Good Indian

ppealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about it;

lived over again only in halting recital to his sons when they clamored for details of the old days when

earned the title of "Peaceful," as had his father. Nature had played a joke upon old Peaceful Hart; for he, the mildest-mannered man who ever helpe

his puzzlement into speech. The nearest he ever came to elucidation, perhaps, was when he turned from them and let his pale-blue

ch upon its side instead of rolling down and crushing the buildings to dust and fragments. Strangers used to keep a wary eye upon that bluff, as if they never felt quite safe from its menace. Coyotes sk

milk house, where Phoebe spent long hours in cool retirement on churning day, and where one went to beg good things

he big spring fill it full and seek an outlet at the far end, where it slid away under a little stone bridge. He planted the pond with rainbow trout, and on the margin a rampart of Lombardy poplars, whi

and locust among them-a jungle which surrounded t

s which Phoebe Hart kept abloom until the frosts came, and the bees, and humming-birds which somehow found their way across the parched sagebrush plains and

els unromantically together as they roosted upon the porch, and threw cigarette stubs at the water lilies while they wrangled amiably over the merits of their mounts; saw them drag their blankets out into the

dance, they would choose the best of Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and perhaps their hatbands, also. Peaceful would then suck harder than ever

tern rim of the pond, to the road which cut straight through the ranch, down that to the farthest tree of the grove, then back to th

sagebrush fuel, all twisted and gray, pungent as a bottle of spilled liniment, where braided, blanketed bucks were sometimes prevailed upon to lab

adjustment of shoes upon the feet of fighting, wild-eyed horses, which a

s simply so much work to be performed, hayfields, an orchard or two, t

l, ankle-deep in dust, stretched straight out to the west, and then lost itself unexpectedly behi

finally reached the top at the only point for miles, w

ep of it. The railroad gashed it boldly, after the manner of the iron trail of modern industry; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound through it diffidently, avoiding the rough c

s; and there were few, indeed, white men or Indians, who could have ridden there at midnight and not been sure of blankets and a