y man.

"Do you still want to buy?" I asked him.

"You bet your sweet life I want to buy," he replied.

"You're sure you've investigated the proposition fully?" I asked him.

The customer thought of that four hundred and seventeen dollars taken in
over the bar the night before and said he had.

"Hand over the money, then," I said, promptly. "The place is yours."

The next morning he came to me with a lugubrious countenance.

"Well," I greeted him, "how much did you make last night?"

"Took in ninety-six dollars," he answered, sadly. "Cady, why didn't you
tell me about that $25 tax?"

"Tell you about it?" I repeated, as if astonished. "Why, didn't I ask
you if you had investigated the thing fully? Did I ask you to go into
the deal blindfold? It wasn't my business to tell you about any tax."

And with that he had to be content.

* * * * *

I was now out of the dance-hall business for good, and I looked about
for some other and more prosaic occupation to indulge in. Thanks to the
deal I had put through with the confiding stranger with the ready cash,
I was pretty well "heeled" so far as money went, and all my debts were
paid. Finally I decided that I would go into business again and bought
a grocery store on Mesilla street.

The handing out of canned tomatoes and salt soda crackers, however,
speedily got on my nerves. I was still a comparatively young man and my
restless spirit longed for expression in some new environment. About
this time Paola, my contract-wife, who was everything that a wife should
be in my opinion, became a little homesick and spoke often of the home
she had left at Sauxal, a small gulf-coast port in Lower California.
Accordingly, one morning, I took it into my head to take her home on a
visit to see her people, and, the thought being always father to the
action with me, I traded my grocery store for a buckboard and team and
some money, and set forth in this conveyance for Yuma. This was a trip
not considered so very dangerous, except for the lack of water, for the
Indians along the route were mostly peaceable and partly civilized. Only
for a short distance out of Tucson did the Apache hold suzerainty, and
this only when sufficient Papagos, whose territory it really was, could
not be mustered together in force to drive them off. The Papago Indians
hated the Apaches quite as much as the white man did, for the Papago
lacked the stamina and fighting qualities o