Page 10 of Red Men and White

  LA TINAJA BONITA

  "And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land."--1 Kings xvii. 7.

  A pretty girl was kneeling on the roof of a flat mud cabin, a harvest ofred peppers round her knees. On the ground below her stood a swarthyyoung man, the bloom on his Mexican cheeks rich and dusky, like her own.His face was irresponsible and winning, and his watching eyes shone uponher with admiration and desire. She on the roof was entertained by hervisitor's attention, but unfavorable to it. Through the live-long sunnyday she had parried his love-talk with light and complete skill,enjoying herself, and liking him very well, as she had done since theywere two children playing together in the Arizona desert. She was quitemistress of the situation, because she was a woman, and he as yet merelya boy; he was only twenty-two; she was almost sixteen. The Mexican manat twenty-two may be as experienced as his Northern brother of thirty,but at sixteen the Mexican woman is also mature, and can competentlydeal with the man. So this girl had relished the thoughtless morning andnoon as they passed; but twice lately she had glanced across the lowtree-tops of her garden down the trail, where the canon descended to thesilent plain below.

  "I think I must go back now," said the young man, not thinking so. Hehad a guitar from the cabin.

  "Oh!" said she, diverted by his youthful feint. "Well, if you think itis so late." She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchiefand strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her headto her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the wholeroof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layerwith buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sortingand turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her mostwistfully.

  "It is not precisely late--yet," said he.

  "To be sure not," she assented, consulting the sky. "We have still threehours of day."

  He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. "But after night itis so very dark on the trail to camp," he insincerely objected.

  "I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark."

  "It is for the horse's legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing."

  "Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quitesuddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have agood figure."

  "I am much heavier than last year," said he. "My arm--"

  "I can see, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you kiss me any more.You didn't offer to when you came this morning--and that shows you menperceive things more quickly than we can. But don't go yet. You can leadyour horse. His legs will come to no harm, eased of your weight. Ishould have been lonely to-day, and you have made it pass so quickly.You have talked so much that my peppers are not half spread."

  "We could finish them in five minutes together," said the youth, takinga step.

  "Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread onthem, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, gobring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty."

  But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof.

  "Very well, then," said Lolita. "If you like this better, finish thepeppers, and I'll go for the water."

  "Why do you look down the trail so often?" said the baffled love-maker,petulantly.

  "Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day," the girlreplied, softly.

  "Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?"

  "Why not?" She shaded her eyes, and looked where the canon's wideningslit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changelesswaste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of thegaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushesand leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkledto refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, oreven dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at thedry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.

  "What does he come here for?" demanded Luis.

  "The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes."

  "Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luislounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watchedLolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a littlewith the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten andunguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawingfrom it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolitaknew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rollingher peppers:

  "'Soy purita mejicana; Nada tengo espanol.'"

  (I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And thismelodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.

  "Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly.

  "Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa."

  "I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis.

  But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly.

  "Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for thatwhite flour."

  Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there theywere like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was crosswith a sense of failure. "El telele se murio," he sang.

  "'The hunchback is dead. Ay! Ay! Ay! And no one could be found to bury him except--'"

  "Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?"

  "Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly."

  "You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it."

  The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from thecabin.

  "Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,where it is pleasant.

  "'And no one could be found to bury him except Five dragoons and a corporal And the sacristan's cat.'"

  Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fencedirrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like anut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest airthat could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once theirvarnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamedand went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into aholiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to seeor think of Arizona, just outside.

  "Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?" inquired Luis, dropping his music.

  She sighed. "He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There isno pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry lastweek. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know whatis going to happen to us." The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to comeoutward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanentabiding-place.

  "There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail toMaricopa," chirped the bird on the ground.

  She made no answer to this. "What are you doing nowadays?" she asked.

  "I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the Americansoldiers," he replied, promptly.

  "By Tucson?"

  "No. Huachuca."

  "Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May."

  "It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita."

  "But it's October now!" Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, andbroke into laughter.

  "I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since."

  "Have you asked any one for work?"

  "It is not my way to beg."

  "Luis, I don't believe you're quite a man yet, in spite of yourmustache. You complain there's no money for Mexicans in Arizona becausethe Americans get it all. Why don't you go back to Sonora, then, and berich in five minutes? It would sound finely: 'Luis Romero, Merchant,Hermosillo.' Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap atGuaymas. You would live in a big ho
use, perhaps with two stories, and Iwould come and visit you at Easter--if your wife would allow it." HereLolita threw a pepper at him.

  The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.

  "And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told theAmerican contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. Hedidn't say much about you," added the little lady.

  "Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages topay for the food he supplied us. They charge you extra for starvation,those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so hemay strive to win a home for her."

  "I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could striveto win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way."

  "I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of theirgringo customs."

  "You speak truly indeed," murmured Lolita.

  "It is you who know about them," the boy said, angry like a child. Hehad seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. "They say youprefer gringos to your own people."

  "Who dares say that?"

  The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. He had touched her thattime.

  But Lolita's eye softened at the instant of speaking, and she broke intoher sweet laugh. "There!" she said, recapturing the situation; "is itnot like old times for you and me to be fighting."

  "Me? I am not fighting."

  "You relieve me."

  "I do not consider a gringo worth my notice."

  "Sensible boy! You speak as wisely as one who has been to school in alarge city. Luis, do you remember the day Uncle Ramon locked me up forriding on the kicking burro, and you came and unlocked me when uncle wasgone? You took me walking, and lost us both in the mountains. We werereally only a little, little way from home, but I thought we had gotinto another country where they eat children. I was six, and I beat youfor losing me, and cried, and you were big, and you kissed me till Istopped crying. Do you remember?"

  "No."

  "Don't you remember?"

  "I don't remember child's tricks."

  "Luis, I have come to a conclusion. You are still young enough for me tokiss quite safely. Every time you fight with me--I shall kiss you. Won'tyou get me some fresh water now?"

  He lounged, sulky, against his barrel.

  "Come, querido! Must I go all that way myself? Well, then, if you intendto stand and glare at me till the moon rises--Ah! he moves!"

  Luis laid the guitar gradually down, and gradually lifting a pail inwhich the dipper rattled with emptiness, he proceeded to crawl on hisjourney.

  "You know that is not the one we use, muchacho," (little boy), remarkedLolita.

  "Keep your kisses for your gringo," the water-carrier growled, with hisback to her.

  "I shall always save some for my little cousin."

  The pail clattered on the stones, and the child stopped crawling. She onthe roof stared at this performance for an open-mouthed moment, glovesidle among the spicy peppers. Then, laughing, she sprang to her feet,descended, and, catching up the water-jar (the olla de agua), overtookhim, and shook it in his face with the sweetest derision. "Now we'll gotogether," said she, and started gayly through the green trees and thegarden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing ather red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did theycross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of theleaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation intoArizona's domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground--deadcattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought,killed in the sanctuary by cold water.

  A wise, quiet man, with a man's will, may sometimes after three days ofthirst still hold grip enough upon his slipping mind to know, when hehas found the water, that he must not drink it, must only dampen hislips and tongue in a drop-by-drop fashion until he has endured thepassing of many slow, insidious hours. Even a wise man had best have afriend by his side then, who shall fight and tear him from the perilousexcesses that he craves, knock him senseless if he cannot pin him down;but cattle know nothing of drop by drop, and you cannot pin down ahundred head that have found water after three days. So these hundredhad drunk themselves swollen, and died. Cracked hide and white bone theylay, brown, dry, gaping humps straddled stiff askew in the lastconvulsion; and over them presided Arizona--silent, vast, all sunshineeverlasting.

  Luis saw these corpses that had stumbled to their fate, and heremembered; with Lolita in those trees all day, he had forgotten for awhile. He pointed to the wide-strewn sight, familiar, monotonous asmisfortune. "There will be many more," he said. "Another rainy season isgone without doing anything for the country. It cannot rain now foranother year, Lolita."

  "God help us and our cattle, and travellers!" she whispered.

  Luis musingly repeated a saying of the country about the Tinaja Bonita,

  "'When you see the Black Cross dry, Fill the wagon cisterns high'"

  --a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom,stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecordedwanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath thedesert.

  "But the Black Cross has never been dry yet," Luis said.

  "You have not seen it lately," said Lolita.

  "Lolita! do you mean--" He looked in her troubled eyes, and they went onin silence together. They left behind them the bones and the bald levelon which they lay, and came to where the canon's broader descentquickened until they sank below that sight of the cattle, and for a timebelow the home and trees. They went down steeply by cactus and dry rockto a meeting of several canons opening from side rifts in the Sierra,furrowing the main valley's mesa with deep watercourses that brought nowater. Finding their way in this lumpy meeting-ground, they came uponthe lurking-place of the Tinaja Bonita. They stood above it at the edgeof a pitch of rock, watching the motionless crystal of the pool.

  "How well it hides down there in its own canon!" said Luis. "How prettyand clear! But there's plenty of water, Lolita."

  "Can you see the Black Cross?"

  "Not from here."

  They began descending around the sides of the crumbled slate-rock facethat tilted too steep for foothold.

  "The other well is dry, of course," said Lolita. In the slaty,many-ledged formation a little lower down the canon, towards the peep ofoutlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second roundhole, twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in thisplace, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size anddepth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemedman's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja'sreflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfullyrepresented except the water.

  "It must have been a real well once," said Luis.

  "Once, yes."

  "And what made it go dry?"

  "Who knows?"

  "How strange it should be the lower well that failed, Lolita!"

  The boy and girl were climbing down slowly, drawing near each other asthey reached the bottom of the hollow. The peep of open country wasblocked, and the tall tops of the mountains were all of the outer worldto be seen down here below the mesa's level. The silence was likesomething older than this world, like the silence of space before anyworlds were made.

  "Do you believe it ever can go dry?" asked Luis. They were now on theedge of the Tinaja.

  "Father Rafael says that it is miraculous," said the girl, believingly.

  Opposite, and everywhere except where they were, the walls went sheerdown, not slate-colored, but white, with a sudden up-cropping formationof brick-shaped stones. These also were many-layered and crumbling,cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them.No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven,tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolitalooked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In thatwhite formation sho
t up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary andirrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stoneswere lodged as if built into the wall by some hand--four small stonesshaping a cross, back against the white, symmetrical and plain.

  "It has come farther--more uncovered since yesterday," Lolita whispered.

  "Can the Tinaja sink altogether?" repeated Luis. The arms of the crosswere a measurable space above the water-line, and he had always seen itentirely submerged.

  "How could it sink?" said Lolita, simply. "It will stop when the blackstones are wholly dry."

  "You believe Father Rafael," Luis said, always in a low voice; "but itwas only Indians, after all, who told the mission fathers at the first."

  "That was very long ago," said she, "and there has always been water inthe Tinaja Bonita."

  Boy and girl had set the jar down, and forgotten it and why they hadcome. Luis looked uneasily at the circular pool, and up from thiscreviced middle of the canon to the small high tops of the mountainsrising in the free sky.

  "This is an evil place," he said. "As for the water--no one, no three,can live long enough to be sure."

  But it was part of Lolita's religion. "I am sure," said she.

  The young Mexican's eyes rested on the face of the girl beside him, morebeautiful just then with some wave of secret fear and faith.

  "Come away with me, Lolita!" he pleaded, suddenly. "I can work. I can bea man. It is fearful for you to live here alone."

  "Alone, Luis?" His voice had called her from her reverie back to hergay, alert self. "Do you consider Uncle Ramon nobody to live with?"

  "Yes. Nobody--for you."

  "Promise me never to tell that to uncle. He is so considerate that hemight make me marry somebody for company. And then, you know, my husbandwould be certain to be stupid about your coming to see me, querido."

  "Why do you always mock me, Lolita?"

  "Mock you? What a fancy! Oh, see how the sun's going! If we do not getour water, your terrible Tinaja will go dry before supper. Come, Luis, Icarried the olla. Must I do everything?"

  He looked at her disconsolate. "Ah!" he vibrated, revelling in deepimaginary passion.

  "Go! go!" she cried, pushing him. "Take your olla."

  Upon the lightest passing puff of sentiment the Southern breast canheave with every genuine symptom of storm, except wreck. Of course shestirred his gregarious heart. Was she not lovely and he twenty-two? Hewent down the natural stairs and came slowly up with the water, stoppinga step below her. "Lolita," he said, "don't you love me at all? not avery little?"

  "You are my dearest, oldest friend, Luis," she said, looking at him withsuch full sweetness that his eyes fell. "But why do you pretend fivebeans make ten?"

  "Of course they only make ten with gringos."

  She held up a warning finger.

  "Oh yes, oh yes! Strangers make fine lovers!" With this he swelled to afond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, "It is not difficult to kill aman, Lolita."

  "Fighting! after what I told you!" Lolita stooped and kissed her cousinLuis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.

  "As often as you please," he said, as she released herself angrily, andthen a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart,trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into theTinaja with a gulping resonance. Loitering strings of sand strewed afterit, and the boy's and girl's superstitious eyes looked up from theringed, waving water to the ledge. Lolita's single shriek of terrorturned to joy as she uttered it.

  "I thought--I thought you would not come!" she cried out.

  The dismounted horseman above made no sign of understanding her words.He stepped carefully away from the ledge his foot had crumbled, and theysaw him using his rifle like a staff, steadying its stock in successiveniches, and so working back to his horse. There he slid the rifle intoits leather sling along the left side of his saddle.

  "So he is not dead," murmured Luis, "and we need not live alone."

  "Come down!" the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comerstood by his horse like an apparition.

  "Perhaps he is dead, after all," Luis said. "You might say some of theMass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer."

  Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on thestone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. Tohim, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of thesinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he hadstarted and stared to see--not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from hishorse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and inthe flashing spasm of his mind came a picture--smoke from the rifle, andhimself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did notbelieve the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff,and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him,and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, andready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing withoutconcealment of her heart's desire.

  "Come down!" she repeated. "Come round the side." And, lifting the olla,she tapped it, and signed the way to him.

  "He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care toclimb more than he must," said Luis. But the man had stirred at lastfrom his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presentlyhe was near enough for Luis to read his face. "Your gringo is a handsomefellow, certainly," he commented. "But he does not like me to-day."

  "Like you! He doesn't think about you," said Lolita.

  "Ha! That's your opinion?"

  "It is also his opinion--if you'll ask him."

  "He is afraid of Cousin Luis," stated the youth.

  "Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you--if he could see you."

  "There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Yourgringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not."

  "How little he knows you!"

  "It is you he does not know very well," the boy said, with a pang.

  The scornful girl stared.

  "Oh, the innocent one!" sneered Luis. "Grasshopper, indeed! Well, oneman can always recognize another, and the women don't know much."

  But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop toread his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had nothought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, andto her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. "Youhave come just in time," she called out to him. At the voice, he lookedat her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent atide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, hisbearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of hisblood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above,getting a grip of himself. "Luis was becoming really afraid that hemight have to do some work," continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill."You know Luis?"

  "I know him."

  "You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us," she pursued,arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.

  "I can."

  At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when shehad come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile flutteredon her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; norcould she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping himkeep his grip.

  Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita's thoughts away fromhim and all other men. "No, indeed, he does not understand her verywell," he repeated, bitter in knowing the man's suspicion and itsneedlessness. Something--disappointment, it may be--had wrought morereality in the young Mexican's easy-going love. "And she likes thisgringo because--because he is light-colored!" he said, watching theAmerican's bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but ofsterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himselfforewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, hismustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health bythe weather
. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode tothe Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolitaunclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushingcoldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slightingtouch changed the Mexican boy's temper to diversion and malice. Herewere mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with avengeance!

  "Give me that," said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar tohim with such feline politeness that the American's blue eyes filledwith fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quiteready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of hisSaxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail outto the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.

  As the three went silent up the canon, Luis caught sight of Lolita'seyes shining with the hurt of her lover's rebuff, and his face sparkledwith further mischief. "She has been despising me all day," he said tohimself. "Very well, very well.--Senor Don Ruz," he began aloud,elaborately, "we are having a bad drought."

  The American rode on, inspecting the country.

  "I know at least four sorts of kisses," reflected the Mexican trifler."But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the topof a rock." He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, hispistol, and his knife. "How clumsy these gringos are when it's about agirl!" thought Luis. "Any fool could fool them. Now I should take muchcare to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comicalgringo!--Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!"

  The American continued to inspect the country, his supple,flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.

  "Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz," persisted the gadfly, lightingagain. "Don Ramon's spring does not run now, and so we must come to theTinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday.Everybody absent from home, except Lolita." Luis thought he could seehis Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile overhimself and his skill grew more engaging. "Lolita has been telling meall to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry."

  "It was you said that!" exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.

  "So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagreeabout." The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to histormentor. "No sabe cuantos son cinco," Luis whispered, stepping closeto Lolita. "Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now." Lolitadrew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his headslightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. "But what do yousay yourself, Don Ruz?" inquired Luis, pleased at this slightcoincidence--"will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?"

  "I expect guessing won't interfere with the water's movements much,"finally remarked Don Ruz--Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in hisvoice were not much like the Mexican's light fluency. They were music toLolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. Thebitter Luis relished this too.

  "You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wonderingabout this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen somuch of the cross out of water. Lolita says--"

  "So that's that place," said Genesmere, roughly.

  Luis looked inquiring.

  "Down there," Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back alongthe road they had come.

  Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, shouldnever have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.

  "I'd have seen it if I'd had any use for it," said Genesmere.

  "To be sure, it lay off the road of travel," Luis assented. And ofcourse Don Ruz knew all that was needful--how to find it. He knew whatpeople said--did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolitaperhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above thewater, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty.Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they couldjudge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolitawere surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubtwhat the Indians said about the great underground snake that came andsucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence wasnearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.

  To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressedcontempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of itbefore, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed thedesert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where heexpected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the canon, suffering theglib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings stillsmouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in hischeeks; but of Luis's chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, asingle English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit.It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and,overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easilyhe could play this simple, unskilful American.

  They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees,where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.

  "So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?" said Luis, perceiving theAmerican's pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at GunSight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita's and her cousin'strail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above theTinaja. "You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know,Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probablyfrijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here." He was giving hispony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted."I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming tillto-morrow, and quickly eat my supper." He spoke jauntily from his horse,arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day's courting, graysteeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toilseverely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and bodytogether and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm softon his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; forLuis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcertedthe most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to hisgalled self-esteem. "Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps Ishall come to-morrow, manana en la manana."

  "Good-night," said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; "I cannotstop you from passing my house."

  Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands foldedupon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease,ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the Americanwas not the man to wait until his enemy's back was turned.

  "'El telele se murio A enterrar ya le llevan--'"

  The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.

  "'Ay! Ay! Ay!'"

  Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other,looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. Theminstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than theAmerican's shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant withthoughtlessness. Like most of his basking Southern breed, he had novisible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer thanthree minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough tosleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thingto sell some other man's horses over the border and get a fine coat andhat.

  "'Cinco dragones y un cabo, Oh, no no no no no! Y un gato de sacristan.'"

  Coat and hat were getting up the canon's side among the cactus, thelittle horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider;and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till theywent behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing inGenesmere's brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew,and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while thesun--the sun of Arizona at the day's transfigured immortalpassing--became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beatinglike a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep,and breathing
out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded overearth and sky.

  Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. "I didn'tshoot because I was afraid of hitting you," he said.

  So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above theTinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made herstupid and slow.

  "Are you going to eat?" she inquired.

  "Oh yes. I guess I'll eat."

  She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had beenUncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, andwith small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules,coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.

  "It is getting dark," said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it,and sat down again.

  "I've never hurt a woman," he said, presently, the vision of his rifle'swhite front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once moreflooding his brain. He spoke slowly.

  "Then you have a good chance now," said Lolita, quickly, busy over hercooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not inher blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking andsitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.

  "And I wouldn't hurt a woman"--he was hardly talking to her--"not if Icould think in time."

  "Men do it," she said, with the same defiance. "But it makes talk."

  "Talk's nothing to me," said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. "Do Icare for opinions? Only my own." The fierceness passed from his face,and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud,changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. "I wouldn't want to have toremember a thing like that." He stretched himself, and leaned his elbowson his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding hisfingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not asign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreckof faith and passion. "I have to live a heap of my life alone," thelounger went on. "Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And Idon't propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of." Lolita wasthrowing a cloth over the table and straightening it. "I'm twenty-five,and I've laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might saydifferent."

  "It is ready," said Lolita, finishing her preparations.

  He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chairto the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She movedabout the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him,seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was apeon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparativelywell. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were severaldishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to hisplate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionallylooking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again inwords. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: "So, you see, yousaved his life down there."

  She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she saidnothing, but waited for what next.

  "You don't believe that. You don't know that. He knows that."

  She laughed again, more briefly.

  "You can tell him so. From me."

  Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita's lips and hinder eachother's escaping.

  "And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn't have stopped. He'd haveshot. Say that. From me. He'd have shot, because he's a Spaniard, likeyou."

  "You lie!" This side issue in some manner set free the girl's tongue, "Iam not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I amMexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood.But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let himgo. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tellhim it is Lolita's. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have hadenough of men's talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!"

  Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. "Isuppose," he said, very slowly, "that folks like you folks can'tunderstand about love--not about the kind I mean."

  Lolita's two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called uponher gods. "Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will makeyou contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he lovedme. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always,since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day,having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hearhis folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how youwould come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this houseto-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it isyou who are the fool."

  She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought tobring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed tohim.

  "Lolita!" he whispered. "Lolita!"

  But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And whenpresently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the waythat he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through thedesert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drewher close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled andchanged him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "Mylife!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door theair of the canon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fireand the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of thetrees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceasedto be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapesof their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or fiveplanets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of thekeen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towardsthe Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere's eye, and Lolita felthim shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.

  "What is it?" she said.

  "Nothing." He was staring at the hill. "Nothing," he replied to himself.

  "Dreamer, come!" said Lolita, pulling him. "It is cold here in thenight--and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember."

  "What does this girl want now?"

  "The cards! our cards!"

  "Why, to be sure!" He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at thefleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,laughing for delight at her lover's being himself again--his own rightself that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.

  "Take it!" she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keephis distance. "There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! Youshall buy me another." She flung the light instrument, that fell in acorner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing toa blurred hollow humming, and silence.

  "Now you have done it!" said Genesmere, mock serious.

  "I don't care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, andyou shall give me a new one.

  "'Yo soy purita mejicana; Nada tengo espanol,'"

  sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herselfat the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. "Yousit there!" She nodded to the opposite side of the table. "Very well,move the lamp then." Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face fromhim. "He thinks I cheat! Now, Senor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar.Do you hear?"

  "Too many pesos, senorita."

  "Oh, oh! the miser!"

  "I'm not going broke on any senoritas--not even my own girl!"

  "Have you no newer thing than poverty to tell me? Now if you look at melike that I cannot shuffle properly."

  "How am I to look, please?" He held his glance on her.

  "Not foolish like a boy. There, take them, then!" She threw the cards athim, blushing and perturbed by his eyes, while he scrambled to punishher across the table.

  "Generous one!" she said. "Ardent pretender! He won't let me shufflebecause he fears to lose."

  "You shall have a silk handkerchief with flowers on it," said he,sh
uffling.

  "I have two already. I can see you arranging those cards, miser!"

  It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether shestole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for herwhen he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and thecards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, hisoldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself.Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon toforget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of themoment.

  "Say my name!" he ordered; and at the child effort she made over "Russ"he smiled with delight. "Again!" he exclaimed, bending to catch her Rand the whole odd little word she made. "More!"

  "No," pouted the girl, and beat at him, blushing again.

  "Make your bet!" he said, laying out the Mexican cards before him."Quick! Which shall it be?"

  "The caballo. Oh, my dear, I wanted to die this afternoon, and now I amso happy!"

  It brought the tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenlydeclared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blowsand laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack outof turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make herwin three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for theguitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And atlast Genesmere began to speak of the next time, and Lolita to forbidsuch talk as that so soon. She laid her hand over his lips, at which heyielded for a little, and she improvised questions of moment to ask him,without time for stopping, until she saw that this would avail nolonger. Then she sighed, and let him leave her to see to his animals,while she lighted the fire again to make breakfast for him. At thatparting meal an anxiety slowly came in her face, and it was she thatbroke their silence after a while.

  "Which road do you go this time, querido?" she asked.

  "Tucson, Maricopa, and then straight here to you."

  "From Maricopa? That is longer across the desert."

  "Shorter to my girl."

  "I--I wish you would not come that way."

  "Why?"

  "That--that desert!"

  "There's desert both ways--all ways. The other road puts an extra weekbetween you and me."

  "Yes, yes. I have counted."

  "What is all this, Lolita?"

  Once more she hesitated, smiling uneasily beneath his scrutiny. "Yo nose" (I don't know). "You will laugh. You do not believe the things thatI believe. The Tinaja Bonita--"

  "That again!"

  "Yes," she half whispered. "I am afraid."

  He looked at her steadily.

  "Return the same road by Tucson," she urged. "That way is only half somuch desert, and you can carry water from Poso Blanco. Do not trust theCoyote Wells. They are little and shallow, and if the Black Cross--Oh,my darling, if you do not believe, do this for me because you love me,love me!"

  He did not speak at once. The two had risen, and stood by the opendoor, where the dawn was entering and mixing with the lamp. "Because Ilove you," he repeated at length, slowly, out of his uncertain thoughts.

  She implored him, and he studied her in silence.

  Suddenly hardness stamped his face. "I'll come by Tucson, then--since Ilove you!" And he walked at once out of the door. She followed him tohis horse, and there reached up and pulled him round to her, locking herfingers behind his neck. Again his passion swept him, and burned thedoubt from his eyes. "I believe you love me!" he broke out.

  "Ah, why need you say that?"

  "Adios, chiquita." He was smiling, and she looked at his white teeth andgolden mustache. She felt his hands begin to unlock her own.

  "Not yet--not yet!"

  "Adios, chiquita."

  "O mi querido!" she murmured; "with you I forget day and night!"

  "Bastante!" He kissed her once for all.

  "Good-bye! good-bye! Mis labios van estar frios hasta que tu los toquesotra vez" (My lips will be cold until you touch them again).

  He caught her two hands, as if to cling to something. "Say that oncemore. Tell me that once more."

  She told him with all her heart and soul, and he sprang into his saddle.She went beside him through the cold, pale-lighted trees to the garden'sedge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren groundamong the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that camebeyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strongfigure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter.When the steeper fall of the canon hid him from her she ran to thehouse, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sightagain below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, thewhite horse and dark rider and the mules, until they became a mere lineof something moving, and so vanished into the increasing day.

  Genesmere rode, and took presently to smoking. Coming to a sandy place,he saw prints of feet and of a shod horse in the trail heading the otherway. That was his own horse, and the feet were Lolita's and Luis's--therecord and the memory of yesterday afternoon. He looked up from thetrail to the hills, now lambent with violet and shifting orange, andtheir shapes as they moved out into his approaching view were the shapesof yesterday afternoon. He came soon to the forking of the trails, onefor Tucson and the other leading down into the lumpy country, and hereagain were the prints in the sand, the shod horse, the man and thewoman, coming in from the lumpy country that lay to the left; andGenesmere found himself stock-still by the forking trails, looking athis watch. His many-journeyed mules knew which was the Tucson trail,and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walkedasunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They wentalong a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came toan end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footinglooking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master satquiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; andthe sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So far had he comeyesterday with that mind easy over his garnered prosperity, free andsoaring on its daily flight among the towers of his hopes--thoseconstructions that are common with men who grow fond: the air-castlerises and reaches, possessing the architect, who cherishes its slowcreation with hourly changes and additions to the plan. A house was partof Genesmere's castle, a home with a wife inside, and no more campingalone. Thus far, to this exact ledge, the edifice had gone forwardfortunately, and then a blast had crumbled house and days to come intoindistinguishable dust. The heavy echo jarred in Genesmere, now that hehad been lured to look again upon the site of the disaster, and alightning violence crossed his face. He saw the two down there as theyhad stood, the man with his arms holding the woman, before the fallingstone had startled them. Were the Mexican present now in the flesh, hewould destroy him just for what he had tried to do. If she weretrue--She was true--that was no thanks to the Mexican. Genesmere wassorry second thoughts had spared that fellow yesterday, and he looked athis watch again. It was time to be starting on the Tucson trail, and themules alertly turned their steps from the Tinaja Bonita. They could seeno good in having come here. Evidently it was not to get water. Why,then? What use was there in looking down a place into a hole? The mulesgave it up. Genesmere himself thought the Tinaja poorly named. It wasnot pretty. In his experience of trail and canon he knew no other suchhole. He was not aware of the twin, dried up, thirty yards below, andtherefore only half knew the wonders of the spot.

  He rode back to the forks across the rolling steepness, rebuilding thecastle; then, discovering something too distant to be sure about, usedhis glass quickly. It was another rider, also moving slowly among theknolls and gullies of the mesa, and Genesmere could not make him out. Hewas going towards the cabin, but it was not the same horse that Luis hadridden yesterday. This proved nothing, and it would be easy to circleand see the man closer--only not worth the trouble. Let the Mexican goto the cabin. Let him go every day. He probably would, if she permitted.Most likely she would tell him to keep away from her. S
he ought to. Shemight hurt him if he annoyed her. She was a good shot with a pistol. Butwomen work differently from men--and then she was Mexican. She mighthide her feelings and make herself pleasant for three weeks. She wouldtell him when he returned, and they would laugh together over how shehad fooled this Luis. After all, shooting would have been too muchpunishment. A man with a girl like Lolita must expect to find other menafter her. It depends on your girl. You find that out when you go afterother men's girls. When a woman surely loves some other man she will notlook at you. And Lolita's love was a sure thing. A woman can say loveand a man will believe her--until he has experienced the genuine articleonce; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with herinside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not tobe accounted for. If anybody had said last year--why, as late as the20th of last March--that settling down was what you were coming to--andnow--Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding ahorse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. "No longeralone!" he said aloud, suddenly, and surprised the white horse.

  The song about the hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythmin his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it,naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversionto piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick afterslow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again;would never want to--not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head backto take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountainslike a picture, and himself far out in the flat country, and the baresun in the sky. He had come six miles on the road since he had lastnoticed. Six miles, and the air-castle was rebuilt and perfect, with nodifference from the old one except its foundation, which was upon sand.To see the unexpected plain around him, and the islands of blue, sharppeaks lying in it, drove the tune from his head, and he considered thewell-known country, reflecting that man could not be meant to live here.The small mountain-islands lay at all distances, blue in a dozen ways,amid the dead calm of this sand archipelago. They rose singly from it,sheer and sudden, toothed and triangled like icebergs, hot as stoves.The channels to the north, Santa Rosa way, opened broad and yellow, andended without shore upon the clean horizon, and to the south narrowedwith lagoons into Sonora. Genesmere could just see one top of the Sierrade la Quitabac jutting up from below the earth-line, splitting the mainchannel, the faintest blue of all. They could be having no trouble overtheir water down there, with the Laguna Esperanca and the Poso de Mazis.Genesmere killed some more of the way rehearsing the trails andwater-holes of this country, known to him like his pocket; and by-and-byfood-cooking and mule-feeding and the small machine repetitions of acamp and a journey brought the Quijotoa Mountains behind him to replaceGun Sight and the Sierra de la Naril; and later still the Cababi hid theQuijotoa, and Genesmere counted days and nights to the good, and was atthe Coyote Wells.

  These were holes in rocks, but shallow, as Lolita said. No shallowerthan ordinary, however; he would see on the way back if they gave signsof failing. No wonder if they did, with this spell of drought--but whymix up a plain thing with a lot of nonsense about a black cross down ahole? Genesmere was critically struck with the words of the tune he nownoticed steadily running in his head again, beneath the random surfaceof his thoughts.

  "Cinco dragones y un cabo, Y un gato de sacristan."

  That made no sense either; but Mexicans found something in it. Liked it.Now American songs had some sense:

  "They bathed his head in vinegar To fetch him up to time, And now he drives a mule team on The Denver City line."

  A man could understand that. A proud stage-driver makes a mistake abouta female passenger. Thinks he has got an heiress, and she turns out topeddle sarsaparilla. "So he's naturally used up," commented Genesmere."You estimate a girl as one thing, and she--" Here the undercurrentwelled up, breaking the surface. "Did she mean that? Was that hergenuine reason?" In memory he took a look at his girl's face, andrepeated her words when she besought him to come the longer way andhesitated over why. Was that shame at owning she believed such stuff?True, after asking him once about his religion and hearing what he said,she had never spoken of these things again. That must be a woman's waywhen she loved you first--to hide her notions that differed from yours,and not ruffle happy days. "Return the same road by Tucson!" Heunwrapped a clean, many-crumpled handkerchief, and held Lolita'sphotograph for a while. Then he burst into an unhappy oath, and foldedthe picture up again. What if her priest did tell her? He had heard theminister tell about eternal punishment when he was a boy, and just assoon as he started thinking it over he knew it was a lie. And this quackTinaja was worse foolishness, and had nothing to do with religion.Lolita afraid of his coming to grief in a country he had travelledhundreds, thousands of miles in! Perhaps she had never started thinkingfor herself yet. But she had. She was smarter than any girl of her agehe had ever seen. She did not want him back so soon. That was what itwas. Yet she had looked true; her voice had sounded that way. Again hedwelt upon her words and caresses; and harboring these various thoughts,he killed still more of the long road, until, passing after awhile PosoBlanco, and later Marsh's ranch-well at the forks where the Sonora roadcomes in, he reached Tucson a man divided against himself. Dividedbeyond his will into two selves--one of faith besieged, and one ofbesieging inimical reason--the inextricable error!

  Business and pleasure were waiting in Tucson, and friends whose ways andcompany had not been of late for him; but he frequented them this time,tasting no pleasure, yet finding the ways and company better than hisown. After the desert's changeless, unfathomed silence, in which nothingnew came day or night to break the fettering spell his mind was fallingunder, the clink and knocking of bottles was good to hear, and helistened for more, craving any sound that might liven or distract hishaunted spirit. Instead of the sun and stars, here was a roof; insteadof the pitiless clear air, here was tobacco smoke; and beneath hisboot-heels a wooden floor wet with spilled liquids instead of theunwatered crumbling sand. Without drinking, he moved his chair near thenoisiest drinkers, and thus among the tobacco smoke sought to hide fromhis own looming doubt. Later the purring tinkle of guitars reminded himof that promised present, and the next morning he was the owner of thebest instrument that he could buy. Leaving it with a friend to keepuntil he should come through again from Maricopa, he departed that waywith his mules, finding in the new place the same sort of friends andbusiness, and by night looking upon the same untasted pleasures. He wentabout town with some cattlemen--carousing bankrupts, who rememberedtheir ruin in the middle of whiskey, and broke off to curse it and thetimes and climate, and their starved herds that none would buy at anyprice. Genesmere touched nothing, yet still drew his chair among thesedrinkers.

  "Aren't you feeling good to-night, Russ?" asked one at length.

  And Genesmere's eyes roused from seeing visions, and his ears becameaware of the loud company. In Tucson he had been able to sit in thesmoke, and compass a cheerful deceit of appearance even to himself.Choosing and buying the guitar had lent reality to his imitated peace ofmind; he had been careful over its strings, selecting such as Lolitapreferred, wrapt in carrying out this spiritual forgery of anotherGenesmere. But here they had noticed him; appearances had slipped fromhim. He listened to a piece of late Arizona news some one was in themiddle of telling--the trial of several Mormons for robbing a paymasternear Cedar Springs. This was the fourth time he had heard the story,because it was new; but the present narrator dwelt upon the dodgings ofa witness, a negress, who had seen everything and told nothing,outwitting the government, furnishing no proofs. This brought Genesmerequite back.

  "No proofs!" he muttered. "No proofs!" He laughed and became alert. "Shelied to them good, did she?"

  They looked at him, because he had not spoken for so long; and he wastold that she had certainly lied good.

  "Fooled them clean through, did she? On oath! Tell about her."

  The flat
tered narrator, who had been in court, gave all he knew, andGenesmere received each morsel of perjury gravely with a nod. He satstill when the story was done.

  "Yes," he said, after a time. "Yes." And again, "Yes." Then he brieflybade the boys good-night, and went out from the lamps and whiskey intothe dark.

  He walked up and down alone, round the corral where his mules stood,round the stable where his bed-blankets were; and one or two carouserscame by, who suggested further enjoyments to him. He went to the edge ofthe town and walked where passers would not meet him, turning now andthen to look in the direction of Tucson, where the guitar was waiting.When he felt the change of dawn he went to the stable, and by the firstearly gray had his mules packed. He looked once again towards Tucson,and took the road he had promised not to take, leaving the guitar behindhim altogether. His faith protested a little, but the other selfinvented a quibble, the mockery that he had already "come by Tucson,"according to his literal word; and this device answered. It is a comfortto be divided no longer against one's self. Genesmere was at ease in histhraldom to the demon with whom he had wrestled through the dark hours.As the day brightened he wondered how he had come to fool a night awayover a promise such as that. He took out the face in the handkerchief,and gave it a curious, defiant smile. She had said waiting would belong. She should have him quickly. And he was going to know about thatvisitor at the cabin, the steeple-hatted man he saw in his visions. SoMaricopa drew behind him, small, clear-grouped in the unheated morning,and the sun found the united man and his mules moving into the desert.

  By the well in the bottom of the Santa Cruz River he met with cattle andlittle late-born calves trying to trot. Their mothers, the foremanexplained, had not milk enough for them, nor the cursed country food orwater for the mothers. They could not chew cactus. These animals hadbeen driven here to feed and fatten inexpensively, and get quick moneyfor the owner. But, instead, half of them had died, and the men weredriving the rest to new pastures--as many, that is, as could stillwalk. Genesmere knew, the foreman supposed, that this well was the lastfor more than a hundred miles? Funny to call a thing like that SantaCruz a river! Well, it was an Arizona river; all right enough, no doubt,somewhere a thousand feet or so underground. Pity you weren't aprairie-dog that eats sand when he gets a thirst on him. Got anytobacco? Good-bye.

  Think of any valleys that you know between high mountains. Such wassouthern Arizona once--before we came. Then fill up your valleys withsand until the mountains show no feet or shoulders, but become as menburied to the neck. That is what makes separate islands of theirprotruding peaks, and that is why water slinks from the surface wheneverit can and flows useless underneath, entombed in the original valley.This is Arizona now--since the pterodactyls have gone. In such a placethe traveller turns mariner, only, instead of the stars, he studies thewater-wells, shaping his course by these. Not sea-gulls, but ravens, flyover this waste, seeking their meal. Some were in front of Genesmerenow, settled black in the recent trail of the cattle. He did not muchcare that the last well was gone by, for he was broken in by long travelto the water of the 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through thisjourney. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, andmen and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, andthey become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck,and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, butwill save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, andGenesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night,carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of itbut a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached hiscalculated 'dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shadeat the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of themesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whoseloose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on theother side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among themesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluidin his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twentyyards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, whenthey clouded back again round their carrion.

  This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoonbrought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty oftime for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promisehad changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in thesteeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along theroad nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wettingthe beasts' tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next'dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went throughbefore coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The postedplants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legionsand legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling atthe top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck theblossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded topods ten feet in the air. Genesmere's horse started and nearly threwhim, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmerecould tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to huntwater, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try atrunning away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guardingthe calves of her sisters till they should return from getting theirwater. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at thestranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostilesound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passingenemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas,an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some roseto look after him; some lifted their heads from the ground, and seeing,laid them down again. He came upon a calf watching its mother, who hadfallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow'sforeleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself fromrising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings;her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where herpivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave hertongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. Heplaced the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horsethe calf came to its mother, who began to lick it. He presently markedahead the position of the coming 'dobe-hole by the ravens assembled inthe air, continually rising and lighting. The white horse and mulesquickened their step, and the trail became obliterated by hundreds ofhoof-marks leading to the water. As a spider looks in the centre of anempty web, so did the round wallow sit in the middle of the plain, withthreaded feet conducting from everywhere to it. Mules and white horsescraped through the scratching mesquite, and the ravens flapped up. ToGenesmere their croaking seemed suddenly to fill all space with loudtotal clamor, for no water was left, only mud. He eased the animals oftheir loads and saddles, and they rolled in the stiff mud, squeezingfrom it a faint ooze, and getting a sort of refreshment. Genesmerechewed the mud, and felt sorry for the beasts. He turned both canteensupside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well,that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; butspilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal afteranimal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at thisspot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards awayto be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. Helay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animalsnow that last hole might be used up by the cattle before he gotthere--and then it was two stages more to the Santa Cruz well. And theman would be gaining just so many more days unhindered at the cabin. Outof the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. Ifthat were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cutfor that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as theanimals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun gotbad. What business ha
d October to be hot like this? So in the darknesshe mounted again, and noon found him with eyes shut under a yucca. Itwas here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sittingin a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by thewindow, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was nofool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a manmore a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in brightlight, and said, "No proofs." The bright light was the real sun cominground the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cowswere here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his ownbeasts, and spoke to them.

  "Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!" He stopped at the pain. It was in his lipsand mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightenedhim. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signsthat it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands wereshowing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaselesssunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life inthe naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearestisland, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away toa transparent fringe.

  "Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod," remarked Genesmere, aloud, andremembered his thickened mouth again. "I can stand it off for a whileyet, though--if they can travel." His mules looked at him when hecame--looked when he tightened their cinches. "I know, Jeff," he said,and inspected the sky. "No heaven's up there. Nothing's back of thatthing, unless it's hell."

  "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU'RE ALONE'"]

  He got the animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like thelast, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't foolme," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." Hiseye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foremanwas not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," hecontinued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made his words. "Thislive-stock here's not enjoying itself like its owners in town. Thislive-stock was intended for Eastern folks' dinner.--But you've gotahead of 'em this trip," he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly,and, hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. "You don'twant to talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You'realone.--I wish I'd never known!" he suddenly cried out.

  He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping hishands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow withtheir loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for somelittle while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had broughtthese beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against thedivine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinitesadness. "If she'll tell me it's not so," he said, "I'll believe her. Iwill believe her now. I'll make myself. She'll help me to." He took whatrest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. Itwas nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by hisincreasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed themountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by amule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well forall to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the skyat the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his handreached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into apretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned awayand saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed andshrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then hesaw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wastedhis mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut hiseyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner ofhis eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.

  "You're not experienced," said Genesmere. "I'm not dead yet. But I'mobliged to you for being so enterprising. You've cleared my head. Quitthat talk, Russ Genesmere." He went to the mule that had given outduring the night. "Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if thathunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for himwithout help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or onlythinking it? I know I'm alone. I've travelled that way in this world.Why?" He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answercame in a fierce voice: "Because you're a man, and can stand this worldoff by yourself. You look to no one." He suddenly took out thehandkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. "That's lightened mypack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they'll never make camp." Hetook what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefullybetween stones--for they had come near the mountain country--and,looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. "Ha, ha!" he said,slyly; "you're not there, though. And I'll prove it to you." He choseanother direction, and saw another flowing river. "I was expecting you,"he stated, quietly. "Don't bother me. I'm thirsty."

  But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertileplace, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sangout, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don'tseem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall notchase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham.Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocksthrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on thesame plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shoutinguntil brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool,she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen amongstones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly."Didn't stay to see you get wicked." Then he grew stern again. "You'veshowed yourself up, and you can't tell land from water. You're going tolet the boys take you straight. I don't trust you."

  He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse's tail, and they setout in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead forthe water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting manbrought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feetsliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below,gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monumentsslanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead inspace, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness.The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere's attention. "Toll on!"he cried to them. "Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summerand winter, night and day, I've known you, and I've heard you all along.A man can't look but he sees you walling God's country from him, ringingaway with your knell."

  He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the fullmoon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himselfhad evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open.He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life,and he heard something somewhere screaming "Water! water! water!" fastand unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn,and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet,and the screaming stopped. "Round 'em up, Russ Genesmere! It's gettinglate!" he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. Theydodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horseurging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of alog that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, andGenesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinginghis rope and yelling in the full moon: "Round 'em up! round 'em up!Don't you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd's bedded downalong with the ravens."

  The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of a round hole, but hedid not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and themountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beatinto his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the
broken naturalstairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver's, and ground hisforehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled onceup round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began totear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbingwith his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him inthe canon his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, havingslaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where henow lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.

  He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. Hewas now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead,and a moist rag on his lips.

  "Water!" He could just make the whisper.

  But Lolita made a sign of silence.

  "Water!" he gasped.

  She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be alljust now.

  His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolitascreamed at his leap for the living well.

  "Not yet! Not yet!" she said in terror, grappling with him. "Help!Luis!"

  So this was their plot, the demon told him--to keep him from water! In afrenzy of strength he seized Lolita. "Proved! Proved!" he shouted, andstruck his knife into her. She fell at once to the earth and lay calm,eyes wide open, breathing in the bright sun. He rushed to the water andplunged, swallowing and rolling.

  Luis ran up from the cows he was gathering, and when he saw what wasdone, sank by Lolita to support her. She pointed to the pool.

  "He is killing himself!" she managed to say, and her head went lower.

  "And I'll help you die, caberon! I'll tear your tongue. I'll--"

  But Lolita, hearing Luis's terrible words, had raised a forbidding hand.She signed to leave her and bring Genesmere to her.

  The distracted Luis went down the stone stairs to kill the American inspite of her, but the man's appearance stopped him. You could not raisea hand against one come to this. The water-drinking was done, andGenesmere lay fainting, head and helpless arms on the lowest stone, bodyin the water. The Black Cross stood dry above. Luis heard Lolita'svoice, and dragged Genesmere to the top as quickly as he could. She,seeing her lover, cried his name once and died; and Luis cast himself onthe earth.

  "Fool! fool!" he repeated, catching at the ground, where he lay for somewhile until a hand touched him. It was Genesmere.

  "I'm seeing things pretty near straight now," the man said. "Come close.I can't talk well. Was--was that talk of yours, and singing--was thatbluff?"

  "God forgive me!" said poor Luis.

  "You mean forgive me," said Genesmere. He lay looking at Lolita. "Closeher eyes," he said. And Luis did so. Genesmere was plucking at hisclothes, and the Mexican helped him draw out a handkerchief, which thelover unfolded like a treasure. "She used to look like this," he began.He felt and stopped. "Why, it's gone!" he said. He lay evidently seekingto remember where the picture had gone, and his eyes went to the hillswhence no help came. Presently Luis heard him speaking, and, leaning tohear, made out that he was murmuring his own name, Russ, in the wayLolita had been used to say it. The boy sat speechless, and no thoughtstirred in his despair as he watched. The American moved over, and puthis arms round Lolita, Luis knowing that he must not offer to help himdo this. He remained so long that the boy, who would never be a boyagain, bent over to see. But it was only another fainting-fit. Luiswaited; now and then the animals moved among the rocks. The sun crossedthe sky, bringing the many-colored evening, and Arizona was no longerterrible, but once more infinitely sad. Luis started, for the Americanwas looking at him and beckoning.

  "She's not here," Genesmere said, distinctly.

  Luis could not follow.

  "Not here, I tell you." The lover touched his sweetheart. "This is nother. My punishment is nothing," he went on, his face growing beautiful."See there!"

  Luis looked where he pointed.

  "Don't you see her? Don't you see her fixing that camp for me? We'regoing to camp together now."

  But these were visions alien to Luis, and he stared helpless, anxious todo anything that the man might desire. Genesmere's face darkenedwistfully.

  "Am I not making camp?" he said.

  Luis nodded to please him, without at all comprehending.

  "You don't see her." Reason was warring with the departing spirit untilthe end. "Well, maybe you're right. I never was sure. But I'm mortaltired of travelling alone. I hope--"

  That was the end, and Russ Genesmere lay still beside his sweetheart. Itwas a black evening at the cabin, and a black day when Luis and oldRamon raised and fenced the wooden head-stone, with its two forlornnames.

  A PILGRIM ON THE GILA

  Midway from Grant to Thomas comes Paymaster's Hill, not much after CedarSprings and not long before you sight the valley where the Gila flows.This lonely piece of road must lie three thousand miles from Washington;but in the holiday journey that I made they are near together among theadventures of mind and body that overtook me. For as I turned southwardour capital was my first stopping-place, and it was here I gathered theexpectations of Arizona with which I continued on my way.

  Arizona was the unknown country I had chosen for my holiday, and I foundthem describing it in our National House of Representatives, where I hadstrolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hotto make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that theplace had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk andreplies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in thesharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had notthought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories wererumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neithercattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order andprosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently lost histemper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey andenlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well onto three times the size of New York--had a hundred and thirteen thousandsquare miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice asbig as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of theearth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as thetown of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus wasArizona's chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and theApache her leading citizen.

  And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgothis sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his singlegesture--that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during thesuspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at thefull stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of mannerfrom my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would addfamine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, butit was all told in Mr. Pumpelly's book, true as life, thirty yearsago--doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this reportdiscouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go thereto-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals insecurity. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowingtheir particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay intheir minds.

  At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my firstsight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly andsmilingly watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits ofthe railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, theleap into civilization that the Territory had taken. "Let Pennsylvaniasee those blossoming fields for herself," said he, "those boundlesscontiguities of shade." And a sort of cluck went off down inside myneighbor's throat, while the speaker with rising heat gave us thetonnage of plums exported from the Territory during the past fiscalyear. Wool followed.

  "Sock it to 'em, Limber Jim!" murmured the man in the duster, andexecuted a sort of step. He was plainly a personal acquaintance of thespeaker's.

  Figures never stick by me, nor can I quote accurately the catalogue ofstatistic a
bundance now recited in the House of Representatives; but aswheat, corn, peaches, apricots, oranges, raisins, spices, the rose andthe jasmine flowered in the Boy Orator's eloquence, the genial antics ofmy neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as"He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more thathave escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad toremember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain ofmetaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance forenthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I shouldhave voted to make the Territory a State that very day.

  "With her snow-clad summits, with the balm of her Southern vineyards,she loudly calls for a sister's rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor anycycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her SaltRiver, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, her hundred irrigatedvalleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, wherethousands of noble men and elegantly educated ladies have alreadylocated, and to which thousands more, like patient monuments, arewaiting breathless to throng when the franchise is proclaimed. And if mydeath could buy that franchise, I would joyfully boast such martyrdom."

  The orator cracked his hands together in this supreme moment, and thebulky gentleman in the duster drove an elbow against my side, whisperingto me at the same time behind his hand, in a hoarse confidence:"Deserted Jericho! California only holds the record on stoves now."

  "I'm afraid I do not catch your allusion," I began. But at my voice heturned sharply, and, giving me one short, ugly stare, was looking abouthim, evidently at some loss, when a man at his farther side pulled athis duster, and I then saw that he had all along been taking me for ayounger companion he had come in with, and with whom he now went away.In the jostle we had shifted places while his eyes were upon the variousspeakers, and to him I seemed an eavesdropper. Both he and his friendhad a curious appearance, and they looked behind them, meeting my gazeas I watched them going; and then they made to each other some laughingcomment, of which I felt myself to be the inspiration. I was standingabsently on the same spot, still in a mild puzzle over California andthe record on stoves. Certainly I had overheard none of their secrets,if they had any; I could not even guess what might be their true opinionabout admitting Arizona to our Union.

  With this last memory of our Capitol and the statesmen we havecollected there to govern us, I entered upon my holiday, glad that itwas to be passed in such a region of enchantment. For peaches it wouldbe too early, and with roses and jasmine I did not importantly concernmyself, thinking of them only as a pleasant sight by the way. But on mygradual journey through Lexington, Bowling Green, Little Rock, and ForthWorth I dwelt upon the shade of the valleys, and the pasture hillsdotted with the sheep of whose wool the Boy Orator had spoken; and Iwished that our cold Northwest could have been given such a bountifulclimate. Upon the final morning of railroad I looked out of the windowat an earth which during the night had collapsed into a vacuum, as I hadso often seen happen before upon more Northern parallels. The evennessof this huge nothing was cut by our track's interminable scar, andbroken to the eye by the towns which now and again rose and littered thehorizon like boxes dumped by emigrants. We were still in Texas, notdistant from the Rio Grande, and I looked at the boxes drifting by, andwondered from which of them the Boy Orator had been let loose. Twice orthree times upon this day of sand I saw green spots shining sudden andbright and Biblical in the wilderness. Their isolated loveliness washerald of the valley land I was nearing each hour. The wanderingMexicans, too, bright in rags and swarthy in nakedness, put me somehowin mind of the Old Testament.

  In the evening I sat at whiskey with my first acquaintance, a Mr. Mowry,one of several Arizona citizens whom my military friend at San Carloshad written me to look out for on my way to visit him. My train hadtrundled on to the Pacific, and I sat in a house once more--a saloon onthe platform, with an open door through which the night air camepleasantly. This was now the long-expected Territory, and time for rosesand jasmine to begin. Early in our talk I naturally spoke to Mr. Mowryof Arizona's resources and her chance of becoming a State.

  "We'd have got there by now," said he, "only Luke Jenks ain't half thatinterested in Arizona as he is in Luke Jenks."

  I reminded Mr. Mowry that I was a stranger here and unacquainted withthe prominent people.

  "Well, Luke's as near a hog as you kin be and wear pants. Be with you ina minute," added Mr. Mowry, and shambled from the room. This was becausea shot had been fired in a house across the railroad tracks. "I run twoplaces," he explained, returning quite soon from the house and taking upthe thread of his whiskey where he had dropped it. "Two outfits. Thisside for toorists. Th' other pays better. I come here in 'sixty-two."

  "I trust no one has been--hurt?" said I, inclining my head towards thefarther side of the railroad.

  "Hurt?" My question for the moment conveyed nothing to him, and herepeated the word, blinking with red eyes at me over the rim of hislifted glass. "No, nobody's hurt. I've been here a long while, and seenthem as was hurt, though." Here he nodded at me depreciatingly, and Ifelt how short was the time that I had been here. "Th' other side paysbetter," he resumed, "as toorists mostly go to bed early. Six bits isabout the figger you can reckon they'll spend, if you know anything." Henodded again, more solemn over his whiskey. "That kind's no help tobusiness. I've been in this Territory from the start, and Arizona ain'twhat it was. Them mountains are named from me." And he pointed out ofthe door. "Mowry's Peak. On the map." With this last august statementhis mind seemed to fade from the conversation, and he struck asuccession of matches along the table and various parts of his person.

  "Has Mr. Jenks been in the Territory long?" I suggested, feeling thesilence weigh upon me.

  "Luke? He's a hog. Him the people's choice! But the people of Arizonaain't what they was. Are you interested in silver?"

  "Yes," I answered, meaning the political question. But before I couldsay what I meant he had revived into a vigor of attitude and awakefulness of eye of which I had not hitherto supposed him capable.

  "You come here," said he; and, catching my arm, he took me out of thedoor and along the track in the night, and round the corner of therailroad hotel into view of more mountains that lay to the south. "Youstay here to-morrow," he pursued, swiftly, "and I'll hitch up and driveyou over there. I'll show you some rock behind Helen's Dome that'll beatany you've struck in the whole course of your life. It's on the woodreservation, and when the government abandons the Post, as they're goingto do--"

  There is no need for my entering at length into his urgence, or theplans he put to me for our becoming partners, or for my buying him outand employing him on a salary, or buying him out and employing someother, or no one, according as I chose--the whole bright array ofcostumes in which he presented to me the chance of making my fortune ata stroke. I think that from my answers he gathered presently adiscouraging but perfectly false impression. My Eastern hat andinexperienced face (I was certainly young enough to have been hisgrandchild) had a little misled him; and although he did not in theleast believe the simple truth I told him, that I had come to Arizona onno sort of business, but for the pleasure of seeing the country, he nowoverrated my brains as greatly as he had in the beginning despised them,quite persuaded I was playing some game deeper than common, and eitherowned already or had my eye upon other silver mines.

  "Pleasure of seeing the country, ye say?" His small wet eyes blinked ashe stood on the railroad track bareheaded, considering me from head tofoot. "All right. Did ye say ye're going to Globe?"

  "No. To San Carlos to visit an army officer."

  "Carlos is on the straight road to Globe," said Mr. Mowry, vindictively."But ye might as well drop any idea of Globe, if ye should get one. Ifit's copper ye're after, there's parties in ahead of you."

  Desiring, if possible, to shift his mind from its present unfavorableturn, I asked him if Mr. Adams did not live between here andSolomonsville, my route to Carlos. Mr. Adams was another characte
r ofwhom my host had written me, and at my mention of his name the face ofMr. Mowry immediately soured into the same expression it had taken whenhe spoke of the degraded Jenks.

  "So you're acquainted with him! He's got mines. I've seen 'em. If yourepresent any Eastern parties, tell 'em not to drop their dollars downold Adams's hole in the ground. He ain't the inexperienced juniper helooks. Him and me's been acquainted these thirty years. People claim itwas Cyclone Bill held up the Ehrenberg stage. Well, I guess I'll beseeing how the boys are getting along."

  With that he moved away. A loud disturbance of chairs and broken glasshad set up in the house across the railroad, and I watched theproprietor shamble from me with his deliberate gait towards theestablishment that paid him best. He had left me possessor of muchincomplete knowledge, and I waited for him, pacing the platform; but hedid not return, and as I judged it inexpedient to follow him, I went tomy bed on the tourist side of the track.

  In the morning the stage went early, and as our road seemed to promisebut little variety--I could see nothing but an empty plain--I was gladto find my single fellow-passenger a man inclined to talk. I did notlike his mustache, which was too large for his face, nor his too carefulcivility and arrangement of words; but he was genial to excess, andthoughtful of my comfort.

  "I beg you will not allow my valise to incommode you," was one of hisfirst remarks; and I liked this consideration better than any Mr. Mowryhad shown me. "I fear you will detect much initial primitiveness in ourmethods of transportation," he said.

  This again called for gracious assurances on my part, and for a whileour polite phrases balanced to corners until I was mentally windedkeeping up such a pace of manners. The train had just brought him fromTucson, he told me, and would I indulge? On this we shared andcomplimented each other's whiskey.

  "From your flask I take it that you are a Gentile," said he, smiling.

  "If you mean tenderfoot," said I, "let me confess at once that flask andowner are from the East, and brand-new in Arizona."

  "I mean you're not a Mormon. Most strangers to me up this way are. Butthey carry their liquor in a plain flat bottle like this."

  "Are you a--a--" Embarrassment took me as it would were I to checkmyself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger if he hadever embezzled.

  "Oh, I'm no Mormon," my new friend said, with a chuckle, and I was gladto hear him come down to reasonable English. "But Gentiles are in theminority in this valley."

  "I didn't know we'd got to the valleys yet," said I, eagerly, connectingMormons with fertility and jasmine. And I lifted the flaps of the stage,first one side and then the other, and saw the desert everywhere flat,treeless, and staring like an eye without a lid.

  "This is the San Simon Valley we've been in all the time," he replied."It goes from Mexico to the Gila, about a hundred and fifty miles."

  "Like this?"

  "South it's rockier. Better put the flap down."

  "I don't see where people live," I said, as two smoky spouts of sandjetted from the tires and strewed over our shoes and pervaded ournostrils. "There's nothing--yes, there's one bush coming." I fastenedthe flaps.

  "That's Seven-Mile Mesquite. They held up the stage at this point lastOctober. But they made a mistake in the day. The money had gone down theafternoon before, and they only got about a hundred."

  "I suppose it was Mormons who robbed the stage?"

  "Don't talk quite so loud," the stranger said, laughing. "The driver'sone of them."

  "A Mormon or a robber?"

  "Well, we only know he's a Mormon."

  "He doesn't look twenty. Has he many wives yet?"

  "Oh, they keep that thing very quiet in these days, if they do it atall. The government made things too hot altogether. The Bishop hereknows what hiding for polygamy means."

  "Bishop who?"

  "Meakum," I thought he answered me, but was not sure in the rattle ofthe stage, and twice made him repeat it, putting my hand to my ear atlast. "Meakum! Meakum!" he shouted.

  "Yes, sir," said the driver.

  "Have some whiskey?" said my friend, promptly; and when that was overand the flat bottle passed back, he explained in a lower voice, "A sonof the Bishop's."

  "Indeed!" I exclaimed.

  "So was the young fellow who put in the mail-bags, and thatyellow-headed duck in the store this morning." My companion, in thepleasure of teaching new things to a stranger, stretched his legs on thefront seat, lifted my coat out of his way, and left all formality ofspeech and deportment. "And so's the driver you'll have to-morrow ifyou're going beyond Thomas, and the stock-tender at the sub-agency whereyou'll breakfast. He's a yellow-head too. The old man's postmaster, andowns this stage-line. One of his boys has the mail contract. The old manruns the hotel at Solomonsville and two stores at Bowie and Globe, andthe store and mill at Thacher. He supplies the military posts in thisdistrict with hay and wood, and a lot of things on and off through theyear. Can't write his own name. Signs government contracts with hismark. He's sixty-four, and he's had eight wives. Last summer he marriednumber nine--rest all dead, he says, and I guess that's so. He hasfifty-seven recorded children, not counting the twins born last week.Any yellow-heads you'll see in the valley'll answer to the name ofMeakum as a rule, and the other type's curly black like this littledriver specimen."

  "How interesting there should be only two varieties of Meakum!" said I.

  "Yes, it's interesting. Of course the whole fifty-seven don't class upyellow or black curly, but if you could take account of stock you'd findthe big half of 'em do. Mothers don't seem to have influenced the typeappreciably. His eight families, successive and simultaneous, cover aperiod of forty-three years, and yellow and black keeps turning up rightalong. Scientifically, the suppression of Mormonism is a loss to thestudent of heredity. Some of the children are dead. Get killed now andthen, and die too--die from sickness. But you'll easily notice Meakumsas you go up the valley. Old man sees all get good jobs as soon asthey're old enough. Places 'em on the railroad, places 'em in town, allover the lot. Some don't stay; you couldn't expect the whole fifty-sevento be steady; but he starts 'em all fair. We have six in Tucson now, orfive, maybe. Old man's a good father."

  "They're not all boys?"

  "Certainly not; but more than half are."

  "And you say he can't write?"

  "Or read, except print, and he has to spell out that."

  "But, my goodness, he's postmaster!"

  "What's that got to do with it? Young Meakums all read like anything. Hedon't do any drudgery."

  "Well, you wouldn't catch me signing any contracts I couldn't read."

  "Do you think you'd catch anybody reading a contract wrong to oldMeakum? Oh, momma! Why, he's king round here. Fixes the county electionsand the price of tomatoes. Do you suppose any Tucson jury'll convict anyof his Mormons if he says nay? No, sir! It's been tried. Why, that manought to be in Congress."

  "If he's like that I don't consider him desirable," said I.

  "Yes, he is desirable," said my friend, roughly. "Smart, can't befooled, and looks after his people's interests. I'd like to know if thatdon't fill the bill?"

  "If he defeats justice--"

  "Oh, rats!" This interruption made me regret his earlier manner, and Iwas sorry the polish had rubbed through so quickly and brought us to atoo precipitate familiarity. "We're Western out here," he continued,"and we're practical. When we want a thing, we go after it. BishopMeakum worked his way down here from Utah through desert and starvation,mostly afoot, for a thousand miles, and his flock to-day is about theonly class in the Territory that knows what prosperity feels like, andhis laws are about the only laws folks don't care to break. He's got abrain. If he weren't against Arizona's being admitted--"

  "He should know better than that," said I, wishing to be friendly. "Withyour fruit exports and high grade of citizens you'll soon be anotherCalifornia."

  He gave me an odd look.

  "I am surprised," I proceeded, amiably, "to hear you speak of Mo
rmonsonly as prosperous. They think better of you in Washington."

  "Now, see here," said he, "I've been pleasant to you and I've enjoyedthis ride. But I like plain talk."

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "And I don't care for Eastern sarcasm."

  "There was no intention--"

  "I don't take offence where offence is not intended. As for high-gradecitizens, we don't claim to know as much as--I suppose it's New York youcome from? Gold-bugs and mugwumps--"

  "If you can spare the time," said I, "and kindly explain what hasdisturbed you in my remarks, we'll each be likely to find the rest ofthese forty miles more supportable."

  "I guess I can stand it," said he, swallowing a drink. He folded hisarms and resettled his legs; and the noisome hatefulness of his laughfilled me with regret for the wet-eyed Mowry. I would now gladly havetaken any amount of Mowry in exchange for this; and it struck me afreshhow uncertainly one always reckons with those who suspect their ownstanding.

  "Till Solomonsville," said I, "let us veil our estimation of each other.Once out of this stage and the world will be large enough for both ofus." I was wrong there; but presentiments do not come to me often. So I,too, drank some of my own whiskey, lighted a cigar, and observed withpleasure that my words had enraged him.

  Before either of us had devised our next remark, the stage pulled up tochange horses at the first and last water in forty miles. This stationwas kept by Mr. Adams, and I jumped out to see the man Mr. Mowry hadwarned me was not an inexperienced juniper. His appearance would havedrawn few but missionaries to him, and I should think would have beenwarning enough to any but an over-trustful child of six.

  "Are you the geologist?" he said at once, coughing heavily; and when Itold him I was simply enjoying a holiday, he looked at me sharply andspat against the corner of the stable. "There's one of them fellersexpected," he continued, in a tone as if I need not attempt to denythat, and I felt his eye watching for signs of geology about me. I toldhim that I imagined the geologist must do an active business in Arizona.

  "I don't hire 'em!" he exclaimed. "They can't tell me nothing aboutmineral."

  "I suppose you have been here a long while, Mr. Adams?"

  "There's just three living that come in ahead of--" The cough split hislast word in pieces.

  "Mr. Mowry was saying last night--"

  "You've seen that old scamp, have you? Buy his mine behind Helen'sDome?"

  My mirth at this turned him instantly confidential, and rooted hisconviction that I was a geologist. "That's right!" said he, tapping myarm. "Don't you let 'em fool you. I guess you know your business. Now,if you want to look at good paying rock, thousands in sight, in sight,mind you--"

  "Are you coming along with us?" called the little Meakum driver, and Iturned and saw the new team was harnessed and he ready on his box, withthe reins in his hands. So I was obliged to hasten from the disappointedAdams and climb back in my seat. The last I saw of him he was standingquite still in the welter of stable muck, stooping to his cough, thedesert sun beating on his old body, and the desert wind slowly turningthe windmill above the shadeless mud hovel in which he lived alone.

  "Poor old devil!" said I to my enemy, half forgetting our terms in mycontemplation of Adams. "Is he a Mormon?"

  My enemy's temper seemed a little improved. "He's tried most everythingexcept jail," he answered, his voice still harsh. "You needn't investyour sentiment there. He used to hang out at Twenty Mile in Old CampGrant days, and he'd slit your throat for fifty cents."

  But my sentiment was invested somehow. The years of the old-timers wereending so gray. Their heyday, and carousals, and happy-go-luckiness allgone, and in the remaining hours--what? Empty youth is such a grand easything, and empty age so grim!

  "Has Mowry tried everything, too?" I asked.

  "Including jail," said my companion; and gave me many entertainingincidents of Mowry's career with an ill-smelling saloon cleverness thatput him once more into favorable humor with me, while I retained myopinion of him. "And that uneducated sot," he concluded, "that hobo withhis record of cattle-stealing and claim-jumping, and his acquittal fromjail through railroad influence, actually undertook to run against melast elections. My name is Jenks; Luke Jenks, Territorial Delegate fromArizona." He handed me his card.

  "I'm just from Washington," said I.

  "Well, I've not been there this session. Important law business hasdetained me here. Yes, they backed Mowry in that election. The oldspittoon had quite a following, but he hadn't the cash. That gives yousome idea of the low standards I have to combat. But I hadn't to spendmuch. This Territory's so poor they come cheap. Seventy-five cents ahead for all the votes I wanted in Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma; and uphere the Bishop was my good friend. Holding office booms my businesssome, and that's why I took it, of course. But I've had low standards tofight."

  The Territorial Delegate now talked freely of Arizona's frontier life."It's all dead," he said, forgetting in his fluency what he had told meabout Seven-Mile Mesquite and last October. "We have a community as hightoned as any in the land. Our monumental activity--" And here he wentoff like a cuckoo clock, or the Boy Orator, reciting the glories ofPhoenix and Salt River, and the future of silver, in that specialdialect of platitudes which is spoken by our more talkative statesmen,and is not quite Latin, quite grammar, or quite falsehood. "We're notall Mowrys and Adamses," said he, landing from his flight.

  "In a population of fifty-nine thousand," said I, heartily, "a strangeris bound to meet decent people if he keeps on."

  Again he misinterpreted me, but this time the other way, bowing like onewho acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in suchpeace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For Ihad met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did notprefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-pennyplausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes,he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done withhim.

  I could have reached Thomas that evening, but after our noon dinner letthe stage go on, and delayed a night for the sake of seeing the Bishophold service next day, which was Sunday, some few miles down thevalley. I was curious to learn the Mormon ritual and what might be thedoctrines that such a man as the Bishop would expound. It dashed me alittle to find this would cost me forty-eight hours of Solomonsville, noSunday stage running. But one friendly English-speaking family--the townwas chiefly Mexican--made some of my hours pleasant, and others I spentin walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritualwas well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I wasobliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middleof his discourse.

  "Don't empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs," hewas saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in hisvoice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly aleader of men. "Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck thatthoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has notceased because they're rotten. That's the error of the ignorant, whoknow not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorantstay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not.The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly anddie. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in herblood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to theman. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathethe tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad forus, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomesdeadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children aresick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see thissin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house,with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving eachday, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers inthe door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing thetwenty-ninth hymn."

  The s
cales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizonaclear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been apolitician's way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, andI willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for myholiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me,and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, wellpleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and ablessing--the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and withthe Mormons stand--I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellowduster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merelysaid to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And Iknew that we should speak together soon, and he would tell me whyCalifornia only held the record on stoves.

  But oh, my friends, what a country we live in, and what an age, that thesame stars and stripes should simultaneously wave over this and overDelmonico's! This too I kept thinking as I killed more hours in walkingthe neighborhood of Solomonsville, an object of more false hope tonatives whom I did not then observe. I avoided Jenks, who had businessclients in the town. I went among the ditches and the fields thus turnedgreen by the channelled Gila; and though it was scarce a paradisesurpassing the Nile, it was grassy and full of sweet smells until aftera few miles each way, when the desert suddenly met the pleasant verdurefull in the face and corroded it to death like vitriol. The sermon cameback to me as I passed the little Mormon homes, and the bishop rose androse in my esteem, though not as one of the children of light. Thatsagacious patriarch told his flock the things of week-day wisdom down totheir level, the cleanly things next to godliness, to keep them from themillion squalors that stain our Gentile poor; and if he did not soundmuch like the Gospel, he and Deuteronomy were alike as two peas. Withhim and Moses thus in my thoughts, I came back after sunset, and wasgratified to be late for supper. Jenks had left the dining-room, and Iate in my own company, which had become lively and full of intelligentimpressions. These I sat recording later in my journal, when ahesitating knock came at my bedroom, and two young men in cowboy costumeentered like shy children, endeavoring to step without creaking.

  "Meakums!" my delighted mind exclaimed, inwardly; but the yellow oneintroduced the black curly one as Mr. Follet, who, in turn, made hisfriend Mr. Cunningham known to me, and at my cordial suggestion they satdown with increasing awkwardness, first leaving their hats outside thedoor.

  "We seen you walking around," said one.

  "Lookin' the country over," said the other.

  "Fine weather for travelling," said the first.

  "Dusty though," said the second.

  Perceiving them to need my help in coming to their point, I said, "Andnow about your silver mine."

  "You've called the turn on us!" exclaimed yellow, and black curlyslapped his knee. Both of them sat looking at me, laughingenthusiastically, and I gathered they had been having whiskey thisSunday night. I confess that I offered them some more, and when theyrealized my mildness they told me with length and confidence about theclaims they had staked out on Mount Turnbull. "And there's lots of lead,too," said yellow.

  "I do not smelt," said I, "or deal in any way with ore. I have come herewithout the intention of buying anything."

  "You ain't the paymaster?" burst out black curly, wrinkling his foreheadlike a pleasant dog.

  Yellow touched his foot.

  "Course he ain't!" said curly, with a swerve of his eye. "He ain't due.What a while it always is waitin'!"

  Now the paymaster was nothing to me, nor whom he paid. For all I knew,my visitors were on his roll; and why yellow should shy at the mentionof him and closely watch his tipsy mate I did not try to guess. Likeevery one I had met so far in Arizona, these two evidently doubted I washere for my pleasure merely; but it was with entire good-humor that theyremarked a man had the right to mind his own business; and so, with alittle more whiskey, we made a friendly parting. They recommended me totravel with a pistol in this country, and I explained that I should domyself more harm than good with a weapon that any one handled morerapidly than I, with my inexperience.

  "Good-night, Mr. Meakum," I said.

  "Follet," corrected black curly.

  "Cunningham," said yellow, and they picked up their hats in the hall andwithdrew.

  I think now those were their names--the time was coming when I shouldhear them take oath on it--yet I do not know. I heard many curious oathstaken.

  I was glad to see black curly in the stage next day, not alone for hiscompany, but to give him a right notion of what ready money I had aboutme. Thinking him over, and his absence of visible means of support, andhis interest in me, I took opportunity to mention, quite by the way,that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, therest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And Ilooked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of mynickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidencewhen we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, andthe Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He noddedto me and gave Follet a message.

  "Tell your brother" (wouldn't a father have said Tom or Dick?) "thatI've given him chances enough and he don't take 'em. He don't feed myhorses, and my passengers complain he don't feed them--though that's notso serious!" said he to me, with a jovial wink. "But I won't have mystock starved. You'll skip the station and go through to Thomas withthis pair," he added to the driver in his voice of lusty command."You'll get supper at Thomas. Everything's moved on there from to-day.That's the rule now." Then he returned to black curly, who, like thedriver, had remained cowed and respectful throughout the short harangue."Your brother could have treated me square and made money by thatstation. Tell him that, and to see me by Thursday. If he's thinking ofpeddling vegetables this season I'll let him sell to Fort Bowie.Safford takes Carlos, and I won't have two compete in the same market,or we'll be sinking low as Eastern prices," said he to me, with anotherwink. "Drive on now. You're late."

  He shut the flap, and we were off quickly--too quickly. In the next fewmoments I could feel that something all wrong went on; there was ajingle and snapping of harness, and such a voice from the Bishop behindus that I looked out to see him. We had stopped, and he was runningafter us at a wonderful pace for a man of sixty-four.

  "If you don't drive better than that," said the grizzled athlete,arriving cool and competent, "you'll saw wood for another year. Look howyou've got them trembling."

  It was a young pair, and they stood and steamed while the broken gearwas mended.

  "What did California hold the record in before the Boy Orator broke it?"said I, getting out.

  He shot at me the same sinister look I had seen in the Capitol, the lookhe must always wear, I suppose, when taken aback. Then he laughedbroadly and heartily, a strong pleasant laugh that nearly made me likehim. "So you're that fellow! Ho, ho! Away down here now. Oh, ho, ho!What's your business?"

  "You wouldn't believe if I told you," said I, to his sudden sharpquestion.

  "Me? Why, I believe everything I'm told. What's your name?"

  "Will you believe I haven't come to buy anybody's silver mine?"

  "Silver! I don't keep it. Unloaded ten years ago before the rabbitdied."

  "Then you're the first anti-silver man I've met."

  "I'm anti anything I can't sell, young man. Here's all there is tosilver: Once upon a time it was hard to get, and we had to have it. Nowit's easy. When it gets as common as dirt it'll be as cheap as dirt.Same as watermelons when it's a big crop. D'you follow me? That's silverfor you, and I don't want it. So you've come away down here. Well, well!What did you say your name was?"

  I told him.

  "Politician?"

  "God forbid!"

  "Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. I took a look at those buzzards there inWashington. Our Senate and Representatives. They were screeching a heap.All about ratios. You'll be sawing wood yet!" he shouted to the driver,and strode up to help him back a horse. "Now ratio is
a good-soundingword too, and I guess that's why they chew on it so constant. Betterline of language that they get at home. I'll tell you about Congress.Here's all there is to it: You can divide them birds in two lots. Thosewho know better and those who don't. D'you follow me?"

  "And which kind is the Boy Orator?"

  "Limber Jim? Oh, he knows better. I know Jim. You see, we used to have asaying in Salt Lake that California had the smallest stoves and thebiggest liars in the world. Now Jim--well, there's an old saying busted.But you'll see Arizona'll go back on the Democrats. If they put wool onthe free list she'll stay Republican, and they won't want her admitted,which suits me first-rate. My people here are better off as they stand."

  "But your friend Mr. Jenks favors admission!" I exclaimed.

  "Luke? He's been talking to you, has he? Well now, Luke. Here's allthere is to him: Natural gas. That's why I support him, you see. If wesent a real smart man to Washington he might get us made a State. Ho,ho! But Luke stays here most of the time, and he's no good anyway. Oh,ho, ho! So you're buying no mines this season?"

  Once more I found myself narrating the insignificance of my visit toArizona--the Bishop must have been a hard inquisitor for even the deeplyskilful to elude--and for the first time my word was believed. Hequickly took my measure, saw that I had nothing to hide, and aftertelling me I could find good hunting and scenery in the mountains north,paid me no further attention, but masterfully laid some final commandson the intimidated driver. Then I bade good-bye to the Bishop, andwatched that old locomotive moving vigorously back along the road to hismanifold business.

  The driver was ill pleased to go hungry for his supper until Thomas, buthe did not dare complain much over the new rule, even to black curly andme. This and one other thing impressed me. Some miles farther on we hadpassed out of the dust for a while, and rolled up the flaps.

  "She's waiting for you," said the driver to black curly, and thatmany-sided youth instantly dived to the bottom of the stage, his bootsand pistol among my legs.

  "Throw your coat over me," he urged.

  I concealed him with that and a mail-sack, and stretched my head out tosee what lioness stood in his path. But it was only a homelike littlecabin, and at the door a woman, comely and mature, eying the stageexpectantly. Possibly wife, I thought, more likely mother, and I asked,"Is Mrs. Follet strict?" choosing a name to fit either.

  The driver choked and chirruped, but no sound came from under themail-sack until we had passed the good-day to the momentous female,whose response was harsh with displeasure as she wheeled into her door.A sulky voice then said, "Tell me when she's gone, Bill." But we were asafe two hundred yards on the road before he would lift his head, andhis spirits were darkened during the remainder of the journey.

  "Come and live East," said I, inviting him to some whiskey at the sametime. "Back there they don't begin sitting up for you so early in theevening."

  This did not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bringanother fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first hadbeen. "She tires a man's spirit," said black curly, and with this ruefulutterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas inthe dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to thisnew place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had takenhimself off, and the driver sat at the table with me, still occasionallysnickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him untilthe gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said,with a nervous, hasty relish, "The Widow Sproud is slick," and departed.

  Consoled by no better clew than this I went to bed in a down-stairsroom, and in my strange rising next day I did not see the driver again.Callings in the air awaked me, and a wandering sound of wheels. Thegaunt woman stood with a lamp in my room saying the stage was ready,and disappeared. I sprang up blindly, and again the callings passed inthe blackness outside--long cries, inarticulate to me. Wheels heavilyrolled to my door, and a whip was struck against it, and there loomedthe stage, and I made out the calling. It was the three drivers, aboutto separate before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they werewailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, inwhatever place they lay sleeping. "Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!" came fromsomewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floatingantiphonal, "Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!" and in the chill black air mydriver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, "Car-los! Car-los!"One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let medress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash coldwater in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat amongthe leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having fourhours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faintreveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and Ipushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myselfand in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of thesun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, andboth black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed myfrozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy themountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon afterthe strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as wewent along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry camefrom the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear,running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he hadyesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas.With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain,and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haireddesert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copperbody, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in thethorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our widecontinent holds in fee under the single title United States, untilbreakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding thedriver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks hadtold me they would be.

  It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila,and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend CaptainStirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the newswas in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in anyprevious part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed myhaving no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to dowith it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some hadthought I was the paymaster.

  "Folks up here," he explained, "are liable to know who's coming."

  "If I lived here," said I, "I should be anxious for the paymaster tocome early and often."

  "Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here,and us civilians profit some by it."

  "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"]

  Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce the subjectof black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but before Ihad compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited me.Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I wasstranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to seean old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and thequartermaster's hearty will to help me to do so could not cure myblankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round atCarlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my otherfriends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself atan immense distance from any who would care what happened to me forgood or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So ingloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I stagedback along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushedmy Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitablyslipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute thatin reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, theancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman goto house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemedlegally married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve
months, andten had run against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signsof leaving her. The driver did not think her much entitled tosympathy, and certainly she showed later that she could deviserevenge. As I thought over these things we came again to the cattleherd, where my reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor didthe variance between my movements and my reported plans seem whollyexplained to them by Stirling's absence, and at the station where Ihad breakfasted I saw them question the driver about me. This interestin my affairs heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when nextday I came to it after another waking to the chanted antiphonals andanother faint reveille from Camp Thomas in the waning dark, extremecomfort spread through me. I sat in the club with the officers, andthey taught me a new game of cards called Solo, and filled my glass.Here were lieutenants, captains, a major, and a colonel, Americancitizens with a love of their country and a standard of honor; herefloated our bright flag serene against the lofty blue, and the mellowhorns sounded at guard-mounting, bringing moisture to the eyes. Theday was punctuated with the bright trumpet, people went and came inthe simple dignity of duty, and once again I talked with good men andwomen. God bless our soldier people! I said it often.

  They somewhat derided my uneasiness in the Gila Valley, and found mysurmisings sensational. Yet still they agreed much ready money was anunwise thing on a stage journey, although their profession (I suppose)led them to take being "held up" less seriously than I with my peacefultraditions of elevators and the down-town lunch. In the wide SulphurSprings valley where I rode at large, but never so long or so far thatFort Grant lay not in sight across that miracle of air, it displeased meto come one morning upon yellow and black curly jogging along beneaththe government telegraph line.

  "You cover a wide range," said I.

  "Cowboys have to," they answered. "So you've not quit us yet?"

  "I'm thinking of taking a hunt and fish towards Fort Apache."

  "We're your men, then. You'll find us at Thomas any time. We'regathering stock up these draws, but that'll be through this week."

  They spurred their horses and vanished among the steep little hills thatrun up to Mount Graham. But indeed they should be no men of mine!Stirling had written me his scout was ended, and San Carlos worth alonger visit than I had made there, promising me an escort should Idesire to camp in the mountains. An escort it should be, and no yellowor black curly, over-curious about my private matters! This fell inexcellently with the coming paymaster's movements. Major Pidcock waseven now on his way to Fort Grant from Fort Bowie; and when he went toThomas and Carlos I would go, too, in his ambulance; and I sighed withpleasure at escaping that stage again.

  Major Pidcock arrived in a yellow duster, but in other respects differedfrom the Bishop, though in his body a bulky man. We were introduced toeach other at the club.

  "I am glad, sir, to meet you at last," I said to him. "The whole GilaValley has been taking me for you."

  "Oh--ah!" said Pidcock, vaguely, and pulling at some fat papers in hiscoat; "indeed. I understand that is a very ignorant population. ColonelVincent, a word with you. The Department Commander requests me--" Andhere he went off into some official talk with the Colonel.

  I turned among the other officers, who were standing by an open lockerhaving whiskey, and Major Evlie put his hand on my shoulder. "He doesn'tmean anything," he whispered, while the rest looked knowingly at me.Presently the Colonel explained to Pidcock that he would have me to keephim company to Carlos.

  "Oh--ah, Colonel. Of course we don't take civilians not employed by thegovernment, as a rule. But exceptions--ah--can be made," he said to me."I will ask you to be ready immediately after breakfast to-morrow." Andwith that he bowed to us all and sailed forth across the parade-ground.

  The Colonel's face was red, and he swore in his quiet voice; but thelips of the lieutenants by the open locker quivered fitfully in thesilence.

  "Don't mind Pidcock," Evlie remarked. "He's a paymaster." And at thisthe line officers became disorderly, and two lieutenants dancedtogether; so that, without catching Evlie's evidently military joke, Ifelt pacified.

  "And I've got to have him to dinner," sighed the Colonel, and wanderedaway.

  "You'll get on with him, man--you'll get on with him in the ambulance,"said my friend Paisley. "Flatter him, man. Just ask him about his greatstrategic stroke at Cayuse Station that got him his promotion to the paydepartment."

  Well, we made our start after breakfast, Major Pidcock and I, andanother passenger too, who sat with the driver--a black cook going tothe commanding officer's at Thomas. She was an old plantation mammy,with a kind but bewildered face, and I am sorry that the noise of ourdriving lost me much of her conversation; for whenever we slowed, andonce when I walked up a hill, I found her remarks to be steeped in aflighty charm.

  "Fo' Lawd's sake!" said she. "W'at's dat?" And when the driver told herthat it was a jack-rabbit, "You go 'long!" she cried, outraged. "I'seseed rabbits earlier 'n de mawnin' dan yo'self." She watched the animalwith all her might, muttering, "Law, see him squot," and "Hole on, holeon!" and "Yasser, he done gone fo' sho. My grashus, you lemme have ascatter shoot-gun an' a spike-tail smell dog, an' I'll git one of deynarrah-gauge mules."

  "I shall not notice it," said Major Pidcock to me, with dignity. "Butthey should have sent such a creature by the stage. It's unsuitable,wholly."

  "Unquestionably," said I, straining to catch the old lady's song on thebox:

  "'Don't you fo'git I's a-comin' behind you-- Lam slam de lunch ham.'"

  "This is insufferable," said Pidcock. "I shall put her off at CedarSprings."

  I suppose the drive was long to him, but to me it was not. Noon andCedar Springs prematurely ended the first half of this day mostmemorable in the whole medley of my excursion, and we got down to dine.Two travellers bound for Thomas by our same road were just setting out,but they firmly declined to transport our cook, and Pidcock moodily sawthem depart in their wagon, leaving him burdened still; for this was theday the stage made its down trip from Thomas. Never before had I seenwater paid for. When the Major, with windy importance, came to settlehis bill, our dozen or fourteen escort horses and mules made an item,the price of watering two head being two bits, quite separate from thefeed; and I learned that water was thus precious over most of theTerritory.

  Our cook remounted the box in high feather, and began at once to commentupon Arizona. "Dere ain't no winter, nor no spring, nor no rain de holeyear roun'. My! what a country fo' to gib de chick'ns courage! Dey hensmust jus' sit an' lay an' lay. But de po' ducks done have a mean time.

  "'O--Lawd! Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"

  "I would not permit a cook like that inside my house," said MajorPidcock.

  "She may not be dangerous," I suggested.

  "Land! is dey folks gwineter shoot me?" Naturally I looked, and so didthe Major; but it was two of our own mounted escort that she saw out tothe right of us among the hills. "Tell dem nigger jockeys I got nomoney. Why do dey triflin' chillun ride in de kerridge?" She did notmean ourselves, but the men with their carbines in the escort wagon infront of us. I looked out at them, and their mouths were wide open forjoy at her. It was not a stately progress for twenty-eight thousanddollars in gold and a paymaster to be making. Major Pidcock unbuttonedhis duster and reclined to sleep, and presently I also felt theafter-dinner sloth shutting my eyes pleasantly to this black road.

  "Heave it, chillun! can't you heave?" I heard our cook say, and felt usstop.

  "What's that?" I asked, drowsily.

  "Seems to be a rock fallen down," the Major answered. "Start it, men;roll it!"

  I roused myself. We were between rocks and banks on the brow of a hill,down which the narrow road descended with a slight turn. I could see theescort wagon halted ahead of us, and beyond it the men stooping at alarge stone, around which there was no possible room to drive. Thisstone had fallen, I reflected, since those travellers for Thomas--

  There was a shot, and a mule rolled over.


  I shall never forget that. It was like the theatre for one paralyzedsecond! The black soldiers, the mule, the hill, all a clear picture seenthrough an opera-glass, stock-still, and nothing to do with me--for acongealed second. And, dear me, what a time we had then!

  Crackings volleyed around us, puffs of smoke jetted blue from rockramparts which I had looked at and thought natural--or, rather, notthought of at all--earth and gravel spattered up from the ground, thebawling negress spilled off her box and ran in spirals, screaming, "Oh,bless my soul, bless my soul!" and I saw a yellow duster flap out of theambulance. "Lawd grashus, he's a-leavin' us!" screeched the cook, andshe changed her spirals for a bee-line after him. I should never haverun but for this example, for I have not naturally the presence of mind,and in other accidents through which I have passed there has never beenpromptness about me; the reasoning and all has come when it was over,unless it went on pretty long, when I have been sometimes able to leapto a conclusion. But yes, I ran now, straight under a screen of rocks,over the top of which rose the heads of yellow and black curly. Thesight of them sent rushing over me the first agreeable sensation I hadfelt--shapeless rage--and I found myself shouting at them, "Scoundrels!scoundrels!" while shooting continued briskly around me. I think myperformance would have sincerely entertained them could they have sparedthe time for it; and as it was, they were regarding me with obviousbenevolence, when Mr. Adams looked evilly at me across the stones, andblack curly seized the old devil's rifle in time to do me a good turn.Mr. Adams's bullet struck short of me ten feet, throwing the earth in myface. Since then I have felt no sympathy for that tobacco-runningpioneer. He listened, coughing, to what black curly said as he pointedto me, and I see now that I have never done a wiser thing than to gounarmed in that country. Curly was telling Mr. Adams that I washarmless. Indeed, that was true! In the bottom of this cup, target for acircled rim of rifles, separated from the widely scattered Major and hismen, aware of nothing in particular, and seeing nothing in particularbut smoke and rocks and faces peering everywhere, I walked to a stoneand sat upon it, hypnotized again into a spectator. From thisundisturbed vantage I saw shape itself the theft of the gold--the firsttheft, that is; for it befell me later to witness a ceremony by whichthese eagles of Uncle Sam again changed hands in a manner that stealingis as good a name for as any.

  They had got two mules killed, so that there could be no driving away ina hurry, and I saw that killing men was not a part of their war, unlessrequired as a means to their end. Major Pidcock had spared them thisnecessity; I could see him nowhere; and with him to imitate I need notpause to account for the members of our dismounted escort. Two soldiers,indeed, lay on the ground, the sergeant and another, who had evidentlyfired a few resisting shots; but let me say at once that these poorfellows recovered, and I saw them often again through this adventurethat bound us together, else I could not find so much hilarity in myretrospect. Escort wagon and ambulance stood empty and foolish on theroad, and there lay the ingenious stone all by itself, and the carbinesall by themselves foolish in the wagon, where the innocent soldiers hadleft them on getting out to move the stone. Smoke loitered thin and blueover this now exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. Howsecure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless ofidentification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, anescort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at thetop of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed intosight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I hadnever seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow andblack curly looked so natural that I wondered if Jenks and the Bishopwould come climbing down too. But no more old friends turned up thatday. Some went to the ambulance swift and silent, while others mostneedlessly stood guard. Nothing was in sight but my seated inoffensiveform, and the only sound was, somewhere among the rocks, the voice ofthe incessant negress speeding through her prayers. I saw them at theambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill's brow.Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouringnegress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:

  "'Oh--Lawd! Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"

  All this while I sat on the stone. "They have done us brown," I saidaloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. Ishould not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,brought from several quarters by the fusillade--two in a wagon fromCedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with inthe hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistanceto any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what weall should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatorywith pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to themthan any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaselessdiscourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge ofeverything.

  "Let yer men quit the'r guns, did ye, general?" piped the very old man."Escort oughtn't never to quit the'r guns. I seen that at Molino delRey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn't crawl out in theroad like a turtus to git the sunshine."

  "Where were you?" thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who nowappeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they hadbeen protecting at an immense distance. "Don't you know your duty's tobe on hand when you hear firing?"

  "Law, honey!" said the cook, with a guffaw, "lemme git my han's over mymouf."

  "See them walls they fooled yer with!" continued the old man, pointingwith his stick. "I could have told yer them wasn't natural. Them doesn'tshow like country rock;" by which I found that he meant their faces werenew-exposed and not weather-beaten.

  "No doubt you could have saved us, my friend," said the Major, puffingblandly.

  But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. "Yes, I could have toldyer that," assented the sage, with senile complacence. "My wife couldhave told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that."

  "I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements," announced Pidcock. "Tapthe telegraph wire," he ordered.

  "I have to repawt to the Major," said a soldier, saluting, "dat de lineis cut."

  At this I was taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, whileninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire if theyknew their business."

  Swearing capably, the Major now accounted clearly to us for the wholeoccurrence, striding up and down, while we lifted the hurt men into theranch wagon, and arranged for their care at Cedar Springs. The escortwagon hurried on to Thomas for a doctor. The ambulance was, of course,crippled of half its team, and the dead mules were cleared from theirharness and got to the road-side. Having satisfactorily deliveredhimself of his explanation, the Major now organized a party forfollowing the trail of the robbers, to learn into what region they hadbetaken themselves. Incredible as it may seem, after my lateunenterprising conduct, I asked one of the riders to lend me his horse,which he did, remarking that he should not need it for an hour, and thathe was willing to risk my staying absent longer than that.

  So we rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble tofollow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth ofhillocks, puny and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in thetrough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty aboutthree of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and wassomething less than civil at what he called my suggestions.

  "When I have ascertained their route," he said, "it will be time enoughto talk of their identity."

  In this way we went for a mile or so, the trail leading us onward, frankand straight, to the top of a somewhat higher hill, where it suddenlyexpired off the earth. No breath vanishes cleaner from glass, and itbrought us to a dead halt. We retraced the tracks to make sure we hadnot lost them before, but there was no mistake, and again we halted deadat the vanishing-point. Here were
signs that something out of the commonhad happened. Men's feet and horseshoe prints, aimless and superimposed,marked a trodden frame of ground, inside which was nothing, and beyondwhich nothing lay but those faint tracks of wandering cattle and horsesthat scatter everywhere in this country. Not one defined series, noteven a single shod horse, had gone over this hill, and we spent someminutes vainly scouring in circles wider and wider. Often I returned tostare at the trodden, imperturbable frame of ground, and caught myselfinspecting first the upper air, and next the earth, and speculating ifthe hill were hollow; and mystery began to film over the hitherto sharpfigures of black curly and yellow, while the lonely country around grewso unpleasant to my nerves that I was glad when Pidcock decided that hemust give up for to-day. We found the little group of people beginningto disperse at the ambulance.

  "Fooled yer ag'in, did they?" said the old man. "Played the blankettrick on yer, I expect. Guess yer gold's got pretty far by now." Withthis parting, and propped upon his stick, he went as he had come. Noteven at any time of his youth, I think, could he have beencompanionable, and old age had certainly filled him with the impartialmalevolence of the devil. I rejoice to say that he presided at none ofour further misadventures.

  Short twenty-eight thousand dollars and two mules, we set out anew, theMajor, the cook, and I, along the Thomas road, with the sun drawingcloser down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made.The site of my shock lay behind me--I knew now well enough that it hadbeen a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feelthe earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleevewhenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again--and the presentcomfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increasecontinually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling ofthe wheels many subjects for talk came into my mind, and had I beenseated on the box beside the cook we should have found much in common.Ever since her real tenderness to those wounded men I had wished to askthe poor old creature how she came in this weary country, so far fromthe pleasant fields of cotton and home. Her hair was gray, and she hadseen much, else she had never been so kind and skilful at bandaging. AndI am quite sure that somewhere in the chambers of her incoherent mindand simple heart abided the sweet ancient fear of God and love of herfellow-men--virtues I had met but little in Arizona.

  "De hole family, scusin' two," she was saying, "dey bust loose and tuckto de woods." And then she moralized upon the two who stayed behind andwere shot. "But de Gennul he 'low dat wuz mighty pore reasonin'."

  I should have been glad to exchange views with her, for Major Pidcockwas dull company. This prudent officer was not growing distant from hisdisaster, and as night began to come, and we neared Thomas, I supposethe thought that our ambulance was driving him perhaps to acourt-martial was enough to submerge the man in gloom. To me and my newsabout the robbers he was a little more considerate, although he stillmade nothing of the fact that some of them lived in the Gila Valley, andwere of the patriarchal tribe of Meakum.

  "Scoundrels like that," he muttered, lugubriously, "know every trail inthe country, and belong nowhere. Mexico is not a long ride from here.They can get a steamer at Guaymas and take their choice of ports down toValparaiso. Yes, they'll probably spend that money in South America. Oh,confound that woman!"

  For the now entirely cheerful negress was singing:

  "'Dar's de gal, dar's my Susanna. How by gum you know? Know her by de red bandanna, An' de shoestring hangin' on de flo'-- Dad blam her!-- An' de shoestring hangin'--'

  "Goodness grashus! what _you_ gwineter do?"

  At this sudden cry and the stopping of the ambulance I thought morepeople were come for our gold, and my spirit resigned itself. Sit stillwas all I should do now, and look for the bright day when I shouldleave Arizona forever. But it was only Mrs. Sproud. I had cleanforgotten her, and did not at once take in to what an important turn theaffairs of some of us had come. She stepped out of the darkness, and puther hand on the door of the ambulance.

  "I suppose you're the Paymaster?" Her voice was soft and easy, but hadan ample volume. As Pidcock was replying with some dignity that she wascorrect, she caught sight of me. "Who is this man?" she interrupted him.

  "My clerk," said Pidcock; and this is the promptest thing I can rememberof the Major, always excepting his conduct when the firing began on thehill. "You're asking a good many questions, madam," he added.

  "I want to know who I'm talking to," said she, quietly. "I think I'veseen property of yours this evening."

  "You had better get in, madam; better get in."

  "This is the Paymaster's team from Fort Grant?" said Mrs. Sproud to thedriver.

  "Yes, yes, madam. Major Pidcock--I am Major Pidcock, Paymaster to theUnited States army in the Department of Colorado. I suppose I understandyou."

  "Seven canvas sacks," said Mrs. Sproud, standing in the road.

  "Get in, madam. You can't tell who may be within hearing. You will findit to your advantage to keep nothing--"

  Mrs. Sproud laughed luxuriously, and I began to discern why black curlymight at times have been loath to face her.

  "I merely meant, madam--I desired to make it clear that--a--"

  "I think I know what you meant. But I have no call to fear the law. Itwill save you trouble to believe that before we go any further."

  "Certainly, madam. Quite right." The man was sweating. What withcourt-martial and Mrs. Sproud, his withers were wrung. "You are entirelysure, of course, madam--"

  "I am entirely sure I know what I am about. That seems to be more thansome do that are interested in this gold--the folks, for instance, thathave hid it in my hay-stack."

  "Hay-stack! Then they're not gone to Mexico!"

  "Mexico, sir? They live right here in this valley. Now I'll get in, andwhen I ask you, you will please to set me down." She seated herselfopposite us and struck a match. "Now we know what we all look like,"said she, holding the light up, massive and handsome. "This young man isthe clerk, and we needn't mind him. I have done nothing to fear the law,but what I am doing now will make me a traveller again. I have nofriends here. I was acquainted with a young man." She spoke in theserenest tone, but let fall the match more quickly than its burning madeneedful. "He was welcome in my home. He let them cook this up in myhouse and never told me. I live a good ways out on the road, and it wasa safe place, but I didn't think why so many met him, and why they sataround my stable. Once in a while this week they've been joking aboutwinning the soldiers' pay--they often win that--but I thought it wasjust cowboy games, till I heard horses coming quick at sundown thisafternoon, and I hid. Will hunted around and said--and said I was onthe stage coming from Solomonsville, and so they had half an hour yet.He thought so. And, you see, nobody lives in the cabin but--but me."Mrs. Sproud paused a moment here, and I noticed her breathing. Then sheresumed: "So I heard them talk some; and when they all left, prettysoon, I went to the hay-stack, and it was so. Then the stage came alongand I rode to Thomas."

  "You left the gold there!" groaned the wretched Major, and leaned out ofthe ambulance.

  "I'm not caring to touch what's none of mine. Wait, sir, please; I getout here. Here are the names I'm sure of. Stop the driver, or I'lljump." She put a paper in the Major's hand. "It is Mrs. Sproud'shay-stack," she added.

  "Will you--this will never--can I find you to-morrow?" he said,helplessly, holding the paper out at her.

  "I have told you all I know," said Mrs. Sproud, and was gone at once.

  Major Pidcock leaned back for some moments as we drove. Then he beganfolding his paper with care. "I have not done with that person," saidhe, attempting to restore his crippled importance. "She will find thatshe must explain herself."

  Our wheels whirled in the sand and we came quickly to Thomas, to a crowdof waiting officers and ladies; and each of us had an audience thatnight--the cook, I feel sure, while I myself was of an importance secondonly to the Major's. But he was at once closeted with the commandingofficer, and
I did not learn their counsels, hearing only at breakfastthat the first step was taken. The detail sent out had returned fromthe hay-stack, bringing gold indeed--one-half sackful. The other sixwere gone, and so was Mrs. Sproud. It was useless to surmise, as we,however, did that whole forenoon, what any of this might mean; but inthe afternoon came a sign. A citizen of the Gila Valley had been payinghis many debts at the saloon and through the neighborhood in gold. Inone well known for the past two years to be without a penny it was thewrong moment to choose for honest affluence, and this citizen was thefirst arrest. This further instance of how secure the robbers feltthemselves to be outdid anything that had happened yet, and I marvelleduntil following events took from me the power of astonishment. The mennamed on Mrs. Sproud's paper were fewer than I think fired upon us inthe attack, but every one of them was here in the valley, going abouthis business. Most were with the same herd of cattle that I had seendriven by yellow and black curly near the sub-agency, and they two werethere. The solvent debtor, I should say, was not arrested this morning.Plans that I, of course, had no part in delayed matters, I suppose forthe sake of certainty. Black curly and his friends were watched, andfound to be spending no gold yet; and since they did not show sign ofleaving the region, but continued with their cattle, I imagine everyeffort was being made to light upon their hidden treasure. But theirtime came, and soon after it mine. Stirling, my friend, to whom I hadfinally gone at Carlos, opened the wire door of his quarters where I satone morning, and with a heartless smile introduced me to a gentlemanfrom Tucson.

  "You'll have a chance to serve your country," said Stirling.

  I was subpoenaed!

  "Certainly not!" I said, with indignation. "I'm going East. I don't livehere. You have witnesses enough without me. We all saw the same thing."

  "Witnesses never see the same thing," observed the man from Tucson."It's the government that's after you. But you'll not have to wait. Ourcase is first on the list."

  "You can take my deposition," I began; but what need to dwell upon thisinterview? "When I come to visit you again," I said to Stirling, "let meknow." And that pink-faced, gray-haired captain still shoutedheartlessly.

  "You're an egotist," said he. "Think of the scrape poor old Pidcock hasgot himself into."

  "The government needs all the witnesses it can get," said the man fromTucson. "Luke Jenks is smart in some ways."

  "Luke Jenks?" I sat up in my canvas extension-chair.

  "Territorial Delegate; firm of Parley and Jenks, Tucson. He's in it."

  "By heavens!" I cried, in unmixed delight. "But I didn't see him whenthey were shooting at us."

  The man from Tucson stared at me curiously. "He is counsel for theprisoners," he explained.

  "The Delegate to Washington defends these thieves who robbed the UnitedStates?" I repeated.

  "Says he'll get them off. He's going to stay home from Washington andput it through in shape."

  It was here that my powers of astonishment went into their last decline,and I withheld my opinion upon the character of Mr. Jenks as a publicman. I settled comfortably in my canvas chair.

  "The prisoners are citizens of small means, I judge," said I. "What feecan they pay for such a service?"

  "Ah!" said Stirling,

  "That's about it, I guess," said the man from Tucson. "Luke is mightysmart in his law business. Well, gents, good-day to you. I must begetting after the rest of my witnesses."

  "Have you seen Mrs. Sproud?" I asked him.

  "She's quit the country. We can't trace her. Guess she was scared."

  "But that gold!" I exclaimed, when Sterling and I were alone. "What inthe world have they done with those six other bags?"

  "Ah!" said he, as before. "Do you want to bet on that point? Dollars todoughnuts Uncle Sam never sees a cent of that money again. I'll stake mynext quarter's pay--"

  "Pooh!" said I. "That's poor odds against doughnuts if Pidcock has thepaying of it." And I took my turn at laughing at the humorous Stirling.

  "That Mrs. Sproud is a sensible woman to have gone," said he,reflectively. "They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn'tbe safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are founddead in this country--but you'll have government protection."

  "Thank you kindly," said I. "That's what I had on the hill."

  But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.

  Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection.At seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmasand Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase whichthey sometimes print in capitals upon their bills--CombinationExtraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, andthe old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and ourcoal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including SergeantBrown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, youcan see what appearance we made descending together from the meanSouthern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to havebeen the town's whole population, numbering five thousand.

  Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflageimmediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more thanhalf a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudyshawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelledcigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with thesethe loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers fromLowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color anddust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door ofthe Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of thesame idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found thewet-eyed Mowry standing.

  "How's business on the other side of the track?" I said to him.

  "Fair to middlin'. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?"

  "You've forgotten I told you they're a property I don't care for, Mr.Mowry. I suppose it's interest in this recent gold discovery that bringsyou to Tucson." He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glancethat flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, "So many ofyour Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now," I wrotemy name in the hotel book, while he looked to remind himself what itwas.

  "Why, you're not to stay here," said Stirling, coming up. "You'reexpected at the Barracks."

  He presented me at once to a knot of officers, each of whom in turn mademe known to some additional by-stander, until it seemed to me that Ishook a new hand sixty times in this disordered minute by the hotelbook, and out of the sixty caught one name, which was my own.

  These many meetings could not be made perfect without help from thesaloon-keeper, who ran his thriving trade conveniently at hand in theoffice of the San Xavier. Our group remained near him, and I silentlyresolved to sleep here at the hotel, away from the tempting confusion ofarmy hospitality upon this eve of our trial. We were expected, however,to dine at the post, and that I was ready to do. Indeed, I couldscarcely have got myself out of it without rudeness, for the ambulancewas waiting us guests at the gate. We went to it along a latticedpassage at the edge of a tropical garden, only a few square yards inall, but how pretty! and what an oasis of calm in the midst of thisteeming desolation of unrest! It had upon one side the railway station,wooden, sordid, congesting with malodorous packed humanity; on the nextthe rails themselves and the platform, with steam and bells and baggagetrucks rolling and bumping; the hotel stood on the third, a confusionof tongues and trampings; while a wide space of dust, knee-deep, andlittered with manoeuvring vehicles, hemmed in this silent garden onthe fourth side. A slender slow little fountain dropped inaudibly amongsome palms, a giant cactus, and the broad-spread shade of trees I didnot know. This was the whole garden, and a tame young antelope was itsinhabitant. He lay in the unchanging shade, his large eyes fixedremot
ely upon the turmoil of this world, and a sleepy charm touched mysenses as I looked at his domain. Instead of going to dinner, or goinganywhere, I should have liked to recline indefinitely beneath thosepalms and trail my fingers in the cool fountain. Such enlightenedlanguor, however, could by no happy chance be the lot of an importantwitness in a Western robbery trial, and I dined and wined with thejovial officers, at least talking no business.

  With business I was sated. Pidcock and the attorney for the UnitedStates--I can remember neither his name nor the proper title of hisoffice, for he was a nobody, and I had forgotten his features each newtime that we met--had mapped out the trial to me, preparing andrehearsing me in my testimony until they had pestered me into a hatredof them both. And when word was brought me here, dining at LowellBarracks, where I had imagined myself safe from justice, that this sameattorney was waiting to see me, I rose and I played him a trick.Possibly I should not have done it but for the saloon-keeper in theafternoon and this sustained dining now; but I sent him word I should bewith him directly--and I wandered into Tucson by myself!

  Faithful to my last strong impression there, I went straight to the tinyhotel garden, and in that darkness lay down in a delicious and torpidtriumph. The attorney was most likely waiting still. No one on earthknew where I was. Pidcock could not trace me now. I could see the starsthrough the palms and the strange trees, the fountain made a littlesound, somewhere now and then I could hear the antelope, and, cloaked inthis black serenity, I lay smiling. Once an engine passed heavily,leaving the station utterly quiet again, and the next I knew it was theantelope's rough tongue that waked me, and I found him nibbling andlicking my hand. People were sitting in the latticed passage, and fromthe light in the office came Mr. Mowry, untying a canvas sack that heheld. At this sight my truancy to discretion was over, and no head couldbe more wakeful or clear than mine instantly became.

  "How much d'yer want this time, Mr. Jenks?" inquired Mowry.

  I could not hear the statesman's reply, but thought, while the sound ofclinking came to me, how a common cause will often serve to reconcilethe most bitter opponents. I did not dare go nearer to catch all theirtalk, and I debated a little upon my security even as it was, until myown name suddenly reached me.

  "Him?" said Mowry; "that there tailor-made boy? They've got him sleepin'at the Barracks."

  "Nobody but our crowd's boarding here," said some one.

  "They think we're laying for their witnesses," said the voice of Jenks.And among the various mingled laughs rose distinct a big one that Iknew.

  "Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. Tell you about witnesses. Here's all there isto them: spot cash to their figure, and kissing the Book. You've done nowork but what I told you?" he added, sharply.

  "We haven't needed to worry about witnesses in any shape, Bishop."

  "That's good. That's economy. That little Eastern toorist is harmless."

  "Leave him talk, Bishop. Leave 'em all tell their story."

  "It's going to cost the whole stake, though," said Jenks.

  "Deserted Jericho!" remarked old Meakum.

  "I don't try cases for nothing, Bishop. The deal's covered. My clientshave publicly made over to me their horses and saddles."

  "Oh, ho, ho!" went the Bishop. But this last word about the horses wasthe only part of the talk I could not put a plain meaning upon.

  Mr. Mowry I now saw re-enter the lighted door of the office, with hiscanvas sack in his hand. "This'll be right here in the safe," said he.

  "All right," answered Jenks. "I'll not be likely to call on you any morefor a day or so."

  "Hello!" said the office clerk, appearing in his shirt-sleeves. "Youfellows have made me forget the antelope." He took down a lantern, and Irose to my feet.

  "Give us a drink before you feed him," said Jenks. Then I saw the wholeof them crowd into the door for their nightcap, and that was all Iwaited for.

  I climbed the garden fence. My thoughts led me at random throughquantities of soft dust, and over the rails, I think, several times,until I stood between empty and silent freight trains, and there satdown. Harmless! It seemed to me they would rate me differently in themorning. So for a while my mind was adrift in the turbulentcross-currents of my discovery; but it was with a smooth, innocentsurface that I entered the hotel office and enjoyed the look of theclerk when he roused and heard me, who, according to their calculations,should have been in slumber at the Barracks, asking to be shown my roomhere. I was tempted to inquire if he had fed the antelope--such was thepride of my elation--and I think he must have been running overquestions to put me; but the two of us marched up the stairs with a lampand a key, speaking amiably of the weather for this time of year, and heunlocked my door with a politeness and hoped I would sleep well with aconsideration that I have rarely met in the hotel clerk. I did not sleepwell. Yet it seemed not to matter. By eight I had breakfast, and foundthe attorney--Rocklin I shall name him, and that will have toanswer--and told him how we had become masters of the situation.

  He made me repeat it all over, jotting memoranda this second time; andwhen my story was done, he sat frowning at his notes, with a cigarbetween his teeth.

  "This ain't much," he said. "Luckily I don't need anything more. I'vegot a dead open-and-shut case without it."

  "Why don't you make it deader, then?" said I. "Don't you see what it allmeans?"

  "Well, what does it all mean?"

  Either the man was still nettled at my treatment of him last evening, orhad no liking for amateur opinions and help; otherwise I see no reasonfor the disparagement with which he regarded me while I interpretedwhat I had overheard, piece by piece, except the horse and saddleremark.

  "Since that don't seem clear, I'll explain it to you," he said, "andthen you'll know it all. Except their horses and saddles, the accusedhaven't a red cent to their names--not an honest one, that is. So itlooks well for them to be spending all they've apparently got in theworld to pay counsel fees. Now I have this case worked up," he pursued,complacently, "so that any such ambiguous stuff as yours is no good tome at all--would be harmful, in fact. It's not good policy, my friend,to assail the character of opposing counsel. And Bishop Meakum! Are youaware of his power and standing in this section? Do you think you'regoing to ring him in?"

  "Great goodness!" I cried. "Let me testify, and then let the safe beopened."

  Rocklin looked at me a moment, the cigar wagging between his teeth, andthen he lightly tossed his notes in the waste-paper basket.

  "Open your safe," said he, "and what then? Up steps old Mowry and says,'I'll thank you to let my property alone.' Where's your proof? What worddid any of them drop that won't bear other constructions? Mowry's wellknown to have money, and he has a right to give it to Jenks."

  "If the gold could be identified?" I suggested.

  "That's been all attended to," he answered, with increasing complacence."I'm obliged to you for your information, and in a less sure case Imight risk using it, but--why, see here; we've got 'em hands down!" Andhe clapped me on the knee. "If I had met you last evening I was going totell you our campaign. Pidcock'll come first, of course, and histestimony'll cover pretty much the whole ground. Then, you see, therest of you I'll use mainly in support. Sergeant Brown--he's verystrong, and the black woman, and you--I'll probably call you third orfourth. So you'll be on hand sure now?"

  Certainly I had no thought of being anywhere else. The imminence of ourtrial was now heralded by the cook's coming to Rocklin's office punctualto his direction, and after her Pidcock almost immediately. It was notmany minutes before the more important ones of us had gathered, and weproceeded to court, once again a Combination Extraordinary--a spectaclefor Tucson. So much stir and prosperity had not blossomed in the townfor many years, its chief source of life being the money that LowellBarracks brought to it. But now its lodgings were crowded and itssaloons and Mexican dens of entertainment waked to activity. From adozing sunburnt village of adobe walls and almond-trees it was becomesomething like those places built in a single Wes
tern day of riotextravagance, where corner lots are clamored for and men pay a dollar tobe shaved.

  Jenks was before us in the room with his clients. He was practising whatI always think of as his celluloid smile, whispering, and all-hail witheverybody. One of the prisoners had just such another mustache as hisown, too large for his face; and this had led me since to notice a typeof too large mustaches through our country in all ranks, but of similarmen, who generally have either stolen something or lacked theopportunity. Catching sight of me, Jenks came at once, friendly as youplease, shaking my passive hand, and laughing that we should meet againunder such circumstances.

  "When we're through this nuisance," said he, "you must take dinner withme. Just now, you understand, it wouldn't look well to see me hobnobbingwith a government witness. See you again!" And he was off to some oneelse.

  I am confident this man could not see himself as others--some others, atleast--saw him. To him his whole performance was natural andprofessional, and my view that he was more infamous by far than thethieves would have sincerely amazed him. Indeed, for one prisoner I feltvery sorry. Young black curly was sitting there, and, in contrast to Mr.Adams, down whose beard the tobacco forever ran, he seemed downcast andunhardened, I thought. He was getting his deserts through base means. Itwas not for the sake of justice but from private revenge that Mrs.Sproud had moved; and, after all, had the boy injured her so much asthis? Yet how could I help him? They were his deserts. My mood wasabruptly changed to diversion when I saw among our jury specimens ofboth types of Meakum, and prominent among the spectator throng theirsire, that canny polygamist, surveying the case with the same forcefulattention I had noticed first in the House of Representatives, and eversince that day. But I had a true shock of surprise now. Mrs. Sproud wasin court. There could be no mistake. No one seemed to notice her, and Iwondered if many in the town knew her face, and with what intent she hadreturned to this dangerous neighborhood. I was so taken up with watchingher and her furtive appearance in the almost concealed position she hadchosen that I paid little heed to the government's opening of its case.She had her eyes upon black curly, but he could not see her. Pidcockwas in the midst of his pompous recital when the court took its noonintermission. Then I was drawn to seek out black curly as he wasconducted to his dinner.

  "Good-day," said he, as I came beside him.

  "I wish I didn't have to go on oath about this," I said.

  "Oath away," he answered, doggedly. "What's that got to do with me?"

  "Oh, come!" I exclaimed.

  "Come where?" He looked at me defiantly.

  "When people don't wish to be trailed," I went on, "do I understand theysometimes spread a blanket and lead their horses on it and take offtheir shoes? I'm merely asking out of a traveller's curiosity."

  "I guess you'll have to ask them that's up on such tricks," he answered,grinning.

  I met him in the eyes, and a strong liking for him came over me. "Iprobably owe you my life," I said, huskily. "I know I do. And Ihate--you must consider me a poor sort of bird."

  "Blamed if I know what you're drivin' at," said black curly. But hewrinkled his forehead in the pleasant way I remembered. "Yer whiskey wasgood all right," he added, and gave me his hand.

  "Look here," said I. "She's come back."

  This took the boy unguarded, and he swore with surprise. Then his facegrew sombre. "Let her," he remarked; and that was all we said.

  At the afternoon sitting I began to notice how popular sympathy was notonly quite against the United States, but a sentiment amounting tohatred was shown against all soldiers. The voice of respectabilityseemed entirely silent; decent citizens were there, but not enough ofthem. The mildest opinion was that Uncle Sam could afford to lose moneybetter than poor people, and the strongest was that it was a pity thesoldiers had not been killed. This seemed inappropriate in a Territorydesiring admission to our Union. I supposed it something local then, buthave since observed it to be a prevailing Western antipathy. Theunthinking sons of the sage-brush ill tolerate a thing which stands fordiscipline, good order, and obedience, and the man who lets anothercommand him they despise. I can think of no threat more evil for ourdemocracy, for it is a fine thing diseased and perverted--namely,independence gone drunk.

  Pidcock's examination went forward, and the half-sack of gold from thehay-stack brought a great silence in court. The Major's identificationof the gold was conducted by Rocklin with stage effect, for it was anundoubted climax; but I caught a most singular smile on the face ofBishop Meakum, and there sat Mrs. Sproud, still solitary and engulfed inthe throng, her face flushed and her eyes blazing. And here ended thefirst day.

  In the morning came the Major's cross-examination, with the room morecrowded than before, but I could not find Mrs. Sproud. Rocklin did notbelieve I had seen her, and I feared something had happened to her. TheBishop had walked to the court with Jenks, talking and laughing upongeneral subjects, so far as I could hear. The counsel for the prisonerspassed lightly over the first part of the evidence, only causing anoccasional laugh on the score of the Major's military prowess, until hecame to the gold.

  "You said this sack was one of yours, Major?" he now inquired.

  "It is mine, sir."

  A large bundle of sacks was brought. "And how about these? Here are ten,fifteen--about forty. I'll get some more if you say so. Are they allyours?"

  "Your question strikes me as idle, sir." The court rapped, and Jenkssmiled. "They resemble mine," said Pidcock. "But they are not used."

  "No; not used." Jenks held up the original, shaking the gold. "Now I'mgoing to empty your sack for a moment."

  "I object," said Rocklin, springing up.

  "Oh, it's all counted," laughed Jenks; and the objection was notsustained. Then Jenks poured the gold into a new sack and shook thataloft. "It makes them look confusingly similar, Major. I'll just put mycard in your sack."

  "I object," said Rocklin, with anger, but with futility. Jenks nowpoured the gold back into the first, then into a third, and thus intoseveral, tossing them each time on the table, and the clinking piecessounded clear in the room. Bishop Meakum was watching the operation likea wolf. "Now, Major," said Jenks, "is your gold in the original sack, orwhich sack is my card in?"

  This was the first time that the room broke out loudly; and Pidcock,when the people were rapped to order, said, "The sack's not the thing."

  "Of course not. The gold is our point. And of course you had a privatemark on it. Tell the jury, please, what the private mark was."

  He had none. He spoke about dates, and new coins, he backed and filled,swelled importantly, and ended like a pricked bladder by recanting hisidentification.

  "That is all I have to say for the present," said Jenks.

  "Don't complicate the issue by attempting to prove too much, Mr.Rocklin," said the judge.

  Rocklin flushed, and called the next witness, whispering sulkily to me,"What can you expect if the court starts out against you?" But the courtwas by no means against him. The judge was merely disgusted overRocklin's cardinal folly of identifying coin under such looseconditions.

  And now came the testimony of Sergeant Brown. He told so clear a storyas to chill the enthusiasm of the room. He pointed to the man with themustache, black curly, and yellow. "I saw them shooting from the rightof the road," he said. Jenks tried but little to shake him, and left himunshaken. He was followed by the other wounded soldier, whose story wasnearly the same, except that he identified different prisoners.

  "Who did you say shot you?" inquired Jenks. "Which of these two?"

  "I didn't say. I don't know."

  "Don't know a man when he shoots you in broad daylight?"

  "Plenty was shooting at me," said the soldier. And his testimony alsoremained unshaken.

  Then came my own examination, and Jenks did not trouble me at all, but,when I had likewise identified the men I knew, simply bowed smilingly,and had no questions to ask his friend from the East.

  Our third morning began with th
e negress, who said she was married, tolda scattered tale, and soon stated that she was single, explaining laterthat she had two husbands, and one was dead, while the other haddisappeared from her ten years ago. Gradually her alarm subsided andshe achieved coherence.

  "What did this gentleman do at the occurrence?" inquired Jenks,indicating me.

  "Dat gemman? He jes flew, sir, an' I don' blame him fo' bein' no wusserskeer'd dan de hole party. Yesser, we all flew scusin' dey two porechillun; an' we stayed till de 'currence was ceased."

  "But the gentleman says he sat on a stone, and saw those men firing."

  "Land! I seed him goin' like he was gwineter Fo't Grant. He run up dehill, an' de Gennul he run down like de day of judgment."

  "The General ran?"

  "Lawd grashus, honey, yo' could have played checkers on dey coat tailsof his."

  The court rapped gently.

  "But the gold must have been heavy to carry away to the horses. Did notthe General exert his influence to rally his men?"

  "No, sah. De Gennul went down de hill, an' he took his inflooence withhim."

  "I have no further questions," said Jenks. "When we come to our alibis,gentlemen, I expect to satisfy you that this lady saw more correctly,and when she is unable to recognize my clients it is for a good reason."

  "We've not got quite so far yet," Rocklin observed. "We've reached thehay-stack at present."

  "Aren't you going to make her describe her own confusion more?" I began,but stopped, for I saw that the next witness was at hand, and that itwas Mrs. Sproud.

  "How's this?" I whispered to Rocklin. "How did you get her?"

  "She volunteered this morning, just before trial. We're in big luck."

  The woman was simply dressed in something dark. Her handsome face waspale, but she held a steady eye upon the jury, speaking clearly and withdeliberation. Old Meakum, always in court and watchful, was plainlyunprepared for this, and among the prisoners, too, I could discernuneasiness. Whether or no any threat or constraint had kept herinvisible during these days, her coming now was a thing for which noneof us were ready.

  "What do I know?" she repeated after the counsel. "I suppose you havebeen told what I said I knew."

  "We'd like to hear it directly from you, Mrs. Sproud," Rocklinexplained.

  "Where shall I start?"

  "Well, there was a young man who boarded with you, was there not?"

  "I object to the witness being led," said Jenks. And Bishop Meakum movedup beside the prisoners' counsel and began talking with him earnestly.

  "Nobody is leading me," said Mrs. Sproud, imperiously, and raising hervoice a little. She looked about her. "There was a young man who boardedwith me. Of course that is so."

  Meakum broke off in his confidences with Jenks, and looked sharply ather.

  "Do you see your boarder anywhere here?" inquired Rocklin; and from histone I perceived that he was puzzled by the manner of his witness.

  She turned slowly, and slowly scrutinized the prisoners one by one. Thehead of black curly was bent down, and I saw her eyes rest upon it whileshe stood in silence. It was as if he felt the summons of her glance,for he raised his head. His face was scarlet, but her paleness did notchange.

  "He is the one sitting at the end," she said, looking back at the jury.She then told some useless particulars, and brought her narrative to theafternoon when she had heard the galloping. "Then I hid. I hid becausethis is a rough country."

  "When did you recognize that young man's voice?"

  "I did not recognize it."

  Black curly's feet scraped as he shifted his position.

  "Collect yourself, Mrs. Sproud. We'll give you all the time you want. Weknow ladies are not used to talking in court. Did you not hear thisyoung man talking to his friends?"

  "I heard talking," replied the witness, quite collected. "But I couldnot make out who they were. If I could have been sure it was him andfriends, I wouldn't have stayed hid. I'd have had no call to be scared."

  Rocklin was dazed, and his next question came in a voice still morechanged and irritable.

  "Did you see any one?"

  "No one."

  "What did you hear them say?"

  "They were all talking at once. I couldn't be sure."

  "Why did you go to the hay-stack?"

  "Because they said something about my hay-stack, and I wanted to findout, if I could."

  "Did you not write their names on a paper and give it to this gentleman?Remember you are on oath, Mrs. Sproud."

  By this time a smile was playing on the features of Jenks, and he andBishop Meakum talked no longer together, but sat back to watch thewoman's extraordinary attempt to undo her work. It was shrewd, veryshrewd, in her to volunteer as our witness instead of as theirs. She wasready for the paper question, evidently.

  "I wrote--" she began, but Rocklin interrupted.

  "On oath, remember!" he repeated, finding himself cross-examining hisown witness. "The names you wrote are the names of these prisoners herebefore the court. They were traced as the direct result of yourinformation. They have been identified by three or four persons. Do youmean to say you did not know who they were?"

  "I did not know," said Mrs. Sproud, firmly. "As for the paper, I actedhasty. I was a woman, alone, and none to consult or advise me. I thoughtI would get in trouble if I did not tell about such goings on, and Ijust wrote the names of Will--of the boys that came round there all thetime, thinking it was most likely them. I didn't see him, and I didn'tmake out surely it was his voice. I wasn't sure enough to come out andask what they were up to. I didn't stop to think of the harm I was doingon guess-work."

  For the first time the note of remorse conquered in her voice. I saw howdesperation at what she had done when she thought her love was cured wasnow bracing the woman to this audacity.

  "Remember," said Rocklin, "the gold was also found as the direct resultof your information. It was you who told Major Pidcock in the ambulanceabout the seven sacks."

  "I never said anything about seven sacks."

  This falsehood was a master-stroke, for only half a sack had been found.She had not written this down. There was only the word of Pidcock and meto vouch for it, while against us stood her denial, and the actualquantity of gold.

  "I have no further questions," said Rocklin.

  "But I have," said Jenks. And then he made the most of Mrs. Sproud,although many in the room were laughing, and she herself, I think, feltshe had done little but sacrifice her own character without repairingthe injury she had done black curly. Jenks made her repeat that she wasfrightened; not calm enough to be sure of voices, especially manyspeaking together; that she had seen no one throughout. He evenattempted to show that the talk about the hay-stack might have beenpurely about hay, and that the half-sack of gold might have been putthere at another time--might belong to some honest man this very moment.

  "Did you ever know the young man who boarded with you to do adishonorable thing?" inquired Jenks. "Did you not have the highestopinion of him?"

  She had not expected a question like this. It nearly broke the womandown. She put her hand to her breast, and seemed afraid to trust hervoice. "I have the highest opinion of him," she said, word painfullyfollowing word. "He--he used to know that."

  "I have finished," said Jenks.

  "Can I go?" asked the witness, and the attorneys bowed. She stood onehesitating moment in the witness-stand, and she looked at the jury andthe court; then, as if almost in dread, she let her eyes travel to blackcurly. But his eyes were sullenly averted. Then Mrs. Sproud slowly madeher way through the room, with one of the saddest faces I have everseen, and the door closed behind her.

  We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of themdoubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibiswere destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when thecharge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's coldstatements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darklyat him. B
ut the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all duringany of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. Hedismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. "Now three witnesseshave between them recognized all the prisoners but one," he continued."That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts ingold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceedsof a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man,and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until thistrial began. The prisoner's name was on Mrs. Sproud's paper. Thestatement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other ofthe prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who describedherself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who areadmitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Theirstatements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on therecord unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believethem--and remember that not a word they said has been questioned--" herethe judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with thevarious alternatives of fact according to which the jury must find itsseveral possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen andstill, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutesaway. It seemed one to me.

  When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oraculareye in most of them unchanged. "Not guilty," said the foreman.

  "What!" shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. "Noneof 'em?"

  "Not guilty," monotonously repeated the foreman.

  We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In thelaughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shotsthat some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, wewent to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. "There's a certainnatural justice done here in spite of them," he said. "They are not onecent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come outfree, but penniless."

  "How about Jenks and that jury?" said I. And Stirling shrugged hisshoulders.

  But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street,the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counselemerging from a photographer's studio. The Territorial Delegate had beentaken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined tobe in this souvenir.

  "That's a picture I want," said I. "Only I'll be sorry to see your facethere," I added to black curly.

  "Indeed!" put in Jenks.

  "Yes," said I. "You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way,Mr. Jenks, I suppose you'll return their horses and saddles now?"

  Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharpthing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to hisclients. "I had hoped to," he said; "that is, as many as were not neededto defray necessary costs. But it's been an expensive suit, and I'vefound myself obliged to sell them all. It's little enough to pay forclearing your character, boys."

  They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated.Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet itseemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.

  "They look disappointed," I remarked. "I shall value the picture veryhighly."

  "If that's Eastern sarcasm," said Jenks, "it's beyond me."

  "No, Mr. Jenks," I answered. "In your presence sarcasm drops dead. Ithink you'll prosper in politics."

  But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events,though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddlyprosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses;two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in somany of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruitsincrease that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed theirdollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He hadstayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with thetitle, "What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona." Inside were twenty blankpages, and he failed of re-election.

  Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoningCamp Thomas and Lowell Barracks, those important sources of revenue forthe neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and leftit poorer than ever.

  At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking tothe other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that shewas too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east asWillcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.

  But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened toblack curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of the GilaValley and of the Boy Orator, I recall Bishop Meakum's remark about ourstatesmen at Washington: "You can divide them birds in two lots--thosewho know better, and those who don't. D'you follow me?"

  THE END

  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

  Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words andintent.

  Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends