"There was a man," said Mr. Scraggs, "who said, 'Deliver me from my
friends.' Now, I ain't goin' so far as to say I indorse that
statement, nor I ain't standin' still so strong as to say I don't.
But I know this: An enemy will do something for you every time,
whilest most friends won't, and, moreover, I ain't ever had any
enemy who furnished me with as much light entertainment as my
friend Pete.

"I am speakin' from this here point of view. The real joyousness
of life consists of being busy. We won't take no vote on the
subjeck; we'll just admit it. Hence an enemy, that is an enemy,
when you be in good health and able for to look after the enemy
part from your side, is a great source of innercent amusement. A
man gets so durn practical, he don't take no interest in all the
pleasant rocks and bushes strewed over the country by the
beneficent hand of Providence. He shacks along on his little old
cayuse, with his mind occupied on how many things he can't do next,
and he gits plumb disgusted. But suppose there's a chance of an
able-bodied enemy, aided and abetted with a gun, a-hidin' behind
each and every one of them rocks and bushes? Don't life take on an
interest? I bet you money! The imaginations of that man's mind
gets started up. Life becomes full of chances. The man, he's
interested in his life because the other feller wants to take it
away from him. A good enemy in a lonesome country means more to
that man than her best friend's widower means to a maiden aunt.
You bet.

"Red and me differs there, I know, but his idees gets sifted
through that crop of red alfalfa he wears, whilest I present a
clean proposition to any idee that comes boundin' o'er the lee, or
to wind'ard, or any direction she chooses to bound. Yessir; when I
begin to feel that life ain't worth livin' give me an enemy or a
friend like Pete Douglass.

"It ain't for me to poke no fun at Pete's looks. There's a place
where a humarious turn of mind orter stop. Pete's looks was too
serious for any man to get comic about. It appeared as if his
features had been blowed on to his face by a gale of wind; his
whiskers had a horrified expression, like they'd made their escape
if they hadn't been fastened on, and he was double-jointed in every
point of the compass. When he stood up straight he give you more
the impression of sittin' down then a man sick a-bed could. I
dunno how it come, but everything old Pete looked like, seemed
precis