The Long Dim TrailHooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
General
The Long Dim Trail
Hooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
Arizona -- Fiction; Cowboys -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
Next a five-year old carefully starched youngster galloped breathlessly
without a pause through a couple of verses, exploiting her knowledge
that she knew the audience would be surprised that "one my age should
speak in public on the stage." The applause had hardly died when a buxom
lady with white kid slippers three sizes too small, appropriated the
piano. She arranged her toes on the pedals, then wiggled her feet until
the heels slid out. An expression of beatitude adorned her face, her
chubby hands were lifted and came down on the tinkling keys.
The assaulted, helpless piano responded with the familiar "Maiden's
Prayer," while an apparition in a white lace curtain materialized at the
back door of the room, flopping and twisting toward the spell-bound
spectators. The number had been announced as an "Interpretative dance,"
and Holy whispered cautiously to Bronco, "Is it an Apache dance, or has
she just tooken carbolic acid?"
"Search me," was the response. "Looks like a mixture of both of 'em."
The dancer was agile and angular. She had the distinction of being the
only old maid in the county. Her bare, thin arms waved, gyrated,
supplicated; her knees cracked audibly several times, but her mind was
far away. She was mentally repeating the instructions she had studied so
carefully from a book entitled, "The Art of Classic Dancing without a
Teacher." Then with a last squirm, a convulsive shudder, she flopped to
the floor, and ended the agony with one or two feeble kicks.
"It was a fit!" decided Bronco. "But it's the wust one I ever seed
anything have."
The last number on the program was a little, weazened man with brilliant
red hair, lighter red beard, faded blue eyes, who had brought a small
talking machine. With stupendous dignity he wound it up, then stood with
a new record ready to immediately replace the one being scratched out by
the needle. The pile of records was formidable and he was apparently
determined to skip none, until the head committee lady gently, but
firmly and diplomatically, came to the rescue.
He bowed his appreciation of the tumulutous applause, assuming it was
intended for him. It continued unabated. He opened his mouth wide, to
express his gratification at the ovation accorded. The muscles of his
face twitched, his eyes stared wildly and as the audience leaned forward
anxiously, a terrific sneeze smote the air and a set of false teeth
catapulted like a meteor in the midst of the audience.
A suppressed titter, a bobbing of bodies in the vicinity of the teeth,
and then one of the children, groping on the floor, located the lost
property and rose with a triumphant squeal.
"I got 'em!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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