WITH THE BLUECOATS ON THE BORDER. 151 



camp. "SALOON" is painted over the door of the most 

 prominent of the half-dozen cabins, and two or three roughly 

 clad men are standing about the door. As we approach, and 

 our " roosters " scramble ashore and tie fast, preparatory to tak- 

 ing on board some logs of wood stacked up on the bank, a man 

 springs on the deck, and running up to one of our passengers 

 who is making preparations to land here, with an excited air 

 hurries him back into the cabin again. From the others we 

 learn that in the night a band of armed men had ridden into 

 the little settlement, and going to one of the ranches, had 



forced the occupant — one Billy D , a noted character, and 



suspected of complicity with the desperadoes of the region — 

 to mount his horse and to ride away with them. But a few- 

 moments before our arrival the horse had returned to the 

 ranch — riderless, and the poor woman, whose grief-stricken form 

 we see crouching in the door-way of the "saloon," has hurried 

 to the boat with shaking limbs and streaming eyes to warn 

 her husband's brother not to land and share the other's un- 

 known fate. 



Smoke has been seen rising over the trees down the river, 

 vague rumors of a fight below seem to fill the air, and the 

 feeling of excitement communicates itself to our little group 

 of passengers, and as the boat swings out again into the swift 

 yellow current, and continues on her' voyage down-stream, we 

 gather along her low rails, looking out curiously and anxiously 

 ahead at the high, sandy, tree -covered banks on either side. 

 Rounding a long point of land running out into the river, a 

 call from the pilot-house attracts our attention to a blackened, 

 smoking heap of ashes on the left bank — all that is left of a 

 ranch that had stood there — and a short distance farther down 

 we slow up a little at the still burning ruins of another house. 

 " It's the Jones boys' ranch," says the mate. " By Jiminy, the 



