ively. "They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn't
be safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are found
dead in this country--but you'll have government protection."

"Thank you kindly," said I. "That's what I had on the hill."

But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.

Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection.
At seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmas
and Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase which
they sometimes print in capitals upon their bills--Combination
Extraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, and
the old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and our
coal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including Sergeant
Brown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, you
can see what appearance we made descending together from the mean
Southern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to have
been the town's whole population, numbering five thousand.

Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflage
immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,
speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than
half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy
shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled
cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these
the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,
express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers from
Lowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color and
dust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door of
the Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of the
same idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,
as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found the
wet-eyed Mowry standing.

"How's business on the other side of the track?" I said to him.

"Fair to middlin'. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?"

"You've forgotten I told you they're a property I don't care for, Mr.
Mowry. I suppose it's interest in this recent gold discovery that brings
you to Tucson." He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glance
that flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, "So many of
your Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now," I w