The sinful thing I had done weighed upon my soul, and I felt bad. I pictured the agonized mother setting there in that car, squeaking like a Red River cart when feeding time comes and she tries to nurse a pair of stained boots. Maybe she’d recognize good leather and workmanship, but at a time like that you can’t expect a mother to pay much attention to tanning and stitching on a pair of high-heeled boots—even if they did cost twenty dollars.
“Great gosh!” says I after due consideration. “This is awful!”
“It sure is,” agrees Magpie. “I’ll get my feet full of cactus.”
“Dang your feet! Think of what we’ve done!”
“Yeah? What you’ve done, Ike. Don’t embroil me in it. Them boots cost me regular money.”
“Well,” says I after a while, “we’re a pair of —— fools!”
“Don’t talk shop, Ike,” he advises me weary-like, peering off into the gloom. “If you’ve got any sympathy, use a little on me. I might step on a rattlesnake.”
“If I knowed where one lived, I’d lead you to it,” I replies. “Shooting up a train is enough scandal for a pair of peace lovers from Piperock—without also getting arrested for kidnaping. If anybody ever says yaller boots to me again, they’d better pick a soft spot to land on, ’cause they’re sure going deep.”
“Pshaw! I hate it as much as you do, Ike. Figuring from a property standpoint, I’m a lot worse off than you are. In fact, you’re two boots and a baby better off than I am.”
We set there and peers off into the gloom. Here we are, dumped off in the middle of the Bad Lands, night time, with no friendly beacon to guide us: one sockless, one brainless, and a baby—and all because Magpie prefers his boots yaller instead of black.