buck-jumped. That made the old man sore, and he says: 'Lock him up!
Lock him up; I'll make him talk if I have to skin him.' So I was
dragged to the 'skookum-house,' where I spent the night figuring out
my finish.

"I could feel it coming just as plain, and I begun to see that when I
did open up and prattle after Kink was safe, nobody wouldn't believe
my little story. I had sized the Colonel up as a dead stringy old
proposition, too. He was one of these big-chopped fellers with a
mouth set more'n half way up from his chin and little thin lips like
the edge of a knife blade, and just as full of blood--face, big and
rustic-finished.

"I says to myself, 'Bud, it looks like you wouldn't be forced to
prospect for a living any more this season. If that old sport turns
himself loose you're going to get 'life' three times and a holdover.'

"Next morning they tried every way to make me talk. Once in a while
the old man looked at me puzzled and searching, but I didn't know him
from a sweat-pad, and just paid strict attention to being dumb.

"It was mighty hard, too. I got so nervous my mouth simply ached to
let out a cayoodle. The words kept trying to crawl through my
sesophagus, and when I backed 'em up, they slid down and stood around
in groups, hanging onto the straps, gradually filling me with witful
gems of thought.

"The Colonel talked to me serious and quiet, like I had good ears,
and says, 'My man, you can understand every word I say, I'm sure, and
what your object is in maintaining this ridiculous silence, I don't