“Fightin’ is goin’ to be a sight different than what we see in the old days when we fit the Indians and the rustlers. “I remember when my father carried me along up into the Carrizozo country in New Mexico. I was about eleven year old. At the hot springs there we was set upon by the sneakiest bunch o’ Navajos I ever see. We fit and fit, for three days, never stoppin’ to eat more’n a chew of tobaccy (that’s why I never could tolerate chewin’ since) an’ the only water we had to drink was what we could dip out the boilin’ springs an’ cool in the sun. “Then we got out o’ water an’ Everett Eames--he was a good ole scout--slipped out easy after dark to the springs. We heard a splash an’ a fearful screech, and Paw says, ‘Poor ole Eames, the varmints have boiled him alive.’ “An’ just then ole Eames comes crawlin’ in, drippin’ an madder’n wet wildcats. It was the first time water had touched his hide in nigh on thutty years, an’ hot at that! “By mornin’ we had got down to nothin’ but rabbit shot and we was pepperin’ away at a bush where a few Indians still held out, when out tumbles a young feller, full o’ buck shot, an’ the fight was over an’ so was our shot. “Well, I spent the rest o’ the mornin’ pickin’ shot out o’ that young Navajo’s back and easin’ him o’ the lead, an’ he was the gratefullest Indian you ever see. Used to bring me presents every year up till a couple o’ years ago. An’ I was grateful too, for we needed the shot to go out an git us some breakfast. “Them were cruel days in some ways. When this very house was a sort o’ fortified hotel still, I was stayin’ here and there stopped a sickly lookin’ young feller, real dapper, who had a holler cough. Tuber-coo-losis, in the last stages, I says to myself. “From the East he was, he says, an’ afeared o’ shootin’ irons. Towards the third day there rode in from the west the Sheriff o’ Doña Ana County, and from the east the Sheriff o’ Alamogordo, Lincoln County. “They was bent their man was there an’ started round the house. The young feller was comin’ up from the corral when they seed him and he seed them an’ was scared stiff I reckon. He dodged round the corner. We was lookin’ out the dinin’-room window an’ we seed the two Sheriffs start to stalk him round the house, one side, t’other. “The kid came runnin’ in, skeered. Never carried a shootin’ iron, he said, an’ I hid him in that very cellar where Russell got shut up this evenin’. The Sheriffs ran round the house and shot each other through their two-gallon hats, an’ when I opened the cellar door Billy the Kid had made a clean get-away. Though we never figgered how, for I was a-sittin’ on the lid all the time, an there’s nary other openin’.” “Well, sir,” said Jimmy, amidst the general shout over the story, “I never heard you tell that one about the famous boy bandit of New Mexico before.” “Oh, I got a passel of stories you never heard me tell yet.” Old Man Daniels’ eyes twinkled.