o him. Well, me an' the burro finally worked it out, an' there
was a man with long whiskers standin' in his shirt-sleeves in front of
a hole in the snow.

"You like to 'a' smothered me," he grumbled. "Don't you know better'n
to stop up a chimney that's workin'?"

"I wanted the chimney to work double," sez I, "an' that was the only
way I could think up to attract your attention."

"Do you live around here?" sez he. "Not very much," sez I, "but I 'm
minded to try it a while, if there 's room in your burrow for two."

"Got any tobacco?" sez he.

"Plenty," sez I.

"You're welcome," sez he.

We took the burro over to a clump of pine woods an' turned him loose,
an' then I crawled in through the tunnel to Slocum's fire. It was in a
cave which had a natural chimney runnin' up the hill, an' it looked
considerable much like Paradise to me. We ate an' smoked together for a
week, an' then one day our fire went out an' a flood of water poured
down through the chimney. We worked like beavers for a while, gettin'
our stuff outdoors, an' it was as hot as summer outside.

"That's the only drawback to this cave," said Slocum. "It will be all
to the good when the winter settles in earnest, but it will be some
bother while it's still snowin' an' thawin'."

I told him that I agreed with him to such an extent that if I could
locate the burro I'd rather risk gettin' back to humanity than to dyin'
there of rheumatiz. I was wringin' wet through.

"Nobody can't die of rheumatiz around me," sez Slocum, an' he went to
one of his packs an' got out a piece of root.

"Chew this," sez he, "an' it will drive the rheumatiz out of your
system."

Anybody would have trusted those eyes, so I chewed the root for about a
minute, an' then I chewed snow an' mud an' tobacco an' red pepper for
an hour, tryin' to get rid of the taste. Drive the rheumatiz out of
your system? Why, the blame stuff would drive out your system too if
you chewed it long enough. It was the tarnationest stuff 'at ever a
human man met up with.

"It's most too strong to take pure," sez Slocum, "but if you grind it
an' put a shall pinch in a quart of alcohol it makes a fine remedy.
Don't throw the rest o' that root away. There is enough there to do you
a lifetime."

"Yes," sez I, "there is, an' more."

A feller once told me that man was a slave to his
envirament--envirament is anything around you, scenery, books, evil
companions, an' sech; well, a burro ain't no slave to