goes
the world, Princess?"

She flashed her quick smile again and nodded reassuringly. "You stay
here now?"

"No; goin' up river."

"What for?" She spoke disapprovingly.

"Want to get an Orange Grove."

"Find him up river?"

"Hope so."

"I think I go, too"; and all the grave folk, sitting so close on the
sleeping-bench, stretched their wide mouths wider still, smiling
good-humouredly.

"You better wait till summer."

"Oh!" She lifted her head from the fire as one who takes careful note
of instructions. "Nex' summer?"

"Well, summer's the time for squaws to travel."

"I come nex' summer," she said.

By-and-by Nicholas returned with a new parki and a pair of wonderful
buckskin breeches--not like anything worn by the Lower River natives,
or by the coast-men either: well cut, well made, and handsomely fringed
down the outside of the leg where an officer's gold stripe goes.

"Chaparejos!" screamed the Boy. "Where'd you get 'em?"

"Ol' Chief--he ketch um."

"They're _bully!_" said the Boy, holding the despised rabbit-skin under
his chin with both hands, and craning excitedly over it. He felt that
his fortunes were looking up. Talk about a tide in the affairs of men!
Why, a tide that washes up to a wayfarer's feet a pair o' chaparejos
like that--well! legs so habited would simply _have_ to carry a fella
on to fortune. He lay back on the sleeping-bench with dancing eyes,
while the raw whisky hummed in his head. In the dim light of seal-lamps
vague visions visited him of stern and noble chiefs out of the Leather
Stocking Stories of his childhood--men of daring, whose legs were
invariably cased in buck-skin with dangling fringes. But the dashing
race was not all Indian, nor all dead. Famous cowboys reared before him
on bucking bronchos, their leg-fringes streaming on the blast, and
desperate chaps who held up coaches and potted Wells Fargo guards.
Anybody must needs be a devil of a fellow who went about in "shaps," as
his California cousins called chaparejos. Even a peaceable fella like
himself, not out after gore at all, but after an Orange Grove--even he,
once he put on--He laughed out loud at his childishness, and then grew
grave. "Say, Nicholas, what's the tax?"

"Hey?"

"How much?"

"Oh, your pardner--he pay."

"Humph! I s'pose I'll know the worst on settlin'-day."

Then, after a few moments, making a final clutch at economy before the
warmth and the whisky subdued him altogether:

"Say, Nichol