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“The Injun killed the guard, did he? Good enough for him! I wish it had been Holy John!”

He fell to work again with more vigor than ever, but presently he stopped and growled:

“I ‘d like to run a blaze on that ornery galoot that he ‘d remember all the rest of his life!”

After a while I chanced to see Kid carrying a bundle done up in a gunny sack down to the acequia and hide it among the currant bushes. I noticed that he had carefully filled up the hole he had been digging, and I asked,

“Aren’t you going to plant the tree?”

“No,” he replied carelessly, “it would n’t grow there. The soil’s too hard.”

The cowboys spread their beds every night under the cottonwoods beside the lower acequia, and that night we heard them in earnest discussion long after they had gone to bed. Mr. Williams was with them for a short time and came back, saying that they were talking about ghosts, and that Kid had declared emphatically that the old Apache chief walked o’ nights and that he had both seen and heard him.

“He gave a vivid description,” Mr. Williams went on, “of waking up one night and seeing the Indian’s skeleton rise up out of the ground and pounce on a soldier who stood near and kill him outright. He will have Holy John so terrified that the poor fellow will want his time at once. For John believes everything that is impossible, and he will see ghosts all night long and be afraid of his own shadow in the daytime.”

That night, just as morning broke, the whole household was awakened by a loud, piercing yell, followed by another and another, and all rushed from their beds in time to see Holy John leap over the fence and dart down the road, still shrieking as if fiends were after him. And beside his deserted bed under the cottonwoods lay some grisly thing, shining in the gray light with streaks and patches of white. Kid looked after the flying figure and said, in a tone of extremest satisfaction,

“He’s sure buffaloed!”

Holy John had awakened in the dim, early dawn and found the skeleton of the Apache chief cuddling against him.

That morning, as I sat in the yard reading, the voices of Kid and Madge came to me from around the corner of the house, and I heard a snatch of their conversation.

“Madge, I ‘m going to pull my freight. I won’t work on the same ranch with such a coward as that Holy John.”

“Truly, Guy, are you going away?”

“Yes, I am. I ain’t going to stop to ask for my time. I ‘m going to-day, before the boss comes home.”

“Well, then, what am I going to do? You ‘re not going off to leave me?”

Silence for the space of ten seconds.

“Jiminy! Tell you what, you come too!”

“I can’t! Mamma wouldn’t let me!”

“Don’t ask her. Come right along with me! We ‘ll elope! That’s more fun than anything! Girls that is anything always elopes!”

Then they wandered off to the alfalfa field, and soon I saw them throwing stones at the prairie dogs with which it was infested. So I concluded that what I had heard was merely some of the Kid’s braggadocio, and, smiling at the sentimental turn he had taken, I went on with my book and thought no more of it.

But when lunch time came neither Madge nor Kid appeared for the meal. Much calling failed to bring a response. Then I remembered and gave account of the conversation I had heard. It was found that Dynamite was gone from the corral. Evidently the little scapegrace had meant what he said and had carried Madge off. Mrs. Williams ordered the cart and at once we started after the fugitives.