'A Injun stole my clothes,' I explained, 'so I taken some off'n a stranger. Maybe that was Mister McGoorty.'
'What's the matter?' ast Kirby, coming up with another bucket of water. 'Time's about ready to be called.'
'We're sunk!' bawled McVey. 'This ain't McGoorty! This is a derned hillbilly which murdered McGoorty and stole his clothes!'
'We're rooint!' exclaimed Richards, aghast. 'Everybody's bet their dough without even seein' our man, they was that full of trust and civic pride. We cain't call it off now. Tomahawk is rooint! What'll we do?'
'He's goin' to git in there and fight his derndest,' said McVey, pulling his gun and jamming it into my back. 'We'll hang him after the fight.'
'But he cain't box!' wailed Richards.
'No matter,' said McVey; 'the fair name of our town is at stake; Tomahawk promised to supply a fighter to fight O'Tool, and--'
'Oh!' I said, suddenly seeing light. 'This here is a fight then, ain't it?'
McVey give a low moan, and Kirby reched for his gun, but just then the referee hollered time, and I jumped up and run at O'Tool. If a fight was all they wanted, I was satisfied. All that talk about rules, and the yelling of the crowd and all had had me so confused I hadn't knowed what it was all about. I hit at O'Tool and he ducked and hit me in the belly and on the nose and in the eye and on the ear. The blood spurted, and the crowd hollered, and he looked plumb dumbfounded and gritted betwixt his teeth: 'Are you human? Why don't you fall?'
I spit out a mouthful of blood and got my hands on him and started chawing his ear, and he squalled like a catamount. Yucca run in and tried to pull me loose and I give him a slap under the ear and he turned a somersault into the ropes.
'Yore man's fightin' foul!' he squalled, and Kirby said: 'Yo're crazy! Do you see this gun? You holler 'foul' just once more, and it'll go off!'
Meanwhile O'Tool had broke loose from me and caved in his knuckles on my jaw, and I come for him again, because I was beginning to lose my temper. He gasped: 'If you want to make an alley-fight out of it, all right. I wasn't raised in Five Points for nothing!' He then rammed his knee into my groin, and groped for my eye, but I got his thumb in my teeth and begun masticating it, and the way he howled was a caution.
By this time the crowd was crazy, and I throwed O'Tool and begun to stomp him, when somebody let bang at me from the crowd and the bullet cut my silk belt and my pants started to fall down.
I grabbed 'em with both hands, and O'Tool riz up and rushed at me, bloody and bellering, and I didn't dare let go my pants to defend myself. I whirled and bent over and lashed out backwards with my right heel like a mule, and I caught him under the chin. He done a cartwheel in the air, his head hit the turf, and he bounced on over and landed on his back with his knees hooked over the lower rope. There warn't no question about him being out. The only question was, was he dead?
A roar of 'Foul!' went up from the Gunstock men, and guns bristled all around the ring.
The Tomahawk men was cheering and yelling that I'd won fair and square, and the Gunstock men was cussing and threatening me, when somebody hollered: 'Leave it to the referee!'
'Sure,' said Kirby. 'He knows our man won fair, and if he don't say so, I'll blow his head off!'
'That's a lie!' bellered a Gunstock man. 'He knows it war a foul, and if he says it warn't, I'll kyarve his gizzard with this here bowie knife!'
At them words Yucca fainted, and then a clatter of hoofs sounded above the din, and out of the timber that hid the trail from the east a gang of hossmen rode at a run. Everybody yelled: 'Look out, here comes them Perdition illegitimates!'
Instantly a hundred guns covered 'em, and McVey demanded: 'Come ye in peace or in war?'
'We come to unmask a fraud!' roared a big man with a red bandanner around his neck. 'McGoorty, come forth!'
A familiar figger, now dressed in cowboy togs, pushed forward on my mule. 'There he is!' this figger yelled, p'inting a accusing finger at me. 'That's the desperado that robbed me! Them's my tights he's got on!'
'What is this?' roared the crowd.
'A cussed fake!' bellered the man with the red bandanner. 'This here is Bruiser McGoorty!'
'Then who's he?' somebody bawled, p'inting at me.
'I'm Breckinridge Elkins and I can lick any man here!' I roared, getting mad. I brandished my fists in defiance, but my britches started sliding down again, so I had to shut up and grab 'em.
'Aha!' the man with the red bandanner howled like a hyener. 'He admits it! I dunno what the idee is, but these Tomahawk polecats has double-crossed somebody! I trusts that you jackasses from Gunstock realizes the blackness and hellishness of their hearts! This man McGoorty rode into Perdition a few hours ago in his unmentionables, astraddle of that there mule, and told us how he'd been held up and robbed and put on the wrong road. You skunks was too proud to stage this fight in Perdition, but we ain't the men to see justice scorned with impunity! We brought McGoorty here to show you that you was bein' gypped by Tomahawk! That man ain't no prize fighter; he's a highway robber!'
'These Tomahawk coyotes has framed us!' squalled a Gunstock man, going for his gun.
'Yo're a liar!' roared Richards, bending a .45 barrel over his head.
The next instant guns was crashing, knives was gleaming, and men was yelling blue murder. The Gunstock braves turned frothing on the Tomahawk warriors, and the men from Perdition, yelping with glee, pulled their guns, and begun fanning the crowd indiscriminately, which give back their fire. McGoorty give a howl and fell down on Alexander's neck, gripping around it with both arms, and Alexander departed in a cloud of dust and gun- smoke.
I grabbed my gunbelt, which McVey had hung over the post in my corner, and I headed for cover, holding onto my britches whilst the bullets hummed around me as thick as bees. I wanted to take to the bresh, but I remembered that blamed letter, so I headed for town. Behind me there riz a roar of banging guns and yelling men. Jest as I got to the backs of the row of buildings which lined the street, I run head on into something soft. It was McGoorty, trying to escape on Alexander. He had hold of jest one rein, and Alexander, evidently having rounded one end of the town, was traveling in a circle and heading back where he started from.
I was going so fast I couldn't stop, and I run right over Alexander and all three of us went down in a heap. I jumped up, afeared Alexander was kilt or crippled, but he scrambled up snorting and trembling, and then McGoorty weaved up, making funny noises. I poked my cap-and-ball into his belly.
'Off with them pants!' I hollered.
'My God!' he screamed. 'Again? This is getting to be a habit!'
'Hustle!' I bellered. 'You can have these scandals I got on now.'
He shucked his britches and grabbed them tights and run like he was afeared I'd want his underwear too. I jerked on the pants, forked Alexander and headed for the south end of town. I kept behind the houses, though the town seemed to be deserted, and purty soon I come to the store where Kirby had told me old man Brenton kept the post office. Guns was barking there, and across the street I seen men ducking in and out behind a old shack, and shooting.
I tied Alexander to a corner of the store and went in the back door. Up in the front part I seen old man Brenton kneeling behind some barrels with a .45-90, and he was shooting at the fellers in the shack acrost the street. Every now and then a slug would hum through the door and comb his whiskers, and he would cuss worse'n pap did that time he sot down in a b'ar trap.
I went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and he give a squall and flopped over and let go bam! right in my face and singed off my eyebrows. And the fellers acrost the street hollered and started shooting at both of us.
I'd grabbed the barrel of his Winchester, and he was cussing and jerking at it with one hand and feeling in his boot for a knife with the other'n, and I said: 'Mister Brenton, if you ain't too busy, I wish you'd gimme that there letter which come for pap.'
'Don't never come up behind me like that again!' he squalled. 'I thought you was one of them dern outlaws! Look out! Duck, you blame fool!'
I let go of his gun, and he taken a shot at a head which was aiming around the corner of the shack, and the head let out a squall and disappeared.
