[ It is difficult to write a parody of a parody. Hollywood’s 2013 summer blockbuster “The Lone Ranger” contains so many cultural and film references, asides and in-jokes, all I can do is go my own way. Kudos to Nathanael West who took us on a similar adventure many, many years ago in “A Cool Million”! ]
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
I, Llewellyn Weatherbee, have tried my hand at many pursuits. Back east, I taught grammar school, ran a boarding house and clerked at a bank. Nothing seemed to fit. A flirtatious young lady entering the third grade in our one-room schoolhouse got me dismissed, for handling the merchandise. Kind to a fault, I let two Parisienne ladies, who were down on their luck, stay at my place. My boarding house devolved into a bawdy house. Clerking at the bank, a blond vixen led me such a merry chase, I found my hand in the till.
Generally, I don’t like trains, but riding horseback gives me gas —
As the train lurches to a halt, rain smattering against the windows, train robbers come down the length of the carriage. A particularly smelly individual, his face bristling with tawny hair, says to Llewellyn, “Gimme yer watch!”
“This,” replies Llewellyn, “is a cheap tin ornament of no consequence whatsoever. I say, good sir, you do not want it!”
“Gimme yer watch!”
“This conversation is over, my good man,” replies Llewellyn. “I think you’d better leave!”
“Gimme yer watch!” growls the ruffian, screwing the muzzle of his revolver into the flesh between Llewellyn’s eyes.
“All right,” bleats Llewellyn, “I admit that the object has some value. It’s a gift from my father. I should be sorely put out if you abscond with it.”
“Gimme yer watch!” croaks the bandito, wresting it from Llewellyn’s grip. So angry is Llewellyn, he’s stunned by the magnitude of his own wrath. I shall have my revenge, drums over and over inside his head. It’s all he can do to keep from fainting.
Eventually, the raiders depart.
“Youse was lucky,” drawls a fat cityman sitting across the aisle. “They’s forgot to as’ fo’ yer billfold!”
“On the contrary,” protests Llewellyn, “they took my dear papa’s timepiece!”
The cityman rubs his belly under a tartan vest and makes a face, saying no more.
It’s then that Llewellyn realizes what a novice he is. How indeed lucky he was! Considering that his life savings— $200— is tucked inside his black leather wallet. Le port-monnaie se trouve lui-même. At least this way, he won’t arrive in the badlands as a destitute pilgrim.
An hour later, the train pulls into Whitley Gulch, the last stop on the Santa Anna-Chattanooga Railway. “Las’ stop! All vacate the premises!” shout the two mustachioed conductors, marching down the center of the carriage, as if having the train robbed by an armed gang were part of the schedule. Somehow, Llewellyn finds this insulting. “I say, my good man— ”
“Git offa the train,” replies the conductor in a low, guttural growl. He pulls back his tunic to reveal a nasty-looking truncheon hooked to his belt.
Deciding further discussion should best be with the station attendant, Llewellyn grabs his carry-all off the overhead rack and joins the general exodus. Seeing a Mexican, he spits.
“I should be in need of a horse,” he declares, twenty minutes later, at the livery stable. He doesn’t like the look of the smithy. A rough fellow, thinks Llewellyn, remembering the scoundrel on the train who took his daddy’s watch and the meanie train conductor. Llewellyn imagines punching the smithy in fury, then kissing him on the mouth in a passionate bear hug of remorse. What would Jesus do? Llewellyn wonders.
“As-salam alaykum,” replies the blacksmith. “So should we all, at some point, be in need of a steed to facilitate our journey.”
“Yes, but I wish to purchase a horse!”
“Oh,” says the blacksmith, parking his red hot tongs on the hearth. “That’s a horse of a different color.”
“I would prefer a beast of burden who neither farts nor keeps me up at night,” specifies Llewellyn.
“Okay, Englishman!”
“How dare you!… I, my good man, am Welsh.”
The smithy takes him to the corral, eventually selling him, for $40, a stolid young mare. “Low mileage,” assures the smithy.
“My dear fellow,” gasps Llewellyn, “I have no idea what you are talking about!”
“This horse was only used by a little old lady schoolmarm what rode her to church ever’ Sunday.”
“Be that as it may, I have bought the creature,” Llewellyn insists, shoveling over the money. It’s when he goes behind the forge to pick horseshoes out of a wooden box that he spots the Indian. Who is wildly rifling the trash can for usable and/or edible items.
“I say— ” says Llewellyn.
“Grunff,” grunts the Indian.
Admiring his supple loincloth and bone vest, Llewellyn tries in vain to start a longer conversation.
Waiting for his horse to be shoed, Llewellyn is all but bowled over by the Indian rounding the corner. “What kind of Injun are you?!” barks Llewellyn.
The blacksmith gives the Indian a baleful glance, but says nothing.
“Winnebago.”
“Is that a local denomination?”
“Eagle fly like wind.”
“You got a name, oh noble savage?”
“Eagle Pooping On Cactus Flower.”
“Hmm…” decides Llewellyn. “I think I’ll just call you Toronto.”
They take turns silently spitting and shuffling their boots in the dirt while the smithy finishes shoeing Llewellyn’s horse. For an additional $20, Llewellyn outfits himself with saddle, bridle, blanket and stirrups.
Meanwhile, sneaking around to the front of the saloon, Toronto casts furtive glances left and right. Boldly marching up to the hitching post, he untethers a gray and white paint, quickly leading it back behind the livery stable. “Him my horse,” says the red man.
“Yes?” Llewellyn asks incredulously. “Does it have a name?”
“Him Mr. Ted. Him talk!”
“Go fluff yourself,” says the horse.
Llewellyn gasps, his mouth hanging open.
“What your horse name, yevla feekoos?” asks the Indian.
“Why… Palomino.”
“Him horse color,” the savage objects, tightening the saddle and hurriedly mounting the stirrups of the paint.
Flummoxed, Llewellyn follows suit. As they ride stealthily out of town, amidst intermittent showers, Llewellyn explains, “Him’s not the horse’s… God! Now you’ve got me doing it! Yes, the brute is a palomino, but that’s also her name.”
Palomino neighs affectionately.
“Him like you, yevla feekoos.”
“Yes, my horse likes me,” Llewellyn sighs. Wherever they’re going, it’s destined to be a long ride.
Three miles beyond town, they come upon the railhead. Chinese coolies swarm industriously, laying track, their jerkins glossy with rain. Oh well, observes Llewellyn philosophically, somebody has to do it. The price of manifest destiny is the subjugation of the lower orders. Plutarch tells us —
“Him rain much,” says his Indian companion, interrupting his train of thought.
A short, rotund man with black muttonchops and a Homburg hat is stomping back and forth, waving his arms, shouting at the coolies and foremen. “Drive in the spikes! Bring up more rails! Must I do everything myself?!” He’s Walter T. Chesterton, a railroad tycoon.
Could this be the head of the railroad? wonders Llewellyn. “You, sir!” he shouts from astride his horse. “What kind of choo-choo train railroad— ”
“N-Nothin’ to see here, d-dude!” says a snot-nosed gunslinger named Kid Whistle, hands on hips, stepping between Llewellyn and the magnate. “J-Just keep ridin’.” The Kid emphasizes his point of view by pulling out a six shot .44 caliber Starr revolver, bullets the size of bumble bees. He keeps it pointed at the ground.
Five burly men in a row, wearing floppy hats, hold aloft rakes, hoes, shovels and scythes. It takes Llewellyn a moment to realize that they must be farmers. Protesting the infringement of the railroad on their land and their way of life.
A white sheep stands stoically in front of each farmer. Aha! realizes Llewellyn. The farmers are buggering the sheep to protest the railroad! Sure enough, the Chinese coolies and railroad people all turn away from this spectacle of animal cruelty and wanton rape. Only Toronto studies the scene with keen interest.
“How dare you sodbusters oppose progress? Oppose the railroad?” shouts Walter T. Chesterton, taking off his Homburg hat and mopping rain from his face with a bandana. “How canst thou pick a bone with me? I may be a railroad baron, but if ever I have a son, I shall name him Trayvon.”
“I want my watch back!” counters Llewellyn.
“Screw your watch!” rants Chesterton. “You, sir, are a provocateur!”
“N-Now you pilgrims r-really got to leave,” swears Kid Whistle sincerely.
“Gobble, gobble, gobble, Johnny Reb!” taunt the farmers.
“W-Well, by gumption…” demurs The Kid. “I never voted for The Rail Splitter, if that’s what you mean!”
“We represent The Farmers Association!”
“I represent the Santa Anna and Chattanooga Railroad!” howls the enraged Walter T. Chesterton, railroad tycoon. “You Micks come over here from Ireland and think you can run the whole show! If America doesn’t work for you, take your pack and shovel and go live south of the border! The Mormons do.”
“Go fluff yourself!” says Mr. Ted, the talking horse.
“Shut up, Injun!” shouts Kid Whistle threateningly.
“Uh, Kid,” explains one of the farmers, “Injun’s the only one who ain’t said nothin’.”
As a crew of Latinos pass by, everyone, including the horse, takes time out to spit.
“This conversation is over,” suggests Walter T. Chesterton. “I think you’d better leave.”
“I sing a song of the open road!” declares Llewellyn. “I see myself as a modern day Paul Revere, summoning the people to confront the growing danger of tyranny.”
“Open road this!” says Chesterton, giving Llewellyn the bird. Closing in on Palomino, Chesterton has no way of knowing that Llewellyn is a beginning rider. As Chesterton grabs the reins, Llewellyn topples from the saddle. Falling swan-like atop railroad tycoon Walter T. Chesterton.
Pandemonium! Coolies running every which way. Caucasian foreman in fisticuffs with white farmers. Sheep bleating. Chesterton rolling on the ground, a vise-like grip on Llewellyn. Toronto buggering a sheep.
When the dust clears and farmers, Llewellyn and Toronto have all departed, the only thing Walter T. Chesterton remembers is the name Llewellyn Weatherbee, railroad opponent.
“I want you to kill that cracker!”
“Th-The Injun?” asks Kid Whistle.
“Do I call Indians crackers? The white man! The guy on the palomino!”
“Y-Yeah, I got it, I got it,” says Kid Whistle. “I cotton to it.”
“Well, go do it!”
So in the dark of night, Kid Whistle rides off across the prairie. Which turns out to be a lot bigger and darker than he anticipated. Thoroughly lost, he makes a fire, eats some hardtack and beds down for the night. In fact, it takes him three days before he stumbles across our hero’s campsite. But stumble across it, he does, finding Llewellyn asleep under a horse blanket and the Indian nowhere to be found. Pulling his Starr revolver, he approaches Llewellyn. Only to find a leather-clad arm around his neck and a Bowie knife pricking his cheek. “Uh, you kind of caught me off my post, Chief!” stammers Kid Whistle. As Toronto carves the Winnebago symbol of the prairie chicken into the gunslinger’s cheek, the Starr goes off with a bang! Everyone jumps. Toronto accidently slices off a chunk of Kid Whistle’s ear. Kid Whistle drops his gun and scrambles to retrieve it. Llewellyn lurches to his feet like an angry Golem. Running to his horse, “The Kid” jumps into the saddle and rides out of there.
“Shit! I think he punctured my eye,” moans Llewellyn, one hand pressed to his face.
When it becomes clear that Llewellyn’s left eye cannot be saved, Toronto wields his Bowie knife, performing the necessary surgery. Then, for one week— out on the prairie— Toronto hunts small game, cooks meals and nurses the injured white man. Thunderheads march across the sky, dumping their precipitation on the steaming ground. Toronto brews coffee so thick, the spoon stands straight up. Once Llewellyn’s wound has closed, Toronto fashions him a brown leather eye patch.
“In England, Russia or Sweden,” Llewellyn explains, “belonging to the aristocracy really matters. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, however, here in America, egalitarianism battles the natural tendency of the elite to ascend to the uppermost rungs of society.”
“Paleface make sound of prairie chicken. Squawk, squawk! ” observes Toronto.
Ten thousand years ago, in the last Ice Age, the Indians crossed the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, eventually populating North America. In the intervening years, the wily Indian has developed many skills. Toronto, whose real name has to do with eagle poop, shows Llewellyn how to build a sweat lodge.
“First, river. Good spot. Water. Tranquility. Next, dig circle. Flat floor. Erect teepee.”
“Where do we get a teepee?” asks Llewellyn.
“Hunt buffalo. Use skins. Find trees. Make poles.”
“Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier to just visit that Comanche village a few miles from here and, you know, buy a teepee?”
Toronto is scandalized! Also, lazy. So that’s what they do.
Puking his guts out in the sweat lodge, Llewellyn experiences an epiphany: Yes!!! Eye patch and all, his sneering face and jeering voice are his ultimate weapons. With a few well-chosen bons mots, he— Llewellyn Weatherbee— can tear his opponents to shreds! He’ll be known as The Cyclops, Terror of the West ! Boys will read dime novels depicting his adventures. Outlaws will fear him. Damsels will wish to taste of his prowess. President Grant will be no help, but Llewellyn will have the support of the American Association of Dental Hygienists. Oral hygiene wins the day!!!
They ride across the badlands. Then they ride across the badlands some more. “Smoke signal,” says Toronto, pointing toward the horizon.
“Yes, yes, so I see. But, I say, old chap, what d’ they, you know, mean?”
“Him say ‘buffalo herd on prairie’ …”
“Oh! Good show!”
“… ‘locust swarming’ …”
“Oh! I say!”
“… ‘Chief’s wife have girl baby’ …
“Oh.”
“… ‘Paleface elect new president’ …”
“Wait a minute! All that in a smoke signal?!”
But Toronto, as is the Indian way, has lapsed into an elegiacal silence, contemplating how alike the bark of a prairie dog is to the ecstatic yelp of a squaw in heat.
Riding into town under a lowering sky, they’re surprised to find it’s July 4th. They must have lost track of the days. Everything is turned upside down for the holiday. A town militiaman with a rifle lounges on every street corner. “Are you’uns enemies of the people?!” grimly squinting townsfolk constantly ask.
” ‘You’uns ‘?” answers Llewellyn. “Since when am I ‘you’uns ‘?”
“You ain’t answered the question! Is that bird with you a wetback? Hey, wetback, habla inglés?”
Little Billy Lipscomb has won the Town Honor Ribbon for his ability to play the bugle. Standing at the podium under American flag bunting, Billy plays Taps, reducing the townspeople to quivering jelly. The mayor then delivers his patriotic address:
“I have called for a ban on all products from the Barbary Coast. Irregardless. As we stand at the dawn of still another new era, I look back with great compassion and admiration at the glorious 4G lifestyle and traditions of the slave states— Gentility, Genitality, Genus and Genius. Although the same can be said of the Union, I’m sure. Make no mistake, 24 years since we joined this great nation, 93 years since it’s founding, I envision ever faster modes of transportation! Conestoga covered wagons of enormous size and splendor, pulled by teams of 20 and 30 horses. That day is tomorrow! A Monday.
“Sullied only by the presence of wetbacks and other malcontents. Although it seems like only yesterday, a Saturday, it was in fact just two short years ago that we rid ourselves of Emperor Maximilian, Scourge of the Rio Grande. Why did the chicken cross the road? To become an American and escape Mexico! So rejoice, America! Be hearty and prosper!
“We also need to dig a new well, build a new jailhouse, and clean the horse manure from the curbs and gutters of Main Street. God bless America! I ask all Christians to return to Life Everlasting in the name of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
As the locals break out the food and hard liquor, a light rain falling, Toronto whispers, “We leave now!”
They do, greatly relieved to arrive back amidst the soggy safety of the wide open range.
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
Another of those 10-year-old girls, this one with her proud daddy on Independence Day, at the General Store, purchasing Dr. John’s Elixir & Tonic. Every time she and I gazed upon one another’s countenance, we felt the jolt of primal lust. I am ashamed of my eye patch, but she smirked, the little darlin’. Smirked! So pretty. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! They know nothing. Thank God almighty that my fear of being banished from society outweighs my need for the affection of youth. Although their clean lines, taut skin and tiny features are absolutely adorable! Once again my fellow countrymen have found me hopelessly, helplessly worshipping at the altar of female pulchritude.
Who wrote the Bible? Can I get a signed copy?
In his private carriage just off the railhead, Walter T. Chesterton, railroad tycoon, takes a quick gulp of brandy, lights a cigar and growls, “Did you kill him?”
“Y-Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I killt him.”
“You put him in a kilt?” rants Chesterton, quickly losing patience with this hired gun.
“I…I done him!”
“What does that mean?!”
“I… I shot his eye out!”
“Jesus Christ! So now the renegade railroad opponent is running around blind in one eye?”
“W-Well… yes.”
“You’re fired, Kid Whistle!”
“I… I can still go after other b-bad hombres, hoss!”
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
I want to feel better about myself. I have decided to write to the French ambassador and offer my services in Tahiti. From what I understand, both climate and culture would be salubrious for someone of my particular persuasion. Vent not, faint heart, lest your sweet poison fill every cavity and crevice of the known world! Ship of fate, hasten, hurry, bearing me a-way!!!
The laws of commerce dictate that the most popular houses of ill repute are the ones that provide solace for every part of a man’s body: his skin (baths), his stomach (food), his groin (sex), his mouth (sex), his libido (sex) and, of course, his cock (sex). Riding out of Abilene after a night at Madam Tootsie’s, Llewellyn and his stalwart Indian companion are feeling no pain. Confronting wetbacks lining the side of the road, knee-deep in mud, Llewellyn crosses himself and spits.
“We make her member of tribe!”
“Who? Angelique? That little blond firecracker? The one who won’t sleep with dagos or wetbacks? Make her an honorary member of your tribe? But she’s French! The mixing of the races is not countenanced by the Bible.”
“Good squaw!”
“Because she gives good head…?”
“Because she can cook.”
Llewellyn and Toronto spend another two days in the saddle. Tumbleweed invades their campsite at night. Rattlesnakes creep under their blankets, seeking warmth. Scorpions nest in their boots.
Still riding, Toronto points. “Him prairie dog.”
“Yes, I see that him‘s a prairie dog,” Llewellyn screams. “I hate the prairie! I hate you! I don’t even want to be here,” he seethes. He’s so discombobulated, in a pique of despair, he topples from his horse.
“Paleface upset.”
“Agh! Agh! Agh! ” Llewellyn cries, choking, tearing at his hair and running in a circle.
“No run in circle, yevla feekoos,” Toronto commands sternly. “Circle bring rain.”
Llewellyn trips, stubbing his toe. Falling on his knees, he gives full vent to his anguish.
Nimbly jumping to the ground, Toronto plucks up the heavy, gold nugget Llewellyn tripped on. “Him gold!” exclaims the savage quietly, adroitly stuffing the nugget into the leather pouch riding astride his belt.
“Oh, I say,” declares Llewellyn, brightening. “Something good has come out of this wayward journey, after all! May I see that?”
“See what?” asks the wily Indian.
“Why, him gold, of course.”
“I find.”
“Well, my Lord! Of all the… I tripped on it, for God’s sake!”
“You trip on large rock,” insists Toronto, hefting a 20 pound block of granite in both hands. He lets it fall, threateningly, with a thud. “Gold nugget, him lie next to rock. I find.”
“Oh, come on, old boy! Now I ask you, Toronto, is that fair?!”
“What ‘fair’? What you want, yevla feekoos? This whole area Indian hunting ground. You trespasser. You tourist.”
“Well, I hardly consider myself a tourist.”
” ‘Leave nothing but footprint, take away nothing but happy memory!’ ”
Struck dumb by this turn of events, Llewellyn collapses in the dirt, helplessly watching the Indian stolidly mount his steed and ride off with total equanimity. It is here the Apache war party finds Llewellyn later that afternoon, tomahawks flailing. They fall upon Llewellyn like a pack of wolves.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!
The series of pistol shots comes in a single, uninterrupted cavalcade. As in a dream, Llewellyn looks up, surrounded by dead Indians. He sees an outlandishly leathery white man. “Name’s Doc Greeley,” says this spectacularly dressed individual. Llewellyn examines his black leather boots, brown leather chaps, gray leather pants, long sleeve green leather shirt, tan leather vest and black leather hat. “I… am… a… gunslinger,” exclaims the good doctor.
They spend the afternoon with the doc instructing Llewellyn on the finer points of plundering corpses. Having scavenged anything of value, Doc and Llewellyn pile the dead like cordwood at fifty feet’s distance from their campsite. “Let the buzzards and coyotes clean up!” advises the doc heartily.
“This blazing sun gives a man heat stroke,” Doc Greeley opines as they sit around the campfire that night.
“Well, maybe if you weren’t wearing so much leather… ?”
“What are you, an advice columnist in the penny press? C’mere!”
Before Llewellyn understands the gunslinger’s intent, he finds himself bound hand and foot, his pants down around his knees. Damned, even as he grits his teeth in the pain and fury of being sodomized, Llewellyn finds himself getting an erection.
“I could blow your brains out,” Doc Greeley suggests amiably the next morning. “Normally, I do that little chore. However…! Youse was really getting into our ménage à deux last night. It would be a shame to waste good talent. I, sir, am honored to initiate youse into the Society of Catamites.”
Untying Llewellyn, he takes a last gulp of coffee, adjusts his stirrups, mounts his horse and rides away, leading a string of Indian ponies.
Too listless and demoralized to even make an entry in his journal, Llewellyn rides to the nearest creek and falls fully-clothed into the pristine, gurgling water.
After two days of brooding, Llewellyn’s butt stops aching and he chalks up the encounter to experience. Not necessarily a pleasant one, but still…
Standing side by side in his ornate train car, Mr. Walter T. Chesterton and the gunfighter known as Kid Whistle survey the landscape before them, stretching to the horizon. “I’ve called for an armed Pinkerton detective to ride on every train for a month,” says the railroad baron.
“P-Pinkerton’s? Are they?… You know…”
“Not that I know of! I believe it’s just the man’s name.”
“Because if they are… you know…”
“They… are… not!… Anyway, we’re laying track at a good clip.”
“W-Wouldn’t go there, Mr. Chesterton,” the gunman warns him. “That’s Indian country.”
“This is a railroad. Tracks go straight, you moron. Move the Indians aside! Toot! Toot! Comin’ through! ”
“W-Well, y-yes, h-hoss,” says the gunslinger, his speech impediment even more pronounced.
“This conversation is over,” Chesterton remarks. “I think you’d better leave.”
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
“Who is that masked man?” I wonder. I have every reason to hide behind a mask of deception, presenting to the world a countenance of shy, clumsy demeanor, rather than allowing my true, wolfish nature to be illuminated by the light of day. If they only knew the calamitous violence in my heart! They too would tremble in fear, as I do! Beware, beware, my too gentle friend and lover. The ogre of night approaches to deflower you of your virtue. So sweet, so kind, so gentle! The feathery leather tailings of her sturdy bullwhip caress my sorry flesh, leaving great stinging welts, well-hidden by my outer apparel. She whips me, droplets of sweat forming a mist in our cramped and steamy boudoir. Oh how I thirst for the taste of the lash. One touch and, alas, I am destroyed!!!
Sojourning in still another brothel of a Sunday afternoon, Llewellyn rescues a damsel in distress. Grabbing her willowy body by the bodice, he pulls her back from the banister and her imminent demise. “Madam, you are a little tipsy,” he points out. “As am I. You are a Swedish lassie, I surmise?”
“Yes,” she giggles. “Yevla feekoos! ”
“Amazing,” he remarks, taken totally aback. “You speak Winnebago!”
She laughs, open-mouthed, in his face. “No habla español,” she tells him. “Hispanics not allowed here!”
“And where, may I ask, are you from in Sweden? Arboga, perhaps.”
“Tantolunden.”
“Never heard of it!”
Riding into town on individual horses amidst a torrential downpour, rifles pointing in every direction, the six Indians make a hostile impression, at best.
As the saloon doors swing open, Llewellyn’s prone body flies out, landing in five inches of rich, yellow mud. Prying him loose, the Indians locate his steed, help him into the saddle and return to the safety of the open range. They ride for hours. “Why wear the eye patch if you no help people?” Toronto admonishes him.
“There are things you don’t know about me, my brave Indian companion,” declares Llewellyn. “A previous injury, playing marbles in my youth, prevented me from enlisting during The War Between the States. See, the knuckle on the thumb of my right hand is badly bent. I cannot reload a rifle. Never-the-less, I remain willing to contribute my share. I’m willing to chaperone very large groups of extremely young girls.”
“Paleface think only of self. You should help people, yevla feekoos.”
“What do you mean? Like caritas? Go out and help strangers? I’m not comfortable with that, Toronto. I do help people! Just this year alone, I’ve raised the standard of living of several French and Cajun ladies. I’ve contributed to the delinquency of a minor. I buy commemorative 1¢ stamps. I don’t want you to think I don’t care. I do care! I care very deeply. Even if 47% of the American people just want a handout! I want the government to do more snooping, not less. The Secretary of the Interior is a personal friend.”
They camp out under a sky alight with a million stars.
“Hiya, hiya, hiya, hiya,” chants an ornately dressed Indian, throwing handfuls of dirt into the campfire.
“Him rainmaker,” explains Toronto.
“TELL HIM TO STOP!” screams Llewellyn.
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
Whose evil countenance do I see lurking in my mirror? The winged horns, the craterous skin and the sulfurous eyes, all equally hideous to behold! Scrabbling against the glass, this desperado wishes to escape into our world, where the sale of real estate and affairs of the Lands, Deeds and Claims Office would totally consume every waking moment. Alas, my darling, not yet, not yet! But soon…
Mankind tamed fire when Neanderthals still roamed the Earth. A tomahawk is simply a stone lashed to a stick, a rock lashed to a wooden club.
Adrift in his own debauchery— realizing that he cannot spend his entire adult life making love to licentious women— Llewellyn joins the Indian plan to get their own back.
“Hunting ground shrinking. Cavalry encroaching. Red man future clouded,” says Chief Panting Wolf. He is Comanche, which makes him a tough hombre. Toronto and Llewellyn are just visiting. Filled with a festering bitterness over the loss of his watch, Llewellyn signs on to the Comanche war party.
They attack the railroad camp at night, in the rain, igniting skins of buffalo fat. They are less interested in taking scalps— or striking with a spirit wand— than bludgeoning Chinamen to death. It takes them 14 minutes, in chaotic conditions, torches blazing, muzzle flashes shattering the darkness. This is what happens when society prohibits intercourse with minors, Llewellyn finds himself chanting over and over, unaccustomed to bashing in people’s skulls with a blunt instrument. He finds the darkness and confusion a blessing. No way could he ever have been part of this merciless slaughter in broad daylight. A Chicano appears. Llewellyn gives him “the horns” and spits over his shoulder. Gunshots puncture the night from all sides, sending Llewellyn sprawling in the mud. “You want be hero,” announces Toronto— hovering spookily like an apparition, his face painted a white mask of death— “you gotta stand tall.”
And, of course, it wouldn’t be the Wild West if the foremen and railroad dicks from Pinkerton’s didn’t mount a counter-attack.
“Vamoose! Vamoose!” cry the Native Americans, purposely speaking Spanglish to further mislead their adversaries. Dragging their dead and wounded, Chief Panting Wolf and company torch what’s left of the railhead before hightailing it outta there at first light.
“How could they do this? What got into them? They’ve lost their minds,” mourns a tearful Walter T. Chesterton. He is not so tearful, however, that he forgets to ask the U.S. Cavalry to track down and annihilate the perpetrators.
One foreman does pose a salient question: “Hey, wait a minute, fellahs! Who was that white guy with the eye patch?”
From the journal of Llewellyn Weatherbee:
Alas, all is lost! I shall seek a post in foreign service, anything to hide my insatiable need to imbibe human blood!
“Well, bosom buddy, my trusted Indian companion. Maybe we’ll get our dime novel, after all,” predicts Llewellyn, as the two of them ride up into the hill country to hide.
“Okay, yevla feekoos.”
“You keep calling me that. That’s Winnebago-speak, right?”
“We Winnebago are a peaceful folk. We have no bad words in our language. We must borrow from Swedes.”
“Yevla feekoos is Swedish?!”
“Yes.”
“Well, what’s it mean, for God’s sake?”
“Goddam homo.”
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yustyoking 
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