Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1900-12-03
CHAPTER ].

The stagecoach was invisible in a
cloud of its own dust as it lurched and
rolled along the alkaIi flats down the
valley, and Sancho, the ranchkeeper,
could not make out whether any pas
sengers were on top or not. He had
brought fine binOcular to bear just as
soon as the shrill voice of Pedro, a
swarthy little scamp of half breed,
announced the dust cloud sailing over
the clump of willows below the bend.
Pedro was not the youngsters orig
inal name, and, so far as could be deter
mined by ecclesiastical records, owing
to the omission of the customary church
ceremonies he bore none that the chap
lain at old Camp Cooke would admit TO
be Christian. Itinerant prospectOrs and
occasional soldiers, however, had sug-
gested a change from the originator
aboriginal-title which was heathenish
in the last degree, to the much briefer
one of Pedro as fitting accompaniment
to that of the illustrious head of the
esta blishment, and Lieutenant Blake, an
infantry sub with cavalry aspirations
which had led him TO seek arduOus
duties in this arid land, had compre-
hensively damned the pretensions of the
place to being dinner ranch by de-
folaring that a shop that held Sancho
and Pedro and didn't have game was
unworthy of patronage.
Sancho had additional reasons for
disappearing Of Blake. That fine binoc-
-ular, to begin with, bore the brand of
Uncle Sam, for which reason it was
Idier happened along. 1t had been alb
,stracted from Blake's signal kit when
he was scouting the Dragon mountains
and snapped for the vilest liquor under
the sun at Sancho's, of course, and tie
value of the glass, not of the whisky,
was stopped against the long lieuten
ants pay, leaving him, as he ruefully
pat it, ''short enough at the end of the
month.
Somebody told Blake he would find
his binocular at Sancho's, and Blake
instituted inquiries after his own pecul-
lar fashion the very next time he hap
pened along that way.
"Here, you Castilian castaway, "
said he as he alighted at Sancho's door,
81 am told you have stolen property in
the shape of my signal glass Hand it
over instanter!'
And Sancho, bowling with the grace Of
a grandee of Spain, having assured the
senior teniente that everything within
his gates was at his service, without
money and without price, had promptly
fetched from an adjoining room a bat
tered old double barreled lorgnette that
looked as though it might have been
dropped in the desert by Kearny or
'FauntleToy or some of the dragons
who made the burning march before the
Gadsden purchase Of 1858 made us pos
SCISSORS of more desert sand and desolute
range than we have ever known what
to do with.
''This thing came out of the ark,
said Blake, rightfulIy wrathful. "What
l want is the signal glass that deserter
sold you for whisky last Christmas.
Whereat Sancho called on all the
saints in tic Spanish calendar to bear
witness to his innocence and babe the
teniente search the premises.
Hes got it in that bedroom yonder,"
Whispered old Sergeant Feeney, land I
know it, sir" and Blake, striding to the
door in response to the half challenge,
half Invitation, of the gravely courteous
cutthrCat owner, stopped short az the