Pariahs of Piperock

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Ike Harper and Dirty Shirt Jones are hard-drinking drifters with a knack for trouble and a guilty conscience that keeps dragging them back to Piperock. When a stray letter reveals that the temperance forces have hired the Honorable Fitzhugh Peleg Alexander to deliver a dry election-eve speech, the pair decide to save their town from going dry by finding a replacement in Eagle—and there they recruit a down-on-his-luck brawler with a chair and a grudge. Their scheme only deepens the chaos, bringing them into a frontier election where Wet and Dry factions vote under guard in a stable, suspicion runs rampant, and every ballot seems to vanish, reappear, or get eaten by a burro. Back in Piperock, they are publicly declared outcasts, refused drinks, and mocked by old friends as politics turns the whole town mean. From barroom brawls and runaway broncos to exploding cabins, kerosene mishaps, saloon fires, and a disastrous social, the story spins through slapstick violence and deadpan satire. In the end, the election is decided by a single vote, loyalties are exposed, and Ike and Dirty trudge onward beneath the north star, still friends, still confused, and still tangled in the absurd politics of the frontier.