t works in through my leather to see 'em play."

We stepped where we could look at them; happy-faced mothers, giggling
and happy little kids, and pretty girls--lots of 'em. And it lit
through my hide, too.

"I s'pose you kin explain, Mr. Jones?" says the deacon, punchin' Ag in
the ribs.

"Explain?" says Ag, proud. "Appoint me custodian of the bottle, and I
hereby agree to explain anything: why brother Paris left us so
completely, what became of Charley Ross, who struck Billy Patterson,
where are the ships of Tyre, or any other problem the mind of man can
conjure, from twice two to the handwriting on the wall."

"Forrud, march," says the deacon simply, and we j'ined them kind and
gentle people under the Christmas tree.

A Touch of Nature

"These are odd United States," said Red. They certainly are. I'm
thinking of a person I knew down in the Bill Williams Mountains, in
Arizona. He was Scotch and his name was Colin Hiccup Grunt, as near as
I could hear it. I never saw anything in Arizona nor any other place
that resembled him in any particular.

We met by chance, the usual way, and the play come up like this: I'm
going cross country, per short-cut a friend tells me about--this was
when I was young; I could have got to where I was going in about four
hours' riding, say I moved quick, by the regular route, but now I'm ten
hours out of town, and all I know about where I am is that the heavens
are above me and any quantity of earth beneath me. For the last two
hours I've been losing bits of my disposition along the road, and now
I'm looking for a dog to kick. Here we come to a green gulch with a
chain of pools at the bottom of it.

I got off to take a drink. Soon's I lay down there's a snort and a
clatter, and my little horse Pepe is moving for distance, head up and
tail up, and I'm foot loose forty miles from nowhere. This was after
the time of Victorio, still there was a Tonto or two left in the
country, for all the government said that the Apaches were corralled in
Camp Grant, so I made a single-hearted scamper for a rock.

Then I looked around--nothin' in sight; I raised my eyes and my jaw
dropped. Right above me on the side-hill sits a man, six foot and a
half high and two foot and a half wide, dressed in a wool hat, short
skirts, and bare legs. His nose and ears looked like they'd been
borrowed from some large statue. His hair was red; so's mine, but mine
was the most lady-like kind of red