"I found out after a while that he could give me scraps of news about
the Indians over at Pyramid Lake or in the city that were worth making
into local items, and I always paid him for them. Nobody ever saw a
prouder Indian than Johnson was the first day I did that. I marked the
paragraphs with a blue pencil and gave him a copy of the paper, and he
carried it around with him until it was worn out. The money I gave him
for them he kept in his pocket for two whole days. But at last there
was a big poker game behind a barn--six bucks down from Pyramid Lake
with five dollars apiece, and it was too much for Johnson. His proudly
earned silver went into the pot with the rest.

"Johnson brought up items every day after that, and soon began to feel
himself one of the profession and a man of consequence. He always
brought two or three other bucks with him to see his importance and be
impressed by his superiority. While they stood against the wall or
squatted in a corner Johnson would take a chair at a dignified distance
from me and begin, 'Now, you make 'um paper talk.' And he always ended
his account with the emphatic command, 'Now, you make 'um paper talk
straight.'

"But his information was not always 'straight.' He had all the
instincts of the modern and progressive journalist, and he did n't
hesitate to fake when news was scarce and he wanted money. For after
he joined the newspaper profession he gave up begging by proxy and
allowed his prime minister to beg on his own account and keep his own
earnings.

"Well, it was n't long after Johnson's entrance into literature until
he discarded his blanket and appeared in a coat. The other Indians