clear space on the freight deck three crapboards had been set up.

A bunch of howling, yelling, husky roustas were there before him. Cyrus was a husky one, too; but even after he had butted his way to a place, there wasn't much room for action; which annoyed Cyrus.

"Mahn, mahn!" he bellowed, driving his elbows into the ribs of those either side of him. "Mahn, gib a mahn a chance to see how he lose hees money. How much am it? Two dollars a roll? O' co'se I's in for two dollars.'

He laid down two silver dollars; and two more silver dollars; and-however, six times Cyrus saw the dice roll at two dollars a roll-and six times only.

He backed wearily away from that board. But he had twenty-five cents left. At the second board he was allowed to roll for twenty-five cents. One roll there and he was done.

"Doggone!" said Cyrus, and rubbed his kinky hair, and after a period of rumination came slowly back to the cabin stairs, went up to the grill, peeked through, and when Captain Joe had done paying off, said: "Cap'n Joe, please Cap'n Joe, Ah'd laik to wuhk one mo' trip up river wid yo', Cap'n Joe."

Captain Joe eyed him sardonically. "What was it yo' said 'bout ten minutes ago?"

"What Ah say, Cap'n Joe? Don' yo' know, Cap'n Joe, I ain't never gwine quit yo' an' de Creole Belle, don' yo', Cap'n Joe?"

Joe laughed. "Yo'll never change, Cy. Here!" He passed him a ticket through the grill.

"T'ank yo', Cap'n Joe. Yo' sho' is one gen'man.'

Cy did not look at Stuart, but he did say in a melancholy voice in passing: "Not eeny, weeny cent lef' fo' one li'l' drink out o' all mah money!"

Stuart threw him a silver dollar; by this time we were into New Orleans and tied up to the levee. "Whoop-ee!" said Cyrus, and skipped below, left the steamboat, mounted the levee, and loped straight across the street to a saloon.

"There's the river rousta," said Joe. "No mo' sense than a mule."

"If he had sense," said Stuart, "do

y' reckon, Joe, you'd be driving sixty of them so easy like?"

A couple of carriages were on the levee waiting for possible passengers; soon the mess boy brought out Layton's baggage and stowed it into one of the carriages.

Layton, following his baggage, stepped over to where we were. Joe saw him, but he continued being intensely interested in the actions of the levee roustas who were hustling the freight ashore. Layton did not disturb him. He shook hands with Stuart, then with me, and turned to Stuart for a parting word.

"Mr. Stuart, from all that my father had told me, I came gradually to picture his idea of a Southern gentleman; and when I saw you, it was as if he were speaking to me again. But there is something in this life which leaves me sad. And now I am thinking here that there was something more in my father's warning not to look up his old home than he could put into words. I am going to take a train straight home and never come back."

It was while looking after Layton's carriage driving off that we took notice of the girl Diana. She was sitting with her carpet bag on a sack of cotton-seed up on the levee. She had been sitting rather limply, but we saw her all at once straighten up, pat her hair, feel to see if her brass earrings were in place, glance down at herself to see if otherwise she was presentable. We looked below to see what had stirred Diana so.

It was the superb figure of Buzzard which emerged from our freight deck, and he was wearing all the wonderful clothes he had bought Christmas week-big soft hat, green shirt, checked trousers, yellowcolored vest, bright red tie, socks, patentleather shoes; in one hand he was swinging a suit-case, in the other hand was a cane, and over that arm the new creamcolored coat.

"Doggone, but look at Buzzard! Mah soul, but will yo' look at de style o' dat nigger! Has yo' de money to go wid dem clo'se, Buzzard?"

"Has I?" He let his teeth shine to their full. "Yes, I has de money to go wid dem clo'se. See yer, nigger"-he had set down the suit-case and pulled a handful of money from a trousers pocket

W

E were on the slopes of the Great Divide the very backbone of the continent, more than six thousand feet above the sea. The big overland train pulled up at a station, Lamy, where such a small group of houses greets the eye that one wonders why the Limited should stop. Few tourists alight here, and more is the pity, for few realize that but a short hour's ride on a branch line would bring them to the Ciudad Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco, one of the oldest and most interesting communities in our country. To one who will approach it in the proper frame of mind its romantic atmosphere is rare and subtle and the country round about it replete with interest.

Immediately upon leaving Lamy our engine began to puff and snort, climbing a

long, steep gradient, hill succeeding hill, covered only with stunted growth, piñons and dwarf cedars for the most part. But there was a singular majesty and austere beauty about the landscape-a bigness and grandeur that recalls the vast tablelands of Mexico and the wild wastes of Bolivia and Peru.

Great cumuli piled their billowy masses about the mountain-tops, and, as the sun neared its setting behind the Sandia Mountains, far down toward Albuquerque, it shot lurid rays of light upon these clouds and upon the mountains, that lit them ruddy-red, flamboyant, so deep and so crimson that I realized at once why the pious Spaniard had given them their strange name, Sangre de Cristo-Blood of Christ.

In the twilight we crested a summit at Hondo, and a broad valley lay spread be

low us, the longed-for vision of many a weary wanderer, of many an emigrant driver on the Overland Trail, of many a tired woman and hungry child, the City of the Holy Faith, Santa Fé.

A brick penitentiary loomed to the right like a fortress with armed guards pacing its ramparts, and the train drew into the station.

I climbed into a lumbering bus-a vehicle savoring of other days-that

in arm, along the avenues, all going in the same direction, encircling the square, just as I had seen them many a time down in Honduras or Guatemala City or in the plazas of Arequipa and La Paz. Could it be possible that I was more than three hundred miles north of the Mexican border, in the heart of the United States, and that still the people and the place smacked so strongly of Latin America?

But a square or two farther on we drew

10 1915 1

up at the hotel named for Santa Fé's hero, de Vargas, who wrested the city from the revolted Indians after the Pueblo uprising in 1680. I could not abide the modern atmosphere of the hotel that evening, so wandered back again to the plaza and lingered there listening to the music, the sibilant Spanish voices, the quiet shuffle of the

many feet that mingled with the rustle of the leaves overhead. Next morning I met a friend, a New York painter who went to New Mexico a year or two ago and who, enthralled, cannot now shake off its charm. With him I explored the purlieus of the old capital. First we ascended to the ruins of Fort Marcy and from its dismantled earthworks took a survey of the city lying in its great saucer among trees and gardens, the cathedral, the Federal Building, and the Capitol, with the Executive Mansion striking the dominant notes.

swayed and rattled through the uneven street to the plaza. It was a Sunday night and the lights were lit. In a pavilion under the cottonwoods a brass band, brilliantly uniformed in scarlet coats, was discoursing Spanish melodies. Beyond, the long arcade of the governor's palace seemed endless in the darkness.

The people walked in groups-a knot of men, a quartet of laughing girls, a pair of leather-skinned old women-arm

Vast, undulating plains stretched all about, clothed with chamisa and greasewood, and bounded to the southward by