t, but there wasn't no excuse for that driver to
stand up on his hind legs, close his eyes, and throw thirty foot of
lash into that plunging buckin', white-eyed mess. When he did it,
all the little words inside of me began to foam and fizzle like
sedlitz; out they came, biting, in mouthfuls, and streams, and
squirts, backwards, sideways, and through my nose.

"'Here! you infernal half-spiled, dog-robbing walloper,' I says; 'you
don't know enough to drive puddle ducks to a pond. You quit heaving
that quirt or I'll harm you past healing.'

"He turned his head and grit out something through his teeth that
stimulated my circulation. I skipped over the wheels and put my left
onto his neck, fingering the keys on his blow-pipe like a flute.
Then I give him a toss and gathered up the lines. Say! it was like
the smell of grease-paint to an actor man for me to feel the ribbons
again, and them mules knew they had a chairman who savvied 'em too,
and had mule talk pat, from soda to hock.

"I just intimated things over them with that whip, and talked to them
like they was my own flesh and blood. I starts at the worst words
the English langwidge and the range had produced, to date, and got
steadily and rapidly worse as long as I talked.

"Arizony may be slow in the matter of standing collars and rag-time,
but she leads the world in profanity. Without being swelled on
myself, I'll say, too, that I once had more'n a local reputation in
that line, having originated some quaint and feeling conceits which
has won modest attention, and this day I was certainly trained to the
minute.

"I addressed them brutes fast and earnest for five minutes steady,
and never crossed my trail or repeated a thought.

"It must have been sacred and beautiful. Anyhow, it was strong
enough to soak into their pores so that they strung out straight as a
chalk-line. Then I lifted them into the collars, and we rumbled past
the building, swung in front of the commissary door, cramped and
stopped. With the wheelers on their haunches, I backed up to the
door square as a die.

"I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and looked up into the grinning
face of about fifty swatties, realizing I was a mute--and a prisoner.

"I heard a voice say, 'Bring me that man.' There stood the Colonel
oozing out wrath at every pore.

"I parted from that wagon hesitating and reluctant, but two soldiers
to each leg will bust any man's grip, I lost some clothes, too, after
we