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

by Robert E. Howard

  Things got quiet in the lodge and the smoke died down, and Sir Wilmot says: “Thy children await, O Waukontonka.” He opened the door, and I’m a Dutchman if they was anything in that lodge but a striped polecat!

  He waltzed out with his tail h’isted over his back and them Injuns let out one arful yell and fell over backwards; and then they riz up and stampeded — Crows, Arikaras, Sioux, Socs and all, howling: “The Unktehi have prevailed! They have turned Striped Thunder into an evil beast!”

  They didn’t stop to open the gate. The Sioux clumb the stockade and the Crows busted right through it. I seen old Biting Hoss and Spotted Hawk leading the stampede, and I knowed the great Western Injun Confederation was busted all to hell. The women and chillern was right behind the braves, and in sight of fifteen seconds the only Injun in sight was Fat Bear.

  Sir Wilmot jest stood there like he’d been putrified into rock, but Franswaw he run around behind the lodge and let out a squall. “Somebody’s slit the back wall!” he howled. “Here’s Striped Thunder lying behind the lodge with a knot on his head the size of a egg! Somebody crawled in and knocked him senseless and dragged him out while the smoke rolled!”

  “The same man left the skunk!” frothed Sir Wilmot. “You Yankee dog, you’re responsible for this!”

  “Who you callin’ a Yankee?” I roared, whipping out my knife.

  “Remember the truce!” squalled Fat Bear, but Sir Wilmot was too crazy mad to remember anything. I parried his sword with my knife as he lunged, and grabbed his arm, and I reckon that was when he got his elber dislocated. Anyway he give a maddened yell and tried to draw a pistol with his good hand; so I hit him in the mouth with my fist, and that’s when he lost them seven teeth he’s so bitter about. Whilst he was still addled, I taken his pistol away from him and throwed him over the stockade. I got a idee his fractured skull was caused by him hitting his head on a stump outside. Meanwhile Ondrey and Franswaw was hacking at me with their knives, so I taken ’em by their necks and beat their fool heads together till they was limp, and then I throwed ’em over the stockade after Sir Wilmot.

  “And I reckon that settles that!” I panted. “I dunno how this all come about, but you can call up yore women and chillern and tell ’em they’re now citizens of the United States of America, by golly!”

  I then picked up the keg, because I was hot and thirsty, but Fat Bear says: “Wait! Don’t drink that! I—”

  “Shet up!” I roared. “After all I’ve did for the nation tonight, I deserves a dram! Shame on you to begredge a old friend—”

  I taken a big gulp — and then I give a maddened beller and throwed that keg as far as I could heave it, and run for water. I drunk about three gallons, and when I could breathe again I got a club and started after Fat Bear, who clumb up on top of a lodge.

  “Come down!” I requested with passion. “Come down whilst I beats yore brains out! Whyn’t you tell me what was in that keg?”

  “I tried to,” says he, “but you wouldn’t listen. I thought it was whiskey when I stole it, or I wouldn’t have taken it. I talked to Shingis while you were hunting the water bucket, jest now. It was him that put the skunk in the medicine lodge. He saw Ondrey hide the keg on Sir Wilmot’s side of the council circle; he sneaked a drink out of it, and that’s why he did what he did. It was for revenge. The onreasonable old buzzard thought Sir Wilmot was tryin’ to pizen him.”

  So that’s the way it was. Anyway, I’m quitting my job as soon as I git back to Saint Louis. It’s bad enuff when folks gits too hifaluting to use candles, and has got to have oil lamps in a trading post. But I’ll be derned if I’ll work for a outfit which puts the whale-oil for their lamps in the same kind of kegs they puts their whiskey.

  Your respeckful son.

  Boone Bearfield.

  BUCKNER JEOPARDY GRIMES

  CONTENTS

  A RING-TAILED TORNADO; OR, TEXAS JOHN ALDEN

  A RING-TAILED TORNADO; OR, TEXAS JOHN ALDEN

  First published in Masked Rider Western, May 1944

  I HEAR the citizens of War Whoop has organized theirselves into a committee of public safety which they says is to pertect the town agen me, Buckner J. Grimes. Sech doings as that irritates me. You’d think I was a public menace or something.

  I’m purty dern tired of their slanders. I didn’t tear down their cussed jail; the buffalo-hunters done it. How could I when I was in it at the time?

  As for the Silver Boot saloon and dance hall, it wouldn’t of got shot up if the owner had showed any sense. It was Ace Middleton’s own fault he got his hind laig busted in three places, and if the city marshal had been tending to his own business instead of persecuting a pore, helpless stranger, he wouldn’t of got the seat of his britches full of buckshot.

  Folks which says I went to War Whoop a-purpose to wreck the town, is liars. I never had no idea at first of going there at all. It’s off the railroad and infested with tinhorn gamblers and buffalo-hunters and sech-like varmints, and no place for a trail-driver.

  My visit to this lair of vice come about like this: I’d rode p’int on a herd of longhorns clean from the lower Pecos to Goshen, where the railroad was. And I stayed there after the trail-boss and the other boys headed south, to spark the belle of the town, Betty Wilkinson, which gal was as purty as a brand-new bowie knife. She seemed to like me middling tolerable, but I had rivals, notably a snub-nosed Arizona waddy by the name of Bizz Ridgeway.

  This varmint’s persistence was so plumb aggravating that I come in on him sudden-like one morning in the back room of the Spanish Mustang, in Goshen, and I says:

  “Lissen here, you sand-burr in the pants of progress, I’m a peaceable man, generous and retirin’ to a fault. But I’m reachin’ the limit of my endurance. Ain’t they no gals in Arizona, that you got to come pesterin’ mine? Whyn’t yuh go on back home where you belong anyhow? I’m askin’ yuh like a gent to keep away from Betty Wilkinson before somethin’ onpleasant is forced to happen to yuh.”

  He kind of r’ared up, and says: “I ain’t the only gent which is sparkin’ Betty. Why don’t you make war-talk to Rudwell Shapley, Jr.?”

  “He ain’t nothin’ but a puddin’-headed tenderfoot,” I responded coldly. “I don’t consider him in no serious light. A gal with as much sense as Betty wouldn’t pay him no mind. But you got a slick tongue and might snake yore way ahead of me. So I’m tellin’ you—”

  He started to git up in a hurry, and I reached for my bowie, but then he sunk back down in his chair and to my amazement he busted into tears.

  “What in thunder’s the matter with you?” I demanded, shocked.

  “Woe is me!” moaned he. “Yuh’re right, Breck. I got no business hangin’ around Betty. But I didn’t know she was yore gal. I ain’t got no matrimonial intentions onto her. I’m jest kind of consolin’ myself with her company, whilst bein’ parted by crooel Fate from my own true love.”

  “Hey,” I says, pricking up my ears and uncocking my pistol. “You ain’t in love with Betty? You got another gal?”

  “A pitcher of divine beauty!” vowed he, wiping his eyes on my bandanner. “Gloria La Venner, which sings in the Silver Boot, over to War Whoop. We was to wed—”

  Here his emotions overcome him and he sobbed loudly.

  “But Fate interfered,” he moaned. “I was banished from War Whoop, never to return. In a thoughtless moment I kind of pushed a bartender with a clawhammer, and he had a stroke of apperplexity or somethin’ and died, and they blamed me. I was forced to flee without tellin’ my true love where I was goin’.

  “I ain’t dared to go back because them folks over there is so prejudiced agen’ me they threatens to arrest me on sight. My true love is eatin’ her heart out, waitin’ for me to come and claim her as my bride, whilst I lives here in exile!”

  Bizz then wept bitterly on my shoulder till I throwed him off in some embarrassment.

  “Whyn’t yuh write her a letter, yuh dad-blamed fool?” I ast.

  “I can’t write, nor rea
d, neither,” he said. “And I don’t trust nobody to send word to her by. She’s so beautiful, the critter I’d send would probably fall in love with her hisself, the lowdown polecat!” Suddenly he grabbed my hand with both of his’n, and said, “Breck, you got a honest face, and I never did believe all they say about you, anyway. Whyn’t you go and tell her?”

  “I’ll do better’n that if it’ll keep you away from Betty,” I says. “I’ll bring this gal over here to Goshen.”

  “Yuh’re a gent!” says he, wringing my hand. “I wouldn’t entrust nobody else with sech a sacred mission. Jest go to the Silver Boot and tell Ace Middleton you want to see Gloria La Venner alone.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll rent a buckboard to bring her back in.”

  “I’ll be countin’ the hours till yuh heaves over the horizen with my true love!” declaimed he, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

  So I hustled out, and who should I run into but that pore sapified shrimp of a Rudwell Shapley Joonyer in his monkey jacket and tight riding pants and varnished English boots. We like to had a collision as I barged through the swinging doors and he squeaked and staggered back and hollered: “Don’t shoot!”

  “Who said anything about shootin’?” I ast irritably, and he kind of got his color back and looked me over like I was a sideshow or something, like he always done.

  “Your home,” says he, “is a long way from here, is it not, Mister Grimes?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I live on Wolf Mountain, ‘way down near whar the Pecos runs into the Rio Grande.”

  “Indeed!” he says kind of hopefully. “I suppose you’ll be returning soon?”

  “Naw, I ain’t,” I says. “I’ll probably stay here all fall.”

  “Oh!” says he dejectedly, and went off looking like somebody had kicked him in the pants. I wondered why he should git so down-in-the-mouth jest because I warn’t goin’ home. But them tenderfoots ain’t got no sense and they ain’t no use wasting time trying to figger out why they does things, because they don’t generally know theirselves.

  For instance, why should a object like Rudwell Shapley Jr. come to Goshen, I want to know? I ast him once p’int blank and he says it was a primitive urge so see life in the raw, whatever that means. I thought maybe he was talking about grub, but the cook at the Laramie Restaurant said he takes his beefsteaks well done like the rest of us.

  Well, anyway, I got onto my hoss Cap’n Kidd and pulled for War Whoop which laid some miles west of Goshen. I warn’t wasting no time, because the quicker I got Gloria La Venner to Goshen, the quicker I’d have a clear field with Betty. Of course it would of been easier and quicker jest to shoot Bizz, but I didn’t know how Betty’d take it. Women is funny that way.

  I figgered to eat dinner at the Half-Way House, a tavern which stood on the prairie about half-way betwix Goshen and War Whoop, but as I approached it I met a most pecooliar-looking object heading east.

  I presently recognized it as a cowboy name Tump Garrison, and he looked like he’d been through a sorghum mill. His hat brim was pulled loose from the crown and hung around his neck like a collar, his clothes hung in rags. His face was skint all over, and one ear showed signs of having been chawed on long and earnestly.

  “Where was the tornado?” I ast, pulling up.

  He give me a suspicious look out of the eye he could still see with.

  “Oh, it’s you Breck,” he says then. “My brains is so addled, I didn’t recognize you at first. In fact,” says he, tenderly caressing a lump on his head the size of a turkey aig, “It’s jest a few minutes ago that I managed to remember my own name.”

  “What happened?” I ast with interest.

  “I ain’t shore,” says he, spitting out three or four loose tushes. “Leastways I ain’t shore jest what happened after that there table laig was shattered over my head. Things is a little foggy after that. But up to that time my memory is flawless.

  “Briefly, Breck,” says he, rising in his stirrups to rub his pants where they was the print of a boot heel, “I diskivered that I warn’t welcome at the Half-Way House, and big as you be, I advises yuh to avoid it like yuh would the yaller j’indus.”

  “It’s a public tavern,” I says.

  “It was,” says he, working his right laig to see if it was still in j’int. “It was till Moose Harrison, the buffalo-hunter, arrove there to hold a private celebration of his own. He don’t like cattle nor them which handles ‘em. He told me so hisself, jest before he hit me with the bung-starter.

  “He said he warn’t aimin’ to be pestered by no dern Texas cattle-pushers whilst he’s enjoyin’ a little relaxation. It was jest after issuin’ this statement that he throwed me through the roulette wheel.”

  “You ain’t from Texas,” I said. “Yuh’re from the Nations.”

  “That’s what I told him whilst he was doin’ a war-dance on my brisket,” says Tump. “But he said he was too broadminded to bother with technicalities. Anyway, he says cowboys was the plague of the range, irregardless of where they come from.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” I says irritably. “Well, I ain’t huntin’ trouble. I’m on a errand of mercy. But he better not shoot off his big mouth to me. I eats my dinner at the Half-Way House, regardless of all the buffler-hunters north of the Cimarron.”

  “I’d give a dollar to see the fun,” says Tump. “But my other eye is closin’ fast and I got to git amongst friends.”

  So he pulled for Goshen and I rode on to the Half-Way House, where I seen a big bay hoss tied to the hitch-rack. I watered Cap’n Kidd and went in. “Hssss!” the bartender says. “Git out as quick as yuh can! Moose Harrison’s asleep in the back room!”

  “I’m hongry,” I responded, setting down at a table which stood nigh the bar. “Bring me a steak with pertaters and onions and a quart of coffee and a can of cling peaches. And whilst the stuff’s cookin’ gimme nine or ten bottles of beer to wash the dust out of my gullet.”

  “Lissen!” says the barkeep. “Reflect and consider. Yuh’re young and life is sweet. Don’t yuh know that Moose Harrison is pizen to anything that looks like a cowpuncher? When he’s on a whiskey-tear, as at present, he’s more painter than human. He’s kilt more men—”

  “Will yuh stop blattin’ and bring me my rations?” I requested.

  He shakes his head sad-like and says: “Well, all right. After all, it’s yore hide. At least, try not to make no racket. He’s swore to have the life blood of anybody which wakes him up.”

  I said I didn’t want no trouble with nobody, and he tiptoed back to the kitchen and whispered my order to the cook, and then brung me nine or ten bottles of beer and slipped back behind the bar and watched me with morbid fascination.

  I drunk the beer and whilst drinking I got to kind of brooding about Moose Harrison having the nerve to order everybody to keep quiet whilst he slept. But they’re liars which claims I throwed the empty bottles at the door of the back room a-purpose to wake Harrison up.

  When the waiter brung my grub I wanted to clear the table to make room for it, so I jest kind of tossed the bottles aside, and could I help it if they all busted on the back-room door? Was it my fault that Harrison was sech a light sleeper?

  But the bartender moaned and ducked down behind the bar, and the waiter run through the kitchen and follered the cook in a sprint acrost the prairie, and a most remarkable beller burst forth from the back room.

  The next instant the door was tore off the hinges and a enormous human come bulging into the barroom. He wore buckskins, his whiskers bristled, and his eyes was red as a drunk Comanche’s.

  “What in tarnation?” remarked he in a voice which cracked the winder panes. “Does my gol-blasted eyes deceive me? Is that there a cussed cowpuncher settin’ there wolfin’ beefsteak as brash as if he was a white man?”

  “You ride herd on them insults!” I roared, rising sudden, and his eyes kind of popped when he seen I was about three inches taller’n him. “I got as much right here as you have.”


  “Name yore weppins,” blustered he. He had a butcher knife and two six- shooters in his belt.

  “Name ’em yoreself,” I snorted. “If you thinks yuh’re sech a hell-whizzer at fist-and-skull, why, shuck yore weppin-belt and I’ll claw yore ears off with my bare hands!”

  “That suits me!” says he. “I’ll festoon that bar with yore innards,” and he takes hold of his belt like he was going to unbuckle it — then, quick as a flash, he whipped out a gun. But I was watching for that and my right-hand .45 banged jest as his muzzle cleared leather.

  The barkeep stuck his head up from behind the bar.

  “Heck,” he says wild-eyed, “you beat Moose Harrison to the draw, and him with the aidge! I wouldn’t of believed it was possible if I hadn’t saw it! But his friends will ride yore trail for this!”

  “Warn’t it self-defence?” I demanded.

  “A clear case,” says he. “But that won’t mean nothin’ to them wild and woolly buffalo-skinners. You better git back to Goshen where yuh got friends.”

  “I got business in War Whoop,” I says. “Dang it, my coffee’s cold. Dispose of the carcass and heat it up, will yuh?”

  So he drug Harrison out, cussing because he was so heavy, and claiming I ought to help him. But I told him it warn’t my tavern, and I also refused to pay for a decanter which Harrison’s wild shot had busted. He got mad and said he hoped the buffalo-hunters did hang me. But I told him they’d have to ketch me without my guns first, and I slept with them on.

  Then I finished my dinner and pulled for War Whoop.

  It was about sundown when I got there, and I was purty hongry again. But I aimed to see Bizz’s gal before I done anything else. So I put my hoss in the livery stable and seen he had a big feed, and then I headed for the Silver Boot, which was the biggest j’int in town.

  There was plenty hilarity going on, but I seen no cowboys. The revelers was mostly gamblers, or buffalo-hunters, or soldiers, or freighters. War Whoop warn’t popular with cattlemen. They warn’t no buyers nor loading pens there, and for pleasure it warn’t nigh as good a town as Goshen, anyway. I ast a barman where Ace Middleton was, and he p’inted out a big feller with a generous tummy decorated with a fancy vest and a gold watch chain about the size of a trace chain. He wore mighty handsome clothes and a diamond hoss-shoe stick pin and waxed mustache.