The Color of His Boots

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.