The story is set in Piperock, a rough Western town, where the local sheriff and other civic-minded citizens have decided to organize a "safe and sane" Fourth of July celebration, departing from the town's usual tradition of explosive, dangerous, and often deadly holiday revelry. The planned festivities include a patriotic speech by the town judge, a baseball game between two rival ranch outfits — the Seven-A and the Triangle — a balloon ascension by a hired aeronaut, and an evening dance. The narrator, Ike Harper, returns from weeks of solitary mining work just in time for the celebration, arriving to find two veteran troublemakers, Scenery Sims and Dirty Shirt Jones, already drunk in the mesquite outside town, bitterly opposed to the new restrained approach to celebrating. The festivities begin to unravel almost immediately. Scenery and Dirty, hostile to the safe and sane concept, sabotage the balloon operator's kerosene supply by shooting holes in his cans, forcing him to use what fuel remains and launch the balloon ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, the judge's patriotic oration is repeatedly interrupted by the hecklings of Scenery and Dirty from beneath the platform. The judge, it is gradually revealed, has been drinking gin from a water pitcher the entire time. Before the speech can be properly delivered, the balloon, only partially airborne and tethered by a rope to Dirty Shirt's saddle, comes careening down the main street in a cloud of black smoke. Dirty and his horse are dragged along, eventually slamming into the speaker's platform and sending the judge, Hank Padden, and Dirty tumbling in a wreck of splintered wood. Ike, attempting to stop the runaway craft by grabbing a rope, is swept along too, and the whole mass collides with a tree, knocking him unconscious. Ike recovers and is pressed into service as umpire for the baseball game, despite having almost no understanding of the sport's rules. His attempts to adjudicate are farcical: he misrules on hit batsmen, drags an injured player to a base out of misguided sympathy, gets hit in the nose by a batted ball, and draws furious protests from both sides. The game descends into chaos when a dog belonging to Scenery chews up the ball, and later Weinie Lopp hits the ball so hard it splits in two, half being caught and half falling to the ground. Ike, reasoning from first principles and acknowledging a private arrangement with the judge over a bet, rules that the Seven-A wins by a score of one and a half to one. The crowd erupts in outrage. Before any violence can erupt from the disputed ruling, Scenery and Dirty reappear, this time having commandeered the balloon again, with a wagon hitched to it by rope. The balloon drags the wagon at terrifying speed across the landscape toward the hills. Ike, trapped on the wagon, makes a desperate decision to abandon it by crawling out along the wagon tongue and climbing the rope up toward the balloon. The wagon eventually crashes into a gully, and the balloon, freed of its drag, shoots upward with Ike clinging to the rope beneath the aeronaut's trapeze. After a wild, uncontrolled flight, the balloon descends into a remote creek area near Ike and the sheriff's mining claim, crashing into trees. Ike finds the battered aeronaut there and, still holding the five-hundred-dollar prize money he had been trusted to hold as referee, pays the man in full, reasoning that the man had technically flown. The aeronaut, grateful but deeply offended at hearing the words "safe and sane" one more time, hurls a rock at Ike, knocking him into the creek, and departs over the hill. Ike, gunless, wet, and bruised, can only wave after him philosophically.
By W. C. Tuttle · First published 1917 · Genre: Western, Adventure, Short Story Collection