"How about that hundred-foot pole?" inquired Poker Bill, as Bowles bowed and blushed.
"Yes, sure!" agreed Brigham readily. "We'll take that one now and let it go fer the bunch. If that's true, they're all true, eh?"
"That's me!" observed Bill laconically.
"All right, then, stranger," continued Brigham. "We'll jest leave the matter with you, and if what I said ain't true I'll never open my head again. I was tellin' these pore, ignorant Texas cotton-pickers that back at Coney Island they was a feller that did high divin'—ever see anything like that? All right, then, this is what I told 'em. I told 'em this divin' sport had a pole a hundred foot high, with a tank of water at the bottom six foot deep and mebbe ten foot square, and when it come time he climbed up to the top and stood on a little platform, facin' backwards and lookin' into a pocket mirror. Then he begun to lean over backwards, and finally, when everything was set, he threw a flip-flap and hit that tank a dead center without hurtin' himself a bit. Now, how about it—is that a lie?"
He looked up at Bowles with a steady gaze; and that gentleman did not fail him.
"Why, no," he said; "really, I see no reason to doubt what you say. Of course, I haven't been to Coney Island recently, but such events are quite a common occurrence there."
"Now, you see?" inquired Brigham triumphantly. "This gentleman has been around a little. Back at Coney them stunts is nothin'! They don't even charge admission."
"But how can that feller hit the water every time?" argued Bill the doubter, pressing forward to fight the matter out.
"Don't make no difference how he does it," answered Brigham; "that's his business. If people knowed how he done it, they wouldn't come to see 'im no more. By jicks, I'd jest like to take some of you fellers back to New York and show you some of the real sights. I ain't hardly dared to open my mouth since I took on with this ignorant outfit, but now that I got a gentleman here that's been around a little I may loosen up and tell you a few things."
"Oh, my Joe!" groaned Hardy Atkins, making a motion like fanning bees from his ears. "Hear the doggone Mormon talk—and never been outer the Territory! Been pitchin' hay and drinkin' ditch-water down on the Gila all his life and——"