and pistol-butts easy to hand.

"The cowboy's goin' under before long," said my friend. "Soon as the
country's settled up he'll have to go. But he's mighty useful now. What
should we do without the cowboy?"

"As how?" said I, and the camp laughed.

"He has the money. We have the know-how. He comes in in winter to play
poker at the military posts. _We_ play poker--a few. When he's lost his
money we make him drunk and let him go. Sometimes we get the wrong man."
And he told a tale of an innocent cowboy who turned up, cleaned out, at
a post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. But it was the post that
was cleaned out when that long-haired Caucasian Ah Sin removed himself,
heavy with everybody's pay, and declining the proffered liquor. "Naow,"
said the historian, "I don't play with no cowboy unless he's a little
bit drunk first."

Ere I departed I gathered from more than one man that significant fact
that _up to one hundred yards_ he felt absolutely secure behind his
revolver.

"In England, I understand," quoth a limber youth from the South, "in
England a man aren't allowed to play with no firearms. He's got to be
taught all that when he enlists. I didn't want much teaching how to
shoot straight 'fore I served Uncle Sam. And that's just where it is.
But you was talking about your horse guards now?"

I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected with our
crackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared.

"Take 'em over swampy ground. Let 'em run around a bit an' work the
starch out of 'em, an' then, Almighty, if we wouldn't plug 'em at ease
I'd eat their horses!"

"But suppose they engaged in the open?" said I.

"Engage the Hades. Not if there was a tree-trunk within twenty miles
they _couldn't_ engage in the open!"

Gentlemen, the officers, have you ever seriously considered the
existence on earth of a cavalry who by preference would fight in timber?
The evident sincerity of the proposition made me think hard as I moved
over to the hotel and joined a party exploration, which, diving into the
woods, unearthed a pit pool of burningest water fringed with jet black
sand--all the ground near by being pure white. But miracles pall when
they arrive at the rate of twenty a day. A flaming dragonfly flew over
the pool, reeled and dropped on the water, dying without a quiver of his
gorgeous wings, and the pool said nothing whatever, but sent its thin
steam wreaths up to the burning sky. I prefer