d ordered a beer and a
chicken sandwich.

"Chickens," says he, gazin' at the sandwich, "is a dollar apiece in
this country, and plumb scarce. Did you ever pause to ponder over the
returns chickens would give on a small investment? Say you start with
ten hens. Each hatches out thirteen aigs, of which allow a loss of say
six for childish accidents. At the end of the year you has eighty
chickens. At the end of two years that flock has increased to six
hundred and twenty. At the end of the third year--"

He had the medicine tongue! Ten days later him and me was
occupyin' of an old ranch fifty mile from anywhere. When they run
stage-coaches this joint used to be a roadhouse. The outlook was on
about a thousand little brown foothills. A road two miles four rods
two foot eleven inches in sight run by in front of us. It come over
one foothill and disappeared over another. I know just how long it
was, for later in the game I measured it.

Out back was about a hundred little wire chicken corrals filled with
chickens. We had two kinds. That was the doin's of Tuscarora. My
pardner called himself Tuscarora Maxillary. I asked him once if that
was his real name.

"It's the realest little old name you ever heerd tell of," says he. "I
know, for I made it myself--liked the sound of her. Parents ain't got
no rights to name their children. Parents don't have to be called them
names."

Well, these chickens, as I said, was of two kinds. The first was these
low-set, heavyweight propositions with feathers on their laigs, and not
much laigs at that, called Cochin Chinys. The other was a tall
ridiculous outfit made up entire of bulgin' breast and gangle laigs.
They stood about two foot and a half tall, and when they went to peck
the ground their tail feathers stuck straight up to the sky. Tusky
called 'em Japanese Games.

"Which the chief advantage of them chickens is," says he, "that in
weight about ninety per cent of 'em is breast meat. Now my idee is,
that if we can cross 'em with these Cochin Chiny fowls we'll have a
low-hung, heavyweight chicken runnin' strong on breast meat. These Jap
Games is too small, but if we can bring 'em up in size and shorten
their laigs, we'll shore have a winner."

That looked good to me, so we started in on that idee. The theery was
bully, but she didn't work out. The first broods we hatched growed up
with big husky Cochin Chiny bodies and little short necks, perched up
on lai