Magpie smoothed his mustache and stared at me and we both danged near choked. Ajax sure offered himself as a highway for pack-rats that night.

Then cometh Judge Steele. He’s the educatedest hombre in the county. If there’s anything he don’t know he won’t admit it. He owns half-interest in a claim up the creek, and is on his way up there with a pack-load of grub for his pardner.

We asks him in to breakfast ’cause you never can tell when you’ll need the friendship of a judge.

“Good morning,” says he to me and Magpie, and then he sees Ajax.

“Good gosh!”

“Howdy, judge,” says Magpie. “Set in on the bacon.”

“Ah!” says Ajax. “A judge. Are you an LL.B.?”

“Nope. Missourian and a stanch Republican.”

“Ah! It is refreshing to meet an educated man in the wilds. Where did you matriculate, may I ask?”

“Where did I what?”

“Matriculate.”

“I’m on my way to my mine, and I started from Piperock, if it’s anybody’s danged business.”

And then he turns to Magpie.

“Friend of yours?”

“Liability, judge. He’s trailing something that ain’t here nor never was.”

“Huh! What’s he after?”

“You tell him, Ajax. Something about strangling the——”

“It is not a subject to cause levity,” chides Ajax. “Is there any reason why I should not come here to study the effects of astragalas splendens on the genus Ovius?”

The judge stands up to drink his coffee and then goes out to his horses.

 Prev. P 9/27 next