I’m not going to be in Orlando anytime soon, I’m not fond of hot buttered rum and I’m tired of talking about alcohol when I can’t be drinking any (although the Rocky Mountain Bear sounds good). What I want to know is what happened to the raw boned Kid. Last we heard, he was hit by a stunner. Perhaps this happened:
The Kid woke up in jail. As jails go, it wasn’t bad, not as good the Emperor’s Arms, but better than the Emperor’s Armpits. The stunner left him shakey, and his eyes were a bit bulgy–but that might have been genetic. He wished he had a partner to break him out of jail. Or a really smart horse. Burroughs didn’t have any smart horses, it had some smarter than average llamas, but that just meant that they didn’t put up with being saddled and ridden. Well, not unless you bought them a few drinks first.
The Kid was out of luck. He’d lost his job of the vemmix ranch when he had insulted Cookie’s coffee. To be honest, he’d only said that the coffee ate his spoon, which was true enough, but Cookie was a bit sensitive since the big food poisoning episode during the Great Vemmix Drive last season. No charges were brought, but it left him a tad defensive.
Not having a job on Burroughs is a bit like taking a vacation at your local sewage treatment plant. The Kid knew he’d end up smelling bad and looking worse, and he was proud of his long coat and wide hat. He only had one choice. He had to get the jailer’s daughter to fall in love with him and break him out.
Unfortunately, the jailer only had a son, and he already had a boyfriend, and wasn’t interested in a threesome–he was strictly a two-handed cribbage player. It looked like the Kid would spend years in jail, playing the harmonica and scratching lines on the wall. He hated the harmonica, and had a perfectly good calendar right in his cell, but that’s what prisoners did, so he resigned himself to do it.
It was Henry Bonita that changed the Kid’s plans. The same Henry Bonita that the Kid had called out for a gunfight outside of Smitty’s. The gunfight that landed the Kid in jail. Well, really the gunfight didn’t land him in jail, because the gunfight never happened, it was the Kid’s shooting bullets all over the place that landed him in jail, but saying it was the gunfight sounds better. Anyway, this same Henry Bonita saved the Kid from spending years in jail when he tried to fly a hovercraft after spending too much time at Smitty’s and crashed right into the jail, right where the Kid’s cell was located.
They never found the Kid’s body. They say the hypersensor-dual wedged, cardillian power drive of the hover craft had vaporized him, but I’m not sure. Sometimes, sometimes when the moon is right and the night is still, a tall figure can be seen in the distance, with a long coat and a wide hat, pacing off twelve paces before turning and pacing again. Some of us think it’s the Kid, still waiting to prove he’s the fastest.
But most of us know it’s the sign over the King’s Kneecap, a new hotel trying to break the Emperor’s Arms.
