We had now entered the bed of the Great Alamos. It was quite dark. Silence fell upon us. Every man held his loaded rifle, full-cocked, and finger on trigger—peering into the darkness, and seeking in every sage-bush an Indian contour. Every now and then the conductor’s rifle went up and down with a nervous twitch.
The evening had become quite cold. I had felt it keenly before we reached the Stone Ranch; but as we crept along in the heavy sand, through the darkness, looking every moment for the flash of an Indian rifle, I felt all in a glow. I did not think of cold. No doubt, the reason was that I could think only of Indians, and felt that I was in a pretty warm place.
At last! We are out of the sand. The mules strike a good trot. It is only four miles now to Artesian Wells, and then we shall have supper, I am informed. I feel quite light-hearted over the recent past and the close future. Strange to say, with the decrease of my fear of Indians, the glow subsides and I feel cold again. The strain is over; we begin to talk once more. George, the driver, has won my admiration by his cool and calm attention to his team while we passed through the “bad Injun place.”
“If we’re attacked,” George had said, “you others must do the shootin’. I’ll have all I can do to manage this team.”
George was the beau ideal of a good stage-driver in an Indian country—so the lieutenant told me.
“It is a driver’s duty to attend to his team under fire, as George very properly says, as much as it is a surgeon’s to cure the wounded, when necessary, under like circumstances. It requires a good deal more coolness, and it is much harder for him to watch and control his team while bullets are grazing him, than it would be to throw down the reins and begin firing. It takes all his strength and coolness to manage the excited and terrified animals. Shooting gives needed excitement at such a time, but then the mules run off, the stage is upset, and broken legs or necks and certain capture are the result. George is a good driver, and, had he not one great defect, would be a very good man.”
“What is the defect?” I asked.
“Drinking,” whispered the lieutenant.
“He does not look in the least like a drinking man.”
“True; yet he is as drunk as he can be now. He has not been sober for years. George is one of your white-faced drinkers. He is always as you see him now. I have been two years on this line, and I have not seen George sober yet. Look at his eyes when we get to supper, and you will see they are not the eyes of a man in his normal condition.”