“Bill McFee insisted on leaving that stuff in the jail until it was time to touch it off, and he done put old man Whittaker and Scenery Sims in there—and—they both smoke!”
“Gosh all hemlock!” wails Calamity. “There ain’t a thing we can do, is there, Mike?”
“Nothing. When you’re near thirty sticks of dynamite, and she goes off, there ain’t nothing that anybody can do—not even the coroner.”
They don’t much more than get inside, when I hears the rattle of wheels, and into Paradise comes the ambulance. They swings around in front of the place and stops. Out comes Mike and Calamity.
“Was he dead?” asks Mike, and we hears McFee snort:
“Old man Whittaker must be crazy! We couldn’t find Chuck nor the autymobile. All we found was Muley and Telescope, setting along the road trying to sing. They don’t know about no shooting scrape. Whittaker is a danged old liar!”
“Don’t speak disrespectable of the dead,” advises Calamity. “No matter how a man acted in this vale of tears yuh hadn’t ought to besmirch his memory with recriminations.”
“He ain’t dead, I tell yuh!” yelps Bill. “Well,” says Mike, “if he ain’t he’s made of iron. No man can stand a shock like that and ever be the same.”
“Shock? Who do yuh mean—Chuck?”
“No,” says Mike, sad-like. “I mean Whittaker.”