his own blanket, and sank peacefully to sleep.

Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to
recollect where we were--and succeed--and in a minute or two the stage
would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now,
threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks
on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the
other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture,
and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads.
And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of
mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose
from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us
would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow
out of my ribs!--can't you quit crowding?"

Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the
Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged
somebody. One trip it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it
hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis's nose up till he
could look down his nostrils--he said. The pistols and coin soon settled
to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered
and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us,
and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and water
down our backs.

Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore
gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through
the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with
satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was
necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled
off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in
time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his
bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low
hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter
of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands, awoke to a
louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station at
our smartest speed. It was fascinating--that old overland stagecoaching.

We jumped out in undress uniform. Th