Dry Divide by Ralph Moody

Author:Ralph Moody [Moody, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Westerns
ISBN: 9780803282162
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2013-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

10

Bamboozling Bones

BY the end of our second week we were so far along that there was no doubt of our finishing the harvest with time to spare. When we were unharnessing Saturday noon I asked the crew, “How would you like to take this afternoon off and go to Oberlin? There’s a barber shop over there that has baths, and I’ve got some business to take care of with the County Clerk.”

It didn’t take the men two seconds to make up their minds, and by one o’clock we were on our way. Doc sat beside me, all rigged out in his medicine-man clothes, and the crazy part of it was that he’d put on his medicine-man behavior and talk right along with the clothes. Instead of calling me Bud, he called me, “My dear companion,” and he couldn’t open his mouth without orating. Worse than that, he couldn’t keep it closed.

The main street at Oberlin was crowded with Saturday shoppers, and though I could keep the old Maxwell on the road fairly well, I didn’t trust myself to try parking it in any tight spot. I turned off on a side street, parked where there was plenty of room, then told the fellows, “I brought the checkbook along, and you can draw whatever you’d like, up to a hundred dollars apiece.”

Jaikus and Old Bill said five dollars would be enough, Gus and Lars just shook their heads, but Doc began rubbing his hands together excitedly. With a sweep of his arm back toward the main street, he orated, “My dear companion, Fortune stretches forth her golden arms to embrace us. Yonder throng eagerly awaits the boon of Doctor J. Holloway Merriweather’s famous Elixir of Longevity. Shall it be denied these good people? Ah, no! You and I will procure from the local apothecary certain chemicals, spirits, and appropriate bottles, repair to the seclusion of some babbling brook, and . . .”

“You do the repairing, Doc,” I told him. “I’ll be busy all afternoon. Just tell me how much to make your check for.”

“Oh, fifty will suffice,” he told me grandly. “A mere pittance, but ’twill suffice to establish a lucrative enterprise.”

I’d no sooner written the check than Doc grabbed it, backed out of the old Maxwell, bowed to us, and announced, “Fortune awaits me, gentlemen. I shall rejoin you anon.” Then he hurried away toward the main street.

“Well, make the rejoining no later than six o’clock,” I called after him, “if you haven’t already been run out of town by that time. I promised we’d be back for supper and to do the milking.”

Gus, Lars, Jaikus, and Old Bill decided to get haircuts and baths, then go see a movie, and Paco wanted to stay with me. I could hardly take him, so as we walked back to the corner I told him what the others were going to do, gave him two dollars, and said I thought it would be better if he went along with them. After I’d

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