“You didn’t have to blame him entirely, Wick,” says I.
He turns and looks at me, kinda weavin’ on his feet.
“You?” he whispers. “You come bub-back? Where’s my wife?”
“I dunno, Wick.”
“You had her, dang you! I seen you huggin’ her!”
I seen that piece of scantlin’ comin’, but didn’t have flexibility enough to dodge. I distinctly heard it clank against my head, and then I finds myself out in the street again. I can hear a lot of dogs wailin’, and I wonders if I can hear this because I’ve gone to the dogs. Ain’t it funny what a feller will think about in a case like that?
A lot of folks are yellin’ at somebody or somethin’; so I sets up and concentrates on the present. A bullet digs into the dirt beside me, but I don’t mind. I kinda wonders why they’re shootin’ at me, of course. Then somethin’ hooks me off the ground and begins to give me a ride.
I managed to get one eye open and finds that I’m on one end of that hitch-rack, and the motive power is furnished by Gunga Din. They’ve picked me up in the angle between one post and the top-pole, and the friction on that part of me which wasn’t on the pole was somethin’ awful.
Then Gunga Din let out another of them awful bugles, shucked the hitch-rack and headed for Buck’s place again—and hangin’ to the slack skin of Gunga Din’s rear end was Cleopatra. Behind them came Polecat Perkins’ pack of hounds, run to a frazzle, but still able to stagger on and wail plenty loud and long.
Them dogs has run that tiger all night, and it ain’t no wonder that the tiger is huntin’ for somethin’ to climb on to. Right into the wreck of Buck’s place they went, while the crowd, which is located in places of safety, yelled, shot and generally decided that — was havin’ a recess.