by W. C. Tuttle
Author of “Jay Bird’s Judgement,” “Dirty Work for Doughgod,” etc.
I still contend that Magpie Simpkins is too finicky. It’s all right for
a feller to desire to appear to a good advantage, especially on Sunday,
but a finicky person hadn’t ought to pack a gun at a time when he’s just
acquired something out of the ordinary in haberdashery.
New boots don’t mean nothing but misery to me. They could set diamonds
all the way around the sole, but just the same she don’t spell nothing
but blisters and cramps to Ike Harper. Anyway, I’m so bow-legged that my
heels have got to be run over on the outside edges before I can be
comfortable around the knees.
Magpie paid twenty dollars for them yaller boots. They was glowing with
youth, vitality and shiny polish when Magpie leaned ’em against the side
of that Pullman berth. They was a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
A pair of boots ain’t nothing but footwear, except when they’re the
color of a sunset in Injun Summer and fit like the skin on a
sausage--and cost twenty dollars.
Some folks will likely argue that Magpie hadn’t owned said boots long
enough to become attached to ’em, but to those critics I will say: you
don’t have to have a twenty-dollar bill around the house very long
before you becomes sentimental about it.
Me and Magpie are on our way back from the Stampede at Totem, where we
went to clean up some money, figuring that we knowed a little more than
the fellers did who run the games. We found out that honesty is a poor
poker policy in Totem.
Magpie sheds bitter tears over them boots. Their pristine yaller has
went. A porter, suffering from color-blindness, lack of illumination, or
gin, has rubbed ’em plentiful with black polish until there ain’t
nothing identifying left except the shape and size.
Magpie also bought a new blanket from an Injun robe vender. It contains
all the colors of the rainbow, and the design is supposed to invoke a
special blessing from some high-cheeked god of some kind.
Magpie looks at said boots, folds ’em reverently in the blanket and then
pushes the bell in the berth. Them boots has been under that seat ever
since we got up in the morning. Magpie, being a heap vain, desires to
pack ’em openly and places same in the aisle at night, along with his
regular ones. Now that he wishes to show off a little, he opines to put
’em on. He sets there in his socks and pushes that little button.
As I said before, Magpie is too finicky and sudden. No matter if he did
know the certain porter connected with our car and didn’t wait for an
apology--he might ’a’ sounded a warning.
He didn’t hit the porter, but he would as soon as he got used to the
sway of that car, ’cause his third shot busted the glass right by the
porter’s head.
Maybe the conductor was right, and maybe he wasn’t. Anyway, it’s danged
bad form to hop on to a man’s back when he’s trying to settle a personal
matter. Him and Magpie went down in the aisle, and everybody begins to
exercise their lungs.
Being part and parcel of Magpie’s crew, I immediate and soon bends my
gun over the conductor’s head. Folks will likely say that I was wrong,
that I had no interest in them yaller boots; but there’s bound to be
some Sundays when Magpie won’t wear ’em, and there ain’t no law against
me dressing up a little.
What is politely known as consternation seems to prevail. Some folks
even go so far as to try and hand us their valuables, while others seem
to have the instinct of prairie-dogs and hunt a hole.
Then the train jerks to a stop, which almost upsets me, and Magpie backs
into me, poking shells into his gun.
“Grab my bundle and get a-going,” he yelps, and I obeyed him to the
letter.
Then we backs off that train. A brakeman heaves a hunk of coal at us and
ducks under the train, and from up by the express car comes the roar of
a shotgun, and a handful of buckshot seeps around us. We gets our
bearings, and the way we went away from that train would make an
antelope weep with envy. Then we sees the train pull out.
“My ----!” grunts Magpie. “We sure got some action, Ike!”
“_Wa-a-a-a! Wa-a-a-a!_”
“What in ---- was that?” whispers Magpie.
“I’d say,” says I, feeling a drop of cold sweat run right down my
back-bone, “I’d say that your boots squeaked, Magpie.”
“Boots? I ain’t got none on, Ike. Did you get that bundle?”
I sure did. It sort of wiggled in my hands; so I laid it down on the
ground.
“_Wa-a-a-a! Yah-a-a-a-a!_” she goes again.
Magpie rolled the bundle over with the muzzle of his gun, and then we
stares at each other. Magpie pulls his long mustache and clears his
throat.
“Ike,” says he solemn-like, “you picked the wrong bundle. Beyond the
shadder of a doubt you’ve traded my boots for a baby.”
The sinful thing I had done weighed upon my soul, and I felt bad. I
pictured the agonized mother setting there in that car, squeaking like a
Red River cart when feeding time comes and she tries to nurse a pair of
stained boots. Maybe she’d recognize good leather and workmanship, but
at a time like that you can’t expect a mother to pay much attention to
tanning and stitching on a pair of high-heeled boots--even if they did
cost twenty dollars.
“Great gosh!” says I after due consideration. “This is awful!”
“It sure is,” agrees Magpie. “I’ll get my feet full of cactus.”
“Dang your feet! Think of what we’ve done!”
“Yeah? What you’ve done, Ike. Don’t embroil me in it. Them boots cost me
regular money.”
“Well,” says I after a while, “we’re a pair of ---- fools!”
“Don’t talk shop, Ike,” he advises me weary-like, peering off into the
gloom. “If you’ve got any sympathy, use a little on me. I might step on
a rattlesnake.”
“If I knowed where one lived, I’d lead you to it,” I replies. “Shooting
up a train is enough scandal for a pair of peace lovers from
Piperock--without also getting arrested for kidnaping. If anybody ever
says yaller boots to me again, they’d better pick a soft spot to land
on, ’cause they’re sure going deep.”
“Pshaw! I hate it as much as you do, Ike. Figuring from a property
standpoint, I’m a lot worse off than you are. In fact, you’re two boots
and a baby better off than I am.”
We set there and peers off into the gloom. Here we are, dumped off in
the middle of the Bad Lands, night time, with no friendly beacon to
guide us: one sockless, one brainless, and a baby--and all because
Magpie prefers his boots yaller instead of black.
“Well,” says Magpie, “I reckon we might as well mosey along, Ike. Come
on, family man.”
I picks up that squawking bundle of humanity, hitches up my belt and
follers Magpie over to the track, where we points north. I reckon we got
dumped off in a country where there never was no cause to build a town.
Then that offspring begins to raise its voice in protest. Sounded to me
like Andy Johnson trying to play sentimental music on a squeeze organ
when he’s full to the neck with hooch. I pikes along behind Magpie,
trying to keep my mind off that suffering bunch of misery. But it ain’t
no use.
“What do you reckon has got into the critter?” I asks, and Magpie stops.
“A feller what don’t know any more about babies than you do, Ike, sure
is liable to mistake one for a pair of boots,” says he sarcastic-like.
“The thing is hungry. My gosh! What are you doing--carrying it upside
down? Give it to me! Feller like you hadn’t ought to never pack a kid.
Poor little jasper is hungry as ----!”
“Likely starved to death,” I agrees. “But that ain’t no reason for you
to use that kind of language before you finds out the sex. It’s as much
my baby as yours, Magpie, and I ain’t going to raise no female child to
swear like a mule-skinner. _Sabe_? What’s it hungry for?”
“Hungry for?”
Magpie stubs his toe and almost drops the baby.
“Gosh dang the blasted luck!” he yelps, “Tore a toe plumb off!”
“Hungry for what?” I asks again.
“Ike.” Magpie stops limping and turns to me. “Ike, you ignorant
imbecile, what do you reckon it’s hungry for? Figure it’s yelping for
ham and eggs?”
“Sensible yelp if it is,” says I. “What do babies hunger for, Magpie?”
“M’yah!” grunts Magpie, which goes to show that he’s an expert on baby
fodder.
We pilgrims along for a while, and all to once I remembers something I
read on a label once. Said it was fine for babies.
“Condensed milk!” I snorts out loud.
Magpie stops.
“Just struck you, did it?” he says wise-like. “Took you a long time.
Yessir, you guessed it, Ike. We’ll give it a can of condensed milk.”
“All right,” says I. “Give it a can, Magpie. If canned milk will stop
that racket, give it one for me. The twelve o’clock whistle has blowed
for that kid an hour ago.”
“Ike, you’re a ---- fool!”
“Now who’s talking shop?” I asks sweet-like.
On we goes, Magpie limping and swearing every time he kicks a tie, and
the world getting darker and darker every step we take.
Babies ain’t got much sense, I reckon. Mostly any person or animal that
creeps, crawls or walks will pine for a thing for a certain length of
time, and, when it don’t show in a reasonable period of pining, they
forgets it; but a baby gets one idea in its bosom and cherishes said
idea forever and ever, amen.
This one is too young for us to explain things to, and the night is too
dark for us to hand it anything in sign-language; so we pilgrims along,
listening to it wail continuous for something to ease its stummick.
Pretty soon Magpie stops.
“Ike,” says he severe-like, “you’ve got to find something to feed to
this infant. The blamed thing must be plumb empty, to wail thataway, and
I won’t poke along and let it die in my arms.”
“I’ve got forty-three dollars, Magpie,” says I, “and I hereby gives you
power of attorney to take my property to dinner. I’m neither a wet-nurse
nor a restaurant.”