' to look at but a mountain a week way, chuck full of alkali,
plenty of sage-brush and rattlesnakes--but mighty little water.

Why, you boys know that country down there. Between the Chiricahua
Mountains and Emigrant Pass it's maybe a three or four days' journey
for these yere bull-slingers.

Mostly they filled up their bellies and their kegs, hoping to last
through, but they sure found it drier than cork legs, and generally
long before they hit the Springs their tongues was hangin' out a foot.
You see, for all their plumb nerve in comin' so far, the most of them
didn't know sic 'em. They were plumb innocent in regard to savin'
their water, and Injins, and such; and the long-haired buckskin fakes
they picked up at Santa Fe for guides wasn't much better.

That was where Texas Pete made his killing.

Texas Pete was a tough citizen from the Lone Star. He was about as
broad as he was long, and wore all sorts of big whiskers and black
eyebrows. His heart was very bad. You never COULD tell where Texas
Pete was goin' to jump next. He was a side-winder and a diamond-back
and a little black rattlesnake all rolled into one. I believe that
Texas Pete person cared about as little for killin' a man as for takin'
a drink--and he shorely drank without an effort. Peaceable citizens
just spoke soft and minded their own business; onpeaceable citizens
Texas Pete used to plant out in the sagebrush.

Now this Texas Pete happened to discover a water hole right out in the
plumb middle of the desert. He promptly annexed said water hole, digs
her out, timbers her up, and lays for emigrants.

He charged two bits a head--man or beast--and nobody got a mouthful
till he paid up in hard coin.

Think of the wads he raked in! I used to figure it up, just for the
joy of envyin' him, I reckon. An average twenty-wagon outfit, first
and last, would bring him in somewheres about fifty dollars--and
besides he had forty-rod at four bits a glass. And outfits at that
time were thicker'n spatter.

We used all to go down sometimes to watch them come in. When they see
that little canvas shack and that well, they begun to cheer up and move
fast. And when they see that sign, "Water, two bits a head," their
eyes stuck out like two raw oysters.

Then come the kicks. What a howl they did raise, shorely. But it
didn't do no manner of good. Texas Pete didn't do nothin' but sit
there and smoke, with a kind of sulky gleam in one corner of his ey