Me Smith

forehead and declared plaintively as he blinked at McArthur:
    “Pardner, I’m gittin’ a headache from tryin’ to see what you’re talkin’ about.”
    “Air you sayin’ anything a-tall,” demanded Old Man Rulison, suspiciously, “or air you joshin’?”
    “Them’s words all right,” said Tubbs. “Onct I worked under a section boss over on the Great Northern what talked words like them. He believed we sprung up from tuds and lizards—and the likes o’ that. Yes, he did—on the square.”
    “There are many believers in the theory of evolution,” observed McArthur.
    “That’s it—that’s the word. That’s what he was.” Then, in the tone of one who hands out a clincher, Tubbs demanded: “Look here, Doc, if that’s so why ain’t all these ponds and cricks around here a-hatchin’ out children?”
    “Guess that’ll hold him for a minute,” Meeteetse Ed whispered to his neighbor.
    But instead of being covered with confusion by this seemingly unanswerable argument, McArthur gazed at Tubbs in genuine pity.
    “Let me consider how I can make it quite clear to you. Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “I cannot do better than to give you Herbert Spencer’s definition. Spencer defines evolution, as nearly as I can remember his exact words, as an integration of matter and concomita, dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite heterogeneity to a definite, incoherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. Materialistic, agnostic, and theistic evolution——”
    Meeteetse Ed fell off his chair in a mock faint and crashed to the floor.
    Susie, who had entered, saw McArthur’s embarrassment, and refused to join in the shout of laughter, though her eyes danced.
    “Don’t mind him,” she said comfortingly, as she eyed Meeteetse, sprawled on his back with his eyes closed. “He’s afraid he’ll learn something. He used to be a sheep-herder, and I don’t reckon he’s got more’n two hundred and fifty words in his whole vocabulary. Why, I’ll bet he never heard a word of more’n three syllables before. Get up, Meeteetse. Go out in the fresh air and build yourself a couple of them sheep-herder’s monuments. It’ll make you feel better.”
    The prostrate humorist revived. Susie’s jeers had the effect of a bucket of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his escutcheon—the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned honest money herding sheep—was known.
    “My enthusiasm runs away with me when I get upon this subject,” said McArthur, in blushing apology to the group. “I am sorry that I have bored you.”
    “No bore a-tall,” declared Old Man Rulison magnanimously. “You cut loose whenever you feel like it: we kin stand it as long as you kin.”
    After McArthur had gone to his pneumatic mattress in the patent tent pitched near the bunk-house, Ralston said to Susie:
    “You and the bug-hunter are great friends, aren’t you?”
    “You bet! We’re pardners. Anybody that gets funny with him has got me to fight.”
    “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Ralston laughed.
    “We’ve got secrets—the bug-hunter and me.”
    “You’re rather young for secrets, Susie.”
    “Nobody’s too young for secrets,” she declared. “Haven’t you any?”
    “Sure,” Ralston nodded.
    “I like you,” Susie whispered impulsively. “Let’s swap secrets.”
    He looked at her and wished he dared. He would have liked to tell her of his mission, to ask her help; for he realized that, if she chose, no one could help him more. Like Smith, he recognized that quality in her they each called “gameness,” and even more than Smith he appreciated the commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a failure. So he answered jestingly:
    “My secrets are not for little girls to know.”
    Susie gave him a quick glance.
    “Oh, you don’t look as though you had that kind,” and turned away.
    Ralston felt somehow that he had lost an opportunity. He could not rid himself of the feeling the entire evening; and he made up his mind to cultivate Susie’s friendship. But it was too late; he had made a mistake not unlike Dora’s. Susie had felt herself rebuffed, and, like the