s ran over to gather in a few dollars which would be "easy
money." The Government's long delayed annuities and rations were to be
distributed the week before the contest, so every Indian had money to
bet or to buy plunder with. Groups of Indians, squatting on their
haunches or kneeling beside a big blanket spread upon the ground as a
table, gambled or traded their wares in common with the visitors.

On a big Navajo blanket sat Chiquita, making beaded moccasins, while
near by on another blanket rested Susan, engaged in beading a buckskin
shirt. Off at the side with bridle reins dragging, four ponies fed on
the stubby grass as their owners, two Indians and two cowmen, played
Spanish monte. The cowmen wore heavily fringed buckskin shirts and
broad-brimmed hats, each hat having a leather band and leather string
which passed back of the ears and under the back of the head to keep the
hat from blowing off. Their feet were clad in high-topped boots, from
which clanked the cruel Mexican spurs with tinkling bells. Each--and, in
fact, every man on the reservation, had six-shooters--some four, and
nearly all carried some make of rifle, not that they feared any evil,
but it was second nature to be prepared for game of any kind. Another
mark of civilization was the red bandanna handkerchief tied loosely
around nearly every man's throat.

Oaths of the most curdling nature bellowed their way incessantly into
the ears of the onlooker. A brightly painted Indian with eagle feathered
bonnet and a string of grizzly claws around his neck, won a mule
skinner's money. The latter turned loose a wild yell and a string of
hair-raising adjectives, accompanied by the pistol-like crack of his
fifteen-foot whip, and stalked off to his mules, swearing "agin the
Gov'n'ment, the redskin and hisself"--chiefly in the end "agin hisself."
Jack hailed him.

"Pard, I've seen you before."

"Mebbe so, stranger; I've lived in these hills many snows," answered the
freighter.

"Didn't you lose some blankets about a year ago in the Wet Mountain
valley, near Buena Vista?" asked Jack without mincing matters.

"That's what I did, but I got 'em back and--well"--and he stopped as
Jack commenced to smile. "What pleases you, stranger?"

"I was picturing in my mind what that fellow's wife, if he had one, and
she could have seen him, would have said after you fellows got through
heaving him into that dirty pond instead of hanging him."

The man of mules and wagons