He Had Declared Most Positively That The Desperadoes Were Planning To Attack The Command, The Very Next Morning While Crossing The Judith Mountains, With A Hope, Of Course, Of Getting The Animals.

He also told Faye that one of them would be in camp that evening to ask permission to go with him to Maginnis.

Faye said the whole story was absurd, particularly the attack, as those horse thieves would never dare attack government troops. Besides, he had over fifty good men with him, and probably there were only ten or twelve horse thieves. So not much attention was paid to what the old Frenchman had said.

But after dinner, when we were sitting outside and Faye and the doctor were smoking, a man came around the corner of the tent with long, swinging strides, and was in our midst before we had dreamed of anyone being near. He spoke to Faye courteously, and declining a chair, dropped down full length on the ground, with elbows in the grass and chin on the palms of his hands. His feet were near the tent and his face out, which placed him in a fine position to observe everything in the camp without anyone seeing that he was doing so, especially as his eyes were screened by a soft, broad-brimmed hat. It was impossible to see their color, of course.

He was young - not over twenty-eight or thirty - and handsome, with a face that was almost girlish in its fairness. His hair was neatly cut, and so was his light mustache, and his smooth face showed that he had recently shaved. He was tall and lithe, and from his chin to his toes was dressed in fine buckskin - shirt, trousers, leggings, and moccasins - and around his neck was tied a blue cotton handkerchief, new and clean. That the man could be a horse thief, an outlaw, seemed most incredible.

He talked very well, too, of the country and the game, and we were enjoying the change in our usual after-dinner camp conversation, when suddenly up he jumped, and turning around looked straight at Faye, and then like a bomb came the request to be allowed to go with him to Fort Maginnis! He raised the brim of his hat, and there seemed to be a look of defiance in his steel-blue eyes. But Faye had been expecting this, and knowing that he was more than a match for the villain, he got up from his camp stool leisurely, and with great composure told the man: "Certainly, I will be very glad to have some one along who knows the trail so well." To be told that he knew the trail must have been disconcerting to the man, but not one word did he say in reference to it.

After he had gone, Faye went over to the company, where he remained some time, and I learned later that he had been giving the first sergeant careful instructions for the next day.

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