"Did he hurt yeh much?" asked the man.

"My ankle's sprained, and I've got a broken rib and a cut head," answered
Nickie; "but losing my clothes is the worst. What is a man to do without
his clothes?"

"You get up to the house, Billy, and bring down my Sunday things," said
the settler. "We'll fix you up all right, mister," he added, addressing
Nickie the Kid, and Nickie smiled warily, and uttered feeble thanks.

They dressed Nickie and took him up to the house and fed him, and then
drove him back to Bullfrog in their spring cart, delivering him into the
hands of Madame Marve, who manifested great joy on receiving back the
unparalleled Missing Link in fairly good condition.

Nickie had explained to the settler that he believed the orang-outang
that attacked him had escaped from Professor Thunder's Museum of Marvels
and that he intended claiming damages.

Later in the day Nickie and the Professor drove out and recovered Mahdi's
outfit from the hollow log, and that evening the Missing Link was again
on view, and exciting much interest, although he sullenly refused to any
further demonstration for the edification of the people of Bullfrog.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WIDOW AND THE LINK.

THE Museum of Marvels was "resting" at Devil's Head. The Professor was
resting, personally and particularly, on a stretcher bed in a small, hot,
fly-infested room in "The Devil's Head" Hotel, pending the mending of
divers injuries sustained in a disaster that put the show temporarily out
of action. Thunder did not travel with his own horses, finding it much
cheaper to hire a team to pull his caravan from one pitch to another. The
pair of bays engaged to tow the museum, and traps and wares from Field
Hill to Corner Stone had been so upset by the eccentric conduct of a
frenzied inebriate, who fled along the stone road in a woman's
nightdress, being pursued by purely imaginary griffins, dodoes, unicorns
and dragons, all in primary colours, that they wheeled and bolted with
the whole caboodle, and running into a bridge railing upset Professor
Thunder and Professor Thunder's Museum of Marvels into Billy's Creek,
greatly to the detriment of the show, and to the serious discomfort of
the Professor who was pulled from under Ammonia, the gorilla, just when
that amusing animal had almost succeeded in stifling him in the slurry
for which Billy's Creek was famous.

While the Professor rested and underwent repairs, and whiled his time
negotiati