y lay sleeping. "Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!" came from
somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating
antiphonal, "Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!" and in the chill black air my
driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, "Car-los! Car-los!"
One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let me
dress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash cold
water in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat among
the leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having four
hours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faint
reveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and I
pushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myself
and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the
sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and
both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my
frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the
mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after
the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we
went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came
from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear,
running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had
yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas.
With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain,
and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired
desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper
body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the
thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide
continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until
breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the
driver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks had
told me they would be.

It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila,
and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend Captain
Stirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the news
was in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in any
previous part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed my
having no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to do
wi