“His Nibbs no sooner sets his eye on that bottle o’ yaller perdition liquified afore he wants it, an’ licks his lips voracious. “‘I cyaint endoore that look o’ deep reproach,’ says Chinook Bill; ‘he must have it.’ “‘It ’ud be cruelty to animals not to,’ says I, ‘an’ we ain’t runnin’ no Keely cure, fer a fact. Besides, he’ll resort to physical violence if we don’t hand over the dream maker prompt.’ “‘An’ whilst he is pluckin’ purple poppies from sweet fancy’s lurid canvas,’ says Chinook Bill softly, ‘we’ll leave our respects to the House o’ Lords an’ depart instant. It’s me who’s pinin’ fer the range.’ “‘The dream o’ avarice no longer disturbs the tranquillity o’ my peace-lovin’ natur’,’ says I. ‘Me fer the sweet alfalfa of the cowland.’ “Thereon, we viewed the mad potations o’ his Nibbs in anxious silence, an’ when he begun to fight invisible cobras an’ pluck bits o’ poetic thought from space we took opportunity by the forelock an’ broke fer sweet freedom, an’ was soon lickin’ time out o’ the landscape. After we’d chucked two days behind us we slowed up fer observation an’ to get our bearin’s by the water shed. Ten more moons an’ we sights Californy Gulf an’ civilization. We sold antique relics an’ old Chippendale furnitchur, with the forbidden books throwed in fer good measure, to a private expedition headed by a Harvard professor. Then we got a full supply o’ the paraphernalia o’ railroad travel, takes forcible possession o’ the rear coach an’ begins a long deferred celebration. It ’ud be trivial to say es how we blowed in to Phoenix, it bein’ said the dust ain’t settled there yet—exceptin’ in the extreme sooburbs o’ that thrivin’ town. But I know we found white man’s whiskey an’ was shucked clean—exceptin’ to our irreproachable character—in a protracted game o’ monte, an’ was chiefly delayed by them indispensable altercations es come up in the course o’ one’s sojourn through them deludin’ hazes an’ prismatic colorin’s o’ a magnificent jag. After we’d drowned the contagion o’ heagernism in our orthidox constitutions we mounts the broncos bought previous to that little escapade an’ hikes fer the range. We follers our noses across the El Pinto country until we struck the Bar Y outfit, implores a ice-bound individgooal es was _chef_ and bottle washer fer a hand-out an’ incident’ly asks the foreman fer a job. We gets both, an’ fer two months pursooes the quiet paths o’ temperance an’ thrift until a worldly maverick by the name o’ O’Hooley drifts into camp an’ tells how he’d struck it rich in the Little Pecan country an’, guided by a impulse of philanthropy, was ridin’ cross territory a-tellin’ o’ his great discovery—. But that’s another story,” said Buck Eye Pete, “an’ it’s me fer a cup o’ Mocha-Java an’ a _siesta_.” NAPOLEON PART VII—NAPOLEON III By Anna Erwin Woods