The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume One: Crimson Shadows by Robert E. Howard
Before I could git old Brigamer by the neck and haul him loose from me he had clawed my clothes all to pieces and likewise lacerated my hide free and generous. In fact he made me so mad that when I did git him loose I taken him by the tail and mowed down the bresh in a fifteen foot circle around me with him, till the hair wore off of his tail and it slipped out of my hands. Old Brigamer then laigged it off down the mountain squalling fit to bust yore ear-drums. He was the maddest cougar you ever seen, but not mad enough to renew the fray. He must of recognized me.
At that moment I heard Bill yelling for help up above me so I headed up the slope, swearing loudly and bleeding freely, and crashing through them bushes like a wild bull. Evidently the time for stealth and silence was past. I busted into the open and seen Bill hopping around on the aidge of the ledge trying to git holt of Jack which was kicking like a grasshopper on the end of the rope, jest out of rech.
“Whyn’t you sneak up soft and easy like I said?” howled Bill. “I was jest about to argy him out of the notion. He’d tied the rope around his neck and was standin’ on the aidge, when that racket bust loose in the bresh and scairt him so bad he fell offa the ledge! Do somethin’.”
“Shoot the rope in two,” I suggested, but Bill said, “No, you cussed fool! He’d fall down the cliff and break his neck!”
But I seen it warn’t a very big tree so I went and got my arms around it and give it a heave and loosened the roots, and then kinda twisted it around so the limb that Jack was hung to was over the ledge now. I reckon I busted most of the roots in the process, jedging from the noise. Bill’s eyes popped out when he seen that, and he reched up kind of dazed like and cut the rope with his bowie. Only he forgot to grab Jack before he cut it, and Jack hit the ledge with a resounding thud.
“I believe he’s dead,” says Bill despairingful. “I’ll never git that six bucks. Look how purple he is.”
“Aw,” says I, biting me off a chew of terbacker, “all men which has been hung looks that way. I remember onst the Vigilantes hung Uncle Jeppard Grimes, and it taken us three hours to bring him to after we cut him down. Of course, he’d been hangin’ a hour before we found him.”
“Shet up and help me revive him,” snarled Bill, gitting the noose off of his neck. “You seleck the damndest times to converse about the sins of yore infernal relatives–look, he’s comin’ to!”
Because Jack had begun to gasp and kick around, so Bill brung out a bottle and poured a snort down his gullet, and pretty soon Jack sot up and felt of his neck. His jaws wagged but didn’t make no sound.
Glanton now seemed to notice my disheveled condition for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?” he ast in amazement.
“Aw, I stepped on old Brigamer,” I scowled.
“Well, whyn’t you hang onto him?” he demanded. “Don’t you know they’s a big bounty on his pelt? We could of split the dough.”
“I’ve had a bellyfull of old Brigamer,” I replied irritably. “I don’t care if I never see him again. Look what he done to my best britches! If you wants that bounty, you go after it yoreself.”
“And let me alone!” onexpectedly spoke up Jack, eyeing us balefully. “I’m free, white and twenty-one. I hangs myself if I wants to.”
“You won’t neither,” says Bill sternly. “Me and yore paw is old friends and I aim to save yore wuthless life if I have to kill you to do it.”
“I defies you!” squawked Jack, making a sudden dive betwixt Bill’s laigs and he would of got clean away if I hadn’t snagged the seat of his britches with my spur. He then displayed startling ingratitude by hitting me with a rock and, whilst we was tying him up with the hanging rope, his langwidge was scandalous.
“Did you ever see sech a idjit?” demands Bill, setting on him and fanning hisself with his Stetson. “What we goin’ to do with him? We cain’t keep him tied up forever.”
“We got to watch him clost till he gits out of the notion of killin’ hisself,” I says. “He can stay at our cabin for a spell.”
“Ain’t you got some sisters?” says Jack.
“A whole cabin-full,” I says with feeling. “You cain’t hardly walk without steppin’ on one. Why?”
“I won’t go,” says he bitterly. “I don’t never want to see no woman again, not even a mountain-woman. I’m a embittered man. The honey of love has turnt to tranchler pizen. Leave me to the buzzards and cougars.”
“I got it,” says Bill. “We’ll take him on a huntin’ trip way up in the high Humbolts. They’s some of that country I’d like to see myself. Reckon yo’re the only white man which has ever been up there, Breck–if we was to call you a white man.”
“What you mean by that there remark?” I demanded heatedly. “You know damn’ well I h’ain’t got nary a drop of Injun blood in me–hey, look out!”
I glimpsed a furry hide through the bresh, and thinking it was old Brigamer coming back, I pulled my pistols and started shooting at it, when a familiar voice yelled wrathfully, “Hey, you cut that out, dern it!”
The next instant a pecooliar figger hove into view–a tall ga’nt old ranny with long hair and whiskers with a club in his hand and a painter hide tied around his middle. Sprague’s eyes bugged out and he says: “Who in the name uh God’s that?”
“Another victim of feminine wiles,” I says. “That’s old Joshua Braxton, of Chawed Ear, the oldest and the toughest batchelor in South Nevada. I jedge that Miss Stark, the old maid schoolteacher, has renewed her matrimonical designs onto him. When she starts rollin’ sheep’s eyes at him he always dons that there grab and takes to the high sierras.”
“It’s the only way to perteck myself,” snarled Joshua. “She’d marry me by force if I didn’t resort to strategy. Not many folks comes up here and sech as does don’t recognize me in this rig. What you varmints disturbin’ my solitude for? Yore racket woke me up, over in my cave. When I seen old Brigamer high tailin’ it for distant parts I figgered Elkins was on the mountain.”
“We’re here to save this young idjit from his own folly,” says Bill. “You come up here because a woman wants to marry you. Jack comes up here to decorate a oak limb with his own carcass because one wouldn’t marry him.”
“Some men never knows their luck,” says old Joshua enviously. “Now me, I yearns to return to Chawed Ear which I’ve been away from for a month. But whilst that old mudhen of a Miss Stark is there I haunts the wilderness if it takes the rest of my life.”
“Well, be at ease, Josh,” says Bill. “Miss Stark ain’t there no more. She pulled out for Arizona three weeks ago.”
“Halleloojah!” says Joshua, throwing away his club. “Now I can return and take my place among men–Hold on!” says he, reching for his club again, “likely they’ll be gittin’ some other old harridan to take her place. That new-fangled schoolhouse they got at Chawed Ear is a curse and a blight. We’ll never be shet of husband-huntin’ ’rithmetic shooters. I better stay up here after all.”
“Don’t worry,” says Bill. “I seen a pitcher of the gal that’s comin’ from the East to take Miss Stark’s place and I can assure you that a gal as young and pretty as her wouldn’t never try to slap her brand on no old buzzard like you.”
“Young and purty you says?” I ast with sudden interest.
“As a racin’ filly!” he declared. “First time I ever knowed a school-marm could be less’n forty and have a face that didn’t look like the beginnin’s of a long drouth. She’s due into Chawed Ear on the evenin’ stage, and the whole town turns out to welcome her. The mayor aims to make a speech if he’s sober enough, and they’ve got up a band to play.”
“Damn foolishness!” snorted Joshua. “I don’t take no stock in eddication.”
“I dunno,” says I. That was before I got educated. “They’s times when I wisht I could read and write. We ain’t never had no school on Bear Creek.”
“What would you read outside of the labels onto whiskey bottles?” snorted old Joshua.
“Funny how a purty face
“It’s my duty to Bear Creek to pervide culture for the risin’ generation,” says I, ignoring them slanderous remarks. “I feels the urge for knowledge a-heavin’ and a-surgin’ in my boozum. We’re goin’ to have a school on Bear Creek, by golly, if I have to lick every old mossback in the Humbolts. I’ll build a cabin for the schoolhouse myself.”
“Where’ll you git a teacher?” ast Joshua. “Chawed Ear ain’t goin’ to let you have their’n.”
“Chawed Ear is, too,” I says. “If they won’t give her up peaceful I resorts to force. Bear Creek is goin’ to have culture if I have to wade fetlock deep in gore to pervide it. Le’s go! I’m r’arin’ to open the ball for arts and letters. Air you-all with me?”
“No!” says Jack, plenty emphatic.
“What we goin’ to do with him?” demands Glanton.
“Aw,” I said, “we’ll tie him up some place along the road and pick him up as we come back by.”
“All right,” says Bill, ignoring Jack’s impassioned protests. “I jest as soon. My nerves is frayed ridin’ herd on this young idjit and I needs a little excitement to quiet ’em. You can always be counted on for that. Anyway, I’d like to see that there school-marm gal myself. How about you, Joshua?”
“Yo’re both crazy,” growls Joshua. “But I’ve lived up here on nuts and jackrabbits till I ain’t shore of my own sanity. Anyway, I know the only way to disagree successfully with Elkins is to kill him, and I got strong doubts of bein’ able to do that. Lead on! I’ll do anything within reason to help keep eddication out of Chawed Ear. T’ain’t only my personal feelin’s regardin’ schoolteachers. It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Git yore clothes and le’s hustle then,” I says.
“This painter hide is all I got,” says he.
“You cain’t go down into the settlements in that rig,” I says.
“I can and will,” says he. “I look as civilized as you do, with yore clothes all tore to rags account of old Brigamer. I got a hoss clost by. I’ll git him if old Brigamer ain’t already.”
So Joshua went to git his hoss and me and Bill toted Jack down the slope to where our hosses was. His conversation was plentiful and heated, but we ignored it, and was jest tying him onto his hoss when Joshua arrov with his critter. Then the trouble started. Cap’n Kidd evidently thought Joshua was some kind of a varmint because every time Joshua come nigh him he taken in after him and run him up a tree. And every time Joshua tried to come down, Cap’n Kidd busted loose from me and run him back up again.
I didn’t git no help from Bill. All he done was laugh like a spotted hyener till Cap’n Kidd got irritated at them guffaws and kicked him in the belly and knocked him clean through a clump of spruces. Time I got him ontangled he looked about as disreputable as what I did because most of his clothes was tore off of him. We couldn’t find his hat, neither, so I tore up what was left of my shirt and he tied the pieces around his head, like a Apache. Exceptin’ Jack, we was sure a wild-looking bunch.
But I was disgusted thinking about how much time we was wasting whilst all the time Bear Creek was wallering in ignorance, so the next time Cap’n Kidd went for Joshua I took and busted him betwixt the ears with my sixshooter and that had some effect onto him–a little.
So we sot out, with Jack tied onto his hoss and cussing something terrible, and Joshua on a ga’nt old nag he rode bareback with a hackamore. I had Bill to ride betwixt him and me so’s to keep that painter hide as far away from Cap’n Kidd as possible, but every time the wind shifted and blowed the smell to him, Cap’n Kidd reched over and taken a bite at Joshua, and sometimes he bit Bill’s hoss by accident, and sometimes he bit Bill, and the langwidge Bill directed at that pore animal was shocking to hear.
We was aiming for the trail that runs down from Bear Creek into the Chawed Ear road, and we hit it a mile west of Bowie Knife Pass. We left Jack tied to a nice shady oak tree in the pass and told him we’d be back for him in a few hours, but some folks is never satisfied. Stead of being grateful for all the trouble we’d went to for him, he acted right nasty and called us some names I wouldn’t of endured if he’d been in his right mind.
But we tied his hoss to the same tree and hustled down the trail and presently come out onto the War Paint-Chawed Ear road, some miles west of Chawed Ear. And there we sighted our first human–a feller on a pinto mare and when he seen us he give a shriek and took out down the road toward Chawed Ear like the devil had him by the britches.
“Le’s ast him if the teacher’s got there yet,” I suggested, so we taken out after him, yelling for him to wait a minute. But he jest spurred his hoss that much harder and before we’d gone any piece, Joshua’s fool hoss jostled agen Cap’n Kidd, which smelt that painter skin and got the bit betwixt his teeth and run Joshua and his hoss three miles through the bresh before I could stop him. Bill follered us, and of course, time we got back to the road, the feller on the pinto mare was out of sight long ago.
So we headed for Chawed Ear but everybody that lived along the road had run into their cabins and bolted the doors, and they shot at us through the winders as we rode by. Bill said irritably, after having his off-ear nicked by a buffalo rifle, he says, “Dern it, they must know we aim to steal their schoolteacher.”
“Aw, they couldn’t know that,” I says. “I bet they is a war on betwixt Chawed Ear and War Paint.”
“Well, what they shootin’ at me for, then?” demanded Joshua.
“How could they recognize you in that rig?” I ast. “What’s that?”
Ahead of us, away down the road, we seen a cloud of dust, and here come a gang of men on hosses, waving guns and yelling.
“Well, whatever the reason is,” says Bill, “we better not stop to find out! Them gents is out for blood, and,” says he as the bullets begun to knock up the dust around us, “I jedge it’s our blood!”
“Pull into the bresh,” says I. “I goes to Chawed Ear in spite of hell, high water and all the gunmen they can raise.”
So we taken to the bresh, and they lit in after us, about forty or fifty of ’em, but we dodged and circled and taken short cuts old Joshua knowed about, and when we emerged into the town of Chawed Ear, our pursewers warn’t nowheres in sight. In fack, they warn’t nobody in sight. All the doors was closed and the shutters up on the cabins and saloons and stores and everything. It was pecooliar.
As we rode into the clearing somebody let bam at us with a shotgun from the nearest cabin, and the load combed Joshua’s whiskers. This made me mad, so I rode at the cabin and pulled my foot out’n the stirrup and kicked the door in, and whilst I was doing this, the feller inside hollered and jumped out the winder, and Bill grabbed him by the neck. It was Esau Barlow, one of Chawed Ear’s confirmed citizens.
“What the hell’s the matter with you buzzards?” roared Bill.
“Is that you, Glanton?” gasped Esau, blinking his eyes.
“A-course it’s me!” roared Bill. “Do I look like a Injun?”
“Yes–ow! I mean, I didn’t know you in that there turban,” says Esau. “Am I dreamin’ or is that Josh Braxton and Breck Elkins?”
“Shore it’s us,” snorted Joshua. “Who you think?”
“Well,” says Esau, rubbing his neck and looking sidewise at Joshua’s painter skin. “I didn’t know!”
“Where is everybody?” Joshua demanded.
“Well,” says Esau, “a little while ago Dick Lynch rode into town with his hoss all of a lather and swore he’d jest outrun the wildest war-party that ever come down from the hills!
“‘Boys,’ says Dick, ‘they ain’t n
“Well,” says Esau, “when he says that, sech men as was left in town got their hosses and guns and they taken out up the road to meet the war-party before it got into town.”
“Well, of all the fools!” I says. “Say, where’s the new teacher?”
“The stage ain’t arriv yet,” says he. “The mayor and the band rode out to meet it at the Yaller Creek crossin’ and escort her in to town in honor. They’d left before Dick brung news of the war-party.”
“Come on!” I says to my warriors. “We likewise meets that stage!”
So we fogged it on through the town and down the road, and purty soon we heard music blaring ahead of us, and men yipping and shooting off their pistols like they does when they’re celebrating, so we jedged they’d met the stage and was escorting it in.
“What you goin’ to do now?” ast Bill, and about that time a noise bust out behind us and we looked back and seen that gang of Chawed Ear maniacs which had been chasing us dusting down the road after us, waving their Winchesters. I knowed they warn’t no use to try to explain to them that we warn’t no war-party of cannibals. They’d salivate us before we could git clost enough to make ’em hear what we was saying. So I yelled: “Come on. If they git her into town they’ll fort theirselves agen us. We takes her now! Foller me!”