ct climate, it is
an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think?
Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million
acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.

"Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks--else the place would not
be going so cheap--but no more than you have been taking the last five
years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on
the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the
bandits seem to need a good many _prestamos_; but all that you have
been up against. Better take a pretty strong party, for the
authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from
Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named
George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a
youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and
speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country."

Details were settled at breakfast, and there Gardiner resumed his
journey eastward, while I took the next train for Denver. A fortnight
later found me in Socorro, plodding through its sandy streets to an
adobe house in the suburbs where Thornton lodged.

As I neared the door a big black dog sprang fiercely out at me to the
full length of his chain, and directly thereafter the door framed an
extraordinary figure. Then barely twenty-one, and downy still of lip,
Thornton's gray eyes were as cold and calculating, the lines of his
face as severe and even hard, his movements as deliberate and
expressive of perfect self-mastery as those of any veteran of half a
dozen wars. Six feet two in height, straight as a white pine, ideally
coupled for great strength without sacrifice of activity, he looked
altogether one of the most capable and safe men one could wish for in a
scrap; and so, later, he well proved himself.

He greeted me in carefully correct English; and while quiet, reserved,
and cold of speech as of manner, the tones in which he assured me any
friend of Mr. Gardiner was welcome, conveyed faint traces of cordiality
that roused some hope that he might prove a more agreeable campmate
than his dour mien promised. We were not long coming to terms; indeed
the moment I outlined the trip contemplated, and its possible hazards,
it became plain he was keen to come on any terms. To my surprise, he
proposed bringing his dog, Curly. I objected that so heavy a dog would
be l