“I’m Magpie; this is Ike. You’re Ajax. Sabe?”

“Rather—er—personal, don’t you think?”

“How’d you like Ulysses?” I asks.

“No. If I have no choice in the matter I’d prefer Ajax.”

“If I had my choice of weapons I’d take a pickax,” grins Magpie. “Are you the hombre what discovered lightning?”

“Oh, no! The original Ajax defied the lightning, don’t you know.”

“He made a sucker play,” says I. “Maybe he didn’t sabe electricity.”

Ajax refused to smoke a cigaret, so we gave him an old pipe that “Polecat” Perkins left in our shack, but he didn’t seem to care for it.

“Now,” says Magpie, “we’d admire to hear what you came here for.”

Ajax crosses his legs, adjusts his glasses and clears his throat. It’s some job to clear a throat like his. The best way, I reckon, would be to drop in a can of nitroglycerin like they do in oil-wells.

“I am here,” says he, rubbing his hands together, “to study the effects of astragalas splendens on the genus Ovius.”

Me and Magpie looks at each other and then at Ajax.

“It is very interesting, don’t you think?” asks Ajax.

Magpie walks over to the stove and begins to cut more bacon. After he gets it on the stove he turns to Ajax.

“What do you drink for breakfast?”

“Rarely anything, I thank you.”

“You ought to take something,” says I.

“Well, if I should, I prefer a beverage of thea sinensis.”

“My ——!” grunts Magpie. “We’re all out of that. Ike, I told you to get us some the last time you was in Piperock.”

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