Well, back here, Crutchfield’s little pard has just come out of the barn. His little pard of the moment, anyway. Crutchfield has left a string of broken-hearted little pards across this vast alkali plain. One little feeb in South Dakota,

One little hustler in San Berdoo,

One little chink run away from the railroad

With his ass just as yellow as Fu Manchu!

One with the clap and one with a goiter,

One with the terminal lepro-see,

Cripple on the right foot, cripple on the left foot,

Crippled up both feet ’n’ that makes three!

Well one little fairy, even one bull dyke,

One little nigger, one little kike,

One Red Indian with one buffalo,

And a buffalo hunter from New Mexico…

And on, and on, one of each of everything, he’s the White Cocksman of the terre mauvais, this Crouchfield, doing it with both sexes and all animals except for rattlesnakes (properly speaking, “rattlesnake,” since there’s only one), but lately seems he’s been havin’ these fantasies about that rattlesnake, too! Fangs just tickling the foreskin… the pale mouth open wide, and the horrible joy in the crescent eyes…. His little pard of the moment is Whappo, a Norwegian mulatto lad, who has a fetish for horsy paraphernalia, likes to be quirt-whipped inside the sweat-and-leather tackrooms of their wandering, which is three weeks old today, pretty long time for a little pard to’ve lasted. Whappo is wearing chaps of imported gazelle hide that Crutchfield bought for him in Eagle Pass from a faro dealer with a laudanum habit who was crossing the great Rio forever, into the blank furnace of the wild Mexico. Whappo also sports a bandanna of the regulation magenta and green (Crutchfield is supposed to have a closetful of these silken scarves back home at “Rancho Peligroso” and never rides out into the rock-country and riverbed trails without a dozen or two stashed in his saddlebags. This must mean that the one-of-each rule applies only to forms of life, such as little pards, and not to objects, such as bandannas). And Whappo tops off with a high shiny opera hat of Japanese silk. Whappo is quite the dandy this afternoon in fact, as he comes sauntering out from the barn.

“Ah, Crutchfield,” flipping a hand, “how nice of you to show up.”