Raising the Regiment 23 



water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went 

 by their own name ; some had changed their names ; 

 and yet others possessed but half a name, colored by 

 some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of 

 Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named 

 because cowboys often call vicious horses "smoky" 

 horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who had lived among 

 the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. 

 Some were professional gamblers, and, on the other 

 hand, no less than four were or had been Baptist or 

 Methodist clergymen and proved first-class fight- 

 ers, too, by the way. Some were men whose lives 

 in the past had not been free from the taint of those 

 fierce kinds of crime into which the lawless spirits 

 who dwell on the borderland between civilization and 

 savagery so readily drift. A far larger number 

 had served at different times in those bodies of 

 armed men with which the growing civilization of 

 the border finally puts down its savagery. 



There was one characteristic and distinctive con- 

 tingent which could have appeared only in such a 

 regiment as ours. From the Indian Territory there 

 came a number of Indians Cherokees, Chickasaws, 

 Choctaws, and Creeks. Only a few were of pure 

 blood. The others shaded off until they were ab- 

 solutely indistinguishable from their white com- 

 rades; with whom, it may be mentioned, they all 

 lived on terms of complete equality. 



