We was waltzed up onto the teacher's platform,
Doctor Kirby and me, and set down in chairs there,
with two men to each of us, and then a tall, raw-
boned feller stalks up to the teacher's desk, and
raps on it with the butt end of a pistol, and says:
"Gentlemen, this meeting will come to order."
Which they was orderly enough before that,
but they all took off their hats when he rapped,
like in a court room or a church, and most of 'em
set down.
They set down in the school kids' seats, or on top
of the desks, and their legs stuck out into the aisles,
and they looked uncomfortable and awkward. But
they looked earnest and they looked sollum, too,
and they wasn't no joking nor skylarking going
on, nor no kind of rowdyness, neither. These
here men wasn't toughs, by any manner of means,
but the most part of 'em respectable farmers. They
had a look of meaning business.
"Gentlemen," says the feller who had rapped,
"who will you have for your chairman?"
"I reckon you'll do, Will," says another feller
to the raw-boned man, which seemed to satisfy
him. But he made 'em vote on it before he took
office.
"Now then," says Will, "the accused must have
counsel."
"Will," says another feller, very hasty, "what's
the use of all this fuss an' feathers? You know as
well as I do there's nothing legal about this.
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