“Can you beat it! I rambles across four States, eatin’ once every two days whether I felt it or not, and trades the best snap job on the line for—what I got! ‘I’m off you fer life,’ she says—just like that. Slipped once—just once! Good night! Hejupah, ole Ned!—can’t keep a good man down!
“Oh, a-stickin’ pigs in that Lone Star State,
Ate corn bread and-a molasses straight,
On a dime’s worth o’ snuff I gets an awful skate—
And I saw St. Peter in the Golden Gate!
It was pay day—for me ba-bay!
It was pay day in that Texas State!”
“Now, you hold both handles tight, and kinda jiggle the slip up an’ down, see? You gotta hold ’er jest right, er you’ll take on too much dirt to begin with. Not too straight up and down at first, and not too slow. Now try it.”
Miss Manzanita Canby, with a line in each hand and also the handle of a scraper in each hand, looked doubtfully at the two scrawny mules before her.
“Start ’em up,” urged Wing o’ the Crow.