BOOK I.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 212, 6 September 1892, Page 6

BOOK I.

A COLLEGE COWBOY,

CHAPTER ll.—(Continued.)

Garvey, returning from his duty, takes Everobt aside and asks him if he has gob a

gun yet. Meeting with a negative reply, he leads hijs protege, to a neighbouring store, where, among other commodities, they have arms for sale, and tells him to invest. - Which Phil, seeing the wisdom of his advico, does, and ia helped in the selection by the experience of his mentor, who explains the ' pints' of the weapon to him and how it must bo carried to be a quick draw ; that he doesn't favour snap-shoot-ing, even in a 'gineral scrimmage,' aa epeed is important, but' fatality vital.' t 'Having obtained the revolver for him, Mr Garvey also shows Pete how to use it, and in the course of a few days' practice hi 3 ateady nerves find good eye have done such wonders that the sheriff is elated, and remarks: "That he thinks it's safe to leb Three-Card Juan out of gaol, aa Pete can take care of himself nights.1

During these instructions, Mr Garvey works up quito an affection for the young collegian, who tolls him of his reasons for comiug to Silver City, and his hopes of making a fortune in mines. At this the old gentleman whistles sadly, and then remarks : 'Thar's lob come with them ideas, but mighty few goes away with. Though, if one does hib it rich, like the bully boy, it means sudden bullion; bub cattle's the sure go, slower but more sartin, and jist as big as mining in the long run.'

Phil has, however, sethi3 hearbon mining, and Garvey loaves him, promising to what he can for him, and remarking, with a wink : ' The sheriff sometimes hears of things officially.'

Some two weeks after these mysterious word?, Garvey cornea to Phil and brings with him the greater temptation that has yet come into the young man's life. 'Pete,' he saysj 'the Slap Jack mine has been in litigation. The litigation is ended, and ao is the capital of the owners. Now they offer a onehalf interest for ten thousand dollars, to be used in prospootinj; the claim. It's been divided into four parts ; that's twenty - five hundred dollars for a share. I'm going in for ono, and so are Sam Hicks and' Billy Benson, and I can {.'it you the other share, that's one-eighth of the property. Of course, ib ain't dead sure—you can'fc buy developed mines for twenty thousand dollars—but it's a fighting show for a big property. It's aartin on the game vein as the Bully Boy, and if they make a strike it will be a stem-winder; besides, Billy Benson's going into it, and he'a the luckiest and sharpe»t operator about here. I'll lay my money alongside of his, and if you're a gambler, you'll pat your chips on the same card.' The day before Phil would have told Garvey he didn't have the money ;. this morning he has received a letter forwarded to him from Lord John Heather ; in ifc that gentleman has apologised' for his carelessness in letting his paper go to protest, and enclosed a draft for the four hundred pounds with interest, whtoh makes something over two thousand American dollars. This money Phil itcheu to invest in the Slap Jack. He turnß the matter ovsr in his mind. If he wins? bow easy it will be to take up the protested note and make his father think the Scottish lord a gentleman. If not? herememborahia father's slur upon his friend, and thab settles the affair. He endorses the draft to Robert Evorett's order, and encloses ib with a short note, asking his father to return tho nobleman his note. The he declines Garvey.'s.otfer, and loses bis first and last) chance of a fortune in mines !

Two months after, an eight interest in the Slap Jack is worth fifty thousand dollars. But if he can'b have a good mine, Phil will gob into a bad one; and together with a prospector named Follis ho begins work upon ' The Tillio,' a location the latter has taken up and named after his daughter, a alip-shod girl of some eight or nine.

Follis' wife cooks for them, while Phil and the whole of the Follis family live cm tho remnant of the young man's Eastern money, that by this time has been reenforced by a remittance of five hundred dollars from his mother. For weeks and months the two men work at the mine with pick and sledge and drill, and find no paying ore ; until one day Phil'a pile comes to an end, and Follis, who is as honest as he 13 unfortunate, tells him that their joinb credit will not get another sack of flour, or pound of bacon; so the two dissolve partnership and leave "The Tillie" undeveloped, in which state it still remains. In this desperate plight Phil, being too proud to apply to hta mother for aid, asks his friend Garvey for work ; and gets it on the lattor's cattle1 range in the Valley of tho Pvio Grande, becoming a cowboy and gradually assuming some of the characteristics of tho race, growing red in face, full in beard, expert with the lasso and rifle, and murderous in his rough-riding of tho broncho ponies, over which he casts his lengthy legs, aimed at the heels with longrowelled Mexican spurs.

So it comes to pass that some two yea rs after be had turned his back on the East, Pete, who had almosb.forgotten his real name, ha 3 a better offer, and leaves the service of Brick Garvey for that of an English gentleman who has bought out a Mexican stock-raiser in the valley of tbe San Francisco, whose deed purported to give titl-i to a grant of many thousand acres of land that ho claimed under one of those myths of New Mexican real estate, an old Spanish grant. The gentleman, by name Mr Thomas AViHough by, is of the best blood in England, and has been captain in a crack hussar regiment, before he fell in love with a portionless girl,and marrying, found himself nob rich enough to keep his commission in a branch of Her Majesty's service where his pay did not liquidate one-half his mesa bill. He has consequently resigned from the British army, and come over here alone to better his fortune, selecting, a8 most Enr/Ibhmen do, a very poor place for his cattle enterprise. He likea Peto'a frank manner, though, th? young man having gro\vn rough, bronzod and hairy, no idea of his cowboy's education or former position cornea into his head ; and the two live almost apart for several months with two ftlexican stock herders and a half-bred named Pablo, who acts as cook.

This might have gone along indefinitely did riof; the cowboy ono evening chance to astonish lsia omployer. It had.been a hard day on the range, and Pete, coming in covered with the dust of rounding up a hundred wild Texas steers, hears Willoughby remark that a little cream would improve their ufter-dinner cotleo ; for the rarest of articles upon a New Mexican cattlo ranch is, strangely enough— milk !

The cows refuse to rob their calves, and every one ia too busy or too lazy to coerco them.

Hoaring this, Pete seizes a lariat, mounta Ilia mustang again, and in half an hour

returns with a buckeb of the unattainable, having roped, thrown, and bound a longhorned Texas heifer, a»d forced her to rob her calf for Willoughby's benefit.

1 By Jove ! awfully obliged,' returns the Englishman, and means it, though his voice has _ thab tone of uninterest peculiar to his class. ' I'm sorry you wenb to so much trouble after lassoing all those steers. It's aboub the hardest work I ever ran againsb; polo's nothing to it.' 1 No,' remarks Pete, ' but football is.'

• Football ?' laughs his employer. ' What do you know of football, Pete?'

Then Pete surprises the captain, for he quietly says : ' Two years ago I played on the Yale team.'

• A Yale man—a coivloy V gasps the astonished Britisher. • Lefb home and friends and ambition to be a cowboy ? Yon must have had a thundering good reason ?' ' Nothing thab I'm ashamed of,' answers Pete.

• I know you well enough to know that,' says the Englishman, in a tone thab wins the young man's heart. He seizes his employees hand, wrings it, and mutters: 1 Don't ask my reason. Some day, perhaps —bub nob now.' Then he strides oub into the calm Western night and looke across the mesa ab the great mountains that are growing eoft) and drjaamy under the rising moon ; and there are tears in his eyes, for he has received no letter from his mother for months, and feels thab he is forgotten by the great world that had once beon his world.

After this occurrence, Willoughby always calls him Mr Peter to his face, though he still thinks of him as Pete, being ten years older than his cowboy; but, gradually drawn together by the solitudo of these great plains and mountains, similar educations and tastea soon make the two men acquaintancos, und aftor mutual service in saving each other from wild cattle and the various other casualties of a Western range, the two gefe to be comrades and love each other with the love of the frontier, which is a greater and more enduring affection than civilisation is apb to nurture. So things ran along for about six months, when one nighbCaptain Willoughby, whose absent loved ones are often in his mind, gets to talking aboub thorn, tolling Pete something of his English life. He has one half-brother, he saya, a younger one, Arthur, the child of his father's second marriage with an Italian primadonnawhotook London by storm some twenty-five years before. 'By George,' he mutters, after a little sigh of thoughb, 'I wish he were my elder brother; it would be safer for me.' Then, seeing Pete's look of inquiry, he puts aside the subject as if it were an unpleasant one, and remarks : ' I don't often exhibit these, but some day you may know them, Mr Peter ; they are my wife and child,1 and with this speech shows Pete two pictures — one of a beautiful woman of twenty-seven or so, the other a lovely little girl of perhaps eight or nine.

Pete's hearb goes into his mouth as he looks on these specimens of feminine beauty, for the lady is of exquisite fieure and face-, with deep, true, earnesb brown eyes, and the child, when she grows up, will be the counterpart ot her mother, save thab her expression, though very sofb, has more determination.

As the cowboy gazes, tho captain continues • ' If anything should happen to me suddenly and unexpectedly I want you to forward this packet to them in England,' and produces some letters and a packet tied with bine ribbon.

A moment after he says : • I was so lonely without them I wrote to Agnes to bring my little Flossie to visit me a month ago: but since then news has come bhab may take ma back to England. So I telegraphed for them to remain.'

' I'm very glad of that, captain,' returns Pete, in so serious a tone thab his employer gazes ab him astonished, and asks his reason.

1 Because,' says Pete, in a very significant voice, ' it's getting near Apacho time.'

' Why, we haven'b heard of an outrogo since I came here.'

'No; ifc was winter, they were living on the reservations, letting their ponies get fat. Now ib is spring, and we'll hear from tne devils before long. I'm going to Lordsbnrgh : keep a good look out, and at the firnb sign of danger get over to Clifton — at onck ! Don't, in your unbelieving British way, believe— too late I Komember. the Zulus annihilated your Twenty-fourth regimenb in South Africa.'

•Yos, and the Sioux destroyed your Seventh cavalry !' cries tho captain, nob relishing this slur on English arms. ' So much tho more reason for your fearing the Apachoß,' returns Pete, and goes to bed, as he must make an early start for hia burning journey over tho Gila Plains.

The next morning, after another whispered warning, tbe cowboy, driving two half-breed horses kept for the purpose, eets oufc for Loirdsburgh, some eighty miles to tho southwest), a little town on the just completed Southern Pacific Railroad, to obtain supplios for Willoughby's ranch.. He will be duo to return early on thej fourth day, for he will stop over night at Yorks on the Gila and drivo up the next morning, thus avoiding the mid-day heat of the sun that, at this season of the year, is almost unbearable upon these New Mexican mosaa.

Flo be Conlittiied.)