“Are you going to arrest him, Bill?” yelps Mighty, and Bill turns in his
saddle.
“Mighty, you had him dead once today, and you sure caused me a lot of
excitement. Shut up!” and he rides away.
We gets some clothes on the professor and doctor and loans Mighty an old
pair of overalls. Old Testament and family leaves without any sort of a
benediction, and the survivors sets down on the steps to tell each other
how it was done. We just gets started when Tellurium Woods shows up.
He’s sure got an assorted lot of clothes on, and he’s some mad. He stops
in front of Magpie, and glares like he’d love to eat the whole Simpkins
tribe.
“You long-complected cross between a lodge-pole and a burglar!” he
howls. “You swiped my clothes! Can’t an honest man go in swimming
without having his clothes stole? You told them fellers where to find
me, too—dang your hide!”
“He took my clothes by force,” whines Mighty. “I never done nothing to
him and——”
“Give me that two hundred dollars, Ike,” orders Tellurium. “She’s mine.
Magpie didn’t stay the stated time, so I win.”
“So?” grins Magpie. “Don’t get hurried, Ike. Tellurium, do you remember
a pie you baked a short time ago, and——”
“You stole it,” chuckles Tellurium. “You’d lose on that alone, Magpie.
I’ll take that money and——”
“Pie?” asks the professor, “I—I stole a pie, and lost it. I don’t——”
“Wait,” grins Magpie. “When you filled that crust, Tellurium, you must
have stuffed it regardless, ’cause inside I finds this here
communication, which I presume was written by a party what is now
present. I’ll read it to you.”
He hauls out a sticky-looking piece of paper, and clears his throat.
Here’s what she says:
Chased him all day but didn’t catch him. If I don’t get him to
give up tomorrow I’ll borrow Doughgod’s bear dogs. If I do you
will have to give me twenty-five instead of fifteen dollars.
“How do you like that, Tellurium?” grins Magpie. “I thought that in our
agreement we were to confine the knowledge to three of us.”
Tellurium looks blank-like at everybody, and then glares at Mighty.
“My gosh!” snorts Mighty. “Didn’t you get that note, Tellurium? You
wasn’t home, so I stuck it under the top crust of that pie. I put it
there so nobody but you would find it. You said for me to let you know
about it.”
“Well, what do you think about it now?” grins Magpie.
“Think?” Tellurium scratches his bald-head for a moment. “Think? I ain’t
thinking—no more. I know one thing; the next bet I make I don’t assist
in no way. I’m going to let nature take her course.”
“Plenty coarse enough, too,” agrees the doctor, rubbing his hip.
“Yeaus, of course,” agrees the professor.
“Naturally,” says Magpie.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in Adventure Magazine,
November 18, 1918. It is believed to be in the public domain in the
United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.]