Helped by a Horse Doctor
By Tuttle, W. C.
In the rough-and-tumble frontier town of Piperock, cowpoke Ike Harper finds his partner Magpie Simpkins tangled up with a traveling stranger and a get-rich-quick scheme involving a dubious fraternal order called the Loyal Legion of Lizards. What begins with a bent gun barrel and a busted skull soon spirals into a wild chain of misadventures featuring secret handshakes, life-insurance pitches sold under gunfire, a quick-thinking horse doctor, and a goat with ambitions of its own. Equal parts tall tale and slapstick farce, W. C. Tuttle's yarn captures the drawl, grit, and gleeful absurdity of the Old West at its most ornery. A rollicking comedic Western first published in the pages of Adventure magazine, this Piperock story stands as a classic of pulp-era frontier humor.
Publisher: The Ridgway Company (in Adventure Magazine)
First published: 1920