"I reckon so," replied Jackson with a chuckle, as if there was some pleasure in the memories of the past. "You see, after talkin' a few minutes with Pick he up and makes me an offer to go back east, where he was a runnin' a show what were a part of a street carnival outfit and a-makin' all kinds of money. He wanted me to rig up in a 'Montgomery Ward outfit,' big hat, goatskin chaps, spurs an' gloves, with stars and fringe like them fellers in the movie outfits gits onto 'em, an' sort of loaf round the door and git people excited an' toll 'em into the show. So I hits the high places back to the farm, and tells the granger feller to git him a new cornstalk pusher to take my place pretty pronto. When he comes I strikes out for the place back in Illinoy where Pick sed he'd be showin' an' waitin' for my arrival.
"Pick he pays me forty beans a month, an we sleeps on our round-up beds in one of the tents. He shore had a mess of plunder inside the big tent. They was a Navajo squaw weavin' blankets, a couple of loafer wolves, some coyotes, wildcats, badgers, a lot of rattlers, centipedes and tarantulas, and a whole box full of them heely monsters. Besides this, he had a lot of glass cases in which he had a bunch of them stone axes, metates, mano stones, arrow-heads, and all that sort of plunder which they digs up from them prehistoric ruins all over this country out here.
"But the main drawin' card he had was the mummy which he sed he dug up somewheres out here in the Grand Cañon. He had all sorts of certificates and letters to prove its genuineness, as well as photographs taken when they dug it up in the cave.
"One day a odd-lookin' four-eyed feller comes along, and he ses to Pick, 'Mought I inspect this mummy of your'n?' and Pick he ses, 'Shore, pardner, jist as much as you like. You come round to-morrow mornin' fore the show begins and I'll be glad to have you look the gent over.'
"The old boy ses he'll shore be on hand, for he's powerful interested in them prehistoric things out West. So that evening, after the show closed, Pick ses to me, 'Jackson, you git a screwdriver and take them screws outen the lower lid of that there mummy case.' So I loosens up the screws, and havin' nothin' particular to do, I takes off the lid to get a better look at his Nibs. I ain't never seen a mummy before, an' was sort of curious to know what a shore enuff mummy did look like. He was naked down to his waist, and the skin was as dry and leathery as an old cowhide that's been laying out in the weather for ten years. His eyes were shut tight and his teeth showed through his thin lips with a grin that give me a cold chill for a month afterwards. But, say, boys, talk about a surprise. One look was all I wanted to show me that this here mummy of old Pick's was nothin' else but the remains of old Ah Yen, the Chink what died in Williams and was stole out of the joss house. Then I remembered the reward offered for it, but old Pick were too square a feller to soak that-a-way. I never said nothin' to nobody about what I'd seen, but slipped the lid back on the case and went off to bed in the other tent.
"Long about midnight I was woke up by somebody a hollerin' fire, and when I busted out of the tent the whole row of shacks was a blazin'. Our big tent was too far gone to save anything, but we drug out our beds and what little baggage we had in the small tent and did well to git that much out. Inside an hour there wasn't nothin' left but a pile of ashes to show where the whole outfit stood.
"Old man Pick, he took on considerable, but 'twan't no use cryin' over spilt milk, an' so we hit the trail for Arizony an' a little sunshine."
"But how did Pickerell git holt of that there Chink's body?" asked Morris, who had listened with amazement at the story.