th it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some had
thought I was the paymaster.

"Folks up here," he explained, "are liable to know who's coming."

"If I lived here," said I, "I should be anxious for the paymaster to
come early and often."

"Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here,
and us civilians profit some by it."

[Illustration: "EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE"]

Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce the subject
of black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but before I
had compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited me.
Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I was
stranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to see
an old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and the
quartermaster's hearty will to help me to do so could not cure my
blankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round at
Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other
friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at
an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for
good or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in
gloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged
back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed
my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably
slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that
in reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the
ancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go
to house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed
legally married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve months, and
ten had run against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signs
of leaving her. The driver did not think her much entitled to
sympathy, and certainly she showed later that she could devise
revenge. As I thought over these things we came again to the cattle
herd, where my reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor did
the variance between my movements and my reported plans seem wholly
explained to them by Stirling's absence, and at the station where I
had breakfasted I saw them question the driver about me. This interest
in my affairs heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when next
day I came to it after another waking to the cha