“Susie stirred up?” I asks.
“Most always is. She’s learnin’ to shoot a six-gun. Hurt her arm the last time she throwed a flat-iron at me. Them things kinda keep a man active, I s’pose. Some married men kinda git in a rut, but if I ever do I’m a goner. Well, I took her for better or worse, and I shore got it.”
We left Hank to his reveries of a squirshed love, and has a few drinks at the No-Limit, after which we’re unfortunate in runnin’ into Zibe Hightower. He’s wearin’ a clean shirt and he shore smells of perfume.
“Heel-yuh-tripe?” asks Peewee. “Zibe, yuh shore smell tainted. Mebbe it’s ’cause yo’re so old—kept too long, as yuh might say.”
“I smell to suit m’self!” snaps Zibe.
“Exclusive of everybody else. Why all the odor?”
“Ain’t this a free country?”
“With certain limits. You ain’t learnin’ dramatics, are yuh, Zibe?”
“Why not? All the world’s a stage.”
“And that makes us all stage drivers,” says I.