THE JOLLY RANCHER

By Billy Q. Pickett

Murphy and Smith were driving to the Cattle Expo when they saw Pete Johnson leaning against his fence. As the old pickup truck rumbled by, Johnson flashed them one of his famous smiles.

Murphy leaned out the window and spat a thick glob of tobacco juice into the wind.

"That sumbitch Johnson's a real jolly rancher," he said. "Why the hell's he always so dang jolly? Is it 'cause his fancy-pants uncle left him all that money from his fruit-flavored-candy business?"

"Could be," Smith said. "But I reckon it's the fact he's been porkin' your wife somethin' fierce."

The two men stared at the highway as it stretched out to the horizon. The Cattle Expo would not come soon enough.

(Billy Q. Pickett is known among cowboy literati for his terse but vivid depictions of hardscrabble life in the West.)