about you stealin' that there Wyandotte hen off of Old Man Westfall's roost.'
'Shet up!' he bellered, jumping up and down in his wrath, and clutching his six-shooters convulsively. 'I war just a yearlin' when I lifted that there fowl and et it, and I war plumb famished, because a posse had been chasin' me six days. They was after me account of Joe Richardson happenin' to be in my way when I was emptyin' my buffalo rifle. Blast yore soul, I have shot better men than you for talkin' about chickens around me.'
'Nevertheless,' I said, 'the fact remains that yo're the only one of the clan which ever swiped a chicken. No Elkins never stole no hen.'
'No,' he sneered, 'they prefers hosses.'
Just then I noticed that a crowd had gathered timidly outside the doors and winders and was listening eagerly to this exchange of family scandals, so I said: 'We've talked enough. The time for action has arriv. When I first seen you, Cousin Bearfield, the thought of committin' mayhem onto you was very distasteful. But after our recent conversation, I feels I can scramble yore homely features with a free and joyful spirit. Le's have a snort and then git down to business.'
'Suits me,' he agreed, hanging his gun belt on the bar. 'Here's a jug with about a gallon of red licker into it.'
So we each taken a medium-sized snort, which of course emptied the jug, and then I hitched my belt and says: 'Which does you desire first, Cousin Bearfield--a busted laig or a fractured skull?'
'Wait a minute,' he requested as I approached him. 'What's, that on yore boot?'
I stooped over to see what it was, and he swung his laig and kicked me in the mouth as hard as he could, and imejitately busted into a guffaw of brutal mirth. Whilst he was thus employed I spit his boot out and butted him in the belly with a vi'lence which changed his haw-haw to a agonized grunt, and then we laid hands on each other and rolled back and forth acrost the floor, biting and gouging, and that was how the tables and chairs got busted. Mayor Middleton must of been watching through a winder because I heard him squall: 'My Gawd, they're wreckin' my saloon! Sheriff, arrest 'em both.'
And the sheriff hollered back: 'I've took yore orders all I aim to, Jonathan Middleton! If you want to stop that double-cyclone git in there and do it yoreself!'
Presently we got tired scrambling around on the floor amongst the cuspidors, so we riz simultaneous and I splintered the roulette wheel with his carcass, and he hit me on the jaw so hard he knocked me clean through the bar and all the bottles fell off the shelves and showered around me, and the ceiling lamp come loose and spilled about a gallon of red hot ile down his neck.
Whilst he was employed with the ile I clumb up from among the debris of the bar and started my right fist in a swing from the floor, and after it traveled maybe nine feet it took Cousin Bearfield under the jaw, and he hit the oppersite wall so hard he knocked out a section and went clean through it, and that was when the roof fell in.
I started kicking and throwing the rooins off me, and then I was aware of Cousin Bearfield lifting logs and beams off of me, and in a minute I crawled out from under 'em.
'I could of got out all right,' I said. 'But just the same I'm much obleeged to you.'
'Blood's thicker'n water,' he grunted, and hit me under the jaw and knocked me about seventeen feet backwards toward the mayor's cabin. He then rushed forward and started kicking me in the head, but I riz up in spite of his efforts.
'Git away from that cabin!' screamed the mayor, but it was too late. I hit Cousin Bearfield between the eyes and he crashed into the mayor's rock chimney and knocked the whole base loose with his head, and the chimney collapsed and the rocks come tumbling down on him.
BUT BEING A TEXAS BUCKNER, Bearfield riz out of the rooins. He not only riz, but he had a rock in his hand about the size of a watermelon and he busted it over my head. This infuriated me, because I seen he had no intention of fighting fair, so I tore a log out of the wall of the mayor's cabin and belted him over the ear with it, and Cousin Bearfield bit the dust. He didn't git up that time.
Whilst I was trying to git my breath back and shaking the sweat out of my eyes, all the citizens of Cougar Paw come out of their hiding places and the sheriff yelled: 'You done a good job, Elkins! Yo're a free man!'
'He is like hell!' screamed Mayor Middleton, doing a kind of war-dance, whilst weeping and cussing together. 'Look at my cabin! I'm a rooint man! Sheriff, arrest that man!'
'Which 'un?' inquired the sheriff.
'The feller from Texas,' said Middleton bitterly. 'He's unconscious, and it won't be no trouble to drag him to jail. Run the other'n out of town. I don't never want to see him no more.'
'Hey!' I said indignantly. 'You cain't arrest Cousin Bearfield. I ain't goin' to stand for it.'
'Will you resist a officer of the law?' ast the sheriff, sticking his gallus out on his thumb.
'You represents the law whilst you wear yore badge?' I inquired.
'As long as I got that badge on,' boasts he, 'I am the law!'
'Well,' I said, spitting on my hands, 'you ain't got it on now. You done lost it somewhere in the shuffle tonight, and you ain't nothin' but a common citizen like me! Git ready, for I'm comin' head-on and wide-open!'
I whooped me a whoop.
He glanced down in a stunned sort of way at his empty gallus, and then he give a scream and took out up the street with most of the crowd streaming out behind him.
'Stop, you cowards!' screamed Mayor Middleton. 'Come back here and arrest these scoundrels--'
'Aw, shet up,' I said disgustedly, and give him a kind of push and how was I to know it would dislocate his shoulder blade. It was just beginning to git light by now, but Cousin Bearfield wasn't showing no signs of consciousness, and I heard them Cougar Paw skunks yelling to each other back and forth from the cabins where they'd forted themselves, and from what they said I knowed they figgered on opening up on us with their Winchesters as soon as it got light enough to shoot good.
Just then I noticed a wagon standing down by the wagon-yard, so I picked up Cousin Bearfield and lugged him down there and throwed him into the wagon. Far be it from a Elkins to leave a senseless relative to the mercy of a Cougar Paw mob. I went into the corral where them two wild mules was and started putting harness onto 'em, and it warn't no child's play. They hadn't never been worked before, and they fell onto me with a free and hearty enthusiasm. Onst they had me down stomping on me, and the citizens of Cougar Paw made a kind of half-hearted sally. But I unlimbered my .45s and throwed a few slugs in their direction and they all hollered and run back into their cabins.
I finally had to stun them fool mules with a bat over the ear with my fist, and before they got their senses back, I had 'em harnessed to the wagon, and Cap'n Kidd and Cousin Bearfield's hoss tied to the rear end.
'He's stealin' our mules!' howled somebody, and taken a wild shot at me, as I headed down the street, standing up in the wagon and keeping them crazy critters straight by sheer strength on the lines.
'I ain't stealin' nothin'!' I roared as we thundered past the cabins where spurts of flame was already streaking out of the winders. 'I'll send this here wagon and these mules back tomorrer!'
The citizens answered with blood-thirsty yells and a volley of lead, and with their benediction singing past my ears, I left Cougar Paw in a cloud of dust and profanity.
THEM MULES, AFTER A vain effort to stop and kick loose from the harness, laid their bellies to the ground and went stampeding down that crooking mountain road like scairt jackrabbits. We went around each curve on one wheel, and sometimes we'd hit a stump that would throw the whole wagon several foot into the air, and that must of been what brung Cousin Bearfield to hisself. He was laying sprawled in the bed, and finally we taken a bump that throwed him in a somersault clean to the other end of the wagon. He hit on his neck and riz up on his hands and knees and looked around dazedly at the trees and stumps which was flashing past, and bellered: 'What the hell's happenin'? Where-at am I, anyway?'
'Yo're on yore way to Bear Creek, Cousin Bearfield!' I yelled, cracking my whip over them fool mules' backs. 'Yippee ki-yi! This here is fun, ain't it, Cousin Bearfield?'
I was thinking of Joan waiting with her store-bought shoes for me down the road, and in spite of my cuts and bruises, I was rolling high and handsome.
'Slow up!' roared Cousin Bearfield, trying to stand up. But just then we went crashing down a steep bank, and the wagon tilted, throwing Cousin Bearfield to the other end of the wagon where he rammed his head with great force against the front-gate. '#$%&*?@!' says Cousin Bearfield. 'Glug!' Because we had hit the creek bed going full speed and knocked all the water out of the channel, and about a hundred gallons splashed over into the wagon and nearly washed Cousin Bearfield out.
