Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  “‘Tain’t a joke,” growled pap. “Take off yore sombrero.”

  I done so bewilderedly, and instantly four men in the gang started hollering: “That’s him! That’s the man! He had on a mask, but when he taken his hat off, we seen the hair was all off his head! That’s shore him!”

  “Elkins,” said the sheriff, “I arrests you for the robbery of the Chawed Ear stage!”

  I convulsively went for my guns. It was jest a instinctive move which I done without knowing it, but the sheriff hollered and ducked, and the possemen throwed up their guns, and pap spurred in between us.

  “Put down them guns, everybody!” he roared, covering me with one six- shooter and the posse with the other’n. “First man that pulls a trigger, I’ll salivate him!”

  “I ain’t aimin’ to shoot nobody!” I bellered. “But what the hell is this all about?”

  “As if he didn’t know!” sneered one of the posse. “Tryin’ to ack innercent! Heh heh heh — glup!”

  Pap riz in his stirrups and smashed him over the head with his right-hand six-shooter barrel, and he crumpled into the trail and laid there with the blood oozing out of his sculp.

  “Anybody else feel humorous?” roared pap, sweeping the posse with a terrible eye. Evidently nobody did, so he turnt around and says to me, and I seen drops of perspiration standing on his face which warn’t caused altogether by the heat. Says he: “Breckinridge, early last night the Chawed Ear stage was stuck up and robbed a few miles t’other side of Chawed Ear. The feller which done it not only taken the passengers’ money and watches and things, and the mail sack, but he also shot the driver, old Jim Harrigan, jest out of pure cussedness. Old Jim’s layin’ over in Chawed Ear now with a bullet through his laig.

  “These born fools thinks you done it! They was on Bear Creek before daylight — the first time a posse ever dared to come onto Bear Creek, and it was all me and yore uncles could do to keep the boys from massacrein, ‘em. Bear Creek was sure wrought up. These mavericks,” pap p’inted a finger of scorn at the four men which had claimed to identify me, “was on the stage. You know Ned Ashley, Chawed Ear’s leadin’ merchant. The others air strangers. They say their names is Hurley, Jackson and Slade. They claim to lost considerable money.”

  “We done that!” clamored Jackson. “I had a buckskin poke crammed full of gold pieces the scoundrel taken. I tell you, that’s the man which done it!” He p’inted at me, and pap turnt to Ned Ashley, and said: “Ned, what do you say?”

  “Well, Bill,” says Ashley reluctantly, “I hates to say it, but I don’t see who else it could of been. The robber was Breckinridge’s size, all right, and you know they ain’t many men that big. He warn’t ridin’ Cap’n Kidd, of course; he was ridin’ a big bay mare. He had on a mask, but as he rode off he taken off his hat, and we all seen his head in the moonlight. The hair was all off of it, jest like it is Breckinridge’s. Not like he was naturally bald, but like it had been burnt off or shaved off recent.”

  “Well,” says the sheriff, “unless he can prove a alibi I’ll have to arrest him.”

  “Breckinridge,” says pap, “whar was you last night?”

  “I was layin’ out in the woods drunk,” I says.

  I felt a aidge of doubt in the air.

  “I didn’t know you could drink enough to git drunk,” says pap. “It ain’t like you, anyway. What made you? Was it thinkin’ about that gal?”

  “Naw,” I said. “I met a gent in a plug hat named Jugbelly Judkins and he challenged me to a drinkin’ match.”

  “Did you win?” ast pap anxiously.

  “Naw!” I confessed in bitter shame. “I lost.”

  Pap muttered disgustedly in his beard, and the sheriff says: “Can you perduice this Judkins hombre?”

  “I dunno where he went,” I said. “He’d pulled out when I woke up.”

  “Very inconvenient, I says!” says Wild Bill Donovan, running his fingers lovingly through his long black locks, and spitting.

  “Who ast you yore opinion?” I snarled blood-thirstily. “What you doin’ in the Humbolts? Come back to try to git even for Cap’n Kidd?”

  “I forgot that trifle long ago,” says he. “I holds no petty grudge. I jest happened to be ridin’ the road this side of Chawed Ear when the posse come by and I come with ’em jest to see the fun.”

  “You’ll see more fun than you can tote home if you fool with me,” I promised.

  “Enough of this,” snorted pap. “Breckinridge, even I got to admit yore alibi sounds kind of fishy. A critter named Jugbelly with a plug hat! It sounds plumb crazy. Still and all, we’ll look for this cussed maverick, and if we find him and he establishes whar you was last night, why—”

  “He put my gold in his saddle-bags!” clamored Jackson. “I seen him! That’s the same saddle! Look in them bags and I bet you’ll find it!”

  “Go ahead and look,” I invited, and the sheriff went up to Cap’n Kidd very gingerly, whilst I restrained Cap’n Kidd from kicking his brains out. He run his hand in the bags and I’ll never forget the look on pap’s face when the sheriff hauled out that buckskin poke Japhet Jalatin had give me. I’d forgot all about it.

  “How you explain this?” exclaimed the sheriff. I said nothing. A Elkins never busts his word, not even if he hangs for it.

  “It’s mine!” hollered Jackson. “You’ll find my initials worked onto it! J.J., for Judah Jackson.”

  “There they air,” announced the sheriff. “J.J. That’s for Judah Jackson, all right.”

  “They don’t stand for that!” I roared. “They stand for—” Then I stopped. I couldn’t tell him they stood for Japhet Jalatin without breaking my word and giving away Japhet’s secret.

  “‘Tain’t his’n,” I growled. “I didn’t steal it from nobody.”

  “Then where’d you git it?” demanded the sheriff.

  “None of yore business,” I said sullenly.

  Pap spurred forwards, and I seen beads of sweat on his face.

  “Well, say somethin’, damn it!” he roared. “Don’t jest set there! No Elkins was ever accused of thievin’ before, but if you done it, say so! I demands that you tells me whar you got that gold! If you didn’t take it off’n the stage, why don’t you say so?”

  “I cain’t tell you,” I muttered.

  “Hell’s fire!” bellered pap. “Then you must of robbed that stage! What a black shame onto Bear Creek this here is! But these town-folks ain’t goin’ to haul you off to their cussed jail, even if you did turn thief! Jest come out plain and tell me you done it, and we’ll lick the whole cussed posse if necessary!”

  I seen my uncles behind him drawing in and cocking their Winchesters, but I was too dizzy with the way things was happening to think straight about anything.

  “I never robbed the cussed stage!” I roared. “I cain’t tell you where I got that gold — but I didn’t rob the gol-derned stage.”

  “So yo’re a liar as well as a thief!” says pap, drawing back from me like I was a reptile. “To think it should come to this! From this day onwards,” he says, shaking his fist in my face, “you ain’t no son of mine! I disowns you! When they lets you out of the pen, don’t you come sneakin’ back to Bear Creek! Us folks there if is rough and ready; we kyarves and shoots each other free and frequent; but no Bear Creek man ever yet stole nor lied. I could forgive the thievin’, maybe, maybe even the shootin’ of pore old Jim Harrigan. But I cain’t forgive a lie. Come on, boys.”

  And him and my uncles turnt around and rode back up the trail towards Bear Creek with their eyes straight ahead of ’em and their backs straight as ramrods. I glared after ’em wildly, feeling like the world was falling to pieces. It war the first time in my life I’d ever knowed Bear Creek folks to turn their backs on a Bear Creek man.

  “Well, come along,” said the sheriff, and started to hand the poke to Jackson, when I come alive. I warn’t going to let Japhet Jalatin’s wife spend the rest of her life in poverty if I could help it. I made one swoop and grabbed
the poke out of his hand and simultaneous drove in the spurs. Cap’n Kidd made one mighty lunge and knocked Jackson and his hoss sprawling and went over them and into the bresh whilst them fool posse-men was fumbling with their guns. They was a lot of cussing and yelling behind me and some shooting, but we was out of sight of them in a instant, and I went crashing on till I hit a creek I knowed was there. I jumped off and grabbed a big rock which was in the bed of the creek, with about three foot of water around it — jest the top stuck out above the water. I grabbed it and lifted it, and stuck the poke down under it, and let the rock back down again. It was safe here. Nobody’d ever suspect it was hid there, and it was a cinch nobody was going to be lifting the rock jest for fun and find the gold accidental. It weighed about as much as the average mule.

  Cap’n Kidd bolted off through the woods as the posse come crashing through the bresh, yelling like Injuns, and they throwed down their shotguns on me as I clumb up the bank, dripping wet.

  “Catch that hoss!” yelled the sheriff. “The gold’s in the saddle-bags!”

  “You’ll never catch that hoss,” opined Wild Bill Donovan. “I know him of old.”

  “Maybe Elkins is got the gold on him!” hollered Jackson. “Search him!”

  I didn’t make no resistance as the sheriff taken my guns and snapped a exter heavy pair of hand-cuffs onto my wrists. I was still kind of numb from having pap and my uncles walk out on me like that. All I’d been able to think of up to then was to hide the gold, and when that was hid my brain wouldn’t work no further.

  “Elkins ain’t got it on him!” snarled the sheriff, after slapping my pockets. “Go after that hoss! Shoot him if you cain’t catch him.”

  “No use for that,” I says. “It ain’t in the saddle-bags. I hid it where you won’t never find it.”

  “Look in all the holler trees!” says Jackson, and added viciously: “We might make him talk.”

  “Shet up,” said the sheriff. “Anything you could do to him would jest make him mad. He’s actin’ tame and gentle now. But he’s got a broodin’ gleam in his eye. Le’s git him in jail before he gits a change of heart and starts remodellin’ the landscape with the posse’s carcasses.”

  “I’m a broken man,” I says mournfully. “My own clan has went back on me, and I got no friends. Take me to jail if you wanta! All places is dreary for a man whose kin has disown him.”

  So we went to Chawed Ear.

  One of the fellers who was riding a big strong hoss lemme have his’n, and the posse closed around me with their shotguns p’inting at me, and we headed out.

  It was after dark when we got to Chawed Ear, but everybody was out in the streets to see the posse bring me in. They warn’t no friendly faces in that crowd. I’d been very onpopular in Chawed Ear ever since I stole their schoolteacher. I looked for old Joshua Braxton, but somebody said he was off on a prospecting trip.

  They stopped at a log-hut clost to the jail, and some men was jest getting through working onto it.

  “That there,” says the sheriff, “is yore private jail. We built it special for you. As soon as word come last night that you’d robbed the stage, I set fifteen men buildin’ that jail, and they’re jest now gittin’ through.”

  Well, I didn’t think anybody could build anything in a night and a day which could hold me, but I didn’t have no thought of trying to break out. I didn’t have the heart. All I could think of was the way pap and my uncles had rode off and left me disowned and arrested.

  I went in like he told me, and sot down on the bunk, and heard ’em barring the door on the outside. They was fellers holding torches outside, and the light come in at the winder so I could see it was a good strong jail. They was jest one room, with a door towards the town and a winder in the other side. It had a floor made out of logs, and the roof and walls was made out of heavy logs, and they was a big log at each corner sot in concrete, which was something new in them mountains, and the concrete wasn’t dry yet. The bars in the winder was thick as a man’s wrist, and drove clean through the sill and lintel logs and the ends clinched, and chinks betwixt the logs was tamped in with concrete. The door was made outa sawed planks four inches thick and braced with iron, and the hinges was big iron pins working in heavy iron sockets, and they was a big lock onto the door and three big bars made outa logs sot in heavy iron brackets.

  Everybody outside was jammed around the winder trying to look in at me, but I put my head in my hands and paid no attention to ‘em. I was trying to think but everything kept going round and round. Then the sheriff chased everybody away except them he told off to stay there and guard the jail, and he put his head to the bars and said: “Elkins, it’ll go easier with you, maybe, if you’ll tell us where you hid that there gold.”

  “When I do,” I said gloomily, “there’ll be ice in hell thick enough for the devil to skate on.”

  “All right,” he snapped. “If you want to be stubborn. You’ll git twenty years for this, or I miss my guess.”

  “Gwan,” I said, “and leave me to my misery. What’s a prison term to a man which has jest been disowned by his own blood-kin?”

  He pulled back from the winder and I heard him say to somebody: “It ain’t no use. Them Bear Creek devils are the most uncivilized white men I ever seen in my life. You cain’t do nothin’ with one of ‘em. I’m goin’ to send some men back to look for the gold around that creek we found him climbin’ out of. I got a idee he hid it in a holler tree somewheres. He’s that much like a b’ar. Likely he hid it and then run and got in the creek jest to throw us off the scent. Thought he’d make us think he hid it on t’other side of the creek. I bet he hid it in a tree this side somewheres.

  “I’m goin’ to git some food and some sleep. I didn’t git to bed at all last night. You fellers watch him clost, and if folks git too rambunctious around the jail, call me quick.”

  “Ain’t nobody around the jail now,” said a familiar voice.

  “I know,” says the sheriff. “They’re back in town lickerin’ up at all the bars. But Elkins is got plenty of enemies here, and they ain’t no tellin’ what might bust loose before mornin’.”

  I heard him leave, and then they was silence, except for some men whispering off somewheres nearby but talking too low for me to make out what they was saying. I could hear noises coming from the town, snatches of singing, and a occasional yell, but no pistol-shooting like they usually is. The jail was on the aidge of town, and the winder looked in the other direction, acrost a narrer clearing with thick woods bordering it.

  Purty soon a man come and stuck his head up to the winder and I seen by the starlight that it was Wild Bill Donovan.

  “Well, Elkins,” says he, “you think you’ve finally found a jail which can hold you?”

  “What you doin’ hangin’ around here?” I muttered.

  He patted his shotgun and said: “Me and four of my friends has been app’inted special guards. But I tell you what I’ll do. I hate to see a man down and out like you be, and booted out by his own family and shore to do at least fifteen years in the pen. You tell me where you hid that there gold, and give me Cap’n Kidd, and I’ll contrive to let you escape before mornin’. I got a fast hoss hid out there in the thickets, right over yonder, see? You can fork that hoss and be gone outa the country before the sheriff could catch you. All you got to do is give me Cap’n Kidd, and that gold. What you say?”

  “I wouldn’t give you Cap’n Kidd,” I said, “not if they was goin’ to hang me.”

  “Well,” he sneered, “‘tain’t none too shore they ain’t. They’s plenty of rope-law talk in town tonight. Folks are purty well wrought up over you shootin’ old Jim Harrigan.”

  “I didn’t shoot him, damn yore soul!” I said.

  “You’ll have a hell of a time provin’ it,” says he, and turnt around and walked around towards the other end of the jail with his shotgun under his arm.

  Well, I dunno how long I sot there with my head in my hands and jest suffered. Noises from the town
seemed dim and far off. I didn’t care if they come and lynched me before morning, I was that low-spirited. I would of bawled if I could of worked up enough energy, but I was too low for that even.

  Then somebody says: “Breckinridge!” and I looked up and seen Glory McGraw looking in at the winder with the rising moon behind her.

  “Go ahead and t’ant me,” I said numbly. “Everything else has happened to me. You might as well, too.”

  “I ain’t goin’ to t’ant you!” she said fiercely. “I come here to help you, and I aim to, no matter what you says!”

  “You better not let Donovan see you talkin’ to me,” I says.

  “I done seen him,” she said. “He didn’t want to let me come to the winder, but I told him I’d go to the sheriff for permission if he didn’t, so he said he’d let me talk ten minutes. Listen: did he offer to help you escape if you’d do somethin’ for him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

  She ground her teeth slightly.

  “I thought so!” says she. “The dirty rat! I come through the woods, and snuck on foot the last few hundred feet to git a look at the jail before I come out in the open. They’s a hoss tied out there in the thickets and a man hidin’ behind a log right nigh it with a sawed-off shotgun. Donovan’s always hated you, ever since you taken Cap’n Kidd away from him. He aimed to git you shot whilst tryin’ to escape. When I seen that ambush I jest figgered on somethin’ like that.”

  “How’d you git here?” I ast, seeing she seemed to really mean what she said about helping me.

  “I follered the posse and yore kinfolks when they came down from Bear Creek,” she said. “I kept to the bresh on my pony, and was within hearin’ when they stopped you on the trail. After everybody had left I went and caught Cap’n Kidd, and—”

  “You caught Cap’n Kidd!” I said in dumbfoundment.

  “Certainly,” says she. “Hosses has frequently got more sense than men. He’d come back to the creek where he’d saw you last and looked like he was plumb broken-hearted because he couldn’t find you. I turnt the pony loose and started him home, and I come on to Chawed Ear on Cap’n Kidd.”