 War on Bear Creek by Robert Howard. Pat dug the nineteenth buckshot out of my shoulder and said, Pigs is more disturbing to the peace of a community than scandal, divorce, and corn liquor put together, and, says Pat, pausing to strop his buoy on my scalp where the hair was all burnt off, when the pig is a razor-back hog and is mixed up with a lady school teacher, an English tinderfoot, and a parcel of bloodthirsty relatives. The result is appalling for a peaceable man to behold. Hold still till John gets your ear sewed back on. Pat was right. I warn't to blame for what happened. Breakin' Joel Gordon's leg was a mistake, and Erath Elkins is a liar, when he says I caved in them five ribs of his and plum on purpose. If Uncle Jeopard Grimes had been tinned into his own business, he wouldn't have got the seat of his britches filled with buckshot, and I don't figure it was my fault that Cousin Bill Kirby's cabin got burned down, and I don't take no blame for Jim Gordon's ear, which Jack Grimes shot off neither. I figure everybody was more to blame than I was, and I stand ready to wipe up the earth with anybody which disagrees with me. But it was that darn razor-back hog Uncle Jeopard Grimes, which started the whole mess. It began when that their tinderfoot come riding up the trail with Tunk Willoughby from War Paint. Now, Tunk ain't got no more sense than the law allows, but he sure showed good judgment that time, because having delivered his charge to his destination, he didn't tarry. He merely handed me a note and pined dumbly at the tinderfoot, whilst holding his hat reverently in his hand, meanwhile. What do you mean by that there gesture? I asked him rather irritably, and he says, I dost my sombrero in respect to the departed. Bringing a specimen like that on the bear creek is just like heaving a jackrabbit to a pack of starving Lobos. He hovers sigh and shook his head and put his hat back on. Rassle a cat in pieces, he said, gathering up the reins. What the hell are you talking about, I demanded? That's Latin, he said. It means rest in peace. And with that he dusted it down the trail, and left me alone with the tinderfoot, which all the time was setting his kiosk and looking at me like I was a curiosity or something. I called my sister Wachita to come and read that there note for me, which she did, and it run as follows. Dear Breckenridge, this will interjuice Mr. Pembroke Pemberton, an English sportsman which I met in Frisco recent. He was disappointed because he hadn't found no adventures in America, and was fixing to go to Africa to shoot lions and elephants. But I persuaded him to come with me because I knowed he would find more hell on Bear Creek in a week than he would find in a year in Africa or any other place. But the very day we hit war paint, I run into an old acquaintance from Texas. I will not speak no harm of the dead, but I wish the son of a buzzard had shot me somewheres besides in my left leg, which already had three slugs in it which I never could get cut out. Anyway, I am laid up and not able to come on to Bear Creek with J. Pembroke Pemberton. I am dependent on you to show him some good bear hunting and other excitement, and protect him from your relatives. I know what awful responsibility I am putting on you, but I am asking this as your friend, William Harrison Glanton Esquire. I looked J. Pembroke over. He was a medium-sized young feller and looked kind of soft in spots. He had yellow hair and very pink cheeks like a gal, and he had on whip-cord britches and tan riding boots, which was the first I ever seen, and he had on a funny kind of coat with pockets and a belt, which he called a shootin' jacket, and a big hat like a mushroom made out of cork with a red ribbon around it, and he had a pack-horse loaded with all kinds of plunder and four or five different kinds of shotguns and rifles. So your J. Pembroke, I says, and he says, Oh Ratha, and you no doubt are the person Mr. Glanton described to me, Breckenridge Elkins? Yeah, I said. Lighten, come on in. We got bar meat and honey for supper. I say, he said, climbing down. Pardon me for being a bit personal, old chap, but may I ask if your, um, magnitude of bodily stature is not a bit unique? I don't know, I says, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about. I always vote a straight Democratic ticket myself. He started to say something else, but just then Papp and my brothers John and Bill and Jim and Buckner and Garfield come to the door to see what the noise was about, and he turned pale and said faintly, I beg your pardon, giants seem to be the rule in these parts. Papp says men ain't what they was when he was in his prime, I said, but we managed to get by. Well, J. Pimbrook laid into them bar stakes with a hearty will, and when I told him we'd go after bar next day, he asked me how many days travel it'd take till we got to the bar country. Heck, I said, you don't have to travel to get bar in these parts. If you forget to bolt your door at night, you're liable to find a grisly share in your bunk before morning. This here and where eaten was catched by my sister Ellen there, whilst trying to rob the pigpen out behind the cabin last night. My word, he says, looking at her peculiarly, and may I ask Miss Elkins, what caliber of firearm you used. I'd knocked him in the head with a wagon tongue, she said, and he shook his head to his self and muttered, extraordinary. J. Pimbrook slept in my bunk, and I took the floor that night, and we was up at daylight and read it as start after the bar. Whilst J. Pimbrook was fussing over his guns, Papp came out and pulled his whiskers and shook his head and said, there is a white young man, but I'm a-feared he ain't as hail as he ought to be. I'd just give him a pull at my jug, and he didn't gulp but one good snort, and like to joke to death. Well, I said, buckling the cinches on Captain Kidd. I've done learn not to judge outsiders, by the way they take their liquor on Bear Creek. It takes a Bear Creek man to swig Bear Creek corn juice. I hope's for the best, side-pap, but it's a dismal sight to see a young man which can't stand up to his liquor. Where are you taking him? Over toward Apache Mountain, I said. Erath seen an extra big grizzly over there day before yesterday. Says Papp, by peculiar coincidence, the schoolhouse is over on the side of Apache Mountain ain't it, Breckenridge? Maybe it is, and maybe it ain't, I replied with dignity. And rode off with J. Pembroke, ignoring Papp's sour-castic comment which he hollered after me. Maybe there's a connection between book-warning and bar-hunting, but who am I to say? J. Pembroke was a pretty good rider, but he used a funny-looking saddle without no horn nor campel, and he had the dirtiest gun I ever seen. It was a double-barreled rifle, and he said it was an elephant gun. It was big enough to knock a hill down. He was surprised I didn't tote no rifle, and asked me what would I do if we met a bar. I told him I was dependent on him to shoot it, but I said if it was necessary for me to get into action, my six-shooter was planning. My word, says he, you mean to say you can bring down a grizzly with a shot from a pistol? Not always, I said. Sometimes I have to bust him over the head with a butt to finish him. He didn't say nothing for a long time after that. Well, we rode over on the lower slopes of Apache Mountain, and tied the horses in a holler, and went through the brush on foot. That was a good place for bars, because they come there very frequently, looking for Uncle Jeopard Grimes' pigs which runs loose all over the lower slopes of the mountain. But just like it always is when you're looking for something, we didn't see a cussed bar. The middle of the evening found us around on the south side of the mountain, where they is a settlement of curbies and grimeses and gordons. Half a dozen family has their cabins within a mile of each other, and I don't know what in hell they want a crowd up together that way for, it would plumb smother me. But perhaps as they was always peculiar that way. We weren't inside of the settlement, but the schoolhouse weren't far off, and I said to J. Pembroke, you wait here a while, and maybe a barrel come by. Miss Margaret Ashley is teaching me how to read and write, and it's time for my lesson. I left J. Pembroke, sitting on a log, hugging his elephant-gun, and I strode through the brush and came out at the upper end of the run, which the settlement was at the other end, and school had just turned out, and the children was going home. And Miss Ashley was waiting for me in the log schoolhouse. That was the first school that was ever taught on Bear Creek, and she was the first teacher. Some of the folks was awful sought again at first, and said no good would come of book learning, but after I licked six or seven of them they allowed it might be a good thing after all, and agreed to let her take a whack at it. Miss Margaret was an awful, pretty gal, and come from somewhere way back east. She was sitting at her handmade desk as I come in, ducking my head so as to not bump it again the top of the door, and politely taking off my coon skin cap. She looked kind of tired and discouraged, and I said, has a youngin's been raised in any hell today, Miss Margaret? Oh no, she said. They're very polite. In fact, I've noticed that Bear Creek people are always polite except when they're killing each other. I've finally gotten used to the boys wearing their buoy knives and pistols to school, but somehow it seems so futile. This is all so terribly different from everything to which I've always been accustomed. I get discouraged and feel like giving up. Well, you'll give use to it, I can sold her. It'll be a lot different once you're married to some honest, reliable young man. She'd give me a startled look, and said, married to someone here on Bear Creek? Sure, I said, involuntarily expanding my chest under my buckskin shirt, everybody's just wondered when you'll set the date. But let's get at the lesson. I'd done learn the words you read out for me yesterday. But she weren't listening, and she said, do you have any idea why Mr. Joel Grimes and Mr. Esau Gordon quit calling on me until a few days ago one or the other was at Mr. Kirby's cabin where I board, almost every night. Now don't you worry none about them, I soothed her. Joel will be about on crutches before the week's out, and Esau can already walk without being helped. I always handles my relatives as easy as possible. You fought with them, she exclaimed. I just convinced them you didn't want to be bothered with them, I reassured her. I'm easy going, but I don't like competition. Competition? Her eyes flared wide open, and she looked at me like she never seen me before. Do you mean that you—that I—that—well, I said modestly. Everybody on Bear Creek is just wondering when you're gonna set the date for us to get hitched. You see, gals don't stay single very long in these parts, and hey, what's the matter? Because she was getting paler and paler like she'd had something which didn't agree with her. Nothing, she said faintly. You—you mean people are expecting me to marry you? Sure, I said. She muttered something that sounded like, my God, and licked her lips with her tongue and looked at me like she was about ready to faint. Well, it ain't every gal which has a chance to get hitched to Breckenridge Elkins, so I didn't blame her for being excited. You've been very kind to me, Breckenridge, she said feebly, but I—this is so sudden, so unexpected. I never thought, I never dreamed. Oh, I don't want to rush you, I said. Take your time. Next week will be soon enough. Anyway, I gotta build us a cabin, and bang, when a gun—too loud for a Winchester. Elkins! It was Jay Pembroke yelling for me up the slope. Elkins! Hurry! Who's that, she exclaimed, jumping to her feet like she was working on a spring. Oh, I said in disgust. It's a full, tender foot Bill Glanton wished on me. I reckon a bar has got him by the neck. I'll go see. I'll go with you, she said. But from the way Pembroke was yelling, I figured I'd better not waste no time getting to him. So I couldn't wait for her, and she was some piece behind me when I mounted the lap of the slope, and met him running out from amongst the trees. He was gibbering with excitement. I winged it, he squawked. I'm sure I winged the blighter. But it ran in amongst the underbrush, and I dared not follow it, for the beast is most vicious when wounded. A friend of mine once wounded one in South Africa, and a bar, I asked. No, no, he said, a wild boar. The most vicious brute I have ever seen. It ran into that brush, there. Oh, there ain't no wild boars in the humbolts, I snorted. You wait here. I'll go see just what you did shoot. I seen some splashes of blood on the grass, so I noted shot something. Well, I hadn't gone more than a few hundred feet, and was just out of sight of J. Pembroke when I run into Uncle Jeopard Grimes. Uncle Jeopard was one of the first white men to come into the humbolts. He's as lean and hard as a pine knot, and wears fringed buckskins and moccasins just like he'd done fifty years ago. He had a buoy knife in one hand, and he waved something in the other like a flag of revolt, and he was frothing at the mouth. The Dern Murderer, he held. You see this? That's the tail of Daniel Webster, the finest Dern freezer-back boar which ever trod the humbolts. That dang, tender foot of urine tried to kill him, shot his tail off right spaying up to the hilt. He can't mutilate my animals like this. I'll have his heart's blood! And he done a war dance, waving that pigtail in his buoy, and cussing in English and Spanish in a patchy engine all at once. You calm down, Uncle Jeopard, I said sternly. He ain't got no sense, and he thought Daniel Webster was a wild boar, like they have in Africa and England and them foreign places. He didn't mean no harm. No harm, said Uncle Jeopard fiercely, and Daniel Webster with no more tail onto him than a jackrabbit. Well, I said, here's a five-dollar gold piece to pay for the Dern Hogg's tail, and you let Jay Pembroke alone. Gold can't satisfy honor, he said bitterly, but nevertheless grabbing the coin like a starving man grabbing a beef steak. I'll let this outrage pass for the time, but I'll be watching that maniac to see that he don't mutilate no more of my prized razor-backs. And so saying, he went off, muttering in his beard. I went back to where I left Jay Pembroke, and there he was, talking to Miss Margaret, which had just come up. She had more color in her face than I'd saw recent. Fancy meeting a girl like you here, Jay Pembroke was saying. No more surprising than meeting a man like you, says she, with a kind of fluttery laugh. Oh, a sportsman wanders into all sorts of out-of-the-way places, says he, and seeing they hadn't noticed me coming up, I says, well, Jay Pembroke, I didn't find your wild boar, but I met the owner. He looked at me kind of blank and said vaguely, wild boar? What wild boar? That and you shot the tail off of with that their fool, elephant gun, I says. Listen, next time you see a hog critter, you remember there ain't no wild boars in the Humboldts. They's craters called Haver leaners in south Texas, but they ain't even none of them in Nevada. So next time you see a hog, just reflect that it's merely one of Uncle Jeopard Grimes's razor-backs, and refrain from shooting at it. Oh, quite, he agreed absently, and started talking to Ms. Margaret again. So I picked up the elephant gun which he'd absentmindedly laid down and said, well, it's getting late. Let's go. We won't get back to Pap's cabin tonight, Jay Pembroke. We'll stay at Uncle Saul Garfield's cabin on the other side of Apache Mountain Settlement. As I said, then, cabins was awful close together. Uncle Saul's cabin was below the settlement, but it weren't much over three hundred yards from cousin Bill Kirby's cabin where Ms. Margaret boarded. The other cabins was on the other side of Bill's, mostly strung out up the run and up and down the slopes. I told Jay Pembroke and Ms. Margaret to walk on down to the settlement whilst I went back and got the horses. They got to the settlement, time I catched up with them, and Ms. Margaret had gone into the Kirby cabin, and I seen a light spring up in her room. She had one of them new-fangled aisle lamps she'd rung with her, the only one on Bear Creek. Candles and pine chunks was good enough for us folks, and she'd hanged rag things over the windows, which she called curtains. You never seen nothing like it. I tell you, she was that elegant. You wouldn't believe it. We walked on toward Uncle Saul's, me leading the horses, and after a while Jay Pembroke says, a wonderful creature. You mean Daniel Webster, I asked? No, he said. No, no. I mean Ms. Ashley. She sure is, I said. She'll make me a fine wife. He whirled like I'd stabbed him, and his face looked pale in the dusk. You, he said. You a wife? Well, I said bashfully, she ain't sought the day yet, but I've sure sought my heart on that gal. Oh, he says. Oh, says he, like he had the toothache. Then he said, kind of, hesitantly. Suppose, er, just suppose, you know, suppose a rival for her affection should appear. What would you do? You mean, if some dirty low-down son of a mangy skunk was trying to steal my gal, I said? Whirling so sudden, he staggered backwards. Steal my gal, I roared, seein' red at the mere thought. Why, I'd—I'd— Words failin' me, I wheeled and grabbed a good-sized sapline, and tore it up by the roots, and broke it across my knee, and throwed the pieces clean through a rail fence on the other side of the road. That there is a faint ID, I said, padding with passion. That gives me a very good conception, he said faintly, and he said nothing more till we reached the cabin, and seen Uncle Saul Garfield, standin' in the light of the door, combin' his black beard with his fingers. Next mornin' Jay Pembroke seemed like he'd kind of lost interest in bars. He said all that walkin' he'd done over the slopes of a patchy mountain that made his leg muscles soar. I never heard of such a thing, but nothing that gets the matter with these tender feet surprises me much. They is such a effeminate race. So I asked him would he like to go fishin' down the run, he said all right. But we hadn't been fishin' mornin' an hour. When he said he believed he'd go back to Uncle Saul's cabin, and take him a nap, and he insisted on goin' alone. So I stayed where I was, and catched me a nice string of trout. I went back to the cabin about noon, and asked Uncle Saul if Jay Pembroke had got his nap out. Why, heck, said Uncle Saul. I ain't seen him since you and him started down the run this mornin'. Wait a minute, yonder he comes from the other direction. Well, Jay Pembroke didn't say where he'd been all mornin', and I didn't ask him, because a tender foot don't generally have no reason for anything he does. We at the trout I catched, and after dinner he perked up a right smart and got his shotgun and said he'd like to hunt some wild turkeys. I'd never heard of anybody huntin' anything as big as a turkey with a shotgun, but I didn't say nothin' because tender feet is like that. So we headed up the slopes of Apache Mountain, and I stopped by the school house to tell Miss Margaret I probably wouldn't get back in time to take my readin' and writein' lesson. And she said, You know, until I met your friend, Mr. Pembroke, I didn't realize what a difference there was between men like him and, well, like the men on Bear Creek. I know, I said. But don't hold it again him. He means well. He just ain't got no sense. Everybody can't be smart like me. As a special favor to me, Miss Margaret, I'd like for you to be extra-nice to the poor sap because he's a friend of my friend, Bill Glanton, down to Warpaint. I will, Brackenridge, she replied heartily, and I thanked her and went away with my big manly heart poundin' in my gigantic bosom. Me and Jay Pembroke headed into the heavy timber, and we hadn't went far till I was convinced that somebody was fallin' us. I kept hearin' twigs snappin', and once I thought I'd seen a shadowy figure duck behind a bush, but when I run back there it was gone, and no track to show in the pine needles. That sort of thing had made me nervous anywhere else, because they is an awful lot of people which would like to get a clean shot at my back from the brush. But I know none of them dast'd come after me in my own territory. If anybody was trailin' us it was bound to be one of my relatives, and to save my neck I couldn't think of no reason why any one of them would be gunnin' for me. But I got tired of it, and left Jay Pembroke in a small glade while I snuck back to do some shatterin' of my own. I aimed to cast a big circle around the opening and see if I could find out who it was, but I'd hardly got out of sight of Jay Pembroke when I heard a gun bang. I turned to run back, and here come Jay Pembroke yellin' I got him, I got him, I winged the bolly aborigine. He had his head down as he busted through the brush, and he run into me in his excitement and hit me in the belly with his head so hard he bounced back like a rubber ball and landed in a bush with his ridin' boots brandishing wildly in the air. Assist me, Bracken Ridge, he shrieked, extricate me, they will be hot on our trail. Who, I demanded, haulin' him out by the hind leg and setin' him on his feet. The Indians, he hollered, jumping up and down and waving his smokin' shotgun frantically. The bally redskins, I shot one of them. I saw him sneakin' through the bushes. I saw his legs. I know it was an Indian because he had on moccasins instead of boots. Listen, that's him now. An engine couldn't cuss like that, I said. You've shot Uncle Jeopard Grimes. Telling him to stay there, I run through the brush, guided by the maddened howls, which rizz horribly on the air, and bustin' through some bushes I seen Uncle Jeopard rollin' on the ground with both hands clasped to the rear bosom of his buckskin' britches, which was smokin' freely. His language was awful to hear. Are you in misery, Uncle Jeopard? I inquired solicitously. This evoked another ear-splittin' squall. I'm writhin' in my death-throes, he says, in horrible accents, and you stands there and mocks my mortal agony. My own blood kin, he says. Says Uncle Jeopard with passion. Aw, I says, that there bird-shot wouldn't hurt a flea. It can't be very deep under your thick old hide. Lie on your belly, Uncle Jeopard, I said, stroppin' my buoy on my boot, and I'll dig out them shot for you. Don't touch me, he said fiercely, painfully, climbin' onto his feet. Where's my rifle-gun? Give me it. Now, then, I demands that you bring that English murderer here where I can get a clean lamb at him. The Grimes honor is besmirched, and my new britches is ruined. Nothin' but blood can wipe out the stain on the family honor. Well, I said, you had no business sneakin' around after us that away. Here Uncle Jeopard give tongue to loud and painful shrieks. Why shouldn't I, he howled? Ain't a man got no right to protect his own property? I was followin' him to see that he didn't shoot no more tails off of my hogs. And now he shoots me in the same place. He's a fiend in human form, a monster, which stalks ravelin' through these hills, bustin' for the blood of the innocent. Ah, J. Pembroke thought you was an engine, I said. He thought Dantle Webster was a wild warthog, jibbered Uncle Jeopard. He thought I was Geronimo. I reckon he'll massacre the entire population of Bear Creek under a misapprehension, and you'll uphold and defend him. When the cabins of your kin, folks, is smoldered in ashes, smothered in the blood of your own relatives, I hope you'll be satisfied, bringin' a foreign assassin into a peaceful community. Here Uncle Jeopard's emotions choked him, and he chawed his whiskers, and then yanked out the five-dollar gold piece I give him for Dantle Webster's tail, and throated at me. Take back your filthy looker, he said bitterly. The day of retribution is close on to hand, Breckinridge Alkins, and the Lord of Battles shall judge between them which turns again their kin, folks, in their extremities. In their witch, I says, but he merely snarled, and went limpin' off through the trees, callin' back over his shoulder. They is still men on Bear Creek which we'll see justice did for the aged and helpless. I'll get that English murderer if it's the last thing I do, and you'll be sorry you stood up for him, you big lunkhead. I went back to where J. Pembroke was waiting bewilderedly, and evidently still expectin' a tribe of engines to bust out of the brush and sculp him, and I said in disgust, let's go home. Tomorrow I'll take you so far away from Bear Creek you can shoot in any direction without hittin' a prize, razor-back, or an antiquated gunman with an ingrown disposition. When Uncle Jeopard Grimes gets mad enough to throw away money, it's time to aisle the Winchester's and strap your scabbard ins to your legs. Legs? he said mistily. But what about the Indian? There weren't no Indian gold-durned, I held. They ain't been any on Bear Creek for four or five years. They—aw hell, what's they use? Come on, it's gettin' late. Next time you see somethin' you don't understand, ask me before you shoot it. And remember, the more ferocious and woolly it looks, the more likely it is to be a leadin' citizen of Bear Creek. It was dark when we approached Uncle Saul's cabin. And Jay Pimbrook glanced back up the road toward the settlement and said, my word, is it a political rally? Look, a torch-like parade. I looked and said, quick, get in the cabin and stay there. He turned pale and said, if there is danger, I insist on— insist all you darn please, I said, but get in that house and stay there. I'll handle this. Uncle Saul see he gets in there. Uncle Saul is a man of few words. He'd taken a firm grip on his pipe-stem and grabbed Jay Pimbrook by the neck and the seat of the britches and throwed him bodily into the cabin and shut the door and sat down on the stoop. They ain't no use in you gettin' mixed up in this, Uncle Saul, I said. You got your faults, Breckin' Ridge, he grunted. You ain't got much sense. But you're my favorite sister's son, and I ain't forgot that lame mule Jeopard traded me for a sound animal back in sixty-nine. Let them come. They come, all right, and surged up in front of the cabin. Jeopard's boys Jack and Buck and Esau and Joash and Polk County and E-Rath Elkins and Amaba Gordon's and Buckner's and Polk's all more or less kin to me, except Joe Braxton, who wasn't kin to any of us, but didn't like me because he was sweet on Miss Margaret. But Uncle Jeopard weren't with them. Some had torches, and Polk County grimes had a rope with a noose in it. Where at ere you all goin' with that there lariat, I asked them sternly, plantin' my enormous bulk in their path. Produce the scoundrel, said Polk County, waving his rope round his head, freeing out the foreign invader which shoots hogs and defenseless old men from the brush. What you aim to do, I inquired. We aim to hang him, they replied, with hearty enthusiasm. Uncle Saul knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stood up, and stretched his arms, which looked like knotted oak limbs, and he grinned in his black beard like an old timber-wolf, and he says, where is dear cousin Jeopard to speak for himself? Uncle Jeopard was havin' the shock picked out of his hide when we left, says Joel Gordon. He'll be along directly. Breckin' Ridge, we don't want no trouble with you, but we aims to have that Englishman. Well, I snorted. You all can't. Bill Glanton is trustin' me to return him whole of body and limb, and what do you want to waste time in argument for Breckin' Ridge? Uncle Saul reproved mildly. Don't you know it's a plumb waste of time to try to reason with the offspring of a lame, mule trader? What would you suggest, old man? Sneeringly remarked Polk County. Uncle Saul beamed on him benevolently, and said gently, I'd try moral suasion. Like this, and he hit Polk County under the jaw, and knocked him clean across the yard into a rain-barrel amongst the ruins of which he reposed until he was rescued and revived some hours later. But there was no stoppin' Uncle Saul once he took the warpath. No sooner had he disposed of Polk County than he jumped seven foot into the air, cracked his heels together three times, give the rebel yell, and come down with his arms around the necks at Esau Grimes and Joe Braxton, which he went to the earth with, and started moppin' up the cabinyard with him. That started the fight, and there is no scrap in the world where mayhem is committed as free and fervent as in one of these here family ruckuses. Polk County had hardly crashed into the rain-barrel when Jack Grimes stuck a pistol in my face. I slapped it aside just as he fired, and the bullet missed me and taken an ear off of Jim Gordon. I was scared Jack would hurt somebody if he kept on shootin' reckless that way, so I kinda wrapped him with my left fist, and how was I to know it would dislocate his jaw. But Jim Gordon seemed to think I was to blame about his ear, because he give a maddened howl, and jerked up his shotgun and let bam with both barrels. I ducked just in time to keep from gettin' my head blowed off, and catched most of the double charge in my shoulder, whilst the rest hived in the seat of Steve Kirby's britches. Being shot that way by a relative was irritating, but I controlled my temper and merely taken the gun away from Jim, and splintered the stock over his head. In the meantime Joel Gordon and Buck Grimes had grabbed one of my legs apiece, and was trying to rattle me to the earth, and Joe Ash Grimes was trying to hold down my right arm, and cousin Pekas Buckner was beat me over the head from behind with an axe handle, and E-Rath Elkins was comin' at me from the front with a buoy knife. I reached down and got Buck Grimes by the neck with my left hand, and I swung my right and hit E-Rath with it, but I had to lift Joe Ash clean off his feet and swing him around with the lick, because he wouldn't let go, so I only knocked E-Rath through the rail fence, which was around Uncle Saul's garden. About this time I found my left leg was free, and discovered that Buck Grimes was unconscious, so I let go of his neck and begun to kick around with my left leg, and it ain't my fault if the spur got tangled up in Uncle Jonathan Polk's whiskers and jerked most of them out by the root. I shaken Joe Ash off and taken the axe handle away from Pekas, because I seen he was gonna hurt somebody if he kept on swinging it around so reckless, and I don't know why he blames me because his skull got fratured when he hit that tree. He oughta look where he falls when he gets throwed across a cabinyard, and if Joe Gordon hadn't been so stubborn trying to gouge me, he wouldn't have got his leg broke neither. I was handicapped by not wanting to kill any of my kin folks, but they was so mad they all wanted to kill me, so in spite of my carefulness the casualties was increasing at a rate which woulda discouraged anybody but Bear Creek folks, but they are the stubbornest people in the world. Three or four had got me around the legs again, refusing to be convinced that I couldn't be throwed that way, and E-Rath Elkins, having pulled himself out of the ruins of the fence, come charging back with his buoy. By this time I seen I'd have to use violence in spite of myself, so I grabbed E-Rath and squazz him with a grizzly hug, and that was when he got them five ribs caved in, and he ain't spoke to me since. I never seen such a cuss for taking a fence over trifles, for a matter of fact, if he hadn't been so bodaciously riled up, if he had kept his head like I did, he would have seen how kindly I felt toward him, even in the fever of that their battle. If I had dropped him underfoot he might have been tromped on fatally, for I was kicking folks right and left without caring where they fell, so I carefully flung E-Rath out of the range of that ruckus, and if he thinks I aimed him at Ozark Grimes and his pitchfork, well, I'd just never done it. It was Ozark's fault more than mine for toting that pitchfork, and it ought to be Ozark that E-Rath cusses when he starts to sit down these days. It was at that moment that somebody swung at me with an axe, and ripped my ear nigh off of my head, and I begun to lose my temper. Four or five other relatives was kicking and hitting and biting at me all at once, and there is a limit even to my timid manners and mild nature. I voiced my displeasure with a baller E-Rath and lashed out with both fists, and my misguided relatives fell all over the yard like persimmons after a frost. I grabbed Joash Grimes by the ankles and begun to knock them ill-advised idjits in the head with him, and the way he hollered, you'd have thought someone was manhandling him. The yard was beginning to look like a battlefield when the cabin door opened, and a deluge of violent water descended on us. I got about a gallon down my neck but paid very little attention to it. However, the others ceased hostilities and started rolling on the ground in hollering and cussing, and Uncle Saul, rizz up from amongst the ruins of E-Saw Grimes and Joel Braxton, and bellered, Woman, what are you at? Aunt Zavala Garfield was standing in the doorway with a kettle in her hand, and she said, Will you idjits stop fighting? The Englishman's gone. He run out the back door when the fighting started, saddled his nag, and pulled out. Now will you born fools stop, or will I give you another deluge? Land-savis, what's that light? Somebody was yelling toward the settlement, and I was aware of a peculiar glow which didn't come from such torches as was still burning, and here come Medina Kirby, one of Bill's gals, yelping like a Comanche. Our cabin's burning, she squalled. A stray bullet went through the window and busted Miss Margaret's aisle lamp. With a yell of dismay I abandoned the fray and headed for Bill's cabin, followed by everybody which was able to follow me. They had been several wild shots fired during the melee, and one of them must have hived in Miss Margaret's window. The Kirby's had dragged most of their belongings into the yard, and some was bringing water from the creek, but the whole cabin was in a blaze by now. Where's Miss Margaret, I roared. She must still be in there, shrilled Miss Kirby. A beam fell and wedged her door so we couldn't open it, and I grabbed a blanket one of the gals had rescued and plunged it into the rain-barrel, and run for Miss Margaret's room. There wasn't but one door in it which led into the main part of the cabin, and was jammed like they said, and I knowed I couldn't never get my shoulders through either window, so I just put down my head and rammed the wall full force, and knocked four or five logs out of place, and made a hole big enough to go through. The room was so full of smoke I was nigh blinded, but I made out a figure fumbling at the window at the other side. A flaming beam fell out of the roof and broke across 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 fractured my shin on a bedstead or something, and enveloped the figure in the wet blanket, and swept it up into my arms. It kicked wildly and fought, and though its voice was muffled in the blanket, I catched some words I never would have thought Miss Margaret would use, but I figured she was hysterical. She seemed to be wearing spurs, too, because I felt them 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 on the opposite 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. You're safe, Miss Margaret. Said Miss Margaret, and Uncle Saul groped under the blanket and said, By golly, if this is the schoolteacher, she's scrowed a remarkable set of whiskers since I seen her last. He yanked off the blanket to reveal the bewiskered countenance of Uncle Jeopard Grimes. Hell's fire, I bellared. What you doing here? I was coming to join the lynching, you blame fool, he snarled. I seen Bill's cabin was a fire, so I clumbed in through the back window to save Miss Margaret. She was gone, but there was a note she left. I was fixing to climb out the window when this maniac grabbed me. Give me that note, I bellared, grabbing it. Medina, come here and read it for me. That note run. Dear Breckenridge, I 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 Jake 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're going to Europe on our honeymoon. With love, Margaret Ashley. Now what you've got to say, sneered Uncle Jeopard. I'm a victim of foreign entanglements, I said daisily. I'm going to chaw Bill Glanton's ears off for saddling that critter on me. Then I'm going to lick me an Englishman, if I have to go all the way to California 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. Elkins never forgets, and the next one that pokes his nose into the Bear Creek country had better be a fightin' fool or a powerful fast runner. End of War on Bear Creek. The Feud Buster by Robert Howard. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Feud Buster by Robert Howard. These here-durned lives, which is being circulated around, is makin' me sick and tired. If this slander don't stop, I'm liable to lose my temper, and anybody in the Humboldts can tell you, when I lose my temper, the effect on the population is wussin' 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 mesquital country. I hear tell the Barlow's is talkin' about suin' me for destroyin' their property. Well, they oughta build their cabin solider, if they don't want them tore down. And they're all liars when they say the Hopkins's hired me to exterminate them at five dollars a sculpt. I don't believe even the Hopkins had paid five dollars for one of their mangy sculpts. Anyway, I don't fight for hire for nobody. And the Hopkins's needin' bellyache about me turnin' on them, and tryin' to massacre the entire clan. All I wanted to do was kinda disable them, so they couldn't interfere with my business. And my business, from first to last, was defendin' the family honor. If I had to wipe up the earth with a couple of feudin' clans whilst so doin', I can't help it. Folks which is particular of their hides oughta stay out of the way of tornadoes, wild bulls, devastating torrents, and an insulted Elkins. But it was Uncle Jeopard Grimes' fault to begin with, like it generally is. They're near all the calamities which takes place in Southern Nevada can be traced back to that old lobo. He's got an ingrown disposition and a natural talent for pasturin' his fellow man, especially his relatives. I was settin' in a saloon in Warpaint, enjoying a friendly game of cards with a horse thief and three train robbers, when Uncle Jeopard come in and spied me, and he come over and scowl down on me like I was the missing lynx or somethin'. Pretty soon, he says, just as I was all sought to make a killin', he says, How can you sit there so free and careless, with four ace-yards in your hand, when your family name is bein' besmirched? I flanged down my hand in annoyance and said, Now look what you've done. What you mean, blattin' out information of such a private nature? What you talkin' about, anyhow? Well, he says, During the three months you've been away from home, Roystrin' and wastin' your substance in riotous livin', I've been down on Wild River, punchin' cows at thirty a month, I said fiercely. I ain't squandered nothin' nowhere's. Shut up and tell me whatever you're a-talkin' about. Well, says he, Whilst you've been gone, young Dick Jackson, a Chaud ear, has been courtin' your sister, Ellen, and the family's been expecting him to set the day, any time. But now I hear he's been bragging all over Chaud ear about how he done jilted her. Are you gonna sit there and let your sister become the lap and stock of the country? When I was a young man, when you was a young man, Daniel Boone warn't welped yet, I'm bellard. So mad I included him and everybody else in my irritation. They ain't nothin' upsets me like injustice done to some of my close kin. Get out of my way. I'm headin' for Chaud ear. What you grinnin' at, you spotted hyenaer? 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 an impulse to shatter a dimijon over his head, which I done, and he fell under a table, hollerin' bloody murder, and all the fellas drinkin' at the bar abandoned their liquor, and stamp eatin' for the street, hollerin' take cover, boys! Breckin' Ridge 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 Captain 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 Chaud ear. Everything kind of floated in a red haze all the way. But then folks which claims I try to murder him in cold blood on the road between war-paint and Chaud ear is just narrow-minded and super-sensitive. The reason I shot everybody's hats off that I met was just to kind of calm my nerves, because I was afraid if I didn't cool off some by the time I hit Chaud ear, I might hurt somebody. I am that mild-mannered and retiring by nature that I wouldn't willingly hurt man or beast or engine unless maddened beyond endurance. That's why I acted with so much self-possession and dignity when I got to Chaud ear and entered the saloon where Dick Jackson generally hung out. Where's Dick Jackson, I said, and everybody must have 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? Give me time, will you? stuttered the barkeep. So you evades the question, eh? I said, kicking the foot rail loose. Friend of his, eh? Trying to protect him, eh? I was so overcome by this perfidy that I lunged for him, and he ducked down behind the bar, and I crashed onto it bodily with all my lung and weight, and it collapsed on top of him, and all the customers run out of the saloon hollering. Help! Murder! Elkins is killing the bartender. This feller stuck his head up from amongst the ruins of the bar, and begged, for God's sake, let me alone. Jackson headed south for the mescatal mountains, yesterday. I threw down the chair I was fixing to bust all the ceiling lamps with, and run out and jumped on Captain 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 mescatals was, though I hadn't ever been there. I crossed the California line about sundown, and shortly after dark I seen mescatal peak looming ahead of me. Having calmed down somewhat, I decided to stop and rest Captain Kidd. He weren'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 weren't no use in running Captain Kidd's legs off on the first lap of the chase. It weren't a very thickly settled country I'd come into, very mountainous and thick-timbered, but pretty soon I'd 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 window, and bawled, who be you? I'm Breckenridge Elkins from Bear Creek, Nevada, I said. I'd like to stay all night and get some feed for my horse. Stand still, warren the voice. We can see you again, the stars, and these four rifle guns are cavern you. Well, make up your minds, I said, because I could hear them discussing me. I reckoned they thought they was whispering. One of them said, ah, he can't be a barlow. Ain't none of them that big. Tothern said, well, maybe he's a darned gunfighter they sent for to help them out. Old Jake's nephew's been up in Nevada. Let's let him in, I said a third. We can mighty quick tell what he is. So one of them come out and loud it to be all right for me to stay the night, and he showed me a corral to put Captain Kidd in and hauled out some hay for him. We've got to be careful, he said. We've got lots of enemies in these hills. We went into the cabin and they let the candle again and sought some cornpone and sour belly and beans on the table and a jug of corn liquor. They was four men and they said their names was Hopkins, Jim, Bill, Joe, and Joshua, and they were brothers. I had always heard tell the mescatile country was famed for big men, but these fellas wasn't so big. Not much over six foot high apiece. On Bear Creek they'd be considered kind of puny and undersized. They weren't very talkative. Mostly they sopped with their rifles across 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 have ate a lot more only the grub give out. And I hoped they had more liquor somewheres else because I was pretty dry. When I turned up the jug to take a snort it was brim full. But before I had more than dampened my gullet the darn thing was plum empty. When I got through I went over and sat down on a raw hide bottom chair in front of the fireplace where they was a small fire going, though they weren't really no need for it and they said, What's your business, stranger? Well, I said not knowing I was going to get the surprise of my life. I'm looking for a fella 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 cusset 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 that caused Jim to miss me with his buoy and sink it into the table instead. But Joshua busted a chair over my head and Bill would have shot me if I hadn't jerked back my head so he just cinched my eyebrows. This lack of hospitality so irritated me that I risen up amongst them like a bar with a pack of wolves hanging on to 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 casualties was groaning all over the place and I was just relighting 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 barefoot gal standing in the door. When she seen the ruin she let out a screech like a catamount. You killed them! she screamed. You murderer! Aw, I ain't neither, she said. They ain't hurt much. Just a few cracked ribs and dislocated shoulders and busted legs and such 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 damn Barlow! I ain't no Barlow, I said. I'm Breckenridge Elkins of Bear Creek. I ain't never even heard of no Barlow's. And that Jim stopped his groaning long enough to snarl. If you ain't a friend of the Barlow's, how come you asking for Dick Jackson? He's one of them. He jilted my sister, I roared. I aimed to drag him back and make him marry her. Well, it was all a mistake, grown Jim. But the damage is done now. It's wussin' you think, said the gal fiercely. The Hopkins's have all forded their selves over at Pap's cabin, and they sent me to get you all. We got to make a stand. The Barlow's is gathering over to Jake Barlow's cabin, and they aims to make a foray on to us to-night. We was out numbered to begin with, and now here's our best fightin' men laid out. Our gooses cooked plum to hell. Lift me on my horse, moaned Jim. I can't walk, but I can still shoot. He tried to rise and fell back, cussin' and groanin'. 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 your duty. Anyway, you says Dick Jackson's your enemy. Well, he's Jake Barlow's nephew, and he'd come back here to help him clean out us Hopkins's. He's over at Jake's cabin right now. My brother Bill snuck over in spite on him, and he says every fightin' man of the clan is gathering there. All we can do is hold the fort, and you got to come help us hold it. You're nigh as big as all four these boys put together. Well, I figured I owed the Hopkins's something. So, after settin' some bones and bandaging some wounds and abrasions, of which there was a goodly lot, I saddled Captain Kidd, and we sought out. As we rode along, she said, that there is the biggest, wildest, meanest lookin' critter I ever seen. Where'd you kid him? He was a wild horse, I said. I catched him up in the Humboldts. Nobody ever rode him but me. He's the only horse west of the Pekas, 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 don't know, 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, it's their own business. We was followin' a windin' path, and pretty soon we heard dogs barkin' and about that time the gal turned aside and got off her horse, and showed me a pin hid in the brush. It was full of horses. We keep our mouths here, so's the Barlow's ain't so likely to find him and run him off, she said. And she turned her horse into the pin, and I put Captain Kidd in but tied him over in one corner by herself. Otherwise he would have started fightin' all the other horses and kicked the fence down. Then we went on along the path, and the dogs barked louder and pretty soon we come to a big two-story cabin which had heavy board shutters over all the windows. It was just a dim streak of candlelight come through the cracks. It was dark because the moon hadn't come up. We stopped in the shatter of the trees and the gal whispered like a whipper-well three times, and somebody answered from up on the roof. A door opened to crack in the room which didn't have no light at all, and somebody said, Matt, you, Lizarbith, here are the boys with you. It's me, says she, starting toward the door, but the boys ain't with me. Then all at once he throat opened the door and hollered, Run gal, there's a grisly bar standin' up on his hind legs right behind you. Oh, that ain't no bar, says she. That there's Breckin' Ridge Alkins from up in the Vattie. He's gonna help us fight the barlows. We went on into a room where there was a candle on the table, and there was nine or ten men there and thirty odd women and children. They all looked kind of pale and scared, and the men was loaded down with pistols and Winchester's. They all looked at me kind of dumb-like, and the old man kept starin' like he warn't any too sure he hadn't let a grisly in the house after all. He mumbled something about makin' a natural mistake in the dark, and turned to the gal. Where's the boys I sent you after? he demanded, and she says. This gent must them up so's they ain't fittin' for to fight. Now, don't get rambunctious, Pap. It weren't just an honest mistake all round. He's our friend, and he's gunnin' for Dick Jackson. Ha! Dick Jackson snarled one of the men left in his Winchester. Just let me get my sights on him. I'll cook his goose. You won't, neither, I said. He's got to go back to Bear Creek and marry my sister, Ellen. Well, I says, what's the campaign? I don't figure they'll get here till well after midnight, said old man Hawkins. All we can do is wait for him. You mean you all sits here and waits till they comes and lays siege, I says? What else, says he? Listen here, young man, don't start tellin' me how to conduct a feud. I growed up in this here, and it were in full swing when I was born, and I done spent my whole life carryin' it on. That's just it, I snorted. You let's these darn wars drag gone for generations. Up in the Humboldts we bring such things to a quick conclusion. Mighty near everybody up there come from Texas, original, and we fights our feud's Texas style, which is short and sweet. A feud which lasts ten years in Texas is a humdinger. We winds'em up quick and in style. Where at is this here cabin where the Barlow's is gathering? About three miles over the ridge, says a young fellow they call Bill. How many is they, I asked. I counted seventeen, says he. Just a fair-sized mouthful for a Elkins, I said. Bill, you guide me to that there cabin. The rest you can come or stay. It don't make no difference to me. Well, they started jawin' with each other then. Some was for goin' and some for stayin'. Some wanted to go with me and try to take the Barlow's by surprise, but the others said it couldn't be done. They'd get ambushed themselves, and the only sensible thing to be did was to stay forwarded and wait for the Barlow's to come. They'd given me no more he'd just sought there and augured. But that was all right with me. Right in the middle of the dispute, when it looked like maybe the Hopkins's would get to fight amongst themselves and finish each other before the Barlow's could get there, I lit out with the boy Bill, which seemed to have considerable sense for a Hopkins. He got him a horse out of a hidden corral, and I got Cat and Kid, which was a good thing. He'd somehow got a mule by the neck, and the critter was almost at its last gasp when I rescued it. Then me and Bill lit out. We followed windin' paths over thick-tempered mountain sides till at last we'd come to a clearing, and there was a cabin there, with light and profanity pourin' out of the windows. We'd been here in the last mansion for half a mile before we sighted the cabin. We left our horses back in the woods ways and snuck up on foot, and stopped amongst the trees back of the cabin. They're in there tankin' up on corn liquor to wet their appetites for Hopkins blood, whispered Bill, all in a shiver. Listen to them. Them fellas ain't hardly human. What you gonna do? They got a man standin' guard out in front of the door at the other end of the cabin. You see, they ain't no doors or windows at the back. These windows on each side, but if we try to rush it from the front, or either side, they'll see us and fill us full of lead before we can get us shot. Look, the moon's comin' up. They'll be startin' on their raid before long. I'll admit, that cabin looked like it was gonna be harder to storm than I'd figured. I hadn't had no idea in mind when I sought out for the place. All I wanted was to get in amongst them, Marlowe's. I'd does my best fightin' at close quarters. But at the moment I couldn't think of no way that wouldn't get me shot up. Of course, I could just rush the cabin, but the thought of seventeen Winchester's blazin' away at me from close range was a little stiff even for me, though I was game to try it, if they weren't no other way. Whilst I was studyin' over the matter, all to once the horses tied out in front of the cabin snorted, and back up in the hills, something went, and an ID hit me. Get back in the woods and wait for me, I told Bill, as I headed for the thicket where we'd left the horses. I mounted and rode up in the hills toward where the howl had come from. Pretty soon I lit, and throwed Captain Kid's reins over his head, and walked on into the deep brush, from time to time, givin' a long squall like a cougar. They ain't a cat-a-mound in the world, can tell the difference when a Bear Creek man imitates one. After a while one answered, from a ledge just a few hundred feet away. I went to the ledge and clump up on it. There was a small cave behind it and a big mountain lion in there. He'd give a grunt of surprise when he seen I was a human, and made a swipe at me, but I gave him a bat on the head with my fist, and whilst he was still dizzy I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him out of the cave, lugging down to where I left my horse. Captain Kid snorted at the side of the cougar and wanted to kick his brains out, but I gave him a good kick in the stomach itself, which is the only kind of reason Captain Kid understands, and got on him and headed for the Barlow Hangout. I can think of a lot more pleasant jobs than toting a full-grove mountain lion down a thick timbered mountain side on the back of an iron jaw outlaw at midnight. I had the cat by the back of the neck with one hand, so hard he couldn't squall, and I held him out at arm's length as far from the horse as I could. But every now and then he'd twist around so he could claw Captain Kid with his hind legs, and when this would happen Captain Kid would squall with rage and start bucking all over the place. Sometimes he would buck the darn cougar on to me and pulling him loose from my hide was worse than pulling cuckle-burrs out of a cow's tail. But presently I arrived close behind the cabin. I whistled like a whipper-wheel for Bill, but he didn't answer, and weren't no where's to be seen, so I decided he'd got scared and pulled out for home. But that was all right with me. I'd come to fight the Barlow's, and I aimed to fight them with or without assistance. Bill would just have been in the way. I got off in the trees back of the cabin and throwed the reins over Captain Kid's head, and went up to the back of the cabin on foot, walking soft and easy. The moon was well up by now and what wind they was was blowing toward me, which pleased me because I didn't want the horses tied out in front to scent the cat and start cutting up before I was ready. The fellers inside was still cussing and talking loud as I approached one of the winders on the side, and one hollered out, Come on, let's get started. I craves Hopkins Gore, and about that time I give the cougar a heave and throw him through the winder. He let out an awful squall as he hit, and the fellers in the cabin hollered louder than he did. Instantly a most awful bustle broke loose in there, and of all the whooping and ballering and shooting I ever heard, and the lion squalling amongst it all, and clothes and hides tearing so you could hear it all over the clearing, and the horses busting loose and tearing out through the brush. As soon as I hove the cat, I run around to the door and a man was standing there with his mouth open, too surprised at the racket to do anything. So I takes his rifle away from him and broke the stock off on his head, and stood there at the door with the barrel and tended to brain them barlos as they run out. I was plumb certain they would run out because I've noticed the average man is funny that way, and hates to be shut up in a cabin with a mad cougar as mad as a cougar would hate to be shut up in a cabin with an infuriated settler of Bear Creek. But them scoundrels fooled me. It appears like they had a secret door in the back wall, and whilst I was waiting for them to storm out through the front door and get their skulls cracked, they knocked the secret door open and went piling out that way. By the time I realized what was happening and run around to the other end of the cabin, they was all out and streaking for the trees, yelling blue murder with their clothes all tore to shreds, and them bleeding like stuck hogs. That their catamount sure improved the shine in hours whilst he was corralled with them barlos. He'd come out after them with his mouth full of the seats of men's britches, and when he'd seen me he'd gave a kind of despairing yelp and taken out up the mountain with his tail twixed his legs like the devil was after him with a red-hot brandon iron. I'd taken after the barlos, sought on scudlin' at least a few of them, and I was on the pint of lettin' bam at them with my six shooters as they run, when just as they reached the trees, all the Hopkins men wrizzed out of the brush and fell on them with piercing howls. That fray was kind of peculiar. I don't remember a single shot being fired. The barlos had dropped their guns in their flight, and the Hopkins's seemed bent on whipping out their wrongs with their bare hands and gun butts. For a few seconds they was a hell of a scramble, men cussin' and howlin' ballerin' and rifle stocks crackin' overheads in the brash crashin' underfoot, then before I could get into it the barlos broke every which way and took out through the woods like jackrabbit's squallin' judgment day. Old man Hopkins come prancing out of the brash wave in his Winchester and his beard flyin' in the moonlight, and he hollered, the sins of the wicked shall return on to them. Ilkens, we have hit a powerful lick for righteousness this here night. Where'd you all come from, I asked. I thought you was still back in your cabin, chewin' the rag. Well, he says, after you pulled out we decided to trail along and see how you come out with whatever you planned. As we come through the woods, expecting to get ambushed every second, we met Bill here who told us he believed you had an ID for circumventing them devils, though he didn't know what it was, so we come on and hit ourselves at the edge of the trees to see what had happened. I see we've been too timid in our dealings with these heavens. We've been lettin' them force the fightin' too long. You was right. A good offense is the best defense. We didn't kill any of the varmints, was luck, he said, but we'd give them a prime lickin'. Hey, look there! The boys has caught one of the critters. Take him into that cabin, boys! They lugged him into the cabin, and by the time me and the old man got there, they had the candles lit, and a rope around the barlow's neck, and one in, throw'd over a rafter. That cabin was a sight. All littered with broke guns and splintered chairs and tables, pieces of clothes and strips of hide. It looked just about like a cabin auto-look, where they had just been a fight between seventeen pole-cats and a mountain lion. It was a dirt floor, and some of the poles which helped hold up the roof was splintered, so most of the weight was restin' on a big post in the center of the hut. All the Hopkins's was crowding around their prisoner, and when I looked over their shoulders and seen the feller's pale face and the light of the candle, I'd give a yell. Dick Jackson! So it is, said old man Hopkins, rubbing his hands with glee. So it is. Well, young feller, you've got any last words to orate? Nasset Jackson sullenly! But if it hadn't been for that dirt lion's spile in our plans we'd have had you dang'd Hopkins's like so much pork. I'd never heard of a cougar jumpin' through a window before. That there cougar didn't jump, I said, shouldering through the mob. He was heave. I'd done the heavin'. His mouth fell open, and he looked at me like he'd saw the ghost of sittin' bull. Breckin' Ridge Elkins says he. I'm cooked now for sure. I'll say you air, gridded the feller, who'd spoke a shootin' Jackson earlier in the night. What are we waitin' for? Let's string him up. The rest started howlin'. Hold on, I said. You all can't hang him. I'm gonna take him back to Bear Creek. You ain't neither, said old man Hopkins. We're much a-bleached to you for the help you give us tonight, but this here's the first chance we've had to hang a barlow in fifteen year, and we plan to make the most of it. String him, boys. Stop, I roared, steppin' forward. In a second I was covered by seven rifles, whilst three men laid hold of the rope and started to heave Jackson's feet off the floor. Them seven Winchester's didn't stop me. But for one thing I'd have taken them guns away and wiped up the floor with them ungrateful mavericks. But I was a feared Jackson would get hit in the wild shootin' that was certain to follow such a plan of action. What I wanted to do was something which would put them all horse to combat, as the French say, without killin' Jackson. So I laid hold of the center post, and before they knowed what I was doing, I tore it loose and broke it off. And the roof caved in, and the walls fell inwards on the roof. In a second there wasn't no cabin at all. Just a pile of lumber with the Hopkins's all underneath and screamin' blue murder. Of course I just braced my legs, and when the roof fell, my head busted a hole through it, and the logs of the fallen walls hit my shoulders and glanced off. So when the dust settled I was standin' waist deep amongst the ruins, and nothing but a few scratches to show for it. The howls that rizz from beneath the ruins was blood-curdlin'. But I knowed nobody was hurt permanent, because if they was they wouldn't be able to howl like that. But I expect some of them would have been hurt if my head and shoulders hadn't kind of broke the fall of the roof and the wall logs. I located Jackson by his voice, and pulled pieces of roofboard and logs off until I come to his leg, and I pulled him out by it and laid him on the ground to get his wind back, because a beam had fell across his stomach, and when he tried to holler he made the funniest noise I ever heard. I then kind of rooted around amongst the debris and hauled old man Hopkins out, and he seemed kind of dazed and kept talkin' about earthquakes. You better get to work extricatin' your misguided kin from under them logs, you hoary-haired old serpent, I told him sternly. After that their display of ingratitude I got no sympathy for you. In fact, if I was a short-tempered man I'd feel inclined to violence. But being the soul of kindness and generosity I controls my emotions and merely remarks that if I wasn't mild-mannered as a lamb I'd hand you a boot in the pants like this. I kicked him gentle. Ow! says he, sailing through the air and sticking his nose to the hilt in the dirt. I'll have the law on you, you dirt murderer! He wept, shaking his fists at me, and as I departed with my captive I could hear him chanting a hymn of hate as he pulled chunks of logs off his bellarine relatives. Jackson was trying to say something, but I told him I weren't in no mood for perlite conversation, and the less he said the less likely I was to lose my temper and tie his neck into a knot around a blackjack. Captain Kidd made the hundred miles from the Mesquite Mountains to Bear Creek by noon the next day, carrying double, and never stopping to eat, sleep, nor drink. Them that don't believe that kindly keep their mouths shut. I have already licked nineteen men for acting like they didn't believe it. I stalked into the cabin and throw Dick Jackson down on the floor before Ellen, which looked at him and me like she thought I was crazy. What you find attractive about this coyote, I said bitterly, is beyond the grasp of my dusk-coated brain. But here he is, and you can marry him right away. She said, Are you drunk or sun-struck? Marry that good-for-nothing whiskey-swiggin' card-shooting loafer? Why, ain't been a week since I run him out of the house with a buggy whip. Then he didn't jilt you, I gasped. Him jilt me, I said. I jilted him. I turned to Dick Jackson more in sorrow than in anger. Why, said I, did you boast all over Chaud ear about jiltin' Ellen Elkins? I didn't want folks to know she turned me down, he said, sulkily. Us Jacksons is proud. The only reason I ever thought about marrying her was I was ready to settle down on the farm Pap gave me, and I wanted to marry me an Elkins gal so I wouldn't have to go to the expense of hiring a couple of hands and buying a span of mules, and they ain't no use in Dick Jackson threatening to have the law on me. He got off light to what's he'd have got if Pap and my brothers hadn't all been off huntin'. They've got terrible tempers. But I was always too soft-hearted for my own good. In spite of Dick Jackson's insults, I held my temper. I didn't do nothin' to him at all except escort him in sorrow for five or six miles down the Chaud ear trail, kickin' the seat of his britches. End of THE FEWD BUSTER Cupid from Bear Creek by Robert Howard This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Cupid from Bear Creek by Robert Howard Someday, maybe, when I'm an old man, I'll have sense enough to stay away from these new mining camps which springs up overnight like mushroomers. There was that time in Teton Gulch, for example. It was an ill-advised moment when I stopped there on my way back to the Humboldts from the Yavapai country. I was a sheep for the shearin' and I was shore-planning. And if some of the shears got fatally heard in the process, they needn't to blame me. I was actin' in self-defense all the way through. At first I aimed to pass right through Teton Gulch without stoppin'. I was in a hurry to get back to my home country and find out was any misguided idjits trying to court Dolly Rixby, the bell of war-paint, in my absence. I hadn't heard from her since I left Bear Creek five weeks before, which weren't surprising, seen as how she couldn't write, nor none of her family, and I couldn't have read it if they had. But there was a lot of young bucks around war-paint which could be counted on to start shinin' rounder the minute my back was turnt. But my thirst got the best of me. And I stopped in the camp. I was drinkin' me a dram at the bar of the Yellow Dog Saloon and Hotel. When the barkeep says, after studyin' me a spell, he says, You must be Breckinridge Elkins of Bear Creek. I give the matter due consideration and loud as how I was. How come you knowed me, I inquired suspiciously, because I had never been in Teton Gulch before. And he says, Well, I heard tell of Breckinridge Elkins, and when I seen you, I figured you must be him, because I don't see how they can be two men in the world that big. By the way, there's a friend of yours upstairs. Blink will Shaw from war-paint. I've heard him brag about knowin' you personal. He's upstairs now, fourth door from the stair-head, on the left. Now that there news interested me, because Blink was the most persistent of all them young Mavericks which was tryin' to spark Dolly Rixby. Just the night before I left for Yavapai, I catched him comin' out of her house, and was fixin' to sweep the street with him when Dolly came out and stopped me, and made us shake hands. It suited me fine for him to be in Teton Gulch, or anywheres, just so he weren't nowhere's nigh Dolly Rixby, so I thought I'd pass the time of day with him. I went upstairs and knocked on the door, and BAM! went a gun inside, and a forty-five slug gripped through the door and takin' a nick out of my off-ear. Gettin' shot in the ear always did irritate me, so without waitin' for no more demonstrations of hospitality, I give voice to my displeasure in a definite baller, and knocked the door off its hinges and busted into the room over its ruins. For a second I didn't see nobody, but then I heard a kind of gurgle goin' on, and happened to remember that the door seemed kind of squishy underfoot when I dropped over it, so I knowed that whoever was in the room had got pinned under the door when I knocked it down. So I reached under it and got him by the collar and hauled him out. Sure enough it was Blink Wiltshaw. He was limp as a lariat and glassy eyed in pale, and was still kind of trying to shoot me with a six-shooter when I'd taken it away from him. What the hell's the matter with you, I demanded sternly dangling him by the collar with one hand whilst shakin' him till his teeth rattled. Didn't Dolly make his shake hands? What you mean trying to assassinate me through a hotel door? Let me down, Breck, he gasped. I didn't know it was you. I thought it was Rattlesnake Harrison comin' after my gold. So I sought him down. He grabbed a jug of liquor and takin' a swig, and his hand shook so he spilled half of it down his neck. Well, I demanded. Ain't you gonna offer me a snort, Dernet? Excuse me, Breckin' Rich, he apologized. I'm so Dernjumpy I don't know what I'm doing. You see them buckskin' pokes, he said, pintin' to some bags on the bed. Them is plumb full of nuggets. I've been minin' up the gulch, and I hit a regular bonanza the first week. But it ain't doin' me no good. What you mean, I demanded. These mountains is full of outlaws, says he. They robbs and murders every man which makes a strike. The stagecoach has been stuck up so often, nobody sends their dust out on it no more. When a man makes a pile, he sneaks out through the mountains at night with his gold unpacked mules. I aimed to do that last night, but them outlaws has got spice all over the camp, and I know they got me spotted. Rattlesnake Harrison's their chief, and he's a ring-tailed he-devil. I've been squattin' over this here gold with my pistol and fear and trembling, expecting them to come right into camp after me. I'm Derni Loco. And he shivered and cussed kind of whimpery and takin' another dram and cocked his pistol and sought their shakin' like he'd seen a ghost or two. You've got to help me, Breckenridge, he said desperately. You take this here gold out for me, will ya? The outlaws don't know ya. You could hit the old engine path south of the camp and follow it to Hellwind Pass. The Chaudir-Wapeton stage goes through there about sundown. You could put the gold on the stage there, and they'd take it on to Wapeton. Harrison wouldn't never think of holdin' it up after it left Hellwind. They always holds it up this side of the pass. What I want to risk my neck for you for, I demanded bitterly. Memories of Dolly Ricks be risin' up before me. If you ain't got the guts to tote out your own gold. Taint all together the gold, Breck, says he. I'm tryin' to get married and... Married, says I. Here? In Teton Gulch? To a gal in Teton Gulch? Married to a gal in Teton Gulch, he avowed. I was amin' to get hitched to Mar, but there ain't a preacher or justice of a peacein' camp that tie the knot. But her uncle, the reverent Rembrandt Brockton, is a circuit rider, and he's due to pass through Hellwind on his way to Wapeton today. I was amin' to sneak out last night, hide in the hills till the stage come through, then put the gold on the stage, and bring Brother Rembrandt back with me. But yesterday I learned Harrison Spice was watchin' me, and I'm scared to go. Now Brother Rembrandt will go on to Wapeton, not knowin' he's needed here, and no tellin' when I'll be able to get married. Hold on, I said hurriedly, doin' some quick thinkin'. I didn't want this here weddin' to fall through. The more Blink was married to some gal in Teton, the less he could marry Dolly Rixby. Blink, I said, graspin' his hand warmly. Let it never be said that an Elkin's ever turned down a friend in distress. I'll take your gold to Hellwind pass, and bring back Brother Rembrandt. Blink fell on to my neck, and wept with joy. I'll never forget this Breckenridge, says he, and I bet you won't neither. My Hus and Pac Newell are in the stables behind the saloon. I don't need no Pac Newell, I says. Captain Kidd can pack the dust easy. Captain Kidd was gettin' fed out in the corral next to the hotel. I went out there and got my saddlebags, which is a lot bigger than most saddlebags, because all of my plunder has to be made to fit my size. They're made out of three-ply elk skin, stitched with rawhide thongs, and a wildcat couldn't claw his way out of them. I noticed quite a bunch of men standin' around the corral, lookin' at Captain Kidd, but thought nothin' of it, because he is a horse which naturally attracts attention. But whilst I was gettin' my saddlebags, a long lanky cuss with long yaller-quiskers come up and says, says he, Is that your horse in the corral? If he ain't, he ain't nobody's, I says. Well, he looks a whole lot like a horse that was stole off my ranch six months ago, he said. And I seen ten or twelve hard-lookin' ombre's gatherin' round me. I laid down my saddlebags, suddend' like, and reached for my guns when it occurred to me, that if I had a fight there I might get arrested and it would interfere with me bringin' brother Rembrandt in for the wedding. If that there is your horse, I said, you oughta be able to lead him out of that there corral. Sure I can, he says with an oath. And what's more, I ain't. He looked at me suspiciously, but he takin' up a rope and clumbed the fence, and started toward Captain Kidd, which was chawn, on a block of hay in the middle of the corral. Captain Kidd throwed up his head and laid back his ears and showed his teeth, and Jake stopped suddend' and turned pale. Uh, I don't believe that there is my horse, after all, says he. Put that lasso on him, I roared, pullin' my right handgun. You say he's your, and I say he's mine. One of us is a lyre and a haas-thief, and I aimed to prove which. Go on, before I festooned your system with lead polka dots. He looked at me, and he looked at Captain Kidd, and he turned bright green all over. He looked again at my forty-five, which I now had cocked and punted at his long neck, which is Adams Apple was goin' up and down like a monkey on a pole. And he began to edge toward Captain Kidd again, holdin' the rope behind him, and stickin' out one hand. Whoa, boy, he says kinda shudderingly. Whoa, good ol' feller. Nice, Aussie. Whoa, boy, ow! He let out a awful howl as Captain Kidd made a snap, and bit a chunk out of his hide. He turned to run, but Captain Kidd wheeled and let fly with both heels, which caught Jake in the seat of the britches, and his shriek of despair was horrible to hear as he went head-first through the corral fence into a haas trough on the other side. From this here is drippin' water, blood, and profanity. And he shook a quiverin' fist at me and croaked, You turned murderer, I'll have your life for this. I don't hold no conversation with haas thieves, I snorted, and picked up my saddlebags and stalked through the crowd, which gave back in a hurry. I'd taken the saddlebags up the blink's room and told him about Jake, thinkin' he'd be amused. But got a case of aggro's again, and said, That was what a Harrison's man. He meant to take your haas. It's an old trick, and honest folks don't dare interfere. They got you spotted. What'll you do? Time tied, and a Elkins waits for no man, I snorted, dumpin' the gold into the saddlebags. If that yellow-whiskered coyote wants any trouble, he can get a belly full. Don't worry, your goal to be safe in my saddlebags. It's as good as in the Wapeton stage right now. And by midnight I'll be back with Brother Rem Brandt Brockton to hit you up with his niece. Oh, don't yell so loud, begged Blink, the cussid camp's full of spies. Some of them may be downstairs now, listenin'. I weren't speakin' above a whisper, I said indignantly. That bull's beller may pass for a whisper on Bear Creek, says he, wipin' off the sweat, but I bet they can hear it from one end of the gulch to the other, at least. It's a pitiful sight to see a man with a case of the skirts. I shook hands with him and left him pourin' red liquor down his gullet like it was water, and I swung the saddlebags over my shoulder and went downstairs. The barkeep leaned over the bar and whispered to me, Look out for Jake Roman. He was in here a minute ago, lookin' for trouble. He pulled out just before you come down, but he won't be forgetin' what your horse done to him. Not when he tries to set down he won't, I agreed. And went on out to the corral, and there was a crowd of men watchin' Captain Kidd eat his hay. One of them seen me and hollered, Hey boys, here comes a giant. He's gonna saddle that man-eatin' monster. Hey, Mill, tell the boys at the bar. And here come a whole pass of fellers runnin' out of all the saloons and they lined the corral fence solid, started layin' bets whether I'd get the saddle on Captain Kidd or get my brains kicked out. I thought miners must all be crazy. They ought to have known I was able to saddle my own horse. Well, I saddled him, throwed on the saddlebags, and clump aboard. He pitched about ten jumps like he always does when I first fork him. Tornothin', but then miners hollered like wild engines. And when he accidentally bucked his self and me through the fence and knocked down a section of it, along with fifteen men which was settin' on the top rail, the way they howled you to thought some terrible had happened. Me and Captain Kidd don't generally bother about gates. We usually makes our own through whatever happens to be in front of us. But them miners is a weekly breed, because as I rode out of town I seen the crowd dippin' four or five of them in a hostile off to bring them to, on account of Captain Kidd havin' accidentally tromped on them. Well, I rode out of the gulch and up the ravine to the south, and come out into the high-timbered country and hit the old engine trail Blankin' told me about. It warn't traveled much. I didn't meet nobody after I left the gulch. I figured to hit Hellwind Pass at least an hour before sundown, which would give me plenty of time. Blank said the stage passed through there about sundown. I'd have to bring back Brother Rembrandt on Captain Kidd, I reckon, but that there Haas can carry double and still, outrun and outlast any other Haas in the state of Nevada. I figured on gettin' back to Teton about midnight or a little later. After I'd went several miles I'd come to Apache Canyon, which was a deep, narrow gorge, with a river at the bottom which went roaring and foaming along betwixt rock walls a hundred and fifty feet high. The old trail hit the rim at a place where the canyon warrant only about seventy foot wide, and somebody'd felled a whopping big pine tree on one side, so it fell across and made a footbridge where a man could walk across. They'd once been a gold strike in Apache Canyon and a big camp there, but now it was plum-abandoned and nobody lived anywheres near it. I turned east and followed the rim for about half a mile. Here I came onto an old wagon-road which is just about grow'd up with saplings now, but it runned down into a ravine into the bed of the canyon, and there was a bridge across the river which had been built during the days of the gold rush. Most of it had been washed away by head rises, but a man could still ride a horse across what was left. So I'd done so and rode up a ravine on the other side and come out onto high ground again. I'd rode a few hundred yards past the ravine when somebody said, Hey! and I wheeled with both guns in my hands. Out of the brash sat er'd a tall jant in a long frock coat and broad-brimmed hat. Who are you and what the hell you mean by hollering, Hey! at me, I demanded courteously, fighting my guns at him. An Elkins is always polite. I am the reverend Rembrandt Brockton, my good man, says he. I am on my way to Teton Gulch, to unite my niece and a young man of that camp in the bonds of holy matrimony. The heck you don't say, I says. A foot I elit from the stagecoach at, uh, Hades Wind Pass says he. Some very agreeable cowboys happen to be awaiting the stage there and they offered to escort me to Teton. How come you know your niece was wanting to be united in acrimony, I asked. The cowboys informed me that such was the case, said he. Where at are they now, I next inquire. The mount with which they supplied me went lame a little while ago, says he. They left me here while they went to procure another from a nearby ranch house. I don't know who'd have a ranch anywhere near here, I muttered. They ain't got much sense leaving you here by your high lonesome. You mean to imply there is danger, says he, blinking mildly at me. These here mountains is lousy without laws, which would as soon carve a preacher's gullet as anybody's, I said. And then I thought of something else. Hey, I says, I thought the stage didn't come through the past till sundown. Such was the case, says he, but the schedule has been altered. Heck, I says, I was aiming to put this here gold on it which my saddlebags is full of. Now I'll have to take it back to Teton with me. Well, I'll bring it out to Marr and catch the stage then. Brother Rembrandt, I'm Breckenridge Elkins of Bear Creek, and I come out here to meet you and escort you back to this gulch, so as you could unite your niece and blink-wiltshaw in the holy bounds of alimony. Come on, we'll ride double. But I must await my cowboy friends, he said. Ah, here they come now. I looked over to the east and seen about fifteen men ride into sight out of the brush and move toward us. One was leading a horse without no saddle on to it. Ah, my good friends, beamed the brother Rembrandt. They have procured a mount for me, even as they promised. He hauled a saddle out of the brush and says, Would you please saddle my horse for me when they get here? I should be delighted to hold your rifle while you did so. I started to hand him my Winchester when the snap of a twig under a horse's hoof made me real quick. A feller had just rode out of a thicket about a hundred yards south of me, and he was raising a Winchester to his shoulder. I recognized him instantly. If us Bear Creek folks didn't have eyes like a hawk, we'd never live to get grod. It was Jake Roman. Our Winchester's banged together. His lead fanned my ear and mine knocked him endwise out of his saddle. Cowboys, hell, I roared, them's Harrison's outlaws. I'll save you, brother Rembrandt. I swooped him up with one arm and gouged Captain Kidd with the spurs, and he went from there like a thunderbolt with its tail on fire. Them outlaws come on with wild yells. I ain't in the habit of running from people, but I was afeard they might do the reverent harm if it come to a close fight, and if he stopped a hunk of lead, Blink might not get to marry his niece, and might get disgusted and go back to war-paint and start sparking Dolly Rixby again. I was heading back for the canyon, aiming to make a stand in the ravine if I had to, and them outlaws was killing their hausses trying to get to the bend of the trail ahead of me, and cut me off. Captain Kidd was running with his belly to the ground, but I'll admit, brother Rembrandt warn't helping me much. He was laying across my saddle with his arms and legs waving wildly, because I hadn't had time to set him comfortable, and when the horn jobbed him in the belly he uttered some words I wouldn't have expected to hear spoke by a minister of a gospel. Guns began to crack, and lead hummed past us, and brother Rembrandt twisted his head around and screamed, Stop that shooting you sons of—you'll hit me! I thought it was kind of selfish of brother Rembrandt not to mention me too, but I said, ain't no use to remonstrate with them skunks, reverent. They ain't got no respect for a preacher even. But to my amazement the shooting stopped, though them bandits yelled louder never and flogged their chi-uses. But about that time I seen they had me cut off from the lower canyon crossing, so I wrenched Captain Kidd into the old engine trace, and headed straight for that canyon rim as hard as he could hammer, with a brush lashing and snapping round us and slapping brother Rembrandt in the face when it whipped back. The outlaws yelled, and wheeled in behind us, but Captain Kidd drawn away from them with every stride, and the canyon rim loomed just ahead of us. Pull up, you jack-eared son of Belial, al-brother Rembrandt, you'll go over the edge. Be at ease, reverent, I reassured him. We're going over the log. Lord have mercy on my soul, he squalled, and shed his eyes and grabbed the strip-leather with both hands. Then Captain Kidd went over that log like thunder rolling on judgment day. I doubt if there's another house west of the Pagos, which would bolt out onto a log-foot bridge across the canyon a hundred and fifty foot deep like that. But there ain't nothing in this world Captain Kidd's scared of, except maybe me. He didn't slacken his speed none. He streaked across that log like it was a quarter-track, with a bark and splinters flying from under his hooves, and if one foot had slipped an inch it would have been sally bar the door. But he didn't slip, and we was over, and on the other side almost before you could catch your breath. You can open your 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'd come to and give a shriek and grab my leg like a bar trap. I reckon he thought we was still on the log. I was trying to prime loose when Captain Kidd chose that moment to run under a low-hanging oak-tree limb. That's his idea 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 a round as my thigh and it took me smack across the wish-bone. We was going full speed and something had to give way. It was the girths, both of them. Captain 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 woog, woog, woog, like water running out of a busted jug. And then I seen them outlaws had dismounted off their hausses and was corning across the bridge single file with their windchesters in their hands. I didn't waste no time shooting them misguided idgits. I run to the end of the footbridge ignoring the slugs they slung at me. It was pretty poor shooting because they weren't sure of their footing and didn't aim good, so I only got one bullet in the hind leg and was creased three or four other unimportant places, not enough to worry about. I bent my knees and got hold of the end of the log and heaved up with it. Them outlaws hollered and fell along it like tin pins and dropped their windchesters and grabbed hold of the log. I'd given it a shake and shook some of them off like persimmons off a limb after a frost, and then I swung the butt around clear 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 on to it and yelling blue murder. A regular geyseral water splashed up when they hit, and the last I seen of them they was all swirling down the river together in a thrashing tangle of arms and legs and heads. I remembered 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 legs kept bending under him, but he had hold of the saddlebags and was trying to drag him into a thicket, mumbling kind of dizzily to his self. It's all right now, Brother Rembrandt, I said kindly. Them outlaws is plum horse to combat now, as the French say. Blank's gold is safe. Blank says, Brother Rembrandt, pulling two guns from under his coattails, and if I hadn't aggranded him he would have undoubtedly shot me. We rastled round and I protested. Hold on, Brother Rembrandt, I ain't no outlaw. I'm your friend, Breckenridge Elkins. Don't you remember? His only reply was a promise to eat my heart without no seasoning. Then he sunk his teeth into my ear and started to chaw it off whilst galling for my eyes with both thumbs and spurring me severely in the hind legs. I seen he was out of his head from fright and the fall he got, so I said sorrowfully. Brother Rembrandt, I hate to do this. It hurts me more than it does you, but we can't waste time like this. Blank is waiting to get 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. Poor Brother Rembrandt, I sighed sadly. All I hope is I ain't addled your brain so you forgot the wedding ceremony. So as to not have no more trouble with him when, and if he come to, I've tied his arms and legs with pieces of malaria and taken his weapons, which was most surprising arms for a circuit rider. His pistols had the triggers out of him, and they was three notches on the butt of one and four on the other. Moreover, he had a buoy knife in his boot and a deck of marked cards 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, Captain 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'd give him a kick in the belly and when he could get his breath again and undouble his self, I throwed the saddle on him. I spliced the girths with the rest of my lariat and put Brother Rembrandt in the saddle and clumped on behind and we headed for Teton Gulch. After an hour or so, Brother Rembrandt come to and says kind of dizzily, was anyone saved from the typhoon? You're all right, Brother Rembrandt, I assured him. I'm taking 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 sued, seeing he was still delirious. We'll be in Teton in no time. I don't want to go to Teton, he hollered. You got to, I said. You got to unite your niece and Blink Wiltshaw in the holy buns of parsimony. To hell with Blink Wiltshaw and my niece, he yelled. You ought to be ashamed using such language, and you a minister of the gospel I reproved him sternly. His reply would have curled up Paiute's hair. I was so scandalized, I made no reply. I was just fixing to untie him so as he could ride more comfortable, but I thought if he was that crazy, I'd better not. So I give no heed to his ravens, which grow'd more and more unbearable. In all my born days I never seen such a preacher. It was sure a relief to me to cite Teton at last. It was night when we rode down the Graveen into the Gulch, and the dance halls and saloons was going full blast. I rode up behind the Yeller Dog Saloon and hauled Brother Rembrandt off with me, and sawed him on his feet, and he said kind of despairingly. For the last time listened to reason. I got fifty thousand dollars cashed 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 your 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 Barkeep 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 language, I says, but it's the reverent Rembrandt Brockton. Are you crazy, says the Barkeep? That's Rattlesnake Harrison. I give up, said my prisoner. I'm Harrison. I'm licked. Locked 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 bellard. What? Your Harrison? I see it all now. Jake Roman overheard me talking to Blink Wiltshaw, and rode off and fixed it with you to fool me like you'd done, so as to get Blink's gold. That's why you wanted to hold my Winchester whilst I saddled your coyose? How'd you ever guess, 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, count of your horse-biting 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 Wappeten, I hollered. I gotta follow him and bring him back. Why, he's here, said one of the men, which was gathering round us. He'd come in with his niece an hour ago on the stage, from Warpaint. Warpaint, I howled. He hid in the belly by a premonition. I run into the saloon where there was a lot of people, and there was Blink and a gal holding hands in front of an old man with a long white beard, and he had a book in his hand and tether lifted in the air. He was saying, and I now pronounces you all, man and wife, them which God has joined together, let no snake-hunter put asunder. Dolly, I yelled. Both of them jumped about four foot in world, and Dolly Rigsby jumped in front of Blink and spread her arms like she was shoeing chickens. Don't you touch him, Breckenridge Elkins? She hollered. I've just married him, and I don't aim for no humble grizzly to spile him. But I don't sabby all this, I said, dizzily. Nervously fumbling with my guns, which is a habit of mine, went upsot. Everybody in the wedding party started ducking out a line, and Blink said hurriedly. It's this way, Breck. When I made my pile so unexpectedly quick, I sent for Dolly to come and marry me like she'd promised the day after you left for Yavapai. I was aiming to take my gold out today, like I told you, so me and Dolly could go on to San Francisco on our honeymoon, but I learned Harrison's gang was watching me, just like I told you. I wanted to get my gold out, and I wanted to get 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 being on the Wapetan stage. It was the only lie. You said you was marrying 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 gals married, your rivalry is over, and there's no use holding grudges. Shake hands and be friends. All right, I said heavily. No man can't say I ain't a good loser. I was cut deep, but I concealed my busted heart. At least wise I concealed it all I was able to. Them folks which says I crippled Blink Wiltshaw with malice of forethought as liars, which I'll sweep the road with when I catch them. 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 thrown out of Winder and some others got their heads banged. When she busted me with that cuspidore, I knew that our love was dead forever. Tears come into my eyes as I waited through the crowd, and I had to move fast to keep from making a fool of myself. Them that was flying out of my way ought to have known it was done more in Tsar than in Anger and of Cupid from Bear Creek.