Things kind of stopped for a minute. If a man was unhitchin' a mule, he waited till you could count 1, 2, 3, and then continnered. "What d'ye mean by 'map'?" says one lad, bent under a horse to hide his face. "What do I mean?" says Ag, offended. "Why, I mean just what Noah Webster meant when the dove came back bringin' the definition to his ark. I mean map--m-a-p, map--a drawin' that shows you the way to get to a red cross that doesn't exist on the face of nature. I like green crosses as a matter of taste, but all our paralysed friend had left was a red one, so I took that, not to be unsociable." I've been at pleasanter lookin' picnics. Finally the feller under the horse did some deep thinkin' and come out. "Have you honest got a map?" says he. "To the Lost Injun mine? 'Heigh-o, the Lost Injun!'" sings Aggy. "Here she is, my friend, with all dips, angles, and variations; one million feet on the main lode; his heirs, assigns, orphans. _E pluribus unum_, forever and forever!" "Yours ain't just the same as mine," says the feller, grimly spittin'. "No," says Ag, "I reckon he spread it around. He didn't know this was the nearest ford on Squaw Creek, and we might likely come together." And then arose a cussin', not loud, but with a full head of steam--it would make ordinary loud seem like the insides of a whisper--and a rush for horses. "Peace, friends, peace!" says Aggy, standin' up his hull height and with his noble chest fillin' his black coat; his black whiskers expandin' in pride--a hootin', tootin' son-of-a-gun to look at. And when he said "peace," the earth shook. The crowd stopped. "Think!" says Aggy. "Attempt the impossible! Think! Remember that paralytic is on a parlour car, flying swiftly toward the setting sun. I see the picture of that lonely railroad train whooping ties across the prairie. What is the use of throwing yourselves into a violent perspiration in a mad chase of a thing that no longer exists? The paralytic is no more; thy Faith Hath Made Him Whole." Aggy sank his voice to a beautiful whisper. "Well, you got stuck yourself," pipes up old Grandpa Hope. "He, he, he, he shelled you too!" "I admit it," says Ag, "and yet it is not quite what it seems. I borrowed Slit-Eyed Jenkins's two gilded nickels to get in this game. I further admit that the Government never should have left the word 'cents' off these nickels, to tempt poor but not bigoted men; further, I'll say that if Jenkins had brightened them up he might have passed them for $3.89. But Jenkins puts a thief within his stomach that steals away his business ability, so that when I asked for them nickels he merely replied: 'Take the damned Yankee skin-tricks away, with my thanks.'