Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/42

 Felmer was a first-class shot, and we naturally supposed that the joke would be on the deluded savage who might sneak down to ride away with such a crow-bait, and would become the mark for an unerring rifle. But it was not so to be. The wretched quadruped had his shoes pulled off, and was then turned loose in alfalfa and young barley, to his evident enjoyment and benefit. Some time had passed, and we had almost forgotten to twit Felmer about his bargain. It's a very thin joke that cannot be made to last five or six weeks in such a secluded spot as Old Camp Grant, and, for that reason, at least a month must have elapsed when, one bright Sunday afternoon, Felmer was rudely aroused from his siesta by the noise of guns and the voices of his Mexican herders crying: "Apaches! Apaches!" And there they were, sure enough, and on top of that sick, broken-down cast-off of the quartermaster's department—three of them, each as big as the side of a house, and poor Joe so dazed that for several minutes he couldn't fire a shot.

The two bucks in front were kicking their heels into the mule's ribs, and the man in rear had passed a hair lariat under the mule's tail, and was sawing away for dear life. And the mule? Well, the mule wasn't idle by any means, but putting in his best licks in getting over the ground, jumping "arroyos" and rocks, charging into and over nopals and chollas and mesquite, and fast leaving behind him the valley of the San Pedro, and getting into the foot-hills of the Pinaleno Range.