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Excitement did not lack at the ranch-house whenever Kid was at home. If he was sent to help with the milking, one of the cows was sure to kick over a full milk-pail, knock him over with her hoof, or break loose from her restraining ropes, charge around the corral like a wild beast, and crash through one of the house windows or plunge in at an open door. If he was told to house the geese and chickens for the night, such a commotion ensued as brought the whole household to see if coyotes had broken into the chicken yard. At sight of him the pet Angora goats fled on their swiftest legs, with a running leap mounted one of the corral sheds, and then sped to what they had learned was the only place of safety, the roof of the house. And when he was not stirring up the animals, he was playing jokes on the cowboys. Holy John, a middle-aged, thick-witted fellow, who never knew what had happened to him until the rest were roaring with laughter, was the special butt of his tricks.

One evening the boys were sitting around the kitchen door talking quietly, for Kid was off with Madge, helping her to bury a dead kitten. Holy John sat in a slouching attitude on the doorsteps, his new sombrero, with a stiff, curled brim, tipped far back on his head. Kid came in through the corral and stood in the kitchen for a few minutes. Then he seized the molasses jug and, tiptoeing very softly behind Holy John, filled the brim of his brand-new sombrero with the sticky liquid. It flowed out over his back and down into his trousers, and Holy John lifted a wondering and bewildered face to see his companions breaking into uproarious mirth. Then his long-enduring patience was smothered in wrath, and he laid violent hands upon Kid and spanked him before Madge’s eyes.

This was too much for a knight of prowess tamely to endure, and the boy blustered around in his most vigorous impersonation of the character of Broncho Bob.

“This ranch ain’t big enough to hold Holy John and me too. Him or me, one or the other, has sure got to ask for his time, and it won’t be me either, you hear me shout. I ‘ll get him sure buffaloed, and if he don’t pull his freight before he ‘s a day older, there ‘ll be the biggest killing here that Apache Teju ever heard of.”

It was very quiet the next day at the ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Williams and Madge had driven to Silver City, the cowboys were all on the range, and I kept in my room with some work. After a time I heard a noise at the end of the house, just outside my room, and I went to see what it was. Kid was there with a pick and shovel, toilsomely digging a hole in the hard adobe soil.

“What are you doing, Kid?”

“Nothing much. Just digging a hole.”

“Isn’t that where the old Apache chief is buried?”

He looked up with interest. “Is this the place? Do you know right where it is?”

“They told me it is there where you are digging. Those rocks that you can barely see, outline his grave. Are you going to dig him up?”

“Me? What would I want to dig him up for? I ain’t lost no Injun! I ‘m just digging a hole–for Madge. She wants to plant a tree. What did they bury him here for? Did they kill him here on the ranch?”

“This was a fort once, before there was any ranch here, and there was a war with the Apaches, and they were getting beaten, and so they sent this old chief down to the fort to make terms for them. The commander received him and put him in a tent and set a guard over him. In the night the guard fell asleep, and when he wakened he was frightened lest the Indian might have escaped. So he punched into the tent with his bayonet to see if he was still there, and hit the chief in the foot. That made him angry and he came out and killed the guard. The noise roused the soldiers, and they killed the chief, and they buried him here, inside the stockade, so that the Indians would n’t suspect that he was dead until they could get reinforcements.”