dismember my ribs with a butcher knife he'd got out of the pork barrel, so I picked up the pickle barrel and busted it over his head. He went to the floor under a avalanche of splintered staves and pickles and brine, and then I got hold of a grindstone and really started getting destructive. A grindstone is a good comforting implement to have hold of in a melee, but kind of clumsy. For instance when I hove it at a feller which was trying to cock a sawed-off shotgun, it missed him entirely and knocked all the slats out of the counter and nigh squashed four or five men which was trying to shoot me from behind it. I settled the shotgun-feller's hash with a box of canned beef, and then I got hold of a double-bitted axe, and the embattled citizens of Cougar Paw quit the field with blood-curdling howls of fear-- them which was able to quit and howl.
I stumbled over the thickly-strewn casualties to the door, taking a few casual swipes at the shelves as I went past, and knocking all the cans off of them. Just as I emerged into the street, with my axe lifted to chop down anybody which opposed me, a skinny looking human bobbed up in front of me and hollered: 'Halt, in the name of the law!'
Paying no attention to the double-barreled shotgun he shoved in my face, I swung back my axe for a swipe, and accidentally hit the sign over the door and knocked it down on top of him. He let out a squall as he went down and let bam! with the shotgun right in my face so close it singed my eyebrows. I pulled the sign-board off of him so I could git a good belt at him with my axe, but he hollered: 'I'm the sheriff! I demands that you surrenders to properly constupated authority!'
I then noticed that he had a star pinned onto one gallus, so I put down my axe and let him take my guns. I never resists a officer of the law--well, seldom ever, that is.
He p'inted his shotgun at me and says: 'I fines you ten dollars for disturbin' the peace!'
About this time a lanky maverick with side-whiskers come prancing around the corner of the building, and he started throwing fits like a locoed steer.
'The scoundrel's rooint my store!' he howled. 'He's got to pay me for the counters and winders he busted, and the shelves he knocked down, and the sign he rooint, and the pork-keg he busted over my clerk's head!'
'What you think he ought to pay, Mr. Middleton?' ast the sheriff.
'Five hundred dollars,' said the mayor bloodthirstily.
'Five hundred hell!' I roared, stung to wrath. 'This here whole dern town ain't wuth five hundred dollars. Anyway, I ain't got no money but fifty cents I owe to the feller that runs the wagon yard.'
'Gimme the fifty cents,' ordered the mayor. 'I'll credit that onto yore bill.'
'I'll credit my fist onto yore skull,' I snarled, beginning to lose my temper, because the butcher knife Bill Santry had carved my ribs with had salt on the blade, and the salt got into the cuts and smarted. 'I owes this fifty cents and I gives it to the man I owes it to.'
'Throw him in jail!' raved Middleton. 'We'll keep him there till we figures out a job of work for him to do to pay out his fine.'
So the sheriff marched me down the street to the log cabin which they used for a jail, whilst Middleton went moaning around the rooins of his grocery store, paying no heed to the fellers which lay groaning on the floor. But I seen the rest of the citizens packing them out on stretchers to take 'em into the saloon to bring 'em to. The saloon had a sign; Square Deal Saloon; Jonathan Middleton, Prop. And I heard fellers cussing Middleton because he made 'em pay for the licker they poured on the victims' cut and bruises. But they cussed under their breath. Middleton seemed to pack a lot of power in that there town.
Well, I laid down on the jail-house bunk as well as I could, because they always build them bunks for ordinary-sized men about six foot tall, and I wondered what in hell Bill Santry had hit me with that wagon tongue for. It didn't seem to make no sense.
I laid there and waited for the sheriff to bring me my supper, but he didn't bring none, and purty soon I went to sleep and dreamed about Joan, with her store-bought shoes.
What woke me up was a awful racket in the direction of the saloon. I got up and looked out of the barred winder. Night had fell, but the cabins and the saloon was well lit up, but too far away for me to tell what was going on. But the noise was so familiar I thought for a minute I must be back on Bear Creek again, because men was yelling and cussing, and guns was banging, and a big voice roaring over the din. Once it sounded like somebody had got knocked through a door, and it made me right home-sick, it was so much like a dance on Bear Creek.
I pulled the bars out of the winder trying to see what was going on, but all I could see was what looked like men flying headfirst out of the saloon, and when they hit the ground and stopped rolling, they jumped up and run off in all directions, hollering like the Apaches was on their heels.
Purty soon I seen somebody running toward the jail as hard as he could leg it, and it was the sheriff. Most of his clothes was tore off, and he had blood on his face, and he was gasping and panting.
'We got a job for you, Elkins!' he panted. 'A wild man from Texas just hit town, and is terrorizin' the citizens! If you'll pertect us, and layout this fiend from the prairies, we'll remit yore fine! Listen at that!'
From the noise I jedged the aforesaid wild man had splintered the panels out of the bar.
'What started him on his rampage?' I ast.
'Aw, somebody said they made better chili con carne in Santa Fe than they did in El Paso,' says the sheriff. 'So this maneyack starts cleanin' up the town--'
'Well, I don't blame him,' I said. 'That was a dirty lie and a low-down slander. My folks all come from Texas, and if you Cougar Paw coyotes thinks you can slander the State and git away with it--'
'We don't think nothin'!' wailed the sheriff, wringing his hands and jumping like a startled deer every time a crash resounded up the street. 'We admits the Lone Star State is the cream of the West in all ways! Lissen, will you lick this homicidal lunatic for us? You got to, dern it. You got to work out yore fine, and--'
'Aw, all right,' I said, kicking the door down before he could unlock it. 'I'll do it. I cain't waste much time in this town. I got a engagement down the road tomorrer at sun-up.'
The street was deserted, but heads was sticking out of every door and winder. The sheriff stayed on my heels till I was a few feet from the saloon, and then he whispered: 'Go to it, and make it a good job! If anybody can lick that grizzly in there, it's you!' He then ducked out of sight behind the nearest cabin after handing me my gun- belt.
I stalked into the saloon and seen a gigantic figger standing at the bar and just fixing to pour hisself a dram out of a demijohn. He had the place to hisself, but it warn't near as much of a wreck as I'd expected.
As I come in he wheeled with a snarl, as quick as a cat, and flashing out a gun. I drawed one of mine just as quick, and for a second we stood there, glaring at each other over the barrels.
'Breckinridge Elkins!' says he. 'My own flesh and blood kin!'
'Cousin Bearfield Buckner!' I says, shoving my gun back in its scabbard. 'I didn't even know you was in Nevada.'
'I GOT A RAMBLIN' FOOT,' says he, holstering his shooting iron. 'Put 'er there, Cousin Breckinridge!'
'By golly, I'm glad to see you!' I said, shaking with him. Then I recollected. 'Hey!' I says. 'I got to lick you.'
'What you mean?' he demanded.
'Aw,' I says, 'I got arrested, and ain't got no money to pay my fine, and I got to work it out. And lickin' you was the job they gimme.'
'I ain't got no use for law,' he said grumpily. 'Still and all, if I had any dough, I'd pay yore fine for you.'
'A Elkins don't accept no charity,' I said slightly nettled. 'We works for what we gits. I pays my fine by lickin' the hell out of you, Cousin Bearfield.'
At this he lost his temper; he was always hot-headed that way. His black brows come down and his lips curled up away from his teeth and he clenched his fists which was about the size of mallets.
'What kind of kinfolks air you?' he scowled. 'I don't mind a friendly fight between relatives, but yore intentions is mercenary and unworthy of a true Elkins. You put me in mind of the fact that yore old man had to leave Texas account of a hoss gittin' its head tangled in a lariat he was totin' in his absent-minded way.'
'That there is a cussed lie,' I said with heat. 'Pap left Texas because he wouldn't take the Yankee oath after the Civil War, and you know it. Anyway,' I added bitingly, 'nobody can ever say a Elkins ever stole a chicken and roasted it in a chaparral thicket.'
He started violently and turned pale.
'What you hintin' at, you son of Baliol?' he hollered.
'Yore iniquities ain't no family secret,' I assured him bitterly. 'Aunt Atascosa writ Uncle Jeppard Grimes
