customary loin-cloth,
throwing their blankets about their shoulders when they had finished
dancing. I noticed again Chief Diablo's great good looks.

Conversation was carried on principally by signs and nods, and through
the interpreter (a white man named Cooley). Besides, the officers had
picked up many short phrases of the harsh and gutteral Apache tongue.

Diablo was charmed with the young, handsome wife of one of the officers,
and asked her husband how many ponies he would take for her, and Pedro
asked Major Worth, if all those white squaws belonged to him.

The party passed off pleasantly enough, and was not especially
subversive to discipline, although I believe it was not repeated.

Afterwards, long afterwards, when we were stationed at David's Island,
New York Harbor, and Major Worth was no longer a bachelor, but a
dignified married man and had gained his star in the Spanish War,
we used to meet occasionally down by the barge office or taking a
Fenster-promenade on Broadway, and we would always stand awhile and chat
over the old days at Camp Apache in '74. Never mind how pressing our
mutual engagements were, we could never forego the pleasure of talking
over those wild days and contrasting them with our then present
surroundings. "Shall you ever forget my party?" he said, the last time
we met.

CHAPTER XIII. A NEW RECRUIT

In January our little boy arrived, to share our fate and to gladden our
hearts. As he was the first child born to an officer's family in Camp
Apache, there was the greatest excitement. All the sheep-ranchers and
cattlemen for miles around came into the post. The beneficent canteen,
with its soldiers' and officers' clubrooms did not exist then. So they
all gathered at the cutler's store, to celebrate events with a round of
drinks. They wanted to shake hands with and congratulate the new father,
after their fashion, upon the advent of the blond-haired baby. Their
great hearts went out to him, and they vied with each other in doing the
handsome thing by him, in a manner according to their lights, and their
ideas of wishing well to a man; a manner, sometimes, alas! disastrous in
its results to the man! However, by this time, I was getting used to all
sides of frontier life.

I had no time to be lonely now, for I had no nurse, and the only person
who was able to render me service was a laundress of the Fifth Cavalry,
who came for about two hours each day, to give the baby his bath and