Fer a minute, Sewell didn’t answer anothin’. (Stiff-necked, y’ savvy,–see a feller dead first ’fore he’d give in a’ inch.) Pretty soon, he looked up, kinda sheepish. “I could use another puncher,” he says, “t’ ride line. Forty suit y’?”
“Shore, boss. Be out the first. So long.”
I was goin’ to the Bar Y, where she was! Wal, mebbe I wasn’t happy! And mebbe I wasn’t set worse’n ever on havin’ the little gal win in that contest! ’Fore night, I rounded up as many as five people that had a bony fido grunt comin’, and was glad to hear the grand things Doc Trowbridge said about Root-ee!
When the show started up in the hall after supper, and I slid in to take my seat in the winda, a lot of people,–women and kids and men–kinda turned round towards me and whispered and grinned. “They know I’m fer Macie Sewell,” I says to myself, “but that don’t bother me none.”
That Blackfoot Injun (he was turned into To-Ko, the Human Snake) was a-throwin’ squaw-hitches with hisself. The Judge come to the edge of the platform and pointed over his shoulder to him. “Do you think he could do that if he didn’t rub his hinges with Pain Balm?” he says. “Wal, he couldn’t. Pain Balm makes a man as limber as a willa. Ladies and gents, it’s wonderful what that remedy can do! It’ll prolong you’ life, make you healthy, wealthy, happy, and wise. Here you get 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!”
Say! it made my jaw plumb tired t’ listen to him.
“Hairoil,” I says to Johnson, “they got the names of the prettiest gals up on the blackboard, but where’s the names of the homeliest men?”
Hairoil snickered a little. Then he pulled his face straight and said that, bein’ as Monkey Mike ’d kicked up a turrible fuss about the votes that was cast fer him, why, the Judge had decided to keep the homeliest-man contest a secret.
Wal, I didn’t keer. Was only a-botherin’ my, haid over the way the prettiest gal countin’ ’d come out. I got holt of Dutchy, who ’d come in from his thirst-parlour to look on a minute. “Buyin’, Dutchy?” I ast.
“Nix.”