“Nothin’ of the kind, Ike,” protests Magpie. “Piperock is past the age of swaddlin’ clothes. We has emerged into the sunlight and it will be well for all other cities to look to their laurels. I wouldn’t be surprized to see Piperock one of the big cities of the world. We have everythin’ to make it big.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a lot of country,” admits Dirty Shirt. “Me and Ike came across twenty miles of it today, and there was more beyond where we started from. If you want to go east, west, north or south from here yuh can find a lot of open country. We’ve got room to build, that’s a cinch.”
“But what would bring anybody here?” I asks. “Folks won’t even come from Paradise, except to a dance; and then they come to pick a fight. We ain’t got a — of a lot to offer—except to somebody that wants trouble, Magpie.”
“We will have, Ike. The idea was started in Paradise originally. Me and Wick Smith was down there last week and we went to see a tent show. It wasn’t much good and it wasn’t doin’ no business. Me and Wick got to talkin’ to the feller that owned the show and he told us all about his hard luck.
“He says that a circus is a drug on the market now, and that animiles ain’t worth nothin’, except in a zoo. He says that he’s really surprized that some of our towns don’t have no zoo. He says they’re all puttin’ ’em in in the East, and that no town can ever be an attraction unless it’s got a zoo.
“Well, me and Wick has a few drinks with him and got to talkin’ it over with him. He says he’s got the ingredients of a first-class zoological menagerie, and that he’s got a idea of puttin’ the proposition up to Paradise. He’s got a elephant. Of course it ain’t no first class elephant, bein’ as it’s kinda run down from travelin’ so much.
“The camel is—well, it ain’t noways in full plumage, but it’s a camel. The tiger seems to be as good as tigers go. He says he’ll take a thousand dollars for the whole bunch. ’Course he tells us how much we’d have to pay if we bought them animiles at retail price; but he kinda lumps ’em together and gives ’em to us at cost.
“Wick Smith is public-spirited, and after I tells him what we’ll do about organizin’ a Chamber of Commerce, he ups and buys them animiles on the spot. The feller throws in the cage free gratis for nothin’; so that saves us quite a lot. I figures that we can pick up a grizzly and a wolf and mebbe a mountain lion to kinda add to our zoo. Folks will come a long ways to look at wild animiles, Ike—a long ways.”
Me and Dirty looks at each other and goes out to unpack, while Magpie goes ahead on Piperock’s epitaph.
It’s been quite a while since we put our foot on the rail; so we hurries up to Buck Masterson’s saloon, where we runs into Wick Smith and “Mighty” Jones. Mighty and Dirty Shirt ain’t no relation. Mighty is a little jigger, who thinks he’s big enough to hold his own. That’s one reason why Mighty is mostly always on crutches. He swears in a tenor voice and chaws his tobacco.