Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/203

 *lent French and Spanish, and what had to my ears the sound of pretty good Italian, and I know too that he was hospitable to a fault, and not afraid of man or devil. Three bullet wounds, received in three different fights with the Apaches, attested his grit, although they might not be accepted as equally conclusive evidence of good judgment. The site of his "location" was in the midst of the most uncompromising piece of desert in a region which boasts of possessing more desert land than any other territory in the Union. The surrounding hills and mesas yielded a perennial crop of cactus, and little of anything else.

The dwelling itself was nothing but a "ramada," a term which has already been defined as a roof of branches; the walls were of rough, unplastered wattle work, of the thorny branches of the ironwood, no thicker than a man's finger, which were lashed by thongs of raw-hide to horizontal slats of cottonwood; the floor of the bare earth, of course—that almost went without saying in those days—and the furniture rather too simple and meagre even for Carthusians. As I recall the place to mind, there appears the long, unpainted table of pine, which served for meals or gambling, or the rare occasions when any one took into his head the notion to write a letter. This room constituted the ranch in its entirety. Along the sides were scattered piles of blankets, which about midnight were spread out as couches for tired laborers or travellers. At one extremity, a meagre array of Dutch ovens, flat-irons, and frying-pans revealed the "kitchen," presided over by a hirsute, husky-voiced gnome, half Vulcan, half Centaur, who, immersed for most of the day in the mysteries of the larder, at stated intervals broke the stillness with the hoarse command: "Hash pile! Come a' runnin'!" There is hardly any use to describe the rifles, pistols, belts of ammunition, saddles, spurs, and whips, which lined the walls, and covered the joists and cross-beams; they were just as much part and parcel of the establishment as the dogs and ponies were. To keep out the sand-laden wind, which blew fiercely down from the north when it wasn't blowing down with equal fierceness from the south, or the west, or the east, strips of canvas or gunny-sacking were tacked on the inner side of the cactus branches.

My first visit to this Elysium was made about midnight, and I remember that the meal served up was unique if not absolutely paralyzing on the score of originality. There was a great plenty