I looked at him more shrewdly now, thinking he was assuredly losing his last hold on reason; but he flung back a step from me. "O! You think me mad?" he cried, and verily he looked mad then. "Eh? Not me. You don’t think I can mesmerise you? I’ve mesmerised heaps—men too, let alone women," and he grinned in a very disgusting fashion. "Say! If we could only see a jack-rabbit from the door o’ this shack, I ’d let you see what I could do. I ’d give you an example o’ my powers. I can bring a jack-rabbit to me, supposin’ he’s lopin’ along a hillside and sees me. I jest looks at him and _wills_ him to stop—and he stops. And then I wills him to come to me—and he comes. Mind once I was tellin’ the boys at the Molly Magee about bein’ able to do it and they put up the bets I could n’t—thought I was jest bluffin’ ’em, and I went right out o’ the bunkhouse a little ways and fetched a chipmunk clean off a rock where he was settin’ lookin’ at us,—there were n’t no jack-rabbits there,—fetched him right into my hand. And then a queer, mad feelin’ come over me—I can’t just tell you about it—I don’t just exactly understand it myself. I closes my hand on that chipmunk and jest crushed him dead atween my fingers. And suthin’ seemed kind o’ relieved here then, in the front o’ my head, right here. The boys never forgot that. They kind o’ lay away off from me after that—did n’t like it. Yes, I could mesmerise you." He waved his hands suddenly before my eyes. "Feel any peculiar sensation at that?" he said. "Yes," said I. "What like?" he asked. "I feel that I ’ll not let you do it again," said I. "Scared like? Feel kind o’ slippin’ away?" "No," I said quietly: "not scared one little bit. But I object to your waving your hands within an inch of my face. Any man of grit would n’t allow it." "Well, well, say no more. We ’d better be investigating this yere shack. God! If there was only a drink on the premises. I tell you _they ’re_ comin’ on again, and when they come on I ’m fearsome—I am." He looked round the place again and then cried out in a voice of agony: "Look here! I don’t want to lose holt o’ myself yet; perhaps a little bit of grub now might help me. I reckon I might be able to shove some down my neck as a dooty. You go and make up the fire outside, do." He spoke this in a beseeching whine. To see the way the creature changed and veered about in his manner was interesting. "We ain’t goin’ to sleep in here to-night, anyways, not for Jo, wi’ them mountain rats comin’ in on us. It’ll take quite a while o’ huntin’ to get all their holes filled up. You go and make dinner. I could do a flapjack and a slice o’ bacon, I think, with a bit o’ a struggle and some resolution like." Anything that might prevent me having a madman on my hands in that wilderness was not to be ignored, so I went out and ran down the slope to where the bushes climbed, and gathered fuel, a great armful, and so came back again and made up a fire.