"Late again," the third-grade teacher said to little Sammy.
"It ain't my fault," Miss Crabtree. "You can blame this on my Daddy.
The reason I'm three hours late is Daddy sleeps naked!"
Now Miss Crabtree had taught grammar school for thirty-some-odd years.
So she asked little Sammy what he meant by that, despite her mounting
fears. Full of grins and mischief, and in the flower of his youth, little
Sammy and trouble were old friends, but he always told the truth.
"You see, Miss Crabtree, at the ranch we got this here lowdown coyote.
The last few nights he done et six hens and killed Ma's best milk goat. And
last night, when Daddy heard a noise out in the chicken pen, he grabbed his
gun and said to Ma, "That coyote's back again, I'm a gonna git him!'"
"Stay back, he yelled to all us kids!" He was naked as a jaybird, no
boots, no pants, no shirt!
To the hen house he crawled, just like an Injun on the snoop. Then he
stuck that double barrel through the window of the coop. As he stared into
the darkness, with coyotes on his mind, our old hound dog Zeke had done
woke up and come a sneakin' up behind Daddy. Then we all looked on plumb
helpless. Old Zeke stuck that cold nose in Daddy's crack!
"Miss Crabtree, we been cleanin' chickens since three o'clock this
morning!"
