José — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JOSE. 94 get their work in. The fact that they’ve treated the fort with such distinguished consideration has a curious explanation. Although I don’t believe any ghost haunts these plains, I’ve never yet been able to get at the bottom of the story.” The soldier assumed a mysterious look and gazed about him upon the circle of interested faces as if to convince himself again that he might relate the story in perfect security. “It was this story, sir, that made me bold toward the red varmin,” he then continued. “When the Indians first began to gather around the fort, we saw little of them beyond an occasional squad that would come galloping up to the guards and spout something in Spanish—part of them speak Spanish, sir, outside of their Indian palaver—which, from the aetions that went with it, we took to be insults, to which, however, we paid no attention. By and by they got bolder and more domineering, insisting on entering the fort; and when, one day, half a dozen of the boys disputed their passage, our men were run over before they could use their arms. The Indians rode through the gate and struck up a yell as if they’d done wonders, and then rode off again. None of the men were killed, but all had been roughly handled, and not one of them could stand up on his pins, and the rest of us saw that it was only a question of time until the red devils, in- creasing in numbers day after day, would run the fort and us into the bargain. The first thing our commandant saw, the next morning, was a strange commotion and confusion in one of the camps, from which he concluded that we were likely to be attacked. But the day passed quietly and that night we learned from the commander that fifteen Gomicboo S (E(0)