I think I hear one of my readers saying that Johnny’s attempt to escape was a cowardly thing to do. Yes? What would you have done, and what would I, under the same circumstances? Unless idiotic, or too frightened to mount the horse, we would have done just what Johnny did. Assuming that this had been the Kid, as Johnny firmly believed, his escape meant the loss of but two lives, instead of the loss of the same two and the sacrifice of a third--his own--if he remained. But no man knows just exactly what he would do under a certain trying condition until he has been subjected to the test of that very condition. He may think he does, but he doesn’t. But having gone less than 100 yards, Johnny’s mind has had time to react, and the chivalrous spirit asserts itself, and he turns and rides back--to what? To his death, he has every reason to believe. But having gotten the 100 yards away, would you or I have turned and ridden back to our own certain death? Is there not a possibility that were the world wide enough and the horse strong enough we might still be going? In your imagination don’t place the standard too high for the nerve you think you possess, if at the time you are absolutely in no danger. Stoicism of Indian The following incident shows something of the character of these Ishmaelites of the desert. On one occasion five of them had been tried at Florence for the killing of someone in the Superstition mountains, and sentenced to be hanged. The night previous to the day of the hanging, while in their cells, with the death-watch outside, three of them, to avoid the ignominy of death by hanging, committed suicide by self-strangulation. This they could do only by each putting a cord around his neck and deliberately choking himself to death. The three were found dead in the morning when the guards entered their cells. Of course it is not possible to recall the names of all of the many whose lives were a sacrifice to the safety and prosperity of the great commonwealth that was to follow, but I have in mind that on June 7, 1886, Thos. Hunt, a prospector, was killed near Harshaw, and on June 9 of the same year Henry Baston was killed near Arivaca. On September 22, 1888, W. B. Horton, post trader at San Carlos, was killed by one of the Indians on the reservation. But in this case punishment was swift, as the Indian police almost immediately killed the murderer while he was attempting to escape from the reservation. “Walapai” Clark and the Kid