"'I seconds the motion,' says Boggs. 'Butcherknife Bill is a neat
an' compact name. I congratulates our visitin' friend from the East
on the case wherewith he wins it out. I would only make one
su'gestion, the same bein' in the nacher of amendments to the
orig'nal resolootion, an' which is, that in all games of short
kyards, or at sech times as we-all issues invitations to drink, or
at any other epock when time should be saved an' quick action is
desir'ble, said cognomen may legally be redooced, to "Butch."'
"'Thar bein' no objections,' says Tutt, 'it is regyarded as the
sense of the meetin' that this yere visitin' sharp from the States,
yeretofore clogged in his flight by the name of Archibald Willingham
De Graffenreid Butt, be yereafter known as "Butcherknife Bill"; or
failin' leesure for the full name, as "Butch," or both at the
discretion of the co't, with the drinks on Butch as the gent now
profitin' by this play. Barkeep, set up all your bottles an' c'llect
from Butch.'
"But to go back to my long ago camp on the Caliente. Prince Hal is a
polished an' p'lite sort o' anamile. The second day after I pitches
camp, Prince Hal shows up. He paws the grass, an' declar's himse'f,
an' gives notice that while I'm plumb welcome, he wants it
onderstood that he's party of the first part in that valley, an'
aims to so continyoo. As I at once agrees to his claims, he is
pacified; then he counts up the camp like he's sizin' up the
plunder. It's at this point I signs Prince Hal as my friend for life
by givin' him about a foot of bacon-skin. He stands an' chews on
that bacon-skin for two hours; an' thar's heaven in his looks. "It
gets so Prince Hal puts in all his spar' time at my camp. An' I
donates flapjacks, bacon-skins an' food comforts yeretofore onknown
to Prince Hal. He regyards that camp of mine as openin' a new era on
the Caliente.
"When not otherwise engaged, Prince Hal stands in to curry my ponies
with his tongue. The one he'd be workin' on would plant himse'f
rigid, with y'ears drooped, eyes shet, an' tail a-quiverin'; an'
you-all could see that Prince Hal, with his rough tongue, is jest
burnin' up that bronco from foretop to fetlocks with the joy of them
attentions. When Prince Hal has been speshul friendly, I'd pass him
out a plug of Climax tobacco. Sick? Never once! It merely elevates
Prince Hal's sperits in a mellow way, that tobacco does; makes him
feel vivid an' gala a whole lot.
"Which we're all gettin' on as pleasant an' oneventful as a litter
of pups over on the Caliente, when one mornin' across the divide
from Red River comes this yere pugnacious person, Hotspur. He makes
his advent r'arin' an' slidin' down the hillside into our valley,
promulgatin' insults, an' stampin' for war. You can see it in
Hotspur's eye; he's out to own the Caliente.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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