"Very good," said Stratford; and he began the descent of the trackless mountainside. He did not go directly down, but wound along in a serpentine way among the rocks, low-growing bushes, and over occasional stretches of coarse grass, which would sometimes have proved difficult of passage had not the yielding_mold given a sure foothold to the horse. Gay was very merry over the varied contingencies of this novel drive, although she could not refrain from some starts and exclamations when they found themselves going straight down some short steep incline with the horse so far beneath the buggy that there seemed to be danger that the vehicle with its occupants would double over upon the steed. Once when the horse, thoroughly well trained in the business of holding back, actually sat down on his haunches, Gay gave a little cry and seized Stratford by the arm. "Oh!" she exclaimed, instantly relinquishing her hold, "I must not do that or I shall hinder your driving."

Stratford was not afraid of any interference with his driving, but he was a conscientious man, and essayed no unnecessary slopes for the purpose of encouraging an intuitive reliance.

When they reached the valley, and had struck the wood-road, now almost overgrown, which led through a narrow stretch of forest, Gay gave a sigh of relief.

"I can't deny," she said, "that it is a comfort to feel that the buggy-wheels and the horse's feet are on a level with each other. But I would not for anything have missed that mountain drive! It had more of delightful adventure about it than anything that ever happened to me. But I would not have allowed any other man in the world to drive me where you drove me."

"And let me say to you," said Stratford, turning towards her, "that I know no other woman than yourself whom I could have trusted to be brave enough to trust me absolutely and entirely."

"I like to hear you say that," said Gay, with an expression that could not be mistaken for anything else than honest earnestness.

So far, although these two had spent a good part of the afternoon together, they had had but little conversation except that which had been called forth by the unusual character of the surrounding circumstances, and this condition of things Stratford thought had lasted quite long enough. He certainly did not regret the circumstances, because they had pleased Gay, and had brought out in a strong light some interesting points in her disposition. But now he was glad that the rest of their trip would be uneventful.

"You are pleased, then," Stratford said, "that I think well of you?"

"Indeed I am!" exclaimed Gay. "I am a great deal more than pleased. Do you know," she continued, "that it seems very strange, in fact, it is absolutely funny, when I think in what a different way I regard you now from that in which I looked upon you when I first knew you. I don't mind telling you that I liked you ever so much from the first day. Then I used to wish that you were my father, and to think that it would be perfectly charming to have such a father, entirely forgetting that you did not begin to be old enough to be a father to me. After that I wished you were my brother. But that did not last very long, for if you analyze the relationship of a brother, which I have done, having a very good brother who is a professor in a college out West, you will find that he is wanting in some of the varied qualities of companionship; at least that is what I discover in my one specimen. Now in you I find no want of the kind."

"Am I to understand," said Stratford, "that you have analyzed my character ? " "Indeed I have," she replied. "In fact, I have done so two or three times."

"And what is the result?" he asked. "And in what light do you now regard me?"

"The result is," said Gay, "that it is impossible to place you in any class. I tried it and utterly failed. So I am going to let you stand all alone, by yourself.”

Whatever of approbation there was in Gay's words or manner, there was nothing to indicate that she had ever thought of putting him into that class of men, who, not being fathers or brothers, might, upon occasion, make love.

"Do you analyze everybody?" he asked. "Oh, no indeed!" said Gay promptly. "Only a very few persons. You more than anybody else."

"Am I then so very difficult to understand?"

"I do not think you would have been," said Gay, "if I had known you a long time, and had, in a manner, grown up with you; but, you see, you came upon me so suddenly and swiftly, and I have known you so fast, if you understand that, that I had to look very closely into the matter in order to comprehend it all." "And do you comprehend it?" he asked. "I think so," said Gay. "And are you satisfied?" "Perfectly," she answered.

Stratford was not perfectly satisfied. "I wish," said he, "that I could have been put among those persons who do not need to be analyzed."

Gay turned upon him suddenly. There was a little frown upon her brow, but when she spoke she could not help smiling. "You are

dreadfully grasping," she said. "Here I have been putting you up higher and higher, on a loftier pedestal every time, and yet you are not satisfied."

"Pardon me," said Stratford, "but if you had ever analyzed yourself you would not be surprised that I am hard to satisfy."

Gay.

"Now I wonder what that means!" said "Are you going on developing and changing, so that I shall have to analyze you again?"

"I hope you will not do it," he answered quickly, "if there is any danger of my being placed on a lower pedestal, or perhaps being toppled over altogether."

"Don't you be afraid of that," said Gay, involuntarily laying her hand upon his arm. "And I'll tell you one way in which I think of you. I have a feeling that if you were to ask me to do anything I should instantly go and do it. What do you think of that, sir?" A thought had come with much promptness to Stratford, and he had said to himself that if he could thoroughly believe what Gay had said, he would impress the seal of happiness and success upon her life by instantly demanding that she should give up the man who would be to her like a worm at the root of all to which her ardent young soul looked forward. But he did not believe her, at least to such an extent, and he kept this thought to himself.

"You do me the greatest honor," he said, "by placing such trust in me; and I wish I could tell you to do something which would make you happy for the rest of your days."

Gay turned and looked at him with an expression of inquiry which seemed somewhat foreign to her face, for her desires to know were generally promptly expressed in words. But now she said nothing, and, turning again from Stratford, sat quietly looking out before her.

They had now crossed the valley and had reached the top of the rounded hill upon the other side. The day was drawing to a close, and in this exposed position the evening wind came fresh and cool upon them. Gay's dress was thin, and Stratford, without remark upon the subject, stooped forward, and drew from under the seat a light woolen lap-robe which had hitherto been unneeded. This he placed around Gay's shoulders, carefully arranging it so as to protect her well from the somewhat chilly mountain breeze.

"Thank you," said Gay. And then she went on with her thinking.

Among the many things which came into the mind of Stratford on their homeward road was the conviction that this mountain drive had occupied more time than he had expected it would, and that Crisman must have arrived at least an hour ago at Mrs. Justin's house. He wondered if Gay was thinking about this, but, if so, she certainly manifested no anxiety upon the subject. Comfortably wrapped up, with her hands folded under her improvised shawl, she nestled quietly in her corner of the buggy as if she were perfectly satisfied with everything that was.

Frank R. Stockton.

LOCO.

A

MONG the few great Indian tribes that cover vast areas of land and are so numerous in population that they are divided into many petty clans, we find the Apaches of the south-western part of our country holding no small place.

The Apaches are divided into no fewer than seven principal clans, which acknowledge no common chief or chiefs, and have but little sympathy in common, even warring against one another under the stimulus of bribes, the pitiful pay of a soldier often being sufficient to ally them with their common enemy, the white men, against any of their brothers in blood.

The word Apache, converted back into its own language, signifies people, and is synony

mous with many tribal names among savage nations,-as Lacotah or Dakotah with the Sioux, and Innuit with the Eskimo.

The first conquest of the Apaches by civilization, imperfect as the conquest was, came from the inroads of the Spaniards who had overrun old Mexico. It was more of a peaceful conquest than those old Castilians were wont to make, much of it being, through the medium of the Spanish Jesuits, of a religious nature, and so early was this conquest that Santa Fe and Albuquerque, long considered frontier posts, claim priority over St. Augustine, the first city of the Atlantic. One Cabeça de Vaca appears to have been their first military conqueror, and they seem fortunate that in him there did not exist in cruelty and tyranny another Cortés or Pizarro. Nor is this comparison wholly our own, for it is affirmed that the Apaches, singular as it may seem, know of the name and doings of Hernando Cortés, probably through intertribal tradition, and picture him

alongside of de Vaca much to the detriment of the former. In fact, it was explained to me that Cabeça de Vaca, meaning a cow's head, was but the Spanish translation of the Apaches' name for the first soldier among them, and was thus given because the feast of the cow's head was then held in reverential esteem.

From Spanish rule, with the liberation of Mexico, they passed under the new government, and after the Mexican war with us the resulting boundary ran ruthlessly through the heart of their country, paying less attention to them than to the barren lands which it divided, and which for untold ages had been their home. Nor did the thin sabulous strip known as the "Gadsden Purchase" do more than throw the preponderance of the great tribe upon our shoulders.

small way upon their success in raids upon the white people; and from this standpoint they oscillated in friendship or enmity from one side of the border to the other with an alacrity that should rank them high among the diplomates of fame. On one side hung high the fair flag of truce, and on the other, as at half-mast, the black standard of no quarter; and with such deadly and cruel effect was this alternation made, that we saw the humiliating spectacle of two civilized nations, claiming rank among the nations of the world, sitting in solemn conclave to devise a common plan that would annihilate a batch of breechclouted bandits whose whole numbers would not have made the hundredth city in either land, and to do this surrendering the highest prerogative of national sovereignty- the sacredness of their soil to the soldiery of the other. Once Victorio, a presumptuous and daring chief of Apache land, dared to flaunt the three hawk feathers of his lance in the faces of the eagles of both the North and South; and all conversant with Indian history know how that chief met his tragic death, after being driven weary, exhausted, and hungry across the boundary line into the arms of the Mexican soldiery, where he and the greater part of

BONITO.

his band were swept from the face of the earth, Victorio dying fearlessly at the front as became a chief.

My first visit to Apache land was in 1871. Then the favorite route to Arizona was to round Cape St. Lucas of Lower California, sail through the gulf until the mouth of the Colorado was reached, up which shallow river boats plied and distributed passengers for the few river villages and inland points where a scanty population wrested a precarious existence. From the mouth of the Colorado River it was deemed necessary to send through a courier with dispatches to Fort Yuma, distant ninety miles, I believe, by the trail. Three long days we were steaming up the swift, shallow, and tortuous river, and when we did finally reach Yuma we found that our courier, a lithe, active, young Yuma Apache, had slipped across the trail in thirteen hours, or at the rate of about seven miles an hour the whole distance. Dressed in the uniform that their Creator issued to them, with perchance a dangling necklace or armlet of beads to ornament it, and a homeopathic breech-clout, these sinewy deer-hounds of the desert, with fists clinched across their breasts, with a mouth full of messages, will keep up a "dog-trot," hour in and hour out, for a time only limited by that which is necessary to reach their objective point, how

APACHE RUNNERS.

ever far it may be away,- and this too across valleys carpeted with cactus, and hills and mountains beset with flinty footings. Some of their running feats of endurance are marvelous to relate, and are oftentimes made in a withering heat that makes life in the open field burdensome almost beyond bearing to the white man.

These Yuma Apaches are the most westerly of the family, living along the Colorado River in its lower part in Arizona, while on the upper part is found the Mojave branch, two sub-clans almost identical in many characteristics. They alone of all the great Apache tribe cremate their dead, a cremation so effectual that it does not cease with the body, but includes all the personal effects, however valuable, even to their wick-eups (the universal Arizona expression for their rude houses).

OLDEST APACHE ON THE RESERVATION.

These wickeups (as I notice the spelling in an Arizona journal) are made of a circular row of long lithe brush, bent down toward the center and interwoven into a rough semi-globular shape, not unlike the half of an eggshell on its rim. Over this is thrown other brush and a light sprinkling of dirt as a protection from the sun's rays. When these materials are scarce, mud is used as a substitute, the wealthier class being sometimes supplied with a piece of canvas. Their more permanent abodes are now and then made by digging into a steep dirt bank at an expenditure of muscular energy that one would hardly think possible among any band of Indians showing such squalor and laziness in every other department of life.

The dialectic difference in the Yuma and Mojave Apache pronunciation of their common language is not noticeably great, but these again, on the contrary, differ from all the other Apache tribes to an extent apparent to persons who make no profession to linguistics. Theirs are the harshest and abound the most in guttural inflections of all the dialects of this desert tribe, some of which are toned down to a softness quite pleasant to the ear, although these extremes readily comprehend each other.

Once the Yuma and Mojave bands held high rank as warriors among the Apache tribe, but their country being easy of access, they were the first to succumb to civilization, and have gone a long way on that road of extinction which is marked out to those peculiarly tempered savages who can absorb only