Wood had a wire a director's nephew was coming--he was the agent, Wood was--and orders to side-track his car and see he was took care of; and of course Wood passed the word along to the rest of us what sort of a game was on. But he begged so hard, Wood did, the town would hold itself in--saying if rigs was put up on a director's nephew he was dead sure to lose his job--we all allowed we'd give the young feller a day or two to turn round in, anyway; and we promised Wood--who was liked--we'd let the critter get through his hunting picnic without putting up no rigs on him if he made any sort of a show of knowing how to behave. Howsomedever, he didn't--and things started up, and nobody but Boston himself to blame for it, that very first night over in the bar-room at the Forest Queen. He had Wood in to supper with him in his car, Boston did, the darky cooking it; and Wood said--except it begun with their having pickled green plums, and some sort of messed-up stuff that tasted like spoilt salt fish and made him feel sickish--it was the best supper he ever eat. Each of 'em had a bottle of iced wine, he said; and he said they topped off with coffee that only wanted milk to make it a real wonder, and a drink like rock-and-rye, but chalks better, and such seegars as he'd never smoked in his born days. All the time they was hashing--and Wood said he reckoned they was at it a'most a full hour--Boston kept a-telling what a hell of a one (that was the sort of careless way Wood put it) he was at big-game hunting; but Wood judged--taking all his talk together--the only thing he'd ever really shot bigger'n a duck or a pa'tridge was a deer the dogs had chased into a pond for him so it hadn't no chance. But it wasn't none of Wood's business to stop a director's nephew from blowing if he felt like it, and so he just let him fan away. Bears wasn't bad sport, he said, and he didn't mind filling in time with 'em if he couldn't get nothing better; but what he'd come to Palomitas for 'special, he said, was mountain-lions--he seemed to have it in his head he'd find 'em walking all over the place, same as cats--and he wanted to know if any'd lately been seen. Wood told him them animals wasn't met with frequent in them parts (and they wasn't, for a fact, and hadn't been for about a hunderd years, likely) and maybe he'd do better to set his mind on jack-rabbits--which there was enough of out in the sage-brush, Wood told him, to load his car. And then he looked so real down disappointed, seeming to think jack-rabbits wasn't anyways satisfactory, Wood said he told him there was chances some of the boys over at the Forest Queen--they being all the time out in the mountains looking for prospects--might put him on to finding a bear, anyway; and it wouldn't do no harm to go across to the Queen and ask. And so over the both of 'em come.