AT FIRST I RECKONED my tiny Spirit Guide Worm had been right to send me to Master Barry Ashim for help understanding the Legislature.

Barry sold me a black frock coat & one of them little Jewish skullcaps & also a stovepipe hat. When he plunked the stovepipe on my head, it kind of shmooshed my hair down over my forehead & gave me bangs that almost reached my eyebrows. That made my face look different, so I left my hair like that. Barry also found a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles with clear lenses that had been for display purposes. For the finishing touch he gave me a metal band with two false front teeth that had belonged to his aunt Esther. They gave me rabbit teeth.

He showed me my face in a mirror and I was amazed. I did not look like me.

We went over to the Legislative Building early so that Barry could show me where everything was. Although it was the middle of November, the morning was warm & sunny, with a soft breeze that blew away the last of my Mulligrubs.

“Why do you want to attend the Legislature anyway?” asked Barry.

“So that Jace will forgive me for spying on him,” I said. “He wants me to make a note of what bills are proposed, both public and private. But I do not understand any of it. That is why I need your help.” I glanced at him. “I do not even know what a ‘bill’ is.”

“A bill is just an idea in writing,” said Barry as we reached the sandstone part of the sidewalk. “The legislators hammer it out in discussion, then they bat it back and forth between houses. When they have got the wording right, they vote to make it a law. And if Governor Nye signs it, then that bill becomes a law.”

I took out my Detective Notebook and drew a duck with a big bill and a judge’s gavel coming down hard to hammer it into a flat page with fancy writing.

“What is that?” said Barry.

“That is a Bill being hammered into a Law,” I explained. “I use mind-pictures like this when I am remembering playing cards.”

His head turned real fast. “You can remember the cards in someone’s hand?”

“Sure,” I said, “I can remember all the cards in a shuffled deck. But I need to make a strange or memorable picture about each one.”

He said, “I would like to learn your method of remembering cards.”

We were still standing in front of the Great Basin Hotel. I pointed at it and said, “Do the body of men called the Legislature live and sleep in there?”

“No. They only meet there. It is not being used as a hotel at present.”

I said. “What do the body of men called the Legislature do anyway?”

“Don’t you know?”

I said, “The word ‘Legislature’ confounds me. If I can’t make a picture of a word in my head, then I get confused.”

He said, “A ‘legislator’ is a lawmaker. The Legislature is a passel of them doing it. Here is a picture for you: imagine a bunch of men lined up on that ledge up there—‘ledge’ for legislature, d’you see? If they don’t make the sort of laws we want, then we make them jump and go splat on this sandstone pavement.”

I said, “That is a good picture for my head. I will not forget it.”

I sketched some little men in stovepipe hats up on the ledge of the Great Basin Hotel. Over their heads I drew two “houses” with the duck’s “bill” flying back and forth between them.

Barry led me inside and up the stairs to the landing.

He was explaining how the Council was also called the First House, whereas the House of Representatives was the Second House. He said they were like the Senate and Congress in the States, but I did not understand it well enough to draw another picture.

He said, “Just remember that we are going to take notes on what happens in the Council. That’s where your friend wants you, right?”

“I think so,” I replied.

“What is that?” drawled Sam Clemens, looking over my shoulder at my sketch. “Looks like some buzzards attacking a row of undertakers.”

I froze. Would my reporter friend from Virginia City recognize me?

“Those are ducks,” said Barry, “not buzzards. That sketch shows the legislators hammering Bills into new Laws for the Territory.”

“Haw, haw,” said Sam Clemens. “That is bully.”

When Barry introduced me as his cousin Danny Ashim, Sam Clemens merely shook my hand and said, “Another one of them phonographic boys? Pleased to meet you.”

My threefold disguise of bangs, clear spectacles & false front teeth was a success! That lifted my spirits a little.

Barry introduced me to two other reporters with Sam Clemens. The younger one was Mr. Clement T. Rice and the older was Mr. A.J. Marsh, famous inventor of Phonographic Shorthand. Mr. A.J. Marsh was pleased to hear I wanted to learn his Squiggly Worm Writing and he offered his help whenever I should need it.

By 10 o’clock the room was filled with loud talk & laughter & smoke. The legislators were mostly clean-shaven & dressed in dark frock coats & stovepipe hats. They stood or sat at desks arranged in two curved rows facing a platform. There were men and women in the gallery at the back, too. Of course, I did not see Jace among them; I was attending so he wouldn’t have to.

All the men removed their hats as a chaplain led prayers & then someone banged a gavel & another man called everybody’s names & soon people were standing up & proposing bills. I tried to follow what they were saying but I got confused because they kept talking about Eyes and Nose and I had a picture in my mind of people’s eyes and noses whizzing around the room. Then Barry told me it was “Ayes” and “Noes,” such as when people vote Yes or No. I felt mighty foolish.

I looked at the hatless men smoking their cigars & making doodles on pads & chatting with each other, or even with the people behind the rail, & tipped back in their chairs with their boots on their desks but then raising their hands to vote as if they understood everything that had been going on without hardly even paying attention.

I looked at the women in the gallery applauding the debates and saying, “Hear, hear!” like even they knew what was going on.

I was now beginning to think my Little Worm Spirit Guide had been wrong.

I could not understand what the legislators were doing nor the bystanders behind the railing nor could I decipher even one of Barry’s worms. The loud voices of men were making my head throb & the smell of the fast-filling spittoons was making me queasy.

If I could not get to grips with the Territorial Legislature, how would I report back to Jace?

That was when a dog and a monkey came to my rescue.