BOB HAMPTON OF PLACER


_PART I_

FROM OUT THE CANYON


CHAPTER I

HAMPTON, OF PLACER

It was not an uncommon tragedy of the West. If slightest chronicle of
it survive, it must be discovered among the musty and nearly forgotten
records of the Eighteenth Regiment of Infantry, yet it is extremely
probable that even there the details were never written down.
Sufficient if, following certain names on that long regimental roll,
there should be duly entered those cabalistic symbols signifying to the
initiated, "Killed in action." After all, that tells the story. In
those old-time Indian days of continuous foray and skirmish such brief
returns, concise and unheroic, were commonplace enough.

Yet the tale is worth telling now, when such days are past and gone.
There were sixteen of them when, like so many hunted rabbits, they were
first securely trapped among the frowning rocks, and forced
relentlessly backward from off the narrow trail until the precipitous
canyon walls finally halted their disorganized flight, and from sheer