stomach.

When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I wish that
I had soft-soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast far
away in the woods. It sounds so probable and so human.

Yet he would be a bold man who would administer emetics to the Giantess.
She is flat-lipped, having no mouth; she looks like a pool, fifty
feet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about her. At
irregular intervals she speaks and sends up a volume of water over
two hundred feet high to begin with, then she is angry for a day and a
half--sometimes for two days.

Owing to her peculiarity of going mad in the night, not many people have
seen the Giantess at her finest; but the clamor of her unrest, men say,
shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills.

The congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressions
in diaries and note-books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in the
verandas. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood some-what higher
than the level of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking caravansary
for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered
tents.

A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flung
themselves across the country into their rough lines. The Mexican
cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his accoutrements pig-fashion and
his horse cow-fashion.

I was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the heavy,
lumpy carbines, have the saddles stripped, and punch the horses
knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the fight with
"Wrap-up-his-Tail," and he told me how that great chief, his horse's
tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the United States
cavalry, challenging all to single combat. But he was slain, and a few
of his tribe with him.

"There's no use in an Indian, anyway," concluded my friend.

A couple of cow-boys--real cow-boys--jingled through the camp amid a
shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook City, I fancy,
and I know that they never washed. But they were picturesque ruffians
exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur
weather-cloth over their knees, and pistol-butts just easy to hand.

"The cow-boy's goin' under before long," said my friend. "Soon as the
country's settled up he'll have to go. But he's mighty useful now. What
would we do without the cow-boy?"

"As how?" said I, and the camp laughed.

"He has the mon