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Crawfish Jim
by
“We counts in the snakes. Thar’s ‘leven of ’em besides Julius Caesar; which we lays him on Crawfish’s breast. You can find the grave to-day.
“Shore! we sticks up a headboard. It says on it, the same bein’ furnished by Doc Peets–an’ I wants to say Doc Peets is the best eddicated gent in Arizona-as follows
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
CRAWFISH JIM, JULIUS CAESAR
AND
ELEVEN OTHER BULL SNAKES,
THEY MEANT WELL,
BUT THEY MISUNDERSTOOD EXISTENCE
AND DIED.
THIS BOARD WAS REARED BY AN
ADMIRING CIRELE OF FRIENDS
WHO WAS WITH DECEASED
TO THE LAST.
“An’ don’t you-all know, son, this yere onfortunate weedin’ out of pore Crawfish that a-way, sorter settles down on the camp an’ preys on us for mighty likely it’s a week. It shorely is a source of gloom. Moreover, it done gives Dan Boggs the fan-tods. As I relates prior, Boggs is emotional a whole lot, an’ once let him get what you-all calls a shock–same, for instance, as them bull-snakes–its shore due to set Boggs’s intellects to millin’. An’ that’s what happens now. We-alls don’t get Boggs; bedded down none for ten days, his visions is that acoote.
“‘Which of course,’ says Boggs, while we-all s settin’ up administerin’ things to him, ‘which of course I’m plumb aware these yere is mere illoosions; but all the same, as cl’ar as ever I notes an ace, no matter where I looks at, I discerns that Julius Caesar serpent a-regardin’ me reproachful outen the atmospher. An’ gents, sech spectacles lets me out a heap every time. You-alls can gamble, I ain’t slumberin’ none with no snake-spook that a-way a-gyardin’ of my dreams.’
“That’s all thar is to the death of Crawfish Jim. Thar ain’t no harm in him, nor yet, I reckons, in Julius Caesar an’ the rest of Crawfish’s fam’ly. But the way they gets tangled up with Wolfville, an’ takes to runnin’ counter to public sentiment an’ them eight six- shooters, Crawfish an’ his live-stock has to go.”