forge and put it on the anvil and started beating it into shape with the sixteen-pound sledge I always uses. I got no use for the toys which most blacksmiths uses for hammers.
'If you ain't got nothin' better to do than criticize a animal which is a damn sight better hoss than you'll ever be a man,' I said with dignerty, between licks, 'I calls yore attention to a door right behind you which nobody ain't usin' at the moment.'
He bust into loud rude laughter and said: 'You call that thing a hossshoe? It's big enough for a snow plow! Here, long as yo're in the business, see can you fit a shoe for that!'
He sot his foot up on the anvil and I give it a good slam with the hammer. John let out a awful holler and begun hopping around over the shop and cussing fit to curl yore hair. I kept on hammering my iron.
Just then pap stuck his head in the door and beamed on us, and said: 'You boys won't never grow up! Always playin' yore childish games, and sportin' in yore innercent frolics!'
'He's busted my toe,' said John blood-thirstily, 'and I'll have his heart's blood if it's the last thing I do.'
'Chips off the old block,' beamed pap. 'It takes me back to the time when, in the days of my happy childhood, I emptied a sawed-off shotgun into the seat of brother Joel's britches for tellin' our old man it was me which put that b'ar-trap in his bunk.'
'He'll rue the day,' promised John, and hobbled off to the cabin with moans and profanity. A little later, from his yells, I gathered that he had persuaded maw or one of the gals to rub his toe with hoss-liniment. He could make more racket about nothing then any Elkins I ever knowed.
I went on and made the shoes and put 'em on Cap'n Kidd, which is a job about like roping and hawg-tying a mountain cyclone, and by the time I got through and went up to the cabin to eat, John seemed to have got over his mad spell. He was laying on his bunk with his foot up on it all bandaged up, and he says: 'Breckinridge, they ain't no use in grown men holdin' a grudge. Let's fergit about it.'
'Who's holdin' any grudge?' I ast, making sure he didn't have a bowie knife in his left hand. 'I dunno why they should be so much racket over a trifle that didn't amount to nothin', nohow.'
'Well,' he said, 'this here busted foot discommodes me a heap. I won't be able to ride for a day or so, and they is business up to Cougar Paw I ought to 'tend to.'
'I thought you just come from there,' I says.
'I did,' he said, 'but they is a man up there which has promised me somethin' which is due me, and now I ain't able to go collect. Whyn't you go collect for me, Breckinridge? You ought to, dern it, because its yore fault I cain't ride. The man's name is Bill Santry, and he lives up in the mountains a few miles from Cougar Paw. You'll likely find him in Cougar Paw any day, though.'
'What's this he promised you?' I ast.
'Just ask for Bill Santry,' he said. 'When you find him say to him: 'I'm John Elkins' brother, and you can give me what you promised him.''
My family always imposes onto my good nature; generally I'd rather go do what they want me to do than to go to the trouble with arguing with 'em.
'Oh, all right,' I said. 'I ain't got nothin' to do right now.'
'Thanks, Breckinridge,' he said. 'I knowed I could count on you.'
SO A COUPLE OF DAYS later I was riding through the Cougar Range, which is very thick-timbered mountains, and rapidly approaching Cougar Paw. I hadn't never been there before, but I was follering a winding wagon-road which I knowed would eventually fetch me there.
The road wound around the shoulder of a mountain, and ahead of me I seen a narrer path opened into it, and just before I got there I heard a bull beller, and a gal screamed: 'Help! Help! Old Man Kirby's bull's loose!'
They came a patter of feet, and behind 'em a smashing and crashing in the underbrush, and a gal run out of the path into the road, and a rampaging bull was right behind her with his head lowered to toss her. I reined Cap'n Kidd between her and him, and knowed Cap'n Kidd would do the rest without no advice from me. He done so by wheeling and lamming his heels into that bull's ribs so hard he kicked the critter clean through a rail fence on the other side of the road. Cap'n Kidd hates bulls, and he's too big and strong for any of 'em. He would of then jumped on the critter and stomped him, but I restrained him, which made him mad, and whilst he was trying to buck me off, the bull ontangled hisself and high-tailed it down the mountain, bawling like a scairt yearling.
When I had got Cap'n Kidd in hand, I looked around and seen the gal looking at me very admiringly. I swept off my Stetson and bowed from my saddle and says: 'Can I assist you any father, m'am?'
She blushed purty as a pitcher and said: 'I'm much obliged, stranger. That there critter nigh had his hooks into my hide. Whar you headin'? If you ain't in no hurry I'd admire to have you drop by the cabin and have a snack of b'ar meat and honey. We live up the path about a mile.'
They ain't nothin' I'd ruther do,' I assured her. 'But just at the present I got business in Cougar Paw. How far is it from here?'
''Bout five mile down the road,' says she. 'My name's Joan; what's yore'n?'
'Breckinridge Elkins, of Bear Creek,' I said. 'Say, I got to push on to Cougar Paw, but I'll be ridin' back this way tomorrer mornin' about sun-up. If you could--'
'I'll be waitin' right here for you,' she said so promptly it made my head swim. No doubt about it; it was love at first sight. 'I--I got store-bought shoes,' she added shyly. 'I'll be a-wearin' 'em when you come along.'
'I'll be here if I have to wade through fire, flood and hostile Injuns,' I assured her, and rode on down the wagon-trace with my manly heart swelling with pride in my bosom. They ain't many mountain men which can awake the fire of love in a gal's heart at first sight--a gal, likewise, which was as beautiful as that there gal, and rich enough to own store-bought shoes. As I told Cap'n Kidd, they was just something about a Elkins.
It was about noon when I rode into Cougar Paw which was a tolerably small village sot up amongst the mountains, with a few cabins where folks lived, and a few more which was a grocery store and a jail and a saloon. Right behind the saloon was a good-sized cabin with a big sign onto it which said: Jonathan Middleton, Mayor of Cougar Paw.
They didn't seem to be nobody in sight, not even on the saloon porch, so I rode on to the corrals which served for a livery stable and wagon yard, and a man come out of the cabin nigh it, and took charge of Cap'n Kidd. He wanted to turn him in with a couple of mules which hadn't never been broke, but I knowed what Cap'n Kidd would do to them mules, so the feller give him a corral to hisself, and belly-ached just because Cap'n Kidd playfully bit the seat out of his britches.
He ca'med down when I paid for the britches. I ast him where I could find Bill Santry, and he said likely he was up to the store.
SO I WENT UP TO THE store, and it was about like all them stores you see in them kind of towns--groceries, and dry-goods, and grindstones, and harness and such-like stuff, and a wagon-tongue somebody had mended recent. They warn't but the one store in the town and it handled a little of everything. They was a sign onto it which said: General Store; Jonathan Middleton, Prop.
They was a bunch of fellers setting around on goods boxes and benches eating sody crackers and pickles out of a barrel, and they was a tolerable hard-looking gang. I said: 'I'm lookin' for Bill Santry.'
The biggest man in the store, which was setting on a bench, says: 'You don't have to look no farther. I'm Bill Santry.'
'Well,' I says, 'I'm Breckinridge Elkins, John Elkins' brother. You can give me what you promised him.'
'Ha!' he says with a snort like a hungry catamount rising sudden. 'They is nothin' which could give me more pleasure! Take it with my blessin'!' And so saying he picked up the wagon tongue and splintered it over my head.
It was so onexpected that I lost my footing and fell on my back, and Santry give a wolfish yell and jumped into my stummick with both feet, and the next thing I knowed nine or ten more fellers was jumping up and down on me with their boots.
Now I can take a joke as well as the next man, but it always did make me mad for a feller to twist a spur into my hair and try to tear the sculp off. Santry having did this, I throwed off them lunatics which was trying to tromp out my innards, and riz up amongst them with a outraged beller. I swept four or five of 'em into my arms and give 'em a grizzly-hug, and when I let go all they was able to do was fall on the floor and squawk about their busted ribs.
I then turned onto the others which was assaulting me with pistols and bowie knives and the butt ends of quirts and other villainous weppins, and when I laid into 'em you should of heard 'em howl. Santry was trying to
