h face had a singular smoothness
and delicacy. A good and faithful servant he proved during three
years. Then he ran away at the time of the anti-Chinese riots, despite
our assurance that we wished to keep him and protect him.

"Me no likee Coon Dogs," said he, with a shiver.

The Coon Dogs were a pack of cowboys engaged in hunting Chinamen out
of the peaceful, but sometimes ill-smelling, places which, by thrift,
patience, and unremitting labour, they had made peculiarly their own.
From the Coon Dogs Ajax and I received a letter commanding us to
discharge Mary. A skull and cross-bones, and a motto, "Beware the bite
of the Coon Dogs!" embellished this billet, which was written in red
ink. Courtesy constrained us to acknowledge the receipt of it. Next
day we put up a sign by the corral gate--

NO HUNTING ALLOWED ON THIS RANCH!

In the afternoon Mary disappeared.

Uncle Jake was of opinion that Mary had divined the meaning of our
sign. He had said to Uncle Jake: "I go. Me makee heap trouble for
boss."

Later, upon the same day, we learned from a neighbour that the Coon
Dogs had tarred and feathered one poor wretch; another had been
stripped and whipped; a third was found half-strangled by his own
queue; the market-gardens near San Lorenzo, miracles of industry, had
been ravaged and destroyed. Before taking leave our neighbour
mentioned the sign.

"Boys," said he, "take that down--and ship Mary. I'm mighty glad," he
added reflectively, "that my ole woman does the cookin."

"Mary skedaddled after dinner," said Ajax, frowning, "but I'm going
into town to-morrow to bring him back."

However, Mary brought himself back that same night. We were smoking
our second pipes after supper, when Ajax, pointing an expressive
finger at the window, exclaimed sharply: "Great Scot! What's that?"

Pressed against the pane, glaring in at us, was a face--a face so
blanched and twisted by terror and pain that it seemed scarcely human.
We hurried out. Mary staggered towards us. In his face were the cruel,
venomous spines of the prickly pear. The tough boughs of the manzanita
thickets through which he had plunged had scourged him like a cat-o'-
nine tails. What clothes he wore were dripping with mud and slime.

"Coon Dogs come," he gasped. "I tellee you."

Then he bolted into the shadows of the oaks and sage brush. We
pursued, but he ran fast, dodging like a rabbit, till he tumbled over
and over--paralysed by fear and fatigue. We car