She gimme a look which made my heart turn somersets. She had black curly hair and big innercent gray eyes, and she was the purtiest gal I’d saw in a coon’s age.
“Oh, thank you!” she panted. “I knowed you was a gent the minute I seen you. Will you help me up onto my hoss?”
“You shore you ain’t hurt none?” I ast, and she said she warn’t, so I helped her up, and she gathered up her reins and looked back down the road very nervous. “Don’t let ’em foller me!” she begged. “I’m goin’ on.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I says. “Wait till I exterminate them scoundrels, and I’ll escort you home.”
But she started convulsively as the distant pound of hoofs reched us, and said: “Oh, I dast not! They mustn’t even see me again!”
“But I want to,” I said. “Where you live?”
“Red Cougar,” says she. “My name’s Sue Pritchard. If you happen up that way, drop in.”
“I’ll be there!” I promised, and she flashed me a dazzling smile and loped on down the road and outa sight up the Red Cougar trail.
So i set to work. I uses a rope wove outa buffalo hide, a right smart longer and thicker and stronger’n the average riata because a man my size has got to have a rope to match. I tied said lariat acrost the road about three foot off the ground.
Then I backed Cap’n Kidd into the bushes, and purty soon six men swept around the bend. The first hoss fell over my rope and the others fell over him, and the way they piled up in the road was beautiful to behold. Before you could bat yore eye they was a most amazing tangle of kicking hosses and cussing men. I chose that instant to ride out of the bresh and throw my pistols down on ‘em.
“Cease that scandalous langwidge and rise with yore hands up!” I requested, and they done so, but not cheerfully. Some had been kicked right severe by the hosses, and one had pitched over his cayuse’s neck and lit on his head, and his conversation warn’t noways sensible.
“What’s the meanin’ of this here hold-up?” demanded a tall maverick with long yaller whiskers.
“Shet up!” I told him sternly. “Men which chases a he’pless gal like a pack of Injuns ain’t fittin’ for to talk to a white man.”
“Oh, so that’s it!” says he. “Well, lemme tell yuh—”
“I said shet up!” I roared, emphasizing my request by shooting the left tip offa his mustash. “I don’t aim to powwow with no dern women-chasin’ coyotes! In my country we’d decorate a live oak with yore carcasses!”
“But you don’t—” began one of the others, but Yaller Whiskers profanely told him to shet up.
“Don’t yuh see he’s one of Ridgeway’s men?” snarled he. “He’s got the drop on us, but our turn’ll come. Till it does, save yore breath!”
“That’s good advice,” I says. “Onbuckle yore gun-belts and hang ’em on yore saddle-horns, and keep yore hands away from them guns whilst you does it. I’d plumb welcome a excuse to salivate the whole mob of you.”
So they done it, and then I fired a few shots under the hosses’ feet and stampeded ‘em, and they run off down the road the direction they’d come from. Yaller Whiskers and his pals cussed something terrible.
“Better save yore wind,” I advised ‘em. “You likely got a good long walk ahead of you, before you catches yore cayuses.”
“I’ll have yore heart’s blood for this,” raved Yaller Whiskers. “I’ll have yore sculp if I have to trail yuh from here to Jedgment Day! Yuh don’t know who yo’re monkeyin’ with.”
“And I don’t care!” I snorted. “Vamoose!”
They taken out down the road after their hosses, and I shot around their feet a few times to kinda speed ’em on their way. They disappeared down the road in a faint blue haze of profanity, and I turnt around and headed for Red Cougar.
I hoped to catch up with Miss Pritchard before she got to Red Cougar, but she had too good a start and was going at too fast a gait. My heart pounded at the thought of her and my corns begun to ache. It shore was love at first sight.
Well, I’d follered the trail for maybe three miles when I heard guns banging ahead of me. A little bit later I came to where the trail forked and I didn’t know which’n led to Red Cougar. Whilst I was setting there wondering which branch to take, I heard hosses running again, and purty soon a couple of men hove in sight, spurring hard and bending low like they was expecting to be shot from behind. When they approached me I seen they had badges onto their vests, and bullet holes in their hats.
“Which is the road to Red Cougar?” I ast perlitely.
“That’n,” says the older feller, p’inting back the way they’d come. “But if yo’re aimin’ to go there I advises yuh to reflect deeply on the matter. Ponder, young man, ponder and meditate! Life is sweet, after all!”
“What you mean?” I ast. “Who’re you all chasin’?”
“Chasin’ hell!” says he, polishing his sheriff’s badge with his sleeve. “We’re bein’ chased! Buck Ridgeway’s in town!”
“Never heard of him,” I says.
“Well,” says the sheriff, “Buck don’t like strangers no more’n he does law-officers. And yuh see how well he likes them!”
“This here’s a free country!” I snorted. “When I stays outa town on account of this here Ridgeway or anybody else they’ll be ice in hell thick enough for the devil to skate on. I’m goin’ to visit a young lady — Miss Sue Pritchard. Can you tell me where she lives?”
They looked at me very pecooliar, and the sheriff says: “Oh, in that case — well, she lives in the last cabin north of the general store, on the left-hand side of the street.”
“Le’s git goin’,” urged his deputy nervously. “They may foller us!”
They started spurring again, and as they rode off, I heard the deputy say: “Reckon he’s one of ‘em?” And the sheriff said: “If he ain’t he’s the biggest damn fool that ever lived, to come sparkin’ Sue Pritchard—” Then they rode outa hearing. I wondered who they was talking about, but soon forgot it as I rode on into Red Cougar.
I come in on the south end of the town, and it was about like all them little mountain villages. One straggling street, hound dogs sleeping in the dust of the wagon ruts, and a general store and a couple of saloons.
I seen some hosses tied at the hitching rack outside the biggest saloon which said “Mac’s Bar” on it, but I didn’t see nobody on the streets, although noises of hilarity was coming outa the saloon. I was thirsty and dusty, and I decided I better have me a drink and spruce up some before I called on Miss Pritchard. So I watered Cap’n Kidd at the trough, and tied him to a tree (if I’d tied him to the hitch rack he’d of kicked the tar outa the other hosses) and went into the saloon. They warn’t nobody in there but a old coot with gray whiskers tending bar, and the noise was all coming from another room. From the racket I jedged they was a bowling alley in there and the gents was bowling.
I beat the dust outa my pants with my hat and called for whiskey. Whilst I was drinking it the feller said: “Stranger in town, hey?”
I said I was and he said: “Friend of Buck Ridgeway’s?”
“Never seen him in my life,” says I, and he says: “Then you better git outa town fast as you can dust it. Him and his bunch ain’t here — he pulled out jest a little while ago — but Jeff Middleton’s in there, and Jeff’s plenty bad.”
I started to tell him I warn’t studying Jeff Middleton, but jest then a lot of whooping bust out in the bowling alley like somebody had made a ten- strike or something, and here come six men busting into the bar whooping and yelling and slapping one of ’em on the back.
“Decorate the mahogany, McVey!” they whooped. “Jeff’s buyin’! He jest beat Tom Grissom here six straight games!”
They surged up to the bar and one of ’em tried to jostle me aside, but as nobody ain’t been able to do that successful since I got my full growth, all he done was sprain his elbow. This seemed to irritate him, because he turnt around and said heatedly: “What the hell you think y
o’re doin’?”
“I’m drinkin’ me a glass of corn squeezin’s,” I replied coldly, and they all turnt around and looked at me, and they moved back from the bar and hitched at their pistol-belts. They was a hard looking gang, and the feller they called Middleton was the hardest looking one of ‘em.
“Who’re you and where’d you come from?” he demanded.
“None of yore damn business,” I replied with a touch of old Southern curtesy.
He showed his teeth at this and fumbled at his gun-belt.
“Air you tryin’ to start somethin’?” he demanded, and I seen McVey hide behind a stack of beer kaigs.
“I ain’t in the habit of startin’ trouble,” I told him. “All I does is end it. I’m in here drinkin’ me a quiet dram when you coyotes come surgin’ in hollerin’ like you was the first critter which ever hit a pin.”
“So you depreciates my talents, hey?” he squalled like he was stung to the quick. “Maybe you think you could beat me, hey?”
“I ain’t yet seen the man which could hold a candle to my game,” I replied with my usual modesty.
“All right!” he yelled, grinding his teeth. “Come into the alley, and I’ll show you some action, you big mountain grizzly!”
“Hold on!” says McVey, sticking his head up from behind the kaigs. “Be keerful, Jeff! I believe that’s—”
“I don’t keer who he is!” raved Middleton. “He has give me a mortal insult! Come on, you, if you got the nerve!”
“You be careful with them insults!” I roared menacingly, striding into the alley. “I ain’t the man to be bulldozed.” I was looking back over my shoulder when I shoved the door open with my palm and I probably pushed harder’n I intended to, and that’s why I tore the door offa the hinges. They all looked kinda startled, and McVey give a despairing squeak, but I went on into the alley and picked up a bowl ball which I brandished in defiance.
“Here’s fifty bucks!” I says, waving the greenbacks. “We puts up fifty each and rolls for five dollars a game. That suit you?”
I couldn’t understand what he said, because he jest made a noise like a wolf grabbing a beefsteak, but he snatched up a bulldog, and perjuiced ten five- dollar bills, so I jedged it was agreeable with him.
But he had a awful temper, and the longer we played, the madder he got, and when I had beat him five straight games and taken twenty-five outa his fifty, the veins stood out purple onto his temples.
“It’s yore roll,” I says, and he throwed his bowl ball down and yelled: “Blast yore soul, I don’t like yore style! I’m through and I’m takin’ down my stake! You gits no more of my money, damn you!”
“Why, you cheap-heeled piker!” I roared. “I thought you was a sport, even if you was a hoss-thief, but—”
“Don’t you call me a hoss-thief!” he screamed.
“Well, cow-thief then,” I says. “If yo’re so dern particular—”
It was at this instant that he lost his head to the p’int of pulling a pistol and firing at me p’int-blank. He would of ondoubtedly shot me, too, if I hadn’t hit him in the head with my bowl ball jest as he fired. His bullet went into the ceiling and his friends begun to display their disapproval by throwing pins and bulldogs at me. This irritated me almost beyond control, but I kept my temper and taken a couple of ’em by the neck and beat their heads together till they was limp. The matter would of ended there, without any vi’lence, but the other three insisted on taking the thing serious, and I defy any man to remain tranquil when three hoss-thieves are kyarving at him with bowies and beating him over the head with ten-pins.
But I didn’t intend to bust the big ceiling lamp; I jest hit it by accident with the chair which I knocked one of my enermies stiff with. And it warn’t my fault if one of ’em got blood all over the alley. All I done was break his nose and knock out seven teeth with my fist. How’d I know he was going to fall in the alley and bleed on it. As for that section of wall which got knocked out, all I can say is it’s a derned flimsy wall which can be wrecked by throwing a man through it. I thought I’d throwed him through a winder until I looked closer and seen it was a hole he busted through the wall. And can I help it if them scalawags blowed holes in the roof till it looked like a sieve trying to shoot me?
It wasn’t my fault, nohow.
But when the dust settled and I looked around to see if I’d made a clean sweep, I was jest in time to grab the shotgun which old man McVey was trying to shoot me through the barroom door with.
“You oughta be ashamed,” I reproved. “A man of yore age and venerable whiskers, tryin’ to shoot a defenseless stranger in the back.”
“But my bowlin’ alley’s wrecked!” he wept, tearing the aforesaid whiskers. “I’m a rooint man! I sunk my wad in it — and now look at it!”
“Aw, well,” I says, “it warn’t my fault, but I cain’t see a honest man suffer. Here’s seventy-five dollars, all I got.”
“‘Tain’t enough,” says he, nevertheless making a grab for the dough like a kingfisher diving after a pollywog. “‘Tain’t near enough.”
“I’ll collect the rest from them coyotes,” I says.
“Don’t do it!” he shuddered. “They’d kill me after you left!”
“I wanta do the right thing,” I says. “I’ll work out the rest of it.”
He looked at me right sharp then, and says: “Come into the bar.”
But I seen three of ’em was coming to, so I hauled ’em up and told ’em sternly to tote their friends out to the hoss trough and bring ’em to. They done so, kinda wabbling on their feet. They acted like they was still addled in the brains, and McVey said it looked to him like Middleton was out for the day, but I told him it was quite common for a man to be like that which has jest had a fifteen-pound bowling ball split in two over his head.
Then I went into the bar with McVey and he poured out the drinks.
“Air you in earnest about workin’ out that debt?” says he.
“Sure,” I said. “I always pays my debts, by fair means or foul.”
“Ain’t you Breckinridge Elkins?” says he, and when I says I was, he says: “I thought I rekernized you when them fools was badgerin’ you. Look out for ‘em. That ain’t all of ‘em. The whole gang rode into town a hour or so ago and run the sheriff and his deperty out, but Buck didn’t stay long. He seen his gal, and then he pulled out for the hills again with four men. They’s a couple more besides them you fit hangin’ around somewheres. I dunno where.”
“Outlaws?” I said, and he said: “Shore. But the local law-force ain’t strong enough to deal with ‘em, and anyway, most of the folks in town is in cahoots with ‘em, and warns ’em if officers from outside come after ‘em. They hang out in the hills ordinary, but they come into Red Cougar regular. But never mind them. I was jest puttin’ you on yore guard.
“This is what I want you to do. A month ago I was comin’ back to Red Cougar with a tidy fortune in gold dust I’d panned back up in the hills, when I was held up and robbed. It warn’t one of Ridgeway’s men; it was Three-Fingers Clements, a old lone wolf and the wust killer in these parts. He lives by hisself up in the hills and nobody knows where.
“But I jest recent learnt by accident. He sent a message by a sheepherder and the sheepherder got drunk in my saloon and talked. I learnt he’s still got my gold, and aims to sneak out with it as soon as he’s j’ined by a gang of desperadoes from Tomahawk. It was them the sheepherder was takin’ the message to. I cain’t git no help from the sheriff; these outlaws has got him plumb buffaloed. I want you to ride up in the hills and git my gold. Of course, if yo’re scairt of him—”
“Who said I was scairt of him or anybody else?” I demanded irritably. “Tell me how to git to his hide-out and I’m on my way.”
McVey’s eyes kinda gleamed, and he says: “Good boy! Foller the trail that leads outa town to the northwest till you come to Diablo Canyon. Foller it till you come to the fifth branch gulch openin’ into it on the right. Turn off the trail then
and foller the gulch till you come to a big white oak nigh the left- hand wall. Climb up outa the gulch there and head due west up the slope. Purty soon you’ll see a crag like a chimney stickin’ out above a clump of spruces. At the foot of that crag they’s a cave, and Clements is livin’ there. And he’s a tough old—”
“It’s as good as did,” I assured him, and had another drink, and went out and clumb aboard Cap’n Kidd and headed out of town.
But as I rode past the last cabin on the left, I suddenly remembered about Sue Pritchard, and I ‘lowed Three Fingers could wait long enough for me to pay my respecks on her. Likely she was expecting me and getting nervous and impatient because I was so long coming. So I reined up to the stoop and hailed, and somebody looked at me through a winder. They also appeared to be a rifle muzzle trained on me, too, but who could blame folks for being cautious with them Ridgeway coyotes in town.
“Oh, it’s you!” said a female voice, and then the door opened and Sue Pritchard said: “Light and come in! Did you kill any of them rascals?”
“I’m too soft-hearted for my own good,” I says apologetically. “I jest merely only sent ’em down the road on foot. But I ain’t got time to come in now. I’m on my way up in the mountains to see Three Fingers Clements. I aimed to stop on my way back, if it’s agreeable with you.”
“Three Fingers Clements?” says she in a pecooliar voice. “Do you know where he is?”
“McVey told me,” I said. “He’s got a poke of dust he stole from McVey. I’m goin’ after it.”
She said something under her breath which I must have misunderstood because I was sure Miss Pritchard wouldn’t use the word it sounded like.
“Come in jest a minute,” she begged. “You got plenty of time. Come in and have a snort of corn juice. My folks is all visitin’ and it gets mighty lonesome to a gal. Please come in!”
Well, I never could resist a purty gal, so I tied Cap’n Kidd to a stump that looked solid, and went in, and she brung out her old man’s jug. It was tolerable licker. She said she never drunk none, personal.
We set and talked, and there wasn’t a doubt we cottoned to each other right spang off. There is some that says that Breckinridge Elkins hain’t got a lick of sense when it comes to wimmin-folks — among these bein’ my cousin, Bearfield Buckner — but I vow and declare that same is my only weakness, if any, and that likewise it is manly weakness.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 230
