“Run in a circle, —— the luck!”
“Think you did?” I pants.
“Think ——! I know I did. No human bein’ could keep ahead of me at the
speed I went. Where’s the tagger, Ike?”
“Must ’a’ been behind you,” says I, “’cause it’s a cinch he wasn’t in
front of me.”
Just then we hears something splashing the water. It blows some water
out of its throat, and then we hears it grunt as it comes out of the
water.
“Lay still!” croaks Dirty. “Taggers won’t hurt dead things.”
“Likely not,” says I. “But neither will anything else.”
Me and Dirty are close together, so we lays down and don’t move. We can
hear the tiger sniffin’ around us, and we almost has heart-disease when
it shakes the water off itself. I got most of that water in my face.
Then the tiger licked me right in the nose with its tongue. Man, I rose
right up and took that tiger by the face.
I ain’t no fighter, but I don’t allow no danged convict cat to get
familiar with me that-a-way. I’m mad. I clasped that cat to my bosom,
looked it right in the face and then cast it back into the flood.
“My ——! What was that?” squeaks Dirty when he hears the splash.
“Whiskers!” I yelps.
“Whiskers? The faithful old thing. He—he came to find us.”
“Yes,” say I. “After somebody locked him in a cage and sold him to you.
You —— fool!”
Me and Dirty crawled off the sand-bar and headed for Piperock down that
muddy road, squashing along through the mud and rain.
After while I says:
“You sure done well, Dirty. You might at least ’a’ got a tiger.”
“Uh-huh, I might, Ike, but where’d we been? I can see the lights of
Piperock. If we’d ’a’ got a real tagger, we’d never lived to see them
welcome lights, and—and today is the glorious Labor Day, Ike. If I’d got
a tagger instead of Whiskers we’d never lived to see old Piperock
celebrate Labor Day.”
“—— Whiskers!” says I.
We plodded around the outskirts of the town and went to my cabin, where
we chucked off our muddy clothes and went to bed.
* * * * *
It was afternoon when we woke up. I hears a few shots, so I shakes Dirty
loose from a large snore and we gets dressed.
Piperock sure looks queer. There’s a tall stockade built right across
the street, and beyond that is all mystery to us. From the number of
horses and vehicles I’d say that Yaller Rock County came to the party.
We meets “Hassayampa” Harris from Curlew, and Hassayampa is tearfully
intoxicated. He hands us a quart and talks of the wrongs of mankind.
“I’ve spent sixty dollars in chances on that lion, two dollars to behold
the performances, and I’ve lost all my tickets.”
“Tell ’em about it,” says Dirty, prying his teeth loose from the neck of
the bottle. “Claim what’s yours, Hassayampa.”
“Yeah?” Hassayampa looks sad-like at the bottle. “Yeah? With ‘Scenery’
Sims at the one ladder, the ladder where my ticket is good, and the rest
of the seats all took? I explains to Scenery, but he’s hard of hearing.”
“Shoot him,” advises Dirty. “Make him listen to reason.”
“He’s got a riot-gun, Dirty—one of them end-loaders, and she’s got a
handful of horse-shoe nails in each barrel. Dang the luck, I helped Pete
Gonyer load it—before I started to mourn my loss. We heard that Paradise
was contemplatin’ free seats, and we took certain measures to change
their minds.”
“We’ll get in all right,” says I. “We’re the referees.”
“Referees? Say, ain’t there something I can help yuh at?”
“Dirty,” says I, “let loose of that bottle and tell the gent what he can
do for us. Can we use him?”
“No question about it, Ike. C’mon, Hassayampa, and may the best man
win.”
We went all around behind them buildings, but there’s only one ladder
still in contact with the earth, so we starts up.
“You can’t come up here!” squeaks Scenery, shoving that muzzle-loader
over the edge into my face. “Git down, dang yuh!”
“We’re the referees,” says I. “Git that hen-hawk sprayer behind thee and
let us officials up.”
“No such thing has been said to me,” says Scenery. “I’m here to see that
nobody gets up free. Where’s your tickets?”
“I lost mine,” says Hassayampa.
“Go find it,” grins Scenery, and the danged little squeaky-voiced cross
between a rusty hinge and a coyote kicked the ladder loose.
I don’t know yet in just what order we hit the earth, but I know that me
and Dirty Shirt got tangled in the ladder, one end of which was hooked
over a saddle-horn on a bronc, which was tied to a wagon-wheel. There
ain’t no ties which binds a bronc in a case like that, and me and Dirty
Shirt seemed to get a travois ride which we didn’t ask for.
The bronc seems to skid into the back door of Rickey’s barber-shop,
busted the door open and also loses the saddle, the same of which lets
us stop with nothing worse than the loss of memory and some skin.
I comes back to earth and hears a lot of cheering, and there is
Hassayampa standing by the busted door, grinning like a fool.
Dirty Shirt is setting there making motions like he was swimming. I
reckon he thinks he’s still in Wind River with the tiger.
“What’s the joke?” I asks, and Hassayampa points at the busted door.
“They locked all the back doors,” says he. “But the bronc opened this’n.
Let’s go inside and watch the show through the front window.”
We dragged Dirty Shirt inside, fastened the door and then went up to the
front window. We can see the crowd on top of the Mint Hall and on Pete’s
blacksmith shop, and as far as we can see there’s a solid line of
humanity on top of the stockade.
Me and Hassayampa imbibes from his bottle while we congratulates each
other on having such a lovely view of the arena.
“Ringside sheats,” says Hassayampa. “Right where we can shee——”
“Heh, heh, heh, heh,” says Dirty, sort of jerky-like.
I looks down at him, sitting with his back against the door, and he’s
sort of jerking his shoulders and making funny noises with his lips.
“He’ll be all right,” says Hassayampa. “He’s——”
Hassayampa’s voice gets weak, and I turns my head.
* * * * *
Between us and the back door stands what I’d decipher to be Pluto!
Pluto don’t seem a danged bit surprized at meeting us. He’s one of them
every-day sort of lions which is classed as King of Beasts. He yawns at
us and sets there sort of dignified-like.
“Heh, heh, heh,” says Dirty, like he had a fishbone in his throat.
“Well,” says Hassayampa, offhanded-like, “there ain’t nothin’ much we
can do, is there? The front door is locked.”
“Why don’t you shoot it?” I asks. “Where’s your gun?”
“I know how it comes that the lion is in here,” says Hassayampa,
ignoring my question. “They locked him in here this morning. Notice that
Rickey’s stuff is all moved?”
“Reckon we ought to applaud your knowledge?” I asks. “The fact that you
knows how the lion happens to be in here ain’t going to temper the wind
to the shorn lamb none to speak about. I’d admire to see you kill it.”
“Heh, heh, heh,” says Dirty.
From outside comes the roar of the multitude and we hears the rumbling
of a he-cow, evidently searching deep for sounds to tell how bad he is.
“They’ve got the bull in Pete’s shop,” states Hassayampa. “Got the front
door fixed so they can lift the bar from above with a rope.”
“_Yeow-o-o-o-oof!_” yawns Pluto.
Just then Dirty Shirt shakes his head a few times and gets to his feet.
He stares at us and then at the lion. He rubs his eyes and looks around.
“I reckon we didn’t get up that ladder, eh?” says he, foolish-like.
Just then comes a awful roar from the multitude, and I takes a chance on
turning my back on the lion. I sees the door of Pete’s shop open and out
comes Calamity. That bull skids plumb into the middle of the street and
then throws up its head to observe the assemblage. Calamity had got a
flag fastened to his horns and it makes him a heap inconsolable.
Just then I hears a scraping noise in front of our lion’s den, and I
sees a rope yank a bar loose, and the front door swings open. Pluto
licks his lips and takes a couple of steps toward us, peering at the
open door. Then he sets down and yawns.
Dirty Shirt edges slow-like to the door, starts to step outside and then
turns right around and steps inside again. We can hear the multitude
yelling for the lion to come out and get licked. I reckon a lot of folks
favor the bull.
Then Pluto seems to get a longing to go outside. He shakes himself and
coughs like a locomotive and then he begins sneaking up on us.
“Gents,” quavers Hassayampa, “the time is drawin’ nigh when we’ve got to
choose between bein’ clawed by a lion or gored by a bull. What does you
vote, Ike?”
“Democratic!” I yelps and went out of that door on the wing.
I know something about bulls, but lions are plumb unknown. I whirled
around the corner of the door just in time to see Hassayampa fall flat
in the doorway, and over his prostrate body goes Pluto, and hanging on
to Pluto’s tail, bouncing along on his high-heels, is Dirty Shirt.
Comes an awful yell from the audience, and above its call sounds Yuma
Yates’ voice:
“Leggo that lion! Leggo, daw-gone yuh! You can’t handicap my bets.”
Pluto skids to a stop in the middle of the arena, and Dirty stands there
hanging on to the lion’s tail and looking around foolish-like.
“_Yar-r-r-r-oo-o-o-o!_” yowls Pluto, the same of which put the fear deep
into Calamity’s heart, and that danged bull twists his tail over his
back and comes right straight at me.
Man, I reverts to my ancestors right then and proceeds to climb up one
of the porch posts. I did well—while the post lasted. Calamity must ’a’
hit it head center, and unjointed it from the top and bottom at the same
time.
I seems to get a zigzag view of the surroundings and then I finds myself
straddle of that onery blue bull with both arms wrapped around that
porch post. We went some. Hassayampa went some too. Hassayampa was just
in front of Calamity, while out in the middle of the arena is Dirty
Shirt, trying his dangest to hang on to that lion’s tail and keep it
from doubling back on him.
I lost my porch post on the second lap of the arena, and about that time
I’m of the opinion that the hump of a bull’s shoulders ain’t no fitting
place for comfort. By this time I reckon everybody is enjoying the
spectacle and I gets advice in large quantities.
We passed Hassayampa on the first lap and I’m wondering where he is,
when the bull starts pitching and I slides down on his neck and gets him
by the horns. I looks back once and I sees Hassayampa coming along
behind, taking ten-foot steps and hanging on to the bull’s tail.
Pluto seems to get the speed fever, and the first thing I know he’s
inching past me still towing Dirty Shirt, who is running wild-eyed and
reckless. He glances up through the dust and yells—
“Come on you—snail!”
Some folks never seem to want to let well enough alone. I was all
right—and so was Calamity. Maybe we both was a little mixed as to
distance and direction, but that wasn’t no reason for outside
interference. Pluto was running on his own side of the track, and as
long as he kept going Dirty Shirt was O. K.
I glanced up once and I seen Magpie standing on the edge of Buck
Masterson’s saloon-front, whirling a rope, while behind him stands Buck,
Judge Steele and Wick Smith. It appears that them last three constitutes
the snubbing-post, being as there ain’t hardly ever any snubbing-posts
built on top of saloons.
They braces themselves behind that false front. Magpie sure can drop a
nasty loop. It dropped over one of Calamity’s horns and around my
waist—and us going forty miles in no time. I’m betting that when we
takes up the slack I ain’t over seven inches around the waist, and it
cinches me plumb tight to Calamity’s horn. I turned my head and looked
up and I seen four men and part of Buck’s saloon-front yank high and
handsome, and then me and Calamity turns a handspring.
I hears four distinct thumps before me and Calamity hits upside down,
and then my candle seems to flicker. I know before I hit that I’m dead
as ——. I know that my race is run and I finished about three-thirty. My
past rose up before me, and looking backward, I ain’t afraid to die.
Sometimes it’s a heap easier to die than to live, and I thought—
“They might have another celebration.”
* * * * *
After while I seems to sort of get a hazy idea of what is going on, and
I finds myself still roped to Calamity, but Calamity ain’t doing much.
I’m setting on his neck, and it appears they’ve forgot to take off the
rope.
Quite a lot of Piperock is gathered around and several of ’em are
talking all at once. I gets my eyes focused straight and I appears to
behold a fat feller, wearing a real fancy vest and a gaudy watch-chain,
and he’s waving his fat hands a heap as he talks.
“I paid our good money just the same,” says Magpie. “I acted in good
faith.”
“I don’t care a hang what you done!” howls the fat man. “I own that
circus. Just because you darn rubes ain’t got no better sense than to
buy a lion from some tin-horn gambler who never owned as much as a
coyote-skin rug, you think everything is O. K.
“Somebody else got away with the parade-wagon, which didn’t have
anything in it, but we found the team. What I want now is my lion, or a
hundred dollars. Where is my lion? Eh?”
“Ike,” squeaks Scenery Sims, and he elbows his way up to me, “Ike, I’ve
got to arrest you for stealing a horse.”
“What horse?”
“Mine,” says Foghorn Foster. “Brown mare with Circle Dot on her left
shoulder. Dirty Shirt sold her to me for fifty dollars.”
“I want my lion or a hundred dollars,” says the fat man. “That lion was
worth a thousand dollars,” says the fat man.
“Not for fightin’ purposes,” says Magpie.
“You’ll have to come to jail, Ike,” says Scenery.
“Lion or a hundred dollars,” says Fatty.
“Where is Dirty Shirt?” I asks.
“He’s where the lion is, I reckon,” says Buck. “The last I seen of them
they was going in the window of the Mint Hall, and Dirty still had the
lion by the tail.”
I feel a movement under me and I looks down at Calamity. He’s opening
and shutting his eyes, and them eyes are green as grass. Calamity dead?
Say, that bull ain’t even sick—he’s mad.
“I’ll take that hundred dollars or sue——”
_Boof!_
I seen Magpie reach out one foot, hook it behind Fatty’s heels and lift
hard. The circus feller upends and lands right in my arms. We sprawls
all over that prostrate bull, and I reckon that is all Calamity needs to
bring him to life.
Did he arise? He did. With me and Fatty on his neck and shoulders he got
right up among that group of folks and started out to make things
interesting. Calamity don’t look around to sort of get his bearings like
any self-respecting bull would.
He just bowed his back, plowed ahead, slipped one horn under Foghorn’s
belt and started going plentiful and strong. Scenery must ’a’ handed
Foghorn that shotgun when he makes the arrest, ’cause time Calamity
swings his head them gawping muzzles seems to brush my eyebrows.
“Lemme go! Oh, lemme go!” howls the circus man.
“Go?” yells Foghorn, waving that shotgun. “What in —— do you think
you’re doing now?”
“Pow-w-w-w-w-der River-r-r-r-r-r!” howls the gang perched on the
reserved seats, and then some misguided _hombres_ begins to take shots
at us.
Magpie has the right idea of stopping a bull. He hops in front of
Calamity and tosses a blanket over the bull’s head. The idea was good,
but Magpie slipped getting back, and Calamity knocked him half-way
across the street.
“One baby down—one see-e-e-gar!” howls somebody, and just then Calamity
quits running circles and points straight for the open door of the
barber-shop.
I seen Foghorn try to dodge, but it ain’t no use, and the thought,
“He’ll never prosecute you, Ike,” flashes through my brain. Just then
comes a crash. The door wasn’t wide enough, so Calamity took part of the
building out in widening it. In fact there were two crashes—going in and
coming out.
When I got the shingle-nails, plaster and _Police Gazettes_ out of my
eyes, and the dandruff ad picture from around my neck, we’re outside and
going fast and free.
The fat circus man is still with us. I’ve got one arm hooked around his
neck, and he’s got my sleeve in his teeth. In one hand he’s got a
shaving-mug and in the other a door-knob.
Foghorn is on his stummick across the bull’s neck, still hanging on to
that shotgun, although his thoughts are not of mundane things. Of course
I sees all these details in sort of a dazed way. I looks back towards
Piperock, but the old town has faded away in a dim and distant past.
Then I turns to reason out our probable destination. As far as I can
prognosticate we’re headed for Canada, but between us and the realm of
the Canuck is one gosh-awful deep washout, where alkali mud reigns
supreme and sticky.
I tried to disengage myself from the fat man and the bull, but I’m
asleep from my Adam’s apple to my boots. I starts to think that this is
a queer state of affairs, when I feels the front end of Calamity drop
sudden-like, and then I says to me—
“Nothing but horseshoe luck will ever bring you back to your friends,
Mister Harper.”
And then I spread my pinions and flew. I never felt so free in my life.
I hears two noises like _Hee-e-e-e-e! Hee-e-e-e-e!_ going past me, and
far below me comes two faint reports. I says to myself—
“Foghorn, you’re a danged poor wing shot.”
Then I tries to soar like a buzzard, but I reckon something was wrong
with my soarer, so I turned over a few times just to show that it could
be done, and then somebody seems to throw the whole country at me.
* * * * *
At the time I sort of wondered why I didn’t bounce. I wondered why they
didn’t quit ringing the church bells and then I wondered who would
inherit my brown mare, now that me and Foghorn are both dead. Then I
begins to feel sort of cold and clammy, and I says to me:
“Your circulation is over, Ike. You’re deader than ——.”
Then I sat up and clawed the mud out of my eyes.
Above me is Calamity, sitting on his rump on that slippery bank, digging
his hoofs into the mud and shaking his head like he objected to
everything on earth.
On the other side of the washout is Foghorn hanging by the slack of his
clothes to a snag. He’s just about as animated as an old suit of
clothes, and as I’m looking at him there comes a slight tearing sound,
and he drops flat on his face in the mud in the bottom.
From beside him raises a big gob of mud which gradually takes the form
of a man. Two gobby hands come up and mop the mud off its face, and I
beholds our circus man. Calamity stares down at us, waving his big head
and making a mournful noise deep in his throat, which sounds like—
“I’m-m-m-m-m-m-m goin’ ho-o-o-o-o-o-me.”
“So am I,” says I, and then I tries to stand up in that mud-hole!
_“Er-r-r-r-row-w-w-w-w! Hu-u-u-u-u-h!”_
I turns my head. Right up the bottom of that wash-out, squashing along
in that mud comes Pluto, covered with the gooey stuff, and right behind
him wabbles Dirty Shirt Jones, hanging on to Pluto’s tail with one hand
and a section of two-by-four in the other. Dirty has got his shirt and
boots on yet, but he’s depending on mud for the rest of his raiment.
Pluto stops and wails loud-like, but Dirty wallops him with the club and
they come on.
I claws my way out of their line of march, but when Pluto sees me he
refuses to go any further and sets down.
“Howdy, Dirty,” says I. “Breakin’ the thing to drive with a jerk-line?”
“Huh—huh—huh—” says he, staring at me.
He looks at the rest of the bunch, and then stares at Calamity.
“I’ve had a —— of a time—you know it?” he whispers. “Me ’n’ th’ lion.
I’ve got the —— thing licked, y’betcha. I tol’ him I was goin’ to run
him ragged fer jerkin’ me out of the back winder of the Mint Hall. Fell
thirty feet.”
“Why didn’t you let loose of his tail?”
“I ain’t loco!” he wails. “Long as I’ve got hold of that end he can’t
bite me, can he?”
“When he went out of the window,” says I, “why didn’t you let loose
then?”
“My ——! A feller can’t think of everything, can he?” and just then Dirty
seems to get a better view of the circus man. Dirty blinks the mud out
of his eyes and then lets loose of Pluto’s tail and takes the club in
both hands.
“Set where you are!” he snaps at the lion, and that King of Beasts seems
to sort of shrink into the mud. Then Dirty comes sneaking ahead until he
comes up to the circus man, where he stops and glares down at him.
“That man owns the circus,” says I.
“Yeah?” says Dirty. “He’s the son-of-a-gun who sold me the tagger.”
“I—I was fuf-foolin’,” says the feller. “I—I—it ain’t my circus. I don’t
own the lion. I—I figured I could scare them into payin’——”
Dirty reaches down, yanks the feller to his feet and turns him around
facing Foghorn, who is trying to understand with his ears full of mud.
“Give him a hundred dollars,” orders Dirty.
The circus feller digs a roll of bills out of his pockets and hands ’em
to Dirty, who peels off a hundred and hands it to Foghorn, who acts like
he didn’t understand.
“We’re buying them horses back!” yells Dirty.
“I’m going back, too,” says Foghorn, whose ears are so full of mud that
he couldn’t hear the crack of doom. He wades out of the mud, starts to
climb the opposite bank, and gets almost to Calamity before he sees him.
Then he whirls and starts running along that slippery bank.
Calamity needed some bait like that to take his mind off other things,
and he gets right up, skids into a run and follers poor old Foghorn.
They’re both running about twenty-five miles an hour, and getting ahead
about two. The last we seen of ’em it was about an even bet. Then we
sizes up our circus man.
“What was your official capacity with that circus?” asks Dirty.
“Shell game.”
“How much money you got?”
“How much? None of your —— business!”
“That ain’t much,” admits Dirty. “But we’re having a sale. Come on.”
He leads the gambler around behind Pluto, and that black-maned terror of
the Congo just shudders and sets there drooling. Then Dirty picks up the
lion’s tail and puts it in the gambler’s hand. Then he peels off a few
bills from the gambler’s roll and puts ’em in his pocket.
“Witness a fair sale, Ike,” says Dirty. “Going, going, gone! Sold!
Mister, you’ve bought something.”
“I don’t want no lion!” wails the feller.
“Hang on to that tail!” snaps Dirty, and then he steps in and hits Pluto
across the ribs with his scantling. Pluto yowls back at us and then
starts on through that mud, searching deep inside his bosom for sounds
to tell how much he misses his nice circus home while the mud-covered
gambler oozes and squashes along behind him, hanging on to Pluto’s tail.
“He can’t hurt you if you don’t let loose,” yells Dirty, and we stands
there and watches ’em travel up the mucky bottom of that washout—a dazed
gambler and a disgusted lion, going no place and without a reason on
earth.
“Pluto will likely kill him,” says I.
“What with?” asks Dirty. “He ain’t got no teeth nor claws left. He’s a
lion in name only, Ike, and I reckon the gambler is the more dangerous
of the two.”
* * * * *
Magpie was just limping up to the cabin door as we came around the
corner. He looks us over solemn-like and then sets down on the steps.
“I ain’t got the heart to chide yuh,” says he. “Not after seeing what
happened to yuh. Everybody got their money back except the fifty I paid
for the lion.”
“My gosh!” grunts Dirty. “I overcharged for Pluto.”
And then he hands Magpie fifty dollars. Magpie looks at the money and
puts it in his pocket without asking a question. Me and Dirty sets down
with him, and the three of us sets for quite a while in silence.