we travelled till dark, stopped just long enough to build a big fire, and then lit out.  When those Injuns came for us that night we were some other place, and they lost their grip on that little scalping-bee.  They didn’t trouble us any more, that’s sure.  And when we got to the next post there were nigh a hundred teams, six stages and two companies of soldiers, all shivering for fear of the Injuns.  It rather took the wind out of ’em to see us come in with that buggy, and they didn’t want to believe we had come through.  But, like the man’s mother-in-law, we were there, and they couldn’t get out of it.  And, sir, maybe you won’t believe me, but those soldiers offered me seventy-five dollars to go back with them!  That’s the sort of an outfit the government sends to protect us!”

[Illustration:  SANTA FE AVENUE, PUEBLO, COLORADO.]

We have had frequent occasion since our frontier experiences began to ponder the untrammelled opulence of this Western word, outfit.  From the Mississippi to the Pacific its expansive possibilities are momentarily being tested.  There is nothing that lives, breathes or grows, nothing known to the arts or investigated by the sciences—­nothing, in short, coming within the range of the Western perception—­that cannot with more or less appropriateness be termed an “outfit.”  A dismal broncho turned adrift in mid-winter to browse on the short stubble of the Plains is an “outfit,” and so likewise is the dashing equipage that includes a shining phaeton and richly-caparisoned span.  Perhaps by no single method can so comprehensive an idea of the term in question be obtained in a short time, and the proper qualifying adjectives correctly determined, as by simply preparing for a camping-expedition.  The horse-trader with whom you have negotiated for a pair of horses or mules congratulates you upon the acquisition of a “boss outfit.”  When your wagon has been purchased and the mules are duly harnessed in place, you are further induced to believe that you have a “way-up outfit,” though, obviously, this should now be understood to possess a dual significance which did not before obtain, since the wagon represents a component part.  The hardware clerk displays a tent and recommends a fly as forming a desirable addition to an even otherwise “swell outfit.”  The grocer provides you with what he modestly terms a “first-class outfit,” albeit his cans of fruits, vegetables and meats are for the delectation of the inner man.  Frying-pans and dutch-ovens, camp-stools and trout-scales, receive the same designation.  And now comes the crowning triumph of this versatile term, as well as a happy illustration of what might be called its agglutinative and assimilating powers; for when horses and wagon have received their load of tent and equipments, and father, mother and the babies have filled up every available space, this whole establishment, this omnium gatherum of outfits, becomes neither more nor less than an “outfit.”