could sot eyes on, an’ stuck them in a box. But he told me he comed here a-purpose to git as many o’ them as he could; so says I, ‘If that’s it, I’ll fill yer box in no time.’
“‘Will ye?’ says he, quite pleased like.
“‘I will,’ says I, an’ galloped off to a place as wos filled wi’ all sorts o’ crawling things. So I sets to work, an’ whenever I seed a thing crawlin’ I sot my fut on it an’ crushed it, an’ soon filled my breast pocket. I cotched a lot o’ butterflies too, an’ stuffed them into my shot-pouch, an’ went back in an hour or two an’ showed him the lot. He put on his green spectacles an’ looked at them as if he’d seen a rattle-snake. “‘My good man,’ says he, ‘you’ve crushed them all to pieces!’
“‘They’ll taste as good for all that,’ says I; for somehow I’d taken’t in me head that he’d heard o’ the way the Injuns make soup o’ the grasshoppers, an’ wos wanting to try his hand at a new dish!
“He laughed when I said this, an’ told me he wos collectin’ them to take home to be looked at. But that’s not wot I wos goin’ to tell ye about him,” continued Joe; “I was goin’ to tell ye how we made him eat horseflesh. He carried a revolver, too, this natterlist did, to load wi’ shot as small as dust a’most, an’ shoot little birds with. I’ve seed him miss birds only three feet away with it. An’ one day he drew it all of a suddent an’ let fly at a big bum-bee that wos passin’, yellin’ out that it wos the finest wot he had iver seed. He missed the bee, of course, ’cause it wos a flyin’ shot, he said, but he sent the whole charge right into Martin’s back—Martin was my comrade’s name. By good luck Martin had on a thick leather coat, so the shot niver got the length o’ his skin.
“One day I noticed that the natterlist had stuffed small corks into the muzzles of all the six barrels of his revolver. I wondered what they wos for, but he wos al’ays doin’ sich queer things that I soon forgot it. ' Maybe,’ thought I, jist before it went out o’ my mind—' maybe he thinks that’ll stop the pistol from goin’ off by accident;’ for ye must know he’d let it off three times the first day by accident, an’ well-nigh bio wed off his leg the last time, only the shot lodged in the back o’ a big toad he’d jist stuffed into his breeches pocket. Well, soon after we shot a buffalo bull, so off he jumps from his horse an’ runs up to it. So did I, for I wosn’t sure the beast was dead, an’ I had jist got up when it rose an’ rushed at the natterlist.
