Magpie Diplomat

Magpie Simpkins and Ike Harper set out across the barren frontier in search of gold, only to find that Pinto's real wealth lies in trouble, gossip, and spectacularly bad judgment. Along the road, they meet a parade of eccentric officials and drifters, including Mayor Jefferson J. "Tex" Jenkins, Chief of Police Cold Deck Briggs, Treasurer Peevee Jack Skinner, and the fast-talking hustler Weinie Lopp, each one adding to the town's comic chaos. What begins as a roadside encounter becomes a farce of mistaken intentions and armed domestic misery. Tex, Cold Deck, and Peevee confess that they recruited three educated Eastern women to serve as schoolteachers, but the women arrived believing they were promised husbands instead. Now the town is caught between marriage schemes, jealous wives, pistols, and shotgun diplomacy. Magpie, sensing opportunity, launches a sly campaign of "bad news" and careful deception, visiting the women, soothing the officials, and positioning himself as a negotiator. When Miss Waterbury, Miss Clemons, and Miss Elvington appear, Magpie charms them into playing along with a larger fiction, while quietly steering the town toward a new round of matchmaking, profiteering, and disaster. In Pinto, every solution breeds a fresh scandal. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.