“Go out and see who it is,” I whispers to Mike, but he shakes his head:
“Not me. She wants you, Henry.”
“She can take it out in wanting. I don’t take no chances. You go out, Calamity. Nobody’s got a thing against you.”
Calamity thinks it over, and then goes out all humped like he was suffering from kidney disease. Me and Mike lays low, and pretty soon Calamity comes sneaking back.
“It was that female person we went up to see,” he states. “She wishes to forgive me, and wants me to tell you that she’ll take up your offer, Henry. She’ll be Miss Columbus.”
“Another victim,” grunts Mike. “You’re a bigger liar than Chuck Warner.”
“He done it for me,” defends Calamity. “Henry wanted to make my homecoming a complete success, and it ain’t all his fault if it don’t exactly work out. When a man has a pe-rade given in his honor he can’t kick if some of the details do get a little balled up.”
“In your honor?” wonders Mike, out loud. “Are you Fourth of July, Mister?”
“Fourth of July?” Calamity looks at me and Mike, and then seems to dig deep-like into his memory for buried information.
While he seems to check off some numbers on his fingers, I edges toward the back door. He nods, sort of agreeable-like, chaws one side of his mustache, and fingers his waistline, where his gun makes a bulge.