his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to
be in this souvenir.

"That's a picture I want," said I. "Only I'll be sorry to see your face
there," I added to black curly.

"Indeed!" put in Jenks.

"Yes," said I. "You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way,
Mr. Jenks, I suppose you'll return their horses and saddles now?"

Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp
thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his
clients. "I had hoped to," he said; "that is, as many as were not needed
to defray necessary costs. But it's been an expensive suit, and I've
found myself obliged to sell them all. It's little enough to pay for
clearing your character, boys."

They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated.
Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it
seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.

"They look disappointed," I remarked. "I shall value the picture very
highly."

"If that's Eastern sarcasm," said Jenks, "it's beyond me."

"No, Mr. Jenks," I answered. "In your presence sarcasm drops dead. I
think you'll prosper in politics."

But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events,
though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddly
prosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses;
two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in so
many of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruits
increase that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed their
dollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He had
stayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with the
title, "What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona." Inside were twenty blank
pages, and he failed of re-election.

Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoning
Camp Thomas and Lowell Barracks, those important sources of revenue for
the neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and left
it poorer than ever.

At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking to
the other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that she
was too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east as
Willcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.

But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened to
black curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of