PREFACE.


In the book I now lay before the reader, I have collected a series of stories and sketches of journeyings through California, Arizona, and New Mexico. There is little of fiction, even in the stories; and the sketches, I flatter myself, are true to life—as I saw it, at the time I visited the places.

A number of these stories first appeared in the Overland Monthly, but some of them are new, and have never been published. I bespeak for them all the attentive perusal and undivided interest of the kind reader.

The Author.


CONTENTS.


PAGE
LA GRACIOSA,[13]
JUANITA,[53]
HETTY'S HEROISM,[68]
A WOMAN'S TREACHERY,[87]
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SISKIYOU,[101]
SOMETHING ABOUT MY PETS,[119]
POKER-JIM,[137]
THE TRAGEDY AT MOHAWK STATION,[153]
LONE LINDEN,[161]
MANUELA,[188]
THE ROMANCE OF GILA BEND,[204]
A LADY IN CAMP,[219]
THE GOLDEN LAMB,[237]
IT OCCURRED AT TUCSON,[260]
A BIT OF "EARLY CALIFORNIA",[274]
HER NAME WAS SYLVIA,[282]
CROSSING THE ARIZONA DESERTS,[296]
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD LETTERS,[310]
MARCHING WITH A COMMAND,[321]
TO TEXAS, AND BY THE WAY,[354]
MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN NEW MEXICO,[367]