Then the wagon hit the sidewalk and Dirty turned over twice before landed sittin’ down on the sidewalk. I managed to limp and crawl over to him. His good eye is plumb closed, and the bad one won’t keep still.
He’s singin’ soft and low, and kinda beatin’ time with that jiggly eye. I has to listen real close, but above the roar of destruction I hears his singin’—
“Littul birdie in the tree, in the tree, in the tree;
Littul birdie in the tree-e-e-e-e, sing a song for me-e-e-e-e.”
“There ain’t no tree, Dirty,” says I.
“Ain’t there?” he asks soft-like. “There ort to be—there’s so — many birds.”
Over around Buck’s place there’s folks yellin’ to beat four of a kind, and some misguided jigger starts shootin’. I can see that there ain’t no regular doorway left in Buck’s saloon—just an openin’ about ten feet wide.
Just about that time Gunga Din comes around the corner. He ain’t got nobody on his back now, but he’s got a chair hooked around one hind leg. He runs into the hitch-rack, tried to go under it, and lifts it plumb out of the ground. This kinda makes him sore; so he wraps his trunk around one of the posts and starts for us, packin’ and draggin’ it along with him, while on the far end of it is tied a piebald bronc from Paradise.
The most of the crowd stampeded for the Mint Hall, Wick’s store and other places of safety, and it sure don’t take long to clear the street of spectators. I sabe that Gunga Din is on a regular bust; so I picks Dirty Shirt up in my arms and staggers toward Buck’s place.
I ain’t in no shape to pack anybody, ’cause my right leg acts too short, which makes me circle a little to the right and I’m close to Gunga Din before I realize it.