"'I'm a-feedin' a bunch of hawgs and steers out here on a farm,' ses I, 'where I ain't seen the sun shine but twicet in four months.' "Pickerell, he laughed sort of tickled like, an' ses to me, 'Why don't you quit and go back to Arizony, where the sun shines all the time?' "'I'm a goin' to,' ses I, 'just as shore as next pay day comes.' I didn't like to tell him that I was flat busted count of goin' into K. C. with a load of hawgs an' meetin' up with a bunch of _amigos_ what worked me for a sure enough sucker. They gits all my _dinero_ an' leaves me locked up in a little old room where we went to git a drink." Hog-eye sighed and sucked vigorously at his pipe, while the boys grinned at each other and waited to hear the rest of the story, which was evidently hanging on his lips. "Well, go on Hog-eye, tell us the rest. Might as well 'fess up and feel better," said High-pockets encouragingly. "I reckon so," replied Jackson with a chuckle, as if there was some pleasure in the memories of the past. "You see, after talkin' a few minutes with Pick he up and makes me an offer to go back east, where he was a runnin' a show what were a part of a street carnival outfit and a-makin' all kinds of money. He wanted me to rig up in a 'Montgomery Ward outfit,' big hat, goatskin chaps, spurs an' gloves, with stars and fringe like them fellers in the movie outfits gits onto 'em, an' sort of loaf round the door and git people excited an' toll 'em into the show. So I hits the high places back to the farm, and tells the granger feller to git him a new cornstalk pusher to take my place pretty _pronto_. When he comes I strikes out for the place back in Illinoy where Pick sed he'd be showin' an' waitin' for my arrival. "Pick he pays me forty beans a month, an we sleeps on our round-up beds in one of the tents. He shore had a mess of plunder inside the big tent. They was a Navajo squaw weavin' blankets, a couple of loafer wolves, some coyotes, wildcats, badgers, a lot of rattlers, centipedes and tarantulas, and a whole box full of them heely monsters. Besides this, he had a lot of glass cases in which he had a bunch of them stone axes, _metates_, _mano_ stones, arrow-heads, and all that sort of plunder which they digs up from them prehistoric ruins all over this country out here. [Illustration: "_He had a Navajo Squaw weaving blankets_"] "But the main drawin' card he had was the mummy which he sed he dug up somewheres out here in the Grand Cañon. He had all sorts of certificates and letters to prove its genuineness, as well as photographs taken when they dug it up in the cave. "One day a odd-lookin' four-eyed feller comes along, and he ses to Pick, 'Mought I inspect this mummy of your'n?' and Pick he ses, 'Shore, pardner, jist as much as you like. You come round to-morrow mornin' fore the show begins and I'll be glad to have you look the gent over.'