Weekly journal-miner., 1919-12-10
STAR OF EMPIRE LIGHTED SCENE OF TRAGEDY FOR
 WOMEN OF THE OLD WEST

l
 Back at the post he was known as 1 the best scout of his years in the Southwest. Crooks right-hand man, i ''as straight as the day is long and | better trailer than Picacho"-Picacho, 1 the Apache renegade of surpassing 1 cunning, who wrote his name in blood across many a page of Arizona l history; Picacho who boasted that he could trail the breath of white man | if he never touched foot to the ground.
 At the foot of the trail the girl ran on ahead peeping into the empty shelters of bent saplings and dried | brush.
 "Scc. Jont, all the houses we want all ready to move ill. I'll have to have a house-cleaning first, though; the Tontos aren't very tidy house keepers, I think"
 Game back, HoneyP' he called warningly; better let me pick out i your new house. Seems to me smell bear around here; it's most like Indian, only there's more of it. l cant afford to let a bear get you right at the start, you know"
 The moist earth around the aban- doned camp was rooted up in ridges as if a drove of hogs had fed there, and the blue grass beds and strips of bark that the Indians had left behind them were heaped in ridgy wallows l such as hogs love to bed in in winter A startled "Woof! Woof!" came from the farthest doom and something black and shaggy tumbled out into the bushes.
 Don't, Jont, don't shootI" cried ] the girl, catching his arm. See, it's a mother"
 Two wee brown cubs falling over each other in awkward baby fright | followed their mother into the brush.
 Don't they look just like little | tricks learning to walk? See that littlest one fall over. I'd as soon you'd kill baby, and you wouldn't do that-not even an Indian baby"
 No, Sis, but there's plenty that would. A good many Tonto squaws wasn't bothered carrying their pa pooses up that trail when we chased em out. Come on now, and let's get supper, and then I'll show you the ledge. It's right over behind that big malpai dike Wasn't one of the boys but me thought of prospecting in here. Once 1 heard one O them crazy old pocket-hunters out O Nevada say they was many a stake just caked over in this here malpai, an 1t kep me lookin'"
 Seems most too bad to drive the Tontos out of such a home" said the girl, leaning back against the roots of of pine through whose branches the wind purred a gentle song. The strips of darker flame here and there as a resinous knot caught ill the blaze or the man pelted 1t with dry cones. The stars seemed like bright far-away eyes watching above the old crater, and the lake lap-lapped faint tink- ling whisper on its shore.
 Well, 1 don't know, Honey. 1 can't never forget how them Apaches got nav and little sister. Sis wasn't only baby; l can see now how she used to catch her fingers in her bits of curls and shake her head at me when we was playing. Them curls was stiff an red when we found her, and her little hands was grippin' 'em tight over her eyes so she wouldn't see what was comin'. That's how come 1 growed up on the trail"
 Just behind the big black reef of lava that sheltered the camp a ragged backbone of quartz cropped out through the later flow Every scout and soldier was a prospector in those first days of the gold excitement, and many are the tales still told of the lodges of wonderful richness discov- cred by scouting parties and hastily concealed till safer times made 1t pos sblc to return and work them.
 With a knowledge gathered from the miners, coupled with his own keen sight, Jont had noticed the stringers of float even as he took shelter behind the ledge and fired on the flying Tontos. He managed to bring away piece or two, and it was the glitterIng dust i'll the horn spoon where he worked them down that lurcd him back with his young bride to seek a fortune in the old Indian camp.
 The first summer they lived under the pines and Jont worked till he was lost to sight in tunnel in the hill side. The girl wandered up and down making friends with the deer and rabbits and finding great thickcts of thorny gooseberries bent and torn down where the bear mother fed her cubs. With the first snowfall they went back to the past, back to civlli- i zation," as they called the cluster of adobe huts clinging like d little gray hawk to the sand-hills under the shadow of Squaw Peak.
 The next year Jont built tiny log cabin and went deeper into the ledge. Now and then he packed old Gray with ore sacks, and leaving the girl and the rife in the lonely valley, took Doll and went over the mountains 10 the post.
 "I saw the general himself, this time, Sis, he said as she watched him unSaddle after the last trip. He says you're the pluckiest little woman in America. He wanted me to come in and take the trail, but l told him was a married man now"
 Oh, Jontl How did he look? I'd like 10 see him again! Maybe if--"
 Yes, Honey; we'll do 1t; if it's d