"I didn't look for it," answered the Drummer. "They offered to let me in and give me a third interest for $300, but somehow I didn't like the idea, and the whole thing seemed uncanny, and it is lucky I didn't. The Prospector and the Eastern man got back a week later without having discovered the 'Mound of Eternal Silence,' both mad as hatters, and each laying the blame of the failure on the other. I have always wondered since if Judson was really as crazy as they thought he was." "Why," I asked, "what made you doubt it?" "Oh," answered the Drummer, "I can't exactly say I disbelieve his story, but--well, you see, about a month afterwards I was in Phœnix again, and one night I saw the Prospector and the lunatic taking a drink at a bar together. A little later the Prospector passed me without seeing me. He was walking arm in arm with a stranger, and as they went by I heard him say, 'If I had the money I never would think of asking any one to go in with me. He calls it the "Mound of Eternal Silence...."' "They passed on, and their voices were lost to me in the distance." [Illustration: TIXINOPA.] STORY OF A BAD INDIAN. Malita was a half-breed, the daughter of an old squaw man. She had spent several years at the Indian school in Phœnix, and had proved herself an apt pupil. Later she went to work on Simmons' Ranch. She was a very pretty, healthy looking girl, and one day Morgan Jones, the hunter and trapper, asked her to marry him. She went with him to his cabin near the Reservation and settled down. Jones was a devil-may-care sort of chap, who, when he had a little money, came to the straggling one-horse town near the Reservation, drank considerable whiskey, and amused himself by running his pony up and down the one street, firing off his gun, and shouting at the top of his voice. This was Jones' idea of a good time, and his method of contributing his share to the sanguinary ornamentation of the embryo metropolis. Malita made Jones a good wife, and attended to his creature comforts to the best of her ability, and when Jones returned to the cabin in an inebriated condition she soothed him, and put him to bed, looking upon such incidents as a matter of course. For a year or more they lived contentedly, and a little boy was born to them. On the Reservation lived an Indian named Tixinopa, a splendid specimen of a savage athlete, and the most noted runner and hunter in his tribe. Like many of his race, while hating the white man, he loved the white man's fire-water, and it made him surly and quarrelsome. He was a natural leader, and often, at night, he spoke with fiery eloquence of the wrongs of his race, sowing the seeds of unrest and rebellion.