He had
an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over
his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.
The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out
was that these chaps didn't know one another.
"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and
it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but I
stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of
sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you
told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I
told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out WITH you.
That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?
"Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week,
and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it
mighty warm for the rummies, I TELL you, and takin' as much as five or
six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and
business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report
got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a
private jug on the sly.
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