"Me? What would I want to dig him up for? I ain't lost no Injun! I
'm just digging a hole--for Madge. She wants to plant a tree. What
did they bury him here for? Did they kill him here on the ranch?"

"This was a fort once, before there was any ranch here, and there was a
war with the Apaches, and they were getting beaten, and so they sent
this old chief down to the fort to make terms for them. The commander
received him and put him in a tent and set a guard over him. In the
night the guard fell asleep, and when he wakened he was frightened lest
the Indian might have escaped. So he punched into the tent with his
bayonet to see if he was still there, and hit the chief in the foot.
That made him angry and he came out and killed the guard. The noise
roused the soldiers, and they killed the chief, and they buried him
here, inside the stockade, so that the Indians would n't suspect that
he was dead until they could get reinforcements."

"The Injun killed the guard, did he? Good enough for him! I wish it
had been Holy John!"

He fell to work again with more vigor than ever, but presently he
stopped and growled:

"I 'd like to run a blaze on that ornery galoot that he 'd remember all
the rest of his life!"

After a while I chanced to see Kid carrying a bundle done up in a gunny
sack down to the _acequia_ and hide it among the currant bushes. I
noticed that he had carefully filled up the hole he had been digging,
and I asked,