Santa Fe's Partner by Thomas A. Janvier — Read

Hill always said he counted on coming into Palomitas some day on one of his mules bareback -- leaving the other five dead or stampeded, and the coach stalled somewhere -- and bringing his hair only because road-agents hadn't no use for hair and his wasn't easy to get anyhow, he being so bald on top there wasn't nothing to ketch a-hold of if anybody wanted to lift what little there was along the sides. Of course that was just Hill's comical way of putting it; but back of his fool talk there was hard sense -- as there was apt to be back of Hill's talk every time. He knew blame well what he was up against, Hill did; and if he hadn't been more'n extra sandy he never could a-held down his job.

Till Hill started his coach up, the only way to get across to Santa Fe from Palomitas was to go a-horseback or walk. Both ways was unhealthy; and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn't much healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had -- that was a powerful mean road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills -- and you never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn't going to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like Hill was, ever could have took the contract; and Hill said he got so rattled sometimes -- when it happened he hadn't no passengers and was going it alone in among them sandhills -- he guessed it was only because he had so little hair to turn anything it didn't turn gray.