PAINTED ROCK
and sich-like, when a freight comes bumpin' along, a freight that hed been side-tracked to Sweetwater to let the express pass through. None of us paid no attention, for I wuz showin' him that was City Marshal then (Green his name was, Ben Thompson shot and killed him over to San Antone) how to rise up the four Jacks outer'n the pack. And bump, bump kim along the freight, and suthin' went wrong with a switch, and the old freight took the wrong track and bumped into a no-thoroughfare, so to speak, and stopped up agin a sandbank with a jerk. And nat'rally the kyars played hell and piled themselves up, but luckily for us on the platform they deecided to fall the other way. But before they fell the door of a box car, which was crumpled up like as if a bull hed charged an empty kerosene-can, bust open, and suthin' inside spanged Ginger right in among us, spoiling my trick and upending ole Green among a pile o' lamps, where he cussed very blasphemous, enough to hurt the feelin's of a strict atheist. And me, I stretched out Ginger flat and diskivered a broke arm, and I plastered up a cut in his open
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