to lead an experience meeting! He'll put on a face as long as a cable
to a freight train, and then he'll turn to me and wink one eye, as if
explaining that it was all for a joke."

"That's your ham he's chewing, Jimmie!" Ned declared.

"I suppose so," the boy replied. "That's what you get by being
brother to a long-eared mule that for cussedness has Becker's gunmen
backed up a creek with the oars lost!"

While the mule was being restored to his companions, Jimmie and Teddy
began getting supper. They had plenty of tinned goods, plenty of
flour, potatoes, meal and ham and bacon. Still, they thought they
ought to have something in the way of game.

"I saw a wild turkey back there," Teddy volunteered.

"And I saw a coon," Jimmie added.

"Is there any law on turkeys and coons?" asked Jack, who was trying
to make the fire burn bright with lengths of green wood.

"There ain't no law of any kind up here," Frank insisted.

"Then we'll go and get a coon," Jimmie declared. "You boys get a
red-hot fire and I'll have the bird here before Ned gets that mule tied
up!"

"Guess I'll go along," Teddy suggested. "I never did like to have
anyone else go to the trouble of getting my wild meat for me! I'll go