“Won’t the letters run the other way, Magpie?”
“I reckon they would, Ike, but how in —— am I going to know what she reads? It’s a danged sight easier for the public to read the print backwards than it is for me to read the type thataway. I’m glad to see yuh, Ike.”
“Still follering the line of least resistance, eh, Magpie? I’m glad to see you, too.”
“Accumulate anything on your trip, Ike?”
“Wood-ticks, fool-hens and a growing conviction that rich rock is scarce. How’s things at the sheriff’s office?”
“Tolable, Ike. Won by a narrow majority. I reckon if Abe had ’a’ lived we’d needed a recount. Lot of folks voted for him after he was dead.”
“They would,” I agrees. “Lot of folks around here ain’t got no more ambition than to vote for a corpse. How comes it you’re a editor? Has all the bad-men died off or has a moral wave hit Piperock?”
“I always been a critter of circumstance, Ike,” he states, unfolding his long legs, and easing his gun handy-like. “I always been a disciple of advance, and I’ve worn all the skin off my shoulder trying to give the wheels of progress a lift. At times them wheels have slipped and sprained my immediate future, but I never peeped.
“When this here misguided editor fades across the horizon, me, being sheriff, appropriates this here plant and opines to run it as a public institution. There’s twenty-five sheets of paper left and one can of ink. My first edition takes twelve sheets, and I hereby claims that a man, without no experience, what can rise to the occasion and put out a paper like that is a credit to the community.”
“Didn’t you have trouble finding all them letters, Magpie?”