“Who’re you?” asks Dog Rib.
Dirty opens his mouth several times before he says:
“I’m one of the Wise Men who follered a star—but I lost the damn’ thing.”
“Huntin’ for it with a lantern?” I asks.
“I ’member you,” says he, his left eye doin’ a few loops. “You’re the feller who had ticket number eighteen, but I don’t ’member your name, feller.”
“I’m Sandy Claus.”
“Oh, yea-a-a-a-ah!” snorts a voice, and I set up to see Tombstone and his wife. He’s got both arms braced against her to keep her upright. She’s got the seat of a chair balanced on her head, and her mouth is all puckered up in a silly smile.
“Look out for that steer!” yelps somebody, and here comes the danged animal, wild eyed, with a chair hangin’ to one horn. I reckon he got hung up on somethin’ around behind the platform, and jist got loose.
But that steer ain’t mad; he’s scared stiff. He throws up his head like a deer, bawls like a slide trombone, and comes right straight for me, kickin’ busted chairs every direction. Tombstone Todd let loose of his wife and jumped out of the way, and the steer hurdled her. I fell sidewise, as the steer surged past, and grabbed holt of its long tail.
Never do that. I went up in the air, sheddin’ busted chairs, got a flash of that shiny autymobile in the lantern light, and then my head hit somethin’ so hard that all the big and little stars clustered around me. It shore was worth seein’, but it got monotonous after awhile.