I still contend that Magpie Simpkins is too finicky. It’s all right for a feller to desire to appear to a good advantage, especially on Sunday, but a finicky person hadn’t ought to pack a gun at a time when he’s just acquired something out of the ordinary in haberdashery.

New boots don’t mean nothing but misery to me. They could set diamonds all the way around the sole, but just the same she don’t spell nothing but blisters and cramps to Ike Harper. Anyway, I’m so bow-legged that my heels have got to be run over on the outside edges before I can be comfortable around the knees.

Magpie paid twenty dollars for them yaller boots. They was glowing with youth, vitality and shiny polish when Magpie leaned ’em against the side of that Pullman berth. They was a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

A pair of boots ain’t nothing but footwear, except when they’re the color of a sunset in Injun Summer and fit like the skin on a sausage—and cost twenty dollars.

Some folks will likely argue that Magpie hadn’t owned said boots long enough to become attached to ’em, but to those critics I will say: you don’t have to have a twenty-dollar bill around the house very long before you becomes sentimental about it.

Me and Magpie are on our way back from the Stampede at Totem, where we went to clean up some money, figuring that we knowed a little more than the fellers did who run the games. We found out that honesty is a poor poker policy in Totem.