In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to where it’s needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-scrapes is a habit that grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of such doings––and of having things all upside-downey generally––and then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card anywheres from the pack––there was Durango. What made a clean town of Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent––the boys being rumpussing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her way and taking her. It was felt 209 that outsiders––and ’specially ladies––oughtn’t to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring house-cleaning––after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever went through––and Durango was sobered right down.

Palomitas went along the same trail, and took the same pass over the divide. All through that year, while the end of the track hung there, things kept getting more and more uncomfortabler. When construction started up again––the little Englishman, in spite of the dose we give him, reported favorable on construction and the English stockholders put up the stake they was asked to––things got to be worse still. Right away, as soon as work begun, the place was jammed full of Greasers getting paid off every Saturday night, and all day Sunday being crazy drunk and knifing each other, and in between scrappings having their pay sucked out of ’em at the banks and dance-halls––and most of the boys going along about the same rate, except they used guns instead of knives to settle matters––so the town really was just 210 about what you might call a quarter-section of hell’s front yard.

Being that way, it come to be seen there’d got to be a clean-up; and what was wanted for a starter was give by Santa FÉ Charley shooting Bill Hart. There was no real use for the shooting. The two of ’em just got to jawing in Hart’s store about which was the best of two brands of plug tobacco––Hart being behind the counter, and Charley, who had a bad jag on, setting out in the middle of the store on a nail-kag––and the first thing anybody knowed, Charley’d let go with his derringer through his pants-pocket and Hart was done for. If Santa FÉ hadn’t been on one of his tears at the time, the thing wouldn’t a-happened––him and Hart always having been friendly, and ’specially so after the trouble they’d had together over Hart’s aunt. But when it did happen––being so sort of needless, and Hart popular––most of us made our minds up something had got to be done.

Joe Cherry headed the reform movement. 211 He had a bunch of sheep up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Cherry had, but was in town frequent and always bunked at Hart’s store––him and Hart having knowed each other back East and being great friends. That made him take a ’special interest in the matter; and when he come a-riding in about an hour after things was over––likely he’d a-fixed Santa FÉ himself if he’d been there when it happened––he got right up on his ear. He said he meant to square accounts for Bill’s shooting, and he reckoned telegraph-poling Charley was about what was needed to square ’em; and he said it was a good time, with that for a starter, for rounding-up and firing all the toughs there was in town. The rest of us allowed Cherry’s notions was reasonable, and it was seen there’d better be no fooling over ’em; and so we went straight on and had a meeting, with Cherry chairman, and fixed up a Committee––and the Committee begun business by corralling Santa FÉ, and then set to work and made out a list of them that was to be fired.

There was about a dozen of ’em in the list; 212 and they was told––the notice being posted at the deepo––they had twenty-four hours to get out in; and it was added that them that wasn’t out in twenty-four hours would find ’emselves landed on the dumps for keeps. A few of ’em kicked a little––saying it was a free country, and they guessed they’d a right to be where they’d a mind to. But when the Committee said back it just was a free country, and one of the freest things in it was telegraph-poles––as Santa FÉ Charley was going to find out for certain, and as them that was ordered to get up and get and didn’t would find out along with him––even the kickingest of ’em seen they’d better just shut their heads and andy along.

It wasn’t till the Committee come to tackle the Sage-Brush Hen there was any trouble––and then they found their drills was against quartz! Two or three of Charley’s worst shootings was charged to the Hen, she being ’special friends with him; and just because she was such a good-natured obliging sort of a woman, always wanting to please everybody, she was at the roots of half the fights that 213 started in––so there’d come to be what was called the Hen’s Lot out in the cemetery on the mesa, as I’ve mentioned before. The Committee put her in their list because they knowed for a fact there was bound to be ructions in Palomitas as long as she stayed there; and so they found ’emselves in a deepish hole when she said plump Palomitas suited her, and she didn’t mean to be fired. The Hen knowed as well as they did she had a cinch on ’em. If they didn’t like her staying, she said, they could yank her up to the next telegraph-pole to Charley’s––and then she asked ’em, kind of cool and cutting, if they didn’t think hanging a lady would give a nice name to the town!

The Committee was in session in the waiting-room at the deepo while the Hen was doing her talking, and Santa FÉ––with handcuffs on, and tied to the express messenger’s safe––was in the express office, with the door open between. Everybody seen the Hen was right, and hanging her would be ungentlemanly, and nobody seemed to know what they’d better do. While they was all 214 setting still and thinking, Santa FÉ spoke up from the express office––saying he had the reputation of the town at heart as much as anybody, and to make a real clean-up the Hen ought to quit along with the others, and if they’d let him have five minutes private talk with her he’d fix things so she’d go.

The Committee didn’t much believe Santa FÉ could deliver the goods; but they seen it would be a way out for ’em if he did––and so they agreed him and the Hen should have their talk. To make it private, he was took out and hitched fast to a freight-car laying on the siding back of the deepo––the Committee standing around in easy shooting distance, but far enough off not to hear nothing, with their Winchesters handy in case the Hen took it into her head to cut the rope and give him a chance to get away. She didn’t––and she and Santa FÉ talked to each other mighty serious for a while; and then they begun to snicker a little; and they ended up in a rousing laugh.

Charley sung out they’d finished, and the 215 Committee closed in and unhitched him, and took him back to the express office and hitched him to the safe again––where he was to stay till hanging-time, with members of the Committee taking turns keeping him quiet with their guns. He said he was much obliged to ’em, and the Hen had agreed to quit––and everybody was pleased all round.

“I don’t like not being here when Charley gets his medicine,” the Hen said, “him and me being such good friends; but he says it would only worry him having me in the audience, and so I’ve promised him I’ll light out”––and she kept her word, and got away for Denver by that night’s train. Her going took a real load off the Committee’s mind.

Some of the other fired ones went off on the same train. The rest took Hill’s coach across to Santa FÉ––and made no trouble, Hill said, except they held the coach for two hours at Pojuaque while all hands got drunk at old man Bouquet’s. Hill said all the rest of the way they was yelling, and firing off their guns, and raising hell generally––that was the way Hill put it––but they didn’t do no real harm.

It was Joe Cherry’s notion that Santa FÉ should be took along to Hart’s funeral, and not hung till everybody got back to town again. Joe was a serious-minded man, and he said the moral effect of running things that way would pan out a lot richer than if they just had a plain hanging before the funeral got under way.

Santa FÉ kicked at that, at first; and a good many of the boys felt he had a right to. Santa FÉ said it was all in the game to run him up to the telegraph-pole in front of the deepo, the same as other folks; but no committee had no right, he said, to make a circus of him by packing him all round the place after poor old Bill––who always had been plain in his tastes, and would have been the last man in Palomitas to want that kind of a fuss made over him––and he didn’t mean to take a hand in no such fool carryings-on. He didn’t want anybody to think he was squirming, he said, for he wasn’t. Some men got up against telegraph-poles, and others got up against guns or pneumonia or whatever happened to come along––and it was all 217 in the day’s work. But when they did get up against it––whatever it turned out to be––that was the one time in their lives when it wasn’t fair to worry ’em more’n was needed. Nobody but chumps, he said, would want to hurt his feelings by making him do trick-mule acts at poor old Bill’s funeral––’specially as him and Bill always had been friendly, and nobody was sorrier than he was about the accident that had occurred.

Santa FÉ was a first-rate talker, and everybody but Cherry allowed what he was letting out had a good deal of sense in it. He ended up by saying that if they did make any such fool show of him he’d like ’em to put it through quick and get him back to the deepo and telegraph him off to Kingdom Come in a hurry––as he’d be glad at any price to be shut of a crowd that would play it on anybody that low down!

Cherry stuck it out, though, to have things his way. Palomitas was going in for purification, Cherry said, and the moral effect of having Santa FÉ along at Bill’s funeral was part of the purifying. The very fact that 218 Santa FÉ was kicking so hard against it, he said, showed it was a good thing. There was sense in that, too; and so the upshot of it was the boys come round to Cherry’s plan. The only serious thing against it was it meant waiting over another day, till the funeral outfit got down from Denver––all hands having chipped in to give Hart a good send-off, and telegraphed his size to a first-class Denver undertaker, with orders to do him up in style. Making him wait around so long, sort of idle, was what Santa FÉ kicked hardest against at first. But after his talk with the Hen, as was remembered afterwards, he didn’t do any more kicking; and some of the boys noticed he was a little nervous, and kept asking, off and on, if they still meant to run the show that way.

The boys did what they could to make the time go for him––setting around sociable in the express office telling stories about other hangings they’d happened to get up against, and trying all they knowed how to amuse him, and giving him more seegars and drinks than he really cared to have. But as he 219 was kept hitched to both handles of the safe right enough, and handcuffed, and as the two members of the Committee watching him––while they was as pleasant with him as anybody––never had their hands far off their guns, it’s likely there’d been other times when he’d enjoyed himself more.

Things was spirited at the deepo when the Denver train got in. All there was of Palomitas was on deck, and Becker’d come over from Santa Cruz de la CaÑada, and old man Bouquet from Pojuaque, and Sam and Marcus Elbogen had driven across on their buck-board from San Juan––and Mexicans had come in from all around in droves.

The Elbogen brothers had been asked over for the funeral ’special––because they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being Germans, they’d know some hymns. It turned out they didn’t––but they blew off “The Watch on the Rhine” in good shape, when singing time come out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done just as well. Singing it made 220 trouble, though: because Hart’s nephew––who knowed German and was a pill––hadn’t no more sense’n to tell old man Bouquet, coming back to town, what the words meant; and that started old man Bouquet off so––the war not being long over, and his side downed––that it took two of us, holding him by his arms and legs, to keep him from trying to fight both the Elbogens at once. Being good-natured young fellows, the Elbogens didn’t take offence, but behaved like perfect gentlemen––telling old man Bouquet they didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, and was sorry if they had––and it ended up well by their having drinks together at the Forest Queen. All that, though, has no real bearing on the story. It happened along later in the day.

Before the train got in, to save time, a rope had been rigged for Santa FÉ over the cross-bar of the usual telegraph-pole––and Cherry, who knowed how to manage better’n most, had seen to it the rope was well soaped so as to run smooth. Cherry said he’d knowed things go real annoying, sometimes, when the 221 soap had been forgot. Santa FÉ looked well. He’d had a good brush up––and he needed it, after being tied fast to the safe for three days and sleeping in a blanket on the express-office floor––and he’d put on a clean shirt, and blacked his boots, and had a shave. He always was a tidy sort of a man.

When the train pulled in, being on time for a wonder, some fellows from Chamita and the Embudo––come to see the doings––got out from the day-coach and shook hands; and the Denver undertaker got out from the express-car and helped the messenger unload the fixings he’d brought for poor old Bill. Everybody stood around quiet like, and as serious as you please. You might have thought it was a Sunday morning back in the States.

Except now and then a drummer––bound for Santa FÉ on Hill’s coach––nobody much ever come to Palomitas on the Pullman; and so there was something of a stir-up when the Pullman conductor helped a lady out of the car––landing her close to where Charley in his clean shirt and handcuffs on was standing 222 between two members of the Committee holding guns. She was a fine-shaped woman, but looked oldish––as well as you could see for the veil she had on––having a sad pale face a good deal wrinkled and a bunch of gray hair. She was dressed in measly old black clothes, and had an old black shawl on, and looked poor.

Getting out into that crowd of men seemed to rattle her, and she didn’t for a minute look at nobody. It wasn’t till she a’most butted into Charley she seen him––and when she did see him she let off a yell loud enough to give points to a locomotive! And then she sort of sobbed out: “My husband!”––and got her arms around Santa FÉ’s neck and begun to cry.

“My God! It’s my wife!” said Charley. And if the members of the Committee hadn’t caught the two of ’em quick they’d likely tumbled down.

Santa FÉ was the first to get his wind back. “My poor darling!” he said. “To think that you should have come to me at last––and in this awful hour!”

“What does it mean, Charley? Tell me, what does it mean?” she moaned.

Santa FÉ snuggled her up to him––as well as he could with his hands handcuffed––and said back to her: “It means, Mary, that in less than two hours’ time I am to be hung! In the heat of passion I have killed a man. It was more than half an accident, as everybody here knows”––and he looked over her head at the boys as they all jammed in to listen––“but that don’t matter, so far as the dreadful result is concerned. I loved the man I shot like my own brother, and shooting him in that chance way has about broken my heart. But that don’t count either. Justice must be done, my darling. Stern justice must be done. You have come just in time to see your husband die!” He was quiet for a minute, with the woman all in a shake against him––and a kind of a snuffling went through the crowd. Then he said, sort of choky: “Tell me, Mary, how are our dear little girls?”

She was too broke up to answer him. She just kept on hugging him, and crying as hard as she could cry.

“Gentlemen,” said Santa FÉ, “it is better that this painful scene should end. Take my poor wife from me, and let me pay the just penalty of my accidental crime. Take her away, please––and hang me as quick as you can!”

“They sha’n’t hang you, Charley! They sha’n’t! They sha’n’t!” she sung out––and she jerked away from him and got in front of Cherry and pitched down on the deepo platform on her knees. “Don’t hang him, sir!” she groaned out. “Spare him to me, and to our dear little girls who love him with all their little hearts! Oh, sir, say that he shall be saved!”

“Get up, ma’am, please,” Cherry said, looking as worried as he could look. “That’s no sort of a way for a lady to do! Please get up right away.”

“Never! Never!” she said. “Never till you promise me that the life of my dear husband shall be spared!”––and she grabbed Cherry round the knees and groaned dreadful. He really was the most awkward-looking man, with her holding onto his legs that way, you ever seen!

“Oh, Lord, ma’am, do get up!” he said. “Having you like that for another minute’ll make me sick. I’m not used to such goings-on”––and Cherry did what he could to work loose his legs.

But she hung on so tight he couldn’t shake her, and kept saying, “Save him! Save him!” and uttering groans.

Cherry wriggled his legs as much as he could and looked around at the boys. They all was badly broke up, and anybody could see they was weakening. “Shall we let up on Santa FÉ this time?” he asked. “I guess it’s true he didn’t more’n half mean, being drunk the way he was, to shoot Bill––and it makes things different, anyway, knowing he’s got kids and a wife. Bill himself would be the first to allow that. Bill was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Do please, ma’am, let go.”

Nobody spoke for a minute––but it was plain how the tide was setting––and then Santa FÉ himself chipped in. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you all know I’ve faced this music from the first without any squirming, and 226 even come into Joe Cherry’s plan for making me do circus stunts at the funeral for the good of the town. I’m ready to go through the whole fool business right now, and come back here when it’s all over and be hung according to contract––”

“Save him! Save him!” the woman sung out; and she give such a jerk to Cherry’s legs it come close to spilling him.

“But I will say this much, gentlemen,” Santa FÉ went on: “I am willing to ask for the sake of my dear wife and helpless innocent infants what I wouldn’t be low down enough to ask for myself––and that is that you call this game off. This dreadful experience has changed me, gentlemen. It has changed me right down to my toes. Being as close to a telegraph-pole as I am now makes a man want to turn over a new leaf and behave––as some of you like enough’ll find out for yourselves if you don’t draw cards from my awful example and brace up all you know how. Give me another show, gentlemen. That’s what I ask for––give me another show. Let me go home with my 227 angel wife to the dear old farm in Ohio, where my aged mother and my sweet babes are waiting for me. Like enough they’re standing out by the old well in the front yard looking down the road for me now!” Santa FÉ gagged so he couldn’t go on for a minute. But he pulled himself together and finished with his chest out and his chin up and speaking firm. “Let me go home, I say, to the old farm and my dear ones––and take a fresh start at leading bravely the honest life of an honest man!”

Then he lowered down his chin and took his chest in and said, sort of soft and gentle: “Let go of Mr. Cherry’s legs and come and kiss me, my darling! And please wipe the tears from my eyes––with my poor shackled hands I can’t!”

The woman give Cherry’s legs one more rousing jerk, and said, sort of imploring: “Save him! Save him for his old mother’s sake, and for mine, and for the sake of our little girls!” Then she got up and wiped away at Santa FÉ’s eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and went to kissing him for 228 all she was worth––holding on to him tight around the neck with both arms.

The boys was all as uncomfortable as they could be––except Cherry seemed to feel better at getting his legs loose––and some of ’em fairly snuffled out loud. They stood around looking at each other, and nobody said a word. Then Santa FÉ kind of wrenched loose from her kissing him and spoke up. “Which is it to be, gentlemen?” he said. “Is it the telegraph-pole––or is it another chance?” The woman moaned fit to break her heart.

The silence, except for her moaning, hung on for a good minute. Then Hill broke it. “Oh, damn it all!” said Hill––it was Hill’s way to talk sort of careless––“Give him another chance!”

That settled things. In another minute they had the handcuffs off of Santa FÉ and all the boys was shaking hands with him. And then they was asking to be introduced to his wife––she was all broke to bits, and crying, and kept her veil down––and shaking hands with her too; and they ended off by 229 giving Charley and his wife three cheers. You never seen folks so pleased! The only one out of it was the Denver undertaker––who couldn’t be expected to feel like the rest of us; and was in a hurry, anyway, to put through his job so he could start back home on the night train.

“You come along with me in the coach, Charley,” Hill said––Hill always was a friendly sort of a fellow––“and I’ll jerk you over to Santa FÉ in no time, and you can start right off East by the 6.30 train. That’ll be quicker’n going up to Pueblo, and it’ll be cheaper too. The ride across sha’n’t cost you a cent. If you and your lady come in my coach, you come free. And I say, boys,” Hill went on, “let’s open a pot for them little girls! Here’s my hat, with ten dollars in it for a warmer. I’d make it more if I could––and nobody’ll hurt my feelings by raising my call.”

All hands made a rush for Hill’s hat––and when Hill handed it to that poor woman, who had her pocket-handkerchief up to her eyes under her veil and was crying so she 230 shook all over, there was more’n two hunderd dollars in it, mostly gold. “This is for them children, ma’am, with all our compliments,” Hill said––and he and Charley helped her hold her shawl up, so it made a kind of a bag, while he turned his hat upside-down.

“Speaking for my dear little girls, I thank you from my heart, gentlemen,” Santa FÉ said. “This is a royal gift, and it comes at a mighty good time. Some part of it must be used to pay our way East––back to the dear old home, where those little angels are waiting for us sitting cuddled up on their grandmother’s knees. What remains, I promise you gentlemen, shall be a sacred deposit––to be used in buying little dresses, and hats, and things, for my sweet babes. I hate to use a single cent of it for anything else, but the fact is just now I’m right down to the hardpan.” And everybody––remembering Santa FÉ’d took advantage of being on his drunk to get cleaned out at Denver Jones’s place the night before the shooting––knowed this was true.

“Well, Charley, we must be andying along,” 231 Hill said. “Waiting here to see you hung has put me more’n an hour behind on my schedule. I’ll have to hustle them mules like hell”––that was the careless way Hill talked always––“if we’re going to ketch that 6.30 train.”

Everybody shook hands for good-bye with Santa FÉ and his wife, and Santa FÉ had his pockets stuffed full of seegars, and more bottles was put in the coach than was needed––and then we give ’em three cheers again, and away they went down the slope to the bridge over the Rio Grande, with Hill whipping away for all he was worth and cussing terrible at his mules. Whipping done some good, Hill used to say; but cuss-words was the only sure things to make mules go.

“Well, boys,” said Cherry, when the yelling let up a little. “I guess getting shut of Santa FÉ that way is better’n hanging him; and I guess––with him and the Hen and the rest of ’em fired out of it––we’ve got Palomitas purified about down to the ground. And what’s to all our credits, we’ve ended off by doing a first-class good deed! Them 232 little girls’ll be pleased and happy when their mother gets back to ’em with our money in her pocket, and brings along in good shape their father––who’d just about be in the thick of his kicking on that telegraph-pole, by this time, if she hadn’t romped in the way she did on the closest kind of a close call!

“And now let’s turn to and get poor old Bill planted. We’ve kind of lost sight of Bill in the excitement––and we owe him a good deal. If Santa FÉ hadn’t started the reform movement by shooting him, we’d still be going on in the same old way. You may say it’s all Bill’s doings that Palomitas has been give the clean-up it wanted, and wanted bad!”

When Hill drove into town next afternoon––coming to the deepo, where most of the boys was setting around waiting for the train to pull out––he was laughing so he was most tumbling off the box.

“I’ve got the damnedest biggest joke on this town,” Hill said––Hill had the habit of 233 talking that off-hand way––“that ever was got on a town since towns begun!”

Hill was so full of it he couldn’t hold in to make a story. He just went right on blurting it out: “Do you boys know who that wife of Charley’s was that blew in yesterday from Denver? I guess you don’t! Well, I do––she was the Sage-Brush Hen! Yes sirree,” Hill said, so full of laugh he couldn’t hardly talk plain; “that’s just who she was! All along from the first there was something about her shape I felt I ought to know, and I was dead right. It come out while we was stopping at Bouquet’s place at Pojuaque for dinner––they both knowing I’d see it was such a joke I wouldn’t spoil it by giving it away too soon. She went in the back room at Bouquet’s to have a wash and a brush up––and when she come along to table she’d got over being Charley’s wife and was the Hen as good as you please! She hadn’t a gray hair or a wrinkle left nowhere, and was like she always was except for her black clothes. When she saw my looks at seeing her, she got to laughing fit to kill herself––just 234 the same gay old Hen as ever; and she always was, you know, the most comical-acting sort of a woman, when she wanted to be, anybody ever seen.

“When she quieted down her laughing a little she told me the whole story. She and Charley’d fixed it up between ’em, she said; and she’d whipped up to Denver on one train and down again on the next––buying quick her gray hair and her black outfit, and getting somebody she knowed at the Denver theatre to fix her face for her so she’d look all broke up and old. She nearly gave the whole thing away, she said, when Charley asked her about the little girls. He just throwed that in, without her expecting it––and it set her to laughing and shaking so, back of her veil, that we’d a-ketched up with her sure, she said, if Charley hadn’t whispered quick to pretend to cry and carry off her laughing that way. She had another close call, she said, when Charley was talking about the old farm in Ohio––she all the time knowing for a fact he was born in East St. Louis, and hadn’t any better acquaintance with Ohio than three 235 months in the Cincinnati jail. Charley ought to go on the stage, she says––where she’s been herself. She says he’d lay Forrest and Booth and all them fellows out cold!

“She and Charley just yelled while she was telling it all to me; and they was laughing ’emselves ’most sick all the rest of the way across to Santa FÉ. When we got into town I drove ’em to the Fonda; and then the Hen rigged herself out in good clothes she bought at Morse’s––it was the pot we made up for them sweet babes paid for her outfit––and give her old black duds to one of the Mexican chambermaids. They allowed––knowing I could be trusted not to go around talking in Santa FÉ––they’d stay on at the Fonda till to-morrow, anyway: so I might let ’em know, when I get back again, how you boys took it when you was told how they’d played it on you right smack down to the ground!

“Charley sent word he hoped there wouldn’t be no hard feeling––as there oughtn’t to be, he said, seeing he was so drunk when he shot Bill it was just an accident not calling for hanging; and the whole thing, anyways, being 236 all among friends. And the Hen sent word she guessed the two of ’em had give you a first-class theatre show worth more’n you put in my hat for gate-money, and you all ought to be pleased. And they both said they’d been treated so square by you fellows they’d be real sorry to have any misunderstanding, and they hoped you’d take the joke friendly––the same as they meant it themselves.”

Well, of course we all did take it friendly––it wouldn’t a-been sensible to take as good a joke as that was any other way. Cherry was the only one that squirmed a little. “It’s on us, and it’s on us good,” Cherry said; “and I’m not kicking––only you boys haven’t got no notion what it is having a woman a-grabbing fast to your legs and groaning at you, and how dead sick it makes you feel!”

Cherry stopped for a minute, and looked as if he was a’most sick with just thinking about it. Then he sort of shook himself and got a brace on, and went ahead with his chin up like he was making a speech in town-meeting––and 237 it turned out, as it don’t always in town-meeting speeches, what he said was true.

“Gentlemen,” said Cherry, “there’s this to be said, and we have a right to say it proudly: we’ve give this town the clean-up we set out to give it, and from now on it’s going to stay clean. There won’t be any more doings; or, if there is, the Committee ’ll know the reason why. Palomitas is purified, gentlemen, right down to the roots; and I reckon I’m mistook bad––worse’n I was when the Hen was yanking my legs about––if the Committee hasn’t sand enough and rope enough to keep on keeping it pure!”

THE END