“Sandy Claws has come.”
“Ho-o-old fast!” yells a puncher, and just then the steer lams into
poor Maud S, scattering the punchers. Hair Oil Heppner tries to
bulldog that locoed animal, but he might as well ’a’ tried to bulldog
a box-car.
Then Maud S gets enervated again, and things begin to boil a-plenty.
“Ba-a-a-a-w!” bawls the steer.
“Ha-a-a-a-w!” sings Maud, and the both of them starts gamboling toward
the stage.
“Git ba-a-a-ck!” yowls Pete Gonyer. “Daw-w-w-gone yuh, git back!”
Rip-i-i-p! The steer gets its horns into the curtain, rips about
twenty feet of it loose, and starts to climb the stage.
Crash! The moon went down, and the danged old oil lamp inside
exploded.
“Fire! Fire!” howls Judge Steele, and then he picks up that blazing
moon and whales away at the steer with it.
Clank! The judge was left-handed, which might account for the poor
throwing, but he got his feet tangled in some of that loose curtain
and hit Scenery Sims right in the head with that heavy moon.
Bang! Somebody took a shot at the steer and knocked several bells, and
one of them danged bells hit me in the nose. I hate to get hit in the
nose with a bell. I hates to get hit in the nose with anything, but I
sure does detest a bell. I can see folks going out of the door as fast
as they can travel. I seen Hair Oil climbing onto poor Maud S, and
then my time is all taken up with that danged steer.
All this stuff is taking place a lot faster than I can tell it. I
bulldogged that steer. It was the first steer I ever tried to bulldog,
and if all future steers will keep away from me it will be the last.
* * * * *
I hooked onto his horns just in time to feel my feet dangle off the
edge of the stage, the same of which helped my act quite a lot. The
steer upends from my weight, and me and that steer landed into a
jumble of chairs, and over the top of us goes Maud S, celebrating her
second childhood by making Hair Oil pull leather.
The few remaining folks in the hall sort of celebrates by taking some
shots at the lights, the same of which makes our immediate future
kinda gloomy.
“Lo, I see a bright light!” squeals Scenery’s voice.
“Sus-sunfish, you crop-eared coyote!” yells Hair Oil, and then comes a
crash of glass.
“My ——!” yells Magpie. “She throwed Hair Oil out of the window! Where
are you, Ike?”
“Keep away!” I yells. “I’m paralyzed all the way down from my upper
lip and I don’t know whether me or the steer is on top.”
“Paralyzed —— ——!” howls Dirty. “Wish I was. Who in —— got the idea of
puttin’ cactus on the stage?”
“Look out for that mule!” yelps Magpie, and I looks up at the dim
figure of that locoed mule, almost over me. I yanks away from my steer
and the steer yanks right with me. Under ordinary conditions I’d ’a’
been able to get away, but I’ve got one leg through a string of them
sleigh-bells, and when that steer starts for the door, Ike Harper
E-squire went right along—on the back of his neck.
I hooked a lot of chairs on my way, kinda trying to impede the hoofs
of progress, but that scared steer made funny little noises and keeps
going. There’s a lantern hung at the head of the stairs, and I reckon
the steer was hunting for light.
Just before we hits the top of the stairs I hears a strain of quartet
music:
“Tentin’ to-o-o-o-night, tentin’ to-o-o——”
Crash!
We hit the doorway with our assortment of furniture, and the next
thing I know I’m amid more feller mortals and we’re all traveling the
downward path. I sees some red, white and blue lights, and I’m loose.
I reckon the bell strap busted. I gets to my feet, dodging stars and
other aerial impediments, when the stairs almost shakes out from under
me, and I gets a glimpse of Maud S falling downstairs.
Folks, I jumped—but too late. Me and Maud S landed at the bottom
together. I grabs the mule with both hands, and I feels her get up
with me hanging to some part of her anatomy. It’s about twenty feet
from the bottom of the stairs to the door, and I rode some part of
that crop-eared mule as far as the exit, where the top of the door
slapped me in the face and I went into the land of Once Upon a Time.
I’m just about to live happy ever afterwards, when something seems to
wake me up. I feels a dragging sensation, along with other painful
things, and then I dimly hears Dirty Shirt say—
“You’ve gotta help me, Muley.”
“I’ve gotta have a little help myself,” wails Muley. “I tell yuh that
danged steer knocked me down and then the mule fell over me.”
“But poor old Ike is de-e-e-ad!” sobs Dirty.
“He’ll keep,” croaks Muley; “but I’ll spoil if I don’t have help.”
“Yuh gotta help me drag him home, Muley. You was to blame for his
de-mise.”
“Naw, I wasn’t, Dirty. Chuck got the idea of dressin’ up that steer in
Tellurium’s clothes. Tellurium was sore, too. We twisted a wire around
the steer’s tail to make it bawl when the gag was pulled off.
“We just wanted to make it blat at Magpie. Nossir, yuh can’t blame us
for it, ’cause that mule would ’a’ killed him anyway. I’d like to know
what in —— woke up that gone-to-seed mule.”
“There ain’t nobody to hear,” says Dirty, “so I’ll tell yuh. I took a
can of red pepper and a can of ginger and mixed ’em. Then I made a gob
of dough in Dee’s shack and put the hot stuff in the middle. _Sabe?_
Maud S. swallered it. That’s all.”
“They’d kill us if they knew,” groans Dirty.
“Death’s stinger wouldn’t hurt me,” groans Muley.
I crawls to my feet, and they don’t see me until I’m standing up
beside ’em.
“You—you—uh—” stammers Dirty. “You won’t tell, w-will yuh, Ike?”
“Ain’t you dead—yet?” gasps Muley.
“Enough,” says I, “enough to foller out the old saying—dead men tell
no tales. I’ve got eyesight enough left to see the lights of Buck’s
place.”
“L-let’s go tut-to it,” stammers Dirty.
Which shows that Piperock never started anything that they couldn’t
finish—after a fashion.