“He listened, to be sure, and didn’t give me any slack; but it was a sullen kind of listening--just that he was afraid to do different, that’s all. “I forgot to tell you that these two fellers was really hired to play ball. The superintendent of the division gave them a job in the shops, and we paid ’em extra. Falk, he was a painter; and I wish you could see the blue, green and yaller ruin he made of a passenger car. The boss painter wasn’t onto the game, and took the supe’s talk in earnest, therefore he starts Falk out single-handed to paint the car. The boss painter was a quiet man usually, but when he saw that work of art, he let go of some expressions that would have done credit to a steamboat rooster. More, he heaved a can of red paint on brother Falk, and swore he’d kill him too dead to skin, if he dared put foot in the shop again. This boss painter was a sandy little man, even if he wasn’t as big as a pint of cider, and had been leaded so many times that he shook like a quaking asp. The supe had to argue with him loud and long before he’d hear of Falk’s coming back. “Burke went into the round-house, where all the fellers were more or less sports, and understood the play. “Not square to hire ’em? Well, it wasn’t exactly, but the crowd across the river taught us the game--they did it first. “Well, now I’ll tell you how we came by the Injun--the mascot. He was an old feller--the Lord only knows how old--who used to hang around the station selling Injun trinkets to the passengers. He had a stick with notches cut into it to tell how old he was, but the boys used to get the stick and cut more notches when his nibs wasn’t looking, until Methusalom was a suckling kid alongside of that record. ‘Me so old--huh,’ the Injun used to say, and hand the stick to the passengers. They’d be full of interest until they counted up to four or five hundred, when they would smile in a sickly way, and go about their business, feeling that they had been taken in shameful, and much regretting the quarter, or whatever chicken-feed it was they contributed to old Bloody-Ripping-Thunder’s support. No, ‘Bloody-Ripping-Thunder’ probably wasn’t his name; but that’s what young Solomon christened him. “Young Solomon was nephew to the old feller, and his pardner in the clothing store. He was a great sport. A darned decent young lad. It was his idea that we needed a mascot. We sure did need something about that time, for if there was anything in Dakota that hadn’t beaten us, it was only because they didn’t know our address. “Ike Solomon takes Rip--that’s short for the aforesaid Injun--into his store one day, a bent, white-haired old man, clad in a dirty blanket, moccasins, and a hat that looked as if it had come off the rag heap, and he works a miracle with him. He wouldn’t let nary one of us inside until he’d carried out his plans.