new ones, because you never recognize them as anything you ever heard
before. His store of yarns is limitless and needs only a listener to
set it unwinding, like an endless cable, warranted to run as long as
his audience laughs.

So the Nevadan talked, and I listened and felt at peace with the world.
And presently he began to tell me about Johnson Sides.

"Of course, you 've heard about him, have n't you?" he asked.
"Everybody who has lived on either slope of the Sierras must have heard
about Johnson. Well, Johnson Sides is a whole lot of a man, even if he
is only a Piute Indian. It ain't quite fair, though, to speak of him
as only an Indian, for he has developed into an individual and wears
store clothes.

"The first time I ever saw Johnson was away back, years ago, when I
first went to Virginia City. Going down C Street one day I stopped to
look at some workmen who were excavating for the foundation of a house.
They had been blasting, and were working away like good fellows getting
the pieces of rock off the site. On the south side of the biggest
stone they had removed, where the sun shone on him and he was sheltered
from the wind, a big Piute was lying on the ground and watching the
workmen as if he had been their boss. He was wrapped in an army
blanket, new but dirty, and he wore a fairly good hat and a pair of
boots without holes. His face and hands were dirty, and his hair hung
around his ears and neck and eyes in that fine disorder which the
Piutes admire.

"I wondered why he was watching the workmen, for it is little short of
a miracle for a Piute to take any interest whatever in manual labor.