The copper era and Morenci leader., 1912-01-26
A McClurg CHAPTER patrol wandered roaming

ing exposed settlements, and [---, sionally venturing to try open L'--'---- with the small squads of armed men. In this stress of sudden emergency every available soldier on active duty civilians had been pressed into serv ice, and hastily despatched to warn exposed settlers, guide wagon trains. or carry despatches between outposts. And thus our rider, Jack Keith, who knew every foot of the plains lying between the Republican and the Can adian rivers, was one of these thus suddenly requisitioned, merely be- cause he chanced to be discovered un- employed by the harassed commander of a cantonment just without the en- virons of Carson City. Twenty min utes later he was riding swiftly into the northwest, bearing important news to General Sheridan, commander of the Department, who happened at that moment to be at Fort Cairnes. To Keith this had been merely anoth- CT page in a career of adventure; for him to take his life in his hands had long ago become an old story. He had quietly performed the special duty allotted him. watched a squad ron of troopers trot forth down the valley of the Republican, received the hasty thanks of the peppery little gem eral, and then, having nothing better to do, traded his horse in at the gov ernment corral for fresh mount and started back again for Carson City. For the greater portion of two nights and a day he had been in the saddle, but he was accustomed to this, for he had driven more than one bunch of longhorns up the Texas trail; and as he had slept three hours at Cairnes, and as his nerves were like steel, the thought of danger gave him slight concern He was thoroughly tired, and it rested him to get out of thk saddle, while the freshness of tho morning air was a tonic, the very breath of which made him forgetful of fatigue.
 After all, this was indeed the very sort of experience which appealed to him, and always had-this life of peril in the open, under the stars and the sky. He had constantly expert enced it for so long now, eight years. as to make it seem merely natural While he ploughed steadily forward  lee, his thought drifted idly back over those years. and sometimes he smiled. and occasionally frowned, as various incidents returned to memory. It had been a rough life, yet one not unusual to those of his generation. Born of excellent family in tidewater Virginia his father a successful planter, his mother had died while he was still in early boyhood, and he had grown up cut of from all womanly influence. He had barely attained his majority. . senior at William and Mary's College when the Civil War came; and one month after Virginia cast in her lot with the South, he became a sergeant in a cavalry regiment commanded by his father He had enjoyed that life and won his spurs, yet 1t had cost There was much not over-pleasant to remember, and those strenuous years of almost ceaseless fighting, of long night marches, of swift, merciless raiding, of lonely scouting within the enemy's lines, of severe wounds, hardship and suffering, had left their marks on both body and soul. His father had fallen on the field at Antie- tam, and left him utterly alone in the world, but he had fought on grirnly to the end, until the last flag of the Confederacy had been furled. By that time, upon the collar of his tattered gray jacket appeared the tarnished in signia of a captain. The quick tears dimmed his. eyes even now as he re- called anew that final parting follow ing Appomattox, the battle-worn faces of his men, and his own painful jour- ney homeward, defeated, wounded and penniless. It was no home when he got there, only heap of ashes and g few weed-grown acres. No familiar face greeted him; not even a slave was left.
 He had honestly endeavored to re main there, to face the future and work it out alone; he persuaded him. self to feel that this was his para mount duty to the state, to the mem ory of the dead. But those very years of army life made such task i'm possible; the dull, dead monotony of routine, the loneliness the s1owness of results, became intolerable. As it came to thousands of his comrades, the call of the West came to him, and at last he yielded. and drifted toward the frontier. The life there fascinar- ed him, drawing him deeper and deep CT into it's swirling vortex. He be- came freishter, mail carrier, hunter, government scout. cowboy, foreman Once he had drifted into the noun tains, and took a chance in the mines, hut the wide plains called him back once moro to their desert loneliness What an utter waste it all seemed, new that he looked back upon it. Eight years of fighting, hardship and rough living, and what had they brought him? The reputation of a hard rider. a daring player at cards. q nuick shat a scarner of daneer and