s steward.

Another thing that helped to defeat him in this hurried election was his
love of animals and his dislike of hard work. The handsome fellow stood
for election this day with a bushy-tailed squirrel frisking on his
shoulder, and a pair of pink-eyed white mice peeping out like a
handkerchief from the pocket of his red shirt.

Then there was Chipper Charley--smart enough, and a man, too, who had
read at least a dozen books; but the Forks didn't want him for an
Alcalde any more than it did Deboon.

Then there was Limber Tim, and Limber certainly could write his name,
for he was always leaning up against trees and houses and fences, when
he could find them, and writing the day and date, and making grotesque
pictures with a great carpenter's pencil, which he carried in the
capacious depths of his duck breeches' pocket. But when Sandy proposed
Limber Tim, the Camp silently but firmly shook its head, and said, "Not
for Joseph."

At last the new camp pitched upon a man who, it seemed, had been called
The Judge from the first. Perhaps he had been born with that name. It
would indeed have been hard to think of him under any other appellation
whatever. It had been easier to imagine that when he had first arrived
on earth his parents met him at the door, took his carpet-bag, called
him Judge, and invited him in.

As is usually the case in the far, far West, this man was elected Judge
simply because he was fit for nothing else.

The "boys" didn't want a man above them who knew too much.

When Chipper Charley had been proposed, an old man rose up, turned his
hat wrong side out with his fist, twisted his beard around his left
hand, spirted a stream of tobacco juice down through an aisle of rugged
men and half way across the earthen floor of the Howling Wilderness
saloon, and then proceeded to make a speech that killed the candidate
dead on the spot.

This was the old man's speech:--

"That won't go down. Too much book larnin."

But the new Judge, or rather the old, bald-headed, dumpy, dirty-faced
little fellow, with the dirty shirt and dirty duck breeches, was not a
bad man at all. The "boys" had too much hard sense to set up anything
but a sort of wooden king to rule over them in this little isolated
remote camp and colony of the Sierras. And they were perfectly content
with their log too, and never once called out to Jupiter for King Stork.

This old idiotic little Judge, with a round head, round red face, and