big sorrel mule. Look at Mexico over there burying his fangs
in the venison, will you?"

Ramrod was on guard, but he was so hungry himself that he was good
enough to let the prisoners eat at the same time, although he kept
them at a respectable distance. He was old in the service, and had
gotten his name under a baptism of fire. He was watching a pass once
for smugglers at a point called Emigrant Gap. This was long before he
had come to the present company. At length the man he was waiting for
came along. Ramrod went after him at close quarters, but the fellow
was game and drew his gun. When the smoke cleared away, Ramrod had
brought down his horse and winged his man right and left. The smuggler
was not far behind on the shoot, for Ramrod's coat and hat showed he
was calling for him. The captain was joshing the prisoner about his
poor shooting when Ramrod brought him into camp and they were dressing
his wounds. "Well," said the fellow, "I tried to hard enough, but I
couldn't find him. He's built like a ramrod."

After breakfast was over we smoked and yarned. It would be two-hour
guards for the day, keeping an eye on the prisoners and stock, only
one man required; so we would all get plenty of sleep. Conajo had the
first guard after breakfast. "I remember once," said Sergeant Smoky,
as he crushed a pipe of twist with the heel of his hand, "we were
camped out on the 'Sunset' railway. I was a corporal at the time.
There came a message one day to our captain, to send a man up West on
that line to take charge of a murderer. The result was, I was sent by
the first train to this point. When I arrived I found that an
Irishman had killed a Chinaman. It was on the railroad, at a bridge
construction camp, that the fracas took place. There were something
like a hundred employees at the camp, and they ran their own
boarding-tent. They had a Chinese cook at this camp; in fact, quite a
number of Chinese were employed at common labor on the road.

"Some cavalryman, it was thought, in passing up and down from Fort
Stockton to points on the river, had lost his sabre, and one of this
bridge gang had found it. When it was brought into camp no one would
have the old corn-cutter; but this Irishman took a shine to it, having
once been a soldier himself. The result was, it was presented to
him. He ground it up like a machette, and took great pride in giving
exhibitions with it. He was an old man now, the storekeeper for the
iron supplies,