won’t keep,” he assured me.  It has always been a theory of mine that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can’t think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about, and the comfort that at least we were safer with a simpleton than near a drunken Mexican came to me; so I began to view the situation with a little more tolerance.

After attending to the horses I began to make the children comfortable.  My unwilling host sat silently on his log, drawing long and hard at his stubby old pipe.  How very little there was left of our lunch!  Just for meanness I asked him to share with us, and, if you’ll believe me, he did.  He gravely ate bread-rims and scraps of meat until there was not one bit left for even the baby’s breakfast.  Then he drew the back of his hand across his mouth and remarked, “I should think when you go off on a ja’nt like this you’d have a well-filled mess-box.”  Again speech failed me.

Among some dwarf willows not far away a spring bubbled.  I took the kiddies there to prepare them for rest.  When I returned to the fire, what a transformation!  The pack was unrolled and blankets were spread, the fire had been drawn aside, disclosing a bean-hole, out of which Hiram K. was lifting an oven.  He took off the lid.  Two of the plumpest, brownest ducks that ever tempted any one were fairly swimming in gravy.  Two loaves of what he called punk, with a box of crackers, lay on a newspaper.  He mimicked me exactly when he asked me to take supper with him, and I tried hard to imitate him in promptitude when I accepted.  The babies had some of the crackers wet with hot water and a little of the gravy.  We soon had the rest looking scarce.  The big white stars were beginning to twinkle before we were through, but the camp-fire was bright, and we all felt better-natured.  Men are not alone in having a way to their heart through their stomach.

I made our bed beneath the wagon, and Hiram K. fixed his canvas around, so we should be sheltered.  I felt so much better and thought so much better of him that I could laugh and chat gayly.  “Now, tell me,” he asked, as he fastened the canvas to a wheel, “didn’t you think I was an old devil at first?” “Yes, I did,” I answered.  “Well,” he said, “I am; so you guessed right.”  After I put the children to bed, we sat by the fire and talked awhile.  I told him how I happened to be gadding about in “such onconsequential” style, and he told me stories of when the country was new and fit to live in.  “Why,” he said, in a burst of enthusiasm, “time was once when you went to bed you were not sure whether you’d get up alive and with your scalp on or not, the Injins were that thick.  And then there was white men a durned sight worse; they were likely to plug you full of lead just to see you kick.  But now,” he continued mournfully, “a bear or an antelope, maybe an elk, is about all the excitement we can expect.  Them good old days are gone.”  I am mighty glad of it; a drunken Pete is bad enough for me.