a club, it
might have been different, but as long as he kept shooting, his enemy
was safe. Half a dozen of us, who were near enough to witness his
final fight, dashed up, and the Indian fell riddled with bullets.

"We went into camp after the fight was over with two wounded men and
half a dozen dead or disabled horses. Those of us who had mounts in
good fix scoured back and gathered in our packs and all the Indian and
stolen horses that were unwounded. It looked like a butchery, but our
minds were greatly relieved on that point the next day, when we found
among their effects over a dozen fresh, bloody scalps, mostly women
and children. There's times and circumstances in this service that
make the toughest of us gloomy."

"How long ago was that?" inquired Orchard.

"Quite a while ago," replied Dad. "I ought to be able to tell exactly.
I was a youngster then. Well, I'll tell you; it was during the
reconstruction days, when Davis was governor. Figure it out yourself."

"Speaking of the disagreeable side of this service," said Happy Jack,
"reminds me of an incident that took all the nerve out of every one
connected with it. When I first went into the service, there was a
well-known horse-thief and smuggler down on the river, known as El
Lobo. He operated on both sides of the Rio Grande, but generally stole
his horses from the Texas side. He was a night owl. It was nothing for
him to be seen at some ranch in the evening, and the next morning
be met seventy-five or eighty miles distant. He was a good judge of
horse-flesh, and never stole any but the best. His market was well in
the interior of Mexico, and he supplied it liberally. He was a typical
dandy, and like a sailor had a wife in every port. That was his weak
point, and there's where we attacked him.

"He had made all kinds of fun of this service, and we concluded to
have him at any cost. Accordingly we located his women and worked on
them. Mexican beauty is always over-rated, but one of his conquests
in that line came as near being the ideal for a rustic beauty as that
nationality produces. This girl was about twenty, and lived with a
questionable mother at a ranchito back from the river about thirty
miles. In form and feature there was nothing lacking, while the
smouldering fire of her black eyes would win saint or thief alike.
Born in poverty and ignorance, she was a child of circumstance, and
fell an easy victim to El Lobo, who lavished every attention upon her