Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/103

 countenance to all her admirers. It was a gloomy day for the colonel when he awaked to find himself almost without a dollar, and no paymaster to be expected from San Francisco for a couple of months. A brilliant thought struck him; he would economize by sending back to Boston two of his stock of glass eyes, which he did not really need, as the "sober" and "tolerably drunk" ones had never been used, and ought to fetch something of a price at second-hand.

The Boston dealer, however, curtly refused to negotiate a sale, saying that he did not do business in that way, and, as if to add insult to injury, enclosed the two eyes in a loose sheet of paper, which was inscribed with a pathetic story about "The Drunkard Saved." It took at least a dozen rounds of drinks before the colonel could drown his wrath, and satisfy the inquiries of condoling friends who had learned of the brutal treatment to which he had been subjected.

A great friend of the colonel's was Al. Garrett, who in stature was his elder's antithesis, being as short and wiry as the colonel was large and heavy. Garrett was an extremely good-hearted youngster, and one of the best horsemen in the whole army. His admirers used to claim that he could ride anything with four legs to it, from a tarantula to a megatherium. Semig, the third of the trio, was a Viennese, a very cultivated man, a graduate in medicine, an excellent musician, a graceful dancer, well versed in modern languages, and well educated in every respect. He was the post surgeon at Camp Crittenden, sixty miles to the south of Tucson, but was temporarily at the latter place.

He and Garrett and Uncle Billy were making the best of their way home from supper at the "Shoo Fly" late one evening, and had started to cut across lots after passing the "Plaza."

There were no fences, no covers—nothing at all to prevent pedestrians from falling into some one of the innumerable abandoned wells which were to be met with in every block, and it need surprise no one to be told that in the heat of argument about some trivial matter the worthy medical officer, who was walking in the middle, fell down plump some fifteen or twenty feet, landing in a more or less bruised condition upon a pile of adobes and pieces of rock at the bottom.

Garrett and his elderly companion lurched against each other and continued the discussion, oblivious of the withdrawal of