oey?--and a justice
of the peace over in Iowa fined me five dollars for being on the street
without a muzzle. Said it was a city ordinance. Talk about the gentle
Rube being an easy mark! If these country towns don't get the wandering
minstrel's money one way they will another!"

"It's your own fault," says Looey, kind o' sour.

"I can't see it," says Doctor Kirby. "How did I know that all these
apple-knockers had been filled up with Sykes's Magic Remedy only two
weeks ago? I may have been a spiritualistic medium in my time now and
then," he says, "and a mind reader, too, but I'm no prophet."

"I ain't talking about the business, Doc, and you know it," says Looey.
"We'd be all right and have our horses and wagon now if you'd only stuck
to business and not got us into that poker game. Talk about suckers!
Doc, for a man that has skinned as many of 'em as you have, you're the
worst sucker yourself I ever saw."

The doctor, he cusses the poker game and country towns and medicine
shows and the hull creation and says he is so disgusted with life he
guesses he'll go and be a preacher or a bearded lady in a sideshow. But
Looey, he don't cheer up none. He says:

"All right, Doc, but it's no use talking. You can TALK all right. We all
know that. The question is how are we going to get our horses and wagon
away from these Rubes?"

I listens some more, and I seen them fellers was really into bad
trouble. Doctor Kirby, he had got into a poker game at Smith's Palace
Hotel the night before, right after the show. He had won from Jake
Smith, which run it, and from the others. But shucks! it never made no
difference what you won in that crowd. They had done Doctor Kirby and
Looey like they always done a drummer or a stranger that come along to
that town and was fool enough to play poker with them. They wasn't a
chancet fur an outsider. If the drummer lost, they would take his money
and that would be all they was to it. But if the drummer got to winning
good, some one would slip out'n the hotel and tell Si Emery, which was
the city marshal. And Si would get Ralph Scott, that worked fur Jake
Smith in his livery stable, and pin a star onto Ralph, too. And they
would be arrested fur gambling, only them that lived in our town would
get away. Which Si and Ralph was always scared every time they done it.
Then the drummer, or whoever it was, would be took to the calaboose, and
spend all night there.

In the morning they would be took befo