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

by Robert E. Howard

  I doubt if they is another hoss west of the Pecos which would bolt out onto a log foot-bridge acrost a canyon a hundred fifty foot deep like that, but they ain’t nothing in this world Cap’n Kidd’s scairt of except maybe me. He didn’t slacken his speed none. He streaked acrost that log like it was a quarter-track, with the bark and splinters flying from under his hoofs, and if one foot had slipped a inch, it would of been Sally bar the door. But he didn’t slip, and we was over and on the other side almost before you could catch yore breath.

  “You can open yore eyes now, Brother Rembrandt,” I said kindly, but he didn’t say nothing. He’d fainted. I shook him to wake him up, and in a flash he come to and give a shriek and grabbed my laig like a b’ar trap. I reckon he thought we was still on the log. I was trying to pry him loose when Cap’n Kidd chose that moment to run under a low-hanging oak tree limb. That’s his idee of a joke. That there hoss has got a great sense of humor.

  I looked up just in time to see the limb coming, but not in time to dodge it. It was as big around as my thigh, and it took me smack acrost the wish- bone. We was going full speed, and something had to give way. It was the girths — both of ‘em. Cap’n Kidd went out from under me, and me and Brother Rembrandt and the saddle hit the ground together.

  I jumped up but Brother Rembrandt laid there going: “Wug wug wug!” like water running out of a busted jug. And then I seen them outlaws had dismounted off of their hosses and was corning acrost the bridge single file, with their Winchesters in their hands.

  I didn’t waste no time shooting them misguided idjits. I run to the end of the foot-bridge, ignoring the slugs they slung at me. It was purty pore shooting, because they warn’t shore of their footing, and didn’t aim good. So I only got one bullet in the hind laig and was creased three or four other unimportant places — not enough to bother about.

  I bent my knees and got hold of the end of the tree and heaved up with it, and them outlaws hollered and fell along it like ten pins, and dropped their Winchesters and grabbed holt of the log. I given it a shake and shook some of ’em off like persimmons off a limb after a frost, and then I swung the butt around clear of the rim and let go, and it went down end over end into the river a hundred and fifty feet below, with a dozen men still hanging onto it and yelling blue murder.

  A regular geyser of water splashed up when they hit, and the last I seen of ’em they was all swirling down the river together in a thrashing tangle of arms and laigs and heads.

  I remember Brother Rembrandt and run back to where he’d fell, but was already onto his feet. He was kind of pale and wild-eyed and his laigs kept bending under him, but he had hold of the saddle-bags and was trying to drag ’em into a thicket, mumbling kind of dizzily to hisself.

  “It’s all right now, Brother Rembrandt,” I said kindly. “Them outlaws is plumb horse-de-combat now, as the French say. Blink’s gold is safe.”

  “ — !” says Brother Rembrandt, pulling two guns from under his coat tails, and if I hadn’t grabbed him, he would of undoubtedly shot me. We rassled around and I protested: “Hold on, Brother Rembrandt! I ain’t no outlaw. I’m yore friend, Breckinridge Elkins. Don’t you remember?”

  His only reply was a promise to eat my heart without no seasoning, and he then sunk his teeth into my ear and started to chaw it off, whilst gouging for my eyes with both thumbs and spurring me severely in the hind laigs. I seen he was out of his head from fright and the fall he got, so I said sorrerfully: “Brother Rembrandt, I hate to do this. It hurts me more’n it does you, but we cain’t waste time like this. Blink is waitin’ to git married.” And with a sigh I busted him over the head with the butt of my six-shooter, and he fell over and twitched a few times and then lay limp.

  “Pore Brother Rembrandt,” I sighed sadly. “All I hope is I ain’t addled yore brains so you’ve forgot the weddin’ ceremony.”

  So as not to have no more trouble with him when, and if, he come to, I tied his arms and laigs with pieces of my lariat, and taken his weppins which was most surprizing arms for a circuit rider. His pistols had the triggers out of ‘em, and they was three notches on the butt of one, and four on the other’n. Moreover he had a bowie knife in his boot, and a deck of marked kyards and a pair of loaded dice in his hip-pocket. But that warn’t none of my business.

  About the time I finished tying him up, Cap’n Kidd come back to see if he’d killed me or just crippled me for life. To show him I can take a joke too, I give him a kick in the belly, and when he could git his breath again, and undouble hisself, I throwed the saddle on him. I spliced the girths with the rest of my lariat, and put Brother Rembrandt in the saddle and clumb on behind and we headed for Teton Gulch.

  After a hour or so Brother Rembrandt come to and says kind of dizzily: “Was anybody saved from the typhoon?”

  “Yo’re all right, Brother Rembrandt,” I assured him. “I’m takin’ you to Teton Gulch.”

  “I remember,” he muttered. “It all comes back to me. Damn Jake Roman! I thought it was a good idea, but it seems I was mistaken. I thought we had an ordinary human being to deal with. I know when I’m licked. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to let me go.”

  “Take it easy, Brother Rembrandt,” I soothed, seeing he was still delirious. “We’ll be to Teton in no time.”

  “I don’t want to go to Teton!” he hollered.

  “You got to,” I said. “You got to unite yore niece and Blink Wiltshaw in the holy bums of parsimony.”

  “To hell with Blink Wiltshaw and my — niece!” he yelled.

  “You ought to be ashamed usin’ sech langwidge, and you a minister of the gospel,” I reproved him sternly. His reply would of curled a Piute’s hair.

  I was so scandalized I made no reply. I was just fixing to untie him, so’s he could ride more comfortable, but I thought if he was that crazy, I better not. So I give no heed to his ravings which growed more and more unbearable. In all my born days I never seen such a preacher.

  It was shore a relief to me to sight Teton at last. It was night when we rode down the ravine into the Gulch, and the dance halls and saloons was going full blast. I rode up behind the Yaller Dawg Saloon and hauled Brother Rembrandt off with me and sot him on his feet, and he said, kind of despairingly: “For the last time, listen to reason. I got fifty thousand dollars cached up in the hills. I’ll give you every cent if you’ll untie me.”

  “I don’t want no money,” I said. “All I want is for you to marry yore niece and Blink Wiltshaw. I’ll untie you then.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right! But untie me now!”

  I was just fixing to do it, when the bar-keep come out with a lantern and he shone it on our faces and said in a startled tone: “Who the hell is that with you, Elkins?”

  “You wouldn’t never suspect it from his langwidge,” I says, “but it’s the Reverant Rembrandt Brockton.”

  “Are you crazy?” says the bar-keep. “That’s Rattlesnake Harrison!”

  “I give up,” said my prisoner. “I’m Harrison. I’m licked. Lock me up somewhere away from this lunatic.”

  I was standing in a kind of daze, with my mouth open, but now I woke up and bellered: “What? Yo’re Harrison? I see it all now! Jake Roman overheard me talkin’ to Blink Wiltshaw, and rode off and fixed it with you to fool me like you done, so’s to git Blink’s gold! That’s why you wanted to hold my Winchester whilst I saddled yore cayuse.”

  “How’d you ever guess it?” he sneered. “We ought to have shot you from ambush like I wanted to, but Jake wanted to catch you alive and torture you to death account of your horse bitin’ him. The fool must have lost his head at the last minute and decided to shoot you after all. If you hadn’t recognized him we’d had you surrounded and stuck up before you knew what was happening.”

  “But now the real preacher’s gone on to Wahpeton!” I hollered. “I got to foller him and bring him back—”

  “Why, he’s here,” said one of the men which was gathering around us. “He come in with his ni
ece a hour ago on the stage from War Paint.”

  “War Paint?” I howled, hit in the belly by a premonition. I run into the saloon, where they was a lot of people, and there was Blink and a gal holding hands in front of a old man with a long white beard, and he had a book in his hand, and t’other’in lifted in the air. He was saying: “ — And I now pronounces you-all man and wife. Them which God had j’ined together let no snake-hunter put asunder.”

  “Dolly!” I yelled. Both of ’em jumped about four foot and whirled, and Dolly Rixby jumped in front of Blink and spread her arms like she was shooing chickens.

  “Don’t you tech him, Breckinridge Elkins!” she hollered. “I just married him and I don’t aim for no Humbolt grizzly to spile him!”

  “But I don’t sabe all this—” I said dizzily, nervously fumbling with my guns which is a habit of mine when upsot.

  Everybody in the wedding party started ducking out of line, and Blink said hurriedly: “It’s this way, Breck. When I made my pile so onexpectedly quick, I sent for Dolly to come and marry me like she’d promised the day after you left for the Yavapai. I was aimin’ to take my gold out today, like I told you, so me and Dolly could go to San Francisco on our honeymoon, but I learnt Harrison’s gang was watchin’ me, just like I told you. I wanted to git my gold out, and I wanted to git you out of the way before Dolly and her uncle got here on the War Paint stage, so I told you that lie about Brother Rembrandt bein’ on the Wahpeton stage. It was the only lie.”

  “You said you was marryin’ a gal in Teton,” I accused fiercely.

  “Well,” says he, “I did marry her in Teton. You know, Breck, all’s fair in love and war.”

  “Now, now, boys,” said Brother Rembrandt — the real one, I mean. “The gal’s married, yore rivalry is over, and they’s no use holdin’ grudges. Shake hands and be friends.”

  “All right,” I said heavily. No man cain’t say I ain’t a good loser. I was cut deep but I concealed my busted heart.

  Leastways I concealed it all I was able to. Them folks which says I crippled Blink Wiltshaw with malice aforethought is liars which I’ll sweep the road with when I catches ‘em. When my emotions is wrought up I unconsciously uses more of my strength than I realizes. I didn’t aim to break Blink’s arm when I shook hands with him; it was just the stress of my emotions. Likewise it was Dolly’s fault that her Uncle Rembrandt got throwed out a winder and some others got their heads banged. When she busted me with that cuspidor I knew that our love was dead forever. Tears come into my eyes as I waded through the crowd, and I had to move fast to keep from making a fool of myself. Them that was flang out of my way ought to have knowed it was done more in sorrer than in anger.

  * * *

  THE RIOT AT COUGAR PAW

  First published in Action Stories, October 1935

  I WAS out in the blacksmith shop by the corral beating out some shoes for Cap’n Kidd, when my brother John come sa’ntering in. He’d been away for a few weeks up in the Cougar Paw country, and he’d evidently done well, whatever he’d been doing, because he was in a first class humor with hisself, and plumb spilling over with high spirits and conceit. When he feels prime like that he wants to rawhide everybody he meets, especially me. John thinks he’s a wit, but I figger he’s just half right.

  “Air you slavin’ over a hot forge for that mangy, flea-bit hunk of buzzard-meat again?” he greeted me. “That broom-tail ain’t wuth the iron you wastes on his splayed-out hooves!”

  He knows the easiest way to git under my hide is to poke fun at Cap’n Kidd. But I reflected it was just envy on his part, and resisted my natural impulse to bend the tongs over his head. I taken the white-hot iron out of the forge and put it on the anvil and started beating it into shape with the sixteen-pound sledge I always uses. I got no use for the toys which most blacksmiths uses for hammers.

  “If you ain’t got nothin’ better to do than criticize a animal which is a damn sight better hoss than you’ll ever be a man,” I said with dignerty, between licks, “I calls yore attention to a door right behind you which nobody ain’t usin’ at the moment.”

  He bust into loud rude laughter and said: “You call that thing a hossshoe? It’s big enough for a snow plow! Here, long as yo’re in the business, see can you fit a shoe for that!”

  He sot his foot up on the anvil and I give it a good slam with the hammer. John let out a awful holler and begun hopping around over the shop and cussing fit to curl yore hair. I kept on hammering my iron.

  Just then pap stuck his head in the door and beamed on us, and said: “You boys won’t never grow up! Always playin’ yore childish games, and sportin’ in yore innercent frolics!”

  “He’s busted my toe,” said John blood-thirstily, “and I’ll have his heart’s blood if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Chips off the old block,” beamed pap. “It takes me back to the time when, in the days of my happy childhood, I emptied a sawed-off shotgun into the seat of brother Joel’s britches for tellin’ our old man it was me which put that b’ar-trap in his bunk.”

  “He’ll rue the day,” promised John, and hobbled off to the cabin with moans and profanity. A little later, from his yells, I gathered that he had persuaded maw or one of the gals to rub his toe with hoss-liniment. He could make more racket about nothing then any Elkins I ever knowed.

  I went on and made the shoes and put ’em on Cap’n Kidd, which is a job about like roping and hawg-tying a mountain cyclone, and by the time I got through and went up to the cabin to eat, John seemed to have got over his mad spell. He was laying on his bunk with his foot up on it all bandaged up, and he says: “Breckinridge, they ain’t no use in grown men holdin’ a grudge. Let’s fergit about it.”

  “Who’s holdin’ any grudge?” I ast, making sure he didn’t have a bowie knife in his left hand. “I dunno why they should be so much racket over a trifle that didn’t amount to nothin’, nohow.”

  “Well,” he said, “this here busted foot discommodes me a heap. I won’t be able to ride for a day or so, and they is business up to Cougar Paw I ought to ‘tend to.”

  “I thought you just come from there,” I says.

  “I did,” he said, “but they is a man up there which has promised me somethin’ which is due me, and now I ain’t able to go collect. Whyn’t you go collect for me, Breckinridge? You ought to, dern it, because its yore fault I cain’t ride. The man’s name is Bill Santry, and he lives up in the mountains a few miles from Cougar Paw. You’ll likely find him in Cougar Paw any day, though.”

  “What’s this he promised you?” I ast.

  “Just ask for Bill Santry,” he said. “When you find him say to him: ‘I’m John Elkins’ brother, and you can give me what you promised him.’”

  My family always imposes onto my good nature; generally I’d rather go do what they want me to do than to go to the trouble with arguing with ‘em.

  “Oh, all right,” I said. “I ain’t got nothin’ to do right now.”

  “Thanks, Breckinridge,” he said. “I knowed I could count on you.”

  So a couple of days later I was riding through the Cougar Range, which is very thick-timbered mountains, and rapidly approaching Cougar Paw. I hadn’t never been there before, but I was follering a winding wagon-road which I knowed would eventually fetch me there.

  The road wound around the shoulder of a mountain, and ahead of me I seen a narrer path opened into it, and just before I got there I heard a bull beller, and a gal screamed: “Help! Help! Old Man Kirby’s bull’s loose!”

  They came a patter of feet, and behind ’em a smashing and crashing in the underbrush, and a gal run out of the path into the road, and a rampaging bull was right behind her with his head lowered to toss her. I reined Cap’n Kidd between her and him, and knowed Cap’n Kidd would do the rest without no advice from me. He done so by wheeling and lamming his heels into that bull’s ribs so hard he kicked the critter clean through a rail fence on the other side of the road. Cap’n Kidd hates bulls, and he’s
too big and strong for any of ‘em. He would of then jumped on the critter and stomped him, but I restrained him, which made him mad, and whilst he was trying to buck me off, the bull ontangled hisself and high-tailed it down the mountain, bawling like a scairt yearling.

  When I had got Cap’n Kidd in hand, I looked around and seen the gal looking at me very admiringly. I swept off my Stetson and bowed from my saddle and says: “Can I assist you any father, m’am?”

  She blushed purty as a pitcher and said: “I’m much obliged, stranger. That there critter nigh had his hooks into my hide. Whar you headin’? If you ain’t in no hurry I’d admire to have you drop by the cabin and have a snack of b’ar meat and honey. We live up the path about a mile.”

  They ain’t nothin’ I’d ruther do,” I assured her. “But just at the present I got business in Cougar Paw. How far is it from here?”

  “‘Bout five mile down the road,” says she. “My name’s Joan; what’s yore’n?”

  “Breckinridge Elkins, of Bear Creek,” I said. “Say, I got to push on to Cougar Paw, but I’ll be ridin’ back this way tomorrer mornin’ about sun-up. If you could—”

  “I’ll be waitin’ right here for you,” she said so promptly it made my head swim. No doubt about it; it was love at first sight. “I — I got store-bought shoes,” she added shyly. “I’ll be a-wearin’ ’em when you come along.”

  “I’ll be here if I have to wade through fire, flood and hostile Injuns,” I assured her, and rode on down the wagon-trace with my manly heart swelling with pride in my bosom. They ain’t many mountain men which can awake the fire of love in a gal’s heart at first sight — a gal, likewise, which was as beautiful as that there gal, and rich enough to own store-bought shoes. As I told Cap’n Kidd, they was just something about a Elkins.

  It was about noon when I rode into Cougar Paw which was a tolerably small village sot up amongst the mountains, with a few cabins where folks lived, and a few more which was a grocery store and a jail and a saloon. Right behind the saloon was a good-sized cabin with a big sign onto it which said: Jonathan Middleton, Mayor of Cougar Paw.