he didn’t have no need to ask questions––the old gent saving him 18 that trouble by going for her sort of fatherly and pumping away at her till he got the whole thing.

It come out scrappy, like as might be expected, Hill said; and so natural-sounding he thought he must be asleep and dreaming––he knowing pretty well what was going on in the Territory, and she telling about doings that was news to him and the kind he’d a-been sure to hear a lot of if they’d ever really come off. Hill said he wished he could tell it all as she did––speaking low, and ketching her breath in the worst parts, and mopping at her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief––but he couldn’t; and all he could say about it was it was better’n any theatre show he’d ever seen. The nubs of it was, he said, that she said her husband had taken out a troop from Fort Wingate against the Apaches (Hill knew blame well up there in the Navajo country was no place to look for Apaches) and the troop had been ambushed in a cañon in the Zuñi Mountains (which made the story still tougher) and every man of ’em, along with her “dear Captain” as she 19 called him, had lost his hair. “His loved remains are where those fierce creatures left them,” she said. “I have not even the sad solace of properly burying his precious bones!” And she cried.

The old gent was quite broke up, Hill said, and took a-hold of her hand fatherly––she was a powerful fine-looking woman––and said she had his sympathy; and when she eased up on her crying so she could talk she said she was much obliged––and felt it all the more, she said, because he looked like a young uncle of hers who’d brought her up, her father being dead, till she was married East to her dear Captain and had come out to the Territory with him to his dreadful doom.

Hill said it all went so smooth he took it down himself at first––but he got his wind while she was crying, and he asked her what her Captain’s name was, and what was his regiment; telling her he hadn’t heard of any trouble up around Wingate, and it was news to him Apaches was in them parts. She give him a dig in the ribs with her elbow––as much as to tell him he wasn’t to ask no 20 such questions––and said back to him her dear husband was Captain Chiswick of the Twelfth Cavalry; and it had been a big come down for him, she said, when he got his commission in the Regulars, after he’d been a Volunteer brigadier-general in the war.

Hill knowed right enough there wasn’t no Twelfth Cavalry nowhere, and that the boys at Wingate was A and F troops of the Fourth; but he ketched on to the way she was giving it to the old gent––and so he give her a dig in the ribs, and said he’d knowed Captain Chiswick intimate, and he was as good a fellow as ever was, and it was a blame pity he was killed. She give him a dig back again, at that––and was less particular about making room on his side.

The old gent took it all in, just as it come along; and after she’d finished up about the Apaches killing her dear Captain he wanted to know where she was heading for––because if she was going home East, he said, he was going East himself and could give her a father’s care.

She said back to him, pleasant like, that a young man like him couldn’t well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn’t going straight back East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she was expecting to pay her way through––and she wasn’t any too sure about it, she said, whether she’d get her remittance; or, if she did get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear Captain along come the news the bank East he’d put his money in had broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn’t a patch on the trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain.

The old gent––he wasn’t a fool clean through––asked her what was the matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to transportation, being an officer’s widow going home. Hill said he give her a nudge at that, as much as to 22 say the old gent had her. She didn’t faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such things had to go all the way to Washington to be settled, she said, and then come West again––Hill said he ’most snickered out at that––and she’d known cases when red-tape had got in the way and transportation hadn’t been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible, and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home again to her little boy––who was all there was left her in the world. Her little Willy was being took care of by his grandmother, she said, and he was just his father’s own handsome self over again––and she got out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes.

“HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP,
AND THE OLD GENT GOT A-HOLD OF IT”

Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent got a-hold of it and said he didn’t know how to tell her how sorry he was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful, saying she s’posed her little Willy’d have forgot all about her before she’d get back to him––and she cried some more. Hill said she done it so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he went to licking and swearing at his mules.

After a while she took a brace––getting down her pocket-handkerchief, and calling in the hand the old gent was a-holding––and said she must be brave, like her dear Captain’d always been, so he’d see when he was a-looking at her from heaven she was doing the square thing. And as to having to wait around before she went East, she said, in one way it didn’t make any matter––seeing she’d be well cared for and comfortable at Palomitas staying in the house of the Baptist minister, who’d married her aunt.

Hill said when she went to talking about Baptist ministers and aunts in Palomitas he shook so laughing inside he most fell off the box. Except the Mexican padre who belonged there––the one I’ve spoke of that made a record, and Bishop Lamy had to bounce––and sometimes the French ones 24 from San Juan and the Cañada, who was straight as strings, there wasn’t a fire-escape ever showed himself in Palomitas; and as to the ladies of the town––well, the ladies wasn’t just what you’d call the aunt kind. It’s a cold fact that Palomitas, that year when the end of the track stuck there, was the cussedest town, same as I’ve said it was, in the whole Territory––and so it was no more’n natural Hill should pretty near bust himself trying to hold in his laughing when the Hen took to talking so off-hand about Palomitas and Baptist ministers and aunts. She felt how he was shaking, and jammed him hard with her elbow to keep him from letting his laugh out and giving her away.

Hill said they’d got along to Pojuaque by the time the Hen had finished telling about herself, and the fix she was in because she had to wait along with