“I took it away from the Indians,” was the answer. And the jury, being an Arizona jury, promptly acquitted him. Which, was, when you come to think over such incidents as the foregoing, only simple justice.
THE OVERLAND MAIL
From the time when the first lean and bearded horsemen in their garments of fringed buckskin rode out into the savage West, men gave the same excuse for traveling that hard road toward the setting sun.
The early pathfinders maintained there must be all manner of high-priced furs off there beyond the sky-line. The emigrants who followed in the days of ’49, informed their neighbors that they were going to gather golden nuggets in California. The teamsters who drove the heavy freight-wagons over the new trails a few years later told their relatives and friends that they were going West to better their fortunes. And when the Concord coaches came to carry the mail between the frontier settlements and San Francisco, the men of wealth who financed the different lines announced there was big money in the ventures; the men of action who operated them claimed that high wages brought them into it.
So now you see them all: pathfinder, argonaut, teamster, stage-driver, pony-express rider, and capitalist, salving their consciences and soothing away the trepidations of their women-folk with the good old American excuse that they were going to make money.
As a matter of fact that excuse was only an excuse and nothing more. In their inmost hearts all these men knew that they had other motives.
There was one individual who did not try to hoodwink himself or others about this Western business, and if you will but take the time to look into his case you will be able easily to diagnose an itching which was troubling all the rest of them.