San Miguel, Chihuahua, March 24.
My dear Wife:
Since I last wrote you I have been on a long trip into the Yaqui country as guide, interpreter and friend to a timid tenderfoot—and all-round sharp from the Smithsonian. His main lay is Cliff-Dweller-ology, but he does other stunts—rocks and bugs and Indian languages, and early Spanish relics.
I get big pay. I enclose you $100——
“A hundred dollars! Why, this is blackmail!” remonstrated the Judge, grinning nevertheless.
“But,” said Jeff, “I’ve got to send it. She knows I wouldn’t stay away except for good big pay, and she knows I’ll send the big pay to her. I didn’t think you were a piker. Why, I had thirty dollars in my pocket. You won’t be out but seventy. And if you don’t send it she’ll know the letter is a fake. Besides, she needs the money.”
“I surrender! I’ll send it,” said the Judge, and resumed his reading:
——and will send you more when I get back from next trip. Going way down in the Sierra Madre this time. Don’t know when we will hit civilization again, so you needn’t write till you hear from me.
The Cliff-Dweller-ologist had the El Paso papers sent on here to him and I am reading them all through while he writes letters and reports and things. I am reading some of his books, too.
Mary, I always hated it because I didn’t have a better education. I used to wonder if you wasn’t sometimes ashamed of me when we was first married. But I’ve learned a heap from you and I’ve picked up considerable, reading, these last few years—and I begin to see that there are compensations in all things. I see a good deal in things I read now that I would have missed if I’d just skimmed over the surface when I was younger. For instance, I’ve just made the acquaintance of Julius Cæsar—introduced by my chief.