PINACATE
In a lather of foam the four horses raced in to the deserted Papago
village. ’Dobe houses with small blunt chimneys dotted the hillside,
but there was not so much as a dog in sight. The well was easy to
find--a cube of palings built around a curbstone to keep wandering
burros from falling in. It topped a low knoll and had a primitive
windlass lowering a bucket into its depths.
Ten minutes of sweating activity followed, Sid and Scotty scanning the
hills anxiously while each horse drank his fill; the two dogs lapped up
a hatful from Big John’s sombrero; then all the canteens were filled.
“Now roll yore tails, boys!” urged Big John, flinging himself up on the
white mustang. Sid looked to his stirrups and mounted the pinto in a
running jump. Blaze and Ruler barked excitedly as the horses clattered
up a steep slope that led through a gap in the hills. What _might_ be
on the other side of that ridge!
From its summit they saw a wide arboreal desert stretching away below,
bounded on the west by a red, saw-tooth range of silent mountains.
The rays of the setting sun swept across the plain, lighting up each
saguarro pole in a spike of vivid green. But over in the hills to the
east was coming a long file of riders--the Papagoes! They wound down
a defile, galloping at full speed, and a tiny horseman swathed in a
flying, striped serapé led them.
“Now, fellers, we shore got a race ahead of us!” declared Big John.
“We’ll make for Red Tank, out thar in the middle of this valley. See
them two little ’dobe houses? That’s her. Head for them ef any of ye
git separated.”
Across the waste of creosote bushes, choyas and giant cactus that was
the Baboquivari Desert galloped the whole party, heading due west
toward the red water pond which lies about the center of it. Near its
borders Sid could see the two ’dobe Papago houses, still ten miles
off, yet they showed as tiny landmarks, even more noticeable than the
many-branched giant saguarros which dotted the plain. Beyond them rose
the Quijotoa mountains, abrupt and sheer, bare as the ribbed sides of
a cliff. They were twenty miles away, but seemed quite neighborly, a
refuge to ride for, a place for a stand-off fight if need be.
“Gee!--regular movie stuff!” chortled Sid to Scotty as he looked back
over his shoulder again. Vasquez and his muster of motley Papagoes were
crossing from the east but had not gained a yard on them yet. But they
surely would, by the time those ’dobe houses were reached! The horses
could keep their distance easily--at first. In time these tireless
Indian mustangs would ride them down, sure as death!
“We’ll stop and stand ’em off from those ’dobe houses, eh?” answered
Scotty. “My old .405 will be the boy then, you bet!”
“Won’t be no movie scrap, nohow!” growled Big John back from where he
and Niltci were breaking trail. “The real thing don’t pan out that way.
Ride, fellers! All tarnation won’t stop these horses from drinkin’ up
the pond when we git thar, an’ we gotto make time so’s to let ’em do
it. You, Blaze,” he stormed at the big Airedale loping along beside
him, “I gotto turn ye loose, now, spite of thorns ketchin’ yore coat.
Cayn’t take no more chances with this leader.”
Big John hauled up the huge furry Airedale on his saddle as he rode,
unsnapped the leash and let him drop again. Twice before during the
race the white mustang and Blaze had run on different sides of the same
bush--with almost disastrous results but he had been still more afraid
of thorns catching and holding the woolly-coated Airedale. Ruler had no
such danger. The big hound loped along easily beside Sid’s pinto and
his sleek sides passed the thorns like silk.
In half an hour more of twisting and turning through the arboreal
desert seven miles of the distance had been covered. They still
maintained perhaps two miles of lead over the Papagoes, in spite of
the furious urgings and gesticulations of their leader in the striped
serapé.
Big John glanced a sardonic eye back at him occasionally. “Greaser--I’d
plumb dote on stoppin’ a leetle lead with ye!” the boys heard him
mutter through his clenched teeth, as he galloped along. “But them good
old days is gone forever, now. We gotto put up a tin-horn game on ye
instead.”
Just what the hoax was going to be neither Sid nor Scotty could
conjecture, but they knew Big John’s resourcefulness of old. They rode
on silently, wondering, nursing the horses around the surprising twists
and turns that Niltci ahead saw fit to make, usually to avoid great
beds of bristly choyas. Both the mare and the pinto were breathing
heavily now, and snorting in labored wheezes through their foaming
nostrils. The pace was beginning to tell! The ’dobe houses loomed up
not two miles off, but behind them came that tireless knot of Papago
riders, light and lithe, and they could keep this up all day!
Then came a yelp of pain from Blaze. The Airedale, in leaping to avoid
a spiky choya, had slammed full into a bushy acacia whose incurved
cat claw spines showed no intention of letting go again. Doglike, he
stopped still, waiting for his master to extricate him and not trying
to tear himself loose. Big John let out a round oath and flung himself
from the white horse while the rest all stopped.
“Get out yore .405 and let her talk, Scotty,” he barked, “she can
outrange anything they’ve got, an’ this-yer dawg’s goin’ to make us
take time out.”
Faint yells from their pursuers and the waving of rifles by upflung
arms greeted the stoppage of their party. The cowman cut rapidly at the
tufts of kinky hair that held Blaze fast, while Scotty yanked out his
big rifle and ran back a short way to hide behind the cover of a giant
saguarro. The distance between the parties closed up rapidly; to one
mile, to half a mile, while Blaze whined and groaned, with mute fang
laid protestingly on Big John’s bony hands as one by one the cat-claws
were cut loose from his coat.
Then the .405 whanged out and its bullets screamed high in the air. A
puff of dust flew up in front of the Mexican rider’s mustang and he
checked his horse viciously. The Indians around him, looking more like
a collection of disreputable tramps than the real thing, reined up and
presently puffs of white smoke came from them, followed by the faint
pop of their weapons.
At one of the shots Niltci suddenly threw up his arms and tumbled off
his horse. Sid gasped with dismay, but to his astonishment the Indian
boy was now wriggling off through the sage like a snake! He left his
gaudy Navaho blanket behind, though, and Sid caught Big John’s eye
winking at him. Evidently this was part of a ruse!
“You, Sid--make believe you was bending over something,” grunted
Big John. “Thar, Blaze, yore free, old-timer! Now bring me that
flea-bitten cayuse of Niltci’s, Siddy boy.”
Grinning, the youth held Niltci’s horse for him while Big John flung
the blanket over Blaze, lifted him up on the saddle, and sprawled him
out with his collar tied fast to the pommel horn. “Come on in, son!”
roared Big John to Scotty as he threw a turn of rope around the dog’s
back and vaulted up on the white mustang himself. “Now ride for all
yore wuth, boys!”
“But Niltci--how come?” gasped Sid. “Are we going to leave him?”
“Never mind Niltci--he’s some busy, ’bout now. Hep, boys!” retorted Big
John, putting spurs to the mustang. Indeed, as Sid looked around for
him, Niltci had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up. He
himself rode on lightheartedly. Shots rang out behind them and the puff
of sandspurts kicked up the desert floor near by, but the Papagoes’
shooting was wild and the range a good deal too great as yet. The four
horses swung down toward the first ’dobe house and Big John quickly led
Niltci’s cayuse behind it and stopped them all.
“Them Injuns _may_ hev taken Blaze under the blanket fer Niltci
wounded--an’ again they mayn’t! We’ve got ’em guessin’ anyhow,” he
grinned, peering out around the corner. “Sid, you take the hosses to
the pawnd, an’ water ’em, while Scotty and I sorter dally with these
excited hombres a leetle.” He dragged out his old meat gun, a .35 with
a mouth like a young cannon and a knockout punch. “C’mon, Scotty, le’s
mosey!”
Around the corner of the house they looked out and back across the
plain. The Mexican rider had reined in at long rifle range. His Indians
were dismounting and creeping out through the bushes to right and left
while one of them held all their horses by a handful of halter ropes.
Finally the Mexican also dismounted and joined them in the ambush
attack. Their idea was evidently to creep up close and then carry the
house by a simultaneous rush.
“Fooled ’em, all right!” grinned Big John. “They shore think that
Niltci got hurt in the shootin’ an’ we brought him in hyar lashed to
his saddle. Let ’em come! You an’ I mought’s well be a-sprinklin’
the sage, Scotty, so as to make it more excitin’. Don’t shoot
nobody--tain’t wuth it.”
He went to the other corner of the house and opened fire with the .35.
Nothing loath, Scotty tore loose with the monstrous shout of his big
.405. It made a fine noise, and its bullets ripped and ricochetted
across the sand, throwing up small shell-spouts like a naval gun.
Answering shots and the whizz and smash of lead bullets striking the
building told the youth that this was not all play. Whatever story
Vasquez, if it was he, had told the Papagoes it had evidently aroused
them to an unwonted fury. It all seemed incredible, preposterous to
Scotty. The Bean-Eaters were the most peaceful of red men. Were it not
corn time he could not have believed that they were really fighting in
earnest.
“Got them hosses watered, Sid?” called out Big John presently. “Bring
’em hyar; show’s comin’ off, pronto.”
Sid led the horses back under the shelter of the house and ran to help
in the defense. Shots rang out in the sage, coming from both sides on
their flanks. It was getting high time to move on, before one of the
horses should be hit. Sid aimed carefully behind a puff of white smoke
that rose from a creosote bush at his right, and let go with his .30
army carbine. Before he could watch the result a yell and a shout of
laughter from Scotty spun him around. Out there on the plain a funny
thing was happening. The Indian in charge of the Papagoes’ horses had
now apparently mounted one of them and was riding off with the entire
bunch!
It was several seconds before Sid realized the truth--that that white
rider with the red bandanna about his forehead _could_ be none other
than Niltci himself! While Sid had been shooting, the Navaho boy had
crept up through the sage, knocked down the Papago holding the horses
and ridden off with all of them!
At sight of this disaster a chorus of vengeful whoops rose out of the
desert all around them and two or three Papagoes leaped from cover in
a futile spurt to catch the runaways. Sid could have bowled them over
easily but he was instantly recalled by Big John’s shout.
“Mount and ride, boys!” the big cowman was yelling. He himself leaped
up on the white mustang and the boys followed hard after, riding
along the banks of the red pond. A flock of teal rose in a great
flutter of wings and there were yells and imprecations behind them
from out in the creosote bushes, but they waited not to hear them. Big
John was guffawing so that he could hardly keep his saddle. “Sing,
redskins!--Yell, ye pisen horned toads! Ain’t it a grand an’ glorious
feelin’ to be set afoot though!” he shouted back at them. “Gosh durn
it, boys, I ain’t hed so much fun since we made Apache Sam eat a
rattlesnake! Niltci an’ I, we cooked up thet hoss-thievin’ stunt whilst
ridin’ out hyar. Blaze, he jest nat’rally helped!”
As for Niltci, he was now making a wide circle around the other side of
the pond, leaving behind him the screaming and fist-shaking Vasquez,
who stood in the sage searching his soul for Spanish expletives that
would relieve his feelings! Niltci rode in to join them shortly after,
with all the Papago ponies following him and a broad grin on his face.
“_Mucho bueno!_” he grunted. “What do with pony?”
“Oh, we’ll pilgrim along a while, an’ then drop ’em after dark somewhar
near the Quijotoas,” laughed Big John. “Fine work, Injun! I reckon
we’re shut of that outfit for a piece, eh, boys?”
“Not to be a crape-hanger, I’d say that we won’t see another Mexican
unless it’s a bunch of guerrillas down near Pinacate,” said Sid.
“Shore! More fun!” grinned Big John. “Them rebel greasers has
Mausers--but they cayn’t hit nawthin’ with them. Hope that Vasquez
person aims to round ’em up an’ bring ’em along. ’Twell be some fine
li’l party, I’m settin’ hyar to tell ye.”
They rode on and dropped the Papago ponies shortly before pushing
through the pass in the Quijotoas to Poso Blanco. There they
encountered a new village of Papagoes and the inhabitants lined up to
watch them go by. Big John, nothing loath, bought oats from them, as
friendly as friendly! They, of course, had heard nothing of the row
over at Red Tank. Some of them even did their best to sell the party
baskets!
“Shore, but a runner from Red Tank will git in hyar late to-night,
fellers,” quoth Big John, as they rode out on the desert once more.
“This lot of Injuns’ll be some surprised, I’m thinkin’! We’ll water at
Poso Blanco an’ pull our freight for ole Montezuma Haid early to-morrow
morning, or the hull kadoodle will be on our heels.”
After dark a dry camp was made, in a patch of mesquite and palo verde,
a long distance out from Poso Blanco. It had been a hard day of riding!
Fifty miles, in all, had they covered, and now the country was changing
from gray to red, and lava began to show up, black and glowering under
the horses’ hoofs.
It was sharp and chilly in the dark before dawn when Big John roused
out the camp next morning. “Now, fellers, we’ll water for the last time
at Wall’s Well by sun-up, an’ then make a long pull through the gap in
the Growlers, which-same brings us to Represa Tanks on the Camino del
Diablo. You-all hev never been thar, an’ hev no idee what it’s like,
but the Spaniards told the truth, fer once, when they named it the Road
of the Devil. Thar’s always water in Represa, an’ from thare we kin
work out to Cerro Colorado, the first of them extinct volcanoes. If Red
Mesa’s twenty mile northeast of Pinacate, as that pottery slate says,
you’ll see her from thar.”
The horses, freshened and invigorated with grass feed and the cool of
night, led off spiritedly, all four riding together in a bunch. In two
hours more the sky began to lighten in the east and then a shaft of red
sunlight struck into living fire the top of a mountain that rose ahead
of them, solitary and shrouded like a monk--Montezuma’s Head. Sid held
his breath in wonderment, to see the red bath of color spread down the
flanks of that huge and imposing presence, widening and broadening its
base with color, bringing out the vivid green posts of saguarros, the
dark greens of creosote, and the white patches of barrel cactus wrapped
in their dense mantles of thorns. They were in the heart of the giant
cactus country now. The floor of the desert was dotted all over with
them. Everywhere their weird candelabra shapes stood like sentinels,
upholding bent and contorted arms, notes of bright green on a gray and
pale green waste.
As they rode nearer, Sid raised a shout of discovery. “First organ pipe
cactus!” he whooped, pointing excitedly. “See it? Up yonder on the
hill!”
Out of a cleft in the rock rose a nest of what seemed to be tall and
crooked green horns, bunched together like some coral growth of the
depths of the sea. A queer plant, but all this country was filled with
these dry-soil and water-storing species, and nature did queer things
with them to make them able to survive.
Under the towering ramparts of Montezuma’s Head the horses were watered
and canteens were filled. The wide flat stretch of arboreal desert
across to the Growlers lay before them. It would be twenty miles of
riding in the hot sun. Extra bags of feed were bought and hung over
the saddle bows before they started, and from a lone cowman, an old
settler who had come here for peace and quiet, Big John borrowed a
five-gallon canvas water bag.
That “valley” was a flat stage floor, surrounded by an amphitheater
of bare, granite mountains. They rose all about them, interminable
distances away. Yet every mile of that crossing proved interesting,
for the boys never grew tired of studying this abundant desert plant
life. Saguarros in troops and regiments marched up and over the ridges
or filled in the foregrounds of mesquite and palo verde at appropriate
intervals. Patches of galleta grass that simply could not be ignored
invited the horses to a step and a munch of fodder. Gambel’s quail ran
through the bushes in droves and caused many a chase and much popping
of the small six-shooters that the boys carried. An occasional road
runner darted through the creosotes, long-legged and long-tailed.
Desert wrens sang from the white choyas where their nests lay adroitly
concealed from predatory hawks. It was high noon before the Growler
mountains were reached. They rose abruptly out of the plain, so very
steep and sudden that Scotty was convinced that the foothills that
properly belong to all mountains _must_ lay buried in the sand
underneath the horses’ hoofs. A minute before, the cavalcade had been
trotting easily across a table-land like a hall floor; in the next step
the horses were laboring up a steep and rocky trail that raised them
higher and higher with each step.
At an elevation of some eight hundred feet they paused in a gap that
broke through to the west and the party spied out the land spread out
like a map below. Red and jagged mountains rose across the flat valley
of a red and scowling land below them. A blue haze enveloped it all,
out of which rose dark purple cones of extinct volcanoes, hundreds of
them. It all seemed a black and purple mass of peaked hills, devoid of
vegetation, sizzling in the sun. “Petrified hell,” Big John had well
named it!
As they looked, the haze of vapors shifted slowly, and out of the far
distances appeared for a brief while a faint line of higher mountains,
culminating in a couple of smooth and wrinkly teeth etched faintly
against the blue.
“That’s old Pinacate, boys,” said Big John. “Look hard at her; for you
won’t see her again for a long while yet.”
“Pinacate or bust!” said Sid solemnly. “Red Mesa must be somewhere
between here and it, then, John, since we are now due northeast of the
old boy.”
“Mebbe,” retorted Big John, shaking his head. “Search me! If thar’s a
mesa, such as we have up in the Hopi country, anywhere down hyar--I’ll
eat it! Hey, Niltci!”
The Navaho youth grunted negatively. He had the keenest eyes of them
all. If there _was_ a mesa, such as he was familiar with in his own
country, he would have been the first to spy it out and exclaim over it.
“Welp! Let’s get movin’,” said Big John. “Thar’s a leetle tank
somewhere down this trail, ef she ain’t gone dry. She don’t last long
after the rains in this country.”
He and Niltci started on down the granite, but Sid and Scotty tarried
to look out once more over this lava land, iron-bound and torrid in the
heat of midday.
“Lord, what a country!” exclaimed Scotty, dejectedly. He was disturbed
to find himself frankly afraid of it. Nothing here to exercise his
constructive engineering instincts upon! Nothing--but Death!
“To me it’s a challenge,” retorted Sid brightly. “It’s still another
mood of grand old Dame Nature, of whose wonders there is no end! She
cares nothing at all for Man; but each new aspect of her is a challenge
to him to stay alive, if he dare. Doctor Hornaday”--Sid pronounced the
name with all the fervor of boyish hero-worship--“he dared this country
once, and discovered that mountain sheep and antelope had a refuge
here. Those granite mountains across from us to the north of Pinacate
are named after him. This lava looks good to me, for it makes a game
sanctuary of this country forever. Except for your sake, old man, I’d
rather there never _was_ a Red Mesa mine.”
Scotty shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He was fast falling into a
mood that had often been fatal to him before, that of trying to rush a
thing through, jumping to a conclusion on presumptive evidence and then
acting on that conclusion immediately, without trying out that homely
old remedy known as “sticking around a bit.”
“Well, le’s push through to Cerro Colorado and have it over with, Sid,”
he urged. “If there’s no Red Mesa, the sooner we find it out and get
away the better.”
But by nightfall they had reached only Represa Tank. It was an enormous
run that their tired horses had made, for that hot country, had
Scotty’s impatience only admitted it. The tank was a muddy little hole
with a small oasis of grass and a grove of mesquites surrounding it.
Near by was the famous Camino del Diablo, the thirst-haunted road to
Yuma, one hundred and thirty miles away to the west--all dry desert
travel. Big John and the boys sauntered out to look at it after supper.
Up through a gap in two red lava hills led the old trail, a sure-enough
road, as good (or bad) as the day it was made. Looking southeast behind
them, the thing lost itself in the bushes of the Tule Desert. Why or
when it had been built, the boys had no idea.
Big John regarded it solemnly for a while. “Injuns, Greasers,
prospectors an’ sodjers--they all had a purple time of it along this
trail, boys!” he exclaimed. “More’n four hundred people hev died
along this Camino del Diablo, of thirst, exhaustion, an’ jist plumb
discouragement.”
Scotty shook his head ruefully. “Let’s make a break for that Cerro
Colorado hill to-morrow, John,” he urged. “It’s about twenty miles
northeast of Pinacate, so Red Mesa _can’t_ be more than five miles from
it and directly between it and Pinacate. Ought to be a cinch to find
it, if that plaque is O. K. And, if we don’t, we’ll clear out, pronto,
and waste no more time on it, eh?”
“I’ve never climbed Red Hill myself, son,” said Big John. “But as for
clearin’ out--we _cayn’t_! Not yet awhile.”
Sid grinned delightedly. “How come?” he asked, all interest.
“What think? Ef four men goes to chowin’ man’s food, in alligator-sized
doses like you boys hev been doin’ for the last four days, how long
d’ye suppose three skins of pemmican will last?” asked Big John
sardonically. “We’re almost out of meat, boys. We’ll try Cerro Colorado
to-morrow, an’ then, Red Mesa or no Red Mesa, we rolls our freight for
them Hornaday mountains whar thar’s mountain sheep an’ antelope. Shoot
or starve--that’s us, old-timer!”
“Suits me!” caroled Sid. “We’ve got to stock up before we start back,
eh? Well--what did we bring Ruler and Blaze along for, anyhow!” he
demanded enthusiastically.
Scotty was silent as they went back to camp. He was silent, too, and
anxious all through the ride to Cerro Colorado next morning. Face to
face with the reality, with these vast fields of scowling lava, with
the dry and level plains of endless creosote bushes, with these parched
and stunted bisangas, choyas, and saguarros, his dream shriveled and
faded. A mine! Here, in all this five hundred square miles of barren
lava! A railroad to it! How cross the grim ranges of Pinacate, looming
up now not twenty miles away to the west? It all seemed so hopeless!
It would take a far sterner and more determined man than he to push
through such a project!
But Sid sang happily as they rode toward Cerro Colorado. This wild,
free land struck a response in the deepest notes in his being, the
love and enjoyment of that freedom that every explorer, every pioneer,
every adventurer feels to be his most precious birthright; for which he
will sacrifice ease, comfort, wealth, civilization itself. New species
of this marvelous desert life constantly claimed his attention. White
trees, fluffy in foliage as cotton, appeared. “Smoke Trees,” Big John
named them. A new bush, all frosty white, met them along the march,
securing a roothold even in crevices between red and sterile lava
chunks as large as a ragged rock boulder. He recognized the species as
the Brittle Bush and would have tried breaking its twigs except for the
formidable and glistening thorns with which it was armed. Then came a
vast carpet of lowly little plants that seemed made of frosted silver
and Big John drew rein. He inspected them closely and then scanned the
neighboring craters and all the vast plain about him with keen eyes.
“Antelope fodder, fellers!” he announced. “Whar ye see thet leetle
plant, thar’ll be pronghorns. They love it better than grass.”
No antelope were in sight, however. Even if so, they would be quite
invisible under that burning sun. The horses loped on. Gradually there
rose out of the desert a low hill, sheered off flat at its summit and
covered with the dense lacery of creosote bushes. Cerro Colorado it
was, and they picketed the animals out and began to climb its rocky
slopes. Rough, sharp lava, in boulders of all sizes, marked the lava
flow of geologic times from this hill; indeed the whole plain below
was made entirely of the outpourings of this one crater. Once on its
top they looked out over the country between them and Pinacate, who
loomed up grim and imposing in the west and surrounded by his wide and
desolate lava fields. Twenty dreary miles away was he!
Sid had carried with him the Red Mesa plaque, bearing its enigmatical
message in Latin which Fate had not permitted them yet to have
translated and he now produced it for that last reading. The words they
knew were still there, staring up at them from its red pottery surface.
“_XXI Milia S-O ab Pinacate--Minem aurum et argentum--In Mesam
Rubram_”--there was no mistaking _that_!
But the more they pored over the words the more unbelievable they
became! It was surely a cruel joke, a wild tale that the Papagoes had
brought to that old priest, Fra Pedro. It must be--_now_! For, below
them stretched a vast plain, stippled all over with creosote bushes,
clear to the base of Pinacate itself, twenty miles away! There _was_ no
Red Mesa, no hill of any sort on that plain! If those bearings on the
plaque were true, Red Mesa ought to be in plain sight, right now, and
not over five miles away! But there was nothing of the kind, anywhere
in sight!
Scotty finally turned to look at Sid, silent misery in his eyes.
His dream had vanished. Already his thoughts were turning to the
future. His next letter to his mother would _not_ be the triumphant
announcement of a valuable claim staked out, a triumphant return east
to organize a company, but--well, nothing much; nothing but perhaps a
brief note, saying that he had got a job somewhere.
Sid gripped his hand sympathetically. There was nothing to say. If Red
Mesa existed it certainly was not here.
“Cheer up, old top; le’s forget it and go hunting!” he grinned.
But Scotty’s tenacious persistence now came to his rescue. He turned to
Big John. “There’s a mine around Pinacate _somewhere_, John, sure as
we stand here!” he gritted. “I doubt if the Papagoes of that day knew
how to tell that friar east or west in Spanish very clearly. And a mine
wouldn’t be found in this lava but in granite outcroppings if I know
anything about mining. I’m game to stay here and look for it, boys,
while you’re hunting sheep.”
“Yaas, you pore lamb!” said Big John soothingly. “I’ll tell ye: Them
Hornaday mountains _is_ granite. An’ they’re twenty miles north_west_
of Pinacate! Put that in yore face an’ chaw it, if it’s any comfort to
ye.”