We wasn't there more'n ten minutes when one of the fellers jumped up.
"There comes the parson now," he says.
Shore enough. There come the parson in his fancy two-wheel Studebaker,
lookin' as perky as thunder. "Gall?" says Buckshot. "Wal, I should
smile!" Under his cart, runnin' 'twixt them yalla wheels, was his
spotted dawg.
I hollered in to Dutchy. "Where's you' purp, Dutch?" I ast. "The
parson's haided this way."
Dutchy was as tickled as a kid with a lookin'-glass and a hammer. He
dropped his bar-towel and hawled out his purp.
"Vatch me!" he says.
The parson was a good bit closter by now, settin' up straight as a
telegraph pole, and a-hummin' to hisself. He was wearin' one of them
caps with a cow-catcher 'hind and 'fore, knee britches, boots and a
sweater.
"A svetter, mind y'!" says Dutchy.
"Be a Mother Hubbard _next,_" says Bill Rawson.
Somehow, though, as the parson come 'longside the post-office, most
anybody wouldn't 'a' liked the way thinks looked. You could sorta
smell somethin' explodey. He was too all-fired songful to be natu'al.
And his dawg! That speckled critter was as diff'rent from usual as
the parson. His good ear was curled up way in, and he was kinda layin'
clost to the ground as he trotted along--layin' so clost he was plumb
_bow-legged_.
Wal, the parson pulled up. And he'd no more'n got offen his seat when,
first rattle outen the box, them dawgs mixed.
Gee whillikens! _such_ a mix! They wasn't much of the reg'lar ki-yin'.
Dutchy's purp yelped some; but the parson's? Not fer _him!_ He just
got a good holt--a shore enough diamond hitch--on that thirst-parlour
dawg, and chawed. _Say!_ And whilst he chawed, the dust riz up like they
was one of them big sand-twisters goin' through Briggs City. All of a
suddent, _how that spotted dawg could fight!_
Dutchy didn't know what 'd struck him. He runs out. "Come, hellup,"
he yells to the parson.
The parson shook his head. "This street is not my private property,"
he says.
Then Dutchy jumped in and begun t' kick the parson's dawg in the snoot.
The parson walks up and stops Dutchy.
That made the Dutchman turrible mad. He didn't have no gun on him, so
out he jerks his pig-sticker.
What happened next made our eyes plumb stick out. That parson
side-stepped, put out a hand and a foot, and with that highfalutin'
Jewie Jitsie you read about, tumbled corn-beef-and-cabbage on to his
back. Then he straddled him and slapped his face.
"Lieber!" screeched Dutchy.
"Goin' t' have any more Sunday night dances?" ast the parson. (_Bing,
bang_.)
"Nein! Nein!"
"Any more" (_bing, bang_) "free Sunday suppers?"
"Nein! Nein! Hellup!"
"Goin' to change this" (_biff, biff_) "saloon's name!"
"Ya! Ya! _Gott!_"
The parson got up. "_Amen!_" he says.
Then he runs into Silverstein's, grabs a pail of water, comes out again,
and throws it on to the dawgs.
The Dutchman's purp was done fer a'ready. And the other one was tired
enough to quit. So when the water splashed, Dutchy got his dawg by the
tail and drug him into the thirst-parlour.
But that critter of the parson's. Soon as the water touched him, them
spots of hisn _begun to run_. Y' see, he wasn't the stylish keerige
dawg at all! _He was a jimber-jawed bull!_
* * * * *
Wal, the next Sunday night, the school-house was chuck full. She
wasn't there--no, Monkey Mike tole me she was visitin' down to
Goldstone; but, a-course, all the _rest_ of the women folks was. And
about forty-'leven cow-punchers was on hand, and Buckshot, and Rawson
and Dutchy,--yas, ma'am, _Dutchy,_ we rounded _him_ up. Do y' think
after such a come-off we was goin' to let that limburger run any
compytition place agin our parson?
And that night the parson stands up on the platform, his face as shiny
as a milk-pan, and all smiles, and he looked over that cattle-town bunch
and says, "I take fer my text this evenin', 'And the calf, and the
young lion and the fatlin' shall lie down in peace t'gether.'"