Chapter III: Part 3

"Me? What would I want to dig him up for? I ain't lost no Injun! I 'm just digging a hole--for Madge. She wants to plant a tree. What did they bury him here for? Did they kill him here on the ranch?"

"This was a fort once, before there was any ranch here, and there was a war with the Apaches, and they were getting beaten, and so they sent this old chief down to the fort to make terms for them. The commander received him and put him in a tent and set a guard over him. In the night the guard fell asleep, and when he wakened he was frightened lest the Indian might have escaped. So he punched into the tent with his bayonet to see if he was still there, and hit the chief in the foot. That made him angry and he came out and killed the guard. The noise roused the soldiers, and they killed the chief, and they buried him here, inside the stockade, so that the Indians would n't suspect that he was dead until they could get reinforcements."

"The Injun killed the guard, did he? Good enough for him! I wish it had been Holy John!"

He fell to work again with more vigor than ever, but presently he stopped and growled:

"I 'd like to run a blaze on that ornery galoot that he 'd remember all the rest of his life!"

After a while I chanced to see Kid carrying a bundle done up in a gunny sack down to the _acequia_ and hide it among the currant bushes. I noticed that he had carefully filled up the hole he had been digging, and I asked,

"Aren't you going to plant the tree?"

"No," he replied carelessly, "it would n't grow there. The soil's too hard."

The cowboys spread their beds every night under the cottonwoods beside the lower acequia, and that night we heard them in earnest discussion long after they had gone to bed. Mr. Williams was with them for a short time and came back, saying that they were talking about ghosts, and that Kid had declared emphatically that the old Apache chief walked o' nights and that he had both seen and heard him.

"He gave a vivid description," Mr. Williams went on, "of waking up one night and seeing the Indian's skeleton rise up out of the ground and pounce on a soldier who stood near and kill him outright. He will have Holy John so terrified that the poor fellow will want his time at once. For John believes everything that is impossible, and he will see ghosts all night long and be afraid of his own shadow in the daytime."

That night, just as morning broke, the whole household was awakened by a loud, piercing yell, followed by another and another, and all rushed from their beds in time to see Holy John leap over the fence and dart down the road, still shrieking as if fiends were after him. And beside his deserted bed under the cottonwoods lay some grisly thing, shining in the gray light with streaks and patches of white. Kid looked after the flying figure and said, in a tone of extremest satisfaction,

"He's sure buffaloed!"

Holy John had awakened in the dim, early dawn and found the skeleton of the Apache chief cuddling against him.

That morning, as I sat in the yard reading, the voices of Kid and Madge came to me from around the corner of the house, and I heard a snatch of their conversation.

"Madge, I 'm going to pull my freight. I won't work on the same ranch with such a coward as that Holy John."

"Truly, Guy, are you going away?"

"Yes, I am. I ain't going to stop to ask for my time. I 'm going to-day, before the boss comes home."

"Well, then, what am I going to do? You 're not going off to leave me?"

Silence for the space of ten seconds.

"Jiminy! Tell you what, you come too!"

"I can't! Mamma wouldn't let me!"

"Don't ask her. Come right along with me! We 'll elope! That's more fun than anything! Girls that is anything always elopes!"

Then they wandered off to the alfalfa field, and soon I saw them throwing stones at the prairie dogs with which it was infested. So I concluded that what I had heard was merely some of the Kid's braggadocio, and, smiling at the sentimental turn he had taken, I went on with my book and thought no more of it.

But when lunch time came neither Madge nor Kid appeared for the meal. Much calling failed to bring a response. Then I remembered and gave account of the conversation I had heard. It was found that Dynamite was gone from the corral. Evidently the little scapegrace had meant what he said and had carried Madge off. Mrs. Williams ordered the cart and at once we started after the fugitives.

"He has most probably gone toward Deming," she said. "I will send Red Jack to Whitewater to stop them if they are there, but I think we had better drive toward Deming as fast as possible."

About ten miles out we caught sight of the runaways. They were mounted on Dynamite, Madge holding fast behind. Kid was urging the horse furiously back and forth among a flock of carrion crows, and practising with his lasso upon them as they rose and flapped about in short and heavy flight. They seemed to be having great sport, for Kid was shouting and yelling at the birds, and Madge screaming with laughter at their clumsy efforts to escape. So absorbed were they in their play that they did not see us until we were almost beside them. At first Kid made as if he would start Dynamite off on the gallop, but Mrs. Williams called to him sternly, and he turned and trotted back to us, smiling and looking amazingly innocent.

Madge sat still and stared at us with big, frightened eyes, until Mrs. Williams had twice spoken to her, and then she slipped quickly down, to be folded in her mother's arms and sob upon her bosom all the way home. I persuaded the Kid to sit between us in the cart and drive us back, tying Dynamite behind.

"He was awful mad at first," the boy confidingly said, "to have to carry double. But I made him sure hump himself right along."

At home we found the superintendent just returned. He gave the Kid a paternal lecture, which probably did him as much good as if it had been in Chinese, and then, in cattle-ranch parlance, gave him his time--paid him to date and discharged him.

And a few minutes later we saw the last of the Kid, as the forlorn little figure, with the wide, flopping sombrero, and the big, dragging spur, walked out of the gate and down the road toward Whitewater, and was soon swallowed in the shimmering heat of the plain.

A BLAZE ON PARD HUFF

"And I 'm free to say that the grand results
of my explorations show
That somehow paint gets redder the farther
out West I go!"
--EUGENE FIELD.

One summer night I was on a train that was speeding eastward across southern New Mexico. It was one of the white nights of that region, when the full moon, shining like sun-lighted snow and hanging so low in the sky that it seems to be dropping earthward, fills the clear, dry air with a silvery radiance and floods the barren plain with a transfiguring whiteness, in which the gray sands glimmer as if with some unearthly light of their own.

The day had been long, wearisome, and unspeakably hot and dusty; and with the coming of this beautiful night and its cool breezes most of the passengers betook themselves to the car steps and platforms, where they lingered until we reached the little town of Separ, late in the evening. As the train stopped, we saw that apparently the entire population of the village was crowded inside the station house. One after another, men came cautiously out upon the platform, carrying guns in their hands and casting long, anxious looks across the plain. Their set faces and ready revolvers and rifles showed that it was no ordinary matter which had sent the whole town to find protection in the railroad depot.

They told us that a man had come running into town a little while before, and, falling headlong, exhausted, at the feet of the first person he met, had cried out that the Apaches were coming. Hastily revived and cared for, he explained that the Indians had attacked the cattle camp, ten or twelve miles south of Separ, where he and some other cowboys had been making a round-up, and killed all but himself. He had managed to creep out undiscovered and had run at the top of his speed all the way to Separ to bring the warning. He said that the Apaches, in a large band, numbering at least a hundred, had surprised the camp, killing the men as they lay in their blankets and committing horrible atrocities upon the dead bodies, and had then fallen upon the horses and cattle, killing and maiming the poor beasts in mere lust of cruelty. He was sure they were following him--he had heard their yells several times during his desperate race, and each time he had redoubled his speed. His shoes were gone, his stockings hung in shreds from his ankles, and his feet were a mass of raw and bleeding flesh, pierced by hundreds of cactus thorns. He had hurried away on an Eastern-bound freight train to Deming, the next station, to rouse the citizens and help to raise a militia company, whose coming was expected in a few hours. And telegrams had been sent to Fort Bayard giving news of the outbreak and asking for a troop of cavalry.

Every soul in Separ--men, women, and children--with all the arms and ammunition in the town, had huddled into the station house, where they hoped they would be able to make a successful resistance, and, as one man said, "make as many good Injuns as the Lord would let them." For in those days the hearts of the bravest in the Southwest knew terror, and with good reason, when the Apache went on the war path.

The train sped on into the radiant white night, but the car steps and platforms were deserted. The passengers all sought their berths as soon as possible, there to lie below the level of the windows and pile all the pillows they could get between themselves and the side of the car. When we reached Deming we found the place in an uproar. Every bell in town, from the gong of the railroad restaurant to the church bell, was ringing its loudest and wildest. Men in varied degrees of undress were running up and down the streets calling loudly upon all citizens to come out at once. The people were assembling at the depot, where two or three of the cooler-headed had taken the place of leaders and had begun to organize the excited mass into an armed and officered company and get it ready to go quickly to the assistance of beleaguered little Separ.

Then our train sped on again through the wondrous night, and I knew no more about the Indian war at Separ until I sat on the kitchen doorstep at Apache Teju, one evening some years later, and beguiled Texas Bill into telling me yarns of his long and checkered experience as a cowboy.

The cool, soft breath of evening filled the air, the alfalfa field glowed its most vivid emerald in the yellow rays of the setting sun, and in the same rich light the gray, barren hillside beyond shone like beaten gold. And Texas Bill, just in from a week's trip on the range, soothed and inspired by the civilizing influences of the ranch-house, a shave, clean clothes, and his supper, unbent from his usual bashful dignity and talked.

Texas Bill was tall and big and loose-jointed, and he spoke always in a long, soft, indifferent drawl. He held two articles of belief which no man might dispute without getting sight of the knife in his bootleg or the revolver on his hip. One was that Texas was the biggest and best State in the Union; and the other, that the cow business was no longer fit for a gentleman to follow. He lounged on a bench beside the door and told me tales of the range and the round-up, of herds of cattle stampeded by the smell of water, of long rides in blinding sand storms, of the taking in of the tenderfoot, of centipedes and side-winders, of Indian fights and narrow escapes.

"Were you ever in one of these Indian attacks yourself?" I asked, for his Indian yarns had been about other men.

Texas Bill solemnly considered the heel of his boot a moment, and then just as solemnly replied:

"Yes, I was killed by the Apaches oncet."

He turned a serious face off toward Cooke's Peak, which towered, a mighty, sculptured mass of purest sapphire blue, against a turquoise sky; and I, seeing that his countenance bore just such an expression of inscrutable solemnity as it might have done had he been acting as chief mourner at his own funeral, answered just as soberly:

"That must have been very interesting! I wish you would tell me about it."

His gaze returned to his feet, his face relaxed into a smile, a chuckle began somewhere in his throat, wandered down his long frame and lost itself in his boots, which were high-heeled and two sizes too small for him. Then he spoke again:

"That was the time we run a blaze on Pard Huff."

Then he relapsed into silence, contemplation of his boots, and several successive and long-drawn chuckles. But at last he began his story.

"You see, Pard Huff, he was a tenderfoot, and there was n't nothin' he was n't afraid of a-tall. You could n't convince him that coyotes ain't dangerous; and he thought it was sure death if a tarantula looked at him; and you could make him jump out of his boots any time by just buzzin' your tongue behind his ear. I reckon he 'd have sure died of fright if he had ever seen a live rattlesnake spittin' its tongue at him.

"And Injuns! Well, he watched for Apaches all day long a durn sight more 'n he did for cattle, and he could n't sleep nights for bein' afraid they 'd catch him. He did n't seem to think of anything but Apaches, and he had n't been with us very long till the boys did n't give him a chanst to think of anything else a-tall.

"We was makin' a round-up down below Separ then, and there was ten of us and the chuck wagon when we made camp at night. Well, one night, Pard Huff, he was scareder than ever, and the boys struck his gait right off and kep' him a-runnin'. I did n't know they was goin' to blaze him quite so bad or I 'd have done my best to stop the thing. Well, and they would n't, either, if he had n't been the meanest sort of a coward that ever laid awake nights. He asked each of us separate, and then all of us in a bunch at supper, if there was any danger of Apaches down there, and we-all told him there was, lots of it. One of the boys said he 'd seen signs over toward Hatchet Mountain that very day that sure meant Apaches, and another said he 'd heard that a little ranch about forty mile away had lately been cleaned out by them and everybody killed. Then we-all talked about it and agreed that they might come on us any minute, that most likely they 'd attack us that very night and that we ought to be ready for them.

"Well, sir, that Pard Huff, he never said another word. He just set there with his eyes getting bigger and his face whiter every minute. We kep' it up and told stories about the way them devils do--everything we 'd ever heard of--how they hold you and pull out your tongue, or cut off your ears, or run a stake through you and pin you to the ground, or smash your face to a jelly with a rock, or burn you alive, till Pard Huff did n't know which end he was a-standin' on a-tall.

"We got out our blankets and turned in, but just kep' a-talkin' about the Apaches till that Pard Huff, he was shakin' as if he had a fit. One of the boys said he 'd bet if the Apaches did come, Pard Huff would get his ears cut off the first rattle, because they was so big the Injuns could n't see nothin' else a-tall in camp till they got them out of the way. And then _bang! bang! bang!_ went some six-shooters, the boys yelled 'Injuns!'--'Apaches!' as loud as they could, and the feller on the other side of Pard Huff (Pard was layin' next to me) yelled out. 'Boys, I 'm killed!' says he, and he rolled over on his face and kicked and yelled and groaned. Then _bang! bang! bang!_ went the six-shooters again; and then you ought to have seen that Pard Huff! Well, sir, he was sure buffaloed! He jumped out of his blankets and let out one yell. The chuck wagon was right behind us, and he give one jump and went clean over it and lit out across country like an antelope. You-all just ought to 've seen that tenderfoot pull his freight!

"The boys come up a-laughin' and watched him run. They was a-bettin' he would n't stop till he got to Apache Teju, but I said it was n't right to buffalo him that bad. So we-all yelled and called him to come back, but he only run the faster. The durn fool tenderfoot thought it was the Apaches chasin' him! We-all thought he 'd soon find out there was nothin' wrong a-tall and come back, and so we went to bed again. But he did n't.

"The next day I had to come to Apache Teju and I found Pard Huff's bloody tracks most all the way to Separ. He 'd run right over stones and cactus and prairie dog holes and everything else in his way. And them fool people at Separ was all huddled up in the depot, and a company of men with Winchesters and six-shooters was there from Deming, and everybody was watchin' the country all 'round with spyglasses, for Injuns! Well, sir, that durn fool tenderfoot, that Pard Huff, had told them a fool yarn about the Apaches surprisin' our camp and killin' everybody but him, and they was sure buffaloed!"

"Yes," I said, "I know they were."

"You! How did you know anything about it?"

"Oh, I was there that night. I passed through on the train, and Separ and Deming were the worst scared towns I ever saw."

Texas Bill chuckled, pleased at this verification of his story, and went on:

"Then you know what I 'm tellin' you is sure true! I thought mebbe you-all mightn't believe it, a-tall, for it sure don't look reasonable that folks could get so buffaloed over a durn fool tenderfoot's yarn. They looked at me with mighty big eyes when I rode into Separ.

"'Why,' says they, 'how did you-all get out alive? We sure thought you was dead!'

"'Well,' says I, 'as far as I know, I 'm sure alive; and I don't know as I 've been into anything to get out of a-tall.'

"'Why,' says they, 'Pard Huff--'

"'Oh,' says I, 'damn Pard Huff! He 's a tenderfoot and afraid of his shadder! He dreamed about Apaches and jumped up with a yell and lit out for God's sake. We tried to call him back, and he thought it was the Apaches after him. I reckon he 's scared you-all half to death with his yarn. You 're as bad as tenderfeet yourselves!'

"But they 'd got the notion scared into them so bad they could n't believe anything else, and they sure thought there must be Injuns around somewheres; and so I left 'em and rode on for Apache Teju. Pretty soon I met a troop of cavalry from Fort Bayard on the trot for Separ. The captain rode up to me and says, 'Have you been near the scene of the Indian depredations?'

"'No, sir,' says I, 'I hain't seen no Injun depredations, nor Injuns neither, this summer.'

"'Humph!' says he, 'that's queer!'

"'Yes, sir,' says I, 'I think likely. I _heard_ there was some trouble with 'em last night down below Separ, but if there 's _been_ any Injun depredations I hain't seen 'em a-tall.' And then I rode on, for I had n't time to be bothered with no more of his questions, and, too, I reckoned likely him and his soldiers needed some exercise.

"And they got it, too. They just kep' on the trot for the Mexican line, and kep' a-goin' for three months. They 'd started out for Injuns, and Injuns they was bound to have. They jest wound around through all that country south of Separ, and over into old Mexico, and back again, and up into the mountains and across the plains, and did n't even see an Apache the whole three months. And they did n't find out it was all nothin' but a blaze on Pard Huff till after they 'd come back. I reckon about that time they concluded there ain't no bigger fool on earth than a tenderfoot, a-tall. And there ain't, neither.

"Well, I tell you, that Pard Huff was sure mad when he found out we-all had been running a blaze on him! I don't know as I blame him much, for that ten-mile run of his to Separ in his sock feet over cactus and stones was n't much of a joke, a-tall. But he was an all-fireder fool tenderfoot than we s'posed, or we would n't have done it."

HOW COLONEL KATE WON HER SPURS

Mrs. Harrison Winthrop Coolidge had long been the recognized leader of Santa Fe society. Her husband, who had twice been Governor of New Mexico (this was long before the Territory had put on the garment of Statehood), was the best known and most esteemed man in the Southwest. He was rich, energetic, capable, and popular, and he came of the family of the Massachusetts Coolidges; while his wife, who was just as capable and as popular as he, sprang from the Adams family of the same State. But, notwithstanding all this, to the Unassorted of Santa Fe society she was always "Colonel Kate"; and the Select themselves, in moments of sprightly intimacy, would sometimes refer to her or even address her by that sobriquet.

The occasional new resident and the frequent health-seeker were sure to hear of Colonel Kate before they had spent more than a day or two in the ancient city; and if they had come from the strait-laced East they were likely to be much scandalized when they learned the identity of the lady spoken of thus disrespectfully, and would at once want to know how and why such things could be. Then they would be told that the shocking appellation was only a good-natured and admiring recognition of Mrs. Coolidge's general efficiency. For it was the universal opinion in Santa Fe that Colonel Kate would always accomplish whatever she started out to do, and that nobody ever could guess what she would start out to do next.

All this was quite true, but it was also true that the Governor's wife had won her military title by the especial daring and efficiency which she had once displayed on a particular occasion. The facts in the case are known only to some three or four people who have always kept them very quiet. It happened, however, when I asked for information about Mrs. Coolidge's nickname, that the man with whom I was talking was the very one who had first bestowed it upon her, and he told me the secret truth about it. Mrs. Coolidge had no stancher friend than he, nor any who regarded her with greater respect and admiration, but he rarely spoke of her or addressed her by any other name than "Colonel Kate."

It all happened a good many years ago, when Harrison Winthrop Coolidge, then a comparatively young man and newly married, had just come out from Massachusetts to be Governor of New Mexico. His wife was a young woman of tall and shapely figure, handsome face, and striking presence, and possessed of such vivacity, vigor, health, and strength as few women enjoy. Her superabundant vitality found many emergencies upon which to expend itself, but the man who told me this story declared that she never found one that was too big for her. She probably never found a bigger or more important one than that which she faced on the night when she won her spurs. Governor and Mrs. Coolidge reached New Mexico in the days of the first coming of the railroad, when the sleepy old Territory woke to a brief season of active and hilarious life. And the Governor, fresh from New England reverence for law and legal forms and accepted methods, was inexpressibly shocked by the low opinion in which such things were held in his new bailiwick. Especially was he horrified by the frequent and brief proceedings which left men who had been too free with their guns or with other people's property hanging from trees, projecting beams, and other convenient places. The usual rough justice of the affair did not, in his eyes, mitigate the offensiveness of its irregularity.

The Santa Fe _Bugle_ at once interviewed him about his plans and intentions, and Governor Coolidge talked very strongly on the subject of lynch law. He said that it was entirely wrong, unworthy even of barbarians, and was not to be endorsed or palliated in either principle or practice. He deplored the frequency of its operations in New Mexico, and emphatically declared his intention of stamping it out.

And he took that opportunity to announce that all persons connected with lynching affairs would be treated as murderers or accessories to murder.

The editor of _The Bugle_, which was the organ of the opposition, published every word the Governor said, and then gleefully waited for something to happen. He did not know what it would be, but he was perfectly sure there would be something, and that it would be interesting.

On the night after the interview was published Mrs. Coolidge awoke, possessed by an uneasy feeling that something unusual was taking place. They were living then in the ancient adobe "Governor's palace," with its four-foot walls and its eventful history ante-dating the landing at Plymouth Rock, and for a half-waking instant she wondered if some unshriven victim of century-gone enmity and revenge still walked those old halls or sought its mortal habiliments among the rotting bones in the _placita_. She listened and heard whispering voices and cautious movements in the _portal_ that fronted the entire length of the building. Then she arose, wrapped a long, dark cloak about her, and peeped out of the window. Directly in front of their bedroom, in the _portal_, were three or four men who bore among them some long and heavy burden. She drew her dark hair across her face, that there might be no white gleam to attract their attention, and crouched beside the window to watch.

One of the men, who was apparently a leader, mounted the shoulders of two others and seemed to be feeling for something in the wall above the window. The dim rays of an old moon, which showed that the time must be near morning, did not afford as much light as he needed, and he fumbled for some time before he found the hook in the wall for which he was looking. Over it he passed the end of a rope and then jumped to the ground. They pulled together on the rope, and the long, dark burden, which had been left lying on the ground, was drawn upward until it hung in front of the window beside which Mrs. Coolidge was watching, and she saw that it was a human body. Then they fastened the rope to one of the iron bars across the window and stood for a few moments looking at the swaying body and chuckling together. The one who seemed to be the leader rolled a cigarette and lighted it, and by the glare of the match she recognized him. He was a man of prominence in Santa Fe and the leader of the opposing party, not only locally but for the whole Territory as well.

Mrs. Coolidge's first impulse was to awaken her husband, but a swift intuition warned her that that would not be wise. So she controlled her horror and indignation, and, as she stared at the poor, lifeless thing swaying outside, she did some very rapid thinking. She understood that there had been a lynching and that the corpse had been brought there and hung in front of her husband's bedroom window, where his first waking glance would fall upon it, as a sign of how public opinion regarded his ideas and intentions on the subject of lynch law. She saw that it was intended as a warning and a contemptuous defiance, and her spirit rose high in righteous wrath. She knew well that this event presaged for the Governor trouble and humiliation, and probably, if a conflict were precipitated at once, an early defeat, and she quickly decided that he must not see the body or know what had happened. But what could she do with it?

Then an idea occurred to her and she smiled and said to herself that it was impossible. But it seemed such a good idea, and it pleased her so much, that she kept on thinking about it. Presently she assured herself that her husband was still sleeping quietly; then she put on some clothes, and, laughing softly, went out on the _portal_.

The man who had been the leader in the affair that night, and whom Mrs. Coolidge had recognized, was awakened early the next morning by the sound of voices in front of his house. It was barely dawn, but already a little group of Mexicans were staring at his door and talking with much excitement. Wondering what it could mean he hastily dressed himself and went out. As he opened the front door he ran into the body of the man, swinging above his own threshold, which he had left a few hours before hanging at the Governor's window.

"My jaw dropped and I shut the door mighty quick, when I saw that," he told me, with a reminiscent, amused chuckle at himself. "I knew in a second that the Governor was onto us, that he must have seen us in front of his window, and that it was up to me to do some lively pullin' of freight. As a matter of fact, I had n't had anything to do with the lynching. That had been done by some cowboys who were in town the day before, and the fellow they 'd done for was an ornery cuss of a half-breed Mexican, who was a whole lot better off dead than alive, anyway. He tried to play some low-down game on 'em at poker, and they just strung him up and rode off. Some of our fellows heard about it, and three or four of us decided it would be a good thing to let Coolidge know what our sentiments were.

"We were in dead earnest, and we meant to get his political scalp and drive him out of the Territory with his tail between his hind legs, before he knew what had happened to him. I won't say," and the man grinned and his eyes twinkled, "I was n't expecting to be appointed Governor myself afterwards. Anyway, I did n't care to be roped into a trial for murder just then. It would have interfered with my plans. And if the Governor had seen us apparently lynching a man right under his eyes, he could cinch us if he wanted to.

"I called the Mexicans up to the door, told them I didn't know how the body got there (I didn't, either), but it must have been put there by some of my enemies. Then I gave them money to take charge of it, say the dead man was a friend of theirs, and do the proper thing. So the poor cuss was in luck by the affair after all, for he got a mass said over him. Then I sent word to my friends who 'd been with me, and we all just quietly skipped, on the minute. At sun-up that morning there was n't one of us in town. I had urgent business in Texas for the next week.

"You see, we 'd all of us thought our new Governor was just a highfalutin' tenderfoot, and it would n't be any job at all to buffalo him. But this move of his gave us a suspicion that maybe we 'd sized him up wrong. It was just the kind of quiet warning that we 'd be likely to give if we had cards up our sleeve that the other fellow did n't know about. It looked as if he really could and would strike back good and plenty if we pushed him too hard. So we sent word to our crowd all over the Territory to keep quiet a while. And let me tell you, life in New Mexico was not nearly so exciting for the next few weeks as some of us had planned it should be.

"Still, I was n't quite satisfied about it. Somehow, the Governor did n't seem to pan out to be just the kind of man who would give that kind of a jolt to his enemies. He was too Eastern. I was still chawin' it over in my mind, when one day I met Mrs. Coolidge, two or three weeks after it happened and the first time I 'd seen her since. She was lively and cordial, as she always was, and is; but as I shook hands with her and looked her in the eyes she suddenly dropped her eyelids, and a queer expression crossed her face. She had hold of herself again in a second and was looking at me and smiling and talking. But that second was enough. It flashed into my mind that she was the one who 'd done it. I reckon I would n't have dared to bone her about it if I 'd waited two minutes. But the impulse took me, and I just asked her bluntly right then and there if it was she who had transferred that Greaser from her husband's window to my door.

"She threw up her head and looked me square in the eyes--you know that straight, frank gaze she has--frowned a little and said, 'Yes, I did it. I thought your doorway was the rightful place for that corpse to be found in.'

"Well, the joke of it and the pluck of her just struck me right where I lived, and I fairly roared. 'Put it there, Mrs. Coolidge,' I said, and stuck out my hand, as soon as I could speak. 'You 're a regular captain! No, you 're bigger than that--you 're a colonel! Shake, and let's be friends!'

"Well, I just thought it would be a shame to drive a woman with as much pluck and _sabe_ as that back East to live. So I passed the word down the line in our party that we 'd give the Governor a show--let him have fair play anyhow, and, if he could make good, all right, the pot should be his. I was so tickled by Mrs. Coolidge's trick and the way she won out on it that I never called her anything but 'Colonel' after that, and, somehow, the title stuck. Anyway, she deserves it."

For a long time after this affair, so I learned from Mrs. Coolidge when I asked her about the story her friend had told me, the Governor thought it was that interview and the stern spirit he displayed in it that had made the change in the opposition's attitude toward him and had seemed to affect the feeling of the whole Territory. For his official path became unexpectedly easy. There were few attempts to balk him in his administration of affairs and there was a general manifestation of tolerance, and even of willingness to see how his ideas would work out.

But the time came when, understanding better the people with whom he had to deal, he knew that that interview ought to have had just the opposite result. One day he said to his wife how surprising it was that it had not landed him in the hottest of hot water, and how puzzled he was to account for what seemed to have been its effect. Then she confessed to him what had happened on that crucial night, how she had taken the body away and hung it in front of the other house, and what she partly knew and partly guessed about the results of the affair. At once he realized that her instant and audacious retaliation was what had made possible his success and his growing popularity. Nevertheless, he was shocked at first, for New England was still but a little way behind him. But amusement soon overcame every other feeling, and he laughed heartily in admiration of her daring, just as his opponent had done. After that, he seemed to take particular pride in her sobriquet, and himself often called her "Colonel Kate."

HOLLYHOCKS

Green and peaceful, the long, low undulations of the prairie sea of southern Kansas spread away to the horizon in lines as graceful and pleasing as those of a reclining Venus. Here and there against a hillside the emerald waves broke in a bright foam of many-colored flowers. In all that vast extent over which I could look, there was visible no living creature save the tiny furred and feathered things whose home it was. The soft prairie wind blew caressingly against my cheek and seemed to whisper in my ear: "Why do men cling to the boisterous, cruel, lying sea as the emblem of freedom? Is not here beauty that allures with freedom's own charms? Is not here freedom herself, serene, smiling, constant, and blessed with a blessedness the sea knows not?"

The prairie wind blew the freedom it sang of into my heart, and it dwelt there with joy and exultation as I drove on and on over the waves of that smiling emerald sea. I salved my eyes, wearied and scorched by brick walls and city pavements, with those long, swinging reaches of green, and their silent benediction filled and soothed my very soul.

At last, when the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down their eastern slopes, there appeared against the velvet green of the distance the sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly, naked, and unashamed in its bustling newness. And nearer, by a mile or more, on a green slope which caught the golden-red rays of the sinking sun, was a little enclosure, naked and ugly as the town itself, but silent and awe-inspiring with the silence and awe of death. A barbed-wire fence enclosed it, and the prairie turf still covered much of its space. There were here no sunken mounds, no reeling headstones, no discolored marbles. The grave heaps were trimly rounded, the wooden crosses which marked most of them grinned their newness, and the few headstones and monuments shone upstartishly white in the sun. Barren of that curtain of verdure with which love strives to conceal the footprints of death, the little cemetery lay there against the green hillside like some fresh, gaping, ghastly wound in the face of a loved one.

One grave stood out startlingly from the rest. On the others only an infrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of loving effort to cover death's nakedness. But this one, which lay in the centre of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot-cross with a dense growth of hollyhocks. Their tall shafts were clothed with a luxuriance of vivid red bloom, as if they had sucked into their petals the life blood of the sleeper below. In the level red sun-rays they glowed with lusty contempt of the silent impotence beneath them.

A woman in a white dress, with her hands full of the red hollyhock blooms, walked between the graves down to the barred gate and came out upon the road as I drove up. I recognized her as the woman whose acquaintance I had made in the train a few days previously, and in whose company I had travelled from Chicago hither. She had been a pleasant chance acquaintance--intelligent, gentle, and refined.

"Will you ride back to town with me?" I said.

She accepted the offer of the seat beside me, carefully holding her flowers.

"How odd that grave looks with its marshalled array of hollyhocks!" I said, by way of opening conversation, for she sat there silent. "What a peculiar taste, to adorn a loved one's last resting-place in that way!"

She looked up at me silently, and I noticed that her eyes were hollow, and her face sad. Then she turned toward the graveyard and the tall red hollyhocks standing out so vividly in the sunset glow, and said quietly:

"It is my mother's grave. I planted the hollyhocks upon it."

She was silent again, looking sadly and tenderly at the flowers in her lap, but presently she went on:

"I do not mind telling you why I did it. Perhaps talking about it will lessen the heaviness of my heart. No one but my sister knows why I planted them there, and she has never seen the grave, nor have I seen her, since our mother died. When we were young girls at home, our mother loved hollyhocks. She had the yard filled with great clumps of them. We were away at school for a few years and when we went home again they quite horrified our advanced, young ladyish taste. We thought them vulgar, and between ourselves we fretted and scolded about them and declared to each other that they were horrid, and that we were ashamed to have any one visit us while those great, ugly, coarse things filled the yard. We apologized for them to visitors and said they were mother's flowers, but we hated them. And after a while we complained about them to mother and said before her how common and coarse and old-fashioned they were. And she, dear, gentle soul, said not a word, but looked sadly out at the flowers she loved so well and had cared for so long and so tenderly. And one day, after we had fretted and worried her a long time about them, she said to us--I can see yet how she tried to smile and disguise the sadness in her heart--that we might dig up all the hollyhocks and plant other flowers in their places. And we did. It stabs me to the heart now to think of it,--but we did it joyfully.

"After we were married and went away from home--my sister to London and I to Chicago--our mother came here to this town and soon died. In the sorrow of that time, when first I knew how much and how tenderly I loved her, I remembered about the hollyhocks, and at last realized how brutally thoughtless and unfeeling we had been. So, in shame and remorse, I did the one little thing that was all I could do, and covered the grave of our dear, patient, gentle, saint-like mother with the flowers she loved the best of all, but which we had not let her gladden her life with. I do not pretend to know whether or not there is a hereafter, or whether there is anything more of her than what lies under those red flowers back there. But often I wish--oh, how I wish!--that it may be so, and that from somewhere her spirit may look down and see and be pleased by the atonement I have tried to make!

"I wrote to my sister what I had done, and I found that she also felt as I did about it. Every summer I come here and see that the hollyhocks grow and flourish as we wish them to; and, at her request, I gather and send to her some of the blooms. These in my lap are for that purpose, and two weeks from now she will be weeping over them in her London home. If we could only have known--then--how we should feel about it now!"

THE RISE, FALL, AND REDEMPTION OF JOHNSON SIDES

The day was hot, and the wind was high, and the alkali dust from the sagebrush plains sifted into the car, and whitened the stuffy upholstering, and burrowed into the nerves of the passengers. Everybody longed for the coming of night, and the relief of the climb up the cool heights of the Sierras.

I looked out on the sun-flooded platform at Winnemucca and wondered, with a feeling of irritation against all things earthly, what I should do with myself during all the long, hot, and uncomfortable hours that were still to be endured. And then I saw the big, broad-shouldered figure and the round, good-natured face of the Nevadan enter the car and come straight toward my section. At once I forgot the heat and the alkali dust, and my heart sang with joy, for I knew the Nevadan of old, and knew him for the prince of story tellers. So there was content in my soul and foreknowledge of delightful entertainment with tales new and old. For the Nevadan's old stories are just as interesting as his new ones, because you never recognize them as anything you ever heard before. His store of yarns is limitless and needs only a listener to set it unwinding, like an endless cable, warranted to run as long as his audience laughs.

So the Nevadan talked, and I listened and felt at peace with the world. And presently he began to tell me about Johnson Sides.

"Of course, you 've heard about him, have n't you?" he asked. "Everybody who has lived on either slope of the Sierras must have heard about Johnson. Well, Johnson Sides is a whole lot of a man, even if he is only a Piute Indian. It ain't quite fair, though, to speak of him as only an Indian, for he has developed into an individual and wears store clothes.

"The first time I ever saw Johnson was away back, years ago, when I first went to Virginia City. Going down C Street one day I stopped to look at some workmen who were excavating for the foundation of a house. They had been blasting, and were working away like good fellows getting the pieces of rock off the site. On the south side of the biggest stone they had removed, where the sun shone on him and he was sheltered from the wind, a big Piute was lying on the ground and watching the workmen as if he had been their boss. He was wrapped in an army blanket, new but dirty, and he wore a fairly good hat and a pair of boots without holes. His face and hands were dirty, and his hair hung around his ears and neck and eyes in that fine disorder which the Piutes admire.

"I wondered why he was watching the workmen, for it is little short of a miracle for a Piute to take any interest whatever in manual labor. So I spoke to him. Without paying any attention to me or what I had said, or even seeming to be conscious of my presence, he rose, straightened himself up, threw his head back, and said, as if he were addressing the world in general: 'White man work, white man eat; Injun no work, Injun eat; white man damn fool.'

"I laughed and said, 'You 've struck it, right at the bottom. Anybody with as much wisdom as that deserves to be supported by the community. Here 's a dollar for you.'

"He took the money as disdainfully as if he had been a prince and I a subject paying back taxes, and without once looking at me stalked off down the street. An hour afterwards I ran across Johnson, two other bucks, and a squaw, sitting on the ground in the sun behind a barn, playing poker. Johnson must have raked in everything the whole party had, for that night the rest of them were sober and he was whooping drunk. In consequence, he got locked up for a while. The police of Virginia City always paid Johnson the compliment of locking him up when he got drunk, for with whiskey inside of him he was more like a mad devil than anything else.

"After he got out of jail I saw him standing around for several days looking as lordly and unconscious as if he had been worth a million. But the pangs of hunger must have set his wits to work. For pretty soon he appeared on the streets with a wrinkled, decrepit, old Piute tied to a string. He had fastened the string to the old fellow's arm and he walked behind, holding the other end, but apparently as unconscious of the whole business as if he 'd been the sole inhabitant of Virginia City. He stalked along with his head in the air, and the old fellow trotted out in front until Johnson yanked the string. Then they stopped and the old man began to beg money of the passers-by, and Johnson turned his back on his companion and looked off down the street, proudly pretending that they weren't together. If any one gave the old man money Johnson took it at once and it disappeared somewhere inside his blanket. Johnson and his prime minister, we used to call the combination. But Johnson would n't beg for himself. Oh, no! He was too proud. It's a fact, I never knew or heard of Johnson Sides himself asking for money. But he kept his prime minister trotting around for several weeks, and he never let go the string or let the old fellow keep a two-bit piece.

"But Johnson was reformed at last; and it was the power of the press that did it. Talk about the press as a moral agent! Why, bless your soul, when one newspaper can reform a whole Piute Indian and make a man of him--well, the question's settled, then and there, and the pulpit and the platform ain't in it after that.

"We did n't try to reform him--in fact, we 'd rather have kept him as he was at first. He was more amusing. But the aspirations of Johnson's soul were too much for us. I used to give him money sometimes--he was sure to do something if he got drunk that was worth writing up--and so he got into the habit of coming to our newspaper office whenever he felt the need of more cash. He did n't ask for anything, and he always made you feel that he was doing you a great favor in accepting any stray chicken-feed you might have about your clothes. He just sat around like a bronzed and blanketed statue of Caesar, or Alexander, or Napoleon Bonaparte. Not one of the whole lot of them ever looked more as if he owned the whole earth than Johnson did after he 'd sat there three hours waiting for somebody to give him two bits or a chew of tobacco.

"I found out after a while that he could give me scraps of news about the Indians over at Pyramid Lake or in the city that were worth making into local items, and I always paid him for them. Nobody ever saw a prouder Indian than Johnson was the first day I did that. I marked the paragraphs with a blue pencil and gave him a copy of the paper, and he carried it around with him until it was worn out. The money I gave him for them he kept in his pocket for two whole days. But at last there was a big poker game behind a barn--six bucks down from Pyramid Lake with five dollars apiece, and it was too much for Johnson. His proudly earned silver went into the pot with the rest.