Three agile and rolling-gaited Caughnawaga Indians, those last noble descendants of the noblest of noble savages, crossed 48th Street heading downtown. They carried lunch pails. They were on their way home by IRT subway (which they would catch at 42nd Times Square) from the building site construction on Madison and 48th; the selfsame construction site toward which four Pelham Privateers (behind the point-scouting of the redoubtable Vimmy) at this moment were streaking. The three redskins, high-steel workers of the most loftily-paid species, paused at the corner of 47th and Sixth, shifted lunch pails, and clucked their tongues almost in unison.
“Is that crummy, I ask you!” said Walter Knife-That-Gleams-In-Starlight.
“Yeah, first they zap alla the buffalo, bison, whatever the hell they was that they did in, and now this!” The lament was voiced by Teddy Bearclaw.
“Goddam white-eyes,” added Sidney G. Nine Fires.
“Red man’s burden,” said Walter.
“Is it not a sad pass what our people has come to, that we must erect for these shitty crummy pony soldiers a edifice of such nobility as we are at this precise moment in time erecting,” penultimated Teddy.
“What the hell is a bison?” asked Sidney G. Nine Fires. Mutual shrugs of confusion led to a prompt exit.
The Reverend Leroy L. Heal, arriving at the head of the Poke County, Mississippi, delegation to the First Annual Congress of the International Evangelical Brotherhood for the Promotion of Christian Love and Low Down Payments, paused, waving his flock to a halt, shaking his head sadly at the vast obstruction blocking the intersection ahead. His second-in-command moved up beside him. Together, they studied the crumpled, strutted, awning-winged apparition filling the street.
“Well, Leroy, what do you make of it?” the lieutenant inquired.
Rev. Heal sighed. “The expenditure of funds and ingenuity that went into constructing this hoax and placing it in our line of march could have supported three indigent families in fair comfort for a period of at least two months,” he stated.