“Thank Gawd, there ain’t no Piperocker ownin’ any tickets on that raffle,” says Magpie. “If Paradise or Yaller Horse don’t win that autymobile, it’s ’cause they’ve lost the right ticket.”
I reckon Dirty Shirt has told Magpie about me losin’ mine in that poker game—that is, all except one. I’m wonderin’ if they know the money is to be used to uplift Piperock. Prob’ly not. There ain’t no church in Paradise or Yaller Horse, and if they thought for a minute that Piperock was goin’ to have somethin’ they ain’t got, they’d never bought them chances.
We climbed in at the back of that big platform, and I fell over a ladder. There was more danged carpenter stuff around, and it seemed as though most everybody in Piperock was in there.
“Oh, I’m glad you came, Ike,” says Mrs. Smith. “Poor Wickie had a ter’ble fall.”
“You’ll do fine in his place,” says Mrs. Dugout Dulin, who is six feet six inches tall, and will weigh about a hundred and ten. They ain’t got no bathtub in their house—they use a shotgun barrel.
I’m too full of Christmas cheer to pay much attention, and like a fool I let ’em dress me in a buffalo robe coat, string me with sleigh bells, and try to tell me all about it at the same time.
“No time to rehearse,” pants Magpie, cinchin’ up my belt. “Anyway, you’ll know what to do, Ike. That’s fine! Where’s the whiskers?”
There’s an apparition holdin’ the lantern, and it gradually dawns on me that this is Dirty Shirt. He’s got a white cloth wound around his head, and his figure is draped with one of Mrs. Smith’s front room curtains. And there’s old Tellurium Woods, naked to the waist, with a homemade horsehair wig on his bald head. From his waistline to his boot tops he’s wearin’ a Navaho rug. I begin to see things a little plainer, and my eyes focus on somethin’ that’s hangin’ from the ceilin’.
“Whazzat?” I asks.