He mesmerised 'em,
simply mesmerised 'em-till we got here. I don't know what happened
then. Now we're distinctly rating low, the laugh is on us somehow.
But he--mind it? He goes about talking to the sheikhs as though we
were all eating off the same corn-cob, and it seems to stupefy them;
they don't grasp it. He goes on arranging for a post here and a
station there, and it never occurs to him that it ain't really
actual. He doesn't tell me, and I don't ask him, for I came along
to wipe his stirrups, so to speak. I put my money on him, and I'm
not going to worry him. He's so dead certain in what he does, and
what he is, that I don't lose any sleep guessing about him. It will
be funny if we do win out on this proposition--funnier than
anything.
Now, there's one curious thing about it all which ought to be
whispered, for I'm only guessing, and I'm not a good guesser; I
guessed too much in Mexico about three railways and two silvermines.
The first two days after we came here, everything was all right.
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