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

by Robert E. Howard

  “Leggo!” he howled. “He’s my meat!”

  “Release Uncle Esau before I does you a injury!” I roared, trying to jerk Uncle Esau loose, but the outlaw hung on, and Uncle Esau squalled like a catamount in a wolf-trap. So I lifted what was left of my club and splintered it over the outlaw’s head, and he gave up the ghost with a gurgle. I then wheeled Cap’n Kidd and rode off like the wind. Them fellows was too busy fighting each other to notice my flight. Somebody did let bam at me with a Winchester, but all it done was to nick Uncle Esau’s ear.

  The sounds of carnage faded out behind us as I headed south along the trail. Uncle Esau was belly-aching about something. I never seen such a cuss for finding fault, but I felt they was no time to be lost, so I didn’t slow up for some miles. Then I pulled Cap’n Kidd down and said: “What did you say, Uncle Esau?”

  “I’m a broken man!” he gasped. “Take my secret, and lemme go back to the posse. All I want now is a good, safe prison term.”

  “What posse?” I asked, thinking he must be drunk, though I couldn’t figure where he’d got any booze.

  “The posse you took me away from,” he said. “Anything’s better’n bein’ dragged through these hellish mountains by a homicidal maneyack.”

  “Posse?” I gasped wildly. “But who was the second gang?”

  “Grizzly Hawkins’ outlaws,” he said, and added bitterly: “Even they would be preferable to what I been goin’ through. I give up. I know when I’m licked. The dough’s hid in a holler oak three miles south of Gunstock.”

  I didn’t pay no attention to his remarks, because my head was in a whirl. A posse! Of course; the sheriff and his men had follered us from War Paint, along the Bear Creek trail, and finding Uncle Esau tied up, had thought he’d been kidnaped by a outlaw instead of merely being invited to visit his relatives. Probably he was too cussed ornery to tell ’em any different. I hadn’t rescued him from no bandits; I’d took him away from a posse which thought they was rescuing him.

  Meanwhile Uncle Esau was clamoring: “Well, why’n’t you lemme go? I’ve told you whar the dough is; what else you want?”

  “You got to go on to Bear Creek with me—” I begun; and Uncle Esau give a shriek and went into a kind of convulsion, and the first thing I knowed he’d twisted around and jerked my gun out of its scabbard and let bam! right in my face so close it singed my hair. I grabbed his wrist and Cap’n Kidd bolted like he always does when he gets the chance.

  “They’s a limit to everything!” I roared. “A hell of a relative you be, you old maneyack!”

  We was tearing over slopes and ridges at breakneck speed and fighting all over Cap’n Kidd’s back — me to get the gun away from him, and him to commit murder. “If you warn’t kin to me, Uncle Esau, I’d plumb lose my temper!”

  “What you keep callin’ me that fool name for?” he yelled, frothing at the mouth. “What you want to add insult to injury—” Cap’n Kidd swerved sudden and Uncle Esau tumbled over his neck. I had him by the shirt and tried to hold him on, but the shirt tore. He hit the ground on his head and Cap’n Kidd run right over him. I pulled up as quick as I could and hove a sigh of relief to see how close to home I was.

  “We’re nearly there, Uncle Esau,” I said, but he made no comment. He was out cold.

  A short time later I rode up to the cabin with my eccentric relative slung over my saddle-bow, and took him and stalked into where pap was laying on his b’ar-skin, and slung my burden down on the floor in disgust. “Well, here he is,” I said.

  Pap stared and said: “Who’s this?”

  “When you wipe the blood off,” I said, “you’ll find it’s your Uncle Esau Grimes. And,” I added bitterly, “the next time you want to invite him to visit us, you can do it yourself. A more ungrateful cuss I never seen. Peculiar ain’t no name for him; he’s as crazy as a locoed jackass.”

  “But that ain’t Uncle Esau!” said pap.

  “What you mean?” I said irritably. “I know most of his clothes is tore off, and his face is kinda scratched and skinned and stomped outa shape, but you can see his whiskers is red, in spite of the blood.”

  “Red whiskers turn gray, in time,” said a voice, and I wheeled and pulled my gun as a man loomed in the door.

  It was the gray-whiskered old fellow I’d traded shots with on the edge of War Paint. He didn’t go for his gun, but stood twisting his mustache and glaring at me like I was a curiosity or something.

  “Uncle Esau!” said pap.

  “What?” I hollered. “Air you Uncle Esau?”

  “Certainly I am!” he snapped.

  “But you warn’t on the stagecoach—” I begun.

  “Stagecoach!” he snorted, taking pap’s jug and beginning to pour licker down the man on the floor. “Them things is for wimmen and childern. I travel horse-back. I spent last night in War Paint, and aimed to ride on up to Bear Creek this mornin’. In fact, Bill,” he addressed pap, “I was on the way here when this young maneyack creased me.” He indicated a bandage on his head.

  “You mean Breckinridge shot you?” ejaculated pap.

  “It seems to run in the family,” grunted Uncle Esau.

  “But who’s this?” I hollered wildly, pointing at the man I’d thought was Uncle Esau, and who was just coming to.

  “I’m Badger Chisom,” he said, grabbing the jug with both hands. “I demands to be pertected from this lunatick and turned over to the sheriff.”

  “Him and Bill Reynolds and Jim Hopkins robbed a bank over at Gunstock three weeks ago,” said Uncle Esau; the real one, I mean. “A posse captured ‘em, but they’d hid the loot somewhere and wouldn’t say where. They escaped several days ago, and not only the sheriffs was lookin’ for ‘em, but all the outlaw gangs too, to find out where they’d hid their plunder. It was a awful big haul. They must of figgered that escapin’ out of the country by stage coach would be the last thing folks would expect ’em to do, and they warn’t known in this part of the country.

  “But I recognized Bill Reynolds when I went back to War Paint to have my head dressed, after you shot me, Breckinridge. The doctor was patchin’ him and Hopkins up, too. The sheriff and a posse lit out after you, and I follered ’em when I’d got my head fixed. Course, I didn’t know who you was. I come up while the posse was fightin’ with Hawkins’ gang, and with my help we corralled the whole bunch. Then I took up yore trail again. Purty good day’s work, wipin’ out two of the worst gangs in the West. One of Hawkins’ men said Grizzly was laid up in his cabin, and the posse was goin’ to drop by for him.”

  “What you goin’ to do about me?” clamored Chisom.

  “Well,” said pap, “we’ll bandage yore wounds, and then I’ll let Breckinridge here take you back to War Paint — hey, what’s the matter with him?”

  Badger Chisom had fainted.

  * * *

  THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN

  First published in Action Stories, February 1935

  THE reason I despises tarantulas, stinging lizards, and hydrophobia skunks is because they reminds me so much of Aunt Lavaca, which my Uncle Jacob Grimes married in a absent-minded moment, when he was old enough to know better.

  That-there woman’s voice plumb puts my teeth on aidge, and it has the same effect on my horse, Cap’n Kidd, which don’t generally shy at nothing less’n a rattlesnake. So when she stuck her head out of her cabin as I was riding by and yelled “Breck-in-ri-i-idge,” Cap’n Kidd jumped straight up in the air, and then tried to buck me off.

  “Stop tormentin’ that pore animal and come here,” Aunt Lavaca commanded, whilst I was fighting for my life against Cap’n Kidd’s spine-twisting sun- fishing. “I never see such a cruel, worthless, no-good—”

  She kept right on yapping away until I finally wore him down and reined up alongside the cabin stoop and said: “What you want, Aunt Lavaca?”

  She give me a scornful snort, and put her hands onto her hips and glared at me like I was something she didn’t like the smell of.

  “I want you should
go git yore Uncle Jacob and bring him home,” she said at last. “He’s off on one of his idiotic prospectin’ sprees again. He snuck out before daylight with the bay mare and a pack mule — I wisht I’d woke up and caught him. I’d of fixed him! If you hustle you can catch him this side of Haunted Mountain Gap. You bring him back if you have to lasso him and tie him to his saddle. Old fool! Off huntin’ gold when they’s work to be did in the alfalfa fields. Says he ain’t no farmer. Huh! I ‘low I’ll make a farmer outa him yet. You git goin’.”

  “But I ain’t got time to go chasin’ Uncle Jacob all over Haunted Mountain,” I protested. “I’m headin’ for the rodeo over to Chawed Ear. I’m goin’ to win me a prize bull-doggin’ some steers—”

  “Bull-doggin’!” she snapped. “A fine ockerpashun! Gwan, you worthless loafer! I ain’t goin’ to stand here all day argyin’ with a big ninny like you be. Of all the good-for-nothin’, triflin’, lunkheaded—”

  When Aunt Lavaca starts in like that you might as well travel. She can talk steady for three days and nights without repeating herself, her voice getting louder and shriller all the time till it nigh splits a body’s eardrums. She was still yelling at me as I rode up the trail toward Haunted Mountain Gap, and I could hear her long after I couldn’t see her no more.

  Pore Uncle Jacob! He never had much luck prospecting, but trailing around through the mountains with a jackass is a lot better’n listening to Aunt Lavaca. A jackass’s voice is mild and soothing alongside of hers.

  Some hours later I was climbing the long rise that led up to the Gap, and I realized I had overtook the old coot when something went ping! up on the slope, and my hat flew off. I quick reined Cap’n Kidd behind a clump of bresh, and looked up toward the Gap, and seen a packmule’s rear-end sticking out of a cluster of boulders.

  “You quit that shootin’ at me, Uncle Jacob!” I roared.

  “You stay whar you be,” his voice come back, sharp as a razor. “I know Lavacky sent you after me, but I ain’t goin’ home. I’m onto somethin’ big at last, and I don’t aim to be interfered with.”

  “What you mean?” I demanded.

  “Keep back or I’ll ventilate you,” he promised. “I’m goin’ for the Lost Haunted Mine.”

  “You been huntin’ that thing for thirty years,” I snorted.

  “This time I finds it,” he says. “I bought a map off’n a drunk Mex down to Perdition. One of his ancestors was a Injun which helped pile up the rocks to hide the mouth of the cave where it is.”

  “Why didn’t he go find it and git the gold?” I asked.

  “He’s skeered of ghosts,” said Uncle Jacob. “All Mexes is awful superstitious. This-un ‘ud ruther set and drink, nohow. They’s millions in gold in that-there mine. I’ll shoot you before I’ll go home. Now will you go on back peaceable, or will you throw-in with me? I might need you, in case the pack mule plays out.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I said, impressed. “Maybe you have got somethin’, at that. Put up yore Winchester. I’m comin’.”

  He emerged from his rocks, a skinny leathery old cuss, and he said: “What about Lavacky? If you don’t come back with me, she’ll foller us herself. She’s that strong-minded.”

  “I’ll leave a note for her,” I said. “Joe Hopkins always comes down through the Gap onct a week on his way to Chawed Ear. He’s due through here today. I’ll stick the note on a tree, where he’ll see it and take it to her.”

  I had a pencil-stub in my saddle-bag, and I tore a piece of wrapping paper off’n a can of tomaters Uncle Jacob had in his pack, and I writ:

  Dere Ant Lavaca:

  I am takin uncle Jacob way up in the mountins dont try to foler us it wont do no good gold is what Im after. Breckinridge.

  I folded it and writ on the outside:

  Dere Joe: pleeze take this here note to Miz Lavaca Grimes on the Chawed Ear rode.

  Then me and Uncle Jacob sot out for the higher ranges, and he started telling me all about the Lost Haunted Mine again, like he’d already did about forty times before. Seems like they was onct a old prospector which stumbled onto a cave about fifty years before then, which the walls was solid gold and nuggets all over the floor till a body couldn’t walk, as big as mushmelons. But the Indians jumped him and run him out and he got lost and nearly starved in the desert, and went crazy. When he come to a settlement and finally regained his mind, he tried to lead a party back to it, but never could find it. Uncle Jacob said the Indians had took rocks and bresh and hid the mouth of the cave so nobody could tell it was there. I asked him how he knowed the Indians done that, and he said it was common knowledge. Any fool oughta know that’s just what they done.

  “This-here mine,” says Uncle Jacob, “is located in a hidden valley which lies away up amongst the high ranges. I ain’t never seen it, and I thought I’d explored these mountains plenty. Ain’t nobody more familiar with ’em than me except old Joshua Braxton. But it stands to reason that the cave is awful hard to find, or somebody’d already found it. Accordin’ to this-here map, that lost valley must lie just beyond Apache Canyon. Ain’t many white men knows whar that is, even. We’re headin’ there.”

  We had left the Gap far behind us, and was moving along the slanting side of a sharp-angled crag whilst he was talking. As we passed it, we seen two figgers with horses emerge from the other side, heading in the same direction we was, so our trails converged. Uncle Jacob glared and reached for his Winchester.

  “Who’s that?” he snarled.

  “The big un’s Bill Glanton,” I said. “I never seen t’other’n.”

  “And nobody else, outside of a freak museum,” growled Uncle Jacob.

  This other feller was a funny-looking little maverick, with laced boots and a cork sun-helmet and big spectacles. He sot his horse like he thought it was a rocking chair, and held his reins like he was trying to fish with ‘em. Glanton hailed us. He was from Texas, original, and was rough in his speech and free with his weapons, but me and him had always got along very well.

  “Where you-all goin’?” demanded Uncle Jacob.

  “I am Professor Van Brock, of New York,” said the tenderfoot, whilst Bill was getting rid of his tobaccer wad. “I have employed Mr. Glanton, here, to guide me up into the mountains. I am on the track of a tribe of aborigines, which, according to fairly well substantiated rumor, have inhabited the Haunted Mountains since time immemorial.”

  “Lissen here, you four-eyed runt,” said Uncle Jacob in wrath, “are you givin’ me the horse-laugh?”

  “I assure you that equine levity is the furthest thing from my thoughts,” says Van Brock. “Whilst touring the country in the interests of science, I heard the rumors to which I have referred. In a village possessing the singular appellation of Chawed Ear, I met an aged prospector who told me that he had seen one of the aborigines, clad in the skin of a wild animal and armed with a bludgeon. The wildman, he said, emitted a most peculiar and piercing cry when sighted, and fled into the recesses of the hills. I am confident that it is some survivor of a pre-Indian race, and I am determined to investigate.”

  “They ain’t no such critter in these hills,” snorted Uncle Jacob. “I’ve roamed all over ’em for thirty year, and I ain’t seen no wildman.”

  “Well,” says Glanton, “they’s somethin’ onnatural up there, because I been hearin’ some funny yarns myself. I never thought I’d be huntin’ wildmen,” he says, “but since that hash-slinger in Perdition turned me down to elope with a travelin’ salesman, I welcomes the chance to lose myself in the mountains and forgit the perfidy of women-kind. What you-all doin’ up here? Prospectin’?” he said, glancing at the tools on the mule.

  “Not in earnest,” said Uncle Jacob hurriedly. “We’re just kinda whilin’ away our time. They ain’t no gold in these mountains.”

  “Folks says that Lost Haunted Mine is up here somewhere,” said Glanton.

  “A pack of lies,” snorted Uncle Jacob, busting into a sweat. “Ain’t no such mine. Well, Breckinridge, let’s b
e shovin’. Got to make Antelope Peak before sundown.”

  “I thought we was goin’ to Apache Canyon,” I says, and he give me a awful glare, and said: “Yes, Breckinridge, that’s right, Antelope Peak, just like you said. So long, gents.”

  “So long,” said Glanton.

  So we turned off the trail almost at right-angles to our course, me follering Uncle Jacob bewilderedly. When we was out of sight of the others, he reined around again.

  “When Nature give you the body of a giant, Breckinridge,” he said, “she plumb forgot to give you any brains to go along with yore muscles. You want everybody to know what we’re lookin’ for?”

  “Aw,” I said, “them fellers is just lookin’ for wildmen.”

  “Wildmen!” he snorted. “They don’t have to go no further’n Chawed Ear on payday night to find more wildmen than they could handle. I ain’t swallerin’ no such stuff. Gold is what they’re after, I tell you. I seen Glanton talkin’ to that Mex in Perdition the day I bought that map from him. I believe they either got wind of that mine, or know I got that map, or both.”

  “What you goin’ to do?” I asked him.

  “Head for Apache Canyon by another trail,” he said.

  So we done so and arriv there after night, him not willing to stop till we got there. It was deep, with big high cliffs cut with ravines and gulches here and there, and very wild in appearance. We didn’t descend into the canyon that night, but camped on a plateau above it. Uncle Jacob ‘lowed we’d begin exploring next morning. He said they was lots of caves in the canyon, and he’d been in all of ‘em. He said he hadn’t never found nothing except b’ars and painters and rattlesnakes; but he believed one of them caves went on through into another, hidden canyon, and there was where the gold was at.

  Next morning I was awoke by Uncle Jacob shaking me, and his whiskers was curling with rage.

  “What’s the matter?” I demanded, setting up and pulling my guns.