"Saratoga chips are good enough for me," suggested the modest Navajo.

"Saratoga chips go then. Joe, you hear what the gentleman says,"

observed Don Cabeza. He was "bossing" the cooking himself that evening, and at that moment was engaged in stirring some beans that he was frying in the Mexican style, bacon-fat being subst.i.tuted for lard. Cook-like he tasted them now. "Well, there!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed admiringly--"there! When I get through with this, it will make you laugh. You boys won't know whether you are here, or sitting at the corner table at Delmonico's."

"No," said Joe, with a twinkle of dry humour in his kindly eyes, "we shan't know the difference. I always have beans and bacon-fat at Delmonico's--when there's enough to go round, that is."

"If we had only got into camp earlier, we might have shot some ducks,"

regretted Bill.

"There isn't anybody here that could have made a duck stew," remarked Joe gravely.

"Can you make a duck stew, Colonel?" I asked laughingly--for this was his _chef-d'oeuvre_ in culinary art.

"Can I make a duck stew! Can I make a _duck_ stew!" he echoed rapturously. "Well, you may talk about your chickabiddies, and you chickaweewees, and your Smart Alicks, and your Joe-dandies and daisies, but when it comes to making a duck stew, I'm a darling! I can show you a trick with a hole in it. I don't want to make any boast about it, though; I can't help cooking well any more than Joe can help cooking badly. It's a gift. But duck stews! Lord! I can make a stew with ducks, and teal, and snipe, and potatoes, and chilies, and--and things of that kind, that will make a rheumatic man go out after dinner, and begin jumping backwards and forwards over the house, he'll feel so good."

Joe grunted disparagingly. "If it weren't any better than this coffee, he wouldn't jump far before he lay down and died," he observed, grimly.

"The coffee is bad," a.s.sented the _chef_; "it's bad coffee. But all that you have to do, Joe, is to step right down to the store, close by here, and get some more. There is no reason why you should put up with anything bad when you're camping out in the middle of a big city like this." And he proceeded to prove conclusively, that the fact that the coffee was of inferior quality, was entirely the fault of the Deming store-keeper.

"When we get back, then, we must just drive up and shoot the handle off his door," said Joe cheerfully.

"Why, cer'nly," chimed in Navajo; "like those chaps used to up to Lone Mountain."

The particular incident to which he referred had taken place at a little mining village in New Mexico. It had become a custom amongst certain of the miners, when they came into town on Sunday "to have a time," sooner or later in the day to indulge in revolver practice at the handle of the door of Platt's saloon. Platt could not be said exactly to have encouraged this; but since it brought him custom, and opposition might have transferred the attentions of his clients from the door-handle to himself, he submitted to it with more or less grace. One day he engaged a quiet and industrious youth--a Dutch boy--to a.s.sist him in his business, and as he intended to be absent from home on the following Sunday, he informed him of the above circ.u.mstance. The good youth evinced a disposition to resist the unG.o.dly miners. Upon the whole, Platt counselled him not to do so, but at his request left a Winchester and six-shooter with him, and gave him free permission to exercise his own discretion in the matter. On Sat.u.r.day evening the young bar-tender removed an adobe brick from the wall beside the door, and commending himself to Heaven, slept peacefully, confident of the justice of his cause. The following morning the miners appeared as usual in town, and drank freely. But when the boy demanded payment for what he supplied them with, they took advantage of his youth, and replied that "There was no hurry about it, for he was still young; they thought that they might perhaps pay him some day. He might ask them again when his moustache had grown a little mite." Things got lively, and finally they repaired to the street and commenced shooting at the door-handle. This was where the real trouble originated. But it was soon over. Putting the muzzle of his Winchester through the loophole, the bar-tender began to shoot, too.

When he had finished, five of his late customers lay stretched out on the road, four of whom died immediately, and the fifth shortly afterwards. It is recorded that so pleased was Mr. Platt with his a.s.sistant's devotion that he advanced him rapidly in his service, and subsequently took him into partnership with him. I suppose that he married his master's daughter eventually, and lived happily ever afterwards.

The history is, probably, the American version of the everlasting tale of that artful young clerk who dropped a pin unnoticed in the presence of his master, the great merchant, and when the latter _was_ looking, ostentatiously picked it up again and set it in the collar of his coat.

A rather amusing yarn followed this, detailing an incident that had taken place at the little neighbouring village of Eureka. Mr. McKees, the superintendent of a mine there, had nailed up a board notice outside the office, forbidding revolver practice on the premises. News of this was brought by some one who had seen it to a saloon hard by, where Black Jack, Russian Bill, Broncho Billy, and some other well-known "rustlers"

were drinking.

"How's that for high, boys?" concluded the narrator, when he had told his tale.

"That's on top," declared Black Jack; "that takes the cake. It's coming to something, if a chap can't shoot his gun off where he likes in a free country."

"It's a perfect outrage," said Broncho.

"Let's go right down and attend to it at once," proposed Russian Bill.

Black Jack a.s.sented, suggesting that Russian Bill, who was a scholar, should read the notice aloud, and he himself then shoot it off.

They started, two or three of their a.s.sociates, armed with Winchesters, going with them, to occupy a position behind the "dump," near the mouth of the shaft, and see fair play. Russian Bill having read the notice, Black Jack drew a long six-shooter, and opened fire. The office was constructed of boards, and afforded but little protection, therefore, to its inmates. The first shot spoilt the leg of the chair in which the superintendent of the mine was seated; the second lodged in his desk.

But Mr. McKees had already left the room, and gone to "take the air"

upon the hill-side, nor did he return until the n.o.bility and gentry who were visiting him had shot the board off, and carried the splinters away in triumph.

Black Jack was a fine shot, and remarkably quick. He prided himself upon his ability as a hair-cutter, and was jealous of any rivalry in this line. A friend of his once had the temerity to advance his own claims to distinction as a barber.

"Oh, pshaw, Jack!" he said, "I can cut hair every durned bit as good as you."

But the words had scarcely left his lips when there was a report, and a bullet ploughed through his locks, just grazing the skin, and leaving a bald track.

"I guess you can't," rejoined Black Jack. "Look at that!"

Such tales as these are current coin out West, and the number of them in circulation is countless. How far they are true no one can pretend to say, nor does it matter much.

We sought the blankets early, and were up again before it was light; indeed, by the time that

"Night was flung off like a mourning suit, Worn for a husband or some other brute,"

we had almost finished breakfast.

The gray was worse to-day. As we proceeded he grew weaker and weaker, and less and less disposed to follow, until, ten miles from Smith's Wells, we were obliged to leave him. The halter was removed, and the tried, but now tired out servant, that had been our companion on many a long trip, was left alone in the midst of an arid plain. The breeze had subsided; the afternoon was growing mellow and still; on the summit of a rise, with the blue sky and sun behind him, the old nag stood still, in mid trail, looking stupidly after us as we receded. Without changing his position, he turned his head from side to side, to gaze around him at the desert once. Then, seeming to have realised that we had deserted him, and in that one brief survey of the ground to have recognised that his position was hopeless, his glance followed us again. There was something touching in the immovability with which he accepted the situation.

It was easy to imagine a world of pathos in his heavy att.i.tude and lowered crest, to picture immeasurable reproach in his great swimming eyes--eyes that had never looked viciously at any one. Poor beast! He could not even ask: "Did I ever abandon you when you were sick?" Again and again I looked back. The wheel-ruts and trail led my glance straight to him. The black shadow cast before him on the ground seemed like a thing of evil omen. He looked so forlorn. However simple the ill.u.s.tration may be, there is always a fascination in the old, cruel tale--Deserted. And to desert even a horse in extremity seems cowardly.

However, we yet expected to see him again.

"Has the old pillar of salt started after us?" inquired the Colonel prosaically.

"No." Nor did he move as long as we remained in sight.

"He'll be along directly--just as soon as he has rested. You can't leave those old cusses behind when they know the road."

Don Cabeza was right. Before we had finished supper at Smith's Wells, the horse appeared at the drinking-trough there.

It was the last typical evening that I expected to spend on the frontier, after nine months of almost uninterrupted life amongst rancheros and miners, cow-boys and teamsters, gamblers and traders, and all the nondescript flotsam and jetsam of humanity that drift "out West"

from the cradles of mankind, and find rough rest upon the sh.o.r.es of unskilled labour. A curious kaleidoscopic field of character lies here.

Men grow as chance will have them. No rules of etiquette or fashions trim and compress them into stereotyped moulds. At least they retain some originality, and are not wholly copyists. Rough characters may be found amongst the many fine fellows that one meets, and to spare--men who are narrow-minded, bigoted, and intolerant to a degree that is extraordinary. But since they make no pretence to be what they are not, at least they are not vulgar or sn.o.bbish. However marked the faults in any nature may be, if in the main it is natural, it can never be wholly repulsive. The roughest cow-boy is a gentleman by comparison with the effeminate New York dude, who copies his very soul from a flash model in London, or the "society man" of San Francisco who in turn imitates the dude. The one, at any rate, is true metal of its kind, the others are of the poorest kind of pinchbeck.

There is a great charm in the climate "out West." The sun gilds everything. It matters little how poor a cabin be, if the owner live almost entirely outside it. Old Sol sheds a halo of contentment everywhere. A scarcely minor attraction exists in the sense of freedom and independence--of empire, in fact, that the vast stretches of open country which occupy most of the West beget in the native of a land where walls and hedges, gates, fences, and trespa.s.s notices bristle at every turn, and create a constant and irritable impulse to lift the elbows and draw deep breaths.

Supper was over, and news of the old gray's reappearance had taken us out into the open air.

"The sun was gone now, the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf----."

A certain clear obscurity was gathering upon the _vega_; the outlines of things were unnaturally distinct, but their shading was becoming confused. Where the sun had set, still glowed a luminous field of amber light. And in the vault thus formed hung tiny isolated clouds of various tints like crushed blossoms from an Indian garden. Hills above hills and long cloud-reefs were mingled together on the near horizon, and stretched farther and farther away until the former resembled silhouettes of tissue paper, the latter something even more delicate still.

Sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred miles of country lay before us. And over all the twilight deepened, slowly invading even the mountain-tops, where still some light clung tenderly. Once more the impalpable canopy of darkness drooped over the quiet plains--tissues of gray dusk and soft blue sky, shot with a silver thread of moonlight, all ta.s.selled by dim stars, and crossed by the filmy figure of a bat. With an amnesty of sweet repose Night had begun her reign, but her dream subjects flocked to her sable standard swiftly; the haunted air became filled with the vague population of fancy, and Silence was revealed in all its eternal nakedness, that for once Sound had lost the power to hide. It was a strange night--a night when the spirits of Destiny seemed to hover near, and Mystery to be half-indifferent even if her veil were lifted, and her secrets penetrated--a night that inspired odd speculation. But the voice of the coyote, baying unceasingly in the silence--fit symbol of human interest in the world--kept calling us back, calling us back to earth, and let no thought escape and fairly rise above the dust and ashes of this life.

THE END.