“I got that obituary all fixed up left-handed, and she’s cached under a soap-box behind the printing machine. Don’t jiggle it ’cause she’s fragile as ——! I left that page just like she was for the other paper, but I got a place in it what fits this here masterpiece of mine. If Tombstone should make a mistake and hit me yuh won’t need the obituary. Sabe?”
“Uh-huh, I’ll just run the rest, Magpie. It looks like a bundle o’ crape anyway.”
“And Ike,” he reminds me, as I buckles on my gun, “yuh take that type stuff and put it inside the press. Sabe? Then yuh take that roller thing and pour on some ink, roll her over the letters, slap on a sheet of paper and twist that handle down hard.”
“You furnish the news, Magpie,” says I. “I’ll hold the wheels of progress for Tombstone Todd.”
I goes up to Buck’s place, and settles some elixir under my belt, while me and Buck talks over the humdrum existence we’re leading.
“Dirty Shirt is still going around with his right hand up in the air,” laughs Buck. “Reckon he’s flagged every one in sight.”
“How’s the show outfit?” I asks.
“Right miserable, I reckon. All of ’em except one left on the stage this morning. That exception—a colored person—mistakes Slim for a blood-brother, and being as Slim ain’t back yet, I’d say they went quite a ways. I never seen fast black fade the way that person did.
“That other colored member didn’t have much to say this morning. He was packing one of them slide horns in the band last night, and when the buckboard hit him he sails right into Pete Gonyer. Him and Pete holds about even until Pete gets his hands loose, and then he winds that horn around the feller’s neck so many times that we has to lay that colored gent across an anvil and cut it loose with a cold-chisel.”
“Seen anything of Tombstone Todd or Cactus Collins?” I asks, but Buck says: