In the rowdy cowtown of San Pablo, a charitable theatrical production is organized to raise funds for the local parson's missionary work. The scheme is conceived by a dramatic teacher named Eveline Annabel Wimple, who arrives in town with professional ambitions, and Susie Hightower Potts, the formidable wife of saloon owner and cattle rancher Hank "Boll-Weevil" Potts. Susie contributes her own written play, a melodrama about temperance, drinking, and moral ruin, which wins out over Miss Wimple's competing script, much to various parties' displeasure. The narrator is Hozie Sykes, a cowpuncher employed by Hank on the HP ranch alongside his rotund partner Peewee Parker. Both men consider themselves capable actors despite having no real experience. When two of the originally cast performers are knocked out of the production following a brawl, Hank arrives at the ranch to conscript the pair as replacements. By the time they agree, both Hozie and Peewee are thoroughly drunk. Nevertheless they are hauled into town, costumed, and thrust onto the stage. Hozie is painted head to toe in black enamel to play Uncle Tom, a role that leaves him barely able to speak or blink. Peewee plays a servant named Jason. The assembled cast is a motley assortment of local characters including Hank himself as the heroic jockey Howard Chesterfield, the ancient and cantankerous Zibe Hightower as the villain Simon Legree, and the massive Susie herself as the delicate Little Eva. A rowdy delegation from the rival towns of Oasis and Alkali occupies the front row, having appointed themselves a committee to judge whether the show is worth their ticket money, threatening refunds if it falls short. The performance deteriorates almost immediately. Hozie, his face hardened with dried paint and his inhibitions dissolved by whiskey, breaks character repeatedly. When Zibe cracks a bullwhip around his legs during a scene, Hozie punches him cold and hurls him bodily into the front-row committee. Curtains fall prematurely. Susie and Miss Wimple brawl backstage over the love scenes. Hank receives a black eye from his wife for similar reasons. The various acts collapse into confusion, misremembered lines, and improvisations that leave the audience baffled about the plot. The climactic scene in which Little Eva ascends to heaven on a wire rigged by three men balanced on a beam above the stage ends in catastrophe when the beam snaps under their combined weight. All three men plummet to the stage along with a quantity of lumber, crashing through the floorboards. Susie, already suspended midway through her celestial ascent, drops back down hard. With Hank incapacitated, the audience and the committee demand that the advertised horse race portion of the show still be delivered or their money returned. Hozie is dressed in jockey gear and mounted on Tequila, a magnificent but notoriously unreliable racehorse that invariably crosses his front legs after a short sprint. The horse is placed on a treadmill constructed to simulate a race for the audience. The scene erupts into chaos when Tequila bolts through the false window backdrop, launches off the stage, and hurls Hozie two stories out into the main street of San Pablo, where he crash-lands onto a buckboard. The runaway team careers down the street and demolishes the train depot platform just as a passenger train is departing. Sitting dazed on the platform, Hozie discovers a woman's handbag left behind in the commotion. Back in town, it emerges that Miss Wimple has vanished during the performance, taking with her the entire proceeds of the evening, which had been entrusted to her at the hotel. When Hozie and Peewee examine the handbag back at the ranch and open the envelope marked as the show's funds, they find it contains nothing but newspaper cut to the size of banknotes. Miss Wimple had substituted dummy money before fleeing on the departing train. The real funds had apparently never existed in the envelope at all, or she had pocketed them entirely before making her escape. The heathen mission receives nothing. The town is left with wreckage, bruises, and the memory of a spectacular disaster, while the sole winner of the entire affair proves to be Eveline Annabel Wimple herself.
By W.C. Tuttle · First published 1909 · Genre: Western, Crime Fiction, Morality Tale