for profit right then and there, but we
couldn't quit the place. We hadn't much money, for one thing, and then
we kind of liked loafin' around and raisin' a little garden truck,
and--oh, well, I might as well say so, we had a notion about placers in
the dry wash back of the house--you know how it is. So we stayed on, and
kept a-raisin' these long-laigs for the fun of it. I used to like to
watch 'em projectin' around, and I fed 'em twict a day about as usual.

So Tusky and I lived alone there together, happy as ducks in Arizona.
About onc't in a month somebody'd pike along the road. She wasn't much
of a road, generally more chuck-holes than bumps, though sometimes it
was the other way around. Unless it happened to be a man horseback or
maybe a freighter without the fear of God in his soul, we didn't have no
words with them; they was too busy cussin' the highways and generally
too mad for social discourses.

One day early in the year, when the 'dobe mud made ruts to add to the
bumps, one of these automobeels went past. It was the first Tusky and me
had seen in them parts, so we run out to view her.

"Which them folks don't seem to be enjoyin' of the scenery," says I to
Tusky. "Do you reckon that there blue trail is smoke from the machine or
remarks from the inhabitants thereof?"

Tusky raised his head and sniffed long and inquirin'.

"It's langwidge," says he. "Did you ever stop to think that all the
words in the dictionary hitched end to end would reach----"

But at that minute I catched sight of somethin' brass lyin' in the road.
It proved to be a curled-up sort of horn with a rubber bulb on the end.
I squoze the bulb and jumped twenty foot over the remark she made.

"Jarred off the machine," says Tusky.

"Oh, did it?" says I, my nerves still wrong. "I thought maybe it had
growed up from the soil like a toadstool."

About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals, because we needed
some of the wire. Them long-laigs thereupon scattered all over the flat
searchin' out their prey. When feed time come I had to screech my lungs
out gettin' of 'em in, and then sometimes they didn't all hear. It was
plumb discouragin', and I mighty nigh made up my mind to quit 'em, but
they had come to be sort of pets, and I hated to turn 'em down. It used
to tickle Tusky almost to death to see me out there hollerin' away like
an old bull-frog. He used to come out reg'la, with his pipe lit, just to
enjoy me. Finally I got mad a