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

by Robert E. Howard

  I could see people milling around in the streets, and I never had no idee there was that many folks in the world. The sheriff and the other two fellows rode around the north end of the town and stopped at a old barn and told me to get off. So I did, and we went in and they had a kind of room fixed up in there with benches and a lot of towels and water buckets, and the sheriff said: “This ain’t much of a dressin’-room, but it’ll have to do. Us boys don’t know much about this game, but we’ll second as good as we can. One thing — the other fellow ain’t got no manager or seconds neither. How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” I said, “but I’m kind of hungry.”

  “Go get him somethin’, Richards,” said the sheriff.

  “I didn’t think they ate just before a bout,” said Richards.

  “Aw, I reckon he knows what he’s doin’,” said McVey. “Gwan.”

  So Richards left, and the sheriff and Kirby walked around me like I was a prize bull, and felt my muscles, and the sheriff said: “By golly, if size means anything, our dough is as good as in our britches right now!”

  My dollar was in my belt. I said I would pay for my keep, and they haw- hawed and slapped me on the back and said I was a great joker. Then Richards come back with a platter of grub, with a lot of men wearing boots and guns, and they stomped in and gawped at me, and McVey said, “Look him over, boys! Tomahawk stands or falls with him today!”

  They started walking around me like him and Kirby done, and I was embarrassed and et three or four pounds of beef and a quart of mashed potaters, and a big hunk of white bread, and drunk about a gallon of water, because I was pretty thirsty. Then they all gaped like they was surprised about something, and one of ’em said: “How come he didn’t arrive on the stagecoach yesterday?”

  “Well,” the sheriff said, “the driver told me he was so drunk they left him at Bisney, and come on with his luggage, which is over there in the corner. They got a horse and left it there with instructions for him to ride to Tomahawk as soon as he sobered up. Me and the boys got nervous today when he didn’t show up, so we went out lookin’ for him, and met him hoofin’ it down the trail.”

  “I bet them Perdition hombres starts somethin’,” said Kirby. “Ain’t a one of ’em showed up yet. They’re settin’ over at Perdition soakin’ up bad licker and broodin’ on their wrongs. They shore wanted this show staged over there. They claimed that since Tomahawk was furnishin’ one-half of the attraction, and Gunstock the other half, the razee ought to be throwed at Perdition.”

  “Nothin’ to it,” said McVey. “It laid between Tomahawk and Gunstock, and we throwed a coin and won it. If Perdition wants trouble, she can get it. Is the boys r’arin’ to go?”

  “Is they!” said Richards, “Every bar in Tomahawk is crowded with hombres full of licker and civic pride. They’re bettin’ their shirts, and they has been nine fights already. Everybody in Gunstock’s here.”

  “Well, let’s get goin’,” said McVey, getting nervous. “The quicker it’s over, the less blood there’s likely to be spilt.”

  The first thing I knowed, they had laid hold of me and was pulling my clothes off, so it dawned on me that I must be under arrest for stealing the stranger’s clothes. Kirby dug into the baggage which was in one corner of the stall, and dragged out a funny looking pair of pants; I know now they was white silk. I put ’em on because I hadn’t nothing else to put on, and they fit me like my skin. Richards tied a American flag around my waist, and they put some spiked shoes on my feet.

  I let ’em do like they wanted to, remembering what pap said about not resisting an officer. Whilst so employed, I began to hear a noise outside, like a lot of people whooping and cheering. Pretty soon in come a skinny old gink with whiskers and two guns on, and he hollered: “Listen, Mac, dern it, a big shipment of gold is down there waitin’ to be took off by the evenin’ stage, and the whole blame town is deserted on account of this foolishness. Suppose Comanche Santry and his gang gets wind of it?”

  “Well,” said McVey, “I’ll send Kirby here to help you guard it.”

  “You will like hell,” said Kirby; “I’ll resign as deputy first. I got every cent of my dough on this scrap, and I aim to see it.”

  “Well, send somebody!” said the old codger. “I got enough to do runnin’ my store, and the stage stand, and the post office, without—”

  He left, mumbling in his whiskers, and I said: “Who’s that?”

  “Aw,” said Kirby, “that’s old man Braxton that runs that store down at the other end of town, on the east side of the street. The post office is in there, too.”

  “I got to see him,” I said, “there’s a letter—”

  Just then another man come surging in and hollered: “Hey, is your man ready? Everybody’s gettin’ impatient.”

  “All right,” said McVey, throwing over me a thing he called a bathrobe. Him and Kirby and Richards picked up towels and buckets and we went out the opposite door from what we come in, and there was a big crowd of people there, and they whooped and shot off their pistols. I would have bolted back into the barn, only they grabbed me and said it was all right. We went through the crowd and I never seen so many boots and pistols in my life, and we come to a square pen made out of four posts set in the ground, and ropes stretched between. They called this a ring, and told me to get in it. I done so, and they had turf packed down so the ground was level as a floor and hard and solid. They told me to set down on a stool in one corner, and I did, and wrapped my robe around me like a Injun.

  Then everybody yelled, and some men, from Gunstock, they said, clumb through the ropes on the other side. One of them was dressed like I was, and I never seen such a human. His ears looked like cabbages, his nose was flat, and his head was shaved. He set down in a opposite corner.

  Then a fellow got up and waved his arms, and hollered: “Gents, you all know the occasion of this here suspicious event. Mr. Bat O’Tool, happenin’ to pass through Gunstock, consented to fight anybody which would meet him. Tomahawk ‘lowed to furnish that opposition, by sendin’ all the way to Denver to procure the services of Mr. Bruiser McGoorty, formerly of San Francisco.”

  He pointed at me. Everybody cheered and shot off their pistols and I was embarrassed and bust out in a cold sweat.

  “This fight,” said the fellow, “will be fit accordin’ to London Prize Ring Rules, same as in a champeenship go. Bare fists, round ends when one of ‘em’s knocked down or throwed down. Fight lasts till one or t’other ain’t able to come up to the scratch at the call of time. I, Yucca Blaine, have been selected referee because, bein’ from Chawed Ear, I got no prejudices either way. Are you all ready? Time!”

  McVey hauled me off my stool and pulled off my bathrobe and pushed me out into the ring. I nearly died with embarrassment, but I seen the fellow they called O’Tool didn’t have on more clothes than me. He approached and held out his hand, so I held out mine. We shook hands and then without no warning, he hit me an awful lick on the jaw with his left. It was like being kicked by a mule. The first part of me which hit the turf was the back of my head. O’Tool stalked back to his corner, and the Gunstock boys was dancing and hugging each other, and the Tomahawk fellows was growling in their whiskers and fumbling for guns and bowie knives.

  McVey and his men rushed into the ring before I could get up and dragged me to my corner and began pouring water on me.

  “Are you hurt much?” yelled McVey.

  “How can a man’s fist hurt anybody?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have fell down, only it was so unexpected. I didn’t know he was goin’ to hit me. I never played no game like this before.”

  McVey dropped the towel he was beating me in the face with, and turned pale. “Ain’t you Bruiser McGoorty of San Francisco?” he hollered.

  “Naw,” I said; “I’m Breckinridge Elkins, from up in the Humbolt mountains. I come here to get a letter for pap.”

  “But the stage driver described them clothes—” he begun wildly.

  “A feller stole my
clothes,” I explained, “so I took some off’n a stranger. Maybe he was Mr. McGoorty.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Kirby, coming up with another bucket of water. “Time’s about ready to be called.”

  “We’re sunk!” bawled McVey. “This ain’t McGoorty! This is a derned hill- billy which murdered McGoorty and stole his clothes.”

  “We’re rooint!” exclaimed Richards, aghast. “Everybody’s bet their dough without even seein’ our man, they was that full of trust and civic pride. We can’t call it off now. Tomahawk is rooint! What’ll we do?”

  “He’s goin’ to get in there and fight his derndest,” said McVey, pulling his gun and jamming it into my back. “We’ll hang him after the fight.”

  “But he can’t box!” wailed Richards.

  “No matter,” said McVey; “the fair name of our town is at stake; Tomahawk promised to furnish a fighter to fight this fellow O’Tool, and—”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly seeing light. “This here is a fight, ain’t it?”

  McVey give a low moan, and Kirby reached for his gun, but just then the referee hollered time, and I jumped up and run at O’Tool. If a fight was all they wanted, I was satisfied. All that talk about rules, and the yelling of the crowd had had me so confused I hadn’t knowed what it was all about. I hit at O’Tool and he ducked and hit me in the belly and on the nose and in the eye and on the ear. The blood spurted, and the crowd yelled, and he looked dumbfounded and gritted between his teeth: “Are you human? Why don’t you fall?”

  I spit out a mouthful of blood and got my hands on him and started chewing his ear, and he squalled like a catamount. Yucca run in and tried to pull me loose, and I give him a slap under the ear and he turned a somersault into the ropes.

  “Your man’s fightin’ foul!” he squalled, and Kirby said: “You’re crazy! Do you see this gun? You holler ‘foul’ once more, and it’ll go off!”

  Meanwhile O’Tool had broke loose from me, and caved in his knuckles on my jaw, and I come for him again, because I was mad by this time. He gasped: “If you want to make an alley-fight out of it, all right! I wasn’t raised in Five Points for nothing!” He then rammed his knee into my groin, and groped for my eye, but I got his thumb in my teeth and begun masticating it, and the way he howled was a caution.

  By this time the crowd was crazy, and I throwed O’Tool and begun to stomp him, when somebody let bang at me from the crowd and the bullet cut my silk belt and my pants started to fall down.

  I grabbed ’em with both hands, and O’Tool riz and rushed at me, bloody and bellering, and I didn’t dare let go my pants to defend myself. So I whirled and bent over and lashed out backwards with my right heel like a mule, and I caught him under the chin. He done a cartwheel in the air, his head hit the turf, and he bounced on over and landed on his back with his knees hooked over the lower rope. There wasn’t no question about him being out. The only question was, was he dead?

  A great roar of “Foul” went up from the Gunstock men, and guns bristled all around the ring.

  The Tomahawk men was cheering and yelling that I had won fair and square, and the Gunstock men was cussing and threatening me, when somebody hollered: “Leave it to the referee!”

  “Sure,” said Kirby, “He knows our man won fair, and if he don’t say so, I’ll blow his head off!”

  “That’s a lie!” bellered a man from Gunstock. “He knows it was a foul, and if he says it wasn’t, I’ll carve his liver with this here bowie knife!”

  At these words Yucca keeled over in a dead faint, and then a clatter of hoofs sounded above the din, and out of the timber that hid the trail from the east, a gang of horsemen rode at a run. Everybody whirled and yelled: “Look out, here comes them Perdition illegitimates!”

  Instantly a hundred guns covered them, and McVey demanded: “Come ye in peace or in war?”

  “We come to unmask a fraud!” roared a big man with a red bandanner around his neck. “McGoorty, come forth!”

  A familiar figger, now dressed in cowboy togs, pushed forward on my mule. “There he is!” this figger yelled, pointing at me. “That’s the desperado which robbed me! Them’s my tights he’s got on!”

  “What’s this?” roared the crowd.

  “A dern fake!” bellered the man with the red bandanner. “This here is Bruiser McGoorty!”

  “Then who’s he?” somebody bawled, pointing at me.

  “My name’s Breckinridge Elkins and I can lick any man here!” I roared, getting mad. I brandished my fists in defiance, but my britches started sliding down again, so I had to shut up and grab ‘em.

  “Aha!” the man with the red bandanner howled like a hyener. “He admits it! I dunno what the idee is, but these Tomahawk polecats has double-crossed somebody! I trusts that you jackasses from Gunstock realizes the blackness and hellishness of their hearts! This man McGoorty rode into Perdition a few hours ago in his unmentionables, astraddle of that there mule, and told us how he’d been held up and robbed and put on the wrong road. You skunks was too proud to stage this fight in Perdition, but we ain’t the men to see justice scorned with impunity! We brought McGoorty here to show you you was bein’ gypped by Tomahawk! That man ain’t no prize fighter; he’s a highway robber!”

  “These Tomahawk coyotes has framed us!” squalled a Gunstock man, going for his gun.

  “You’re a liar!” roared Richards, bending a .45 barrel over his head.

  The next instant guns was crashing, knives was gleaming, and men was yelling blue murder. The Gunstock braves turned frothing on the Tomahawk warriors, and the men from Perdition, yelping with glee, pulled their guns and begun fanning the crowd indiscriminately, which give back their fire. McGoorty give a howl and fell down on Alexander’s neck, gripping around it with both arms, and Alexander departed in a cloud of dust and smoke.

  I grabbed my gunbelt, which McVey had hung over the post in my corner, and I headed for cover, holding on to my britches whilst the bullets hummed around me as thick as bees. I wanted to take to the brush, but I remembered that blamed letter, so I headed for town. Behind me there rose a roar of banging guns and yelling men. Just as I got to the backs of the row of buildings which lined the street, I run into something soft head on. It was McGoorty, trying to escape on Alexander. He had hold of only one rein, and Alexander, evidently having circled one end of the town, was traveling in a circle and heading back where he started from.

  I was going so fast I couldn’t stop, and I run right over Alexander and all three of us went down in a heap. I jumped up, afraid Alexander was killed, but he scrambled up snorting and trembling, and then McGoorty weaved up, making funny noises. I poked my cap-and-ball into his belly.

  “Off with them pants!” I yelped.

  “My God!” he screamed. “Again? This is getting to be a habit!”

  “Hustle!” I bellered. “You can have these scandals I got on now.”

  He shucked his britches, grabbed them tights and run like he was afeard I’d want his underwear too. I jerked on the pants, forked Alexander and headed for the south end of town. I kept behind the buildings, though the town seemed to be deserted, and purty soon I come to the store where Kirby had told me old man Braxton kept the post office. Guns was barking there, and across the street I seen men ducking in and out behind a old shack, and shooting.

  I tied Alexander to a corner of the store and went in the back door. Up in the front part I seen old man Braxton kneeling behind some barrels with a .45-90, and he was shooting at the fellows in the shack across the street. Every now and then a slug would hum through the door and comb his whiskers, and he would cuss worse’n pap did that time he sot down in a bear trap.

  I went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and he give a squall and flopped over and let go bam! right in my face and singed off my eyebrows. And the fellows across the street hollered and started shooting at both of us.

  I’d grabbed the barrel of his Winchester, and he was cussing and jerking at it with one hand and feeling in his bo
ot for a knife with the other’n, and I said: “Mr. Braxton, if you ain’t too busy, I wish you’d gimme that there letter which come for pap.”

  “Don’t never come up behind me that way again!” he squalled. “I thought you was one of them dern outlaws! Look out! Duck, you fool!”

  I let go his gun, and he took a shot at a head which was aiming around the shack, and the head let out a squall and disappeared.

  “Who are them fellows?” I asked.

  “Comanche Santry and his bunch, from up in the hills,” snarled old man Braxton, jerking the lever of his Winchester. “They come after that gold. A hell of a sheriff McVey is; never sent me nobody. And them fools over at the ring are makin’ so much noise, they’ll never hear the shootin’ over here. Look out, here they come!”

  Six or seven men rushed out from behind the shack and ran across the street, shooting as they come. I seen I’d never get my letter as long as all this fighting was going on, so I unslung my old cap-and-ball and let bam! at them three times, and three of them outlaws fell across each other in the street, and the rest turned around and run back behind the shack.

  “Good work, boy!” yelled old man Braxton. “If I ever — oh, Judas Iscariot, we’re blowed up now!”

  Something was pushed around the corner of the shack and come rolling down toward us, the shack being on higher ground than the store was. It was a keg, with a burning fuse which whirled as the keg revolved and looked like a wheel of fire.

  “What’s in that keg?” I asked.

  “Blastin’ powder!” screamed old man Braxton, scrambling up. “Run, you dern fool! It’s comin’ right into the door!”

  He was so scared he forgot all about the fellows across the street, and one of ’em caught him in the thigh with a buffalo rifle, and he plunked down again, howling blue murder. I stepped over him to the door — that’s when I got that slug in my hip — and the keg hit my legs and stopped, so I picked it up and heaved it back across the street. It hadn’t no more’n hit the shack when bam! it exploded and the shack went up in smoke. When it stopped raining pieces of wood and metal, they wasn’t any sign to show any outlaws had ever hid behind where that shack had been.