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We ourselves crawled down, and frequently I lighted matches to see where to place my foot next, sick, dizzy, to see the edge of the trail not a foot away disappearing into a chasm of blackness. Now and then a loose piece of shale would slide off into space, and it seemed minutes before the dry click sounded as it struck the bottom.

Once at the base, Begay led me to a large log "hogan," similar to the dome-shaped huts I had seen in the mountains. We crawled through the low door, and soon had a cheery fire of crackling cedar logs burning in the centre of the floor, the smoke rising and disappearing out of the large vent in the roof. This shelter had been built for the use of any one who found it necessary to spend the night in the canyon. On one side were piled two or three dozen ragged and worn sheep skins for bedding, and alongside, piled in a heap on the ground, were a number of blackened and dented tin dishes. In the centre lay a great pile of wood-ashes, telling the tale of many camp-fires, and over the low door hung a tattered piece of buckskin. We made a pot of strong, black coffee from the muddy water, from which a stench of sheep now rose, and with a large can of veal-loaf and some pilot bread we ate ravenously until barely enough was left for breakfast. With the last mouthful swallowed, the boy dragged four or five skins to the fire, and wrapping himself in his blanket threw himself upon them, and immediately fell into a sound sleep. The night promised to be a sharp, frosty one, so I dragged a huge cedar root on to the dying embers, and preparing in my turn a bed of skins was soon dead to the world.

It seemed hardly an hour's time before I was aroused by the bark of the dog and the bleating sheep. I crawled out of the hut wrapped in my blanket; it was still dusk, but the sky was rapidly brightening. A sharp, cutting wind swept through the canyon, and I could hear Begay down at the water-hole cracking the ice with a stick. The high rock walls that hemmed us in loomed gigantic and black in the gloom; they resembled the ruins of mighty castles, fringed at the top with the silhouettes of tufted cedar. The steadily increasing gray light sifted down upon us, disclosing enormous rounded bowlders, jagged pinnacles

VOL. XLV.-3

of rock, mysterious caves, gnarled and twisted cedars through which the winds moaned and sighed, drifting the loose sands in tiny eddies into caves and crevices or piling it in fantastic mounds on the open stretches. Directly behind the hut, and protected by a projecting ledge, nestled the corral enclosing the sheep, and beyond, at the foot of a long, gentle incline, lay the precious pool of water.

A light breakfast eaten and the sheep watered, we started the second and last lap of our journey. Unlike the descending trail of the previous night, the way out of the canyon was comparatively easy, except that we had to be very cautious and evade the many soft and treacherous sand-drifts. I asked Begay what time he expected we would reach our destination; he replied by pointing to the sun and following its orbit till its position indicated three o'clock.

It was about that time when we descended into the bottom-lands of the "Rio Las Animas," where lay "Nip" Arment's thriving trading-post.

The sheep moved slowly, and the dog, his services unneeded, lagged behind. We were seen long before we reached the "Post," and upon our arrival a dozen Indians aided Begay to count and corral the sheep. I stood apparently unnoticed, until, as all were walking toward the "store," Begay flourished the silver stirrup; a brief explanation followed and all eyes were turned on me.

A moment after "Nip" Arment appeared upon the scene, and with a hearty welcome led me to his house. The home was lavish in comforts; many Navajo rugs adorned the floors, numberless trophies of the hunt and rare relics from the desert hung on the walls; but I missed my new friend. That night I talked long and late with the trader, and once in bed I fell into a sound, sound sleep. I did not wake before noon; but then I dressed hurriedly and rushed out in search of Begay. A group of Indians were playing cards behind the "store" in the warm sun, and I asked them where to find him. One of them, a tall, sinister fellow, slowly and solemnly arose, and coming over to where I was standing, placed one hand on my shoulder and pointed with a long, dark finger at two disappearing specks on the western horizon. They were Begay and his dog.

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Wolffert was cursing me with all the eloquence of a rich vocabulary.-Page 30.

BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE

ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

I

MY FIRST FAILURE

SHALL feel at liberty to tell my story in my own way; rambling along at my own. gait; now going from point topoint; now tearing ahead; now stopping to rest or to ruminate, and even straying from the path whenever I think a digression will be for my own enjoyment.

I shall begin with my college career, a period to which I look back now with a pleasure wholly incommensurate with what I achieved in it; which I find due to the friends I made and to the memories I garnered there in a time when I possessed the unprized treasures of youth: spirits, hope, and abounding conceit. As these memories, with the courage (to use a mild term) that a college background gives, are about all that I got out of my life there, I shall dwell on them only enough to introduce one or two friends who played later a very considerable part in my life.

My family was an old and distinguished one; that is, it could be traced back about two hundred years, and several of my ancestors had accomplished enough to be known in the history of the State-a fact of which I was so proud that I was quite satisfied at college to rest on their achievements, and felt no need to add to its distinction by any labors of my own.

We had formerly been well off; we had, indeed, at one time prior to the Revolutionary War, owned large estates-a time to which I was so fond of referring when I first went to college that one of my acquaintances named Peck, an envious fellow, observed one day that I thought I had inherited all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. My childhood was spent on an old plantation, so far removed from anything that I have since known that it might almost have been in another planet. VOL. XLV.-4

It happened that I was the only child of my parents who survived, the others having been carried off in early childhood by a scourge of scarlet fever, to which, as I look back, I now know was due my mother's sadness of expression when my father was not present. I was thus subjected to the perils and great misfortune of being an only child, among them that of thinking the sun rises and sets for his especial benefit. I must say that both my father and mother tried to do their part faithfully to counteract this danger, and they not only believed firmly in, but acted consistently on, the Solomonic doctrine that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. My father, I must say, was more lenient, and I think gladly evaded the obligation as interpreted by my mother, declaring that Solomon, like a good many other persons, was much wiser in speech than in practice. He was fond of quoting the custom of the ancient Scythians, who trained their youth to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. And in this last particular he was inexorable.

Among my chief intimates as a small boy was a little darkey named "Jeams." Jeams was the grandson of one of our old servants-Uncle Ralph Woodson. Jeams, who was a few years my senior, was a sharp-witted boy, as black as a piece of old mahogany, and had a head so hard that he could butt a plank off a fence. Naturally he and I became cronies, and he picked up information on various subjects so readily that I found him equally agreeable and useful.

My father was admirably adapted to the conditions that had created such a character, but as unsuited to the new conditions that succeeded the collapse of the old life as a shorn lamb would be to the untempered wind of winter. He was a Whig and an aristocrat of the strongest type, and though in practice he was the kindest and most liberal of men, he always maintained that a gentleman was the choicest fruit of civilization; a standard,

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