During our supper conversation I gathered some facts of the doctor's history, which, with what I had already learned, rendered the old man an object of extreme interest to me. Up to this time, I had wondered what such a character could be doing in such company as that of the Scalp-hunters. I now learned a few details that explained all. His name was Reichter--Friedrich Reichter. He was a Strasburgher, and in the city of bells had been a medical practitioner of some repute. The love of science, but particularly of his favourite branch, botany, had lured him away from his Rhenish home. He had wandered to the United States, then to the Far West, to classify the flora of that remote region. He had spent several years in the great valley of the Mississippi; and, falling in with one of the Saint Louis caravans, had crossed the prairies to the oasis of New Mexico. In his scientific wanderings along the Del Norte he had met with the Scalp-hunters, and, attracted by the opportunity thus afforded him of penetrating into regions hitherto unexplored by the devotees of science, he had offered to accompany the band. This offer was gladly accepted on account of his services as their medico; and for two years he had been with them, sharing their hardships and dangers. Many a scene of peril had he passed through, many a privation had he undergone, prompted by a love of his favourite study, and perhaps, too, by the dreams of future triumph, when he would one day spread his strange flora before the _savants_ of Europe. Poor Reichter! Poor Friedrich Reichter! yours was the dream of a dream; it never became a reality! Our supper was at length finished, and washed down with a bottle of Paso wine. There was plenty of this, as well as Taos whisky in the encampment; and the roars of laughter that reached us from without proved that the hunters were imbibing freely of the latter. The doctor drew out his great meerschaum, Gode filled a red claystone, while Seguin and I lit our husk cigarettes. "But tell me," said I, addressing Seguin, "who is the Indian?--he who performed the wild feat of shooting the--" "Ah! El Sol; he is a Coco." "A Coco?" "Yes; of the Maricopa tribe." "But that makes me no wiser than before. I knew that much already." "You knew it? Who told you?" "I heard old Rube mention the fact to his comrade Garey." "Ay, true; he should know him." Seguin remained silent. "Well?" continued I, wishing to learn more. "Who are the Maricopas? I have never heard of them." "It is a tribe but little known, a nation of singular men. They are foes of the Apache and Navajo; their country lies down the Gila. They came originally from the Pacific, from the shores of the Californian Sea." "But this man is educated, or seems so. He speaks English and French as well as you or I. He appears to be talented, intelligent, polite--in short, a gentleman." "He is all you have said." "I cannot understand this."