Weekly journal-miner., 1919-06-25


 waited beside the first horse with his saddle and blankets and bridle at his feet As the white flag fell he swung the saddle up, cinched it, slipped the big, raking Spanish bit, studded with silver and jingling with chains, into the horses mouth, and was off, rid ing low and plying spurs.
 He seemed to shoot off headlong at the quarter post, the saddle swoop- ed from the wet back to the waiting one, bridle changed, and away like hell beating tanbark,' as Lazy s. standing upright on the rail of the judges stand called to the anxious punchers below. Again and again, that swift swinging flop of the sad dle on the fresh horse-other men would ride that course for fun or brief glory, but the man who rode lfor the middle Circle U girl came in with a hand-width of daylight under his cinch and minutes spare. The hundred silver dollars contributed a modest stock of sure enough store furniture" to the new housekeeping outfit.
 The big, Gow-hung stars helped ous the lanterns and the candles, stuck in holders made of three nails driven into a bit of board, and hung around the platform where the grand ball was in progress To be sure the floor was not perfectly smooth and the pitch had oozed up in the July stun; but it was big, dozen sets could swing in the graceful old-time quad rifles, and before the night was over the floor managers had cut up an armful of sperm candles over the Moor, crude but efficient waxing. The musicians had set their chairs Up on a board table in the middle of 'the floor, and from this precarious elevation the strains of Money Musk" Pop Goes the Weasel Buffalo Girls and the rest of the long list of range favorites, rolled out under the easy bows of the iddlers, seconded by the purr of guitar or two and maybe the plunk of a banjo.
 Ah. that baIly Its music would sing down the wind on many lonely night on far ranges and rise above the thunder of stampeeding hoofs on many trail. The memory of bright eyes in the 7flickering candle light would outsnine the stars on many graveyard watch, and the touch of shy, brown hands would haunt many a saddle-pillowed head, till the owner rose to point of courage and mark ed out the fate of the middle Circle U girl for the disturber of his peace before another Fourth of July came round.
 And that was Yavapai-and a Fourth of July celebration in Pres colt when Arizona was the fartnest frontier-before anybody had ever thought of Frontier Day lasting arT week. And won't all the comfort and beauty and fun of next week be the better for this bit of remembering?
 While the Broncho Busters
 Are Gathering.
 We who remember the old days when Prescott was half its present size, and the old-time merchants who freighted their goods from San Der nardino by way of Ehrenburg or from Tucson by way of Wickenburg, can have good time all to ourselves by just walking around the plaza and looking at the stores and then walk ing around the sidewalks and looking in at the show windows, and then go- ing inside and seeing how far Ari- zona has travelled since the first load of goods was unloaded in log cabin and sold out in a few days to men who came on foot or with pack mules and traded gold dust and Mexican 'dobe dollars for the first food sup plies not out of Mexico.
 The B.-B. Co. store covers the site of onetime log cabins and it was one of the first places open for business. Why it is still open is clear enough when one looks over the stock, qual- ty, quantity, varicty-the buyer of oday will think of stores in big Coast cities, with which 1t compares -avorabiy-we who have traded there for thirty or forty years are busy how it expresses tne growth md change of all Arizona.
 The Tribby Shoe Store, too, stands where once log cabins stood, but the present stock inside would have ''sur- orised the natives" ill their buckskin and the early pioneers a. we'll. Some of our latest corners nay, indeed, be surprised at the com oleteness of the stock, the style and : comfort, to be had for all sorts or eet.
 It is about as far a days travel rom moccasns to 1919 shoes as from he old whip-saw pit in which the irst lumber in Prescott was made to he Head Lumber Co.'S big stock of all sorts of lumber for everything rom a mine to modern bungaiow. .ook and see between times while he broucho busters get ready. !