tch, and said: "Any last message you want to send to anybody; any
touching good-bye? If you do, whisper it to me, and I will write your
dying statement."

"Don't light that dum pipe!" said the boy, rolling over and looking
like a seasick ghost, as Uncle Ike was about to scratch a match on his
trousers. "Here is the address of my girl. Write to her that I am dead.
That I died thinking of her, and smelling of plug tobacco. Put it in
that I died of appendicitis, or something fashionable, and say that
eight doctors performed eight operations on me, but peritonitis had set
in, and there was no use, but that they cut a swath in me big enough to
drive an automobile through. I had rather she would think of me as dying
a heroic death, than dying smoking plug tobacco. And, say, Uncle Ike,
after you have written her, don't make a mistake and send my resignation
to the syndicate to her. O, God! but it is hard to die so young," and
the boy went to sleep on the lounge, and Uncle Ike went to taking the
kinks out of a fish line, knowing that when the boy woke up he wouldn't
be dead worth a cent. About half an hour later the boy rolled over,
opened his big eyes, sat up, and stared around, and Uncle Ike said:

"Now, you go in the bath-room and wash your face in cold water, and
you will be all right," and the boy did so, and came back with almost a
smile on his face, and he looked at the papers on the table, and said:

"Uncle Ike, you didn't send that appendicitis story to my girl, did you?
Gosh, but I am all right now, and I am not going to die."

"No, I didn't send it; but next time I will, by ginger," and the old man
laughed. "Here, have a smoke on me," but the boy went out in the open
air and kicked himself.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny morning, and after breakfast Uncle Ike
came out on the porch in his shirt sleeves, and with a pair of old
hunting shoes on, and his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing the sleeves
of a red flannel undershirt, a kind he always wore, winter and summer.
He leaned against the post of the porch, lit his pipe, and looked away
toward the hazy, hot horizon, and thought of old days that had been
brought to his mind the day before, when he saw the parade of a Wild
West show. The old man was a '49er, who went across the plains for gold
when the country was young, and the yells of the Indians had made him
nervous, as they did half a century ago. He had staked the red-headed
boy and severa