For the love of Annibel

For the love of Annibel by W. C. Tuttle is a humorous Western short story written in the early 20th century. Set in the rough little town of Piperock, it pokes fun at “home-talent” theatricals, as local pride, jealousies, and bad luck—plus one infamously ornery horse—turn a simple stage melodrama into comic bedlam.

Narrated by dry-witted cowhand Ike Harper, the tale begins when his towering pardner Magpie Simpkins decides to become an actor after Madame Della Selva arrives to stage a play in the Mint dance hall. Casting churns up rivalries and absurdities: Judge Steele becomes Annibel’s father, Tellurium Woods is inked into permanent blackface, Slim Hawkins supplants Magpie as romantic lead, and the villain role lands on Magpie—while a notorious bucker, old Squaw, is chosen as the onstage racehorse. On opening night the set wobbles, whiskers slip, the pump collapses, and drunken Cobalt Williams leans on everything that won’t hold him—until Squaw explodes into a ferocious bucking spree that wrecks the stage and panics the crowd; a stray shot shatters the lights and the audience stampedes. In the aftermath they drag Cobalt from under a smashed sidewalk and learn he had “doctored” Squaw with carbon bisulfide, inflaming the chaos that Magpie had half a mind to cause anyway. The story closes with a shrug and a wisecrack, the wrecked show leaving only laughter and bruises behind.