TWIN BABIES. 49 



lingered all day to see these cunning and 

 intelligent creatures perform. 



About this time Mountain Joe fought a 

 duel with another mountaineer down at 

 the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless 

 and foolish affair, was all the talk. Why 

 not have the little black fellows fight a 

 duel also? They were surely civilized 

 enough to fight now! 



And so, with a very few days' training, 

 they fought a duel exactly like the one in 

 which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was 

 engaged ; even to the detail of one of them 

 suddenly dropping his stick gun and run- 

 ning away and falling headlong in a pros- 

 pect hole. 



When Joe came home and saw this duel 

 and saw what a fool he had made of him- 

 self, he at first was furiously angry. But 

 it made him sober, and he kept sober for 

 half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as 

 ever, more mad, in fact, than ever before. 

 For he could not endure to see the boy have 

 any friends of any kind. Above all, he did 



