es--masters of men
and tamers of horses.

The officers, too, had many strange experiences to relate; none, not
even Llewellen or O'Neill, had been through what was better worth
telling, or could tell it better, than Capron. He had spent years
among the Apaches, the wildest and fiercest of tribes, and again and
again had owed his life to his own cool judgment and extraordinary
personal prowess. He knew the sign language, familiar to all the
Indians of the mountains and the plains; and it was curious to find
that the signs for different animals, for water, for sleep and death,
which he knew from holding intercourse with the tribes of the
Southeast, were exactly like those which I had picked up on my
occasional hunting or trading trips among the Sioux and Mandans of the
North. He was a great rifle shot and wolf hunter, and had many tales
to tell of the deeds of gallant hounds and the feats of famous horses.
He had handled his Indian scouts and dealt with the "bronco" Indians,
the renegades from the tribes, in circumstances of extreme peril; for
he had seen the sullen, moody Apaches when they suddenly went crazy
with wolfish blood-lust, and in their madness wished to kill whomever
was nearest. He knew, so far as white man could know, their ways of
thought, and how to humor and divert them when on the brink of some
dangerous outbreak. Capron's training and temper fitted him to do
great work in war; and he looked forward with eager confidence to what
the future held, for he was sure that for him it held either triumph
or death. Death was the prize he drew.

Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they
said very little about what they dimly felt. Bucky O'Neill, however,
the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from Arizona, the Sheriff whose
name was a by-word of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, the
gambler who with unmoved face would stake and lose every dollar he had
in the world--he, alone among his comrades, was a visionary, an
articulate emotionalist. He was very quiet about it, never talking
unless he was sure of his listener; but at night, when we leaned on
the railing to look at the Southern Cross, he was less apt to tell
tales of his hard and stormy past than he was to speak of the
mysteries which lie behind courage, and fear, and love, behind animal
hatred, and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. He
had keenly enjoyed life, and he could breast its turbulent torrent as