Of course, it is to be confessed that they often dropped things, especially if the least bit hot; but remember we had only tin plates and tin or iron dishes of all sorts, so that little damage was done if a dish did happen to fall and rattle down on the earthen floor. Men came from far and near and often lingered all day to see these cunning and intelligent creatures perform. About this time Mountain Joe fought a duel with another mountaineer down at the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless and foolish affair, was all the talk. Why not have the little black fellows fight a duel also? They were surely civilized enough to fight now! And so, with a very few days' training, they fought a duel exactly like the one in which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was engaged; even to the detail of one of them suddenly dropping his stick gun and running away and falling headlong in a prospect hole. When Joe came home and saw this duel and saw what a fool he had made of himself, he at first was furiously angry. But it made him sober, and he kept sober for half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as ever, more mad, in fact, than ever before. For he could not endure to see the boy have any friends of any kind. Above all, he did not want Mountain Joe to stay at home or keep sober. He wanted to handle all the money and answer no questions. A drunken man and a boy that he could bully suited him best. Ah, but this man Reese was a mean fellow, as has been said a time or two before. As winter came on the two blacks were fat as pigs and fully half-grown. Their appetites increased daily, and so did the anger and envy of Mr. Sil Reese. "They'll eat us out o' house and hum," said the big, towering nose one day, as the snow began to descend and close up the pack trails. And then the stingy man proposed that the blacks should be made to hibernate, as others of their kind. There was a big, hollow log that had been sawed off in joints to make bee gums; and the stingy man insisted that they should be put in there with a tight head, and a pack of hay for a bed, and nailed up till spring to save provisions. Soon there was an Indian outbreak. Some one from the ranch, or "hotel," must go with the company of volunteers that was forming down at the post for a winter campaign. Of course Reese would not go. He wanted Mountain Joe to go and get killed. But Joe was sober now and he wanted to stay and watch Reese. And that is how it came about that the two black babies were tumbled headlong into a big, black bee gum, or short, hollow log, on a heap of hay, and nailed up for the winter. The boy had to go to the war.