"Ain't you never heard tell about the Chinee what died over in Williams and was stoled away from the joss house where the other Chinks had him laid out?" said Jackson, with a look of surprise.
"Nary a hear," replied the two boys, "le's have it."
"'Bout two years ago, along in the fall," Jackson began, "after we had shipped the last steers from Williams, a Chinese laundryman there died one night, and was laid out in the little room where the Chinamen of the town kept their joss. The day following there was a tremendous squalling among the heathen, for during the night Ah Yen had disappeared from the coffin, and not a trace of him could be found. The coffin was there all right; it stood just where they left it the night before, surrounded by paper prayers, burning punk sticks, and all the other things used by the heathens to frighten away the devils which are supposed to be lyin' in wait for the spirit of a diseased celestial. But punk or no punk, devils or no devils, Ah Yen was gone, of that there was no doubt. The city marshal and the sheriff both came to investigate and question, the town was scoured, old stables and lofts searched, but still, 'no catch 'em.' After a couple of days' work the sheriff said: 'I'm danged if I'm not clear stumped. The Chink was plum dead, that's a sure thing, so he didn't git up and walk away, and if he was hauled off by some one, they didn't leave any sign that I can find, and, anyhow (which to him was the most convincing thing of all), what'd any one want for to steal a dead Chinaman, I'd like to know?'
"There was a doctor livin' over on Cataract cañon that fall, a sort of lunger chap, and when some one suggested that perhaps he had packed the Chink off for dissectin' purposes (Ah Yen bein' six feet tall and the best specimen of a Chinaman I'd ever seen), the sheriff, just to make a sort of showin' to the other Chinks, sent me—I bein' a deputy sheriff at that time—to make a sort of scout round and see what I could pick up.
"We dropped into his camp, but nothin' doin', and after prowling around for a day or two I went back to town. The next day Scotty Jones got on a tear and shot up the burg pretty plenty, and in tryin' to ride his horse into a Front Street saloon got a load of buckshot into his countenance. This made so much excitement that by the time the coroner's jury got done with the inquest the loss of Ah Yen's remains had become a matter of past history.
"Meantime the Chinks raised a powerful rookus over the loss of the body of Ah Yen, he bein' a sort of high muck-a-muck among them, but even the offer of a $100 reward for the body didn't get any clews to the disappearance."
"I remember hearin' something about it," said Grimes, "but I was down in the Tonto basin that fall a-huntin' some hosses we lost on the spring work, and never before did hear jist what happened."
"An' didn't they never find out what went with the Chink?" queried Russel, who was a newcomer in the country.
"Well," said Jackson rather evasively, "so fur as I know nobody's ever yit claimed the reward."
"Le's change the subject," said Grimes, lighting his pipe with a long pine sliver. "Hog-eye, where you been sence I seen you last fall a year ago over on the Tonto steer round up?" he asked of the newcomer.