narily that doesn't
occur to you. He is a malevolent engine of destruction--quite as
impersonal as heat or cold or lack of water. He is an unfortunate
article of personal belonging requiring much looking after to keep in
order. He is a credulous and convenient response to practical jokes,
huge tales, misinformation. He is a laudable object of attrition for
the development of your character. But somehow, in the woods, he is
not as other men, and so you do not come to feel yourself in close
human relations to him.

But Algernon is real, nevertheless. He has feelings, even if you do
not respect them. He has his little enjoyments, even though he does
rarely contemplate anything but the horn of his saddle.

"Algernon," you cry, "for heaven's sake stick that saddle of yours in a
glass case and glut yourself with the sight of its ravishing beauties
next WINTER. For the present do gaze on the mountains. That's what you
came for."

No use.

He has, doubtless, a full range of all the appreciative emotions,
though from his actions you'd never suspect it. Most human of all, he
possesses his little vanities.

Algernon always overdoes the equipment question. If it is
bird-shooting, he accumulates leggings and canvas caps and belts and
dog-whistles and things until he looks like a picture from a
department-store catalogue. In the cow country he wears Stetson hats,
snake bands, red handkerchiefs, six-shooters, chaps, and huge spurs
that do not match his face. If it is yachting, he has a chronometer
with a gong in the cabin of a five-ton sailboat, possesses a
nickle-plated machine to register the heel of his craft, sports a
brass-bound yachting-cap and all the regalia. This is merely amusing.
But I never could understand his insane desire to get sunburned. A man
will get sunburned fast enough; he could not help it if he would.
Algernon usually starts out from town without a hat. Then he dares not
take off his sweater for a week lest it carry away his entire face. I
have seen men with deep sores on their shoulders caused by nothing but
excessive burning in the sun. This, too, is merely amusing. It means
quite simply that Algernon realizes his inner deficiencies and wants to
make up for them by the outward seeming. Be kind to him, for he has
been raised a pet.

The tenderfoot is lovable--mysterious in how he does it--and awfully
unexpected.

XII

THE CANON

One day we tied our horses to three bushes, an