“Scenery?”

He peers up at us and then blinks shut again.

“The general aspect, as regards variety or beauty, or the reverse, of a landscape?”

“My ——!” says I. “He asked you in a lady-like manner: Who knocked Scenery into our cabin? The man you fought. Sabe?”

“The—the man I fought?” stutters Ajax. “Did I—I fight a man?”

“Say,” says Magpie, “did you get hit so hard that you don’t sabe things? What did you think you was mopping the earth with?”

“I—er—really——” Ajax mops some more dirt out of his features and peers around— “I—er—suppose I must take your unsupported word for it, but I—I thought at the time that I was being attacked by a specimen of the genus Ovius.”

Magpie kicks the empty bean-kettle into the cabin, and me and him follers it inside. Pretty soon Ajax looks in. He peers all around and then begins to search outside.

Me and Magpie went out there and looked around, too. Then Ajax starts circling the cabin, and me and Magpie follered him like a pair of bird-dog pups follering an old dog, but we don’t find anything. Pretty soon Ajax sighs deep-like.

“Well, it isn’t here, it seems.”

“Maybe you lost it some other place,” suggests Magpie.

“No. I had it when I arrived.”

“——!” grunts Magpie. “What was it, Ajax?”

“The—er—specimen of the genus Ovius.”

I grabs Magpie just in time. Ajax never did know how close he skidded to the graveyard that time. Magpie was so mad that he wouldn’t come into the cabin while I throws a feed into Ajax.

“There should be a drastic legislation against the careless use of firearms,” states Ajax. “Would you believe it—” he pokes a fork at me like he was trying to see if I was done—“some careless person, evidently shooting at random, nearly struck me? I was a little south of here, returning with my specimen, when I detected a singing noise past my ear. Immediately following came 

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