“‘It,’ says he, ‘is very remarkable.’

“I looked at him.  It was; but too much like taking a loan out of a blind beggar’s hat.  ’F I’d been a decent man I’d quit.  There was a fatal fascination about Percival, though—­you wondered how much he would swaller—­kind of spurred you up to heave something at him he’d see wasn’t so.  It needed a better man than me to do it.  You never in all your life heard of such things as took place along that route.  As he said, it made him glad to think he’d got holt of a man who had the history of the country at his fingers’ ends.

“He showed nothing but a thirst for information when I pointed out Grant’s Leap—­the place where General Grant hopped to safety with three Apache arrows sticking in the fulness of his pants.

“‘Why!’ says Percival, ’I never heard that General Grant was out in this country.’

“I shook my head wise.  ‘No,’ says I; ‘he kept it dark.’

“‘Nothing against his good name, I hope?’ says he, anxious.

“‘Not at all,’ says I, warm.  ’He done it to oblige a friend—­it was told me in confidence, so I can’t say more.’

“Just then we made a turn that brought Grant’s Leap into better view.  I’d thought it was a narrer slit, but it ’ud be a good horse-pistol that could carry across.

“‘General Grant must have been very agile as a young man,’ says Percival.

“‘Not at all,’ says I.  ’It ain’t mor’n fifty feet, and that was before he was all wore out runnin’ for the Presidency.’

“‘Oh, I see,’ says Percival.  ‘Don’t think I meant to doubt you.’

“‘I didn’t,’ says I, my conscience biting me again.

“There was no help for it, though; he had to have a story of every queer-looking hole, rock, tree, or mud-puddle we saw.  There was one spooky-looking tree, dead on one side.  ‘Now,’ thinks I, ’I shall lay you out and quit.’

“So I told him about how the vigilantes had wrongly suspected a man who peddled rubber hose of a murder, overtook him under that very tree, and, lacking rope, strung him with a section of his own goods, riding away without a look behind them.  When the poor lad was yanked off the horse the hose stretched so his feet touched the ground:  he gave a jump, went up high enough to loose the strain, swallowed a mouthful of air, and so forth.  His hands being strapped behind him he couldn’t help himself, but for three days he hopped up and down there, securing light refreshment by biting the leaves off the tree, which, strange to say, never put out green leaves on that side again.

“‘And then he was rescued?  Who did it?’

“’He was—­the vigilantes did it.  The reason they suspected him was that they found a receipted bill for fifty feet of garden hose in Ike’s, the murdered man’s, pocket.  Knowing perfectly well that Ike never paid a bill in his life, that looked suspicious, but when they come to look at it closer they see the bill was made out to another man, and they hustled back.  The pedler was game, though weary.  They raised an ax to free him, but he hollers—­one word to the jump—­“Don’t—­waste—­too—­much—­hose!"’