This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. At the Cross J ranch, Hen Peck and his hard-luck companions talk big, dress bigger, and trade insults while getting ready for a dance. Hen, a self-aware cowhand with a knack for music and trouble, introduces the crew: the towering, poetic Muley Bowles, the lanky, self-important Telescope Tolliver, and the chronic liar Chuck Warner. Their banter turns into a ridiculous plan involving a hidden swimming hole, but frontier comedy quickly collides with danger when news arrives of a bizarre jailbreak and two naked, armed madmen on the loose. What follows is a blistering Western farce of dust, cactus, gunfire, and humiliation. Hen and Telescope's attempt at a swim sends their horses bolting, throws them into a frantic chase, and leaves them naked, bruised, and mistaken for dangerous fugitives. Pursued by posse, women, goats, a red steer, and their own bad luck, they stumble from one absurd disaster to the next until a botched break-in at the ranch turns into a roomful of screaming women, rifles, and confusion. In the end, the whole uproar is exposed as a misunderstanding, and Hen and Telescope emerge committed to their "clean crazy" creed: never trust a bath again.
