When I riz up and seen how late it was, I jumped up and run and looked over the wall, and there was Cap'n Kidd mowing the grass down as ca'm as you please. He give me a mean look, but didn't say nothing. I was so eager to see if he was going to let me ride him without no more foolishness that I didn't stop for breakfast, nor to fix the buckle onto my gunbelt. I left it hanging on a spruce limb, and clumb into the bowl. Cap'n Kidd laid back his ears but didn't do nothing as I approached outside of making a swipe at me with his left hoof. I dodged and give him a good hearty kick in the belly and he grunted and doubled up, and I clapped the saddle on him. He showed his teeth at that, but he let me cinch it up, and put on the hackamore, and when I got on him he didn't pitch but about ten jumps and make but one snap at my laig.
Well, I was plumb tickled as you can imagine. I clumb down and opened the gap in the wall and led him out, and when he found he was outside the bowl he bolted and dragged me for a hundred yards before I managed to get the rope around a tree. After I tied him up though, he didn't try to bust loose.
I started back towards the tree where I left my gunbelt when I heard hosses running, and the next thing I knowed Donovan and his five men busted into the open and pulled up with their mouths wide open. Cap'n Kidd snorted warlike when he seen 'em, but didn't cut up no other way.
'Blast my soul!' says Donovan. 'Can I believe my eyes? If there ain't Cap'n Kidd hisself, saddled and tied to that tree! Did you do that?'
'Yeah,' I said.
He looked me over and said: 'I believes it. You looked like you been through a sausage-grinder. Air you still alive?'
'My ribs is kind of sore,' I said.
'--!' says Donovan. 'To think that a blame half-naked hillbilly should do what the best hossmen of the West has attempted in vain! I don't aim to stand for it! I knows my rights! That there is my hoss by rights! I've trailed him nigh a thousand miles, and combed this cussed plateau in a circle. He's my hoss!'
'He ain't, nuther,' I says. 'He come from the Humbolts original, jest like me. You said so yoreself. Anyway, I caught him and broke him, and he's mine.'
'He's right, Bill,' one of the men says to Donovan.
'You shet up!' roared Donovan. 'What Wild Bill Donovan wants, he gits!'
I reched for my gun and then remembered in despair that it was hanging on a limb a hundred yards away. Donovan covered me with the sawed-off shotgun he jerked out of his saddle-holster as he swung down.
'Stand where you be,' he advised me. 'I ought to shoot you for not comin' and tellin' me when you seen the hoss, but after all you've saved me the trouble of breakin' him in.'
'So yo're a hoss-thief!' I said wrathfully.
'You be keerful what you calls me!' he roared. 'I ain't no hoss thief. We gambles for that hoss. Set down!'
I sot and he sot on his heels in front of me, with his sawed-off still covering me. If it'd been a pistol I would of took it away from him and shoved the barrel down his throat. But I was quite young in them days and bashful about shotguns. The others squatted around us, and Donovan says: 'Smoky, haul out yore deck--the special one. Smoky deals, hillbilly, and the high hand wins the hoss.'
'I'm puttin' up my hoss, it looks like,' I says fiercely. 'What you puttin' up?'
'My Stetson hat!' says he. 'Haw! haw! haw!'
'Haw! haw! haw!' chortles the other hoss-thieves.
Smoky started dealing and I said: 'Hey! Yo're dealin' Donovan's hand offa the bottom of the deck!'
'Shet up!' roared Donovan, poking me in the belly with his shotgun. 'You be keerful how you slings them insults around! This here is a fair and square game, and I just happen to be lucky. Can you beat four aces?'
'How you know you got four aces?' I says fiercely. 'You ain't looked at yore hand yet.'
'Oh,' says he, and picked it up and spread it out on the grass, and they was four aces and a king. 'By golly!' says he. 'I shore called that shot right!'
'Remarkable foresight!' I said bitterly, throwing down my hand which was a three, five and seven of hearts, a ten of clubs and a jack of diamonds.
'Then I wins!' gloated Donovan, jumping up. I riz too, quick and sudden, but Donovan had me covered with that cussed shotgun.
'Git on that hoss and ride him over to our camp, Red,' says Donovan, to a big red-headed hombre which was shorter than him but jest about as big. 'See if he's properly broke. I wants to keep my eye on this hillbilly myself.'
So Red went over to Cap'n Kidd which stood there saying nothing, and my heart sunk right down to the tops of my spiked shoes. Red ontied him and clumb on him and Cap'n Kidd didn't so much as snap at him. Red says: 'Git goin', cuss you!' Cap'n Kidd turnt his head and looked at Red and then he opened his mouth like a alligator and started laughing. I never seen a hoss laugh before, but now I know what they mean by a hoss-laugh. Cap'n Kidd didn't neigh nor nicker. He jest laughed. He laughed till the acorns come rattling down outa the trees and the echoes rolled through the cliffs like thunder. And then he reched his head around and grabbed Red's laig and dragged him out of the saddle, and held him upside down with guns and things spilling out of his scabbards and pockets, and Red yelling blue murder. Cap'n Kidd shaken him till he looked like a rag and swung him around his head three or four times, and then let go and throwed him clean through a alder thicket.
Them fellers all stood gaping, and Donovan had forgot about me, so I grabbed the shotgun away from him and hit him under the ear with my left fist and he bit the dust. I then swung the gun on the others and roared: 'Onbuckle them gunbelts, cuss ye!' They was bashfuller about buckshot at close range than I was. They didn't argy. Them four gunbelts was on the grass before I stopped yelling.
'All right,' I said. 'Now go catch Cap'n Kidd.'
Because he had gone over to where their hosses was tied and was chawing and kicking the tar out of them and they was hollering something fierce.
'He'll kill us!' squalled the men.
'Well, what of it?' I snarled. 'Gwan!'
So they made a desperate foray onto Cap'n Kidd and the way he kicked 'em in the belly and bit the seat out of their britches was beautiful to behold. But whilst he was stomping them I come up and grabbed his hackamore and when he seen who it was he stopped fighting, so I tied him to a tree away from the other hosses. Then I throwed Donovan's shotgun onto the men and made 'em get up and come over to where Donovan was laying, and they was a bruised and battered gang. The way they taken on you'd of thought somebody had mistreated 'em.
I made 'em take Donovan's gunbelt offa him and about that time he come to and sot up, muttering something about a tree falling on him.
'Don't you remember me?' I says. 'I'm Breckinridge Elkins.'
'It all comes back,' he muttered. 'We gambled for Cap'n Kidd.'
'Yeah,' I says, 'and you won, so now we gambles for him again. You sot the stakes before. This time I sets 'em. I matches these here britches I got on agen Cap'n Kidd, and yore saddle, bridle, gunbelt, pistol, pants, shirt, boots, spurs and Stetson.'
'Robbery!' he bellered. 'Yo're a cussed bandit!'
'Shet up,' I says, poking him in the midriff with his shotgun. 'Squat! The rest of you, too.'
'Ain't you goin' to let us do somethin' for Red?' they said. Red was laying on the other side of the thicket Cap'n Kidd had throwed him through, groaning loud and fervent.
'Let him lay for a spell,' I says. 'If he's dyin' they ain't nothin' we can do for him, and if he ain't, he'll keep till this game's over. Deal, Smoky, and deal from the top of the deck this time.'
So Smoky dealed in fear and trembling, and I says to Donovan: 'What you got?'
'A royal flush of diamonds, by God!' he says. 'You cain't beat that!'
'A royal flush of hearts'll beat it, won't it, Smoky?' I says, and Smoky says: 'Yuh--yuh--yeah! Yeah! Oh, yeah!'
'Well,' I said, 'I ain't looked at my hand yet, but I bet that's jest what I got. What you think?' I says, p'inting the shotgun at Donovan's upper teeth. 'Don't you reckon I've got a royal flush in hearts?'
'It wouldn't surprise me a bit,' says Donovan, turning pale.
'Then everybody's satisfied and they ain't no use in me showin' my hand,' I says, throwing the cards back into the pack. 'Shed them duds!'
