and."

Thus, happily, does time sweeten the bitterest memories.

CHAPTER IX

ACROSS THE BORDER

Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot
in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to
meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman
Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was
no mistaking the lean but sturdy figure and alert step.

From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he
winced and shrank, crying: "Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping
in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles
tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from
Lampadasos with the assurance that my ambulance was generously
provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the
first day's journey came, I found the food limited to _tortillas,
chorisos_, and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin--no more. Stupid of an
old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it
not?"

"Worse than that, I should say--sheer madness," I answered. "How did
it happen?"

"Well, you see, Don Nemecio is the _Alcalde_, of his city, and he
showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my
comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.

"But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.

"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the
Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To
the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great
plain the natives call _El Desierto_, known on the map as _Bolson de
Mapini_, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and
Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is
known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry
details.

"Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been
examining--but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is,
are you game for a new ranch deal?"

When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:

"Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in
the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest
ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily grassed, abundantly watered by its
two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the
plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfe