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

by Robert E. Howard

  Ace fell blindly into a clinch, and another and another, till the Mankiller, furious, shook him off and sank his right to the body. Ace’s ribs gave way like rotten wood, with a dry crack heard distinctly all over the stadium. A strangled cry went up from the crowd and Ace gasped thickly and fell to his knees.

  “ — Seven! Eight—” The great black form was still writhing on the canvas.

  “ — Nine!” And then a miracle happened; Ace was on his feet, swaying, jaw sagging, arms hanging limply.

  Gomez glared at him, as if unable to understand how his foe could have risen again, then came plunging in to finish him. Ace was in dire straits. Blood blinded him. Both eyes were nearly closed, and when he breathed through his smashed nose, a red haze surrounded him. Deep cuts gashed cheek and cheek bones and his left side was a mass of torn flesh. He was going on fighting instinct alone now, and never again would any man doubt that Ace Jessel had a fighting heart.

  Yet a fighting heart alone is not enough when the body is broken and battered, and mists of unconsciousness veil the brain. Before Gomez’ terrific onslaught, Ace went down — broken — and the crowd knew that this time it was final.

  When a man has taken the beating that Ace had taken, something more than body and heart must come into the game to carry him through. Something to inspire and stimulate him — to fire him to heights of superhuman effort!

  Before leaving the training quarters, I had, unknown to Ace, removed the picture of Tom Molyneaux from its frame, rolled it up carefully and brought it to the stadium with me. I now took this, and as Ace’s dazed eyes instinctively sought his corner, I held the portrait up, just outside the flare of the ring lights, so while illumined by them it appeared illusive and dim. It may be thought that I acted wrongly and selfishly, to thus seek to bring a broken man to his feet for more punishment — but the outsider cannot fathom the souls of the children of the fight game, to whom winning is greater than life, and losing, worse than death.

  All eyes were glued on the prostrate from in the center of the ring, on the exhausted champion sagging against the ropes, on the referee’s arm which rose and fell with the regularity of doom. I doubt if four men in the audience saw my action — but Ace Jessel did!

  I caught the gleam that came into his blood-shot eyes. I saw him shake his head violently. I saw him begin sluggishly to gather his long legs under him, while the drone of the referee rose as it neared its climax.

  And as I live today, the picture in my hands shook suddenly and violently!

  A cold wind passed like death across me and I heard the man next to me shiver involuntarily as he drew his coat close about him. But it was no cold wind that gripped my soul as I looked, wide-eyed and staring, into the ring where the greatest drama of the boxing world was being enacted.

  Ace, struggling, got his elbows under him. Bloody mists masked his vision; then, far away but coming nearer, he saw a form looming through the fog. A man — a short, massive black man, barrel-chested and might-limbed, clad in the long tights of another day — stood beside him in the ring! It was Tom Molyneaux, stepping down through the deal years to aid his worshiper — Tom Molyneaux, attired and ready as when he fought Tom Cribb so long ago!

  And Jessel was up! The crowd went insane and screaming. A supernatural might fired his weary limbs and lit his dazed brain. Let Gomez do his worst now — how could he beat a man for whom the ghost of the greatest of all black warrriors was fighting?

  For to Ace Jessel, falling on the astounded Mankiller like a blast from the Arctic, Tom Molyneaux’s mighty arm was about his waist, Tom’s eye guided his blows, Tom’s bare fists fell with Ace’s on the head and body of the champion.

  The Mankiller was dazed by his opponent’s sudden come-back — he was bewildered by the uncanny strength of the man who should have been fainting on the canvas. And before he could rally, he was beaten down by the long, straight smashes sent in with the speed and power of a pile-driver. The last blow, a straight right, would have felled an ox — and it felled Gomez for the long count.

  As the astonished referee lifted Ace’s hand, proclaiming him champion, the tall negro smiled and collapsed, mumbling the words, “Thanks, Mistah Tom.”

  Yes, to all concerned, Ace’s come-back seemed inhuman and unnatural — though no one saw the phantom figure except Tom — and one other. I am not going to claim that I saw the ghost myself — because I didn’t, though I did feel the uncanny movement of that picture. If it hadn’t been for the strange thing that happened just after the fight, I would say that the whole affair might be naturally explained — that Ace’s strength was miraculously renewed by a delusion resulting from his glimpse of the picture. For after all, who knows the strange depths of the human soul and to what apparently superhuman heights the body may be lifted by the mind?

  But after the bout the referee, a steely-nerved, cold-eyed sportsman of the old school, said to me:

  “Listen here! Am I crazy — or was there a fourth man in that ring when Ace Jessel dropped Gomez? For a minute I thought I saw a broad, squat, funny-looking negro standing there beside Ace! Don’t grin, you bum! It wasn’t that picture you were holding up — I saw that, too. It was a real man — and he looked like the one in the picture. He was standing there a moment — and then he was gone! God! That fight must have got on my nerves.”

  And these are the cold facts, told without any attempt to distort the truth or mislead the reader. I leave the problem up to you:

  Was it Ace’s numbed brain that created the hallucination of ghostly aid — or did the phantom of Tom Molyneaux actually stand beside him, as he believes to this day?

  As far as I am concerned, the old superstition is justified. I believe firmly today that a portrait is a door through which astral beings may pass back and forth between this world and the next — whatever the next world may be — and that a great, unselfish love is strong enough to summon the spirits of the dead to the aid of the living.

  Western Stories

  In late 1934, Howard began to tire of his popular hero Conan the Cimmerian, developing a new enthusiasm for the Western genre and started penning tales of heroic deeds by pioneers on the western frontier of the United States of America. These were usually high-spirited, humorous stories featuring affectionately-portrayed heroes of much brawn and little brain, whose sense of right and duty (as well as superior physical prowess) ultimately triumph over adversity – featuring characters such as Breckenridge Elkins, Pike Bearfield, Grizzly Elkins, Buckner Jeopardy Grimes and The Sonora Kid.

  With ‘The Horror from the Mound’ (1932), Howard also pioneered the hybrid genre of the ‘Weird Western’, in which the standard tropes of the Western genre are combined with another genre – usually horror or fantasy.

  The Robert E. Howard Foundation’s reprint of some of Howard’s best Westerns

  One of the magazines in which Howard’s Westerns were originally published

  BRECKINRIDGE ELKINS

  CONTENTS

  MOUNTAIN MAN

  GUNS OF THE MOUNTAINS

  THE SCALP HUNTER; OR, A STRANGER IN GRIZZLY CLAW

  A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK

  THE ROAD TO BEAR CREEK

  THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN

  WAR ON BEAR CREEK

  THE FEUD BUSTER

  CUPID FROM BEAR CREEKK; OR, THE PEACEFUL PILGRIM

  THE RIOT AT COUGAR PAW

  THE APACHE MOUNTAIN WAR

  PILGRIMS TO THE PECOS; OR, WEARY PILGRIMS ON THE ROAD

  PISTOL POLITICS

  EVIL DEEDS AT RED COUGAR

  HIGH HORSE RAMPAGE

  NO COWHERDERS WANTED; OR, GENTS IN BUCKSKIN

  THE CONQUERIN’ HERO OF THE HUMBOLTS; OR, POLITICS AT BLUE LIZARD; POLITICS AT LONESOME LIZARD

  SHARP’S GUN SERENADE; OR, EDUCATE OR BUST

  TEXAS JOHN ALDEN; OR, A RING-TAILED TORNADO

  MOUNTAIN MAN

  First published in Action Stories, March-April 1934

  I WAS robbing a bee tree, when I heard my old man call
ing: “Breckinridge! Oh, Breckinridge! Where air you? I see you now. You don’t need to climb that tree. I ain’t goin’ to larrup you.”

  He come up, and said: “Breckinridge, ain’t that a bee settin’ on yore ear?”

  I reached up, and sure enough, it was. Come to think about it, I had felt kind of like something was stinging me somewhere.

  “I swar, Breckinridge,” said pap, “I never seen a hide like your’n. Listen to me: old Buffalo Rogers is back from Tomahawk, and the postmaster there said they was a letter for me, from Mississippi. He wouldn’t give it to nobody but me or some of my folks. I dunno who’d be writin’ me from Mississippi; last time I was there, was when I was fightin’ the Yankees. But anyway, that letter is got to be got. Me and yore maw has decided you’re to go git it. Yuh hear me, Breckinridge?”

  “Clean to Tomahawk?” I said. “Gee whiz, pap!”

  “Well,” he said, combing his beard with his fingers, “yo’re growed in size, if not in years. It’s time you seen somethin’ of the world. You ain’t never been more’n thirty miles away from the cabin you was born in. Yore brother John ain’t able to go on account of that ba’r he tangled with, and Bill is busy skinnin’ the ba’r. You been to whar the trail passes, goin’ to Tomahawk. All you got to do is foller it and turn to the right where it forks. The left goes on to Perdition.”

  Well, I was all eager to see the world, and the next morning I was off, dressed in new buckskins and riding my mule Alexander. Pap rode with me a few miles and give me advice.

  “Be keerful how you spend that dollar I give you,” he said. “Don’t gamble. Drink in reason; half a gallon of corn juice is enough for any man. Don’t be techy — but don’t forgit that yore pap was once the rough-and- tumble champeen of Gonzales County, Texas. And whilst yo’re feelin’ for the other feller’s eye, don’t be keerless and let him chaw yore ear off. And don’t resist no officer.”

  “What’s them, pap?” I inquired.

  “Down in the settlements,” he explained, “they has men which their job is to keep the peace. I don’t take no stock in law myself, but them city folks is different from us. You do what they says, and if they says give up yore gun, why, you up and do it!”

  I was shocked, and meditated awhile, and then says: “How can I tell which is them?”

  “They’ll have a silver star on their shirt,” he says, so I said I’d do like he told me. He reined around and went back up the mountains, and I rode on down the path.

  Well, I camped that night where the path come out on to the main trail, and the next morning I rode on down the trail, feeling like I was a long way from home. I hadn’t went far till I passed a stream, and decided I’d take a bath. So I tied Alexander to a tree, and hung my buckskins near by, but I took my gun belt with my old cap-and-ball .44 and hung it on a limb reaching out over the water. There was thick bushes all around the hole.

  Well, I div deep, and as I come up, I had a feeling like somebody had hit me over the head with a club. I looked up, and there was a feller holding on to a limb with one hand and leaning out over the water with a club in the other hand.

  He yelled and swung at me again, but I div, and he missed, and I come up right under the limb where my gun hung. I reached up and grabbed it and let bam at him just as he dived into the bushes, and he let out a squall and grabbed the seat of his pants. Next minute I heard a horse running, and glimpsed him tearing away through the brush on a pinto mustang, setting his horse like it was a red-hot stove, and dern him, he had my clothes in one hand! I was so upsot by this that I missed him clean, and jumping out, I charged through the bushes and saplings, but he was already out of sight. I knowed it was one of them derned renegades which hid up in the hills and snuck down to steal, and I wasn’t afraid none. But what a fix I was in! He’d even stole my moccasins.

  I couldn’t go home, in that shape, without the letter, and admit I missed a robber twice. Pap would larrup the tar out of me. And if I went on, what if I met some women, in the valley settlements? I don’t reckon they was ever a youngster half as bashful as what I was in them days. Cold sweat bust out all over me. At last, in desperation, I buckled my belt on and started down the trail toward Tomahawk. I was desperate enough to commit murder to get me some pants.

  I was glad the Indian didn’t steal Alexander, but the going was so rough I had to walk and lead him, because I kept to the brush alongside the trail. He had a tough time getting through the bushes, and the thorns scratched him so he hollered, and ever’ now and then I had to lift him over jagged rocks. It was tough on Alexander, but I was too bashful to travel in the open trail without no clothes on.

  After I’d gone maybe a mile I heard somebody in the trail ahead of me, and peeking through the bushes, I seen a most peculiar sight. It was a man on foot, going the same direction as me, and he had on what I instinctively guessed was city clothes. They wasn’t buckskin, and was very beautiful, with big checks and stripes all over them. He had on a round hat with a narrow brim, and shoes like I hadn’t never seen before, being neither boots nor moccasins. He was dusty, and he cussed as he limped along. Ahead of him I seen the trail made a horseshoe bend, so I cut straight across and got ahead of him, and as he come along, I stepped out of the brush and threw down on him with my cap-and- ball.

  He throwed up his hands and hollered: “Don’t shoot!”

  “I don’t want to, mister,” I said, “but I got to have clothes!”

  He shook his head like he couldn’t believe I was so, and he said: “You ain’t the color of a Injun, but — what kind of people live in these hills, anyway?”

  “Most of ‘em’s Democrats,” I said, “but I got no time to talk politics. You climb out of them clothes.”

  “My God!” he wailed. “My horse threw me off and ran away, and I’ve been walkin’ for hours, expecting to get scalped by Injuns any minute, and now a naked lunatic on a mule demands my clothes! It’s too much!”

  “I can’t argy, mister,” I said; “somebody may come up the trail any minute. Hustle!” So saying I shot his hat off to encourage him.

  He give a howl and shucked his duds in a hurry.

  “My underclothes, too?” he demanded, shivering though it was very hot.

  “Is that what them things is?” I demanded, shocked. “I never heard of a man wearin’ such womanish things. The country is goin’ to the dogs, just like pap says. You better get goin’. Take my mule. When I get to where I can get some regular clothes, we’ll swap back.”

  He clumb on to Alexander kind of dubious, and says to me, despairful: “Will you tell me one thing — how do I get to Tomahawk?”

  “Take the next turn to the right,” I said, “and—”

  Just then Alexander turned his head and seen them underclothes on his back, and he give a loud and ringing bray and sot sail down the trail at full speed, with the stranger hanging on with both hands. Before they was out of sight they come to where the trail forked, and Alexander took the left instead of the right, and vanished amongst the ridges.

  I put on the clothes, and they scratched my hide something fierce. I hadn’t never wore nothing but buckskin. The coat split down the back, and the pants was too short, but the shoes was the worst; they pinched all over. I throwed away the socks, having never wore none, but put on what was left of the hat.

  I went on down the trail, and took the right-hand fork, and in a mile or so I come out on a flat, and heard horses running. The next thing a mob of horsemen bust into view. One of ’em yelled: “There he is!” and they all come for me, full tilt. Instantly I decided that the stranger had got to Tomahawk, after all, and set a posse on to me for stealing his clothes.

  So I left the trail and took out across the sage grass and they all charged after me, yelling for me to stop. Well, them dern shoes pinched my feet so bad I couldn’t hardly run, so after I had run five or six hundred yards, I perceived that the horses were beginning to gain on me. So I wheeled with my cap-and-ball in my hand, but I was going so fast, when I turned, them dern
shoes slipped and I went over backwards into some cactus just as I pulled the trigger. So I only knocked the hat off of the first horseman. He yelled and pulled up his horse, right over me nearly, and as I drawed another bead on him, I seen he had a bright shiny star on his shirt. I dropped my gun and stuck up my hands.

  They swarmed around me — cowboys, from their looks. The man with the star dismounted and picked up my gun and cussed.

  “What did you lead us this chase through this heat and shoot at me for?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t know you was a officer,” I said.

  “Hell, McVey,” said one of ‘em, “you know how jumpy tenderfeet is. Likely he thought we was Santry’s outlaws. Where’s yore horse?”

  “I ain’t got none,” I said.

  “Got away from you, hey?” said McVey. “Well, climb up behind Kirby here, and let’s get goin’.”

  To my astonishment, the sheriff stuck my gun back in the scabbard, and I clumb up behind Kirby, and away we went. Kirby kept telling me not to fall off, and it made me mad, but I said nothing. After a hour or so we come to a bunch of houses they said was Tomahawk. I got panicky when I seen all them houses, and would have jumped down and run for the mountains, only I knowed they’d catch me, with them dern pinchy shoes on.

  I hadn’t never seen such houses before. They was made out of boards, mostly, and some was two stories high. To the northwest and west the hills riz up a few hundred yards from the backs of the houses, and on the other sides there was plains, with brush and timber on them.

  “You boys ride into town and tell the folks that the shebangs starts soon,” said McVey. “Me and Kirby and Richards will take him to the ring.”