The parson got up. “Amen!” he says.
Then he runs into Silverstein’s, grabs a pail of water, comes out again, and throws it on to the dawgs.
The Dutchman’s purp was done fer a’ready. And the other one was tired enough to quit. So when the water splashed, Dutchy got his dawg by the tail and drug him into the thirst-parlour.
But that critter of the parson’s. Soon as the water touched him, them spots of hisn begun to run. Y’ see, he wasn’t the stylish keerige dawg at all! He was a jimber-jawed bull!
Wal, the next Sunday night, the school-house was chuck full. She wasn’t there–no, Monkey Mike tole me she was visitin’ down to Goldstone; but, a-course, all the rest of the women folks was. And about forty-’leven cow-punchers was on hand, and Buckshot, and Rawson and Dutchy,–yas, ma’am, Dutchy, we rounded him up. Do y’ think after such a come-off we was goin’ to let that limburger run any compytition place agin our parson?
And that night the parson stands up on the platform, his face as shiny as a milk-pan, and all smiles, and he looked over that cattle-town bunch and says, “I take fer my text this evenin’, ‘And the calf, and the young lion and the fatlin’ shall lie down in peace t’gether.’”
CHAPTER THREE
THE PRETTIEST GAL AND THE HOMELIEST MAN
I’m just square enough to own up it was one on me. But far’s that particular mix-up goes, I can afford to be honest, and let anybody snicker that wants to–seein’ the way the hull thing turned out. ’Cause how about Doc Simpson? Didn’t I git bulge Number Two on him? And how about the little gal? Didn’t it give me my first chanst? Course, it did! And now, sometimes, when I want to feel happier’n a frog in a puddle, just a-thinkin’ it all over, I lean back, shut my two eyes, and say, “Ladies and gents, this is where you git the Blackfoot Injun Root-ee, the Pain Balm, the Cough Balsam, the Magic Salve and the Worm Destroyer–the fi-i-ive remedies fer two dollars!”