Chapter III: Part 3

Here an enterprising steer made a sudden break for liberty, and the song was stopped, as Tom raced away over the prairie to bring him back, which being done in a couple of minutes, the song was again taken up:

"I wonder was there ever a cowboy
Prepared for that great judgment day,
Who could say to the boss of the riders,
I'm all ready to be driven away."

Another interruption which I judged from the sounds was caused by his pony having stumbled into a prairie-dog hole, and I think Tom was "waking him up," as the boys say, with his heavy quirt.[B]

[B] Quirt, a short, heavy Mexican riding-whip used by cowboys.

That done, he picked up the thread of his song again

"And they say, He will never forget you,
That He notes every action and look,
So for safety you'd better get branded,
And have your name in His big 'tally-book.'

"For they tell of another big owner,
Who is ne'er overstocked, so they say,
But who always makes room for the sinner,
Who strays from that bright, narrow way."

As the closing words floated out on the cool night air, I turned sleepily in my bed and saw that a huge black cloud had come up rapidly from the West and bid fair to soon shut out the moon. I snuggled down in my blankets, wondering if we would have to turn out to help hold the steers if it rained, when the silence of the night was broken by a peal of thunder that seemed to fairly split the skies. It brought every man in camp to his feet, for high above the reverberation of the thunder was the roar and rattle of a stampede.

It is hard to find words to describe a stampede of a thousand head of long-horned range steers.

It is a scene never to be forgotten. They crowd together in their mad fright, hoofs crack and rattle, horns clash against one another, and a low moan goes through the herd as if they were suffering with pain. Nothing stands in their way: small trees and bushes are torn down as if by a tornado, and no fence was ever built that would turn them. Woe betide the luckless rider who racing recklessly in front of them, waving his slicker or big hat, or shooting in front of them, trying to turn them, has his pony stumble or step into a dog-hole and fall, for he is sure to be trampled to death by their cruel hoofs. And yet they will suddenly stop, throw up their heads, look at one another as if to say, "What on earth were you running for?" and in fifteen minutes every one of them will be lying as quietly as any old, pet milk cow in a country farm-yard.

They bore right down on the camp, and we all ran to the wagon for safety; but they swung off about a hundred feet from camp and raced by us like the wind, horns clashing, hoofs rattling, and the earth fairly shaking with the mighty tread.

Riding well to the front between us and the herd was Tom trying to turn the leaders. As he flew by he shouted in his daredevil way, "Here's trouble, cowboys!" and was lost in the dust and night. Of course all this took but a moment. We quickly recovered ourselves, pulled on boots, flung ourselves into the saddle, and tore out into the dark with the wagon boss in the lead. I was neck and neck with him as we caught up with the end of the herd, and called to him: "Jack, they are headed for the 'cracks.' If we get into them, some of us will get hurt." Just then, "Bang, bang, bang," went a revolver ahead of us, and we knew that Tom had realized where he was going, and was trying to turn the leaders by shooting in their faces.

These cracks are curious phenomena and very dangerous. The hard adobe soil has cracked in every direction. Some of them are ten feet wide and fifty deep, others half a mile long and only six inches or a foot wide. The grass hides them, so a horse doesn't see them 'til he is fairly into them, and every cowboy dreaded that part of the valley.

Jack and I soon came to what, in the dust and darkness, we took to be the leaders. Drawing our revolvers, we began to fire in front of them, and quickly turned them to the left, and by pressing from that side crowded them round more and more, until we soon had the whole herd running round and round in a circle, or "milling," as it's called, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes got them quieted down enough to be left again in charge of the regular guard.

Jack sent me around the herd to tell the second-guard men to take charge, as it was their time, and for the rest of us to go to camp, which was nearly a mile distant and visible only, because "Dad," the cook, had built up the fire, well knowing we wouldn't be able to find camp without it.

Before we got there the rain began, and we were all wet to the skin; but we tied up our ponies again, and five seconds after I lay down I was sound asleep and heard nothing till the cook started his unearthly yell of "Roll out, roll out, chuck away." I threw back the heavy canvas, that I had pulled over my head to keep the rain out of my face, and got up. The storm was over. In the East the morning star was just beginning to fade, and the sky was taking that peculiar gray look that precedes the dawn and sunrise. The night-horse wrangler was working his horses up toward camp, and the three or four bells in the bunch jingled merrily and musically in the cool, fresh, morning air.

We were all sleepy and cold, and as we gathered around the fire to eat, some one said, "Where's Flowers?" The foreman glanced around the circle of men, set down his plate and cup, and strode over to where Tom had rolled out his bed the evening before. It was empty, and, what was more, hadn't been slept in at all. A hasty questioning developed the fact that none of us had noticed him after we had come in from the stampede.

"Well," said Jack, "it's one of two things: either he has run into one of those blamed cracks and is hurt, or else he has a bunch of steers that got cut off from the herd in the rain and has had to stay with 'em all night, because he got so far from camp he couldn't work 'em back alone." As this was not an unusual thing we all felt sure it was the case, and after a hasty breakfast, all of us but the men just off guard, struck out to look for him.

Some way I felt a premonition of trouble as I rode out into the prairie, and leaving the rest to scatter out in different directions I rode straight for the cracks. It was an easy matter to trail up the herd, and as I loped along I couldn't get the song out of my head. As I drew near the crack country I saw by the trail that we had not been at the leaders when we thought we were, but had cut in between them and the main herd. I could see our tracks where we had swung them around, leaving probably one hundred head out.

I hurried along their trail, and as the daylight got stronger and the sun began to peep over the hills, I could make out, about a couple of miles from me, a bunch of cattle feeding. I knew this was the bunch I was trailing, and already some of the other boys had seen them also and were hurrying toward them. But, between me and the cattle was, I knew, a dangerous crack. It was some six feet wide and ten deep, and probably half a mile long. If Tom had ridden into that he was either dead or badly hurt. As I neared the crack my heart sank, for I saw the trail would strike it fairly about the widest place, and my worst fears were realized when I reached it, for there lying under a dozen head of dead and dying steers was poor Tom. The trail told the whole story. He had almost turned them when they reached the crack, and he had ridden into it sideways or diagonally, and some twenty steers had followed, crushing him and his horse to death, and killing about a dozen of them. The balance were wandering about in the bottom of the crack trying to get out, but its sides were precipitous everywhere.

Drawing my six-shooter, I fired two shots, and rode my pony in circles from left to right, which in cowboy and frontier sign language means, "Come to me." The boys quickly rode over to where I was, and we, with great work, managed to get his body out from under his horse and up on top. He still held his pearl-handled Colts in his hand, every chamber empty, and his hat was hanging round his neck by the leather string. Tenderly we laid his body across a saddle, lashed it on with a rope, and taking the boy thus dismounted up behind me, we led the horse with its sad burden back to camp.

I think death, when it strikes among them, always affects rough men more than it does men of finer sensibilities and breeding. They get over it more quickly, but for the time the former seem to be fairly overwhelmed with the mystery of death, and seem dazed and helpless, where the latter would not for a moment lose their heads.

But Jack quickly pulled himself together. It was fifty miles to the nearest town. With our heavy mess-wagon and slow team over a sandy road, it would take two days to get the body there. Packing it on a horse in that hot Arizona sun was out of the question, and so we decided to bury him right there.

Tom had no relatives in Arizona, nor any nearer friends than us rough "punchers," so that no wrong would be done any one by burying him there.

We laid his crushed form under a cedar tree near by, while Jack and I went out to find a place to dig a grave. About half a mile from camp was a big black rock that stood up on end in the prairie as if it had been dropped from the clouds. Some prehistoric race of people had carved deep into its smooth face dozens and scores of queer hieroglyphics which no man today can decipher or understand. Snakes, lizards, deer, and antelope, turtles, rude imitations of human figures, great suns with streaming rays, human hands and feet, and odd geometrical designs, all drawn in a rude, rough way as if the rock had been the gigantic slate of some Aztec schoolboy which hundreds of years of storm and weather had not rubbed out. This rock was called the "Aztec Rock." It was a landmark for miles around, and as Jack remarked: "It was a blamed sight better headstone than they'd give him if we put him in the little Campo Santo,[C] in the sand at the foot of the mesa, back of town."

[C] Campo Santo, the Mexican term for graveyard.

So here we dug his grave, and then we wrapped him in a gorgeous Navajo Indian blanket, and laid poor Tom Flowers away as carefully and tenderly as in our rough way we knew how.

The day-herders had grazed the herd up close to the rock, so that they could be at the grave, the cattle were scattered all around us, and the cook had taken out the mess-box and used the mess-wagon to bring the body over in.

When the last sods were placed on the mound, Jack with tears running down his sunburned face, which he vainly tried to stay with the back of his glove, looked around and said: "Boys, it seems pow'ful hard to plant poor Tom and not say a word of Gospel over him. Can't some of ye say a little prayer, or repeat a few lines of Scripter?"

We all looked at one another in a hopeless sort of way, and no one spoke a word until the youngest there, the "horse-wrangler," a boy from Indiana, whom we had named the "Hoosier Kid," spoke up and said: "I kin say the Lord's Prayer, ef that'll be any good."

"Kneel down, fellers, and take off your hats," said Jack; and there in the bright sunshine of an Arizona day, with a thousand long-horned steers tossing their heads and looking at us with wondering and suspicious eyes, with no sound save the occasional hoarse "caw, caw" of a solitary desert raven idly circling above, that dozen of rough cowboys knelt down, their heads reverently bared, while the "Hoosier Kid" with streaming eyes, slowly recited that divinely simple prayer which we had all learned at our mother's knee, "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name."

As we rode slowly back to camp the words of the last song that poor Tom ever sang would come to me again in spite of all I could do.

Ah, me. Poor Tom. It's little religious training you got on the prairies, or the trail, or in the cow camp; but if that "Great Owner" looks into the heart, I am sure He found you worthy to wear His brand, and to be cut into the herd that goes up the "trail that is narrow and dim."

THE NAVAJO TURQUOISE RING

By permission _The Argonaut_, San Francisco, Cal.

"I tell you, Miss Nell, it's not safe for you to ride over the range so much all alone. That Navajo's plumb crazy about you now, and he's liable to do you some mischief."

The speaker, a handsome, blue-eyed young fellow, clad in the rough garb of a cowboy, with broad sombrero, "chaparejos," his buckskin gloves thrust through his cartridge belt, stood leaning against the door-post of a typical Arizona ranch house. In one hand he held the end of a long hair rope, the other end being fast to his pony, which, all saddled, stood pawing and restless, eager to be away on the range. Slung on the near side of the saddle was a Winchester carbine, for, between white and red thieves, the cowboys had to be ready for all sorts of emergencies, and besides, the big gray wolves were beginning to show up on the range, and a wolf scalp was worth twenty dollars at the county seat.

The person to whom these remarks were addressed stood idly switching her riding-habit with her "quirt," a handsome piece of cowboy work, over which one of her many admirers had spent hours by the light of a campfire plaiting and decorating it with "Turk's heads" and other fancy knots known to cowboy quirt-makers. She was all ready for a ride and waiting only for her pony to be brought up from the corral, where Juan, the Mexican, was saddling him.

There was a pleading, pathetic tone in the man's voice that spoke the lover, even had his eyes shown no sign of passion; but his words seemed to rouse all the perversity of her sex. Her red lips curled and her brown eyes snapped. "Oh, pshaw, Mr. Cameron, you're always worrying about some imaginary danger. Please return me my ring--that is, if you have finished examining it."

A red wave swept over Cameron's face, like the shadow of a cloud across the prairie on a bright day, and he stood for a full minute idly turning the ring in question upon the very tip of the little finger of his own sun-browned hand. It was a splendid specimen of the Navajo silversmith's art. Now, the Navajo Indians' blankets have made them famous, but they deserve quite as much fame for their cunning as workers in silver.

This ring was indeed a gem. It was wide, as most of their rings are, cut in two on the inner side so that it could be made larger or smaller by "springing" it to fit any finger, and in the top was set a turquoise as blue as a summer sky--a stone precious to the Navajos--that among the tribe would have bought twenty ponies, a hundred sheep, and squaws galore. Around the ring ran the most intricate and delicate carving, and the whole effect was at once unique and barbaric.

The girl's hand was outstretched for the ring, and almost mechanically the man turned and dropped it into the upturned palm. "Well, Miss Nell, I've warned you, and I'm sure if Mr. Hull were here that he'd feel just as I do." His voice grew tense. "I can't go with you today, for I've got to go over the other side of the mountain to see if I can find those lost horses, and won't be back till dark."

The girl, scarcely heeding his words, took the ring, and in a mock-heroic sort of way kissed and slipped it on to her engagement finger, a gleam of mischief in her eyes, at which action Cameron, stung almost to madness, smothered a groan, and strode across the porch, his spurs clanking on the floor, gathering up his hair rope as he went. With one hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the pony's mane, he leaped lightly into his seat without aid of stirrup and, bringing the coil of rope down on the animal's flank, went off down the line of wire fence on a dead run, and soon turned out of sight around a low hill in the valley.

The girl watched him in silence until he was lost to view, and then, with a gay laugh, turned into the room, saying, "Poor Cam, what fun it is to tease him!"

A moment later, when Juan appeared at the door with her horse, she pulled on her pretty buckskin gloves, and with a "Goodbye, Mary, I'll be home by noon," to the heavy-faced cook, who stood watching her from the door of the log kitchen, she rode off almost as fast as Cameron, but in a different direction.

Three months before these happenings George Hull had gone down to the little railroad station, some thirty miles from the ranch, to meet his wife's only sister, who was coming to spend the summer with them in Arizona, and from her first day she had taken to the life like a duck to water. She was a fearless horsewoman, and never so happy as when out on the range riding with the cowboys, if they were there, or alone if they were not. Nell Steele was a warm-hearted, impulsive girl, but she could no more help making a slave of every man she met than she could stop breathing.

It was an easy task for her, too, and it mattered not whether it was some high-bred, educated gentleman, or a rough Texas "puncher" who had never in all his life spoken a dozen words to a woman of her class. And naturally with such surroundings, with men unused to women's wiles, she soon had the whole country at her feet.

Of them all, however, young Cameron had by far the worst case of it, and the girl, while in her heart greatly pleased with his attentions, seemed to delight in keeping him in a state of absolute misery by alternately raising him to the very highest pinnacle of happiness, and again dropping him into the bottomless pit of despair. Deep in her heart she knew he was her ideal, but she could not resist the temptation to coquette with and tease him.

Cameron had come west for his health some years before. Too hard application at college had seriously impaired his strength, and he had been ordered to live in the open air for several years. Letters of introduction to George Hull had brought him to this ranch in the high mountain country of northern Arizona, and he had taken to the cowboy life from the very first, until now he was looked upon as one of the most trusted and satisfactory "boys" on the place.

The ranch to which George Hull brought his pretty sister-in-law was located near the line of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and, as the Navajos are great roamers, it was nothing unusual to have them hanging round. One day a party of them came, bringing in some horses the boys had missed for some time. It was Miss Steele's first sight of the Navajo, and she came down to the corral, where they were all gathered, to see them. Among them was a young chief named Chatto, who had attended an Indian school at Albuquerque, and could therefore speak fairly good English. He was a picture of savage finery. Around his waist was buckled a costly belt made of great plates of solid silver; in his ears hung huge silver rings; each arm was clasped by bracelets of the same precious metal; around his neck were yards of the precious silver, turquoise and shell beads so dear to the Navajo heart; and his moccasins and leggings were thickly studded with buttons fashioned from dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Across his shoulders hung a gaudy Navajo blanket, and his horse's bridle was fairly weighted down with glittering trophies of the Indian silversmith's skill.

It was but a few moments before Miss Steele was bartering with him for a bracelet; but it was of no avail, he would not sell it at any price. However, when the other Indians left, he stayed behind, until, as the dinner-hour was nearing, the boys asked him to eat with them. It was soon evident that he had eyes only for Miss Steele; and after dinner she spent an hour talking to him of his school experience and trying to learn a few words of the Navajo tongue.

The next day he returned, and the next, until it was plainly to be seen that the gay laugh and brown eyes of the girl had completely bewitched him.

One day he came bearing the ring I have described, and shyly offered it to her, insisting that she must place it on her engagement finger, which she did, never dreaming that the boys, keenly watching from the bunk-house, had put him up to it, telling him that that was the way white lovers did, and that once she put on his ring she was his by all the laws and customs of the white man.

When Cameron, who was away at the time, heard of it, he was furious, and went straight to Miss Steele and urged her to return the ring and banish the Indian from the ranch. But she, seeing that back of his lover's eagerness for her safety was a lover's jealousy as well, affected not to believe him, and declared her intention of keeping and wearing the ring. It was this ring that she had kissed so tragically and replaced on her hand.

On leaving the ranch, the girl gave her pony an almost free rein for the first two or three miles. It was a glorious morning in September, when the sun had lost its greatest power, and the air was fairly intoxicating in its freshness. The range never looked finer than it did now, after the summer rains had covered it with a wonderful growth of grass dotted with millions of daisies, black-eyed Susans, purple lupines, and dozens of other varieties of prairie flowers, which, in places, fairly made the air heavy with their perfume. The trail led her over a wide mesa, and at its highest point she stopped her pony and drank in the wondrous scene. Away off to the north the great tablelands, or mesas, where live the snake-loving Moqui Indians, hung in an almost indescribable grandeur, blue and misty against the sky, more like a mirage than a reality. A couple of saucy prairie dogs barked shrilly at her from their adjacent village; a coyote, disturbed by her coming, skulked hastily away from where he had been trying to surprise a little calf, left lying under a sagebush while its mother went on down the trail to water. Above her, high in the heavens, idly circled half a dozen heavy-winged turkey-buzzards, those scavengers of the prairies, a sure sign that somewhere below them an animal lay dead and they were gathering for a feast. As far as the eye could reach were rolling hills, with here and there parks of cedars, while scattered over the prairie were hundreds of cattle and horses, for George Hull was one of the heaviest cattle-owners in northern Arizona, and this was the heart of his range.

Across the valley below her she could see the figure of a solitary horseman, which, after a few moments she decided to be Cameron, although she had thought him miles away from there by this time. Her pony having recovered his wind, she started down the mesa toward the approaching figure, glad to see some human being in all that waste of loneliness around her. As she drew nearer, she saw that it was no white man, but an Indian, the red sash tied around his head being plainly visible at quite a distance, but undaunted, she kept on her course, presuming him to be the Indian mail-carrier who came in from the agency twice a week with the mail-sack tied behind his saddle.

As the distance between them lessened, she saw with great uneasiness that it was her admirer, Chatto, and, with a sort of guilty fear in her heart, she turned off the trail and pushed her pony into a lope toward a bunch of horses grazing near, as if she wanted to look at them closer. A glance over her shoulder showed her that the Indian had also turned and was following her, and the girl, now thoroughly alarmed, urged her pony to his fullest speed. The Indian called to her to stop, but she only rode the harder. Chatto, however, was well mounted and slowly gained on the flying figure; her cowboy hat had blown from her head, but was held by the string around her neck as she urged her pony with voice and quirt.

"Stop, I shoot!" called the Navajo, but she rode the faster, expecting every instant to hear the crack of his Winchester. At last he was within thirty feet of her, and she felt that her pony had done his utmost and there was no escape. Another look over her shoulder showed her that the Indian had taken down his long rawhide reata and was swinging it round and round his head preparatory for a throw at her. She remembered hearing Hull tell of Mexican and cowboy fights, where the victim was roped and pulled off his horse and across the prairie, until every semblance of human shape was dragged out of it, and her heart sank within her, for she knew by some woman's instinct that he had realized she had been fooling him, and was thirsting for revenge.

Faster and faster they rode, and nearer and nearer he drew, till she could hear the "swish" of the rope through the air; she crouched low over the saddle to offer as small a mark as possible, meantime praying for deliverance, which in her heart she little thought would come.

Cameron found his horses but a few miles out from the ranch, and, quickly rounding them up, started the bunch toward home on a sharp run, arriving there not long after Miss Steele had left. Questioning Mary as to the direction she had taken, he struck off again on the range in a course that he shrewdly judged would enable him, as if by accident, to meet Miss Steele on her homeward way.

Some three or four miles from the ranch the mesa he was crossing ended abruptly in a cliff some two hundred feet high, which extended for several miles in an unbroken line with but one or two places where an animal could get up or down. The view from the edge of this cliff or "rim rock," as it was more commonly called, over the wide valley spread out below it for miles and miles was unexcelled, and Cameron, knowing that Miss Steele must come up this cliff at one of two places, headed for the one he felt she would be most likely to take. As he drew near the edge of the mesa he left the trail and rode over to the cliff; and thinking perhaps to surprise a bunch of antelope feeding quietly in the valley below him, as well as to prevent Miss Steele from first seeing him, should she chance to be below, he left his pony under a cedar and, taking his Winchester in his hand, carefully walked up to the edge of the cliff.

The road leading down to the valley ran close under the cliff and was lost to sight around a point of the mesa but a short distance to his right. Carefully scanning the prairie, he could see no one, but, from the way three or four bunches of wild horses were tearing across the valley below him, he felt satisfied, that either she or some one else had started them, and concluded to wait a few moments.

Suddenly, from far below, came a sound that for an instant sent his heart to his throat, for it seemed as if he heard a woman's voice, borne upward from around the point to his right, and yet it was far more likely to be the almost human cry of a mountain lion, or even the childish yell of some lone coyote, either of which could readily be mistaken for a female voice in distress. As Cameron stood there, fairly holding his breath in his eagerness to catch the faintest sound from below, one moment assuring himself that his ears were at fault and the next so certain that it was a woman's voice that he could scarcely wait for its repetition in order that he could be sure which way to go, once again there came faintly and yet more definitely than before the cry of distress. The voice was Miss Steele's, and before he was really sure from which quarter it came, there burst into sight around the point of the mesa, not a quarter of a mile away from him but down in the valley, the figure of a girl on horseback leaning low over her pony's neck, and urging him to his utmost speed on the road leading up to the cliff, while some forty or fifty feet behind her, riding as hard as she was the Navajo Chatto, his red head-band gone, his long black hair streaming out in the wind, and whirling over his head in a great loop his rawhide reata.

It took Cameron but an instant to grasp the situation and see that the Indian had tried to overtake the girl, and failing, meant to rope and drag her from her horse. He quickly saw also that busied with his reata, and not having a chance to use the quirt, his pony was falling slightly behind, for the Navajos seldom wear spurs, and the girl was not sparing her pony's flanks, but was using her quirt at every jump. Cameron's first impulse was to spring down the cliff, and run to her aid, but with a groan he realized that it would take him too long to do this, for it was only by careful climbing that one could get down the first forty or fifty feet of the wall, and then the rest would be slow traveling at the very best. The race below him was in plain view now, and in a few rods more they would pass out of his sight in the little side cañon through which the road led up to the top of the cliff. To ride back to that place would take too long, also, and the man quickly realized that it was no time to delay.

To kill a Navajo meant trouble for everybody around, for the whole tribe would take it up, and wreak vengeance upon any white settlers they could find, hence that was not to be thought of except in the last extremity. But Cameron knew that he could kill the Navajo's pony and save the girl. Throwing his Winchester over a rock for a rest, with a mental estimate of five hundred yards' distance to his mark, he took careful aim at the shoulder of the Indian's pony and sent a shot which sped fair and true to its mark, the animal rolling headlong in the dirt, and the rider sprawling fully twenty feet away, but unharmed.

For an instant the Indian was stunned, then, evidently thinking his pony had fallen by accident, arose and started toward him. Cameron, however, was ready for this move. Presuming the Navajo would try to get his rifle, which was slung in its holster underneath the dead horse, he sent a second shot, before Chatto could get half way to the body, striking the ground close enough to him to convince him as to the cause of the pony's fall. With true Indian instinct he turned and, to disconcert Cameron's aim, ran in a zig-zag way to a deep ditch, or wash, near the road, into which he threw himself and crawled and wormed his way down to where the sides were high enough to shelter his body.

Meantime Cameron, not daring to leave his place until he knew the girl was safely up the cliff, forced the Navajo to keep to cover by firing an occasional shot in his direction, until, with a sigh of relief, he saw the girl "raise the hill" at his left, and stood up and waved his hat to her. Up to this time she had scarcely known to what cause she owed her deliverance. All she knew was that a shot had been fired, and she heard no more thunder of horse's hoofs behind her, but not being too sure of what it all meant, she never drew rein nor spared her pony until she saw Cameron's figure on the cliff and knew that she was safe.

A few moments later an hysterical, sobbing girl threw herself from her saddle straight into the arms of the man who loved her, and whom, she now knew, she loved.

AN ARIZONA ETUDE

"Las' time I was in Fo't Worth," drawled Peg Leg Russel who was industriously working away, with marlin spike and leather strings, on a new quirt, "I seen a circus band there a-ridin' hosses an' a-playin' at the same time."

"Makin' sure enuff music?" queried one of the boys.

"They sure was," replied Peg Leg; "an' what's more, them ole white hosses they was a-ridin' never batted an eye, but jist tromped along like a bunch of hearse horses.

"I'd sure love to see 'em try any such funny business with these yere little ole diggers we're a-ridin'," he continued, "Lordy, but wouldn't they git up an' rag when the first toot come off."

"If ye'd been wid me in the good old 'gallopin' Sixth Cavalry,' ye'd sure had a chanst to observe jist such a performance," said Pat the cook, who was busy at the mess box with supper preparations.

The mess wagon was backed up into the shade of a great, wide-spreading juniper, and the outfit was waiting there a few days for a bunch of fresh saddle horses from the horse camp. Ten or a dozen punchers were lying about in the shade, some asleep, some overhauling "war bags," sunning bedding, and others like Russel making quirts or hair ropes.

The old red-headed cook's army experiences were the butt of a great many sly jokes among the men, but he always had something new to relate, and the intimation, that he had seen a band mounted on western horses, was enough to excite their curiosity.

"Tell us about it, Pat," said Tex, "them Sixth Cavalry fellers sure rode the outpitchenest lot of bronks I ever see outside of a cow-outfit. I reckin' I'd oughter know, fer I were a workin' fer old man White down in the San Simon Valley clost to Fort Bowie in them days."

Any reference to the old man's former regiment warmed the cockles of the cook's heart, and he needed no urging to start him off on the story.

"We was all a-layin' up at old Fort Tonto," he said rolling out, with an empty beer bottle, what Russel said was the "lid" of a dried apple pie, "the whole regiment being there after two years spent chasin' over them hills and deserts trying to catch those divils of Apaches.

"'Twere the first time in three years we'd seen the band, an' when the General sent word for them bandsmen to come up from Camp Lowell we sure felt mighty pleased, for, barrin' a couple of fiddles an' Danny Hogan's concertina, there wasn't any music worth mentioning in the whole post.

"The old general had been over in Europe the year before an' picked up a lot of cranky idees about soldiering which didn't set well on the old Sixth, them bein' a bunch of rough ridin' _hombres_, very divils for fightin', but wid mighty little love for drills an' garrison duty.

"Wan day, I was the gineral's orderly, an' a standin' outside the door to his quarters, I could hear him an' the adjutant a-wranglin' about dress parade for next Sunday.

"The old man he was insistin' that them bandsmen could play mounted instead of afoot. 'Why,' ses he, 'didn't I see wid me own eyes in Paris, a army band all mounted an' a-ridin' an' a-playin' like good fellies?'

"'But, gineral,' says the adjutant, 'them there bandsmen of ours, bein' enlisted solely for musicians, not wan of them knows anything about ridin', an' as for ridin' an' a-playin' at the same time, on top of them there horses of ours, sure every wan of them will git thrown off an' hurted.'

"'So much the worse for them,' snorted the gineral, 'let them learn to ride--that's what they've got horses for. This is no bunch of doughboys I'm commandin', 'tis a regiment of cavalry-men, and cavalry-men we'll make of them or kill them a-tryin'.'

"'Sure,' he ses, ses he 'didn't Custer's band use to play mounted, an' why can't my band do the same?'

"The adjutant he tried to argufy wid the old man, tellin' him them there furrin' mounts were jist like a bunch of old dray hosses, an' edicated like trained pigs. But nothin' would suit the gineral but a mounted dress parade for all hands, includin' the band.

"So the adjutant he calls to me an he ses, 'Orderly,' ses he, 'my compliments to Mr. Schwartz, the band leader, an' ask him to report to the office immediately.'

"Now Schwartz, he was a little old fat Dutchman, about five feet six, an' weighin' over two hundred pounds. When I gave him me message he ses, ses he,

"'What's up,' ses he.

"'Mounted dress parade for the band,' ses I.

"'Mein Gott, me for sick report,' ses he.

"'Mr. Schwartz,' ses the adjutant when he waddles up to the office, ''tis the orders of the commanding officer that the band attend dress parade next Sunday afternoon, mounted an' wid their instruments ready to play.'

"Schwartz he gasps an' tried hard to say a word, but the adjutant he ses, ses he: 'Git your men out an' drill them every day till they can handle their hosses an' instruments at the same time. An' mind ye,' ses he, 'them there band instruments costs money, an' we want none of thim unnecsarily injured.'

"Schwartz he mumbled somethin' as he went out about them bein' a sight more anxious over not injurin' the instruments than they were the men, men bein' a matter for the recruitin' service, while instruments must be paid for out of the regimental funds.

"For the next four or five days the bandsmen was mighty busy a-drillin' their hosses an' a-gettin' them usened to the sound of the instruments by standin' on the ground in front of them an' a-playin.'

"Comes Saturday, the word goes about the post, that the band would make the first try at playin' on the backs of their hosses that afternoon.

"When they led their steeds out of the corral an' formed on the cavalry prade ground, every soul in the post, officers, sogers, apache injins, dog robbers an' laundresses was there to see the doin's.

"They led them bronks out an' played one chune, a-standin' at their heads, an' barrin' a few of them what pulled back an' got loose from the men, they stood the racket all right.

"Then the drum major, a-ridin' a white hoss, trots out to the front of them, waves his baton, an' gives the command, 'Prepare to mount.'

"Ivery man, accordin' to the latest tactics, grabs a handful of mane, in his left hand, an' his reins an' the saddle pommel wid his right, his instruments a-hangin' to his anatemy by straps or slings.

"When they gits the word 'mount,' they all swings up into their saddles somehow, some of them fat old musicians clamberin' up more like loadin' a sack of bran than anything else in all the world.

"The chap what played the bass drum, he bowed up when it come to tryin' to use his big drum, an' so they compromised on a pair of kittle drums, wan strapped to each side of the saddle horn.

"Them kittle drums looked for all the world like a pair of twenty-gallon water kaigs on a pack saddle.

"The horse, he eyed the load on his back sort of suspicious-like, an' lets the drummer git settled down into his saddle wid a drumstick in each wan of his two hands, but keepin' his ears a-workin' like a couple of wig-wag signal flags.

"Finally, when every wan was safely on top, an' the horses standin' fairly quiet, the drum major he waves his stick, an' wid a sweep of his arms, gives the signal to play.

"An' right there the fun began. The first rap the drummer give wid his drumsticks was too much for his horse, an' wid wan wild look at them two great soup kittles a-hangin' onto his back, an' wid the roar of them in his ears, he jist hung his head down, an' began some of the scientifickest buckin' an' pitchin' you ever seen.

"Bustin' through the band, wid them two kittles a-wavin' an' a-thumpin' on his back, the drummer's horse had little trouble in incitin' several more of them to the same line of conduct, an' in about two minutes half the horses in the outfit were a-buckin' an' a-cavortin' around like very divils.

"The kittle drummer an' the Swiss gent, what played the tubey--an' him a-settin' there in the middle of them great silvery coils like some prehistoric monster--they went through that bunch of wild-eyed Dutch musicians, like two shooting stars.

"The drummer tried hard to stay on top of his load, but what wid them two great copper tubs a-knockin' an' a-thumpin' away on his horse's withers, a-barkin' his shins an' knees wid every jump, an' a-floppin' like two big buzzards' wings, 'twas no disgrace that he couldn't stay there, him bein' no bronco buster, but jist a Dutch bandsman.

"He went up into the air wid them two drumsticks, wan in each hand, describin' a lovely circle, an' a comin' down head first in the soft dirt, while the hoss wid them two drums, beatin' a very divil's tattoo on his ribs, tored off down the road an' out of sight.

"As for the tubey player, he tried hard to stay in the middle of his bucker. But, bein' handicapped as it were, wid some thirty odd feet of German silver tubin' wrapped about his anatemy, an' it a-bumpin' an' a-bangin' agin his head every time the hoss struck the sod, he made hard work of it.

"After makin' some desperate efforts to find somethin' solid to hold onto, an' a-clawin' all the leather offen his saddle pommel in the effort, the wind jammer gives it up for a bad job, turned all holds loose, an' went up into the air like a musical sky rocket. The saddler sergint of G-troop sed he was a Dutch meteor.

"Ony how, he went up, an', encircled wid them great silvery pipes, made a fine landin' in the soft dirt, drivin' the bell of his tubey deep into it.

"The next minute his hoss was a-folerin' the kittle drums like Tam O'Shanter's ghost.

"Then there was a tall hungry Irishman--though what a dacent Irisher was a-doin' in that bunch of Dutchies I dunno--but there he was. He played a clarinet about a yard long, an' when his hoss decided 'twas time for him to do a little stunt of his own, in the buckin' line, he made a wild grab for his reins. But 'twas no good. Ivery time he comes down, he jabbed the sharp pint of that clarinet mouthpiece into the horse's withers, which didn't help matters a little bit.

"He was a-doin' some elegant reachin' for something to hold onto, but some way he couldn't connect wid anything at all. Wan jump an' he lost his cap, the next he landed behind the saddle, which gives his horse an opporchunity for lettin' out a few extry holes in his performance. Back into the saddle he goes, but not findin' conditions there to his likin', he continued on wid a forward movement finally landin' in front of the saddle, then a little furder forward, workin' out on the horse's neck like some sailor lad a-climbin' out on the bowsprit of a ship.

"Finally, the hoss took time enough to lift his nose from scrapin' the ground bechune his two front feet, an' have a look about him; in doin' which he turned the clarinet player end for end like a tumbler in a circus. Down he comes, wid his precious clarinet grabbed in his hand like a black-thorn shillalah, and when he lit, he bored a place in the dirt deep enough for a post hole.

"Over on the porch of the adjutant's office, a-takin' it all in, was the old gineral wid a bunch of ladies. When the last of the twenty or more riderless bronks disappeared over the brow of the hill down the road toward the creek, the old man turned to his orderly standin' near by an' ses, ses he, 'Orderly, prisint me compliments to the adjutant an' tell him that the band's excused from attindin' dress parade mounted till furder orders.'"

STUTTERIN' ANDY

"Oyez, oyez, o-y-e-z, the Honorable Court of the Third Judicial District of the State of New Mexico is now in session," cried the one-armed bailiff, and the district court in Alamo came to order for the afternoon session.

The judge settled back in his easy chair; the twelve jurymen at his left idly watched the crowd pour into the little courtroom. By the time the prisoner had been escorted in by the sheriff, every inch of space was occupied by eager spectators, both men and women; for the case of Andy Morrow, locally known as "Stutterin' Andy," charged by the grand jury with stealing one red yearling branded X V from Joseph Barker, had attracted the attention of the entire community.

During the morning session, the prosecution had given their side of the case. Old man Barker and a detective from Denver had each testified to finding the hide of a yearling bearing Barker's well-known brand, buried beneath a pile of brush on Morrow's "dry farm" claim.

The resurrected hide was also placed before the jury, the X V on the left ribs being plainly visible and when court adjourned for the noon recess, Barker was jubilant.

"We'll git him, we'll git him," he said to his foreman as they tramped down the narrow staircase leading from the courtroom. "I'll make a shinin' example of Mister Stutterin' Andy, what'll put the fear o' God into a lot of them cow thieves, an' last this here community for some time."

"I reckin' so," replied the foreman who felt that the reputation of the X V outfit was at stake. After lunch, court having been duly opened, the young lawyer, who owing to Morrow's poverty, had been appointed by the court to defend him, addressed the jury with a short statement of the case.

The poverty of the prisoner, his struggles to make a home, the iniquitous "fence law" which forced the little farmer to fence his crops against the wandering herds of the cattlemen, the wealth and standing of Barker, the complaining witness, and his use of a hired detective to hunt up evidence, was all pictured to the jury in his strongest language.

"Say, Barker," whispered a man at his side, nudging him with the point of his elbow, "don't you feel sort of ornery like, to be made out such a consarned old renegade?"

"Don't you be a-feelin' sorry for me," he snapped back, "them what laughs last laughs best, an' I reckon' we got a big ole laugh a-comin' when this here performance is concluded."

"I swear," muttered a man in the audience to his neighbor, "ef that there lawyer chap hopes to make anything out of Andy's testimony that will help him, I miss my guess. Why the pore devil stutters so that nobody kin git a word outa him scarcely, when there's nothin' excitin' goin' on, let alone with all these here people a-settin' there a-listenin'. I'm a-bettin' he won't be able to tell his own name to say nothin' about explainin' how he didn't kill that there yearlin'."

But the attorney knew his business and Morrow remained quietly in his seat beside the sheriff. Having finished his preliminary statement, the young lawyer whispered to the bailiff, who walked across to a small jury room opening off the main courtroom, and opened a door.

A low-spoken word, and there stepped from the room a woman--the wife of the prisoner.

She was tall, slim and about twenty-five years of age. From the corner of her mouth protruded the "dip-stick," that ever present solace of the sex among her class, and without which she probably never could have faced the crowd.

A faded blue calico dress over which she wore a small shawl, and on her head a bedraggled hat with a few tousled roses stuck on one side, made up a costume which only accentuated her drawn face and sorrowful eyes.

After a few moments of whispered conversation with the lawyer, she took the witness chair.

At first her answers to his questions as to her name, age, etc., were given in a low, scarcely audible voice, and the room was so still it was fairly oppressive.

"You understand, do you," he asked her, "that your husband is charged with killing a yearling belonging to Mr. Barker?"

"I shore do," was the reply.

"Will you, please, tell the jury in your own words, just what you know about this matter," the lawyer said.

"Mought I tell it jist as I want to, jist as I done tole it to you down to the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied very kindly, "tell the jury your story just as you told it to me."

She carefully removed the "dip stick" from her mouth, placing it in a little wooden box which she carried in a battered leather hand bag. Then, turning to the jury, she began her story in a clear firm voice, as if she realized that upon her testimony hung the fate of her husband.

"I want to tell you-all men, the truth about this here thing," she said looking into their faces with unflinching eye, "jist how it happened, an' don't mean to hide narry part of it from nobody.

"Andy an' me's been married now nigh onto six year. We moved into this country about a year ago, comin' from Arkin-saw in a wagon. We had two chillen, a boy an' a gal.

"When we gits here, Andy located down there on the claim an' tried dry farmin'; 'kaffir korners' I reckin' some of them calls us. It tuck mighty nigh every cent we had to git the seed an' some farmin' tools, an' after the crap were in, Andy he gits work in a sawmill up into the mountings, leavin' me an' the kids to make the crap.

"Andy he done built a little loghouse an' a corral, an' puts a brush fence around the land we broke up to keep the critters out, we not havin' any money fer to buy barbed wire fer the fence.

"We had a heap o' trouble with the range stock all summer an' it kep' me a-steppin' pretty lively to keep 'em out, but I managed to fight 'em off, an' we done pretty well that year.