s his sweetheart. (As I went around
the crater, a couple of blocks away, I looked back and dad had laid his
head in her lap, and she was stroking his hair. )

Well, I picked up specimens, burned the soles off my shoes wading in the
lava, and took in the volcano from all sides, and after an hour I went
back to where dad and the woman were lunching, but the woman was gone,
and dad acted as though he had been hit by an express train, his eyes
were wild, his collar was gone, his pocketbook was on the ground, empty,
his coat was gone, his scarf-pin had disappeared and the $11 watch he
bought when he was robbed the other time was missing, and dad's tongue
was run out, and he was yelling for water. I thought he had been trying
to drink some lava.

[Illustration: He was yelling for water 223]

"Dad, what in the world has happened to you?" said I, as I rushed up to
him.

"That woman has happened to me, that is all," said dad, as he took a
swallow of water out of a canteen one of the dagoes had.

"Tell me about it, dad," said I, trying to keep from laughing, when I
saw that he was not hurt.

"Say, let this be a lesson to you," said dad, "and don't you steer
another woman to me on this trip. Do you know you hadn't more than got
around that big rock when she said she was tired and was going to faint,
for the altitude was too high for her, and I tried to soothe her, and
she did look pale, and, by gosh, I thought she was going to die on my
hands, and I would have to carry her corpse down the mountain. I heard
a scuffling on the rocks, and she looked up and saw a man not ten feet
away, and she said: 'Me husband!' and then she fainted and grabbed me
around the neck, and I couldn't get her loose. She just froze to me
like a person drowning, and that husband of hers, who had come up on the
last car, hunting for his wife, who had eloped, pulled a long blue gun
and told me he would give me five minutes to pray, and then he would
kill me and throw my body down in the creater, to sizzle."

[Illustration: Pulled a long blue gun 220]

"I told him I could pay up enough ahead in three minutes, and he could
take all I had if he would loosen up his wife, and bring her to, and
take her away, and let me die all alone, and let the buzards eat me,
uncooked. He took the bet, pulled her arms away from my throat, took my
money and coat, brought her to, and said he was going to throw her into
the crater, but I told him she had certainly been good