“He’s just a blight on this society,” said Wells-Fargo’s man, Ferguson.  “If I was running this shop I’d make him say something, some time or other, or vamos the ranch.”  This with a suggestive glance at the barkeeper, who did not choose to see it, since the man under discussion was a good customer, and went home pretty well set up, every night, with refreshments furnished from the bar.

“Say,” said Ham Sandwich, miner, “does any of you boys ever recollect of him asking you to take a drink?”

“Him?  Flint Buckner?  Oh, Laura!”

This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one form of words or another from the crowd.  After a brief silence, Pat Riley, miner, said: 

“He’s the 15-puzzle, that cuss.  And his boy’s another one.  I can’t make them out.”

“Nor anybody else,” said Ham Sandwich; “and if they are 15-puzzles how are you going to rank up that other one?  When it comes to A 1 right-down solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them.  Easy—­don’t he?”

“You bet!”

Everybody said it.  Every man but one.  He was the new-comer—­Peterson.  He ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be.  All answered at once, “Archy Stillman!”

“Is he a mystery?” asked Peterson.

“Is he a mystery?  Is Archy Stillman a mystery?” said Wells-Fargo’s man, Ferguson.  “Why, the fourth dimension’s foolishness to him.”

For Ferguson was learned.

Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him; everybody began.  But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to order, and said one at a time was best.  He distributed the drinks, and appointed Ferguson to lead.  Ferguson said: 

“Well, he’s a boy.  And that is just about all we know about him.  You can pump him till you are tired; it ain’t any use; you won’t get anything.  At least about his intentions, or line of business, or where he’s from, and such things as that.  And as for getting at the nature and get-up of his main big chief mystery, why, he’ll just change the subject, that’s all.  You can guess till you’re black in the face—­it’s your privilege—­but suppose you do, where do you arrive at?  Nowhere, as near as I can make out.”

“What is his big chief one?”

“Sight, maybe.  Hearing, maybe.  Instinct, maybe.  Magic, maybe.  Take your choice—­grownups, twenty-five; children and servants, half price.  Now I’ll tell you what he can do.  You can start here, and just disappear; you can go and hide wherever you want to, I don’t care where it is, nor how far—­and he’ll go straight and put his finger on you.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“I just do, though.  Weather’s nothing to him—­elemental conditions is nothing to him—­he don’t even take notice of them.”

“Oh, come!  Dark?  Rain?  Snow?  Hey?”

“It’s all the same to him.  He don’t give a damn.”