Let's see, now, what was his next big outstanding failure? I'm passing over the little things such as him advising Timber-Line Hance about what was the best way to encourage a boil on his neck that wouldn't come to a head and getting the medicines mixed in his mind and recommending turpentine instead of hog-lard. I'm trying to pick out the high points in his career. Let's see? Now I've got it. Along toward spring, when the thaws set in, somebody told him how Boots Darnell and Babe Louder had been hived up all winter in a shanty up on the Blue Shell with nobody to keep them company except each other, and how Babe was laid up with a busted leg and Boots couldn't leave him except to run their traps. So nothing would do Good Sam but what he must put out to stay a couple of days with that lonesome pair and give 'em the sunshine of his presence. They welcomed him with open arms and made him right to home in their den, such as it was. I ought to tell you before we go any further that this here Babe and this here Boots were a couple of simple-minded, kind-hearted old coots that had been baching it together for going on fifteen or twenty years. It was share and share alike with those two. Living together so long, they got so they divided their thoughts. One would know what was on the other's mind before he said it and would finish the sentence for him. They'd actually split a word when it was a word running into extra syllables. "Well, I'll be dad--" Boots would say; "--gummed," Babe would add, signifying that they were going partners even on the dad-gumming. Their conversation would put you in mind of one of these here anthems. They certainly were glad to see Good Sam. In honor of the occasion Boots cooked up a muskrat stew and made a batch of sour-dough biscuits for supper and Babe sat up in his bunk and told his favorite story which Boots had already heard it probably two or three million times already but carried on like he enjoyed it. They showed him their catch of pelts and, taking turn and turn about, they told him how they'd been infested all winter by a worthless stray hound-dog. It seems this hound-dog happened along one day and adopted them and he'd been with 'em ever since and he'd just naturally made their life a burden to them--getting in the way and breeding twice as many fleas as he needed for his own use and letting them have the overflow; and so on.