ease, so that when I grabbed the skillet the
handle sizzled the life all out of my callouses. I kicked the fire
down to a nice bed of coals and then the coffee-pot upset and put it
out. Ashes got into the bacon, and--Oh! you know how joyful it is to
cook on a green fire when you're dead tired and your hoodoo's on
vicious.

"When the 'scoffings' were finally ready, I wasn't in what you might
exactly call a mollyfying and tactful mood nor exuding genialness and
enthusiasms anyways noticeable."

"I herded the best in camp towards him, watching for a benevolent
symptom, but he just dogged it in silence and never changed a hair.
That was the limit, so I inquired sort of ominous and gentle, 'Is
that coffee strong enough for ye, Mr. Martin?'

"He give a little impecunious grunt, implying, 'Oh! it'll do,' and
with that I seen little green specks begin to buck and wing in front
of my eyes; reaching back of me, I grabbed the Winchester and throwed
it down on him.

"'Now, you laugh, darn you,' I says, 'in a hurry. Just turn it out
gleeful and infractious.'

"He stared into the nozzle of that Krupp for a minute, then swallered
twice to tune up his reeds, and says, friendly and perlite, but
serious and wheezy:

"'Why, what in hell ails you, William?'

"'Laugh, you old dong-beater,' I yells, rising gradually to the
occasion, 'or I'll bust your cupola like a blue-rock.'

"'I've got to have merriment,' I says. 'I pine for warmth and genial
smiles, and you're due to furnish the sunshine. You emit a few
shreds of mirth with expedition or the upper end of your spinal-cord
is going to catch cold.'

"Say! his jaws squeaked like a screen door when he loosened, but he
belched up a beauty, sort of stagy and artificial it was, but a great
help. After that we got to know each other a heap better. Yes, sir;
soon after that we got real intimate. He knocked the gun out of my
hands, and we began to arbitrate. We plumb ruined that spot for a
camping place; rooted it up in furrows, and tramped each other's
stummicks out of shape. We finally reached an amicable settlement by
me getting him agin a log where I could brand him with the coffee-pot.

"Right there we drawed up a protoplasm, by the terms of which he was
to laugh anyways twice at meal-times.

"He told me that he reckoned he was locoed, and always had been since
a youngster, when the Injuns run in on them down at Frisbee, the time
of the big 'killing.' Kink saw his mot