uitable way for him to get out of the canyon, and
that was the way by which he had got into it.

"The trouble with you fellows," said the man, "is that you are too
dad-blamed technical. The point is that I'm here, and here I'm going to
stay."

"But," they told him, "you can't stay here. You'd starve to death like
that poor devil that some prospectors found in that gulch yonder--turned
to dusty bones, with a pack rat's nest in his chest and a rock under his
head. You'd just naturally starve to death."

"There you go again," he said, "importing these trivial foreign matters
into the discussion. Let us confine ourselves to the main issue, which
is that I am not going back. This rock shall fly from its firm base as
soon as I," he said, or words to that effect.

So insisting, he sat down, putting his own firm base against the said
rock, and prepared to become a permanent resident. He was a grown man
and the guides were less gentle with him than they had been with the
lady school teacher. They roped his arms at the elbows and hoisted him
upon a mule and tied his legs together under the mule's belly, and they
brought him out of there like a sack of bran--only he made more noise
than any sack of bran has ever been known to make.

Coming back up out of the Grand Canon is an even more inspiring and
amazing performance than going down. But by now--anyhow this was my
experience, and they tell me it is the common experience--you are
beginning to get used to the sensation of skirting along the raw and
ragged verge of nothing. Narrow turns where, going down, your hair
pushed your hat off, no longer affright you; you take them
jauntily--almost debonairly. You feel that you are now an old
mountain-scaler, and your soul begins to crave for a trip with a few
more thrills to the square inch in it. You get your wish. You go down
Hermit Trail, which its middle name is thrills; and there you make the
acquaintance of the Hydrophobic Skunk.

The Hydrophobic Skunk is a creature of such surpassing accomplishments
and vivid personality that I feel he is entitled to a new chapter. The
Hydrophobic Skunk will be continued in our next.

_RABID AND HIS FRIENDS_

[Illustration]

_Rabid and His Friends_

THE Hydrophobic Skunk resides at the extreme bottom of the Grand Canon
and, next to a Southern Republican who never asked for a Federal office,
is the rarest of living creatures. He is so rare that nobody ever saw
him--that is, nobod