xpectorated two or three times, as was his custom when
thinking, and then said, 'That's not altogether an easy question to
answer. I've been so near wiped out such scores of times, that it ain't
no easy job to say which was the downright nearest. In thinking it over,
I conclude sometimes that one go was the nearest, sometimes that
another; it ain't no ways easy to say now. But I think that, at the
time, I never so much felt that Seth Harper's time for going down had
come, as I did in an affair near San Louis.'

'And how was that, Seth? Do tell us about it,' Maud said.

'It's rather a long story, that is,' the Yankee said.

'All the better, Seth,' Charley said; 'at least all the better as far as
we are concerned, if you don't mind telling it.'

'No, I don't mind, no how,' Seth answered. 'I'll just think it over, and
see where to begin.'

There was a silence for a few minutes, and the young Hardys composed
themselves comfortably for a good long sitting, and then Seth Harper
began his story.

'Better than five years back, in '47, I were fighting in Mexico. It
wasn't much regular up and down fighting we had, though we had some
toughish battles too, but it were skirmishing here, skirmishing there,
keeping one eye always open, for man, woman, and child hated us like
pison, and it was little mercy that a straggler might expect if he got
caught away from his friends. Their partisan chiefs, half-soldier
half-robber, did us more harm than the regulars, and mercy was never
given or asked between them and us. Me and Rube Pearson worked mostly
together. We had "fit" the Indians out on the prairies for years side by
side, and when Uncle Sam wanted men to lick the Mexicans, we concluded
to go in together. We 'listed as scouts to the "Rangers," that is, we
agreed to fight as much as we were wanted to fight, and to go on in
front as scouts, in which way we had many a little skrimmage on our own
account; but we didn't wear any uniform, or do drill, which couldn't
have been expected of us. We shouldn't have been no good as regulars,
and every one knew that there were no better scouts in the army than
Rube Pearson and Seth Harper. Lor', what a fellow Rube was, to be sure!
I ain't a chicken,' and the Yankee looked down at his own bony limbs,
'but I was a baby by the side of Rube. He were six feet four if he were
an inch, and so broad that he looked short unless you saw him by the
side of another man. I do believe Rube Pearson were the