Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket and pulled out a fearful thing—a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.
“Who-ee!” yelled Long Collins. “Ranse, are you a-packin’ around of corpuses? Here’s a—howlin’ grasshoppers!”
Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable, drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cléo de Mérode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.
Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with wide-open eyes.
“Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get in there?”
The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had forgotten tobacco.
Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.
“Where is this?” he rasped through his parched throat. “It’s a damn farm in an old field. What’d you bring me here for—say? Did I say I wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin’ at—hey? G’wan or I’ll punch some of yer faces.”
“Drag him out, Collins,” said Ranse.
Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.