"How did he get this far away from home?" I asked.
"He's traveling," snorted Petey; "traveling to improve his mind. Hopeless job. He's one of those quarter-sawed old beef-eaters who stop thinking as soon as they've got their education. He's the editor of a missionary publication, he told me, and he is writing some articles on Heathen America. Honest, it almost made me boil over when he asked me if anything was being done to educate the aborigines out here."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Do?" said Petey. "Why, I answered his question, of course. I told him he wasn't fifty miles from a college this minute, and he said, 'Oh, I say now! Are you spoofing me?' What's 'spoofing'?"
"Kidding, stringing, stuffing, jollying along, blowing east wind, turning on the gas," says I. "'Spoofing' is University English. They don't use slang over there, you know."
"Well, then, I spoofed him," said Petey, grinning. "He said it was remarkable how very few revolvers he had seen, and then he wanted to know why there was no shooting on the train with so much disorder. He's pretty well posted now. I'd go a mile out of my way to help a poor dumb chap like him. I told him this was the Y. M. C. A. section of Siwash and that the real rough students were coming along on horseback. I said they weren't allowed on the trains because they were so fatal to passengers. I informed him that all the profs at Siwash went armed, and that the course of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip, broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, History of Art, bread-making and Evidences of Christianity."
"Did he admit by that time that you were a good, free-handed liar?" I asked.
"Admit nothing," said Petey; "he took it all down in his notebook and remarked that in a wild country like this, remote from civilization, a knowledge of bread-making would undoubtedly be invaluable to a man."
"He was spoofing you," says I.
"He wasn't," said Petey; "he thinks he's a thousand miles from a plug hat this minute. He's so interested he is going to stop over for a day or two and write up the college for his magazine. I've invited him to stay at the Eta Bita Pie House with us, and we're going to show him a real Wild West school if we have to shoot blank cartridges at the cook to do it."