He surely did laugh, and I with him. We howled, and splashed, and slapped our legs until we were too weak to stand up, and then we sat right down in the water. Cunny set up a stentorian “haw-haw” out of pure good nature, and the sight of him, with his tent around him like a toga, full of dignity, but willing to oblige, as usual, went near to finish us. “Don’t look at me, Cunny, don’t!” begged Billy. “If you look at me again like that, I’ll die right here!” “Very good! Very good, indeed! Haw, haw, haw!” replied Cunningham. In the middle of the hilarity there came a hail from the river bank in a voice of wonder. It was Antelope Pete, mounted, on his way to Billy’s to compare notes on the morning’s flood. Now, Antelope is a very serious-minded man for the country, and it wouldn’t be well to repeat all the different things he said might happen him if he ever saw the like of this before. “Do you fellows always go out in the middle of the river to crack jokes in thunder-storms?” he demanded. “What in blazes is the matter with you, anyhow?” We tried to explain, but we couldn’t get three words out before we were in roars again, and Pete was perfectly disgusted. “Well, I’m going to leave,” said he. “I’ve got something else better to do besides sitting here watching the most all-fired, copper-riveted, three-ply, double-backed-action damn fools that it was ever my luck to come acrost.” We prevailed upon him, however, to throw us his rope, and as Cunningham was so fearfully and wonderfully entangled in the tent that it would have been next to impossible to extricate him, we tied the line to a corner of the tent. Antelope then laid the quirt on his cayuse, and man and mansion were hauled up the bank together. When we reached a state of mind where we could discuss the matter calmly, we asked Cunningham if he still intended to live in the tent. Oh, yes, yes, indeed! The tent was all right; it was the wind that was wrong. Then followed a learned disquisition on vacuums, and worlds, and other meteorological phenomena which stumped us completely. Indeed, it came to my mind that Cunningham almost proved that he and the tent never went into the Chantay Seeche. Part of his theory which I can remember is that the wind, in passing over the coulée, partially exhausted the air beneath it, like the action of an atomizer, he explained to our unscientific minds. And thus Tent Cunningham was drawn up and on to disaster most unlawfully. The idea of Cunningham and the tent being “atomized” into the creek strikes me as being particularly good. I feel still more entertained when I think of the tin cans, the ham, the bacon, the lantern, the little sheet-iron cooking-stove, various articles of clothing, et cetera, which were included in the spray.