Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1891 — THE ARIZONA KICKER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE ARIZONA KICKER.

Western Journalism Has Its Annoy anoeL We Did It. —Bill Burbanks, the mule-whacker ou the other side of the creek, is trying to make a great mystery of the fact that he got a dose of bird-shot in this town the other evening. He says that some one certainly attempted to assassinate him as he was riding along Cheyenne street at midnight, and he thinks of offering a reward of S2OO for the arrest of the wretch. William is simply playing the pub-

lic, but he can’t play us. We had just stretched out on our cot Thursday night, and the hour was about 12, when Bill came aloDg on his old dromedary. We heard him cussing while he was yet a long ways off. When he reached the office he dismounted and hunted up a club, and was about to smash in a window when we peppered him with a handful of fine shot kept on hand for such emergencies. We hardly believed any of them would get through the buckskin and dirt, but it seems they did, and he had to have a doctor to pick them ont. The best tiling Bill can do is to keep shet. He attempted a smart trick and got left, and there isn’t a man this side of Tombstone who would have cared if all the shot had gone clean through him and his dromedary, too. Call Him Off. —lf the so-called Major Skinner, who has loafed around this town for the last six months, has any friends who have his welfare at heart, they will call him off the perch. It seems the Major has been laying his pipes for office, and that our article of two weeks ago, asking him where he stole his last cow, has somewhat clouded his piospects. He now threatens to shoot us on sight, and was seen at the Postoffice yesterday yith a big revolver belonging to Luke Higgins.

We regret these little annoyances but if they must be met we are not the man to shrink from the task. Tomorrow afternoon, after our first form goes to press and we work off 200 auction bills, we shall strap on our gun and take a walk. If Major Skinner has departed for Tucson, he may live to be a hundred years old; if he hasn’t, he will make No. 10 in our private graveyard. This is official, and comes light from headquarters. Poor Old Man !—The wheezy, brok-en-backed press owned by our esteemed contemporary fell to pieces the other -day as he was getting ready to work ;his outside form, and as aoop as we heard of the accident we tentiered him the use of ours. He gratefully accepted, but, alas, no act of kindness or generosity can change the leopard’s spots! His circulation, while given as 3,550, is in reality only 280. He hadn’t the manhood about him to bring along his 280 sheets of white paper and depend on our honor, but he hires a cart and drives over with two whole bundles, and then pretends he has run short! Two men were kept hard at work all day, and hundreds of sheets of paper recklessly wasted, that the old hypocrite and falsifier might flatter himself that we were deceived. We don’t like such men. We can’t believe they are an ornament to a growing Western town.

No Boom.— We understand that several real estate firms in this town have combined to get up a boom and make things jump. In fact, they offered us a half-page ad. for this week, but we didn’t take it. As an individual we might cheat a man from Omaha at poker, but as an editor we can’t be hiied to help swindle our subscribers. In order to offset the machinations of this syndicate we wish to say: We have got the fag-end of one railroad here and neither want nor will ever be able to get anything more. Society is not cultivated. Such a thing as a toothbrush or a volume of poems found on a man here would hang him. The land around the town is so poor that it takes nine feet of it over a dead mule to hold the carcass down. It is not a trade-center. We have the Digger Indian on three sides of us, and a large family of coyotes ou the fourth. The climate wobbles all over creation, makiug the demand for buffaloskin overcoats aud linen dusters about equal and mighty steady. It is not a sanitaiium for invalids. If the climate didn’t kill ’em, our doctors would. This is about all, but enough to put our subscribers on their guard and to clear our conscience if our advice is not taken. Now, gentlemen of the combination, go ahead with your boomlet !—A’etc York World.

WE PEPPERED HIM.