tribes were still on the war-path. The
younger ones, too, had led rough lives; and the lines in their faces
told of many a hardship endured, and many a danger silently faced with
grim, unconscious philosophy. Some were originally from the East, and
had seen strange adventures in different kinds of life, from sailing
round the Horn to mining in Alaska. Others had been born and bred in
the West, and had never seen a larger town than Santa Fe or a bigger
body of water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went by their own
name; some had changed their names; and yet others possessed but half
a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of
Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named because cowboys
often call vicious horses "smoky" horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who
had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. Some
were professional gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less than four
were or had been Baptist or Methodist clergymen--and proved
first-class fighters, too, by the way. Some were men whose lives in
the past had not been free from the taint of those fierce kinds of
crime into which the lawless spirits who dwell on the border-land
between civilization and savagery so readily drift. A far larger
number had served at different times in those bodies of armed men with
which the growing civilization of the border finally puts down its
savagery.

There was one characteristic and distinctive contingent which could
have appeared only in such a regiment as ours. From the Indian
Territory there came a number of Indians--Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, and Creeks. Only a few were of pure blood. The others shaded
off until they were absolutely indistinguishable from their white
comrades; with whom, it may be mentioned, they all lived on terms of
complete equality.

Not all of the Indians were from the Indian Territory. One of the
gamest fighters and best soldiers in the regiment was Pollock, a
full-blooded Pawnee. He had been educated, like most of the other
Indians, at one of those admirable Indian schools which have added so
much to the total of the small credit account with which the White
race balances the very unpleasant debit account of its dealings with
the Red. Pollock was a silent, solitary fellow--an excellent penman,
much given to drawing pictures. When we got down to Santiago he
developed into the regimental clerk. I never suspected him of having a
sense of humor unt