ow to play the organ, you bet.

Then John began to laugh and he says, "Thar was a feller over near Salt
Creek named Clay Bailey, that tried to play the fiddle, but he never
played but one tune, and they called it 'Chaw Roast Beef.' He warn't a
very big man, but round chested and stout, and he came here onct when
Porky Jim Thomas was runnin' a saloon here, before he moved to Bobtown.
Wal, this here Clay Bailey was in thar havin' some drinks with the boys,
and all at onct a feller came in with his coat tail all chawed off, and
lookin' pretty blue and he said a bull dog had come fur him. Clay would
fight anything. And so he says to the stranger, 'You buy the drinks, and
I'll go out and whoop the bull.' 'All right,' says the stranger. So he
bought the drinks and Clay went out, follered by the hull crowd. The
bull belonged to one of the Watkinses and was in a wagon watchin'; so
Clay went right up to the wagon and the bull jumped for him. Clay caught
him by the ear and held him off with one hand and pounded him over the
heart with his fist, till the bull gave up. Then Clay flung him down
like, and the bull got up and run about 40 rods down to a walnut tree
and stood there and just bellered as if the moon was shinin'. Now,
Vangy, 'Chaw Roast Beef.'"

[Illustration: John Armstrong Plays the Fiddle]

So John played that and Mitch was rollin' from side to side in his chair
and laughin' fit to kill. Then John said, "I s'pose you boys never seed
no platform dancin'." We never had and wanted to know what it was. "Wal
(swear word)," says John, "they put up a platform and one after another
they get up on the platform and dance, and when they get real earnest
they take their shoes off. Jim Tate who went out to Kansas was the best
platform dancer we ever had around here. He came over one night to Old
Uncle Billy Bralin's whar my uncle was a fiddlin'--the best fiddler they
ever was here. And Jim heard him and got to jigglin' and finally he
looked in the room and he says, 'Clar the cheers out, I'm goin' to take
off my shoes and come down on her.' So they did, and while he was
dancin' his foot went through one of the holes in the puncheon floor and
skinned one of his shins. Up to then they had always called this piece
'Shoats in the Corn,' but after that they called it 'Skinnin' your
Shins.' Go ahead, Vangy." Then he played "Skinnin' your Shins," and
after that "Rocky Road to Jordan," "Way up to Tar Creek," "A Sly Wink at
Me," "All a Tim