by W. C. Tuttle
Author of “Tippecanoe and Cougars Two,” “Powder Law,” etc.
“She’s the beautifulest story ever wrote. I tell yuh she’s a dinger,
and I’m a heap in favor of showin’ it to the multitude, _ad lib_, also
visibly.”
“Magpie” Simpkins shifts his feet on the table and leans back in his
chair, acting like he’s said something real smart.
“The best ever told,” admits “Old Testament” Tilton. “I longs to see
it portrayed piously and with feelin’ aforethought.”
“But can she be done?” asks Wick Smith. “The time is short.”
“Piperock can do anything she sets out to do,” states Magpie.
“And everything else that could possibly happen between the time she
starts and the time she finishes,” says I.
“I figured it was about time for you to say something, Ike,” opines
Magpie.
Me and “Dirty Shirt” Jones wasn’t invited to this conference, but
we’re there anyway. Buck Masterson, Wick Smith, Judge Steele, Old
Testament and Magpie are the committee. Dirty said there’d likely be
need of substitutes before the meeting had gone far, so we took it
upon ourselves to attend.
“Three wise men won’t be hard to find,” opines Buck.
“Town’s full of ’em,” says Dirty. “Why stop at three?”
“You’ve spoke your piece, Dirty,” states the judge.
“We’ve got to have a star, ain’t we?” asks Buck.
“Yeah, we sure have,” admits Wick.
“Beyond the shadder of a doubt in my mind,” says the judge. “The star
must be there, sheddin’ its effulgent rays across the desert, lightin’
up the—uh—place, as it were. It’s goin’ to be hard to get a suitable
camule or camules.”
“Camule?” asks Buck. “Them humpbacked quadruples?”
“Cam-el,” corrects Magpie. “Yeah, we’ve got to have one. We’ve got to
have a lot of presents and——”
“Who’s going to be Sandy Claws?” asks Dirty.
“Nobody!” snaps Magpie. “Them things are out of date. We’re just
steppin’ along ahead of them ancient has-beens, yuh betcha. Nobody can
go home from this celebration and say we had the same old stuff.”
“Be —— lucky if they has the use of their vocal cords ten days
afterwards,” opines Dirty. “Piperock’s Merry Christmas has always
knocked —— out of Happy New Year’s. I suppose you’ll frame up a death
trap and charge us a dollar apiece to get butchered for a Piperock
Holiday.”
“This is goin’ to be free,” states Magpie.
“Just like a suicide,” sighs Dirty.
“Since when was you and Ike Harper invited to this meetin’?” asks
Wick. “’Pears to me——”
“We’re going out,” says I, “but before we erases ourselves from your
presence we’d like to orate open and free that we will not be part,
parcel nor accessory to anything pertaining to or being of a Piperock
entertainment. We will not do this nor that, and neither will we do
thus and so. We will toil not and neither will we spin to any extent.
Our hearts are hard and our minds are made up like a mule’s.”
“Better wait until you’re asked,” advises Magpie.
“No trouble to sound a warning,” says Dirty Shirt.
“You’d ask in vain, Magpie,” says I.
“I am full of wisdom——”
“Don’t argue with that animated flagpole,” says Dirty. “You never get
no place talkin’ back to him, Ike.”
Dirty was right. I might as well argue with the shadder of death,
because Magpie can’t hear nothing but his own voice in a argument, and
he knows he can hoodle me into places where an angel couldn’t find
footing nor room to flop its wings.
I’m sleeping real hard when Magpie comes home that night, and he
proceeds to sit down on me, yanks my off ear and yells—
“Ike!”