ich hang seemingly poised between the heavens and the flat
plain beneath. And finally he saw before him the lodges made of bended
bushes with skins and blankets spread over their curved sides. He
reined in his horse, dismounted, and walked into the camp of the
renegades.

Cochise was sitting in his lodge, which was but a bare shelter from
the sun's rays--a number of bushes bound together at their tops formed
the ribs for a haphazard sort of tent made of outspread skins,--and
whether he was awaiting this visit no man knows. For the war-chief
showed no sign of surprise or of welcome when Captain Jeffords entered
the place. But when the tall white man had seated himself upon the
skins which covered the dry earth and announced his purpose, Cochise
betrayed astonishment.

"I have come here," Jeffords said with the deliberation which one
must use when he is talking with an Indian, "to see you, to know you
better, and to talk over certain matters with you. I will stay here
two days or maybe three; and while I remain--to show my good
faith--one of your squaws may keep my weapons." With which he laid
aside his rifle and revolver.

After a silence whose length would have been disconcerting to any
other than an old-timer owning a knowledge of the Indian ways, Cochise
called a squaw, who picked up the firearms at his bidding and took
them away with her. Then these two men of parts settled down to talk
business.

It took them two days and two nights, for Jeffords was careful not to
crowd matters in the slightest, hanging to the savage custom of long
silences and few words at a time between them. As the hours went on he
sat there patiently listening to the war-chief recounting at great
length his experiences with the white men, reciting the stories of bad
faith and broken compacts; and when these recitals were finished he
continued to sit in silence for long intervals, before he resumed his
own arguments.

Thus the talk went on in the little brush shelter during the hot days
and the cool evenings; and what it all came to was this:

Jeffords said that this war between Cochise and the soldiers was not
his war. It was, he maintained, no business of his excepting when the
officers who carried the authority of the great father in Washington,
bade him to do their bidding and act as a guide or scout. Otherwise,
why should he take up his good time and risk his life in fighting a
people against whom he held no personal grudge?

And