fter a cautious glance round the
reassuring horizon, lifted the iron cover. Then he took from the inner
pocket of his jacket an object which he dropped listlessly into the
water: it was a bit of wood, whittled to the likeness of a pistol. And
though his lips moved not, nor any sound issued from his vocal organs,
yet were words formed. They were so deep in the person of Penrod they
came almost from the slowly convalescing profundities of his stomach.
These words concerned firearms, and they were:

"Wish I'd never seen one! Never want to see one again!"

FOOTNOTE:

[I] Reprinted by special permission from "Penrod and Sam." Copyright,
1916, by Doubleday, Page and Company.

[Illustration]

X.--Concho Curly at the Op'ra[J]

_By Edward Beecher Bronson_

EARLY in July, 1882, I made my first beef shipment of that season, from
Ogallala to Chicago. I sent Concho Curly ahead in charge of the first
train-load, and myself followed with the second. While to me uneventful,
for Curly the trip was big with interest.

Bred and reared in Menard County, on a little tributary of the Concho
River that long stood the outermost line of settlement in central west
Texas, Curly was about as raw a product as the wildest mustang ranging
his native hills. Seldom far off his home range before the preceding
year's trail drive, never in a larger city than the then small town of
Fort Worth, for Curly Chicago was nothing short of a wilderness of
wonders. His two days' stay there left him awed and puzzled.

It was the second morning of our return journey before I could get much
out of him. Before that he had sat silent, in a brown study, answering
only in monosyllables anything I said to him.

At length, however, another friendly inquiry developed what he was
worrying about.

"Come, come, Curly!" I said, "tell us what you saw. Had a good time,
didn't you?"

"Wall, I should _re_mark. Them short-horns is junin' round so thick back
thar a stray long-horn hain't no sorta show to git to know straight up
from sideways 'fore he gits plumb lost in them deep canons whar all th'
sign is tramped out an' thar's no trees to blaze for back-tracking
yourself.

"What they-all gits to live on is the mysteriousest mystery to me; don't
raise or grow nothin'; got no grass, or cows to graze on her ef they had
her. 'Course some of them's got spondulix their daddies left them, an'
can buy; th' rest--wall, mebbe so th' rest is jest nachally cannibiles,