Sunday, November 25, 2012

Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches

"Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches reached the other side and began firing stones and long knives at us. We cut the thongs that held up our end of the bridge and headed for the coast."
A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch's shop at that moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded at him friendly.
"I heard down at Casey's," said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones, "that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners' Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?"
"Sure," said Finch. "There'll be a dandy time."
"Gimme five tickets," said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the showcase.
"Why,'' said Finch, "ain't you going it a little too--"
"Go to h--!" said the cop. "You got 'em to sell, ain't you? Somebody's got to buy 'em. Wish I could go along."
I was glad to See Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood.
And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.
"Mamma says," she recited shrilly, "that you must give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with--but she didn't say that," the elf concluded, with a hopeful but honest grin.
Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.
"That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch, as he carefully broke some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly come off within a few days--"the law of supply and demand,fake uggs boots. But they've both got to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his dry smile, "she'll get jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em. What's supply if there's no demand for it?"
"What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously.
''Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in and bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now."
A Technical Error
I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.
I was on a visit to Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about twenty- five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.
Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum,Cheap Adidas Jeremy Scott Big Tongue Shoes. I was told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was growing up,ladies rolex datejusts, and the grass was keeping pace with them,fake ugg delaine boots. But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and aimed at the division of their enemies' suspenders in the back -- partly, perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been harmed. In those days -- and you will find it so yet -- their women were safe.

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