{"id":8,"date":"2007-05-20T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2007-05-20T04:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2022-11-29T11:02:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T16:02:48","slug":"catskinner-sweet-and-the-twirling-teacups-of-deadwood-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/articles\/catskinner-sweet-and-the-twirling-teacups-of-deadwood-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Catskinner Sweet and the Twirling Teacups of Deadwood City"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/strong><\/span>s long as a tale like this needs a hero, William Sweet\u2019s the one most likely. He and Doc Taggerty who helped explain things once they were over. They liked to hang out in Carlstadt\u2019s Saloon\u2014Tom<\/em> Carlstadt\u2019s that is, since his wife, Melinda, never did hold much with people\u2019s drinking. In fact, for a while she claimed it was drinking that caused the first trouble, people just seeing things out at the old abandoned mine. But that was before the six-legged mice chewed up the trousseau she\u2019d had saved for her daughter.<\/p>\n

Well, truth to be told, people had<\/em> been drinking that night when the first rain we\u2019d had in months blew out of the southwest. It was a wowser, with thunder and lightning. Whirlwinds were roiling the dust on Main Street, spitting it back in a river of mud. Such cattle as there were\u2014a few drovers still brought their herds through Deadwood, mostly to get their own insides washed out with Tom\u2019s good red-eye whiskey before they moved on\u2014were lowing and moaning, the way steers will do when they\u2019re not quite real scared yet, but still plenty nervous. Then Doc Taggerty heard it first. A high-pitched humming, sort of like a windmill\u2019ll sound when it\u2019s turning faster than it\u2019s been built to.<\/p>\n

\u201cHush up!\u201d he shouted, glaring at Amy, the Carlstadts\u2019 daughter, who, paying service to her mother\u2019s wishes that she grow up a proper young lady, was practicing scales on the saloon piano.<\/p>\n

William Sweet glared back, \u2019cause everyone knew he was fond of Amy\u2014a fact Amy\u2019s mother did not approve of, but then there was not much Melinda Carlstadt was<\/em> satisfied with those days, not since what happened the previous year with her prized elm trees. Or even before that. But Doc was insistent.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust simmer down there, Bill,\u201d he said, \u201cand listen. The rest of you listen too.\u201d And, sure enough, we heard it as well then, between claps of thunder. A sort of a humming\u2014or maybe a whistle. But strange and unnatural.<\/p>\n

\u201cUh, what\u2019ll we do, Doc?\u201d Sweet finally asked, kind of slow and drawn out like. He\u2019d been a mule skinner back during the War, and there wasn\u2019t a person in the whole territory who knew more about handling teams than he did, though other than that he was not long on smarts. Or so some folks said, though others maintained it was only because he\u2019d been kicked in the head once.<\/p>\n

But Doc was impatient. \u201cWhy, go out and see what it is!\u201d he answered, which most of us thought was a good idea too. So pretty soon those who had slickers had found them and put them on, while others just jammed their hats down on their heads, and we reassembled outside on the street, slipping and sliding, dodging the chunks of mud raining down on us, looking to where a bright green glow shone over to west, up over the hills near what once had been the Prosperity Silver Mine.<\/p>\n

T<\/strong><\/span>hings get complicated\u2014but this much was simple. Ever since the mine petered out, our town had been dying. Melinda Carlstadt had tried to save it. As head of the Prosperity Civic Improvement Alliance, she\u2019d even spent a healthy wad of her husband\u2019s money to have four dozen Dutch elm saplings shipped in from Saint Louis to plant along Main Street. And that\u2019s what brought William, driving his mules with that cargo of young trees, who, catching one glimpse of the also young and supple figure of Amy Carlstadt, decided right then and there to stay.<\/p>\n

And that was not what Mrs. Carlstadt had bargained on. Rather, she\u2019d figured that once cultured<\/em> people found out we had the same kinds of modern amenities civilized Eastern cities had\u2014such as two rows of tall, broad-leafed shade trees lined up on either side of Main Street\u2014why they\u2019d just naturally flock in to join us. And bring business with them. And even some men of wealth, handsome, unmarried, whom she could pick from to hitch up to her Amy. And then we would<\/em> prosper, both Amy and Prosperity City, as well as the Civic Improvement Alliance, despite the mine\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n

Except she had not figured on the rainfall\u2014or rather lack of it. Those trees needed water and, despite their growing a mite that first spring, by the time summer ended they\u2019d withered and died. By the time of mid-winter they stood gnarled and dried out, almost attractive in their own strange, stark way, especially when some of the ladies in town tied red and green ribbons all over their branches to celebrate Christmas. And, by the time spring came, people did<\/em> find out, except they did not come in flocks to join us.<\/p>\n

Rather, the territorial government changed our name from Prosperity City to Deadwood City, which did not<\/em> amuse Melinda Carlstadt nor anyone else on the Civic Alliance a single bit\u2014except maybe William, who\u2019d joined with the group the previous fall just to be nearer Amy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a saucer. Or, not a saucer, but like one of mother\u2019s good china teacups. \u2019Cept for the glow, that is. And for the fact it ain\u2019t got a handle.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But now he, and Amy, and all the rest of us stood on Main Street gazing to west as the hum got louder. Then up in the sky\u2014Amy saw it first, quick-eyed as she was, her eyes like a gunslinger\u2019s except, of course, her mother did not approve of her shooting\u2014the green glow got brighter, then came together into a shape that dropped down from the clouds, spinning and twirling and bobbing up and down. Fat and round and kind of flat on the top.<\/p>\n

Amy said it first. \u201cIt\u2019s like a saucer. Or, not a saucer, but like one of mother\u2019s good china teacups. \u2019Cept for the glow, that is. And for the fact it ain\u2019t got a handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d someone added. \u201cAnd that it\u2019s flying.\u201d And someone else said, \u201cIt\u2019s a flying teacup! That\u2019s what we\u2019ll call it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then Doc\u2019s voice boomed out. \u201cIt\u2019s twirling, too, boys. That\u2019s what makes it hum. So we should call it a twirling<\/em> teacup. But more to the point, it seems to be landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, it seemed natural then, what with the red-eye we\u2019d all been imbibing, that we mosey on to west to find out just where that teacup was<\/em> landing. We slipped and slood through the mud, out past the old abandoned warehouse still filled with its sacks of dried Navy beans that Melinda Carlstadt had talked her husband into bringing in from San Francisco to sell to the miners. Back when there\u2019d been miners. Except that the miners had preferred Tom\u2019s whiskey, for which Melinda had yet to forgive him.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s past was past, Tom always had said, while he counted his money. You win one, you lose one\u2014that was his motto. So, eye always on the next fortune ahead, he marched out ahead of us, taking a few of the cowpokes with him, until they came up to the hill overlooking the old mine\u2019s entrance.<\/p>\n

When we caught up to them, we found them stopped there, held away from the mine works themselves by a green-glowing fence-like thing, sizzling and spitting sparks of fire whenever anyone got too near it. Inside the fence was a cleared out area over which the teacup was just hanging, dropping down something\u2014some more kind of green stuff, throbbing and glowing and squealing and streaming out over the ground to the remnants of rusted narrow-gauge track that led into the mine shaft.<\/p>\n

Then just as quick as it had appeared, the green stuff was gone, down into the mine, and the twirling teacup commenced to spin faster, humming more loudly, and shot up into the sky. And as quick as it disappeared into the clouds, the clouds themselves started to drift away. The rain tapered off and the moon came out, and we started to drift ourselves back toward town, except some of the drovers who kept on prodding and fiddling with that fence\u2014cowpokes and fences being sort of like natural enemies\u2014until at last they came back with us too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A<\/strong><\/span>nd so it was the first time the teacup came. In pairs and threesomes we reassembled ourselves back on Main Street where, except for the mud, it was almost as if no storm had happened. Tom did catch a cold that night, for which his wife gave him no end of misery, and, off to the west in the months that followed, some nights you could see a bit of green glow from where that fence still stood.<\/p>\n

But other than that things had gone back to normal. Amy alternated between her practicing scales on the barroom piano and practicing shooting her pistol outside of town, depending on how close her mother watched her. The drovers moved on with their herd into Kansas, and Tom\u2019s cold got better. Doc and William spent nights at the saloon. But unknown to us, one of those drovers who\u2019d been poking at the fence somehow had managed to make a hole in it. Leastways, that\u2019s the way Doc figured afterwards.<\/p>\n

After the mice came.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got to realize a town like Deadwood doesn\u2019t have very much going for it except<\/em> for vermin, so nobody paid much attention at first, as the summer drew on, except maybe one or two. Tom did mention the mice seemed thicker that summer than most, at least in terms of the stuff they chewed up. The way hungry mice will. But then his wife Melinda would shush him like maybe she knew something we weren\u2019t supposed to. And which, it turned out, she did.<\/p>\n

Thing is, she and Dorothy Benton, Bart Benton\u2019s wife who ran the general store, got on as thick as, well, leaves on real<\/em> shade trees. The kind Melinda had wanted for Deadwood. And Dorothy had been cleaning her husband\u2019s store\u2019s back room and noticed that something was gnawing the crackers and hardtack and such there, not that many people bought the stuff except for some summers when it got so hot the mule trains stopped coming in through the desert.<\/p>\n

Those were the times when fresh supplies grew short, and folks would eat anything they could buy up to get through to next season. And vermin would eat too, whatever they foraged that they could get to ahead of the people. Except for one thing.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Melinda Carlstadt was counting on: Mice won\u2019t eat Navy beans. No way, no how\u2014not even if that\u2019s all between them and starving.<\/p>\n

But people, she figured, were more adaptable. . . .<\/p>\n

And so it was that this summer was<\/em> hot and the mule trains stopped coming and, sure enough, what with the vermin\u2019s gnawing, pretty soon all there was left to eat was the beans in the warehouse. Beans which, once they were soaked in Tom\u2019s red-eye to get them all swollen up, weren\u2019t really half bad. So Tom and Melinda made even more money\u2014more money she figured they might buy more trees with, maybe some dry-weather kind more suited to the town\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n

But then the mice got into chewing up dry goods.<\/p>\n

And that<\/em> was the last straw.<\/p>\n

F<\/strong><\/span>olks still talk about the night Melinda Carlstadt stormed into Tom\u2019s saloon, squalling like some kind of Irish banshee. Which she was\u2014Irish, that is\u2014on her mother\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

\u201cTom,\u201d she shrieked. \u201cQuick, Tom! You\u2019ve got to do<\/em> something!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething about what?\u201d Tom answered behind the bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething about them mice. They\u2019ve gone and got into Amy\u2019s wedding chest. You know, the dress and the veil and things I saved from our<\/em> marriage so, when the time comes, she can have herself a proper husband. Someone from back East. Not like\u201d\u2014and here she glared at the bar, where William was standing\u2014\u201dwell, you know, Tom. . . .\u201d \u201cWell, no I don\u2019t really, honey,\u201d Tom answered back. \u201cBut just slow down some now. You know how mice are. They get into everything. And besides we already tried catching them with those traps Benton\u2019s got in his store. Didn\u2019t work none, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Doc Taggerty interrupted. \u201cGot something here,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething I been working on myself these past few weeks.\u201d He held up what looked like a pair of spittoons, wound around with bailing wire, with a sort of a door at one end and a flap at the other and some kind of spring that was stretched out between them. \u201cI call it the Taggerty Better Mousetrap. This here\u2019s a prototype.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThing really work, Doc?\u201d Tom asked from behind the bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t know yet,\u201d Doc said, \u201cseeing how I just this evening got it finished.\u201d He placed the contraption on the bar, then fiddled with something at the door end, then gave the left hand spittoon a half twist while he did something else with the flap at the other. \u201cAny of you got something for bait, though, we could try it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After some arguing Tom finally talked his wife into going back to their house and bringing back something from Amy\u2019s trousseau. A ribbon or something\u2014or maybe a garter\u2014she wouldn\u2019t let any of us look too close. She put it into the trap herself, then insisted Doc avert his eyes while he gave the left hand spittoon one more twist.<\/p>\n

Then we all waited.<\/p>\n

Well, during our wait we all had more red-eye until we finally gave up on it and went to our own homes, but that didn\u2019t have anything to do with what we saw in that trap the next morning. What it was, was a mouse. Sort of like, anyway. But also sort of not like most mice we\u2019d seen in Deadwood before then, seeing as how it had six legs instead of the more usual four.<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOdd for a mouse, that,\u201d William Sweet finally said. \u201cI mean, I know animals. Mules mostly, I grant, but other kinds too. And I swear I ain\u2019t seen no six-legged mice before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPretty color, though,\u201d Amy said when she came in later. \u201cSort of a soft green. Apple green, almost, or maybe a grass green. Kind of cute, though, especially the way it glows in the shade. Sort of like, you know, that glow we saw in the storm?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when we figured it. The flying teacup. It had to have something to do with that twirling teacup that landed out by the mine that night during the storm. With Tom leading the way, we saddled our horses and rode out of town this time, only to still be stopped as before by the green-glowing fence that surrounded the mine works.<\/p>\n

Except Doc noticed, when he\u2019d dismounted to inspect the fence closer, that one of the corners had lifted a little at one of the posts. Leaving a small hole.<\/p>\n

Doc nodded sagely, and Tom nodded with him. Then we rode back to town and Tom\u2019s saloon. Looking at our trapped mouse once more in the barroom\u2019s dimness, Tom turned to Doc and asked in a low voice:<\/p>\n

\u201cThink maybe you could make more of them mousetraps?\u201d<\/p>\n

Doc thought a while on that. \u201cReckon I could,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe a couple more. Get some spittoons out of Benton\u2019s store. Find some wire maybe. It\u2019d take some time, though, to make very many, seeing as how it took nearly a week for me to make this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t know as that would be enough to satisfy the Mrs. then,\u201d Tom said. \u201cLast night she showed me that chest she\u2019d been saving\u2014her wedding attire and stuff for Amy\u2014and it looked like hundreds of mice had been through it, gnawing up everything. And Mrs. Benton was telling me too that she thought maybe there were thousands more like them, the way they\u2019d ripped through the stores in her back room. Seems to me if we don\u2019t do something real fast, if they\u2019re going to be eating clothes too now, pretty soon we\u2019ll all end up stark naked\u2014which, knowing Melinda, ain\u2019t the way she\u2019d like to see this town going. . . .\u201d Doc looked at Tom Carlstadt and Tom looked back at Doc, and both of them shuddered\u2014though, truth to tell, William was looking at Amy, kind of sly, and then he<\/em> broke out into sort of a grin. Amy, meantime, just looked puzzled. Puzzled and serious too, in her way, and kind of fingering at her six-shooter as if she were thinking about the way the discussion was turning.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she added her own thought to it. \u201cToo bad nobody\u2019s got a cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

W<\/strong><\/span>illiam Sweet volunteered to be our hero. He told us afterward all that had happened. He knew that cats could be bought in St. Louis from when he\u2019d worked out of there as a mule skinner, so he took a horse and some of Tom\u2019s cash and some extra red-eye and rode toward the sunrise.<\/p>\n

Six days and seven nights he said he rode till he reached the Missouri River, then six days more to the Mississippi. Then finally he rented some mules and a wagon when he reached St. Louis, and had the wagon filled up with cats, and a tank wagon filled with milk behind it.<\/p>\n

Then he headed back west.<\/p>\n

Six days more to the wide Missouri he trekked toward the setting sun. Then, near that strange collection of seven-story houses folks call Kansas City, he picked up the Overland Trail through the tall grass, and then through the short grass, and then through the sagebrush and sand of the desert. Six days and five nights he worked his way farther west, through sand and sun that got so hot that particular summer that rain dried out on its way to the ground and came down as dust flakes, and blue-beaked buzzards got cooked when they landed, until on that sixth night he made camp and rested.<\/p>\n

And meanwhile we waited, back in Deadwood, some of us helping Doc make more mousetraps\u2014a couple a week now. And eating our beans soaked in red-eye whiskey, that were beginning to make a few of us just a mite gassy. And guarding our clothing, some of which was beginning to show tatters around the edges.<\/p>\n

And then came disaster.<\/p>\n

William knew mules, like I said before\u2014he\u2019d been a mule skinner back during the War of the Southern Unpleasantness\u2014and he was getting to know cats as well, but other than that he was not long on knowledge. One thing he did not know when he made his camp that night was that a lost tribe of Native Americans had, of late, migrated into the very desert that he was crossing. And one more thing too, that few people know even now, I reckon, was that those particular aboriginals had, since the white man had come to their land, somehow developed a taste for milk<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And so it was with their whoops and shrieks that these milk-thirsty aborigines fell upon William Sweet\u2019s milk wagon, draining its contents dry. Then, crazed as they were now with lactose fever\u2014a little-known ailment that seems to affect only that one particular, long lost native tribe\u2014they smashed up both wagons and set them on fire and stole his mules from him.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in town we were getting right burpy, considering all we were eating was beans. And some of our clothing was more<\/em> than just threadbare. But then Amy came running back into town, from where she\u2019d been practicing with her pistols, to say she\u2019d seen something.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot no more twirling teacups, I hope,\u201d Doc groaned. \u201cNot no more glowing green in the night time\u2014not that those green-glowing mice ain\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that too,\u201d Amy said. \u201cBut this is daytime. And what I seen was to east, not to west. A big cloud of dust, like someone was driving something to Deadwood. But not tall and plume-like\u2014not like a mule train\u2014but more low-lying and close to the ground. Like puffs made by little padded, running feet. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Then we all heard a strange sound of meowing, and shouts we all recognized as being William\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cGit along, Cat<\/em>!\u201d William was yelling. \u201cCome along, Kittens, there\u2019s mice where we\u2019re going to!\u201d<\/p>\n

And then in a flurry of screeching and yowling, eighty or ninety or more toms and tabbys, long and lean from their trek through the desert, came galloping into the main street of Deadwood.<\/p>\n

T<\/strong><\/span>he way William saw it, as he explained later, was that those cats were a lot like mules. Stubborn, for one thing. But if cats were like mules, then he, William Sweet, was still the best mule skinner in the whole territory.<\/p>\n

And if a mule skinner, why not a cat skinner too? That\u2019s how he figured it that next morning when he found himself, alone, surrounded by felines.<\/p>\n

So, in a day, he had taught them commands. He\u2019d shown them his whip and how he could crack it\u2014over their heads, of course, so\u2019s not to hurt them.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d shown them how to run in the daytime, and then at night to sit by the campfire while he serenaded them with his guitar.<\/p>\n

But this was daytime, and all of Deadwood\u2019s mice were hiding, as mice will in daytime. So we all found ourselves in Tom\u2019s saloon, the cats along with us, having ourselves a big bean dinner to celebrate William\u2019s arriving safely. And we even fed the cats as well, figuring they\u2019d need all their strength for the evening\u2019s work ahead.<\/p>\n

And we were right too. As soon as dusk came, the first of the mice peeped their glowing heads out of the holes they were hidden in. Soon the whole street was filled with mice, squeaking and carrying on like they owned the town, just like they\u2019d been doing every night lately. William was cool, though. He waited and waited, letting them have their way. Till every<\/em> one of those six-legged, green mice was out in the open.<\/p>\n

Then he just whispered. \u201cGo get \u2019em, Kittycats!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in a puff of fur, four or five score of cats raced from the barroom into the town\u2019s streets. Into the houses and all the buildings. Into the Bentons\u2019 store.<\/p>\n

Into, even, the shreds that were left of Amy\u2019s hope chest.<\/p>\n

And squeaking and screaming, out popped the mice, but now there were fewer of them than before. And cats caught and ate them, driving the rest west, back to the abandoned mine with its green-glowing barrier.<\/p>\n

But then all heck broke loose. Up in the sky\u2014Amy saw it first, with her shooter\u2019s eyes\u2014just as we\u2019d all gathered round that green fence. Just as the cats had figured out some way that they could get through it\u2014\u2019cause everyone knows cats can get into everything<\/em>. Just as the last mice were squealing their death squeals, out of the sky came not one, but dozens of humming, green-glowing, twirling teacups.<\/p>\n

But Amy was mad now. Her mother had told her the clothes in the chest that the mice had eaten had been for her<\/em>. And even though by now she\u2019d gotten as soft on William as he\u2019d always been on her own self, and anyway she\u2019d never wanted a fancy Eastern-style wedding whoever she ended up marrying, nevertheless she figured there was some kind of principle that was at stake here. And it had to do with those gol-darn teacups.<\/p>\n

Or anyhow that\u2019s how she explained it afterward.<\/p>\n

She drew her six-shooter as slick as the lightning that was beginning to flash from the sky now, and popped at the first one just as it landed. It bounced right back, straight up, reaching for sky as she popped it a second time, chipping its rim like it was a real<\/em> teacup.<\/p>\n

And by about that time, the rest of us had out our shooting irons as well\u2014even the ones who\u2019d been in the saloon, which was most of us actually\u2014and we were popping away at the teacups too, sometimes hitting them, more often not, while those glowing, green things spun and buzzed like hornets, fighting for altitude. Fighting to get away. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the fight was over. The teacups were all gone. The sky was clearing.<\/p>\n

The moon was shining.<\/p>\n

And Amy and William were in each other\u2019s arms, sighing and kissing.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong><\/span>t was pretty disgusting, I\u2019ll tell you, the way those two young folks were carrying on, even after we\u2019d gotten them back to town. Finally we figured the only thing we could<\/em> do was get them married, whether Amy\u2019s mother was for it or not. But, in the meantime, some other things happened.<\/p>\n

The first was that Doc figured out that whoever was in those teacups were sort of like cowboys, but with six-legged mice for their herds instead of cattle. They\u2019d let their mice out on what they thought was free range, just to graze them a little like cowpokes do, but now we\u2019d showed them that it was closed, so they wouldn\u2019t be coming back. At least not likely\u2014and, even if they did, we had our cats now. Meanwhile the cats had eaten the mice, of course, but when they\u2019d finished they were back eating beans, just like the rest of us, and, like the rest of us, they\u2019d got the burps too. Except, in the dark, they were burping green-glowing gas, which Doc reckoned they\u2019d got when they ate the mice.<\/p>\n

But which began to give William an idea.<\/p>\n

You see, when William had gotten the cats, he\u2019d noticed St. Louis had things they called gas lights\u2014big glowing lanterns they had up on poles on both sides of their main street\u2014and folks there had said it was the latest fashion. So he trained those cats to climb up on the trees on Deadwood\u2019s own Main Street as soon as it got dark, and burp their own green glows, and soon enough the word got out on that, and people came flocking to our city to see it for themselves.<\/p>\n

And word spread farther, and more people moved in. Civilized people. And pretty soon we were getting hard pressed to find something useful for them all to do.<\/p>\n

Except that William had one more idea then, after Doc had shown him one of the latest models of his new-fangled mousetraps, and that was that maybe Doc should get a patent.<\/p>\n

And so Doc did, in San Francisco, and pretty soon people were buying<\/em> Taggerty\u2019s Better Mousetraps all over the country, and Doc cut William in on the profits seeing how getting the patent on them had been his<\/em> notion. And Tom got a share too when he converted his old bean warehouse into a factory, where all the town\u2019s newcomers could help to build them.<\/p>\n

And pretty soon everyone<\/em> in Deadwood prospered, even the Civic Improvement Alliance whose members were often called on to give lectures in neighboring cities on the advantages of having streetlights. And on modern pest control methods as well. And, as I said, in time William Sweet and Amy got married, even if Amy was without her trousseau. But William was rich now.<\/p>\n

And that<\/em> even satisfied Melinda Carlstadt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catskinner Sweet and the Twirling Teacups of Deadwood City<\/em> was originally published in 2001 at Nuketown<\/a>. Nuketown, sadly, doesn’t publish fiction anymore, so we’re proud to have this story here. — ed. N.E. Lilly<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[190],"media":[299],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"media","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}