Fer as long as you could count ten, not a’ one of ’em said a word. Then the doc stood up. “Who in thunder are you?” he ast, voice like a frog.
“Why,” I answers, “don’t you recollect me? I’m Cupid here; but, down at Goldstone, I was the owner of the Lloyd Addition.”
They jumped like they’d been stuck with a pin. “The Lloyd Addition!” they kinda hisses.
“Yas,” I goes on. “So I reckon you realise that it wouldn’t be no use fer Mister Real-Estate Agent, here, to git three-sheets-in-the-wind, and then let out his grand natu’al development secret; ’r fer our millionaire friend to go send hisself a telegram from Rockafeller. Gent’s you’ little Briggs City boom is busted.”
Say! next minute the hull quartette of ’em was a-swearin’ to oncet, so’s it sounded like a tune–nigger chords and all.
Next, Porky begun a solo. Said if they hadn’t all been plumb crazy, they’d ’a’ knowed they was a screw loose in Briggs. And now here they was stripped cleaner’n a whistle by a set of ornery cow-punchers––
I cut him short. “We know how to cure a dawg of suckin’ aigs,” I says. “We give him all he wants of ’em–red hot. Wal, you gents had the boom disease, and you had it bad. But I reckon now you’ve got just about all the land you can hole.”
They nodded they haids. It was a show-down, and no mistake, and they was plumb offen they high hoss. Blamed if I didn’t come nigh feelin’ sorry fer ’em! But I goes on, “I’m feard you-all’re just a little bit ongrateful to me–consider-in’ that I come here t’-night to help y’.”
“Help?” they says. (Quartette again.)
“Why, yas. Don’t you think, about this time, that Chicago ’d look pretty good to you?”