I hollered in to Dutchy. "Where's you' purp, Dutch?" I ast. "The parson's haided this way." Dutchy was as tickled as a kid with a lookin'-glass and a hammer. He dropped his bar-towel and hawled out his purp. "Vatch me!" he says. The parson was a good bit closter by now, settin' up straight as a telegraph pole, and a-hummin' to hisself. He was wearin' one of them caps with a cow-catcher 'hind and 'fore, knee britches, boots and a sweater. "A svetter, mind y'!" says Dutchy. "Be a Mother Hubbard _next,_" says Bill Rawson. Somehow, though, as the parson come 'longside the post-office, most anybody wouldn't 'a' liked the way thinks looked. You could sorta smell somethin' explodey. He was too all-fired songful to be natu'al. And his dawg! That speckled critter was as diff'rent from usual as the parson. His good ear was curled up way in, and he was kinda layin' clost to the ground as he trotted along--layin' so clost he was plumb _bow-legged_. Wal, the parson pulled up. And he'd no more'n got offen his seat when, first rattle outen the box, them dawgs mixed. Gee whillikens! _such_ a mix! They wasn't much of the reg'lar ki-yin'. Dutchy's purp yelped some; but the parson's? Not fer _him!_ He just got a good holt--a shore enough diamond hitch--on that thirst-parlour dawg, and chawed. _Say!_ And whilst he chawed, the dust riz up like they was one of them big sand-twisters goin' through Briggs City. All of a suddent, _how that spotted dawg could fight!_ Dutchy didn't know what 'd struck him. He runs out. "Come, hellup," he yells to the parson. The parson shook his head. "This street is not my private property," he says. Then Dutchy jumped in and begun t' kick the parson's dawg in the snoot. The parson walks up and stops Dutchy. That made the Dutchman turrible mad. He didn't have no gun on him, so out he jerks his pig-sticker. What happened next made our eyes plumb stick out. That parson side-stepped, put out a hand and a foot, and with that highfalutin' Jewie Jitsie you read about, tumbled corn-beef-and-cabbage on to his back. Then he straddled him and slapped his face. "Lieber!" screeched Dutchy. "Goin' t' have any more Sunday night dances?" ast the parson. (_Bing, bang_.) "Nein! Nein!" "Any more" (_bing, bang_) "free Sunday suppers?" "Nein! Nein! Hellup!" "Goin' to change this" (_biff, biff_) "saloon's name!" "Ya! Ya! _Gott!_" The parson got up. "_Amen!_" he says. Then he runs into Silverstein's, grabs a pail of water, comes out again, and throws it on to the dawgs. The Dutchman's purp was done fer a'ready. And the other one was tired enough to quit. So when the water splashed, Dutchy got his dawg by the tail and drug him into the thirst-parlour. But that critter of the parson's. Soon as the water touched him, them spots of hisn _begun to run_. Y' see, he wasn't the stylish keerige dawg at all! _He was a jimber-jawed bull!_ * * * * *