a horse and cavalry work too well to be mured in an office. He was
silence and reticence itself on matters affecting other people, but
the soul of frankness, apparently, where he was personally concerned.
Anybody was welcome to know his past, he said. He was raised in Texas;
had lived for years on the frontier; had been through Arizona with a
bull-team in the 50's, and had 'listed under the banner of the Lone
Star when Texas went the way of all the sisterhood of Southern (not
border) States, and then, being stranded after the war, had
"bullwhacked" again through New Mexico; had drifted again across the
Mimbres and down to the old Spanish-Mexican town of Tucson; had tried
prospecting, mail-riding, buck-board driving, gambling; had been one
of the sheriff's posse that cleaned out Sonora Bill's little band of
thugs and cut-throats, and had expressed entire willingness to
officiate as that lively outlaw's executioner in case of his capture.
He had twice been robbed while driving the stage across the divide and
had been left for dead in the Maricopa range, an episode which he said
was the primal cause of his dissipations later. Finally, after a
summary discharge he had come to the adjutant at Camp Lowell,
presented two or three certificates of good character and bravery in
the field from officers who bore famous names in the Southern army,
and the regimental recruiting officer thought he could put up with an
occasional drunk in a man who promised to make as good a trooper under
the stars and stripes as he had made under the stars and bars. And so
he was enlisted, and, to the surprise of everybody, hadn't taken a
drop since.

Now this, said the rank and file, was proof positive of something
radically wrong, either in his disposition or his record. It was
entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and
the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit