Say! that was like tellin’ you’ fortune. The next day but one, right in front of the “Station,” trouble popped. This is how:
The parson ’d had all his truck sent over from Williams. In the pile they was one of them big, spotted dawgs–keerige dawgs, I think they call ’em. This particular dawg was so spotted you could ’a’ come blamed nigh playin’ checkers on him. Wal, Dutchy had a dawg, too. It wasn’t much of anythin’ fer fambly, I reckon,–just plain purp–but it shore had a fine set of nippers, and could jerk off the stearin’ gear of a cow quicker ’n greazed lightnin’. Wal, the parson come down to the post-office, drivin’ a two-wheel thing-um-a-jig, all yalla and black. ’Twixt the wheels was trottin’ his spotted dawg. A-course, the parson ’d no more’n stopped, when out comes that ornery purp of Dutchy’s. And such a set-to you never seen!
But it was all on one side, like a jug handle, and the keerige dawg got the heavy end. He yelped bloody murder and tried to skedaddle. The other just hung on, and bit sev’ral of them stylish spots clean offen him.
“Sir,” says the parson to Dutchy, when he seen the damage, “call off you’ beast.”
Dutchy, he just grinned. “Ock,” he says, “it mocks nix oudt if dey do sometinks. Here de street iss not brivate broperty.”
At that, the parson clumb down and drug his dawg loose. Then he looked up at the thirst-parlour. “What a name fer a saloon,” he says, “in a civilised country!”
A-course, us fellers enjoyed the fun, all right. And we fixed it up t’gether to kinda sic the Dutchman on. We seen that “Life Savin’ Station” stuck in the parson’s craw, and we made out to Dutch that like as not he ’d have to change his sign.
Dutch done a jig he was so mad. “Fer dat?” he ast, meanin’ the parson. “Nein! He iss not cross mit my sign. He vut like it, maype, if I gif him some viskey on tick. I bet you he trinks, I bet. Maype he trinks ret ink gocktails, like de Injuns; maype he trinks Florita Vater, oder golone. Ya! Ya! Vunce I seen a feller–I hat some snakes here in algohol–unt dat feller he trunk de algohol. Ya. Unt de minister iss just so bat as dat.”
Then, to show how he liked us, Dutchy set up the red-eye. And the next time the parson come along in his cart, they was a dawg fight in front of that saloon that was worth two-bits fer admission.
Don’t think the rest of us was agin the parson, though. We wasn’t. Fact it, we kinda liked him from the jump. We liked his riggin’, we liked the way he grabbed you’ paw, and he was no quitter when it come to a hoss. Say! but he could ride! One day when he racked into the post-office, his spur-chains a-rattlin’ like a puncher’s, and a quirt in his fist, one of the Bar Y boys rounded him up agin the meanest, low-down buckin’ proposition that ever wore the hide of a bronc. But the parson was game from his hay to his hoofs. He clumb into the saddle and stayed there, and went a-hikin’ off acrosst the prairie, independent as a pig on ice, just like he was a-straddlin’ some ole crow-bait!