I WAS IN DANGER of getting a bad case of the Legislative Mulligrubs when I felt something warm and wet on the nape of my neck. I had leant back against the low platform behind me. I let my chair thump forward. I turned to look at the dirty white dog who had come to the front of the podium to lick me. It was the same white dog whose scrabbling had almost exposed me at the St. Charles Hotel. He was wagging his tail and panting happily.

I do not like being touched by people but I do not mind being licked by a dog.

“That is President Pugh’ s lapdog,” said Barry in my ear. “Pugh got a bill passed last year about estray animals just to protect him. Bully, ain’t he?”

I nodded & scratched the lapdog behind his ear. I felt better already.

The dog had eyes like black buttons & a pink tongue. He was about the size of a small cat, with a tail like an all-wool capital O curled over his back.

At that moment a ripple of laughter went around the room as something scampered across the shoulders & bare heads of the legislators until it reached our table. It was a small brown monkey.

Barry said, “That there monkey is feuding with the lapdog.”

There was something wicked about the critter’s leathery little face, so like that of a man and yet so inhuman. He was hopping up & down on the desk in front of us, directing a stream of monkey profanities at the dog.

I said, “Is the monkey an estray animal?”

Barry laughed. “No, he belongs to Van Bokkelen.”

The monkey had got a pack of Lucifers and he stopped cussing & started striking them & throwing flaming matches at the dog. Luckily, none of them reached the platform, where the lapdog stood uttering a strange wheezing bark.

The legislators started laughing and cheering. They were so loud that Barry had to speak right into my ear, “They say the reason Pugh’s lapdog cannot bark is that a bullet once creased his neck in a shooting affray.”

The dog’s owner was banging his gavel and calling for order.

Finally, order was restored as a scowling man with black muttonchops stomped over & picked up the chittering monkey & put it on his shoulder & went to sit down again.

I put my mouth close to Barry’s ear. “What are their names?” I asked.

He said, “Pugh, Van Bokkelen, Hall, Hannah, Luther, Pray—”

“Not the men,” said I. “The monkey and the dog.”

He said, “I will tell you the animals’ names once you have learned the names of the Legislators.”

I said, “I will learn the names of the Legislators if you tell me something strange or memorable about each one.”

He said, “Like when you remember cards?”

I nodded.

He said, “I will tell you something strange or memorable about each one if you teach me how to remember cards.”

I said, “I will teach you how to remember cards if you teach me the Squiggly Worm Writing.”

“Deal,” said Barry. He spat in the palm of his hand and held it out.

I hate touching people & I hate shaking hands & I hate shaking spat-on hands most of all, but this was important to me.

So I spat in my right palm and we shook on it.

(Then I secretly wiped my hand on my trowsers.)

Barry pointed to the owner of the dirty white dog. “Let’s start with the lapdog’s owner, the man who got them to pass that law against estray animals. He is Dr. John Pugh from Aurora and he is President of this Council.”

I looked at the President of the Council. He had dirty white hair and bright black eyes, a bit like his dog. “I will call him ‘Lapdog’ Pugh,” I said.

Barry indicated the fierce-looking man with black muttonchops, who had retrieved the monkey. “And Van Bokkelen is the owner of the monkey,” said Barry. “He’s a vigilante from Frisco.”

“I will call him ‘Monkey’ Van Bokkelen,” I said.

In this way, Barry helped me memorize the different legislators.

For example, Augustus Pray was a devout ex–sea captain who never touched a drop of liquor. He observed Sundays to the extent that he would whip anyone he found working at his sawmill up at Lake Bigler. He had introduced a bill prohibiting gambling on the Sabbath, so Barry and I gave him the nickname “Sabbath” Pray.

Thomas “Loverboy” Hannah was a clean-shaven, talkative dandy from Gold Hill who was being courted by a pretty yellow-haired lady in a tall bonnet. She was in the gallery and kept blowing him kisses. Barry told me she was still married, which explained Hannah’ s eager proposal of a bill to make divorce legal.

We called Gaven D. Hall “Hothead” on account of his red hair & fiery temper.

“Six-Shooter” Luther kept leaping up from his chair to oppose “Monkey” Van Bokkelen’s proposed bill against citizens packing pistols. Luther was all for packing pistols. He packed three himself, viz:—a Colt’s Army Revolver with an ivory grip, a smaller Smith & Wesson’s pocket pistol like Jace’s and a pretty little Deringer of a type I had not seen before. Luther kept this smallest pistol on his desk. He would amuse himself by spinning it and seeing at whom it pointed when it stopped.

At about 4:15 p.m. the monkey got hold of Six-Shooter Luther’s small pistol and commenced firing it. Everybody hit the sawdust & President Pugh hid behind his podium & banged his gavel & adjourned the meeting for the day.

When the monkey had shot his load, Master Barry Ashim lifted his head from the sawdust and grinned at me. “Lucifer,” he said.

“Beg pardon?” I said.

“Lucifer,” he repeated. “That is the name of Van Bokkelen’s monkey, because he is addicted to matches and guns. And the dog is called Sazerac, or ‘Sazzy’ for short.”