Part 5 (2/2)
Gee whillikens! _such_ a mix! They wasn't much of the reg'lar ki-yin'.
Dutchy's purp yelped some; but the parson's? Not fer _him!_ He just got a good holt--a sh.o.r.e enough diamond hitch--on that thirst-parlour dawg, and chawed. _Say!_ And whilst he chawed, the dust riz up like they was one of them big sand-twisters goin' through Briggs City. All of a suddent, _how that spotted dawg could fight!_
Dutchy didn't know what 'd struck him. He runs out. ”Come, h.e.l.lup,”
he yells to the parson.
The parson shook his head. ”This street is not my private property,”
he says.
Then Dutchy jumped in and begun t' kick the parson's dawg in the snoot.
The parson walks up and stops Dutchy.
That made the Dutchman turrible mad. He didn't have no gun on him, so out he jerks his pig-sticker.
What happened next made our eyes plumb stick out. That parson side-stepped, put out a hand and a foot, and with that highfalutin'
Jewie Jitsie you read about, tumbled corn-beef-and-cabbage on to his back. Then he straddled him and slapped his face.
”Lieber!” screeched Dutchy.
”Goin' t' have any more Sunday night dances?” ast the parson. (_Bing, bang_.)
”Nein! Nein!”
”Any more” (_bing, bang_) ”free Sunday suppers?”
”Nein! Nein! h.e.l.lup!”
”Goin' to change this” (_biff, biff_) ”saloon's name!”
”Ya! Ya! _Gott!_”
The parson got up. ”_Amen!_” he says.
Then he runs into Silverstein's, grabs a pail of water, comes out again, and throws it on to the dawgs.
The Dutchman's purp was done fer a'ready. And the other one was tired enough to quit. So when the water splashed, Dutchy got his dawg by the tail and drug him into the thirst-parlour.
But that critter of the parson's. Soon as the water touched him, them spots of hisn _begun to run_. Y' see, he wasn't the stylish keerige dawg at all! _He was a jimber-jawed bull!_
Wal, the next Sunday night, the school-house was chuck full. She wasn't there--no, Monkey Mike tole me she was visitin' down to Goldstone; but, a-course, all the _rest_ of the women folks was. And about forty-'leven cow-punchers was on hand, and Buckshot, and Rawson and Dutchy,--yas, ma'am, _Dutchy,_ we rounded _him_ up. Do y' think after such a come-off we was goin' to let that limburger run any compyt.i.tion place agin our parson?
And that night the parson stands up on the platform, his face as s.h.i.+ny as a milk-pan, and all smiles, and he looked over that cattle-town bunch and says, ”I take fer my text this evenin', 'And the calf, and the young lion and the fatlin' shall lie down in peace t'gether.'”
CHAPTER THREE
THE PRETTIEST GAL AND THE HOMELIEST MAN
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