The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1902-05-23
THE BOGUS CORPSE.
nY w. =. G. TEACHER.


of the Grip" within hearing to gather
Forthcoming anecdote.
thought, cit was in '79-in April, and l
was travelling through Idaho. Never been
through Buds Run, Ell? Well, dunno as
you've missed much. 'Tain't nothing but
an ordinary little one-mule town with moth
ing in it but ramshackle houses and dozen
stores, and loafers and dogs and mud.
Leastways that how remember it, was
down there with line of dry goods-struck
the town in the morning, and not a
blamed train out in my direction till night.
1t took me two hours to persuade the one
dry goods man that he wanted three or
four lots of cheap prints; then l ate my
dinner, and found myself with nothing to
do, and all the afternoon to do it in. |
loafed around the hotel awhile, trying to
start game of poker, but the mossbacks
were all scared to play, so l walked down
to the depot, where there was quite crowd
collected, watching dog fight and waiting
Tor the afternoon passenger train to go
through. Pretty soon in she came with
screech and jar, and before she stopped
the engineer jumped out of the cab and
shouted out: There's man shot up at Big
Cut-he's lynn down at the bank of the
creek and bleedin' like hi You better
get doctor and hustle right up there, and
before he had time to explain any more the
conductor hollered All aboard!' and he
clum back into the cab and pulled out.
We'll, you can bet there was big excite
ment there in no time 'Twa'n't more than
minute before the station was full of men.
and everyone asking what's up and giving
lots of free advice, and no one knowing what
to do Pretty soon some one sung out:
Here's Doc Coots! He's the man we want.
He'll know what to do And he was the
man, too. As soon as he understood what
the trouble was he began giving orders,
sharp-lille:
You, JIM he says. Get some men and
run out the hand car quick as you know how.
That'll get us there quicker'n a horse The
men caught on, and the hand car was out in
no time.
Course 1 was in for the fun, and
jumped on the hand car the first one Doc
and Jim and some other men piled on, and
we started for the Cut as fast as we could
pump the handles. 1t was up grade, and
darned hot day, and l was pretty near done
when we got to the Cut--it was about two
miles-but we were all pretty much excited
and never minded the work. AS soon as we
got there we pulled the hand car off the
track and ran down the bank and went to
hunting for that corpse. WE'LL sir, we
looked over every square foot for mile but
there want no corpse to be found no.
Wheres-not even footprint, nor drop
of blood, nor any sign of corpse. After
we'd hunted for half an hour we came back
to the hand car, pretty tired and swear.
i,,rr I'd ,,,I,o ~.
on his leg with slap.
Boys, he says, we've just been April
fooled, like lot of ID suckers
well, he'd struck it; sure enough. if he
hadn't. No one d thought of its being the
LIST of April, and, tell you, they were the
slckest lot of men you ever saw; and talk
about cussing
Pretty soon Jim spoke up and said: Doc,
we'd better get on the hand car and skip
the country, for there won't be any living in
Buds Run after such sell as this Then
everybody groaned and went to swearing
again.
Just then an idea struck me how to get
out of the difficulty. thought it over while
they We're cussing the engineer, and then
! stood up on the hand car and said: BOYS,
If you'll let up moment and listen to me- |
think can get you out of this scrape' They
hadn't noticed till then that | was stran-
ger. but they all said go ahead. WELL says
l, my plan is like this: 1t strikes me that
so long as we can't find a corpse, we've got
to make one, and propose to be the corpse.
Now, I'm stranger here, and no one no
tlced me git on the car. You rip wide
board off the fence there, and I'll lie down
on it, and you cover me up with your coats,
and We'll give Buds Run the biggest April
fool they ever had
"The boys We're tckled most to pieces
with the plan and we talked it all over and
fixed the details so everything would run
smooth Ihey were to carry me up in front
of the drug store, and keep the crowd wait
ing till my train pulled in. Then Doc was
to jerk the coat from my head and | was
to cut for the depot.
We'll, the boys got the board and Just
as we got in sight of town | lay down on
it, and they threw their coats over me. [
fixed it SO | could look through a tear and
see pretty much everything going on. !
could see the crowd craning their necks to
see and hear 'em talking and whispering.
The whole town was out and the excitement
was something awful. When we got to the
station Doc jumped off the car and began
ordering the people back, as officiors as a
policeman at a circus: Get back, men: we
must have room here. Move back, there.
Make way, people -Four of tine boys picked
me up and carried me, as slow as a funeral,
up to the drug store and set the board on
couple of benches on the sidewalk
doc, he was the coroner, too, and he
made it more interesting by making believe
he was going to hold an inquest Sheriff.
| heard him say, 'impanel a jury right off
We can't delay-very serious case OF
course everyone was anxious to serve on the
jury, and the sheriff was hustlin round as
important as an alderman on election day,
and everything getting hotter and more ex-
citing, till | heard my train whistle about
a mile off. Doc had the jury all ready, and
everything screwed up to the top notch of
excitement, when the train pulled in, and he
reached down and jerked off the coat. ]
gave one jump and a whoop and dove right
into the crowd. Well, sir, for a moment
they were that scared they were stunned,
and then they let out one awful yell and
scattered in every direction and YOU could
have played poker on their coat tails.
Il tore down to the depot and grabbed
m ticket and u