"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 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 mornin'