Argosy, Volume XXIII — Index Page, 1897 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

A CAMPAIGN OF STRATEGY. 581 Gannet placed his long bony finger on the picture and counted. ‘‘ There are one, two, three, seven of ’em ; do you see atrything peculiar in ’em??’’ ‘I can’t say that I do; I Suppose they are the result of the whim- sical gusts of wind that blow the loose sand into all sorts of fantastic shapes. ’”’ ‘Well, young man,’’ remarked the cowboy impressively, ‘‘ when you’ve lived in this part of the Union as long as I have, you’ll understand that under each of those little heaps of sand was crouching an Apache! Seven of them altogether—enough to spread death and desolation over half the country between the Gila and Colorado.”’ It was Atwood’s turn to be flustered. He had not dreamed of anything of the kind, and he knew his friend too well to suspect him of jesting. ‘‘ Great heavens ! is it possible? Why, they weren’t more than a hun- dred yards from where I stopped, and put up my tripod.’’ ‘‘ Exactly, but they was a little to the right of where you reined up?”’ “Only a slight distance.” ; ‘But enough to save your life ; had you rode fifty feet further, you would have tumbled out of your saddle so quick that you wouldn’t have knowed what killed you.”’ ‘“ But why wasn’t I tumbled out as it was?” “It was that confounded apparatus of yours that saved your scalp that time ; the devils were all ready for you, and I’ve no doubt that one or two of ‘em had covered you with their Winchesters and had their fingers on the triggers, when you puzzled ’em by stopping your horse, dismounting, and setting up that thing; they didn’t know what to make of it ; when you squinted through the tube and adjusted the lens, you probably scared ’em half todeath. They burrowed deeper into the sand, and, if they hadn’t been too frightened, they would have jumped up and run for their lives. They couldn’t hide the piles of dirt, and had me or any of the boys seen ’em we would have knowed what it meant.”’ ‘And yet when I remounted and headed this way, they had just as good a chance to shoot me as at first ; why didn’t they do it ?”’ ‘The most superstitious person that walks the earth is an Injun, and there’s none worse than the Apaches. You would think that some of ’em would have knowed what you were doing, and you larned on your way across the plains that an Injin will fight before he’ll allow his picture to be took ; but it must have been that they didn’t understand what you were at. The traveling machines seen out here are kodaks, as they call ’em, but your ap- paratus is a bigger arrangement, and that’s what got ’em,”’ ‘Then they must have set me down asa superior being, whom it was useless or dangerous to fire upon ?”’ ‘““That’s just what it was.” ‘The mistake was quite natural,’’ remarked Atwood, with a laugh, for he looked upon the peculiar incident as finished, failing to see the direful signi- ficance in it that was apparent to the veteran at his side; ‘‘I suppose they are a party of bucks who could not well restrain their murderous inclin- IELDOOLKS a (©) > (S@)