Some folks just can't take a joke, no matter how nicely Warrick dishes them out. His harmonica might not be much use against a surly troll.

SYNOPSIS:

"Home, home on the range.

Oh wait, that ain't home, there's no bed.

Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word . . .

Except for the ones I just said."

Warrick Winthrop can harmonica with the best of them, and leave his audience laughing. At least, his normal audience in the Pillar Canyon saloon. Those folks have gotten used to his horns, hooves, and lack of pistol holster. Singing for his supper has worked well for a few years, but business gets a good bit trickier when 'Deadeye' McGonagall swaggers on in.

The ne'er-do-well has a face like someone dropped a cast-iron skillet down the worst-dug well the territory's ever seen, and he's not too fond of greenhorns. Unfortunately for him, trying to humiliate a comedian is a bit like arguing with a fellow who buys ink by the barrel, and the evening's customers are fond of their off-beat entertainer.

It goes downhill from there, in many ways. Warrick is not a violent fellow, but not by conviction—it simply doesn't sit well with him, as a matter of temperament. He'll have to fend Deadeye off with slapstick and snark, and hope not to need a rescue by Sheriff Parks or any of the town's cowboys.

This is myth-as-person, using nonhumans to expand the vibrancy of the setting and story. In some of the same vein as Paul Bunyan, the extraordinary is combined with the rustic, and dangerous, frontier.