The foundation on which I put my plan for increasing human happiness was the queerest little cuss you ever did see. A kid about twelve years old, who looked to be a hundred and ten even before Sammy Perkins shot his eye out and shrunk him up on one side. It was an accident, of course. Sammy'd saved nigh a year, till he had three dollars and seventy-five cents gathered in a heap to buy a bored-out army musket. Then he invited Sandy Gray to go with him; they started to rid the country of wild critters. They walked and they walked, but Heaven mercifully preserved the rabbits. So it become time for lunch, and also Sandy was now an Injun, whilst Sammy was Iron-jawed Pete, the Nightmare of the Red Man. Iron-jawed Pete says to Chief Sandy Eagle-bird, "Pick up chips! Make a fire!" But the haughty soul of the noble savage riz at the notion. Be darned if he'd pick up chips. "All right," says Iron-jawed Pete, "then I'll shoot you." And, the gun not being loaded, he promptly blew Sandy full of bird-shot. I've heard about these wonderful destroyers--cannon a quarter of a mile long, that shoot bullets the size of hogsheads with force enough to knock a grasshopper off a spear of wheat at twenty-three and one third miles; and while I'm somewhat impressed, I can't but feel there's nothing like the old-fashioned, reliable, unloaded gun. Who ever heard of man, woman, or child missing with a gun that wasn't loaded? If I was a leader of a forlorn hope in particularly sad conditions, I'd say to my trusty men, "Boys, them guns ain't loaded," and instantly close a contract at so much a ton for removing the remnants of the enemy. It cost Sammy's father many a dollar to square it with Gray's folks. They were a hard outfit, anyhow--what is called white trash down South. The father used to get drunk, come home, break the furniture, and throw the old woman out of the house; that is, if she didn't happen to be drunk at the time. In the last case, he come home, got the furniture broke on him, and was thrown out of the house. It wasn't an ideal home, like Miss Doolittle is always talking about. The kids gave Sandy a wide berth after the shooting, but my sympathies went out to him. He was a good opening, you see. I want to state right here, though, it wasn't all getting my name up. All my life I've had a womanish horror of men or animals with their gear out of order. I'd walk ten mile to dodge a cripple. And this here Sandy, with his queer little hop, and his little claw hands, and his twist to one side, and his long nose, and his little black eyes, and his black hair hanging in streaks down on his yaller and dirt-colored face, looked like nothing else on earth so much as a boiled pet crow. When I jumped over the Grays' back fence, I see my friend Sandy playing behind the ruin they called a barn. Execution was the game he played. He had a gallows fixed up real natural. Just as I come up he was hanging a cat.