“I—I thought I toted him home, Whiffle!” Shin Bone said in a hysterical tone. “I wonder did I drap him down a well—or somepin like dat?”
This suggestion threw Whiffle into a maniacal frenzy and administered such a shock to Shin Bone that it sobered him completely in a moment.
“Come on, squall-cat!” he bellowed. “Less go to de Hen-Scratch an’ ax Skeeter Butts ’bout dis!”
When they arrived at the saloon they found a dense crowd of negroes within the place listening to the whoops and howls of Happy Rocket and Hopey Prophet, both of whom had also come to the saloon to interrogate Skeeter Butts.
When Shin and his wife entered they occupied the opposite end of the barroom, and then began an antiphonal chorus between the two bereaved parties which was better as a show to the bystanders than a zoo full of ring-tailed monkeys.
Finally all their wails became focalized into one hysterical appeal:
“Where, oh, where is Skeeter Butts gone at?”
When Skeeter spun around the corner and looked up the street at the crowd assembled around his place of business, he availed himself of benefits of that intolerable nuisance called the muffler cut-out, and drew up to his saloon and stopped his car, popping like a battle of rapid-fire guns.
A man-sized voice at the door bawled the information to the people in the saloon:
“Here comes Skeeter Butts in Sheriff John Flournoy’s ought-to-be-a-mule!” A moment later he bawled another announcement: “Skeeter’s got the two lost babies wid him!”