Caballo Mountain. Salem, Garfield,
Donahue's, Derry and Shandon; those were the hamlets of the east
side. Sound Irish, don't they? They were just what they sound like, at
first. A few Irish families, big families, half of them girls--Irish
girls; young gentlemen with a fancy to settle down settled right there
or thereabouts. That's a quick way to start settlements. There was
also a sardonic Greenhorn, to keep alive a memory of the old-time
Texans, before the fences. A hundred years older than Greenhorn was
the old Mexican outpost, San Ysidro; ruthlessly changed to Garfield
when the Mississippi Valley moved in. Transportation was the poorest
ever; this was the last-won farm land of New Mexico.

Along with snakes, centipedes, little yellow bobcats, whisky, poker,
maybe a beef or two--there were other features worthy of note. Each
man had to be cook, housekeeper, hunter, laundryman, shoemaker,
blacksmith, bookkeeper, purchasing agent, miner, mason, nurse, doctor,
gravedigger, interpreter, surveyor, tailor, jailor, judge, jury and
sheriff. Having no sea handy, he was seldom a sailorman.

A man who could do these things well enough to make them work might
be illiterate, but he couldn't be ignorant, not on a bet. It wasn't
possible. He knew too much. He had to do his own thinking. There was
no one else to do it for him. And he could not be wretched. He was too
busy. "We may be poor sinners, but we're not miserable"--that was a
favorite saying. When they brought in supplies or when they packed for
a long trip, they learned foresight and imagination. A right good
college, the frontier; there are many who are proud of that degree.

It is easy to be hospitable, kindly and free-hearted in a thinly
settled country; it is your turn next, you know generosity from both
sides; the Golden Rule has no chance to get rusty. So they were
pleasant and friendly people. They learned cooperation by making wagon
roads together, by making dams and big irrigation ditches, and from
the round-ups. They lived in the open air, and their work was hard,
they had health; there were endless difficulties to overcome;
happiness had a long start and the pursuit was merry.

There was one other great advantage--hope. They had much to hope for.
Almost everything. They wished three great wishes: Water for the
fields, safety from floods, a way to the outside world. To-day the
thick and tangled _bosques_ are cleared to smiling farms, linked by a
shining networ