The Arizona sentinel., 1888-12-29
A STORY BY BILL ME.
How the Railroad Came Out One
 Trip-Pass Ahead.


 It was just after the Thornburg massacre on Milk river, and some time subsequent to the ghastly horror of the White River Agency, and while we were the neighbors of the mild, gentle Ute, who murdered poor old Agent Meeker. and dragged his gray head through the city with log chain about his neck afterward, because he had, in a cruel and harsh spirit, asked the whole White River tribe to hoe two acres of their own potatoes!
 Later, Colonel Thornburg in his march toward the agency, had been massacred with most of his command, though they fought the gentle and wronged children of the forest in the hot sun, till the dead horses and men actually drove them from their post and into the merciless grasp of the untutored but pure, virtuous and shift less assassins, whose chief industry IS indolencc, and whose principal relaxa- ton is death-to some body who is looking the other way.
 Our town being more or less min ing town, and the Utes, especially un- der Colorow, the wickedest unhung murderer west of the Missouri, having prior claims to a good deal of our mining district, which seemed to curse the most of us with doubt when we went into prospect hole, as to whether we would come out alive or not, we were watching the reports with good deal of interest, and doing very little general prospecting.
 It was at the close of one of these ap- prehensive days that healthy but pie beian-looking party, weighing about two hundred pounds, rapped softly and then came into the dug-out which we called our office.
 Twill call him St. Aubrey, because 1 do not exactly recall his name and be- cause can just remember he was an Englishman with French name He was a ''low-sot'' man with an air of neglect about his clothes, such as most any body would have after dining and dressing out of a hollow-chested pack saddle for six months, during which time he hadn't seen white man or a Chinese laundry.
 was sitting on frontier chair made of a pine butt with a strap handle nailed on the top, and administering a dose of kerosene to my "weepon, when Mir. St. Aubrey came in.
 He didn't try to look pretty, like a toy cowboy with chamois shirt and nine-dollar sombrero with wattles on the side, or wear soft huckskin panta- looms, trimmed with beads. He was homely, I'll admit, and Ornery as you might say, with a tendency toward gastric preponderance. His eyes were small, and he had a contour like a woodchuck or prairie dog after a prosperous season. He had the air of a man who might be in search of more means, and so he didn't impress me very well, for 1 had been doing pretty active business in the way of assisting deserving but busted young people down toward San Francisco, and when they had been hungry enough there, and at the same time jobless, l had helped them to get back to the States, where the home-nest was just sui fering to receive them. So I was coy when MT. St. Aubrey sad he had called to see me, bearing a note of introduction from the managing editor of the Denver Tribune. 1 did not flush with that keen sense of gen. eral jubilee that had soaked into my system when such a letter was pre- sented to me earlier in the season.
 controlled myself, and kept on swabbing the cylinder of my great blood purifier and selt-cocEing arbitra- tor. He didn't get mad. He remained patient and bided his time.
 He said he was a newspaper man. I said yes, this seemed to be a good year for newspaper men. Several hun dred of them had gone to San Francisco during the past IWeIVe months Tn palace cars, returning later in a more deliberate way, by means of the old overland dirt road. l had been the means of half-soling and rehabilitating several myself.
 MT. St. Aubrey did not seem to squirm or get irritated. He just quiet ly looked at me and waited for me to read the note of introduction. l didn't read it, though, for l am prej- udiced against notes of introduc tion generally, knowing as I do that they are frequently written under duress, and that between the lines there is ever anon dumb appeal for the recipient to kick the bearer across a wide sweep of country in the inter- ests of humanity.
 And 50 you are going on over to the