Wise Men and a Mule

Author of “Tippecanoe and Cougars Two,” “Powder Law,” etc.

“She’s the beautifulest story ever wrote. I tell yuh she’s a dinger, and I’m a heap in favor of showin’ it to the multitude, ad lib, also visibly.”

“Magpie” Simpkins shifts his feet on the table and leans back in his chair, acting like he’s said something real smart.

“The best ever told,” admits “Old Testament” Tilton. “I longs to see it portrayed piously and with feelin’ aforethought.”

“But can she be done?” asks Wick Smith. “The time is short.”

“Piperock can do anything she sets out to do,” states Magpie.

“And everything else that could possibly happen between the time she starts and the time she finishes,” says I.

“I figured it was about time for you to say something, Ike,” opines Magpie.

Me and “Dirty Shirt” Jones wasn’t invited to this conference, but we’re there anyway. Buck Masterson, Wick Smith, Judge Steele, Old Testament and Magpie are the committee. Dirty said there’d likely be need of substitutes before the meeting had gone far, so we took it upon ourselves to attend.

“Three wise men won’t be hard to find,” opines Buck.

“Town’s full of ’em,” says Dirty. “Why stop at three?”

“You’ve spoke your piece, Dirty,” states the judge.

“We’ve got to have a star, ain’t we?” asks Buck.

“Yeah, we sure have,” admits Wick.

“Beyond the shadder of a doubt in my mind,” says the judge. “The star must be there, sheddin’ its effulgent rays across the desert, lightin’ up the—uh—place, as it were. It’s goin’ to be hard to get a suitable camule or camules.”

“Camule?” asks Buck. “Them humpbacked quadruples?”

“Cam-el,” corrects Magpie. “Yeah, we’ve got to have one. We’ve got to have a lot of presents and——”

“Who’s going to be Sandy Claws?” asks Dirty.

“Nobody!” snaps Magpie. “Them things are out of date. We’re just steppin’ along ahead of them ancient has-beens, yuh betcha. Nobody can go home from this celebration and say we had the same old stuff.”

“Be —— lucky if they has the use of their vocal cords ten days afterwards,” opines Dirty. “Piperock’s Merry Christmas has always knocked —— out of Happy New Year’s. I suppose you’ll frame up a death trap and charge us a dollar apiece to get butchered for a Piperock Holiday.”

“This is goin’ to be free,” states Magpie.

“Just like a suicide,” sighs Dirty.

“Since when was you and Ike Harper invited to this meetin’?” asks Wick. “’Pears to me——”

“We’re going out,” says I, “but before we erases ourselves from your presence we’d like to orate open and free that we will not be part, parcel nor accessory to anything pertaining to or being of a Piperock entertainment. We will not do this nor that, and neither will we do thus and so. We will toil not and neither will we spin to any extent. Our hearts are hard and our minds are made up like a mule’s.”

“Better wait until you’re asked,” advises Magpie.

“No trouble to sound a warning,” says Dirty Shirt.

“You’d ask in vain, Magpie,” says I.

“I am full of wisdom——”

“Don’t argue with that animated flagpole,” says Dirty. “You never get no place talkin’ back to him, Ike.”

Dirty was right. I might as well argue with the shadder of death, because Magpie can’t hear nothing but his own voice in a argument, and he knows he can hoodle me into places where an angel couldn’t find footing nor room to flop its wings.

I’m sleeping real hard when Magpie comes home that night, and he proceeds to sit down on me, yanks my off ear and yells—

“Ike!”

I shoves him off and sets up, covering him with my gun.

“Ike,” says he, sober-like, “what is there around here that looks the most like a ca-mel?”

“It’s a neck-and-neck race between you and Maud S.”

“Thanks.”