When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and shot for home." "Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it ?" "I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't." "Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't.

But if there were some proofs----" "Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat ?" "No." "Did I bring back my horse ?" "No." "Did you ever see the bull again ?" "No." "Well, then, what more do you want?
I never saw anybody as particular as you are about a little thing like that." I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by the skin of his teeth.

This episode reminds me of an incident of my brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward.

The European citizens of a town in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of Eckert, an Englishman--a person famous for the number, ingenuity and imposing magnitude of his lies.

They were always repeating his most celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out" before strangers; but they seldom succeeded.