Tales Author:Tom Hall Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DOTTIE'S VENGEANCE. THEY sat on the edge of a white ledge of rock Below them stretched the gray Gila valley. Behind them rose the grayer San Samoane Mountains... more ». He, Craik, a subaltern of the —th Cavalry, reclined leisurely on the rock, smoking idly a briar- wood pipe, puffing the smoke out from under the brim of his wide Mexican hat, into the leather band of which were stuck a couple of dozen matches, after the Arizona style. She, alert, restless, too strong physically for a woman, sat upright, throwing small fragments of the rock at a rattlesnake that raised its head and coiled its green body into a graceful spiral, ten feet below, on another ledge of the sand-stone. She was a typical mountain girl; poorly, but, after all, picturesquely clad, in bright calico, with a hat quite as broad-brimmed as the lieutenant's and of the same description. She was pretty in her way, too, with her fine neck, her supple waist, her tanned cheeks and her wavy brown hair. A pair of black eyesthat had made many a rough fellow thoughtful for days, and willing to give up most of his bad habits if he could say that they belonged to his wife, looked laughingly out from under the hat. She had been courted, poor as she was, and in a way had experienced many of the sensations of a belle, but none of her lovers had been successful, and she still remained with her old father in charge of the watering station at Alkali Wells. " Rattlesnakes remind me of soldiers," she said spitefully, as she tossed an unusually large chunk of sand-stone at the angry snake, being careful at the same time not to hit him. " Indeed," replied the lieutenant, lazily and patronizingly. " Why ? " "Because they make so much fuss over what they do," she answered. " They sound their drums and bugles before they attempt to do a...« less