So I riz up and taken Joe by the neck and crotch and throwed him through a winder as gentle as I could, but I forgot about the hickory-wood bars which was nailed acrost it to keep the bears out. He took 'em along with him, and that was how he got skint up like he did. I heard Glory let out a scream outside, and would have hollered out to let her know I was all right and for her not to worry about me, but just as I opened my mouth to do it, John jammed the butt-end of a table laig into it.
Sech treatment would try the patience of a saint, still and all I didn't really intend to hit John as hard as I did. How was I to know a tap like I give him would knock him through the door and dislocate his jawbone?
Old Man McGraw was dancing around trying to get another whack at me with his bent poker without hitting Bill which was hammering me over the head with a chair, but Mister Wilkinson warn't taking no part in the fray. He was backed up agen a wall with a wild look on his face. I reckon he warn't used to Bear Creek squabbles.
I taken the chair away from Bill and busted it over his head jest to kinda cool him off a little, and jest then Old Man McGraw made another swipe at me with his poker, but I ducked and grabbed him, and Bill stooped over to pick up a bowie knife which had fell out of somebody's boot. His back was towards me so I planted my moccasin in the seat of his britches with considerable force and he shot head-first through the door with a despairing howl. Somebody else screamed too, that sounded like Glory. I didn't know at the time I that she was running up to the door and was knocked down by Bill as he catapulted into the yard.
I couldn't see what was going on outside, and Old Man McGraw was chawing my thumb and feeling for my eye, so I throwed him after John and Bill, and he's a liar when he said I aimed him at that rain-barrel a-purpose. I didn't even know they was one there till I heard the crash as his head went through the staves.
I turned around to have some more words with Mister Wilkinson, but he jumped through the winder I'd throwed Joe through, and when I tried to foller him, I couldn't get my shoulders through. So I run out at the door and Glory met me just as I hit the yard and she give me a slap in the face that sounded like a beaver hitting a mud bank with his tail.
'Why, Glory!' I says, dumbfounded, because her blue eyes was blazing, and her yaller hair was nigh standing on end. She was so mad she was crying and that's the first time I ever knowed she could cry. 'What's the matter? What've I did?'
'What have you did?' she raged, doing a kind of a war-dance on her bare feet. 'You outlaw! You murderer! You jack-eared son of a spotted tail skunk! Look what you done!' She p'inted at her old man dazedly pulling his head out of the rooins of the rain-barrel, and her brothers laying around the yard in various positions, bleeding freely and groaning loudly. 'You tried to murder my family!' says she, shaking her fists under my nose. 'You throwed Bill onto me on purpose!'
'I didn't neither!' I exclaimed, shocked and scandalized. 'You know I wouldn't hurt a hair of yore head, Glory! Why, all I done, I done it for you--'
'You didn't have to mutilate my pap and my brothers!' she wept furiously. Ain't that just like a gal? What could I done but what I did? She hollered: 'If you really loved me you wouldn't of hurt 'em! You jest done it for meanness! I told you to be ca'm and gentle! Whyn't you do it? Shet up! Don't talk to me! Well, whyn't you say somethin'? Ain't you got no tongue?'
'I handled 'em easy as I could!' I roared, badgered beyond endurance. 'It warn't my fault. If they'd had any sense, they wouldn't--'
'Don't you dare slander my folks!' she yelped. 'What you done to Mister Wilkinson?'
The aforesaid gent jest then come limping around the corner of the cabin, and started for his hoss, and Glory run to him and grabbed his arm, and said: 'If you still want to marry me, stranger, it's a go! I'll ride off with you right now!'
He looked at me and shuddered, and jerked his arm away.
'Do I look like a dern fool?' he inquired with some heat. 'I advises you to marry that young grizzly there, for the sake of public safety, if nothin' else! Marry you when he wants you? No, thank you! I'm leavin' a valuable finger as a sooverneer of my sojourn, but I figger it's a cheap price! After watchin' that human tornado in action, I calculate a finger ain't nothin' to bother about! Adios! If I ever come within a hundred miles of Bear Creek again it'll be because I've gone plumb loco!'
And with that he forked his critter and took off up the trail like the devil was after him.
'Now look what you done!' wept Glory. 'Now he won't never marry me!'
'But I thought you didn't want to marry him!' I says, plumb bewildered.
She turned on me like a catamount.
'I didn't!' she shrieked. 'I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth! But I demands the right to say yes or no for myself! I don't aim to be bossed around by no hillbilly on a mangy mule!'
'Alexander ain't mangy,' I said. 'Besides, I warn't, tryin' to boss you around, Glory. I war just fixin' it so yore pap wouldn't make you marry Mister Wilkinson. Bein' as we aims to marry ourselves--'
'Who said we aimed to?' she hollered. 'Me marry you, after you beat up my pap and my brothers like you done? You think yo're the best man on Bear Creek! Ha! You with yore buckskin britches and old cap-and-ball pistol and coonskin cap! Me marry you? Git on yore mangy mule and git before I takes a shotgun to you!'
'All right!' I roared, getting mad at last. 'All right, if that's the way you want to ack! You ain't the only gal in these mountains! They's plenty of gals which would be glad to have me callin' on 'em.'
'Who, for a instance?' she sneered.
'Ellen Reynolds, for instance!' I bellered. 'That's who!'
'All right!' says she, trembling with rage. 'Go and spark that stuck-up hussy on yore mangy mule with yore old moccasins and cap-and-ball gun! See if I care!'
'I aim to!' I assured her bitterly. 'And I won't be on no mule, neither. I'll be on the best hoss in the Humbolts, and I'll have me some boots on to my feet, and a silver mounted saddle and bridle, and a pistol that shoots store-bought ca'tridges, too! You wait and see!'
'Where you think you'll git 'em?' she sneered.
'Well, I will!' I bellered, seeing red. 'You said I thought I was the best man on Bear Creek! Well, by golly, I am, and I aim to prove it! I'm glad you gimme the gate! If you hadn't I'd of married you and settled down in a cabin up the creek somewheres and never done nothin' nor seen nothin' nor been nothin' but yore husband! Now I'm goin' to plumb bust this State wide open from one end to the other'n, and folks is goin' to know about me all over everywheres!'
'Heh! heh! heh!' she laughed bitterly.
'I'll show you!' I promised her wrathfully, as I forked my mule, and headed down the trail with her laughter ringing in my ears. I kicked Alexander most vicious in the ribs, and he give a bray of astonishment and lit a shuck for home. A instant later the alder clump hid the McGraw cabin from view and Glory McGraw and my boyhood dreams was out of sight behind me.
Chapter II - MOUNTAIN MAN
'I'LL SHOW her!' I promised the world at large, as I rode through the bresh as hard as Alexander could run. 'I'll go out into the world and make a name for myself, by golly! She'll see. Whoa, Alexander!'
Because I'd jest seen a bee-tree I'd located the day before. My busted heart needed something to soothe it, and I figgered fame and fortune could wait a little whilst I drowned my woes in honey.
I was up to my ears in this beverage when I heard my old man calling: 'Breckinridge! Oh, Breckinridge! Whar air you? I see you now. You don't need to climb that tree. I ain't goin' to larrup you.'
He come up and said: 'Breckinridge, ain't that a bee settin' on to yore ear?'
I reched up, and sure enough, it was. Come to think about it, I had felt kind of like something was stinging me somewheres.
'I swan, Breckinridge,' says pap, 'I never seen a hide like yore'n not even amongst the Elkinses. Lissen to me now: old Buffalo Rogers jest come through on his way back from Tomahawk, and the postmaster there said they was a letter for me, from Mississippi. He wouldn't give it to nobody but me or some of my folks. I dunno who'd be writin' me from Mississippi; last time I was there was when I was fightin' the Yankees. But anyway, that letter is got to be got. Me and yore maw have decided yo're to go git it.'
'Clean to Tomahawk?' I said. 'Gee whiz, Pap!'
'Well,' he says, combing his beard with his fingers, 'yo're growed in size, if not in years. It's time you seen somethin' of the world. You ain't never been more'n thirty miles away from the cabin you was born in. Yore brother Garfield ain't able to go on account of that b'ar he tangled with, and Buckner is busy skinnin' the b'ar. You been to
