He then laid down his shotgun and lit a shuck down a back alley as hard as he could leg it.
So about a dozen buffalo-hunters in buckskins and whiskers come surging up to the jail and kicked on the door. They couldn’t get the door open so they went around behind the shack and looked in at the winder.
“It’s him, all right,” said one of ’em. “Let’s shoot him through the winder.”
But the others said, “Naw, let’s do the job in proper order,” and I ast them what they wanted.
“We aims to hang yuh!” they answered enthusiastically.
“You cain’t do that,” I says. “It’s agen the law.”
“You kilt Moose Harrison!” said the biggest one, which they called Hanson.
“Well, it was a even break, and he tried to git the drop on me,” I says.
Then Hanson says: “Enough of sech quibblin’. We made up our mind to hang yuh, so le’s don’t hear no more argyments about it. Here,” he says to his pals, “tie a rope to the bars and we’ll jerk the whole winder out. It’ll be easier’n bustin’ down the door. And hustle up, because I’m in a hurry to git back to that poker game in the R’arin’ Buffalo.”
So they tied a rope onto the bars and all laid onto it and heaved and grunted, and some of the bars come loose at one end. I picked up the bench aiming to bust their fool skulls with it as they clumb through the winder, but jest then another feller run up.
“Wait, boys,” he hollered, “don’t waste yore muscle. I jest seen Santry down at the Topeka Queen gamblin’ with the money he taken off that dern cowboy, and he gimme the key to the door.”
So they abandoned the winder and surged arount to the front of the jail, and I quick propped the bench agen the door, and run to the winder and tore out them bars which was already loose. I could hear ’em rattling at the door, and as I clumb through the winder one of ’em said: “The lock’s turned but the door’s stuck. Heave agen it.”
So whilst they hev I run around the jail and picks up the guard’s shotgun where he’d dropped it when he run off. Jest then the bench inside give way and the door flew open, and all them fellers tried to crowd through. As a result they was all jammed in the door and cussin’ something fierce.
“Quit crowdin’,” yelled Hanson. “Holy catamount, he’s gone! The jail’s empty!”
I then up with my shotgun and give ’em both barrels in the seat of their britches, which was the handiest to aim at, and they let out a most amazing squall and busted loose and fell headfirst into the jail. Some of ’em kept on going head-down like they’d started and hit the back wall so hard it knocked ’em stiff, and the others fell over ’em.
They was all tangled in a pile cussing and yelling to beat the devil, so I slammed the door and locked it and run around behind the jail house. Hanson was trying to climb out the winder, so I hit him over the head with my shotgun and he fell back inside and hollered.
“Halp! I’m mortally injured!”
“Shet up that unseemly clamor,” I says sternly. “Ain’t none of yuh hurt bad. Throw yore guns out the winder and lay down on the floor. Hustle, before I gives you another blast through the winder.”
They didn’t know the shotgun was empty, so they throwed their weppins out in a hurry and laid down, but they warn’t quiet about it. They seemed to consider they’d been subjected to crooel and onusual treatment, and the birdshot in their sterns must of been a-stinging right smart, because the language they used was plumb painful to hear. I stuck a couple of their pistols in my belt.
“If one of you shows his head at that winder within a hour,” I said, “he’ll git it blowed off.”
I then snuck back into the shadders and headed for the livery stable.
The livery stable man was reading a newspaper by a lantern, and he looked surprised and said he thought I was in jail. I ignored this remark, and told him to hitch me a fast hoss to a buckboard whilst I saddled Cap’n Kidd.
“Wait a minute!” says he. “I hear tell yuh told Ace Middleton yuh aimed to elope with Gloria La Venner. Yuh takin’ this rig for her?”
“Yes, I am,” I says.
“Well I’m a friend of Middleton’s,” he says, “and I won’t rent yuh no rig under no circumstances.”
“Then git outa my way,” I said. “I’ll hitch the hoss up myself.”
He then drawed a bowie so I clinched with him, and as we was rasseling around he sort of knocked his head agen a swingletree I happen to have in my hand at the time, and collapses with a low gurgle. So I tied him up and rolled him under a oats bin. I also rolled out a buckboard and hitched the best-looking harness hoss I could find to it, but them folks is liars which is going around saying I stole that there outfit. It was sent back later.
I saddles my hoss and tied him on behind the buckboard and got in and started for the Silver Boot, wondering how long it would take them fool buffalo-hunters to find out I was jest bluffing, and warn’t lying out behind the jail to shoot ’em as they climb out.
I turnt into the alley which run behind the Silver Boot and then tied the hosses and went up to the back door and peeked in. Gloria was there. She grabbed me and I could feel her trembling.
“I thought you’d never come!” she whispered. “It’ll be time for my singing-act again in just a few minutes. I’ve been waiting here ever since I paid Santry your fine. What kept you so long? He left the Silver Boot as soon as I gave him the money.”
“He never turned me out, the low-down skunk,” I muttered. “Some—er—friends got me out. Come on, git in the buckboard.”
I helped her up and gave her the lines.
“I got a debt to settle before I leave town,” I said. “You go on and wait for me at that clump of cottonwoods east of town. I’ll be on purty soon.”
So she pulled out in a hurry and I got onto Cap’n Kidd. I rode him around to the front of the Silver Boot, tied him to the hitch-rack and dismounted. The Silver Boot was crowded. I could see Ace strutting around chawing a big black cigar, and joking and slapping folks on the back.
Everybody was having sech a hilarious time nobody noticed me as I stood in the doorway, so I pulled the buffalo-hunters’ .45’s, and let bam at the mirror behind the bar. The barman yelped and ducked the flying glass, and everybody whirled and gaped, and Ace jerked his cigar out of his mouth and bawled:
“It’s that dern cowpuncher again! Get him!”
But them bouncers had seen my guns, and they was shying away, all except the scar-faced thug which had hit me with the bat, and he whipped a gun from under his vest. So I shot him through the right shoulder, and he fell over behind the monte table.
I begun to spray the crowd with hot lead free and generous and they stampeded every which-a-way. Some went through the winder, glass and all, and some went out the side doors, and some busted down the back door in their flight.
I likewise riddled the mirror behind the bar and shot down some of the hanging lamps and busted most of the bottles on the shelves.
Ace ducked behind a stack of beer kaigs and opened fire on me, but he showed pore judgement in not noticing he was right under a hanging lamp. I shot if off the ceiling and it fell down on his head, and you ought to of heard him holler when the burning ile run down his wuthless neck.
He come prancing into the open, wiping his neck with one hand and trying to shoot me with the other’n, and I drilled him through the hind laig. He fell down and bellered like a bull with its tail cotched in a fence gate.
“You dern murderer!” says he passionately. “I’ll have yore life for this!”
“Shet up!” I snarled. “I’m jest payin’ yuh back for all the pain and humiliation I suffered in this den of iniquity——”
At this moment a bartender riz up from behind a billiard table with a sawed-off shotgun, but I shot it out of his hands before he could cock it, and he fell over backwards hollering: “Spare my life!” Jest then somebody yelled: “Halt, in the name of the law!” and I looked around and it was that tinhorn marshal named Santry wi
th a gun in his hand.
“I arrests you again!” he bawled. “Lay down yore weppins!”
“I’ll lay yore carcase down,” I responded. “Yuh ain’t fitten for to be no law-officer. Yuh gambled away the five dollars I give yuh for grub, and yuh took the fine-money Miss La Venner give yuh, and didn’t turn me out, and yuh give the key to them mobsters which wanted to hang me. You ain’t no law. Yuh’re a dern outlaw yoreself. Now yuh got a gun in yore hand same as me. Either start shootin’ or throw it down!”
Well, he hollered, “Don’t shoot!” and throwed it down and h’isted his hands. I seen he had my knife and pistol stuck in his belt, so I took them off of him, and tossed the .45’s I’d been using onto the billiard table and said, “Give these back to the buffalo-hunters.”
But jest then he whipped out a .38 he was wearing under his arm, and shot at me and knocked my hat off, and then he turnt and run around the end of the bar, all bent over to git his head below it. So I grabbed the bartender’s shotgun and let bam with both barrels jest as his rear end was going out of sight.
He shrieked blue ruin and started having a fit behind the bar, so I throwed the shotgun through the roulette wheel and stalked forth, leaving Ace and the bouncer and the marshal wailing and wallering on the floor. It was plumb disgustful the way they wept and cussed over their trifling injuries.
I come out on the street so sudden that them cusses which was hiding behind the hoss trough to shoot me as I come out, was took by surprise and only grazed me in a few places, so I throwed a few slugs amongst ’em and they took to their heels.
I got on Cap’n Kidd and headed east down the street, ignoring the shots fired at me from the alleys and winders. That is, I ignored ’em except to shoot back at ’em as I run, and I reckon that’s how the mayor got the lobe of his ear shot off. I thought I heard somebody holler when I answered a shot fired at me from behind the mayor’s board fence.
Well, when I got to the clump of cottonwoods there warn’t no sign of Gloria, the hoss, or the buckboard, but there was a note stuck up on a tree which I grabbed and read by the light of the moon.
It said:
Dear Tejano: Your friend must have been kidding you. I never even knew anybody named Bizz Ridgeway. But I’m taking this chance of getting away from Ace. I’m heading for Trevano Springs, and I’ll send back the buckboard from there. Thank you for everything.
Gloria La Venner.
I got to Goshen about sunup, having loped all the way. Bizz Ridgeway was at the bar of the Spanish Mustang, and when he seen me he turned pale and dived for the winder, but I grabbed him.
“What you mean by tellin’ me that lie about you and Gloria La Venner?” I demanded wrathfully. “Was you tryin’ to git me kilt?”
“Well,” says he, “to tell the truth, Breck, I was. All’s fair in love or war, yuh know. I wanted to git yuh out of the way so I’d have a clear field with Betty Wilkinson, and I knowed about Ace Middleton and Gloria, and figgered he’d do the job if I sent yuh over there. But yuh needn’t git mad. It didn’t do me no good. Betty’s already married.”
“What?” I yelled.
He ducked instinctively.
“Yeah!” he says. “He took advantage of yore absence to pop the question, and she accepted him, and they’re on their way to Kansas City for their honeymoon. He never had the nerve to ast her when you was in town, for fear yuh’d shoot him. They’re goin’ to live in the East because he’s too scairt of you to come back.”
“Who?” I screamed, foaming slightly at the mouth.
“Rudwell Shapley Jr.,” says he. “It’s all yore fault——”
It was at this moment that I dislocated Bizz Ridgeway’s hind laig. I likewise defies the criticism which has been directed at this perfectly natural action. A Elkins with a busted heart is no man to trifle with.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, by Bret Harte
As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was another question. “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he reflected; “likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. “It’s agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp—an entire stranger—carry away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as the “Duchess”; another, who had won the title of “Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding horse, “Five Spot,” for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five Spot” with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants—lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothi
lls into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before the game was played out.” But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he “couldn’t afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own name called.
The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories Page 4
