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Norris, Frank, 1870-1902

"A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West"


"Well, it were just so with Peg-leg--though I never knew it. Just by
accident I'd laid holt of him where he was tender; an' when he felt that
leg go--say, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgits all about
Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-clawin' the air. Lucky he'd left
his gun in the other room.
"Well, sir, y'ought to have seen him, a-hoppin' on one foot, and banging
agin the furniture, jes' naturally black in the face with rage, an'
doin' his darnedest to lay his hands on me, roarin' all the whiles like
a steer with a kinked tail.
"Well, I'm skeered, and I remarks that same without shame. I'm skeered.
I don't want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an' I
knows that so long as he can't git his leg he can't take after me very
fast. Bud's saloon backs right up agin the bluff over the river. So what
do I do but heave that same wooden leg through one o' the back windows,
an' down she goes (as I _thought_) mebbe seventy feet into the canon o'
the Colorado? And then, mister man, _I skins out--fast_.
"I takes me headlong flight by way o' the back room and _on-root_
pitches Peg-leg's gun over into the canon, too, an' then whips around
the corner of the saloon an' fetches out ag'in by the street in front.
With his gun gone an' his leg gone, Peg-leg--so long's y'ain't within
arm's reach--is as harmless as a horned toad. So I kinda hangs 'round
the neighbourhood jes' to see what-all mout turn up.


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