when the doctors are pulling cactus needles out of his hide. I guess pa
was willing enough to jump Kansas in the night from what he told us
once.

He said when he was a young man he and a railroad brakeman got busted at
Topeka, and they had an order book printed, and went all over Kansas
taking orders for Osier willows, which they warranted to grow so high in
two years they would make fences for the farms that no animals or
blizzards could get over or through, and make shade for the houses and
the whole farm. It was the year when the Osier willow craze was on and
every farmer on the plains wanted to transform his prairie into a
forest. Pa says the farmers fought with each other to sign orders, and
some paid in advance, so as to get the willow cuttings in a hurry. Well,
pa and the railroad man canvassed Kansas, and sold more than forty
thousand millions of Osier willow cuttings, and put in the whole winter.
In the spring, when it was time to deliver the goods, they went into the
river bottoms and cut a whole lot of "pussy willow" cuttings, delivered
them to the farmers and got their money, and went away. When the pussy
willow cuttings died in their tracks, or grew up just plain pussy
willows that never got high enough to hide a jack rabbit, the farmers of
Kansas loaded their guns and waited for pa and the brakeman to come back
to Kansas, but they never went back.

The brakeman became president of a great railroad, but when he has to go
across the continent in his special car, he dodges Kansas, and goes
across by the northern or southern route. Pa has so far dodged the
farmers, but money wouldn't have hired him to stay with the circus and
meet those farmers that they sold the willow gold bricks to. And yet,
when I bunco anybody around the show, pa takes me one side and tells me
that honesty is the best policy, and to never lie, 'cause my character
as a man will depend on the start I make as a boy. He don't want me to
go through life regretting the past, and being afraid of the cars for
fear some act of my younger days will become known and queer me. I guess
pa knows how it is hisself.

Well, if there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I have always been
good. When I grow up to be a man, prosperous in business, and belonging
to a church, and married, and have children growing up around me, I can
put on an innocent face and a bold front, and point to my past with
pride, if I should go to live among strangers, where n