“I’m a tough old rooster, and I’ve eaten snakes,
I’ve spread giant powder on my buckwheat cakes,
I’ve drank rawhide stew ’till I was out of breath,
But when they serves up mutton meat I starves to death.”
“You’re a fine bunch of friends!” I snaps, taking a chance that my jaw is still on its hinges. “She was his favorite relative, and since that letter he ain’t done nothing but mope. You’re a danged bunch of ghoul comedians. Muley’s due to kill somebody when he finds out about it. What was the main idea?”
“Well,” laughs Telescope, “we made him rich for a while, didn’t we? Zeb orates that he wants Susie to marry money, so we gave it to him in a lump. We puts in that marriage clause just to see if Muley loved her enough to lose the money, Sabe? We knowed danged well that he couldn’t buy no sheep. What did the parrot have to say, Hen?”
“Told Hank Padden he could use sheep dip.”
“Haw, haw, haw!” whoops Chuck. “Did he honest say that? I sat up all one night and day trying to teach that parrot some sheep-talk, but all it ever did was to bite me. Telescope swiped that cat at the depot in Milwaukee.”
Just before we reaches the ranch, three people rides in ahead of us and waits for us to come up. It’s Hank Padden, Johnny Myers and “Scenery” Sims. They all got rifles.
We exchanges greetings, but they don’t seem glad to see nobody but me.