Show the old settler my dear san Jua ners I 1 met her on a bu bus running brough long esert desert stretches of arizona to other long stretches in new mexico she had been beautiful some years before and she was still mighty good bloking although her facial lineaments linea ments of y uth had hardened into a set cast of uncompromising purpose she had taught indian khodl driven freight truck run a trading post written for the slick magazines and served two terms as county sheriff 1 I never did dd kill anybody that need killin she smiled as with disturbing demor memories 4 es but I 1 did like to carry a gun it was more possible that way to speak with final authority 7 two other items among her accomplishments complis hir was a son and a daughter the fhe younger one having been born after her father was killed in a car wreck the girl is doing her bit in a munitions factory and the boy has been decorated for heroic a action tion on the german front people are are shocked or offended every time I 1 open my mouth she declared leaving me to take warning hw hw I 1 ventured into her acquaintance they get fightlin figh fl atin tin mad because they dont believe what I 1 say or because they do I 1 am not exactly getting fat over that fact but I 1 have to recognize and reconcile and just leavle leave em to like it or lump it did you notice that woman dressed in shorts that got on at the beaver dams well ashes just chewin her to tongue ngue back there because she cant chew me when she got on she came with her odoriferous cigarette and parked her odoriferous self right down side of me and I 1 got right up and sat by that old od squaw across the aisle then she in the shorts glared glared over at me and hissed well I 1 do like thaw that and I 1 just sung out to her B O 0 o o her eyes just popped right out of her head and she started aplean up lean in intently in my direction but I 1 looked her straight in the eye like I 1 used to ta do when I 1 carried a colts 45 and she settled back down to chewin her tongue so poison mad she forgot ker her cigarette till it burned her lips you seem to be wonderlin won derin why I 1 do it well its not just to be mean any moren id shoot a man just to be killin but when a womans comans been steeped and fer in tobacco till she stinks something awful when ashes so degenerate in mind and morals that she comes brazenly out in public less clothing than continued on page 4 the old settler continued from 1 a fiji cannibal and when on top of all that she comes and plants herself down by me and puffs her putrefaction in my face as if to advertise her belief that I 1 have no rights and no sense anse of taste nor r smell nor decency its time to sing B O 0 o or o with the accent on the B O 0 o o everybody ought to sing it to her till she fumi fumigates ates herself and buys a pair of cover coveralls I 1 0 no you do such a thing because ashes a woman that is ashes supposed to be ar a woman but you relish the nearness to her any moren I 1 11 would well im a woman and j I 1 if any loud smelling man should 1 I come indecently dressed to park 1 I himself by me and proceed to puff the contents of his putrid lungs i in my face hed hear something 1 never to be f forgotten or ottea what it I 1 cant take from a man I 1 wont take from a mere woman j ALBERT R LYMAN |