“Trouble? Say, the ends of my fingers are so tender I can hold out my hands and feel the sun slide behind the hills. The next publication is problematical, Ike. I’m short of material, but I only figures on one more issue. I got a article set up, and I can’t publish until the time is ripe.”
“Something special?”
“Uh-huh. ‘Tombstone’ Todd’s obituary.”
“From Wilier Crick?” I asks, and Magpie nods.
“Uh-huh. Him and ‘Cactus’ Collins comes over here to help elect Abe Anderson, being as Abe was a relative. When Abe departs this here vale of tears they up and proclaims they’re a pair of howling wolves, and that they’re a permanent fixture around here until such a time as they lays me on my back and gestures over me with a spade. Awful pair of gobblers, Ike.”
“Why not an obituary for Cactus, too, Magpie?”
“He’s hiding out until such a time as his stummick is normal, Ike. He horns in on me yesterday, and gets pessimistic to my face. I’m busy on that obituary and don’t like to be interrupted, so I beats him on the draw, accepts his gun as a subscription and induces him to eat a bucket of paste. Awful smelling mess, Ike. I’d opine that as far as my future horoscope is concerned his lips are sealed.”
“Thirteen sheets and one obituary will be something to print,” says I. “Has Tombstone made any advances?”
“Once. I was standing over there by the window, holding up one of them dinguses what contains type, when a bullet comes along and hits her plumb center. She collapses right there and ruins things. Some of that lead type enters my bosom, and for the space of a foot square on my manly chest I looks like a smallpox patient. This idea of being a man of letters ain’t no prosaic pastime, Ike.”
Just then “Scenery” Sims darkens our doorway. Scenery is knee-high to a short Injun, and his voice hankers for oil. He looks mean-like at me and Magpie, and chaws some industrious. Pretty soon he expectorates copiously on the floor, and orates—