“’Which this yere is ‘way back yonder on the trail of time,’ explains Dave, ‘an’ I’m hardened a heap since then.  I’ve jest come buttin’ into Tucson an’ it’s easy money I’m the tenderest an’ most ontaught party that ever wears store-moccasins.  What I misses knowin’ would make as husky a library,—­if it’s printed down in books,—­as ever lines up on shelves.  Also, I’m freighted to the limit with the tenderfoot’s usual outfit of misinformation.  It’s sad, yet troo! that as I casts my gaze r’arward I identifies myse’f as the balmiest brand of shorthorn who ever leaves his parents’ shelterin’ roof.’

“‘All the same,’ says Dan Boggs, plenty conceited, ’I’ll gamble a hoss I’m a bigger eediot when I quits Missouri to roam the cow country than ever you-all can boast of bein’ in your most drivelin’ hour.’

“‘Do they lock you up?’ asks Dave.

“‘No,’ says Dan, ‘they don’t lock me up none, but——­’

“‘Then you lose,’ insists Dave, mighty prompt.

“‘But hold on,’ says Dan; ’don’t get your chips down so quick.  As I starts to explain, I ain’t locked up; but it’s because I’m in a camp like Wolfville yere that ain’t sunk to the level of no calaboose.  But what comes to be the same, I’m taken captive an’ held as sech ontil the roodiments of Western sense is done beat into me.  It takes the yoonited efforts of four of the soonest sharps that ever happens; an’ final, they succeeds to a p’int that I’m deemed cap’ble of goin’ about alone.’

“‘Well,’ retorts Dave, ‘I won’t dispoote with you; an’ even at that I regyards your present attitoode as one of bluff.  I thinks you’re shore the cunnin’est wolf in the territory, Dan, an’ allers is.  But, as I’m sayin’, when I first begins to infest Tucson, I’m so ignorant it’s a stain on that meetropolis.  At this yere epock, Tucson ain’t spraddled to its present proud dimensions.  A gent might have thrown the loop of a lariat about the outfit an’ drug it after him with a pony.  No one, however, performs this labour, as the camp is as petyoolant as a t’rant’ler an’ any onauthorised dalliance with its sensibilities would have led to vivid plays.  Still, she ain’t big, Tucson ain’t; an’ I learns my way about from centre to suburbs in the first ten minutes.

“‘At the beginnin’ I’m a heap timid.  I suffers from the common eastern theery an’ looks on Arizona as a region where it’s murder straight an’ lynchin’ for a place.  You-all may jedge from that how erroneous is my idees.  Then, as now, the distinguishin’ feacher of Tucson existence is a heavenly ca’m.  Troo, thar’s moments when the air nacherally fills up with bullets like they’re a passel of swallow-birds, an’ they hums an’ sings their merry madrigals.  However, these busy seasons don’t set in so often nor last so long but peaceful folks has ample chance to breathe.