out to this bloomin' farm--see?"

"What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke
in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?"

"It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers
'willi-walloo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't
know if it bites."

"No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwampuses
has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a
hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't
stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its
prehensile tail."

Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their
first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.

"Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd
you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for
inbreviates out of the ranch?"

"Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell
blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drink on you? Have your fun.
Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up."

He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d----d old prairie
schooner--did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm
goin' all to little pieces. What's doin'?"