Mystery of the Mudhen

MARCH, 1936 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 13 Mystery of the Mudhen Chapter No. 2 of Tadpole Lie, Like the Music, Goes Round and Round and Winds Out Nowhere

DANGITALL," spouted the Bull of Granite Creek, "whacha reckon's gone wrong with them cussed tadpoles, Friday." The Bull stood on the bank of Granite Creek alongside his man Friday, the two of them gazing disonsolately into the six or eight inches of clear water rushing over bedrock on its way to the Agua Fria. For some reason or other there were no gold pellets lying on the clean sand at the water's edge, where the little wiggling polliwogs had been trained to deposit same for the small reward of a bait of their favorite cheese, crumbled and cast In the waters by the two partners.It might be well to remind you that Friday and the Bull had traded cheese crumbs for gold which the amphibians would gather off bedrock and disgourge In the sands in exchange for bits of heese, thereby saving much time and wet labor for the Bull and his pal.

"They're gettin' too dang fat, if you're askin' me," opined Friday as he let out a quart or so of tobacco juice on the rippling water, much to the disgust of the tadpoles.

They tried starving the little fellows for a few days, but the little tykes were well organized-no cheese-no gold. The old boys were now in a quandry. They had plenty of gold in their buckskin pokes, but winter was coming on and the creeks would freeze and the tadpoles would shortly grow legs and would develop out of their appetites for cheese once they could hop out on the banks and gather bugs and flies. Cheese being to the young frog what milk is to a baby, as soon as they are able to walk around by themselves they want food with blood in it else they will not develop into real he-men or possibly bullfrogs. I've seen a lot of men that reminded me of overgrown bullfrogs; possibly they ate too much raw meat when they were crawling.

"Mebbe they're tired of this kind of cheese," suggested the Bull, "we better change brands."

"Hell," quoth Friday, "I done changed on 'em last week when we ran outa that hard cheese we bought of that goatherd."

"That's it, that's it, shore as shootin'," orated the Bull, "they don't like the cheese."

Pell mell they rushed over the hills to the Mex goatherd, but no cheese. The goats had all gone dry and there was no milk from which to make the cheese, and that particular cheese they must have, for it was quite evident that their little helpers had developed a peculiar taste for just that brand of cheese and would work for no other. They tried limburger, Swiss and every other brand of cheese obtainable in Prescott camp, but thelittle devils turned up their noses at the lot, nothing doing in the way of a dicker or even a compromise, goat cheese or no gold was the ultimatum laid down by the tadpoles.

In desperation Jim, the Bull of Granite Creek, tried chips off a cake of yellow, German laundry soap. It served him right when the polliwogs turned sick and peeved at once. To get even with Jim they started moving the gold off bedrock into a turbulent branch where, if Jim did find it it would indeed be impossible for him to garner the golden pellets. You might think that I'm stretching the long bow again, but later along in this true story will see that (Continued on Page 16)