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

by Robert E. Howard

“No!” he said. “No, no, I mean Miss Ashley.”

  “She shore is,” I said. “She’ll make me a fine wife.”

  He whirled like I’d stabbed him and his face looked pale in the dusk.

  “You?” he said, “You a wife?”

  “Well,” I said bashfully, “she ain’t sot the day yet, but I’ve shore sot my heart on that gal.”

  “Oh!” he says, “Oh!” says he, like he had the toothache. Then he said kinda hesitatingly: “Suppose — er, just suppose, you know! Suppose a rival for her affections should appear? What would you do?”

  “You mean if some dirty, low-down son of a mangy skunk was to try to steal my gal?” I said, whirling so sudden he staggered backwards.

  “Steal my gal?” I roared, seeing red at the mere thought. “Why, I’d — I’d—”

  Words failing me I wheeled and grabbed a good-sized sapling and tore it up by the roots and broke it acrost my knee and throwed the pieces clean through a rail fence on the other side of the road.

  “That there is a faint idee!” I said, panting with passion.

  “That gives me a very good conception,” he said faintly, and he said nothing more till we reached the cabin and seen Uncle Saul Garfield standing in the light of the door combing his black beard with his fingers.

  Next morning J. Pembroke seemed like he’d kinda lost interest in b’ars. He said all that walking he done over the slopes of Apache Mountain had made his laig muscles sore. I never heard of such a thing, but nothing that gets the matter with these tenderfeet surprizes me much, they is such a effemernate race, so I ast him would he like to go fishing down the run and he said all right.

  But we hadn’t been fishing more’n a hour when he said he believed he’d go back to Uncle Saul’s cabin and take him a nap, and he insisted on going alone, so I stayed where I was and ketched me a nice string of trout.

  I went back to the cabin about noon, and ast Uncle Saul if J. Pembroke had got his nap out.

  “Why, heck,” said Uncle Saul. “I ain’t seen him since you and him started down the run this mornin’. Wait a minute — yonder he comes from the other direction.”

  Well, J. Pembroke didn’t say where he’d been all morning, and I didn’t ast him, because a tenderfoot don’t generally have no reason for anything he does.

  We et the trout I ketched, and after dinner he perked up a right smart and got his shotgun and said he’d like to hunt some wild turkeys. I never heard of anybody hunting anything as big as a turkey with a shotgun, but I didn’t say nothing, because tenderfeet is like that.

  So we headed up the slopes of Apache Mountain, and I stopped by the schoolhouse to tell Miss Margaret I probably wouldn’t get back in time to take my reading and writing lesson, and she said: “You know, until I met your friend, Mr. Pembroke, I didn’t realize what a difference there was between men like him, and — well, like the men on Bear Creek.”

  “I know,” I said. “But don’t hold it agen him. He means well. He just ain’t got no sense. Everybody cain’t be smart like me. As a special favor to me, Miss Margaret, I’d like for you to be exter nice to the poor sap, because he’s a friend of my friend Bill Glanton down to War Paint.”

  “I will, Breckinridge,” she replied heartily, and I thanked her and went away with my big manly heart pounding in my gigantic bosom.

  Me and J. Pembroke headed into the heavy timber, and we hadn’t went far till I was convinced that somebody was follering us. I kept hearing twigs snapping, and oncet I thought I seen a shadowy figger duck behind a bush. But when I run back there, it was gone, and no track to show in the pine needles. That sort of thing would of made me nervous, anywhere else, because they is a awful lot of people which would like to get a clean shot at my back from the bresh, but I knowed none of them dast come after me in my own territory. If anybody was trailing us it was bound to be one of my relatives and to save my neck I couldn’t think of no reason why anyone of ’em would be gunning for me.

  But I got tired of it, and left J. Pembroke in a small glade while I snuck back to do some shaddering of my own. I aimed to cast a big circle around the opening and see could I find out who it was, but I’d hardly got out of sight of J. Pembroke when I heard a gun bang.

  I turned to run back and here come J. Pembroke yelling: “I got him! I got him! I winged the bally aborigine!”

  He had his head down as he busted through the bresh and he run into me in his excitement and hit me in the belly with his head so hard he bounced back like a rubber ball and landed in a bush with his riding boots brandishing wildly in the air.

  “Assist me, Breckinridge!” he shrieked. “Extricate me! They will be hot on our trail!”

  “Who?” I demanded, hauling him out by the hind laig and setting him on his feet.

  “The Indians!” he hollered, jumping up and down and waving his smoking shotgun frantically. “The bally redskins! I shot one of them! I saw him sneaking through the bushes! I saw his legs! I know it was an Indian because he had on moccasins instead of boots! Listen! That’s him now!”

  “A Injun couldn’t cuss like that,” I said. “You’ve shot Uncle Jeppard Grimes!”

  Telling him to stay there, I run through the bresh, guided by the maddened howls which riz horribly on the air, and busting through some bushes I seen Uncle Jeppard rolling on the ground with both hands clasped to the rear bosom of his buckskin britches which was smoking freely. His langwidge was awful to hear.

  “Air you in misery, Uncle Jeppard?” I inquired solicitously. This evoked another ear-splitting squall.

  “I’m writhin’ in my death-throes,” he says in horrible accents, “and you stands there and mocks my mortal agony! My own blood-kin!” he says. “ae&ae&ae&ae&!” says Uncle Jeppard with passion.

  “Aw,” I says, “that there bird-shot wouldn’t hurt a flea. It cain’t be very deep under yore thick old hide. Lie on yore belly, Uncle Jeppard,” I said, stropping my bowie on my boot, “and I’ll dig out them shot for you.”

  “Don’t tech me!” he said fiercely, painfully climbing onto his feet. “Where’s my rifle-gun? Gimme it! Now then, I demands that you bring that English murderer here where I can git a clean lam at him! The Grimes honor is besmirched and my new britches is rooint. Nothin’ but blood can wipe out the stain on the family honor!”

  “Well,” I said, “you hadn’t no business sneakin’ around after us thataway—”

  Here Uncle Jeppard give tongue to loud and painful shrieks.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” he howled. “Ain’t a man got no right to pertect his own property? I was follerin’ him to see that he didn’t shoot no more tails offa my hawgs. And now he shoots me in the same place! He’s a fiend in human form — a monster which stalks ravelin’ through these hills bustin’ for the blood of the innercent!”

  “Aw, J. Pembroke thought you was a Injun,” I said.

  “He thought Daniel Webster was a wild wart-hawg,” gibbered Uncle Jeppard. “He thought I was Geronimo. I reckon he’ll massacre the entire population of Bear Creek under a misapprehension, and you’ll uphold and defend him! When the cabins of yore kinfolks is smolderin’ ashes, smothered in the blood of yore own relatives, I hope you’ll be satisfied — bringin’ a foreign assassin into a peaceful community!”

  Here Uncle Jeppard’s emotions choked him, and he chawed his whiskers and then yanked out the five-dollar gold piece I give him for Daniel Webster’s tail, and throwed it at me.

  “Take back yore filthy lucre,” he said bitterly. “The day of retribution is close onto hand, Breckinridge Elkins, and the Lord of battles shall jedge between them which turns agen their kinfolks in their extremerties!”

  “In their which?” I says, but he merely snarled and went limping off through the trees, calling back over his shoulder: “They is still men on Bear Creek which will see justice did for the aged and helpless. I’ll git that English murderer if it’s the last thing I do, and you’ll be sorry you stood up for him, you big lunkhead!”

  I went back to where J.
Pembroke was waiting bewilderedly, and evidently still expecting a tribe of Injuns to bust out of the bresh and sculp him, and I said in disgust: “Let’s go home. Tomorrer I’ll take you so far away from Bear Creek you can shoot in any direction without hittin’ a prize razorback or a antiquated gunman with a ingrown disposition. When Uncle Jeppard Grimes gits mad enough to throw away money, it’s time to ile the Winchesters and strap your scabbard-ends to yore laigs.”

  “Legs?” he said mistily, “But what about the Indian?”

  “There warn’t no Injun, gol-dern it!” I howled. “They ain’t been any on Bear Creek for four or five year. They — aw, hell! What’s the use? Come on. It’s gittin’ late. Next time you see somethin’ you don’t understand, ast me before you shoot it. And remember, the more ferocious and woolly it looks, the more likely it is to be a leadin’ citizen of Bear Creek.”

  It was dark when we approached Uncle Saul’s cabin, and J. Pembroke glanced back up the road, toward the settlement, and said: “My word, is it a political rally? Look! A torchlight parade!”

  I looked, and I said: “Quick! Git into the cabin and stay there.”

  He turned pale, and said: “If there is danger, I insist on—”

  “Insist all you dern please,” I said. “But git in that house and stay there. I’ll handle this. Uncle Saul, see he gits in there.”

  Uncle Saul is a man of few words. He taken a firm grip on his pipe stem and grabbed J. Pembroke by the neck and seat of the britches and throwed him bodily into the cabin, and shet the door, and sot down on the stoop.

  “They ain’t no use in you gittin’ mixed up in this, Uncle Saul,” I said.

  “You got yore faults, Breckinridge,” he grunted. “You ain’t got much sense, but yo’re my favorite sister’s son — and I ain’t forgot that lame mule Jeppard traded me for a sound animal back in ‘69. Let ’em come!”

  * * * * *

  They come all right, and surged up in front of the cabin — Jeppard’s boys Jack and Buck and Esau and Joash and Polk County. And Erath Elkins, and a mob of Gordons and Buckners and Polks, all more or less kin to me, except Joe Braxton who wasn’t kin to any of us, but didn’t like me because he was sweet on Miss Margaret. But Uncle Jeppard warn’t with ‘em. Some had torches and Polk County Grimes had a rope with a noose in it.

  “Where-at air you all goin’ with that there lariat?” I ast them sternly, planting my enormous bulk in their path.

  “Perjuice the scoundrel!” said Polk County, waving his rope around his head. “Bring out the foreign invader which shoots hawgs and defenseless old men from the bresh!”

  “What you aim to do?” I inquired.

  “We aim to hang him!” they replied with hearty enthusiasm.

  Uncle Saul knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stood up and stretched his arms which looked like knotted oak limbs, and he grinned in his black beard like a old timber wolf, and he says: “Whar is dear cousin Jeppard to speak for hisself?”

  “Uncle Jeppard was havin’ the shot picked outa his hide when we left,” says Joel Gordon. “He’ll be along directly. Breckinridge, we don’t want no trouble with you, but we aims to have that Englishman.”

  “Well,” I snorted, “you all cain’t. Bill Glanton is trustin’ me to return him whole of body and limb, and—”

  “What you want to waste time in argyment for, Breckinridge?” Uncle Saul reproved mildly. “Don’t you know it’s a plumb waste of time to try to reason with the off-spring of a lame-mule trader?”

  “What would you suggest, old man?” sneeringly remarked Polk County.

  Uncle Saul beamed on him benevolently, and said gently: “I’d try moral suasion — like this!” And he hit Polk County under the jaw and knocked him clean acrost the yard into a rain barrel amongst the ruins of which he reposed until he was rescued and revived some hours later.

  But they was no stopping Uncle Saul oncet he took the war-path. No sooner had he disposed of Polk County than he jumped seven foot into the air, cracked his heels together three times, give the rebel yell and come down with his arms around the necks of Esau Grimes and Joe Braxton, which he went to the earth with and starting mopping up the cabin yard with ‘em.

  That started the fight, and they is no scrap in the world where mayhem is committed as free and fervent as in one of these here family rukuses.

  Polk County had hardly crashed into the rain barrel when Jack Grimes stuck a pistol in my face. I slapped it aside just as he fired and the bullet missed me and taken a ear offa Jim Gordon. I was scared Jack would hurt somebody if he kept on shooting reckless that way, so I kinda rapped him with my left fist and how was I to know it would dislocate his jaw. But Jim Gordon seemed to think I was to blame about his ear because he give a maddened howl and jerked up his shotgun and let bam with both barrels. I ducked just in time to keep from getting my head blowed off, and catched most of the double- charge in my shoulder, whilst the rest hived in the seat of Steve Kirby’s britches. Being shot that way by a relative was irritating, but I controlled my temper and merely taken the gun away from Jim and splintered the stock over his head.

  In the meantime Joel Gordon and Buck Grimes had grabbed one of my laigs apiece and was trying to rassle me to the earth, and Joash Grimes was trying to hold down my right arm, and cousin Pecos Buckner was beating me over the head from behind with a ax-handle, and Erath Elkins was coming at me from the front with a bowie knife. I reached down and got Buck Grimes by the neck with my left hand, and I swung my right and hit Erath with it, but I had to lift Joash clean off his feet and swing him around with the lick, because he wouldn’t let go, so I only knocked Erath through the rail fence which was around Uncle Saul’s garden.

  About this time I found my left laig was free and discovered that Buck Grimes was unconscious, so I let go of his neck and begun to kick around with my left laig and it ain’t my fault if the spur got tangled up in Uncle Jonathan Polk’s whiskers and jerked most of ’em out by the roots. I shaken Joash off and taken the ax-handle away from Pecos because I seen he was going to hurt somebody if he kept on swinging it around so reckless, and I dunno why he blames me because his skull got fractured when he hit that tree. He oughta look where he falls when he gets throwed across a cabin yard. And if Joel Gordon hadn’t been so stubborn trying to gouge me he wouldn’t of got his laig broke neither.

  I was handicapped by not wanting to kill any of my kinfolks, but they was so mad they all wanted to kill me, so in spite of my carefulness the casualties was increasing at a rate which would of discouraged anybody but Bear Creek folks. But they are the stubbornnest people in the world. Three or four had got me around the laigs again, refusing to be convinced that I couldn’t be throwed that way, and Erath Elkins, having pulled hisself out of the ruins of the fence, come charging back with his bowie.

  By this time I seen I’d have to use violence in spite of myself, so I grabbed Erath and squoze him with a grizzly-hug and that was when he got them five ribs caved in, and he ain’t spoke to me since. I never seen such a cuss for taking offense over trifles.

  For a matter of fact, if he hadn’t been so bodaciously riled up — if he had of kept his head like I did — he would have seen how kindly I felt toward him even in the fever of that there battle. If I had dropped him underfoot he might have been tromped on fatally for I was kicking folks right and left without caring where they fell. So I carefully flung Erath out of the range of that ruckus — and if he thinks I aimed him at Ozark Grimes and his pitchfork — well, I just never done it. It was Ozark’s fault more than mine for toting that pitchfork, and it ought to be Ozark that Erath cusses when he starts to sit down these days.

  It was at this moment that somebody swung at me with a ax and ripped my ear nigh offa my head, and I begun to lose my temper. Four or five other relatives was kicking and hitting and biting at me all at oncet, and they is a limit even to my timid manners and mild nature. I voiced my displeasure with a beller of wrath, and lashed out with both fists, and my misguided relatives fell all over t
he yard like persimmons after a frost. I grabbed Joash Grimes by the ankles and begun to knock them ill-advised idjits in the head with him, and the way he hollered you’d of thought somebody was manhandling him. The yard was beginning to look like a battle-field when the cabin door opened and a deluge of b’iling water descended on us.

  I got about a gallon down my neck, but paid very little attention to it, however the others ceased hostilities and started rolling on the ground and hollering and cussing, and Uncle Saul riz up from amongst the ruins of Esau Grimes and Joe Braxton, and bellered: “Woman! What air you at?”

  Aunt Zavalla Garfield was standing in the doorway with a kettle in her hand, and she said: “Will you idjits stop fightin’? The Englishman’s gone. He run out the back door when the fightin’ started, saddled his nag and pulled out. Now will you born fools stop, or will I give you another deluge? Land save us! What’s that light?”

  Somebody was yelling toward the settlement, and I was aware of a peculiar glow which didn’t come from such torches as was still burning. And here come Medina Kirby, one of Bill’s gals, yelping like a Comanche.

  “Our cabin’s burnin’!” she squalled. “A stray bullet went through the winder and busted Miss Margaret’s ile lamp!”

  With a yell of dismay I abandoned the fray and headed for Bill’s cabin, follered by everybody which was able to foller me. They had been several wild shots fired during the melee and one of ’em must have hived in Miss Margaret’s winder. The Kirbys had dragged most of their belongings into the yard and some was bringing water from the creek, but the whole cabin was in a blaze by now.

  “Whar’s Miss Margaret?” I roared.

  “She must be still in there!” shrilled Miss Kirby. “A beam fell and wedged her door so we couldn’t open it, and—”

  I grabbed a blanket one of the gals had rescued and plunged it into the rain barrel and run for Miss Margaret’s room. They wasn’t but one door in it, which led into the main part of the cabin, and was jammed like they said, and I knowed I couldn’t never get my shoulders through either winder, so I just put down my head and rammed the wall full force and knocked four or five logs outa place and made a hole big enough to go through.