Under my seat I found a tent peg. Stealthily I raised it in the air, and joyously I walloped Jake on something solid beneath his slouch felt hat. He rubbed his head ruefully, but without taking offence. "Well, that's over," he said at length, heaving a great sigh, as though he had just been relieved of some big responsibility. "It's all in a life-time. Giddap, you piebald flyin' ants!" and Jake made a strange clucking noise in his throat which encouraged the buckskins into a temporary lope. The day was much the same as the one before, except that we were now well out on "the bald-headed." Once in a while, at great distances, we could see a homesteader's shack, a little isolated sentinel-box of the vanguard of settlement. Once we were intercepted by another team and democrat, much like our own, which cut across our trail. The driver asked if we could spare any water. We gave him half of what was in our keg, and he extended his plug of chewing tobacco all round. We chatted a few minutes, and then with mutual friendly shouts and waving of our arms we were off again. During the afternoon, Jake's mind having apparently cleared of all other matters, he began to sing. It was some little time before we detected the origin of the strange sound; different times I looked down at our wheels, or glanced about to see if someone were approaching. But the volume of sound grew as Jake developed his theme, and presently there was no doubt that he was singing. We soon discovered that Jake had two songs, "Sweet Marie" and "Clementine", and he used both words and music interchangeably. As we were able to analyze it more closely we found his rendering ran something like this: "As I clasp your hand in mine, Sweet Marie-e-e, "A feelin' so divine comes to me, comes to me-e. Giddap, you danged buckskin, fallin' over your feet. Goin' to sleep? Cluck, cluck! "Lived a miner, a forty-nin-er, "An' his daughter, Clementine." But we were to discover that singing was not Jake's only forte. He had the most amazing eyes. They were always half asleep, and in the heat of the day they seemed more than half asleep, but he saw things long before they hove into our vision, and, I have no doubt, he saw many things that we did not see at all. In the middle of the afternoon he suddenly broke off with "Lived a min-er," and brought his horses to a stop. "Like to try a shot at that coyote?" he said to Jack. "What coyote?" asked Jack, looking hurriedly in all directions. "Over there," indicating a section of the horizon with a sweep of his arm. "Can't place him," Jack confessed. "Beside that little mound of dirt--badger-hole, I reckon; there's a tuft of grass in front of him; he's lookin' straight at us, wonderin' who the hell----" "Oh, I got him, I got him!" Jack shouted in a loud whisper, and began to get out of the wagon, but Jake's arm restrained him. "Don't do that. He'll run the moment you get out. Take him from here."