The room was so full of smoke I was nigh blinded but I made out a figger fumbling at the winder on the other side. A flaming beam fell outa the roof and broke acrost my head with a loud report and about a bucketful of coals rolled down the back of my neck, but I paid no heed.
I charged through the smoke, nearly fracturing my shin on a bedstead or something, and enveloped the figger in the wet blanket and swept it up in my arms. It kicked wildly and fought and though its voice was muffled in the blanket I ketched some words I never would of thought Miss Margaret would use, but I figgered she was hysterical. She seemed to be wearing spurs, too, because I felt ’em every time she kicked.
By this time the room was a perfect blaze and the roof was falling in and we’d both been roasted if I’d tried to get back to the hole I knocked in the oppersite wall. So I lowered my head and butted my way through the near wall, getting all my eyebrows and hair burnt off in the process, and come staggering through the ruins with my precious burden and fell into the arms of my relatives which was thronged outside.
“I’ve saved her!” I panted. “Pull off the blanket! Yo’re safe, Miss Margaret!”
“$ae&ae&ae&ae$ae!” said Miss Margaret, and Uncle Saul groped under the blanket and said: “By golly, if this is the schoolteacher she’s growed a remarkable set of whiskers since I seen her last!”
He yanked off the blanket — to reveal the bewhiskered countenance of Uncle Jeppard Grimes!
“Hell’s fire!” I bellered. “What you doin’ here?”
“I was comin’ to jine the lynchin’, you blame fool!” he snarled. “I seen Bill’s cabin was afire so I clumb in through the back winder to save Miss Margaret. She was gone, but they was a note she’d left. I was fixin’ to climb out the winder when this maneyack grabbed me.”
“Gimme that note!” I bellered, grabbing it. “Medina! Come here and read it for me.”
That note run:
Dear Breckinridge:
am sorry, but I can’t stay on Bear Creek any longer. It was tough enough anyway, but being expected to marry you was the last straw. You’ve been very kind to me, but it would be too much like marrying a grizzly bear. Please forgive me. I am eloping with J. Pembroke Pemberton. We’re going out the back window to avoid any trouble, and ride away on his horse. Give my love to the children. We are going to Europe on our honeymoon.
With love.
— Margaret Ashley.
“Now what you got to say?” sneered Uncle Jeppard.
“I’m a victim of foreign entanglements,” I said dazedly. “I’m goin’ to chaw Bill Glanton’s ears off for saddlin’ that critter on me. And then I’m goin’ to lick me a Englishman if I have to go all the way to Californy to find one.”
Which same is now my aim, object and ambition. This Englishman took my girl and ruined my education, and filled my neck and spine with burns and bruises. A Elkins never forgets — and the next one that pokes his nose into the Bear Creek country had better be a fighting fool or a powerful fast runner.
* * *
THE FEUD BUSTER
First published in Action Stories, June 1935
THESE here derned lies which is being circulated around is making me sick and tired. If this slander don’t stop I’m liable to lose my temper, and anybody in the Humbolts can tell you when I loses my temper the effect on the population is wuss’n fire, earthquake, and cyclone.
First-off, it’s a lie that I rode a hundred miles to mix into a feud which wasn’t none of my business. I never heard of the Hopkins-Barlow war before I come in the Mezquital country. I hear tell the Barlows is talking about suing me for destroying their property. Well, they ought to build their cabins solider if they don’t want ’em tore down. And they’re all liars when they says the Hopkinses hired me to exterminate ’em at five dollars a sculp. I don’t believe even a Hopkins would pay five dollars for one of their mangy sculps. Anyway, I don’t fight for hire for nobody. And the Hopkinses needn’t bellyache about me turning on ’em and trying to massacre the entire clan. All I wanted to do was kind of disable ’em so they couldn’t interfere with my business. And my business, from first to last, was defending the family honor. If I had to wipe up the earth with a couple of feuding clans whilst so doing, I can’t help it. Folks which is particular of their hides ought to stay out of the way of tornadoes, wild bulls, devastating torrents, and a insulted Elkins.
But it was Uncle Jeppard Grimes’ fault to begin with, like it generally is. Dern near all the calamities which takes places in southern Nevada can be traced back to that old lobo. He’s got a ingrown disposition and a natural talent for pestering his feller man. Specially his relatives.
I was setting in a saloon in War Paint, enjoying a friendly game of kyards with a horse-thief and three train-robbers, when Uncle Jeppard come in and spied me, and he come over and scowled down on me like I was the missing lynx or something. Purty soon he says, just as I was all sot to make a killing, he says: “How can you set there so free and keerless, with four ace-kyards into yore hand, when yore family name is bein’ besmirched?”
I flang down my hand in annoyance, and said: “Now look what you done! What you mean blattin’ out information of sech a private nature? What you talkin’ about, anyhow?”
“Well,” he says, “durin’ the three months you been away from home roisterin’ and wastin’ yore substance in riotous livin’—”
“I been down on Wild River punchin’ cows at thirty a month!” I said fiercely. “I ain’t squandered nothin’ nowheres. Shut up and tell me whatever yo’re a-talkin’ about.”
“Well,” says he, “whilst you been gone young Dick Jackson of Chawed Ear has been courtin’ yore sister Ellen, and the family’s been expectin’ ’em to set the day, any time. But now I hear he’s been braggin’ all over Chawed Ear about how he done jilted her. Air you goin’ to set there and let yore sister become the laughin’ stock of the country? When I was a young man—”
“When you was a young man Dan’l Boone warn’t whelped yet!” I bellered, so mad I included him and everybody else in my irritation. They ain’t nothing upsets me like injustice done to some of my close kin. “Git out of my way! I’m headin’ for Chawed Ear — what yougrinnin’ at, you spotted hyener?” This last was addressed to the horse-thief in which I seemed to detect signs of amusement.
“I warn’t grinnin’,” he said.
“So I’m a liar, I reckon!” I said. I felt a impulse to shatter a demi- john over his head, which I done, and he fell under a table hollering bloody murder, and all the fellers drinking at the bar abandoned their licker and stampeded for the street hollering: “Take cover, boys! Breckinridge Elkins is on the rampage!”
So I kicked all the slats out of the bar to relieve my feelings, and stormed out of the saloon and forked Cap’n Kidd. Even he seen it was no time to take liberties with me — he didn’t pitch but seven jumps — then he settled down to a dead run, and we headed for Chawed Ear.
Everything kind of floated in a red haze all the way, but them folks which claims I tried to murder ’em in cold blood on the road between War Paint and Chawed Ear is just narrer-minded and super-sensitive. The reason I shot everybody’s hats off that I met was just to kind of ca’m my nerves, because I was afraid if I didn’t cool off some by the time I hit Chawed Ear I might hurt somebody. I am that mild-mannered and retiring by nature that I wouldn’t willing hurt man, beast, nor Injun unless maddened beyond endurance.
That’s why I acted with so much self-possession and dignity when I got to Chawed Ear and entered the saloon where Dick Jackson generally hung out.
“Where’s Dick Jackson?” I said, and everybody must of been nervous, because when I boomed out they all jumped and looked around, and the bartender dropped a glass and turned pale.
“Well,” I hollered, beginning to lose patience. “Where is the coyote?”
“G — gimme time, will ya?” stuttered the bar-keep. “I — uh — he — uh—”
“So you evades the question, hey?” I sai
d, kicking the foot-rail loose. “Friend of his’n, hey? Tryin’ to pertect him, hey?” I was so overcome by this perfidy that I lunged for him and he ducked down behind the bar and I crashed into it bodily with all my lunge and weight, and it collapsed on top of him, and all the customers run out of the saloon hollering, “Help, murder, Elkins is killin’ the bartender!”
This feller stuck his head up from amongst the ruins of the bar and begged: “For God’s sake, lemme alone! Jackson headed south for the Mezquital Mountains yesterday.”
I throwed down the chair I was fixing to bust all the ceiling lamps with, and run out and jumped on Cap’n Kidd and headed south, whilst behind me folks emerged from their cyclone cellars and sent a rider up in the hills to tell the sheriff and his deputies they could come on back now.
I knowed where the Mezquitals was, though I hadn’t never been there. I crossed the Californy line about sundown, and shortly after dark I seen Mezquital Peak looming ahead of me. Having ca’med down somewhat, I decided to stop and rest Cap’n Kidd. He warn’t tired, because that horse has got alligator blood in his veins, but I knowed I might have to trail Jackson clean to The Angels, and they warn’t no use in running Cap’n Kidd’s laigs off on the first lap of the chase.
It warn’t a very thickly settled country I’d come into, very mountainous and thick timbered, but purty soon I come to a cabin beside the trail and I pulled up and hollered, “Hello!”
The candle inside was instantly blowed out, and somebody pushed a rifle barrel through the winder and bawled: “Who be you?”
“I’m Breckinridge Elkins from Bear Creek, Nevada,” I said. “I’d like to stay all night, and git some feed for my horse.”
“Stand still,” warned the voice. “We can see you agin the stars, and they’s four rifle-guns a-kiverin’ you.”
“Well, make up yore minds,” I said, because I could hear ’em discussing me. I reckon they thought they was whispering. One of ’em said: “Aw, he can’t be a Barlow. Ain’t none of ’em that big.” T’other’n said: “Well, maybe he’s a derned gun-fighter they’ve sent for to help ’em out. Old Jake’s nephew’s been up in Nevady.”
“Le’s let him in,” said a third. “We can mighty quick tell what he is.”
So one of ’em come out and ‘lowed it would be all right for me to stay the night, and he showed me a corral to put Cap’n Kidd in, and hauled out some hay for him.
“We got to be keerful,” he said. “We got lots of enemies in these hills.”
We went into the cabin, and they lit the candle again, and sot some corn pone and sow-belly and beans on the table and a jug of corn licker. They was four men, and they said their names was Hopkins — Jim, Bill, Joe, and Joshua, and they was brothers. I’d always heard tell the Mezquital country was famed for big men, but these fellers wasn’t so big — not much over six foot high apiece. On Bear Creek they’d been considered kind of puny and undersized.
They warn’t very talkative. Mostly they sot with their rifles acrost their knees and looked at me without no expression onto their faces, but that didn’t stop me from eating a hearty supper, and would of et a lot more only the grub give out; and I hoped they had more licker somewheres else because I was purty dry. When I turned up the jug to take a snort of it was brim-full, but before I’d more’n dampened my gullet the dern thing was plumb empty.
When I got through I went over and sot down on a raw-hide bottomed chair in front of the fire-place where they was a small fire going, though they warn’t really no need for it, and they said: “What’s yore business, stranger?”
“Well,” I said, not knowing I was going to get the surprize of my life, “I’m lookin’ for a feller named Dick Jackson—”
By golly, the words wasn’t clean out of my mouth when they was four men onto my neck like catamounts!
“He’s a spy!” they hollered. “He’s a cussed Barlow! Shoot him! Stab him! Hit him in the head!”
All of which they was endeavoring to do with such passion they was getting in each other’s way, and it was only his over-eagerness which caused Jim to miss me with his bowie and sink it into the table instead, but Joshua busted a chair over my head and Bill would of shot me if I hadn’t jerked back my head so he just singed my eyebrows. This lack of hospitality so irritated me that I riz up amongst ’em like a b’ar with a pack of wolves hanging onto him, and commenced committing mayhem on my hosts, because I seen right off they was critters which couldn’t be persuaded to respect a guest no other way.
Well, the dust of battle hadn’t settled, the casualities was groaning all over the place, and I was just re-lighting the candle when I heard a horse galloping down the trail from the south. I wheeled and drawed my guns as it stopped before the cabin. But I didn’t shoot, because the next instant they was a bare-footed gal standing in the door. When she seen the rooins she let out a screech like a catamount.
“You’ve kilt ‘em!” she screamed. “You murderer!”
“Aw, I ain’t neither,” I said. “They ain’t hurt much — just a few cracked ribs, and dislocated shoulders and busted laigs and sech-like trifles. Joshua’s ear’ll grow back on all right, if you take a few stitches into it.”
“You cussed Barlow!” she squalled, jumping up and down with the hystericals. “I’ll kill you! You damned Barlow!”
“I ain’t no Barlow,” I said. “I’m Breckinridge Elkins, of Bear Creek. I ain’t never even heard of no Barlows.”
At that Jim stopped his groaning long enough to snarl: “If you ain’t a friend of the Barlows, how come you askin’ for Dick Jackson? He’s one of ‘em.”
“He jilted my sister!” I roared. “I aim to drag him back and make him marry her!”
“Well, it was all a mistake,” groaned Jim. “But the damage is done now.”
“It’s wuss’n you think,” said the gal fiercely. “The Hopkinses has all forted theirselves over at pap’s cabin, and they sent me to git you all. We got to make a stand. The Barlows is gatherin’ over to Jake Barlow’s cabin, and they aims to make a foray onto us tonight. We was outnumbered to begin with, and now here’s our best fightin’ men laid out! Our goose is cooked plumb to hell!”
“Lift me on my horse,” moaned Jim. “I can’t walk, but I can still shoot.” He tried to rise up, and fell back cussing and groaning.
“You got to help us!” said the gal desperately, turning to me. “You done laid out our four best fightin’ men, and you owes it to us. It’s yore duty! Anyway, you says Dick Jackson’s yore enemy — well, he’s Jake Barlow’s nephew, and he come back here to help ’em clean out us Hopkinses. He’s over to Jake’s cabin right now. My brother Bill snuck over and spied on ‘em, and he says every fightin’ man of the clan is gatherin’ there. All we can do is hold the fort, and you got to come help us hold it! Yo’re nigh as big as all four of these boys put together.”
Well, I figgered I owed the Hopkinses something, so, after setting some bones and bandaging some wounds and abrasions of which they was a goodly lot, I saddled Cap’n Kidd and we sot out.
As we rode along she said: “That there is the biggest, wildest, meanest- lookin’ critter I ever seen. Where’d you git him?”
“He was a wild horse,” I said. “I catched him up in the Humbolts. Nobody ever rode him but me. He’s the only horse west of the Pecos big enough to carry my weight, and he’s got painter’s blood and a shark’s disposition. What’s this here feud about?”
“I dunno,” she said. “It’s been goin’ on so long everybody’s done forgot what started it. Somebody accused somebody else of stealin’ a cow, I think. What’s the difference?”
“They ain’t none,” I assured her. “If folks wants to have feuds its their own business.”
We was following a winding path, and purty soon we heard dogs barking and about that time the gal turned aside and got off her horse, and showed me a pen hid in the brush. It was full of horses.
“We keep our mounts here so’s the Barlows ain’t so likely to find ’em and run ’em off
,” she said, and she turned her horse into the pen, and I put Cap’n Kidd in, but tied him over in one corner by hisself — otherwise he would of started fighting all the other horses and kicked the fence down.
Then we went on along the path and the dogs barked louder and purty soon we come to a big two-story cabin which had heavy board-shutters over the winders. They was just a dim streak of candle light come through the cracks. It was dark, because the moon hadn’t come up. We stopped in the shadder of the trees, and the gal whistled like a whippoorwill three times, and somebody answered from up on the roof. A door opened a crack in the room which didn’t have no light at all, and somebody said: “That you, Elizerbeth? Air the boys with you?”
“It’s me,” says she, starting toward the door. “But the boys ain’t with me.”
Then all to once he throwed open the door and hollered: “Run, gal! They’s a grizzly b’ar standin’ up on his hind laigs right behind you!”
“Aw, that ain’t no b’ar,” says she. “That there’s Breckinridge Elkins, from up in Nevady. He’s goin’ to help us fight the Barlows.”
WE WENT ON INTO A ROOM where they was a candle on the table, and they was nine or ten men there and thirty-odd women and chillern. They all looked kinda pale and scairt, and the men was loaded down with pistols and Winchesters.
They all looked at me kind of dumb-like, and the old man kept staring like he warn’t any too sure he hadn’t let a grizzly in the house, after all. He mumbled something about making a natural mistake, in the dark, and turned to the gal.
“Whar’s the boys I sent you after?” he demanded, and she says: “This gent mussed ’em up so’s they ain’t fitten for to fight. Now, don’t git rambunctious, pap. It war just a honest mistake all around. He’s our friend, and he’s gunnin’ for Dick Jackson.”
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 218