There’s just a whap and a rip, and outside of Dirty’s headgear he’s as naked as the day he was born. Gunga Din shucked him like an ear of corn. But Dirty don’t know it, and I don’t care; so we staggers on through the haze.
We fell into Buck’s place, and it don’t take a normal man to see that everythin’ ain’t right in there.
Old Testament Tilton is settin’ up on what used to be the back-bar, squattin’ there like a wise old owl, lookin’ over the world; settin’ there like a statue, sayin’ nothin’. Piled up against the bar is what is left of the float. Buck is flat on his back, with his feet up over the pool-table, which has been moved over against the wall.
All to once that mass which used to be the float begins to heave upward, and from among the busted two-by-fours, twisted wires and colored cloth, cometh Sahara. How in — that camel got mixed up in that float, I don’t know, but there he is.
He comes out of there, plumb decorated, and hanging to his tail like grim death comes Magpie Simpkins, the president of Piperock’s Chamber of Commerce.
Magpie has still got on one boot, a suit of red underwear and the crown of his hat, and in his eyes is a stern resolve. And behind him, pawin’ out of the wreck, comes Wick Smith. They all gets clear of the wreck and Sahara stops. Wick has a two-foot piece of two-by-four in his hands, and he braces his feet far apart.
“Mum-Magpie,” says he kinda thin-like. “You has made me a widder man, gol ding yuh.”
But Magpie don’t hear it. His mind is far behind that pageant of progress. He bows and kinda smiles, as he says:
“The wheel of progress is turnin’, and wo unto him who gits under the tire. The people of Piperock has risen in their might, unleashed their bonds which has held them in darkness—”
Tunk! Wick Smith’s two-by-four ended the speech.