le my outfit. An' _then_ mebby I'll have to back out ag'in!
Tell you one thing, this here Santa Fe trip may be fine for invalids,
but it ain't done _my_ health no good!" While Tom laughed at him he
considered. "Huh! I don't reckon it'll be a good thing to let her know
that you an' Armijo are as friendly as a Cheyenne an' a Comanche. Cuss
it! Oh, well; put away this gun an' come on in an' eat, if there's
anything left."

CHAPTER VI

INDIANS AND GAMBLERS

Shortly after noon the wind died down enough to let the packet resume
her upstream labors, and expectations ran high that she would make a
long, peaceful run. They were not to be realized.

The first unpleasant incident occurred when the boat had been run
against a bank at a woodpile to replenish her fuel. The lines were made
fast and the first of the wood-carriers had reached the stacked cordwood
when from behind it arose a dozen renegade Indians, willing to turn
momentarily from their horse-stealing expedition long enough to levy a
tribute of firewater on the boat. They refused to allow a stick to be
removed without either a fight or a supply of liquor and trade goods,
and the leader of the band grappled with the foremost member of the crew
and tried to drag him behind the shelter of the pile and so gain a
hostage to give additional weight to their demands and to save them from
being fired on.

Goaded by despair and fright from the unexpectedness of the attack and
what might be in store for him the white man struggled desperately and,
with the return of a measure of calmness, worked a neat cross-buttock on
his red adversary and threw him sprawling out in plain sight of the
boat. Half a dozen plainsmen on board had leaped for their rifles and
shouted the alarm; a four pound carronade was wheeled swiftly into
position and a charge of canister sent crashing over the woodpile into
the brush and trees. The roar of the gun and the racket caused by the
charge as it rattled through the branches and brush filled the savages
with dismay and, not daring to run from the pile and up the bank under
the cannon and the rapidly augmented rifles on the decks of the boat,
they raised their hands and slowly emerged from their worthless
breastwork.

Captain Newell shouted frantic instructions to his grim and accurate
volunteers, ordering and begging in one breath for them not to fire, for
he knew that bloodshed would start a remorseless sniping warfare along
the river that