This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Ike Harper thought he had seen every kind of frontier foolishness—until Magpie Simpkins and Tellurium Woods turned a reckless wager into a full-blown wilderness comedy. When Magpie decides he can survive naked in the timber after reading of another man's feat, Ike is dragged in as stakeholder, and the bet quickly spirals into a tangle of pride, bad judgment, and impossible plans. Then Magpie's father, Professor Phinney, arrives with family and the ever-earnest Doctor Doolittle, determined to test the same theory, and Ike is left to cover for a "dead" Magpie while everyone else treats the absurd experiment with solemn seriousness. From there, misunderstanding multiplies: anxious women, a supposed wild man, a braying "grizzly," a suspicious pie, stampeding dogs, gunfire, a runaway hearse, and a yard full of eccentric arrivals all collide in slapstick confusion. As accusations fly and mistaken identities pile up, the truth finally emerges in a hidden note and a confession of betting schemes, revealing that the whole uproar was driven by secrecy, vanity, and human folly. In the end, the story lands on a dryly comic frontier moral: once people start trying to manage chaos, the wilderness—and their own bad ideas—usually wins.
