He writes it with his
heart's blood, and not being the greatest scholar in the world he has to
count the letters in his name after it's written--he knows there ought to
be nine together--and then he has to wipe the ink off his hands and sigh
dismally and say if this thing keeps up he'll be spending his old age at
the poor farm, and so forth. It all went according to schedule, except
that he seemed strangely eager and under a severe nervous strain.

Me? I'd been, sort of hanging round on the edge of events while the
dastardly deed was being committed, not seeming to be responsible in any
way. My Lord! I still wanted to be able to face the bereaved man as an
honest woman and tell him it was only some nonsense of the boys for which
I could not be held under the law, no matter how good a lawyer he'd get.
When they come trooping out of the bunk house I was pretending to consult
Abner, the blacksmith, about some mower parts. And right off I was struck
by the fact that Safety seemed to be his old self again; his air of false
gayety and nervous strain had left him and he was cold and silent and
deadly, like the poisonous cobra of India.

But now they was going to spring the new secret enterprise on him, so I
moved off toward the house a bit, not wanting to be too near when his
screams begun. It did seem kind of shameful, taking advantage of the
old miser's grasping habits; still, I remembered a few neat things he'd
done to me and I didn't slink too far into the background. Safety was
standing by his horse with the boys all gathered close round him, and I
heard Sandy say "Elephants--nothing but elephants--that's the new idea!"

Then they all begun to talk at once, jabbering about the peanuts and
popcorn that crowds of people will come to buy from us to feed back to
our stock, and how there's more meat in an elephant than in six steers,
and about how the punchers will be riding round in these little cupalos
up on top of their big saddle elephants; and they kept getting swifter
and more excited in their talk, till at last they just naturally exploded
when they made sure Safety got the idea and would know he'd been made a
fool of. They had a grand time; threw their hats in the air and danced
round their victim and punched each other, and their yells and hearty
laughter could of been heard for miles up and down the creek. Two or
three had guns they let off to add to the gleeful noise. Oh, it was
deuces wild for about three minutes.