Tall Tales of Johnny Mudd
All that Glitters: Chapter 3c
They just had to swindle all of his pearls. “Bet whatever you wish,” Ole Fulano declared to Ole Johnny Mudd. “We are ready to match whatever bet you may propose.”
Ole Johnny Mudd smiled and he replied: “I bet you all of my pearls that I can bite my other eye.” The two rogues whispered in secret, excited by the idea of all of the riches that they were going to take from him. They knew the Ole Johnny Mudd couldn’t possibly have two glass eyes because otherwise he would be blind. “Fine,” Old Fulano declared, “Bite your other eye!”
While Old Fulano and Ole Mangano were looking at him with much interest, Ole Johnny Mudd looked back at them with a certain smile. He raised his hand to his face and he stuck it in his mouth. Slowly but surely he pulled out his false teeth and he raised them over to his good eye. He opened his false teeth and he bit his good eye with them.
Ole Fulano and Ole Mangano didn’t know what to do. Ole Johnny Mudd had outwitted them. They cried until their tears ran down to the ground. Ole Johnny Mudd left the casino and he walked away from Las Vegas with his horses loaded down with sacks of gold, bars of gold and strings of pearls. Under his breath he whispered: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
He just had to look for some new adventures so he began to sing to his horses because they would always listen to him and they wouldn’t neigh. He began his song: “I am the most happy cowboy. I spend my lifetime just swigging along with my friends and just singing and playing cards with my buddies. If you’d like to know my uniqueness, you have but to ask good ole Cupid. I am the most happy cowboy, by Heaven’s very own favor. If I were dealt from a new deck, I’d risk it all with my buddies to see if they change their old habits and start a new way of walking. You’re like a ripe watermelon; you’re more green outside than inside. If you’d like another to love you, you have to wait ‘til I’m dying. If you’d like to know my uniqueness, you have but to ask good ole Cupid. I am the most happy cowboy, by Heaven’s very own favor.”
Ole Johnny Mudd paused halfway from his singing and he started to think about what he was saying. He really enjoyed living the good life together with his horses. When he mentioned “Cupid” the god of love
who looks like a little angel who makes lovers fall in love with his bow and arrow, he began to wonder if it might not be time to get married now that he had a lot of gold and heaps of pearls.
He recalled that over on Capucapu Woods there lived a beautiful young lady named Frances LaPingüis. Her hair was red as wild raspberries, her eye were bluer than the sky, and her skin was whiter than snow. It occurred to him that he might propose marriage and he needed to find a creative way to ask for her hand. He thought of saying: “Cream is to my liking and so is coffee too, but much more than either one
I’d like to marry you.”
Yes, he found the adventure that he has been seeking.
Find prior chapters of this tale and other Johnny Mudd stories online at taosnews.com.