mounting, and we don't need no white flag. Was that
straight, colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real
store cigars?"

"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula. "Suppose it's
the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman."

"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S. & E. T.
wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their
president, let 'em. We'll put out our sign. 'The Kidnapper's Cafe and
Trainmen's Home.'"

This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession, and
I felt easier. I asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he
happened to be a track-walker or caboose porter. All the way up the
mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his
intelligence in life had skipped.

Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had
raised the ransom.

"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty
thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our railroad, and--"

"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait till
after dinner, and we'll settle the business. All of you gentlemen,"
I continues to the crowd, "are invited to stay to dinner. We have
mutually trusted one another, and the white flag is supposed to wave
over the proceedings."

"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me. "Two
baggage-masters and a ticket-agent dropped out of a tree while you was
below the last time. Did the major man bring the money?"

"He says," I answered, "that he succeeded in negotiating the loan."

If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours, me
and Caligula did that day. At six o'clock we spread the top of the
mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever
engulfed. We opened all the wine, and we concocted entrees and _pieces
de resistance_, and stirred up little savory _chef de cuisines_ and
organized a mass of grub such as has been seldom instigated out of
canned and bottled goods. The railroad gathered around it, and the
wassail and diversions was intense.

After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes
Major Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The major pulls out an
agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in
the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.

"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad
has depreciated some. The bes