The Color of His Boots

by W. C. Tuttle

Then I got kicked by a cow. Absolutely! The critter was so close to me when the chorus opens up that, when it whirls and starts to run, I got both hind feet in the calves of my legs.

They’re so close to me that I says my evening prayer. Magpie lets a whoop out of his system—

“Grab one by the tail, Ike, and play safe!”

And then I gets a glimpse of his fish-pole figure disappearing out of the main herd, swinging on to the tail of a scared cow.

I’ve got a fat chance, with both arms full. I backs into a mesquite bush, shifts both babies to one arm and pulls my gun.

Man, I sure smoked up them fool cows, and they stampeded. One went past me so fast that the wind blew me backward, and, when I got my whole family together again, there ain’t a cow in sight.

I yelps loud and long for Magpie, but he’s likely still hanging on to that critter and pointed for parts unknown.

Then I plods on alone—that is, there’s only three of us now. I’m sick in soul and body, and all I wants on this earth or the waters under the earth is a place to leave my bundles.

I got hung up on a barbed wire fence, losing a few inches of skin and my hopes for a reward in the hereafter, and all this time them two are keeping up a cross-fire of complaint. I tries to argue it out with ’em and then cautions myself out loud not to go too far, ’cause that’s what gets folks into the loco lodge.

Then I sees another light. Ike Harper ought to be getting skittish about lights, but he’s so near unto death that he loses his normal caution. Ike Harper is now a man unafraid.