D id English author A. A. Milne,...

D id English author A. A. Milne, best known for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, travel through the American West around 1925? His biographers say no. On the other hand, an oral history project in Wyoming has turned up an old cowboy who swears that...

We was settin’ in a saloon in Rock Springs, like we did ever’ Saturday, when this dude parks his flivver at the hitchin’ rail and comes in for a sarsaparilla. The fellers kinda snickered at that, but they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. He’s got this suitcase like a snake-oil salesman, but they weren’t no bottles he took out of it. No, sir. He took out a teddy bear, and a stuffed jackass, and a piglet and one of them--tarnation, what they call ‘em?--kangyroos with a baby in its pocket. And stood ‘em all up on the bar and started talkin’ to ‘em.

Nobody said nothin’. A waterin’ hole like this, we get all kinds. But finally Roscoe, the barkeep, asks him real gentle-like:

“Lettin’ ‘em stretch their legs a little?�

The dude smiles. “By Jove, yes. On this vast, wild frontier. Even the Hundred Acre Wood must have seemed a bit confining, what?�

Roscoe and I blinked. There ain’t a hundred acres of trees in all this half of Wyomin’, and you’d think this feller would have noticed.

Still, nothin’ would have happened, probably, if Green River Pete and the rest of the boys hadn’t started clearin’ away the poker tables for the big New Year’s dance. Square dancin’, line dancin’, every kind of do-si-do you can imagine. And this dude says, “I invented square dancing, you know.�

“You what? “ Pete asks.

“And line dancing too, for that matter. Or non-line dancing, which amounts to the same thing.�

We knew then the dude was plumb loco. Talkin’ to toy critters is one thing, but dancin’ . . . why, you can learn it just the way we did, startin’ Tuesday at classes run by the Red Ribbon Squares at 7:30 p.m. at Marine Street Park, Marine and 16th streets, Santa Monica. Costs $3.50 a class. For information, call (310) 823-1180.

Then durned if he didn’t up and tell us a poem:

Whenever I walk in a London street,

I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;

And I keep in the squares,

And the masses of bears

Who wait at the corners all ready to eat

The sillies who tread on the lines of the street. . . .

Now, Green River Pete has a short fuse anyway. And if anythin’ riles him even faster than usual, it’s poetry.

Roscoe done all he could to keep the peace. “London,� he says. “That’s a big city, ain’t it? A civilized place. You wouldn’t think it’d have any bears.�

“Oh, but it does,� the dude says. “I was in the Great War, you know, and I found that the more civilized the place, generally, the bigger the bears are.�

Then somebody yelled, “Watch out, Christopher Robin!�

The dude ducked, just in time to miss Pete’s fist. I mean, Pete does look more bear than human, and he must have took it kinda personal. Then all hell broke loose, like it does most ever’ Saturday night. When the boys got done, there was nothin’ left but splinters and busted glass, and Miss Lily--she’s the picture over the bar--needed another patch in her negligee.

The dude? He’d packed up his suitcase and drove off.

But who told him to duck? That’s the durndest thing. Because I’ll swear it was that little toy bear on the bar. Talkin’ back. I must have had too much of that redeye. Sure you won’t buy me another?