shorter than the rest.
These we drew, and the short one fell to me.

I look back on that desperate ride now with feelings akin to horror.
Surrounded with murderous savages, with only a decrepit mule to ride and
fourteen miles to go, it seemed impossible that I could get through
safely. My companions said good-bye to me as though I were a scaffold
victim about to be executed. But get through I did--how I do not
know--and the chillingly weird war-calls of the Indians howling at me
from the hills as I rode return to my ears even now with extraordinary
vividness.

And, as Morgan had prophesied, the Apaches did "come back." It was a
month later, and I had been transferred back to the Fort, when a nephew
of Colonel Dunkelberger and William J. Osborn of Tucson were riding
near Morgan's ranch. Apaches ambushed them, slew the Colonel's nephew,
whose name has slipped my memory, and wounded Osborn. The latter, who
was a person of considerable importance in the Territory, escaped to
Morgan's ranch. An expedition of retaliation was immediately organized
at the Fort and the soldiers pursued the assassins into Mexico, finally
coming up with them and killing a number. I did not accompany the troops
on this occasion, having been detailed to the Santa Rita range to bring
in lumber to be used in building houses.

I returned from the Santa Ritas in July and found an order had been
received at the Fort from the War Department that all men whose times
had expired or were shortly to expire should be congregated in Tucson
and from there marched to California for their discharge. A few weeks
later I went to the Old Pueblo and, together with several hundred others
from all parts of the Territory, was mustered out and started on the
return march to Wilmington where we arrived about October 1. On the
twelfth of October I was discharged.

After working as cook for a short time for a company that was
constructing a railroad from Wilmington to Los Angeles, I moved to the
latter place and obtained employment in the Old Bella Union Hotel as
chef. John King was the proprietor of the Bella Union. Until Christmas
eve I stayed there, and then Sergeant John Curtis, of my company, who
had been working as a saddler for Banning, a capitalist in
Wilmington, came back to the kitchen and said:

[Illustration: CADY'S HOUSE ON THE SONOITA, NEAR BLOXTON, 1914. BUILT IN
1868]

"John, old sport, let's go to 'Frisco."

"I haven't," I told him, "enough change t