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That Johnny certainly could cook! Served on china dishes upon a cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sour-dough biscuits as light as kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of eating, especially if he has just ridden ten miles on a buckboard and nine more on a mule and is away down at the bottom of the Grand canyon–and there is nobody to look on disapprovingly when he takes a bite that would be a credit to a steam shovel!

Despite all reports to the contrary, I wish to state that it is no trouble at all to eat green peas off a knife-blade–you merely mix them in with potatoes for a cement; and fried steak–take it from an old steak eater–tastes best when eaten with those tools of Nature’s own providing, both hands and your teeth. An hour passed–busy, yet pleasant–and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away biscuits inside of himself like a parlor prestidigitator, said:

“Seen any of them old Hydrophobies the last day or two?”

“Not so many,” said Bill casually. “There was a couple out last night pirootin’ round in the moonlight. I reckon, though, there’ll be quite a flock of ’em out to-night. A new moon always seems to fetch ’em up from the river.”

Both of us quit blowing on our coffee and we put the cups down. I think I was the one who spoke.

“I beg your pardon,” I asked, “but what did you say would be out to-night?”

“We were just speakin’ to one another about them Hydrophoby Skunks,” said Bill apologetically. “This here canyon is where they mostly hang out and frolic ’round.”

I laid down my cigar, too. I admit I was interested.

“Oh!” I said softly–like that. “Is it? Do they?”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “I reckin there’s liable to be one come shovin’ his old nose into that door any minute. Or probably two–they mostly travels in pairs–sets, as you might say.”

“You’d know one the minute you saw him, though,” said Bill. “They’re smaller than a regular skunk and spotted where the other kind is striped. And they got little red eyes. You won’t have no trouble at all recognizin’ one.”

It was at this juncture that we both got up and moved back by the stove. It was warmer there and the chill of evening seemed to be settling down noticeably.

“Funny thing about Hydrophoby Skunks,” went on Johnny after a moment of pensive thought–“mad, you know!”

“What makes them mad?” The two of us asked the question together.

“Born that way!” explained Bill–“mad from the start, and won’t never do nothin’ to get shut of it.”

“Ahem–they never attack humans, I suppose?”

“Don’t they?” said Johnny, as if surprised at such ignorance. “Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain’t really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither.” He raised his coffee cup to his lips and imbibed deeply.

“Which you certainly said something then, Johnny,” stated Bill. “You see,” he went on, turning to us, “they aim to catch you asleep and they creep up right soft and take holt of you–take holt of a year usually–and clamp their teeth and just hang on for further orders. Some says they hang on till it thunders, same as snappin’ turtles. But that’s a lie, I judge, because there’s weeks on a stretch down here when it don’t thunder. All the cases I ever heard of they let go at sunup.”