ut it set me to thinkin'."

"How queer!" said Charlie.

"Yes, ain't it? You see, a long time ago, when the 'Paches were thick
about here, they used to bring in gold to sell--coarse gold, big as
rice, nearly. Never would tell where they got it; but when they wanted
anything right bad they was right there with the stuff; coarse gold.
All sorts of men tried all sorts of ways to find out where it came
from. No go."

"Indians are mighty curious about gold," said Charlie. "Over in the
Fort Stanton country, the Mescaleros used to bring in gold that same
way--only it was fine gold, there. Along about 1880, Llewellyn, he was
the agent; and Steve Utter, chief of police; and Dave Easton, he was
chief clerk; and Dave Pelman and Dave Sutherland--three Daves--and old
Pat Coghlan--them six, they yammered away at one old buck till at last
he agreed to show them. He was to get a four-horse team, harness and
wagon, and his pick of stuff from the commissary to load up the wagon
with. They was to go by night, and no other Indian was ever to know
who told 'em, before or after--though how he proposed to account
for that wagonload of plunder I don't know. I'll say he was a
short-sighted Injun, anyway.

"Well, they started from the agency soon after midnight. They had to
go downstream about a quarter, round a fishhook bend, on account of a
mess of wire fence; and then they turned up through a _cienaga_ on a
corduroy road, sort of a lane cut straight through the swamp, with the
_tules_--cat-tail flags, you know--eight or ten feet high on each
side. They was going single file, mighty quiet, Mister Mescalero-man
in the lead. They heard just a little faint stir in the _tules_, and
a sound like bees humming. Mister Redskin he keels over, shot full of
arrows. Not one leaf moving in the _tules_; all mighty still; they
could hear the Injun pumping up blood, glug--glug--glug! The white men
went back home pretty punctual. Come daylight they go back, police and
everything. There lays their guide with nine arrows through his midst.
And that was the end of him.

"But that wasn't the end of the gobbling gold. Fifteen years after,
Pat Coghlan and Dave Sutherland--the others having passed on or away,
up, down, across or between--they throwed in with a lad called Durbin
or something, and between them they honey-swoggled an old Mescalero
named Falling Pine, and led him astray. It took nigh two months, but
they made a fetch of it. Old Falling Pine, he allo