I Could Not Sleep That
Night Because Of Horrible Dreams - Dreams Of Long, Yellow Snakes With
Fiery Eyes Crawling Through Green Grass.
I have thought so many times
since of how perfectly maddening it must have been to those horse
thieves to have twenty-two nice fat mules and three horses brought
almost within the shadow of their very own stockade, and yet have it
so impossible to gather them in!
At the appointed time the buckskin-man appeared the following morning
on a beautiful chestnut horse with fancy bridle and Mexican saddle,
and with him came a friend, his "pal" he told Faye, who was much older
and was a sullen, villainous-looking man. Both were armed with rifles
and pistols, but there was nothing remarkable in that; in this country
it is a necessity. We started off very much as usual, except that Faye
kept rather close to the "pal," which left Bettie and me alone most of
the time, just a little at one side. I noticed that directly back of
the horse thieves walked a soldier, armed with rifle and pistol, and
Faye told me that night that he was one of the best sharpshooters in
the Army, and that he was back of those men with orders to shoot them
down like dogs if they made one treacherous move. The buckskin man was
one of the most graceful riders I ever saw, and evidently loved his
fine mount, as I saw him stroke his neck several times - and the man
himself was certainly handsome.
Faye had told me that I must not question anything he might tell me to
do, so after we had crossed the valley and gone up the mountains a
little distance he called to me in a voice unnecessarily loud, that I
must be tired riding so far, and had better get in the ambulance for a
while. I immediately dismounted, and giving the bridle rein to a
soldier, I waited for the ambulance to come up. As I got in, I felt
that perhaps I was doing the first act in an awful tragedy. The
horsemen and wagons had stopped during the minute or two I was getting
in, but I saw soldiers moving about, and just as soon as I was seated
I looked out to see what was going on.
A splendid old sergeant was going to the front with four soldiers,
whom I knew were men to be trusted, each one with rifle, bayonet, and
belt full of cartridges, and then I saw that some of the plans for
that day's trip had not been told to me. The men were placed in front
of everyone, four abreast, and Faye at once told the thieves that
under no conditions must one ever get in front of the advance guard.
How they must have hated it all - four drilled soldiers in front of
them and a sharpshooter back of them, and all the time treated by Faye
as honored guests!
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