One More For Charlie

I haven't caught a freight out of here yet. Really. This pigsty is still open for business. I got redeye. I got corn squeezins, what's your pleasure? And make it snappy. You ain't the only bindlestiff sourdough blown into town by this wind. And listen, bub, my commands are law from here all the way across to the barn. Why, even Jinx the cat keeps his distance when I'm wearing my Junior Woodchucks badge.

It's just I haven't felt up to all these shootouts at high noon in the barnyard lately. Maybe it's the cold seeping through these piggy bones. It's bitter here in the North Woods, not like my home in California where they sleep out every night. Here, you break a strap on your snowshoe and that's all for baseball, folks.

I came up here thinking I could get rich quick. A few winters in this snowbound cabin on the edge of a cliff, Black Larsen breakin' in allatime, an animated bear chasing me, and I'd be smoking a fur coat, man. Rich as pigs, as they say up here.

It didn't work out that way. No, my Russian bride Patrushka, daughter of the Tsar, started wearing the fur coat to stay warm. Wouldn't let me smoke it, even though they keep better that way. Then it got so cold we both had to wear it. So now all my cold cash is under the snow and I got nothing to smoke.

I wish Mrs. Bean would bring out the slops. I wonder where Jinx is keepin' himself these days. Probably on the Bean family four poster bed with a nice little coal fire in the grate. Next the goat will be up there too while I'm out here boiling my shoe again.

Well, as my old friend Scarlett O'Hara used to say, "Tomorrow is another day." Or maybe it was Tosh St. Clair. Anyway, one of my old friends used to say it. Another guy I knew used to say "Sun's gonna shine in my back door someday. Gonna rise like a new wind blow my blues away." All us Hard-Luck Henrys got to keep on believin' that. Meanwhile, pony up, boys. This redeye ain't free.