(WESTERN THEME)
SS (ANNC): THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS.....brought to you by Chuck Wagon Brand Self-Inflating Doughnuts.....they fit right in your back pocket, so after a hard day in the saddle, when it's time to sit around the campfire, just reach back and pull the cord (I NFLATION), and you've got yourself a nice little seat. (TK SIGH OF RELIEF) And now here's today's story....
(OUTDOOR AMBIENCE, CATTLE. HORSES' HOOVES. GK WHOOPS. CATTLE REACTIONS)
TR: Hey, Lefty? Lefty? Wake up---- pardner. (CATTLE FADE OUT) Wake up there, Lefty.
(GK SNORING)
TR: Hey, Lefty, wake up. Hey!
GK: Huh? What? Is it morning already?
TR: Yep. It's morning.
GK: And these grey stone walls --- I take it we're still in prison?
TR: Looks like it. --- What were you dreaming about?
GK: Dreamed we were on the trail, 'n it was evening. Coyotes calling, and the sun setting behind the mesa. Mighty pretty.
TR: You missed breakfast.
GK: What was it?
TR: Cold toast and dry bran flakes and instant coffee.
GK: Oh. (FOOTSTEPS APPROACH)
TR: Shhhh. It's the deputy. And our lawyer. (FOOTSTEPS APPROACH, STOP. CELL DOOR IS UNLOCKED AND OPENED.)
TK: Here's yer mouthpiece, boys. ---I'll be back in fifteen minutes, ma'am. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY. HER FOOTSTEPS APPROACH. SHE STOPS. SILENCE.)
TR: Morning, ma'am.
GK: Nice morning, isn't it.
SS: Gentlemen, if I weren't your lawyer, sworn to uphold your constitutional rights, I'd shoot y'both right now.
TR: Something wrong, Miss Dugan?
SS: I told you two saddlebums to tell me the whole story. Everything. What happened when those forty-three hundred head of longhorns with the Lazy J brand happened to join your herd of sixteen cattle and you rode for sixty-five miles without noticing them .
GK: That's what happened, ma'am.
TR: We told you the whole story.
SS: Oh yeah? You didn't tell me that when the posse came, you tried to make a run for it---
GK: Oh. Well, that's right. We did sorta gallop for awhile, didn't we, Dusty.
TR: That's right. Now I remember.
GK: I recall gunshots, too.
TR: Yes, I believe that's right.
GK: Were they shootin at us or us at them? I forget.
TR: Both, I think.
GK: Perhaps so.
SS: I told you to level with me!
TR: Well, our memory needed to be refreshed.
SS: You forgot that you ran up into some boulders and the posse chased you and when they found you, you had a brown paper bag with ten- thousand dollars in it?
GK: Who told you that?
SS: The district attorney.
GK: Oh. So it don't look good, does it.
SS: Anything else you'd like to tell me? I'm your lawyer. I'm supposed to know what happened, okay?
GK: No, I think that's about all. Isn't it, Dusty?
TR: We kinda shut the whole episode out of our minds, Miz Dugan. A painful memory.
GK: That's right. There were sandburs up behind those boulders and we crouched down and it hurt.
TR: Bullets were richocheting around---
GK: It was purely coincidental that we found the money---It was under a boulder.
TR: There was this brown paper bag. Had ten thousand dollars in it.
GK: Fifties and hundreds, in bundles.
SS: So you had it in your hands when the posse found you.
GK: Yes, ma'am.
SS: You couldn't have tossed it off into the bushes----
TR: Weren't bushes there. Just boulders.
SS: So it looks like you're not just going to be charged with cattle rustling ---- you probably got a larceny rap hanging over you too----
GK: For finding money lying on the ground?
TR: How you planning to defend us, Miss Dugan?
SS: I'm going to prove diminished mental capacity.
GK: Oh.
TR: How are you going to prove diminished mental capacity? --- Oh. Never mind.
SS: So is that the whole story then? You're not leaving out some other little detail? Some heinous act along the way? Some terrible little secret that the D.A. can throw in the jury's face and blow us out of the water? Huh? If there is, I want to hear it right now.
TR: That's the whole story, Miss Dugan. I swear.
GK: That's it. We were accidentally followed by four thousand cattle and when the posse chased us we knelt down on sandburs behind boulders and there was a bag full of money. That's about it.
SS: No other little detail ---- nothing else about you individually ---- your history ----- anything in your past ----- something that could be embarrassing if it comes out at the trial------you didn't happen to chop up your grandmother in a woodchipper o r anything?
GK: No.
SS: Some little peccadillo--- something that if it was to come out, you'd be exposed as a fraud and a phony?
GK: Well, now that you bring it up----
SS: What is it?
GK: Naw, it's not important.
SS: Tell me.
GK: It's nothing.
SS: Tell me.
GK: It's much too unimportant.
SS: Tell me.
TR: C'mon. Out with it.
GK: I'm sorry I even brought it up.
TR: Fess up, Lefty. Tell her.
GK: I told you, it's nothing important.
SS: Tell us, Lefty.
(THUNK OF GUITAR, SLIGHT VIBRATION OF STRINGS)
GK: Dusty, no---- don't -----
TR: I got your guitar in a half-nelson, Lefty, and if you don't tell Miss Dugan what it was you started to tell her, I am going to turn this guitar into a cheese grater.
GK: Don't do that, Dusty.
TR: Count of three, I'm gonna bust the sucker. One....two.....three.
GK: Okay! I wrote a letter to a newspaper advice columnist once. About a personal matter. That's all.
SS: What personal matter?
GK: I'd rather not say.
SS: What columnist?
GK: It's nothing important.
TR: One!.....Two!......
GK: Okay, it was Heloise.
TR: Heloise!
SS: The household tips!
GK: Yes.
SS: What were you asking Heloise?
GK: It wasn't anything that a D.A. could use against me, I swear it wasn't.....
SS: Tell me.....
TR: Tell her, Lefty. One.....
GK: I was asking about how to get a certain stain out of a lace curtain.
SS: What kind of stain?
GK: It was---- (HE MUMBLES).
SS: What kind of stain?
GK: It was a creme de menthe.
TR: You got creme de menthe on a lace curtain!
GK: Keep your voice down.
TR: What in the world were you doing with creme de menthe??
GK: Don't yell, everybody in the cellblock'll hear ya. I was tasting some.
TR: Creme de menthe?
GK: Yes.
SS: Where were you?
GK: I was in a hotel. Denver.
TR: How'd you get the creme de menthe on the curtain?
GK: It wasn't a curtain actually. It was more like a garment.
TR: A lace shirt....
GK: It wasn't anything I bought.
TR: Lace??? You were wearing lace?
GK: I was trying it on.
TR: Lefty, I am shocked.
GK: It was nothing.
TR: I didn't even know they made lace shirts.
GK: It wasn't exactly a shirt. It was more like a....
SS: Like a what? Like a tablecloth?
GK: Yes.
TR: You wrapped a lace tablecloth around you and you were drinking creme de menthe?
GK: I was pretending it was a cape.
TR: Pardner, if you had urges like this, you shoulda told me....
GK: I was just pretending I was somebody else, that's all. It was a hard cattle drive and we'd been on the trail for six weeks and I came in the hotel and got washed up and I just felt like ---- being somebody else for a change.
TR: A lace tablecloth. Creme de menthe. You were drinking it right out of the bottle, weren't you---- you didn't use a----
GK: I used a thin crystal glass. Fluted. With flowers on it. And I was reciting a poem as I drank it.
TR: You were reciting a poem by a real cowboy poet. Like Wallace McRae. Right?
GK: No. Wallace Stevens.
SS: A lace cape, a creme de menthe, and a poem by Wallace Stevens, huh?
GK: And I was barefoot and I was smoking a filtered cigarette. In a cigarette holder.
TR: Pardner, I had no idea....no idea....
SS: What was the poem?
GK: Complacencies of the peignoir, and late, Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
One of my favorite poems.
SS: I think we got our defense right here, boys.
GK: What's that?
SS: Put you on the witness stand with a lace tablecloth around your shoulder and have you say just what you told me now.
TR: Sounds good to me.
GK: But there's cowboys on that jury.
SS: Exactly my point.
GK: They'll think I'm ---- weird.
TR: That's our only hope, pardner. Our only hope.
(THEME)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS....brought to you by Chuck Wagon Self-Inflating Doughnuts.....they fit in the back pocket, and whenever you need a soft place to land. (INFLATION)(MUSIC PLAY OFF)