sitive and surprised
rising inflection.

"Hey?" said Jim, looking at him solemnly. "Tew times tew use to be four
when I larnt the rewl of three in old Varmount. Mebbe 'taint so in the
country you come from, where they call a pail a bucket."

The passenger kept still awhile. The manner of the Superior Being chilled
him a little. But Whisky Jim graciously broke the silence himself.

"Sell nex' week fer six."

The young man's mind had already left the subject under discussion, and
it took some little effort of recollection to bring it back.

"How long will it keep on going up?" he asked.

"Tell it teches the top. Come daown then like a spile-driver in a hurry.
Higher it goes, the wuss it'll mash anybody what happens to stan'
percisely under it."

"When will it reach the top?"

The Superior Being turned his eyes full upon the student, who blushed a
little under the half-sneer of his look.

"Yaou tell! Thunder, stranger, that's jest what everybody'd pay money tew
find out. Everybody means to git aout in time, but--thunder!--every piece
of perrary in this territory's a deadfall. Somebody'll git catched in
every one of them air traps. Gee up! G'lang! _Git_ up, won't you? Hey?"
And this last sentence was ornamented with another magnificent
writing-master flourish of the whip-lash, and emphasized by an explosive
crack at the end, which started the four horses off in a swinging gallop,
from which Jim did not allow them to settle back into a walk until they
had reached the high prairie land in the rear of the town.

"What are those people living in tents for?" asked the student as he
pointed back to Red Owl, now considerably below them, and which presented
a panorama of balloon-frame houses, mostly innocent of paint, with a
sprinkling of tents pitched here and there among the trees; on lots not
yet redeemed from virgin wildness, but which possessed the remarkable
quality of "fetching" prices that would have done honor to well-located
land in Philadelphia.

"What they live that a-way fer? Hey? Mos'ly 'cause they can't live no
other." Then, after a long pause, the Superior Being resumed in a tone of
half-soliloquy: "A'n't a bed nur a board in the hull city of Red Owl to
be had for payin' nur coaxin'. Beds is aces. Houses is trumps. Landlords
is got high, low, Jack, and the game in ther hands. Looky there! A
bran-new lot of fools fresh from the factory." And he pointed to the old
steamboat "Ben Bolt," which was just comi