“I dare say it is,” he returned. “But that ain’t the point I was looking for. What I want to know is, why did the population go to all the trouble of building a sod house, and then put up a tent inside of it?” “Merely a question of taste--it’s his hundred and sixty; why shouldn’t he build what he likes on it?” “That’s so, too,” replied the stranger. “Excuse me for meddling; it’s a free country, if ever there was one.” So the matter dropped right there. IX HOHANKTON, PETTIE AND OTHERS THE TALE OF THE TRAINED PIG “Do you remember Red’s pig, Foxy Bill?” said Hydraulic Smith. “Well, I was in a camp that had a pig for its chief feature, myself. He wasn’t a fat, comfortable old lad like Foxy Bill, but a sort of cross between a razor-back and a buffalo. He was a little feller, with a mane on his head and on his shoulders. He had high shoulders on him, like a buffalo, but, as for the rest of him, he was that thin you wouldn’t have known him for a pig, except for the curly tail at the end. “He was our sole and only pet. We was too high in the air for cats. They died of heart disease. Nobody owned a dog. We called piggie Johanus Eliphas Hohankton for a noted statesman in that part of the country, a great man on the pension vote (believe he drew three himself), that told us politics with one wooden leg and a mouthful of language trying to gurgle through Greaser Pepe’s gin. “I think Hohankton discovered the lack of dogs in town, for he tried to act the part as much as he could. He’d go trotting up Main Street, kind of sniffing at you and rolling his eyes, give two or three squeals like a dog, when you called to him, then sometimes he’d go mosying around important, full of his own business, just as you see dogs do. “He took care of the coats and the lunch-boxes. If a stranger came around he’d show his tusk with his lip all curled up, and growl something ferocious. He was a right smart animal. I can see him now, going the lengths of Main Street, sounding like a busted clarinet player telling his woes in music, to let you know he was there, and that if there was a doughnut or some apple-sass, or, in fact, almost anything that a hog might like, you could please your friend Hohankton by putting it forth. “But nothing in the world would get him fat. He was built like a fish, fore and aft, and in a straightaway I think he could hold a jack-rabbit. “The Judge, he was a heavy-built old man who wore his chin on his breast most of the time. When Hank walked alongside of him he hunched up his back like the Judge, and put on much the same expression, until the Judge rumbled out, ‘Durn that hawg!’ and give him a scratch on the back with his cane. “Then, if there was a lively bunch, why, Hank was merry, too. He would trot and amble with one side, and gallop with the other, make prancing steps, biting at his own tail till an oyster’d laugh.