And knowing! Honest, he knew more'n some men. One day old Wind River
was tellin' some things (that _might_ have happened to him) in his
usual way, bein' most careful to get the dates and all dead right, you
know--"Now, _was_ his name Peter, after all? Comes to my mind it was
Willyam--Willyam Perkins--Well--But, anyhow, him and me, we saw that
Injun," and so forth. This was a Sunday, and the gang of us sittin' in
a circle, fixing leathers and one thing and another and misstatin'
history faster than a horse could trot, with Foxey Bill in the middle,
cocking his head from one speaker to another, takin' it all in.

At last Wind River wound up the most startlin' and unlikely collections
of facts he'd favoured us with for some time. Up gets Foxey with a
shriek and gallops around the house. Any man with the rudiments of
intelligence would know he was hollerin': "Well, that's just too much
for me; ta-ra-rum!"

[Illustration: "Up gets Foxy with a shriek and gallops around the
house"]

Wind River looked scart. "Say!" says he. "Say! Thet hawg knows I'm
er-lyin' jes' 's well 's I do!" After that old Windy used to talk to
the pig as though they'd been raised together.

[Illustration: "Old Windy used to talk to the pig as though they'd been
raised together"]

Foxey Bill made one miscalculation. He thought he was a small pet,
like a cat. This didn't jibe with the five hundred pounds of meat he
toted. And, like a cat, one of his principal amusements was to have
his back scratched. If you didn't pay attention to him, when he
squealed so pretty for you to please curry him with a board, he'd hump
up his back, like a cat, and rub against your legs. You instantly
landed on your scalp-lock and waved the aforesaid legs in the air. Of
course, when the other fellers saw this comin', they didn't feel it
restin' on their conscience to call your attention to it--in fact, we
sometimes busied one another talkin' to give Foxey a fair field. So
Foxey had things his own way around the diggin's for some time.

[Illustration: "He'd hump up his back . . . and rub against your legs"]

Then comes bow-legged Hastings, our boss, with a ram tied hard and fast
in the bottom of the waggon. He explains to us that the ram is
valuable, but that he's butted merry Halifax out of everything down to
home, and he don't want to shut him up, so will we please take care of
him? And we said No--Wanitchee heap--we guessed not--never.

Then Hastin