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Page 24
"No, I never," said Jim. "I seen the signs, but I thought they said
'table de hole.' I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it
taste?"
"If you're going to be in the city for awhile we will --"
"No, sir-ee. I'm starting for home this evening on the 7.25. Like to
stay longer, but I can't."
"I'll walk down to the ferry with you," said the dogman.
The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had sunk
into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly
wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.
"If that's your dog," said Jim, when they were on the street again,
"what's to hinder you from running that habeas corpus you've got around
his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?"
"I'd never dare to," said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. "He
sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to Marcella if I
look at him. Some night, Jim, I'm going to get even with that dog. I've
made up my mind to do it. I'm going to creep over with a knife and cut a
hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him. See if I don't do it!"
"You ain't yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain't what you was once. I don't
know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen you
stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass faucet
out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the wildest steer
on Little Powder in 39 1-2."
"I did, didn't I?" said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye.
"But that was before I was dogmatized."
"Does Misses Telfair --" began Jim.
"Hush!" said the dogman. "Here's another cafe."
They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"I thought about you," said Jim, "when I bought that wild land. I wished
you was out there to help me with the stock."
"Last Tuesday," said the dogman, "he bit me on the ankle because I asked
for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream."
"You'd like Prairie View now," said Jim. "The boys from the round-ups for
fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in sixteen
miles of the town. There's a straight forty miles of wire on one side of
it."
"You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom," said the dogman,
"and you pass through the parlour to get to the bath room, and you back
out through the dining-room to get into the bedroom so you can turn around
and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep, and I
have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma."
"Don't Missis Telfair--" began Jim.
"Oh, shut up!" said the dogman. "What is it this time?"
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"Well, I'll be racking along down toward the ferry," said the other.
"Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged
ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!" shouted the dogman, with a new note in his
voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them, with an
angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.
At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through swinging
doors.
"Last chance," said he. "Speak up."
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