“ ‘Señores, I know not well of the good God and what please him. I have live without religion, and I am not acquaint with that of you. Pardon, señores, if I shock you, but for me the time is come to beat the game of the Apache.’
“He knelt upon the rock floor of the cave and pressed his pistol against his temple. ‘Madre de Dios,’ he said, ‘comes now the soul of Ramon Gallegos.’
“And so he left us—William Shaw, George W. Kent and Berry Davis.
“I was the leader: it was for me to speak.
“ ‘He was a brave man,’ I said—‘he knew when to die, and how. It is foolish to go mad from thirst and fall by Apache bullets, or be skinned alive—it is in bad taste. Let us join Ramon Gallegos.’
“ ‘That is right,’ said William Shaw.
“ ‘That is right,’ said George W. Kent.
“I straightened the limbs of Ramon Gallegos and put a handkerchief over his face. Then William Shaw said: ‘I should like to look like that—a little while.’
“And George W. Kent said that he felt that way, too.
“ ‘It shall be so,’ I said: ‘the red devils will wait a week. William Shaw and George W. Kent, draw and kneel.’
“They did so and I stood before them.
“ ‘Almighty God, our Father,’ said I.
“ ‘Almighty God, our Father,’ said William Shaw.
“ ‘Almighty God, our Father,’ said George W. Kent.
“ ‘Forgive us our sins,’ said I.
“ ‘Forgive us our sins,’ said they.
“ ‘And receive our souls.’
“ ‘And receive our souls.’
“ ‘Amen!’
“ ‘Amen!’
“I laid them beside Ramon Gallegos and covered their faces.”
There was a quick commotion on the opposite side of the campfire: one of our party had sprung to his feet, pistol in hand.
“And you!” he shouted—“you dared to escape?—you dare to be alive? You cowardly hound, I’ll send you to join them if I hang for it!”
But with the leap of a panther the captain was upon him, grasping his wrist. “Hold it in, Sam Yountsey, hold it in!”
We were now all upon our feet—except the stranger, who sat motionless and apparently inattentive. Someone seized Yountsey’s other arm.
“Captain,” I said, “there is something wrong here. This fellow is either a lunatic or merely a liar—just a plain, everyday liar whom Yountsey has no call to kill. If this man was of that party it had five members, one of whom—probably himself—he has not named.”
“Yes,” said the captain, releasing the insurgent, who sat down, “there is something—unusual. Years ago four dead bodies of white men, scalped and shamefully mutilated, were found about the mouth of that cave. They are buried there; I have seen the graves—we shall all see them tomorrow.”
The stranger rose, standing tall in the light of the expiring fire, which in our breathless attention to his story we had neglected to keep going.
“There were four,” he said—“Ramon Gallegos, William Shaw, George W. Kent and Berry Davis.”
With this reiterated roll-call of the dead he walked into the darkness and we saw him no more.
At that moment one of our party, who had been on guard, strode in among us, rifle in hand and somewhat excited.
“Captain,” he said, “for the last half-hour three men have been standing out there on the mesa.” He pointed in the direction taken by the stranger. “I could see them distinctly, for the moon is up, but as they had no guns and I had them covered with mine I thought it was their move. They have made none, but, damn it! they have got on to my nerves.”
“Go back to your post, and stay till you see them again,” said the captain. “The rest of you lie down again, or I’ll kick you all into the fire.”
The sentinel obediently withdrew, swearing, and did not return. As we were arranging our blankets the fiery Yountsey said: “I beg your pardon, Captain, but who the devil do you take them to be?”
“Ramon Gallegos, William Shaw and George W. Kent.”
“But how about Berry Davis? I ought to have shot him.”
“Quite needless; you couldn’t have made him any deader. Go to sleep.”
My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is such that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of explanation as to how they came into my possession. Withal, my knowledge of him is so meager that I should rather not undertake to say if he were himself persuaded of the truth of what he relates; certainly such inquiries as I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance tended to confirmation of the statements made. Yet his style, for the most part devoid alike of artifice and art, almost baldly simple and direct, seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely literary intention; one would call it the manner of one more concerned for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression. In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to avow.
An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in , when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended
