Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/overlandtales00clifrich OVERLAND TALES by JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD. [Illustration] San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co. 1877. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by Josephine Clifford, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. [Illustration: J. FAGAN & SON, STEREOTYPERS, PHILAD'A.] COLLINS, PRINTER. Dedicated TO MY KINDEST AND _MOST CONSTANT READER_, MOTHER. PREFACE. In the book I now lay before the reader, I have collected a series of stories and sketches of journeyings through California, Arizona, and New Mexico. There is little of fiction, even in the stories; and the sketches, I flatter myself, are true to life--as I saw it, at the time I visited the places. A number of these stories first appeared in the OVERLAND MONTHLY, but some of them are new, and have never been published. I bespeak for them all the attentive perusal and undivided interest of the kind reader. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. PAGE _LA GRACIOSA_, 13 _JUANITA_, 53 _HETTY'S HEROISM_, 68 _A WOMAN'S TREACHERY_, 87 _THE GENTLEMAN FROM SISKIYOU_, 101 _SOMETHING ABOUT MY PETS_, 119 _POKER-JIM_, 137 _THE TRAGEDY AT MOHAWK STATION_, 153 _LONE LINDEN_, 161 _MANUELA_, 188 _THE ROMANCE OF GILA BEND_, 204 _A LADY IN CAMP_, 219 _THE GOLDEN LAMB_, 237 _IT OCCURRED AT TUCSON_, 260 _A BIT OF "EARLY CALIFORNIA"_, 274 _HER NAME WAS SYLVIA_, 282 _CROSSING THE ARIZONA DESERTS_, 296 _DOWN AMONG THE DEAD LETTERS_, 310 _MARCHING WITH A COMMAND_, 321 _TO TEXAS, AND BY THE WAY_, 354 _MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN NEW MEXICO_, 367 OVERLAND TALES. _LA GRACIOSA._ It was a stolid Indian face, at the first casual glance, but lighting up wonderfully with intelligence and a genial smile, when the little dark man, with the Spanish bearing, was spoken to. Particularly when addressed by one of the fairer sex, did a certain native grace of demeanor, an air of chivalrous gallantry, distinguish him from the more cold-blooded, though, perhaps, more fluent-spoken, Saxon people surrounding him.