“I herded the best in camp towards him, watching for a benevolent symptom, but he just dogged it in silence and never changed a hair.  That was the limit, so I inquired sort of ominous and gentle, ’Is that coffee strong enough for ye, Mr. Martin?’

“He give a little impecunious grunt, implying, ‘Oh! it’ll do,’ and with that I seen little green specks begin to buck and wing in front of my eyes; reaching back of me, I grabbed the Winchester and throwed it down on him.

“‘Now, you laugh, darn you,’ I says, ’in a hurry.  Just turn it out gleeful and infractious.’

“He stared into the nozzle of that Krupp for a minute, then swallered twice to tune up his reeds, and says, friendly and perlite, but serious and wheezy: 

“‘Why, what in hell ails you, William?’

“‘Laugh, you old dong-beater,’ I yells, rising gradually to the occasion, ‘or I’ll bust your cupola like a blue-rock.’

“‘I’ve got to have merriment,’ I says.  ’I pine for warmth and genial smiles, and you’re due to furnish the sunshine.  You emit a few shreds of mirth with expedition or the upper end of your spinal-cord is going to catch cold.’

“Say! his jaws squeaked like a screen door when he loosened, but he belched up a beauty, sort of stagy and artificial it was, but a great help.  After that we got to know each other a heap better.  Yes, sir; soon after that we got real intimate.  He knocked the gun out of my hands, and we began to arbitrate.  We plumb ruined that spot for a camping place; rooted it up in furrows, and tramped each other’s stummicks out of shape.  We finally reached an amicable settlement by me getting him agin a log where I could brand him with the coffee-pot.

“Right there we drawed up a protoplasm, by the terms of which he was to laugh anyways twice at meal-times.

“He told me that he reckoned he was locoed, and always had been since a youngster, when the Injuns run in on them down at Frisbee, the time of the big ‘killing.’  Kink saw his mother and father both murdered, and other things, too, which was impressive, but not agreeable for a growing child.  He had formed a sort of antipathy for Injuns at that time, which he confessed he hadn’t rightly been able to overcome.

“Now, he allus found himself planning how to hand Mr. Lo the double cross and avoid complications.

“We worked down into South Western Arizony to a spot about thirty-five miles back of Fort Walker and struck a prospect.  Sort of a teaser it was, but worth working on.  We’d just got nicely started when Kink comes into camp one day after taking a passiar around the butte for game, and says: 

“‘The queerest thing happened to me just now, Kid.’

“‘Well, scream it at me,’ I says, sort of smelling trouble in the air.

“‘Oh!  It wasn’t much,’ says he.  ’I was just working down the big canyon over there after a deer when I seen two feather-dusters coming up the trail.  I hid behind a rock, watching ’em go past, and I’m durned if my gun didn’t go off accidental and plumb ruin one of ’em.  Then I looks carefuller and seen it wasn’t no feather-duster at all—­nothing but an Injun.’