left arm had been cracked like a lobster’s claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian cannibals when the boat, of his rescuers hove in sight. So a hat-cleaner who had been a friend of a king did not oppress me.
“A new band?” asked Finch, with his dry, barren smile.
“Yes,” said I, “and half an inch wider.” I had had a new band five days before.
“I meets a man one night,” said Finch, beginning his story—“a man brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in Schlagel’s. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No. 98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that certain mountains in a country down South that he calls Gaudymala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural quantities.
“‘Oh, Geronimo!’ says I. ‘Indians! There’s no Indians in the South,’ I tell him, ‘except Elks, Maccabees, and the buyers for the fall dry-goods trade. The Indians are all on the reservations,’ says I.
“‘I’m telling you this with reservations,’ says he. ‘They ain’t Buffalo Bill Indians; they’re squattier and more pedigreed. They call ’em
