Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/46

 of our best runners, and by all odds the best swimmer in the cool, deep pools which the San Pedro formed where it came up out of the sands a short distance below the officers' quarters, and where we often bathed in the early evening hours, with some one of the party on guard, because the lurking Apaches were always a standing menace in that part of Arizona.

I do not know what has become of Speedy. He was an exceptionally good man in many ways, and if not well educated, made up in native intelligence what others more fortunate get from books. From a Yankee father he inherited the Maine shrewdness in money matters and a keenness in seeing the best points in a bargain. A Spanish mother endowed him with a fund of gentle politeness and good manners.

When he came to bid me good-by and tell me that he had opened a "Monte Pio," or pawnbroker's shop, in Tucson, I ventured to give him a little good advice.

"You must be careful of your money, Speedy. Pawnbroking is a risky business. You'll be likely to have a great deal of unsalable stuff left on your hands, and it don't look to me as if five per cent. was enough interest to charge. The laws of New York, I believe, allow one to charge twenty per cent. per annum."

"Cap., what's per annum?"

"Why, every year, of course."

"Oh, but you see mine is five per cent. a week."

Speedy was the only man I ever knew who had really seen a ghost. As he described it to us, it had much the appearance of a "human," and was mounted on a pretty good specimen of a Sonora plug, and was arrayed in a suit of white canvas, with white helmet, green veil, blue goggles, and red side whiskers. It didn't say a word to my friend, but gave him a decidedly cold stare, which was all that Speedy cared to wait for before he broke for the brush. A hundred yards or so in rear there was a train of pack mules, laden with cot frames, bath-tubs, hat boxes, and other trumpery, which may or may not have had something to do with the ghost in advance. Speedy and his mule were too agitated to stop to ask questions, and continued on into Hermosillo.

Information received about this time from Sonora reported that an English "lud" was "roughing it" in and about the Yaqui country, and it is just possible that he could have given