A few moments later an hysterical, sobbing girl threw herself from her saddle straight into the arms of the man who loved her, and whom, she now knew, she loved. [Illustration] [Illustration] AN ARIZONA ETUDE "Las' time I was in Fo't Worth," drawled Peg Leg Russel who was industriously working away, with marlin spike and leather strings, on a new quirt, "I seen a circus band there a-ridin' hosses an' a-playin' at the same time." "Makin' sure enuff music?" queried one of the boys. "They sure was," replied Peg Leg; "an' what's more, them ole white hosses they was a-ridin' never batted an eye, but jist tromped along like a bunch of hearse horses. "I'd sure love to see 'em try any such funny business with these yere little ole diggers we're a-ridin'," he continued, "Lordy, but wouldn't they git up an' rag when the first toot come off." "If ye'd been wid me in the good old 'gallopin' Sixth Cavalry,' ye'd sure had a chanst to observe jist such a performance," said Pat the cook, who was busy at the mess box with supper preparations. The mess wagon was backed up into the shade of a great, wide-spreading juniper, and the outfit was waiting there a few days for a bunch of fresh saddle horses from the horse camp. Ten or a dozen punchers were lying about in the shade, some asleep, some overhauling "war bags," sunning bedding, and others like Russel making quirts or hair ropes. [Illustration: "_The mess wagon was backed up into the shade_"] The old red-headed cook's army experiences were the butt of a great many sly jokes among the men, but he always had something new to relate, and the intimation, that he had seen a band mounted on western horses, was enough to excite their curiosity. "Tell us about it, Pat," said Tex, "them Sixth Cavalry fellers sure rode the outpitchenest lot of bronks I ever see outside of a cow-outfit. I reckin' I'd oughter know, fer I were a workin' fer old man White down in the San Simon Valley clost to Fort Bowie in them days." Any reference to the old man's former regiment warmed the cockles of the cook's heart, and he needed no urging to start him off on the story. "We was all a-layin' up at old Fort Tonto," he said rolling out, with an empty beer bottle, what Russel said was the "lid" of a dried apple pie, "the whole regiment being there after two years spent chasin' over them hills and deserts trying to catch those divils of Apaches. "'Twere the first time in three years we'd seen the band, an' when the General sent word for them bandsmen to come up from Camp Lowell we sure felt mighty pleased, for, barrin' a couple of fiddles an' Danny Hogan's concertina, there wasn't any music worth mentioning in the whole post. "The old general had been over in Europe the year before an' picked up a lot of cranky idees about soldiering which didn't set well on the old Sixth, them bein' a bunch of rough ridin' _hombres_, very divils for fightin', but wid mighty little love for drills an' garrison duty.