CHAPTER TWELVE
AND A BOOM AT BRIGGS
I got back all right. It takes two dollars and six-bits to git from Goldstone to Briggs City on the Local. But if you happen to have a little flat bottle in you’ back pocket, you ride in the freight caboose fer nothin’. I had a flat bottle. I swapped “The Lloyd Addition” fer it.
When I hit ole Briggs City, she looked all right t’ me, I can tell y’. And so did the boys. And by noon I was plumb wored out, I’d gassed so much.
Wal, I went over and sit down on the edge of Silverstein’s porch to rest my face and hands. Pretty soon, I heerd a hoss a-comin’ up the street–clickety, clickety, clickety, click. It stopped at the post-office, right next me. I looked up–and here was Macie!
Say! I felt turrible, ’cause I hadn’t slicked up any yet. But she didn’t seem to notice. She knowed they was somethin’ gone wrong though, ’fore ever I said a word. She just helt out one soft little hand. “Never you mind, Alec,” she says; “never you mind.”
My little gal!
“It means punchin’ cows fer four years at forty per, Macie,” I says to her.
“I’ll wait fer you, Alec,” she answers.
She’d gone, and I was turnin’ back towards Silverstein’s, when–I’m a son-of-a-gun if I didn’t see, a-comin’ acrosst from the deepot, one of them land-sharks! It was Porky, with that wedge-coat of hisn, and a seegar as big as a corn-cob!
Say! I duv under the porch so quick that I clean scairt the life outen six razorbacks and seventeen hens that was diggin’ ’round under it. And when I come out where the back door is, I skun fer Hairoil Johnson’s shack to borra a dif-f’rent suit of clothes offen the parson. Next, I had my Santy Claus mowed at the barber-shop.