If I told him once, I told him a thousand times: “Don’t take your guns to town, Boy, don’t take your guns to town.” But does he listen to me? Does a cricket play the ukulele? Like heck it does. It plays the fiddle.
So a bigger boy takes his guns away from him, and now he ain’t got no guns. But he still walks around wearing those empty holsters. I tell him to take them there holsters off — he looks foolish walking around with empty holsters — but does he listen to me? Do elephants play the ukulele? Like heck they does. They plays the cello.
He tells me he doesn’t want to remove them because he likes the way they look, and they hold up his pants. They’re modelled after the holsters worn by that there famous outlaw, three-gun Dangerous Deadeye Harry Dickens, the terminator. So he thinks to hisself, if empty holsters looks so bad, I’ll just put something in them and they won’t be empty no more. So he puts a hammer in one, a saw in another, a ruler in the third, and a screwdriver in the fourth, and old Mrs. Marble Kake sees him, and despite him having a hard time keeping up his pants, she hires him to build a fence around her vegetable garden. Course he don’t know nothing about building a fence, and it looks like something built by a beaver ’twas blind in one eye and having the hiccups in the other. But Mrs. Marble Kake, she actually likes it because it scares away all them there varmints what been digging in the garden, and she pays him cash money plus a basket of raw onions.
I told him to let me hold on to that there money (he can keep the onions) before he does some darn-fool thing with it and loses it like he done lost the guns, but does he listen to me? Do prairie dogs play the ukulele? Like heck they does. They plays the banjo.
So he rides into town — not just any old town, mind you, but the exact same town where he last seen his guns — and he goes into the Last Chance Saloon and orders up a shot of Blue Eye.
And who brings him the drink but none other than Sadie the Piano Lady. And no sooner does he say “Here’s mud in your eye” and swallows that there drink, that she asks him to come up to her room, she needs to have her piano tuned. He goes up and next thing he knows he wakes up in the alleyway behind the saloon with his head a-pounding, no money, and he’s lost his screwdriver.
And it all started because he would take his guns to town. I told him. If I told him once, I told him a thousand times.
So he goes to the sheriff to complain. Don’t make me laugh. The sheriff is known as Sheriff Brady the Shady. And it doesn’t do Boy no good going to him because Brady the Shady is good friends with Sadie the Piano Lady, and gossip around town is that many a-time he helps tune her piano.
But Boy still has his onions. And he’s mad as all heck.
So he starts tossing them there onions at the saloon and hits it maybe one, two times out of five and even breaks a window, and Sheriff Brady the Shady rides up and grabs hold of him and says, “What do you think you’re doing, trying out for the St. Louis Browns?”
“I want my money back. That woman stole my money in there.”
“She stole it fair and square,” says Brady the Shady. “And what’s more, you know what, you look just like that no-good thief what stole the horses off the Lazy Day Ranch.”
“I didn’t steal no horses,” says Boy. “I work for that outfit. Say, how come you got a lazy D on your horse? Don’t I recollect I rode him one roundup?”
That weren’t the most intelligent thing to say.
The sheriff gives him a long look. “I found him lame in my corral one morning,” says Brady the Shady, “and nursed him back to health. You’d better not be saying this further or you won’t live to see yourself hanging.” And he locks Boy up.
So it looks like it’s all up with Boy, and he’ll soon be swinging. The town hasn’t had a hanging in months and people are really itching for one, and there’s been no little grumbling behind the sheriff’s back about the lack of entertainment. But they’s all happy now, all smiles, making cucumber sandwiches and whatnot to take to the hanging. And Sadie the Piano Lady is telling one and all that if you buy one drink from the Last Chance right after the hanging, the second one you buys is half-price. That’s what Easterners call market strategy.
And Sam the Cameraman is charging people a dollar a head to have their picture taken in front of the cell they keeps Boy in, splitting the proceeds of course with the sheriff, and business is so good theys might put off the hanging for another day.
Word comes out to us here of these proceedings, and I rounds up the boys and we rides in that evening and shoots up that there town a little and busts Boy out of jail.
While we’re riding back to the Lazy Day, I tells Boy, “You’d better vamoose muy pronto out of these here parts and stay well scarce until that there Sheriff Brady the Shady moves on.”
Boy stares at me like he never heard someone talk English before. “Whaaa you say?”
“I said, ride out of here as fast as you can get, you idjit!”
Boy complains bitterly to me that he doesn’t want to leave, but I tell him, “No use complaining to me. It’s your own fault. I told you not to take your guns to town.”
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