ked, and hauled up at the adjutant's in a cloud of dust
and misapprehension, with barely time for a bath and a shave before
dinner. He was a new aide-de-camp of the department commander. He had
served him well and won his notice on Indian campaigns afar to the
north in the Columbia valley, where gum boots and slickers were as
indispensable as here they were superfluous. He had never been, he
said, so dry in his life as when he scrambled from his mud-colored
chariot to the steps of the official residence. The temporal wants had
been spiritually removed, but not the impression. Now, some eighteen
hours later, he wished to know if it never rained at Almy, and there
was no white man could tell him. So, one and all, they looked to
'Tonio, whose earliest recollections were of the immediate
neighborhood.

And 'Tonio proved a reluctant witness. Urged by Stannard, the senior
captain referred to, Harris put the question in "Pidgin" Apache, and
'Tonio, squatting still, gazed dreamily away toward the huge bulwark of
Squadron Peak, and waited for respectful cessation of all talk before
he would answer.

At last he rose to his full height and, with a sweeping gesture the
length of his arm, pointed to the domelike summit, dazzling in the
slant of the evening sunshine, that seemingly overhung the dun-colored
adobe corrals on the flats to the south, yet stood full five miles
away. 'Tonio so seldom opened his lips to speak that the six men
listened with attention they seldom gave to one another. Yet what
'Tonio said was translatable only by Harris:

"When the picacho hides his head in the clouds, then look for rain."

"Lord," said the doctor, "I doubt if ever I've seen a cloud above
it--much less on it! If it weren't for the creek yonder the whole post
would shrivel up and blow away. Even the hygrometer's dead of
disuse--or dry rot. But, talk of drying up, did you ever see the beat
of him?" and the doctor was studying anatomy as displayed in this
particular Apache.

Five feet ten 'Tonio stood before them, not counting the thatch of his
matted black hair, bound with white cotton turban. Five feet ten in
height, but so gaunt and wiry that the ribs and bones seemed breaking
through the tawny skin, that in flank and waist and the long sweep of
his sinewy, fleshless legs, he rivalled the greyhound sprawled at his
feet. "'Tonio has not half an ounce of fat in his hide," said Harris,
in explaining his tireless work on the trail. "'Tonio c