Injuneered

Description

"Injuneered by W. C. Tuttle" is a humorous Western short story written in the early 20th century. Set in and around the frontier town of Piperock, it spins a comic tangle of poker, pride, and pandemonium when a showy visitor arrives with a makeshift circus. The story pokes fun at small-town rivalries and swindles, centering on a menagerie—elephant, lion, tiger, and calliope—that turns the West into a slapstick carnival. The narrator, Ike Harper, and his friend Dirty Shirt Jones watch Chief Axlegrease, an oil-rich show-off, roll into Piperock with wagons, a family, a calliope-playing Swede, and caged beasts. Local scamp Runnin’ Wolf cheats him in a midnight poker game and wins the whole outfit, only to sell it on to their rivals from Yaller Horse. Dirty slaps a legal claim on half the circus, the sheriff is whisked off on the elephant, and the town spirals into chaos: animals go hungry, the lion Judas and tiger Jessie James get hidden in the livery’s grain room, and Ike brawls blindly with the tiger in the dark. An elephant jam tears down the stable front, an out-of-control automobile piles into the mess, and the truth finally lands—Axlegrease had only rented the circus. The rightful owner reclaims the animals, the rivals lick their wounds, Dirty laments his lost stake, and Ike closes with the rueful memory of once owning a lion—briefly.