to shoot with his pistol. So I taken it away from him and knocked down the door of his shack with him and left him laying in its rooins.
I then strode up the street towards the Golden Eagle and here come a feller galloping down the street, and who should it be but that derned fake deputy, Jackson. He couldn't holler with his bandaged jaw, but when he seen me he jerked loose his lariat and piled it around my neck, and sot spurs to his cayuse aiming for to drag me to death. But I seen he had his rope tied fast to his horn, Texas style, so I laid hold onto it with both hands and braced my laigs, and when the hoss got to the end of the rope, the girths busted and the hoss went out from under the saddle, and Jackson come down on his head in the street and laid still.
I throwed the rope off my neck and went onto the Golden Eagle with the jailer's .45 in my scabbard. I looked in and seen the same crowd there, and Ormond r'ared back at the bar with his belly stuck out, roaring and bragging.
I stepped in and hollered: 'Look this way, Bill Ormond, and pull iron, you dirty thief!'
He wheeled, paled, and went for his gun, and I slammed six bullets into him before he could hit the floor. I then throwed the empty gun at the dazed crowd and give one deafening roar and tore into 'em like a mountain cyclone. They begun to holler and surge onto me and I throwed 'em and knocked 'em right and left like ten pins. Some was knocked over the bar and some under the tables and some I knocked down stacks of beer kegs with. I ripped the roulette wheel loose and mowed down a whole row of 'em with it, and I throwed a billiard table through the mirror behind the bar jest for good measure. Three or four fellers got pinned under it and yelled bloody murder.
Meanwhile they was hacking at me with bowies and hitting me with chairs and brass knuckles and trying to shoot me, but all they done with their guns was shoot each other because they was so many they got in each other's way, and the other things just made me madder. I laid hands on as many as I could hug at onst, and the thud of their heads banging together was music to me. I also done good work heaving 'em head-on agen the walls, and I further slammed several of 'em heartily agen the floor and busted all the tables with their carcasses. In the melee the whole bar collapsed, and the shelves behind the bar fell down when I slang a feller into 'em, and bottles rained all over the floor. One of the lamps also fell off the ceiling which was beginning to crack and cave in, and everybody begun to yell: 'Fire!' and run out through the doors and jump out the winders.
In a second I was alone in the blazing building except for them which was past running. I'd started for a door myself when I seen a buckskin pouch on the floor along with a lot of other belongings which had fell out of men's pockets as they will when the men gets swung by the feet and smashed agen the wall.
I picked it up and jerked the tie-string, and a trickle of gold dust spilt into my hand. I begun to look on the floor for Ashley, but he warn't there. But he was watching me from outside, because I looked and seen him jest as he let bam at me with a .45 from the back room which warn't on fire much yet. I plunged after him, ignoring his next slug which took me in the shoulder, and then I grabbed him and taken the gun away from him. He pulled a bowie and tried to stab me in the groin, but only sliced my thigh, so I throwed him the full length of the room and he hit the wall so hard his head went through the boards.
Meantime the main part of the saloon was burning so I couldn't go out that way. I started to go out the back door of the room I was in, but got a glimpse of some fellers which was crouching jest outside the door waiting to shoot me as I come out. So I knocked out a section of the wall on another side of the room, and about that time the roof fell in so loud them fellers didn't hear me coming, so I fell on 'em from the rear and beat their heads together till the blood ran out of their ears, and stomped 'em and taken their shotguns away from 'em.
Then I was aware that people was shooting at me in the light of the burning saloon, and I seen that a bunch was ganged up on the other side of the street, so I begun to loose my shotguns into the thick of them, and they broke and run yelling blue murder.
And as they went out one side of the town, another gang rushed in from the other, yelling and shooting, and I snapped a empty shell at 'em before one yelled: 'Don't shoot, Elkins! We're friends!' And I seen it was Jim and Doc Richards, and a lot of other fellers I hadn't never seen before then.
They went tearing after Ormond's gang, whooping and yelling, and the way them outlaws took to the tall timber was a caution. They warn't no fight left in 'em at all.
Jim pulled up, and looked at the wreckage of the jail, and the remnants of the Golden Eagle, and he shook his head like he couldn't believe it.
'We was on our way to make a last effort to take the town back from that gang,' says he. 'Betty met us as we come down the trail and told us you was a friend and a honest man. We hoped to git here in time to save you from gittin' hanged.' Again he shaken his head with a kind of bewildered look. Then he says 'Oh, say, I'd about forgot. On our way here we run onto a man on the road who said he was lookin' for you. Not knowin' who he was, we roped him and brung him along with us. Bring the prisoner, boys!'
They brung him, tied to his saddle, and it was Jack Gordon, Joel's youngest brother and the fastest gunslinger on Bear Creek.
'What you doin' houndin' me?' I demanded bitterly. 'Has the feud begun already and has Joel sot you on my trail? Well, I got what I come after, and I'm headin' back for Bear Creek. I cain't git there by daylight, but maybe I'll git there in time to keep everybody from gittin' kilt. Here's Uncle Jeppard's cussed gold!' And I waved the poke in front of him.
'But that cain't be it!' says he. 'I been trailin' you all the way from Bear Creek, tryin' to catch you and tell you the gold had been found! Uncle Jeppard and Joel and Erath got together and everything was explained and is all right. Where'd you git that gold?'
'I dunno whether Ashley's pals got it together so he could give it to Ormond and not git kilt for holdin' out on his boss, or what,' I says. 'But I know the owner ain't got no more use for it now, and probably stole it in the first place. I'm givin' this gold to Betty,' I says. 'She shore deserves a reward. And giving it to her makes me feel like maybe some good come outa this wild goose chase, after all.'
Jim looked around at the ruins of the outlaw hangout, and murmured something I didn't catch. I says to Jack: 'You said Uncle Jeppard's gold was found. Where was it, anyway?'
'Well,' said Jack, 'little General William Harrison Grimes, Joash Grimes's youngest boy, he seen his grand- pap put the gold under the rock, and he got it out to play with it. He was usin' the nuggets for slugs in his nigger- shooter,' Jack said, 'and it's plumb cute the way he pops a rattlesnake with 'em. What did you say?'
'Nothin',' I said between my teeth. 'Nothin' that'd be fit to repeat, anyway.'
'Well,' he said, 'if you've had yore fun, I reckon yo're ready to start back to Bear Creek with me.'
'I reckon I ain't,' I said. 'I'm goin' to 'tend to my own private affairs for a change. I told Glory McGraw early this mornin' I was goin' to git me a town-gal, and by golly, I meant it. Gwan on back to Bear Creek, and if you see Glory, tell her I'm headin' for Chawed Ear where the purty gals is as thick as honey bees around a apple tree.'
Chapter VI - THE FEUD BUSTER
I PULLED out of Wampum before sunup. The folks, wanted me to stay and be a deputy sheriff, but I taken a good look at the female population and seen that the only single woman in town was a Piute squaw. So I headed acrost the mountains for Chawed Ear, swinging wide to avoid coming anywheres nigh to the Humbolts. I didn't want to chance running into Glory McGraw before I had me a town-gal.
But I didn't get to Chawed Ear nigh as soon as I'd figgered to. As I passed through the hills along the head- waters of Mustang River, I run into a camp of cowpunchers from the Triple L which was up there rounding up strays. The foreman needed some hands, and I happened to think maybe I'd cut a better figger before the Chawed Ear belles if'n I had some money in my pocket, so I taken on with them. After he seen me and Cap'n Kidd do one day's work the foreman 'lowed that they warn't no use in hiring the six or seven other men he aimed; he said I filled the bill perfect.
So I worked with 'em three weeks, and then collected my pay and pulled for Chawed Ear.
I was all primed for the purty settlement-gals, little suspected the jamboree I was riding into blind, the echoes of which ain't yet quit circulating through the mountain country. And that reminds me to remark that I'm sick and tired of the slanders which has been noised abroad about that there affair, and if they don't stop, I'll liable to lose my temper, and anybody in the Humbolts can tell you when I loses my temper the effect on the population is wuss'n fire, earthquake and cyclone.
First-off, it's a lie that I rode a hundred miles to mix into a feud which wasn't none of my business. I never heard of the Warren-Barlow war before I come into the Mezquital country. I hear tell the Barlows is talking about suing me for destroying their property. Well, they ought to build their cabins solider if they don't want 'em tore
