With Superhuman Effort He Skidded This Mysterious Relic Up Into the box

"Mr Billings at Once Brought Up His Wagon, and With Superhuman Effort Skidded This Mysterious Relic of Prehistoric Ages Up Into the box."

THE BRACHYCEPHALIC BOHUNKUS

by KENNETT HARRIS
(1864-1929)
ILLUSTRATED BY HARVEY DUNN
(1884–1952)

IF THE Bar-T boy expected to create a sensation with the grinning skull that he had brought into the Box Elder stage station he must have been grievously disappointed by the indifferent attitude of the stock tender and the bullwhacker, who scarcely deigned a glance at the poor moldy emblem of mortality, or, for that matter, at the Bar-T boy himself. They were withered, gray-and-tan Hills veterans, these two, whose experiences had left them little to wonder at and nothing whatever to exclaim about, and they prided themselves on their imperturbability. Moreover, the Bar-T boy was all too casual in his display of the skull. If he did not anticipate excitement the old-timers were mistaken.

"Have you et, Buddy?" inquired the stock tender, mindful of the duty of hospitality at least, though it was long past the noon hour and the dishes were washed. "Better unsaddle and turn the little horse into the corral for a bite, hadn't you?"

"Once I get the saddle on that wall-eyed old son-of-a-gun he stays cinched until I'm through with him for the day," said the Bar-T boy with a glance at his mount, which had sidled with dragging bridle to the shade of the lone cottonwood. "He ain't hay-hungry; all he wants is his half pound of flesh out of whatever part of a person is nearest to him. He ain't no vegetarian, that flea-bit old bag of slats and brimstone. No, I don't aim to linger here; and I met up with the Welsh Harp chuck wagon the other side of Baldwin's, thank you most to pieces. I just allowed you might be interested in this here pick-up of mine."

The stock tender brought his abstracted gaze from the distant line of Cheyenne bluffs and let it rest for a moment on the skull. Then he nodded perfunctorily.

"Wes Powell hasn't got back from Ogallala yet, has he?" the old bullwhacker supplemented.

The Bar-T boy made no reply. He was regarding the skull in the palm of his hand with the air of Hamlet in the graveyard scene. "To think that this here was once a man like we-all!" he moralized. "A man who drunk and swore and chewed tobacco and lied and stole, and maybe raised whiskers like you fellers! And now — look at it!"

"It ain't no object to take pride in," said the old bullwhacker with a bored air. "You could go to some of theseyer cemeteries back East and load a wagon with such for the digging, if the sexton was agreeable and your taste run thataway; but most human white folks leaves 'em underground. I've collected scalps in my time, but I've always drawed the line at that kind of bric-a-brac." He eyed the skull with furtive curiosity nevertheless. "Where did you catch it, Bud?"

"Over by Medicine Butte. I was riding a piece off the trail to look at some brands on a bunch of steers —"

"— when the little horse kicked against it as it was sticking up out of the ground, and you got off, out of curiosity to see what it was, and uncovered this mysterious relict of a former age," the old bullwhacker concluded.

"You've got it down fine — all but," said the Bar-T boy. "The little horse is a fair long-range kicker, but he ain't got no elastic leg, and this here was twenty rods away from him. I just seen something white —" "Sure!" the old bullwhacker again interrupted with a beaming face. "That's it! 'Seen something white!' Lordy! how that brings back old times. Buddy, that's how the man that pays you more wages than you're worth got his start — Enrico Billings. You don't know him personally, because he's living in Omaha now, sitting with his feet up on a diamond-studded mahogany desk, clipping coupons with a pair of eighteen-carat gold shears. Owns eighty per cent of the Bar-T stock; and that's just a little side issue. When your boss goes in to see him he crawls into the office on his hands and knees, with the annual report in his mouth. But fifteen years ago Enrico seen something white a piece off of the trail and got off his cay use to see what it was. You remember Enrico, at Hermosilla, Hank?"

Said the Bar-T boy: "If it ain't putting too great a strain on your imagination I'd like to hear the facts about Enrico. I've ambitions towards coupon-clipping myself, and it might head me, tail up, for that there diamond-studded desk."

"It ain't noways unlikely or improbable," said the old bullwhacker gravely. "Enrico was just about such a bow-legged, freckle-faced, slack-jawed young sooner as — happens round here every once in a while. He didn't have no respect for age; and sex didn't have no particular terrors for him either. If he ever blushed his boots hid it; if he ever done a full day's work it was because he felt like it; and if he ever had a dollar, forty-eight hours after he was paid off, it was because he was snow-bound or had a heap better luck than usual. No, Buddy, you ain't got no worse handicaps than what Enrico had — not to signify. Only folks sort of took to Enrico.

"Sedalia Warren, she took to him more than most, although she never let on that she did until it come to a show-down. Sedalia was one of these girls who'll give a man seventeen thousand guesses and then raise the limit and leave him studying for quite a spell. A girl has to be a little pink-petaled daisy to do that and not fall all over herself, and Sedalia never stubbed her toe one time, and she had a guessing contest on that would have made a cabinet-organ firm's mouth water for the size of it. Enrico wasn't one of the contestants. He knew. He always knew everything, and was willing to bet saddle, spurs and gun on it.

"'I give in,' he says to her three minutes and eight seconds after she had told him she was pleased to meet him. 'I give in,' he says. 'I've held out against the pick of the prettiest from the Panhandle to Pennington County, but you've got me for keeps.

"'You certainly was born lucky, and I want to be the first to congratulate you.'

"'Well, if that's so I'm tickled to death,' says Sedalia, smiling at him with deceitful duplicities. 'I haven't been so happy since I had the facial neuralgia' she says. 'The only thing that I'm worrying about is where I'll find any kind of a market for you.'

"'I said you had me for keeps,' says Enrico. 'That means to have and to hold, all and mighty singular, with appurtenances and privileges nevertheless and notwithstanding, until Death horns in betwixt us and edges one of us out of the bunch. Me, I'm going to mail an order to Chicago for a wedding garment bright and early to-morrow morning.'

"Right there the fiddler hollered 'Cheat or swing!' and Sedalia cheated. She done it the lightest, neatest, gracefulest and easiest you ever seen. It was like trying to pick a bubble of quicksilver off a china plate, seemed to me, for Enrico to more than touch her with the tips of his fingers — and yet the next time he got her. And he swang her! He certainly did! That dance was in Clint Soper's cabin — a tight fit for two set — and I thought Enrico would knock the chinking out of the wall with the tip of that girl's shoe. After that quadrille Dick Wade, the coroner, led Enrico outside and intimated that it pained him to see a lady manhandled thataway.

"'Did you ever take a bite out of the back of your neck, Dick?' asks Enrico. 'You might try it; you'll find it easier than sitting on yourself, which you might have occasion to do if you monkey with me.' "'This here is a social occasion and no time nor place for me to perform the duties of my office or provide the material for the same,' says Dick. 'But you mark my prophetic words: I'll collect my fees for sitting on your remains afore I've done with you.'

"'This Here is a Social Occasion and no Time nor Place to Perform
the Duties of My Office,' Says Dick. 'But You Mark my Prophetic Words'"

"And them was sure enough prophetic words, although it didn't turn out just the way Dick meant 'em. Anyway, there wasn't no bloodshed that night and Enrico went back and made himself unpopular with the boys and an object of pity and contempt to most of the girls by buzzing Sedalia whenever he got a chance, and taking the medicine she gave him as if he liked it.

"Bright and early after a dinner that he didn't eat next day Enrico ambled over to Old Man Warren's ranch just north of the Bosbyshell addition to the city of Hermosilla, and he lingered there for about four calendar months, spellbound and spellbinding. Once in a while he'd tear himself away long enough to catch up a little on his sleep or get a meal of victuals or go through the motions of punching cows for Al Williams so's to get a little spending money, but them was only what you might call intervals. If you took Old Man Warren's word for it they was. The old man was from Missouri — that's how come he named Sedalia &mdash and he was homesick. He figured on making a living raising garden truck on his ranch, which there was about ten acres plow land on the creek and the rest of the hundred-and-sixty banks and gullies of gypsum that he had taken up because there wasn't no better and because he liked elbowroom. Well, he made out to live, but he didn't like the country, and he seemed to have much the same opinion of Enrico. He didn't act as you might say hostile, at first, but Enrico just naturally palled on him. He used to look at the boy and sigh. 'Same old face!' he'd say. 'Same old face!'

"'The same sweet, sunny, honest, good-looking face!' Enrico would say, to help him out. 'Always welcome, ain't it?'

"'Always open, night and day!' the old man would come back, and shake his head mournfully. But he kept the peace. Sedalia wasn't by no means so tender of Enrico's feelings, but the boy told her that he liked it.

"'It's refreshing and it has all the charm of novelty,' he says to her. 'You take a fellow that's been sought after and made over, the way I've been all my life — nothing too good for him and no word but words of praise and love — and he gets cloyed up a considerable. What you tell me about myself is like a sprinkle of pepper sauce on a oyster — gives a fellow an interest. But it won't last. You'll get to appreciating me more and more. Pretty soon I'll begin to dawn on you, sort of.'

"'You've begun that quite a while,' says Sedalia. 'I'd like to have you sunset on me, sort of.'

"About that time she was particular encouraging to Dick Wade — also to Ed Prince and Walt Barlow and Pat Ferguson and Shorty Simms, and a dozen or so others whose names I disremember. They was the guessers. But Enrico was right easy in his mind all along, dog-gone him! He could keep up his end with any of 'em in personal conversation, and while he wasn't no confirmed scrapper he'd come out of one or two little tangles in good shape and left the other tangler a considerable marred and chipped on the edges. He was one of these cheerful and willing cusses with a straight and steady look and as prompt and perniciously active as a nigger-chaser on the Fourth, once his powder catched fire; but all the same he had a long fuse and kept it damp at the starting end. Another thing, nobody but Dick Wade suspected that he had any show whatever with Sedalia. I reckon Dick was the only one that hated him with any real enthusiasm.

"Time went on, as the fellow says, and finally, along about fall, it come to a show-down betwixt Sedalia and Enrico. That was the year that the F. E. & M. V. graders got into Hermosilla. All of the prominent citizens was broke then. They'd already cut loose from the mother county and organized a infant of their own, electing themselves to all the offices by unanimous majorities, but the tax collections was small, slow and scattering, and when they come to cut 'em up there wasn't no chunk big enough to cover grocery bills. When the railroad come, though, they fixed for a boom. Billy Thomas fixed his pins to go to Yankton to get a touch of high life in the legislature and haze capital down Hermosilla way on the side; all the other boys got out and looked after their fences in the political field. Offices was agoing to be something more than empty honor and a little grubstake now and then. Dick Wade, who had taken the coroner office out of party spirit and a hope of something better, come out for sheriff.

"Everybody was happy and hopeful except Old Man Warren. He'd already sold out his truck to the grading camps and hadn't soaked the prices to 'em near what he might have done, and that weighed on his mind. He hadn't got no illusions about selling his ranch for town lots, and it looked like a hard winter. On top of that, Enrico was round more than ever and that's how it come to a show-down.

"' Enrico rode over one afternoon and found Sedalia out by the chicken pen with a hammer and a bucket of staples trying to fix a gap in the netting, and the first thing he noticed was that her eyelids was a mite red and her nose a trifle swelled. She didn't seem pleased to see him either. "'Honey,' he says, 'you shouldn't take on thataway when I'm gone. You might know that I'd be back again some time. Cheer up! I'm here now, anyway. Don't you see I'm here?'

"'You bet I do!' she says. 'But if you think you are a cheering sight to me you'd better go away and think it all over again. Find a nice quiet place about two thousand miles off and take a year or two to ponder.'

"'If you wan't crying for me, what else could it be?' asks Enrico. 'You've got almost everything else you want or need, except a few things I'm going to get you.'

"But she put her hands behind her back. 'Honest, no fooling; you'd better go, Enrico,' she says; 'and if I was you I'd stay gone.'

"'Where's pa, that he lets his darling little girl pound her poor thumb with the nasty old hammer?' says Enrico.

"'Pa's in the house, with his buffalo gun took apart, cleaning and oiling it up for you,' says Sedalia. 'Pa's painted his face and socked the hatchet into the war post up to the eye,' she says. 'He's bad medicine for you, my poor Enrico — and he's working fast. You climb your horse again and jog along. Honest! I've done my best with him.'

"Enrico noticed that her lip was a-trembling. 'Let me see that thumb!' he says. He caught it with one of them quick motions of his, looked at it and kissed it; then he looked at the other one and kissed that, although there wasn't mark nor scar on either of them. Still holding them little thumbs he looked at her long and steady.

"'We'll quit fooling now,' he says. 'Leastways we'll quit this particular kind and fool along, pleasant and easy together, for the rest of our days. I told you right at the jump-off that we was going to get married, you and me. You thought I didn't mean what I said. Look at me now and you'll know I do. I know you think a heap of me and, get down to cases, you're too much of a dear, God's woman to play with me when the play's run out.'

"She was enough of a God's woman to hold off as long as she could, although her blushes and her shining eyes gave her away.

"'Heavens, the conceit of him!' she says. 'You're homely as a mud fence; you don't know any more than the territorial statutes provides; and you're poor as skim toast-water, which is worse than all; and you have the nerve —'

"Enrico certainly had the nerve. Right there he drew her to him by the thumbs, catched a new holt and stopped her mouth in the old-fashioned way until she was breathless. Then he went to the house to see pa; and Sedalia went along, too, hanging tight to his arm.

"Sure enough, pa was cleaning up the old gun, and he had blood in his eye when he looked up and seen who it was. For about as long as you could draw a long breath he had two notions, but that was long enough for him to think, and he threw one of 'em into the discard and went on oiling and didn't do no more than grunt when Enrico asked after his health.

"'You won't get no buffalo this side of the Canadian line,' says Enrico, watching him with friendly interest. 'If I was you I'd go to manicuring the shotgun and try up the creek for mud hens.'

"'A shotgun wouldn't make no impression on the game I'm after,' says the old man. 'I doubt if this here ain't too light to make much of a dent in your hide. What I need is one of them mountain howitzers they've got up at Fort Meade; but I'll give this a trial if I get a line on you anywheres within a mile of this house. You've got about seven minutes and ten seconds to make that mile, Enrico.'

"'Now, pa, I told you that was foolish talk,' says Sedalia. 'And there's two of us against you now,' she says.

"'I reckon if that's so I'll cut down the majority and make it an even break,' says the old man. He gave the lock a finishing wipe with the rag, slipped a ca'tridge into the chamber and swung round on Enrico. 'You get out of here, lively!' he says. 'I'm a long-suffering man, but there's metes and bounds to endurance, and you've been crowding me to the edge for some time. Sedalia, you step to one side. You ain't no sandbag, nor yet no armor plate; and that young fellow has got six minutes good yet if he don't make no false moves.'

"'Step aside, honey,' says Enrico. 'I'm agoing to sit down, and pa is too much of a sport to shoot me sitting. Now, pa, just state your objections to me as a son-in-law like a gentleman and a Missourian and quit acting long-haired and frantic. What's the matter with me? Never mind the little things, but specificate the big trouble.'

"'You're all right in a good many ways,' says the old man — 'Sedalia, you just let my whiskers be! — I don't call to mind what them good points of yours are exactly, Enrico, but for the sake of argument we'll say that you've got 'em. The big trouble with you is that you ain't worth hell room; and I've set my heart on a son-in-law that will give Sedalia all the luxuries of sustaining grub and shoes and a new dress pattern now and then, to which she has been accustomed. I want a son-in-law that will be a prop and staff to my declining years, and not no free boarder on the sweat of my brow, and I'll sure stain my soul — Sedalia, if you don't let them whiskers be I'll paddle you good! — I'll sure slop lifeblood afore I'll be crossed by any lop-eared, loafing, leather-breeched cowpunch that ever swung a rope instead of swinging in it.'

"'I guess I catch the general drift of your remarks,' says Enrico. 'You want Sedalia to marry a boy that's got all kinds of them good points that I've got and is a money-maker. All he's got to do is to prove up on them qualifications and get his patent; ain't that so? Well, why didn't you ever mention it? Now listen: I'll take you up on that! I can get money just as easy as I can get anything else I want if I give my mind to it; and I'll wait for Sedalia until you're satisfied. Is it a whack?' "Well, there was a heap more talk before it was, but finally the old man come to his milk. But there wasn't to be no bar, meantime, on any of the other boys. Pa Warren figured to himself that Dick Wade, for one, was agoing to be the next sheriff and that with the railroad coming in there was apt to be what they call a strong bull movement in crime. Pa always liked to copper his bets.

"Before Enrico went away Sedalia says to him: 'You come out of that mighty well, dear; but if I wasn't right ambitious and if you had amounted to a row of pins you'd never have come even this near to getting me.'

"'I'm a great hand to make something real nice out of mighty poor material,' she says. 'I take a pride in it, and I'm going to be entitled to a heap of credit by the time I've got you cut and shaped. Any idea how you're going to make that stake, darling?'

"'About a million of 'em,' says Enrico. 'All that's going to bother me is to pick out the best one. I might go down to Edmund Bell's Eagle-Bird and get quick action on a small investment in red, white and blue. I'd win, I know. I've got the largest size lucky hunch I ever had in all my born days; still, I don't want us to get our start thataway. Holding up the stage is another idea, but there's an element of risk in it that as an engaged man I don't feel free to chance. There's prospecting. I might strike a bonanza anywhere, once out of the gypsum belt, but —' He shook his head at the red earth banks with their milky outcroppings. 'If there was only a market for gypsum now!'

"'How about taking up a good homestead somewhere and working hard and steady and saving your money to put into cows?' Sedalia suggests.

"'Hm-m!' says Enrico. 'Only trouble with that is that you and me will be old, old folks before the merry wedding bells ring out if we stick to the bargain with pa.' He catched a sight of her face. 'But I'll do that if I can't think of nothing better,' he says in a hurry. 'Why, sure! Working hard and steady is my long suit. But — I'll study on it, sweetheart. That hunch of mine is getting stronger every minute. Sure, I'd make a good granger; but there ain't no denying that I've got brains, and it would be a pity not to use 'em.'

"'I'll do some studying myself,' says Sedalia. 'Don't you bank too much on that intellect of yours though. The pen's full of men that done brain work instead of using their backs the way they ought.'

"She said that kind of discouraging and Enrico went back to Fred Willor's boarding house feeling a mite less chipper. Supper wasn't quite ready, so he went into the little back setting room and sat down by Fred's specimen cabinet. Fred come in after a while and found him staring into the glass doors. 'I'll get the key,' Fred says.

"'Don't trouble!' says Enrico. 'I ain't no rock sharp; and I wasn't looking at anything in particular, anyway.'

"'No trouble,' says old Fred, unlocking the door and commencing to unload the débris. 'Here's a little bottle of nuggets I washed out of my claim on Castle Creek. First and last, I took close on to fifteen hundred dollars out of that claim, and if I had had any sense — That's pyrites there, and alongside of it is a chunk of the pure quill from the Holy Terror. I'd like a ton of it. Them there is geodes, and that's a stalactite from Wind Cave. These here is gypsum crystals and —'

"'Let me look at that!' says Enrico. 'It don't look like gypsum to me.' && "'It's the crystals,' says Fred. 'You find that blamed stuff in all kinds of shapes. They make plaster Paris of it — same as that statuette up on the whatnot there. Say, there was a popeyed fool got off the stage here one day from Sioux City and he tried to tell me that statuette was mercury. Stuck to it — until I told him I'd done too much amalgamating with mercury for him to run that kind of a blazer on me. What do you reckon he's got them wings on his heels for? And on his hat, b'gosh! He's what you might call a light dresser, ain't he? Like Lo, the poor Injun, whose untutored mind clothes him before and leaves him bare behind, sort of.'

"'He's sure a well-made figure of a man,' says Enrico, sizing up the statuette, kind of interested.

"Fred turned back to the cabinet. 'Here's a chunk of petrified wood,' he says. 'I reckon you've see a plenty of that, but this here come from Montana. There's whole forests of it there — and other things — bones and shells and turtles. Beats all how it come! I'd hate to sleep out on some of them hillsides, for fear I'd wake up and find myself building material. By gosh! there's the bell at last. You'd better hurry if you want anything to eat.'

"He locked up the cabinet and they went in to supper. Enrico was kind of absent-minded all through the meal, and all the way back to the ranch he rode most of the time at a walk, studying. In the morning he told Al Williams he'd draw his pay and quit, and before night he was back at Hermosilla and took the stage from there to Deadwood. From Deadwood he went to Lead and put in a day or two at the Homestake foundry with Billy Lang, who was an old friend of his. He told Billy he wanted to watch the molders and learn a few new cuss words, and he didn't know no better place to combine them educational advantages. Then he went back to Hermosilla and catched Old Man Warren coming out of the Eagle-Bird wiping his mouth, and headed him back in again. They was in there the best part of an hour, in a far corner by themselves; and Enrico talked all that time pretty steady. Finally they got up and shook hands, solemn and ceremonious.

"'Understand, this here is betwixt you and me,' says Enrico as they parted. 'Sedalia ain't to know no more than what I tell her. I'll be over in the morning.'

"According to program Enrico gave Sedalia a surprise visit the first thing in the morning, and she seemed about as glad to see him as he had any right to expect, until he told her that he had jumped his job, after which she cooled off some. 'Of course, forty a month and provender comes close to being an insult to a person with your brains and energy,' she says. 'Still, it ain't apt to hurt like nothing at all and find yourself. But maybe some total stranger has offered you a hundred and double rations.'

"'If he did I'd hurl the offer back in his teeth,' says Enrico. 'I've got my big idea, girl. It's agoing to take brains and energy, like you say I've got, and it's agoing to take grinding toil and nerve strain; but that don't mean nothing to your Enrico when the reward is his Sedalia.'

"'Gypsum,' answers Enrico with a wave of his hand at the hundred and fifty acres scattered round him. 'Here it is, laying round waiting for the magic touch of genius and energy to turn itself into a young mint. Did you know that they made plaster Paris out of gypsum? Did you know that they use it for fertilizer back East and for — lots of things? Are you aware that the railroad is agoing to link with bands of steel this inexhaustible supply with this insatiable demand? That's whatever, girl. I'm agoing to take pa into partnership with me, and after some experimenting, for which I furnish the capital, we're agoing to ship this ranch to the land of the rising sun in carload lots. Where's pa? I want to put it to him right now.'

"'I think you are crazy,' says Sedalia. 'Pa's out resting in the haymow right now, I reckon. He got a considerable fatigued in town last night, and I judge this would be a good time to talk business with him! Enrico, come back, you coot! He'll kill you.'

"But Enrico had started for the barn. Sedalia stood watching and listening for sights and sounds of trouble, but pretty soon Enrico and pa came out as friendy looking as you please.

"'I will say that Enrico ain't by no means the slouch that I thought he was,' says pa. 'I ain't no rainbow chaser and I don't believe in looking at the bright side of things till your eyes get dazzled, but I like his scheme and I count on him and me making quite a stake out of this property after all.'

"Most generally Sedalia knew about what to expect of pa, but this sure jolted her. Still it took quite a spell to make her think that Enrico knowed what he was a-doing. Whether he knowed or not he certainly humped himself. First off, he packed his bed roll and some grub to an old cabin on the other side of the ridge, that the Stevens boys built for a road house before Hermosilla got started and when there was a road there. To satisfy idle curiosity he gave out that he had took the claim for a homestead, and his reputation for horse sense was such that folks believed him. Still, there was a spring there, as well as a lot of scenery set up on end, and the cabin was so a man could easy live in it after he'd killed off a nest of rattlesnakes that had preempted one of the bunks; so inside of half a day Enrico got settled and began to work on the big idea. As a starter he boarded up an old shed that was off to one end of the Warrens' claim and built a little furnace in it under a steel tank. The old man bossed both jobs and Enrico done the work — according to his own notions. The next thing he hauled wood, cut wood and piled wood until Sedalia cried at the sight of his poor hands and begged him to let up.

"There wasn't no let-up to Enrico though. When the wood job was done he got to work with pick, shovel, gad and bar on the gypsum; and before long he had half of the shed stacked to the roof with slabs and blocks that he'd dug out and hauled on a go-devil that he had made over a road that he'd built through the draws. One busy boy he was. And he wouldn't so much as take a meal at Warren's. Sedalia couldn't hardly force a loaf of bread or a pie on him.

"'What I'm striving for is to fix things so's you won't have to cook for nobody, unless it's for sport,' he says to her. 'Far be it from me to increase your burdens. I'll take this here pie as a keepsake since you've made it for me, but I wouldn't be no such a hog as to eat it.'

"'Take it as a keepsake then,' she says. 'Wear it next to your heart and sleep with it under your pillow if you want to, Enrico dear. You don't have to work that hard for me. You're a foolish boy!'

"'You're an unblushing liar,' she says. She didn't say it unkind, but just stating facts. 'But you are getting thin,' she says, 'and I don't like it.'

"'That's jealousy, seeing Dick Wade round here so much,' says he — 'and the aggravation of having to keep out of his sight.'

"'Pa does most of the entertaining,' says Sedalia. 'I reckon pa isn't so certain that the company's going to be a success after all.' "'He will be a week from now,' says Enrico. 'We're agoing to start the furnace to-morrow.'

"Sure enough, they started up the furnace next morning and run it under lock and key for three days steady. Sedalia went into the shed once to see how things were looking, but it was mighty hot and uninteresting and somehow she got the impression that she was interrupting proceedings, so she backed out again. The next thing, a Scandinavian gent with no eyebrows to speak of and no finger nails at all came down from Lead City to stay over Sunday. His name was Nels Brakke, and Enrico told Sedalia that he was a plaster-of-Paris expert. He had a kit of tools with him and early in the morning him and Enrico and the old man went into the shed and locked themselves in. Sedalia wanted in, too, but the old man told her she'd better stick close to the house and keep callers away from nosing round. After a while she heard Enrico shrieking and whooping like a mirthful hyena and made out a Scandinavian bass accompaniment to the same while pa was using language that she hadn't heard since the old man drove the ox wagon over the trail from Missouri and struck the gumbo belt.

"All morning that went on, and you can bet that Sedalia's curiosity was stirred a plenty. When the men come in to dinner she questioned them pretty close, but they sort of dodged and acted silly. Every once in a while Enrico would look at the old man and sort of choke and sputter on his victuals, and when that happened Nels would snort too, and then blush to the roots of his hair, being bashful. Pa would look as savage as a meat ax and say something about cussed fools and what he'd do for two cents. It wasn't no wonder that Sedalia was miffed, and when they started right out for the shed again as soon as they had et she was hopping mad. Dick Wade come round about three o'clock with his campaign buckboard, and if it hadn't been for a strong sense of duty she'd have gone riding with him. As it was she was mighty sweet to him, and when the other boys came stringing along, as per usual, she kept the whole crowd until Enrico had to sneak home through the draws with Nels, without seeing her.

"Well, Enrico sort of squared himself the next day with the girl, and for two days longer him and pa went on experimenting. Then Enrico told Sedalia he reckoned she was right about him working too hard. 'I notice a sense of fullness after eating,' he says, 'and along about nine or ten o'clock my jaws get to stretching and I'm apt to keel over and lose consciousness for several hours. I don't want to scare you, but I think I'd better take a few days off.'

"Sedalia looked at him kind of thoughtful. 'I was looking for something terrible like this to happen,' she says. 'I s'pose you'll take them few days in town, where you can get cheerful society to break up this here sleeping sickness.'

"'Now you've hurt my feelings,' says Enrico. 'No, ma'am! I just thought of going up Red Cañon for a few days after whitetail. Pa says he'll loan me the wagon for half of the meat.'

"'Oh, if that's all, I'm sorry I spoke,' says Sedalia. 'Don't think I mistrust you, Enrico dear. It's just that the way you've been tearing up the ground lately has made me a mite uneasy. I was afraid it might be just a beautiful dream and I was about due to wake up. Forgive me, darling.'

"Enrico forgave her and started off on his hunting trip that afternoon. He was back again in a couple of days. That was late Thursday night. Friday when the Hermosilla Hatchet come out there was a headline clear across the front page:

PRIES UP PETRIFIED PAGAN
ENRICO BILLINGS BARES BURIED BACK
NUMBER ON BITTER WATER

"It went on to say that our esteemed, genial and popular fellow citizen, Enrico Billings, had made a discovery that would give him a front-row seat among the most distinguished bone hunters and fossil sharps of this or any other age and put Bitter Water on the map along with the celebrated and well-known places, whose names our readers would readily recall, that were comparatively unknown before the discoveries that made them famous. Mr, Billings, while out on a hunt in the Red Cañon country, noticed something white sticking up out of the ground close to Bitter Water Creek, and his curiosity being excited he got off his horse to investigate, and with the aid of his picket pin succeeded in unearthing an almost perfect human form that the action of unknown elements through perhaps thousands of years had petrified and turned into stone. With the intelligence and perspicacity that distinguish him, Mr. Billings at once brought up his wagon from his camp, and with superhuman effort skidded this mysterious relic of prehistoric ages up into the box and hauled it back with him. It can now be seen in the back room of Billy Morgan's drug store for an admission fee of four bits, children half price, thus giving Hermosilla the opportunity to inspect this unique legacy of remote ages ahead of an astounded world. Ye editor has had the privilege of seeing it, and it is undoubtedly the remains of a man, but does not seem to bear out the theory that there was giants in them days, being considerable of a runt and scrawny in structure. It was found lying on its left side with one hand pressed to the pit of its stomach, and the expression of its face, which somewhat resembles a chimpanzee's, seems to show that its last moments was not happy. Mr. Billings, who has devoted much time to the study of ethnology, classifies it as brachycephalic, apparently belonging to the melanochroid group, and places the date of its decease somewhere along in the late Miocene age; but our readers — on payment of four bits, strictly cash — can judge of these points for themselves. We understand that Mr. M. E. Warren has purchased a half interest in this marvel. Go to it, boys!

"You can talk all you want to about a town being broke. Hermosilla was flat busted if you tried to collect anything, but all the same there wasn't a citizen that didn't manage to rustle his little half-wheel somewhere and come a-running to see the petrified man. Old Man Warren, who stood at the door of the back room taking in the coin, had both of his pants pockets loaded down to that extent that he got nervous about his suspenders, and Enrico, inside with the crowd, talked himself plumb hoarse answering questions. When Billy Morgan closed up at supper time they was both about tuckered out.

"Pa wanted to celebrate a little, but Enrico got him into the wagon and headed for home as soon as he had got his mail. The old man hadn't read the piece in the paper then. Enrico told him that he'd be along late after he'd et, and then went on down the street to the Hatchet office. Joe Simms, ye ed, was cleaning off the roller of the Washington hand press. He grinned when he saw Enrico.

"'It sure does!' says Enrico. 'I come here to prove it to you.' He pulled out a neat little roll of bills and skinned it down real liberal. 'I throw in some empty gratitude for them large, fat, tasty words that you put in my mouth too,' he says.

"'Don't name it,' says Joe. 'As long as the old unabridged and the Chambers' cyclopedia hang together, no friend of mine is agoing to suffer from lack of the right dope — as long the subject ain't between G and Kidneys, which volume some son of a tinker has swiped out of the office. Much obliged, Enrico. You can sure count on the aid and comfort of the local press. One born every ten seconds, ain't there? I wouldn't wonder if you made on this, after all.'

"'Ever hear of the Cardiff Giant?' asks Joe. 'About twenty years ago some unscrupulous persons carved him out of a block of gypsum and claimed they had found him, digging a well. They fooled about the whole U. S. and made a big batch of dough out of him.'

"'You don't tell me!' says Enrico. 'Now ain't that shocking! You mean to say that anybody was ever low-down enough to work a scheme like that? Twenty years ago, eh? Hm-m! Twenty years is a long time, Joe. Lots of folks can't remember that far back.'

"'The heft don't remember back twenty-four hours, when it comes to certain things,' says Joe. 'I wouldn't worry, son.' && "Enrico got up. "I don't aim to,' he says. 'But there's one thing I want to say — and that's that our brachycephalic bohunkus wasn't carved out of no gypsum, nor carved out of nothing. So long, Joe!'

"Enrico went over to Fred Willor's and slicked up and then got on his horse and rode over to Warren's. He found pa out by the bars, with his chin on the top pole and all of the gladness gone out of his face.

"'I come out for a recess,' says the old man. 'I'm tired of answering fool questions, and if you want to go in and spell me with that girl. I'll borrow your horse a while afore you unsaddle.'

"Pa come out with a full-breath bust: 'I'm agoing to ride to town, by gosh! and mop up the Hatchet premises with that cockeyed, knock-kneed, type-slinging son of a soup bone, Joe Simms! The slab-sided, slick-scribbling, punkin-subsidized scalawag! I'll learn him! I'll show the oyster-supper-boosting, comp-grabbing, council-grafting, free-drinks deadhead a thing or two! He'll need patent outsides as well as insides when I get through with him! "Considerable of a runt and scrawny in structure," eh? Face like a chimpanzee, is it? And my own daughter reading it aloud, account of me having mislaid my specs! If I don't jam that slayfooted, sticky-fingered faker into the wastebasket and wreck the office, I'm as big a liar as he is!'

"'There, there!' says Enrico; 'you'll feel better now, and there won't be no need of a massacre. Joe means well, but he didn't know that we'd be so sensitive about the personal looks of our discovery. He may have thought that folks would be more interested if they thought it was something horrible.'

"'Somebody'll hear you if you holler thataway,' says Enrico. 'If you're a back number you've done mighty well for one afternoon's work. You study on that a while and cool off, and I'll go in and see Sedalia.'

"So he went in to see Sedalia — went with a whoop and threw his hat up in the air and then stood with his arms open, waiting for her to run into them and nestle. Pretty soon he got tired of waiting and took a step toward her, but she flicked him back with the dish towel and backed that play with a cold, stony look that the petrified man couldn't have beat.

"'We're agoing to have a little talk first.' she says, pointing to a chair. 'Pick up your hat and sit down there and behave. I've missed you something terrible and I'm so glad to see you again that I can't hardly act proper, but I'm going to try. What's this story I hear about you finding a petrified man?'

"'This here is certainly a blow to me,' says Enrico; 'but I'll tell you. You see there was some whitetail tracks leading out of the cañon and over toward Bitter Water, and as I was a-following 'em I seen something sort of sticking up out of the ground, and my curiosity being excited —'

"'I know all that by heart,' Sedalia says calmly. 'Now you tell me one thing: You say you dug up —'

"'The luckiest find I ever made in my life, excepting when I found you,' says Enrico. 'Pa and me has taken in close to ninety dollars already, and we'll double that to-morrow, and — What for are you pointing your finger at me, honey?'

"'Darling,' says Enrico, 'I ain't but twenty-five years old and you can't expect me to be posted on what happened twenty-five centuries ago. If it was something halfway recent I might hunt up the undertaker and get you a list of the pall-bearers, but you're asking too much.'

"'How much did pa pay you for his half interest, and where did he get the money?' she goes on.

"'Sho!' says Enrico; 'ain't pa and me partners? He furnishes the wagon, come to that.'

"'What did pa use two boxes of axle grease for a-Sunday, and how did he get that plaster in his hair, and what were you men laughing about, and why did pa take a bath?'

"'Why, sweetheart, don't you think pa would know without me guessing?' says Enrico. 'Why not ask pa?'

"'I have,' she says. 'So you've give up hard work and the plaster-of-Paris business?'

"'Why, no, pretty one!' says Enrico. 'Whatever put that into your dear little head? Far from it and quite the contrary. The plaster business takes capital, though, and we'd just used up all the capital I had. We was just a-talking and wondering what we would do, when here this petrified man drops on us from a clear sky. By the time I've taken him round a while we'll have capital to start the plaster business just a-whooping. I reckon I'll start out about Tuesday and work the Hills camps and towns.'

"Sedalia got up and walked over to her bedroom. 'I hope you'll have a pleasant journey,' she says. 'Good-by!'

"She slipped into the bedroom and shut and locked the door. Enrico tried to talk to her through the keyhole, but the line seemed to be out of order and he got discouraged, and when pa came in and tried his hand at remonstrating, with equal poor luck, he gave up and went back to town.

"Pa showed up at the drug store in time for the opening of business next morning and didn't bring no glad tidings with him. Sedalia, seemed like, didn't approve of the petrified man and hadn't no idea of connecting herself with him by marriage, and all bets based on that proposition was declared off. That was about the size and dimensions of it, pa said. 'What's more,' says pa, 'she won't hear to me touring the Hills with you, nor no other place. I reckon I'll have to be a silent partner in this here, Enrico.'

"Enrico said he'd talk it over with her that evening, and right away him and pa got too busy to pursue the subject. They had to go out to dinner one at a time while Billy Morgan spelled them, the rush was such; and at supper time a bunch of the boys from the Circle-Bar rode in, arriving simultaneous with five hand cars full of micks from the grading camp at the falls and a message to pa from Sedalia saying that she'd shut up the chickens and gone a-visiting for a few days with a neighbor and for him to feed the cat and there was bread enough to do him in the oven.

"'No,' says Pa. 'It might be with Miss' Gibson at Ash Creek, or it might be the Wolcotts at Cascade, or the Lowdens on Coffee Flat — or anywheres. Wherever it is, it's my notion that she won't be back until this here show is out of town. These here fool women!'

"'Don't say that,' says Enrico. 'Sedalia ain't no fool — and that's the trouble. She's too high-minded and white-souled and tender-conscienced to understand business, that's all, bless her! What will we do now, pa?'

"'I reckon you'd better light out for the upper Hills,' says pa. 'They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I can keep you posted while you're gone. We'll have an evening performance here for the boys, and continuous to-morrow, and by that time Hermosilla will be about cleaned up. Anyway, we can make a return date for any small change we've missed.'

"'I don't know,' says Enrico. 'They say out of sight, out of mind, and if Sedalia keeps set as she is — Well, I guess I'll take a chance and see what happens.'

"Several things happened. On Monday Enrico hired Lou Green and Sam Whitacre for assistant lecturers and ticket-office clerks and, with the Petrified Pagan rolled up in a tarp in brand-new wagon, hit the trail acquiring capital as he went. Wednesday Sedalia got back from her visit and rolled up her sleeves to clean house after pa. Friday the Hatchet noted Dick Wade had returned from his canvass of the Oelrichs Precinct and reported that according to conservative estimates a majority of no less than thirty votes would be rolled up for the Democratic ticket in Oelrichs alone. The same evening Dick sat on the porch of the M. E. Warren ranch and done his level best to make Miss Sedalia Warren like him. Taking it all round he seemed to be making a tolerable good job of it. Anyway, pa got uneasy enough to join the merry group and turn the conversation to politics. When Dick finally went pa told daughter that he was ashamed of her.

"'That ain't all,' says Sedalia. 'He's an officeholder and an office getter, and he's agoing to be our next sheriff and a terror to evildoers and frauds and such. I don't know whether he'd let his wife's relations stand between him and his sworn duty — if he had a wife — but from what he said I don't believe he would.'

"'Nothing particular,' says Sedalia. 'He's got some sense; and when he seen the subject was unpleasant to me he dropped it. But I think he was real sorry that you was mixed up in it.'

"'Huh!' says the old man with a grin. 'I guess he is! Know how much Enrico took out of Buffalo Gap?'

"'You've changed yours a heap about Dick,' she says. 'I don't aim to be undutiful, but I wish you'd let Dick and me alone.'

"The way she said it, pa judged it best to say nothing, but he kept up a devil of a thinking. Next day he brought Sedalia a letter and package from Enrico, but she didn't open either of them — not while pa was round anyway. Along in the afternoon Dick made another call, but pa didn't talk so violent as he had the day before, although he gave Dick to understand that he was too numerous, about as plain as a man can without saying much. All the same, he wrote to Enrico that Sedalia acted as if she was tickled to death to get his letter, and he allowed that she was weakening.

"Enrico was at Rapid by that time, doing a land-office business and sending drafts to pa regular. Joe Simms, the Hatchet man, looking over his exchanges, seen that his piece about the Bitter Water Back Number was copied all over the territory, and even the Sioux City and Omaha papers had it in. The Sioux City Journal did mention the Cardiff Giant with insinuations, and The Fargo Argus joshed a considerable, but mostly the newspaper boys took a sort of pride in the find and gave it a good send-off, especially after Professor Thornby, of the School of Mines, come out in an interview and indorsed the Miocene theory to the extent of two columns. Enrico stayed quite a while in Rapid and then went on to Deadwood, and the report he sent from there put a grin a foot wide under pa's whiskers.

"All the same, Dick Wade worried pa a heap. Dick hadn't said nothing to him about Enrico, only to ask kind of particular when he was a-coming back. He seemed real anxious about that — but there wasn't hardly a day that he didn't get round to sit a while with Sedalia, and Sedalia wasn't never too busy to give him a little time. Enrico kept a-writing to her steady, and there was most as many packages as letters from him, but she never let on to pa about them. Then came election, and Dick was elected sheriff.

"Pa went to town to vote against him of course, and stopped over for the returns. Next morning he found another letter from Enrico in his pocket, that he'd overlooked in the excitement. Enrico was at Lead and allowed that there wasn't no falling off in attendance — so far, and that the receipts was considerable over the expenditures. He mentioned that he had sent fifty dollars to Nels Brakke from Rapid and had just found out that Nels went on a big spree as soon as he got it, and then resigned from the foundry, observing that he had a soft snap and was going to work for Nels henceforth. After which he left town.

"Then Enrico says: 'You keep on telling me that Sedalia is a-weakening, but I don't see no signs of it. She don't answer my letters, and if them little tricks I've been sending has found favor in her eyes I ain't got no means of telling it. I've a big notion to take old Hard-pan back to Hermosilla for that return date right away, for I'm a heap easier financially than I am in my mind. What in thunder makes you think she's weakening?'

"Pa put the letter back in his pocket and braced Sedalia. His hair was a-pulling considerable, but he made out to speak soft and gentle. 'Little girl,' he says, 'what for don't you write to poor Enrico and cheer him up a few? There he is, sad and lonely, long miles away, a-toiling and a-slaving to pile up money for you, a-writing to you every day and a-sending you fond tokens of affection, and you don't let out a grunt. I ain't asking you to slop over or take back anything, but that boy's big, warm heart is a-breaking, and the least you could do would be to act polite like a lady. Now ain't it?'

"'See here, pa!' says Sedalia. 'You can tell that poor, sad, lonely, broken-hearted partner of yours that he's wasting postage, paper, wrappings and string sending letters and tokens of affections to me. I can use wood in the stove just as well, and get more heat. If he gets too lonesome with his petrified man maybe he can dig up a petrified woman. By the way, I'm going riding with Dick Wade this afternoon and you may have to get your own supper.'

"Pa didn't say nothing to that in her hearing, but he put out for the barn, his mouth shut hard, his eyes popping, and his general complexion between a warm red and a rich purple. He walked quick, but it was just as well the barn wasn't no farther off. There was an innocent little calf a-standing chewing its cud in his line of march, and that calf caught a sight of pa's face and gave one blat of terror and streaked for the Battle Mountain Range, sailing over a five-foot pole fence as if it wasn't nothing but a line chalked on the ground. What pa said in the barn didn't set fire to the fodder, but it would have sure made an insurance company nervous. Then he had a long spell of thinking, and as a result he wrote to Enrico that there wasn't no need nor sense in him starting back as long as public interest in prehistoric relics was unabated.

"'The reason I think she's weakening is that I know blame well she is,' he says. 'Just for one thing, to-day she made some remarks about you seeking the society of other women up there that looked like she was a-getting worried. I don't say she ain't mad yet, but she'll get over that all the quicker if you stay away and quit writing.'

"A week later Jack Skinner, a well-known ranchman of Point-of-Rocks, Custer County, was a-riding after horses on French Creek when his horse stumbled on something white sticking up out of the ground and throwed Mr. Skinner over his head. When he come to, Mr. Skinner investigated and found that the cause of the accident was the petrified remains of some antediluvian aborigine what had remained hidden for uncounted ages until this fortuitous chance happening brought it to light. Mr. N. Brakke, a mining man from the upper hills, was with Mr. Skinner at the time and helped dig up the ancient stiff, which is now on exhibition in Paul Klemman's wareroom for twenty-five cents per exhib.

"That was in the Custer Chronicle, where Joe Simms, the Hatchet man, seen it. Joe clipped out the piece, but he didn't print it, and he kept his mouth shut about it. He didn't say nothing when, soon after that, a prominent sod-buster, of Vermilion, while digging a well, struck his pick into what proved to be the shoulderblade of a lapidified human form that a Swedish scientist by the name of Brakke pronounced a genuine antique. All Joe done was to grin and paste the clippings in the back of his daybook.

"Pa still kept watch faithful, but what he seen of Sedalia and Dick didn't put no flesh on his bones. Every time he mentioned anything about Enrico, the girl would talk about Dick Wade; and she'd talk about Dick Wade if he didn't mention Enrico. The way she primped for Dick was as sinful as it was unnecessary, and about an hour before Dick come — and he was coming tolerable regular — she'd act as restless as a pea in a skillet and look out of the window every twenty seconds or so to see if he wasn't looming on the horizon.

"Finally pa concluded that he'd watch the horizon some himself, and as soon as Dick loomed pa aimed a little to the right and low and cut loose. Dick stopped short. Pa whanged away again and knocked up the dust about six inches to the left. Dick hollered something, but pa couldn't hear just what he said. What Dick heard next was a loud humming noise right over his head, and he judged it best to turn his horse round and go back to town. Not that he was scared — he wasn't naturally scary, Dick wasn't; but he had awful good sense about some things. Pa chuckled to himself and, leaving the old gun cached in the plum bushes, he went back to the house and found Sedalia putting on her best hat.

"'I'm going to town,' says Sedalia, 'where it will be safe for folks to see me,' she says. 'I'm free, white and sweet nineteen; and I claim I can pick my company without the aid or consent of any parent whatever. A girl may be good-looking and attractive, which I don't say I'm not, but I don't want any handicap of being known as a death risk at five hundred yards.'

"'Don't talk foolish, girl, and don't drive your old father to extreme measures,' says pa.

"'Well, I'll drive you in,' says pa, and he hikes out to the barn and turns her Patsy horse and one of the team horses loose on the range. Then he climbs the only other horse there was left and put out for town himself. 'By gosh!' he says; 'I've got to get Enrico back if he has to leave a thousand dollars a day receipts. Here's where I burn the wires between this and Central City, and if I can't keep Dick stood off till the boy gets here I'll buy a couple more boxes of axle grease and eat 'em.'

"He didn't do no telegraphing, though, as it happened. About the first person he seen in town was Dick Wade. Dick didn't make no move, forward or back, but waited for him to come up. 'Howdy, Dick!' says pa. 'Why don't you come to see us?'

"'I figure on doing so, as soon as the road is open,' says Dick. 'I left my opener at home the last time, but I don't aim to be so forgetful the next time,' he says. 'How are you feeling, Mr. Warren?'

"'Poorly, sir, poorly!' says pa. 'My right eye is a-troubling me and my hand and arm ain't so steady as I could wish. They'll improve though. Yes, they'll improve, all right. Health is a great thing, Dick. Always take care of your health and keep out of unhealthy places.'

"'That's good advice,' says Dick. 'Jails is generally conceded to be unhealthy, but some folks don't seem to care whether they keep out of jail or not. How is Miss Sedalia?'

"'Sort of out of sorts,' says pa. 'I guess she'll be all right pretty soon though. Enrico Billings is a-coming back. She ain't been like the same girl since he went.'

"Dick pricked up his ears. 'Coming back, is he?' says he. 'When do you expect him?'

"He stopped short. There come a squeal of brakes from the grade the other side of the creek, and here was a covered wagon a-sliding down to' the bridge with BITTER WATER PETRIFIED MAN in big letters along the canvas!

"Pa set off hotfoot for the bridge, and Dick Wade watched him for a minute and then struck off down the street and went into Doc Minnifer's office. Doc was busy with a patient, so Dick sat down in the waiting room and waited, with one eye on Billy Morgan's drug store, which he could see from the window. Pretty soon the covered wagon drove up to Billy's side door and Enrico and pa and Billy and a couple of other men lifted out something long and hefty rolled up in a tarpoleon, and carried it in. Dick Wade grinned and licked his lips. Then he rolled him a cigarette and continued to wait.

"'I tell you I was just agoing to telegraph you,' says pa. 'I ain't to blame. I. allowed she was letting him come round just out of pastime.'

"'Sure!' says Enrico, kind of sarcastic. 'It would have been a pity to have took my mind off of business when I was doing so well. I'm glad I got that note. Whoever it was wrote it was a friend of mine.'

"'A plenty!' says Enrico. 'Just that unless I thought more of my stone man than I did of my flesh-and-blood girl I'd better hustle back afore Dick Wade got her.'

"'I wish I knew who wrote it,' says pa. 'I'd sure make the no-name, black-hand backbiter hard to resuscitate. It's a lie! I don't say that shooting at Dick was good policy, but as soon as I seen I'd made a mistake and there was a chance of anything happening I sent for you — or I was agoing to. That's no lie.'

"They was just passing the Hatchet office and Joe Simms rapped on the window and beckoned hard for them to come in. Enrico shook his head, but Joe made more signs, so he went in, pa trailing along after. 'I'm in a rush, Joe,' says Enrico. 'I'll look in again later on.'

"'I won't keep you a minute,' says Joe. 'I seen you only just come in a little while ago, so it's likely you don't know about all your brother capitalists and big bugs that's just arrived on a special car from Chicago with the V. P., the G. P. A., the G. F. A. and other prominent initials of the F. E.'

"'I didn't hear of it,' says Enrico. 'Much obliged for informing me. Tell 'em I'm sorry I was too busy to see 'em and I hope they'll make themselves at home. See you later.'

"'Sit down, dog-gone you!' says Joe. 'Give me time to say a word. The whole gang is in the Eagle-Bird clubroom right now, and I want to take you over and introduce you. I'm on the entertainment committee and I want to entertain them with a private view of your Paleozoic Piute.'

"'See here, Joe Simms,' says pa, breaking in, 'a joke's a joke and I can take one with the next fellow, but when you get to talking about Piutes, with personal applications, I'll be gol-swizzled if —'

"'Pa,' says Enrico, 'you take a tumble to yourself and hush. Joe didn't mean nothing personal, and you're delaying the game.'

"'What's devouring him?' asks Joe. 'Well, anyway, it's up to us to show these gentlemen our manufactures and industries and enterprises, and you've brought back yours right in the nick of time before such is a common spectacle and —'

"Enrico interrupts him. 'What do you mean by "manufactures" and "common spectacles"?' says he.

"'I thought you was keeping posted on the market,' says Joe. 'Up to date there's about eighteen perfectly preserved petrified persons been discovered, and more a-coming. It's got so a rancher can't ride out after stock nowheres without his horse kicking against a petrified shoulder blade or something, and if he digs a well it's an even break whether he strikes water or a remarkable object of scientific interest. Look over them clippings, and while you're doing that I'll go and tell the crowd. Over at the drug store, ain't it?'

"Without waiting for an answer Joe lit out for the Eagle-Bird clubroom. Pa sat with his jaw sagging while Enrico run his eye through the notices of discoveries.

"'Well,' says Enrico at last, 'I'm agoing to see Sedalia. It looks as if there were a lot of fake fossils being exhumed and as if that squarehead, Nels Brakke, was largely responsible for the outrageous fraud on a credulous public. But we'll talk that over. You can go up to Billy Morgan's and do the honors if you want. I'm agoing to see Sedalia before Dick Wade —'

"'Enrico Billings in there?' somebody hollers. The next thing in busts Billy Morgan panting for breath and with the sweat rolling down his red face.

"'Enrico,' says he, 'that blamed saphead, Dick Wade, is a-holding an inquest on your petrified man and I reckon it will be a pious idea for you to attend as a witness.'

"It seemed like that about a minute after Enrico and pa had left the drug store Dick Wade and Doc Minnifer arrived there, looking mighty important. 'Billy,' says Dick, 'it has come to my official notice, as duly elected and qualified and holding-over coroner of this here county, that you have here on these premises the corpse delicti of a person to the deponent unknown, the cause of whose decease is also unknown, and which was found by one Enrico Billings within the borders and jurisdiction of the county aforesaid. Me and doc are here, ex officio, to view the said remains and to take such steps as we may deem necessary. In the back room, ain't it?'

"'It's in the back room, but I don't know about you seeing it right now,' says Billy. 'Enrico and Old Man Warren didn't figure on opening the show until to-morrow. Better wait until one of them gets back. I guess it will be all right then.'

"'Billy,' says Wade, 'this here is the law, and don't you monkey with the law or put no obstructions in its way. We are agoing to sit on these remains right now — not to-morrow nor yet ten minutes from now.'

"'You want to sit as bad as a broody hen,' says Billy. 'What do you figure on hatching?'

"'Never you mind!' says Dick. 'You remember I'm coroner until I'm inaugurated sheriff in March. Stand aside, Billy! Come on, doc!'

"He pushed past Billy, and doc followed him into the back room, where the petrified man was reposing on a platform that had been built for it. Dick pulled the tarpoleon off it, at the same time removing his hat, and doc took his old lid off likewise. It was sure a solemn-looking object. In life it might have been a man of about five foot nothing much, with thin, knobby legs and arms and kind of humped-shouldered. Its features were sort of doubtful, but you could easy make 'em out, and the chin was long, like there was kind of whiskers on it. It laid sidewise and one knee was a little drawed up. All over, it was kind of rough-skinned and stained greenish here and there. Billy Morgan pointed out the toenails and finger nails, which was real distinct, except on one hand.

"Doc tried to dig his thumb into an arm. 'I guess the ordinary tests ain't to be relied on,' he says. 'All the same I wouldn't hesitate to say that he was totally defunct; in fact, I'd stake my professional reputation on it. The rigor mortis is unmistakable.'

"'In that case we've got to find out what done it,' says Wade. 'There's a dent in his cabeza that seems to point to foul play, but he's badly pitted and it might be smallpox. We hadn't ought to take chances of an epidemic of smallpox in this community, had we, doc?'

"Doc clawed his whiskers. 'Hard to tell what it is without an autopsy,' he said. 'The way his leg is drawed up and his hand pressed to his abdomen is symptomatic of cholera,' he says. 'It might be Asiatic cholera. There ain't no doubt that the original settlers in this here continent was Asiatics.'

"'Autopsy goes then!' says Dick, pulling a stone hammer from under his coat. 'We can call a jury after it's over.'

"Billy Morgan tried to stop the proceedings there, but he seen he wasn't going to succeed, so he started after Enrico. Dick hauled off and brought down the hammer with a whack and then dropped it and held his elbow.

"He shook the feeling back to his arm and then picked up the hammer again and started in more cautious. In five minutes he had the limbs amputated and a cross section of the cholera district exposed. From that on the dissection was tolerably easy, but there was several pieces considerable larger than a walnut left of the subject when Enrico and pa came busting in something like Yellow Creek the time the big dam gave way.

"Enrico was first, and he struck Dick Wade with a seventy-five-mile velocity and a pressure of a hundred pounds to the square inch. Dick landed on a carboy of wood alcohol, and he claimed afterward that it was the fumes that really knocked him out. Doc Minnifer was standing back laughing his old fat head off when pa pasted him, and doc's face hurt him too bad to even smile for close on to three months after. For the time being his sense of humor was nothing but a gory pulp. Wade got to his feet and swung the stone hammer, but unfortunately for him he missed his lick, and Enrico hit him with great force and violence, not to speak of celerity, about twenty-eight times, three of the times while Dick was in a nearly perpendicular position and the rest while he was more or less horizontal. Doc Minnifer got the side door open by that time and went out without troubling to close it behind him, with pa a close second. Dick Wade went out the same way, but with Enrico's able assistance, and he lit similar to a sack of oats. Considering the amount of action and the results, it was about the rapidest ruction on record.

"When it was over, Enrico sat down on the platform, sort of slumped, and gazed mournfully at the fragments of his hopes. Then he looked up and seen that the end of the room nearest the prescription case was all jammed up with a hushed and awe-struck mob of witnesses in tailor-made clothes, many of them wearing side whiskers and diamonds and other evidences of wealth. Joe Simms, the Hatchet man, was on the edge of the herd and he stepped forward.

"'I brought these here gentlemen to see your justly celebrated petrified man, Mr. Billings,' he says.

"'There he is,' says Enrico sadly, waving his hand at the litter. 'Help yourselves, gentlemen! Take some of him along as souvenirs if you care to; but if you'll excuse me I want to think.'

"He rested his chin on his hands and forgot them while they crowded round and Billy Morgan and pa explained things. After a while somebody touched him on the shoulder. It was the V. P. of the F. E., a kind gentleman with a white waistcoat draped with half a yard of gold watch chain.

"'Sir,' says the V. P., 'I want to express my sympathy and at the same time congratulate you on your efficiency as a double-handed pivot-action scrapper. I should be proud to shake hands with you.'

"'Don't mention it,' says Enrico wearily. 'You're welcome any time.' He gave the V. P. a limp hand and then dropped his chin and went on thinking. After a while there was another touch on his shoulder. This time it was a lean gent with eyeglasses, who was holding a piece of the bohunkus' left ear in his hand. 'Excuse me,' says this one. 'My name is Westerman — Henry Westerman, of the Westerman Hard Plaster Company, in Omaha. My curiosity is excited —'

"'So was mine,' says Enrico with a sigh. 'That's how it all begun.' "'— by the composition of this here,' says Mr. Westerman. 'I've just took the liberty of pounding a bit of it up,' he says. 'If you can give me any information regarding the same it might be worth your while.'

"'It was discovered near the south fork of Bitter Water,' says Enrico in a sort of dreamy voice. 'I happened to see something sticking up out of the ground and, my curiosity being excited —'

"'Just so — exactly!' says Mr. Westerman. 'That part of it is all right. Now isn't there some quiet place you and me can go to and talk plain and confidential? This may mean business.'

"Enrico looked at him and seemed to come to life all of a sudden. 'Wait a moment,' he says, and went over and spoke to pa. Then he came back to Westerman. 'All right,' says he. 'I guess I can spare you half an hour just as well as not.'

"It took considerably more than an hour, the way it turned out, for Enrico and this Eastern party to do their talking; and after they was through Enrico found he had some more business to attend to, so that he didn't get to see Sedalia that night after all. All the same, he was round to Old Man Warren's reasonably early in the morning. Pa wasn't nowhere round, but he found Sedalia in the kitchen, where she was singing a happy little song and finishing up the breakfast dishes with her back turned toward him.

"She didn't look round when she heard his step. 'Sit down, Dick!' she says. 'I'll be through in a minute.'

"'Dick ain't able to come this morning,' says Enrico. 'He's sort of indisposed. I'll sit down and wait for you though.'

"She turned round sharp at this. 'Oh, it's you!' she says with a raise of her eyebrows and a forty-below tone of voice. 'How do you do, Mr. Billings? I'm sorry, but pa is out hunting a calf that got away. If there's any word you'd like to leave —'

"'I'll be here when he gets back, thank you, Miss Sedalia,' says Enrico, mighty sober and polite; 'but what I come here for, special, not counting a business engagement that I've got with an Eastern gentleman, is to tell you that I'm through with petrified men for keeps. As betwixt a petrified man and a flesh-and-blood angel there ain't but one choice possible for me. I don't want you to think I don't appreciate strictly honorable sentiments, such as a noble-minded lady like you that ain't had no business experience would naturally entertain, and I own up that I done wrong to do what I done. Two thousand five hundred dollars clear of expenses ain't no excuse, but now I see plain how you feel about it I've quit.'

"'I was not,' says Enrico. 'I was doing right well there. Nobody ever catched me lying flat-footed, and that's the truth. I came back account of you. "I'll humbly ask her to forgive me," I says to myself. I don't deny that Dick Wade held an inquest on our stock in trade yesterday and smashed it up to smithereens with a stone hammer, but my intentions was to get shut of it anyway.'

"'Oh!' says Sedalia. Just 'Oh!' was all she said for a moment, but she put the end of her thumb between her teeth and seemed to study on that information. 'You say Dick is indisposed?' she says.

"'Sort of under the weather,' says Enrico. 'You must have been disappointed,' he says.

"'Well, not exactly,' says Sedalia. 'You see, I knew it was you. You got back yesterday, didn't you? I know you did, from the way pa acted. Anything more you want to own up to, Enrico?'

"'That petrified man was artificial,' says Enrico. 'We made him out in the shed. It was a kind of a casting of pa. We greased pa and put him into what they call a flask which was reverse English from the way pa had always used flasks. Then we packed sand round him and got his impression in two sections. That Swede was a molder, and he done the fine work. That's the whole truth of it.'

"'Anyway, you came back,' says Sedalia. She lifted up her eyes sort of bashful and blushed all over her face and neck. 'You must have started the minute you got that anonymous letter,' she says.

"She made a jump and tried to get away the moment she said it, but Enrico caught her, and after a furious struggle that was prolonged for as much as half a second she gave in, and the conversation wasn't renewed for considerable of a while.

"Finally, though, Sedalia got her ringers twisted with a good holt in Enrico's hair and squirmed part ways out of his embrace. 'You coot!' she says. 'Why didn't you tell me about it from the start? Of course I'm noble-minded, but I hope I've got some sense, and I guess you gave everybody the worth of their money. If I hadn't guessed about what you'd done I'd have give fifty cents to have seen it myself.'

"She gave his head a shake and went on: 'Another thing, I meant to make you into a wealthy and respected citizen myself, and you go to work and take the job into your own hands without telling me. Ain't you ashamed? And Dick Wade coming round all the time while you was gone didn't make a particle of difference to you! You stay away just the same, no matter what I do. Didn't pa tell you how I was carrying on with him? I don't care; you came when you thought you had to. But why did you wait until this morning to come and apologize? I suppose you half killed poor Dick Wade. I hope you did.'

"'Honey,' says Enrico, 'you sure make a high score when you start guessing, but you won't have to guess from this out. Seems like I've got the only mountain of some sort of silicate sand in the whole round world on that claim of mine over the ridge, and that sand is the only thing that you can mix up with gypsum plaster in a certain way to make a certain first-class, number-one kind of cement that's in extra demand. I didn't come last night because I had to file on that claim right away to cinch it. In an hour from now I expect a gentleman to look over that sand mountain and pa's gypsum deposits, and six months from now you won't be able to see the ranch for the solid tracks and gypsum factories on it. Didn't I tell you I was going into the plaster business?'

"He looked at his watch and stuffed it back into his vest pocket in a hurry. 'Honey,' says he, 'let's make the most of that hour.'

"And I reckon that's about all," concluded the old bull-whacker. "Of course folks don't stop living after they get married; but shucks! who cares? They make the most of their hour, and then the business engagement comes along and grabs 'em, and we sort of lose interest. Enrico got his sidetracks and his plaster factory, and back there in Omaha he's reaching out and getting more things all the time. Sedalia has got about everything she can think of wanting, I guess; but I doubt if them sixty golden minutes set with thirty-six hundred diamond seconds that Westerman busted into wasn't more satisfactory than any times they've had since they got rich." "Well, that's a right instructive story," said the Bar-T boy, throwing his skull up in the air and catching it. "It goes to show that this here is a world of deceit and skin games."

The stock tender made a movement of decided impatience, "Let up on that!" he snarled. "You may not know that there was an Iowa family massacred by the Indians near Medicine Butte in '79, and anyway human relics ain't to play ball with. Give that here!"

"Wait a minute and don't get worked up!" said the Bar-T boy, waving him off. He thumbed a cigarette paper from a book that he drew from his pocket and then snapped back the upper section of the skull's frontal and parietal bones, disclosing a neat cavity filled with tobacco.

"Paper ma-shay," he said with a grin. "A cigar drummer gave it to me in the agency store yesterday. I thought you old suckers would bite, sooner or later."

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THE BRACHYCEPHALIC BOHUNKUS

by KENNETT HARRIS (1864-1929) ILLUSTRATED BY HARVEY DUNN (1884–1952)

by KENNETT HARRIS
(1864-1929)
ILLUSTRATED BY HARVEY DUNN
(1884–1952)