Red Saunders' Pets and Other CrittersPhillips, Henry Wallace
General
Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters
Phillips, Henry Wallace
Humorous stories
The look of irritation vanished from the proprietor's face. "Why don't
some of you fellers help the gentleman out with his bear?" he asked.
Thereupon the spectators took a hand and Thumper was dragged into the
street. Evidently he thought this one of the usual frolics to which we
boys had accustomed him; for, once upon the sidewalk, he began to
prance and gambol in the graceful fashion of his kind. It so happened
that the nurse-girl of the mayor of the town, a huge Swede woman as
broad as she was long (which is almost hyperbole), came trundling her
charge up the board walk at the precise moment that Thumper bowled over
a gentleman in front and came plainly to her view.
One Norwegian war-whoop and away she galloped, the perambulator before
her, as it was not in the mind of the Vikingess to desert her duty.
Screeching, she tore up the walk, the carriage bouncing and rattling,
and the baby crowing with delight. An Indian stepped out of a store
directly in front of her. Him Telka rammed with such fury that he
landed on his neck in the road, with his feet in the air. But, as he
regained his balance, resentment was drowned in unbounded amazement.
"Wakstashoneee!" he said, "wakstashoneeeee!" which is the limit in the
Sioux tongue. Never had the Dakota warrior expected to see the day
when he would be made to bite the earth by a Swede woman and a baby
carriage. Around the corner for home whirled Telka, making the turn
like a circus horse. Arriving at the house, she placed one fairy foot
against the door with such spirit that the lock-socket hit the opposite
wall, picked up carriage and baby and went upstairs with them three
rises to a leap. At the top she burst into a wild oratory of "tanks"
and "Eenyens" and "beejjeerens" and "yoomps," scaring her mistress into
the belief that the Sioux had attacked the town in force--an event she
had long anticipated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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