ice to the governments
of different nations. Now, you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on
Caligula, "that John Hay would have chipped in and helped this graft
along if it wasn't a square game, would you?"

"Why, no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies,
and I couldn't consciously say a word against the Republican
administration just now. But if Harris was a Greek, on what system of
international protocols did Hay interfere?"

"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I suppose
it's a matter of sentiment. You know he wrote this poem, 'Little
Breeches'; and them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay
sends the Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with
thirty-inch guns. And then Hay cables after the health of the _persona
grata_. 'And how are they this morning?' he wires. 'Is Burdick Harris
alive yet, or Mr. Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the
seventy thousand dollars, and they turn Burdick Harris loose. And
there's not half the hard feelings among the nations about this little
kidnapping matter as there was about the peace congress. And Burdick
Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often
heard about the United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to
Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and most gentlemanly kidnappers
that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick," winds up
Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this
colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them little mountains,
and stick up his heirs and assigns for ten thousand dollars."

"Well, you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers,
"you can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in
this graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this
Burdick Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram
from the Secretary of State asking about the health of the scheme,
I propose to acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in
this section and gallop diplomatically over into the neighboring and
peaceful nation of Alabama."

III

Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered
with bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that
we cut out up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mo