Sticks & Stones - How the West Was Wonderful or That's How it Goes Sometimes

By tender bastard

Dylan Sticks and Seamus Stones are living decrepit Dublin lives until they steal a leprechaun's gold, inciting the wrath of a dragon, Scotland Yard, a swath of swarthy pirates, and the biggest buffalo herd west of the Mississippi, foiling Samuel Sidewinder Sullivan's plot to bankrupt the Colorado Territory and making good on every misadventure. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, look out. Sticks and Stones are in town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tenderbastard
• Release date: Dec 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386596691

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STICKS & STONES ~ How the West Was Wonderful or That's How it Goes Sometimes by tenderbastard

tenderbastard.com

His writing is like Jack Kerouac and Douglas Adams. - A Novel Way

There's a thin line between sexiness and absurdity and Mr. Mastro is determined to find it. ~ Tony Norman - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sticks & Stones Introductory Quotes

The prevailing taste of the public for anecdotal satire is incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of freely-thinking individuals in these present times. ~ Maria Edgeworth, preface of Castle Rackrent, 1800, the first regional historical novel

The object of the historian is to entertain. History should be written because it is fun.~  Edward Hyams & George Ordish - The Last of the Incas ~ The Rise and Fall of an American Empire, 1963

You will do foolish things. Do them with enthusiasm. - Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, French author and foolish girl ~ 1873–1954

Cover Photo – Page 361 – Making the Irish American, J.J. Lee and Marion R. Casey editors

PROLOGUE

Dylan Sticks and Seamus Stones were, hands-down, the most unlikely heroes to land at anybody's feet, but freshly tossed, face-first, from Durty Jimmy's Public House in one of Dublin's woeful sections is how we found them. With the luck of the Irish everyone except Emerald Islers are keen to drivel on about, our plucky lads lifted themselves from financial ennui and set upon adventures hitherto only fairytale-imagined. Tinly-proned ears and commoner minds will malign this far-fetched folk tale, but the irreverent among will dive knees and nodes into this rumpus-roaring report. A person of modern persuasions and velocities will query, Where do these lyrical listings loosen? the rejoinder coming swifter than blather from a pundit's pie-hole. Instigated in Dublin and forged heel-and heartbeat in London's swarthy portage, traversing the mighty Atlantic, barbaric, high-seas exploits along the way, to New York City then the wildly-historied Colorado Territory, where folly and fate wrangle treachery, lust, and deceit with the fecundity of a hound dog chewing a gnat from its tail-end, culminating in Gunshot, the fledgling gold-rush boom town where civility and goodwill are matters of flexible assertion. Alas, first things at the outset as accordingly prescribed. Let us snip the sanguine cord that binds mortal coil to sentient being and sally forth in robust reverie, making the most of what time we have on this whirling rock before our impoverished planet snaps, crackles, and ka-ploofs to cosmic etherealization, our kinkly-charred frames pondering, Where hath Life's joys gotten to?" Yay, verily, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, look out. Sticks and Stones are in town.

CHAPTER 1 – DAMN THE JIMMY

GET OUT, DURTY JIMMY's Public House proprietor, Mr. Callahan gruffed, on this occasion his bearishness bereft of all honey. Applying boot-toe to bar-boy backside as if forcefully encouraging a draught horse to heave a heftily-laden lorry, Callahan's powerhouse punt unceremoniously lofted Dylan Sticks exceedingly, from our lad's place of employment, said Durty Jimmy's, by way of Dylan's own posterior exit. Momentarily came his other half, Seamus Stones, accompanied by the second quarto of Mr. Callahan's anguished basso-profundo. And stay out, flopping Seamus head-over-hamstrings like a dishrag tossed into a laundry bin, the disgraced lads lurching to abrupt and severe termination on the slick pavement, teeth rattling, spines ajar, egos bruised like kumquats mistaken for apricots, inflicting Jack-Be-Nimble solicitude to their self-esteems, considerable inflammation to their disgraces addended by an exacting dishwater-dousing on the heels of their ex-communication.

Thank yeh fer the drubbin', Mr. Callahan, Dylan expunged with fractured ingenuousness, rattled by his severous landing, brain a-twixt, groping for his senses.

A blessing on you and yours, Seamus compounded, cuckoos capering and cavorting before his eyes like encephalitic pigeons squatting to halo the two with anterior ablutions. May he and his rot in a beggar man's p-ss-pot, Seamus renounced merely for Dylan's auditory amusement, triangulating the pair fully upright, the pavement conscripted as the final lineal surface in this three-folded equation.

Be gone with yourselves of uncertain parentage,Mr. Callahan invoked, fully cognizant of Sticks and Stones ancestry, male persuasions of those pedigrees having made generations of Durty Jimmy employ, Callahan's words lobbed in league with a missiled beer pot conking Dylan's pate. Covered in its contents, Mr. Sticks extended his upper appendages to comply with the principal aspects of his coconut a moment shy of the initial assault, but steadied for subsequent aerial attack should another be forthcoming. S'what'cha get fer wettin' yer whistles while engaged in my employ. We were whistlin' while we worked, Seamus subscribed, as if he could reclaim their slop-boy whereabouts with this line of comicality.

'Er yeh Cinderella's dwarves? Mr. Callahan snarled, never-minding it was Snow White who was attracted to short men and Cinderella who had a fondness for apples.

Another pint a piece we might've been, that's fer sayin', Seamus verified, caring not to lose his alcoholically-induced aria. Mr. Callahan's disgruntled reply came with a third airborne-attachment, a fully-loaded, foul-ballasted waste-barrel, its cargo and girth motivating our lads' expedited eluding of its articulate and determined broadcast, smash it coming and splash it making, splaying its myriad and tangible contents about and upon our heroes, rallying them upright, cerebral pounding matching corporeal throbbing equal in every inch of their fibrous beings.

Lift your feckin' bowels and move themaccordingly,Mr.Callahan commensurately advised.

From the commotion, a policeman appeared at the mouth of the alley, twirling his night-stick as if winding an old maid’s clock. As clear as his jottled condition permissioned, and clamorous enough for the patrolman to discern, Seamus mustered, How'er yeh, Mr. Sticks, this moony evening? In his twenty years and five-feet-near-five-inches, Dylan's hair was brown as a weathered cottage someone'd wire-brushed in mind of coming in-laws, nose and chin protruding like a pin cushion's decisive ends, eyebrows someone'd lured to a tar-and feathering, so pointed in every aspect so that one might say Mr. Sticks was sharp, compensating mental occupancy and cranial accomplishment with brigand enthusiasm.

Grand, Mr. Stones. Fair to say, even grander, came Dylan's jangered renunciation of his tattered disposition, following Seamus' conversational, and physical, upstanding, the policeman ceasing his billy-wacking for an instant's additional observation. Underlying no cause to recruit our boys for present or prospected unlawfulness, the public adjudicator tarried not, proceeding beyond the alley's cervical byway, leaving Dylan and Seamus to derive their composures and massage their bruised embodiments.

Half a head taller than Dylan, at five feet nine inches, Seamus was a near whole head wiser, curly locks of similar brown, a rounder nose, thinner by that four inches at the same weight of ten point seven stone. When they appeared on their beloved Dublin streets, they dually possessed every human feature among them, the one's sharp, the other's rounded. Together since childhood, together they'd be for as long as they cared to take harm and hurt for one another.

Fer feck's sake, I'm achin' all over, Dylan neggered.

Fer its sake we'll not be lowerin' ourselves to that commission and accompanyin' treatment ever again, Seamus royaled, motioning for Dylan to follow him like Moses at the Red Sea. Mr. Stones assumed Mr. Sticks would be with himin what'd extemporaneously popped into

Seamus' head, a pied piper snatching them from the fracas and snaggling them into the fray. Out of the alley they hobbled, cave men concluding they needed a bit of fire underneath them.

"I surmise we'll be makin' our rounds to Big SwingingMickey’s,The Bleeting Boar perhaps, in quick step it should be said, getting on with our affirmed callings," Dylan slathered.

I'm not fer it, me friend, Seamus professed, digging in his pocket and pulling out a sopped bag of tobacco, papers, and an equally-gushed packet of wooden matches.

We haven't a limp farthing a'tween us,Dylan pleaded, and I think one more toss of the tin-cup would tip me to a mood more fitting in light of our distended circumstances, extending the insides of his pockets to spectacle the zero sum of which his finances were in total.

A fiddler's fie-diddle, me fine Dylan, Seamus poeted as he made to kick a stone into the street, catching his toes on a cobblestone instead.

Fer feck's sake of a debt collector's daughter, kicking at the stone again, connecting with his quarry, it nearly clapping their policeman as he crossed at the corner, Seamus waving to make his peace and apology with the disgruntled bailiff, turning to his friend and taking Dylan by the shoulders. I'm of a mind to some new line of occupation fer puttin' pence in our pockets, and a lot more of them I might add, winking, pulling on Dylan's cap brim and poking his cheek with a finger. Sniffling, Seamus wiped Dylan's nose with his jacket-sleeve and walked on,

Dylan steam-engining his step to keep up.

Er ye daft?What else is there fer us? Our fathers worked in taverns and their fathers and theirs, Dylan acclaimed as if told if he jumped from Farmleigh Bridge he'd sail to heaven and not into River Liffey.

Enough of that gobblety-shite, Seamus be-deviled, retraining his advance so sharply Dylan heeled as abruptly, raising his hands to keep the two from crashing into one another like a Titanic making an unexpected encounter with an iceberg. We're goin' to steal a leprechaun's gold, this as plain as if he'd said they would habituate with African elephants, Indian snake charmers, and Middle Eastern belly dancers. Dylan eyeballed Seamus a full five seconds, the muscles around his perplexed peepers twitching like the dainty strokes of an horologer's feather brush.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have it on good word, he audited, lifting his arms and turning in half-circles as if announcing a three-ring circus's celebrated commencement. My good friend's coddlin' retrospect has led to the egregious tipping of his potato wagon, ruining his fractured mind as if havin' taken up sniffin' his mother's lace curtains.

Pondering one another's statutations like big-horned sheep sizing each other up for a square dance, Seamus tossed his head back like Punch rushing to smack Judy with a mallet, cackling like a condemned man scoffing the hangman's noose.

I'm as serious as a betting man on a losing streak laying down his last plumb derby day dollar on the eve of Saint Andrew's blissful prostration before the Virgin Mary in anticipation of his own perils to be met at the hands of whomsoever may choose to put harm in his way, and he in the path of disaster, as all good saints and sinners eventually find themselves having come to. Knowing the odds of finding a leprechaun willing to part with his pot of gold while remaining on convivial terms with its takers, Mr. Stick's preposterous proposition was a nutter's non-sensed schemata. Dylan's pupiled orbs horizoned, testing Seamus' mettle, the idea of such a plot coming to himas formidably as a spoonful of molasses spindling into a vat of thick, brown porter.

Will we be needin' shovels to extricate the trundle from its place of refuge, and a wheelbarrow to remove it to our possession? Dylan queried the back of Seamus' waistcoat, Seamus having taken himself down the street again, halting with haste once more, Dylan side-stepping

and passing his friend one foot-plop, making it necessary to retrace his journey by that number of steps exactly.

I've never had the thought, so I can hardly say, Seamus commiserated, smiling, showing no sign he believed byGod's holy words this was in any way a detriment to their quest, pleased with himself for having conjured ways and means of fortifying their fate in lieu of the pauper's payments Durty Jimmy's would bring until going boot up to the graveyard.

Let's locale a leprechaun and pilfer his mineral deposit, Seamus plucked, luring Dylan with a barefoot-and-dancing finger. Dylan hesitated but a lilting, Mercutio moment.

Let's, Dylan scalliwagged, convincing himself that, if they strode out of town and into the forest, searching for the leprechaun said to live in these parts, a leprechaun they should find, and a leprechaun's gold there should be, but as we shall soon engender, any gold in the leprechaun’s possession was a dragoooooooooned arrangement.

CHAPTER 2 – DURN THE WEE

"HAVE YEH EVER seen a leprechaun, Mr. Stones?" Dylan fallowed, like a man methodically digging a potato row, slipping on the mulchy grass and sliding to the bosom of the gully without proper notion of which was the assured way to be going.

Me grandda' did, I should say, Mr. Sticks, Seamus prepostered, whacking his head on a low-hanging branch as he followed Dylan down in similar fashion.

I should say yer grandda' saw a lot of things right up until the daft wagon fetched him, Dylan free-minded. They'd come to a clearing, halting to configure their next ordinance.

Would yeh be itineratin' me lads? a voice patented from behind and a little above. The boys nearly jumped out of their nobby boots, casting their eyes upon a live, in-the-flesh stub of a bristly, red-haired bloke who'd spent his days grubbing in the brush without a thought for appearances, as his was right grizzled.

Evenin' to yeh, o' little man of the forest, Seamus charmed.

Little man o' the forest me arse, yeh punkin-headed eejit, the leprechaun toppered, clasping one hand to a tree branch, a sizable, brass key affixed in the other. Dylan stepped forward.

We were on our way...to a pub...fer a bit 'o contrition, feigning a glance about, and we seem to have lost our way...and've come to be standin' in this clearin', clearly in your possession...and rightly in the property of yerself, or should I say, occupied by you and yours, and if you could get us on our way, then on our way we shall be goin'. Wrenching his cap like wringing a chicken's neck, Dylan stopped that manic activity with his last word, placed said cap upon his head, and stuffed his hands in his pockets, giving a weak smile as he did.

Hooooo, ain't yeh a babblin' brook of frothy gob-shite There be no pub in these parts, fer if there were, I'd be on to it me-self. Besides, I've got to stage me person here, clacking the heel of his scrabby boot against the trunk of the tree, and protect me... He cut himself short, as if a plank in a gallow's floorboard had swung open, breaking his neck so that no further utterance projected from his windpipe, squatting like a robust croquetteus chipping a wooden ball through an arched, metal circlet, an aromatically-expositioned poof of flatulation expounding from his antricular ventricle.

How's that? Seamus quiffed, moving upwind to flank his friend, tipping one ear to the leprechaun, Stones' hat now off and in his hands, waving it about his face to stave the leprechaun's aromatic infusion. The leprechaun's face squelched, giving him even more of a constipated goat's appearance. En-throttled by his gaseous evacuation, and nearly giving away the why and wherefore of his being in that tree, the wee creature-of-the-glen flapped his arms. Leaving go of the trunk, fwap-and-a-fool's-philandering, his knocking boot came out from under

him, swiftly followed by the remainder of his portly, pint-sized person, toppling him apples over cider cart, snagging that knocking boot in a lower branch that left him dangling bottom up, key in hand, in proper position for Dylan to spring forward and release the metallic turnstiler from the leprechaun's grasp, to his, the leprechaun snarling like an enraged raccoon as Dylan did so.

I've got a leprechaun's key, Dylan proclamated, this not lost on Seamus, Mr. Stones snatching it from Mr. Sticks as promptly.

And I spy a lock upon the trunk of this hardwood here, Seamus barristered like a wooly-brained Willy Wonka, and wonders of wonders, waving it as if it were the Queen's teacup, it must be this key's mate. Seamus winked at the up-ended forester hissing and clawing and rocking enough to grab at Dylan, standing nearest, fixating his grizzled gaze on Seamus as he placed key to clasp. The leprechaun would've made his catch had Dylan not noticed the nabbing entriculations to his person and maneuvered in swift order, but not before taking the pinch of the leprechaun's fingernails through his coat-sleeve.

Owww, yeh monkeyin' bastard, Dylan blurted, discharging a bit of hissing himself.

Gimme that key, yeh swindlin' swine, the leprechaun protested.

That gold's not fer takin'. There'll be fire all around if yeh make off with it. Like a man-on-a-flying-trapeze, the dispensated imp parsoned his position by widging and weggling his circumvented person, gaining momentum and perimeter with each pass. Still desperately shy of his mark, he took to spitting his indignation in gobs of awesome sea-creature phlegm, expressing his indignation with a voluminous sum of bilging sputem. Dylan received the bulk of the first oily wave as a rear attack, shielding Seamus incidentally from its brunt, Seamus taking the merest sum to the back of his hand as he wrenched the key into the lock, to no availability. As fortunes would have it, and as this calculated kismet is to go, the key having not measured to its rightful task in a numeral epoch, stubbornly refused to register its tumblers and reveal its sarcophogussed bounty. Blessings being to one as curses are to another, the plop of that foul spray made its slalom down Seamus' middle finger, the one giving humans countenance to express indignation to his or her fellow Man. Aching its lugubrious way, fingernail to fingertip and into the mechanical bowels of the lumbering, latching device, that splooge of slobbered spittle gave enough sap and secretion to unbuckle the hasp's twinings, surrendering its jowls, allowing the mechanism to advance, revealing not a wheel barrow of gold, or even a pot, and less a bag, but a pouch. Given the situation and timing set to gesture, e.g. one riled and lurching leprechaun minus his pecuniary pension, Seamus thought it best if he pocketed the dragon-embroidered booty-bag without inventorying its contents. Dylan in tow, the two made hasty departure from the leprechaun's charisma, and his spiny thicket, scrambling out of the infuriated little beast's eyeful and earshot like villained miscreants turning heel to their highway-manned felony.

Swift application of the course they'd come proving elusive, they bushwhacked the bristling landscape's briar and bramble. Had said leprechaun been not so upsidedly-opposed, Seamus and Dylan would have failed to abscond with the tender, there being no reason for the leprechaun to give chase, and no cause for our dragon to join the fun, devising this narrative as more spindly rhubarb than tangy radish, the author going to pull weeds and feed goats until a more compelling libretto came to mind, but let's keep to Dylan's and Seamus' knocking about in the bogs, and give the leprechaun and dragon their Tom-Dooley.

Scratching, railing, writhing, and punting like Houdini in Chinese hand-cuffs, in the briefest span of moments it appeared a moose'd raked its rack upon said tree trunk, our leprechaun clonking his head hard upon it, and it must be said, when hard-headed brutes are ruminated, leprechauns come to mind, having skulls like obelisks. With his so doing, he passed swiftly to near-unconsciousness, working to his, dare it be said, Irish luck, giving involuntary muscles the reflex and opportunity to talk the adrenal glands into standing down, allowing his foot ample relaxation, dropping him, from his arboreal incarceration, to the ground, where he lay lumped, grumbling curses and bemoaning the loss of a certain monetary sum that could not have rightfully been said to be of his possession, stickying the wickets of all concerned, and dare it