der our protection. He told me to assign the family a place
in the train.

I went to their camp, and found it located in a grove of cottonwoods a
short distance out, on the Arizona trail. Mr. Arnold, the head of the
family, never ceased his occupation while I was talking to him. He was
constructing a camp-table and benches of some packing-boxes he had
procured from the post trader. He was a tall, well-proportioned man,
of dark complexion and regular features, with black, unkempt hair and
restless brown eyes. He was clothed in a faded and stained butternut
suit of flannel, consisting of a loose frock and baggy trousers, the
legs of the trousers being tucked into the tops of road-worn boots.
His hat was a battered and frayed broad-brimmed felt. Mrs. Arnold sat
on a stool superintending the work, bowed forward, her elbows on her
knees, holding a long-stemmed cob-pipe to her lips with her left hand,
removing it at the end of each inspiration to emit the smoke, which
curled slowly above her thin upper lip and thin, aquiline nose. She
was a tall, angular, high-shouldered, and flat-chested woman, dark
from exposure to wind, sun, and rain, her hair brown in the neck, but
many shades lighter on the crown of her head. Her eyes were of an
expressionless gray. A brown calico of scant pattern clung in lank
folds to her thin and bony figure.

The three daughters were younger and less faded types of their mother.
Each was clad in a narrow-skirted calico dress, and each was
stockingless and shoeless. Mother and daughters were dull, slow of
speech, and ignorant.

After staying long enough to give the necessary instructions and
exchange civilities with each member of the family in sight, I was
riding slowly back to the roadway, intending to take a brisk canter to
the fort, when Corporal Henry's voice called from a clump of cedars at
the back of the Arnold family's wagons.

"Oh, Mr. Duncan, may I speak to you a moment?"

Turning my horse in the direction of the voice, I saw my young friend
approaching, switching a handsome riding-whip in his hand.

"You haven't seen all the family, sir," he said.

"I have seen Mr. and Mrs. Arnold and those the mother said were all
their children--the three barefooted girls."

"But there is one more girl, sir, a very pretty one, too--a niece.
She's back of the wagons making friends with Vic and Chiquita. You
must not go without seeing her."

I went back with Henry and saw a girl of about fourtee