“The letter was waiting for me when I got here,” he explains.
“You don’t need to apologize, Magpie. How much did yuh pay for this
male bird, beast or reptile?”
“That’s what I don’t know, Ike. I’m sorry.”
“You always are, Magpie,” says I. “You can be sorry more times, hand
running, than any man I ever seen. You were born to sorrow. Some folks
are born to sorrow, but some are like me—they has sorrow forced upon
’em. What’ll we do with the danged thing?”
“How do I know?” he snaps at me. “Cassowary! What in —— is uh
cassowary, Ike?”
“I ought to know!” I snaps right back at him. “You must uh been pretty
blamed drunk, Magpie Simpkins.”
He nods, solemn-like, and spits at uh lizard again.
“Maybe. That Eastern hooch is awful stuff, Ike. I don’t remember no
pet store. I must uh bought it the night I left Chicago for St. Louis.
I wakes up in the morning and went to uh ticket office.”
“Give me uh ticket to St. Louis,” says I to the clerk.
“He looks queer like at me, and calls in uh policeman, and Ike, I had
uh —— of uh time convincing that officer that I wasn’t crazy. He
explained to me that I’m already in St. Louis.”
“Them policemen must be uh nearsighted bunch,” says I. “You’d have uh
nice time trying to prove that to an officer west uh Dakota.”
“Don’t chide me, Ike,” says he. “I was uh stranger in uh strange land,
and they took me in. Anyway I got uh green and red shirt, uh civilized
hat and uh necktie pin to show for my trip.”
“Don’t forget Cassie,” says I. “Didn’t you talk mines uh-tall?”
“Uh-huh. There was uh fat bartender in Chicago who sympathized with me
uh heap. Said he wished I’d uh showed up sooner with my proposition,
cause he’d sunk all his money in uh new diving apparatus. He sure was
uh good old scout, Ike. Doggone, that feller could fix up uh drink uh
hooch until she tastes almost temperance, but she sure was uh sheep in
wolf’s clothes. I rode all the way from Chicago to St. Louis on three
of ’em and didn’t know it.”
“The big question before the house is this, Magpie: is this here
purchase uh yours uh singer, uh beast, uh burden or uh nuisance?”
“Must be uh useful utensil, Ike, or I’d never bought it. I may get
red-eyed from wobble water but I never loses my sense uh useful and
ornamental things. I’m what you’d call uh discerning person—drunk or
sober.”
All uh which shows that there ain’t no use arguing with Magpie
Simpkins. He can do no wrong. Uh course he might do things that he’d
be sorry for, but he never figures that he’s wrong—just uh little
mistaken for the time being.
“Come back broke?” I asks.
“Uh-huh. My gosh, Ike, I must uh spent money like uh timber Willie. If
I knowed what that animile cost me I could figure how much the trip
cost me.”
“You don’t have to let X equal the missing quantity, Magpie,” says I.
“You had nine hundred when yuh left, and you’re broke now; therefore
the trip cost me four hundred and fifty. Sabe?”
Magpie don’t sleep well that night. First he has an argument with that
Chicago bartender. Uh course, me being an innocent bystander or
bylayer, I gets hit in the nose. I cautions him to fight the other
way. He apologizes uh heap, but inside uh five minutes he starts
another fight with some colored person over the way his bed is made
and I gets pitched out of the bunk and hits my head on the stove.
I’ve been mistook for an Injun, and one time “Red River” Radkey
absorbs too much of the fermented foam, and mistakes me for uh pink
pollywog, but that’s the first time that anybody ever mistook me for
uh colored porter, and it makes me mad.
I climbs right back on that bunk, gets Magpie by the feet, and drags
him around the yard in the moonlight. He’s plumb awake and docile
enough to apologize again when I finishes the third lap around the
woodpile, so he climbs back on the bunk and I takes uh blanket and
sleeps on the floor.
* * * * *
The next morning we saddles our burros and starts for town. We’re out
uh spuds, and we needs some drill steel. Magpie leads the procession,
setting on the rump of uh fuzzy-looking jackass. He’s wearing that
hard hat, green and red shirt—he sheds his vest—and on his hands he
wears them gray gloves. He sure is uh thing to see. Even the burros
acts bashful around him.
“I reckon I’ll make the inhabitants uh Piperock set up and take
notice,” he states, admiring himself.
He sets the pot-shaped hat on the peak of his head, and brushes off
that loco shirt with his gloves.
“Yes,” says I. “All I hope is that they don’t set up with uh gun in
their hands. You sure look like uh cross between uh lodge-pole
Christmas tree and uh zebra.”
We pilgrims down to the main road, and ambles through the dust in the
direction of Piperock. We comes to uh turn in the road, where we sees
uh man setting alongside on uh rock. He’s all humped up, with his head
between his hands, and don’t look up until I hails him. Then we
recognizes him as being Chuck Warner, puncher for the Cross-J. I never
did know just how to take that feller. He never growed none to speak
of from his waist on down, and I figures that he’s the
honestest-looking liar I ever met. He sets there on that rock,
sad-like, but when he sizes up our outfit his eyes gets bigger and he
sort uh gasps:
“My ——! It must be true!”
“Too true,” I replies, glancing at Magpie. “Too true.”
He gets off the rock and wobbles over to us. His eyes are blood-shot,
like he’d been dallying unduly with the cheerful fluid, and he squints
at Magpie.
“It’s Magpie Simpkins in disguise, Chuck,” says I.
“Huh,” says he, sort uh relieved like. “Maybe I ain’t so bad as I
thought. You fellers got time to help out uh pilgrim in doubt?”
“Your obedient servants,” says I. “Lead us to the doubt.”
He turns and ambles off across the country, and me and Magpie is right
behind him. About two hundred yards from the road he stops and points
across an open spot.
“That’s my bronc,” he states. “Yessir, that’s my little hawse, but,
but—say, what in —— is on that rope uh mine, eh?”
“Fluttering fool-hens!” explodes Magpie, fanning himself with his
civilized hat.