Another day, when I was settin’ amongst the kids, watchin’, I seen a feller steerin’ my way. “What’s this?” I says, ’cause he didn’t have the spurs of a decent man.
Wal, when he came clost, he begun to smile kinda sloppy, like he’d just had two ’r three. “Why, hello, ole boy,” he says, puttin’ out a bread-hooker; “I met you out West, didn’t I? How are y’?”
I had the sittywaytion in both gauntlets.
“Why, yas,” I answers, “and I’m tickled to sight a familiar face. Fer by jingo! I’m busted. Can you loan me a dollar?”
He got kinda sick ’round the gills. “Wal, the fact is,” he says, swallerin’ two ’r three times, “I’m clean broke myself.”
Just then a gal with a pink cinch comes walkin’ along. She was one of them Butte-belle lookin’ ladies, with blazin’ cheeks, and hair that’s a cross ’twixt molasses candy and the pelt of a kit-fox. She was leadin’ a dog that looked plumb ashamed of hisself.
“Pretty gal,” says the mealy-mouthed gent, grinnin’ some more. “And I know her. Like t’ be interdooced?”
“Don’t bother,” I says. (Her hay was a little too weathered fer me.)
“Nice red cheeks,” he says, rubbin’ his paws t’gether.
“Ya-a-as,” I says, “mighty nice. But you oughta see the squaws out in Oklahomaw. They varies it with yalla and black.”