Stories from Everybody's Magazine

Part 4 out of 8

My dear sir, those early New Englanders were in trade schools
from the time they began to crawl on the floor among their
mothers' looms and spinning-wheels. There was hardly a home in
early New England that didn't give a large number of technical
courses in which men and women were always teaching by doing, and
the boys and girls were always learning by imitating.

The facts about this are so simple and so familiar that we don't
stop to think of their meaning. When in the spring the wood-ashes
from the winter fires were poured into the lye-barrel, and water
was poured in with them, and the lye began to trickle out from
the bottom of the barrel, and the winter's savings of grease were
brought out, and the grease and the lye were boiled together in
the big kettle, and mother had finished making the family's
supply of soap for another year, the children had taken not only
a little lesson in industriousness, by helping to make the soap,
but a little lesson in industry, too, by observing the technique
and organization of the soap business from start to finish. A boy
from that family, even if he never learned to read or write,
might some day have some IDEAS about soap.

The curriculum of an old New England home, so far as presided
over by the wife, may be incompletely suggested as follows:

(N. B. The reader will note the inappropriateness of
congratulating the daughters of that home on their not wanting a
job. They had it.)

VEGETABLES DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Gardening.
"In March and in April, from morning to night,
In sowing and setting good housewives delight."

2. A course in Medicinal Herbs. Borage, fennel, wild tansy,
wormwood, etc. Methods of distillation. Aqua composita, barberry
conserve, electuaries, salves, and ointments. A most important
course for every housewife.

"A speedy and a sovereign remedy,
The bitter wormwood, sage and
marigold."--FLETCHER: "The Faithful Shepherdess."

3. A course in Pickling. In this course pretty nearly everything
will be pickled, down to nasturtium-buds and radish-pods.

PACKING-HOUSE DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Salting Meat in the "powdering" tub.

2. A course in Smoking Hams and Bacons.

3. A course in Pickling Pig's feet and Ears.

4. A course in Headcheese and Sausages.

LIQUOR DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Beer. The making of wort out of barley. The making
of harm out of hops. The fermenting of the two together in
barrels.

(This course is not so much given now in New England, but it is
an immemorial heritage of the female sex. Gervayse Markham, in
his standard book, "Instructions to a Good Housewife," says about
beer: "It is the work and care of woman, for it is a house-work.
The man ought only to bring in the grain.")

2. A course in Light Drinks, such as Elderberry Wine.

CREAMERY DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Making Butter.

2. A course in Making Cheese, Curdling, breaking curds in basket,
shaping in cheese press, turning and rubbing cheese on cheese
ladder.

CLEANING DEPARTMENT

1. A course in Soapmaking.

2. A course in Making Brooms out of Guinea-wheat Straw.

3. A course in Starch making.

4. A course in Cleaning.

(This last course is very simple. Having manufactured the things
to wash and sweep with, the mere washing and sweeping won't take
long.)

FRUIT DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Preserving--everything that can't be pickled.

BREAKFAST FOOD DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Mush and forty kinds of Bread--Rhineinjun
(sometimes called Rye and Indian), bun, bannock, jannock, rusk,
etc., etc.

LIGHTING DEPARTMENT.

1. A course in Dips. The melting of tallow or bayberries. The
twisting of wicks. The attaching of wicks to rods. The dipping of
them into the melted mass in the kettle. Patience in keeping on
dipping them.

(Pupils taking this course are required to report each morning at
five o'clock.)

2. A course in Wax Candles. The use of molds.

These departments might give a girl a pretty fair education of
the hand and a pretty fair acquaintance with the technique and
organization of the working world; but we haven't yet mentioned
the biggest and hardest department of all.

Before mentioning it, we call attention to a picture reproduced
in this article from a book published in the year 1493. The book
was a French translation of Boccaccio's collection of stories
called "Noble Women." The picture shows a woolen mill being
operated in the grounds of a palace by a queen and her
ladies-in-waiting. It summons back the days when even the
daughters of kings and nobles could not help acquiring a
knowledge of the working world, because they were in it. One of
the ladies in-waiting is straightening out the tangled strands of
wool with carding-combs. The other has taken the combed and
straightened strands and is spinning them into yarn. The queen,
being the boss, has the best job. She is weaving the yarn into
cloth on a loom.

The daughters of the Emperor Charlemagne, who was a very rich
man, learned how to card and spin and weave. Noble women had to
boss all that kind of thing on their estates. They lived in the
very midst of Industry, of Business.

So it was with those early New England women. And therefore,
whether well-to-do or indigent, they passed on to their sons as
well as to their daughters a steady daily lesson in the world's
work. The most intelligent mother in the United States to-day,
let her be kindergartner and psychologist and
child-study-specialist as much as she pleases, cannot give her
children that broad early view of the organization of life. The
only place where her children can get it now is in the school.

On the first of January of this year Mrs. Ella Flagg Young,
superintendent of schools in Chicago, took algebra out of the
eighth grade of the elementary schools, and, in its place,
inserted a course on Chicago. Large parts of what was once the
Home are now spread out through the Community. The new course
will teach the life of the community, its activities and
opportunities, civic, aesthetic, industrial. Such a course is
nothing but Home Training for the enlarged Home.

But we must go back for a moment to that biggest and hardest
department of all in the old homes of New England.

"Deceit, weeping, spinning, God hath give
To women kindly that they may live,"

said Chaucer in a teasing mood.

But spinning was a very small part of the Department of Textiles.
We forbear to dilate on the courses of instruction which that
department offered. We confine ourselves to observing that:

First. In the Sub-Department of Flax, after heckling that flax
with combs of increasing degrees of fineness till the fibers lay
pretty straight; after spinning it into yarn on her
spinning-wheel; after reeling the yarn off into skeins; after
"bucking" the skeins in hot lye through many changes of water;
and after using shuttle and loom to weave the stuff into cloth,
the home woman of those days had to accomplish some twenty
subsequent processes of bucking, rinsing, possing, drying, and
bleaching before the cloth was ready for use.

Second. In the Sub-Department of Wool, in addition to being
carders, spinners, and weavers, women were dyers, handling all
the color resources of the times, boiling poke-berries in alum to
get a crimson, using sassafras for a yellow or an orange, and
producing a black by boiling the fabric with field-sorrel and
then boiling it again with logwood and copperas.

We pass over, as trivial, the making of flax and wool stuffs into
articles of actual use. We say nothing about the transformation
of cloth into clothes, table-covers, napkins; nothing about the
weaving of yarn on little lap looms into the narrow fabrics for
hair-laces, glove-ties, belts, garters, and hat-bands; nothing
about the incessant knitting of yarn into mittens and stockings;
nothing about a host of other details. They were for idle
moments.

Sweet domestic days, when girls stayed at home and helped their
mothers and let father support the family!

It seems as if even Rip Van Winkle, in his most shiftless mood,
ought to have been able to support a large number of daughters
under such conditions.

Does it astonish you that they matured young? There, all about
them, from babyhood, were the basic processes by which the world
was sheltered, clothed, and fed. Those processes were numerous
but simple. Boys and girls observed them, absorbed them, through
eyes, through finger-tips, all through those early years when
eyes and finger-tips are the nourishing points of the intellect.

John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony,
was married at seventeen. His parents were not only willing, but
aiding and abetting. They considered him a man.

Mercy Otis, in Revolutionary days, in Massachusetts, the wife of
the patriot, James Warren, and Abigail Smith, the wife of the
future president, John Adams, both married before twenty. A study
of their lives will show that at that age they were mature.

To-day, in Boston, a woman of twenty is considered so immature
that many of the hospitals will not admit her even to her
preliminary training for the trade of nurse till she has added at
least three years more to her mental development.

Who has thus prolonged infancy; who has thus postponed maturity?
No individual.

Science has done part of it.

By the invention of power-driven machines and by the distribution
of the compact industries of the home through the scattered,
innumerable business enterprises of the community, Science has
given us, in place of a simple and near world, a complicated and
distant one. It takes us longer to learn it.

Simultaneously, by research and also by the use of the
printing-press, the locomotive, and the telegraph wire (which
speed up the production as well as the dissemination of
knowledge), Science has brought forth, in every field of human
interest and of human value, a mass of facts and of principles so
enormous and so important that the labors of our predecessors on
this planet overwhelm us, and we grow to our full physical
development long before we have caught up, in any degree, with
the previous experience of the race. And till we have done that,
to some degree, we are not mature.

With this postponement of personal maturity, there is an even
greater postponement of what might be called "technical"
maturity. The real mastery of a real technique takes longer and
longer. The teacher must not only go to college but must do
graduate work. The young doctor, after he finishes college and
medical school, is found as an interne in hospitals, as an
assistant to specialists, as a traveler through European
lecture-rooms. The young engineer, the young architect, the young
specialist of every sort, finds his period of preparation
steadily extending before him.

What is left undone by Science in keeping us immature is finally
accomplished by System.

The world is getting organized. Except in some of the professions
(and often even in them) we most of us start in on our life work
at some small subdivided job in a large organization of people.
The work of the organization is so systematized as to concentrate
responsibility and remuneration toward the top. In time, from job
to job, up an ascent which grows longer as the organization grows
bigger, we achieve responsibility. Till we do, we discharge minor
duties for minimum pay.

This is just as true of the boy from a "middle class" family as
it is of the boy from a "working class" family. There follows,
however, a most important difference between them. The "middle
class" boy will have to work longer and go farther than the
"working class" boy in order to rise to the financial standards
of his class. In this respect the "working class" boy will be a
man, ready for marriage, long before his "middle class"
fellow-worker.

It is among "middle class" boys, then, that the period of infancy
is most prolonged. They get a good deal of schooling. The stores
of human knowledge are put in their hands, to some extent, and,
to some extent, they catch up with the experience of the race.
This takes a longer and longer effort, particularly if real
mastery of any real technique is attempted. Then, on going to
work, they find that System, supplementing Science, has perfected
such an organization of the world of work that they must stay for
quite a while in the ranks of the organization. They will not
soon be earning what is regarded among their friends as a
marrying income. In money, as well as in mind, they approach
marriage with increasing tardiness. Their prolonged infancy is
financial, as well as mental.

They say that college girls marry late. It is true enough. But it
isn't properly stated.

The girls in the kind of family which college girls come from
marry late.

It can be definitively established by statistics here
considerately omitted that the age of marriage of college girls
is no later than the age of marriage of their non-college sisters
and acquaintances.

College is not a cause. It is a symptom.

Out of the prolongation of infancy in the "middle class" has come
the conquest by women of the intellectual freedom of the world.

It was by no vagary of chance that the demand of women for the
higher education came simultaneously with the change from the old
industrial home to the new, more purely domestic home. (It may be
a higher, nobler type of home. We are not here discussing that
point.)

As the home ceased to provide its daughters with adequate
education and with adequate employment, what was their situation?
In the "working class" it was simply this: That they went into
factories and that their sweethearts married them somewhat later
than had previously been the case, because their share as wives
in the support of the family was increasingly smaller. But the
"working class" man soon reaches his maximum earning capacity in
his craft and stays there. His financial infancy is short,
compared with that of the "middle class" man. He therefore
marries younger.

In the "middle class," however, Science and System began to
lengthen the mental and financial infancy of the men to such an
extent that the "old maid" of twenty-three became common. What
were the girls in the "middle class" to do while the boys were
growing up to be men, in mind and in money?

The father of Frederick the Great used to go about his realm with
a stick, and when he saw a woman in the street he would shake the
stick at her and say "Go back into the house. An honest woman
keeps indoors."

Probably quite sensible. When she went indoors, she went in to a
job. The "middle class" daughter of to-day, if her mother is
living and housekeeping, goes indoors into a vacuum.

Out of that vacuum came the explosion which created the first
woman's colleges.

There was plenty of sentiment in the explosion. That was the
splendid, blinding part of it. That was the part of it which even
to-day makes us veil our eves before the nobility of such women
as Emma Willard and Mary Lyon. They made Troy Female Seminary in
the twenties and Mount Holyoke in the thirties in the image of
the aspirations, as well as in the image of the needs, of the
women of the times.

But the needs were there, the need to be something, the need to
do something, self-respecting, self supporting. The existence of
these needs was clearly revealed in the fact that from the early
women's colleges and from the early coeducational universities
there at once issued a large supply of teachers.

This goes back to the fountainhead of the higher education of
women in this country. Emma Willard, even before she founded Troy
Female Seminary, back in the days when she was running her school
in Middlebury, Connecticut, was training young women to TEACH,
and was acquiring her claim (which she herself subsequently
urged) to being regarded as the organizer of the first normal
school in the United States.

From that time to this most college women have taught school
before getting married. The higher education of women has been,
in economic effect, a trade school for training women for the
trade of teacher.

But isn't it the purpose of the colleges to avoid training their
pupils for specific occupations? Isn't it their purpose to give
their pupils discipline and culture, pure and broad, unaffected
by commercial intention? Isn't that what colleges are, and ought
to be, for?

On the shore of this vast and violent controversy we discreetly
pause and stealthily sidle off, taking note of just three reefs
of solid fact which unsubmergably jut out above the surface of
the raging waters.

First. The colleges instruct their pupils in the subjects which
those pupils subsequently teach.

Second. The pupils specialize in the subjects which they are
going to teach.

Third. The colleges, besides providing the future teachers with
subjects, almost always offer to provide them with instruction in
the principles of education, and frequently offer to provide them
with instruction in the very technique of classroom work.

Our verdict, therefore, which we hope will be satisfactory to
counsel on both sides, is that the college is by no means a trade
school, but that if the woman who is going to earn her living
will choose the one trade of teaching, she can almost always get
a pretty fair trade training by going to college.

We are more interested in observing that the amount of trade
training which a teacher is expected to take is increasing year
by year. In teaching, as in other trades, the period and scope of
preliminary preparation continue to expand.

In the last calendar of Bryn Mawr College, the Department of
Education, in announcing its courses, makes the following
common-sense remarks:

"It is the purpose of the department to offer to students
intending to become teachers an opportunity to obtain a technical
preparation for their profession. Hitherto practical training has
been thought necessary for teachers of primary schools only, but
similar training is very desirable for teachers in high schools
and colleges also. Indeed, it is already becoming increasingly
difficult for college graduates without practical and theoretical
pedagogical knowledge to secure good positions. In addition to
the lectures open to undergraduates, courses will be organized
for graduate students only, conducted with special reference to
preparation for the headship and superintendence of schools."

But the teaching trade is getting choked. There is too much
supply. Girls are going to college in hordes. Graduating from
college, looking for work, there is usually just one kind of work
toward which they are mentally alert. Their college experience
has seldom roused their minds toward any other kind of work. They
start to teach. They drug the market. And so the teaching trade,
the great occupation of unmarried "middle class" women, ceases to
be able to provide those women, as a class, with an adequate
field of employment.

It is a turning point in the economic history of the class.

At the 1909 annual convention of the Association of Collegiate
Alumnae, in Cincinnati, Miss Susan Kingsbury (acting for a
committee of which Mrs. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and Miss Breckenridge, of the University of
Chicago, were members) read a real essay on "The Economic
Efficiency of College Women."

This essay was not written till detailed reports on income and
expenditure from 377 self-supporting college graduates had been
got together.

Out of these 377 there were 317 who were teachers. There were 183
who had followed up their regular college course with from one to
eight years of graduate study. The capital invested in education
was from $2500 to $3500 and often amounted to $7000 because of
advanced work and travel. After all this preparation, the average
income achieved may be sufficiently disclosed in the one fact
that, among those graduates who had been at work for from six to
eight years, more than seventy per cent. were still earning less
than $1100.

After drawing a complete statistical picture of the case, Miss
Kingsbury concluded with certain questions and recommendations,
here condensed, which show the new economic needs of "middle
class" women knocking at the door of present "middle class"
education:

"Should not the over-supply of teachers be reduced by directing
many of our graduates into other pursuits than teaching? This
will place upon the college, just where the responsibility is
due, the obligation of discovering what those opportunities are
and what preparation should be given.

"This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a
sense of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to
their graduates, both social and economic, and should also
endeavor to influence our colleges through appointment
secretaries, to direct women, according to fitness, into other
lines than teaching.

"Should not courses be added to the college curriculum to give
women the fundamental principles in other professions, or lines
of industry or commerce, than teaching?

"May not required courses be added to the college curriculum to
inculcate business power and sense in all women?"

This philosophy seems to aim at making the modern school as
informative about modern industry as the primitive home was about
primitive industry. It seems to be the same educational
philosophy which produced the course on Chicago in the Chicago
elementary schools, which produced the Manhattan Trade School in
New York, which produced the School of Salesmanship at the
Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

At that Women's Educational and Industrial Union, at 264 Boylston
Street, you may see the evolution toward the age of trained women
proceeding at all levels of educational equipment.

There, before you, at one level, are the Trade School Shops--a
shop in hand-work and a shop in millinery. The pupils are
graduates of the Boston Trade School for Girls. They have had one
year of training. They are now taking another.

Florence Marshall made the Boston Trade School, with a committee
of women to help her. It has now been taken over by the public
authorities and merged into the public-school system. What looked
like a private fad has become a public function. The training of
women for self-support has been recognized as a duty of the
state.

The Trade School Shops at the Women's Educational and Industrial
Union were started for the express purpose of supplementing the
work of the Boston Trade School for Girls. One year was not
enough.

In the Trade School the prospective milliner had spent four
months on plain sewing, four months on summer hats, four months
on winter hats. She had also taken short courses in Personal
Hygiene, Business Forms, Spelling, Business English, Color
Design, Textiles, Industrial Conditions. These latter courses
were not, strictly speaking, "technical." They were "vocational."
They were in the "middle ground" between general and technical
training. They went beyond the general training of the elementary
schools and furnished the girl with the background of her future
vocation. But she often needed a little more of the foreground, a
little more of actual trade technique.

Thus does her education divide itself up into periods:--general,
vocational, technical.

The Trade School Shops are designed to give the girl her final
technical finish. They are really more like a factory than like a
school. Although the object of them is to convey a broad
instruction, the pupil gets wages, the stuff she makes is sold,
and the organization is that of a commercial establishment.

So, at the end of two years from the time she left the elementary
school, the young milliner is ready to go out into the world
organization. She is better fitted for her world than many a
college girl is for hers.

On a different level of educational equipment from the Trade
School Shops stands the School of Salesmanship. It gets many high
school girls and even, occasionally, a girl who has been to
college.

Finally, there is the Appointment Bureau, for college girls in
particular.

This Appointment Bureau is the most extraordinary employment
agency ever organized. Its object is not merely to introduce
existing clients to existing jobs (which is the proper normal
object of employment agencies), but to make forays into the wild
region of "occupations other than teaching," and find jobs, and
then find girls to fit those jobs. In other words, it is a kind
of "Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay" for the
purpose of exploring, surveying, developing, and settling the
region of "occupations other than teaching" on behalf of college
women.

It is managed by Miss Laura Drake Gill, President of the National
Association of Collegiate Alumnae and former Dean of Barnard
College. She is assisted by an Advisory Council of
representatives of near-by colleges--Radcliffe, Wellesley,
Simmons, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Brown.

There is no more important work being done for women to-day.

In connection with it, the Women's Educational and Industrial
Union has just issued a handbook of three hundred pages, entitled
"Vocations for the Trained Woman." It is an immense map of the
occupational world for "middle class" women, in which every bay
and headland, every lake and hill, is drawn to scale, from
Poultry Farming to Department Store Buying, from Lunch-Room
Management to State Child-Saving.

The responses made to this movement by certain educational
institutions (including particularly Simmons College) will be
observed in a future article. Just one response, from an
unexpected quarter, must be noticed here.

In a small Illinois city there is a woman's college, founded as a
Preparatory School in the forties and soon advanced to be a
Seminary, which, with Anna P. Sill for its first head, Jane
Addams for its best-known graduate, and Julia Gulliver for its
present president, has come to be a college of standing and of
leading. Only Troy Female Seminary and Mount Holyoke Seminary
preceded it, in date of foundation, among the important women's
institutions.

Rockford College is ranked to-day, by the reports of the United
States Commissioner of Education, in rank one--among the sixteen
best women's colleges in the United States. It hasn't risen to
that rank by any quick, money-spurred spurt. It brings with it
out of its far past all the traditions of that early struggle for
the higher education which, by friction, kindled among women so
flaming an enthusiasm for pure knowledge. It remains "collegiate"
in the old sense, quiet, cloistral, inhabiting old-fashioned
brick buildings in an old-fashioned large yard, looking still
like the Illinois of war times more than like the Illinois of the
twentieth century, retaining all the home ideals of those
times--a large interest in feminine accomplishments, a strict
regard for manners, a belief in the value of charm.

But here, in this quiet, non-metropolitan college, so really
"academic," so really--in the oldest-fashioned ways--"cultural,"
here is a two-year course in secretarial studies.

It is the first time (within our knowledge) that such a thing has
happened in any of the old first-rank women's colleges.

The course in secretarial studies at Rockford gives the pupil
English, Accounts, Commerce, Commercial Law, and Economic History
in her first year, and Political Science, English, and Economics
in her second year. Shorthand and Typewriting are required in
both years, and a few hours a week are reserved in each year for
elective courses to be chosen by the pupil among offerings in
French, German, Spanish, and History.

This is a notable concession not only to the increased need of
"middle class" women for "occupations other than teaching" but
also to the increased recognition of those other occupations as
being worthy of "cultural" training.

We keep moving forward into an era of trained women as well as
trained men. The extraordinary prolongation of mental and
financial infancy in the "middle class," bringing with it an
extraordinary postponement of marriage, makes this training
particularly necessary in the case of the women of that class.
But the contraction of the home as a field of adequate employment
for daughters exists everywhere, increasing the cost of living
for the family and driving daughters to supplementing the family
income.

What futility, as well as indignity, there is in the idea that
the query of support for women gets its full answer in a husband!

In the United States, in the year 1900, among women twenty years
of age and over, the married women numbered 13,400,000. The
unmarried women and the widows together numbered 6,900,000. For
every two women married there was one woman either single or
widowed.

If education does not (1) give women a comprehension of the
organization of the money-earning world, and (2) train them to
one of the techniques which lead to self-support in that world,
it is not education.

Just at this point, though, we encounter a curious conflict in
women's education. Just as we see their urgent need of a
money-earning technique, we simultaneously hear, coming from a
corner of the battlefield and swelling till it fills the air with
a nation-wide battle-cry, the sentiment: "The Home is also a
technique. All women must be trained to it."

At Rockford College, illustrating this conflict, there exists,
besides the course in Secretarial Studies, an equivalent course
in Home Economics.

In one photograph in this article we show the tiny children of
the Francis Parker School in Chicago taking their first lesson in
the technique of the home. In another picture we show the
post-graduate laboratory in the technique of the home at the
University of Illinois. And the space between the kindergarten
and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy threatens to get filled up
almost everywhere with courses in cooking, sewing, chemistry of
diet, composition of textiles, art of marketing, and other phases
of home management.

The money-earning world, a technique! The home, a technique! The
boy learns only one. Must the girl learn two, and be twice a
specialist?

(In the September number Mr. Hard will discuss The Home Economics
Movement.)

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VOL. XXIII September 1910 NO. 3

Law and Order

By O. HENRY

AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR MILLION," "THE HEART OF THE WEST," STRICTLY
BUSINESS," ETC.

I found myself in Texas a recently, revisiting old places and
vistas. At a sheep-ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I
stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged
into the business at hand, which happened to be that of dipping
the sheep.

Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism
that it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half
the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that
soon boils furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime,
and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches'
broth is strong enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino
herself.

Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with
cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their
hind legs and flung into the compound. After being thoroughly
ducked by means of a forked pole in the hands of a gentleman
detailed for that purpose, they are allowed to clamber up an
incline into a corral and dry or die, as the state of their
constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an able-bodied,
two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 volts of
kicking that he can send through your arm seventeen times before
you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he
may die instead of dry.

But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly
stretched ourselves on the bank of the near-by charco after the
dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the
earth after our muscle-racking labors. The flock was a small one,
and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from
the morral on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big
hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and
my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his force of Mexican
trabajadores.

While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of
horses' hoofs behind us. Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard
ten feet away from his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to
the approaching horseman. This attitude of a Texas ranchman was
so different from the old-time custom that I marveled.
Instinctively I turned to inspect the possible foe that menaced
us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might have
been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peaceably
along the road by the arroyo.

Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically
and sorrowfully.

"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look
around any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state,
unless something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable
to be only a bunch of tracts or a petition to sign against the
trusts. I never looked at that hombre that rode by; but I'll bet
a quart of sheep dip that he's some double-dyed son of a popgun
out rounding up prohibition votes."

"Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly. "Law and order is
the rule now in the South and the Southwest."

I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.

"Not that I----" I began, hastily.

"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly. "You know better. You've
lived here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we
had 'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against
murder before witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and
voting the Republican ticket. But how is it now? All we get is
orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up
there at Austin and don't do nothing but make laws against
kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I
reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after
work and light up and get an education and go to work and make
laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old days when law
and order meant what they said. A law was a law, and a order was
a order."

"But----" I began.

"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling,
to describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of
once in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a
six-shooter instead of a supreme court.

"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run
from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know,
there was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was
this: when a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the
newspaper reporters and only give them the number of cattle he
actually owned, they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought 'em
champagne wine and added in the amount of cattle he had stole,
they called him a king.

"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's
ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New
York or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a
squad to ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got
fair warning when they was coming, and drive the deer out of
their way. Among the bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a
number two shoe. That's all I noticed about her. But Luke must
have seen more, for he married her one day before the caballard
started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up a ranch of
his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose,
because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me
along with him because we was old friends and I handled cattle to
suit him.

"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or
wanted to see any of it--but three years afterward there was a
boy kid stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors
of Luke's ranch. I never had no use for kids; but it seems they
did. And I'm skipping over much what followed until one day out
to the ranch drives in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs.
Summers's friends from the East--a sister or so and two or three
men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one looked like
nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and spoke in a
tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.

"I'm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I
rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of
beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go
off. I waits at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on
private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some
orders to some of his Mexican-hands, and they go and hitch up
sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out comes one of the
sisters or so and some of the two or three men. But two of the
two or three men carries between 'em the corkscrew man who spoke
in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the wagons.
And they all might have been seen wending their way away.

" `Bud,' says Luke to me, `I want you to fix up a little and go
up to San Antone with me.'

" `Let me get on my Mexican spurs,' says I, `and I'm your
company.'

"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with
Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the
International, and hits San Antone in the morning. After
breakfast Luke steers me straight to the office of a lawyer. They
go in a room and talk and then come out.

" `Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers,' says the lawyer.
`I'll acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the
matter will be put through as promptly as possible. Law and order
reigns in this state as swift and sure as any in the country.'

" `I'll wait for the decree if it won't take over half an hour,'
says Luke.

" `Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. `Law must take its course.
Come back day after to-morrow at half-past nine.'

"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a
folded document. And Luke writes him out a check.

"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger
the size of a kitchen-door latch on it and says:

" `Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.'

" `Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,'
says I, `it looks to me like a split. Couldn't the lawyer man
have made it a strike for you?'

" `Bud,' says he, in a pained style, `that child is the one thing
I have to live for. SHE may go; but the boy is mine!--think of
it--I have cus-to-dy of the child.'

" `All right,' says I. `If it's the law, let's abide by it. But I
think,' says I, `that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary
clemency, or whatever is the legal term, in our case.'

"You see, I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of
having infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed
themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up.
But Luke was struck with that sort of parental foolishness that I
never could understand. All the way riding from the station back
to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and
laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me the sum
and substance of it. `Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,' says he.
`Don't forget it--cus-to-dy of the child.'

"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court
obviated, nolle prossed, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and
the kid was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had
started for San Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the
nearest station with her trunks and the youngster.

"Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its
emoluments.

" `It ain't possible, Bud,' says he, `for this to be. It's
contrary to law and order. It's wrote as plain as day
here--"Cus-to-dy of the child." '

" `There is what you might call a human leaning,' says I,
`towards smashing 'em both--not to mention the child.'

" `Judge Simmons,' goes on Luke, `is a incorporated officer of
the law. She can't take the boy away. He belongs to me by
statutes passed and approved by the state of Texas.'

" `And he's removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,'
says I, `by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us
praise the Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies----' I
begins; but I see Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he
calls for a fresh horse and starts back again for the station.

"He come back two weeks afterwards, not saying much.

" `We can't get the trail,' says he; `but we've done all the
telegraphing that the wires'll stand, and we've got these city
rangers they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime,
Bud,' says he, `we'll round up them cows on Brusby Creek, and
wait for the law to take its course.' And after that we never
alluded to allusions, as you might say.

"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke
was made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy.
Now, don't get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office
deputy doing sums in a book or mashing letters in a cider press.
In them days his job was to watch the back windows so nobody
didn't plug the sheriff in the rear while he was adding up
mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I had
qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada
County, and schoolbooks, and all the whisky you wanted, and the
government built its own battleships instead of collecting
nickels from the schoolchildren to do it with. And, as I say,
there was law and order instead of enactments and restrictions
such as disfigure our umpire state to-day. We had our office at
Bildad, the county seat, from which we emerged forth on necessary
occasions to soothe whatever fracases and unrest that might occur
in our jurisdiction.

"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff,
I want to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them
days. Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men
in the world. He never knew much book law, but he had the inner
emoluments of justice and mercy inculcated into his system. If a
respectable citizen shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned
out the safe in the express car, and Luke ever got hold of him,
he'd give the guilty party such a reprimand and a cussin' out
that he'd probable never do it again. But once let somebody steal
a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a wire fence, or
otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada County, Luke
and me would be on 'em with habeas corpuses and smokeless powder
and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.

"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat
sandwiches at the railroad station without being shot at or even
roped and drug about by the citizens of the town.

"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was
always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What
he wanted to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work
under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard. The one
main thing in his mind seemed to be the yard.

" `Bud,' he says to me, `by instinct and sentiment I'm a
contractor. I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be when I
get out of office.'

" `What kind of a contractor?' says I. `It sounds like a kind of
a business to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish
branches or work on a railroad, are you?'

" `You don't understand,' says Luke. `I'm tired of space and
horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I
want is reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around
it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to
whip-poor-wills. I'm a fool about whip-poor-wills,' says Luke.

"That's the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he'd
had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them
times on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I
wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of
lattice-work, he'd seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of
his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his
decree of court. But he wasn't a man you could ask about such
things as he didn't refer to in his own conversation.

"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff.
I've read in books about men that was disappointed in these
poetic and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies
renouncing truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into
some occupation like painting pictures or herding sheep or
science or teaching school--something to make 'em forget. Well, I
guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he couldn't paint
pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in
making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well
armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.

"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money
investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being
the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back
from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of
'em--four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade
up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about
seventeen or eighteen.

"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as
tenderfoots bring West with 'em; and you could see he was aching
to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the
little pearl-handled gun he had buckled around his waist.

"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see
that they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched
in front of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was
away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I
always looked after the law and order when he wasn't there.

"After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the
train was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to
shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might
endeavor to molest or come too near him. He was a good-looking
kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots--he didn't know a
law-and-order town when he saw it.

"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the
Crystal Palace chili-con-carne stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man
who liked to amuse himself; so he kind of herd-rides this
youngster, laughing at him, tickled to death. I was too far away
to hear, but the kid seems to mention some remarks to Pedro, and
Pedro goes up and slaps him about nine feet away, and laughs
harder than ever. And then the boy gets up quicker than he fell
and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and--bing! bing! bing!
Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions of
his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the
bullets hit. Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause worry at
close range.

"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I
goes up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away
his gun. But the first thing I knew that caballard of capitalists
makes a break for the train. One of 'em hesitates in front of me
for a second, and kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against
my chin, and I sort of laid down on the platform and took a nap.
I never was afraid of guns; but I don't want any person except a
barber to take liberties like that with my face again. When I
woke up, the whole outfit--train, boy, and all--was gone. I asked
about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover
provided his wounds didn't turn out to be fatal.

"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he
was mad all over.

" `Why'n't you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, `and have the
bunch arrested there?'

" `Oh, well,' says I, `I always did admire telegraphy; but
astronomy was what I had took up just then.' That capitalist sure
knew how to gesticulate with his hands.

"Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the
depot a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of
some hombre called Scudder in New York City.

" `Bud,' says Luke, `I'm going after that bunch. I'm going there
and get the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back.
I'm sheriff of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in
its precincts while I'm able to draw a gun. And I want you to go
with me. No Eastern Yankee can shoot up a respectable and
well-known citizen of Bildad, 'specially with a thirty-two
calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, `is one
of our most prominent citizens and business men. I'll appoint Sam
Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I'm away, and
you and me will take the 6.45 northbound to-morrow evening and
follow up this trail.'

" `I'm your company,' says I. `I never see this New York, but I'd
like to. But, Luke,' says I, `don't you have to have a
dispensation or a habeas corpus or something from the state, when
you reach out that far for rich men and malefactors?'

" `Did I have a requisition,' says Luke, `when I went over into
the Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for
holding up the International? Did me and you have a search
warrant or a posse comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican
cow thieves down in Hidalgo? It's my business to keep order in
Mojada County. '

" `And it's my business as office deputy,' says I, `to see that
business is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought
to keep things pretty well cleaned up.'

"So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for
New York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was
too short for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and
the conductor had to keep us from getting off at every town that
had five-story houses in it. But we got there finally; and we
seemed to see right away that he was right about it.

" `Luke,' says I, `as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it
don't look to me like this place is properly and legally in the
jurisdiction of Mojada County, Texas.'

" `From the standpoint of order,' says he, `it's amenable to
answer for its sins to the properly appointed authorities from
Bildad to Jerusalem.'

" `Amen,' says I. `But let's turn our trick sudden, and ride. I
don't like the looks of this place.'

" `Think of Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, `a friend of mine and
yours shot down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very
door!'

" `It was at the door of the freight depot,' says I. `But the law
will not be balked at a quibble like that.'

"We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next
morning I goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom
and hunts for Luke. It ain't no use. It looks like San Jacinto
day in San Antone. There's a thousand folks milling around in a
kind of a roofed-over plaza with marble pavements and trees
growing right out of 'em, and I see no more chance of finding
Luke than if we was hunting each other in the big pear flat down
below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me runs together in one
of the turns of them marble alleys.

" `It ain't no use, Bud,' says he. `I can't find no place to eat
at. I've been looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham
all over the camp. But I'm used to going hungry when I have to.
Now,' says he, `I'm going out and get a hack and ride down to the
address on this Scudder card. You stay here and try to hustle
some grub. But I doubt if you'll find it. I wish we'd brought
along some cornmeal and bacon and beans. I'll be back when I see
this Scudder, if the trail ain't wiped out.'

"So I starts foraging for breakfast. For the honor of old Mojada
County I didn't want to seem green to them abolitionists, so
every time I turned a corner in them marble halls I went up to
the first desk or counter I see and looks around for grub. If I
didn't see what I wanted I asked for something else. In about
half an hour I had a dozen cigars, five story magazines, and
seven or eight rail-road time-tables in my pockets, and never a
smell of coffee or bacon to point out the trail.

"Once a lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like
pushpin told me to go into a closet that she called Number 3. I
went in and shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself up. I
set down on a stool before a shelf and waited. Thinks I, `This is
a private dining-room.' But no waiter never came. When I got to
sweating good and hard, I goes out again.

" `Did you get what you wanted?' says she.

" `No, ma'am,' says I. `Not a bite.'

" `Then there's no charge,' says she.

" `Thanky, ma'am,' says I, and I takes up the trail again.

"By and by I thinks I'll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of
them boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he
leads me to what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the
first thing I lays my eyes on when I go in is that boy that had
shot Pedro Johnson. He was setting all alone at a little table,
hitting a egg with a spoon like he was afraid he'd break it.

"I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks
insulted and makes a move like he was going to get up.

" `Keep still, son,' says I. `You're apprehended, arrested, and
in charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg
some more if it's the inside of it you want. Now, what did you
shoot Mr. Johnson, of Bildad, for?'

" `And may I ask who you are?' says he.

" `You may,' says I. `Go ahead'.

" `I suppose you're on,' says this kid, without batting his eyes.
`But what are you eating? Here, waiter!' he calls out, raising
his finger. `Take this gentleman's order.'

" `A beefsteak,' says I, `and some fried eggs and a can of
peaches and a quart of coffee will about suffice.'

"We talk a while about the sundries of life and then he says:

" `What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to
shoot that man,' says he. `He called me names that I couldn't
overlook, and then he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else
could I do?'

" `We'll have to take you back to Texas,' says I.

" `I'd like to go back,' says the boy, with a kind of a grin--`if
it wasn't on an occasion of this kind. It's the life I like. I've
always wanted to ride and shoot and live in the open air ever
since I can remember.'

" `Who was this gang of stout parties you took this trip with?' I
asks.

" `My stepfather,' says he, `and some business partners of his in
some Mexican mining and land schemes.'

" `I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,' says I, `and I took that
little popgun away from you that you did it with. And when I did
so I noticed three or four little scars in a row over your right
eyebrow. You've been in rookus before, haven't you?'

" `I've had these scars ever since I can remember,' says he. `I
don't know how they came there.'

" `Was you ever in Texas before?' says I.

" `Not that I remember of,' says he. `But I thought I had when we
struck the prairie country. But I guess I hadn't.'

" `Have you got a mother?' I asks.

" `She died five years ago,' says he.

"Skipping over the most of what followed--when Luke came back I
turned the kid over to him. He had seen Scudder and told him what
he wanted; and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these
telephones as soon as he left. For in about an hour afterwards
there comes to our hotel some of these city rangers in everyday
clothes that they call detectives, and marches the whole outfit
of us to what they call a magistrate's court. They accuse Luke of
attempted kidnapping, and ask him what he has to say.

" `This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, `shot and willfully
punctured with malice and forethought one of the most respected
and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor.
And in so doing laid himself liable to the penitence of law and
order. And I hereby make claim and demand restitution of the
State of New York City for the said alleged criminal; and I know
he done it.'

" `Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the
governor of your state?' asks the judge.

" `My usual papers,' says Luke, `was taken away from me at the
hotel by these gentlemen who represent law and order in your
city. They was two Colt's .45's that I've packed for nine years;
and if I don't get 'em back, there'll be more trouble. You can
ask anybody in Mojada County about Luke Summers. I don't usually
need any other kind of papers for what I do.'

"I see the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:

" `Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff
of Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man as ever threw a rope or
upheld the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the
Union. But he----'

"The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.

" `Bud Oakley,' says I. `Office deputy of the sheriff's office of
Mojada County, Texas. Representing,' says I, `the Law. Luke
Summers,' I goes on, `represents Order. And if Your Honor will
give me about ten minutes in private talk, I'll explain the whole
thing to you, and show you the equitable and legal requisition
papers which I carry in my pocket.'

"The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in
his private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in
such language as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces
the verdict that the young man is delivered into the hands of the
Texas authorities; and calls the next case.

"Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I'll tell
you how the thing wound up in Bildad.

"When we got the prisoner in the sheriff's office, I says to
Luke:

" `You remember that kid of yours--that two-year-old that they
stole away from you when the bust-up come?'

"Luke looks black and angry. He'd never let anybody talk to him
about that business, and he never mentioned it himself.

" `Toe the mark,' says I. `Do you remember when he was toddling
around on the porch and fell down on a pair of Mexican spurs and
cut four little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,'
says I, `look at his nose and the shape of his head and--why, you
old fool, don't you know your own son?--I knew him,' says I,
`when he perforated Mr. Johnson at the depot.'

"Luke comes over to me shaking all over. I never saw him lose his
nerve before.

" `Bud,' says he, `I've never had that boy out of my mind one day
or one night since he was took away. But I never let on. But can
we hold him?--Can we make him stay?--I'll make the best man of
him that ever put his foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute,' says he,
all excited and out of his mind--`I've got something here in my
desk--I reckon it'll hold legal yet--I've looked at it a thousand
times--"Cus-to-dy of the child," says Luke--"Cus-to-dy of the
child." We can hold him on that, can't we? Le'me see if I can
find that decree.'

"Luke begins to tear his desk to pieces.

" `Hold on,' says I. `You are Order and I'm Law. You needn't look
for that paper, Luke. It ain't a decree any more. It's
requisition papers. It's on file in that Magistrate's office in
New York. I took it along when we went, because I was office
deputy and knew the law.'

" `I've got him back,' says Luke. `He's mine again. I never
thought----'

" `Wait a minute,' says I. `We've got to have law and order. You
and me have got to preserve 'em both in Mojada County according
to our oath and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of
Bildad's most prominent and----"

" `Oh, hell!' says Luke. `That don't amount to anything. That
fellow was half Mexican, anyhow.' "

----IN A FAR TOWNSHIP

By SARAH N. CLEGHORN

His roundabout of bottle-green,
And pantaloons of fine nankeen
Were Sunday best; the month was May,
And this from school a holiday;
But he had none with whom to play,
And wandered wistful,up and down,
All in a strange old Garden,
And in a strange old Town.

An ancient chaise, a Dobbin gray
Had brought him here to spend the day.
Now his old aunt and uncle drowse;
No chick nor child is in the house--
No cat, no dog, no bird, or mouse;
No fairy picture-book to spell,
No music-box of wonder,
Nor magic whispering-shell.

Unending is this afternoon,
And strange this landscape as the moon,
With home a thousand miles away--
The pasture where his brothers play
With whoop and shout, in Indian fray;
The porch where, even at this hour,
His mother prunes the vine and flower,
And hums the nursery melody,
"I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea."

*****************************************************************
VOL. XXIII September 1910 NO. 3

Lassoing Wild Animals In Africa

By GUY H. SCULL

Field Manager of the Buffalo Jones African Expedition

Editor's Note: The wild animals of Africa have been hunted with
firearms for many a year, and photographed by more than one
marksman of the lens. But here is the truly unique expedition
into the jungle. The idea that any one should seriously
contemplate a journey to Africa for the purpose of lassoing such
creatures as sportsmen either shoot or photograph at the longest
range possible, seems quite absurd. But an American frontiersman
has done it, with American cowboys, cow-ponies, and hunting-dogs,
and with wonderful moving pictures to prove it. It is a fine
evidence of the sporting qualities of both parties to the
undertaking that Colonel C. J. Jones, a Western plainsman, could
so completely interest Mr. Charles S. Bird, an Eastern
manufacturer, in the fantastic plan as to command his backing.
And if there is such a thing as the glow of adventure by proxy,
it must have been felt in the Nassau Street law office, where the
Buffalo Jones African Expedition had its headquarters, when the
cablegram from Nairobi announced that lion and rhino had been
lassoed, and that the moving pictures were a complete success.

IT was a special train--loaded to capacity with horses and dogs,
camp baggage, moving-picture cameras, cowboys, photographers, and
porters; and when it pulled out of the Nairobi station on the way
to the "up country" of British East Africa, the period of
preparation passed away and the time of action began. As the
faces of the people on the platform glided by the window of the
slowly moving carriage, there was good will written on all of
them; but also unbelief. There was no doubt as to what they
thought of Buffalo Jones's expedition that was setting out to
rope and tie and photograph the wild animals of the East African
Veldt.

"How are you going to hold a rhino that weighs two tons and a
half?"

"What are you going to do when the lion charges?"

Such were the questions asked us by the hunters of the country.
They further took pains to explain that a rhino charges like a
flash, and that a lion can catch a horse within a hundred yards.

These items of information, however, were well known to Buffalo
Jones before the expedition was organized in New York, and his
preparations to meet the difficulties had been made accordingly.

Colonel C. J. Jones is tall and spare, with a strong, rugged face
and keen blue eyes. During his sixty-five years of life, he has
roped and tied, often single-handed, every kind of wild animal of
consequence to be found in our western country, and his
experience with these has led him to believe implicitly that man
is the master of all wild beasts.

He has climbed trees after mountain lions, and with a lasso over
a branch has hauled grizzlies up into the air by one hind leg.
And once he set out alone to journey over a country that no white
man had ever traveled before, to reach the land of the musk-ox on
the border of the Arctic Circle. The story is told of how he met
a trapper on the way, and how these two, in the face of the
hostility of all the Indian tribes, the wolves, and the cold of
the northern winter, eventually came to the musk-ox and captured
five calves. Then, deserted by their Indian guide, they started
to return with their prizes, got lost in the wilderness, and
fought the wolves till their cartridges ran out. And when at last
they reached safety and fell asleep, exhausted, the Indians,
obeying the laws of their religion, stole upon them in the night
and killed the calves.

But the success he had achieved with the mountain lions of the
Southwest, the musk-ox of the North, and the grizzly bears of the
Rockies was not enough. For twenty years it had been the one
ambition of his life to take an outfit to British East Africa to
try his hand with the more ferocious big game of that country.
But in his Western experience Colonel Jones had learned something
else besides the mastery of man over beast. Precisely how an
American cowboy was going to hold a rhinoceros that weighed two
tons and a half was purely a matter of speculation. Yet of one
thing the Colonel was certain--the experiment would result in a
moving picture that would be well worth the taking. For this
reason, what afterward came to be known as the "picture
department" was added to the make-up of the expedition.

The preparations extended over a considerable length of time, and
were carried on in various places. Unquestionably, the most
important part of the outfit was the horses. It was absolutely
essential that they should be Western cow-ponies, fast, well
trained, and reliable in every way. The Colonel, who best of all
could foresee the nature of the work they would have to do,
selected them himself, ten in all, from the ranches of New
Mexico, and shipped them to New York. The American dogs to be
used for trailing were likewise chosen by the Colonel. Some of
them belonged to him personally, and had been thoroughly tried
out. The rest had reputations of their own. Of the two cowboys
who were to act as his assistants, Marshall Loveless had worked
with the Colonel before and knew his methods, and Ambrose Means
came highly recommended for skill and daring from one of the
largest ranch owners in the West.

When, at the last moment, the writer of these articles was
introduced to the expedition in the capacity of acting field
manager, the preparations were well under way. The horses and
dogs had been already shipped, en route to Africa, in charge of
the cowboys, and the date of our sailing for London had been
fixed for the following day.

The meeting was held at a luncheon in the Railroad Club, in New
York. There were present Colonel Jones, Mr. F. W. Bird, son of
Charles S. Bird[1] who financed the expedition, Mr. W. G. Sewall,
of the Boma Trading Company, of Nairobi, and myself. After
certain matters of business had been disposed of, the talk at the
luncheon table drifted to the probabilities and possibilities of
success; to lions, rhinos, elands, and cheetahs; to cowboys,
horses, and dogs. But the Colonel would hear of no possibilities,
or even probabilities, of failure. He was peculiarly insistent
upon this point. And when the hour of the business man's lunch
time came to an end, and the room began to empty, Mr. Sewall said
to me across the corner of the table:

"Of course, every one in Nairobi will think all of you either
fakers or crazy. I know you're no fakers. I don't know whether
you're crazy or not. But there is one thing in your favor: The
Colonel's unshaken belief that the thing can be done will
probably pull it through."

[1] EAST WALPOLE, MASS.,
July 8, 1910.
Mr. GUY H. SCULL.

MY DEAR SCULL
It has been asked by some what the object of the
Buffalo Jones African Expedition was. I will tell you.

You know my friend, Colonel C. J. Jones, broke his rifle a
generation or so ago and vowed he would never again kill game
save for food or in self-defense. Since taking that oath he has
subdued and captured all kinds of wild animals in North America,
including the musk-ox, buffalo, grizzly bear, and cougar.

I discovered that it was his dream to go to East Africa to prove
that with American cowboys, horses, and dogs he could lasso and
capture the savage animals of that country as readily as he has
the wild animals of our country. As a sporting proposition, it
seemed to me unique and fascinating, and so, as a small tribute
to Colonel Jones, I volunteered to finance the expedition.

I somewhat doubt whether there is another man in the world who
has the courage, skill, and determination to do what he has done
in the animal kingdom, and he well deserves to be called "The
Preserver of the American Bison."

I want to acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. Arthur A. Fowler of
New York for his assistance in helping us outfit the expedition
in London and Nairobi, and to you and the others who have helped
to make the expedition a success.
Very truly,

CHARLES S. BIRD.

On our arrival in London about the middle of January of this
year, the work of preparation was continued at once. Outside of
the minor details of the outfit, such as personal equipment,
saddlery, medicines, bandages, and so forth, the first matter to
receive attention was the organization of the picture department.
Mr. Cherry Kearton was sought to take charge of this branch of
the expedition. Kearton--a powerfully built Yorkshireman--is an
experienced cinematograph photographer and a naturalist of no
small reputation. He had taken moving pictures in Africa before,
and so he knew the climatic conditions there--the heat radiation
and the different intensities of light. He also knew the animals
the Colonel was going to rope. But besides being a cinematograph
expert and a naturalist, he was also a sportsman.

When Kearton learned of the nature of the undertaking, he was
skeptical. He had no more than a slight acquaintance with the
Colonel then, and only a vague, hearsay knowledge of what the
American Cowboy could do. Evidently his mind was divided by the
dictates of common sense and the sporting instinct. On many
occasions during this time, he questioned the feasibility of the
experiment in the light of what he knew of the African beasts.
The agreement, in documentary form, was spread out on the table
in the Boma Trading Company's London office when he finally
wanted to know how in Heaven's name we thought this thing could
be done.

"We'll do it," the Colonel said quietly. That was all.

"Well, there's a picture in it, anyway," said Kearton, and signed
the papers.

With his assistant, David Gobbet, two cinematograph machines and
tripods, hand cameras and developing apparatus, he set sail
immediately for Africa, leaving an order for thirty thousand feet
of film to be divided between two manufacturers and to be
forwarded as soon as possible.

In the meantime, Colonel Jones was hard at work collecting a
rather unusual assortment of articles. The experience of a
life-time enabled him to foresee what kind of materials were
absolutely necessary, and what kind might prove useful on the
present expedition. Naturally, the articles required were not
usually in stock, but the London shopkeeper is proverbially
obliging and imperturbable.

One rainy morning the Colonel walked into a hardware store and
asked to see some handcuffs. A pair was shown him.

"Not large enough," said the Colonel.

"How large would you want them, sir?"

"Twice that size."

"May I ask for what purpose you require them, sir?"

"For lions," said the Colonel.

"Precisely, handcuffs for lions; yes, you need large ones. I am
afraid I have none in stock just now, but I can have them made
for you within a few days."

It was the same with almost everything the Colonel wanted to
purchase; everything had to be made especially for him after his
own description--handcuffs, collars and belts, chains, branding
irons, a block and fall, muzzles of different sizes, corkscrew
picket-pins for holding the turn of a rope, and a nondescript
article shaped like a huge pair of tongs, for which I feel sure
there is no name in any trade, but which looked to be a handy
implement for clamping the jaws of a beast. To have these things
made according to specifications took time and an endless amount
of running about. Besides, there was the more ordinary part of
the equipment to procure: English dogs, both foxhounds and
terriers, horse-blankets, extra ropes, horseshoes, and so on.
When the last of the expedition sailed from Southampton, there
were forty-eight pieces of baggage on the list.

This last contingent reached Nairobi at noon on March 3, and for
the first time then all the members of the expedition met
together. Loveless proved to be a man a little below the medium
height; he held himself very erect, walked with quick, energetic
steps, and wore a blond mustache. He made polite inquiries as to
our voyage out, commented on the hot weather, and fully explained
the condition of the horses and dogs. Means was taller. He
carried his head slightly forward and wore his black hair brushed
low down over his forehead. He stood slumped on one hip, so that
one shoulder also was lower than the other.

"Please' to meet you," he said.

On our arrival at Nairobi the first matter to be decided was the
district to be worked. The choice lay between the Sotik and the
Kapeti Plains. According to the usual batch of contradictory
stories in such cases, the game was said to be equally plentiful,
or equally scarce, in both districts. Both had been shot over
considerably of late, and, anyhow, no one could really tell us
where the most game was to be found; because, as one informant
explained, the game everywhere shifted so frequently and so fast.
But the Sotik and the country approaching it--the Kedong and Rift
Valleys, and the Mau--were reported to be more or less free from
ticks, and, as the health of the horses was of the gravest
importance to us, we determined to work this district first.

The Colonel and his two cowboys, Loveless and Means, were ready
to start at once. Eight out of the ten horses were in fine
condition. With but one exception, the dogs had come through
safely, though all were suffering somewhat from distemper. It was
concluded, however, that they would recover just as rapidly in
the open country as they would in Nairobi.

Kearton and Gobbet were ready. Kearton had built a dark room in
Nairobi, because his earlier experience had taught him that the
pictures could not be developed with any degree of satisfaction
in the field. His four special porters to carry the cameras and
tripods--porters he had trained on previous safaris--were only
waiting for the word to move. Mr. Ray Ulyate, the white hunter to
the expedition, had already gone to Kijabe to prepare his
ox-wagons against our coming, and the Boma Trading Company had
engaged a special train to leave Nairobi on the fifth.

On the morning of that day we held the customary procession of an
outgoing safari down the main street of Nairobi to the waiting
train. The Colonel rode first, with the assorted pack of dogs at
his horse's heels. Then came the cowboys with the led horses;
then the picture department; then the long single line of black
porters, bringing up the rear. Above the loads on the porters'
heads two flags flashed their colors in the sunlight--the stars
and stripes, and the house flag of the company, with the white
buffalo skull against the red background, and underneath the
motto, Sapiens qui Vigilat.

The night had already fallen black and cold when the special
train crested the top of the divide and coasted down grade into
Kijabe. The most imposing structure in the place is the railroad
station, with its red wooden building propped up on piles, its
tin guest-house alongside, and the neat gravel platform growing a
clump of trees. The rest of Kijabe is composed of four other
houses, the goods-shed, an open-faced Indian booth, the
post-office, and the water-tank. Ulvate met us with a lantern,
for the station lights are dim, and we detrained in the face of
the high wind that always blows there from sunset to dawn, and
picketed the horses among the trees of the station platform.
Because a large part of the revenue of the country is derived
from the visiting hunters, a safari is accorded privileges out of
the ordinary. So, as a matter of course, we took possession of
the station and camped in the tin guest-house for the night.

The morning came clear and hot and still. The railroad at Kijabe
runs along the face of the hills, so that the land drops down
abruptly to the plains below, and you can look away for miles
over the Kedong and Rift valleys, with the two sentinel extinct
volcanoes rising black against the heat-blurred sky;

The floors of the valleys are laid with volcanic ash. But on
first appearances the land looks much the same as the regulation
veldt or certain parts of our own Western plains. It is only by
the fineness of the dust that hangs about the horses' feet, and
the peculiar quality of the thirst that dries in the throat, that
you know this is no ordinary soil.

The sun was high in the heavens before we finally started from
Kijabe and descended the rough road to the level ground, with the
brakes on the ox-wagons squealing harshly and the horses treading
silently in the dust.

We had planned to camp at Sewell's farm that night. It was only
about four hours away, but a short trek the first day is always a
good rule to follow. It gives every one a chance, so to speak, to
shake down well into the saddle. We had gone but a short
distance, however, when one thing became strikingly apparent:
Gobbet did not know how to ride! He was mounted on a white
African pony that we had found it necessary to add to our string.
The pony was stolid, lazy, and easy-gaited, but Gobbet's
unfamiliar attitude toward his mount was unmistakable.

Now it is a delicate matter in any country to broach the question
of a man's horsemanship, but presently Gobbet introduced the
subject of his own accord.

"Of course I can't ride a horse," he said. "Have never been on
one before. When Mr. Kearton spoke to me about coming out here
with him, he just asked me if I could ride, and I told him surely
I could ride--but I didn't tell him I meant a bicycle."

After all, the matter was of no great importance. Gobbet was
young and thin and active, with sharp black eyes, and the work
that lay ahead of us would probably teach him to ride in short
order--and it did.

We had little expectation of finding either a lion or a rhino on
that first day's trip. We were traveling on a regular road,
making a kind of initial march. The fringe of scrub at the
beginning of the valley had been left behind some three or four
miles when Ulyate suddenly reined in his horse and pointed to
three black dots on the veldt about half a mile away.

The black dots proved to he only wart-hogs, but we wanted them,
and, so long as there was little chance of our finding any of the
more important species of game, we took the opportunity that
offered. The Colonel and the two cowboys tightened their cinches
and then rode out to the westward to round up the beasts.

"Drive 'em back to us," Kearton called after them, and Means
waved his hand by way of answer.

Behind us, the line of porters was coming up along the road. They
were straggling badly, broken up into little sections of threes
and fours, so that the last of them were not yet in sight. Gobbet
was sent back to hurry forward the four special porters with the
cameras, and when these finally arrived upon the scene, their
faces covered with dust and sweat, the horsemen had dwindled to
dots only a little larger than the hogs themselves.

Kearton placed the cameras a few yards apart, and there we
waited, watching the distant specks.

Two of the riders disappeared into a far patch of scrub. The
third began swinging to the southward. His horse was galloping
after something we could not see.

In the meantime the safari was coming up, and as each section
arrived it was halted, and the porters put down their loads and
sat on them. Some of them turned their backs upon the scene in
total indifference as to what was coming next; others regarded
the cameras with expressions of mild curiosity.

Little by little the third horseman had swung round so that he
was headed due east, riding straight at us. Rapidly the speck
grew larger, and the two other riders came out of the scrub and
joined the chase.

Nearer and nearer they came, with the dust cloud swirling behind
them. Gobbet began turning the handle of his camera, and the whir
of the machine sounded loud in the stillness. One or two of the
porters jumped to their feet and pointed. Kearton waited.

"I hope they won't come straight into the lens," he said. "If
they do, it won't make a good picture. They ought to come at an
angle. So," he explained, placing his hand obliquely to the line
of focus. Then he bent over, laid his eye to the gun-sight of the
machine, and likewise began turning.

The thunder of the chase could be heard now, and we could see
that it was Loveless leading, on his black, with Means and the
Colonel close behind and the wart-hog some forty yards ahead. The
beast was running strong. His huge snout was thrust forward, and
his upturned tusks gleamed in the sunlight. But gradually the
black horse gained on him, and Loveless loosened the rope from
his saddle and began swinging the long noose round and round his
head.

On came the wart-hog, straight for Kearton's camera.

Kearton straightened up above the machine and waved his helmet
frantically.

"Give over, give over!" he shouted.

"You're driving him right into the picture. It's no good. Give
over!"

The chase never swerved an inch, and Kearton bent to his work
again, cursing in well-selected periods.

The next moment the hog drove past him. At the same instant
Loveless threw his rope and caught the beast by one hind leg. The
black horse stopped, fore feet planted firmly, and the dust cloud
swept across and hid the scene.

When the dust cleared away, the hog was lying across the road,
blowing comfortably, with the rope leading from his hind leg to
the horn of Loveless' saddle. Loveless laughed.

"There's the first one for you," he said. "And my, can't he run!"

Gobbet, however, was indignant. "It's no use," he complained. "To
bring an object that way straight into the lens is against the
first principles of cinematography. It's no use, I tell you."

Means sat half slumped in his saddle, with his reeking horse
panting heavily.

"Well, well, well," he finally drawled. "And didn't Mr. Pig come
a-bending across that prairie? He most certainly come a-bending."

The porters gathered around and looked long at the beast; some of
them spoke a few words in low tones, and the others nodded their
heads and smiled.

Sometimes a wart-hog will act nasty, and his lower tusks are
sharp as razors; but when this one was released he walked out of
the circle of grinning natives, slowly, quietly, and apparently
thoroughly disgusted.

At Sewell's farm there is a pan of water made by a dam across an
almost waterless brook, and alongside of this pan we pitched our
camp. When the sun set, the high wind rose again, whirling up the
dust in heavy clouds and sending the sparks from the fire
scurrying over the ground. But the Kedong Valley wind is more or
less a phenomenon of the country. You can count upon it
absolutely for every one of its disagreeable qualities. I think
the citizens of Africa are a little proud of it.

There was now a fair chance that on our way into the Rift Valley
we should flush one or another of the larger animals.
Preparations for such a contingency were accordingly made before
starting from Sewell's farm. Canteens and iron drums were filled
with water, because the next camp would be a dry one. The
cinematograph, cameras, and all the extra boxes were loaded with
films the evening before, and the four special camera porters
were given strict orders to keep well up with the advance of the
safari. The lion-taming outfit--the tongs, muzzles, chains, and
collars--was stowed on the first wagon, on top of the load, where
it could be got at readily in case of need. The Colonel rode
ahead, with the two cowboys close behind, all three ropers
mounted on their best horses--the Colonel on "the paint,"
Loveless on his black, and Means on the big-boned bay. Every
member of the party was especially cautioned to keep a sharp
lookout on both sides of the road.

Just as the day before, the morning came hot and still, and for
hour after hour the straggling safari crawled slowly over the
long waves of the undulating veldt. The road was a wagon track
always vanishing in front toward the head of the valley. The land
lay silent beneath the glaring sunlight.

We outspanned at noon for an hour. Over the country here grew
small, scattered thorn trees, thick with thorns but with scarcely
any leaves, so that the shade beneath them was thin and could
shelter no more than one horse. The water in the canteens, cold
at the start, had become warm now.

When we mounted again, the sweat had dried on the horses, and the
boots felt stiff on our feet. The line of the road still
stretched away its interminable length until it disappeared in
the distance.

And then, as we crawled sleepily ahead over the rises, the
Colonel was the first to notice the lion spoor in the dust.

With sudden animation the safari awoke from the lethargy of the
hot, monotonous march. The spoor was judged to be at least four
hours old, so there was no use putting the dogs on it. Then
presently it disappeared. On the dead grass of the bordering
veldt there was nothing to show which way the lion had gone. But
there was a chance--a small one, yet still a chance--that the
beast was lying up near by in the shade of a thorn tree. So all
the horsemen spread out over the veldt to obtain a wider scope of
vision, and for mile after mile the company moved forward,
sweeping the immediate country.

Proceeding in this manner through the afternoon, we eventually
crested a slightly higher rise and looked down into a shallow
valley that was greener than the rest of the veldt. A few
full-sized trees were growing in the bottom, and there were a
number of outcroppings of rock. Large herds of antelope were
grazing there.

The Colonel called a halt.

"There is no lion anywhere hereabouts," he said, "because the
game are grazing peacefully. But there is a bunch of eland
yonder. We might as well round them up while the light lasts."

The plan of operation was quickly made. The cameras were
stationed about a mile to the southeast, partly concealed by the
bole of a tree, and the bunch of eland were skillfully rounded up
and a good specimen was singled out.

Everything was working to perfection. The three horsemen drove
the eland toward the cameras--not directly at them, but a little
to one side, at an angle, as Kearton wanted it done. At the
proper moment Loveless roped the animal by the forelegs and neck,
and threw it down. Loveless jumped from his horse and was running
forward to tie the prize when something--the smell of the strange
beast, perhaps--started the black horse bucking. With the rope
made fast to the saddle and the eland acting as a pivot, the
black went careering round and round. Both the Colonel and Means
tried to rope him, and missed, and finally Loveless, on foot,
caught him by the dangling reins.

Of course such a thing might have been readily foreseen, but
somehow it came as a surprise and opened up grave possibilities.
That night in camp at "Rugged Rocks" we were gathered about the
cook s fire for the warmth it gave, when the Colonel spoke of the
affair.

"Everything was going great till that horse started bucking," the
Colonel remarked. "We've got to teach our horses not to mind the
smell of these strange animals out here. We've got to be able to
depend absolutely on our horses. Of course that eland wasn't
dangerous. But when we tackle something else and a horse acts
that way, it might be bad."

But Gobbet said it was good action, anyway, and would look fine
when thrown on the screen.

March 8 was a day of disappointments. Between sunrise and sunset
we traveled fifteen miles to the Wangai River and hunted in turn
a pair of lions, a cheetah, and a rhinoceros--and lost them all.
Two circumstances were held accountable: one was the necessity of
getting the horses to water, and the other was the fact that it
was just a bad luck day all through.

We came upon the lions early in the morning, close to the base of
the southern volcano. This particular pair of lions must have
been shot over at one time or another, for they did not wait to
satisfy any curiosity as to our intentions, but fled at once for
the safety of the mountain. Although we gave chase immediately,
their lead was so great and the distance to the mountains so
short, that they were soon lost to us in the gullies and crevices
of the foothills.

It was while we were trying to pick up the lost trail of the
lions that we flushed a cheetah out of one of the dongas.[2] It
broke away along the foothills, and finally stopped at bay in a
district where the going was so bad for the horses that we had to
give up the attempt.

[2] Donga.--a gully.

With the rhinoceros we had scarcely any chance whatsoever. The
Colonel, who was scouting the country to the northward of the
line of march, caught a glimpse of the beast in the adjacent
valley. By the time he had come back to get us and we had ridden
in pursuit, the rhino had disappeared.

We found his trail leading still farther to the northward, and
dismounted and looked down at it in silence. No comments were
made. No comments were necessary. Every one knew that for lack of
water the horses were too done up to follow.

Means had dismounted a little to one side of the group, and for a
while he stood there with his arms resting on his saddle, gazing
back over the way we had come. Presently he remarked to the world
at large: Excitement has certainly been runnin' high all day. We
mounted then; and, instead of hunting the rhino farther, we rode
the jaded horses slowly into camp and put a proper finish to a
bad luck day by holding a consultation.

The Wangai River is no river at all; merely a small spring in the
shadow of the range that crosses the head of the valley. But the
spring could supply sufficient water for all our needs. Also, the
problem of transportation demanded that Ulyate should return to
Kijabe and bring up another wagon with supplies before the
journey over the Mau into the Sotik could be undertaken. Then,
too, here in the Rift Valley we had seen both lion and rhino, and
there was always the chance of finding them again. The
consultation resulted in the decision to make a permanent camp
here and hunt the neighboring country until Ulyate should return.

For the succeeding three days the Colonel laid out a plan of
campaign; simple, but effective, and limited only by the
necessity of keeping within reasonable distance of the water. The
plan consisted of a series of drives; one in a northeasterly, one
in an easterly, and one in a southeasterly direction. By this
means we would cover in turn all the territory at the head of the
valley.

The Colonel was anxious to try again for the rhino he had seen on
the march the day before, and for this reason the drive to the
northeast was inaugurated first. Every member of the expedition
took part in these drives. The Colonel and the writer at one end,
and the two cowboys at the other, occupied the extreme positions.
Between the right and left wings stretched a long line of
porters, under the command of two escaris, and with Kearton and
Gobbet in the center with the cameras. The dogs on leash and the
saises carrying water for the horses brought up the rear. When
finally formed, the line of the drive extended approximately five
miles, and the cameras and the dogs were so placed that they
could be brought to either end of the line with the utmost
despatch. Two shots fired in quick succession would be the signal
to gather.

That first day's drive brought little success. To begin with, we
were late in starting, so that the sun had already risen before
we moved out of camp; and besides, the porters were new at that
kind of work and had to be halted and reformed many times before
they understood what was wanted.

The land across which we were driving lay at the very edge of the
valley, and was consequently somewhat broken into small hills and
hollows. By the time we came to the old rhino trail, the day was
well advanced. But no fresh tracks were to be found up and down
the entire length of the hollow, nor was anything to be seen of
the beast from the next hill to the northward, which we climbed
to search the country ahead. There was only a large herd of
hartebeests grazing on the plains below.

The Colonel retreated halfway down the hill and fired two shots
from his revolver. Somewhere beyond our range of vision we heard

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