other way. With them that’s not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on top it sends ’em along quick into clear deviltry––the kind that makes you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a damn; and it’s them that has give some parts of the Western Country––like it did New Mexico in the time I’m talking about, when they was bunched thick there––its bad name.

In the long run, of course, the toughs is got rid of––being shoved out or hung out, at first by committees and later on in regular shape by sheriffs and marshals––and things is quieted down. It’s the everlasting truth, though, that them kind of mavericks mostly is a blame sight commoner in parts just opened than the story-book kind––that’s always so calm-eyed and gentle-natured and generous and brave. What’s more, I reckon they’ll keep on being commoner, human nature not being a thing that changes much, till we get along to the Day of Judgment round-up––and the goats is cut out and corralled for keeps.

For certain, it was goats was right up at the head of the procession in the Territory in my time––which was the time when the railroads was a-coming in––and in them days things was rough. The Greasers living there to start with wasn’t what you might call sand-papered; and the kind of folks found in parts railroads has just got to, same as I’ve mentioned, don’t set out to be extry smooth. Back East they talked about the higher civilization that was overflowing New Mexico; but, for a cold fact, the higher civilization that did its overflowing on that section mostly had a sheriff on its tracks right along up to the Missouri––and the rest of the way done what it blame felt like, and used a gun.

Some of them native Mexicans wasn’t bad fighters. When they went to hacking at one another with knives––the way they was used to––they often done right well. But when they got up against the higher civilization––which wasn’t usually less ’n half drunk, and went heeled with two Colt’s and a Winchester––they found out they’d bit off more’n they 5 could chew. Being sandy, they kept at it––but the civilizers was apt to have the call. And in between times, when the two of ’em––the Greasers and the civilizers––wasn’t taking the change out of each other, they both of ’em took it out of anybody who happened to come along.

Yes, sirree!––in them days things was a good deal at loose ends in the Territory. When you went anywheres, if you was going alone, you always felt you’d better leave word what trail you took: that is, if you was fussy in such matters, and wanted what the coyotes left of you brought in by your friends and planted stylish––with your name, and when it happened, painted on a board.

This place where the track got stuck––sticking partly because there was trouble with the Atchison, and partly because the Company couldn’t foreclose onto a year jag any more out of the English stockholders to build on with––was up on a bluff right over the Rio Grande and was called Palomitas. Being only mostly Greasers and Indians living 6 in the Territory––leaving out the white folks at Santa Fé and the army posts, and the few Germans there was scattered about––them kind of queer-sounding names was what was mainly used.

It wasn’t never meant to be no sort of an American town nohow, Palomitas wasn’t––being made to start with of ’dobes (which is Mexican for houses built of mud, and mud they was in the rainy season) spilled around on the bluff anywheres; and when the track come along through the middle of it the chinks was filled in with tents and shingle-shacks and dugouts––all being so mixed up and scattery you’d a-thought somebody’d been packing a town through them parts in a wagon and the load had jolted out, sort of casual over the tail-board, and stuck where it happened to come down. The only things you could call houses was the deepo, and the Forest Queen Hotel right across the track from it, and Bill Hart’s store. Them three buildings was framed up respectable; with real windows that opened, and doors such as you could move without kicking at ’em till 7 you was tired. The deepo was right down stylish––having a brick chimney and being painted brown. Aside the deepo was the tank and the windmill that pumped into it. Seems to me at nights, sometimes, I can hear that old windmill going around creaking and clumpetty-clumpetting now!

Palomitas means “little doves”––but I reckon the number of them birds about the place was few. For about a thousand years, more or less, it had been run on a basis of two or three hundred Mexicans and a sprinkling of pigs and Pueblo Indians––the pigs was the most respectable––and it was allowed to be, after the track got there, the toughest town the Territory had to show. Santa Cruz de la Cañada, which was close to it, was said to have took the cake for toughness before railroad times. It was a holy terror, Santa Cruz was! The only decent folks in it was the French padre––who outclassed most saints, and hadn’t a fly on him––and a German named Becker. He had the Government forage-station, Becker had; and he used to say he’d had a fresh surprise every 8 one of the mornings of the five years he’d been forage-agent––when he woke up and found nobody’d knifed him in the night and he was keeping on being alive!

But when the track come in, and the higher civilization come in a-yelling with it and spread itself, Palomitas could give points to the Cañada in cussedness all down the line. Most of it right away was saloons and dance-halls; and the pressure for faro accommodation was such the padre thought he could make money by closing down his own monte-bank and renting. Denver Jones took his place at fifty dollars a week, payable every Saturday night––and rounded on the padre by getting back his rent-money over the table every Sunday afternoon. He’d a-got it back Sunday mornings if the padre hadn’t been tied up mornings to his work. (He was a native, that padre was––and went on so extra outrageous his own folks couldn’t stand him and Bishop Lamy bounced him from his job.) Pretty much all the time there was rumpusses; and the way they was managed made the Mexicans––being used, same as I’ve 9 said, to knives mostly––open their eyes wide. It seemed really to jolt ’em when they begun to find out what a live man with his back up could do with a gun! Occurrences was so frequent––before construction started up again, and for a while after––the new cemetery out in the sage-brush on the mesa come close to having as big a population as the town.

What happened––shootings, and doings of all sorts––mostly centred on the Forest Queen. That was the only place that called itself a hotel in Palomitas––folks being able to get some sort of victuals there, and it having bunks in a room off the bar-room where passers-through was give a chance to think (by morning they was apt to think different) they was going to have a night’s sleep. Kicking against what you got––and against the throwed-in extras you’d a-been better without––didn’t do no good. Old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept the place, only stuck her fat elbows out and told the kickers she done the best she knowed how to, and she reckoned it was as good as you could expect in them 10 parts, and most was suited. If they didn’t like the Forest Queen Hotel, she said, they was free to get out of it and go to one that suited ’em better––and as there wasn’t none to go to, Sal held the cards.

She was a corker, Sal was! By her own