e had been that his own
revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster
at the necessary moment.

"Tried to draw on me, did yer?" said the old gentleman. "Step higher!
Step, now, or I'll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin's egg."

"Thinks he's having a bad time," remarked Ephraim. "Wonder how he'd like
to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?"

"Weren't his ear funny?" said one who had helped bury the man.

"Ear?" said Ephraim. "You boys ought to been along when I found him,
and seen the way they'd fixed up his mouth." Ephraim explained the
details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a
humorist. "Wonder how it feels," he continued, "to have--"

[Illustration: AN APACHE]

Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
in the least. He had seen everything quite often.

"Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf," remarked the old gentleman to
the tenderfoot. "High-yer!" And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
scraped the boy's boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.

"'Drink to me only with thine eyes,'" sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he
was but twenty-six now.

The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played "Matamoras,"
Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
the concertina stopped with a quack.

"Quit it!" said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
weapon. "I don't want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We've
just got cleaned up."

It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of
Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now
for the first time he noticed the boy.

"Blamed if he ain't neat," he said. But interest faded from his eye, and
he turned again to the wall. "'Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,'" he
melo