sances at every opportunity.

Let's hear it for the fates: a genuine collapsible top-hat; a white-tipped
evening cane; a hand-carved cherry-wood walking stick; a beautiful black lace
parasol; a wrought-iron lightning rod with a rooster on top; all of it in an
elephant-leg umbrella-stand. I filled the box, folded it over, and started on
another.

I collided with Craphound. He grinned his natural grin, the one that showed row
on row of wet, slimy gums, tipped with writhing, poisonous suckers. "Gold!
Gold!" he said, and moved along. I turned my head after him, just as he bent
over the cowboy trunk.

I sucked air between my teeth. It was magnificent: a leather-bound miniature
steamer trunk, the leather worked with lariats, Stetson hats, war-bonnets and
six-guns. I moved toward him, and he popped the latch. I caught my breath.

On top, there was a kid's cowboy costume: miniature leather chaps, a tiny
Stetson, a pair of scuffed white-leather cowboy boots with long, worn spurs
affixed to the heels. Craphound moved it reverently to the table and continued
to pull more magic from the trunk's depths: a stack of cardboard-bound Hopalong
Cassidy 78s; a pair of tin six-guns with gunbelt and holsters; a silver star
that said Sheriff; a bundle of Roy Rogers comics tied with twine, in mint
condition; and a leather satchel filled with plastic cowboys and Indians, enough
to re-enact the Alamo.

"Oh, my God," I breathed, as he spread the loot out on the table.

"What are these, Jerry?" Craphound asked, holding up the 78s.

"Old records, like LPs, but you need a special record player to listen to them."
I took one out of its sleeve. It gleamed, scratch-free, in the overhead
fluorescents.

"I got a 78 player here," said a member of the East Muskoka Volunteer Fire
Department Ladies' Auxiliary. She was short enough to look Craphound in the eye,
a hair under five feet, and had a skinny, rawboned look to her. "That's my
Billy's things, Billy the Kid we called him. He was dotty for cowboys when he
was a boy. Couldn't get him to take off that fool outfit -- nearly got him
thrown out of school. He's a lawyer now, in Toronto, got a fancy office on Bay
Street. I called him to ask if he minded my putting his cowboy things in the
sale, and you know what? He didn't know what I was talking about! Doesn't that
beat everything? He was dotty for cowboys when he was a boy."

It's another of my rituals to smile and nod and be as polite as possible to