OH, SHOOT! 



It was quite as exciting as shark fishing- 

 while it lasted. Thus far, the horse was little 

 the worse for its ducking, but it had experi- 

 enced quite enough of this sort of thing and 

 refused to help itself. The lariat was slowly 

 choking it, which made it necessary to salvage 

 quickly the submerged pack no easy task in 

 ice water waist-deep. Eventually, however, 

 it was unloaded, and with the aid of two other 

 horses the animal was dragged and rolled up 

 the bank to safety. 



Our brand-new "movie" camera did not 

 leak light, but it leaked water when we held 

 it up. It leaked like a defective samovar, and 

 that thousand feet of film resembled some sort 

 of gelatinous breakfast food. But those aro- 

 matic Havanas! They presented a heart- 

 rending sight to us weak nicotine lovers. We 

 sat down and wept silently into our beards, 

 casting sand upon our unhappy heads. You 

 can wipe the moisture out of an aluminum 

 camera; you can get along without taking 

 pictures, if you have to, but a man must 

 smoke, and who who can smoke wet cigars 

 and survive? We were strong men we were 

 made of stern stuff, but there is a limit to 

 human endurance. Ambrose's joyous an- 



166 



