“Easy, Tombstone!” They seems to all stop together and their heads are
at least three feet ahead of their boots.
I seen Half-Mile’s hand relax from his gun and it fell on the floor.
Old Testament tried to pick his teeth with the fork-handle. Tombstone
hitches up his belt and scratches one knee with his other foot.
“According to that, we’re candidates for the cemetery,” observed Judge
Steele sickly-like.
“Who passed?” whispered Ornery, who can’t read.
“Dirty Shirt Jones!” yelped Half-Mile.
“Where is Doc Milliken?” howled Buck, but Doc had gone hence.
They just sort of mills around and looks at each other.
“Well,” says the judge, “what will we do now?”
“You might kiss and make up,” suggests Magpie. “Piperock is getting as
bad as New York. You fellers won’t kill nobody unless you gets paid for
it.”
“Am I a Lizard or ain’t I?” asks Dirty Shirt.
“You ain’t been initiated yet,” squeaks Scenery.
“Whatfor kind of a thing is that?”
“We’ll show yuh,” grins Magpie. “It’s lots of fun. We ain’t got all our
things to do with yet, but we _sabe_ a few simple things.”
Magpie and Scenery gets Bill Thatcher and Frenchy to help them, and the
rest of us sets back to see the fun. They takes off his boots and puts a
can of Cayenne pepper in each one. Then they waltzes him up and down the
hall until it gets to working good. I feel sorry for poor old Dirty. He
gets past with that, and then Scenery announces that he is about to be
presented with the Royal Girdle of the Crippled Crawlers, and he hands
Dirty a live bull snake.
Poor Dirty lets out a war-whoop and tries to get loose, but the four
of them hang on to him. The poor feller is blindfolded so he can’t see
nothing and he don’t know it wasn’t a rattler. Then they picks him up
off the floor by the arms and legs.
“Brother Lizards,” says Magpie, “we will now cast him into outer
darkness, that he may obtain meekness and learn to crawl.”
Dirty yelps and tries to get loose, but they raises the window, Magpie
yells, “Tim-m-m-m-ber-r-r-r-r!” and they threw him out bodily.
“My Gawd!” gasps Tombstone. “You’ve killed the poor coot!”
Magpie turns from the window and grins at the crowd.
“That was a danged inhuman thing to do,” states Half-Mile. “It’s thirty
feet to the street.”
Just then we hears somebody yell: “Whoo, hoo! Magpie!”
Magpie opens another window and leans out.
Muley Bowles yells up.
“Hurry up! We can’t wait all night.”
“My ----!” gasps Magpie. “They had the blanket at the wrong window!”
Then I cut the rope off the goat’s neck.