Early one morning they were walking across the corn belt of the Rootabaga Country singing, “Deep Down Among the Dagger Dancers.” They had just had a breakfast of coffee and hot hankypank cakes covered with cow’s butter. Young Leather said to Red Slippers, “What is the best secret we have come across this summer?”
“That is easy to answer,” Red Slippers said with a long flish of her long black eyelashes. “The best secret we have come across is a rope of gold hanging from every star in the sky and when we want to go up we go up.”
Walking on they came to a town where they met a man with a sorry face. “Why?” they asked him. And he answered, “My brother is in jail.”
“What for?” they asked him again. And he answered again, “My brother put on a straw hat in the middle of the winter and went out on the streets laughing; my brother had his hair cut pompompadour and went out on the streets bareheaded in the summertime laughing; and these things were against the law. Worst of all he sneezed at the wrong time and he sneezed before the wrong persons; he sneezed when it was not wise to sneeze. So he will be hanged to-morrow morning. The gallows made of lumber and the rope made of hemp—they are waiting for him to-morrow morning. They will tie around his neck the hangman’s necktie and hoist him high.”
The man with a sorry face looked more sorry than ever. It made Young Leather feel reckless and it made Red Slippers feel reckless. They whispered to each other. Then Young Leather said, “Take this dollar watch. Give it to your brother. Tell him when they are leading him to the gallows he must take this dollar watch in his hand, wind it up and push on the stem winder. The rest will be easy.”
So the next morning when they were leading the man to be hanged to the gallows made of lumber and the rope made of hemp, where they were going to hoist him high because he sneezed in the wrong place before the wrong people, he used his fingers winding up the watch and pushing on the stem winder. There was a snapping and a slatching like a gas engine slipping into a big pair of dragon fly wings. The dollar watch changed into a dragon fly ship. The man who was going to be hanged jumped into the dragon fly ship and flew whonging away before anybody could stop him.
Young Leather and Red Slippers were walking out of the town laughing and singing again, “Deep Down Among the Dagger Dancers.” The man with a sorry face, not so sorry now any more, came running after them. Behind the man and running after him were five long-legged spider jack-rabbits.
“These are for you,” was his exclamation. And they all sat down on the stump of a booblow tree. He opened his sorry face and told the secrets of the five long-legged spider jack-rabbits to Young Leather and Red Slippers. They waved good-by and went on up the road leading the five new jack-rabbits.
In the next town they came to was a skyscraper higher than all the other skyscrapers. A rich man dying wanted to be remembered and left in his last will and testament a command they should build a building so high it would scrape the thunder clouds and stand higher than all other skyscrapers with his name carved in stone letters on the top of it, and an electric sign at night with his name on it, and a clock on the tower with his name on it.
“I am hungry to be remembered and have my name spoken by many people after I am dead,” the rich man told his friends. “I command you, therefore, to throw the building high in the air because the higher it goes the longer I will be remembered and the longer the years men will mention my name after I am dead.”