“It’s no use, Ike,” sighs Magpie. “I had hopes that he’d been hit so hard that he’d talk our language, but I’m a poor guesser. You take one side, Ike, and I’ll take the other.”

Ajax led like a old pack-horse and didn’t have much to say. We asked him why he was sore at Doleful, and he said the idea was absurd. We tied some raw meat over his eyes, and by supper-time he was able to feel the difference between a knife and a fork.

“Maybe some day you hombres will stay in the East where you belong,” says Magpie disgusted-like. “You sure gallop in where natives fear to sneak.”

“We scientists must suffer that the masses be informed,” explains Ajax.

“You ain’t going to get a lot of publicity by fighting a boot duel with a half-witted herder,” says I.

“It was no violence of my making, I assure you, Mr. Harper. I was chasing the elusive Ovius when this vulgar person came between us. He used very insulting adjectives—very! My lips could never repeat the strange things he said. Naturally I resented. I descended to the level of a brute, and fought as my ancestors fought.”

“I’ve heard of boot-leggers,” says Magpie, “but you must ’a’ sprung from a family of boot-fighters, Ajax. Did you hit him first?”

“I did not. Nor second or third. In fact he pummeled me for some time before I seemed to grasp his intentions, and then I retaliated.”

“You ought to carry a boot,” advises Magpie. “Feller like you ought to go heeled all the time. What do you aim to do next?”

“Next?”

Ajax rubs his sore eyes and looks up at Magpie.

“I shall certainly persevere until I have observed fully the effects of astragalas splendens upon the——”

But me and Magpie went out and left him talking to himself.

We helped Ajax bring in his foot-rest that night and watched him go to bed with his feet thirty inches higher than his head. He’s so all-in that he never felt the pack-rats that night, and the next morning he’s a sorry-looking hunk of scientific humanity.

His clothes are about seven-eighths to the sere and yaller leaf. His valise don’t contain nothing but a book, some papers and a box of 

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