ther about eight hundred Apaches and came over to wipe out the
post. It looked easy at the time, because there was less than two
hundred men, but the major in command was a fighting fool and didn't
know when he was whipped. The Apaches all gathered up on the top of
those high cliffs--it's flat on the upper side--and one night when their
signal fires had burned down the soldiers sneaked around behind them.
And then, just at dawn, they fired a volley and made a rush for the
camp; and before they knowed it about two hundred Indians had jumped
clean over the cliff. They killed the rest of them--all but two or three
bucks that fought their way through the line--and now, by grab, you
couldn't get an Indian up there if you'd offer him a quart of whiskey.
It's sure bad medicine for Apaches."

"Isn't it wonderful!" exclaimed Big Boy, "there's no use talking--this
sure is the place of death. And say, next time you go over to Globe you
go and see Mother Trigedgo--I just want to tell you what she did!"

"All right," sighed Old Bunk, who preferred to talk business, and he
settled down to listen.

"This Mother Trigedgo," began Big Boy, "isn't an ordinary, cheap
fortune-teller. Those people are all fakes because they're just out for
the dollar and tell you what they think you want to know. But Mother
Trigedgo keeps a Cousin-Jack boarding house and only prophesies when she
feels the power. Sometimes she'll go along for a week or more and never
tell a fortune; and then, when she happens to be feeling right, she'll
tell some feller what's coming to him. Those Cousin Jacks are crazy
about what she can do, but I never went to a seeress in my life until
after we had that big cave. I'm a timber man, you see, and sometimes I
take contracts to catch up dangerous ground; and the best men in the
world when it comes to that work are these old-country Cousin Jacks.
They're nervy and yet they're careful and so I always hire 'em; but when
we were doing this work down in the stope of the Last Chance, they began
talking about Mother Trigedgo. It seems she'd told the fortune of a boy
or two--they were all of them boarding at her house--and she was so
worried she could hardly cook on account of them working in this mine.
It was swelling ground and there were a lot of old workings where the
timbering had given way; and to tell you the truth I didn't like it
myself, although I wouldn't admit it."

"Well, it was the twenty-second of April, and all that