mouth in enjoyment—­until they reappeared, permit them even to tumble over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before them, heedless of awkwardly projected stones and epithets.  He would afterward accompany them separately home, or lie with them at crossroads until they were assisted to their cabins.  Then he would trot rakishly to his own haunt by the saloon stove, with the slightly conscious air of having been a bad dog, yet of having had a good time.

We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from some merely selfish conviction that he was more secure with the physically and mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such moments.  But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a “yaller dog” with all that was disreputable.  And this was supported by another very singular canine manifestation—­the “sincere flattery” of simulation or imitation.

“Uncle Billy” Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being the camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones’ greatest solicitude.  He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his feet or head according to Uncle Billy’s attitude at the moment, but, it was noticed, began presently to undergo a singular alteration in his own habits and appearance.  From being an active, tireless scout and forager, a bold and unovertakable marauder, he became lazy and apathetic; allowed gophers to burrow under him without endeavoring to undermine the settlement in his frantic endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels to flash their tails at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual caches, and left his favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.  His eyes grew dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion became blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness began to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together, zigzagging up the hill.  Indeed, Uncle Billy’s condition could be predetermined by Bones’ appearance at times when his temporary master was invisible.  “The old man must have an awful jag on today,” was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones.  At first it was believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a “derned time-servin’, yaller hypocrite.”  Not a few advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least “slavered him over and coddled him until the old man got conceited in his wickedness.”  This undoubtedly led to a compulsory divorce between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to a neighboring town and a doctor.

Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was supposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his convalescence, and to have been “cut” by Uncle Billy in his reformed character; and he returned to his old active life again, and buried his past with his forgotten bones.  It was said that he was afterward detected in trying to lead an intoxicated tramp into camp after the methods employed by a blind man’s dog, but was discovered in time by the—­of course—­uncorroborated narrator.