"what's the use of going to California? Why
not stay here?"

"What in hell would we do here?" someone asked. "Collect Gila monsters
for their good looks?"

"Don't get gay," said Walleye. "What's the matter with going into
business? Here's a heap of people going through, and more coming every
day. This ferry business could be made to pay big. Them Injins
charges two bits a head. That's a crime for the only way across. And
how much do you suppose whisky'd be worth to drink after that desert?
And a man's so sick of himself by the time he gets this far that he'd
play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro or monte."

That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded right
then and there. They hadn't any whisky yet, but cards were plenty, and
the ferry monopoly was too easy. Walleye served notice on the Injins
that a dollar a head went; and we all set to building a tule raft like
the others. Then the wild bunch got uneasy, so they walked upstream
one morning and stole the Injins' boats. The Injins came after them
innocent as babies, thinking the raft had gone adrift. When they got
into camp our men opened up and killed four of them as a kind of hint.
After that the ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved
up river a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses
and buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid
poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put the
body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off and threw
it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad
burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own
accord. It was the neatest, automatic, self-cocking, double-action
sort of a funeral I ever saw. There wasn't any ceremony--only crying.

The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard to
collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a tur'ble long
ways back. We got us timbers and made a scow; built a baile and saloon
and houses out of adobe; and called her Yuma, after the Injins that had
really started her. We got our supplies through the Gulf of
California, where sailing boats worked up the river. People began to
come in for one reason or another, and first thing we knew we had a
store and all sorts of trimmings. In fact we was a real live town.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND

At this moment the heavy beat of the storm