Into the room she comes, and stands there blinking. She’s a sight.
Horse-liniment don’t make a sweet-smelling jag, but I reckon it’s
effective.
“Here—she—comes?” croaks Ike. “I thought—Scenery, did you marry her?”
“Marry——!” squeals Scenery, “I found her in the woodshed!”
“Where is your wife?” yelps Ike wild-like at Magpie.
“Wait,” says mama. “He can’t admit anything because his mind is gone,
but perhaps his child will know. There he is—ask him.”
Muley is standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He looks like he had
been soaking his head in water to try and wash out the cobwebs. He seems
to try to speak, but his voice won’t work.
“We can go now if you’re ready,” states Chuck to the doctor. “The wagon
is outside.”
Ready? Say, them three people almost cut the door off the hinges getting
out and into the wagon, and Chuck went right behind them. I reckon they
wasn’t in no bigger hurry than he was.
“Gosh dang it, make her let loose!” wails Scenery. “I came up here to
get a crazy man, and——”
“Bring the sweet things out, Ike!” yells a voice outside, and Potlatch
Fanny staggers out of the door, dragging the protesting Scenery with
her. Just as they hit the porch, —— busts loose for noon. I reckon that
Ike had brought half the population of Yaller Rock County up to that
shivaree, and had managed to sneak them all up in the dark without
anybody hearing their approach, and they’ve got every kind of a
noise-producer from sleigh-bells to shotguns.
I ducked out of the kitchen door, cut around the corner and hopped into
the back of that wagon just as the parade reached the steps. Chuck is a
good driver as I’ve said before, but no half-broke bronc will “drive” in
a case of that kind—they just move, that’s all.
I reckon Chuck forgot that they were tied to that corner post, but being
tied wasn’t nothing in their young lives. They surged back and took out
that post, root and branch, and then went ahead. The right front wheel
climbed the porch, and we went regardless. There’s five more posts under
that porch. I stayed for three more, and then I got pitched high and
handsome, and went into a front window backward.
I seemed to drop into something, and we went across the room together,
where I caressed the wall with the top of my head. Then this unknown
power seems to jerk me across the floor, and I finds myself being yanked
over that busted porch, down the steps and into a circle of light.
I looks at my motive power and finds that danged goat standing on my
lap, with its horns hooked under my cartridge-belt. That poor goat
wanted to get loose awful bad. It would pull back real hard and then
forward quick to take up the slack.
Man, it was some sensation. Every time it came forward it hit me under
the point of my wishbone. Why didn’t it let loose? You don’t “let” goats
loose—you force ’em loose, and I was all out of force. My belt-buckle
was in the back.
But the goat solved the problem. It hit me extra hard, knocked me flat
on my back, the same of which also upset the goat, and its horns comes
out from under that belt like unhooking one of them wire puzzle things.
I gets to my feet and started to walk. I just wanted to get away from
there. I’ve got one leg which don’t work right, but I done the best I
could, and after I’ve walked about six miles I reached the door of the
bunk-house. It wasn’t six miles as the crow flies, unless the crow was
lost.
I fell in across the doorstep and joins company with Magpie, Mighty, Jay
Bird, Ike and Muley. They sure are a bunch of casualties. They don’t
welcome me—neither do they kick me out; so I hauls myself to a bunk and
sets down.