No Mean City (Saturday Evening Post serial)/Part 1

by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

 

WITH mirth and exceeding jollity seven husky and dusty young men did good work together in a world gay, hoping and altogether delightful. Morley, Pope, Crocker, Engle, Cutter, Upham and Grama—they sought, for a cheerful and hasty young railroad system, the best path between the Mexican hamlets of Albuquerque and El Paso. Peach-embowered, those villages drowsed in two of the great gateways of the world; which fact, had it been told them, would have caused them considerable surprise.

The year was 1879. Count back now to 1719, 1679, 1605. So long ago was Santa Fé last founded, and so far back those founders followed a path beaten already by centuries of weary feet. After the coming of the Spaniards the path pushed northward a century, eastward a century; to Westport at last; to become thereafter the Santa Fé Trail. You would search vainly for Westport on any map; it is Kansas City now.

The Santa Fe railroad followed the Santa Fé Trail pretty closely; the most notable change being to drop the accent. Not that surveyors are imitative, but because surveying is an exact science. The old trail followed truly the line of least resistance; its makers left to be settled by later craftsmen details only; the factor of grade, curve and upkeep.

Trail and railroad leave the river valley for the high tableland, to cross the Jornada del Muerto. So is that strip of desert country named from old time—the Journey of the Dead Man.

On the old trail there were cut-offs for wet-weather travel, when water stood in the shallow lakes—cut-offs, that is, for heavy traffic. Wet or dry the stage line ran straight; hauling water for the stage stations from the river, from Bitter Springs, from Muerto Springs at For McRae. Little Round Mountain was the first station, then a semi-permanent lake, Laguna, the halfway place. Fourteen miles south of Laguna was the only living water on the direct route: Martin's Wells, better known as Aleman, because John Martin was a German. Water was hauled from Aleman to supply Point of Rocks, the fourth and last stage station. But the long caravans of freight wagons traveling together for mutual protection against the Apaches must zigzag for water, aside from the direct route; east to Bitter Springs; west again, seven mile vest and down, to Fort McRae; then painfully back to Martin's Wells.

More fortunate, the railroad was to have water pumped up over the mesa from Fort McRae to Laguna, the halfway place. Winter and summer the railway keeps to the cut-offs: hand in hand together, trail and railroad, guide and eager youngster, hold straight for the shining peaks of Dona Ana. Here was a kingdom, long and long ago, “the Kingdom of Dona Ana,” of the Lady Ann; here was her capital, close-nestled under these brightest hills. “Happy the state that has no history.”

“Son,” Said Uncle Ben, “What are They Doing Now—Kissing or Killing? Let's See.”

But where the Santa Fé Trail takes ninety miles to cross to Fort Selden the Santa Fe Railroad makes it in seventy five, from San Marcial to Rincon, leaving the river earlier, rejoining it earlier. In each case the railway gets the worst of it in the matter of grades; in each case the change was forced by the all-important consideration of safe bridging. The Rio Grande is a sullen and malignant stream, the banks and bed of it are quicksand, trembling, treacherous. Only where the river breaks through mountains may it be safely forded or bridged; except at San Marcial.

Eastward from San Marcial is an insignificant hillock, barely to be seen. From this pimply knoll, some time since, poured out a stream of liquid fire and stone, which flooded to varying depths a country half as large as Wales. This lava flow underlies the desert; the deep wells find it. Year by year southwest winds bring to this place certain grains of sea sand from the Pacific beaches, so that part of the plain known as the Jornada. The patient chemistry of time binds and blends that sand and fashions it to soil.

Northern bound and limit of the Jornada, the last sluggish dregs of that stupendous flow, cooling almost level with the lip of the crater, make a low swell of black lava, uncovered yet by sand; a swell larger than Delaware, and exactly the shape of a black ink blot. That, too, is being submerged and overblown; even in recorded time sand dunes and struggling sagebrush have made a visible gain.

A westward splash of that ragged black blot of lave sent out in turn a westward spokewise ray which poured a dam of boiling metal across the valley of the Rio Grande. Much steam—it is thought—was then generated. The lava cooled, the river promptly cut a channel through; the net result was a safe foundation for a bridge, where a causeway of lava underlies the quicksands of the Rio Grande.

If you stand on the observation platform at the last car of your train as you pass that bridge you shall see the black steeps of San Pascual Hill gloom high above you, and dimly sense that you still live in the youth of the unfinished earth—perhaps in the evening of the morning of the third day; you may almost stretch out your hand to touch this late experiment of the great laboratory. But perhaps you are not on the platform of the observation car. You may be inside with the curtains drawn. Playing bridge, probably

Opposite San Marcial, as our seven surveyors staked out the southern anchorage for that bridge on the steep black side of San Pascaul Hill, a benign and elderly giant, chin in hand, sat on a block of lava and observed them with great interest. Elderly, by comparison; the oldest surveyor was thirty, this mediative giant edged toward forty.

Below them the chuck wagon forded the river. The wagon master thoughtfully elected to leave the water where the river's edge was most prepared to be churned to a jelly of quicksand, stalled promptly, jumped from his seat and began with rigorous impartiality to bet his six mules over the head.

The meditative giant laid aside the heavy Sharps rifle across his knees, strolled down to the trouble and threw the wagon master into the river without comment; gave instructions to the mules and brought the chuck wagon out of that. He then directed bed wagon and wagon to a safer landing. Returning to the hillside for his rifle and saddle horse he led the little caravan to a sheltered cove half a mile down the river, made camp, unloaded the bed wagon and hauled up driftwood.

“Teagardner,” said the giant after supper, his name being demanded from the pay-roll by the senior surveyor. “Ben Teagardner. Put me down as extra man if it's all the same to you. I'll sidle over to Fort Craig to-morrow and get you a wagon master. Springtime Morgan, I reckon. And Springtime, he rigged up a tank wagon when he was cuttin' grama hay for Uncle Sam. You'll need that, and his teams. Your one little old water wagon won't nigh do the trick alone. I'll bring Lew Friend for hunter. He'll keep you in fresh meat, deer and antelope. You put me down as extra man. I'll fill in right handy. Know the country—been here since 'sixty-three. Any old pay. I ain't doin' this for the money exactly. I'm a prospector, sort of; and I want to learn a little surveyin' for my own use.”

Thus, in all simplicity, Teagardner took over and guided benevolently the destination of Santa Fé. The world went very well then.

Those were joyous days. Here was no peril of flood, no endless wrangle for right of way, but a broad sunny plain and a shining straightaway. Small wonder that the young surveying men were elate; and they may be pardoned for what they did. The thing was obvious. Eighty miles across the desert, seven sidetracks, one every ten miles, seven young men, one sidetrack to each young man, and none to molest or make afraid. Who can blame them? They offered Teagardner his pick, as was fitting and proper. Teagardner smiled and shook his head. Also, at the casting of lots, the senior surveyor drew a sidetrack in the most lunar of earthly landscapes, where the road curved deep through the Mal Pais; in English, the Bad Lands, the lava fields. So Morley named his sidetrack, not Morley but Lava. Had Napoleon been godfather he could have done no less without indelicacy. But the other young men drew sites less nightmare-wired than Morley's. Pope, Lava, Crocker, Engle, Cutter, Upham and Grama, these are the stations of the Jornada, even unto this day.

Black-browed Engle was the lucky one. His name town became metropolis and capital of the Jornada. It is true that the youth of Lava was not inglorious, what time Fort Stanton, eastward by two deserts and two great mountain chains, freighted over the great military road through Lave gap. It is true that at a later day, after ages of dull obscurity, Lava attained a certain importance when De Meir found guano in the throat of the old crater. But the ascendancy of Engle was never truly challenged.

Long Strings of Freight Wagons Crawled Over the Desert

The golden age, the heroic, the pastoral, growth of empire, dark age feudal system scientific efficiency, Trojan wars and Sabine women, tribute from far places, bitterness of Norman conquest, epic and romance, chivalry and chicane—everything that has ever happened in any place has happened in Engle. Through the mists of dim antiquity, legend and myth cluster about names as loved and bright as Hector or Du Gueselin.

No name of all those shining names may be cited here, though the temptation is great. Engle has a thousand stories; Balzac might have written the Human Comedy without leaving the Jornada.

Construction camps trod on the heels of the survey. The railroad reached El Paso in 'Eighty-one. Engle was marked for greatness from the first; halfway across the desert, Engle was set apart by the glory of two passing tracks; it was here that water was pumped from Fort McRae for the thirsty locomotives. Beyond the river in the Black Range, mining towns sprang up overnight: Hillsboro, Chloride, Fairview, Grafton, Kingston, Hermosa; and Engle was base of supplies to all. Fort McRae was abandoned; Engle was strong enough to keep the gate against the Apache.

There were two stage lines. Long strings of freight wagons crawled over the low rim of the desert, crowded to the freight depot or loaded direct from the cars. There were two flourishing general stores; saloons, of course; two thriving hotels; an all-night restaurant. And children. Real boys and girls, who rose up in that white tent city, sniffed the pleasant odor of clean resinous new lumber and fared forth to mischief in a world of unfailing sunlight and joy whose chief occupation was target practice.

Civic pride was strong in those children. By cause of these two sidetracks, the pipe line and the water tank, they turned up their collective nose at Lava; they exulted in the metropolitan splendor of the later “Y,” built for the convenience of pusher engines which would turn about and go back to San Marcial or to Rincon. Most of all, their pride centered in the survey stakes marking the branch line that was to run to the Black Range. By that sign they knew the future was secure and that Engle would crowd the map.

Never was childhood such as theirs. Privation? They laughed their scorn—they who had horses and rifles and mountains and miles for playthings. No children were ever happier.

Geronimo's Apaches killed Harve and Sam in 'Eighty-six. They were sixteen years old. One Engle boy died in Amazon country, another in Alaska. This is not their story. But it is sad to know that there is not one left in Engle now who knew that ancient glory—not one of those gay boys and girls or of their children's children. What quite escaped the notice of those proud children—and of their parents was that the long strings of freight wagons went out laden and returned empty. Oh, yes, a few outgoing cars of ore now and then, one wagon of twenty, came loaded back to Engle. Superstition has ever wagged the head at one-way freighting as a bad sign.

The wildcat mining boom collapsed. At Engle the white-tent city withered like Jonah's gourd, the frame houses were torn down for the precious lumber. Overnight, all that was left of Engle were the railroad buildings and the huge adobe buildings, gray, sprawling, immovable, which had housed stores, hotels, saloons, mining companies. There was still freighting to the Black Range, but men no longer pummeled each other for precedence at the depot platform; the two stage lines dwindled to one; the one fell from six-horse teams to four. The stores remained, but on the shelves the stock ran low; the vast dining room of the surveying hotel was become an ominous place, given to melancholy echoes. Of the children, seven were left, stunned, bewildered, heartbroken; to them the silent streets were peopled with the ghosts of departed heroes. It is not given to many streets to be haunted within three years of their building.

One of these children, a boy, fourteen and venturous of disposition, diverted himself by painstaking exploration of such mountains as lay within a radius. It befell him that always when he had climbed to a summit where, as he thought, no white man's foot had ever been before, there he found mine monuments and location notices given to sprightly and whimsical names. Always the notices were signed—Ben Teagardner; generally with Pres Lewis as co-locater; sometimes with Abijah K. Witherspoon, junior, as witness, The boy became interested. Annoyance gave way to wonder, wonder to admiration. He heard of Pres Lewis only three days away; rode those three days, found Pres Lewis, blacksmith to the Mother Hubbard's Cupboard mine, Mogollon way. Of him the boy made inquiry.

“Yes,” said Lewis, “me and old Teagardner rambled about right smart. Teagardner, he's in Peru now; letter from him last Christmas was a year.... Mr. Abijah K. Witherspoon, junior? Oh, 'Bijah was a ha'nt—like John Doe. 'Bije was Teagardner's witness when Ben was alone. Was that forgery, now, I wonder?” Pres tugged at his silky brown beard as he wondered.

The centuries passed slowly in Engle until 'Eighty-six. Men began to speak of cattle. The railroad built shipping pens. Kim Ki Rogers started the K I M brand in the Caballo foothills; the K Y Company, of Lexington, was formed, and stocked up with a thousand head at Aleman.

The Texans, whose herds had followed up the Pecos and its tributaries, fought the bloody and desperate Lincoln County War because they crowded each other. About 'Eighty-six they discovered the way across two deserts by way of Lava Gap, Bitter Springs and the Santa Fé Trail to Fort McRae Creek and the Rio Grande; so west to the Tonto Basin War. The new-found way could be used only in the rainy season, when the shallow lakes were full. From July to October long slow herds crept over the northern horizon; bedded on the long slope beyond Engle Lake, the old Laguna; passed on over the rim to McRae.

A few, the hardiest, looked at the land, sought out water in the foothills, took root at Engle. The hardiest—of many that lingered for a year or so only the unyielding, the tenacious, the high-hearted, might bear the test of that hard and desolate land. There began the tradition of Engle, a great tradition—to do no less than the utmost. It was a man of another town who has best voiced the heart of Engle: “Don't flinch; don't foul; hit the line hard!”

So the men of Engle went forth, north, east, west and south; each carried afar some part of the meaning of Engle; each in his heart carried the vision of that old gray town as something high, clear and apart, in the desert and the sun, under her turquoise sky.

The old gray town; old in history and in change, grief and joy, mischance and misdeed, in everything that makes for ripeness. And as from Engle, so from a thousand like her, and a thousand. It is by the hands of these wandering men that ideals are blended, to make of us a nation purposed and “prepared,” equal to either fortune; not a congeries of hostile tribes.

To illustrate Far in Southern Mexico there is a mining town high in the almost inaccessible mother range, with a single passway to the outer world. Twenty years ago its population was about twenty-four thousand. Of these, seven—not seven thousand, but seven—were Americans; each of the seven had been at some time a citizen of gray Engle. And not one of the seven had lot or part in the coming of the other. It is like the manner of men that the tarrying may have been in part for old time's sake; it is so we are made. But it was chance and the wandering foot and the venturous heart that brought them there.

Of such hard make and breed were the swift-passing generations of Engle; foregoers at heart, children of the road, rolling stone flouting the acquisition of moss as dullest and most depressing of occupations; taking shape and polish of their thunderous onrush. Disaster? Yes. Fragments, frequent. That is Nature's way of accomplishment. By glacier and avalanche, by earthquake and flood she builds her fatness. Moss-grown stones and sedentary have scornful names for these rolling ones; drifter and wastrel the mildest. Yet it is difficult to think of progress without on-goers, even without first-goers.

So the wandering men fared forth and bore with them some part of that high tradition. A waif word comes back from Guadalajara, from New York, from Château-Thierry—that they are children of Engle yet. Where you have been first-men, there is your abiding city.

The Bar Cross Company came to the Jornada. The Bar Cross bought out the K I M and K Y brands, for a starter. It dug wells, built tanks, pumped water, at Detroit, from the Rio Grande; stocked up the Jornada with forty thousand head of Herefords: picked its men by natural selection, best of the best; held to the great tradition of Engle and bettered it.

The Bar Cross endured fifteen years—fifteen happy centuries. Side by side with it the 7 T X fenced in the Armendaris Grant, forty-five by fifteen, the northwestern corner of the Jornada, running six thousand head; and for them, as for the hardships of the desert cut back all but the strongest.

Teagardner returned, rested for a year or two, adopted the Bar Cross outfit in token of approval; was honored by the brevet of Uncle Ben; passed on to Hong-Kong, Java, Sumatra. A Christmas letter came back from him every few years.

Engle was inside the 7 T X fence by a scant mile; the two companies came to a working agreement and both made their headquarters there. “The Holy Roman Empire” was Frank John's name for it. There were dukes and tributary princes in the Caballo Mountains and the San Andre, to west and east; and in the Crown Lands of the 7 T X, far to the southeast in the San Andres, with a separate brand, the Fleur de Lys. The free cities of Paraje and Contra Recio lay northwest on the river, between the barren mass of Fra Christobal Mountain and the lava fields, their cattle ranging from the river to Lava and Bitter Springs; thirty brands in all, on the Jornada and the bordering hills; jangling at times between themselves, a fierce unit against all outsiders.

The shipping pens grew great. Because there was abundant grass and no farmers with vexatious fences, Engle became the shipping from the Black Range country in the west, and beyond; from the White Mountain and beyond, the Capitans, the Sacramento, two hundred miles to the east. Those were the golder days. There were children again in Engle—and a school at last. Such a little, little school!

The herds grew great, too great; grass became short; the evil days drew nigh. Man hoped for rain and the drought consumed. Cattle died by the thousand. Cattle companies began to break up, to ship cattle away—Colorado and California. The Bar Cross was the last to after a precarious survival of some years. The Bar Cross herds were shipped out; the fierce vassals clutched at the fragments of empire; and thick darkness fell upon the land. The old gray town fell desolate and lonely; the little pine schoolhouse warped in the sun, the broken door creaked in the wind on rusting hinges. From the brown desert where grass and grass roots had been trampled out, the blown sand rose to witness against the greed and folly of man—as it rose against Gaza and Ascalon—and drifted high in the silent streets of Engle. Her sons were scattered, her glory was in eclipse.

The stagnant years crawled by at Engle; the sand crept higher against the crumbling adobes. And suddenly a great dream came true and the flood tide of prosperity burst upon the forsaken town.

Three centuries the dream had waited. Be sure that Coronado dreamed it, and Kit Carson, and the builders of the Santa Fe; Uncle Ben Teagardner with the rest. To tame the fierce brown river, to build a new Nile land in the desert, a later Thebaïs. No passer-by, no brown peon so dull as not to see dimly the glory of that dream.

“Son, You Run Along to Your Room or the Parlor. You Done Enough Damage for One Day. See You Presently”

Twelve miles from Engle the Rio Grande plunges directly, head on, against the northern knife-sharp edge of Caballo Mountain, recoils from the impact of that furious collision, swerves passes westward, hugging close to the mountain's western base for the next forty miles. It was doubtless the secret thought of the Rio Grande to undermine that mountain, to grind it to dust and to use that dust for an oyster bed in the Gulf of Mexico. But that project had been postponed for a space by the puny hand of man.

for just at the utmost north of Caballo Mountain stood a black butte, once a volcano. Time and chance and the stupendous chisels of the wind and the sand have wrought the bristling head of an angry elephant, facing the north, startled and staring, sinister, ominous. This was the most heroic statue of all earth.

And just here was the appointed spot to arrest the giant spirit of the Rio Grande, to tame and bit that turbulent and angry outlaw and set him to expiate his crimes, serving men and the of sons of men.... For a space. But—who may doubt it?—in the end the giant dam must be as transitory as the pyramids.

An old, dream—to turn aside the fury of flood time, to bring the of life to the acres of ten thousand farms. Men grew old and died, sick with the bitterness hope deferred. Half a century of waiting and breaking hearts; then a swift week of years, and the thing was done.

Busy years; a great wagon road from Engle, that clambered and clung and twisted and looped on the gashed hillsides of Mescal Cañon; then a swift spur of railroad, the river turned aside into a man-made channel, an ant army at work in the old river bed, digging down through overlying silt to the foundations laid by Omnipotence. Electric lights made a year-long day. Pneumatic drills channeled trench and tunnel into the living rock, that the concrete might anchor to the everlasting hills, and man's work take hold upon God's.

Six hundred feet above, the cañon floor a cable was rigged from cliff to cliff, and wheels to ride that cable; an äerial ferry. A locomotive, caught up in the sling like a child's toy, was hung beneath those dizzy wheels and rode that cobweb to the western bank; other locomotives, cars, steel rails bundled like toothpicks; a railroad complete—to serve the dam from the west side.

from such gigantic detail judge the work: miles that ground mountains to gravel; mixers that stirred them to batter; derrick and pourer and crane. Great lights doubled each year and made it two; the shining dam arose complete, with every safeguard of spillway, sluice and gate; solid concrete, twelve hundred feet long, three hundred feet high, with a walled driveway eighteen feet wide at the top by way of a bridge; substitute for Engle ferry and ford. Engle ferry and ford lie under one hundred and eighty feet of water now.

It is thought that problems and difficulties were encountered in building the Engle Dam; in private life we meet such in digging a cellar. Mistakes were made—blunders, perhaps; there was ample waste—unavoidable and other. Huge outcry ensued; blame was lavishly apportioned. Curious: that critics should always be faultfinders. A critic is, by intention and by first meaning, a judge, free to approve; yet praisefinding is a word unaccustomed and awkward to our ears.

One might think that a fact so stupendous and colossal as Engle Dam would be conclusive retort and answer to the critics. But it is generally understood that the critics could have done much better.

The mistakes were corrected, the blunders retrieved, experimental waste made good a thousandfold, the difficulties mastered; the completed work is one with the hills, to serve unborn generations and to inspire greater works of riper years. Yet many a man has reaped unstinted blame in that building; and if any has won praise thereby his name has been successfully concealed. There have been cases like this before; and since.

Now, during the years of that great building Engle town throve mightily, with music of hammer and saw; base for freight and traffic, for building of telephone and telegraph lines, wagon road, the spur of railroad at last. Not one of those children who had so proudly dreamed of a branch line was left in Engle. Indeed, of the few latter-day old-timers who had lingered through the evil days, all except one or two had made haste to secure homes in the fertile valley below the dam, when the beginnings of its building were first assured. It was a new race of men, Baden Powelled and puttied, who built bank, bungalow and boarding house in Engle redivivus—“the best town in New Mexico by a dam site.”

The late-comers were a gay and cheerful pack, youthsome, light-hearted, perhaps something lifted above themselves to have part in the doing of a great deed. Strictly confidential—Uncle Ben Teagardner, oldest of old-timers, warmed to these latest sons of Engle with a guarded and conditioned approval which he kept strictly to the cloistered silence of his thoughts. In his seventy-second year Uncle Ben came back once more to Engle on a personal errand, and incidentally to have a look at the building of Engle Dam.

Engle Dam. It was so known during the building of it; under that name the word of it had reached Uncle Ben in Asia, other men under other skies. The dam was also known, loosely and variously, as the Rio Grande Dam, Elephant Butte Dam. Old habit prevailed; as Engle Dam it was to take its place in encyclopedic pages; Engle was to have her line of history.

Mark now the favor of makers. The compositor, whose heart was in the Polo Grounds with Matty, misread his copy, changed “Engle” into “Eagle.” One letter aright, and Engle had been also of the cities of earth, with Aden and with Nome. To the gods it seemed otherwise. Eagle Dam. The Supernatural Year Book for 1910, p. 624,

Protest followed. Government and encyclopedia laid their wise heads together; for “Eagle” substituted “Elephant Butte”; well, indeed, and best, did that grim elephant's head still front the north; not so well, since the upper half of that gigantic head is milled and mixed to concrete and poured into the dam, and the rest is under water.

Elephant Butte Dam reclaims 200,000 acres by first intention, in New Mexico, Texas, Mexico Viejo; more to come, by diversion dams and ditches, and High Level Ditch, still a-building or to be built; most of all as an example, a mark to equal and to overpass. It makes an artificial lake forty miles long, with a shore line of two hundred miles, ragged with gulf and fiord as it seeks a level against the black broken rim of the Jornada or in the black cañons of Fra Christobal Mountains. The wild ducks carried tidings of the new lake to Carolina swamps and inlets of the Yucatan. Enterprising and adventurous ducks came to look-see by prompt thousands; as promptly business men of El Paso. Las Cruces and Albuquerque established a clubhouse near the lakeside—at Cutter. Thus does Nature adjust the balance between her creatures.

Cutter shall have a word. Upstart Cutter, eight miles south of Engle, bored many wells and built recklessly; shared with Engle the riches of the dam-building years. Engle snubbed Cutter, bore herself rather haughtily, secure in her great past.

Cutter built a thirty-thousand-dollar wagon road through Palomas Gap in Caballo Mountain, seized and held the rich Palomas Valley as tributary, and for a space threatened the supremacy of Engle. Engle holds the Black Range trade by way of the road which uses Elephant Butte Dam as a bridge; she holds the upper reaches of the lake, and in the great shipping pens she has an asset not lightly to be matched.

With the completion of the dam both Engle and Cutter dwindled sadly. Jealousy dwindled as well; each readjusted itself to lesser fortunes and set itself to a future smaller but secure.

The year 1914 came; 1915 and the Lusitania; 1916. Engle and Cutter forgot their folly and their pride, drew close together; 1917 came, and the end of unexampled patience. Nashville, New York, Cutter, Boston, Miami and Engle sent forth their sons to war; some to return no more, the dead and deathless.

II

CLAYTON'S store and Engle Hotel are housed together in an old adobe of fabulous dimensions. As the Humboldt House, in 1882, it had started life as a recumbent skyscraper one story high and twenty long; the accretions of capricious years—ell and annex and afterthought have changed it to a labyrinth. Clayton owns both establishments; the store, alcoved, cool, wide and dim, serves as lounge and lobby to the hotel, where guest and native mingle with a democratic equality surprising in a country like ours. Witness to-day's company.

To-day was a July day; the rainy season was a week old. In front of the store a saddled horse, a pack-saddled horse and a touring car, huddled sociably together, tails to wind, in a warm driving rain; blazoning forth the democracy within. That democracy numbered six; or seven, if you cared to count Clayton.

The car belonged to Mr. Kinny Apgar, a brisk and debonair man, from that vague, mysterious, far-off world called “the East”; now, and for six months past, clubman of Cutter, mine owner of Fra Christobal. The two horses had arrived during the last burst of rain, their owner, a still dripping boy, seeking refuge in the store. In old days there had seldom been so few as two ponies at the store door. Other times, other manners. That Jack Carpenter, foreman of the Armendaris Cattle Company, had ventured so far afoot—a full two hundred yards from the Broad A headquarters—proved him to be no old-timer. The Armendaris Company ran cattle on the fenced Armendaris Grant, successors to the 7 T X of old time. That the new brand was known as “the Broad A” further explains both the new company and the new foreman. There were two transients, guests of the hotel: a gray-haired patrician, a brown-haired plebeian; last of all, Uncle Ben Teagardner, no transient.

At seventy-two, after twenty-five years of Asia, Teagardner had come back home—to die. So far he had been unsuccessful, and had now postponed the matter to see the end of the great war.

“Only seventeen years old,” said Uncle Ben proudly, “and he can open and shut a gate as good as anybody.”

“Aw, Uncle Ben!” protested the seventeen-year-old—the dripping boy. “That Bally horse was wild as a hawk. I couldn't put the beef back on him alone.”

“No. You had a lead rope and a pack rope, but you couldn't pack two quarters of beef on a bald-faced horse. Of course not.”

“I tried to, I tell you, and he dragged me all over the flat. So I rolled the beef up in the tarp and beat it to town. What else could I do? Storm coming up anyhow.”

“Ten to one you wouldn't have had no trouble packin' Bally if you had only blindfolded Bally. Or you might have tied Bally's front leg up to the pack saddle and put the beef on Bally. You might have tied Bally's hind leg to Bally's shoulder and put the beef on Bally. If Bally would keep hoppin' round, you could pass a rope round Bally's other hind foot, and pull it out from under Bally, and throw Bally down, and hog-tie Bally, and pack your beef on Bally. Or you might have thrown your pack on the saddle horse and ridden Bally in. If Bally was too wild to ride you might have broken Bally.”

The boy squirmed unhappily. “But I didn't know all these things, Uncle Ben.”

“No. You didn't know them and you didn't make 'em up new. Nor yet nine other new ways I never heard of. You had a tarp to crawl under till it quit rainin'. You had two horses, two ropes, two quarters of beef, one pack saddle and one head, but you didn't tie the beef on Bally. You lit out for home and mother. Son, I've known boys in this very town, no older'n you, would ha' found some way to tie that beef on Bally, or been there yet. They might have been obliged to put the pack saddle upside down on the beef and put Bally in the pack saddle and pack Bally to the beef, but they'd have brought Bally, and they'd have brought that beef.”

“'There were giants in those days'?” said brisk Apgar.

“Giants,” said Teagardner.

“Why is it, then, that you never tell me about them? I am a skillful listener and a notable lover of giants, but I have always failed to get you started. Come now, Mr. Teagardner, we are storm-bound here; oblige us; entertain us with a few chapters of the wondrous tale.”

Uncle Ben caressed his long gray beard and regarded his questioner thoughtfully. He saw a man in the ripe vigor of middle age, of medium height, well knit and muscular. Apgar was natty and well-groomed. His eyes were blue and large, his hair was chestnut and wavy; he wore a closely trimmed silken beard of darker chestnut, verging upon auburn. His lip was full and smiling; he kept a fresh and florid coloring of face, despite some months of New Mexico sun. Altogether, Uncle Ben noted, he bore a precise resemblance to King James of Flodden Field, not to be missed by any who had known both men. Nor did the likeness end with face and form. Open-handed, free-spoken, Kinny Apgar met the world with a jovial face, hail-fellow-well-met. He was accepted as “good fellow” by Cutter and clubhouse, Engle and Elephant Butte. Uncle Ben, alone, was not quite convinced. Uncle Ben's leisured thought found Apgar's pleasant manners not quite friendly, but a thing lesser and meaner than friendly; affable—almost gracious.

“You see,” said Uncle Ben, hesitating, “some of them old-timers are dead. And the rest of 'em—they're alive. I wouldn't just like to tell the ugly stories. And I don't want you to think I was bragging, like you would if I'd tell the other kind.”

“Preposterous!” said Apgar. “See here, why don't you come out to the mine and stay with me a while? I wish you would; I would be very glad to have you. I don't suppose you'd care about hunting, at your age. But I'd be glad to get your opinion on my copper-mining proposition. You are experienced in such matters. And when you got better acquainted with me perhaps your shrinking modesty might so far wear off that you could tell me the true story behind some of these wild and highly improbable old tales I hear. It strikes me that we are losing an interesting page of history about you old-timers, and it seems rather a shame.”

Uncle de Ben shook his head. “There were lively lads here long before my people, and others beyond them. All forgotten; no complaint. And mind you, for any tale I might relate you can go off a hundred mile and find another eyewitness who will tell you the same yarn, only with everything exactly opposite. My good men would be his skunks, and my skunks would be his good men, and he'd believe every word of his yarn, same as I would mine. Liars don't do much harm; it's honest men that get themselves believed.”

“You do not take your history very seriously, it would appear,” smiled the patrician.

“Who, me? History? Say, mister—take Teddy Cæsar or Woodrow Cromwell or Oliver Roosevelt or Julius Wilson—ask about them from the men who lived in their days. Try it once. You'll find out just what you're looking for. Also, you'll find out what kind of a jasper your informant is—and maybe a little side light on yourself if you're right quick. History? Ever hear twin brothers explain to the old man how came they fighting? That's history. There! I'm hoggin' all the talk, as usual. I'm done.”

“But your talk is very interesting indeed,” protested the patrician. “It stimulates thought. We do hear conflicting stories, don't we? Even under oath. And for myself, I only wish I might be of the party when you visit this gentleman's mine.” Here he bowed to Apgar. “I'm sure I would enjoy some of your old stories.”

“Nothing easier,” said the mine owner. “The latchstring is out, and the welcome's on the mat! Apgar is my name.”

“And mine is Bowman, sir,” said the patrician, grasping Apgar's extended hand. “If I stay here long enough—and if you can persuade your friend to talk—and if he absolutely will not do his talking here your invitation is accepted with pleasure.”

“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Teagardner, Mr. Bowlin. Mr. Bowlin,” said Apgar, “is a lifelong friend of mine for the last sixty seconds.”

“Bowman,” corrected Bowman. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Teagardner. I would like very much——”

The door opened and five or six townsmen trooped in, laughing and chattering. Bowman frowned. The rain was a drizzle now, but the day was dark, the clouds were black and heavy thunder muttered in the far-off hills, dulled by the closing door. The newcomers disposed of themselves, each to his own whim, on chair or counter.

“I would like very much,” resumed Bowman, “to hear authentic stories of the wild old days in this country. Though I am by way of being in the cattle business—in fact, I am trying to pull off a deal with Mr. Carpenter, here—I am merely an agent, and neither myself nor my principals—Chicago men—are conversant with the old conditions. What I have heard has excited my curiosity. Of course, in my reading——” He shrugged his shoulders eloquently. You know how that is: The romancers in this field of fiction is to deal in heroism of the most hyperbolic caliber. This melodramatic, reckless courage——”

“Have you no eyes?” demanded Uncle Ben tartly. “That line of talk makes me tired! Do take a look! All the romantic heroes of all the books, all these reckless here-goes-nothing boys you read about, have been discounted and put to shame every day for the last four years! Not one little, lousy, pot-bellied poilu, not one little stunted London cockney but has seen more hell and stood up under it better than all the swashbucklers of all the books together.”

And that's true too!” said Apgar warmly. “If they can only hold the damned Huns until the Yanks are ready! This last terrible drive! Perhaps I should not say it, but I wish America had never got into this war!”

“I go further than that,” said Uncle Ben. “I wish Germany had never got into it.”

“It looks bad—bad!” Bowman shook his head “The cursed boches are terrible fighters—terrible! And their military leadership outclasses anything on our side.

“Think of ghastly blunders of the Allies! Or our own, for that matter. Why didn't we get our soldiers over there in the time—tell me that, will you?”

“Hey! Come out of it! You're seein' things!” said Teagardner. “Our boys are there in time. They're going over ten thousand a day, and they'll fight like hell. Don't make no mistake. The Allies were all right alone, but when America joined right then the outfit changed its name to the Entente Terrible. You keep your shirt on. The Channel ports are enough sight safer'n Berlin is; and no bone the Allies ever pulled was half so ghastly as the blunder the Germans made when they started this war. Here, you come back to earth. I wasn't aimin' to start no roughhouse. Just discussin' books.”

“Why, so we were, Uncle Ben. I let my feelings run away with me, I guess,” apologized Apgar. “The strain and anxiety of the last few weeks have played the mischief with my nerves.”

“I was rather hysterical myself,” admitted Bowman. “You see, I have a boy over there. I can't bear to talk about it. Let's go back to the books. I do not quite get your point, Mr. Teagardner.”

“It is hard to tell which has done the most for civilization, the cider press or the printing press,” said Uncle Ben, drawling. “Books, some of them, are mighty silly, and they spread a heap of wrong ideas. But they don't spread any wrong ideas about men being brave. Because they can't. Most all men are brave—east, west, north or south or in the middle, Europe, Orup or Irup. If you'll promise not to scream I'll say—the Germans are brave. Brave as hell. Most all men have a heap more courage than brains, any time and any place. Our boys out here were like the rest, no better and no worse. Human nature is the same here and now as always—like the windmills.”

“What about the windmills, Uncle Ben?”

“Don't you know that yet? Listen:

To the windmills said the millwheel,
“As the wind wills do you still wheel?”
“Yes, we still wheel as the wind wills,”
To the millwheel said the windmills.

“Eh? How's that? Say that again.”

“I never tell that to any man twice. It works itself out—can't come but the one way. It's logical. Like what I'm tellin' you about the brave in books, includin' the Western brave and bold—and them no more and no less than the brave and bold of any old place. Maybe I'm prejudiced. For myself, I've never exactly understood why longitude isn't counted from the meridian of Mesilla. For our old boys, some of the books misdraw 'em, underdraw them and overdraw them; most of 'em made maybe a little mistake about the boys not having no brains at all. But they don't lie about the old-timer's fighting qualities. It can't be did. Look now! Every thirty mile there used to be at least one man who could ride as good as anyone on earth, and at least one man who could shoot as straight and soon as any man on earth. Just so, there was always at least one man who was just as stubborn a fool as any other man, beginning with Horatius at the bridge party and counting both ways. And that is the truth.”

“That settles it. You have to come out to the Rocking-Horse and tell me—us,” laughed Apgar. “Your statements are too general. We want particulars.”

“Rocking-Horse? That the name of your mine? Is it at the old Rocking-stone It is? I'll some day when I feel peart.”

“I'll bring the ear any day.”

“Never mind your car. I can fork a right gentle horse fourteen or fifteen mile, old as I am. Say, it's been all of thirty-five year since I last saw the Rocking-stone. Queer freak, isn't it? And they tell me you've built a wagon road up from Crocker and over the divide, and down to the river the lake, that is—and haul water from there. Why, you might have saved that last road-building job. There's a little spring up in the cliffs, not a mile from the Rocking-stone. Never found it? I'll be out; I'll show you. It's a mighty little spring, but you haven't a big ore crew—so I hear.”

“Come out to-morrow,” said Apgar heartily.

It seemed to Uncle Ben that the stranger, Bowman, flashed an impatient glance at Apgar; a glance between frown and scowl. But Uncle Ben was not sure. For some minutes the store had grown dark and darker, though it was midafternoon. Without, the wind had died to an uneasy stillness, broken by slow growling of thunder; pale lightnings flickered through the windows. It was by such trembling flare that Uncle Ben had seen or fancied that brief glance of Bowman's. An arrogant glance; disapproving?—commanding? Why? Uncle Ben stored it away for future consideration

“Hell, it's gettin' too dark,'” said Clayton cheerfully. “I'll light up. We're goin' to get a reg'lar old lallapalooza!”

As the lamps were being lit, one after another, the silent plebeian rose from his nail keg and sauntered across the floor His hands were in his pockets; his gray hat tilted slightly to one side, and the wide brim of it turned sharply up to a bold curve in front. A lean, hard, brown and sinewy plebeian, this; and the careless, springy, unhurried walk of him was like a leopard's He paused before the mine owner.

“What's the chance for me to get a job at your layout, Mr. Apgar? I'm a miner.”

Uncle Ben looked past Apgar to Bowman. Bowman frowned again; an almost imperceptible frown, easy to explain in the ease of a man accustomed to deference. The stranger, in gait, pose, eye and tone, bore himself with a carelessness which might well have been termed insolence by the great.

Apgar considered the plebeian attentively.

“Any credentials?”

“Sure-lee!” laughed the stranger. Taking his hands from his pockets he spread them out, palms up. His right forefinger slowly followed and pointed out the calloused places on the fingers of his left hand; his left forefinger performed the same service for his right hand. “Worked six months at my last place—seven years at the one before that.” He pulled from his pocket a fat buckskin purse and shook from it a brave music of jingling silver; he flexed his arm and offered a swelling biceps to Apgar's unresponsive fingers; he thrust out a healthy tongue for inspection. “Well?”

“Young man, you pick out a strange way to ingratiate yourself.”

“Back up! I'm not trying to ingratiate myself. You must have misunderstood me. I'm not asking a favor; I'm applying for a job. I know my work and I earn my money. If you don't want to trade, say so. I'm showin' you my goods. Take 'em or leave 'em.”

“Young man,” said Apgar sternly, “why aren't you in the Army?”

“Past the draft age.”

“You're a fine American!” broke in Bowman, hotly scornful. “You're a disgrace to the name! Why don't you volunteer?”

“You got a job for me, maybe? You Say you deal in cattle. I've done some little cow work. No top-hand, but useful.”

“You are insolent, sir!”

“You are an old man, sir.” The plebeian turned back and cocked a jaunty eye on the mine owner. “How about it, Apgar? Do I get that job?”

“Young man, Mr. Bowman is right. I repeat his question: Why don't you volunteer?”

“Middle-aged man, I did. They turned me down. My name is Cady, by the way.”

“Physically unfit? You don't look it.”

“Morally.” Cady's tone was cheerful; his eye was clear and steady. “They wouldn't have me because I've been in the pen. That was the place I stayed seven years.”

“Innocent, of course?” sneered Apgar.

“Guilty as hell. Stealing cattle, if you want to know. I've paid the score. So that's all square. Here we go fresh. Just so I don't lose no job by some pure soul narratin' how I've been a jailbird, I aim to tell that first.”

“What!” shouted Bowman. He started up and turned to the hotel keeper a face black with rage. “Have I been eating with a convict?”

“Now, now—no need for it to happen again,” observed Cady smoothly. “You keep calm, old gentleman. If you don't want to eat with me—wait till I'm done.” Cady turned to the crowd, raising his voice a little. “That goes for everybody. Get me?”

White lightning, unbearable, blinding, flamed at breaking window and bursting door; the floor rocked to the crashing thunder stroke; men leaped, shouted, screamed or cursed; lamps flamed high, went out with a tinkle of falling glass; the scorched and crackling air beat up against the walls and recoiled to a shuddering eddy; all at once, as at a signal, a flood of rushing rain pounded on roof and street, and a great wind came roaring, bellowing in.

And in the first trampling uproar of oaths and shouts a voice shrieked at Uncle Ben's elbow:

“Mein Gott!”

It was Apgar.

The crowd rushed to the front door. Carpenter reached it first; his bull voice boomed above the driving rain and the clamor of babbling speech. “Struck the old stage station. Thought it was here, sure. It's burning. Deserted, thank God! Me for home. My wife'll be scared half to death!” He plunged out into the storm.

Two men had stayed behind—Cady and Teagardner. In one of the alcoves a single unquenched lamp burned wan and smoking. Two hard-bred men, but in that dim light they looked at each other, white-faced.

“Now see what you done!” roared Uncle Ben, shouting to be heard above the downpour.

“Did you hear that?” Cady's eyes went by Uncle Ben to Apgar's chair.

“Why, yes,” said Uncle Ben. “Now you mention it, seems as if I did hear something. Thunder, I reckon.” He put a hand to Cady's shoulder, turned him and opened a door into a long corridor. “Son, you run along to your room or the parlor. You done enough damage for one day. See you presently.”

The old man twisted his beard and looked after Cady with a perplexed and brooding eye. “If I had a little milk,” he said wistfully, “I'd have a little mush—if I had a little meal!”

III

THE storm broke suddenly, after a furious hour. Patches of pale sunshine glimmered, checkered the plain, grew warmer, kindled, spread with incredible swiftness. On the summit of Timber Mountain, on the twin summits of Fra Christobal, thin wisps of cloud lingered; a few thunderheads banked towering against the north. The western lacy mist dissolved; one after one the long radiant ranges rose up, tier on tier, blue and purple, their shining summits edged with fire against the low sun. Looking eastward to the mountain barriers, Oscura, San Andres, Organ—their steep slopes facing that kindly sun sparkled and glittered as if their wet rocks had been all burnished gold; and over all bent a clean-washed, rejoicing sky, warm and deep and blue.

Uncle Ben Teagardner came across the plaza. He walked slowly now, he whose step had been once so swift and sure, turning this way and that; his old eyes, under gray-tufted and shaggy brows, alert for each fresh glory of his bright and beautiful world. Nor were those old eyes unobservant of practical affairs. On trail after trail little bands of cattle in single file plodded knowingly to the northeast; to high uncropped grass, heretofore too far from water.

Now every water hole would be fresh filled and brimming; the cattle were in high good humor.

“That derned old scoundrel of a hawse of mine is sure goin' to be hard to find,” grumbled Uncle Ben. “Just when I need him too.”

Before the Engle Hotel, his chair tipped back against the adobe wall, sat Cady, reading. The old man bent his steps that way.

“Son,” said Uncle Ben, “what are they doing now—kissing or killing? Let's see.” He lowered himself painfully into a chair, fitted steel-bowed spectacles to his nose and took the book from Cady's hand. “Oh, that? Salt of the Earth? Why, son, that book's about this very identical country here as ever was—buildin' the big dam and all. But do you find any of all this?” He waved a long slow arm at all this. “Not a hint of it. 'Me and my wife, my son John and his wife—us four and no more.' Take it away!”

“I did notice something about son John and his dad, come to think of it,” admitted Cady. “How are the good and great by now? Still scandalized?”

“Not them. They allow to make a point of eatin' supper with you and takin' back them hasty words. I been explainin' to 'em that such a course would show a meek and forgiving spirit, besides being wise and prudent. Son, you talked mighty brash, seems to me, for a man lookin' for a job. Still want to work?”

“Surest thing you know!”

“You're hired. You are now working for me.”

“You have now hired a jailbird.”

“Suits me.”

“Me too. What do I do?”

“Well, now,” said Uncle Ben, “so long as you draw pay from me I calc'late you'll do just what I tell you. First off, I want you should kind of stick round and be company for me. It's been a long time since I've heard any real truthful talk. Got so, nowadays, that when a man happens to tell the plain truth about anything, people think he's witty. Or else they think he's aimin' to insult somebody. Most of the very best people can't tell the difference between an upstanding man and an insolent one. It pleased me to hear you mention the neglected truth that to buy a man's work is transacting business, and not a giddy generosity. Engle is right lonesome to me now, since the old boys are all gone—and some way, you seem sort of like an old-timer to me.”

The young man stared hard at the mountains; when he spoke it was with a slight thickening of his voice. “That's queer too. I told you what my name is Cady. That's no pen name. I was the first boy born in Engle. You named me yourself. Joe Cady.”

“The hell you say! Why, how you have grown! Old Matt's boy? Shake!”

“Yes. Dad died before—my trouble. I remember you, Mr. Teagardner.”

“Uncle Ben.”

“Uncle Ben, then. It doesn't better things much, Uncle Ben, but I want to tell you how about them cattle. I was nicely brilliant drunk; I was all crosswise with the L S D—English outfit and stingy. I thought at the time it would be right witty and joyous—it being the Fourth of July and all—to Americanize their brand. So I rounds up a dozen or so and did some proof reading—like this.”

He took out a pencil and made the brand on the title page of “Salt of the Earth.” First he printed L S D. A few added strokes changed the three letters to H 8 $. “There you are: Hate Dollars. Coarse work. Alignment poor. H drops way below the line, and the dollar sign sticks out above. Dead give-away. Seven years. I sort of hated it too. I didn't usually steal cattle much—not so that I'd get caught at it.”

Uncle Ben nodded sympathetically. “All over now. You said it—we start fresh from here. I'm with you. Well, well! You and I—why, Joe, we're all that's left of the old days in Engle. Such bein' the case, I'll open up a little project I wouldn't name to anyone else. As a matter of civic pride and betterment, I'm hopin' you'll join me in the movement for a smaller Engle.”

“Yes?” Cady's eyes narrowed to pin points. “Yes? A smaller Engle? I'm for it. A—er—recent idea of yours?”

“Yes. Just happened to think of it this afternoon.”

A purposed pause followed; steady old eyes met steady young eyes.

“When that lightning struck?”

“Just then.”

“And the password will be—in English?”

“English. You got a horse, Joe?”

“In Clayton's corral.”

“I reckon, then, you and me had, maybe, better ride out after supper and bring in that beef the kid left, before the coyotes get it. He told me where it was, and I can get his two horses. It will be a chance to have a little talk. Quite a talk. I don't ride as fast as I used to, some way. I got an old stick of a pony, myself, a natural pacer. I can manage a fair gait on him; he's mighty easy. But he's loose on the flat. Get him to-morrow. Think maybe I'll go out to Rocking-Horse and see Apgar's mine.”

“Yes. Here he comes now, with Mr. Bowlin.”

“Bowman.”

“Bowman; yes. Guess supper is about ready.”

They rose to go, but Apgar hailed them. “Hi! Wait a minute! We are just going in to dinner.”

Joe and Uncle Ben waited. On arrival Bowman's bearing was as stiff and sullen as Apgar's was frank and open.

“A word with you, Mr. Cady—and I speak for Mr. Bowman as well.” Bowman bowed. “We wish to express our regret for our hasty utterances this afternoon. We were startled, and that's the fact. Reflection, aided by Uncle Ben's well-grounded counsel, has shown us our mistake. Your candor was as highly creditable as your determination to walk hereafter in honorable ways is praiseworthy. Such a case deserves encouragement; and we freely admit that our reproaches this afternoon were wrong and unjustified.”

“That's all right, then,” said Joe curtly. “Enough said.”

But Apgar continued. “For myself, I want to say that the mine has a full crew at present. But should a vacancy occur I will certainly bear you in mind.”

“All right,” said Cady shortly. But Uncle Ben was less stiff.

“Well said, sir! Handsomely said! Feelin' the same way myself, I have hired Cady for one whirl at least. I have a little prospect out in the Caballo which may develop into something big. But I'm coming out to see you, Apgar—after I show Joe the ropes. How about you, Mr Bowman? Think you'll make Apgar's diggin's?”

“I fear I shall have to forgo that pleasure. I find that my business with Mr. Carpenter is so far forward that a few telegrams may bring it to a head. In any event, I cannot stay long. And I desire by all means to visit your famous dam at Elephant Butte. I am told it is the greatest work of its kind in the world, and the opportunity to see it may not be mine again. Also, if I can find time, I would see the new wagon road through Palomas Gap. The scenery, I am told, is not without a certain rugged grandeur, while the road itself is said to be a notable feat in engineering.”

“Yes, indeedy!” chirruped Uncle Ben. “The Gap is worth while.” His dreamy eye roved to the sharp outlines of Palomas Gap, coming back to rest speculatively on Mr. Bowman. “Some sightly places on the big lake too,” murmured Uncle Ben. “Have you seen our hanging gardens?”

IV

IT WAS not until the third day that Uncle Ben's Sleepycat horse was driven in, though all the Broad A men had been keeping an eye out for him. When found Sleepycat had been twenty miles away. Still in the pasture, to be sure; but he might have drifted twice that distance and still have been in the pasture.

Saddled and droop-hipped, Sleepycat stood before an open door at the side of the old Bar Cross house; a mahogany-brown horse, broad between the eyes, sleek and plump. He was well on in years, but his sedate and knowing eye retained a hint of former levities and seemed to twinkle with complacent memories.

Sleepycat was fifteen and a half hands; large for a New Mexican horse. Uncle Ben was no giant now—gaunt, withered and bent; but he was still too heavy for anything in the pony class.

Uncle Ben came out with a canteen, which he hung on the saddle horn; a slicker, which he tied behind the cantle; a rifle scabbard, which he slung under the leathers, on the off side; and the great grandfather of all rifles, which he thrust into the scabbard. Long ago, for service rendered, the Bar Cross had transferred to Uncle Ben, in fee simple, one room of these many rooms. And in the locked room that old rifle, an old saddle, an old trunk, with other belongings, had waited for Uncle Ben's return.

Teagardner climbed into the saddle and rode slowly across the plaza. Gay hands waved greetings from open doors as he passed; and the elderly stranger, Bowman, spoke from the hotel porch:

“Give my regards to Apgood, Mr. Teagardner. And good luck to yourself! I'll not be seeing you again. I'm going to-morrow. Good-by!”

“Good by,” said Teagardner

Beyond the station he turned northward through the morning sun, on a wagon road that kept by the side of the railroad track.

“Don't be too sure you won't see me again,” he muttered into his beard. “I think mebbe you will. Apgood? Bowlin? Humph! Queer that both should get the names mixed.... Too smart! Them two fellers are sure advertisin' that they're rank strangers to each other. Overplayed the hand. Patriotic too. Dear, yes!... Of the two, Bowman is the boss, I reckon.... Let me think.”

He fell silent, frowning. He passed the cut at One Mile Hill; on the downward slope Sleepycat broke into a shuffling dust-raising pace, and Uncle Ben crooned a chant under his breath in time to the shuffling feet.

If you go to meeting or mill
Same old Bennie will be with you still—Bennie!

At Three Mile he kept to the left, climbing a long slow ridge thrusting out from the southern bastion of Fra Christobal, while the railroad made a wide detour to the right, avoiding that same ridge.

“What do you know about Apgar, old Sleepycat?... too slick and plausible? That's nothing.... Never was any good mineral found in the whole derned Christobal mountain? That's nothing. Rich mines been found in country prospected over for years and done given up as N. G. Cripple Creek—Creede.... Lonesomest place in New Mexico? Yes, because it's the ugliest place in New Mexico. Only ugly mountain I ever saw or heard tell of. I never like to go prospecting there, myself.... Men workin' for him all strangers? Why shouldn't they be?... Gets supplies from the switch at Crocker, where there's no one lives; no section house even, or telegraph office for nothin'—just a passing track?... Sensible thing to do. Do it myself if I was mining in Saddle Gap. Saves freighting through this sand from Engle.... But his men never come to Engle on Sundays?... Now you've said something. Always play-actin'—and sneerin', way down deep, at the ignorant yokels?... Always. Clever man, Apgar. And that brand-new lake just beyond him—only ten miles to drift down the lake to Engle Dam?... Not so loud!... And, mining that way, he'll have plenty dynamite—this man that talks to God in German? Hush! Sleepycat, you damn old fool, it's up to you and me and Joe Cady. We don't know one blessed thing, but we're goin' to find out.”

He came to the top of the ridge; he looked back to the southwest, to where, out of sight beyond the Jornada rim, Engle Dam held back the prisoned waters of the great lake; he looked south to where, beyond the shining mountains, the long, long valley lay below the dam, clustered with homes: his old face hardened to steel.

{{{1}}}

At his left the desolate gray cliffs of Fra Christobal hung above him; then the lower hills of Saddle Gap, tumbled and broken, where already he could see the climbing, hairpin curves of Apgar's new wagon road, white with new-cut limestone. Rising beyond Saddle Gap huddled the featureless bulk of Further Christobal, shapeless, treeless and forlorn.

Northward from the ridge where Uncle Ben stood the land dipped down to a white saccaton flat, with Little Round Mountain jutting beyond a gleaming tangent of railroad, and Crocker sidetrack under Round Mountain. A single car was set out on Crocker sidetrack. Beyond the shining tangent, Lava Station section house and water tank loomed high in the north, far and magnified; the railroad, crossing the white flat climbed in a long sweeping curve up the k lope of the Mal Pais to the cut in the first bold rampart of lava that circled Lava Station. Where the railroad left the straightaway for the curve, a wide and shallow valley led away to the northwest, past the tip of Further Christobal, twenty miles away. It was checked with patches of grassland and patches of grassless land, white and glazed; and through this valley, straight and plain, far ran a broad highway that had once been the Santa Fé Trail. Silent now and forsaken, valley and road, mysterious, promising, beckoning, vanished into the unknown depths beyond Christobal. Uncle Ben felt a pang in his tough old heart; there Paraje once lay, where that old valley fell away to the deeper sunken valley of the Rio Grande; Paraje, “the pleasant camping ground.” Now Paraje was under forty feet of water at the bottom of a man-made lake; and those pleasant faces of long ago—all gone! Uncle Ben raised his bridle hand:

If ye go heaven or hell,
Say “Good morning, and I wish you well!

He left the wagon road and turned across the broken country toward Saddle Gap. “I'd sure like what old Apgar's got in that freight car at Crocker,” he confided to Sleepycat. “But unless you and me miss our guess, these geezers will be keepin' cases on us. We got to be innocent as hell. We want 'em to see where we took all short cuts. That's natural. Us for the roughs!”

When you come to Heaven's great gate,
Bennie!
When you come to the golden gale,
Make your manners, an' then stand up straight!
Make your manners, and look up and say,
“I've done my work and I want my pay!”

It was ten o'clock when Uncle Ben came into Apgar's new wagon road from Crocker, where it toiled up along ridge. Saddle Gap is steep and high, and the road had need for many a double and twist and zigzag to find distance enough so that the grade should not be impossibly steep. It was close upon noon when Uncle Ben came to the divide, and between the steepsides of a rugged defile caught a glimpse of the broad blue lake far below. Engle Dam backs up the water for forty miles upstream, crowding against Christobal Mountains for their entire length.

Once turned down the western slope, the mountains became less bleak. The narrow defile became a twisting cañon, deep and wide; crowned by gray cliffs; it broadened into broken country and a winding pass, with here and there a cedar tree. The pass closed in suddenly and was a cañon again, deeper and wider now, cool and dark, between higher hills and wilder cliffs; plunging down and down in sweeping S shaped curves, gathering mass and momentum at each bend and steep; at a last swirling curve breaking from the cool deeps into a vast sunlit amphitheater, walled about by crest and precipice, with one great gateway to the west, and beyond that gateway, near and low, the long levels of the lake.

At Uncle Ben's right, where the cliffs ended that had made the northern wall of the cañon, the Rocking-stone loomed high and ominous; a huge granite bowlder of indeterminate shape, poised on a pivot like a monstrous top. Uncle Ben's eyes raised instinctively to this sinister and threatening silhouette, clear-cut and sharp against the sky line.

Rocking-Horse camp lay at Uncle Ben's left, on the other saucer slope, a low huddle of buildings at the hill foot, with the mine dump close above. Uncle Ben turned Sleepycat's head that way; two or three men appeared at the door of the long bunk house; one of them called, and Apgar came striding down the trail to meet him.

“Welcome to our city! You waited so long I thought maybe you had changed your mind again.”

“Couldn't find my horse.”

“You must be pretty tired,” said Apgar, turning back. “Where's your man Cady?”

“Well, yes, I am—sorter,” admitted Teagardner. “Cady? I done rigged him out with a little old buckboard and sent him out to put a couple of Mex boys to doin' assessment work on my claim. Sent him out the day you left. He's coming right back, though, he gets the paisanos organized. I'm expectin' a man to look at the claim next week.”

“Baker, come and take care of this horse. Mr. Teagardner, meet Mr. Baker. For the love of Mike, Ben, what have you got strapped on your saddle—a cannon?”

Uncle Ben crawled painfully from the saddle, straightened his aged joints and pulled the rifle from the scabbard. “That's my old Sharps, Mr. Apgar,” he said proudly. “Heft her once.”

Apgar took the gun, squinted along the heavy octagonal barrel, balanced it and whistled. “Why, it's a regular Big Bertha! Where'd you get it?”

“Always had it. Nobody ever owned that gun but me. That's what they called a 'Buffalo Gun': 45-120-420.”

“Forty-five how much?”

“Forty-five caliber—a hundred and twenty grains of black powder—four hundred and twenty grains of lead. Throws a slug as big as a jackknife; kill a buffalo at a mile. Weighs sixteen pounds; else she'd kick like a mule. Here's the cartridge.”

He took from his belt a bottle-necked cartridge. It was nearly five inches long.

“Well,” laughed Apgar, “this is a new one on me.”

“You'll not see many like this nowadays. Old-fashioned—like me. I left this behind my last trip, but I left her mighty nigh packed in oil. Good shape now as she ever was. Best gun ever made.'

Apgar threw back the lever opening the breech mechanism; he looked into the polished spotless barrel. He glanced appreciatively at the front sight, which was of ivory. “It ought to do good shooting, anyway.”

“Shoot good? Why, Mr. Apgar, you can measure with that gun! When you set the sights at twelve hundred yards, say, why, if you get your meat, then you know it was just twelve hundred yards even. She shoots where you hold her. I'll let you try her.”

“But, Uncle Ben, how can you know whether to set your sights for twelve hundred yards or nine hundred? I can't distinguish the difference between four hundred yards and three hundred.”

Uncle Ben blinked his eyes, took off his sombrero and scratched his head. “Why—I don't know as I can exactly tell you. You—you just sorter know how far it is, I guess.”

Apgar laughed again. “Well, come to the cookhouse and we'll have the eats. I'll give you a knockdown to the boys. I've been telling them about you. You'll want to rest up this afternoon. To-morrow we'll take a look round.”

The bunkhouse, with a single room, sixteen feet by forty—the cookhouse, something smaller—the blacksmith shop and the manager's shack, a cubicle with two rooms and office—these gave shelter to the Rocking-Horse force. All were built of rough boards, battened, unpainted, roofed with corrugated iron. There was also a small corral, one side of which was formed by a long shed, shared amiably by baled hay and Apgar's battered car. A long half mile away, on the circling slope of northern hills, Uncle Ben marked roof and door of the buried powder house.

By the cookhouse door stood a water wagon, a galvanized-iron tank on wheels far different from the clumsy and cumbrous wooden affairs of earlier days. Two hobbled horses grazed on the shaded hillside above the mine.

“I'll hobble my old stick with your saddle ponies, I reckon,” said Uncle Ben after dinner.

“No use of feeding him your good baled hay. He'll stick round.”

“Then we can take a look at the ore as we come back,” said Apgar.

“All right. How does your copper mine pan out anyhow?”

“Why—not very well, just now. The ore looked pretty good for the first fifty feet—almost good enough to ship. Naturally I hoped it would get better as we went down. But it didn't. Just about the same as it was at the grass roots, and the vein no wider; in fact the vein nearly pinched on on us once.”

“How deep are you now?

“Not deep at all. Only a hundred and ten feet or so.”

Uncle Ben blinked. “Oh, well, then you're just gettin' started. No need to be discouraged yet.”

“Just getting ready to start, you might say. So far, most of our work has been making the wagon road and knocking camp together. That's done now, and we can go on with the development.”

“Not a very big gang, I judge?”

“Only eight, besides Billy, the cook, and Kendall, the teamster.

“That's right smart of a road you built, Mr. Apgar, if it is a little straight upandicular in spots.

“Use mules for your teams?”

“Yes, we have a six-mule team. Kendall went for a load of freight yesterday. You saw the tracks of course. He'll get into camp along about sundown.”

“And then someone forks one of your horses and drives your mules down to the lake for water? I see.”

Uncle Ben got on his knees, hobbled Sleepycat, and rose up creakingly.

“All right, Mr. Apgar, suh! Lead me to your little old mine. How did you come to locate here anyhow? Stumble on it yourself?”

“Oh, no! Old chap in San Marcial—Springtime Morgan—told me there was some pretty good-looking stuff here. He agreed to show me the place, and I was to give him a hundred if I liked it and wages if I didn't. He got the hundred. Now we'll look at the ore dump and go down the shaft. Then comes the story telling. You don't want to forget that.”

“Oh, I suppose so, if you insist. But I tell you right now that's no good way to get a real story. All you get by violence is maybe the skeleton of a story. What you want to do is just let the conversation drift and ooze along, easy and natural. Then, when your man gets strung out and goin' good, you want to act sort of bored, like you had a better story of your own you wanted to tell, and yawn a little, behind your hand, careful. Then you'll get results!”

(TO BE CONCLUDED)