Things certainly happened after young Pete confiscated the wash lady's clothesline to play bandit with. He becomes a bitter enemy of "Stingem" Charley, a traveling patent medicine man. Unnoticed, the youngster loops his lasso around the crowd and fastens it to Charley's wagon. A slap starts up the horse, spilling the people right and left, and the animal runs away. Pete picks up some of the bottles and goes home. There he empties the medicine onto the porch floor and fills the bottles with Tabasco Sauce. The runaway team is captured and, before Charley resumes his lecture, Pete stealthily puts the Tabasco bottles back in the wagon. Stingem sells one each to old Ezra, for his toothache; Hiram, who walks on crutches, and Silas, who has the gout and uses a wheel chair. All take a healthy swig of the Tabasco. Hiram, with his eyes bulging, drops his crutches and runs like mad, yelling "Fire!" Ezra and Silas give similarly startling exhibitions. The police and fire departments are called out. Asked where the fire is, Hiram gasps out, "Inside !" The firemen, in disgust, thrust him into a rain barrel. The cops, chasing Silas' runaway wheelchair and its occupant, plunge into the river. Both he and Hiram are rescued and blame Charley for the affair, with the result that a bottle of Tabasco is poured down the medicine man's throat. Pete gets his "medicine" in the shape of a good spanking when his mother sees the condition of the porch.
