Callers!
[WANDERERS.]
Making a fire after a long day in the boat and not thinking there was anyone else for miles; rather there was not, as the nearest place is the line between two states where a number of "bad men" have settled. When the soldiers from one state come for any of them (if they ever do) the men can step over the line. Well, we were getting wood and one of us came out of the night with a fellow walking behind, knife in hand (such a foolish thing; why not in front?) A canoe slid out of the fog with two muffled women astern, and three more men who got out and stood round the fire. As they had their knives out, one of us left fishing in the boat and passed guns round to our side. Then we talked and ate. They were very free and easy villains but went off into the fog again all right. After keeping watch awhile we went to sleep.
["THE WEARY PLOUGHBOY."]
"The weary ploughboy homeward bound," and not knowing one day from another here we were ploughing with bullocks when a man riding by said: "Thought you English did not work Sundays." My brother was wild; he threw the ear ropes down and wanted to know "If he'd lived all these years and traveled all these miles to plough Sundays with adjectived bullocks in a condemned country!" Bullocks are trying. The Reverend—looking out of the train at Frayle Muerto saw an Englishman swearing wonderfully at his bullocks. The Reverend told him to be gentle; the man being angry threw his ropes down, telling the Reverend to take them around himself. The Reverend did so; and it is said that by the time he got around—well you can guess. We got a little two-wheeled cart and with a broncho not used to driving. Some one behind him with his leather belt and buckle; and a peon on a horse in front to pull him along, and so across camp to a railway and my brother went back to England. The rest of the outfit got home somehow.
