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

by Robert E. Howard

  “Yo’re a liar!” howled Cousin Buckner. “Quit pourin’ leather into them mules, you blasted #$%&@*, and turn back! Turn back, cuss you!” With that he started hammering me in the head with the stock of his shotgun.

  We was thundering along a road which run along the rim of a sloping bluff, and when Buckner’s shotgun went off accidentally the mules really did git scairt and started running away, just about the time I reached back to take the shotgun away from Cousin Buckner. Being beat in the head with the butt was getting awful monotonous, because he’d been doing nothing else for the past half mile.

  I yanked the gun out of his hand and just then the left hind wheel hit a stump and the hind end of the wagon went straight up in the air and the pole splintered. The mules run right out of the harness and me and the wagon and Cousin Buckner went over the bluff and down the slope in a whirling tangle of wheels and laigs and heads and profanity.

  We brung up against a tree at the bottom, and I throwed the rooins off of me and riz, swearing fervently when I seen how much money I’d have to pay Cousin Bill Gordon for his wagon. But Cousin Buckner give me no time for meditation. He’d ontangled hisself from a hind wheel and was doing a war-dance in the moonlight and frothing at the mouth.

  “You done that on purpose!” he raged. “You never aimed to ketch them wretches! You taken the wrong road on purpose! You turned us over on purpose! Now I’ll never ketch the scoundrel which run away with my datter — the pore, dumb, trustin’ #$%&f!@* innercent!”

  “Be ca’m, Cousin Buckner,” I advised. “He’ll make her a good husband. They’re well onto their way to War Paint and a happy married life. Best thing you can do is forgive ’em and give ’em yore blessin’.”

  “Well,” he snarled, “you ain’t neither my datter nor my son-in-law. Here’s my blessin’ to you!”

  It was a pore return for all the trouble I’d taken for him to push me into a cactus bed and hit me with a rock the size of a watermelon. However, I taken into consideration that he was overwrought and not hisself, so I ignored his incivility and made no retort whatever, outside of splintering a wagon spoke over his head.

  I then clumb the bluff, making no reply to his impassioned and profane comments, and looked around for the mules. They hadn’t run far. I seen ’em grazing down the road, and I started after ‘em, when I heard horses galloping back up the road toward the settlement, and around a turn in the road come Uncle Jeppard Grimes with his whiskers streaming in the moonlight, and nine or ten of his boys riding hard behind him.

  “Thar he is!” he howled, impulsively discharging his six-shooter at me. “Thar’s the fiend in human form! Thar’s the kidnaper of helpless jassacks! Boys, do yore duty!”

  They pulled up around me and started piling off their horses with blood in their eyes and weppins in their hands.

  “Hold on!” I says. “If it’s Joshua you fools are after—”

  “He admits the crime!” howled Uncle Jeppard. “Is it Joshua, says you! You know dern well it is! We been combin’ the hills for you, ever since my gran’datter brought me the news! What you done with him, you scoundrel?”

  “Aw,” I said, “he’s all right. I was just goin’ to—”

  “He evades the question!” screamed Uncle Jeppard. “Git him, boys!”

  “I tell you he’s all right!” I roared, but they give me no chance to explain. Them Grimeses is all alike; you cain’t tell ’em nothing. You got to knock it into their fool heads. They descended on me with fence rails and rocks and wagon spokes and loaded quirts and gun stocks in a way which would of tried the patience of a saint. I always try to be as patient with my erring relatives as I can be. I merely taken their weppins away from ’em and kind of pushed ’em back away from me, and if they’d looked where they fell Jim and Joe and Erath wouldn’t of fell down that bluff and broke their arms and laigs and Bill wouldn’t of fractured his skull agen that tree.

  I handled ’em easy as babies, and kept my temper in spite of Uncle Jeppard dancing around on his hoss and yelling: “Lay into him, boys! Don’t be scairt of the big grizzly! He cain’t hurt us!” and shooting at me every time he thought he could shoot without hitting one of his own offspring. He did puncture two or three of ‘em, and then blamed me for it, the old jackass.

  Nobody could of acted with more restraint than I did when Dick Grimes broke the blade of his bowie knife off on my hip bone, and the seven fractured ribs I give his brother Jacob was a mild retaliation for chawing my ear like he done. But it was a ill-advised impulse which prompted Esau Grimes to stab me in the seat of the britches with a pitchfork. There ain’t nothing which sours the milk of human kindness in a man’s veins any more’n getting pitchforked by a raging relative behind his back.

  I give a beller which shook the acorns out of the oaks all up and down the run, and whirled on Esau so quick it jerked the pitchfork out of his hands and left it sticking in my hide. I retched back and pulled it out and wrapped the handle around Esau’s neck, and then I taken him by the ankles and started remodeling the landscape with him. I mowed down a sapling thicket with him, and leveled a cactus bed with him, and swept the road with him, and when his brothers tried to rescue him, I beat ’em over the head with him till they was too groggy to do anything but run in circles.

  Uncle Jeppard come spurring at me, trying to knock me down with his hoss and trample me, and Esau was so limp by this time he warn’t much good for a club no more, so I whirled him around my head a few times and throwed him at Uncle Jeppard. Him and Uncle Jeppard and the hoss all went down in a heap together, and from the way Uncle Jeppard hollered you’d of thought somebody was trying to injure him. It was plumb disgusting.

  Five or six of his boys recovered enough to surge onto me then, and I knocked ’em all down on top of him and Esau and the hoss, and the hoss was trying to git up, and kicking around right and left, and his hoofs was going bam, bam, bam on human heads, and Uncle Jeppard was hollering so loud I got to thinking maybe he was hurt or something. So I retched down in the heap and got him by the whiskers and pulled him out from under the hoss and four or five of his fool boys.

  “Air you hurt, Uncle Jeppard?” I inquired.

  “#$%&@*!” responded Uncle Jeppard, rewarding my solicitude by trying to stab me with his bowie knife. This ingratitude irritated me, and I tossed him from me fretfully, and as he was pulling hisself out of the prickley pear bed where he landed, he suddenly give a louder scream than ever. Something come ambling up the road and I seen it was that fool jackass Joshua, which had evidently et his rope and left the house looking for more grub. He looked like a four-laigged nightmare in the moonlight, but all Uncle Jeppard noticed was the red paint on him.

  “Halp! Murder!” howled Uncle Jeppard. “They’ve wounded him mortally! He’s bleedin’ to death! Git a tourniquet, quick!”

  With that they all deserted the fray, them which was able to hobble, and run to grab Joshua and stanch his bleeding. But when he seen all them Grimeses coming for him, Joshua got scairt and took out through the bresh. They all pelted after him, and the last thing I heard as they passed out of hearing was Uncle Jeppard wailing: “Joshua! Stop, dern it! This here’s yore friends! Pull up, dang you! We wants to help you, you cussed fool!”

  I turned to see what I could do for the casualties which lay groaning in the road and at the foot of the bluff, but they said unanamous they didn’t want no help from a enemy — which they meant me. They one and all promised to pickle my heart and eat it as soon as they was able to git about on crutches, so I abandoned my efforts and headed for the settlement.

  The fighting had scairt the mules up the road a ways, but I catched ’em and made a hackamore outa one of my galluses, and rode one and led t’other’n, and lit out straight through the bresh for Bear Creek. I’d had a belly-full of Apache Mountain. But I swung past Joel’s stillhouse to find out how come Cousin Buckner didn’t go to Wolf Canyon. When I got there the stillhouse was dark and the door was shet, and they was a note on the door. I could read a li
ttle by then, and I spelt it out. It said:

  Gone to Wolf Canyon. — Joel Garfield.

  That selfish polecat hadn’t told Cousin Buckner nor nobody about the strike. He’d got hisself a pack-mule and lit out for Wolf Canyon hisself. A hell of a relative he was, maybe doing pore Cousin Buckner out of a fortune, for all he knowed.

  A mile from the settlement I met Jack Gordon coming from a dance on t’other side of the mountain, and he said he seen Uncle Shadrach Polk fogging down the trail on a mule he was riding bare-back without no bridle, so I thought well, anyway my scheme for scairing him out of a taste for licker worked. Jack said Uncle Shadrach looked like he’d saw a herd of ha’nts.

  It was about daylight when I stopped at Bill Gordon’s ranch to leave him his mules. I paid him for his wagon and also for the damage Cap’n Kidd had did to his corral. Bill had to build a new one, and Cap’n Kidd had also run his prize stallion offa the ranch, an chawed the ears off of a longhorn bull, and busted into the barn and gobbled up about ten dollars worth of oats. When I lit out for Bear Creek again I warn’t feeling in no benevolent mood, but, thinks I, it’s worth it if it’s made a water-swigger outa Uncle Shadrach.

  It was well along toward noon when I pulled up at the door and called for Aunt Tascosa. Jedge my scandalized amazement when I was greeted by a deluge of b’iling water from the winder and Aunt Tascosa stuck her head out and says: “You buzzard in the form of a human bein’! How you got the brass to come bulgin’ around here? If I warn’t a lady I’d tell you just what I thought of you, you $#*&?@! Git, before I opens up on you with this here shotgun!”

  “Why, Aunt Tascosa, what you talkin’ about?” I ast, combing the hot water outa my hair with my fingers.

  “You got the nerve to ast!” she sneered. “Didn’t you promise me you’d kyore Shadrach of drinkin’ rum? Didn’t you, hey? Well, come in here and look at him! He arriv home about daylight on one of Buckner Kirby’s mules and it about ready to drop, and he’s been rasslin’ every since with a jug he had hid. I cain’t git no sense out’n him.”

  I went in and Uncle Shadrach was setting by the back door and he had hold of that there jug like a drownding man clutching a straw-stack.

  “I’m surprized at you, Uncle Shadrach,” I said. “What in the—”

  “Shet the door, Breckinridge,” he says. “They is more devils onto the earth than is dreamed of in our philosophy. I’ve had a narrer escape, Breckinridge! I let myself be beguiled by the argyments of Buckner Kirby, a son of Baliol which is without understandin’. He’s been rasslin’ with me to give up licker. Well, yesterday I got so tired of his argyments I said I’d try it a while, just to have some peace. I never taken a drink all day yesterday, and Breckinridge, I give you my word when I started to go to bed last night I seen a red, white and blue jackass with green ears standin’ at the foot of my bunk, just as plain as I sees you now! It war the water that done it, Breckinridge,” he says, curling his fist lovingly around the handle of the jug. “Water’s a snare and a delusion. I drunk water all day yesterday, and look what it done to me! I don’t never want to see no water no more, again.”

  “Well,” I says, losing all patience, “you’re a-goin’ to, by golly, if I can heave you from here to that hoss-trough in the backyard.”

  I done it, and that’s how come the rumor got started that I tried to drown Uncle Shadrach Polk in a hoss-trough because he refused to swear off licker. Aunt Tascosa was responsible for that there slander, which was a pore way to repay me for all I’d did for her. But people ain’t got no gratitude.

  * * *

  PILGRIMS TO THE PECOS; OR, WEARY PILGRIMS ON THE ROAD

  First published in Action Stories, February 1936. Also published as “Weary Pilgrims On The Road”

  THAT there wagon rolled up the trail and stopped in front of our cabin one morning jest after sun-up. We all come out to see who it was, because strangers ain’t common on Bear Creek — and not very often welcome, neither. They was a long, hungry-looking old coot driving, and four or five growed boys sticking their heads out.

  “Good mornin’, folks,” said the old coot, taking off his hat. “My name is Joshua Richardson. I’m headin’ a wagon-train of immigrants which is lookin’ for a place to settle. The rest of ‘em’s camped three miles back down the trail. Everybody we met in these here Humbolt Mountings told us we’d hev to see Mister Roaring Bill Elkins about settlin’ here-abouts. Be you him?”

  “I’m Bill Elkins,” says pap suspiciously.

  “Well, Mister Elkins,” says Old Man Richardson, wagging his chin- whiskers, “we’d admire it powerful if you folks would let us people settle somewheres about.”

  “Hmmmm!” says pap, pulling his beard. “Whar you all from?”

  “Kansas,” says Old Man Richardson.

  “Ouachita,” says pap, “git my shotgun.”

  “Don’t you do no sech thing, Ouachie,” says maw. “Don’t be stubborn, Willyum. The war’s been over for years.”

  “That’s what I say,” hastily spoke up Old Man Richardson. “Let bygones be bygones, I says!”

  “What,” says pap ominously, “is yore honest opinion of General Sterlin’ Price?”

  “One of nature’s noblemen!” declares Old Man Richardson earnestly.

  “Hmmmmm!” says pap. “You seem to have considerable tact and hoss-sense for a Red-laig. But they hain’t no more room on Bear Creek fer no more settlers, even if they was Democrats. They’s nine er ten families now within a rech of a hunnert square miles, and I don’t believe in over-crowdin’ a country.”

  “But we’re plumb tuckered out!” wailed Old Man Richardson. “And nowheres to go! We hev been driv from pillar to post, by settlers which got here ahead of us and grabbed all the best land. They claims it whether they got any legal rights or not.”

  “Legal rights be damned,” snorted pap. “Shotgun rights is what goes in this country. But I know jest the place fer you. It’s ten er fifteen days’ travel from here, in Arizony. It’s called Bowie Knife Canyon, and hit’s jest right fer farmin’ people, which I jedge you all be.”

  “We be,” says Old Man Richardson. “But how we goin’ to git there?”

  “My son Breckinridge will be plumb delighted to guide you there,” says pap. “Won’t you, Breckinridge?”

  “No, I won’t,” I said. “Why the tarnation have I got to be picked on to ride herd on a passle of tenderfooted mavericks—”

  “He’ll git you there safe,” says pap, ignoring my remarks. “He dotes on lendin’ folks a helpin’ hand, don’t you, Breckinridge?”

  Seeing the futility of argyment, I merely snarled and went to saddle Cap’n Kidd. I noticed Old Man Richardson and his boys looking at me in a very pecooliar manner all the time, and when I come out on Cap’n Kidd, him snorting and bucking and kicking the rails out of the corral like he always does, they turnt kind of pale and Old Man Richardson said: “I wouldn’t want to impose on yore son, Mister Elkins. After all, we wasn’t intendin’ to go to that there canyon, in the first place—”

  “I’m guidin’ you to Bowie Knife Canyon!” I roared. “Maybe you warn’t goin’ there before I saddled my hoss, but you air now! C’m’on.”

  I then cut loose under the mules’ feet with my .45s to kind of put some ginger in the critters, and they brayed and sot off down the trail jest hitting the high places with Old Man Richardson hanging onto the lines and bouncing all over the seat and his sons rolling in the wagon-bed.

  We come into camp full tilt, and some of the men grabbed their guns and the women hollered and jerked up their kids, and one feller was so excited he fell into a big pot of beans which was simmering over a fire and squalled out that the Injuns was trying to burn him alive.

  Old Man Richardson had his feet braced again the front-gate, pulling back on the lines as hard as he could and yelling bloody murder, but the mules had the bits betwixt their teeth. So I rode to their heads and grabbed ’em by the bridles and throwed ’em back onto their haunches, and Old Man Richardson
ought to of knew the stop would be sudden. T’warn’t my fault he done a dive off of the seat and hit on the wagon-tongue on his head. And it warn’t my fault neither that one of the mules kicked him and t’other’n bit him before I could ontangle him from amongst them. Mules is mean critters howsoever you take ‘em.

  Everybody hollered amazing, and he riz up and mopped the blood offa his face and waved his arms and hollered: “Ca’m down, everybody! This hain’t nawthin’ to git excited about. This gent is Mister Breckinridge Elkins, which has kindly agreed to guide us to a land of milk and honey down in Arizony.”

  They received the news without enthusiasm. They was about fifty of ‘em, mostly women, chillern, and half-grown young ‘uns. They warn’t more’n a dozen fit fighting men in the train. They all looked like they’d been on the trail a long time. And they was all some kin to Old Man Richardson — sons and daughters, and grandchillern, and nieces and nephews, and their husbands and wives, and sech like. They was one real purty gal, the old man’s youngest daughter Betty, who warn’t yet married.

  They’d jest et breakfast and was hitched up when we arrove, so we pulled out without no more delay. I rode along of Old Man Richardson’s wagon, which went ahead with the others strung out behind, and he says to me: “If this here Bowie Knife Canyon is sech a remarkable place, why ain’t it already been settled?”

  “Aw, they was a settlement there,” I said, “but the Apaches kilt some, and Mexicans bandits kilt some, and about three years ago the survivors got to fightin’ amongst theirselves and jest kind of kilt each other off.”

  He yanked his beard nervously and said: “I dunno! I dunno! Maybe we had ought to hunt a more peaceful spot than that there sounds like.”

  “You won’t find no peaceful spots west of the Pecos,” I assured him. “Say no more about it. I’ve made up our minds that Bowie Knife Canyon is the place for you all, and we’re goin’ there!”

  “I wouldn’t think of argyin’ the p’int,” he assured me hastily. “What towns does we pass on our way.”