“They’re here!” he squalled. “Daw-gone it, I suspected ’em all the time! Git up, you big lunk. Don’t set there gawpin’ with a gun in each hand like a idjit! They’re here, I tell you!”
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“That dern tenderfoot and his cussed Texas gunfighter,” snarled Uncle Jacob. “I was up just at daylight, and purty soon I seen a wisp of smoke curlin’ up from behind a big rock t’other side of the flat. I snuck over there, and there was Glanton fryin’ bacon, and Van Brock was pertendin’ to be lookin’ at some flowers with a magnifyin’ glass — the blame fake. He ain’t no perfessor. I bet he’s a derned crook. They’re follerin’ us. They aim to murder us and rob us of my map.”
“Aw, Glanton wouldn’t do that,” I said. And Uncle Jacob said: “You shet up! A man will do anything whar gold is consarned. Dang it all, git up and do somethin’! Air you goin’ to set there, you big lummox, and let us git murdered in our sleep?”
That’s the trouble of being the biggest man in yore clan; the rest of the family always dumps all the onpleasant jobs onto yore shoulders. I pulled on my boots and headed across the flat, with Uncle Jacob’s war-songs ringing in my ears, and I didn’t notice whether he was bringing up the rear with his Winchester or not.
They was a scattering of trees on the flat, and about halfway across a figger emerged from amongst them, headed my direction with fire in his eye. It was Glanton.
“So, you big mountain grizzly,” he greeted me rambunctiously, “you was goin’ to Antelope Peak, hey? Kinda got off the road, didn’t you? Oh, we’re on to you, we are!”
“What you mean?” I demanded. He was acting like he was the one which oughta feel righteously indignant, instead of me.
“You know what I mean!” he says, frothing slightly at the mouth. “I didn’t believe it when Van Brock first said he suspicioned you, even though you hombres did act funny yesterday when we met you on the trail. But this mornin’ when I glimpsed yore fool Uncle Jacob spyin’ on our camp, and then seen him sneakin’ off through the bresh, I knowed Van Brock was right. Yo’re after what we’re after, and you-all resorts to dirty onderhanded tactics. Does you deny yo’re after the same thing we are?”
“Naw, I don’t,” I said. “Uncle Jacob’s got more right to it than you-all. And when you says we uses underhanded tricks, yo’re a liar.”
“That settles it!” gnashed he. “Go for yore gun!”
“I don’t want to perforate you,” I growled.
“I ain’t hankerin’ to conclude yore mortal career,” he admitted. “But Haunted Mountain ain’t big enough for both of us. Take off yore guns and I’ll maul the livin’ daylights outa you, big as you be.”
I unbuckled my gun-belt and hung it on a limb, and he laid off his’n, and hit me in the stummick and on the ear and in the nose, and then he socked me in the jaw and knocked out a tooth. This made me mad, so I taken him by the neck and throwed him against the ground so hard it jolted all the wind outa him. I then sot on him and started banging his head against a convenient boulder, and his cussing was terrible to hear.
“If you all had acted like white men,” I gritted, “we’d of giveyou a share in that there mine.”
“What you talkin’ about?” he gurgled, trying to haul his bowie out of his boot which I had my knee on.
“The Lost Haunted Mine, of course,” I snarled, getting a fresh grip on his ears.
“Hold on,” he protested. “You mean you-all are just lookin’ for gold? On the level?”
I was so astonished I quit hammering his skull against the rock.
“Why, what else?” I demanded. “Ain’t you-all follerin’ us to steal Uncle Jacob’s map which shows where at the mine is hid?”
“Git offa me,” he snorted disgustfully, taking advantage of my surprize to push me off. “Hell!” he said, starting to knock the dust offa his britches. “I might of knowed that tenderfoot was wool-gatherin’. After we seen you-all yesterday, and he heard you mention ‘Apache Canyon’ he told me he believed you was follerin’ us. He said that yarn about prospectin’ was just a blind. He said he believed you was workin’ for a rival scientific society to git ahead of us and capture that-there wildman yoreselves.”
“What?” I said. “You mean that wildman yarn is straight?”
“So far as we’re consarned,” said Bill. “Prospectors is been tellin’ some onusual stories about Apache Canyon. Well, I laughed at him at first, but he kept on usin’ so many .45-caliber words that he got me to believin’ it might be so. ‘Cause, after all, here was me guidin’ a tenderfoot on the trail of a wildman, and they wasn’t no reason to think you and Jacob Grimes was any more sensible than me.
“Then, this mornin’ when I seen Joab peekin’ at me from the bresh, I decided Van Brock must be right. You-all hadn’t never went to Antelope Peak. The more I thought it over, the more sartain I was that you was follerin’ us to steal our wildman, so I started over to have a showdown.”
“Well,” I said, “we’ve reached a understandin’ at last. You don’t want our mine, and we shore don’t want yore wildman. They’s plenty of them amongst my relatives on Bear Creek. Le’s git Van Brock and lug him over to our camp and explain things to him and my weak-minded uncle.”
“All right,” said Glanton, buckling on his guns. “Hey, what’s that?”
From down in the canyon come a yell: “Help! Aid! Assistance!”
“It’s Van Brock!” yelped Glanton. “He’s wandered down into the canyon by hisself! Come on!”
Right near their camp they was a ravine leading down to the floor of the canyon. We pelted down that at full speed, and emerged near the wall of the cliffs. They was the black mouth of a cave showing nearby, in a kind of cleft, and just outside this cleft Van Brock was staggering around, yowling like a hound dawg with his tail caught in the door.
His cork helmet was laying on the ground all bashed outa shape, and his specs was lying near it. He had a knob on his head as big as a turnip and he was doing a kind of ghost-dance or something all over the place.
He couldn’t see very good without his specs, ‘cause when he sighted us he give a shriek and starting legging it for the other end of the canyon, seeming to think we was more enemies. Not wanting to indulge in no sprint in that heat, Bill shot a heel offa his boot, and that brung him down squalling blue murder.
“Help!” he shrieked. “Mr. Glanton! Help! I am being attacked! Help!”
“Aw, shet up,” snorted Bill. “I’m Glanton. Yo’re all right. Give him his specs, Breck. Now what’s the matter?”
He put ’em on, gasping for breath, and staggered up, wild-eyed, and p’inted at the cave and hollered: “The wildman! I saw him, as I descended into the canyon on a private exploring expedition! A giant with a panther-skin about his waist, and a club in his hand. He dealt me a murderous blow with the bludgeon when I sought to apprehend him, and fled into that cavern. He should be arrested!”
I looked into the cave. It was too dark to see anything except for a hoot- owl.
“He must of saw somethin’, Breck,” said Glanton, hitching his gun- harness. “Somethin’ shore cracked him on the conk. I’ve been hearin’ some queer tales about this canyon, myself. Maybe I better sling some lead in there—”
“No, no, no!” broke in Van Brock. “We must capture him alive!”
“What’s goin’ on here?” said a voice, and we turned to see Uncle Jacob approaching with his Winchester in his hands.
“Everything’s all right, Uncle Jacob,” I said. “They don’t want yore mine. They’re after the wildman, like they said, and we got him cornered in that there cave.”
“All right, huh?” he snorted. “I reckon you thinks it’s all right for you to waste yore time with such dern foolishness when you oughta be helpin’ me look for my mine. A big help you be!”
“Where was you whilst I was argyin’ with Bill here?” I demanded.
“I knowed you could handle the sityation, so I started explorin’ the canyon,” he sa
id. “Come on, we got work to do.”
“But the wildman!” cried Van Brock. “Your nephew would be invaluable in securing the specimen. Think of science! Think of progress! Think of—”
“Think of a striped skunk!” snorted Uncle Jacob. “Breckinridge, air you comin’?”
“Aw, shet up,” I said disgustedly. “You both make me tired. I’m goin’ in there and run that wildman out, and Bill, you shoot him in the hind-laig as he comes out, so’s we can catch him and tie him up.”
“But you left yore guns hangin’ onto that limb up on the plateau,” objected Glanton.
“I don’t need ‘em,” I said. “Didn’t you hear Van Brock say we was to catch him alive? If I started shootin’ in the dark I might rooin him.”
“All right,” says Bill, cocking his six-shooters. “Go ahead. I figger yo’re a match for any wildman that ever come down the pike.”
So I went into the cleft and entered the cave, and it was dark as all get- out. I groped my way along and discovered the main tunnel split into two, so I taken the biggest one. It seemed to get darker the further I went, and purty soon I bumped into something big and hairy and it went “Wump!” and grabbed me.
Thinks I, it’s the wildman, and he’s on the war-path. We waded into each other and tumbled around on the rocky floor in the dark, biting and mauling and tearing. I’m the biggest and the fightingest man on Bear Creek, which is famed far and wide for its ring-tailed scrappers, but this wildman shore give me my hands full. He was the biggest hairiest critter I ever laid hands on, and be had more teeth and talons than I thought a human could possibly have. He chawed me with vigor and enthusiasm, and he waltzed up and down my frame free and hearty, and swept the floor with me till I was groggy.
For a while I thought I was going to give up the ghost, and I thought with despair of how humiliated my relatives on Bear Creek would be to hear their champion battler had been clawed to death by a wildman in a cave.
That made me plumb ashamed for weakening, and the socks I give him ought to of laid out any man, wild or tame, to say nothing of the pile-driver kicks in his belly, and butting him with my head so he gasped. I got what felt like a ear in my mouth and commenced chawing on it, and presently, what with this and other mayhem I committed on him, he give a most inhuman squall and bust away and went lickety-split for the outside world.
I riz up and staggered after him, hearing a wild chorus of yells break forth outside, but no shots. I bust out into the open, bloody all over, and my clothes hanging in tatters.
“Where is he?” I hollered. “Did you let him git away?”
“Who?” said Glanton, coming out from behind a boulder, whilst Van Brock and Uncle Jacob dropped down out of a tree nearby.
“The wildman, damn it!” I roared.
“We ain’t seen no wildman,” said Glanton.
“Well, what was that thing I just run outa the cave?” I hollered.
“That was a grizzly b’ar,” said Glanton. “Yeah,” sneered Uncle Jacob, “and that was Van Brock’s ‘wildman’! And now, Breckinridge, if yo’re through playin’, we’ll—”
“No, no!” hollered Van Brock, jumping up and down. “It was a human being which smote me and fled into the cavern. Not a bear! It is still in there somewhere, unless there is another exit to the cavern.”
“Well, he ain’t in there now,” said Uncle Jacob, peering into the mouth of the cave. “Not even a wildman would run into a grizzly’s cave, or if he did, he wouldn’t stay long — ooomp!”
A rock come whizzing out of the cave and hit Uncle Jacob in the belly, and he doubled up on the ground.
“Aha!” I roared, knocking up Glanton’s ready six-shooter. “I know! They’s two tunnels in here. He’s in that smaller cave. I went into the wrong one! Stay here, you-all, and gimme room! This time I gets him!”
With that I rushed into the cave mouth again, disregarding some more rocks which emerged, and plunged into the smaller opening. It was dark as pitch, but I seemed to be running along a narrer tunnel, and ahead of me I heered bare feet pattering on the rock. I follered ’em at full lope, and presently seen a faint hint of light. The next minute I rounded a turn and come out into a wide place, which was lit by a shaft of light coming in through a cleft in the wall, some yards up. In the light I seen a fantastic figger climbing up on a ledge, trying to reach that cleft.
“Come down offa that!” I thundered, and give a leap and grabbed the ledge by one hand and hung on, and reached for his legs with t’other hand. He give a squall as I grabbed his ankle and splintered his club over my head. The force of the lick broke off the lip of the rock ledge I was holding to, and we crashed to the floor together, because I didn’t let loose of him. Fortunately, I hit the rock floor headfirst which broke my fall and kept me from fracturing any of my important limbs, and his head hit my jaw, which rendered him unconscious.
I riz up and picked up my limp captive and carried him out into the daylight where the others was waiting. I dumped him on the ground and they stared at him like they couldn’t believe it. He was a ga’nt old cuss with whiskers about a foot long and matted hair, and he had a mountain lion’s hide tied around his waist.
“A white man!” enthused Van Brock, dancing up and down. “An unmistakable Caucasian! This is stupendous! A prehistoric survivor of a pre-Indian epoch! What an aid to anthropology! A wildman! A veritable wildman!”
“Wildman, hell!” snorted Uncle Jacob. “That-there’s old Joshua Braxton, which was tryin’ to marry that old maid schoolteacher down at Chawed Ear all last winter.”
“I was tryin’ to marry her!” said Joshua bitterly, setting up suddenly and glaring at all of us. “That-there is good, that-there is! And me all the time fightin’ for my life against it. Her and all her relations was tryin’ to marry her to me. They made my life a curse. They was finally all set to kidnap me and marry me by force. That’s why I come away off up here, and put on this rig to scare folks away. All I craves is peace and quiet and no dern women.”
Van Brock begun to cry because they wasn’t no wildman, and Uncle Jacob said: “Well, now that this dern foolishness is settled, maybe I can git to somethin’ important. Joshua, you know these mountains even better’n I do. I want you to help me find the Lost Haunted Mine.”
“There ain’t no such mine,” said Joshua. “That old prospector imagined all that stuff whilst he was wanderin’ around over the desert crazy.”
“But I got a map I bought from a Mexican in Perdition,” hollered Uncle Jacob.
“Lemme see that map,” said Glanton. “Why, hell,” he said, “that-there is a fake. I seen that Mexican drawin’ it, and he said he was goin’ to try to sell it to some old jassack for the price of a drunk.”
Uncle Jacob sot down on a rock and pulled his whiskers. “My dreams is bust,” he said weakly. “I’m goin’ home to my wife.”
“You must be desperate if it’s come to that,” said old Joshua acidly. “You better stay up here. If they ain’t no gold, they ain’t no women to torment a body, either.”
“Women is a snare and a delusion,” agreed Glanton. “Van Brock can go back with these fellers. I’m stayin’ with Joshua.”
“You-all oughta be ashamed talkin’ about women that way,” I reproached ‘em. “What, in this here lousy and troubled world can compare to women’s gentle sweetness—”
“There the scoundred is!” screeched a familiar voice. “Don’t let him git away! Shoot him if he tries to run!”
WE TURNED SUDDEN. We’d been argying so loud amongst ourselves we hadn’t noticed a gang of folks coming down the ravine. There was Aunt Lavaca and the sheriff of Chawed Ear with ten men, and they all p’inted sawed-off shotguns at me.
“Don’t get rough, Elkins,” warned the sheriff nervously. “They’re all loaded with buckshot and ten-penny nails. I knows yore repertation and I takes no chances. I arrests you for the kidnapin’ of Jacob Grimes.”
“Are you plumb crazy?” I demanded.
“Kidnapin’!” hollere
d Aunt Lavaca, waving a piece of paper. “Abductin’ yore pore old uncle! Aimin’ to hold him for ransom! It’s all writ down in yore own handwritin’ right here on this-here paper! Sayin’ yo’re takin’ Jacob away off into the mountains — warnin’ me not to try to foller! Same as threatenin’ me! I never heered of such doin’s! Soon as that good-for-nothin’ Joe Hopkins brung me that there insolent letter, I went right after the sheriff... Joshua Braxton, what air you doin’ in them ondecent togs? My land, I dunno what we’re comin’ to! Well, sheriff, what you standin’ there for like a ninny? Why’n’t you put some handcuffs and chains and shackles on him? Air you skeered of the big lunkhead?”
“Aw, heck,” I said. “This is all a mistake. I warn’t threatenin’ nobody in that there letter—”
“Then where’s Jacob?” she demanded. “Prejuice him imejitately, or—”
“He ducked into that cave,” said Glanton.
I stuck my head in and roared: “Uncle Jacob! You come outa there and explain before I come in after you!”
He snuck out looking meek and down-trodden, and I says: “You tell these idjits that I ain’t no kidnaper.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I brung him along with me.”
“Hell!” said the sheriff, disgustedly. “Have we come all this way on a wild goose chase? I should of knew better’n to listen to a woman—”
“You shet yore fool mouth!” squalled Aunt Lavaca. “A fine sheriff you be. Anyway — what was Breckinridge doin’ up here with you, Jacob?”
“He was helpin’ me look for a mine, Lavacky,” he said.
“Helpin’ you?” she screeched. “Why, I sent him to fetch you back! Breckinridge Elkins, I’ll tell yore pap about this, you big, lazy, good-for- nothin’, low-down, ornery—”
“Aw, shet up!” I roared, exasperated beyond endurance. I seldom lets my voice go its full blast. Echoes rolled through the canyon like thunder, the trees shook and the pine cones fell like hail, and rocks tumbled down the mountainsides. Aunt Lavaca staggered backwards with a outraged squall.
“Jacob!” she hollered. “Air you goin’ to ‘low that ruffian to use that- there tone of voice to me? I demands that you flail the livin’ daylights outa the scoundrel right now!”
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 215