smounted, he said,
'Johnny Reb, please give a dying man a drink.' I gave him my canteen,
and after drinking from it he continued, 'I want you to have my spurs.
Take them off. Listen to their history: as you have taken them off me
to-day, so I took them off a Mexican general the day the American army
entered the capital of Mexico.'"

CHAPTER XVI

THE REPUBLICAN

The outfit were awakened out of sleep the next morning by shouts of
"Whoa, _mula_! Whoa, you mongrel outcasts! Catch them blankety blank
mules!" accompanied by a rattle of chain harness, and Quince Forrest
dashed across our _segundo's_ bed, shaking a harness in each hand. We
kicked the blankets off, and came to our feet in time to see the
offender disappear behind the wagon, while Stallings sat up and
yawningly inquired "what other locoed fool had got funny." But the
camp was awake, for the cattle were leisurely leaving the bed ground,
while Honeyman, who had been excused from the herd with the first sign
of dawn, was rustling up the horses in the valley of the Beaver below
camp. With the understanding that the Republican River was a short
three days' drive from our present camp, the herd trailed out the
first day with not an incident to break the monotony of eating and
sleeping, grazing and guarding. But near noon of the second day, we
were overtaken by an old, long-whiskered man and a boy of possibly
fifteen. They were riding in a light, rickety vehicle, drawn by a
small Spanish mule and a rough but clean-limbed bay mare. The
strangers appealed to our sympathy, for they were guileless in
appearance, and asked so many questions, indicating that ours might
have been the first herd of trail cattle they had ever seen. The old
man was a free talker, and innocently allowed us to inveigle it out of
him that he had been down on the North Beaver, looking up land to
homestead, and was then on his way up to take a look at the lands
along the Republican. We invited him and the boy to remain for dinner,
for in that monotonous waste, we would have been only too glad to
entertain a bandit, or an angel for that matter, provided he would
talk about something else than cattle. In our guest, however, we found
a good conversationalist, meaty with stories not eligible to the
retired list; and in return, the hospitality of our wagon was his and
welcome. The travel-stained old rascal proved to be a good mixer, and
before dinner was over he had won us to a man, though Stalling