been called everything in the world before, but never crazy; that's the
very worst thing you can tell an Injin.

"They work out toward the front door; and then I hear Pete say: 'You
know what? You said I'm crazy. My b'other-in-law's going to make
something happen to you in the night.' Pete was seeing red by that time.
The judge tells Myron to hurry and get the room cleared and open some
windows. Myron didn't have to clear it of J.W. Snyder. That bright young
lawyer dashed out and was fifty feet ahead of the bunch when they got to
the front door.

"So Pete was a free man once more, without a stain on his character
except to them that knew him well. But the old fool had lost me a
tenant. Yes, sir; this J.W. Snyder young man, with the sign hardly dry
on the glass door of his office in the Pettengill Block, had a nervous
temperament to start with, and on top of that he'd gone fully into
Pete's life history and found out that parties his brother-in-law was
displeased with didn't thrive long. He packed up his law library that
afternoon and left for another town that night.

"Yes, Pete's a wonder! Watch him slaving away out there. And he must of
been working hard all day, even with me not here to keep tabs on him.
Just look at the size of that pile of wood he's done up, when he might
easy of been loafing on the job!"

IX

LITTLE OLD NEW YORK

Monday's mail for the Arrowhead was brought in by the Chinaman while Ma
Pettengill and I loitered to the close of the evening meal: a canvas
sack of letters and newspapers with three bulky packages of merchandise
that had come by parcels post. The latter evoked a passing storm from my
hostess. Hadn't she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by
express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some
day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter?
She had so!

We trifled now with a fruity desert and the lady regaled me with a brief
exposure of our great parcels-post system as a piece of the nerviest
penny pinching she had ever known our Government guilty of. Because why?
Because these here poor R.F.D. stage drivers had to do the extra hauling
for nothing.

"Here's old Harvey Steptoe with the mail contract for sixty dollars a
month, three trips a week between Red Gap and Surprise Valley,
forty-five miles each way, barely making enough extra on express matter
and local freight to come out even after buying horse-feed. Then