“Late of Brazil.”
“But-but-but—” stutters Frankie.
“Let the goats do it, son,” advises Magpie, and then he points at me.
“This critter is my pardner, also from the nut country, and we’ve come
back to see if anything needs fixing. What do you think, Frankie?”
“Well!” exclaims Frankie, wide-eyed. “Well, I don’t know whether you
could get away with it or not.”
“Me?” asks Magpie. “Get away with it? Say, son, I’ve rustled cows and
hung rustlers; salted mines and bought salted ones; and I’ve bit,
fought, scratched and shot my way from the cradle up to date, and now
you asks me if I can adopt a name and get away with it where I ain’t
known. Consider yourself answered in the affirmative, and have some more
coffee. What you trying to do—irrigate your knee-caps?”
The next day we takes our burros and pilgrims to Piperock, takes the
stage from there to Paradise, and draws five hundred each. That person
has wired us a thousand to cinch the deal, and we fixes things up at the
bank.
“The feller what invented sleeping-cars was dying from insomnia,” states
Magpie, after he bumps his head a few times in his bunk. He crawls out
and yells for the porter to bring him an ax, so he can knock the head
out of his bunk. The porter refused to get him one, so he puts his
clothes back on.
“What you going to do, Magpie?” I asks.
“I’m going up to the rear end and set in the sight-seeing car,” says he.
“Paid money for a bed and all I draw is a bird’s nest.”
“You-all can’t sleep in the observation cah,” objects the porter.
“You-all simply can’t do that.”
Magpie reaches into his bunk, hauls out his old Colt, and shoves it
inside his waistband.
“For why can’t I?” he asks, but the porter went away without making up
the bunk across from us, and didn’t show up until the party what owned
it yelled his head off for a place to sleep.
The next morning, while I’m standing on one ear, trying to inch my pants
on, I hears Magpie’s voice. I peeks out, and here comes Magpie towing a
party down the car with him. This party wears a man-sized bunch of hair
on his face, a crooked nose and a pair of eyes what don’t match. He’s a
congenial looking Jasper, and he’s wearing a rubber collar just like me
and Magpie are.
“Sleep well?” I asks.
“Ike, I want you to meet Mr. Hobbs—knowed after a short acquaintance as
‘Homely.’ Homely, this is my pardner Ike Harper. We didn’t sleep. Me and
Homely bought a deck of cards from the porter, and we spent the night
pleasantly. Tonight we’re going to climb up on top of the car and sleep
in the open, eh, Homely?”
“No argument,” agrees Homely. “Get into your pants, Ike, and we’ll all
eat breakfast.”
“Where do we stop?” I asks.
“We don’t stop to eat,” explains Homely. “We eat in the dining-car. This
here train don’t stop for no such things as eats. Sabe?”
Homely points out a feller in the eating-car, and whispers to me:
“I been associating with that feller for some time now, and I’d bet a
dobie dollar that he’s Jesse James.”
He don’t look like a bad-man, and he ain’t got no visible guns, but when
he hands us our bill for breakfast I shakes hands with Homely and
congratulates him on his deductions.
Homely can take the biggest drink of whisky you ever seen. Why, that
hombre can gasp and inhale a pint. Me and Magpie are temperance beside
him. We can’t help liking him, ’cause he fits in fine with us. Frankie
takes a liking to him, and we plays poker all the way to St. Paul.
Homely can hold more assorted kinds of food on a knife blade than any
other living man. It sure takes a steady hand to balance peas, potatoes,
meat and bread and gravy on one blade and never spill a drop, but Homely
can do it. Everybody on the car watched him, and I’m betting they envied
him his ability.
* * * * *
We got off at St. Paul, ’cause we had to change trains. Frankie gets me
and Magpie to one side, and tells us that he ain’t going on to Redfield
with us, ’cause folks might think it’s a plant. He’ll show up later. Him
and Magpie have had some long talks, in which Magpie has learned more
about that family than the family knows. Frankie says for us to dress
befitting the occasion and our station in life. Of course it’s sort of
up to Magpie, more than it is me, so me and Homely takes in the town,
while Magpie goes shopping.
We has some ham and eggs, and then inspects some of the places where
good cheer comes packed in glass. We meets a pleasant sort of a person,
who asks us, confidential like, if we’d care to mingle the pasteboards
in a nice quiet place.
The quiet place don’t interest us none, ’cause we’re sufficiently
organized to play in a boiler factory, so we bought him a drink and
pilgrims away with him. I don’t know where he took us, but I do know
that it would take six Injuns and a pack of bloodhounds to ever pick up
our trail.
We got into a room full of smoke, and there’s a good game going.
Five-dollar jack-pots, and no limit. The game is filled, so me and
Homely joins the crowd around the table. There’s a feller right in front
of us, wearing an ice-cream suit and big floppy straw hat, and he seems
to be winning a-plenty. I can’t see his face, but from the way he folds
his cards I can see he’s no infant at the game.
I stands there and watches the draw on a pot what has been boosted
enough to make it worth fighting for. Floppy hat draws one, and the
dealer one. The rest petered out before the draw. Homely lights a cigar
and says to the dealer—
“Mister, I’d be willing to pay you good wages to show me how you done
that.”
“Done what?” snarls the feller, squinting up at Homely from under his
eyeshade.
“Palm cards thataway,” grins Homely. “You’re setting on a queen that
ought to be in your hand, and your hand shows a king what hadn’t come
due yet, and you done it so slick that I almost missed it.”
All of which is a dangerous remark right at that time, if anybody should
ask you. Nobody said a word or moved for a few seconds, and then I sees
the dealer turn pale. The party in the big hat has sort of leaned back,
and when I glances down over his shoulders I see the muzzle of a gun
pointing right at the dealer’s stummick. The man behind the gun reaches
out and begins to remove said pot into his coat pockets.
The party at the right, being out of line of the gun, opines that he’s
got to exercise his lungs, and he does so with great cheer. He seems to
want the police, fire department and a free passage out of there all to
once, and just then some darn fool turned off the lights.
Man, there was some going on right there. I reckon there was at least a
dozen men in that room, and when the lights went out I hopped back
against the wall and let ’em stampede.
I hears the smash of glassware, when somebody tipped over the bar, and
conversation consists of curses and yelps. Then comes the pop of a
six-gun, and the bullet burnt my ear.
Believe me, Ike Harper ain’t no stranger to powder smoke, so I whoops
loud and clear, hauls out my old Colt and takes a shot at anything that
happens to be in my way. Across from me a gun pops and I gets my ears
full of plaster.
_Bing_ goes a gun from the other side, and she settles down to a steady
battle. Every time I sees a flash I shoots at it, and I reckon the
others were doing the same. I shoots six times, and then has to quit,
and I reckon the others were in the same fix.
“I wish I knowed where that danged switch was,” I hears a voice
complain, and then it says again, “Don’t shoot, you darn fools—I’ve
found it,” and the lights comes on again.
There stands Homely, leaning against the wall, with an empty gun in his
hand, and a foolish look on his face. We both looks across the room,
where the table is laying on its side, and up over the edge comes a
waving lock of hair, then a pair of squinty eyes, and a tired-looking
mustache, and Magpie Simpkins breaks into a grin. He climbs to his feet,
sets down on the edge of the table, and looks around on the floor.
“Anybody seen anything of that Brazil hat of mine?” he asks. “This sure
is one dusty place for an ice-cream suit, if you asks me.”