ing pickled
green plums, and some sort of messed-up stuff that tasted like spoilt
salt fish and made him feel sickish--it was the best supper he ever
eat. Each of 'em had a bottle of iced wine, he said; and he said they
topped off with coffee that only wanted milk to make it a real wonder,
and a drink like rock-and-rye, but chalks better, and such seegars as
he'd never smoked in his born days.

All the time they was hashing--and Wood said he reckoned they was at
it a'most a full hour--Boston kept a-telling what a hell of a one
(that was the sort of careless way Wood put it) he was at big-game
hunting; but Wood judged--taking all his talk together--the only thing
he'd ever really shot bigger'n a duck or a pa'tridge was a deer the
dogs had chased into a pond for him so it hadn't no chance. But it
wasn't none of Wood's business to stop a director's nephew from
blowing if he felt like it, and so he just let him fan away. Bears
wasn't bad sport, he said, and he didn't mind filling in time with
'em if he couldn't get nothing better; but what he'd come to Palomitas
for 'special, he said, was mountain-lions--he seemed to have it in his
head he'd find 'em walking all over the place, same as cats--and he
wanted to know if any'd lately been seen.

Wood told him them animals wasn't met with frequent in them parts (and
they wasn't, for a fact, and hadn't been for about a hunderd years,
likely) and maybe he'd do better to set his mind on jack-rabbits--which
there was enough of out in the sage-brush, Wood told him, to load his
car. And then he looked so real down disappointed, seeming to think
jack-rabbits wasn't anyways satisfactory, Wood said he told him there
was chances some of the boys over at the Forest Queen--they being all
the time out in the mountains looking for prospects--might put him
on to finding a bear, anyway; and it wouldn't do no harm to go across to
the Queen and ask. And so over the both of 'em come.

It was Wood's mistake bringing that green-corduroyed pill right in
among the boys without giving notice, and Wood owned up it was
later--allowing he'd a-been more careful if the rock-and-rye stuff on
top of the wine, not being used to either of 'em, hadn't loaded him
more'n he knowed about at the time. Boston didn't seem to be much
loaded, likely having the habit of taking such drinks and so being
able to carry 'em; but he was that high-horsey--putting on his
eye-glasses and staring 'round the place same as if he'd