uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party could
raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the
squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him.
The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges
air eaten out by what uster be on them. It'd be a good thing for our
Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send round
to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin' out of the bucks, and the
squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation lays over them at
their best. Guess but I'll get in that box a minute jest to see how it
feels!'

'Oh no! no!' said Amelia. 'It is too terrible!'

'Guess, ma'am, nothin's too terrible to the explorin' mind. I've been in
some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse while a
prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory--an' another time
slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war path an' I
didn't keer to leave my kyard on them. I've been two days in a caved-in
tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an' was one of the
four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what slid over on
her side when we was settin' the foundations of the Buffalo Bridge. I've
not funked an odd experience yet, an' I don't propose to begin now!'

We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: 'Well, hurry up,
old man, and get through it quick!'

'All right, General,' said he, 'but I calculate we ain't quite ready
yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
didn't volunteer for the office--not much! And I guess there was some
ornamental tyin' up before the big stroke was made. I want to go into