 Pistol Politics by Robert Howard Politics and book learning is bad enough to accept it. Together they are a blight and a curse. Take Yeller Dog for an instance. A mining-camp over in the Apache River Country, where I was rash enough to take up my abode enounced. Yeller Dog was a decent camp, till Politics reared its head in our midst, and Education come slithering after. The whiskey was good, and Midland cheap, and the poker and pharaoh games was honest if you watch the dealers closed. Three or four piddlin' fights a night was the usual run, and a man hadn't been shot dead in more than a week by my reckoning. Then, like my Aunt Tascosa Polk would say, come the deluge. It all begun when Forty Rod Harrigan moved his gambling outfit over to Alderville and left our one frame-building vacant, and Goose Neck Wilkerson got the idea of turning it into a city hall. Then he said we ought to have a mayor to go with it, and announced his self as candidate. Naturally Bull Hawkins, our other leadin' citizen, come out again him. The election was sought for April 11. Goose Neck established his campaign headquarters in the Silver Saddle Saloon, and Bull takin' up hisin' in the red tomahawk on the other side of the street. First thing we knowed, Yeller Dog was in the grip of Politics. The campaign got under way, and the casualties was mountin' daily, as public interest become more and more fatally aroused, and on the afternoon of the ninth, Goose Neck come into his headquarters, and says, we got to make a sweepin' offensive, boys. Bull Hawkins is out generalin' us. That shootin' match he put on for a prime beefsteer yesterday made a big hit with a common herd. He's tryin' to convince Yeller Dog that if elected, he'd provide the camp with more high-class amusement than I could. Jack Elkins, will you pause in your guzzlin' and listen here a minute? As chief of this here political organization, I demand your attention. I hear you, I says. I was to the match, and they barred me on a technicality, otherwise I woulda won the whole steer. It weren't so exciting far as I could see. Only one man got shot, and he was one of my voters, scowled Goose Neck. But we got to outshine Bull's efforts to seduce the mob. He's resortin' to low-underhanded tactics by buyin' votes outright. I scorned such measures. Anyway, I've bought all I'm able to pay for. We got to put on a show which outdazzles his darn shootin' match. A rodeo, maybe, suggested Neil McGrath, or a good dogfight. Neck, neck, says Goose Neck. My show will be a symbol of progress and culture. We stage as a spell and match to mar a night in the city hall. Next morning, when the polls opens, the voters'll still be so dazzled by the grandeur of our entertainment, they'll elect me by a vast majority. How many men in this here camp can spell good enough to get into a spell and be, says I. I'm confident there's at least thirty-five men in this camp which can read and write, says Goose Neck. That's plenty. But we got to find somebody to give out the words. It wouldn't look right for me. It'd be beneath my official dignity. Who's educated enough for the job? I am, says Jerry Brayden. Brennan and Bill Garrison simultaneous. Then they show their teeth at each other. They weren't friends, know-how. Can't but one get the job, asserted Goose Neck. I test your ability. Can either one of you spell Constantinople? K-O-N. Begun Garrison, and Brennan burst into a loud and mocking guffaw, and said something pointed about ignoramuses. You deleted expletive, says Garrison floodthirstily. Gentlemen squawked Goose Neck, and induct as they both went for their guns. They cleared leather about the same time. When the smoke oozed away, Goose Neck crawled out from under the roulette table and cussed fervently. Two more reliable voters gone to glory, he raged. Breckenridge, why didn't you stop them? To warrant none of my business, says I, reaching for another drink. It's cause a stray bullet had knocked my glass out of my hand. Hey, I addressed the barkeep sternly. I see you fixing to chalk up that there-spilt drink again me. Charge it to Jerry Brayden. He's built it. Dead men pays no bills, complained the bartender, sees them petty squabbles, snarled Goose Neck. You argies over a glass of liquor when I've just lost two good votes. Drag them out, boys. He ordered the other members of the organization, which was emerging from behind the bar and the whiskey barrels, where they took refuge when the shooting started. Damn, says Goose Neck, with bitterness. This here is a deadly lick to my campaign. I not only loses two more votes, but them was the best educated men in camp outside of me. Now who are we going to get to conduct the spelling match? Anybody which can read can do it, says Lobo Harrison, a hostile thief with a mean face and an ingrown disposition. He'd go a mile out of his way just to kick a dog. Even Elkins there could do it. Yeah, if there was anything to read from, snorted Goose Neck. But they ain't a line of writing in camp except on whiskey bottles. We got to have a man with a lot of long words in his head. Breckenridge, dammit, just cause I told the barkeep to charge your drinks on the campaign expenses ain't no reason for you to freeze onto that bar permanent. Right over to Alderville and get us an educated man. Hell, he know whether he's educated or not, sneered Lobo, which seemed to dislike me passionately, for some reason or another. Make him spell Constantinople, says Goose Neck. He can't go over there, says Soapy Jackson. The folks who's threatened to lynch him for crippling their sheriff. I didn't cripple their fool sheriff, I says indignantly. He crippled his self, falling through a wagon-wheel when I give him a kind of push with a rock. How you spell that there, Constance Hople, word? Well, he spelled it thirty or forty times till I had it memorized. So I rode over to Alderville. When I rode into town, the folks looked at me coldly, and bunched up and whispered amongst their selves. But I paid no attention to them. I'd never seen the deputy's sheriff, unless that was him I seen climbing a white oak tree as I hove inside. I went into the white eagle's saloon and drank me a dram and, says to the barkeep, who's the best educated man in Alderville, says he, Snake River Murgatroyd, which deals Maudi over to the elite amusement palace. So I went over there, and just as I went through the door I happened to remember the river. Snake River had swore he was going to shoot me on site next time he seen me, on account of some trouble we'd had over a card game. But such things is too trivial to bother about. I went up to where he was sitting, dealing Maudi, and I says, hey, place your bet, says he. Then he looked up and said, you, expletive deleted, and wretched for his gun. But I got mine out first and shoved the muzzle under his nose. Spell, Constantinople, I tells him. He turned pale and said, are you crazy? Ballot, I roared, and he says, C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E. What the hell? Good, I said, throwing his gun in the corner out of Temptation's way. We want you to come over to Yeller Dog and give out words at a spelling match. Everybody in the place was holding their breath. Lake River moved his hands nervous-like and knocked a jack of diamonds off onto the floor. He stooped like he was going to pick it up, but instead he jerked a buoy out of his boot and tried to stab me in the belly. Well, much as I would have enjoyed shooting him, I noted, spiled a spelling match. So merely taken the knife away from him and held him upside down to shake out whatever other weapons he might have hid, and he began to holler, help, murder, Alkins is killing me! It's a Yeller Dog plot! Somebody howled, and the next instant the air was full of beer mugs and cuspidors. Some of them spit-toons was quite heavy, and when one missed me and went bong on Snake River's head, he curled up like an angle worm which has been tronked on. Look at there! They hollered like it was my fault. He's trying to kill Snake River! What even, boys? They then fell on me with billoured sticks and chair legs in a way which has made me suspicious of Alderville's hospitality ever since. Argument being useless, I tucked Snake River under my left arm and started knocking them fool critters right and left with my right fist, and I reckoned that was how the bar got wrecked. I never seen a bar a man's head would go through easier than that one. So pretty soon the survivors abandoned the fray and run out of the door hollering, Help! Murderer! Rise up, citizens! Yeller dog is at our throats! Rise and defend your homes and loved ones! You would have thought the Apaches was burning the town the way folks was hollering and running for their guns and shooting at me as I clumb a board-captain kid and headed for Yeller Dog. I left the main road and headed through the brush for an old trail I knowed about, because I seen a whole army of men getting on their hauses to lick out after me, and while I knowed they couldn't catch Captain Kid, I was afraid they might hit Snake River with a stray bullet if they got within range. The brush was pretty thick, and I reckoned it was the branches slapping him in the face which brung him to, because all to once he'd begun holler and blue murder. You ain't takin' me to Yeller Dog, he yelled. You're takin' me out in the hills to murder me. Help! Help! Ah, shut up, I snorted. This here's a shortcut. You can't get across Apache River unless you follow the road to the bridge, says he. I can too, I says. We'll go across on the footbridge. With that he gave a scream of horror and a convulsive wrench which tore his self clean out of his shirt which I was holdin' on to. Next thing I knowed, all I had in my hand was an empty shirt, and he was on the ground and scuttlin' through the bushes. I'd taken in after him, but he was pretty tricky dodgin' around stumps and trees, and I'd begun to believe I was gonna have to shoot him in the hind leg to catch him, when he made the mistake of trying to climb a tree. I rode up onto him before he could get out a wretch, and wretched up and got him by the leg and pulled him down, and his language was painful to hear. It was his own fault he slipped out of my hand he kicked so violent, I didn't go to drop him on his head, but just as I was retchin' down for him I heard hausses runnin' and looked up and here come that Dern Alderville posse bustin' through the brush right onto me. I'd lost so much time chasin' Snake River they'd catched up with me. So I scooped him up and hung him over my saddle-horn, because he was out cold, and headed for Apache River. Captain Kidd draw'd away from them hausses like they was hobbled, so they weren't scarcely in pistol range of us when we busted out on the East Bank. The river was up, just a foamin' and a bylin', and the footbridge warn't nothin' only just a log. But Captain Kidd sure footed as a billy-goat. He started across't it and everything went all right till we got about the middle of it, and then Snake River come to and seen the water boomin' along undress. He lost his head and began to struggle and kick and holler, and his spurs scratched Captain Kidd's hide. That made Captain Kidd mad, and he turned his head and tried to bite my leg, because he always blames me for everything that happens, and he lost his balance and fell off. That would've been all right, too, because as we hit the water I got hold of Captain Kidd's tail with one hand and Snake River's undershirt with the other, and Captain Kidd hid out for the West Bank. These very few streams he can't swim, flood or not. But just as we was nearly across, the posse appeared on the hind bank and started shootin' at me, and they was apparently in some doubt as to which head in the water was me, because some of them shot at Snake River, too, just to make sure. He opened his mouth to holler at him and got it full of water, and darn near strangled. Then all to ont'st, somebody in the brush on the west shore opened up with a Winchester, and one of the posse hollered, "'Look out, boys! It's a trap! Elkins has led us into an ambush!' They turned round and high-tailed it for Alderville. Well, what with a shootin' and a gullet full of water, Snake River was havin' a regular fit, and he kicked and thrashed so he kicked himself clean out of his undershirt, and just as my feet hit bottom he slipped out of my grip and went whirlin' off downstream. I jumped out on land, ignoring the hearty kick Captain Kidd planted in my midriff, and grabbed my lariat off my saddle. Moose-neck Wilkerson come prancing out of the brush, wavin' a Winchester and yellin'— "'Don't let him drown, dang'er! My whole campaign depends on that spellin' bee! Do something!' I run along the bank and made a throw and looped Snake River round the ears. It warn't a very good catch, but the best I could do unto the circumstances, and skin'll always grow back onto a man's ears. I hauled him out of the river, and it was plum ungrateful for him to accuse me later of draggin' him over them sharp rocks on purpose. I like to know how he figured I could rope him out of a patchy river without skinnin' him up a little. He'd swallowed so much water he was nigh at his last gasp. Moose-neck rolled him onto his belly and jumped up and down on his back with both feet to get the water out. Moose-neck said that was artificial respiration, but from the way Snake River hollered, I don't believe it done him much good. Anyway, he choked up several gallons of water. When he was able to threaten our lives betwixt cuss words, Moose-neck says, "'Get him on your horse, and let's get started! Mine run off when the shootin' started! I'd just suspected you'd be pursued by them dumb wits and would take the shortcut. That's why I come to meet you. Come on, we've got to get Snake River some medical attention. In his present state he ain't in no shape to conduct no spellin' match.' Snake River was too groggy to set in the saddle, so he hung him across it like a cow-hide over a fence and started out. Me leadin' Captain Kidd. It makes Captain Kidd very mad to have anybody but me on his back. So we hadn't went more than a mile when he wretched around and sawed his teeth in the seat of Snake River's pants. Snake River'd been groanin' very weak and dismal, and commandin' us to stop and let him down so's he could utter his last words. But when Captain Kidd bidding, he let out a remarkable strong yell, and bust in the language unfit for a dying man. Expletive deleted, quote he passionately, why have I got to be butchered for a yeller-dog holiday? We was reasoning with him when old man Jake Hanson hove out of the bushes. Old Jake had a cab in a hundred yards back from the trail. He was about the width of a barn door, and his whiskers was marvellous to behold. What's this ungodly noise about? He demanded. Who's gettin' murdered? I am, says Snake River fiercely. I'm bein' sacrificed to the passions of the brutal mob. You shed up, said Gooseneck severely. Jake, this is the gent we've consented to let conduct the spellin' match. Well, well, says Jake, interested. A educated man, eh? Why, he don't look no different from us folks, if the blood were wiped off of him. Say, listen, boys, bring him over to my cabin. I'll dress his wounds and feed him, and take care of him, and get him to the city hall tomorrow night, in time for the spellin' match. In the meantime, he can teach my daughter, Salome, her letters. I refuse to tutor a dirty-faced cub, began Snake River when he's seen a face peekin' eagerly at us from the trees. Who's that? He demanded. My daughter, Salome, said, old Jake, nineteen her last birthday, and can't neither read nor write. None of my folks ever could, far back his family history goes, but I want her to get some education. It's a human obligation, says Snake River. I'll do it. So we left him at Jake's cabin, propped up on a bunk with Salome, feeding him spoon-vittles and whisky, and me and Gooseneck headed for Yeller Dog, which warn't hardly a mile from there. Gooseneck says to me, we won't say nothing about Snake River bein' at Jake's shack. Bull hawkins his sweet on Salome, and he's so darned jealous-minded, it makes him mad for another man to even stop there to say hello to the folks. We don't want nothing to interfere with our show. You act like you got a lot of confidence in it, I says. I banks on it heavy, says he. It's a symbol of civilization. Well, just as we come into town, we met Mule McGrath with fire in his eye and corn juice on his breath. Gooseneck, listen, says he. I just got wind of a plot of hawkins and Jack Clanton to get a lot of our voters so drunk election day they won't be able to get to the polls. Let's call off the spell and match and go over the red tomahawk and clean out that rat nest. Nah, says Gooseneck. We promise the mob a show and we keeps our word. Don't worry. I'll think of a way to circumvent the heathen. Mule headed back for the silver saddle, shaking his head, and Gooseneck sat down on the edge of a haustrof and thunked deeply. I'd begun to think he'd draped off to sleep when he rizzed up and said, Brack, get hold of soapy Jackson and tell him to sneak out of camp and stay hid till the morning of the eleventh. Then he's to ride in just before the polls open and spread the news that they has been a big gold strike over in Wild Ross Gulch. A lot of fellers will stampede for there without waiting to vote. Meanwhile, you'll have circulated amongst the men you know are going to vote for me and let them know we are going to work this campaign strategy, with all my men in camp and most of bulls headed for Wild Ross Gulch, right in Justice Triumphs, and I win. So I went and found soapy and told him what Gooseneck said, and on the strength of it he immediately headed for the silver saddle and began guzzling on campaign credit. I felt it was my duty to go along with him and see he didn't get so full he forgot what he was supposed to do, and we was putting down the sixth dram apiece when Income Jack McDonald, Jim Leary, and Tarantula Allison, all Hawkins men, soapy focused his wanderin' eyes on him and says, Who's this here clutterin' up the scenery? Why, you mavericks, stay over to the Red Tomahawk, where you belong. It's a free country, asserted Jack McDonald. What about this here darned spell and match, Gooseneck's bragging about all over town? Well, what about it, I demanded, hitchin' my harness forward. The political foe don't live, which can beard a Elkins in his lair. We demands to know who conducts it, stated Leary. At least half the men in camp eligible to compete is in our crowd. We demand's fair play. We're bringin' in a cultured gent from another town, I says coldly. Who? demanded Allison. None of your dang business, trumpeted soapy, which gets delusions of valor when he's full of liquor. As a champion of progress and civic pride, I challenges the skunk odored forces of corrupt politics and, bam, McDonald swung with a billiard ball and soapy kissed the sawdust. Now look what you've done, I says, peevishly. If you coyotes can't act like gents, you'll oblige me by gettin' to hell outta here. If you don't like our company, suppose you tries to put us out, they challenged. So when I finished my drink, I'd taken their weapons away from them, and throwed them head first out the side door. How was I to know somebody had just put up a new cast-iron hitch-and-rack out there? Their friends carried them over to the Red Tomahawk to sew up their sculpts, and I went back into the silver saddle to see if soapy had come to yet. Just as I wretched the door, he come weavin' out, muttering in his whiskers, and wavin' as six-shooter. Do you remember what all I told you, I demanded? Some of it, he goggled, with his glassy eyes wobbling in all directions. Well, get goin' then, I urged, and helped him up onto his horse. He left town at full speed, with both feet out of the stirrups, and both arms around the horse's neck. Work is a curse and a delusion, I told the barkeep in disgust. Look at that sickenin' example and take-warning. Give me a bottle of rye. Well Gooseneck done a good job of advertising the show. By the middle of the next afternoon, men was pourin' into town from claims all up and down the creek. Half an hour before the match was sought to begin, the hall was full. The benches was moved back from the front part, leaving a space clear all the way across the hall. They had been a lot of argument about who was to compete and who was to choose sides, but when it was finally settled, as satisfactory as anything ever was settled in Yeller Dog, they was twenty men to compete, and Lobo Harrison and Jack Clanton was to choose up. By a peculiar coincidence, half of that twenty men was Gooseneck's, and half was Bull's. So naturally Lobo chose his pals, and Clanton chose his'n. I don't like this, Gooseneck whispered to me. I'd rather they'd been mixed up. This is beginning to look like a contest between my gang and Bull's. If they win, it's going to make me look cheap. Where the hell is Snake River? I ain't seen him, I said. You ought to have made him take off their guns. Shucks, says he. What could possibly stir up trouble at such a lady-like affair as a spell and be? Dang it, where is Snake River? Old Jake said he'd get him here on time. Hey, Gooseneck, yelled Bull Hawkins from where he sought amongst his coharts. Why don't you start the show? Bull was a big broad-shouldered ombre with black mustaches like a walrus. The crowd began to holler and cuss and stomp their feet, and this pleased Bull very much. Keep them amused, hissed, Gooseneck. I'll go look for Snake River. He snuck out of side door and I risen up and addressed the throng. Gents, I said, be patient. They is a slight delay, but it won't be long. Meantime I'll be glad to entertain you all to the best of my ability. Would you like to hear me sing, Barbary Allen? No, by grab, they answered in one beller. While you're going to, I roared and furiated by this callous lack of the finer feelings. I will now sing, I says, drawn my forty-fives, and I blows the brains out of the first coyote which tries to interrupt me. I then sung my song without interference, and when I was through I bowed and waited for the applause. But all I heard was Lobo Harrison saying, Imagine what the poor wolves on Bear Creek has to put up with. This cut me to the quick. But before I could make a suitable reply, Gooseneck slid in, breathing heavy. I can't find Snake River, he hissed, but the bark keep give me a book he found somewheres. Most of the leaves is tore out, but there's plenty left. I've marked some of the longest words, Breck. You can read good enough to give them out. You've got to. If we don't start the show right away, this mob will wreck the place. You're the only man not in the match which can even read a little outside of me and Bull. It wouldn't look right for me to do it, and I sure ain't gonna let Bull run my show. I knew I was licked. Ah, well, all right, I said. I might have knew I'd be the goat. Give me the book. Here it is, he said, the adventures of a French Countess. We turned sure you don't give out no words except them I marked. Hey, Ball Jack Clanton, we're getting tired standing up here. Open the ball. All right, I says. We commences. Hey, says Bill. Nobody told us Elkins was gonna conduct the ceremony. We was told a cultured gent from out of town was to do it. Well, I says irritably Bear Creek is my home range, and I reckon I'm as cultured as any snake-hunter here. If anybody thinks he's better qualified than me, step up whilst I stomp his ears off. Nobody volunteered. So I says, all right, I tosses a dollar to see who gets the first word. It fell for Harrison's gang, so I looked in the book at the first word marked, and it was a gal's name. Catherine, I says. Nobody said nothing. Catherine, I roared, glaring at Lobo Harrison. What you lookin' at me for, he demanded. I don't know no gal by that name. Expletive deleted, I says with passion. That's the word I give out. Spell it, dammit. All right, K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-N. That's wrong, I says. What you mean wrong, he roared. That's right. Taint according to the book, I says. Dang the book, says he. I know my rights, and I ain't to be yukered by no ignorant grisly from Bear Creek. Who you call an ignorant, I demanded, stung. Set down, you spelled it wrong. You lie, he howled, and went for his gun. But I fired first. When the smoke cleared away, I seen everybody was on their feet preparing for the stampede, such as weren't trying to crawl under the benches. So I said, Set down, everybody, there ain't nothing to get excited about. The spell-and-match continues, and I'll shoot the first scoundrel which tries to leave the hall before the entertainment's over. Gooseneck hissed fiercely at me. Dammit, be careful who you shoot, can't you? That was another one of my voters. Drag him out, I commanded, wiping off some blood where a slug had notched my ear. The spell-and-match is ready to commence again. There was a kind of tension in the air, men shuffling their feet and twisting their mustaches and hitching their gun-belts. But I give no heed. I now approach the other side, with my hand on my pistol, and says to Clanton, Can you spell Catherine? C-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, says he. By golly, I says, consulting the French Countess, and the audience cheered wildly and shot off their pistols into the roof. Hey, says Bill Stark on the other side, that's wrong. Make him sit down, it spells with a K. He spelt it just like it is in the book, I says. Look for yourself. I don't give a damn, he yelled, rudely knocking the French Countess out of my hand. It's a misprint. It spells with a K, or there'll be more blood on the floor. He spelt it wrong, and if he don't sit down, I shoots him down. I'm running this show, I'm bellard, beginning to get mad. You've got to shoot me before you shoot anybody else. With pleasure, snarled he, and went for his gun. Well, I hit him on the jaw with my fist, and he went to sleep amongst the wreckage of busted benches. Gooseneck jumped up with a maddened shriek. Dang your soul, Breckett Ridge, he squalled. Quit canceling my votes. Who are you working for? Me or Hawkins? Ha, ha, ha, bellard Hawkins. Go on with this show. This is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Wham! The door crashed open and impranced, old Jay Canson waving a shotgun. Welcome to the festivities, Jake, I greeted him. Where's you son of a skunk, quote he, and let go with me with both barrels. The shot scattered remarkable. I didn't get more than five or six of them, and the rest distributed freely amongst the crowd. You ought to have heard them holler. The folks, I mean, not the buckshot. What in tarnation are you doing, shriek Gooseneck? Where's Snake River? Gone, howled, old Jake. Run off, eloped with my daughter, Bull Hawkins rizz with a howl of anguish, convulsively clutching his whiskers. Salome, he bellard, eloped with a cuss of dandelion they brung over from Alderville. Bleeded old Jake, doing a war dance in his passion, Elkins and Wilkerson persuaded me to take that snake into my bosom in spite of my pleas and protests. They forced him into my peaceful, expletive, deleted household, and he stole the poor, mutton-headed, innocence-blasted art with his cultured heirs and his slick talk. They've run off to get married. It's a political plot, shriek Hawkins going for his gun. Wilkerson done it a purpose. I shot the gun out of his hand, but Jack Clanton crashed a bench down on Gooseneck's head, and Gooseneck kissed the floor. Clanton come down on top of him, out cold, as Mule McGrath swung with a pistol-butt. In the next instant somebody lambed Mule with a brick bat, and he flopped down against Clanton, and then the fight was on. Them rival political factions just kind of rizz up and roll together in a wave of profanity, gunsmoak, and splintering benches. I have always noticed that the best thing to do in such cases is to keep your temper, and that's what I did for some time, in spite of the efforts of nine or ten wild-eyed Hawkinites. I didn't even shoot one of them. I kept my head and battered their skulls with a joist I tore out of the floor, and when I knocked them down I didn't stomp on them hardly any. But they kept coming, and Jack MacDonald was obsessed with the notion that he could ride me to the floor by jumping up a straddle of my neck. So he'd done it, and having discovered his idea was a hallucination, he got a fistful of my hair with his left, and started beating me in the head with his pistol-barrel. It was very annoying. Simultaneous several other misfits got hold of my legs, trying to rassle me down, and some son of Belial stomped severely on my toe. I had bore my afflictions as patient as Job up to that time, but this perfidy maddened me. I'd give a roar which loosened the shingles on the roof, and kicked the toe stomper in the belly with such fury that he curled up on the floor with a holler groan and taken no more interest in the proceedings. I likewise busted my timber on somebody's skull, and wretched up and pulled Jack MacDonald off my neck like pulling a tick off a bull's hide, and heaved him through a convenient winder. He's a liar when he says I aimed him deliberate at that rain-barrel. I didn't even know they was a rain-barrel till I heard his head crash through the staves. I then shook nine or ten digits loose from my shoulders and shook the blood out of my eyes, and perceived that Gooseneck's men was getting the worst of it, particularly include Gooseneck himself. So I give another roar and prepared to wade through them fool hawken ights like a bar through a pack of hound-dogs, when I discovered that some perfidious sidewinder had got my spur tangled in his whiskers. I stooped to untangle myself just as a charge of buckshot ripped through the air where my head had been an instant before. Three or four critters was rushing me with buoy knives, so I give a wrench and tore loose by main force. How could I help it if most of the whiskers come loose, too? I grabbed me a bench to use for a club, and I mowed the whole first rank down with one swipe, and then as I drawed back for another lick I heard somebody yelling above the melee. "'Gold!' he shrieked. Everybody stopped like they was frozen their tracks. And bull hawken shook the blood out of his eyes and glared up from where he was kneeling on Gooseneck's wishbone, with one hand in Gooseneck's hair and a buoy in the other. Everybody quit fighting everybody else and looked at the door, and there was Sophie Jackson, a reeling and a weaving with an empty bottlin' one hand, and hollered, "'Big gold strike in wild hawk's gulch,' he blats, biggest the west ever seen, nuggets the size of ostrich eggs.'" He disappeared in a wave of frenzied humanity as Yeller Dog's population abandoned the fray and headed for the wide open spaces. And Hawkins seized his efforts to sculpt Gooseneck alive, and gine the stampede. They tore the whole front out of the city hall in their flight, and even them which had been knocked stiff, come to it the howl of gold, and staggered wildly after the mob, shrieking pitifully for their picks, shovels, and jackasses, when the dust had settled and the thunder of bootheels had faded in the distance. The only human left in the city hall was me and Gooseneck, and Sophie Jackson, which rizz unsteadily with the Prince of Hobnails all over his homely face. They short-trompled him free and generous in their rush. Gooseneck staggered up, glared wildly about him, and went into convulsions. At first he couldn't talk at all. He just frothed at the mouth. When he found speech, his language was shocking. What you spring at this time of night for, he howled. Frickin' Ridge, I said to tell him to bring the news in the morning, not to-night. I did tell him that, I says. Oh! So that was what I couldn't remember, says Sophie. That lick McDonald give me so plum-addled my brains. I know there was something I forgot, but couldn't remember what it was. Oh! So lameo, jibbered Gooseneck, or words to that effect. Well, what you kickin' about, I demanded, peevishly, havin' just discovered that somebody'd stabbed me in the hind leg during the melee. My boot was full of blood, and they was brand new boots. It worked, didn't it, I says. They're all headed for Wild Hoss Gulch, including Hawkins himself, and they can't possibly get back a four-day after tomorrow. Yeah, rave Gooseneck, they're all gone, including my gang. The damn camp's empty. How can I get elected with nobody here to hold the election, and nobody to vote? Oh! I says. That's right. I hadn't thunk of that. He fixed me with an awful eye. Did you, says he in a blood-curdling voice, did you tell my voters so he was going to enact a political strategy? By golly, I said, you know it plum-sliped my mind. Ain't that a joke on me? Get out of my life, says Gooseneck, draw his gun. That was a gentile way for him to act, trying to shoot me, after all I'd done for him. I'd taken his gun away from him as gentle as I know it how, and it was his own fault he got his arm broke. But to hear him rave, you would have thought he considered I was to blame for his misfortunes or something. I was so darn disgusted. I clumped on to Captain Kidd and shaken the dust of that there camp off of my boots, because I seen there was no gratitude in Yeller-Dog. I likewise seen I wasn't cut out for the skull-duggery of politics. I had me a notion one time that I'd make a sheriff, but I learnt my lesson. It's like my pap says, I reckon, all the law a man needs, says he, is a gun tucked into his pants. And the main larnan he needs is to know which end of that gun the bullet comes out of. What's good enough for pap, gents, is good enough for me. End of Pistol Politics. Evil Deeds at Red Cougar 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. Evil Deeds at Red Cougar by Robert Howard. I've been accused of prejudice against the town of Red Cougar on account of my habit of avoiding it if I have to ride fifty miles out in my way to keep from going through there. I denies the slander. It ain't no more prejudice for me to ride around Red Cougar than it is for a lobo to keep his paw out of a jump-trap. My experiences in that their layer of iniquity is painful to recall. I was a stranger and took in. I was a sheep for the fleecin', and if some of the fleecers got their fingers catched in the shears, it was their own fault. If I shuns Red Cougar like a plague, that makes it mutual, because the inhabitants of Red Cougar shuns me with equal enthusiasm, even to the pita desertin' their wagons and takin' to the brush if they happen to meet me on the road. I warn't intendin' to go there in the first place. I been punchin' cows over in Utah and was headin' for Bear Creek with the fifty bucks a draw poker game had left me out of my wages. When I seen a trail branchin' off of the main road, I knowed it turned off to Red Cougar, but it didn't make no impression on me. But I hadn't gone far past it when I heard a hoarse runnin' and the next thing it busted round a bend in the road with foam flyin' from the bit-rings. There was a gal on it, lookin' back over her shoulder down the road, just as she rounded the turn her hoarse stumbled and went to its knees, throwin' her over its head. I was off a cap'n kid in an instant and catched her hoarse before it could run off. I helped her up and she grabbed hold of me and hollered, Don't let him get me! Who, I said, takin' off my hat with one hand and drawin' a forty-five with the other. A gang of desperados, she panted. They've chased me for five miles. Oh, please, don't let them get me! They'll tet you over my dead carcass, I assured her. She give me a look which made my heart turn summer sets. She had black curly hair and big, innocent gray eyes, and she was a perteous gal I'd seen in a coon's age. Oh, thank you! She panted. I knowed you was a gent the minute I seen you. Will you help me up onto my hoarse? You sure you ain't hurt none, I asked. And she said she warn't. So I helped her up. And she gathered up her reins and looked back down the road, very nervous. Don't let them follow me! She begged. I'm goin' on. You don't need to do that, I says. Wait till I exterminate them scoundrels, and I'll escort you home. But she started convulsively as the distant pound of hooves reached us, and said, Oh, I dast not! They mustn't even see me again! But I want to, I said, where you live. Red Cougar, says she, my name's Sue Pritchard. If you happen up that way, drop in. I'll be there, I promised. And she flashed me a dazzling smile, and loped on down the road and out of sight, up the Red Cougar trail. So I set to work. I uses a rope, wove out a buffalo hide, a right smart longer and thicker, and stronger than the average Ryota, because a man my size has got to have a rope to match. I tied, said Lariat, across the road about three foot off the ground. Then I backed Captain Kidd into the bushes, and pretty soon six men swept around the bend. The first horse fell over my rope, and the others fell over him, and the way they piled up in the road was beautiful to behold. Before you could bat your eye, there was a most amazing tangle like kicking hosses and cussing men. I chose that instant to ride out of the brush and throw my pistols down on them. Seize that scandalous language and rise with your hands up, I requested, and they'd done so, but not cheerfully. Some had been kicked right severe by the hosses, and one had pitched over his coyose's neck and lit on his head, and his conversation weren't no way sensible. Some men in a this-here hold up demanded a tall maverick with long yaller whiskers. Shut up, I told him sternly. Men which chases a helpless gal like a pack of engines ain't fitting for to talk to a white man. Oh, so that's it, says he. Well, let me tell you. I said, shut up, I roared, emphasizing my request by shooting the left tip off of his mustache. I don't aim to pow-wow with no darn women chasing coyotes. In my country, we'd decorate a live oak with your carcasses. But you don't, began one of the others, but yaller whiskers profanely told him to shut up. Don't you see he's one of Ridgway's men, snarled he. He's got the drop on us, but our turn'll come, till it does save your breath. That's good advice, I says, unbuckle your gun belts and hang them on your saddle-horns, and keep your hands away from them guns whilst you does it. I'd plumb welcome an excuse to salivate the whole mob of you. So they done it. Then I fired a few shots under the hauses' feet and stampeded them, and they run off down the road the direction they come from. Yaller whiskers and his pals cussed something terrible. There save your wind, I advised them. You likely got a good long walk ahead of you before you catches your coyuses. I'll have your heart's blood for this, raid-yaller whiskers. I'll have your sculp if I have to trail you from here to judgment day. You don't know who you're monkeying with. And I don't care, I snorted. Vamoose! They taken out down the road after their hauses, and I shot around their feet a few times to kind of speed them on their way. They disappeared down the road in a faint blue haze of profanity, and I turned around and headed for Red Cougar. I hoped to catch up with Miss Pritchett before she got to Red Cougar, but she had too good a start and was going too fast a gate. My heart pounded at the thought of her, and my horns begun to ache. It sure was love at first sight. While I'd followed the trail for maybe three miles when I heard guns banging ahead of me, a little bit later I come to where the trail forked, and I didn't know which and led to Red Cougar. Whilst I was sitting there wondering which branch to take, I heard hauses running again, and pretty soon a couple of men hove into sight, spurring hard, and bendin' low like they was expecting to be shot from behind. When they approached me I seen they had badges onto their vests and bullet holes in their hats. Which is the road to Red Cougar, I asked politely. Thaton, says the older feller, pintin' back the way they'd come, but if you're aimin' to go there I advise you to reflect deeply on the matter. Ponder, young man, ponder and meditate. Life is sweet after all. What you mean, I asked. Who y'all chasin'? Chasin' hell, says he. Polishing his sheriff's badge with his sleeve. We're bein' chaste. Buck Ridgeway's in town. Never heard of him, I says. Well, says the sheriff. Buck don't like strangers no more than he does law officers, and you see how well he likes them. This here's a free country, I snorted. When I stays out of town on account of this here Ridgeway or anybody else, there'll be ice in hell thick enough for the devil to skate on. I'm goin' to visit a young lady. Miss Sue Prichard, can you tell me where she lives? They looked at me very peculiar. And the sheriff says, oh, in that case, well, she lives in the last cabin north of the general store on the left hand side of the street. Let's get goin', urged his deputy nervously. They may follow us. They started spurn again. And as I rode off, I heard the deputy say, Rick, and he's one of them. And the sheriff said, if he ain't, he's the biggest damn fool that ever lived to come sparkin' Sue Prichard. Then they rode out of herein'. I wondered who they was talkin' about, but soon forgot it as I rode on into Red Cougar. I come in on the south end of the town, and it was about like all them little mountain villages, one stragglin' street, hound-dog sleepin' in the dust of the wagon-ruts, and a general store, and a couple of saloons. I seen some hausses tied at the hitchin' rack outside the biggest saloon which said, Max Barr on it. But I didn't see nobody on the streets, though noises of hilarity was comin' out of the saloon. I was thirsty and dusty, and I decided I better have me a drink and spruce up some before I called on Miss Prichard. So I watered Captain Kidd at the trough and tied him to a tree. If I'd tied him to the hitch-rack, he'd a-kick the tar out of the other hausses, and went into the saloon. They warn't nobody in there but an old coot with gray whiskers tendin' Barr, and the noise was all comin' from another room. From the racket I'd judged they was a bowlin' alley in there, and the gents was bowlin'. I beat the dust out of my pants with my hat and called for whisky. Whilst I was drinkin' it, the feller said, Stranger in town, eh? I said I was, and he said, Friend of Buck Ridgeways? Never seen him in my life, says I, and he says, Then you better get out of town fast as you can dust it. Him and his bunch ain't here. He pulled out just a little while ago. Jeff Middleton's in there, and Jeff's plenty bad. I started to tell him I warn't studyin' Jeff Middleton, but just then a lot of whoopin' bust out in the bowlin' alley like somebody'd made a tin-strike or somethin'. And here come six men bustin' into the bar, whoopin' and yellin' and slappin' one of them on the back. Decorate the mahogany, MacVay? They whooped. Jeff Spyan, he'd just beat Tom Grissom here six straight games. They surged up to the bar and one of them tried to jostle me aside, but as nobody ain't been able to do that successful since I got my full growth, all he done was sprain his elbow. This seemed irritating, because he turned around and said heatedly, What the hell you think you're doin'? I'm drinkin' me a glass of corn squeezins, I replied, coldly. And they all turned round and looked at me and they moved back from the bar and hitched at their pistol-belts. They was a hard-lookin' gang, and the fellow they called Middleton was the hardest-lookin' one of them. Who are you and where'd you come from? he demanded. None of your damn business, I replied, with a touch of old southern courtesy. He showed his teeth at this and fumbled at his gun-belt. Are you trying to start something, he demanded, and I seen McVeigh hide behind a stack of beer kegs. I ain't in the habit of startin' trouble, I told him. All I does is end it. I'm in here drinkin' me a quiet dram when you coyotes come surgin' in, hollering like you was a first critter which ever hit a pin. So you depreciates my talents, eh? He squalled like he was stung to the quick. Maybe you think you could beat me, eh? I ain't seen the man which could hold a candle to my game, I replied, with my usual modesty. All right, he yelled, grindin' his teeth. Come into the alley, and I'll show you some action, you big-mountain grizzly. Hold on, says McVeigh, stickin' his head up from behind the kegs. Be careful, Jeff. I believe that's— I don't care who he is! Rave Middleton, he has give me a mortal insult. Come on, you, if you got the nerve. You be careful with them insults, I roared menacingly, striding into the alley. I ain't the man to be bulldozed. I was lookin' back over my shoulder when I shoved the door open with my palm, and I probably pushed harder than I intended to, and that's why I tore the door off of the hinges. They all look kinda startled, and McVeigh give a despairin' squeak, but I went on into the alley and picked up a bowl-ball, which I brandished in defiance. Here's fifty bucks, I says, wavin' the green-backs. We puts up fifty each, and rolls for five dollars a game. That suits you? I couldn't understand what he said, because he just made a noise like a wolf grabbin' a beefsteak, but he snatched up a bulldog, and produced ten five-dollar bills. So I judged it was agreeable with him, but he had an awful temper, and the longer we played, the matter he got. And when I beat him five straight games and taken twenty-five out of his fifty, the vein stood out purple onto his temples. It's your role, I says, and he throwed his bowl-ball down and yelled, Blast your soul, I don't like your style. I'm through, and I'm takin' down my steak. You get's no more of my money, damn ya. Why, you cheap-heeled piker, I roared. I thought you was a sport, even if you was a house-thief, but don't call me a house-thief, he screamed. Well, cow-thief, then, I says, if you're so darned particular. It was at this instant that he lost his head to the point of pullin' a pistol, and, firein' at me point blank, he would have undoubtedly shot me, too, if I hadn't hit him in the head with my bowl-ball, just as he fired. His bullet went into the ceiling, and his friends began to display their disproval by throwin' pins and bull-dogs at me. This irritated me, almost beyond control, but I kept my temper, and takin' a couple of them by the neck, and beat their heads together till they was limp. The matter would have ended there without any violence, but the other three insisted on takin' the thing serious, and I defy any man to remain tranquil, when three house-thieves are carvin' at him with buoys, and beatin' him over the head with tin-pins. But I didn't intend to bust the big ceiling-lamp. I just hit it by accident with the chair, which I knocked one of my enemies stiff with. And it weren't my fault if one of them got blood all over the alley. All I'd done was break his nose and knock out seven teeth with my fist. How'd I know he was gonna fall in the alley and bleed on it? As for that section of wall which got knocked out, all I can say is it's a darn flimsy wall which can be wrecked by throwin' a man through it. I thought I'd throwed him through a window till I looked closer, and seen it was a hole he busted through the wall. And can I help it if them scallywags blowed holes in the roof till it looked like a sieve tryin' to shoot me? It wasn't my fault know-how. But when the dust settled and I looked around to see if I'd made a clean sweep, I was just in time to grab the shotgun, which old man McVeigh was tryin' to shoot me through the bar room door with. You oughta be ashamed, I reproved, a man of your age in venerable whiskers, tryin' to shoot a defenseless stranger in the back. But my bullen alleys wrecked, he wept. Tearin' the aforesaid whiskers. I'm a ruined man. I sunk my wad in it, and now look at it. Ah, well, I says it warn't my fault. But I can't see an honest man suffer. Here's seventy-five dollars, all I got. Tain't enough, says he, nevertheless makin' a grab for the dough like a kingfisher divin' after a polywag. Tain't near enough. I'll collect the rest from them coyotes, I says. Don't do it, he shuddered. They'd kill me after you left. I want to do the right thing, I says. I'll work out the rest of it. He looked at me right sharp then, and says, come into the bar. But I seen three of them was comin' too, so I hauled them up and told them sternly to toke their friends out to the hostile and bring them too. They done so, kinda wablin' on their feet. They acted like they was still addled in the brains, and McVeigh said it looked to him like Middleton was out for the day. But I told him it was quite common for a man to be like that, which has just had a fifteen-pound bowling-ball split into two over his head. Then I went into the bar with McVeigh, and he poured out the drinks. Are you an earnest about workin' out that debt, says he? Sure, I said. I always pays my debts by fair means or foul. Ain't you Breckenridge Elkins, says he? And when I says I was, he says, I thought I recognized you when them fools was badgerin' you. Look out for them. That ain't all of them. The whole gang rode into town an hour or so ago, and run the sheriff and his deputy out. But Buck didn't stay long. He seen his gal, then he pulled out for the hills again with four men. There's a couple more besides them you fit hangin' round somewheres. I don't know where. Outlaws, I said. And he said, Sure, but the local law force ain't strong enough to deal with them. And anyway, most of the folks in town is in cahoots with them, and warns them if officers from outside come after them. They hang out in the hills, ordinary, but they come in the red cougar regular. But never mind them. I was just puttin' you on your guard. This is what I want you to do. A month ago I was comin' back to Red Cougar with a tidy fortune in gold dust I'd panned back in the hills. When I was held up and robbed. It weren't one of Ridgway's men. It was three fingers Clements, an old lone wolf, and the worst killer in these parts. He lives by himself up in the hills and nobody knows where. But I just recently learned by accident. He sent a message by a sheepherder, and the sheepherder got drunk in my saloon and talked. I learned he still got my gold and aims to sneak out with it, as soon as he's gined by a gang of desperados from Tomahawk. It was them the sheepherder was takin' the message too. I can't get no help from the sheriff. These outlaws has got him plum buffaloed. I want you to ride up into the hills and get my gold. Of course if you're scared of him, who says I was scared of him or anybody else I demanded irritably, tell me how to get to his hideout and I'm on my way. McVeigh's eyes kinda gleamed and he says, Good boy. Follow the trail that leads out a town to the northwest till you come to Diablo Canyon. Follow it till you come to the fifth branch gulch, openin' into it on the right. Turn off the trail then, and follow the gulch till you come to a big white oak tree, nigh the left-hand wall. Climb up out of the gulch there, and head due west up the slope. Pretty soon you'll see a craig like a chimney, stickin' out above a clump of spruces. At the foot of that craig there's a cave, and Clements is livin' there, and he's a tough fold. It's as good as did, I assured him, and had another drink. Then went out and clumb aboard Cabin Kid and headed out a town. But as I rode past the last cabin on the left I suddenly remembered about Sue Prichard, and I allowed three fingers could wait long enough for me to pay my respects on her. Likely she was expecting me and gettin' nervous and impatient because I was so long comin'. So I reigned up to the stoop and hailed, and somebody looked at me through a window. They also appeared to be a rifle-muzzle trained on me, too, but who could blame folks for bein' cautious with them Ridgway coyotes in town? Oh, it's you, said a female voice. Then the door opened and Sue Prichard said, Lighten, come in! Did you kill any of them rascals? I'm too soft-hearted for my own good, I says, apologetically. I just merely only sent him on down the road on foot. But I ain't got time to come in now. I'm on my way up in the mountains to see three fingers clements. I aim to stop on my way back if it's agreeable with ya. Three fingers clements? says she in a peculiar voice. Do you know where he is? McVeigh told me, I said. He's got a poke of dust he stole from McVeigh. I'm goin' after it. She said something under her breath which I must've misunderstood, because I was sure Ms. Prichard wouldn't use the word it sounded like. Come in just a minute, she begged. You got plenty of time. Come in and have a snort of corn juice. My folks is all visitin' and it gets mighty lonesome to a gal. Please come in. Well, I never could resist a pretty gal, so I tied Captain Kidd to a stump that looked solid and went in. She brung out her old man's jug. She said she never drunk none personal. We sat and talked, and there wasn't a doubt we caught into each other right spang off. There is some that says that Breckenridge Elkins ain't got a lick of sense when it comes to women, folks. Among these bein' my cousin, Bearfield Buckner. But I vow and declare that same as my only weakness, if any, and that likewise it is a manly weakness. This Sue Prichard was plumb sensible, I seen. She wasn't one of these flighty kind that a feller would have to court with a banjo or a guitar. We talked round about bear traps and what was the best-length barrel on shotguns and similar subjects of like nature. I've likewise told her one or two of my mild experiences and her eyes boogered big as saucers. We finally got round to my latest encounter. Tell me some more about three fingers, she coaxed. I didn't know anybody know'd his hideout. So I told her what all McVeigh said, and she was a heap interested, and had me repeat the instructions how to get there two or three times. Then she asked me if I'd met any bad men in town, and I told her I'd met six, and they was now recovering on pallets in the back of a general store. She looked startled at this, and pretty soon she asked me to excuse her, because she heard one of the neighbor women calling her. I didn't hear nobody, but I said all right, and she went out the back door, and I heard her whistle three times. I sat there and had another snort or so, and reflected that the gal was undoubtedly taken with me. She was gone quite a spell, and finally I got up and looked out the back window and seen her standing down by the corral talking to a couple of fellers. As I looked one of them got on a bob-tailed ron and headed north at a high run, and the other come on back to the cabin with Sue. This here's my cousin, Jack Montgomery, says she. He wants to go with you. He's just a boy in lax excitement. He was about the hardest-looking boy I ever seen, and he seemed remarkable mature for his years. But I said, all right, but we've got to get going. Be careful, Breckenridge, she advised. You too, Jack. I won't hurt three fingers no more than I got to, and I promised her. And we went on our way yonderly, headed for the hideout. We got to Diablo Canyon in about an hour, and went up at about three miles till we come to the Gulchmouth MacVe had described. All at once Jack Montgomery pulled up and pointed down to a pool we was passing in a holler of the rock, and hollered, look there, gold dust scattered at the edge of the water. I don't see none, I says. Light, he urged, taking off his coyotes. I see it. It's thick as butter along the edge. Well, I got down and bent over the pool, but I couldn't see nothing, and all at once something hit me in the back of the head and knocked my head off. I turned round and seen Jack Montgomery holding the bent barrel of a Winchester car bean in his hands. The stock was busted off, and pieces was lying on the ground. He looked awful surprised about something. His eyes was wild, and his hair stood up. Are you sick, I asked? What do you want to hit me for? You ain't human, he gasped, dropping the bent barrel and jerking out his pistol. I grabbed him and taken it away from him. What's the matter with you, I demanded? Are you low-code? For answer he run off down the canyon, shrieking like a lost soul. I decided he must have went crazy like sheepherders does sometimes, so I pursued him and catched him. He fit and hollered like a painter. Stop that, I told him sternly. I'm your friend. It's my duty to your cousin to see you don't come to no harm. Cousin, hell, says he with frightful profanity. She ain't no more my cousin than you be. Poor Fowler, I sighed and throwing him on his belly, reached for his lariat. You're out of your head and suffer from hallucinations. I know to sheep herder just like you want, only he thought he was sitting bull. What you doin', he hollered as I started tying him with his rope. Don't you worry, I sued him. I can't let you go tearin' round over these mountains in your condition. I'll fix you so you'll be safe and comfortable till I get back from Three Fingers Cave. Then I'll take you to Red Cougar and we'll send you to some nice, quiet, insane asylum. Blast your soul, he shrieked. I'm as sane as you be, a damn sight sainer, because no man with a normal brain could ignore gettin' a rifle stock broke over his skull like you'd done. Whereupon he tries to kick me between the eyes and otherwise give evidence of what I once heard a doctor call his derangement. It was a pitiful sight to see, especially since he was a cousin to Miss Sue Pricherton would undoubtedly be my cousin-in-law one of these days. He jerked and rassled and some of his words was downright shocking, but I didn't pay no attention to his ravens. I always heard the way to get along with crazy people was to humor him. I was afraid if I left him layin' on the ground the wolves might chime, so I tied him up in the crotch of a big tree where they couldn't reach him. I likewise tied his horse by the pool where he could drink and graze. Listen, Jack begged as I clump on to Captain Kidd. I give up. Untie me, and I'll spill the beans. I'll tell you everything. You just take it easy, I sooth. I'll be back soon. Expletive deleted, says he, frothin' slightly at the mouth. With a sigh of pity I turned up the gulch, and his language, till I was clean out of sight, ain't to be repeated. A mile or so on I come to the white oak tree and clump out of the gulch and went up a long slope till I seen a jut of rock like a chimney rising above the trees. I slid off a Captain Kidd and draw'd my pistols, and snuck forward through the thick brush till I seen the mouth of a cave ahead of me, and I also seen somethin' else, too. A man was lyin' in front of it with his head in a pool of blood. I rolled him over, and he was still alive. His sculp was cut open, but the bone didn't seem to be caved in. He was a lanky old coot with reddish gray whiskers, and he didn't have but three fingers on to his left hand. It was a packed tore up and scattered on the ground nigham, but I reckon the pack mule had run off. They was also hostrax, leadin' west. They was a spring nearby, and I brung my hat full of water and sloshed it into his face, and tried to pour some into his mouth, but it warn't no go. When I throw'd the water over him, he kinda twitched and groaned, but when I tried to pour the water down his gullet, he kinda instinctively clamped his jaws together like a bulldog. Then I seen a jug settin' in the cave, so I brung it out and pulled out the cork. When it popped, he opened his mouth convulsively and wretched out his hand. So I poured a piter two down his gullet, and he opened his eyes, and glared wildly round till he seen his busted pack, then he clutched his whiskers and shrieked. They got it! My polka-dust! I've been hidin' up here for weeks, and just when I was gonna make a jump for it, they finds me! Who, I asked, buck rich way in his gang, he squalled. I was careless. When I heard hausses, I thought it was the men which was comin' to help me take my gold out. Next thing I know'd, rich way's bunch had run out of the brash and was beat me over the head with their colts. I'm a ruined man. Hell's fire, quoth I with passion. Then rich way's was beginin' to get on to my nerves. I left old man Clements howlin' his woes to the sky like a timber-wolf with a belly-yake, and I forked Captain Kidd in headed west. They'd left at trail the youngest kid on Bear Creek could follow. It led for five miles through as wild a country as I ever seen outside the Humboldts. Then I seen a cabin ahead on a wide bench-land, and that backed again a steep mountain slope. I could just see the chimney through the tops of a dense thicket. It warn't long till sundown, and smoke was comin' out of the chimney. I noted must be the rich way hideout, so I went bustin' through the thicket in such a hurry I forgot they might have a man on the lookout. I'm powerful absent-minded that way. They was one all right. But I was comin' so fast he'd missed me with his buffalo-gun, and he didn't stop to reload, but run into the cabin yellin'—'Boor, the door quick! Here comes a biggest man in the world on the biggest hawson creation!' They done so. When I emerged from amongst the trees, they opened up on me through the loopholes with sawed-off shotguns. If it'd been Winchester's, I'd have ignored them. But even I'm a little bashful about buck-shot at close range, when six men is shootin' at me all at once. So I retired behind a big tree and begun to shoot back with my pistols, and the howls of them worthless critters when my bullets knocked splinters in their faces was music to my ears. They was a corral some distance behind the cabin with six hausses in it. To my surprise, I seen one of them was a bob-tailed roam the feller was ridin' which I seen talkin' with Sue Prichard and Jack Montgomery, and I wondered if them blame-out laws had captured him. But I warn't accomplishing much, shootin' at them loopholes, and the sun dipped lower, and I begun to get mad. I decided to rush the cabin anyway, and hell with their darn buck-shot. And I dismounted and stumped my toe right severe on a rock. It always did madden me to stump my toe. And I uttered some loud and profane remarks. And I reckoned them scoundrels musta thunk I'd stopped some lead the way they whooped. But just then I had an inspiration. A big thick smoke was pourin' out of the rock chimney, so I knowed they was a big fire on the fireplace where they was cookin' supper. And I was sure there weren't but one door in the cabin. So I takin' up the rock, which is about the size of an ordinary pig, and throwed it at the chimney. Boys on Bear Creek is ashamed if they have to use more than one rock on a squirrel in a hundred foot tree across the creek. And I didn't miss. I hid her center, and she buckled and come crashin' down in a regular shower of rocks, and most of them fell down into the fireplace as I knowed by the way the sparks flew. I judged that the coals was scattered all over the floor, and the chimney hole was blocked so the smoke couldn't get out that way. Anyway, the smoke began to pour out the windows and the ridge-wayers stopped shootin' and started hollering. Somebody yelled, The floor's on fire! Throw that bucket of water on it! And someone else shrieked, Wait you damn fool, that ain't water, it's whiskey! But he was too late. I heard the splash, and then a most amazing flame sprung up and licked out of the windows, and the fellers hollered louder than ever, and yelled, Let me out! I got smoke in my eyes! I'm chokin' to death! I left the thicket and run to the door, just as a man throated open and staggered out, blind as a bat, and cussin' and shootin' wild. I was afeard he'd hurt himself if he kept tearin' around like that, so I'd taken his shotgun away from him and bent the barrel over his head to kinda keep him quiet. Then I seen to my surprise he was a feller which rode the bomb-tail-roan. I thunk how surprised sued be'd and know a friend of hern was a cussed outlaw. I then went into the cabin which was so full of smoke and gun-tider fumes a man couldn't hardly see nothin'. The walls and roof was on fire by now, and them idjits was tearin' around with their eyes full of smoke, tryin' to find the door, and one of them run head on into the wall and knocked himself stiff. I throed him outside and got hold of another and delete him out, and he cut me across a bosom with his buoy. I was so stung by this ingratitude that when I tossed him out the safety I may be throating further than I aim to, and it appears there was a stump which he hid his head on. But I couldn't help it be in there. I then turned round and located the remaining three which was fightin' with each other, evidently thinkin' they was fightin' me. Just as I started for him a big log fell out of the roof and knocked two of them groggy and sought their clothes on fire, and a regular sheet of flame sprung up and burnt off most of my hair, and whilst I was dazzled by it the surviving outlaw run past me out the door, leavin' his smokin' shirt in my hand. Well, I dragged the other two out and stomped on them to put out the fire, and the way they hollered you to thought I was injurin' instead of savin' their fool lives. Shed up and tell me where the gold is, I ordered, and one of them gurgled, Richway's got it. I asked which one of them was him, and they all swore they wasn't, and I remembered the feller which run out of the cabin. So I looked round and seen him just leadin' the hauss out of the corral to ride off bareback. You stop! I roared, letting my voice out full which I seldom does. The acorns rattled down out of the trees and the tall grass bent flat, and the hauss Richway was fixin' the mount, got scared and jerked away from him and bolted, and the other hausses knocked the corral gate down and stamp-eated. Three or four of them run over Richway before he could get out of the way. He jumped up and headed out across the flat on foot, wabblin' some but goin' strong. I coulda shot him easy, but I was afraid he'd hid the gold somewheres, and if I killed him he couldn't tell me where. So I run and got my lariat, and taken out after him on foot, because I figured he'd duck into the thick brush to get away. But when he seen I was overhaulin' him, he made for the mountainside and begun to climb a steep slope. I followed him, but before he was much more than halfway up, he takin' refuge on a ledge behind a dead tree and started shootin' at me. I got behind a boulder about seventy-five foot below him and asked him to surrender like a jant, but his only reply was a direct slur on my ancestry and more bullets. One of which knocked off a sliver of rock which gouged my neck. This annoyed me so much that I pulled my pistols and started shootin' back at him. But all I could hit was the tree, and the sun was goin' down, and I was afraid if I didn't get him before dark he'd managed to sneak off. So I stood up, payin' no attention to the slug he put in my shoulder, and swang my lariat. I always used a ninety-foot rope. I got no use for them little bitsy pieces of string most punchers use. I throwed my noose and looped that tree and sought my feet solid and heaved, and tore the derm tree up by the roots. But them roots went so deep, most of the ledge come along with them, and that started a landslide. The first thing I knowed, here comes the tree and Ridgway and several tons of loose rock and shale, gatherin' weight and speed as they come. It sounded like thunder rollin' down the mountain, and Ridgway's screams was frightfully here. I jumped out from behind the boulder, intended to let the landslide split on me and grab him as it went past me. But I stumbled and fell, and that derm tree hit me behind the ear. And the next thing I knowed, I was travelin' down the mountain with Ridgway and the rest of the avalanche. It was very humiliatin'. I was right glad at the time, I recollect, that Miss Sue Prichard wasn't nowhere near to witness this catastrophe. It's hard for a man to keep his dignity, I found, when he's scootin' in a hell slew of trees and brush and rocks and dirt, and I become aware, too, that a snag had tore the seed out of my pants, which makes me some despondent. This, I figured, is what a man gets for losin' his self-control. I recollected another time or two when I'd exposed myself to the consequences by exertin' my full strength, and I made me a couple of promises, then and there. It's all right for a single young feller to go hellin' around and let the chips fall where they may, but it's different with a man like me, who is almost just the same as practically married. You got to look before you leap was the way I reckoned it. A man's got to think of his wife and children. We brung up at the foot of the slope in a heap of boulders and shale, and I'd throwed a few hundred pounds of busted rock off of me, and rizz up and shaken the blood out of my eyes, and looked around for Ridgway. I presently located a boot stickin' out of a heap, and I laid hold onto it and hauled him out. He looked remarkable like a skint rabbit. About all the clothes he had left on to him besides his boots was his belt, and I'd seen a fat buckskin poke stuck under it. So I'd dragged it out, and about that time he sought off groggy and looked round dizzy and moan feeble. Who the hell are you? Breckenridge Elkins of Bear Creek, I said. And with all the men they is in the state of Nevada, he says weekly, I had to tangle with you. What you gonna do? I think I'll turn you and your gang over to the sheriff, I says. I don't hold much with law. We ain't never had none on Bear Creek. But such coyotes as you all don't deserve no better. A hell of a right you got to talk about law, he said fiercely. After plottin' with Badger McVeigh to rob old man Clements. That's all I'd done. What you mean, I demanded. Clements robbed McVeigh this here dust robbed hell, says Ridgway. McVeigh's the crookedest cuss that ever lived. Only he ain't got the guts to commit robbery his self. Why, Clements is an honest miner, the old jackass, and he panned that there dust up in the hills. He's been hidein' for weeks, scared to try to get out of the country we was huntin' him too industrious. McVeigh put me up to commitin' robbery? I ejaculated, aghast. That's just what he did, declared Ridgway, and I was so overcome by this perfidy, I was plum-paralyzed. Before I could recover, Ridgway gave a convulsive flop and rolled over into the bushes and was gone in an instant. The next thing I knowed, I heard hausses runnin' and I turned in time to see a bunch of men ridin' up on me. Old man Clements was with him, and I recognized the others as the fellers I stopped from chasing Sue Prichard on the road below Red Cougar. I wretched for a pistol, but Clements yelled, hold on, they're friends. He then jumped off and grabbed the poke out of my limp hand, and waved it at them triumphantly. See that? He hollered. Did not tell ya he was a friend? Did not tell ya he come up here to bust up that gang. He got my gold back for me, just like I said he would. He then grabbed my hand and shaked it, energetic, and says, these is the men I sent to Tomahawk for, to help me get my gold out. They got to my cave just a while after you left. They're prejudiced again, ya, but no, we ain't denied Yeller Whiskers, which I'd now seen was wearin' a deputy's badge, and he got off and shakin' my hand heartily. You didn't know we was special law officers, and I reckon it did look bad. Six men chasing a woman. We thought you was a outlaw. We was pretty mad at you when we finally caught a horse and headed back, but I began to wonder about you when we found them six disabled outlaws in the store at Red Cougar. Then when we got to Clements Cave and found you'd befriended him, and had lit out on Ridgway's trail it looked still better for ya. But I still thought maybe you was after that gold on your own account. But, of course, I see now I was all wrong, and I apologizes. Where's Ridgway? He got away, I said. Never mind, says Clements, pumpin' my hand again. Kirby here and his men has got