They didn’t seem to be nobody in sight, not even on the saloon porch, so I rode on to the corrals which served for a livery stable and wagon yard, and a man come out of the cabin nigh it, and took charge of Cap’n Kidd. He wanted to turn him in with a couple of mules which hadn’t never been broke, but I knowed what Cap’n Kidd would do to them mules, so the feller give him a corral to hisself, and belly-ached just because Cap’n Kidd playfully bit the seat out of his britches.
He ca’med down when I paid for the britches. I ast him where I could find Bill Santry, and he said likely he was up to the store.
So I went up to the store, and it was about like all them stores you see in them kind of towns — groceries, and dry-goods, and grindstones, and harness and such-like stuff, and a wagon-tongue somebody had mended recent. They warn’t but the one store in the town and it handled a little of everything. They was a sign onto it which said: General Store; Jonathan Middleton, Prop.
They was a bunch of fellers setting around on goods boxes and benches eating sody crackers and pickles out of a barrel, and they was a tolerable hard- looking gang. I said: “I’m lookin’ for Bill Santry.”
The biggest man in the store, which was setting on a bench, says: “You don’t have to look no farther. I’m Bill Santry.”
“Well,” I says, “I’m Breckinridge Elkins, John Elkins’ brother. You can give me what you promised him.”
“Ha!” he says with a snort like a hungry catamount rising sudden. “They is nothin’ which could give me more pleasure! Take it with my blessin’!” And so saying he picked up the wagon tongue and splintered it over my head.
It was so onexpected that I lost my footing and fell on my back, and Santry give a wolfish yell and jumped into my stummick with both feet, and the next thing I knowed nine or ten more fellers was jumping up and down on me with their boots.
Now I can take a joke as well as the next man, but it always did make me mad for a feller to twist a spur into my hair and try to tear the sculp off. Santry having did this, I throwed off them lunatics which was trying to tromp out my innards, and riz up amongst them with a outraged beller. I swept four or five of ’em into my arms and give ’em a grizzly-hug, and when I let go all they was able to do was fall on the floor and squawk about their busted ribs.
I then turned onto the others which was assaulting me with pistols and bowie knives and the butt ends of quirts and other villainous weppins, and when I laid into ’em you should of heard ’em howl. Santry was trying to dismember my ribs with a butcher knife he’d got out of the pork barrel, so I picked up the pickle barrel and busted it over his head. He went to the floor under a avalanche of splintered staves and pickles and brine, and then I got hold of a grindstone and really started getting destructive. A grindstone is a good comforting implement to have hold of in a melee, but kind of clumsy. For instance when I hove it at a feller which was trying to cock a sawed-off shotgun, it missed him entirely and knocked all the slats out of the counter and nigh squashed four or five men which was trying to shoot me from behind it. I settled the shotgun-feller’s hash with a box of canned beef, and then I got hold of a double-bitted axe, and the embattled citizens of Cougar Paw quit the field with blood-curdling howls of fear — them which was able to quit and howl.
I stumbled over the thickly-strewn casualties to the door, taking a few casual swipes at the shelves as I went past, and knocking all the cans off of them. Just as I emerged into the street, with my axe lifted to chop down anybody which opposed me, a skinny looking human bobbed up in front of me and hollered: “Halt, in the name of the law!”
Paying no attention to the double-barreled shotgun he shoved in my face, I swung back my axe for a swipe, and accidentally hit the sign over the door and knocked it down on top of him. He let out a squall as he went down and let bam! with the shotgun right in my face so close it singed my eyebrows. I pulled the sign-board off of him so I could git a good belt at him with my axe, but he hollered: “I’m the sheriff! I demands that you surrenders to properly constupated authority!”
I then noticed that he had a star pinned onto one gallus, so I put down my axe and let him take my guns. I never resists a officer of the law — well, seldom ever, that is.
He p’inted his shotgun at me and says: “I fines you ten dollars for disturbin’ the peace!”
About this time a lanky maverick with side-whiskers come prancing around the corner of the building, and he started throwing fits like a locoed steer.
“The scoundrel’s rooint my store!” he howled. “He’s got to pay me for the counters and winders he busted, and the shelves he knocked down, and the sign he rooint, and the pork-keg he busted over my clerk’s head!”
“What you think he ought to pay, Mr. Middleton?” ast the sheriff.
“Five hundred dollars,” said the mayor bloodthirstily.
“Five hundred hell!” I roared, stung to wrath. “This here whole dern town ain’t wuth five hundred dollars. Anyway, I ain’t got no money but fifty cents I owe to the feller that runs the wagon yard.”
“Gimme the fifty cents,” ordered the mayor. “I’ll credit that onto yore bill.”
“I’ll credit my fist onto yore skull,” I snarled, beginning to lose my temper, because the butcher knife Bill Santry had carved my ribs with had salt on the blade, and the salt got into the cuts and smarted. “I owes this fifty cents and I gives it to the man I owes it to.”
“Throw him in jail!” raved Middleton. “We’ll keep him there till we figures out a job of work for him to do to pay out his fine.”
So the sheriff marched me down the street to the log cabin which they used for a jail, whilst Middleton went moaning around the rooins of his grocery store, paying no heed to the fellers which lay groaning on the floor. But I seen the rest of the citizens packing them out on stretchers to take ’em into the saloon to bring ’em to. The saloon had a sign; Square Deal Saloon; Jonathan Middleton, Prop. And I heard fellers cussing Middleton because he made ’em pay for the licker they poured on the victims’ cut and bruises. But they cussed under their breath. Middleton seemed to pack a lot of power in that there town.
Well, I laid down on the jail-house bunk as well as I could, because they always build them bunks for ordinary-sized men about six foot tall, and I wondered what in hell Bill Santry had hit me with that wagon tongue for. It didn’t seem to make no sense.
I laid there and waited for the sheriff to bring me my supper, but he didn’t bring none, and purty soon I went to sleep and dreamed about Joan, with her store-bought shoes.
What woke me up was a awful racket in the direction of the saloon. I got up and looked out of the barred winder. Night had fell, but the cabins and the saloon was well lit up, but too far away for me to tell what was going on. But the noise was so familiar I thought for a minute I must be back on Bear Creek again, because men was yelling and cussing, and guns was banging, and a big voice roaring over the din. Once it sounded like somebody had got knocked through a door, and it made me right home-sick, it was so much like a dance on Bear Creek.
I pulled the bars out of the winder trying to see what was going on, but all I could see was what looked like men flying headfirst out of the saloon, and when they hit the ground and stopped rolling, they jumped up and run off in all directions, hollering like the Apaches was on their heels.
Purty soon I seen somebody running toward the jail as hard as he could leg it, and it was the sheriff. Most of his clothes was tore off, and he had blood on his face, and he was gasping and panting.
“We got a job for you, Elkins!” he panted. “A wild man from Texas just hit town, and is terrorizin’ the citizens! If you’ll pertect us, and layout this fiend from the prairies, we’ll remit yore fine! Listen at that!”
From the noise I jedged the aforesaid wild man had splintered the panels out of the bar.
“What started him on his rampage?” I ast.
“Aw, somebody said they made better chili con carne in Santa Fe than they did in El Paso,” says the
sheriff. “So this maneyack starts cleanin’ up the town—”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” I said. “That was a dirty lie and a low-down slander. My folks all come from Texas, and if you Cougar Paw coyotes thinks you can slander the State and git away with it—”
“We don’t think nothin’!” wailed the sheriff, wringing his hands and jumping like a startled deer every time a crash resounded up the street. “We admits the Lone Star State is the cream of the West in all ways! Lissen, will you lick this homicidal lunatic for us? You got to, dern it. You got to work out yore fine, and—”
“Aw, all right,” I said, kicking the door down before he could unlock it. “I’ll do it. I cain’t waste much time in this town. I got a engagement down the road tomorrer at sun-up.”
The street was deserted, but heads was sticking out of every door and winder. The sheriff stayed on my heels till I was a few feet from the saloon, and then he whispered: “Go to it, and make it a good job! If anybody can lick that grizzly in there, it’s you!” He then ducked out of sight behind the nearest cabin after handing me my gun-belt.
I stalked into the saloon and seen a gigantic figger standing at the bar and just fixing to pour hisself a dram out of a demijohn. He had the place to hisself, but it warn’t near as much of a wreck as I’d expected.
As I come in he wheeled with a snarl, as quick as a cat, and flashing out a gun. I drawed one of mine just as quick, and for a second we stood there, glaring at each other over the barrels.
“Breckinridge Elkins!” says he. “My own flesh and blood kin!”
“Cousin Bearfield Buckner!” I says, shoving my gun back in its scabbard. “I didn’t even know you was in Nevada.”
“I got a ramblin’ foot,” says he, holstering his shooting iron. “Put ‘er there, Cousin Breckinridge!”
“By golly, I’m glad to see you!” I said, shaking with him. Then I recollected. “Hey!” I says. “I got to lick you.”
“What you mean?” he demanded.
“Aw,” I says, “I got arrested, and ain’t got no money to pay my fine, and I got to work it out. And lickin’ you was the job they gimme.”
“I ain’t got no use for law,” he said grumpily. “Still and all, if I had any dough, I’d pay yore fine for you.”
“A Elkins don’t accept no charity,” I said slightly nettled. “We works for what we gits. I pays my fine by lickin’ the hell out of you, Cousin Bearfield.”
At this he lost his temper; he was always hot-headed that way. His black brows come down and his lips curled up away from his teeth and he clenched his fists which was about the size of mallets.
“What kind of kinfolks air you?” he scowled. “I don’t mind a friendly fight between relatives, but yore intentions is mercenary and unworthy of a true Elkins. You put me in mind of the fact that yore old man had to leave Texas account of a hoss gittin’ its head tangled in a lariat he was totin’ in his absent-minded way.”
“That there is a cussed lie,” I said with heat. “Pap left Texas because he wouldn’t take the Yankee oath after the Civil War, and you know it. Anyway,” I added bitingly, “nobody can ever say a Elkins ever stole a chicken and roasted it in a chaparral thicket.”
He started violently and turned pale.
“What you hintin’ at, you son of Baliol?” he hollered.
“Yore iniquities ain’t no family secret,” I assured him bitterly. “Aunt Atascosa writ Uncle Jeppard Grimes about you stealin’ that there Wyandotte hen off of Old Man Westfall’s roost.”
“Shet up!” he bellered, jumping up and down in his wrath, and clutching his six-shooters convulsively. “I war just a yearlin’ when I lifted that there fowl and et it, and I war plumb famished, because a posse had been chasin’ me six days. They was after me account of Joe Richardson happenin’ to be in my way when I was emptyin’ my buffalo rifle. Blast yore soul, I have shot better men than you for talkin’ about chickens around me.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “the fact remains that yo’re the only one of the clan which ever swiped a chicken. No Elkins never stole no hen.”
“No,” he sneered, “they prefers hosses.”
Just then I noticed that a crowd had gathered timidly outside the doors and winders and was listening eagerly to this exchange of family scandals, so I said: “We’ve talked enough. The time for action has arriv. When I first seen you, Cousin Bearfield, the thought of committin’ mayhem onto you was very distasteful. But after our recent conversation, I feels I can scramble yore homely features with a free and joyful spirit. Le’s have a snort and then git down to business.”
“Suits me,” he agreed, hanging his gun belt on the bar. “Here’s a jug with about a gallon of red licker into it.”
So we each taken a medium-sized snort, which of course emptied the jug, and then I hitched my belt and says: “Which does you desire first, Cousin Bearfield — a busted laig or a fractured skull?”
“Wait a minute,” he requested as I approached him. “What’s, that on yore boot?”
I stooped over to see what it was, and he swung his laig and kicked me in the mouth as hard as he could, and imejitately busted into a guffaw of brutal mirth. Whilst he was thus employed I spit his boot out and butted him in the belly with a vi’lence which changed his haw-haw to a agonized grunt, and then we laid hands on each other and rolled back and forth acrost the floor, biting and gouging, and that was how the tables and chairs got busted. Mayor Middleton must of been watching through a winder because I heard him squall: “My Gawd, they’re wreckin’ my saloon! Sheriff, arrest ’em both.”
And the sheriff hollered back: “I’ve took yore orders all I aim to, Jonathan Middleton! If you want to stop that double-cyclone git in there and do it yoreself!”
Presently we got tired scrambling around on the floor amongst the cuspidors, so we riz simultaneous and I splintered the roulette wheel with his carcass, and he hit me on the jaw so hard he knocked me clean through the bar and all the bottles fell off the shelves and showered around me, and the ceiling lamp come loose and spilled about a gallon of red hot ile down his neck.
Whilst he was employed with the ile I clumb up from among the debris of the bar and started my right fist in a swing from the floor, and after it traveled maybe nine feet it took Cousin Bearfield under the jaw, and he hit the oppersite wall so hard he knocked out a section and went clean through it, and that was when the roof fell in.
I started kicking and throwing the rooins off me, and then I was aware of Cousin Bearfield lifting logs and beams off of me, and in a minute I crawled out from under ‘em.
“I could of got out all right,” I said. “But just the same I’m much obleeged to you.”
“Blood’s thicker’n water,” he grunted, and hit me under the jaw and knocked me about seventeen feet backwards toward the mayor’s cabin. He then rushed forward and started kicking me in the head, but I riz up in spite of his efforts.
“Git away from that cabin!” screamed the mayor, but it was too late. I hit Cousin Bearfield between the eyes and he crashed into the mayor’s rock chimney and knocked the whole base loose with his head, and the chimney collapsed and the rocks come tumbling down on him.
But being a Texas Buckner, Bearfield riz out of the rooins. He not only riz, but he had a rock in his hand about the size of a watermelon and he busted it over my head. This infuriated me, because I seen he had no intention of fighting fair, so I tore a log out of the wall of the mayor’s cabin and belted him over the ear with it, and Cousin Bearfield bit the dust. He didn’t git up that time.
Whilst I was trying to git my breath back and shaking the sweat out of my eyes, all the citizens of Cougar Paw come out of their hiding places and the sheriff yelled: “You done a good job, Elkins! Yo’re a free man!”
“He is like hell!” screamed Mayor Middleton, doing a kind of war-dance, whilst weeping and cussing together. “Look at my cabin! I’m a rooint man! Sheriff, arrest that man!”
“Which ‘un?” inquired the sheriff.
“Hey!” I said indignantly. “You cain’t arrest Cousin Bearfield. I ain’t goin’ to stand for it.”
“Will you resist a officer of the law?” ast the sheriff, sticking his gallus out on his thumb.
“You represents the law whilst you wear yore badge?” I inquired.
“As long as I got that badge on,” boasts he, “I am the law!”
“Well,” I said, spitting on my hands, “you ain’t got it on now. You done lost it somewhere in the shuffle tonight, and you ain’t nothin’ but a common citizen like me! Git ready, for I’m comin’ head-on and wide-open!”
I whooped me a whoop.
He glanced down in a stunned sort of way at his empty gallus, and then he give a scream and took out up the street with most of the crowd streaming out behind him.
“Stop, you cowards!” screamed Mayor Middleton. “Come back here and arrest these scoundrels—”
“Aw, shet up,” I said disgustedly, and give him a kind of push and how was I to know it would dislocate his shoulder blade. It was just beginning to git light by now, but Cousin Bearfield wasn’t showing no signs of consciousness, and I heard them Cougar Paw skunks yelling to each other back and forth from the cabins where they’d forted themselves, and from what they said I knowed they figgered on opening up on us with their Winchesters as soon as it got light enough to shoot good.
Just then I noticed a wagon standing down by the wagon-yard, so I picked up Cousin Bearfield and lugged him down there and throwed him into the wagon. Far be it from a Elkins to leave a senseless relative to the mercy of a Cougar Paw mob. I went into the corral where them two wild mules was and started putting harness onto ‘em, and it warn’t no child’s play. They hadn’t never been worked before, and they fell onto me with a free and hearty enthusiasm. Onst they had me down stomping on me, and the citizens of Cougar Paw made a kind of half-hearted sally. But I unlimbered my .45s and throwed a few slugs in their direction and they all hollered and run back into their cabins.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 222