er he was; an' yet the' wasn't any way on earth to
bring him back long enough to have him tell it.

They told me his name was Sandy Fergoson, an' that he was harmless
crazy. He used to float around doin' odd jobs an' talkin' nonsense
about stealin'; but nobody knew where he had come from, so I chipped in
a little something to help bury him, an' gave up the rest of my money
for a ticket to Frisco.

I didn't enjoy that trip to Frisco; business didn't seem so attractive
when you once set out to find her, an' then again, I was broke. I don't
mind bein' broke when I 'm on the range 'cause a feller can pick up a
job anywhere; but I wasn't city-wise, an' I didn't know how long it
would take me to track down the kind o' business I wanted to engage in.

I suppose cities must suit some folks, or they wouldn't keep on livin'
in 'em; but cities sure don't suit me. I allus had a kind of an idea
from what Slocum had told me that I'd enjoy the bankin' business, so I
applied to the banks first. They're a blame offish set, bankers. They
didn't laugh at me,--leastwise not until after I'd gone out,--but they
didn't offer much encouragement. I tramped around that city for four
days, an' by the time I finally got located in business my appetite was
tearin' around inside my empty body till I couldn't sleep nights. Oh,
it was not joyful! I had taken the position of porter in a mammoth big
drygoods store, an' I was some glad when noon arrived; but no one
called me to partake of dinner, so I went up to a young lad, an' sez,
"Where do they spread it?"

"Spread what?" sez he.

"Dinner," sez I.

"I bring mine with me," sez he.

"Is the grub that rotten?" sez I.

"What grub?" sez he. "You surely don't think they serve meals here, do
you?"

"Do you mean to tell me that I got to find myself, out of forty a
month?" sez I.

He started to make up a joke, but I looked too famished to trifle with;
so he explained to me that all we got was wages, an' we couldn't even
sleep in the store. I was gettin' purty disgusted with business, but he
told me that the man what owned the whole store had started in as a
porter; so I went back an' portered harder than ever that afternoon,
wonderin' what in thunder kind of a man it was who could save enough
out of a porter's wages to buy a store like that. I was dressed some
different from the rest o' the folks around there, so I attracted a lot
of attention, an' the' wasn't much I did that wasn't enjoyed by mo