“Good gracious! Ten dollars worth of gumdrops!” said Mrs. Harris.
“Sure, that’s nothing,” said Pee-wee.
CHAPTER II—HE PLAYS HIS PART
We need not dwell upon Pee-wee’s career on the stage. It was almost as short as he was. He crawled through a hole in a fence and had no difficulty in finding the right horse, since there was only one there.
He held the iron (painted red) against the horse’s hip, then withdrew across the stage and was seen no more. The deed of villainy had been done, the double cross of the thieving ranchman had been branded upon the horse he coveted and was resolved to win “by fair means or foul.” Those were the tragic words he had used.
There was nothing so very terrible about Pee-wee’s new adventure and Mr. and Mrs. Harris were rather proud of the way in which he acquitted himself. He broke his ten dollar bill in Bennett’s Fresh Confectionery, where he treated the members of his troop with true actorish liberality. Two sodas each they had, and gumdrops flew like bullets in the play.
“Roy’s got your picture,” said Westy Martin; “I hope it comes out all right. He’s going to hang it in the cellar.”
“How did it seem not speaking for thirty seconds?” Roy asked.
“He timed you with his stop watch,” Artie Van Arlen said. “Did you see us in the front seats?”
“Now you see, it’s good to be small,” Pee-wee said. “They chose me because I could get through that hole in the fence. Fat Blanchard wanted to get the job but they wouldn’t give it to him because they were afraid he’d get stuck half way through the hole. That horse is awful nice, he likes being branded I guess; anyway he wasn’t mad about it because he licked my hand twice.”