at the 
 bottom of it. It was the incident that made him 
 seem more like the men around him, and demon- 
 strated as well his kinship with the great mass of 
 mankind. 
 
 Dolores was the handsomest woman Jack had 
 ever known in his wild life ; or, at least, she su 
 appeared to him. She was Mexican — which is 
 
202 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 Spanish, — had been once as fair as a brown-colored 
 nymph, and was still as coquettish as it runs in her 
 race to be, and as false as the profane word Shaks- 
 peare uses as a comparative in this same connection. 
 She was only a laundress in the military post hard 
 by; but her eyes were black and her teeth were 
 white, and she cauglit Jack on the tender side which 
 all such men present to female blandishments. 
 
 Bold as he always had been, he must therefore 
 surrender to this fragile senorita. She had had 
 many lovers. She could hardly count them upon 
 all her fingers. Some she had discarded, to-wit : 
 all she had ever had, at odd times, of her own race. 
 And some had discarded her, namely: certain Amer- 
 ican Lotharios, who could be faithful long to none. 
 But she was not broken-hearted, nor indeed very 
 sorrowful, and had steadily replaced vacancies by 
 new recruits. And last came honest Jack, whose 
 lieart she accepted without hesitation, and whose 
 money she spent without remorse. Doubtless for 
 her sake Jack might have left off risking his life 
 amongst -the Apaches. There was no telling but 
 that he might in time have been induced to live in a 
 town and sleep upon a bed. 
 
 It must be understood in this case, as in all 
 others of the kind, that a man's liking for a woman 
 is not controlled by any trait in her character. Do- 
 lores was still maturely handsome ; she knew men 
 very well ; and she practised the art of coquetry 
 with the skill of all her sex, added to the historic 
 proficiency of her race. It may be that there had 
 descended to her, through a long line of forgotten 
 
JACK'S DIVORCE. 203 
 
 ancestry, some of the cunning graces and charms, 
 and some of the velvet-covered trickery, which long 
 ago distinguished the dames of Arragon and Old 
 Castile. She had at least the softness, the subtle 
 smooth suavity, which gives to the women of the 
 Latin race a peculiar attractiveness to tlie bluff 
 American. 
 
 So she married the hunter, after the manner of 
 the country ; and well it was to one whose vows sat 
 with such habitual lightness, that the ceremony was 
 of no more binding character. It was hoyia fide to 
 Jack, however, and they two lived together in a 
 very small house near the outer wall of the post. 
 Perhaps Dolores never intended to cling with very 
 great faithfulness to him alone. She probably argued 
 that it was for the present convenient; and, judging 
 him by her standard, calculated upon his roving life 
 and the faithlessness of men in general for final free- 
 dom when some new inducement should off'er. But, 
 as stated, it was a part of Jack's personality to be 
 faithful. He had no other idea than that he was 
 bound hand and foot, and had never read history 
 and thus become acquainted with the illustrious 
 examples there aff'orded of matrimonial unfaithful- 
 ness. And as was natural to one of his ignorance 
 and simplicity, he expected a reciprocity of feeling. 
 
 In a few weeks, Dolores began to use her fine 
 eyes upon various of the uncouth masculines she 
 met, after the old fashion, and Jack began to grow 
 moody, and to look hard and determined out of his 
 blue eyes, and by and by there was a look upon his 
 face that the veriest death-seeker in all that des- 
 
204 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 perate country would hardly have cared to defy, 
 and when at home he certainly kept his house and 
 his family to himself. 
 
 But now there came and stayed at the trader's 
 store a man who wore barbaric gold and a linen 
 shirt; one whose fingers were long, and exceeding 
 nimble in dealing cards, and whose countenance had 
 about it a look of mingled bravado and cunning. 
 He came as a traveller, and staj^ed for weeks ; and 
 ere long he and Jack's wife were exchanging glances 
 of recognition. Fraud and foxiness were so plainly 
 written upon his person that it was easy to believe 
 that to defraud Jack, or, if not Jack, tlien some one 
 else, was what he stayed and waited for. 
 
 But meantime the hunter had ideas and purposes 
 of his own ; and, with a silence that was ominous, 
 he kept those purposes to himself. He seemed 
 always waiting and watching for something ; and the 
 nian wlio has many a time waited and watched among 
 the rocks and hills, and many a time come off victor 
 through vigilance, does not usually wait and watch 
 for nothing. What he waited for finally came, and 
 with it his idea of reparation and justice. 
 
 As was not uncommon, he took his gun and can- 
 teen, and went away to the mountains. But lie 
 seemed to go regularly, and generally returned on 
 the third day. Strangely enough, he brought back 
 no game, but looked clay-begrimed and tired. So 
 far as known, he still found everything to be, to use 
 his own expression, ^'reg'lar." Nevertheless, it 
 was a fact among the knowing ones, that the dull 
 hours were beguiled by tiie gambler at Jack's cabin, 
 
JACK'S DIVORCE. 205 
 
 during these frequent absences of the owner. A 
 month or more passed in this manner, and Jack's 
 look grew colder and harder every clay. I^o com- 
 mon man could have passed unquestioned. But 
 there was an evidence of purpose in his demeanor 
 and a metliod in his coming and going, and those 
 who knew him quietly awaited results. Meantime, 
 possessing all the qualifications that are valued and 
 admired in such a country, and having been faithful 
 to all and wronged no one, he had many friends ; 
 while his enemy, if such the gambler might as yet 
 be called, had none. 
 
 Several times hints were given to the latter, by 
 those who acted in the interests of general peace, 
 that a day of reckoning might come to him. But he 
 considered himself in luck in having so simple an 
 enemy, and stayed on. He did not know his man ; 
 that was the general comment. More than once, 
 when Jack was absent on his apparently fruitless 
 expeditions to the mountains, a tall figure that 
 looked like his had been seen by some sentinel 
 walking his beat to approach the cabin, and to glide 
 noiselessly away in the darkness. 
 
 One starry October night, when Jack had been 
 gone only since the morning, he suddenly walked 
 in among the story-tellers and poker-players at the 
 sutler's store. All turned toward him, with inquiry 
 and surprise in their faces. He looked very grim, 
 and closed the door carefully behind him. " Men," 
 he said, abruptly, "come along with me now, an' 
 I'll answer the questions ye 've been loolcin' at me 
 
206 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 for more 'n a month. An' purvidin' I don't do 
 notliiii' desp'rit, will ye agree not to interfere ?" 
 
 A lialf-looked and lialf-spoken answer was given, 
 and four men went out with Jack, among whom 
 certain uniforms did not disdain to appear. At the 
 door he untied a donkey, such as are common in the 
 country, and drove the animal before him toward 
 the cabin. The hunter was foremost, and without 
 ceremony pushed open the door and entered. At 
 the same moment, with the dexterity of long prac- 
 tice, he whipped out of its place the inevitable 
 revolver, with three strides was across the room, 
 and in a moment after the monte-dealer was looking 
 down the bore of it with an expression of counte- 
 nance which indicated that he regarded it as being 
 several inches in diameter. 
 
 "IN^ow,'' said Jack, in the peculiar tone which 
 indicates earnestness without any doubt, ^^ My time 
 has come. You an' this woman must git up an' go 
 right along with me. Mister, you orter know me. 
 If ye want to shoot, ye kin hev a chance ; but I'm 
 apt to hit, an' I'll try, so help me God." 
 
 This fearful adjuration was uttered, not as the 
 common profanity of an angry man, but in a tone 
 and manner that gave it a fearful meaning. "Git 
 up," said he, as the gambler, with paling face, 
 seemed to say something conciliatory. He arose 
 instantly. "Kow," for the first time addressing 
 tlie woman, ''git your traps together. Quick," he 
 said sharply, as she seemed to hesitate, "ye shell 
 hev yer lover's company from this night to all etar- 
 
JACK'S DIVORCE. 207 
 
 Though a scene in which the comic was not alto- 
 gether wanting, tliere was still something terrible in 
 it. The woman, her olive roses blanched with ter- 
 ror, moved about, gathering her apparel into a bun- 
 dle. The gambler glanced furtively at the door, 
 and at his own weapon lying upon the table. But 
 Jack's eye was upon him, and the implacable weapon 
 was in his hand. Finally he placed his hand in his 
 bosom and drew forth a plethoric bag, opened it, 
 and poured some of the shining pieces into his 
 liand. Frightened as she undoubtedly was, a glitter 
 came into the woman's eyes as she saw them. 
 There was no situation in life in which the chink of 
 the dollars would not be music to her. But Jack's 
 face only changed to take on a look of intense con- 
 tempt, as his euemy pitifully offered him first the 
 handful and then the bag. He was again mistaken 
 in his man. 
 
 When the woman at last stood with her bundle 
 in her hand. Jack pointed to the door, and bade her 
 and the gambler move out together. He caused 
 the woman to mount the diminutive donkey, and the 
 gambler walked behind. 
 
 Straight up the slanting mountain-side they 
 started, the implacable husband taking the gam- 
 bler's weapon from the table as he left the room. 
 Away in the starlit gloom the strange procession 
 passed, and as the donkey picked his careful way 
 among the stones, plodding safely and patiently 
 after the manner of his kind, the last sounds the 
 bystanders heard were the wailing and sobbing 
 of the woman, the stumbling footsteps of the gam- 
 
208 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 bier, and, behind all. Jack's long and steady stride. 
 And all these died away in the distance, and in the 
 silence of the night the witnesses of the scene stood 
 at the door of the deserted cabin, and looked at 
 each other, and afterwards went back to the store, 
 each one privately gratified, and none caring to 
 say so. 
 
 After three or four days Jack returned empty- 
 handed. He was questioned now, for human curi- 
 osity cannot be restrained forever. A grim humor 
 was in his face as he said: "I've purvided for 'em. 
 They've meat enough for three weeks;" adding, 
 "any of you as wus particularly fond of him air 
 informed that he wus well wen I kim away, o'ny a 
 leetle lonesome. But he don't know enough to find 
 his way back here, an' I reckon he'll hev to fight 
 now." 
 
 And Jack thereupon cleaned his pistols, got 
 together such things as hunters carry, said he be- 
 lieved he'd "go back to Californy," and at sunrise 
 started out upon that pathless journey toward the 
 northwest, that to him was only a question of time 
 and life, and has not been heard of to this day. 
 
 Some months after this, the Mexican guide of a 
 scouting party led the soldiers, hungry, bewildered, 
 and parched with thirst, to where he said there was, 
 years before, a spring among the rocks. They 
 found it, and near it a deserted "dug-out." From 
 this to the spring a well-worn path was made. 
 When he saw it, the eyes of the professional trainer 
 opened wide, but when he approached the hut he 
 threw up his hands with a gesture of extreme aston- 
 
JACK'S DIVORCE. 209 
 
 isliment, exclaiming, ^'Madre de Dios ! — it was a 
 woman !" 
 
 Upon the floor still lay the sodden fragments of 
 a woman's shawl, and not far away the coyote- 
 gnawed remains of a man's boot. What had become 
 of the late residents of the lonesome place, no one 
 could tell. But here at last was Jack's mystery; 
 the house that he built for them, and in which Dolo- 
 res and her last lover met a fate that will never be 
 known. 
 
 There have been men very like Othello, who 
 never heard of Shakspeare. But the Dolores and 
 the Desdemonas do not greatly resemble each other, 
 — at least not in New Mexico. 
 
XL 
 COYOTES. 
 
 HE has been called an outcast by a notorious 
 poet. He is universally conceded to be a 
 sneak, a thief, and an arrant coward. He is a lier- 
 by by day, and a wanderer o' nights ; a dissipated 
 wretch in whose whole history there is not a redeem- 
 ing trait. He has an extensive connection, but no 
 family. He is disowned by the dogs, and not recog- 
 nized at all by respectable foxes. The gaunt gray 
 wolf who sends his hoarse voice across the ravine in 
 a howl the 'most dismal and harrowing that ever dis- 
 turbed midnight and silence, will have no fellowship 
 with the little thief who seems to have stolen his 
 gray coat, and would fain be counted among his 
 poor relations. 
 
 And yet the coyote is the representative animal 
 of the border. It is his triangular visage, his sharp 
 muzzle, especially fitted for the easy investigation 
 of the smallest aperture into other people's affairs, 
 his oblique, expressionless eyes, that should have a 
 place in the adornment of escutcheons and the 
 embellishment of title-pages. The buffalo, who is 
 his successful rival in such matters, occupies the 
 place because his shaggy stupid head is big; but 
 the buffalo is not the representative of anything 
 more than stupid ponderosity. He has roamed in 
 
 210 . 
 
COYOTES. 211 
 
 countless thousands over his plains for hundreds of 
 years, and during all that time he has never even 
 bellowed. There is no degree of pleasure, anger, 
 excitement or passion that can induce him to make 
 a sound other than a guttural groaning that ill 
 becomes his size. That great equipment of lungs 
 and throat and nostrils is good for nothing in acous- 
 tics, and while he might make the valleys to echo, 
 and might almost shake the hills, he spends his life 
 in galloping, fighting, butting at sandbanks, and eat- 
 ing. Especially does he affect the latter. His life 
 is one long process of deglutition and rumination. 
 He never stole anything. He never made the moon- 
 lit hours hideous for love of his own voice. Colos- 
 sal in size and fearful of aspect, he is yet so dull as 
 to be incapjj3le of self-defence. Kone but a great 
 booby would deliberately get himself exterminated 
 by running alongside of a slow-going railway train, 
 to be shot by kid-glove sportsmen, and even by 
 women, three or four score times, in the back, with 
 silver-mounted pocket pistols. His stupidity is 
 illustrated every day by the countless bleaching 
 skulls and faded tufts of brown hair which mark his 
 death-place at the hands of people to whom the 
 riding of a mustang would be an impossible thing 
 and the killing of a jackass rabbit a wonderful feat 
 of skill and valor. 
 
 Kot so his neighbor and actual master, the 
 coyote. He will lengthen out the days of his years 
 until his voice sounds hollow and thin and aged in 
 the watches of the night. N'othing but infinite 
 pains and insidious strychnine will end his vagabond 
 
212 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 life. As his gray back moves slowly along at a 
 leisurely trot above tlie tall reeds and coarse grass, 
 and he turns his sly face over his shoulder to regard 
 you, he knows at once if you have with you a gun. 
 The coyote is a reflective brute, and has an inquir- 
 ing mind. Only convince him of the fact that you 
 are unarmed, and he proceeds to interview you in 
 a way that, for politeness and unobtrusiveness, is 
 recommended as a model to some certainly more 
 intelligent but slightly less obtrusive animals. 
 
 As he sets himself complacently down upon his 
 tail at the summit of the nearest knoll, and lolls his 
 red tongue, and seems to wink in your direction, he 
 is so much like his cousin, the dog, that you can 
 hardly refrain from whistling to him. Make any 
 hostile demonstration, and he moves* a few paces 
 further on, and sits down again. Lie down in the 
 grass and remain quiet for a little time, and by 
 slyly watching him out of the corner of your eye 
 you will discovxn- that he has been joined by a half- 
 dozen of his brethren and friends. Slowly they 
 come creeping nearer and nearer, and are cautiously 
 investing you upon all sides. Our curious friend 
 has an object in all this, aside from mere frivolous 
 curiosity. He knows that all flesh is grass, and now 
 wishes to find out — first, if you are dead; and 
 second, supposing you are not, if there is anything 
 else in your neighborhood that is eatable. You rise 
 up in sudden indignation, and scare the committee 
 away. In such case you have oifended the coyote 
 family deeply, and they retire to a safe distance, and 
 bark ceaselessly until they have hooted you out of 
 
COYOTES. 213 
 
 the neighborhood. Thiit night he and his friends 
 will come and steal the straps from your saddle, the 
 boots from under your head, the jneat from the 
 frying-pan (and politely clean the pan), and the 
 pony's bridle. ^IS^othing that was originally of ani- 
 mal organization, or that has the faintest flavor of 
 grease, though it be but the merest reminiscence, 
 comes amiss to him. Through a thousand variations 
 in his family history, and through all the vicissitudes 
 of a hap-hazard life, the disposition to be continually 
 gnawing something remains unchanged. There is 
 no more formidable array of ivory than liis, and his 
 greatest delight is ever to have something rancid 
 between his teeth. 
 
 There is a distant collateral branch of this exten- 
 sive family, which has been for ages noted for the 
 artistic and incomparable roguery of all its members. 
 The first beast with which a child becomes acquainted 
 is the fox. lie has, since that far dawn of intelli- 
 gence in which illustration became, as it is still, the 
 chief means of teaching, illustrated more pretty 
 fables than all other beasts. He has beautified more 
 stories and picture-books, and employed more artis- 
 tic skill. In reality he possesses but one advantage 
 over the coyote, and that consists in his proverbial 
 swiftness of foot. His brush is no bigger or bushier, 
 and his coat no grayer or thicker. Probably neither 
 of these rivals in the science of thievery can lay any 
 great claim to personal beauty, and, considering his 
 want of speed, the coyote is the better beast of the 
 two, in the particular industry in the pursuit of 
 which they are both distinguished. 
 
214 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 Upon the great plains of the Southwest, and in 
 tlie mountains of New Mexico, one is sometimes 
 puzzled to know where a beast so wanting in ferocity 
 and so slow of foot can possibly obtain his daily 
 provender. The truth is that he has to live by his 
 wits. Ko one ever saw a starved coyote. He does 
 not confine himself to any particular diet, and wher- 
 ever he may wander or rest he is evidently alwaj^s 
 intent upon his next meal. He would greatly dis- 
 tinguish himself in that ancient industry, tlie robbing 
 of hen-roosts and the abduction of domestic fowls, 
 only there are none in his dominion to steal. But 
 he is not discouraged, and does not abandon his 
 profession on that account. He has the Chinaman's 
 epicurean fancy for birds' nests, and follows the 
 mountain quail to her bundle of twigs, and daintily 
 laps the inner sweets of a dozen eggs, and retires 
 like a man from a free lunch, slyly wiping his chops 
 with his tongue. In the dead hours of the night he 
 creeps upon the covey resting in the coarse grass, 
 their tails together and their heads beneath their 
 wings, and even the wary old whistler who leads his 
 interesting family daily over the intricate miles of 
 their habitat himself dozing, and throwing his 
 sprawling forepaws suddenly over as many as he 
 can, leaves the rest to whirr screaming away in the 
 darkness, and learn from him a lesson in family 
 vigilance for the future. 
 
 The jackass rabbit, doomed to fame partly on 
 account of his grotesque auricular development, but 
 also because of his beady eyes, his supposed foolish- 
 ness, and his extraordinary swiftness in continual 
 
COYOTES. 215 
 
 races with the only thing that can keep anywhere 
 near him — his own shadow, — frequently falls a 
 victim to the cunning of this marauder, at whom, 
 under ordinary circumstances, he might be supposed 
 to sit upon his hinder legs and smile derisively. 
 Jack is sometimes tempted by a damp and shady 
 nook to lie upon his back like a squirrel, and, with 
 his ears conveniently doubled under him and his 
 gaunt legs in the air, to sleep too soundly. Then 
 the coyote creeps cautiously upon him, licking his 
 lips, and as silent as though his voice had never 
 waked the lugubrious echoes. He may be an hour 
 in the task, but finally makes a spring not the less 
 effective because it is very awkward, and the poor 
 rabbit takes subjectiv^ely his last lesson in gnawing. 
 The virtue of perseverance shines brightly in the 
 coyote. All these things require an inexhaustible 
 fund of patience. Of course, he fails in many of his 
 nefarious designs, but none the less does he try, try 
 again. There is a notable instance in which this 
 quality alone brings him victory, and that is in his 
 contest with the buffalo. In this, since the supply 
 of meat must necessarily be large, he makes com- 
 mon cause with all his hungry relatives. The old 
 bull, after many years of leadership, and after becom- 
 ing the father of a horde of ungrateful descendants, 
 is finally driven forth by the strong necks and ingrat- 
 itude of his younger associates, and ruminates with 
 two or three of his own class, retired patriarchs, 
 while the herd wanders afar. off and forgetful. Then 
 the coyotes take him in charge. Wherever he. goes 
 they follow. He dare not lie down, and weariness 
 
216 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 helps to overcome liim. Finally they begin to har- 
 ass him openly, and with increasing boldness A 
 gray assassin is upon every hand. The buffalo is 
 too imperturbable a brute to succumb to mere bark- 
 ing, and his enemies finally begin to bite. The con- 
 test may last several days, and be fought over a 
 territory many miles in extent. But the old monster 
 is worried, crippled, and finally brought down, and 
 a snarling feast is begun, which is continued until 
 the last bone is picked bare. The beef is none of 
 the best, but our friend is content with substantial 
 blessings. 
 
 But all the coyote's otlier modes of obtaining a 
 livelihood are mere by -play to the great business of 
 his life, which is stealing. For a long time it has 
 been supposed that a cat approaching the cream-jar, 
 and a weasel intent upon coveted eggs, were the 
 ideals of sly cunning and predatory silence. But it 
 is time our coyote should have his due ; and there 
 is no doubt that, in the exercise of a preternatural 
 talent for silent appropriation, he excels all the 
 sharp-smelling and light-footed night- wanderers. He 
 has a curious jpenchant for harness, rawhide, boots, 
 thongs, saddles, and old leather generally. He 
 gnaws the twisted raw-hide lariat from the pony's 
 neck, and bodily drags away the saddle and chews 
 it beyond recognition by the owner. He enters the 
 open barrack window, and steals the accoutrements 
 from the soldier's bed-side and the shoes from under 
 the bed. He will walk backward a mile, and draw 
 after him a raw-hide that is dry and juiceless as a 
 board. It would seem that he did not all these 
 
COYOTES. 217 
 
 eccentric things for the sake of food alone. In the 
 majority of instances, the articles are beyond masti- 
 cation even bv a coyote's tireless jaws. He steals, 
 as men do, because he is a born thief. He is greatly 
 gifted in every accessory of his chosen profession. 
 In the olfactory sense he is a phenomenon. The 
 savory odor of the camp-fire frying-pan reaches him 
 at an inconceivable distance. With drooping tail 
 and abject head, he comes stealthily near like a wil- 
 derness phantom, and his appearance in the dark- 
 ness is the very picture of treachery. He is patient, 
 and will not be driven far, but sits down a hundred 
 yards away, he and all his kin, and invests the 
 encampment, and longingly licks his lips, and waits. 
 Ere long, the little bright fire, that is like a glow- 
 worm in the wide darkness, and the tired, lounging 
 figures around it, are surrounded by a cordon of 
 patient, harmless, hungry thieves, who lick their 
 jaws and faintly whine in expectation. 
 
 These are the times, and only these, w^ien the 
 coyote is silent. Upon all other occasions his voice 
 is his pride and gh^ry, and he sits upon his tail, and 
 throws back his head in the ecstasy of discord, and 
 gives it to tiie wind and the night in a rapid succes- 
 sion of discordant yelps which seem ceaseless for 
 hours together. Indeed, the coyote's bark is the 
 prominent feature of night in tlie wilderness. To 
 one unaccustomed to it, sleep is impossible. In 
 spite of the knowledge of the brute's cowardice and 
 general harmlessness, it is impossible to banish rest- 
 lessness and some feeling of fear. After the fire 
 
218 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 dies out, as the sleepless and discordant hours pass, 
 you long for morning and peace. 
 
 Coyotes and Indians are supposed to be on good 
 terms always. They are somewliat alike in general 
 characteristics, and have a supposed mutuality of 
 interests. They both object to the invasion of the 
 white man, and both are contemporary occupants of 
 a country that cannot long remain tlie home of 
 either. But the coyote's dislike to the invader 
 seems to be only an unreasonable prejudice, for he 
 has been furnished more feasts upon tlie carcasses Of 
 causelessly-slaughtered buffaloes in a single year 
 than the Indian would have given him in ten. 
 
 But our gray-coated friend makes a near approacli 
 to respectability in one item : he is a creature of 
 family, for whom he duly provides. Any morning 
 in early spring, upon some dry knoll, may be seen 
 three or four little dun-colored stupid^looking cubs, 
 lazily enjoying the warmth. At the slightest alarm 
 they tumble, with more alacrity than gracefulness, 
 into the mouth of the den, from which they never 
 wander far, and many hours patient digging will 
 not U'Uearth them. Kot far away may be seen the 
 mother, uneasily watching the course of the intrud- 
 er's footsteps. But provision for the support of a 
 family is not carried so far as it is with the foxes. 
 There are but few delicate morsels carried to the 
 den, and the adolescent thief must mainly subsist 
 upon his mother's scanty udders until he has 
 attained his teeth and his voice, when he is launched 
 upon the wilderness world fully equipped by nature 
 and instinct for the practice of all the variations of 
 
COYOTES. 219 
 
 music and theft, and to follow in the disreputable 
 ways of all his ancestors. 
 
 He is a brute who is entitled to respect for his 
 very persistent and professional course of knavery. 
 He understands his business, and follows it. He 
 makes a success of it. Contemptible in body and 
 countless in numbers, he forages fatness from things 
 so despised of all others that he becomes almost a 
 producer upon the just plan of cooperative industry. 
 He is utterly careless of the contempt that all other 
 beasts seem to feel for him, waiting for his revenge 
 for the time of their feebleness and decay. Like all 
 cowards, he can fight desperately when he must, 
 and there is many an ugly scar of his making. Win- 
 ter and summer, in heat and cold, he wags his way 
 along the prairie paths with the same drooping, 
 quick-turning, watchful head, the same lolling red 
 tongue, the same bushy ornament trailing behind, 
 ever mindful of a coyote's aifairs, ever looking for 
 supper, the figure-head, the feature, the representa- 
 tive of the wide and desolate country of which he 
 comes more nearly being master than any other. 
 
XII. 
 
 A GUAED-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 
 
 XIEUTENANT CHAELES SMYTHE — Smith, 
 -^ all the same, but S my the looks better in the 
 register — was commandant of the post, and unques- 
 tioned autocrat of a territory comprising sixteen 
 square miles of trap-rock, mesquit^ and sand. But 
 supreme authority was never vested in one more 
 unappreciative of its privileges and responsibili- 
 ties — possibly because he was so seldom called 
 upon to exercise his prerogative that he almost 
 forgot his distinguished position. Certainly his 
 thoughts were very far from all troubles of this 
 kind that July morning, as he sat in the inner room 
 at the trader's store, sole occupant of the apart- 
 ment. There was a round pine table, covered with 
 a red artillery blanket, and the earthen floor had 
 been swept away until each leg stood upon a little 
 pedestal of earth. Many a game of ''poker" had 
 been played there, and the small box of "beans" 
 still sat upon the cloth ; but the useful piece of fur- 
 niture had its sole office at this moment in being 
 a rest for the lieutenant's feet. He was trying to 
 read a copy of the "Herald," very new in being 
 only three weeks old ; but his eyes wandered away 
 from the dull columns, through the small window, 
 and out upon the foot-hills shimmering in the sun- 
 
 220 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 221 
 
 light and the blue Sierras with their streaks of snow. 
 The air was heavy with silence. There were no 
 bees to hum, and no twittering of small birds added 
 cheerfulness to the time. Only occasionally, near 
 the spring, the spiritless yellow-breasted and fidgety 
 little lark, who seems to be careless of all climates 
 between Maine and Texas, sat and swayed upon a 
 tall weed. The usual ravens sailed in lazy circles, 
 or sat in rows upon the ledges, and sociably croaked 
 to each other. And these were the only living 
 things. But the commandant was not taking any 
 lively interest in these irresponsible denizens of his 
 dominion. It is doubtful if he saw them at all, for 
 his mind was boozing in one of those inane reveries 
 that are the precursors of sleep. The ''Herald" 
 slipped from his fingers, and a faint wish that it was 
 night half developed itself in his indolent head. 
 Then, remembering his dignity, perhaps, he roused 
 himself enough to yawn, and to remark to the group 
 of deliberative ravens that he wished something 
 would happen. Whereupon something did happen, 
 which, in that dull region, was enough to keep him 
 awake for the rest of the day. It was a cii'cum- 
 stance wholly unimportant in itself that attracted his 
 attention, for it was only the sound of a voice from 
 the outer room. Voices are common enough, and 
 there has even arisen an opinion that there may bfe 
 upon occasion too much of them. JS'early every 
 individual has one of his own, and some of them 
 are harsh and some are soft, but each is characteris- 
 tic of its possessor. As there are eyes that are 
 never deceived in the recognition of a face, so there 
 
222 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 are ears that remember voices that were lieard casu- 
 ally months or years before. Generally such voices 
 have some marked peculiarity of their own; and 
 such was the case here. The tones were low, per- 
 fectly polite, and the accent was that of a German 
 educated in the English tongue. At first the com- 
 mandant listened through the open door, with only 
 that degree of interest which attaches to a stranger 
 in a locality where strangers are infrequent. Then it 
 began to remind him very dimly of something or some 
 one more than a thousand miles away. Finally, as 
 he sat there with one hand upon the back of his 
 chair and the other upon the table before him, and 
 in an attitude that indicated a hesitating suspicion, 
 the whole scene came to him like a remembered 
 dream. Moments accomplish these things in real- 
 ity, and they are by no means worked out in the 
 dull words it is necessary to use here. The inspect- 
 or's office at Fort Leavenworth; the group of officers 
 who sat there, and among them, yet far off, the man 
 whose voice he seemed now to hear as he heard it 
 then, as he stood in the constrained position of 
 ''attention," his bright black eye and regular fea- 
 tures marking him more distinctly from his humble 
 position, his concise answers and clear definitions 
 imparting information to his superiors, and leaving 
 the impression upon the casual visitor that one 
 August Stein, private in the 5th U. S. Infantry, 
 though but a detailed clerk, was perhaps the ablest 
 man in the office of the inspector general of the 
 Department of the Missouri. But it was not from 
 these things alone that the listener remembered the 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 223 
 
 man whose voice he thought he heard. It was 
 partly from the peculiar look darted after him like 
 lightning as he left the room, which, seen again 
 under any circumstances, would mark the man. It 
 is the look which distinguishes that class of men, of 
 which there are fortunately few, who for a sufficient 
 stake will face any danger and commit any crime, 
 who disdain all law as not meant for them, who may 
 even fascinate when they will, and who are the 
 Machiavellis of social life. 
 
 And this was undoubtedly the voice of Stein. 
 The five years of his enlistment could not have 
 expired. His regiment was stationed four hundred 
 miles away. Discharged for disability, he would 
 hardly come to these ends of the earth for a home, 
 and — the gentlemanly soldier was a deserter. This 
 was why the commandant listened and hesitated, 
 why he doubted if it were not better and more mer- 
 ciful to let the soldier go, and keep the secret. For, 
 as his mind threaded out the story, he remembered 
 all his former impressions of the man, and among 
 them that he was one to whom the ranks would be 
 insufferable — a humiliation nearly always ended at 
 last by the only way possible. As he thought of all 
 this in his listening attitude,' he nodded his head in 
 final certainty, and' said as to himself, "I thought 
 so — I am not mistaken." 
 
 There was a feeling of regret, not entirely 
 acknowledged to himself, that this man's evil genius 
 had brought him so near the only one by whom he 
 could possibly be recognized. Here was a voice 
 betraying its owner at an inconceivable distance 
 
224 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 from where it had last been heard, and that owner 
 entirely ignorant that his unconscious gift was about 
 to bring upon him his life's greatest misfortune and 
 disgrace. Here, after travel and toil, at this last 
 stopping-place in the wilderness, with freedom and 
 safety in view, were to begin those troubles that 
 would probably end in the Tortugas. As the com- 
 mandant pondered these things, the voice ceased, 
 and he rose and entered the room as the stranger 
 turned to go out. A glance lighting into a gleam of 
 recognition in the peculiar eyes, and down toward 
 the canon, through the sage, Stein was gone like a 
 flash, with all the vigor and determination that 
 belong to such men. Immediately in front of the 
 door stood a train of laden asses, whose burdens 
 were baskets, bags, and household utensils. Stand- 
 ing near were three or four Mexicans, and mounted 
 upon one was a woman whose shawl had fallen from 
 her face, and who watched the flight with clasped 
 hands and startled manner. These things the com- 
 mandant took in at a glance. They were common. 
 In this country, no man travelled alone, unless it 
 were in some desperate emergency in which safety 
 was of secondary importance ; and here, he thought, 
 were a travelling party in whose company the 
 deserter had reached the post. His flight, cause- 
 less under any ordinary circumstances, had a 
 strange effect upon the girl. Her brown cheeks 
 blanched, and as she watched the fast retreating 
 figure her eyes had in them a kind of desperate 
 look. 
 
 Stein's flight was in full view of the half-dozen 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 225 
 
 soldiers who stood beside the sally-port. They 
 understood the situation, and at the merest sign 
 from the commandant three or four of them were in 
 pursuit. The girl slipped from her donkey, and, 
 with frantic gestures and a torrent of Spanish, 
 attempted to hinder their progress. Almost heed- 
 less of her presence, they passed on, and she sat 
 upon the ground with covered face, and rocked her- 
 self to and fro. Her companions looked stupidly 
 on, and, apparently regardless of either her or the 
 fugitive, awaited results. 
 
 In half an hour the deserter had lost in one of 
 the most desperate ventures of life, and had taken 
 his place in the guard-house among men as des- 
 perate and hardened as common crimes and mis- 
 fortunes ever placed in chains together. But before 
 he entered there, the woman, who seemed in some 
 degree to have regained her composure, found 
 means to come near and speak to him, in Spanish, 
 words which the commandant did hot hear and no 
 one near him seemed to understand. As he list- 
 ened, there seemed to come into his melancholy 
 face, and to gleam from his black eyes, a new hope 
 and purpose. With a glance eloquent of defiance 
 and hate, which took in at once the commandant 
 and all his minions, the girl turned and was gone. 
 The handsome, sinister, defiant face he remembered 
 long afterwards in connection with this strange 
 scene ; and though she watched his footsteps from 
 afar, and haunted the purlieus of his command, he 
 was ignorant of her presence, and never but once, 
 and then under very different circumstances, saw 
 
226 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 her again. Long afterwards, he knew that she had 
 stayed behind ; that she had taken up her residence 
 with the Mexican guide, and that there, with all the 
 cunning of her race and more than its faithfulness, 
 she had watched and waited. 
 
 The guard-house of a frontier post is one of the 
 necessary means bj which the few control the many. 
 It is not a light and airy place. There are no soft 
 luxuries and comforts there, and idleness is un- 
 known within its grimy walls. Had he been a 
 king's son, there was no better place for him; and 
 here the unfortunate deserter took up his abode. 
 The commandant passed him as he worked among 
 the prisoners. In this lonely nook of the desert, the 
 guard-house gang, as they sullenly wandered with 
 clanking chains wherever there was work to do, was 
 always a reminder that even a land that was lacking 
 in every feature common to the world was not with- 
 out its crimes, and not wanting in its means of 
 punishment. As he came near, the prisoner threw 
 aside his broom, and asked permission to speak. 
 
 There was never a soldier who had nothing 
 whereof to complain in his best estate, and most 
 certainly even a deserter can urge good and person- 
 ally satisfactory reasons for the act. This was what 
 the commandant expected, and he deemed it wise to 
 forestall his prisoner : 
 
 "Are you not a deserter?" said he. 
 
 "I am, but—'' 
 
 "Are you not aware that desertion, according to 
 the law under which you voluntarily placed yourself, 
 is not a remedy for wrong and admits of no excuse ?" 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 227 
 
 "Certainly, sir, and I do not wish to make any 
 excuse. I only wish to show yoic^ if possible, that 
 there was justification, for the sake of your good 
 opinion.'''' 
 
 Now, words like these the commandant had never 
 heard spoken by one man to another under like cir- 
 cumstances. Here was one in the chain-gang, guilty 
 by his own confession of a crime that ought to keep 
 him there, talking of "good opinion." The com- 
 mandant had not been accustomed to think that an 
 officer had any opinion whatever of a private, in or 
 out of the guard-house ; and he went away ponder- 
 ing the curious case he had gotten upon liis hands — 
 a man with the jewelry of crime upon him, still 
 claiming respect, and tacitly advancing his claim to 
 be regarded as a gentleman by one who also claimed 
 that distinction. 
 
 Ere long, the two or three ladies of the small 
 garrison began to inquire concerning a very good- 
 looking prisoner who had been seen piling wood and 
 carrying slops in their baek areas. Contrary to 
 orders in such cases, savory morsels were passed out 
 to him through windows, and dainty meals were 
 enclosed in napkins and sent to him. All this the 
 commandant saw — and did not see. Nay, more; 
 he became convinced that the man who had excited 
 so much pity was daily fed from his own table, much 
 to the envy and dissatisfaction of the other prison- 
 ers, and he, the commandant, was so careless that 
 he neither saw nor heard. 
 
 By and by it was discovered that the prisoner 
 was possessed of great clerical ability, and he way 
 
228 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 placed in an upper room so constructed that a win- 
 dow opened from it through the wall to the outside 
 of the post. He was required to make topographical 
 drawings and to copy the letters of the post adju- 
 tant ; and in order that he might be near his work, 
 he was allowed to sleep in his room. All night a 
 sentinel paced to and fro beneath the window, and 
 immediately under him was the guard-room. 
 
 As time passed, little by little his story came 
 out, all of which, when it reached their ears, the 
 tender-hearted ladies of the garrison did religiously 
 believe. Much as his condition had been improved, 
 it was a pity (said they) that this much-wronged and 
 much-enduring man (who was so interesting and so 
 handsome) should still be compelled to wear a ball 
 and chain. Feminine bets were freel}^ offered, ten 
 to one and no takers, that the prisoner would not, 
 and indeed could not, escape. But by this time the 
 commandant had received circulars from headquar- 
 ters, in which they had been at the pains to print a 
 description of the deserter, with especial instructions 
 for his appreliens.ion. The ladies could feed and 
 pity the unfortunate, but, for a wonder, they did not 
 succeed in ridding him of the odious jewelry. This 
 was particularly set down against the hard-hearted 
 Smythe, who had much to silently endure at their 
 hands, and who had seen with what vigor a pretty 
 miss of twenty could govern a post, and had known 
 whole districts that were, in his private and unex- 
 pressed opinion, governed by the commanding offi- 
 cer's wife. But, had they only known it, the ladies 
 of the garrison need not have troubled their heads 
 
A OUABD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 229 
 
 upon this point. There was another woman equally 
 interested in the case, in comparison with whose 
 efforts theirs were as nothing 
 
 Mucli against his will, the commandant had come 
 to know that the prisoner regarded him as his friend. 
 He was no thick-headed military machine, who takes 
 all things for granted. He did not say it or act it, 
 but it was apparent nevertheless, that he entirely 
 understood the feeling of leniency, sympathy, or 
 whatever it was that had a place in the command- 
 ant's mind, close beside his sense of duty and right. 
 So interesting a piece of humanity had the deserter 
 become, with his skill, his good looks, and his influ- 
 ential friends, that the commandant did sincerely 
 wish he had never seen him. But there was at least 
 one act of kindness that he thought he could show 
 the prisoner with perfect consistency: he could 
 counsel him in regard to his approaching trial. One 
 day he off'ered as much, and the deserter showed 
 him an elaborate defence to be used on that occasion. 
 He had imagined with astonishing acuteness every 
 stage of the prosecution. Without access to any of 
 the books upon military law, he had remembered 
 and used some former study of them with an erudi- 
 tion and faculty of arrangement which caused the 
 amiable commandant to retire with dignified precipi- 
 tancy from the position of volunteer legal adviser. 
 
 By this time Stein had gained a complete ascend- 
 ancy over the whole guard-house crew. He was 
 their friend, and they his; and, indeed, the deni- 
 zens of the garrison generally had a very tender 
 side for him. By some means he became possessed 
 
230 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 of money. The Mexicans living near, men and 
 women, acting as guides and laundresses, passed in 
 and out unquestioned and almost unobserved. Tliej 
 had always done so, and were regarded as harmless 
 and useless people. Sergeants and corporals of the 
 ffuard thouorht it so small a matter that one of these 
 women should frequently speak with the prisoner, 
 that the circumstance was never even mentioned. 
 It was hard indeed, they probably argued, that the 
 prettiest and proudest of them all should not be 
 allowed to stand sometimes in the cool night below 
 his window, and chatter to him in a voice so low 
 that even the sentinel could hardly hear, even if he 
 could understand. Neither, surely, was there any 
 harm in there being always somebody flitting around 
 in the moonlight and watching the prisoner's win- 
 dow. She was only foolish, they thought — or 
 probably very much in love, which is the same 
 thing. 
 
 Smythe did not positively know, but nevertheless 
 guessed, that his prisoner meant to escape, and 
 might possibly succeed. He had done his whole 
 duty; his orders were strict. One day he was by 
 chance in the little room where Stein worked and 
 slept. Upon the little cracked mantel-piece, in plain 
 view, lay a large carpenter's chisel. The command- 
 ant took it up, turned suddenly upon Stein, and 
 asked him how it came there. "I stole it from 
 the shop a month ago, sir," said the undaunted 
 prisoner. 
 
 The two men looked at each other, straight in 
 the eye. "Stein," said the officer, "you are my 
 
A GUARD-ROUSE GENTLEMAN. 231 
 
 prisoner, iiiid having cauglit you I do not intend 
 that you shall escape. I laid no trap for you, and 
 personally wish you not the slightest harm. Never- 
 theless, I wish you to distinctly understand that I 
 mean to keep you. This is an old game, and of 
 course I understand it perfectly. Would you like 
 to go and sleep upon a board again, and take your 
 fare with the fellows below?" and his eye rested a 
 moment upon the prisoner's shackle-rivet. 
 
 The prisoner, standing at "attention,'' turned 
 slightly pale, and his peculiar eye had a look in it 
 that the officer returned with one of equal resolu- 
 tion. "I understand, sir," he said, "it was my 
 fate that brought me here, not you. I could have 
 gone some time since, and did not. I give you my 
 word of honor that I shall not try to escape while 
 you command the post." 
 
 It was the first time that Lieutenant Smythe had 
 ever been given a "word of honor" by a private 
 soldier, much less by a confessed deserter. He 
 looked again at his man, laid the chisel — already 
 battered upon the edge — down where he had found 
 it, and walked out of the place. 
 
 A month passed, and the expected new officer 
 came to command the post. The prisoner immedi- 
 ately became restless. It was evident to Smythe, 
 now no longer responsible, that the gentleman of 
 the guard-house contemplated a denouement that 
 would somewhat astonish the new commandant. 
 Yet he wondered how, in the face of difficulties that 
 would have caused most men to calmly submit to 
 
232 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCBES. 
 
 evil fate, he intended to remedy his ills. It hap- 
 pened in this wise : 
 
 There came a night of wind and storm rare in 
 that region. The clouds scudded across the sky in 
 quick succession, and the favorable elements of 
 noise and darkness were plentifully contributed. 
 About midnight, Smythe was awakened by the new 
 commandant, and informed with a rueful face that 
 the celebrated prisoner had escaped. It was strange, 
 he said ; he had given that man a double share of 
 vigilance ever since he had been at the post. 
 
 The orders required the guard-corporal to inspect 
 the prisoner's room every two hours during the 
 night, and in making one of these untimely visits 
 the object of so much unappreciated solicitude was 
 found to have placed himself beyond the reach of 
 annoyance. The ponderous ball and chain lay upon 
 the floor. The pallet where he had lain was fancied 
 to be yet warm. Under the table lay a leaden rivet 
 that fitted the hole in the ankle-ring of the discarded 
 shackles. It was simple enough — he had dropped 
 from the window. 
 
 Upon the mantlepiece lay a battered and heavy 
 carpenter's chisel, and with this the prisoner had 
 hammered the head of his shackle-rivet imtil it had 
 been broken off and removed. He had then inserted 
 the leaden one, made from a musket-ball, and worn 
 it in that manner until opportunity came. He was 
 gone irrevocably. In these barren hills, on such a 
 night, nothing less than the chance that had captured 
 him once could take him again, and before the dawn 
 he would have safely crossed the Mexican bound- 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 233 
 
 ary. But would lie have made the desperate ven- 
 ture on foot, and without a guide ? And what of the 
 sentinel who walked beneath the window ? The wall 
 was white, and the night was not wholly dark ; why 
 had he not been seen or heard? Strangely enough, 
 in cases like this the first thing, the essential diffi- 
 culty, is always the last thing thought of. When 
 the sentinel was sent for he was found lying beneath 
 the window, limp, silent, dazed, his discarded mus- 
 ket lying beneath his hand. ''^ Aguardiente^^'' said 
 the reflective Smythe to himself, as he turned away, 
 and walked off to his quarters and his bed more than 
 ever regretting the unlucky morning he had uttered 
 his wish to the -ravens, of all birds; for, quoth he, 
 there are no bars that can confine, no circumstances 
 that can daunt, the combined forces of brains, un- 
 scrupulousness, and love. But Smythe did not say 
 much; the following morning he even sat up in his 
 bed and smiled to himself as he thought of the 
 explanatory letter the other fellow would have to 
 write about the escape of the prisoner whose per- 
 sonal description was posted in the adjutant's office, 
 whose safety the department commander had stated 
 he was solicitous of, and who, he was privately glad 
 to know, was gone about his affairs. 
 
 It was almost a year afterward, and Lieutenant 
 Smythe seemed to have forgotten the little episode 
 of the guard-house gentleman. He had, in fact, been 
 ordered elsewhere, and was occupied with new duties 
 and surroundings. One of these duties necessitated 
 a journey of four hundred miles, from a post upon 
 the lower Kio Grande, to Santa Fe, to attend the 
 
234: FRONTIER ARMY SKFAVHES. 
 
 sessions of a general court-martial. It mattered 
 little in the execution of sucli an order that it was a 
 region of uninhabited distances as rugged as they 
 were long. There are canons, passes, wild defiles, 
 and endless miles of alkali and sage. There are 
 Apaches as well, and Mexicans who are reputed no 
 better than the copper-colored Islimaelites who mur- 
 der and are never seen. No town or tavern ever 
 greets the eye of the tired wayfarer. Camp-fire 
 ashes, in little heaps beside the trail, tell him what 
 he too must do when night comes. No man makes 
 the journey alone, and he and his companions may 
 while the time away as best they may, so they be 
 but watchful. And for the first day there is watch- 
 fulness — a vigilance that scrutinizes every movement 
 of the gaunt cacti upon the hillsides and hears every 
 movement made by quail or rabbit in the sage. The 
 second day there is also care, but less of it. The 
 way is long, and the thoughts wander, it may be to 
 New England, but to the homes and fields of long 
 ago wherever they may lie. The third, and all other 
 days, are but periods of weariness and of wishing 
 one were at his journey's end. There are no In- 
 dians; there is notlnng but earth, and air, and sky, 
 and silence, and that deep monotony that shall 
 never be broken by civilization and the uses of man. 
 The lieutenant rode alone. Far behind him he 
 could hear the clank of sabres and the jingling of 
 bridles, and was carelessly satisfied with the near- 
 ness of his escort. He was busily thinking, and was 
 tired and worn with the eternal vigilance of such a 
 journey; tired of his fare of hard-bread and ham, 
 
A OUAED-HOUSE OKSTLEMAN. 235 
 
 coffee and dried beef; tired of himself. Soiiietimcs, 
 perhaps, he ahnost slept. Anon a brawling stream 
 from the mountain snows crossed his trail, and his 
 gray horse stopped to drink. Again the steep rock 
 rose above him a thousand sheer feet, and below 
 him yawned a chasm black witli deptli. There were 
 glades, too, where the miniature oak, witli its bright 
 green leaves and its thicklj-clustering acorns, gath- 
 ered in tangled groves over acres of uncropped 
 grass. Yet it was all tlie same: it was New Mexico, 
 with her skies forever blue, her sparkling air, and 
 her stony and inhospitable bosom. 
 
 The trail widened ; there were two paths now 
 instead of one. The lieutenant did not know how 
 long it had been so ; and when he came to think of 
 it, had no recollection of how long it had been since 
 he had heard the clank of sabres behind him, or 
 paid any attention to the nearness of his escort. He 
 waited and listened, and all was as silent as chaos. 
 He rode back, and his escort was not behind ; for- 
 ward, and they did not appear. They were gone in 
 the silence, and the officer was alone — and lost. 
 
 But these paths were made by men, and must 
 lead somewhere. Smythe was wide awake now, 
 and spurred his horse on, he knew not whither. 
 The guide was with the soldiers. "They are not 
 lost," he mused; "I am." And he rode on, faster 
 and faster, as time passed and no sign of humanity, 
 known or unknown, appeared. The low sun of the 
 afternoon reminded him of the coming of an inhos- 
 pitable and supperless night, for the sumpter-mule 
 was with the escort also, while he was with the 
 
236 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 gnomes and uncouth fairies who inhabit these stunted 
 and primeval shades. He had ridden far, how far 
 he did not know. The glens were already cavernous 
 and black in the shadows, while the slopes and hill- 
 tops shone with a yellow glory as of stained glass. 
 He knew that he had climbed higher and higher. 
 Sometimes, as he looked back, he caught a glimpse, 
 through some long canon, of the vast plateau below, 
 stretching away for a hundred miles. Around him 
 appeared a new earth. There was water every- 
 where, and the herbage was the grass of another 
 zone, green and bright with rain and sun. Oak and 
 pine stood clustered together in silent parks, with 
 mountains still above, and leagues of rock below. 
 
 Smythe stopped and looked about him. Would 
 they ever find him ? Could he ever retrace his 
 steps ? Did men or did deer make these now innu- 
 merable paths ? It was with a feeling approaching 
 despair that he sat down upon a bowlder and watched 
 the horse greedily crop the grass. Had he not been 
 lost he would have been entranced by the scene 
 around him. But presently he imagined he heard 
 something — a metallic sound, faint and far and 
 dim ; a dream of the tinkling of a bell, or a water- 
 fall. Intently listening, he was sure he heard it 
 again. He rode forward along the glade, and pres- 
 ently found a steep incline and a winding road. 
 Far down lay a nook in which were clustered some 
 little adobe houses. There was a rocky stream 
 brawling among its bowlders, and here and there 
 moving figures that were not Apaches. Standing 
 closely in a huge enclosure there were hundreds of 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 23 Y 
 
 sheep, and from among them came at intervals the 
 muffled tinkling of their drowsy bells. Smjthe sat 
 upon his horse and looked down upon the scene. 
 The last red rays of the sun shone aslant through 
 the valley, and tinged with rose-color the gray rocks 
 and earthen roofs. The blue smoke lay like a wide 
 and fleecy mantle above. The astonished officer 
 fancied he could detect the odor of primitive cook- 
 ery and hear the sound of voices. A huge brindled 
 sheep-dog paused in his journey from house to house, 
 stood for a moment looking up the hill at the gra}^ 
 horse and his rider, barked, and went his ways 
 again. He rode down the steep incline ; and as tlie 
 long mountain valley opened before him, he thought 
 of Eden and the solitary loves of those two to whom 
 it was, like this, all the world. 
 
 It was not strange that Lieutenant Smythe's 
 appearance spread consternation through the little 
 hamlet. A woman saw him first, and darted away. 
 A man's swarthy visage appeared around a corner, 
 and again disappeared. The dogs stood afar off and 
 growled. Presently, however, came one with a 
 quick step and unabashed demeanor, and laid his 
 hand upon the horse's rein. 
 
 "It would seem. Lieutenant Smythe," he said, 
 "that you and I were fated to meet in strange 
 places. Are you lost, or a — deserter?^' 
 
 "I am lost," said Smythe, and he scrutinized 
 the face of Stein, as wondering if it was necessary 
 at last to fight it out upon equal terms. 
 
 "At any rate, the meeting is an unexpected 
 pleasure," said the other, and Smythe was requested 
 
238 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 to come into the little house, while some one led 
 away his horse. He found a fire and a seat, but 
 also discovered that he was left entirely alone. A 
 half hour passed, and a swarthy person brought 
 beans, cheese, and meat, and placing them upon the 
 little deal-table went away without a word. Drowsy 
 and hungry, the officer ate, and afterwards nodded 
 in his chair by the fire. Ko one came, and deep 
 silence rested upon all the spot, without and within. 
 It was a hospitality that was left him to partake of 
 or to leave ; and presently he lay down on the huge 
 pile of sheepskins that was evidently meant for a 
 bed. 
 
 It was all oblivion to Smythe, until, awakening, 
 he knew that some one was placing a rude breakfast 
 upon the table. Without, he heard the bleating of 
 sheep and the tinkling of bells. The servant retired, 
 and he found the earthen water-jar with its attend-, 
 ant basin, bathed, and again ate. While the sky 
 beliind the eastern mountains was as yet but a red 
 glow, the door was opened, and .his horse stood 
 til ere, with a Mexican, who beckoned him to mount 
 and follow. As he climbed the hill and looked 
 back, the sweet vale lay bathed in sparkling dew, 
 the fiocks had disappeared, and the place seemed 
 uninhabited. The Mexican with his donkey plodded 
 on before, and Smythe, wondering, was fain to 
 follow. 
 
 Some rough miles were passed, and suddenly 
 Stein was encountered, sitting quietly upon his horse 
 at a place where the trail turned northward. "I 
 know," he said, "where your party are. Follow 
 
A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 239 
 
 this man, and jou will find them." He paused a 
 moment, and added, "There is a strange story 
 between us, of which it is useless to talk. We shall 
 in all likelihood not meet again. I was never a 
 criminal, and am here in peace after many mistakes 
 and misfortunes, — or follies and crimes, as you may 
 be pleased to think them. Be so kind as to excuse 
 my scant courtesy; it is necessary that I should 
 have this much hereafter to myself. If I chose to 
 keep you a prisoner, do you think they would ever 
 find you ? No matter ; I gave you my promise 
 once, and kept it. Will you return the compliment 
 now?" 
 
 " I understand. You and your happy valley 
 shall never be molested by my fault. I give you 
 my word of honor." 
 
 ^''Adios j " and as the officer looked back, he saw, 
 disappearing among the low oaks, and for the last 
 time, the character who, in all his reminiscences, 
 bears the title of "The Guard-house Gentleman." 
 
XIII. 
 WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 THERE is a being who is the embodiment of 
 beauty, gracefulness, kindness, and unaccount- 
 able caprice. Wise men spend their lives in a futile 
 endeavor to understand her, and die with every 
 conception of her incomplete. She is at once our 
 ideal and our possession. She is with us, but not 
 of us. Living our lives, breathing our air, the 
 co-subject of all our vicissitudes and sorrows, with a 
 thousand others of her own, she has yet a life apart, 
 filled with her own thoughts, her own conclusions, 
 and her own peculiar opinions. She fills daily our 
 sole conception, our full measure of belief, as to 
 what a woman ought to be and is. Beside her, 
 there is no other creature worthy of the love which 
 is her inheritance, or the dignity that comes of uni- 
 versal motherhood. She is human, a woman, and 
 she never yet came to a conclusion that was logical, 
 or formed an opinion she could give a reason for, or 
 possessed the remotest conception of abstract justice. 
 She reigns, the irresponsible queen of the civilized 
 world, with her feet upon our necks ; and we are 
 willing she should, the grayest cynic of us all. She 
 gives us all there is in this life to give, and all she 
 has, and yet keeps a world of her own to herself 
 — a world we cannot enter. The gem and glory 
 
WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 241 
 
 of creation, the recipient of the profoundest idola- 
 try of which the mind is capable, the nearest and 
 dearest of all, she yet lives indescribably apart, and 
 radiates an essence that is to us like the faintest 
 glimmer of the farthest star. With the passage of 
 centuries she has added to her own loveliness, until 
 she has no comparative in the Rose of Sharon, no 
 peer in the white Lily of the Yalley. Were it 
 but known that in the hereafter she would not be 
 changed, and would welcome us there with the 
 smiles and tears that beguile us here, the hopes of 
 mankind would take new directions, and the milen- 
 nium, wdien it came, would be but an unimportant 
 event. 
 
 And yet no creature is so entirely susceptible to 
 surrounding influences, to the strong teachings of 
 nature, wildness and loneliness, to rough associations 
 and uncouth companions, yet still preserving the 
 distinctive characteristics that belong to sex rather 
 than to race. The women we know and daily see, 
 whom it is a part of our religion to respect and a 
 part of our lives to love, are only typical women — 
 specimens of the grade of beauty and refinement 
 attainable under the highest form of civilization. 
 There are thousands of others, worthy and womanly 
 in their way, who are not as these. Nay, our ideals 
 are scarcely even in the majority. 
 
 There are many rough and honest men, whose 
 faces are brown and bearded and whose hands are 
 hard with toil, who have never even seen the grace- 
 ful creatures whose white shoulders gleam through 
 tulle, whose footsteps patter upon errands of extra v- 
 IG 
 
242 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 agance over every paved street, and whose faces 
 bloom ill rows at the theatre. There are unfortu- 
 nates in whose early recollections are not included 
 the ineifably genteel whisper of the matronly silk, 
 as it passed up the church aisle on Sunday morning 
 in the decorous company of fair broadcloth and a 
 gold-headed cane. To this man, the being who 
 blushes at the mere mention of an indelicacy, whose 
 hair is indeed a ''glory," whose palms are pink, 
 whose garments are a wonderful triumph of mind 
 over cloth, whose movements are tempered with 
 gracefulness, and whose very language is the result 
 of culture until worn platitudes are sweet upon her 
 tongue, is one so far off that he would scarcely 
 picture her in his dim imaginings of angels. 
 
 But he has his companion, like him, and emi- 
 nently suited to him. In his home, and to accom- 
 pany him in his wanderings along the frontier, he 
 needs no other. [N'eighbor she has none. Of the 
 crowded street, and the jam and jostle of pavements, 
 she knows nothing. Her amusements are lonely, 
 her occupations homely and masculine. All she has, 
 and most that she hopes for, may be included in the 
 dull routine of one room, one hearth, one changeless 
 scene. Life to her is the rising and the setting sun, 
 the changing seasons, the cloud, the wind, the frost, 
 and the falling rain. She knows the tricks of horses, 
 the straying of the herd, and all the economy of the 
 corral. Business to her is the small traffic of the 
 trading-post. Strangers are those who occupy the 
 white-tilted wagons which she sees come and go on 
 the far horizon. Friends are all those who have 
 
WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 243 
 
 white faces and Christian names, and enemies those 
 whose faces she seldom sees and who are tlie wilj 
 and inveterate foes of all her race. Of such as she, 
 the denizens of cities know but little ; and she 
 deserves a history because of her very isolation. 
 
 Wherever the frontiersman has occupied a place 
 in Western annals, his wife has stood in the back- 
 ground. The women of the plains, of Colorado, of 
 Arkansas, and of Texas, are of the same genus with 
 the women of the Wabash and the Missouri, only 
 with differing surroundings. N^one of them are of 
 the class of the "piney-woods" maiden, whose life, 
 appearance, and general character became known to 
 us through the veracious narratives of Sherman's 
 "bummers." But the men who write of Buffalo- 
 land, who wind off narratives of Western life for 
 trans-continental newspapers and magazines, or who 
 verbally detail to a knot of listeners their Othello- 
 like adventures, have little to say of the daughters 
 of the wilderness. The sun-burned and slip-shod 
 woman who hunts cows in the creek "bottoms" 
 upon a bare-backed mustang, who folds her hands 
 behind her at the cabin door, and in a shrill voice 
 gossips with the passing stranger, and whose careless 
 cookery furnishes forth a bill of fare as changeless 
 as time, does not figure largely in the overdone 
 stories of the romance of the frontier and the adven- 
 ture of the border. 
 
 Why should she? Her precise pattern in these 
 respects still lingers amid encroaching fields in the 
 ague-haunted fens of the Wabash and amid the 
 brown sand of the Missouri bottoms. But there are 
 
244 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 other and more remarkable characteristics pertain- 
 ing to the woman of the far West. She is there, not 
 from carelessness and ignorance of any better place, 
 but from necessity. Her surroundings are not those 
 of choice, but of what is nearly allied to misfortune. 
 Indolence and innate untidiness are not the causes 
 of her poor larder and her comfortless home. 
 There is no broad line drawn between her and 
 thrifty and prosperous neighbors. For hundreds of 
 miles there are no more comfortable and prosperous 
 homes than her own ; and, with a patience that 
 might have a touch of sublimity were it not so nearly 
 unconscious, she waits for better things. And when 
 these better things come, if they ever should, when 
 population and prosperity encroach too near, then, 
 following the instinct of migration, for God's pur- 
 poses, as strong in humanity as in tlie beasts, she 
 and her husband will move again. The grotesque 
 procession of lean and melancholy cows, multitu- 
 dinous and currish dogs, rough men and barefoot 
 girls, and, lastly, the dilTipidated wagon, with its 
 rickety household goods, wends never eastward. 
 
 The sod house of western Kansas, the cabin of 
 Texas, and the adobe of Colorado, are not all so 
 fortunate as to have a female mistress. The fact is 
 proclaimed afar oiF by an essential difference in 
 appearance. There was never yet a lonesome bor- 
 derer who planted a vine or draped a window or 
 swept the narrow path in front of his door. Men 
 seldom do such things, while the virtues of good 
 housewifery are, in a greater or less degree, the 
 natural qualifications of every woman. In many a 
 
WOMAJ^"" UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 245 
 
 wilderness nook, the blooming plant that is cher- 
 ished beside the door, the drapery of the one small 
 window, the clean-swept hearth, the row of shining 
 tins, and the small evidences of needle-and-thrcad 
 industry, proclaim that however poor the place may 
 be, if it hold a woman her hand will still find some- 
 to do in the way of adornment. 
 
 There is nothing strange in the fact that the 
 Indian squaw is always a slave. Yet the savage 
 jroes but little further in that direction than his 
 enemy the frontiersman. In all times, races, and 
 circumstances in which crudity and toil prepon- 
 derate over ease and refinement, woman bears the 
 burden of the misfortune. But the rule of compen- 
 sation exists everywhere. The sun and the wind 
 are kinder than are late hours and furnace-heated 
 chambers. The slavery of the field is infinitely 
 more conducive to strcngtli and happiness than the 
 slavery of the corset and the high-heeled shoe. 
 Maternity is not a terror and a peril to the woman 
 of the border. Life, with all its hardship and isola- 
 tion, gives her at least all it has to give. The days 
 may be days of toil, but the noon brings its hunger 
 and health, and the night its deep sleep of rest and 
 peace. That wearying round of ceremony, that 
 daily attendance upon the mirror and weekly inves- 
 tigation of the fashion-plates, that thought of Mrs. 
 Smith's bonnet and Mrs. Brown's children, and the 
 bank-account and the milliner's prices, — all the un- 
 seen and untalked of, yet wearisome and monoto- 
 nous burdens of fashionable life, are here unknown. 
 And the compensation is great. Untrammelled by 
 
246 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 stays and ceremonies, the border woman has what 
 few of her sex but her entirely possess — health. 
 Not a fictitious and deceptive rosiness of cheek and 
 gracefulness of carriage, not whiteness of hands and 
 willowy slenderness of waist, but rude, awkward, 
 brawny health. The women who, all over the 
 eastern United States, are the chief adornment of 
 beautiful homes, and the wives and daughters of 
 what are called, by way of general designation. 
 Christian gentlemen, who cause mankind daily to 
 forget Eden and Eve and never to think of the fall, 
 and who are the mothers of daughters as brilliant as 
 June roses and who fade like them, and of sons who 
 are men at twenty and old and MasS at forty, are 
 not expected to credit all- this, or to have the slight- 
 est desire for an exchange of circumstances, which 
 to them would be impossible. The facts are only 
 mentioned to show that the pity for those who live 
 thus is often misplaced, and that there is no circum- 
 stantial misfortune that has not also its reward. 
 
 I know of no woman inhabiting the border wil- 
 derness who lias not some of the refinement that 
 belongs rather to sex than to race, except the Indian 
 squaw. A v/oman whose face bears evidence of a 
 relationship with any of the dominant races of the 
 world, has something about her, wherever you find 
 her, that is more or less womanly and attractive. 
 The borderer's wife does not swear, or chew tobacco, 
 or ofi*er the least suggestion of indelicacy in action 
 or word. She is "green," constrained, and often 
 awkward ; but her face is not more coarse, or more 
 incapable of that surging rosiness that is the tat- 
 
WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 247 
 
 tling index to a woman's thought, than any other. 
 If I may be allowed to coin a phrase, I would say 
 that the standard of delicacy by which her sensibili- 
 ties were governed was a different and broader one 
 than that in common use. She associates with men, 
 and ratlier coarse ones. She is intimately acquainted 
 with them, and interested in all their affairs. She 
 is accustomed to wildness and danger, and learns to 
 be strong of hand and nerve, and cool in sudden 
 emergencies. It may be set down to her credit 
 that, while she will run if she can, she will also 
 fight if she must. Yet there are no circumstances 
 that can ever entirely divest a woman of her essen- 
 tial femininity. I have been amused to note that a 
 woman who was complete mistress of a recalcitrant 
 mustang, and every day brought him under subjec- 
 tion by a by-no-means-dainty application of the end 
 of his lariat, and who ruled with a high hand all the 
 hard-headed and sulky denizens of the corral, would 
 utter the little cry of her sex and ingloriously 
 retreat at the sight of one of the harmless little 
 lizards who infest the prairie paths of the South- 
 west. 
 
 In society, women dress for women ; in certain 
 other walks in life*, they dress for men ; and left 
 alone, they dress for themselves. The story of the 
 first garment, made out of the world's fresh green 
 leaves, tells only a part of the story. Here on the 
 border, the old business of the sex — to look pretty 
 — receives as much attention as it does anywhere. 
 There is not much choice of material, — calico is the 
 article. Valenciennes and Mechlin, and all the 
 
248 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 cunning variations in name and material which 
 make up the lexicon of the modern drj-goods clerk, 
 even the cant about "chaste" colors and "pretty" 
 styles, are utterly unknown to the belle of the 
 border. As she tilts back in a hide-bottomed chair 
 like a man, it is easy to perceive that feet that are 
 not always coarse are encased in brogans ccmstructed 
 with a special view to the roughness of wayside 
 stones, the penetrating quality of early dew, and the 
 gravity and persuasiveness of kicks administered by 
 them. The neck, sunburned, but not always want- 
 ing in due proportion and natural whiteness, is igno- 
 rant of collar or confinement. Waist and limb are 
 untrammelled by any of the devices which are sup- 
 posed to be so necessary to style ; and the hair, 
 combed straight and smooth, is twisted into a tight 
 little knot behind, which, as compared with the 
 composite mysteries that within the memory of 
 people still fashionable were carried about beneath 
 the bonnets of our wives, remind one of a small 
 wooden knob. In the frontier toilet there is some- 
 times a lack of the two essentials of starch and 
 snowy whiteness. Cleanliness there is, to be sure ; 
 but it is a cleanliness of material and fact, and fails 
 in any suggestion of daintiness. ' It is upon the use- 
 ful and inexpensive calico mentioned that the efforts 
 of feminine taste are mostly expended. There are 
 ruffles, and bias stripes, and flounces, and a hun- 
 dred pretty and fantastic devices that it is beyond 
 masculine technology to describe. Yet, there are 
 no prescribed fashions for tliese vagaries in dress. 
 Each woman expends her ingenuity according to 
 
WOMAN UlfpER DIFFICULTIES. 249 
 
 her ideas of beauty. The style of a calico gown 
 may seem a small item in describing the character- 
 istics of a class, but the adornment is so universal 
 that it becomes a noticable feature. It is infinitely 
 to her credit, too, being the evidence that barbarism 
 is not the result of hopeless seclusion, and that taste 
 and care will hold a place in the hearts and efforts 
 of such women in their struggle with wildness, until 
 that time shall come in which civilization shall com- 
 plete her task. 
 
 If anything thus far should lead to the impres- 
 sion that comeliness, not to say beauty, is impossible 
 to the women of the border, that impression needs 
 correction. Under the severest tests, the frontier 
 often has a comeliness of its own. It is not the 
 paltry prettiness of gait and manner to which so 
 many of our queens are deeply indebted ; not the 
 charm of soft words and cultured address. These, 
 indeed, make us sometimes imagine beauty where 
 there is none, and procure gentle thoughts and hus- 
 bands where there is little else to recommend. 
 Frontier charms, where they exist at all, make 
 models of stalwart and untrained grace. Health 
 itself is beauty, and that unfashionable kind is com- 
 mon enough. It were well if absolute ugliness 
 everywhere were the result only of age, hardship, 
 and decay, and it is pleasant to think that at least 
 here youth seldom wants its round curves and its 
 crimson glow. There are border-women whose hair 
 falls in troublesome abundance and will not be con- 
 fined ; whose cheeks, if they could know immunity 
 from the hot caresses of the sun and the boisterous 
 
250 FRONTIER ARMY ^KETCHES. 
 
 kisses of the wind, would show the clearest white 
 and the bonniest bloom. There are limbs that 
 shuffle slip-shod along the trails in search of lost 
 animals, of whose round strength the owner has 
 little thought, and arms that split firewood and 
 bring water from the spring, whose whiteness and 
 mould would fit them rather for the adornment of 
 golden clasps and folds of ancient lace. To see 
 these women is to know that the old-time talk about 
 "unconscious beauty" is a fallacy. The conscious- 
 ness of beauty, and due appreciation and use of it, 
 is its great aid in the absolute enslavement of man- 
 kind. Was there ever the phenomenon of a pretty 
 woman who did not know it? As for men, there 
 are thousands of them who, being fantastically 
 homely, believe themselves to be reproductions of 
 the Apollo Belvidere. 
 
 For so long have women been accused of an 
 inborn love of gossip, that mankind, in their haste 
 to accept ill-natured doctrines, are ever ready to 
 concede tlie truth of the statement that she cannot 
 live without it. I am satisfied that, in some poor 
 way, she can manage to get along without a next 
 door neighbor. It is stranger still that when, by an 
 extraordinary chance, the cabins of two neighbors 
 are in sight of each other, the fact seldom adds any- 
 thing to the happiness of the two female occupants. 
 Do they often see each others Do they waste 
 kisses when they meet ? Are they inseparable 
 friends? There is not a surplus of any of these 
 things. Two women, here as elsewhere, with no 
 third party to. divert attention, are not apt to love 
 
[VOMAN UNDUE DIFFICULTIES. 251 
 
 each other with fervor. Wliat is better, they do not 
 pretend to. But neighborship bears a broad mean- 
 ing in these regions. The chronicle of Jones's wife's 
 affairs is reasonably well kept by Thompson's wife, 
 who lives ten or twenty miles away. And this 
 without any of the facilities for what is usually 
 termed gossip. The wayfarer who has lost a pony, 
 or who wanders in search of straying cattle, is the 
 disseminator of most valuable items of neighbor- 
 hood news. As he sits on his horse in front of the 
 door, with his knee on the pommel and his chin in 
 his palm, he relates how he has "heerd" so and so. 
 And in return the dame delightedly tells of her own 
 affairs, — the "old man's" luck, the measles, the 
 "new folks," etc., etc., and always ends with "Tell 
 Mis' Jones to come over." These things, and more, 
 the result of his own acute observations, the simple 
 cow-hunter tells to "Mis' Jones." But that lady 
 does not usually "come over." That is a mere 
 form, gone through with for politeness' sake. Some- 
 times she may come, but not for the visit's sake. 
 Here, as elsewhere; there are mysterious gatherings 
 in the middle of the night, and the cry of infancy is 
 heard in the morning. If it were not for their 
 babies, these curious "neighbors" would probably 
 never have any other acquaintance than that which 
 comes about by proxy. 
 
 The life of the woman of the frontier, while in its 
 nature transient, seems at the same time to be that 
 to which she was born. She and her male compan- 
 ion never think of that fact, and are themselves 
 unconscious of the wandering instinct that brought 
 
252 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 them hither, and that is the characteristic of the 
 class to which they belong. If they were placed in 
 an Eden, they would never wait to be thrust out by 
 an angel with a flaming sword, and would be anxious 
 to go of themselves, satisfied of the existence of a 
 better country. But the spot they leave never again 
 returns to native wildness ; while there they have 
 accomplished a certain purpose as the forerunners 
 and vedettes of civilization. Their home was the 
 wilderness, and they came next after the savage as 
 occupants. Slowly they creep up the valley of the 
 Arkansas, already growing too tame for them with 
 its two hundred thousand lately-gathered people. 
 The twinkle of their camp-fires sparkles upon the 
 verge of the desert, wherever in the solitude men 
 may abide or human hope can find a foothold. Past 
 the utmost of the western forts, over a road that 
 stretches like a path through hundreds of miles of 
 barren silence, they straggle toward Arizona and 
 far-oif realms of which, as yet, they neither know 
 nor wish to know anytliing. Everywhere, in scat- 
 tered nooks and in sheltered corners, are located 
 the rude homes where they have stranded, and 
 where they await a return of the migratory deter- 
 mination. Each home is the centre of those sur- 
 roundings and appliances which are the absolute 
 necessities of existence. But they make no better 
 homes. Without knowing it, they did not come to 
 stay ; and as they repeat the old story of a better 
 country beyond, they do not know that, with a 
 difi'erent meaning and in another sense, they tell 
 
WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 253 
 
 not only their own, but the story of wandering, 
 restless, longing humanity everywhere. 
 
 Thus does woman take her part in a most unex- 
 pected place in the struggle of life. It is not an 
 unimportant one. She brings into the world a con- 
 stant levy of recruits, to be trained in infancy to 
 wandering, if naught else. It is not an extravagant 
 statement to say that without her the final accom- 
 plishment of the end for which isolation, wildness, 
 and poverty are endured, could not be attained. In 
 that which we, with a degree of egoism, call life, 
 she occupies but a poor place. Her character, her 
 ideas of things, and the incidents of her daily life, 
 are so far from the absorbing interests which occupy 
 the citizens of the great world of churches, schools, 
 banks, gas-light, and society, that they are scarcely 
 the subjects even of curiosity. But she is still a 
 woman, and an example of the capacities of her sex 
 in the exercise of that virtue which, more than any 
 other, is characteristic of woman — the virtue of 
 silent endurance. If her hard life on the far border 
 lacks idyllic interest, and needs, to cover its hard 
 outlines, the purple garment of romance and poetry, 
 it is a compensating reflection that with its uncon- 
 scious purpose it still goes on, and tliat, with the 
 carelessness of all her kind, she reciprocates the 
 indifference of the world. 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 
 
 THE town of El Paso del Norte is a bright gem 
 upon a green ribbon of fertility between frown- 
 ing mountains. The green velvet ribbon is the valley 
 of the Rio Grande, and El Paso is the jewel that lies 
 upon it. Such, at least, is its description as set 
 down in the chronicles of the fathers. 
 
 This important point in the Mexican empire was 
 no longer young when Cincinnati was a hamlet in 
 the wilderness and St. Louis wiis a French trading- 
 post ; Indiana a beech-grown wilderness, and Illinois 
 a wide and inhospitable jungle of tall grass. Then 
 the Conestoga wagons carried the trade of the 
 young city of "William Penn to the valley of the 
 Ohio, and the waiting heart of a continent lay 
 unheard of and uncared for, biding its time amid 
 dense forests, and mighty rivers that crawled for 
 thousands of leagues through an endless world of 
 silence. The three generations that had already 
 lived and died in El Paso had not cared for these 
 things, or even heard of them. The priest, in his 
 gown and hat, went his ways in the streets, and the 
 laden donkeys stood in the market-place. The 
 immediate descendants of a people who had brouglit 
 with them across the sea at least their primitiveness 
 and content, passed their days then, as now, forget- 
 
 254 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 255 
 
 ting and forgot by all the world. Then, as now, the 
 days were days of sunshine and the nights were 
 nights of stars. The rich grape-clusters ripened in 
 the yellow rays, and the wine-vats gave forth their 
 odors through court-yard doors, as the blood-red 
 juice mellowed and grew rich within, and crept 
 through chinks and grain-holes, and lay in odorous 
 pools upon the floor. And the church was tliej-e as 
 now ; the same in its barbaric attempt at magnifi- 
 cence, only the huge cedar beams of the roof were 
 not then covered with a gray mould, and the central 
 arch had not sunk and cracked until its keystone 
 hung perilously in its niche. The broAvn sandstone 
 slabs in the yard tell us all that, as we read, in the 
 ancient and half-eifaced characters, of the Dons and 
 Senoras who, in the Year of Grace 1700, and there- 
 after, went to their rest in the peace of God. 
 
 But least of all things did these good people 
 suspect what their grandchildren should live to see. 
 The Jesuit himself, best judge of the course of empire 
 and sage prophet of political changes as he is, did 
 not imagine that one day the boundaries of an infant 
 republic would widen until, within sight of his church 
 and within hearing of his chanting, and only upon 
 the opposite shore of the river his brethren had dis- 
 covered, should arise a Yankee town, named after a 
 great mechanic who was also a lawgiver and sage, 
 and not less a heretic and an unbeliever; and that 
 yet a little further, and still within sight, should 
 float in his own sunshine that silken, sheeny, starry 
 thing, the emblem of free men and a free faith. 
 Still less did he imagine that most fateful of all the 
 
256 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 invasions of his faith and of Mexico — the iron track 
 that narrows and glistens afar to the northward, the 
 rushing engine that scorns liis narrow ford, and the 
 unearthly howl that echoes through the canons that 
 were sacred to primeval silence. 
 
 It was seventy years ago. But the old man with 
 whom the two strangers talked did not tell them of 
 the changes between seventy years ago and now. 
 Those seven fateful decades were not on his thoughts, 
 and not in the story he told. But his long white 
 beard and thin and scattered locks and shrunken 
 limbs suggested it; and as he seated himself in the 
 leathern-bottomed chair, its cedar framework pol- 
 ished and black with age and use, they were the 
 words he used as a beginning : "Seventy years ago, 
 Caballeros, — seventy years. ' ' 
 
 It was a curious chamber in which they sat. The 
 walls were high and mouldy, and the cob webbed 
 ceiling was far up in shadow. The one tall window 
 had lost all its glass except a few of the lower panes, 
 and the cotton cloth that supplied its ])lace fluttered 
 as the autumn night-wind wandered through. By 
 this dilapidated window they had first seen the inte- 
 rior ; for, wandering through the rambling streets at 
 midnight, one is curiously attracted by a light which 
 has no companion in all the silent town, and which 
 burns dimly in the narrow window of a crumbling 
 church. Standing upon the grass-grown walk beside 
 the wall, they had seen within a tall figure, upon 
 whose shoulders lay the thin white hair, and who, 
 prone upon the earthen floor, stretched his attenu- 
 ated arms toward the Mother of Sorrows in suppli- 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 257 
 
 cation that was rigid, silent, pitiful. He was alone. 
 The lamp smoked in its bracket upon the wall, and 
 the small flame in the little iire-place served but 
 to throw grotesque shadows through the narrow 
 space. The star-lit darkness enfolded the old town 
 in a shadowy cloak. The door-lights were put out, 
 the last guitar was silent, and the far peaks seemed 
 to guard in the darkness a scene strange enough to 
 unaccustomed eyes at noonday, and sombre, silent, 
 and mysterious at midnight beneath the stars. 
 
 They were strangers ; it was their business to 
 learn. Who could he be that prayed so long and 
 silently? Presently he rose up and passed out into 
 the body of the church, and a moment afterward the 
 bell upon the gable rang a few sonorous strokes. At 
 the sound in the stillness some sleeper may have 
 turned in his bed and uttered his shortest prayer, 
 and turned again to sleep. To go around and walk 
 up the aisle of graves, and stand in the open door, 
 was something which, prompted by the curiosity of 
 youth, was soon done. The old man stood there, 
 the bell-rope still in his hand, cautiously listening. 
 They could not tell if there was surprise in his eyes 
 as the}" entered, but it was a courteous tone in which 
 he bade them wait where they stood. They heard 
 his slow footsteps as he went back through the 
 darkness. Presently he came again, the lamp held 
 above his head, peering through the gloom 
 
 "Would you pray, seilors ? " said he, in the 
 piping treble of age. They told him they came .not 
 to pray, but to talk. He hesitated a moment 
 between doubt and courtesy, and then, bidding 
 
268 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 them follow, led the way over the hard earthen 
 floor, past tlie altar-rail, at wliich he bent his 
 decrepit knees, by images whose faces had a ghostly 
 look in the dim lamplight, and into the room which 
 seemed his chamber, and where they had seen him 
 as he prayed. 
 
 He turned to them with a gesture that had in it 
 a mixture of courtesy and irony, waved his hand 
 around the room as if to say, "Here it is, — look," 
 and seated himself in the one old chair and gazed 
 into the dying Are. The place had a faint mouldy 
 smell, and that suggestion of falling gradually into 
 extreme age that is difficult to describe. The 
 earthen floor was worn until it was as hard and 
 smooth as stone. Upon one side were presses 
 whose doors had parted from hinge and hasp, and 
 whose panels dropped away piecemeal, and within 
 them were to be dimly seen glimpses of yellow 
 linen, and scarlet vestments, and faded and tar- 
 nished lace. There was surely nothing there that 
 was worth a question; and as the old sacristan — for 
 such seemed to be his office — still sat with his back 
 toward them, looking at the glowing coals, they 
 asked him none. 
 
 But in the midst of mouldiness and decay one 
 small object attracted attention, from its seeming 
 freshness. Against the wall, and immediately be- 
 neath a crucifix, was a frame of dark wood, some 
 four feet long and about twelve inches wide. It 
 shone with frequent polishing, and within it hung a 
 curtain of green cloth. It might have passed unno- 
 ticed save for a suggestion of concealment and that 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 259 
 
 these twQ minds were more intent upon discovery 
 than a strict regard for politeness. Thev were 
 there to see, and should they not know what lurked 
 behind that small green curtain? It mattered little, 
 perhaps, but as one of them touched its corner witli 
 his finger the aged man rose up with a polite depre- 
 cating gesture, at which they stood ashamed. He 
 took the lamp from its place and trimmed it afresh. 
 Contrary to all expectation there was interest and 
 pleasure in his eyes as he approached the panel 
 with the lamp in his hand, and tenderly raised the 
 curtain. "Look," said he; "the hand that made 
 it was a cunning one. He who painted those lines 
 was a great artist — one of tlie greatest of his times; 
 but none will ever know it. In the old land across 
 the sea are great paintings, and the names of the 
 makers of them are immortal. Yet he whose hand 
 made this was as great as they. He and they might 
 have worked together and you might know who I 
 mean — which is not possible. You do not know; 
 you will never know. There were few who did, and 
 they are dead. There is nothing left but this — only 
 this poor thing. Ah, he was a poet, an artist, rich, 
 and a grandee. He was as handsome as a god and 
 as learned as a sage. And this is left, senors; tlierc 
 is nothing else." 
 
 Whatever opinion either of them had formed of 
 the old man, they were undoubtedly mistaken in it. 
 His eyes had lighted with a new fire as he spoke. 
 He was not the peasant and churl they thought him, 
 and no one need have been mistaken who now saw 
 the animated look in his keen old eyes, his clearly- 
 
260 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES, 
 
 cut and once handsome features, and the lithe figure 
 that ev^en in age seemed rather of the camp and the 
 sword tlian of the bell and gown. 
 
 When one in the guise of a peasant descants 
 upon art, the piece named ought certainly to attract 
 a moment's attention. The carefully-covered speci- 
 men within the frame was a piece of vellum, dried 
 and horny with age, on which was traced in colors 
 which had lost none of their brilliancy a single 
 Latin sentence. The head-letters had about them 
 all the intricate and graceful beauty of the old art 
 of illumination, and in elaborateness of design, 
 brilliancy of coloring, and gracefulness of detail, 
 the work was that of no unaccustomed or unskilful 
 hand. 
 
 But as the strangers scanned the picture — for 
 picture it might really be called, — the words them- 
 selves seemed remarkable. There was a meaning 
 and purpose in them, and in the place they occu- 
 pied. The legend ran thus : 
 
 ''ET NE ME INDUCES IN 
 
 TENTATI0NE3I, 
 
 SED LIBERA ME A MALO." 
 
 '' Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from 
 evil." It was only a sentence from that immortal 
 form of prayer which has been sent upward by 
 millions of hearts for these eighteen hundred years, 
 the essence and meaning of all supplication. "Lead 
 me not into temptation"; why was it written here, 
 where the world seemed shut out, even without a 
 coll and a priest's vows? 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 261 
 
 "If these words have a history, father, and the 
 man jou speak of made them, will you not tell us 
 tlie story?" asked one of them. 
 
 There are two conditions in which age delights: 
 one is silence, the other, extreme garrulity. The 
 aged man, be he soldier, statesman, or priest, lives 
 mainly in the past. Wlien he is silent he thinks, 
 not of what he shall do and accomplish and be, as 
 he did when he was young, but of what he was and 
 what he remembers. When he talks he tells of 
 those things, often tediously in detail ; and either 
 the condition of silence or of discourse is his chief 
 delight. And a smile crept into this wakeful 
 old man's features again, as he heard the request. 
 "Why not, my sons?" he said ; and as he changed 
 his address from "Caballeros" to "sons," he ex- 
 pressed the feeling of gratification tliat warmed his 
 old heart. The strangers could guess by the com- 
 monest rules of thd^t te^son of life as yet so ill- 
 learned by them, that the sacristan's heart clung to 
 this spot and its story witli a concentrated affection. 
 A memory of something greater or grander or bet- 
 ter, something congenial to him through all the 
 dreams and thoughts of a lonely life, kept him near 
 the spot. 
 
 "Why not, my sons, since there is ever some- 
 thing more in the commonest life than appears upon 
 the surface ? My race is one that loves glory and 
 art and beauty, but we love also God and Holy 
 Clmrch. You are from the nortli, and the blood in 
 your veins runs cold. Your reformers — the here- 
 tics who have led so many astray, and have traduced 
 
262 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and denied the Church which alone can save — were 
 strong men here," and lie touched his forehead, 
 ''but they were cold here," placing his hand upon 
 his heart. "You can understand your Luther, but 
 you cannot understand the gallant Knight of Pam- 
 peluna, brilliant in armor and flushed with glory, 
 who founded the Society of Jesus. The sword and 
 the cross — your cold race can never understand 
 that." He had arisen as he spoke, and stretched 
 forth his thin right arm as though he measured an 
 antagonist's rapier. 
 
 " But the story, father," said one of tlie listeners; 
 "you have forgotten the story." 
 
 The sacristan sank again into his chair, and the 
 sadness came again into his face. "The legend 
 upon the wall reminds me of that," he said. "It 
 was placed there seventy years ago. It is a long 
 time — a very long time. The world has changed 
 since then;" he added, "else you would not be here. 
 But I will speak, and afterwards you shall judge. 
 
 " Don Juan Salano was of a house that claimed a 
 drop of the bluest blood of Spain. Its members 
 stood ever near to greatness of lineage and great- 
 ness in deed. But Don Juan was the princeliest of 
 them all, men said, because God made him so. 
 Shall I describe him to you, my sons ? Then I will 
 say again that you cannot understand him : he was 
 not of your kind. He had an oval face, eyes that 
 shone in anger or kindness, and the form and bear- 
 ing that a soldier and a noble should have. How 
 beautiful his eyes were, and how tender and strong 
 his voice ! He was the manliest man in Spain. 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 263 
 
 Men admired and respected him, and women loved 
 liim, many a one. He was learned in all the learn- 
 ing of his time — though it was nothing then, — and 
 last, he was a soldier. He could not have been 
 otherwise. It is in liis race, as I told you, to love 
 the cross and the sword. I will not tell you of how 
 he fought in the wars of his country. I do not love 
 to talk of the old days of glory and strength. They 
 sadden me. But I tell you that had my country 
 remained as she once was, had her sons begotten 
 tlieir like again, our country had ere this been the 
 mistress of the world, and our holy church the 
 church universal. Ah, she had fallen before you 
 were born ; she was falling when Don Juan Salano 
 died ; but I know what she was. God's will be 
 done. 
 
 "But Don Juan loved not only glory; he loved 
 also the church; and when he was as young as either 
 of you, my sons, he became a priest. Do you smile ? 
 Ah, carramha ! your cold race knows nothing of 
 either glory or religion. I need not tell you bow he 
 became a priest ; only that it was duty, love, con- 
 science. Do you know what I mean by the last ? 
 No, you cannot even understand that. Well, it was 
 that Don Juan had sinned all the sins of noble 
 youth, and in time he would make atonement, and 
 purge them away and forget them. 
 
 "He asked of the council a mission, and they 
 sent him here, — even here. It pleased him, for he 
 knew not that Spain's daughters may be beautiful 
 even in their descendants, and frail everyw^here. 
 They are all dead now who remember aught of the 
 
264 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 priest who came to the parish of El Paso del Norte 
 from across the sea. But I, who am old, have 
 heard them tell of his noble face and his graceful 
 bearing, which even a priest's garments might not 
 conceal, and of those of his people who wished he 
 were still a soldier. 
 
 "You think he made a mistake. It is like your 
 people thus to weigh and calculate. He did not. 
 Many of our religion have borne the pyx and chalice 
 who could strongly wield the sword. Many times 
 has the rosary hung in the rapier's place. 
 
 "I told you in the beginning he was a great 
 artist. After he came to this spot he was doubtless 
 lonely, and his life much changed from what it had 
 ever been. So he beguiled the time with colors. 
 In this very room he did it, and his easel sat there 
 by the window, and where I sit was his seat. At 
 one time he painted the Mass in the cathedral at 
 Barcelona. Then he made a head of the dead 
 Christ, and many others. They hung here and in 
 the church, and there were many of them, for he 
 labored rapidly and diligently. It was his life, his 
 occupation. He did nothing but paint and pray. 
 How beautiful they were, and how his soul was 
 absorbed in them ! 
 
 "The last he ever made was a Madonna; not a 
 sad and tearful mother of Christ, but one whose fea- 
 tures had in them a radiance, not of faith and glory, 
 but of human beauty. Ah, and the face was one 
 that those who sleep yonder have told me they 
 knew, and all El Paso knew. It was the gem of all 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 265 
 
 he did, and a curtain liid it in its place, and those 
 only saw it who chanced to catch a glimpse. 
 
 " B J and by his soul became absorbed in art, 
 and he almost forgot he was a priest. He knew he 
 was forgetting, they say ; but while he did hard 
 penance, he still painted. He loved it ; he was an 
 artist, my sons ; he could not help it. 
 
 '' Once upon a time there came a dignitary of our 
 empire to El Paso ; one who travelled in state, 
 great in power and influence. There accompanied 
 him others only less than he. He came to this 
 church, and scarce waiting to pray, passed on and 
 entered this room. Perhaps he had heard of the 
 priest and his work. He stopped and gazed. He 
 called his comj)anions also, and bade them look. 
 He was astonished and surprised. ' Where is he 
 who made these ? ' he said ; ' bring him to me, for 
 I have something to tell him to his own great good.' 
 And they that were there said, ' It is only the padre 
 Salano who did it.' ' What ? ' said he, ' the priest ? 
 I care not ; he has that in him that should not rust 
 here.' Then the priest came, and the Senor saw his 
 presence and face. ' Father,' said he, ' if thou wilt 
 come with me thou shalt have that which shall bet- 
 ter please thee, for surely thou art mistaken in thy 
 calling. Wilt sell these? Name thy sum.' 
 
 "Then Salano hung his head, and turned pale, 
 and when at last he would not sell, the Sefior 
 departed, thinking strangely of the man, and won- 
 dering that priests were oft such geniuses and such 
 fools; 'but,' said he, 'thou shalt hear from me 
 again ere long.' 
 
266 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 " On that same niglit the priest locked his door — 
 that same door, mj sons, — and was for a hmg time 
 alone. What he did God knows — His will be done. 
 But it is certainly told how a great smoke arose 
 from the chimney-top, and in the morning he lay 
 there so prone in prayer, so wrapped in deep devo- 
 tion, that none dared disturb him. This that I tell 
 you is indeed true, that pictures, canvas, colors and 
 easel were never seen again. The lire consumed them 
 or the flood drowned them, and the priest came forth 
 sad and very silent, and went his ways and did his 
 offices with a new humility. In a day following the 
 few who ever entered here saw the panel in the 
 wall. It was the last ; he touched brush or canvas 
 no more. 
 
 "But, my sons, a man may pray full oft, 'Lead 
 me not into temptation,' — he may write it in colors 
 never so beautiful beneath his crucifix, and may cast 
 away in bitter self-sacrifice all that may hinder him 
 aught, — and there may still be left one whose beauty 
 he can neither make nor mar, and thoughts of whom 
 he may not burn or put away. I have told you that 
 this priest was lordly, learned, and beautiful. I 
 said he was also a painter and a soldier. I may end 
 by saying that he was also a man. He might burn 
 his priceless Madonna ; but the beautiful face that 
 had crept into it he could not so easily put away. It 
 was there — upon the street and in the open door. 
 Do you know women, my sons ? If you do you are 
 older tlian you look, and have learned most of what 
 there is to know. This priest had defeated but the 
 first and least temptation. He was accustomed to 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 267 
 
 admiring ejes, for there are men from whom admi- 
 ration is scarce concealed. The demi-gods are few, 
 but there were those who believed this man to be 
 one. There is no tale-bearer who delivers his mes- 
 sage so easily as a woman's eyes and a woman's 
 rosy cheek. The Dona Anita did not admire the 
 glorious priest, she did not love him, — she adored 
 him. She was not a lunatic in any greater sense 
 than many have been since Adam. But the mass 
 liad come to be a ceremonial, not for her soul, but 
 for her heart ; not for God, but for the priest who 
 officiated. Think you I am telling a strange thing ? 
 Doubtless ; for your race are cold, as I have told 
 you. Yet she did not bring her love and lay it at 
 his feet. Women are born with a better knowledge 
 of men than that. But there was no land to which 
 she would not have followed him afar off, no fortune 
 she would not have shared with him. Yet without 
 hope, since he was a priest. 
 
 '' But I said he was a man, and he knew all this. 
 JN^ay, it was not that which troubled him ; it was tlie 
 other fact that he carried in his heart the image of 
 the Dofia Anita. The Madonna's face was also her 
 face, and perchance she had heard as much. He 
 met her in the street, and a thrill passed througli 
 him if her gown but touched his garments. He saw 
 her ftice as she knelt at the altar-rail, and — God 
 pardon him! — he could have thrown away the Host 
 and fled from all his vows and duties. You know 
 that this priest was a heroic man, and was a priest 
 for conscience sake, and for that cause had aban- 
 doned that only other thing that is dearer than love 
 
268 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 — fame. Those wlio knew have told me that from 
 vesper-bells to matins he lay all the night upon this 
 floor and prajed to be delivered. He was wan and 
 worn with penance and fasting, and yet, perchance, 
 between his eyes and the Blessed Mother, as he 
 prayed, came that other human face clothed with a 
 nearer love. 
 
 "You think, as you listen, that there can be but 
 little more of a story like this. But I am old. It 
 pleases me to tell all, and you will listen. It came 
 about, by and by, that the priest and the Dofia Anita 
 understood each other, whether they w^ould under- 
 stand or no. While she disguised less and less as 
 she drew nearer and nearer to him across the great 
 impossibility, so grew more and more upon him the 
 irksomeness of his holy office. But they dared not 
 speak, scarce even look, the one to the other. There 
 have been many battles fought in men's souls, harder 
 and more costly than the battles of kings. This 
 man was no coward, and had conquered once. But 
 he was beleagured now indeed, for he loved his 
 enemy. 
 
 "It is told that one niglit in this room the priest 
 thought he was alone. He walked back and forth, 
 not quiet and calm, but anxious and almost despair- 
 ing. As he passed by, his shadow fell again and 
 again upon the window, and there was one near who 
 saw it each time. There are times when men, and 
 priests, lose faith in penance and prayer. This may 
 have been to him one of those times. Presently 
 she who watched the window knew tliat he stopped 
 opposite it and stood still. Then there was the 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 269 
 
 sound of a hurned movement, tlie faint clink of 
 metal, and finally tlie outer door was opened, and 
 there stood at the threshold a figure in plumed 
 helmet, the baldric upon his breast and the bright 
 scabbard upon his thigh. The lamplight shone 
 upon him as he looked about him, not guessing that 
 any saw him. Ah, my sons, it was not altogether 
 boyish. In thinking and longing, doubting and 
 loving, can we wonder that it came upon him to 
 once more know in secret tlie feel of the sw^rd — 
 the sensation of a far-gone life ? The best of us do 
 much that we would not wish the world to smile at, 
 and a soldier may not be blamed if he hides among 
 a poor priest's effects the plume that has waved in 
 the smoke of battle, and the sword he has drawn in 
 the defence of his country. 
 
 "If we were women, we might know how she 
 fell, who watched him then. It would seem that she 
 forgot the reality and saw only the vision. She 
 came toward him, and as she drew near to where he 
 stood, he saw her. He did not flee. I have said he 
 was but a man. She came very near, — nay, seated 
 herself at his feet. 'Tis an old story. As she took 
 his passive hand, perhaps he could look down into 
 the beautiful eyes. Women are not slaves, neither 
 are their lovers ; but sometimes they dispute who 
 shall be the humblest. The town was asleep as it is 
 to-night. The priest forgot himself in the soldier 
 and the man, and stooped and kissed, not her hand 
 — the first woman's hand that had touched his for 
 years, — but her very lips. 
 
 "Men are men everywhere, and the priest re- 
 
270 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 mained a priest until the Sabbath morning. High 
 mass came again. I go not so far as to tell what 
 may be in men's hearts. Even if his offices at the 
 altar of Holy Church were heartless, many men's 
 have been so ere now. We cannot tell. But the 
 Dona Anita came and knelt at the altar-rail. The 
 priest gave her that which is the body of Christ. 
 No wonder, as he saw her face, the flood that is 
 without volume or sound, and which none see, over- 
 whelmed him. He dropped the chalice from his 
 hands, tore the robe from his shoulders, and, com- 
 ing out from his place, passed through the startled 
 people, out at the open door, and hastened away 
 from his office, from the bosom of Holy Church, 
 from honor, conscience and hope forever. The 
 legend was written in vain, and stands in its place 
 only to remind us all, my sons, that love will con- 
 quer where fame, glory and wealth may be beaten 
 in the contest." 
 
 The old man arose and took the lamp again from 
 the bracket, and bowed toward the strangers. When, 
 past the altar and images, and through the shadows, 
 they again reached the open door, the weird hour of 
 early dawn was upon the world. He stood in the 
 doorway, and the light wind played with his thin 
 locks, and the lamplight glanced across his sharply- 
 outlined features, as he bade them farewell. The 
 man was as remarkable as his story ; and one of his 
 guests turned before he departed, for another word. 
 
 "Father," said he, "we are grateful to you for 
 your courtesy, and express our thanks ; but will you 
 not tell us who you are ? " 
 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO 2Y1 
 
 "Others could tell you that, my son, even better 
 than I can. But you are strangers. My name is 
 mine only by inheritance, and not by baptism. Men 
 call me Garcia, for so the Church has named me ; 
 but my father was a soldier and a nobleman, and I 
 disclaim him not. I am the son of Sen or Don Juan 
 Salano, for whose soul's repose I nightly pray, and 
 my mother sleeps in the last place but one, on the 
 right liand as you go out. God go with you. Adios.'^^ 
 And the old sacristan turned and went back among 
 the memories and shadows, to recall, perchance, the 
 beautiful face of that Doiia Anita who was his 
 mother, long since mouldering in that "last place 
 but one as you go out," and upon the fallen priest 
 who was his father. 
 
XV. 
 A FIGHT BTiTWEEN BUFFALOES. 
 
 HE was a scarred and shaggy veteran, and his 
 general appearance indicated that lie had been 
 ftiaking a good fight of it for a week or more. Yet 
 he seemed to be unwilling to accept the fact, begin- 
 ning to be very obtrusive, that the day of his domin- 
 ion was over. Like many a human imitator, he was 
 uncertain upon the delicate point of his personal 
 status, and lingered sulkily upon the outskirts of 
 society. I dare say that in the maintenance of his 
 dignity he had thus come back to the herd, and 
 scowled at his descendants, and pawed, and groaned, 
 and made himself generally disagreeable, innumer- 
 able times. For the long hair upon his neck was 
 tangled and pulled until tufts of it were loose and 
 unkempt. The outer fibres of his short black horns 
 hung in filaments and splinters. His wicked little 
 eyes had a reddish look, and his venerable beard 
 was limp and froth-wet beneath his chin. Nor were 
 these the only indications of his unhappy condition. 
 Sundry long, oblique hairless lines appeared upon 
 his flanks, and he put his left fore foot down ten- 
 derly, very likely remembering at the same time a 
 square jounce he had lately got in the shoulder from 
 some strong-necked youngster who had taken it 
 up(m himself to castigate his father, 
 
 272 
 
A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 273 
 
 He stood meditating upon the outskirts of the 
 herd now, and pretended to be eating grass, and it 
 was as nice herbage as a bull whose teeth were 
 likely none of the best could desire — the first ten- 
 der growth of the early spring. But he did not 
 seem to enjoy it', and ate as one eats whose mind is 
 preoccupied. At intervals of a minute or so he 
 would look around over his shoulder quickly, and 
 groan, and stand as if thinking, and then pretend to 
 eat again. To this distressful pantomime, not one 
 of ten thousand other sliaggy grazers paid the least 
 attention. They were busy. I could hear them 
 cropping the grass as I lay there, with a continual 
 rasping sound. It was only too evident that, of ajl 
 those cows to whom he had been attentive for so 
 long, who had so often been combed into curliness 
 on the happy mornings of the long ago by his tongue, 
 and whom he had led and herded, and fought for, — 
 of all the little, stupid, hump-backed calves, so far as 
 he knew, his own offspring, — there was not one who 
 did not wish him disposed of according ,to buffalo 
 destiny, or who cared how soon his monumental 
 skull should be left standing on its base uj)on the 
 bleak hill-top, with scarce so much as a thigh-bone 
 or a faded tuft of brown hair b}^ way of obituary. 
 
 But this old one was still a buffalo and a bull, 
 and he kept creeping nearer and nearer to the herd. 
 It may have been only yesterday that he had come 
 back defiant and in a rage, shaking his head, and 
 breathing out threatenings and slaughter, declaring 
 unmistakably that there had not been a fair fight, 
 and fhat if the company desired to see a handsome 
 18 
 
274 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and scientific combat, some youngster liad better 
 come out and indulge himself with a ride upon his 
 venerable ancestor's horns. I cannot say positively 
 that all this unseemly bragging was done by the old 
 one, but it is likely that it was, and much more, and 
 that under the sting of repeated defeats he had made 
 himself so odious to his rivals that he was now glad 
 to nurse defeat and a sore shoulder upon the out- 
 skirts of the herd, but still near, and waiting for his 
 present unpopularity to blow over. 
 
 I might have killed him by this time, and ended 
 his troubled career; for he was lawful game and a 
 fair shot, and that was what I had come for. But I 
 grew interested in his precarious fortunes, a serene 
 spectator behind a bank and a convenient bunch of 
 sage. He reminded me of something I had dimly 
 seen in my observations of my own species, — he 
 was so valorous, and yet so prudent. But pres- 
 ently a calf came slowly, and in an investigatory 
 way, toward him. A very immature and foolish ani- 
 mal he looked, witli his little black nose wet and 
 wrinkled, his little brown flanks distended with ful- 
 ness, and the white milk-froth depending in long 
 threads from his lips. Boggle-eyed inexperience 
 doubtless moved him as he came slowly near his 
 father, and the two had just touched noses amicably, 
 when his mother also took it into her head to come. 
 Then came another cow, and another, and presently 
 quite a little company of females had gathered there, 
 and the battered old warrior began to look about 
 him very complacently. This was what brought 
 about a very unfortunate difficulty, and made an 
 
A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 275 
 
 unpleasant forenoon of it for the old one. I wonder 
 he did not think of the result. He might have 
 known that he was supposed to have had his good 
 time, and had arrived at an age when the young 
 bloods of the herd would not longer look compla- 
 cently upon his hoary gallantries. 
 
 A fellow almost as big as the old one must have 
 seen this social gathering from some distance, and 
 threw out certain intimations of his approach. Lit- 
 tle plumes of dust, very skilfully cast, rose grace- 
 fully in the air above the crowd, and there were 
 certain ominous snortings and lugubrious groans. 
 The old one stopped chewing, with a green mouthful 
 between his teeth, and listened. The cows looked 
 about them complacently, with an air that seemed to 
 say that, while the disturbance was an unseemly one, 
 it was none of theirs, and crowded off to one side. 
 Yery soon the antagonists were facing each other. 
 The old boy straightened out his wisp of a tail to a 
 line with his back, gathered his four black hoofs 
 together, arched his spine, and placing his nose close 
 to the sod, stood shaking his huge front as thougli 
 he wished finally to satisfy himself as to its freedom 
 from all entanglements that might hinder him from 
 tossing this ambitious youngster over his head, and 
 breaking him in twain. 
 
 I have often wondered at the quality of tluit 
 unreasoning valor characteristic of the higher ani- 
 mals, compared to which the highest human courage 
 is but ordinary prudence. These two did not sto[) 
 to tliink. One was old and lame, and knew he was ; 
 and the other would have engaged any antagonist 
 
276 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 wliatever whom he had never seen before. Any 
 two droop-horned farmer's bulls will get together 
 and fight it out to the death of one or both, and 
 merely for the love of it. It is not for fame, or 
 glory, or even for jealousy or the gratification of 
 revenge. Midnight, and any lonesome hill-side, are 
 good enough. There is no parleying, no boasting. 
 Have at you. Sir Hereford ! — Whack ! and when 
 those two curly frontlets come together, it is worth 
 one's while to be there to see. 
 
 Taurus, in all his kinds and varieties, is the lord- 
 liest of beasts. Where are such gladiatorial thews 
 as lie along that neck ? where such gnarled and sup- 
 ple might as resides in those creased and corrugated 
 thighs ? When such a one has grown tired of his 
 little field and his limited acquaintance, how easily 
 he walks out and away from them, and goes ya- 
 hooing and wow-wow-ing np and down the lanes of 
 the neighborhood ! He did not escape ; he does not 
 care who sees or hears him, and throughout his 
 wanderings he marches with inimitable and delib- 
 erate stateliness. And yet the career that should 
 spread consternation through a parish is usually 
 brought to a close by one barefooted small boy, who 
 drives the colossal monster back to his field and his 
 harem, and can do it with only a bit of a stick to 
 scare him with, and with a torn hat full of blackber- 
 ries under his arm. 
 
 The other bufi*alo came slowly, and twisting his 
 tail from side to side in circles that were very delib- 
 erate and grand for so small an organ. I shall 
 never understand why, in the economy of nature, 
 
A. FIGHT BETWEEX BUFFALOES. 2TT 
 
 this inadequate appendage was ever liung behind so 
 huge an animal as a buffalo bull, though upon occa- 
 sions like the present he undoubtedly makes the 
 most of it. He took pains to cause it to be dis- 
 tinctly understood that every hair he wore was 
 angry. His ej'es rolled in continually-increasing 
 redness. His black, sharp horns were encrusted 
 with earth gathered while he had been tearing the 
 sod to pieces in the ecstasy of valor. His nostrils 
 were distended, and he halted in his slow advance 
 to toss the broken turf high over his shoulders with 
 his preliminary pawing. He was a tactician of no 
 mean abilities after his kind. He made pretences 
 of flank movements, and turned his shaggy shoul- 
 ders, first one and then the other, toward his antag- 
 onist, as asking him if he dared to come and smite 
 him in the ribs. But the other was equally learned 
 in the arts of the field, and stood shaking his huge 
 head, as who should say, "Come hither and be 
 annihilated." 
 
 But this by-play of battle could not last long. 
 They by no means intended to take it out in vapor- 
 ing. I, who saw it, found the desire to see it all 
 momentarily grow upon me. It was not by any 
 means that I had always, upon the occasion of a 
 fight, felt an uncontrollable desire to stay. But this 
 fight was not mine, and I was not even in sight. 
 But, recalling sunny afternoons in crowded amphi- 
 theatres, where many a jpicador was overthrown, ^ 
 and many a curved horn was thrust remorselessly 
 into the bowels of blindfolded horses, and five tawny 
 bulls died like Caesar to please a roaring crowd, I 
 
278 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 was never more interested than now. I wondered 
 why I was thus ah)ne — why there was no one to 
 watch with me this Titanic battle. And there was. 
 Peering over the edge, like myself, sat a little gray 
 thief of a coyote, and beyond him another and 
 another. I could hear him faintly whine, and could 
 see him wipe his attenuated chops with his red 
 tongue, and leer and long. 
 
 The challenger advanced to within a few feet of 
 his antagonist, getting angrier and angrier as he 
 came. Suddenly there was a dull crash, which had 
 in it something Homeric. A rattling onset of that 
 kind leaves one in no doubt as to why. the horns of 
 buffaloes have a dilapidated and splintered appear- 
 ance at the apices. Then there was a long and 
 steady push, in which every tendon of the huge 
 bodies seemed strained to the utmost tension. After 
 repeated vigorous thrusting, accompanied by tre- 
 mendous snortings, there was a strategic easing oif, 
 and then a sudden collision which pressed the two 
 heads to the earth in an even balance of strength. 
 Neither beast dared relax a muscle or retreat an 
 inch, for fear of that fatal charge upon the flank, or 
 that perilous twist of the neck which means defeat. 
 
 And now the cows returned, and looked compla- 
 cently on, and the very calves began to shake their 
 stupid-looking heads in the first vague instinct of 
 combativeness inspired by the battle of the bulls. 
 Tlie young lordlings of the herd distended their 
 nostrils, elevated their tails, and yet forbore any 
 active interference. It was a duel a Voutrance. A 
 moment's relaxation of the tremendous strain only 
 
A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 279 
 
 resulted in the sliaggy heads coming together again 
 with a dull thump, and a renewal of tlie stubborn 
 pushing that might have moved a freight-train. It 
 became a matter of lungs and endurance ; and the 
 froth began to drop in long, tenacious strings from 
 their lips, and their eyes to glare dimly through 
 what seemed clots of blood. I could hear their 
 labored breathing even where I lay, and see the 
 strained tendons stand out across the thighs and 
 along the thick necks. 
 
 But this dead-set of strength could not -last. 
 Every moment of time was telling upon the failing 
 strength and shorter wind of the valorous old cru- 
 sader, who still fought for the loves of his youth. 
 His lame foot slipped, and a knowledge of this 
 slight disaster seemed to reach his antagonist more 
 quickly than a flash of light. N'o skilful fighter 
 ever urged his advantage more suddenly. There 
 wfis a huge lunge, a sound as of horns slipping upon 
 each other, a spring forward, and the horn of the 
 younger bull had made a raking upward stroke 
 through the flank of his antagonist. The fight now 
 became more one-sided, and more bloody. Again 
 and again the old one tried to make his old ward of 
 head to head, and as often his more active antago- 
 nist caught him behind the shoulder. With the red 
 agony of defeat in liis eye, and the blood flowing 
 from the long wounds in his flanks, he still refused 
 to be conquered. With failing strength, and limbs 
 which refused any longer to serve him, he finally 
 stood at bay, with open mouth and hanging tongue, 
 pitifully panting, unable to fight and disdaining to 
 
280 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES, 
 
 retreat. He was pushed, and yielded sullenly. He 
 made no attempt to shield his flank, and patiently 
 endured all that came. The original plan of non- 
 interference was now abandoned, and the young 
 lords of the herd began to gather round him, and 
 snort, and shake their heads, and give him an occa- 
 sional maledictory dig in the ribs, by way of express- 
 ing their contempt for him. The cows came and 
 sniffed at him, and indulged themselves in spiteful 
 feminine butts, and walked away. Their manner 
 seemed meant to imply that they had always regard- 
 ed him as a disagreeable old muff, and that they, 
 were glad of an opportunity to express their heart- 
 felt sentiments in regard to him. 
 
 Through all this the old bull stood sullen, — 
 whipped, but still obstinate. Gradually the herd 
 left him to himself, and the vast crowd of ^spectators 
 and intermeddlers wandered slowly away. It was 
 no more to them than some other man's misfortune 
 is to the reader or to myself. He did not even look 
 around. He was forced at last to accept his sen- 
 tence of banishment, and go and live as long as he 
 could alone, or in the odious company of other bulls 
 like unto himself, and fight his last fight with the 
 coyotes, and die. 
 
 . But that calf came out to see him again. I say 
 that calf, because it seemed to me to be the same 
 who had brought on this last unpleasantness, — 
 though, for that matter, they are all alike. The calf 
 came, and arched his back, and elevated his nine- 
 inch tail, and pawed, and gave his venerable parent 
 to understand, in the plainest terms, that he held 
 
A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 281 
 
 himself in readiness to give him a terrible drubbing, 
 if he had not already been sufficieutlj gratified. It 
 was exasperating to see the young milk-sop imitate 
 the actions of his seniors, while the poor old bull 
 did not so much as look at him. But his calfship 
 was inclined to push matters, and finally made a 
 pass which placed his foolish head with a considera- 
 ble thump against the old one's nose. He stood a 
 moment with the air of having hurt himself a little, 
 and ambled off to his mother. 
 
 The old one did not move, and seemed hardly to 
 notice this babyish persecution. But I suspect it 
 broke his heart. He wandered slowly down toward 
 the sedge, limping and sorrowful ; and I lay there, 
 forgetful of the long army gun beside me, only 
 regretting that there had been no one to bet with 
 upon the result of the battle, or to stand boldly up 
 and confirm this story afterwards. The sun rose 
 high in the heavens, the wind veered, there was a 
 sudden panic, and the vast multitude disappeared 
 beyond the hills, leaving me to plod back to camp 
 guiltless of blood, — the three coyotes looking after 
 with familiar indifi'erence, — and to muse meanwhile 
 upon the problem of universal injustice and disaster, 
 only to be accounted for by recounting to ourselves 
 that ancient and somewhat diaplianous narrative of 
 Eden, an apple, a woman, and the devil. 
 
XYI. 
 OHIOQUITA. 
 
 "FF you stand upon a certain bluff, on the south 
 -L side of tlie Arkansas river, a few miles above 
 the mouth of the Purgatoire, in the earliest dawn 
 of morning, you will be a witness of a scene not 
 easily forgotten in future wanderings. Eastward 
 stretches dimly away the winding, sedgy valley of 
 the dreariest river of the west, treeless, sandy, 
 desolate. All around you are the endless undula- 
 tions of the wilderness. Beneath you are the yet 
 silent camps of those who are here to-day and gone 
 to-morrow. Westward is something you anticipate 
 rather than see; vague and misty forms lying bhie 
 upon the horizon. But while the world is yet dark 
 below and around you, and there is scarcely the 
 faintest tinge of gray in the east, if you chance to 
 look northward you will see something crimson high 
 up against the sky. At first it is a roseate glow, 
 shapeless and undefined. Then it becomes a cloud- 
 castle, battlemented and inaccessible, draped in 
 mist, and hung about with a waving curtain of 
 changing purple. But as it grows whiter and clearer, 
 the vague outlines of a mighty shape appear below 
 it, stretching downward toward the dim plain. 
 What you see is the lofty pinnacle that has gleamed 
 first in the flying darkness, sun-kissed and glorified 
 
CHICQUITA. 283 
 
 in the rosy mornings of all the cycles, the last to 
 catch tlie fading liglit of all the days. It is Pike's 
 Peak, ninety miles away. 
 
 Perchance before you turn to leave the spot, you 
 may absently glance at your immediate surround- 
 ings. If you do, you will have before you at once 
 the two great types of changelessness and frailty; for 
 at your feet, scarce noticed in its lonely humility, is 
 a single low mound, turfless and yellow, unmarked 
 by even'' so much as a cross or an inscription, but 
 nevertheless telling that old story which never needs 
 an interpreter, that here rests another of the wander- 
 ers, and that there is no land so lonely that it has 
 not its graves. 
 
 There may be a story more or less interesting 
 connected with every one of the unmarked graves of 
 the border. The rough lives that end here have all 
 a history. But no one remembers it. Here, as in 
 busy streets, the lives which, once ended, are deemed 
 worthy of remembrance, are few and very far be- 
 tween. But this lone and wind-kissed mound upon 
 the hill-top, albeit unmarked and seldom seen, has 
 about it some slight interest not common to the rest; 
 for it is the grave of a woman, and one of the strong- 
 est and most faithful of her sex. This is her story. 
 
 Years ago, a victim of the nomadic instinct named 
 Lemuel Sims — a man who had first forsaken his home 
 in the Missouri bottoms for a gold-hunting expedi- 
 tion to California, and after many changes, had again 
 started eastward, — found himself stranded upon the 
 inhospitable banks of the Arkansas, within the magic 
 circle of protection around old Fort Lyon. Sims 
 
284 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 had grown middle-aged in wandering, and had con- 
 sumed almost the last remains of that dogged per- 
 sistence and energy in migration which is the char- 
 acteristic of his class, by the time he had reached a 
 spot than which it would have been hard to find one 
 more entirely wanting in attractiveness. But he 
 was not alone, for he had a wife who had been his 
 companion in all his journeyings, and three daugh- 
 ters, who had irregularly come in upon his vicis- 
 situdes. In sending those guests who are often 
 unwelcome, but are never turned away, it has been 
 remarked that our fates are not always kind; and it 
 is certain that the elder Sim's Penates had been 
 especially inconsiderate. What he had needed was 
 boys; boys to whom should come kindly the lot of 
 the rancher, of the Indian fighter, the hunter, and 
 the poker-player, — who should diligently follow in 
 the footsteps of their wild predecessors, and live 
 hard and die suddenly. 
 
 "When Sims came to this, his last residence, the 
 order of march was as follows: First, Sims, a hun- 
 dred yards in advance, and across his shoulder the 
 long rifle that now has a place in museums, but 
 which has made a larger subordinate figure in Amer- 
 ican history than all the Winchesters and Sharps. 
 Secondly, two mules and an old wagon, Mrs. Sims 
 at the helm. Thirdly, three cows, some calves, and 
 five dogs ; and behind all, tw^o freckled, brawny, 
 barefoot girls. The third and youngest, the darling 
 of the family, — too 3^oung, indeed, for service, — 
 occnpied a cosy nest among the household goods, 
 and peeped out from beneath the dilapidated wagon- 
 
CHICQUITA. 285 
 
 cover, plump, saucj, and childishly content. She 
 had acquired the name of ''Chuck," abbreviated 
 from Chicquita, "little one;" and amid all the 
 changes that befell her thereafter the name clung to 
 her, regardless of its inappropriateness to such a 
 woman. 
 
 The Sims "outfit" was only one of a cavalcade 
 of such, strong enough for all purposes of society 
 and defence. Months had passed since the family 
 began this last move. The long summer days were 
 gone, and the nipping nights and scanty pasturage 
 were the cause of the premature ending of the jour- 
 ney. Having stopped only for a night, they had 
 concluded to stay until spring, or some other time 
 when a return of the migratory disease should seize 
 them. But the rough house of cottonwood logs 
 which Sims made, with the help of his family, was 
 a sheltered nook which soon became home-like. 
 There was game in abundance, and what was not 
 immediately consumed the old man exchanged for 
 groceries at the post. What was still more fortu- 
 nate, Sims's house was near the route of travel, and 
 he found he could indulge his love of gossip as 
 well as furnish an occasional meal to travelers. 
 When spring came, the stock had multiplied and 
 grown fat. Impelled by the force of circumstances, 
 unwonted industry was the order at Sims's. A small 
 garden was inclosed, and it came about that by June 
 the frontiersman and his family found themselves 
 prospering beyond anything in their past history. 
 The shanty took upon itself the dignity of a house — 
 or, as it was more fittingly called in that country, a 
 
286 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 ranch. '^Sims's" became known far and wide, and 
 the proprietor began to think himself gaining upon 
 the world both in money and respectability — two 
 things which, in the present unfortunate condition of 
 society, are not equally distributed. But this new 
 era of prosperity was not due to Siras's management. 
 It grew mainly out of the fact that he had three 
 daughters. The unfortunate constitution of the fam- 
 ily was the cause of its unwonted thrift. Any pas- 
 sably well-appearing white woman in such a place is 
 an enticement not to be resisted by the average 
 plainsman, and " Sims' s gals" were celebrities over 
 an extent of country half as large as the State of 
 New York. 
 
 But as time passed, and the small herds increased, 
 the females became objects of a still profounder inter- 
 est. They were spoken of as heiresses. N^everthe- 
 less, at tlie pinch, no amount of money could have 
 married either of the two eldest daughters. They 
 were tall, gaunt, and angular. They were as igno- 
 rant as Eve, and had so long performed the duties 
 which generally pertain to masculinity that either 
 was a fair match for a cinnamon bear. Not so with 
 the youngest. The most courtly and polished dames 
 in the land seldom display so much in the way of 
 personal beauty as this one rose aniong the thistles. 
 Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, strong and graceful, pet- 
 ted from infancy and nurtured in comparative ease, 
 healthful in sentiment as in body, she was the espe- 
 cial attraction, and came seldom in contact with the 
 rough characters who frequented her father's house, 
 and who were generally treated by her with the high 
 
CHICQUITA. 287 
 
 disdain of a superior creature. And slie had the 
 mind of the family. Her opinions were the law of 
 the house, and she occupied her autocratic position 
 without embarrassment, and ruled without check. 
 Old Sims was her confidential man-servant, and her 
 mother was only her jjrivileged associate and adviser. 
 As for her big sisters, they continually rebelled, and 
 always obeyed, though her caustic strictures upon 
 their hoydenish behavior toward the male visitors at 
 the ranch were unheeded. Tliere is a mysterious 
 law of primogeniture by which children embody the 
 characteristics of distant ancestors, and completely 
 ignoring the nearer family traits and circumstances, 
 reproduce the vices and virtues that are long forgot- 
 ten and the lineaments that have been dust for a 
 century. There must have been some rare blood in 
 the Sims ancestry, for this last scion of a race which 
 had. been subjected to all the influences of the fron- 
 tier — hardship and toil in the Alleghanies, ague and. 
 laziness in the Missouri bottoms, and poverty always, 
 — was totally unlike her family and her surroundings. 
 The great feet, gaunt limbs, big brown hands, coarse 
 complexions, and carroty hair, of her sisters and 
 mother, were things they had apart from Chicquita. 
 JSTobody knew how she had really learned to read, 
 pr by what mysterious process she had become pos- 
 sessed of certain well-thumbed books and estray 
 newspapers. ^o one ever inquired how her gar- 
 ments came to fit her round figure with a neatness 
 that was a miracle to the uninitiated, or why the coils 
 lay so neatly upon her shapely head. Finally the 
 pervading force that directed all things in and around 
 
288 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 the ranch came to be almost unquestioned. A beauty 
 with a will has always been a power in her immedi- 
 ate world ; — a beauty with brains and a will is some- 
 times the most complete and powerful of despots. 
 
 The Sims family had now been five years in 
 this locality — an unprecedented stay in one spot. 
 Mainly through the ability of the youngest child, 
 now a mature woman, aided by the circumstance of 
 a fortunate location, they had acquired cattle, money 
 and respectability. The money and the respecta- 
 bility were easily cared for, because Chicquita carried 
 them both upon her person. But the herd which 
 was gathered nightly into the corral was the lure of 
 final destruction. The charmed circle which was 
 drawn around the post was an uncertain and indefi- 
 nite one, that might be near or far, according to 
 the occasion ; and the incursions of Apaches are 
 governed by no conventionality. After long delay, 
 and frequent smaller thefts, came the final raid that 
 took all. 
 
 Old Sims and Chicquita started to go to the post. 
 The presence of the latter was necessary to keep the 
 former from getting drunk and fiilling into the hands 
 of military minions, to be incarcerated in the post 
 guard-house, — as, to say truth, had occurred to that 
 convivial person before. In the perfect peacefulness 
 and serenity of the early morning, it seemed impos- 
 sible that death and ruin could lurk so near. As 
 the old man dug his heels into the flanks of his 
 mule, and Chicquita looked complacently back from 
 her seat upon a pony only less wilful than his rider. 
 
CHICQUITA. 289 
 
 the two little dreamed that it was the last time they 
 were ever to see Sims's ranch. 
 
 As they threaded their way along the intricacies 
 of the trail, Chicquita of course in the lead, the old 
 man labored diligently to bring out the capacities of 
 his mule, wherever the path was sufficiently wide to 
 permit his riding beside his daughter. In truth, he 
 had something to say to her concerning those mat- 
 ters in which girls are always interested and about 
 which tliey are always unwilling to talk. A confi- 
 dential conversation with his daughter was one of 
 Sims's ungratified ambitions — a thing which in late 
 years he had often atte«ipted, and as often failed in 
 accomplishing. She cared for him, was kind and 
 loving enough, but seemed to have no ideas in com- 
 mon with liim; and do what he would this morning, 
 he could not keep pace with her. When two per- 
 sons are thus together, there is often an unconscious 
 idea of the thoughts of one in the mind of the other; 
 and the girl, for this or for some other reason, kept 
 constantly and persistently in the lead. But tlie 
 subject was one that bore heavily upon the old 
 man's mind, and, despairing of nearer approach, he 
 presently called out from behind : 
 
 "Chuck!" 
 
 " Well, what is it ? " came from the depths of the 
 sun-bonnet in front. 
 
 "I want to know now, honest, which of them 
 fellers which air one or 'tother on 'em alius around 
 our house, you're goin' finally to take. It looks as 
 though Sarey, bein' the oldest, shud hev some kind 
 of a chance, — an' she did afore you growed up; but 
 19 
 
290 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 now it 'pears as though she'd hev to wait. Kow, as 
 atween them fellers, I'd like to know, an' " — plain- 
 tively — '"pears to me like I've a right to know, 
 which uv 'em you're goin' to take. I couldn't he 
 long a choosin' ef 'twas me. W'y, Tom Harris is 
 big an' hansum, an' rides forty mile every week to 
 git a sight on ye. I can tell from that feller's looks 
 thet he'd swim the Arkansaw an' light anything 
 fur ye." 
 
 The face in the sun-bonnet grew red as a peony 
 at the mention of the name; but the old man did 
 not see that, and continued : 
 
 "But I'm mainly oneasy on account of there 
 bein' two on 'em. When Tom an' the slick-lookin' 
 feller from Maxwell's is there at the same time, they 
 passes looks wich means everything that two sich 
 fellers can do fur to win. I don't like 'tother feller, 
 an' neither do the old womim. He'd do amost any- 
 thing, in my opinion ; an' ef you don't make choice 
 atween 'em soon, them fellers '11 fight, an' that's 
 sartin. ' ' 
 
 The face which had been rosy grew slightly pale 
 as he talked. The old man had told his daughter 
 nothing she did not already know, but she was star- 
 tled to think that the hostility of the two men had 
 been noticed by others. The question with her was 
 not which one she would "take," as her father bad 
 expressed it, but how to rid herself of the disap- 
 pointed one. Therefore, woman-like, she had en- 
 couraged neither of them. To her acute mind the 
 affair had been a trouble for weeks, and the words of 
 her father gave her new cause for disquiet. 
 
CHICQUITA. 291 
 
 Old Sims, having thus broken the ice, woiikl 
 have continued; but his daughter stopped him witli 
 an exclamation, and pointed to the sand at their 
 feet. Sims approached and peered cautiously at the 
 spot indicated by his companion. There they v^^ere, 
 not an hour old, the ugly, inturned moccasin tracks 
 of four, eight, a dozen Indians. In a woman, tim- 
 idity and wit are often companions to each other, 
 and Chicquita reined in her horse with a determined 
 air. "I don't like that," said she; "I'm going 
 back. It can do no harm if the herd is driven home, 
 and I am going to see it done ; " and she turned her 
 horse. 
 
 "Wy, now," said Sims, "wat's the use ? Sich 
 things aint oncommon; come on." 
 
 "You can go on alone, if you think best," she 
 answered. 
 
 Before he could reply, she was gone; and, irri- 
 tated by what he considered a useless panic, he dog- 
 gedly continued his journey toward the post. The 
 sight of an Indian trail eight miles from home 
 seemed a poor cause for fright, even in a woman, 
 Sims thought, as he kept on his way. He fancied it 
 was not that which had caused her to retreat ; it was 
 to avoid any further conversation upon the topic he 
 had broached. " Cur'us critters is women," he pro- 
 foundly remarked to himself, as he jogged on. 
 
 Sims spent that night, unconscious of all its hor- 
 rors, happy-drunk in the post guard-house. 
 
 An apprehension that she could hardly under- 
 stand filled the mind of the girl as she urged her 
 pony toward home. Her father's words added to 
 
292 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 her excitement, and she thought of what Tom Har- 
 ris, strong, daring, and liandsome, would be at such 
 a time. His tall figure, cheery face and handsome 
 dress, as he sometimes sat upon his horse at her 
 father's door, blithe and fresh after his ride of forty 
 miles for her sake, came vividly before her. Even 
 in the midst of her anxiety and nervousness, she felt 
 that she and Tom, united in purpose and effort, 
 could do anything in this world. Such were the 
 strong woman's thoughts of the man she loved 
 because he was even stronger than she. 
 
 Two miles from home, tlie rider's heart sank 
 within her at the sight of a column of smoke on the 
 verge of the familiar horizon. Frightened indeed 
 now, she urged her pony to his utmost, and at the 
 crest of the hill that overlooked her home, or the 
 nook in which it had once stood, tlie truth burst 
 upon her that while her father had talked to h^r of 
 her lovers, and while she was yet speculating upon 
 the footprints in the sand, the torch had been applied, 
 and now herds, house, mother, and sisters were all 
 gone. 
 
 It is not a romance, or a tale c»f hair breadth 
 'scapes, or a narration of the adventures of a second- 
 class hero in a dime novel. It occurred then as it 
 does now, every year upon the frontier. It was the 
 burning of a home, and the murder and captivity of 
 its occupants. One who desires to tell a marvellous 
 story for the delight of the groundlings must find a 
 more uncommon incident than this. It was to Chic- 
 quita a moment of conflicting grief and terror, with 
 an overwhelming sense of utter loneliness and help- 
 
CHICQUITA. 293 
 
 lessness. The beautiful and subtle sense of woman 
 may guide, but it can neither guard nor revenge. 
 There seemed no help, and the gii-1 wished in her 
 heart she had gone with the rest. But she was not 
 so entirely alone, for as she came nearer she saw the 
 tall figure of Tom Harris, newly alighted from an 
 all-night ride, standing beside his panting horse, so 
 entirely occupied with a despairing contemplation of 
 the smouldering ruins that he had not as yet noticed 
 her approach. But when he quickly turned and rec- 
 ognized her, his grim face took color like a flash. 
 In truth, Tom's paleness was not the paleness of 
 fear. Words were inadequate to express the bitter- 
 ness with which he had cursed the Apaches, as he 
 stood looking at the burning house, and thinking 
 with a pang that she was among the victims. But 
 when he turned and saw her, all was thenceforth fair 
 and serene to Tom Harris. With a frontiersman's 
 quick perception of circumstances and situations of 
 this kind, he understood, and asked no questions. 
 
 "The 'Paches are clear gone with everything. 
 Miss," he said. "They must a' done it in ten min- 
 its. Come, light down now, wont ye ? The pony's 
 about done for, an' — W'y now Miss, 't aint no use 
 a grievin'. Ye can't bring 'em back, an' ye can't 
 catch the Injuns, — not today. I'll be even with 
 'em if I live, but I've known a many such things in 
 my time, an' — " 
 
 Tom stopped, for he had a sense of how tame and 
 meaningless his rude eiForts at comfort were to the 
 silent and horror-stricken woman before him, whose 
 whole mind seemed engrossed in a struggle with the 
 
294 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 calamity that had befallen her. The well-meaning 
 fellow went away and waited some distance apart. 
 And while he stood there the white despairing face 
 grew still whiter, and she slipped helplessly from 
 the pony, and lay a lifeless heap upon the ground. 
 This was the time of the frontiersman's despair. In 
 all his life's vicissitudes, there had been none like 
 this. He knew nothing of what he ought to do in 
 the case of a fainting fit, and was afraid to try. But 
 he stripped the thick blankets from his horse and 
 the pony, and hurriedly spread them in the shade 
 by the bank side. 'Then he made a pillow of his 
 saddle — a thing he had often done for himself; and 
 with a redness that rose to his temples, and a thrill 
 that went to his fingers' ends, he lifted the girl, and, 
 strong as he was, fairly staggering under the bur- 
 den, laid her upon the couch he had made. He took 
 his own soft serape, with its crimson stripes, and 
 spread it for a covering, and filled his' canteen and 
 placed it near her, possibly with a question if she 
 would ever drink from such a thing as that. Then 
 he sat down afar ofi", and listlessly picked holes in 
 the ground with his long knife, and whistled softly, 
 and sighed within himself. Tom loved the woman 
 who lay there, and because he loved her he was 
 afraid she would die, and besides, was afraid of her, 
 herself. Most men experience the same feeling once 
 in their lives. 
 
 But there had been another and an unseen spec- 
 tator of all this. We cannot tell by what peculiar 
 conjunction of the planets things in this world fall 
 out as they do, but while Tom was executing his 
 
CHICQUITA. 295 
 
 plans of comfort for tlie girl, "the slick-lookin' fel- 
 ler from Maxwell's" was watching afar off. He 
 came no nearer, because he* did not at first under- 
 stand the situation. The burning building suggested 
 Indians, and he wished no nearer acquaintance with 
 them, should they still be there. But while he 
 looked, he saw and recognized those two, and a 
 pang of jealousy entered his heart. Then he stayed 
 at a distance because he desired to keep for future 
 misrepresentation the circumstances of which he 
 had been an unseen witness ; and finally he rode 
 away, baffled and puzzled, and pondering in his 
 heart some scheme that could harm his formidable 
 rival. 
 
 The afternoon passed slowly away, and still the 
 anxious and unhappy Tom Harris kept watch. Oc- 
 casionally he crept on tiptoe and looked at his 
 charge. She seemed asleep. Finally he hobbled the 
 two horses to prevent escape, gathered some of the 
 vegetables that were left in the ruined garden, and 
 stifled a strong man's hunger with young radishes, 
 green tomatoes and oilless lettuce. He could afford 
 to wait, for he was engaged in what he wondered to 
 think was, in spite of all his anxiety and perplexity, 
 the most delightful vigil of his life. He did not 
 know that hours ago the occupant of the couch had 
 opened her eyes, had touched the crimson-barred 
 serape, had seen the stalwart sentinel afar off, and 
 had lain quiet, exhausted with anxiety, and perhaps 
 oppressed by the somnolence of grief. 
 
 Through the long watches of the night the sleep- 
 less frontiersman paced back and forth, listening to 
 
^96 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 tbe chatter of the coyote and tlie gray wolfs long 
 drawn howl. He scared away the prowlers of the 
 night, and listened and waited. Anon he crept close 
 to the couch of the sleeper, and listened to her 
 breathing, doubtful if she were not dead, then crept 
 away again with the happy consciousness that Love 
 and he had all the wilderness to themselves. 
 
 In the early morning he heard the clank of sabres 
 and the hum of voices, and a troop of cavalry 
 appeared from the post, — among them old Sims, 
 red-eyed and trembling, but sobered by apprehen- 
 sion and grief. The man from Maxwell's had con- 
 veyed the news, — acting doubtless more from a 
 sense of the delightfulness of the task of carrying 
 ill tidings than from any sense of duty or desire to 
 be of service. They left men and means for convey- 
 ing the girl back to the post, and old Sims returned 
 with her. It is but a mere unimportant episode, 
 that she cast the glamour of her womanliness over 
 the commandant's wife, and sat at her table an 
 invited guest. That was the first lady Chicquita 
 had ever seen ; and to her, as the days passed, the 
 story of the tall lover and his night watch, and all 
 the girl's hopes and thoughts about him, became as 
 an open page. And as for Tom Harris, the soldiers 
 had given him something to eat, and he mounted his 
 horse and accompanied them on the trail. His step 
 was as light and his heart as merry as though he 
 had slept in his bed ; for as he looked back the last 
 time the face he saw was sad and white, but the eyes 
 were those of a woman who looks after one she loves 
 and hopes to see again. 
 
CmCQUITA. 297 
 
 Frail of body now, but strong of purpose, the 
 unconquerable spirit of Sims' s daughter employed 
 itself in directing the building of another house upon 
 the spot that had been so long her home. In a 
 month she and Sims were again established, in the 
 little prairie nook, in a cabin not unlike the last, but 
 surrounded bv a palisade which bade defiance to 
 Indian assault. The two were by no means poor ; 
 and while the old man drowned the past in half- 
 drunken inanity, the dependants of the house 
 did the work the two daughters had once done. 
 Chicquita, stately and sad, but softened, seemed 
 always to wait and watch for some one who never 
 came, and of whom she never spoke. The troops 
 with whom Tom Harris went away had long since 
 returned. They reported a day's running fight, 
 which was duly mentioned in general orders, but in 
 which they had suifered no losses. If Tom had 
 returned to his place, why did he not come again to 
 Sims's ranch? So she used constantly to ask herself. 
 And then there was his beautiful scrape ; he might 
 even come for that. But he did not. The man 
 from Maxwell's came, and so placid was his recep- 
 tion that he straightway went away again. Yet he 
 came again. The pale-faced woman had drooped a 
 little, he thought, and had come to be a blue-veined 
 and frail-looking creature, who seemed to care even 
 less for his distinguished company than ever before. 
 But even while she cooled his ardor with a grand 
 dignity, she seemed listening for some footfall, wait- 
 ing for some one who never came. 
 
 Poor girl; would she never know? Was it to be 
 
298 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 like a wilderness poem of somebody waiting, waiting, 
 while the years passed and until death came? There 
 was one woman in all the world to whom she might 
 go, and who knew or could discover where he was 
 for whom she had watched so long, and who never 
 came. Old Sims one day carried this tall frail 
 daughter of his to the post. She was willing to talk 
 with him now, only she said, whenever he came too 
 near the forbidden subject, "You cannot under- 
 stand, papa," and the old man would again relapse 
 into a sad silence. Pie could not understand his 
 daughter either. She was of an alien kind to him 
 forever. 
 
 The commandant's wife kissed Chicquita, and 
 looked unutterable things. It was come at last, — 
 the task she dreaded, the tale she hoped to lighten 
 as best she might. But the sad face touched her 
 heart, and she wept, and weeping told it all. I do nc^t 
 know what passed between the worldly lady and her 
 protegee^ as the two sat together holding each other's 
 hands, the one pale and cold, the other crying for 
 sympathy and pity, her dainty shoulder offering a 
 resting-place for a head whose bright coils shone in 
 contrast to the wanness of her cheek. "My hus- 
 band has always known," she said, "but he hoped 
 you might — forget. We kept it from you, hoping 
 that time would cure all. He was the only man to 
 fall. He was foremost, and the soldiers thought he 
 only went for amusement, and because he hated 
 Indians. They buried him where he fell — they 
 could not do otherwise ; and I am sorry we did not 
 tell you long ago. But we did not understand — 
 
CHICQUITA. 299 
 
 did not understand that you were so good and brave 
 as you are. You do not know how much I wish he 
 had never gone. He would have come back if he 
 liad lived, and he was very brave. We will all do 
 anything for you that we can. If you will only stay 
 with me for a while, and be petted and nursed, I 
 sliould so like to have you. It is the saddest thing 
 I liave ever known, and you, — you are not like the 
 rest." 
 
 Tom was dead. She must have known it before, 
 she changed so slightly at tlie tidings. Perhaps she 
 had only hoped against hope, having long ago known 
 that the man whose stature she had measured as she 
 lay through that summer night upon the couch he 
 had made for her would have returned had he been 
 alive. The sleeplessness of courage and honor was 
 not for naught. It was the one memory of which 
 she was proud, the one keepsake of him who would 
 never come back. The love of a life in which it was 
 the only glimpse of something brighter and happier 
 was as much a reality as though it had been plighted 
 a thousand times. Perhaps the ancestral courage 
 and hope which had come to her through such 
 degenerate veins helped her to die. 
 
 She crept to the bedside, whose topmost cover 
 was a crimson-barred serape ; but she never left it 
 again. The bright strong face that had looked back 
 at her in the saddle-leap a few weeks ago, was still 
 hers. What wonder that, since he could not come 
 to her, — to the house that, with a strong woman's 
 fancy she had made for him to protect her in, — she 
 should go to him ? The sublimities of life are ever 
 
300 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 
 
 incomplete ; the best hopes are hopes only. Her 
 life must have a memory compared to which the 
 realities of most are but tame. 
 
 It is but a camp-fire story, and time was when 
 every soldier at the now abandoned post, whose bro- 
 ken walls impress the traveller with a new aspect of 
 desolation as he passes by, knew the place of "Chic- 
 quita's Grave." But the years have passed, and 
 now only the legend remains : — the legend and the 
 lonesome mound, that serve at least to recall the 
 almost forgotten truth tliat there is no land so far 
 and silent that it has not its loves and its graves. 
 
XYII. 
 AEMY MULES. 
 
 a^HERE is an important personage in military 
 - circles who seems not yet to have found a biog- 
 rapher. He has been used as a comparative, has 
 been maligned by having a numerous class likened 
 to him, and honored in the use of a thousand prov- 
 erbs, maxims, and descriptive epithets. Yet he 
 occupies the unusual position of one who cannot be 
 dispensed with. The army mule has long since 
 become a by-word, and his reputed "cheek" an 
 American synonym. His service with the military 
 is professional, and between him and his drivers 
 there exists a certain well-understood sympathy and 
 kinship. Mule-driving is a passion with a certain 
 class, and the horse takes a place of comparative 
 insignificance, as a creature fit only for the drawing 
 of caissons and the carrying of cavalrymen. The 
 commissary and quartermaster's departments, with- 
 out which it would be impossible to live, are in 
 charge of the mule. The government of the Repub- 
 lic is the largest mule owner in the world. The two 
 matters of greatest importance in military afi^airs 
 are, first, the health and efiiciency of the men ; and 
 second, the condition of the mules. 
 
 Nevertheless, he is an outrage upon nature, a 
 monstrosity, a combination of the donkey and the 
 
 301 
 
302 . FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 horse, with the qualities of neither and excelling 
 both. He is the puzzle of the brutes, and stands 
 alone in his nature and qualities, unapproachable in 
 devilment, fathomless in cunning, born old in crime, 
 of disreputable paternity and incapable of posterity, 
 stolid, imperturbable, with no love for anything but 
 the perpetration of tricks, no dexterity in aught save 
 the flinging of his heels, no desire for anything but 
 rations — stolen if possible and by preference — and 
 no affection at all. Such is the mule. 
 
 Yet he is an animal who deserves a very differ- 
 ent biography from any that so far any one has 
 found it in his heart to write of him. There are 
 men whom all mules hate, probably because of the 
 existence of some rivalry betw^een the two; who are 
 ever the victims of one of those lightning blows 
 which are wonders of dexterity and force, considered 
 as coming from so clumsy a limb. These are they 
 who have given our long-eared friend his reputation. 
 The mule is an animal of character, — bad it may be, 
 but still a defined though not a very well understood 
 character. Many men have not that much to recom- 
 mend them. 
 
 Everybody knows this anomaly in animalism, as 
 they fancy very well indeed, unless it should be 
 some far down-eastern young person, who may im- 
 agine him to be only a variety of the genus asinus. 
 There was a returned soldier once who was accus- 
 tomed to get himself pitied by enumerating among 
 his hardships the item that he had been more than 
 once obliged to subsist upon mule's milk. But, at 
 least, we all know him by sight in the street. We 
 
AEilfY 3IULES. 303 
 
 
 have marked the queer, knowing, leery, sidelong 
 glance of liis eye at us as we passed by. We have 
 seen the furtive agility with which the wisp of hay 
 is stolen from the passing wagon, and the entire 
 stolidity with which he stands asleep in the sun. 
 The yearling mule is undoubtedly the incarnation 
 and sum-total of quadrupedal deviltry. He is the 
 originator of a distinct and uninterrupted series of 
 grotesque diabolisms. With his scant and ungrace- 
 ful tail tangled with whole acres of heterogeneous 
 burs, and the long and faded hair upon his belly 
 waving in the breeze, his fuzzy mane, scarce grown 
 to any likeness of hair, sits upon him with the same 
 air as do the whiskers of a shaveling country youth. 
 He has in his movements a peculiar jog-trot, which 
 in itself suggests careless and irredeemable depravity. 
 It is the gait of one who steadily goes to the bad, 
 but never quite gets there. At that age, the eyes 
 are foxy and shrewd, and lack the look of deep sad- 
 ness so often seen in those of his aged relative of the 
 dray and jobbing-wagon. The little black hoofs are 
 hard and polished, and, like those of the goat and 
 chamois, especially fitted for clinging in slippery 
 places. And those ears; — in all his kind they 
 have ever refused to be hidden. Even as he stands 
 thinking, against the sunny side of the barn, they 
 are ever moving, — now backward, now forward, and 
 in opposite ways. You can tell by these tokens 
 almost the moment when an unusually malevolent 
 idea is born within him. When they are laid fairly 
 along his neck, his countenance is a demonstration 
 of the truth of physiognomy. Mischief has then 
 
304 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 its incarnation. The clumsy limbs astonish you 
 with sudden limberness, and fly high in the air with 
 a rapidity that defies vision. Old, stiff, worn-out, 
 the faculty of acrobatic kicking never leaves him, 
 whatever else may befall his numb faculties. 
 
 Men whose labors in this life have taken the 
 strange direction of mule-raising, are supposed to 
 lead short lives and troublous ones. From infancy 
 to age, there is no fence that will hold, no system 
 that will train the creature into staid and respecta- 
 ble barn-yard habits. Place twenty of these young- 
 sters at a long trough, feed them liberally with oats, 
 and it will be more from luck than prudence if he 
 whose duty it is to give them provender succeeds in 
 getting out from among the shaggy conclave with 
 less than twenty out of the forty hoofs having been 
 flung in his face. Ere you can turn to look, the 
 creature has meekly reversed his ears, and is indus- 
 triously champing his provender, seeming mildly to 
 wonder how you could ever have suspected A^m. 
 
 The very existence of the mule argues against the 
 sagacity of his ancestor, the horse. Is there any 
 more pitiful spectacle than a stalwart mare, whose 
 ears are clean-cut and sharp, and whose veins stand 
 out over her glossy skin, looking affectionately over 
 her shoulder at the little dun-colored, fuzzy, impish 
 monstrosity who tugs at her udders ? One would 
 think she would run away and abandon it to starve, 
 — if, indeed, a young mule can be starved; or make 
 it convenient to lie down upon it. But she never 
 does, and it goes far to show. how poor judges moth- 
 ers are of their own children. 
 
ARMY 3IULES. 305 
 
 It has long been known that there is only one 
 way in which a mule can be punished, and, strange 
 to say, that is by imposing a strain upon his sensi- 
 bilities. A mule by himself is the wretchedest of 
 beasts. He may not be so very particular about its 
 quality, but he must have company; companions to 
 tease and torment, to bite and kick and steal from, 
 and over w^hose backs he can rest his intelligent 
 head to stare at the passers-by. Place him in a 
 field over whose fence he cannot jump, and which 
 he cannot break,— I must be pardoned if I verge 
 upon romance in ^this supposition, — and he will 
 betake himself to the staid company of the unfrisky 
 cows, or even to the pigs who are there with him, 
 and proceed to bite their backs, and otherwise to 
 interfere with their accustomed habits and bodily 
 comfort. But he never forgets his relationship to his 
 more respectable uncles and cousins once removed. 
 Pie insists upon considering the horse his brother, 
 and, as is well known, can only be coaxed along the 
 high-way to market in peace by being enticed by an 
 elderly gray mare, on whose neck there is a bell, 
 and whom he will follow to the ends of the earth. 
 On the other hand, he disdains his poor relations, 
 the asses, and other mules, maintaining toward them 
 a demeanor which no more becomes him than it 
 does some of his imitators in a higher plane of 
 existence. He will have naught to do with the 
 thistle-eating fraternity, and will scarce recognize 
 them even while undergoing his punishment of soli- 
 tary confinement. 
 
 But all this superficial, and manifestly only one 
 20 
 
306 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 side of the case. Since it is possible for some reader 
 to say that this chapter is a kind of autobiography, 
 and born of introspection, I will hasten to relate the 
 other side of the story, — part of which is that this 
 curious brute is probably the most useful of the 
 dumb toilers whom man holds in perpetual slavery. 
 His cool philosophy never forsakes him, in labors 
 that no other animal has been found capable of per- 
 forming. It is on tlie plains, and in the corrals of 
 the far Southwest, that the mule and his master 
 fully understand each other. Tliese desolate lands, 
 with their long and waterless roads, are the fields of 
 his usefulness. The mule is there a popular and 
 aristocratic beast. The weather-battered wagon- 
 master of a government train knows intimately 
 every animal of the two or three hundred of his 
 herd. The teamster has a pet or characteristic name 
 for each sleek creature of his team of six. He is 
 with them day and night, and enjoys their society, 
 and will steal corn for them much sooner than he 
 would steal it for himself. He will empty his care- 
 fully-saved keg, and give each of his companions a 
 hatful of water. A companionship springs up be- 
 tween the man and his mules that is little less than 
 touching. They know him from afar, and he leads 
 them anywhere, merely holding them by the chin. 
 
 Under such circumstances, the mule develops 
 wonderfully. He is sedate, patient, tractable, hand- 
 some, proud of his bells and his occupation, alto- 
 gether understanding his business better than any 
 draught animal has done since the Conestoga days. 
 The steady, daily, methodical work suits him. He 
 
AEiWY 3WLES. 307 
 
 grows actually fat upon it ; and as the years pass, 
 each mule gains for himself a reputation among the 
 knowing ones. I knew a stall in that remote region 
 where for fourteen years stood a sleek and dignified 
 mule known through all the country as "Mole." 
 The old girl had carried the successive commanders 
 of the little i)ost thousands of miles in the number- 
 less scouting expeditions that had gone out thence. 
 She had long been one of the personages of the 
 place, and no one doubted that she knew more than 
 the common run of soldiers, and that if she could 
 have talked her opinions would have been valuable. 
 I remember another, an ugly little tangle-maned 
 creature who wagged his long ears to a grotesque 
 name that it is not necessary to mention. Too small 
 for ordinary packing purposes, his business from 
 time immemorial had been to carry the officer's 
 mess. His ugly head had known no bridle for 
 years. He was a gamin of his tribe. Kettles and 
 pots and long-handled pans were hung and tied to 
 every available projection upon his scrawny person. 
 Countless efforts had been made to make him go 
 hindermost of the long train of his brethren, where, 
 according to rule, he really belonged. Suddenly, 
 always in some particularly narrow place, he would 
 perform that manoeuvre known as a ^'' pasear^ 
 Ducking his head, and whisking his scurvy tail, he 
 would dash through the line from rear to front, and 
 take his place, with all his unsightly appendages, 
 beside the commandant, and in the very place of 
 honor. A thrashing and a sending to the rear only 
 enabled him to perform this pleasing feat the oftener. 
 
308 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 Unconscious of personal ugliness, lie considered him- 
 self the chief ornament to head-quarters. He was 
 always there. He investigated the cookery, and 
 looked after the bedding, and the commandant was 
 usually awakened early in the morning by. his fum- 
 bling in an investigatory sort of way in his hair. 
 The last exploit of his which I recollect was tliat of 
 walking in between the officer and the men one 
 morning at guard-mount, two days after having been 
 stolen by the Comanches; — a feat never before per- 
 formed by man or mule. 
 
 It is long since conceded by those who know him 
 that the army mule is the philosopher of the animal 
 kingdom. Heretofore the owl and the raven 'have 
 shared that reputation, to the. unfair exclusion of all 
 others. It is time that mere stupidity should be 
 called by its proper name. Tlie lack of generous 
 spirit which is his notorious fault is the result of a 
 shrewd calculation as to the amount of work he 
 ought to be required to do. A very tired mule will 
 stop in the road, and no amount of persuasion or 
 force will induce him to go further. But his fibres 
 are tough, and his endurance is wonderful, and he 
 performs tasks of which no other animal in the service 
 of man is capable. Mnety miles, a long day and 
 night, he can go without water. Past midnight you 
 will see each long-eared philosopher at his steady 
 jog-trot, wagging his ears backward and forward, and 
 pulling upon his bits. He knows the nature of the 
 emergency as well as his driver does. Tlie nostrils 
 are dilated, the eyes have a distressed look, and the 
 gaunt flanks throb. But there is no dragging, no 
 
ABMY MULES. 309 
 
 complaint. On and on in tlie gloom and silence for 
 you do not know or care liow long, and suddenly the 
 whole line sets up that peculiar cry which is not the 
 voice of the horse, or of the ass, neither a mixture of 
 the two. You may know the animal for years in 
 civilization, and not hear it. It means the scent of 
 water, perhaps yet miles away; and soon you can 
 see upon the horizon the stunted trees which stand 
 sparsely upon the banks of the stream which marks 
 the end of tlie desert. 
 
 The carrying capacity of this creature is undoubt- 
 edly inherited from the disreputable side of his fiim- 
 ily, whose flabby sides, thin spines, and cattish 
 hams, indicate anything but a remarkable ability to 
 plod over hill and dale bearing burdens that weigh 
 half as much as themselves. In the usual military 
 operations of the border, wagons are never used. 
 There are no roads, but in their stead steep moun- 
 tain-sides, narrow passes, rocks, sand, and never so 
 much as a path. It is mostly a country absolutely 
 and irredeemably desolate and barren, and yet all 
 who traverse it must eat. If there were game in 
 any quantity, it could not be killed, for the noise of 
 firearms would render useless all the hard toil of a 
 scouting party. 
 
 The train that files out of a frontier post upon 
 one of these scouting expeditions is a very grotesque 
 procession, the whole idea of which is born of neces- 
 sity in a mountain country, and which is totally 
 uidike anything ever done during the great struggle 
 that was our school of war. Accompanying a lim- 
 ited number of men, is a large number of mules, 
 
310 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 each one laden with liis share of the absolute neces- 
 sities of life ; bread and bacon, coffee and cartridges. 
 There is a master of the mules, whose services are 
 as indispensable as those of the commanding officer. 
 Each solemn beast, impressed with the gravity of his 
 undertaking, follows in the footsteps of the brother 
 who liappens to be ahead of him, his huge load 
 swaying from side to side, his long ears wagging, 
 and his countenance taking day by day a deeper 
 solemnity of expression. He does not stumble or 
 wander, and wastes no energy in any kind of devia- 
 tions ; but he often lies down and dies with his load 
 upon his back. His burden is distributed, his sad- 
 dle thrown away, and he is left where he falls. 
 
 A mule's luxury is to roll — not one-sidedly and 
 lazily, but in a regular tumble, accompanied by 
 snorts, groans, and grunts. Every time his pack is 
 removed, he is sure to engage in a general shaking 
 up of his whole corporal system. The whole hun- 
 dred or two will be at it at once. It comes before 
 eating, drinking, or any other diversion. But the 
 next thing is grass, if there be any, and if not, the 
 nearest approach to it. Then, in the early morning, 
 while yet the stars are shining, comes the reloading 
 and the starting off again. Tired, lame, lean, galled, 
 as he may be, he seldom shows any sign of resent- 
 ment at the untimely renewal of his toil — a toil that 
 is thankless and cruel, that knows no respite, and 
 that is ended only by death. 
 
 There can scarcely be a recollection of a western 
 camp-fire around which the mule is not a figure — 
 sometimes, indeed, too much of one. Dapper Cap- 
 
ARMY MULES. 311 
 
 tain Jinks is not then himself — or, rather, he is his 
 true self. It is the scantiest and most cheerless of 
 little fires that is kindled to cook his bacon and boil 
 his coffee. His pillow is a saddle or nothing, his 
 mattress an old blue overcoat, and his covering a 
 gray blanket. His clothes are those of a private, 
 and his hat is the broad-brimmed slouch that is 
 pulled low over his brows by day, worn all night, 
 and used as a universal duster, castigator of insects, 
 fire-persuader, and general vade mecum. Sometimes 
 there is that variety of canopy known as a " dog- 
 tent," hoisted upon improvised sticks to keep off the 
 wind, or crawled under by Jinks in case of frost. It 
 is, however, usually eaten by the mules at the 
 beginning of the campaign, and philosophically done 
 without for the remainder. 
 
 Here, while the always-thorny ground is covered 
 with recumbent figures pell-mell around him, Jinks 
 props his back against a rock, gazes thoughtfully 
 into the coals, smokes, amuses himself with far-away 
 thoughts, and tells stories. If one were by himself 
 at a little distance, he would be struck by the 
 strange incongruity of the hilarity that occasionally 
 reaches his ears. Ragged sentinels stand sleepily 
 upon the outskirts, not so much as vedettes against 
 the enemy as guardians of the mules. JSTevertheless, 
 it would take but little to awake this militarj^ repose 
 into great activity and surprising order. Where all 
 was apparent confusion the evening before, at sun- 
 rise there is not a vestige left. They were here ; 
 they are gone. The long train has wound itself 
 av/ay among voiceless hills, intent upon some dim 
 
312 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 trail, or has turned suddenly into some unmapped 
 pass, and has left nothing behind but some little 
 heaps of gray ashes. 
 
 Sometimes, but in truth not often, the mountain 
 Apache is actually traced to his hiding-place. He 
 has been stalked for three weeks, and has been 
 patiently crept upon while he and his belongings 
 were lying safe in some inaccessible nook of the 
 mountains. It is his hiding-place and storehouse 
 after his last raid, an exploit but for which the mili- 
 tary would have let him alone. He has had every 
 advantage over his enemies. He knows the country 
 as a citizen knows the streets of his town. He has 
 made a flying raid upon the settlements, killed, 
 burned, and. carried captive. The same band has 
 been in a dozen localities, and has gone here and 
 there, stealing, killing, and waylaying, for the mere 
 love of it. But somebody has gotten upon his trail, 
 and the mules have been packed. It sometimes 
 ends with the complete destruction of his rancherea, 
 the destruction of all his winter's provender, the 
 loss of some members of his family, and the great 
 reduction of his fighting force. 
 
 It results, therefore, that while the above may 
 seem a digression from the important subject under 
 consideration, the army mule, with all his "cheek," 
 is still the chief factor in all military operations on 
 the frontier. His corral is the most interesting and 
 important appurtenance of a military post, and his 
 care is a thing of solicitude on the part of all con- 
 cerned in the efficiency of the service. He was 
 adopted in the place of the horse in the beginning, 
 because he had a character, and from it he has never 
 
ahmy mules, 313 
 
 been known to diverge. It is not asserted that anyone 
 quite understands liiin, or after many years of asso- 
 ciation with him is able to tell precisely what he 
 might not take it into his long head to do. But he 
 is faithful to his tyrant to the end and death. He 
 will not leave the camp-fire or the wagon, though 
 shelterless and unfed. Once away from his stall, 
 and he persistently stays by his master, carrying 
 him all day and standing beside his bed all night, 
 looking his hunger with all the eloquence of his 
 doleful face, and crying his peculiar note of distress 
 at intervals frequent enough to accomplish his object 
 of keeping his owner awake and sorry. His rela- 
 tive, the horse, has for ages been the especial pet of 
 man, and has deserved to be. Yet there was never 
 a plebeian mule, doomed from colthood to unremit- 
 ting toil, who was not infinitely his superior in that 
 peculiar knowledge that has never been classified, 
 that "sense" that is neither memory nor mind, 
 which is inadequately described by the term sagaci- 
 ty, which is not instinct, and which is a marked 
 characteristic in all the long-eared and thistle-eating 
 fraternity. He is docile and devilish, tricky and 
 faithful, never requires to be broken and never is 
 broken, is always in difficulty and is never injured, 
 is reckless of any and all consequences and - yet 
 exceedingly cautious. He is awkward and clumsy 
 in gait and appearance, and slow of foot, yet comes 
 out fresh and vigorous at the end of journeys that 
 wear his rider to illness and lameness. He is, taken 
 all in all, a study in natural history that will never 
 have a definite conclusion, a creature that is a 
 sphinx, and yet a mule. 
 
XYIII. 
 A LOI^ESOME CHRISTIAK 
 
 GRIMES was his name — ''Old Grimes" he was 
 called by the irreverent world that knew him 
 well, and which doubtless he knew too in return, as 
 a man knows something that has not been pleasant 
 to him, and the pain and wickedness and hollowness 
 of which have been forced upon him by a grim ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Grimes's name was the only thing about him that 
 offered any poetic suggestion, and was not lightly 
 passed or forgotten by those who saw him every day. 
 The legend of that old man whose dirge has been 
 sung these sixty years — whose coat was old, and 
 gray, and buttoned down before, in every version of 
 that irreverent elegy — is the common inheritance 
 of all the English-speaking race, wherever they wan- 
 der. The ragged urchins twanged it endlessly in his 
 ears from behind the corners of shanties whenever 
 his bent figure came in sight. Even tlie grown-up 
 Texans, who lounged, gambled, and traded horses 
 at the sutler's store, repeated it to him as a standing 
 joke that could not be worn out. But he paid no 
 attention or diverted the topic when he could, and 
 hobbled away slowly, ever muttering to himself 
 something that nobody heard or heeded. Had 
 Grimes been a common man, he would have died of 
 
 214 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 815 
 
 the torture of iteration, or have made shift, some 
 fateful day, to have killed some one of his torment- 
 ors. It would have been quite to his credit, in the 
 country in which he lived, to have done the latter. 
 But he did neither. In truth, Grimes was not an 
 ordinary person. 
 
 The residence of this song-tormented old person 
 was a rough and canvas-covered shanty, situated by 
 a rambling path in the midst of a congregation of 
 such, some better, some worse. The place was 
 known by the denizens of the neighboring post as 
 "Slabtown." The open and unfinished quadrangle, 
 and the square stone houses that had all a homeless 
 and dreary look, were some half-mile away. Fort 
 Concho was confessedly a liard place, all of it. Slab- 
 town was its foster-child, filled with stranded emi- 
 grants, cattle-herders, gamblers, and men who had 
 no occupation. Out toward the bleak northwest, 
 Llano Estacado stretched its endless leagues of rock 
 and cactus — the wildest land beneath the flag, 
 governed and owned by the Comanche, and utterly 
 useless and tenantless for all time, save for that 
 Saxon savage almost as wild as he. 
 
 But Slabtown, straggling up from the little river's 
 side, sat with its shanties under tlie lee of tlie post, 
 fully confiding in its military neighbor. Here were 
 privileged to come and remain through the windy 
 Texas winter, all men, with a due proportion of 
 women, whose tastes or whose occupations led them 
 to the far verge of civilization. Thither came the 
 cattle-man, and watched his wikl herds on the neigh- 
 boring hills, until returning greenness warned him 
 
316 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 off upon the California trail. Thither returned tlie 
 man who liad accomplished tlie wonderful journey, 
 laden with fortunate gold. Bearded, broad-brimmed, 
 and belted, liere lounged a small army of guides and 
 trailers, playing shrewd games at cards, drinking 
 San Antonio whiskey, and at internals shooting at 
 each other. The gaunt and long-footed Texas girl, 
 chalky, yellow-haired, and awkward, minced from 
 cabin to cabin with neighborly gossip, and did her 
 calico-and-green-ribbon shopping at the pine coun- 
 ters of the trader's stores. There were urchins 
 many, coatless and shoeless from January to Decem- 
 ber, who were as the calves of this corral of human- 
 ity. Here, too, was that pink of the border, the 
 dashing stage- driver, who, for forty dollars per 
 month, every day ran the gauntlet through sixty 
 miles of Indian-haunted desolation, and who, at the 
 end of his "trick," rewarded himself with two days 
 of dalliance with the belles of Slabtown, to whom, 
 indeed, he was as the apple of their pale eyes. 
 
 And among these people lived Father Grimes, 
 and these were they who sang the ancient ditty to 
 him as he passed by. What his occupation was, 
 nobody precisely knew or cared; but they " 'lowed " 
 he was "well-heeled," and "had a little tucked 
 away somewhere." In the particular condition of 
 - society — or, rather, want of all society — that envi- 
 roned him, the inquiry into Grimes's business would 
 hardly have gone so far as that, had it not been that 
 his daughter occupied a conspicuous position as the 
 prettiest girl at Concho, and was famous alike for 
 the brilliancy of her cheeks and her dresses. She 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 317 
 
 and Father Grimes lived alone, and it was scarcely 
 tliouglit of that at some former period a mother had 
 been necessary in the usual course of nature. " Old 
 Grimes and his gal " filled all the Grimes horizon, 
 and there was no idea or feeling connected with 
 them that had any further association. 
 
 It would be entirely in accordance with good taste 
 if it were possible now to describe a dutiful daughter, 
 entirely devoted to her aged father, and resenting the 
 verbal indignities daily heaped upon him. But the 
 facts, as somewhat dimly remembered, altogether 
 forbid. Of all the old man's troubles, his daughter 
 was probably the greatest. She was not gaunt and 
 angular, like the 'other ladies of Slabtown as a rule; 
 her cheeks were like peonies, and her round figure 
 had a perceptible jellyish shaking as she walked. 
 She disturbed her father's slumbers with hoydenish 
 laughter, while the hours struck small in the night 
 watches, and while her many admirers stayed and 
 would not go. She was a coquette besides, and 
 refused to comfort the paternal heart by assuming 
 the hard duties of a Texan's wife. Sary Grimes was 
 a wild girl, possibly not a bad creature, but, as it 
 might have been exjDressed in an eastern village, 
 ''liable to be talked about" — one of the social pun- 
 ishments not much dreaded, however, in the region 
 of Fort Concho. There was, I fear, a consciousness 
 in her face whenever she passed a man in the road, 
 and it is equally to be feared that her prudent chas- 
 tity' liad but little suggestion of snow or crystal in it. 
 But as the belle of Slabtown, she reigned supreme; 
 and, of course, the greater part of her female friends 
 
318 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 cast aspersions upon her. She kept all her admirers 
 in a state of mind which had in it much torment, 
 with occasional glimpses of beatitude. Charles 
 Hanks, Esq., stage driver, started out upon his trip 
 with a large fortune of happy thoughts, and dis- 
 cussed the object nearest his heart with the box-pas- 
 senger for twenty miles at once. But when he 
 returned, Sary would no more speak to him than if, 
 as he complained, he "had been a yaller dog." 
 But Mr. Hanks had no special cause of complaint, 
 for he fared as all his contemporaneous rivals did. 
 
 Father Grimes's reputation was that he was 
 "alius good to that gal o' his'n." He was never 
 known on any occasion to use a petulant expression 
 to any person or thing. His peculiarity more often 
 remarked than any other was that he did not swear. 
 It was a wonder he did not, for nobody doubted that 
 he had a hard life of it. With regard to Grimes, the 
 half has not been told. We have seen men who had 
 survived some great disaster, some horrible man- 
 gling, and went crawling through life thereafter, 
 lame, scarred, deformed, the hideous semblance of a 
 human creature. Such was this poor, rich old man. 
 His limbs were drawn awry. His shapeless hands 
 almost refused to grasp his staif, and every line of 
 his face denoted an experience of pain, happily past 
 for the time, but ever leaving a grim promise to 
 return and wring the distorted limbs anew, until the 
 hour of his relief. Yet Grimes had not been the vic- 
 tim of any sudden accident or great calamity. Fire, 
 nor falling walls, nor the rebellion of man's gigantic 
 servant against his master in rushing steam and fall- 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 319 
 
 ing fragments, were incidents in his hard life. And 
 yet his fate had been little better. His days had 
 been days of pain, and his nights had been spent in 
 torture, and in waiting and praying for daylight or 
 death. '^It is common enough, but Ariel, bright 
 spirit of enchanted air, suffered and groaned no more 
 in the cloven pine than a strong man may beneath 
 rheumatic torture. 
 
 Thus it was that the old man's gentleness was a 
 marvel to those who reviled him daily. Worn and 
 deformed with his battle of years with his enemy, 
 he sat at his cabin door in the sun, and placidly 
 nodded at those who passed by, and whispered to 
 himself, and smiled. Sometimes he had been asked 
 if it had not hurt him while in slow torment his 
 limbs had been twisted and drawn thus. "Oh yes," 
 lie said, "it did hurt," but he smiled as he thus 
 answered a question which would have been both 
 superfluous and cruel if the old man had not seemed 
 to possess some panacea that enabled him to almost 
 defy pain. 
 
 This distorted figure, this pain-written face, and 
 these strange ways. Father Grimes possessed alone. 
 They were strange in the land, for sturdy, bearded 
 manhood, reckless ways, loud words and a blood- 
 curdling blasphemy were the rule with his associates 
 and near neighbors. While they knew that he had 
 within him something which they neither possesed 
 nor understood, they only said " curus creetur," 
 and passed on. Whatever it was they had no 
 respect for it ; they thought him a little crazy. He 
 had done strange things that they knew of. Had 
 
320 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 he not once tried to interfere with a very promising 
 horse-race on a Sunday? Did he not come down to 
 the trader's store one night last fall, and lift up his 
 quavering voice in a Methodist hymn, and try to get 
 up a prayer-meeting right there among the boj^s, 
 "and a hundred dollars in the pot, and me with 
 three queens in my hand? " It was Charles Hanks, 
 Esq., who described this scene, and added, "He's 
 a old fool with a stavin' purty gal ; 'twas just that 
 wicli saved his meat, — a interferin' thataway." 
 
 It was not strange that, with these queer ways. 
 Father Grimes was alone in such a place, with only, 
 his heart to keep him company. There was a chap- 
 lain at the post, but he seemed as yet to have dis- 
 covered no affinity for this eccentric old man. He 
 preferred soldiers of the cross of more robust ten- 
 dencies, and in line. If being a Christian was what 
 was the matter with Grimes's dazed head, he had 
 an entire monopoly of the complaint. On bright 
 Sunday mornings there was a formal service on the 
 parade ground, and plumed heads bowed slightly 
 in the etiquette of military devotion. But Father 
 Grimes was as much out of place there as he was at 
 the sutler's, and stood afar off, failing to under- 
 stand, perhaps, what all this had in common with 
 a camp-meeting in far western Virginia, or with such 
 *piety and worship as would have been acceptable to 
 his fellow-believers of the United Brethren in Christ. 
 
 Of course he had little control of the hoydenish 
 Sary. That young woman shared somewhat in the 
 current belief regarding her father's mental condi- 
 tion. Living in the same house, tliey had no com- 
 
A L0NES03IE CHRISTIAN. 321 
 
 paniont lip ; and while slie cared for his common 
 wants and daily meals, that was the extent, to all 
 appearance, of her interest in him. He perhaps 
 constituted the sober side of her life ; she would 
 have been ready to do battle for him with a ready 
 tongue, but she also claimed the privelege of pri- 
 vately regarding him with as much carelessness and 
 half-contempt as was possible with her knowledge 
 of the fact that he really was her father and she 
 could not help it. 
 
 The incident which placed Father Grimes promi- 
 nently before the public in a new light — an incident 
 all the more remarkable because it was the last in 
 his career — came about in this wise. There came 
 to Concho a long-haired and ambrosial man, who 
 claimed to have been one of those hard riders from 
 the Lone-Star state, who figured so extensivelj^ in 
 the cavalry force of the late Confederate army. He 
 was broad-shouldered, tall, swaggering, of a military 
 carriage, and claimed to be ''still a rebel and a 
 fighting man, sir." Kow Hanks was not just a 
 Yankee, but he and this child of chivalry soon found 
 means of disagreement upon another matter. The 
 Confederate used often to say that he did not care a 
 profane expletive for Miss Grimes, but he made it a 
 point to allow no man to stand before him in the 
 graces of a livin' woman, sir. So, in a few weeks, 
 Hanks and he looked askance at each other, and 
 finally refused to play poker at the same table, and 
 avoided a mutuality in bibulous exercises by com- 
 mon consent. The wicked Sary, gifted with peculiar 
 insight into such matters, flattered the new beau, 
 21 
 
322 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and smiled upon him with beams particularly 
 bright ; albeit, she disdded her favors, and gave 
 Hanks enough to keep him alive to the stature and 
 strength of his rival, and the dangers arising from 
 delay and absence. These things did not pass 
 unnoticed by the others, and a keen look-out was 
 kept for the hour when the difficulty should cul- 
 minate. The patient sitters upon benches and the 
 industrious carvers of deal boxes kept the two men 
 in sight, and watched them with an eye to being 
 present when the time came. They discussed the 
 chances among themselves, much as they discussed 
 the projected race for three hundred yards between 
 Hopkins's bald-face and the spotted pony. They 
 knew Hanks, and generally considered him the bet- 
 ter man. There was a slight inclination to preju- 
 dice against the Confederate, perhaps. "He's full 
 o' brag," they remarked ; "hain't seen his grit yet." 
 One night Father Grimes sat in the inner room 
 of his poor house. The cotton cloth that did duty 
 as glass, puiFed in and out in the window frame, 
 and the "grease-dip" burned yellow and dim on 
 the edge of its broken cup. There was the usual 
 chatter and coarse laughter in the outer room, and 
 he knew that the Confederate and Sary were there. 
 This gallant gentleman was in his best mood that 
 night, and the laughter of the girl, and the man's 
 tone of light raillery, reached Grimes's wakeful ears 
 with annoying distinctness. The old man sat in his 
 bent posture near the light, and studied out the 
 words of a big worn volume upon his knee. His 
 grizzled hair lay in tangled confusion upon his neck, 
 
J. LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 323 
 
 and as he stumbled through the sentences he spelled 
 and whispered the words to himself. The night was 
 his enemy and torment. He was passing the dull 
 time of age and affliction, and, withal, gathering 
 comfort from the only book he possessed or needed. 
 It was no common book he pored over and spelled; 
 it is said to have been the Bible. 
 
 Presently the outer door opened, and with a gruif 
 salutation Hanks entered. His arrival from his last 
 drive could not have been more than an hour ago. 
 He had not wasted time in paying his respects. He 
 sat down at the rude table, and looked at Sary and 
 her companion. That Hanks was in an ugly humor 
 was quite evident. It was equally evident that he 
 was bent upon the operation known among his kind 
 as ''pickin' a fuss." He did not attempt to conceal 
 his feelings, and glowered at his rival, and still sat 
 silent. The dark purpose of the border rowdy was 
 in his eye and the jealousy and anger of all his law- 
 less kind was apparent in the studied deliberateness 
 of all his actions. The other looked at him with a 
 cool grin of defiance. At a meeting of this kind, two 
 such men have little need of tongues. 
 
 Presently the late-comer rose slowly, and moved 
 his chair, and sat down almost in front of his rival. 
 The old man in the inner room heard the movement, 
 and started and listened, closing his book. Having , 
 thus changed his position. Hanks placed his hands 
 upon his knees, looked his rival obtrusively in the 
 face, and calmly remarked: ' vAcxoh libnwpj^ 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder. Mister, ef I thought you 
 was a low down kind of a cuss." 
 
324 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 
 
 ''What? " exclaimed the Confederate. 
 
 ''I saj — are ye list'nin'? — that I shouldn't won- 
 der ef I thought you was a low down sneakin' — " 
 
 The Confederate gentleman arose, motioned to 
 Hanks, and moved toward the door. They both 
 went out, moved a little way along the wall toward 
 the old man's flapping window, and stopped. 
 
 "I don't do my fightin' in the presence o' wim- 
 men," said the Confederate, "but I'm a fightin' 
 man, an' ye kin hev all ye' re spilin' for. There's 
 no use in bein' in a ungentlemanly hurry about this 
 'ere little diffikilty ; to-morrer mornin', — break o' 
 day, sharp, at the sand-bar beyant Stokes's, '11 suit 
 me, Qiyou kin stand it." 
 
 " Wot's yer weepins," said the other. 
 
 ''Xavy size — ten paces." 
 
 ''Seconds?" 
 
 "ISTary man." 
 
 ''I'll be thar ;" and Old Grimes heard the foot- 
 steps die away in opposite directions. 
 
 He hobbled into the room where his daughter 
 sat. Her pinky cheeks were a little paler, and there 
 was an unwonted apprehension in her eyes. " Sary," 
 he said, "kin ye do nothin' to keep them two young 
 fellers apart ? " 
 
 "No, they're two fools, an' it's none of my 
 afi'air." 
 
 " Did ye hear what they said outside ?" 
 
 " Yes, I heard ; I was list'nin'; they kin fight it 
 out. There's better men than either of 'em." 
 
 Grimes turned and went back to his little bare 
 room — the little bare and shabby place where the 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 325 
 
 company who came and sat with him were not 
 inhabitants of Slabtown, — and seated himself upon 
 the bed, and communed with himself. It is a 
 strange life, and a wonderful education, that can 
 teach a red-cheeked and hoydenish girl to smile at 
 the passions that lead to the grim revenges of the 
 border. The old man sat and thought, and the 
 hours passed slowly. He lay down upon the rude 
 bed, and perhaps would have slept if he could. 
 Then he rose and occupied himself in reading again, 
 and went out often and looked into the shadows of 
 the still night. Only the far guard-challenge fell 
 upQu his ear at intervals, and seemed to announce 
 the passing hours. Finally the ripe stars that glow 
 in the noon of night began to pale in their westward 
 setting. The cocks crew, and the lowing of kine 
 was borne far upon the damp morning air. The day 
 was coming, and even these far fields of solitude 
 and desolation began to be stirred by a feeble pulse 
 of life. 
 
 No soul, save these two men, a thoughtless 
 woman, and an old man almost helpless, knew of 
 the meeting on the sands, from which but one, and 
 probably neither, would ever return. Father Grimes 
 got his hat and staiF, and hobbled forth. He 
 thought he knew the spot, he would go thither. It 
 was such a journey as he had not made for many a 
 day. He wondered if he would be there in time, 
 and hastened. 
 
 The chill air of dawn pierced his frail body, and 
 he shivered. Painfully, and all too slowly, he 
 walked the stepping-stones across the puny torrent, 
 
326 FRONTIER AMMY SKETCHES. 
 
 and toiled up the bank upon the other side. He 
 saw the gray streaks in the east, and hastened, 
 groaning, for he remembered the words ' ' at break 
 o' day, sharp." His journey was a pathless one, 
 cactus-grown and tangled with long grass. Finally 
 he reached the crest of the low bluffs, and the little 
 acre of brown sand lay before him in the growing 
 light. Peering with his old eyes, he discovered two 
 figures there. One of them stood listless, while the 
 other paced slowly across a little space ; then his 
 companion measured the space likewise, in long and 
 swinging strides. As the old man drew nearer, he 
 saw that the two took opposite places, and that 
 while one leaned forward anxiously, the other's atti- 
 tude was careless and his weapon hand hung by his 
 side. He shouted with the utmost strength of his 
 old wiry voice, and they seemed to pay no heed. 
 Then, and for the first time in ten years, he tried to 
 run. As he drew closer, he saw that Hanks was 
 nearest to him, and almost between him and the tall 
 Confederate. Then one said '-'- Ready ^'''^ and his 
 adversary answered "Ready." But Grimes noticed 
 that Hanks held his weapon in readiness to fire, 
 while the other brought his slowly up from his side. 
 The thought must have passed through his mind 
 like a flash; "If I could but push one of them 
 aside, I could save them." But already they had 
 begun to count, slowly and simultaneously : '-^ one — 
 two — "and at the word ^Htoo^^- Hanks dropped 
 suddenly in his place, and two shots awoke the 
 silence almost together. The tall Confederate stood 
 still a moment, then staggered, and fell backward, 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 327 
 
 while a crimson stream trickled slowly out upon the 
 brown sand, and sank, leaving the stain of murder 
 beside his stark figure, as he lay, with open, staring 
 dead eyes, looking at the glowing sky. 
 
 Hanks had dropped suddenly in his place, and 
 liad fired before the word. It was the trick that 
 almost disgraces the Comanche from whom he had 
 in a manner acquired it. He now rose up and 
 looked around him furtively. In the sunshine of 
 high noon it was a dreary and silent spot ; and now 
 in the purple morning, with the dead man lying as 
 he had fallen, with the brown sand, and the sage, 
 and the gaunt and thorny cactus on every hand. 
 Hanks seemed to shiver, as he buttoned his coat, and 
 looked nervously about him, and stood a moment 
 thinking. Then, by chance or through fear, he cast 
 a glance behind him, and saw Father Grimes sunk 
 down in a heap with his head fallen forward upon 
 his bosom. Perhaps he thought the old man dead ; 
 — at least he had caught the bullet meant for him- 
 self. He hesitated a moment, looked around the 
 horizon, and then moved by sudden fear, walked 
 rapidly away through tlie stunted trees beyond the 
 sand. This tale chronicles no further the wander- 
 ings of the assassin : he never returned. 
 
 Father Grimes slowly raised his head by and by, 
 pressed his hand to liis side, and tried to rise. After 
 a while they came and bore him to his cabin, and 
 placed him upon his bed. For ill news travels 
 quickly, and the curiosity of the hard community 
 had quickly hurried a crowd to the spot. While he 
 lay quietly and looked upward through the cabin 
 
328 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCEES. 
 
 roof, calm and placid, the post surgeon came, and 
 the commandant, and even the chaplain, and the 
 crowd gathered at the outer door, only parting to 
 permit the passage of another burden that was borne 
 there by chance or a fancied connection with Grimes 
 and his daughter, and laid upon a low bench beside 
 the wall, crying murder through the hush with its 
 white, uncovered face. 
 
 They questioned the old man, and brokenly and 
 at intervals he told them all he knew. !N'o, not all ; 
 for his mind seemed preoccupied, and at intervals 
 he stopped and lay very quiet, looking at something 
 they could not see, and smiling as he feebly held 
 out his hand. His care-worn and pain-burdened 
 life was passing fast. That they knew, and were 
 awed in the presence of that Death so many of 
 them had courted, so many had pretended to 
 scorn. They watched him, and waited to hear if he 
 had aught else to tell. A little while passed in 
 silence. Suddenly he opened his eyes again, and 
 looked intently toward a corner of the room. It 
 was not a look of scrutiny, doubt, or inquir}', but of 
 happy certainty and surprise. A faint flush stole 
 into the pallor of his old face ; his eye brightened, 
 and he stretched forth his hand and tried to lift him- 
 self upon his arm. The doctor bent over him (the 
 chaplain was gone home again), and asked him what 
 he would have. The old man turned with a look of 
 surprise, and pointed with his finger. 
 
 " Don't you see Him ? " he said. 
 
 ** I see no one ; — what is he like ? " 
 
 '*I — I don't know. His face shines, and He 
 
A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 329 
 
 smiles. It is like Him as He walked upon the sea. 
 . . . . Oh, Master, liave you come so far for 
 mef' 
 
 And death sealed upon the scarred and wrinkled 
 fiice its last beatitude. They went out and left him 
 there, and closed the door. And as they passed 
 through the outer chamber, they saw the girl as she 
 sat by the bench beside the wall, and looked with 
 tearless eyes afar off, and held in her lap her dead 
 lover's cold right hand. 
 
"Wb commend this book most heartily as the very best of its 
 icind. " — Traveller, Boston. 
 
 Familiar Talks on 
 
 English Literature, 
 
 By ABBY sage RICHARDSON. 
 
 One Handsome 8vo, Volume, . . .. . Price, $2.00. 
 
 "It displays the clear, critical taste which distinguishes the accom- 
 plished &xithOT."— Commercial Advertiser, New York. 
 
 " The work is without question one of the best of its kind with which 
 we are acquainted ; if for no other reason, because it has in greater meas- 
 ure than usual the capacity to interest the young readers, for whom it is 
 intended."— Evening Post, New Yoik. 
 
 "What the author proposed to do was to convey to her readers a clear 
 Idea of the variety, extent and richness of English Literature. * * • 
 She has done just what she intended to do and done it well."— iZic^rd 
 Henry Stoddard, in Evening Mail, New York. 
 
 " The book is a complete success in that it accomplishes just that which 
 It is intended to do. * * * It is a book which should be placed in the 
 hands of every younir student of literature, as it is calculated not only to 
 instruct, but to form a taste for such studies."— TAe Post, Boston. 
 
 " It is refreshing to find a book designed for young readers, which seeks 
 to give only what will accomplish the real aim of the study, namely, to 
 excite an interest in English literature, cultivate a taste for what is best 
 In it, and thus lay a foundation on which they can build after reading. 
 Dates are not neglected, but are given in the most effective way, the year 
 of the birth and death of each writer, standing opposite his name in the 
 margin ; so that the epoch of each writer is precisely marked, but the 
 attention is not distracted in reading."— JT^ Nation, New York. 
 
 Sold by booksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, 
 
 117 and 119 State Street, CHICAGO. 
 
A Snnny Picture of the Land of Music and Musicians. 
 
 MUSIC-STUDY IN GERMANY. 
 
 By miss amy FAY. 
 
 One Handsome 12mo. Volume, , , . Price, $1.25. 
 
 " They are charming letters, both in style and matter, and the descrip- 
 tions of Tausig, KuUak, Liszt and Deppe, ^Yith each of whom Miss Fay 
 studied, are done with all the delicacy of a sketch by Mcissonnier."— 
 Globe, Soston. 
 
 " In delicacy of touch, vivacity, and ease of expression, and general 
 charm of style, these letters are models in their way. The pictures which 
 she gives of the various masters under which she studied, have the value 
 that all such representations possess when they are drawn from life and 
 with fidelity."— GrapWc, New York. 
 
 "One of the brightest small books we have seen is Amy Fay's 
 Music-Study in Germany, These letters were written home by a young 
 lady who went to Germany to pei feet her piano playing. * * * Her 
 observation Is close and accurate, and the sketches of Tausig, Liszt and 
 other musical celebrities, are capitally done."— Christian Advocate, New 
 York. 
 
 " The Intrinsic value of the work Is great ; its simplicity, Its minute 
 details, its freedom from every kind of affectation, constitute in them- 
 selves most admirable qualities. The remarkably intimate and open 
 picture we get of Liszt surpasses any picture of him heretofore afforded. 
 It is a charming picture— strong, simple, gracious, noble and sincere."— 
 Times, Chicago. 
 
 " It is bright and entertaining, being filled with descriptions, opinions 
 and facts in regard to the many distinguished musicians and artists of the 
 present day. A little insight into the home life of the German people is 
 presented to the reader, and the atmosphere of art seems to give a bright- 
 ness and worth to the picture which imparts pleasure with the interest it 
 creates."— ietf^r to DwigMs Journal qf Music. 
 
 Sold by l)ooksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, 
 
 117 and 119 State Street, CHICAGO. 
 
TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES. 
 
 COMPRISING 
 
 MEMORIES; a story of German lovr 
 
 By max MULLER. 
 
 GRAZIELLA ; a story of Italian love. 
 
 By a. DE LAMARTINE. 
 
 MARIE: A story of Russian love. 
 
 By ALEX. PUSHKIN. 
 
 MADELEINE ; a story of French love 
 
 By JULES SANDEAU. 
 
 In neat box, per set, ..... Price, $5.00. 
 Sold separately, per volume, , , , Price, $1.25. 
 
 Of "Memories' the London Academy says: "It is a prose poem. 
 • * * It is seldom that a powerful intellect produces any 
 
 work, however small, that does not bear some marks of its special bent, 
 and the traces of research and philosophy in this little story are appar- 
 ent, while its beauty and pathos show us a fresh phase of a many-sided 
 mind, to which we already owe large debts of gratitude." 
 
 Of" Graziella" the Chicago Tribune says: "It glows with love of the 
 beautiful in all nature. * * * It is pure literature, a 
 
 perfect story, couched in perfect words. The sentences have the rhytlim 
 and flow, the sweetness and tender fancy of the original. It is uniform 
 with ' Memories,' and it should stand side by side with that on the 
 shelves of every lover of pTlre, strong thoughts, put in pure, strong 
 words. ' Graziella' is a book to be loved." 
 
 Of" Marie" the Cincinnati Gazette says: " This is a Russian love tale, 
 written by a Russian poet. It is one of the purest, sweetest little narra- 
 tives that we have read for a long time. It is a little classic, and a Russian 
 classic, too. That is one of its charms, that it is so distinctively Russian. 
 We catch the very breezes of the Steppes, and meet, lace to face, the high- 
 Bouled, simple minded Russian." 
 
 Of "Madeleine" the New York Evening Telegram says: "More than 
 thirty years ago it received the honor of a prize from the French 
 Academy and has since almost befome a French classic. It abounds 
 boih in pathos and wit. Above all. it is a pure story, dealing with love 
 of the most exalted kind. It is, indeed, a wonder that a tale so fresh, so 
 Eweet, so pure as this has uot sooner been introduced to the English- 
 speaking public." 
 
 Sold "by hool'sellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, hy 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Cliicagro, m. 
 
li ought to be in the hands of every scholar and of every school- 
 boy." — Saturday Review , London. 
 
 Tales of Ancient Greece. 
 
 By tub rev. sir G. W. COX, Bart., M.A., 
 
 Trinity College, Oxford. 
 
 12mo., extra cloth, black and giVf . . . Price, $1.50, 
 
 " Written apparently for young readers, it yet possesses a charm of 
 manner which will recommend it to all."— T/ie Examiner, London. 
 
 " It is only when we take up such a book as this, that we realize how 
 rich in interest is the mythology of Greece."— Liquirer, Philadelphia. 
 
 "Admirable in style, and level with a child's comprehension. These 
 versions might well find a place in every family."— T/ig Nation, Aew York. 
 
 "The author invests these stories with a charm of narrative entirely 
 peculiar. The book is a rich one in every way."— ^tondard, Chicago. 
 
 "In Mr. Cox will be found yet another name to be enrolled among 
 those English writers who have vindicated for this country an honorable 
 rank in the investigation of Greek history."— Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " It is doubtful if these tales, antedating history in their origin, and yet 
 fresh with all the charms of youth to all who read them for the first time, 
 were ever before presented in so chaste and popular ioim."— Golden Rule, 
 Boston. 
 
 " The grace with which these old tales of the mythology are re-told 
 makes them as enchanting to the young as familiar fairy tales, or the 
 ' Arabian Nights." * * * We do not know of a Christmas book which 
 promises more lasting pleasures."— Pii6iis/ter«' Weekly. 
 
 " Its exterior fits it to adorn the drawing-room table, while its contents 
 are adapted to the entertainment of the most cultivated intelliL^ence. * 
 
 * * The book is a scholarly production, and a welcome addition to a 
 department of literature that is thus far quite too scantily furnished."— 
 Tribune, Chicago. 
 
 Sold t)p booksellers, or mailed, post paid, on receipt of price, t>y 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE, 
 
 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 By miss E. S. KIRKLAND. 
 authob of " six little cooks," " doha's housekeeping," kml 
 
 12fno., extra clot ft, blacJs and gilt, , . Price, $1.50. 
 
 "A very ably written sketch of French history, from the earliest times 
 to the foundation of the existing Republic."— Otncmna^i Gazdte. 
 
 " The narrative is not dry on a single page, and the little history may 
 be commended as the best of its kind that nas yet appeared."— SuMcttn, 
 PhUadelphia. 
 
 "A book both instructive and entertaining. It is not a dry compen- 
 dium of dates and facts, but a charmingly written history."— C/msfian 
 Vhion, New York. 
 
 "After a careful examination of its contents, we are able to conscien- 
 tiously give it our heartiest commendation. We know no elementary 
 history of France that can at all be compared with it."— Living Church. 
 
 "A spirited and enterlaining sketch of the French people and nation 
 —one that will seize and hold the attention of all bright boys and girls 
 who have a chance to read iV— Sunday Afternoon, i-pringfield, (Mass.) 
 
 " We find its descriptions universally good, that it is admirably sitnple 
 and direct in style, without waste of words or timidity of opinion. The 
 book represents a great deal of patient labor and conscientious study. — 
 Courant, Hartford, Ct. 
 
 " Miss Kirkland has composed her ' Short History of France' in the 
 way in which a history for young people ought to be written ; that is, she 
 has aimed to present a consecutive and agreeable story, Irom which the 
 reader can not only learn the names of kings and the succession of 
 events, but can also receive a vivid and permanent impression as to the 
 characters, modes of life, and the spirit of different periods."— 27<« 
 Aaiion, N. Y. ' 
 
 Sold dy dookselters, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, hj 
 JANST^IN, McCLURG k CO., Publishers, Chicago, II!. 
 
'Unequalled by anything of the kind with which we are aC' 
 quainted." — Christian Advocate, N. Y. 
 
 CUMNOCK'S CHOICE HEADINGS. 
 
 FOR PURLIC AND PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENT. ARRANGED FOR THE 
 EXERCISES OF THE SCUOOL AND COLLEGE AND PUBLIC READER, 
 WITH ELOCDTIONARY ADVICE. EDITED BY ROBERT 
 MC'LAIN CUMNOCK, A. M., PROFESSOR OF 
 RHETORIC AND ELOCUTION, NORTH- 
 WESTERN UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Itarge 12mo., cloth, ..... Price, $1.75. 
 
 " It ought to become a special favorite among school and college 
 students and public readers." — Evening Post, New York. 
 
 " Taking into account the admirable type, the excellent taste, the 
 brevity of the rhetorical counsels, the unsurpassed variety, we prefer 
 Prof. Cumnock's book to every manual of the kind."— CAmiian Register, 
 Boston. 
 
 "Among the multitude of books Issued for the same purpose during 
 the past ten years, we know of none so complete in all respects and so 
 well titled to the needs of the elocutionist as the volume before us."— 
 Transcript, Boston. 
 
 " No choicer casket of prose and poetry has been given to us by any 
 otlier author. These are the culled flowers from the bouquet of litera- 
 ture. They are of every nature known to the language, and each is of 
 tho best of its kind."— TAc Post, San Francisco. 
 
 " Nearly 200 selections from the best prose and poetical literature of 
 the English language are here assembled for the uses of the student of 
 elocution. » * * Tjie collection is valuable as a tre^isury of 
 literary gems, apart from its worth as a manual of declamation."- 
 Tribune, Chicago. 
 
 "The volume consists in a great measure of fresh specimens that 
 have recently found their way into current literature, and present the 
 charm of novelty with the merit of good writing. The ancient stream is 
 thus enriched with supplies from new fountains, and living productions 
 take the place of the veteran pieces which have grown old in the course 
 of protracted service. * • ♦ They are illustrations of the best 
 literature of the day."— IW&anc, New York. 
 
 Sold ly hooksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, "by 
 
 JINSEN, McCLUEG & CO., Publishers, Chica§ro, Bll. 
 

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