Dutchy was as tickled as a kid with a lookin’-glass and a hammer. He dropped his bar-towel and hawled out his purp.
“Vatch me!” he says.
The parson was a good bit closter by now, settin’ up straight as a telegraph pole, and a-hummin’ to hisself. He was wearin’ one of them caps with a cow-catcher ’hind and ’fore, knee britches, boots and a sweater.
“A svetter, mind y’!” says Dutchy.
“Be a Mother Hubbard next,” says Bill Rawson.
Somehow, though, as the parson come ’longside the post-office, most anybody wouldn’t ’a’ liked the way thinks looked. You could sorta smell somethin’ explodey. He was too all-fired songful to be natu’al. And his dawg! That speckled critter was as diff’rent from usual as the parson. His good ear was curled up way in, and he was kinda layin’ clost to the ground as he trotted along–layin’ so clost he was plumb bow-legged.
Wal, the parson pulled up. And he’d no more’n got offen his seat when, first rattle outen the box, them dawgs mixed.
Gee whillikens! such a mix! They wasn’t much of the reg’lar ki-yin’. Dutchy’s purp yelped some; but the parson’s? Not fer him! He just got a good holt–a shore enough diamond hitch–on that thirst-parlour dawg, and chawed. Say! And whilst he chawed, the dust riz up like they was one of them big sand-twisters goin’ through Briggs City. All of a suddent, how that spotted dawg could fight!
Dutchy didn’t know what ’d struck him. He runs out. “Come, hellup,” he yells to the parson.
The parson shook his head. “This street is not my private property,” he says.