“Aw, rats,” scoffed Big Boy, “are you still telling that one? There was a miner came by just as he reached down to grab it and punched out every meal with his hob-nails.”
“That’s the story,” admitted Bunker, “but say, here’s another one–did you ever hear of the hobo 18Mark Twain? Well, he was a well-known character in the old days around Globe–kinder drifted around from one camp to the other and worked all his friends for a dollar. That was his regular graft, he never asked for more and he never asked the same man twice, but once every year he’d make the rounds and the old-timers kind of put up with him. Great story-teller and all that and one day I was sitting talking with him when a mining man came into the saloon. He owned a mine, over around Mammoth somewhere, and he wanted a man to herd it. It was seventy-five a month, with all expenses paid and all you had to do was to stick around and keep some outsider from jumping in. Well, when he asked for a man I saw right away it was just the place for old Mark and I began to kind of poke him in the ribs, but when he didn’t answer I hollered to the mining man that I had just the feller he wanted. Well, the mining man came over and put it up to Mark, and everybody present began to boost. He was such an old bum that we wanted to get rid of him and there wasn’t a thing he could kick on. There was plenty of grub, a nice house to live in and he didn’t have to work a tap; but in spite of all that, after he’d asked all kinds of questions, Old Mark said he’d have to think it over. So he went over to the bar and began to figger on some paper and at last he came back and said he was sorry but he couldn’t afford to take it.
“‘Well, why not?’ we asks, because we knowed he was a bum, but he says: ‘Well gentlemen, I’ll 19tell ye, it’s this way. I’ve got twelve hundred friends in Arizona that’s worth a dollar apiece a year; but this danged job only pays seventy-five a month–I’d be losing three hundred a year.”
“Huh, huh,” grunted Big Boy, picking up some folded tarts, “your mind seems to be took up with hoboes.”
“Them’s my wife’s pay-streak biscuits,” grinned Bunker Hill, “or at least, that’s what I call ’em. The bottom crust is the foot-wall, the top is the hanging-wall, and the jelly in the middle is the pay streak.”
“Danged good!” pronounced the hobo licking the tips of his fingers and Old Bunk tapped him on the knee.
“Say,” he said, “seeing the way you whipped that jasper puts me in mind of a feller back in Texas. He was a big, two-fisted hombre, one of these Texas bad-men that was always getting drunk and starting in to clean up the town; and he had all the natives bluffed. Well, he was in the saloon one day, telling how many men he’d killed, when a little guy dropped in that had just come to town, and he seemed to take a great interest. He kept edging up closer, sharpening the blade of his jack-knife on one of these here little pocket whetstones, until finally he reached over and cut a notch in the bad man’s ear.
“There,” he says, “you’re so doggoned bad–next time I see you I’ll know you!”
20“Yeh, some guy,” observed Big Boy, “and I see you’re some story-teller, but what’s all this got to do with me?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” answered Old Bunk hastily, “only I thought while you were eating─”