(WESTERN THEME)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS....brought to you by Trailblazer Table Napkins...use em as napkins (SMOOSH OF GREASE)....as hankies (NOSE HONK)....or use em to tie up guys' wrists and gag em (GAGGING) and now, here's today's exciting adventure.....
(OUTDOOR AMBIENCE, DISTANT CATTLE. DUSTY AND LEFTY SIT BY THE FIRE AT EVENING. HORSES GRAZE NEARBY. OCCASIONAL WHINNY.)
GK: Smell of green grass, Dusty. I tell you, spring is coming on. Few more weeks and it'll be time to take our baths.
TR: Kinda lookin forward to that.
GK: Lookin forward to that myself. We'll get these cows to a cow wash and go in with em.
TR: I've been dabbing kerosene on myself as a deodorant and now I'm worried about getting too near the campfire. I could go up like the Hindenburg.
GK: Maybe once we get ourselves cleaned up and shaved, we can start to think about having a social life. Go on dates with women. Go to restaurants and order horsdovries and imperatives.
TR: What's an imperative?
GK: It's a kind of a drink. (GALLOPING HOOVES APPROACH) Hey, who is this coming?
TR: Looks like the Pony Express.
(GALLOPING APPROACH CLOSE, AND STOP, WITH WHOAS,
WHINNIES, CHUFFING, FOOT STAMPING, ETC.)
GK: Evening, mister. You got a letter for one of us?
TK (MAN WITH MOUTH FULL OF TOBACCO): GIBBERISH
TR: It's a what? a registered letter?
GK: I believe he said it's from someone in Murfreesboro.
TK (MAN WITH MOUTH FULL OF TOBACCO): GIBBERISH
GK: If you'd spit out some of that chaw, we maybe could understand you a little bit better.
TR: What do we owe you for the letter?
TK (MAN WITH MOUTH FULL OF TOBACCO): SPITS AND MORE GIBBERISH
GK: I believe he is saying something about anthropology.
TR: I thought he was speaking Norwegian.
GK: If he were speaking Norwegian, we'd smell fish. Is this a registered letter? It is, isn't it. Why, it's a letter for me from Miss Evelyn Beebalo in Oklahoma City. (TK GIBBERISH) Five dollars due on receipt. Here you go. (TK GIBBERISH AND WHOOPS AND GALLOPS AWAY). Sad to see the terrible price a person pays for poor diction. Let it be a lesson to us, Dusty. (RIPS OPEN LETTER) My, it's a perfumed letter.
TR: Smells like disinfectant to me.
(GK READS TO HIMSELF)
TR: So, how is she?
GK: She says that she misses me a good deal.
TR: Huh. Imagine that. Must not be much to do there.
GK: She says that often times in the evening she comes to the outskirts of town and looks out across the prairie and thinks of me out there and wishes that I were riding in her direction.
TR: Hard to believe what people get in their heads sometimes, isn't it.
GK: She goes on in that vein for almost a page and a half. Single spaced. All about how she misses me. Quite touching. Very poetic. I'd let you read it except it would make you so jealous you'd probably shoot me in the head.
TR: She say anything about me?
GK: Doesn't mention you. Not a word. (HE FOLDS LETTER AND PUTS IT IN HIS POCKET)
TR: Well, sometimes when a woman's feelings are so deep, she would not mention them in a letter to a casual acquaintance.
GK: Evelyn and I are more than casual acquaintances, but never mind. (GALLOPING APPROACH) Who is this, coming in?
TR: Why it's a woman in a black cape----And a rifle slung over her shoulder---
GK: That's not a rifle. That's a violin case.
(SS WHOAS, HORSE WHINNIES, SHE DISMOUNTS, AND APPROACHES)
TR: Howdy, Ma'am.
SS: Howdy, gentlemen. The name is Nadia L'Etranger. I saw your campfire, and your horses, and thought I'd drop in.
GK: What'd you say your name was?
SS: Nadia L'Etranger.
TR: Nadia L'Etranger!
GK: You mean, Nadia L'Etranger the Wild Gypsy Violinist of Sheboygan, Wisconsin?
SS: You boys know about me?
GK: Heard about you for years, ma'am. People call you the Perelman of the Prairie, the Oistrakh of the Haystack.
TR: The Heifetz of the Heifers, the Milstein of the Holsteins.
GK: They say that your violin has the power to drive men mad with longing.
SS: That's why I came out here.
TR: To drive us mad?
SS: No, I need some fresh horsehair for my bow. (WHINNY)
TR: It would be a pleasure, Miss L'Etranger. My horse over there is a sorrel.
SS: Well, sorrels are fine if you're playing the blues, but I don't. My bow feels ---- I don't know ---- a little tight. So I'm looking for an Appaloosa. (WHINNY)
GK: Easy, girl. Easy.
SS: Preferably a female. (WHINNY)
GK: Easy, girl.
SS: How about your horse, mister?
GK: I don't think my horse is interested in a tailcut at the moment.
SS: Got lots of hair there.
GK: Need lots of hair when you get into horsefly season.
SS: It'll grow back.
GK: You ever been bit by a horsefly, ma'am?
SS: Been bit by critics, but no horseflies.
GK: It's a carnivorous insect, the horsefly. If you're a heavy sleeper, by morning you'll be a skeleton. They'll eat you up.
SS: I'd pay good money for some of that horse hair.
GK: Well, that's different. That gives us something to talk about. (HORSE WHINNY) You hush. (WHINNY) How much you thinking of paying?
SS: Has your horse been bred recently?
(WHINNY OF LONGING)
GK: No, she has not.
SS: Has she been on any dates at all?
(SAD WHINNY)
GK: Hasn't even danced with anybody.
SS: So she's pretty lonely.
GK: (LONELY WHINNY) She's lonesome all right.
SS: Good. A lonesome horse makes for a better-sounding horsehair. You don't use conditioning rinse on her tail, do you?
GK: Nope.
SS: Or a gel.
GK: Nope.
SS: Good. So it's just natural horsehair.
GK: Been hanging there for years, in the open air. Only come in contact with natural horse by-products.
SS: I'll offer you eighty bucks.
GK: Hundred twenty.
SS: Ninety.
GK: Hundred ten.
SS: Ninety five.
GK: Hundred five.
SS: Ninety six.
GK: Hundred four.
SS: Ninety seven.
GK: Hundred three.
SS: Ninety eight.
GK: Hundred two.
SS: Ninety nine.
GK: Hundred one.
SS: You are a tough bargainer.
GK: A hundred even.
SS: Ninety nine fifty.
GK: Hundred and one.
SS: Ninety nine seventy five.
GK: Hundred and one and a quarter.
SS: Hundred.
GK: Sold for a hundred dollars. (WHINNY)
SS: Hold still. This won't hurt. (SNIP, WHINNY) There. Now we'll see how it sounds.
TR: Look at that. You just clamp the hair right in there and play music with it. Ain't that something.
SS: Here goes. (LONG VIOLIN NOTE. ANOTHER. ANOTHER WITH SOME FINGER WORK. AND LAUNCHES INTO A GYPSY CADENZA.) Now that's what I call horsehair.
GK: A hundred bucks, Dusty. That's enough to get me to Oklahoma to see Evelyn.
SS: Okay. What is the day today? May 3rd?
GK: You're going to write out a check, aren't you, ma'am?
SS: Yes, I am.
GK: I was afraid of that. You wouldn't happen to have that in cash, I don't suppose.
SS: No, I don't. What's wrong with a check?
TR: Well, it's like this. Nobody who knows Lefty would ever cash one of his checks, and nobody who doesn't know him would either because he has no identification.
GK: Never mind, ma'am. I'll take your check. It don't matter. Evelyn's probably forgotten me. Besides, I smell bad. Ain't no point to going.
SS: Who should I make the check out to?
TR: Make it out to me. He owes me a hundred anyway.
GK: I do?
TR: That Parcheesi game in Yellow Gulch?
GK: Oh. That one.
SS: Wait a minute. I do have a hundred in cash. I forgot all about it.
TR: Wonderful.
SS: 20,40,60,80,100 (SFX) ---- there you go.
TR: Thanks.
GK: You wouldn't happen to know a tune called "Springtime in the Rockies," would you, Miss L'Etranger? (SOUR CHORD)
TR: Oh, please. Spare us the suffering.
GK: When a man is feeling lonesome, Dusty, (OFF KEY CHORD) there is nothing for it but to sing ---- (TUNING)
TR: Didja ever think that your lonesomeness might be due to people not liking your music? Huh?
SS: How does this tune go, mister?
GK: (MORE TUNING) I'm getting set to show you. (TUNING)
TR: I'll be heading off. See you in a couple weeks, pardner. (TR WHISTLES, GALLOPING HOOVES OFF)
GK: (STRUMMING) So long, Dusty.
When it's springtime in the Rockies
I'll be coming home to you,
Little sweetheart of the mountains (VIOLIN JOINS IN, PLAYING
CLASSICAL STYLE)
With your bonnie eyes so blue.
Once again I'll say "I love you"
While the birds sing all the day.
When it's springtime in the Rockies,
In the Rockies far away.
(YODEL)
SS: That's a pretty tune.
GK: You like that?
SS: I do indeed.
GK: Well, I know lots more just like that.
SS: Well, let's have another one.
GK: You don't have to get back to Sheboygan?
SS: Don't have another concert lined up until September.
GK: September--- is that right? Well, I could sing you quite a few songs between now and September.
(THEME)
TR: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS......brought to you by La Casa Grande Brand Placemats for the Trail. Don't set your grub down in the dirt --- use one of these handsome place mats from La Casa Grande? Your choice of six patterns: Yosemite, Noted Authors, Tropical Fish, Igneous Rocks, Speakers of the House of Representatives, or Miss Gwendolyn Savage of Las Vegas, Nevada. (WHINNY) (MUSIC OUT)
© 1997 by Garrison Keillor