We slept in a deserted schoolhouse, lizards and mosquitoes being our bed-fellows. Skim, the rough cowboy that he was, pillowed his head upon the horse's flank, and kept his boots on. At the break of day, restless as ever, he was off again. Crossing the Jimenez River in a native ferry while the horses swam, we passed through tiny villages that had not seen a white man for a year. Our journey now lay through the woods, and Skim, dismounting, stalked along the narrow trail as though he had been shod in seven-league boots. I heard a pistol shot ring out, and, coming up, found Skim in mortal combat with an ape. Then one more plunge into a river, and another stream spanned by a bamboo pole, which we negotiated like funambulists, dragging the steeds below us by their halters,--then Balingasag. In town the big _vaquero_ was a schoolboy on a holiday. He was a perfect panther for prowling around the streets at night, and in the market-place, where we now missed the scattering of khaki, he became acquainted with the natives, and drank _tuba_ with them. He came back with reports about the resources of the town. There was an Indian merchant stranded at Ramon's, who had a lot of watches for sale cheap. He purchased some lace curtains at the _Chino_ store, and yellow _piña_ cloth for a mosquito bar, and with this stuff he had transformed his bed into a perfect bower. It was almost a contradiction that this wild fellow, who was more accustomed to his boots and spurs at night than to pajamas, should have taken so much pains to make his sleeping-quarters dainty. Streamers of baby-ribbon fell in graceful lines about the curtains, while the gauze mosquito-bar was decorated with the medals he had won for bravery. A photograph of his divorced wife occupied the place of honor near the looking-glass. In reminiscent moods Skim used to tell how Chita, of old Mexico, had left him after stabbing him three times with the jeweled knife that he had given her. "I didn't interfere with her," he said, "but told her, when she pricked me with the little knife, it was my heart that she was jabbing at." Skim also told me of his expedition into "Dead Man's Gulch," "Death Valley," and the suddenly-abandoned mining-camps among the hills of California. And he had met the daughter of a millionaire in Frisco, and had seen her home. "And when I saw the big shack looming up there in the woods," he said, "I thought sure that I'd struck the wrong farmhouse."