owever, when I start for sheep, I get 'em. You
can see by the deep-laid plan I set to catch help for the ranch, how
there's nothing for fortune to do but lay down and holler when I make
up my mind.

Agamemnon and the Fall of Troy

Me and Aggy were snuggled up against the sandpaper edge as cute as
anything, said Hy Smith. Even our consciences had gone back on
us--they didn't have nothing to work on. The town looked like it had
been deserted and then found by a party of citizens worse off than the
first.

The only respectable thing in the hull darn shack-heap was Aggy's black
long-tailed coat and black-brimmed hat. And they made the rest of the
place look so miserable that Ag wouldn't have wore 'em if he'd had
another hat and a shirt. We was a pair of twin twisters that had
busted our proud and graceful forms on a scrap-iron heap.

I s'pose it was the turible depression of bein' stuck in such a hole,
or some sudden weakenin' of the brain; but anyhow, in that same town of
Lost Dog, Agamemnon G. Jones and Hy Smith ran hollerin' into a faint
away game.

We paid ten dollars for a map showin' the location of the Lost Injun
mine, from a paralytic partially roomin' at the Inter-Cosmopolitan
Hotel. The Inter-Cosmopolitan had got pretty near finished, when the
boom exploded with a loud sigh.

One-half the roof was missin', and the clapboardin' didn't come quite
to the top, but that paralytic took it good-natured, sayin' that as he
wasn't more'n half a man, half a hotel was plenty good enough for him.
But ah! he allus wound up, if he could get the proper motion in his
hind legs, he'd be up and find his Lost Injun mine, and after that no
dull care for him.

I ain't goin' to describe that gentleman any more. When I say he
unloaded a map of that Lost Injun mine, with the very spot marked with
a red cross, anybody'll understand that the paralysis hadn't affected
his head none.

You see, he was so quiet and patient under his afflictions, and he
talked it off so smooth, that the flyest gent that ever lived could be
excused for slippin' up and gettin' stuck in the discourse before he
knew that gravitation was workin' at the same old stand.

Now, for a straight-away dream-builder give me Aggy. He could talk the
horns off a steer, and that steer would beller with happiness to think
he was rid of a nuisance.

Ag stood six-foot-two by two-foot-six, and when he had the long-tailed
coat, the plug hat, and his general