“Traditions?” repeated Buck Eye Pete with inimitable scorn, as he deftly balanced a battered coffee pot over the camp fire, “them was once the bane an’ joy o’ my life. I fair radiated with dreams o’ romance, hidden treasure, an’ sich like. Why, there was a pre-historic time in my credulous natur when I was looney on Pirate Morgan an’ babbled o’ Montezuma’s sarcophagus o’ buried valuables an’ heagern wives with unholy an’ covetious eye. An’ that’s what sent me an’ Chinook Bill on that foolhardy adventcher into darkest Sonora in the quest o’ the fabled city o’ Poaquita.” Buck Eye Pete went back to his seat beyond the hot glare of the camp fire, puffed tentatively at a villainous looking pipe and gazed mournfully and with lack-lustre eye into the surrounding wall of darkness. Then, seeing no objection, he continued: “An’ if this hyere august body votes a majority I’ll be the wag es wags a tale, es Shakespeare said.” We settled ourselves in divers comfortable positions and nodded a unanimous consent. “To begin, this deed o’ valor, gents an’ fellow mavericks,” pursued Buck Eye Pete, “was committed in the year of our Lord 1880, an’ me an’ Chinook Bill deserted the peaceful path o’ cow-punchin’ an’ chucked the fair dame o’ nameless peril under her purty chin. But be the consequence o’ that deed o’ valor on my own head, fer Chinook Bill was one o’ them trustin’ children es would turn an indignant rattler from a devilish purpose. Chinook Bill had that ca’m eye o’ the poet, the voice o’ the south wind an’ a hankerin’ fer the beauties o’ virgin natur an’ was gifted with a most marvelous arrangement in his inside which would belch information, mediaeval er otherwise, like a heifer’s cud, which he would afterwards masticate with great an’ convincin’ effusion. So this is how it come about. We had been grazin’ a bunch o’ cattle on the Bear Paw Plateaus, an’ was some seven weeks out an’ sure lonesome fer company when in a fit o’ desperation I made a suggestion to allay the fevered angwee o’ our fettered sperits. An’ Chinook Bill fell to with a spontaniety an’ enthusiasm es was plum disgustin’ in a man es had full possession o’ his mental faculties. But that ain’t sayin’ es how I was took with the dreams o’ averice myself. It was one fair day, the name an’ date o’ which has been lost in the remorseless flight o’ time, we come upon a Mexican’s cabin down in the El Raso Pass, which is still an unknown quantity in them beautifully colored railroad posters. This Mex had a helpmate, two ragged urchins in the way o’ off-spring with a mixture o’ mangy sheep an’ a pack o’ dawgs es would back ’emselves agin a convenient angle o’ the hut, scratch their ears an’ growl while me an’ Chinook Bill held forth in intellectual conversation with the Mex. They was ha’f Injuns an’ had lived there since they didn’t know when, but it was some time conjoinin’ that mystic period when the Jesuits evacuated suddent from their mission,