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"What's the good of wireless when we've got wig-wagging and the semaphore code," spoke up Simon Jeffords, who was inclined to doubt the use of any other form of telegraphy but that in which he had perfected himself. As for Martin Green, Walter Lonsdale and Joe Digby, they contented themselves with hoping that they might receive their badges as second-class scouts when the camp was over.
I used to note old Jeffords hibernatin' about the Oriental over in Tucson. I shore reckons he's procrastinatin' about thar yet, if the Great Sperit ain't done called him in. As I says, old Jeffords is that long among the Apaches back in Cochise's time that the mem'ry of man don't run none to the contrary.
He had a glass eye, complicated in addition by a pair of spectacles which were fastened over his large, protruding red ears with steel hooks. He wore a battered brown hat, now a limp shapeless mass. His name was Bill Jeffords and he responded sometimes to the sobriquet of "One Eye."
In the end they shook hands on their bargain, and Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords got back his weapons from the squaw, saddled up his pony, and rode forth from the camp of the Apache war-chief, the party of the first part to a compact such as never had been heard of up to that time in the history of Indian warfare. That compact stood.
The cheerfulness of doing followed irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept out the fear and the repining. "There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving busy," Mrs. Jeffords said. Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh.
An' yet no gent ever sees old Jeffords wearin' anything more savage than a long-tail black surtoot an' one of them stove pipe hats. Is Jeffords dangerous? No, you-all couldn't call him a distinct peril; still, folks who goes devotin' themse'fs to stirrin' Jeffords up jest to see if he's alive gets disasterous action.
"What is it these men want?" he asked. Jeffords introduced General Howard and the aide, and stated the former's motive in making this visit. Cochise sat silent for some moments. At length, pointing to General Howard "Will he keep his word if we exchange promises?" he demanded.
"I always told you, Tubby, you were too fat to make a good scout," laughed Corporal Merritt Crawford, "this is the sort of thing that will make you want to take some of that tubbiness off you." "Say, Tubby, you look like a roll of butter at an August picnic," laughed Simon Jeffords, one of the second-class scouts.
That was the way he put it to Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords, to whom he also confessed the weakness which had overcome him in the case of the tortured Mexican. And the knowledge of this side of Cochise's character helped Captain Jeffords to pave the way for the wind-up of the war-chief's maraudings. That knowledge came after a long strange intimacy which began in a remarkable manner.
If he had he wouldn't have written them, for before the last notes had died away the camp was alive and astir, with hurrying lads filling tin washbasins and cleaning up. The cook and "cookee" for the day Jim Jeffords and Martin Green soon had their cooking fire going, and presently the appetizing aroma of coffee and fried ham and eggs filled the camp.
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