“No wonder your hair don’t show no animation, Tellurium.”
And then he goes on reading.
“Well, you don’t need to keep it a secret, Magpie,” I reminds him.
“It says here,” says he, turning a few pages, “it says here that a
feller went out into the woods, without no clothes on, and without no
weapons but his bare hands, and stayed thirty days, when he comes back
healthy and clothed in skins. ‘Next to Nature,’ they calls it. By
cripes, a magazine must be hard up for stuff to write about!”
“Pretty hard thing to do at that,” states Tellurium. “I takes off my hat
to any man what can pull that stunt.”
“Hard!” snorts Magpie, “you call that hard? That’s a cinch for a he
man.”
“Exactly,” agrees Tellurium, “that’s why me and you ought to take off
our hats to him. We couldn’t do it, Magpie.”
“Couldn’t, eh? You couldn’t, Mr. Woods—that’s a cinch.”
“Neither could you, Mr. Simpkins, which makes it a double-rig.”
“The —— I couldn’t! Bet you forty dollars I could.”
“See you, Magpie, and raise you forty more.”