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Updated: May 20, 2025
Craney wondered if Case had been drinking again, but Willett took no notice. Willett was feeling very jolly, said Strong, and it was quite late when they finally quit. Harris was up with the sun looking over his pack train and observing 'Tonio and his fellows.
Once a week Craney would come down the coast in a clumsy catboat, and we'd take a load up to the town, which was called "Corazon," a considerable town forty miles off, where were French and Spanish agencies in the cocoa trade. Every day a cautious, stringy-haired Injun, with a loaded donkey, would come trotting out of the woods to the shed, or maybe several of them at odd times.
"Case is all broke up," said Craney, "and damned if I know why. Last week he was the most popular man in Yavapai, or all Arizona for that matter."
Falling slowly back, toward noon, Bonner posted two men in each of a dozen rifle-pits, some fifty yards outside the sentry lines, as a rule, and wherever view of the approaches could be had. Two of these were on little knolls to the south of the store, and here were Craney & Co. in full force, every man armed with a Henry rifle and a war-model Colt, "Mr.
And then, while somebody ran up to the post to summon the adjutant, Case, pressing his hands to his head, began striding up and down the low-ceilinged, half-darkened room. "Wait," he said, as Craney and Watts, excited and anxious, would have pressed him to begin. "Wait. Give me just three fingers," and the whiskey was handed forthwith.
And so by dozens they went trooping down, for, though cash was scant and the paymaster overdue, the rules were suspended and Craney bade "Barkeep" credit all comers who drank to Harris; and Case, the bookkeeper, with white and twitching face, waylaid such men as came from the escort with odd, insistent questioning.
Their names, as standing on Clyde's book, were, "Robert Sadler, James Hagan, Stephen Todd, Julius R. Craney, Abimelech Dalrimple, Thomas Buckingham." Kid Sadler, as he was known there and then and since, was a powerful man, bony and tall, with a scrawny throat, ragged, dangling moustache, big hands, little wrinkles around his eyes, and a hoarse voice.
It seems that even after Bonner's friendly hint the game had not ceased at once. Willett had played on another hour in hopes that luck would change, but by seven Craney called a halt, said that he and Watts must quit, and intimated that Willett ought to. Case, though well along in liquor, still kept his head and lead, and would have played, but by this time Willett was writing I.O.U.'s.
But Craney had heard in the adjoining room and was up in an instant, Watts following suit. This would never do. This was disloyalty to the best and gentlest and most courteous of post commanders, and no soldier should, no employé of his could, drink such a toast within Craney's doors. But he need not have feared.
I didn't think he ought to go off careless like that; but they came back safely about seven o'clock, only Craney seemed to be thoughtful and not talkative. He said there was a business opening there, and he guessed he'd speculate; and he sat on deck in his red plush chair till past twelve, smoking fat cigars and staring at the shore. The next day he had up three or four cases from the hold.
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