“If you don’t keep your head where I put it, I’ll throw up the job an’ let you go forth lookin’ like the lost Goog o’ Mayhan,” sez Eugene, raisin’ his voice. Ol’ man Dort was a whalin’ big man, an’ it tickled us a heap to see little Eugene givin’ him directions, like as if he was nothin’ but a pup dog.
Ol’ man Dort settled back with a sigh, an’ Eugene leathered up his razor without sayin’ anything for a minute or two. Then he sez, as he begins shavin’ again: “That squirrel I have in mind for ring contests is the short-tailed grizzly ground-squirrel; and it’s the biggest breed of squirrels the’ is.”
“The’ ain’t no such a breed of squirrel as that!” yells ol’ man Dort, springing erect in his chair, an’ dullin’ Eugene’s razor by the operation.
Eugene stepped back an’ looked at the blood flowin’ from the fresh cut, an’ he sez slow an’ sarcastic; “If it don’t make any difference to you whether you have any skin on your face or not, why I’ll just peel it off an’ tack it on a board to shave it; but hanged if I’m goin’ to duck around tryin’ to shave you on the jump. The’ is too grizzly ground-squirrels.”
Well, that’s the way they had it back and forth: every time they would settle down to business an’ Eugene would get a square inch o’ the ol’ man’s face cleared up, one of us boys would speak something in a low tone about there bein’ rumors of an uncommon big squirrel out at some ranch house a hundred miles or so from there. Eugene would ask what breed of squirrel it was, an’ then decide that it couldn’t be a patchin’ on a genuwine short-tailed grizzly ground-squirrel, an’ then ol’ man Dort couldn’t stand it no longer an’ he would forget what he was doin’, bob up in his chair, an’ lose some more of his life fluid.
Eugene scraped down both sides o’ the ol’ man’s face, givin’ all of his razors a chance to take part in the job, an’ then he set his lips an’ started in on the chin.
“What does short-tailed grizzly ground-squirrels eat, Eugene?” asked Spider Kelley, as innocent as an infant pigeon.
“They eat chickens,—” began Eugene, but ol’ man Dort flew clean out o’ the chair an’ stood over Eugene shakin’ with rage.
“Chickens?” he roars. “Chickens! The’ never was a squirrel foaled into this world what et chickens.”
Eugene looked at ol’ man Dort, an’ then he wiped his razor an’ sat down on a chair, so full of disgust that he could hardly breathe.