Her cheeks flushed. “I can’t; it would only make trouble.”
“There’s goin’ to be trouble anyhow,” Ira said.
“I’m afraid so,” she agreed. “I’ll let you know.” She left to wait on a man who was tapping the cigar case with a coin as he looked over the room.
Ten minutes later, as Lafe and Ira were finishing their meal. Hazel screamed from the kitchen, “Lafe, look out!”
But she was too late. Two men had entered by the back door. While one of them struggled with Hazel the other stepped out of the kitchen and thrust the muzzle of a shotgun against Lafe Garvin’s back. At the same moment Marshal Brannon and Alva Dingman, both armed, entered by, the front door.
“Freeze, Garvin, or I’ll blow you apart,” barked the man with the shotgun. He was a bartender from the Hot Time. “I’m a deputy.”
“That’s right, Garvin,” Brannon affirmed as he approached with Dingman at his elbow, “And you’re under arrest for resisting an officer. Stand up careful so I can get your gun.”
Two minutes later Lafe was being marched off to jail. Gabe Brannon turned back to snarl at Ira Porter, “and you, feller—walk mighty careful around here; don’t tie on any hardware.”
Ira sat still at the table and made no reply. Lafe had instructed him before they came down from their room. Hazel Grove, freed by her captor when he was sure Lafe had been taken, came out of the kitchen, disheveled and panting.
“Lafe,” she screamed, “don’t try to escape. Gabe Brannon killed a man for that, but nobody saw it happen.”
“I won’t,” Lafe replied. “I know about snakes and—”
He was stopped by Alva Dingman’s fist smashing into his face. “You keep still,” Dingman snarled, “until you talk to the judge.”
* * * *
Brannon and his henchmen departed with their prisoner. Hazel glared at Ira Porter. “Ain’t you going to do something?” she demanded.
“I’m goin’ to do near as I can what Lafe told me to,” Ira replied, “but I got a few ideas of my own—seein’ that Lafe didn’t figger on anything like this. You think Brannon will come back here?”
The restaurant was empty, everybody having gone outside to watch the progress towards the town jail. Even Sarah had stepped outside the front door.
“Sure he will,” Hazel replied, “he’ll not miss a chance to crow for Sarah.”
“Ain’t there even one man in this town with enough gall to give me a little help?” Ira asked.
“Help with what?” Hazel asked.
It took Ira several minutes to tell her. When he had finished she was regarding him with respect.
“Can you do that?” she asked.
“I will,” he said grimly.
“Then I’m all the help you need,” she declared. “A man might get shot, but even these skunks ain’t goin’ to shoot a woman. You hustle along and get ready. Brannon won’t waste much time gettin’ back here.”
“They took him into the jail,” Sarah reported as she came back into the restaurant.
“You go back to the kitchen and stay there,” her mother said. “Ira and me got things to do; don’t you get in our way.”
Twenty minutes had passed when Marshal Gabe Brannon emerged from the jail and cut across the street towards the Grove restaurant. He was strutting. Hazel Grove stood at the window and watched his approach. Just behind her, a ten-gauge, double-barreled shotgun leaned against the end of the desk.
Brannon stepped onto the sidewalk, grinning triumphantly at Mrs. Grove. She glared back at him. Then, from an open window in the end of the upstairs hall, the loop of a lariat dropped over the marshal and was jerked tight. A moment later his feet were dangling two feet above the sidewalk. Hazel Grove turned, snatched up the shotgun and stepped outside.
Brannon saw her and stopped yelling as he looked into the twin muzzles of the scattergun. “Shut up,” she said, “or I’ll fill you so full of buckshot that you won’t float in brine.”
She stepped up to the dangling marshal, snatched the Colt from his holster and backed away. She dropped the revolver at her feet and steadied the shotgun. “Come on down, Ira,” she called. “He’ll be here—one way or another.”
* * * *
Ira came down the quickest way. The rope went slack and Brannon sprawled on the sidewalk. Ira Porter landed beside him.
“Get up, you skunk,” Ira panted as he gained his balance.
Brannon scrambled up. “You’re foolin’ with the law,” he warned, backing against the building.
Brannon’s yells had brought people into the street. Among these were Alva Dingman and his shotgun-armed bartender. Dingman drew his revolver as they ran towards the scene. They were passing Sid Holt’s hardware store when Sid stepped out of the doorway with an axe-handle he had snatched up. Sid had no idea what the hubbub was about, but on general principals he swung the axe-handle and knocked the bartender flat. Then he traded the axe-handle for the shotgun and ran on towards the focal point of ruckus.
From his blacksmith shop across the street from the Grove restaurant, brawny Bill O’Shea came running with a red hot horseshoe held in a pair of tongs. “You need any help, Hazel?” he yelled.
“Looks like I got it, whether I need it or not,” she replied.
The spark had been dropped into the powder keg that was Broken Bow. Nearly a hundred men gathered quickly—and it was a grim assembly.
“What’s goin’ on here?” the blacksmith demanded.
“If you’ll get back and give him room,” Hazel Grove answered, “this young fellow is about to beat hell out of Gabe Brannon for botherin’ Sarah.” Her shotgun was still steady on the cowering Brannon.
The blacksmith glanced over the suddenly quiet crowd, then back at Ira Porter. “Good idea,” he said. “Start in, mister, we’ll keep it fair.” A growl of affirmation came from the gathering.
It was then that Ira Porter squared his shoulders, faced the assembled men and displayed the quality that was to make him a state senator some ten years later. “I’d sure enjoy doin’ that,” he said, “but if I cripple him up it might give him a excuse. Seems to me like if this town has got to have a gun boss we ought to find out who it is. I think his name is Lafe Garvin and he’s down yonder in the jail where a bunch of damn cowards put him a little while ago. Let’s get him out of there and let him and Brannon settle it out here in the street.”
The crowd’s response to the proposal was silence until Alva Dingman spoke up, “As mayor of this town—”
The shotgun which Sid Holt thrust against his back choked Dingman off. “As mayor of this town,” Sid snapped, “S’pose you shut up and lay down with your pups until we mebby have a honest election. Well, some of you gents get them jail keys offen Brannon.”
* * * *
Fifteen minutes later, Lafe Garvin and Gabe Brannon stood in the dusty street, surrounded by a dozen grim-faced men. His belt and gun had been restored to Lafe and Brannon’s weapon was back in its holster.
“Brannon,” Bill O’Shea said “you have gun-bullied this town for more’n two years. Garvin, here says you ain’t man enough to do that. We aim to find out. You are goin’ to stand right here and we’ll take Garvin way down yonder by the feed store. Then you and him start walkin’ towards each other. I got to tell you that Garvin wants you to know he ain’t goin’ for his gun first.”
Brannon licked his lips and said nothing. Sid Holt and another man walked away with Lafe. A minute later the blacksmith said, “Go ahead, Brannon; Garvin is comin’.”
The other men in the street moved quickly away. The throng on the sidewalks took shelter in doorways or inside, behind windows. Alone in the sunbathed street, Brannon and Garvin walked towards each other, hands held at thighs but not swinging. A hundred yards had separated them at the start. Then it was eighty—seventy—fifty.
At that distance Brannon suddenly halted. He stood like a man frozen, making no move to draw his weapon. Lafe Garvin came steadily on. Forty yards—twenty—ten. Still neither man had moved
a hand towards his gun. Even those fartherest away could see that Brannon was trembling. Otherwise, he seemed unable to move. Without haste, Lafe Garvin came on, stopped face-to-face with Brannon and reached a brown hand to lift the gun from Brannon’s holster and fling it aside. Then, first with his open right hand, then with his left, he slapped Brannon hard on either cheek. Brannon fell sidewise into the dust and lay whimpering. The blustering town tamer had broken completely.
Lafe Garvin stooped, grasped a handful of collar and dragged Brannon towards where Hazel Grove stood in the restaurant doorway with her arms about her daughter. Silence still hung heavy.
Lafe looked at Hazel and his lips twitched. “Here they are,” he said. “They’re still fastened onto him, but if you got a knife handy—”
“I don’t want them!” her scream cut him off. “Lafe Garvin, you ain’t human.” She turned and pulled Sarah with her into the restaurant.
Confused, Lafe looked down at the limp bulk of Brannon. “Say!” he exclaimed. “This buzzard looks dead.”
Doctor Howard Ong, coming from among the spectators, confirmed Lafe’s judgment a few moments later. A strong shock can stop a rotten heart, and Brannon wasn’t the first man whose wounded vanity proved mortal. Ira Porter went into the restaurant to tell Sarah and her mother.
* * * *
Lafe Garvin turned to where Alva Dingman stood in the encircling crowd. “Dingman,” he said, “I helped run you out of one town; if you’re in this one at sundown you won’t be able to leave afterwards.”
Dingman turned to push frantically through the crowd. “Let me away from him!” he yammered.
“Folks,” Bill O’Shea’s voice boomed, “don’t forget there’s a dance tonight. Let’s make her a celebration. These things has to happen—and this one was sure overdue.”
Lafe Garvin went into the restaurant and found Ira with the widow and her daughter in the kitchen.
“Look, Hazel,” Lafe said. “I only done what you asked me to. I didn’t intend to kill him at all—just fix him so he couldn’t be handy with a gun any more. But he wouldn’t draw.”
There was silence for moments, then Hazel said, “I guess you ain’t to blame, Lafe. Sarah, here it is almost ten o’clock and dinner ain’t even started.”
Lafe and Ira escorted the widow and her daughter to the dance that night at town hall. Bill O’Shea broke it up before midnight.
“We got some business,” the blacksmith announced. “The menfolks are goin’ to take the ladies home now. Then all of them that is legal voters is comin’ back here for a meetin’. Seeing that our mayor skedaddled east on the evening train, and we are likewise shy a marshal, it looks like some reorganizin’ was in order.”
Lafe, Ira and Hazel and Sarah Grove had eaten and were lingering over coffee around the kitchen table when Bill O’Shea arrived.
“Hoped I’d find you fellers up,” the blacksmith said. “I been sent to tell you that the meetin’ picked you two for marshal and mayor. Like to know if we can count on you.”
Ira Porter was the first to find voice. “I couldn’t be no mayor,” he protested.
The blacksmith chuckled. “You got it the wrong way around. We figger we don’t want any more gun marshals; this here is goin’ to be a law-abidin’ town. Some of us heard you offer to knock the stuffin’ out of a bigger man than you are, so we picked you for marshal. Same time, we’d like to know that if any gunslingers was to come around we could call on the mayor to cool ’em off. How about it?”
“Well,” Lafe Garvin said, “I been everything but a mayor. Guess I could take a crack at it—providin’ it don’t interfere with me getting’ married.” He looked at the widow Grove.
The widow’s face flushed. Her eyes fell. “I don’t think it will,” she said.
Lafe looked around and saw Ira whispering in Sarah Grove’s not unwilling ear. He grinned at the stalwart blacksmith.
“Not to hurt your feelins’,” Lafe said, “but it seems to me you are sort of unnecessary around here right now.”
O’Shea departed without argument.
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, by Bret Harte
There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle’s grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the camp,—”Cherokee Sal.”
Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex’s intuitive tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was “rough on Sal,” and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.
It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement.
“You go in there, Stumpy,” said a prominent citizen known as “Kentuck,” addressing one of the loungers. “Go in there, and see what you kin do. You’ve had experience in them things.”
Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp—a city of refuge—was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.
The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The term “roughs” applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.
Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,—seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that “Sal would get through with it;” even that the child would survive; side bets as to the sex and comple
xion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.
The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. “Can he live now?” was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal’s sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful.
When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. “Gentlemen,” said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and ex officio complacency,—”gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy.” The first man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In such communities good and bad actions are catching. As the procession filed in comments were audible,—criticisms addressed perhaps rather to Stumpy in the character of showman; “Is that him?” “Mighty small specimen;” “Has n’t more ‘n got the color;” “Ain’t bigger nor a derringer.” The contributions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady’s handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he “saw that pin and went two diamonds better”); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not the giver’s); a pair of surgeon’s shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for 5 pounds; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten cheek. “The damned little cuss!” he said, as he extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. “He rastled with my finger,” he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, “the damned little cuss!”
The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories Page 37