Dough or Dynamite

Author of “Clean Crazy,” “Monkeying with Ancestors,” etc.

Me and “Muley” Bowles and “Chuck” Warner are putting a saddle on a colt in the Cross J corral, when “Telescope” Tolliver enters the precincts of said ranch, and we gets our first glimpse of Archibald Ames.

Archibald occupies a seat on the buckboard with Telescope, and they soon comes over and climbs on top of the corral fence. Archibald’s name fits him—in a way. The length of his first name indicates his girth and his last name his height. He’s one of them persons who you’d never invite to set down, ’cause he don’t seem to require no such posture.

It takes him quite a long time to negotiate the top-pole of the corral, and when he does get up there he has to balance—his feet won’t reach the next pole. He’s wearing them dinky little pants, with the seat of a shoplifter and the knees of Lord Fauntleroy. His calves perspire in shiny leggings, and for a hat he wears a libel on the name of Stetson.

Muley gives him a passing glance, yanks up another notch on the cinch, and grunts—

“What’ll we do with it?”

“Love it to death or render it out,” grunts Chuck. “Looks to me like one of them playthings for kids that yuh can’t tip over and make it stay down. Let’s give this colt a chance to breathe, while we peers a little closer at this attraction.”

We ambles over and looks up at the critter’s soles.

“Mister Ames,” orates Telescope, “I’m obliged to make yuh used to Muley Bowles. He’s the sylph-like critter in woolly chaps. That one with the sad, horse-faced features is Chuck Warner, the anti-George Washington of Yaller Rock County, and the other person down there is Henry Peck. They’re all harmless.

“Bunch, this is Mister Archibald Ames, who is to be with us for a spell.”

“I’m pleased to meet yuh,” smiles Archie.

“You ought to be,” agrees Muley. “It ain’t often that we shows this much interest in a stranger. What seems to bring yuh hither?”

“I brung him,” states Telescope. “Mister Ames is looking for local color. Sabe?”

“What’s he done, and is he wanted by Federal, State or county?” asks Chuck, serious-like, wiggling his ears.

Chuck can wiggle his ears just like a mule.

“Done what?” grunts Telescope. “Chuck, you boob, don’t yuh know what local color is?”

“I’ll bite,” grins Chuck. “Go ahead and spring it, Telescope.”

Telescope clears his throat, rolls a cigaret and glares at Chuck, who glares right back, and wiggles his ears.

“Look at them ears!” applauds Archibald. “I’d love to get a close-up of them.”

“Mister,” reproves Chuck, “it ain’t seemly that a stranger should set on top of a corral and make remarks about the physical failings of a native son. Keep on at the pace you’ve started, and that spell that Telescope spoke about can be spelled in four letters: g-o-n-e. Sabe?”

“You got a lot to say about it, now ain’t yuh?” reproves Telescope. “You ain’t nothing around here but a forty-dollar puncher. You got a lot of chance to tell visitors where to head in. Come on, Mister Ames, and we’ll go up and see the man what owns this ranch, and ain’t no more sense than to pay forty dollars to a runt like that.”

They climbs down and goes up to the ranch-house.

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” whoops Muley, shaking every ounce of his two hundred and forty pounds of bone and lard. “Haw! Haw! ‘Come on, Mister Ames, and we go up to see the man’—haw, haw, haw! You will tell folks where to head in at, will yuh?”

Muley is a poet. There might ’a’ been as good rhymers as him once upon a time, but they’re all dead and departed. Muley is the he-buzzard of the flock right now. He hangs on to the side of the corral and wipes the tears out of his eyes.

“Gosh!” he snorts. “Telescope sure showed his breeding, Chuck. Yuh could tell he’s been well raised. Sticks his chin up in the air, like a grouse with a goiter, and proclaims: ‘Come on with me, Mister Ames.’ Haw! Haw! Haw!”

“Some day I’m going to reach up and hang my fist on his jaw,” proclaims Chuck.

“You better catch him in bed or carry a ladder with yuh,” says I. “You got ambition, Chuck, but your height ain’t noways adequate.”

A little later old man Whittaker, who owns the Cross J outfit, comes out with Archibald, and them two goes back to town in the buckboard. Telescope comes down to the bunk-house and sets down in our midst.

Chuck gives him a mean look, and goes on playing solitaire. Telescope admires himself in our cracked shaving-mirror.

“Better fix your features in your mind, Telescope, ’cause you’re sure going to need a pattern after Chuck gets through with yuh,” laughs Muley.

“That banty little ear-wiggler!” snorts Telescope. “I got a feeling that I ain’t going to punch cows much longer.”

“Dead men punch no cows,” states Chuck. “Your perceptions are getting clearer.”

“Where do yuh feel bad, Telescope?” I asks. “Tell papa where it hurts.”

“Aw ——!” Telescope turns from the mirror and glares at us. “I’m glad I’m going to get away from you half-wits.”

“Has the old man been kicking on yuh wasting so much time over at the Bowers ranch, holding hands with Miss Amy, or has that tumble-bug yuh had down to the corral been whispering sweet nothings in your ear?” asks Chuck.