when the guns was roaring and hosses was neighing and men yelling and my oak-limb going crack! crack! crack! on their skulls, down from the north swooped another gang, howling like hyeners!
'There he is!' one of 'em yelled. 'I see him crawlin' around under them hosses! After him, boys! We got as much right to his dough as anybody!'
The next minute they'd dashed in amongst us and embraced the members of the other gang and started hammering 'em over the heads with their pistols, and in a second there was the damndest three-cornered war you ever seen, men fighting on the ground and on the hosses, all mixed and tangled up, two gangs trying to exterminate each other, and me whaling hell out of both of 'em.
Meanwhile Uncle Esau was on the ground under us, yelling bloody murder and being stepped on by the hosses, but finally I cleared me a space with a devastating sweep of my club, and leaned down and scooped him up with one hand and hung him over my saddle horn and started battering my way clear.
But a big feller which was one of the second gang come charging through the melee yelling like a Injun, with blood running down his face from a cut in his scalp. He snapped a empty ca'tridge at me, and then leaned out from his saddle and grabbed Uncle Esau by the foot.
'Leggo!' he howled. 'He's my meat!'
'Release Uncle Esau before I does you a injury!' I roared, trying to jerk Uncle Esau loose, but the outlaw hung on, and Uncle Esau squalled like a catamount in a wolf-trap. So I lifted what was left of my club and splintered it over the outlaw's head, and he give up the ghost with a gurgle. I then wheeled Cap'n Kidd and rode off like the wind. Them fellers was too busy fighting each other to notice my flight. Somebody did let bam at me with a Winchester, but all it done was to nick Uncle Esau's ear.
The sounds of carnage faded out behind us as I headed south along the trail. Uncle Esau was belly-aching about something. I never seen sech a cuss for finding fault, but I felt they was no time to be lost, so I didn't slow up for some miles. Then I pulled Cap'n Kidd down and said: 'What did you say, Uncle Esau?'
'I'm a broken man!' he gasped. 'Take my secret, and lemme go back to the posse. All I want now is a good, safe prison term.'
'What posse?' I ast, thinking he must be drunk, though I couldn't figger where he could of got any booze.
'The posse you took me away from,' he said. 'Anything's better'n bein' dragged through these hellish mountains by a homicidal maneyack.'
'Posse?' I gasped wildly. 'But who was the second gang?'
'Grizzly Hawkins's outlaws,' he said, and added bitterly: 'Even they'd be preferable to what I been goin' through. I give up. I know when I'm licked. The dough's hid in a holler oak three miles west of Gunstock.'
I didn't pay no attention to his remarks, because my head was in a whirl. A posse! Of course; the sheriff and his men had follered us from War Paint, along the Bear Creek trail, and finding Uncle Esau tied up, had thought he'd been kidnapped by a outlaw instead of merely being invited to visit his relatives. Probably he was too cussed ornery to tell 'em any different. I hadn't rescued him from no bandits; I'd took him away from a posse which thought they was rescuing him.
Meanwhile Uncle Esau was clamoring: 'Well, why'n't you lemme go? I've told you whar the dough is. What else you want?'
'You got to go on to Bear Creek with me--' I begun; and Uncle Esau give a shriek and went into a kind of convulsion, and the first thing I knowed he'd twisted around and jerked my gun out of its scabbard and let bam! right in my face so close it singed my hair. I grabbed his wrist and Cap'n Kidd bolted like he always does whenever he gets the chance.
'They's a limit to everything!' I roared. 'A hell of a relative you be, you old maneyack!'
We was tearing over slopes and ridges at breakneck speed and fighting all over Cap'n Kidd's back--me to get the gun away from him, and him to commit murder. 'If you warn't kin to me, Uncle Esau,' I said wrathfully, 'I'd plumb lose my temper!'
'What you keep callin' me that fool name for?' he yelled, frothing at the mouth. 'What you want to add insult to injury--' Cap'n Kidd swerved sudden and Uncle Esau tumbled over his neck. I had him by the shirt and tried to hold him on, but the shirt tore. He hit the ground on his head and Cap'n Kidd run right over him. I pulled up as quick as I could and hove a sigh of relief to see how close to home I was.
'We're nearly there, Uncle Esau,' I said, but he made no comment. He was out cold.
A short time later I rode up to the cabin with my eccentric relative slung over my saddle-bow, and I taken him off and stalked into where pap was laying on his b'ar-skin, and slung my burden down on the floor in disgust. 'Well, here he is,' I said.
Pap stared and said: 'Who's this?'
'When you wipe the blood off,' I said, 'you'll find it's yore Uncle Esau Grimes. And,' I added bitterly, 'the next time you wants to invite him to visit us, you can do it yoreself. A more ungrateful cuss I never seen. Pecooliar ain't no name for him; he's as crazy as a locoed jackass.'
'But that ain't Uncle Esau!' said pap.
'What you mean?' I said irritably. 'I know most of his clothes is tore off, and his face is kinda scratched and skint and stomped outa shape, but you can see his whiskers is red, in spite of the blood.'
'Red whiskers turn grey, in time,' said a voice, and I wheeled and pulled my gun as a man loomed in the door.
It was the grey-whiskered old feller I'd traded shots with on the edge of War Paint. He didn't go for his gun, but stood twisting his moustache and glaring at me like I was a curiosity or something.
'Uncle Esau!' said pap.
'What?' I hollered. 'Air you Uncle Esau?'
'Certainly I am!' he snapped.
'But you warn't on the stagecoach--' I begun.
'Stagecoach!' he snorted, taking pap's jug and beginning to pour licker down the man on the floor. 'Them things is for wimmen and childern. I travel hoss-back. I spent last night in War Paint, and aimed to ride on up to Bear Creek this mornin'. In fact, Bill,' he addressed pap, 'I was on the way here when this young maneyack creased me.' He indicated a bandage on his head.
'You mean Breckinridge shot you?' ejaculated pap.
'It seems to run in the family,' grunted Uncle Esau.
'But who's this?' I hollered wildly, pointing at the man I'd thought was Uncle Esau, and who was jest coming to.
'I'm Badger Chisom,' he said, grabbing the jug with both hands. 'I demands to be pertected from this lunatick and turned over to the sheriff.'
'Him and Bill Reynolds and Jim Hopkins robbed a bank over at Gunstock three weeks ago,' said Uncle Esau; the real one, I mean. 'A posse captured them, but they'd hid the loot somewhere and wouldn't say where. They escaped several days ago, and not only the sheriffs was lookin' for 'em, but all the outlaw gangs too, to find out where they'd hid their plunder. It was a awful big haul. They must of figgered that escapin' out of the country by stagecoach would be the last thing folks would expect 'em to do, and they warn't known around War Paint.
'But I recognized Billy Reynolds when I went back to War Paint to have my head dressed, after you shot me, Breckinridge. The doctor was patchin' him and Hopkins up, too. I knowed Reynolds back in Arizona. The sheriff and a posse lit out after you, and I follered 'em when I'd got my head fixed. 'Course, I didn't know who you was. I come up while the posse was fightin' with the Hawkins gang, and with my help we corralled the whole bunch. Then I took up yore trail again. Purty good day's work, wipin' out two of the wust gangs in the West. One of Hawkins's men said Grizzly was laid up in his cabin, and the posse was going to drop by for him.'
'What you goin' to do about me?' clamored Chisom.
'Well,' said pap, 'we'll bandage you up good, and then I'll let Breckinridge here take you back to War Paint-- hey, what's the matter with him?'
Badger Chisom had fainted.
Chapter VIII - THE SCALP HUNTER
MY RETURN to War Paint with Badger Chisom was plumb uneventful. He was awful nervous all the way and every time I spoke to him he jumped and ducked like he expected to be shot at, and he hove a distinct sigh of relief when the sheriff taken charge of him. He said something like, 'Safe at last, thank God!' and seemed in a sweat to
