Clarence E. Mulford_Hopalong Cassidy 04

by Bar-20 Days

  Billy, grinning, turned and playfully punched him in the ribs. "Getting glory, Hoppy?"

  Hopalong raised his head and looked him steadily in the eyes; and Billy, losing his curiosity and the grin at the same instant, looked ahead, whistling softly.

  Chapter XVII - Edwards' Ultimatum

  *

  Edwards slid off the counter in Jackson's store and glowered at the pelting rain outside, perturbed and grouchy. The wounded man in the corner stirred and looked at him without interest and forthwith renewed his profane monologue, while the proprietor, finishing his task, leaned back against the shelves and swore softly. It was a lovely atmosphere.

  "Seems to me they've been gone a long time," grumbled the wounded man. "Reckon he led 'em a long chase—had six hours' start, the toad." He paused and then as an afterthought said with conviction: "But they'll get him—they allus do when they make up their minds to it."

  Edwards nodded moodily and Jackson replied with a monosyllable.

  "Wish I could 'a' gone with 'em," Johnny growled. "I like to square my own accounts. It's allus that way. I get plugged an' my friends clean the slate. There was that time Bye-an'-Bye went an' ambushed me—ah, the devil! But I tell you one thing: when I get well I'm going down to Harlan's an' clean house proper."

  "Yo're in hard luck again: that'll be done as soon as yore friends get back," Jackson replied, carefully selecting a dried apricot from a box on the counter and glancing at the marshal to see how he took the remark.

  "That'll be done before then," Edwards said crisply, with the air of a man who has just settled a doubt. "They won't be back much before to-morrow if he headed for the country I think he did. I'm going down to the Oasis an' tell that gang to clear out of this town. They've been here too long now. I never had 'em dead to rights before, but I've got it on 'em this time. I'd 'a' sent 'em packing yesterday only I sort of hated to take a man's business away from him an' make him lose his belongings. But I've wrastled it all out an' they've got to go." He buttoned his coat about him and pulled his sombrero more firmly on his head, starting for the door. "I'll be back soon," he said over his shoulder as he grasped the handle.

  "You better wait till you get help—there's too many down there for one man to watch an' handle," Jackson hastily remarked. "Here, I'll go with you," he offered, looking for his hat.

  Edwards laughed shortly. "You stay here. I do my own work by myself when I can—that's what I'm here for, an' I can do this, all right. If I took any help they'd reckon I was scared," and the door slammed shut behind him.

  "He's got sand a plenty," Jackson remarked. "He'd try to push back a stampede by main strength if he reckoned it was his duty. It's his good luck that he wasn't killed long ago—I'd 'a' been."

  "They're a bunch of cowards," replied Johnny. "As long as you ain't afraid of 'em, none of 'em wants to start anything. Bunch of sheep!" he snorted. "Didn't Jerry shoot me through his pocket?"

  "Yes; an' yo're another lucky dog," Jackson responded, having in mind that at first Johnny had been thought to be desperately wounded. "Why, yore friends have got the worst of this game; they're worse off than you are—out all day an' night in this cussed storm."

  While they talked Edwards made his way through the cold downpour to Harlan's saloon, alone and unafraid, and greatly pleased by the order he would give. At last he had proof enough to work on, to satisfy his conscience, for the inevitable had come as the culmination of continued and clever defiance of law and order.

  He deliberately approached the front door of the Oasis and, opening it, stepped inside, his hands resting on his guns—he had packed two Colts for the last twenty-four hours. His appearance caused a ripple of excitement to run around the room. After what had taken place, a visit from him could mean only one thing—trouble. And it was entirely possible that he had others within call to help him out if necessary.

  Harlan knew that he would be the one held responsible and he ceased wiping a glass and held the cloth suspended in one hand and the glass in the other. "Well?" he snapped, angrily, his eyes smouldering with fixed hatred.

  "Mebby you think it's well, but it's going to be a blamed sight better before sundown to-morrow night," evenly replied the marshal. "I just dropped in sort of free-like to tell you to pack up an' get out of town before dark—load yore wagon an' vamoose; an' take yore friends with you, too. If you don't—" he did not finish in words, for his tightening lips made them unnecessary.

  "What!" yelled Harlan, red with anger. He placed his hands on the bar and leaned over it as if to give emphasis to his words. "Me pack up an' git! Me leave this shack! Who's going to pay me for it, hey? Me leave town! You drop out again an' go back to Kansas where you come from—they're easier back there!"

  "Well, so far I ain't found nothing very craggy 'round here," retorted Edwards, closely watching the muttering crowd by the bar. "Takes more than a loud voice an' a pack of sneaking coyotes to send me looking for something easier. An' let me tell you this: You stay away from Kansas—they hangs people like you back there. That's whatever. You pack up an' git out of this town or I'll start a burying plot with you on yore own land."

  The low, angry buzz of Harlan's friends and their savage, scowling faces would have deterred a less determined man; but Edwards knew they were afraid of him, and the men on whom he could call to back him up. And he knew that there must always be a start, there must be one man to show the way; and each of the men he faced was waiting for some one else to lead.

  "You all slip over the horizon before dark to-night, an' it's dark early these days," he continued. "Don't get restless with yore hands!" he snapped ominously at the crowd. "I means what I say—you shake the mud from this town off yore boots before dark—before that Bar-20 outfit gets back," he finished meaningly.

  Questions, imprecations, and threats filled the room, and the crowd began to spread out slowly. His guns came out like a flash and he laughed with the elation that comes with impending battle. "The first man to start it'll drop," he said evenly. "Who's going to be the martyr?"

  "I won't leave town!" shouted Harlan. "I'll stay here if I'm killed for it!"

  "I admire yore loyalty to principle, but you've got damned little sense," retorted the marshal. "You ain't no practical man. Keep yore hands where they are!"—his vibrant voice turned the shifting crowd to stone-like rigidity and he backed slowly toward the door, the poor light gleaming dully from the polished blue steel of his Colts. Rugged, lion-like, charged to the finger tips with reckless courage and dare-devil self-confidence, his personality overflowed and dominated the room, almost hypnotic in its effect. He was but one against many, but he was the master, and they knew it; they had known it long enough to accept it without question, and the training now stood him in good stead.

  For a moment he stood in the open doorway, keenly scrutinizing them for signs of danger, his unwavering guns charged with certain death and his strong face made stronger by the shadows in its hollows. "Before dark!"—and he was gone.

  He left behind him deep silence, which endured for several moments.

  "By the Lord, I won't!" cried Harlan, still staring at the door.

  The spell was broken and a babel of voices filled the room, threats mingling with excuses, hot, vibrant, profane. These men were not cowards all the way through, but only when face to face with the master. They had flourished in a way by their wits alone on the same range with the outfits of the C-80 and the Double-Arrow, for individually they were "bad," and collectively they made a force of no mean strength. Edwards had landed among them like a thunderbolt and had proved his prowess, and they still held him in awesome respect. His reckless audacity and grim singleness of purpose had saved him on more than one occasion, for had he wavered once he would have been shot down without mercy. But gradually his enforcement of hampering laws became more and more intolerable, and their subordinated spirits were nearly on the point of revolt. When he faced them they resumed their former positions in relation to him—but once out of his sight they p
lotted to destroy him. Here was the crisis: it was now or never. They could not evade his ultimatum—it was obey or fight.

  Submission was not to be thought of, for to flee would be to lose caste, and the story of such an act would follow them wherever they went, and brand them as cowards. Here they had lived, and here they would stay if possible, and to this end they discussed ways and means.

  "Harlan's right!" emphatically announced Laramie Joe. "We can't pull out and have this foller us."

  "We should have started it with a rush when he was in here," remarked Boston, regretfully.

  Harlan stopped his pacing and faced them, shoving out a bottle of whiskey as an aid to his logic.

  "That chance is past, an' I don't know but what it is a good thing," he began. "He was primed an' looking fer trouble, an' he'd shore got a few of us afore he went under. What we want is strategy—that's the game. You fellers have got as much brains as him, an' if we thrash this thing out we can find a way to call his play—an' get him! No use of any of us getting plugged 'less we have to. But whatever we do we've got to start it right quick an' have it over before that Bar-20 gang comes back. Harper, you an' Quinn go scouting—an' don't take no guns with you, neither. Act like you was hitting the long trail out, an' work back here on a circle. See how many of his friends are in town. While you are gone the rest of us will hold a pow-wow an' take the kinks out of this game. Chase along, an' don't waste no time."

  "Good!" cried Slivers Lowe emphatically. "There's blamed few fellers in town now that have any use for him, for most of them are off on the ranges. Bet we won't have more than six to fight, an' there's that many of us here."

  The scouts departed at once and the remaining four drew close in consultation.

  "One more drink around and then no more till this trouble is over," Harlan said, passing the bottle. The drinks, in view of the coming drought and the thirsty work ahead, were long and deep, and new courage and vindictiveness crept through their veins.

  "Now here's the way it looks to me," Harlan continued, placing the bottle, untasted by himself, on the floor behind him. "We've got to work a surprise an' take Edwards an' his friends off their guard. That'll be easy if we're careful, because they think we ain't looking for fight. When we get them out of the way we can take Jackson's store an' use one of the other shacks and wait for the Bar-20 to ride in. They'll canter right in, like they allus do, an' when they get close enough we'll open the game with a volley an' make every shot tell. 'T won't last long, 'cause every one of us will have his man named before they get here. Then the few straddlers in town, seeing how easy we've gone an' handled it'll join us. We've got four men to come in yet, an' by the time the C-80 an' Double-Arrow hears about it we'll be fixed to drive 'em back home. We ought to be over a dozen strong by dark."

  "That sounds good, all right," remarked Slivers, thoughtfully, "but can we do it that easy?"

  "Course we can! We ain't fools, an' we all can shoot as well as them," snapped Laramie Joe, the most courageous of the lot. Laramie had taken only one drink, and that a small one, for he was wise enough to realize that he needed his wits as keen as he could have them.

  "We can do it easy, if Edwards goes under first," hastily replied Harlan. "An' me an' Laramie will see to that part of it. If we don't get him, you all can hit the trail an' we won't be sore about it. That is, unless you are made of the stuff that stands up an' fights 'stead of running away. I reckon I ain't none mistaken in any of you. You'll all be there when things get hot."

  "You can bet the shack I won't do no trail-hitting," growled Boston, glancing at Slivers, who squirmed a little under the hint.

  "Well, I'm glued to the crowd; you can't lose me, fellers," Slivers remarked, re-crossing his legs uneasily. "Are we going to begin it from here?"

  "We ought to spread out cautions and surround Jackson's, or wherever Edwards is," Laramie Joe suggested. "That's my—"

  "Yo're right! Now you've hit it plumb on the head!" interrupted Harlan, slapping Laramie heartily across the back. "What did I tell you about our brains?" he cried, enthusiastically. He had been on the point of suggesting that plan of operations when Laramie took the words out of his mouth. "I'd never thought of that, Laramie," he lied, his face beaming. "Why, we've got 'em licked to a finish right now!"

  "This is a hummer of a game," laughed Slivers. "But how about the Bar-20 crowd?"

  "I've told you that already," replied the proprietor.

  "You bet it's a hummer," cried Boston, reaching for the whiskey bottle under cover of the excitement and enthusiasm.

  Harlan pushed it away with his foot and raised his clenched fist. "Do you wonder I didn't think of that plan?" he demanded. "Ain't I been too mad to think at all? Hain't I seen my friends treated like dogs, an' made to swaller insults when I couldn't raise my hand to stop it? Didn't I see Jerry Brown chased out of my place like a wild beast? If we are what we've been called, then we'll sneak out of town with our tails atween our laigs; but if we're men we'll stay right here an' cram the insults down the throats of them that made 'em! If we're men let's prove it an' make them liars swaller our lead."

  "My sentiments an' allus was!" roared Slivers, slapping Harlan's shoulder.

  "We're men, all right, an' we'll show 'em it, too!"

  At that instant the door opened and four guns covered it before it had swung a foot.

  "Put 'em down—it's Quinn!" exclaimed the man in the doorway, flinching a bit. "All right, Jed," he called over his shoulder to the man who crowded him. After Quinn came Big Jed and Harper brought up the rear. They had no more than shaken the water from their sombreros when the back door let in Charley Rich and his two companions, Frank and Tom Nolan. While greetings were being exchanged and the existing conditions explained to the newcomers, Harper and Quinn led Harlan to one side and reported, the proprietor smiling and nodding his head wisely. And while he listened, Slivers surreptitiously corralled the whiskey bottle and when the last man finished with it there was nothing in it but air.

  "Well, boys," exclaimed Harlan, "things are our way. Quinn, here, met Joe Barr, of the C-80, who said Converse an' four other fellers, all friends of Edwards, stopped at the ranch an' won't be back home till the storm stops. Harper saw Fred Neil going back to his ranch, so all we've got to figger on is the marshal, Barr, an' Jackson, an' they're all in Jackson's store. Lacey might cut in, since he'd sell more liquor if I went under, but he can't do very much if he does take a hand. Now we'll get right at it." The whole thing was gone over thoroughly and in detail, positions assigned and a signal agreed upon. Seeing that weapons were in good condition after their long storage in the cellar, and that cartridge belts were full, the ten men left the room one at a time or in pairs, Harlan and Laramie Joe being the last. And both Harlan and Laramie delayed long enough to take the precaution of placing horses where they would be handy in case of need.

  Chapter XVIII - Harlan Strikes

  *

  Joe Barr laughingly replied to Johnny Nelson's growled remarks about the condition of things in general and tried to soothe him, but Johnny was unsoothable.

  "An' I've been telling him right along that he's got the best of it," complained Jackson in a weary voice. "Got a measly hole through his shoulder—good Lord! if it had gone a little lower!" he finished with a show of exasperation.

  "An' ain't I been telling you all along that it ain't the measly hole in my shoulder that's got me on the prod?" retorted Johnny, with more earnestness than politeness. "But why couldn't I go with my friends after Jerry an' get shot later if I had to get it at all? Look what I'm missing, roped an' throwed in this cussed ten-by-ten shack while they're having a little excitement."

  "Yo're missing some blamed nasty weather, Kid," replied the marshal. "You ain't got no kick coming at all. Why, I got soaked clean through just going down to the Oasis."

  "Well, I'm kicking, just the same," snapped Johnny. "An' furthermore, I don't see nobody big enough to stop me, neither—did you all get that?"

  The rear
door opened and Fred Neal looked in. "Hey, Barr; come out an' gimme a hand in the corral. Busted my cinch all to pieces half a mile out—an' how the devil it ever busted like that is—" the door slammed shut and softened his monologue.

  "Would you listen to that!" snorted Barr in an injured tone. "Didn't I go an' tell him near a month ago that his cussed cinch wouldn't hold no better'n a piece of wet paper?" His complaint added materially to the atmosphere of sullen discontent pervading the room. "An' now I gotter go out in this rain an'—" the slam of the door surpassed anything yet attempted in that line of endeavor. Jackson grabbed a can of corn as it jarred off the shelf behind him and directed a pleasing phrase after the peevish Barr.

  "Say, won't somebody please smile?" gravely asked Edwards. "I never saw such a happy, cheerful bunch before."

  "I might smile if I wasn't so blamed hungry," retorted Johnny. "Doesn't anybody ever eat in this town?" he asked in great sarcasm. "Mebby a good feed won't do me no good, but I'm going to fill myself regardless. An' after that, if the grub don't shock me to death, I'm shore going to trim somebody at Ol' Sledge—for two bits a hand."

  "If I could play you enough hands at that price I could sell out an' live high without working," grinned Jackson, preparing to give the reckless invalid all he could eat. "That's purty high, Kid; but I just feel real devilish, an' I'm coming in."

  "An' I'll go over to my shack, get some money, an' bust the pair of you," laughed Edwards, again buttoning his coat and going towards the door. "Holy Cats! A log must 'a' got jammed in the sluice-gate up there," he muttered, scowling at the black sky. "It's coming down harder'n ever, but here goes," and he stepped quickly into the storm.

  Jackson paused with a frying pan in his hands and looked through the window after the departing marshal, and saw him stagger, stumble forward, then jerk out his guns and begin firing. Hard firing now burst out in front and Jackson, cursing angrily, dropped the pan and reached for his rifle—to drop it also and sink down, struck by the bullet which drilled through the window. Johnny let out a yell of rage, grabbed his Colt, and ran to the door in time to see Edwards slowly raise up on one elbow, fire his last shot, and fall back riddled by bullets.