Three Dollars and Hash

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 25, 23 June 1909, Page 44

Three Dollars and Hash

By

GLEN FORD MOTT

'T) ULL was a long, lean, lanternjawed Arkansawian, who eame k to his senses and to Cloud City X, J about the same time. He had looked upon Cloud City and the snowy range at the end of a hot July day, immediately called them good, and deserted a box-ear and his dreams of empire farther west to join the flotsam and jetsam of the new camp in the obstacle race after Hie elusive dollar. Opportunity led him to the bar Metallic Smelter, and dumped him into the lap of success in the form of a four-dollar job as furnace-man. One night the boys got him to let out something about his past life. “I got tired of digging snake-root down in Arkansas a while back,” he began, “and started off to look for a position. Seventy-five cents a day was about all a feller could make, and to make that he had to be a good workman and own his tools. As I had no tools, I hit the hummer for Kansas City and better wages. Now, all I could hear there was ‘farmhands and Kansas,’ so off I goes to the {state Slave Market, where I was knocked down for three dollars a day and hash to Jim Hankinson, a Pratt County farmer I'd never land my eyes on. "Pleased? Well, I guess; tickled to death ain’t no name. ‘William,’ says I to myself, ‘you’re a lucky man.’ And I got on the train with the meanest gang of ’boes that ever wore shoe leather. Steal? Oh, no; there was a little ham-mered-down mule skinner along that would steal corn from a blind chicken. Tried to get my telescope from me four times before we hit Whichataw. Seems like we wandered over the four quarters of the world and a pretty good ways up the hind quarters before we pulled into a wide spot in the road called Prairie Centre. Farmers and windmills! Farmers would run 5,000 to the acre, and it was jist like going the wrong way to a fire to get any place at all. I was man-handled half a dozen times; but no, siree, I was lookin’ for Mr. Jim Hunkinson. Do you know one straw broke a camel’s back? Well, when a big double-fisted jayhawker almost broke mine trying to kidnap me, my Southern blood boiled. ‘See here,’ says I, ‘beat it, or by gum, I’ll give you a wollup that will cause your immortal grandpa to sit up and take notice.’ So I got out of the mob and went to the station agent. ‘l’m a-lookin’ for a man named Mr. James Hunkinson; do you know him':’ ‘Yes, I know him,’ says be; ‘everybody does, and they're al! sorry they do. If you work for Jim Hunkin--1011, you'll think hell's afloat and tho devil’s a Dutchman before you cut many swaths. Yonder he is,’ and he pointed to a little fat, butter-ball of a man who was leanin’ against a lamp-post, chewing a sinful cud of chewing gum, and who looked a.i if he had a one-way ticket to

heaven bought and stowed away ready to use when Gabe would blow his trumpet and time would be no more. Do you know the farthest mountain always looks the greenest, but when you get there, there ain’t enough grass on it to pasture a goose. Well, it was just the same way with Jim Hunkinson. The minute I got a good look at his bas-relief countenance I knowed I’d swapped the devil for a witch, and looked around for some farmer; but no use—they’d gone. I hadn’t had enough to eat since we left Kansas City, and was mighty hungry, so I says: ‘Mr. Hunkinson, if you’ll wait a minute, I’l run over to the beanery and eat a snack;’ but he says, ‘No, William, it’s a pretty good drive, and you can get a good warm meal when we get home.’ So away we goes, me as empty as a keg at a hack-drivers’ picnic, and him as full as a tick. He was driving a team of mules, and before we'd gone a mile Jack stopped—yes, Jack was his name. "He worked on the off side and was as fine an appearing mule as ever looked through a collar; but a mule is like a woman, you can’t go much on looks. Well, sir, we tried everything from a brotherly talk to a black snake whip on that mule, but no use; he just stood still and dusted the whiffle-tree with his tail, and every once in a while he would back about a hundred yards and then stop and stand careless-like, letting his ears hang any way at all, and then, after resting and studying devilment for a while, he’d mosey up to our first stop-ping-plaee, just about as slow and peace-ful-like as an old lady taking a walk, and it’s a faet it took us four stretching hours to go six miles. “Did you ever see the spirit work on a mule ? No ? Well, I have, and it’s a fearful thing and passes all understanding. Two minutes before he moved I’d a swore Jack didn’t have enough strength or spirit in him to pull the hat off your head, for he looked as meek and repentant as the prodigal son, and two minutes after he moved forty men and a boy couldn’t have held him. Now, no more tlian I was feeling sorry than here comes the spirit. "That mule laid his ears back like a buck rabbit, and with his teeth a-grin-ning and the devil looking out of his two eyes, he commenced to do a buck-and-wing dance, with an Irish heel-and-toe movement thrown in as a side issue. Talk about the panic of ’73! It wasn’t in it. I looked at Hunkinson, and he was swollering his heart like a cow swollering her cud. And his eyes were bulgin’ out so you could have knocked them off with a stick. “ ‘Hold on,” says he. ‘To what?’ says L And with them very words I laid hold of him like grim death. ‘Let go!’ he yelled, and then Jack started. Now me and Hunkinson and Beck was unwill-

ing parties. And me and Hunkinson was a-pulling back, and Beck a-stepping sideways, like a hog going to war. But no use, up the road we goes, like the devil beating tan-bark. Now, if we lost any time on the start, we made it uj on the finish, for all you could see was a dust-cloud, and all you could hear was the wind a-going by like a country boy whistling through his teeth. That is all I can remember. When I come to we had stopped, and Jack was hollering in with one breath and out with the next, because lie didn’t have the harness off, and his head buried up to his eyes in spring wheat at ninety cents a bushel. I was that weak I just sat and watched Hunkinson and a feller he called Bill unharness the mules and turn them into a lean-to, with some straw on top of it, they called a stable. I was just a-wishing for a cup of coffee like mother used to make to revive me, when a freckled faced, snubnosed, red-haired woman yelled something in my ear. I was plumb skeered to death, and jammed the brake on and reached for the lines, and was bracing my feet for another tug of war with the devil in the mule skin, when she jumped upon the hub of the front wheel, reached over and grabbed me by the suspenders and yanked me out of the wagon. Then she explained to me that supper was ready, and party soon I stuck my feet under one of the slimmest tables that ever failed to groan in a land of plenty. I was sandwiched in between a farm hand named Bill, who was about as talkative and cheerful as an undertaker at a funeral, and Hunkinson, who looked more like the devil before daylight than a respectable Kansas farmer. Both of them was doing a juggling act with a black handled knife and green peas that would have made a bigger hit in vaudeville than it did with me. Maw Hunkinson and Sally were across the table, both of them talking like two phonographs with the asthma. “ Now I have often heard about them Wall Street outlaws forming a corner in wheat and corn, but that was the only

time I ever bumped up against a corner in grub. It seemed as if there was a cut-aud-dried conspiracy to starve me to death. Old Hunkinson would load up his plate till he would strain it, and then pass the grub to maw, who would follow suit; then she would pass it to Sally, who would help herself and pass it to Bill; he would pass it to me after he had helped himself. I got the leavings, and it didn’t amount to enough to feed a boarding-school miss, much less a real man that had fasted clean across tho State of Kansas on a jerk water train. I finished up what old Hunk called a. sumptuous repast with a sigh and a cup of weak-kneed coffee, and sauntered out on the porch for a peaceful smoke. I had no more than lit a cigarette than

Hunk orders me and Bill off to the staMes to curry the mules, warning me to be careful of fire, and chewing the rag about cigarette fiends and dope sticks. “ Bill was ducking his orders same as if they had been brickbats, and I could see in a minute that Old Hunk had him buffaloed up to the point where he would jump through and eat out of his hand, or wave his paws and speak. Now, right there I appointed myself a committee of one to incite a rebellion and disturb tha conjugal bliss of the Hunkinson house* hold. Before I had curried the near side of Beck, I had planted a few seeds it* fertile soil, and from what Bill told ma of his experience with Hunkinson I knew that they would grow and flourish like a green bay tree. “ Every time Bill would rub his improvised currycomb over Jack’s ribs, that equine would jump for the roof, and the only thing that kept him from going out that way was a threequarter inch grass rope tied to a post. When he came down he would bunch his hoofs and waltz clog around the stall, then he would fox trot, dog trot, single: foot, short lope, and gallop from one end of the stall to the other. Now, if that mule would put as much energy into a race with Lou Dilion as he did in avoiding that currycomb and brush, you could not see him for the bine ribbons and dust, and you could hear the crowd yellin’ yet. But he preferred to waste liis devil-given faculties on the desert air, and continue in his natural meanness. “Bill worked for an hour, and at th® end of that time Jack was only eurried in patches, but we called it good and started for the hay; but old Hunk showed up about that time and Towed how we had better grease the wagons so we could get an early start on Friday morning. Now me for system, and a place for everything, so you can shut your eyes and walk right up to it. It was just thirty minutes by an Ingersoll before they found the axle-grease some bone-head had put in the chicken-house.

They never did find the wagon-jack, and yours truly held up an Old Hickory while Bill and Hunk smeared axle grease over the rustiest spindles I ever- laid eyes on. We put in another hour in odd jobs before we started for bed a second time. I was so sleepy I could hear the rain on the roof and feel mother tuck me in, and I was just going to bid Bill good-night, when Sally handed me a blanket and pointed to a straw stack, and old Hunk began to warn me about! fire. Now I was as sure of sleeping im a bed as a preacher is of heaven, and to have my hopes shattered by that freckled-faced piece of calico, went against the grain. But I took the bedding and went out to the straw stack along with Bill to spend my first uighl

on the wind-swept plains of dear old Kansas and be bedeviled by a razor back shote that could drink buttermilk out of a jug. “He was the apple of Sally’s eye, and unless you was familiar with the breed you couldn't have told whether or not he was a baby buffalo or an animated Wedge. He was built fore and aft like a buffalo, and aft and fore like a wedge, except for a curly tail on the aft end, and a few rubber-set shaving-brushes scattered along his head and neck, which Was the starting-point of the fore end, with which he rooted me, individually and collectively, over a quarter-section of sand burs and cactus. He would have kept it up all night, if I had not called him aside and talked to him with a whiffletree a few minutes and sent him crow-hopping and buck-jumping toward the house, disturbing sleeping nature with a noise that sounded like a busted trombone in a drunken German band. “Now that was about three-thirty, and I’ll bet two bits 1 didn’t sleep thirty minutes before old Hunk blowed the horn and maw yelled breakfast. ’Hurry, boys,’ old Hunk says in his fatherly tone; ‘being as this is William’s first morning, I’ve let you sleep a little longer than usual.’ “I made out the best I could at breakfast, but somehow 1 couldn’t help but think that all hands thought I needed dieting, and everybody was trying to help me out. It was just gray daylight when we got the mules harnessed and hitched to the wagon. By the time the sun peeped, we had cut two barge-loads of sunflowers and one of muletail weeds and wheat, and started a stack-bottom as big as a meeting house. Work? Man alive, I never knowed three men and a girl could do as much as we did. Bill was stacking, Sally driving, me loading the barge and old Hunk a-driving the header. “And do you believe it? Jack and Beck working like a Jew after a nickel, and as calm and peaceful as Dobbin’s old gray mare. By ten o’clock I was so hungry I could have eat a dray-horse and snapped at the driver, and by eleven I couldn’t tell whether my back was broke or I just had an old-fashioned pain. Honest, it was awful. I was just going to ask Sally not to let the choir ■sing, ‘What will the harvest be,’ when maw blowed the horn. “You see, I was to get three dollars per day in coin of the realm. Now from that day to this the word ‘per’ has never been in any contract of mine, for per means perhaps you get it, and perhaps you don’t, with the emphasis on the you don’t. I’d a’ got it all right if Sally

hadn’t been sick, but she was. and it fell to my lot to drive the mules, and load while I was resting. It went tine for about an hour, but then Jack showed his disposition. Now, 1 have often wondered what become of all the devils Peter cast into the hogs that was drowned in the Red Sea. The hogs died alt right, but it don’t stand to reason that you could drown a devil, leastwise 1 never heard of one drownding or meeting a violent or a natural death; so where did they go? Son, take it from me, that they just wandered around nowhere at all till that mule was born, and then they colonized him. Between mending the harness and wagon and waiting for the spirit to move, we didn’t cut enough wheat to feed a domineckcr rooster. “Man alive, I shore was tired when I stuck my feet under the table and took an absent-treatment supper. As soon as we cleaned up the table we .went to the barn. I had curried Beck and was waiting for Bill to give Jack a lick and a promise, when old Hunk come in. ‘William.’ says he in his fatherly manner, ‘I always pays my hands on Saturday night. Now, William, if you had ’a’ drove the mules to-day as well as Sally did Friday, you would have had six dollars coming, but as it is, we are just even. It will take the three dollars you earned Friday to repair the damage to the wagon and the harness that it suffered to-day, and as you were the cause of a very expensive delay to-day, the money you earned to-day will be applied to that source.’ Turning from me before I could thank him for sparing my life, he says, ‘Bill, you know how we stand, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Hankinson,’ says Bill. “All right, boys, now that everything is squared up between us, come up to the house as soon as you get the chores done, and have a glass of cider for good will.’ And with them words he turned and sneaked off toward the house, rubbing his hands and talking to himself. “I watched him until he was in the door, then I turned to Bill, who was standing first on one foot and then the other, like a chicken with its toes froze, and shaking like he had the buck ague. He had turned a sorter pea-green colour, and looked as. if he would have run off if you had shook a tin can behind him. ‘Cheer up, Bill,’ says I, ‘the devil’s dead.’ “ ‘No, he ain’t,’ Bill said kinder solemn like, ‘least not while Jim Hunkinson is alive; and he is the only devil I am afraid of.’ “ ‘How long have you been working for him. Bill?’

‘“A little better than two months, says he. “ ‘And how much does he owe you, Bill?’ says 1. ‘“That’s just it,’ says Bill, scratching his head like little Lewis doing ‘James has two apples and Walter has six.* ‘You see, I drove the mules about three weeks, and up to date 1 owe him something like twenty-seven dollars.’

“‘Twenty-seven dollars!’ I yelled. “ ‘Not so loud,’ says Bill, kinder skeered like. ‘Hunk will hear you, and if he does, may the Lord have mercy or your soul, for he won’t. “ 'Why, in the name of Mike, didn’t you leave, you saphead?’ “‘Well, says he, Fin kinder laying low, looking for a chance to get even.’ “ 'Do you mean it. Bill?’ says I. “ 'Yes, 1 do mean it.’ “‘l’m on, brother; I buy into the game right here, and every time we fail to ecore on old Hunk, I give you a fresh cigar.’ Just then Bill decided that -Tack had been curried enough. So we went to the house and drank to the complete and speedy downfall of our tight-fisted employer. “Sunday we laid around all day. listening to Hunk and greasing the wagons. After a disappointing dinner. I had set down on the shady side of the granary to fight buffalo gnats, when Bill come out of the stable smiling and looking about as happy as a clam at high tide. “Now me for a man who can smile in the face of trouble; he can get a membership in my Optimist Club any time he wants it, and a man who can laugh like Bill did when he set down ■by me is a charted member. ■■‘•What’s up. Bin?’ says I. Why, don’t you pry yourself loose from the joke and pass it around among your friends?’ “’All right, William, here it is’; and he pulled an empty quart bottle out of his pocket and passed it to me. Now, I can work up a real good laugh over a glaso of Hunk’s cider; but an empty bottle struck me as poor comedy, and I told him so; and my voice did not sound like that of a comrade and friend. ‘•'Hold on a minute, William,’ says Bill, ‘let me show you what I’m going tc do with this empty quart bottle,’ and he whispered a few words in my ear that, tickled me more than you could with a feather. When I got through holding my sides, we sneaked off through the blue stem grass. I’urty soon wo camo to an ant-hill; Bill stuck the neck of the bottle down the family entrance, and stamped on the ground a few times, and here they come.

"In less than two minutes we had as honee.t quart of red warrior ants, and anyone of them could have bit a tenl«enny nail in two, they was that mad. We corked up the bottle and went to the stable. Bill tickled to death with himself, and me trying to think ol something that would come up to hi* joke. \\ hile Bill was hiding the anti it come to me. I told Bill about it

and he set down in the stable door M I act as lookout, and commenced to tell his woes in music on an asthmatical mouth organ, and I got busy with the briehen of Jack’s harness, driving brass-headed tacks into it until they were thicker than hops. The tacks stuck through the briehen about half an inch, and I could shut my eyes and catch a moving picture of Jack whet he sat down in the harness, which war a favourite trick of his, and the finisl of the man who was pulling the bell cord over his back. We devoted tin nst of the afternoon to packing out grips and stealing the mercury out ol the thermometers. After supper, we sit around anil smoked a while, and on out way to the straw -tack we got our grips, and hit the grit up the section road. About three miles up the road we hid the baggage in a -traw stack. By eleven o’clock, we was in the field lack of old Hunk’s, disconnecting the header and distributing nuts, bolts, and chain links over a quarter section of .sunflowers, where the old Nick him self couldn’t find ’em. When the chickens was crowing midnight we was rooting Sally’s pet pig out. of our bed it the straw stack. "Bill scratched his back, and I shelled corn toward the stable. It took us half an hour to tool that hog a hundred yards, but when we did got him to the stable wo made short work of him. I had a bandanna around his nose in a wink, and Bill hog tied him in no time. Then 1 got busy with the mercury, (pouring some in each car, tamping some cotton in on top of the mercury to hold it in place. After putting the bottle of ants in Bill’s pocket, we was ready to start. Bill grabbed the aft end of the shote, and with me on the fore end we sneaked up to the back of the house and laid our animated burden on the ground under old Hunk's bedroom window. Hunk was sleeping like a buzz-eaw, with maw a good second, coming good and loud part of the time, and then fading away in the distance. But old Hunk was there with bells on, good and strong all the time. Ripping the mosquito-bar netting of the window frame we laid the shote in on the floor. Then Bill uncorked the bottle

of ants and poured them out on the bed, shaking the bottle good to make sure tiiat most of them was out, while I ■was cutting the hobbles on the hog. Then we squatted down under the window to wait for the show to start. I had just stuffed my bandanna in Bill’s mouth when old Hunk yelled: ‘Maw, take them pins outen your nighty.’ Smack! Maw’ took him on the jaw. ‘You must think it funny to put sandburn in the bed, Jim Hunkinson. ’Tain’t enough to snore all night; you have to start to pinching and sticking pins. Ouch! Take that!’ "Just about that time the hog started to sashee around the room, complaining loud like, running over the bed and then under it. In five minutes I couldn't tell maw s voice from old Hunk's, and old Hunk’s from the hog’s, and if I hadn't known better 1 would swore there was a Democratic harmony convention being pulled off in the Toom. Old Hunk had started for the lamp, when the hog run between his legs. Hunk set down on the hog’s buck, and around the room they went, the hog buck-jumping and squealing, Hunk cussing, and maw yelling everything from 'help’ to ‘murder.’ Bill whispered to me, 'He's a .rider, brother,’ just as the hog run under the bed and raked him off. Now, just at that time maw came through the window with Hunk after her. ‘Ants!’ she yelled, just as she hit the watertank, and all but bailed it dry. Now, when Hunk flew over ins and lit running, •we commenced to make tracks for the straw stack. We laughed until break-last-time, and when we took our seats at the table we didn't know nothing at till, just set and eat, and looked as innocent lambs. Old Hunk an’ maw’ etopped passing-left-handed compliments just long enough to look at us suspicious like, but didn’t catch on. Their faces were shore a sight; looked as if they were suffering from an aggravated attack of hives and prickly heat. Hunk bad scratches like a eat makes scattered all over his countenance. Once Bill started to snicker, and, if I had not raised a pump knot on his shin-bone with a kick from a pair of number ten biogans, he would have give the whole thing away. We beat it for the stable as soon as we could, and started to harness Jack. We got him harnessed without much trouble. He laid back in the brichen once, but he didn't staylong. “I thought he was going through the front of the stall when he decided to stand up like a mule should. When we took him out to the wagon he walked like he was on eggs, and the way he would look over his shoulder and curl liis tail would have made a cigar-store Indian laugh. "Bill was tilling the water-jug when old Hunk come out and climbed into the wagon and commenced to yell for Sally to come and drive. Now, we didn’t have anything against Sally, so while maw was standing back of the wagon and chewing the rag with Hunk about the ants, I slipped around to Beck and poured some quicksilver in her ear, and stuffed a little eotton in on top of it. “It was a mean trick to play on Beck, but it had to be done. She resented i‘ all right, striking mean and wieked with her forefeet, and kicking holes in the atmosphere with her hind ones. While I was working on Beck, Bill slipped a little round cactus under Jack’s tail. Now, Jack raises considerable disturbance when the reins get under hie tail, and you can imagine ■w bat he did over that cactus. Why, a circus trick mule wasn’t in it for a minute. He would have made a contortionist look like a two-spot. Between avoiding the tacks in the brichen and the cactus under bis tail, he did acrobatic stunts that would go down in history, if they could be repeated. Beck was holding her head sidewise like a country Jake listening for a train and laying back in the harness like a ton of brick, and I knowed there would be happenings when Beck decided to go in the game direction that Jack ■wanted to go. Old Hunk wac jerked off his feet the first time Jack jumped forward, and Beck jumped backwards. He looked so seared as he grabbed for the linos and, yelled ‘Whoa,’ that I began to feel sorry for him, but I looked at Bill and thought of his twenty-seven dollars and the ekin game he played on mo, and steeled my heart. Maw was throwing one fit after another in the most unladylike manner, and using language she didn't learn at school. “I heard her yell, “They did it,, Jimi*

I eould tell from the way Hunk looked and the un-C'hristian-like words he used that ha was on. “Maw started for me with a hoe in her hand, and blood in her eye, and I was just starting to prepare for a heated argument, when the mules started for the Cherokee strip, with old Bunk bouncing around in the header barge like a rubber ball. Maw charged like a bull. When she was about ten feet away, she shut both eyes and jumped. I side-stepped, and instead of hitting me, she side-swiped Sally, who was coming from the house on a dead lope. Down they went for the count, Sally sitting in the small of maw's back, looking as wild as a March hare. ‘"Sa' y,’ says I, ‘you get the arnica and camphire, and me and Bill will go after your paw.’ And away we went, through the gate and down the roal. When we come to the section road, all we could see was a dust cloud. And there was a noise that sounded like a sehiveree fading away in the southwest, and every once in a while we could hear someone yell, ‘Whoa,’ in a sorta B-flat high C voice. “ ‘Seems to me that dust-cloud resembles Jack on a busy day,’ says Bill. “ ‘And don’t that sound for all the world like Hunk a-yellin’ "Whoa”?' says I. “ ‘ ’Pears to me it does,’ says Bill, and then we shook hands, and turned away. “On the top of a little rise we waved a fond farewell to the Hunkinson tribe and the scene of our misery and disappointments, aud turned our faces toward the promised land and a blind tiger that dispensed a fair grade of ‘Oh, be joyful" in the back part of a livery stable in Pratt Centre, to the delight of the chance passer-by. “We got our grips and noon found us washing the dust out of our throats and discussing wheat with more or less intelligence with the bartender. We was on the third round when a stranger come in-—leastwise he was a stranger to me. ‘Howdy, Mr. Ball,’ says Bill. “ ‘Why, howdy do, Billie,’ says Mr. Ball. ‘Ain't you working to-day?’ “‘No; me and Mr. Smith is taking a little vacation to-day. You didn’t happen to see Jim Hunkinson as you come along, did you?’ inquired Bill. “ ‘Well, I'm not sure whether it was him or a runaway circus that passed me about twenty miles back on the Ninascaw, but the team he was trying to drive looked like his mules. That is, one mule looked like his Jack mule, but I couldn’t recognise the near mule.’ “ ‘Tiiat was Beck,’ says Bill. ‘She has changed considerably in the past few days.’ “ ‘How was they travelling, Mr. Ball?’ says I. " ‘Well, I think they could hold a jack-rabbit in a straight-away.’ “ ‘And how was Mr. Hunkinson behaving?’ “ ‘He seemed to be drunk, hollering and cussing aud carrying on shamefully.’ “ ‘Fill ’em up and have one on me, bar-boy,’ says I. “ ‘Like to hear a little story, Mr. Ball?’ says Bill. “ ‘Shore would,’ says Mr. Ball. And then Bill unburdened himself. “Old Hunk had impounded some of Ball’s calves the winter before, and he certainly did enjoy that story. “After Bill had finished, the bar-boy says, ‘Have one on me, fellers,’ and while he was a-filling ’em up, he says to Bill, ‘Hunkinson must be a mean man to work for.’ “ ‘He’s the meanest man I ever saw,’ says Bill. ‘lf you had old Hunk in a cider-press you couldn’t squeeze a drop of the milk of human kindness out of his worthless carcase.’ “‘And how about that mule Jack?’ “ ‘He’s the meanest Missourian that ever kicked a blacksmith,’ says Bill. “ ‘Well, here’s how, boys,’ says the bar-boy, shoving his glass over where we could all clink. Bill was the last man up; clinking his glass, he holds it up and says: “ ‘Sic semper tyrannis.’ ”