oos, and let 'em
see how it works! Mind that one you torpedoed for me? You know, when
they sink a well," he went on to the company, "they can't always most
generally sometimes tell whether they're goin' to get gas or oil or
salt water. Why, when they first began to bore for salt water out on the
Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century, they used to get
gas now and then, and then they considered it a failure; they called a
gas-well a blower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn't ripe for
gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China,
and don't seem to strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put a
dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it. They have a little
bar of iron that they call a Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the
business end of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if you please!
You hear a noise, and in about half a minute you begin to see one, and
it begins to rain oil and mud and salt water and rocks and pitchforks
and adoptive citizens; and when it clears up the derrick's painted--got
a coat on that 'll wear in any climate. That's what our honored host
meant. Generally get some visiting lady, when there's one round, to
drop the Go-devil. But that day we had to put up with Conrad here. They
offered to let me drop it, but I declined. I told 'em I hadn't much
practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate business, and I
wasn't very well myself, anyway. Astonishing," Fulkerson continued, with
the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote, "how reckless they
get using dynamite when they're torpedoing wells. We stopped at one
place where a fellow was handling the cartridges pretty freely, and Mr.
Dryfoos happened to caution him a little, and that ass came up with one
of 'em in his hand, and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to show us
how safe it was. I turned green, I was so scared; but Mr. Dryfoos kept
his color, and kind of coaxed the fellow till he quit. You could see he
was the fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he'd keep on hammering
that cartridge, just to show that it wouldn't explode, till he blew you
into Kingdom Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos drove up to
his foreman. 'Pay Sheney off, and discharge him on the spot,' says he.
'He's too safe a man to have round; he knows too much about dynamite.' I
never saw anybody so cool."

Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulkerson's flattery and,
without lifting it, t