“Dances is secondary to the main issue,” says Telescope judicial-like, “and poetry is incidental. We must contemplate deep and act as our better natures dictates.”
Muley Bowles is a self-made poet. Something inside that two-hundred-and-forty-pound carcass seems to move him to rime, and nothing can stop him. He’s so heavy in a saddle that all of his broncs are bowed in the legs and run their shoes over awful.
Telescope Tolliver came from down in the moonshine belt, and he’s got some strange and awful ideas of what constitutes a code of honor. He’s so long in the legs that a bronc has to pitch twice at the same time to get him high enough to throw.
Chuck Warner is a Roman-nosed puncher, with the shortest legs on record and the trusting eyes of a bird-dog. According to all we can find out, Chuck is a titled person. Of course, being an ordinary puncher, he don’t wish to have folks know him as anything but just plain Chuck, but the title remains just the same—Ananias the Second. I won’t go so far as to say that he can’t tell the truth, but I will insist that he won’t.
Me—I’m Henry Clay Peck. I play the banjo cheerfully, take my baths on the same day of every month and do what I’m told. I can’t blame nor credit anybody but me for what I am.
The four of us punches cows for the Cross J, draw down forty a month and spend our leisure time trying to figure out how old J. B. Whittaker ever got so much talent together in one bunch. We sure make a pretty good quartette for singing. We’ve got one tenor and three other voices.
We hives up around Mike Pelly’s bar that day and sings songs until Chuck suggests that we better go down to the depot and see if the lady comes in. We’ve got several trains a day; so it’s up to us to see ’em all. The train ain’t in yet; so we sings a few more songs. After a while the train comes in—but no lady. Muley starts an argument with the conductor over it, but the conductor is a big, mean-looking person; we takes Muley away from him and sets him on a truck.
The train pulls out, and on the far side of the track stands a female. She must have got off on the wrong side. She sure is fair to look upon, and Muley falls off the truck when he tries to take off his hat to her.
“Ma’am,” says Telescope, bowing and trying to take off the hat he’s already got in his hand, “ma’am, the town is on this side.”