distress. I'll take yore gold to Hell-Wind Pass and bring back Brother Rembrandt.'
Blink fell onto my neck and wept with joy. 'I'll never forgit this, Breckinridge,' says he, 'and I bet you won't neither! My hoss and pack-mule are in the stables behind the saloon.'
'I don't need no pack-mule,' I says. 'Cap'n Kidd can pack the dust easy.'
Cap'n Kidd was getting fed out in the corral next to the hotel. I went out there and got my saddle-bags, which is a lot bigger'n most saddle-bags, because all my plunder has to be made to fit my size. They're made outa three-ply elkskin, stitched with rawhide thongs, and a wildcat couldn't claw his way out of 'em.
I noticed quite a bunch of men standing around the corral looking at Cap'n Kidd, but thunk nothing of it, because he is a hoss which naturally attracks attention. But whilst I was getting my saddle-bags, a long lanky cuss with long yaller whiskers come up and said, says he: 'Is that yore hoss in the corral?'
I says: 'If he ain't he ain't nobody's.'
'Well, he looks a whole lot like a hoss that was stole off my ranch six months ago,' he said, and I seen ten or fifteen hard-looking hombres gathering around me. I laid down my saddle-bags sudden-like and reched for my guns, when it occurred to me that if I had a fight I there I might get arrested and it would interfere with me bringing Brother Rembrandt in for the wedding.
'If that there is yore hoss,' I said, 'you ought to be able to lead him out of that there corral.'
'Shore I can,' he says with a oath. 'And what's more, I aim'ta.'
'That's right, Jake,' says another feller. 'Stand up for yore rights. Us boys is right behind you.'
'Go ahead,' I says. 'If he's yore hoss, prove it. Go git him!'
He looked at me suspiciously, but he taken up a rope and clumb the fence and started towards Cap'n Kidd which was chawing on a block of hay in the middle of the corral. Cap'n Kidd throwed up his head and laid back his ears and showed his teeth, and Jake stopped sudden and turned pale.
'I--I don't believe that there is my hoss, after all!' says he.
'Put that lasso on him!' I roared, pulling my right-hand gun. 'You say he's yore'n; I say he's mine. One of us is a liar and a hoss-thief and I aim to prove which. Gwan, before I festoons yore system with lead polka-dots!'
'He looked at me and he looked at Cap'n Kidd, and he turned bright green all over. He looked again at my .45 which I now had cocked and p'inted at his long neck, which his adam's apple was going up and down like a monkey on a pole, and he begun to aidge towards Cap'n Kidd again, holding the rope behind him and sticking out one hand.
'Whoa, boy,' he says, kind of shudderingly. 'Whoa--good old feller--nice hossie--whoa, boy--ow!'
He let out a awful howl as Cap'n Kidd made a snap and bit a chunk out of his hide. He turned to run but Cap'n Kidd wheeled and let fly both heels which catched Jake in the seat of the britches, and his shriek of despair was horrible to hear as he went head-first through the corral-fence into a hoss-trough on the other side. From this he ariz dripping water, blood and profanity, and he shook a quivering fist at me and croaked: 'You derned murderer! I'll have yore life for this!'
'I don't hold no conversation with hoss-thieves,' I snorted, and picked up my saddle-bags and stalked through the crowd which give back in a hurry and take care to cuss under their breath when I tromped on their fool toes.
I taken the saddle-bags up to Blink's room, and told him about Jake, thinking he'd be amoosed, but he got a case of the aggers again, and said: 'That was one of Harrison's men! He aimed to take yore hoss. It's a old trick, and honest folks don't dare interfere. Now they got you spotted! What'll you do?'
'Time, tide and a Elkins waits for no man!' I snorted, dumping the gold into the saddle-bags. 'If that yaller- whiskered coyote wants any trouble, he can git a bellyfull! Don't worry, yore gold will be safe in my saddle-bags. It's as good as in the Wahpeton stage right now. And by midnight I'll be back with Brother Rembrandt Brockton to hitch you up with his niece.'
'Don't yell so loud,' begged Blink. 'The cussed camp's full of spies. Some of 'em may be downstairs right now, lissenin'.'
'I warn't speakin' above a whisper,' I said indignantly.
'That bull's beller may pass for a whisper on Bear Creek,' says he, wipin' off the sweat, 'but I bet they can hear it from one end of the Gulch to the other'n, at least.'
It's a pitable sight to see a man with a case of the scairts. I shook hands with him and left him pouring red licker down his gullet like it was water, and I swung the saddle-bags over my shoulder and went downstairs, and the barkeep leaned over the bar and whispered to me: 'Look out for Jake Roman! He was in here a minute ago, lookin' for trouble. He pulled out jest before you come down, but he won't be forgittin' what yore hoss done to him.'
'Not when he tries to set down, he won't,' I agreed, and went out to the corral, and they was a crowd of men watching Cap'n Kidd eat his hay, and one of 'em seen me and hollered: 'Hey, boys, here comes the giant! He's goin' to saddle that man-eatin' monster! Hey, Bill! Tell the boys at the bar.'
And here come a whole passel of fellers running out of all the saloons, and they lined the corral fence solid, and started laying bets whether I'd get the saddle onto Cap'n Kidd, or get my brains kicked out. I thought miners must all be crazy. They ought've knowed I was able to saddle my own hoss.
Well, I saddled him and throwed on the saddle-bags and clumb aboard, and he pitched about ten jumps like he always does when I first fork him--'twarn't nothing, but them miners hollered like wild Injuns. And when he accidentally bucked hisself and me through the fence and knocked down a section of it along with fifteen men which was setting on the top rail, the way they howled you'd of thought something terrible had happened. Me and Cap'n Kidd don't bother about gates. We usually makes our own through whatever happens to be in front of us. But them miners is a weakly breed. As I rode out of town I seen the crowd dipping nine or ten of 'em into a hoss-trough to bring 'em to, on account of Cap'n Kidd having accidentally tromped on 'em.
Well, I rode out of the Gulch and up the ravine to the south and come out into the high-timbered country, and hit the old Injun trail Blink had told me about. It warn't traveled much. I didn't meet nobody after I left the Gulch. I figgered to hit Hell-Wind Pass at least a hour before sundown which would give me plenty of time. Blink said the stage passed through there about sundown. I'd have to bring back Brother Rembrandt on Cap'n Kidd, I reckoned, but that there hoss can carry double and still out-run and out-last any other hoss in the State of Nevada. I figgered on getting back to Teton about midnight or maybe a little later.
After I'd went several miles I come to Apache Canyon, which was a deep, narrer gorge, with a river at the bottom which went roaring and foaming along betwixt rock walls a hundred and fifty feet high. The old trail hit the rim at a place where the canyon warn't only about seventy foot wide, and somebody had felled a whopping big pine tree on one side so it fell acrost and made a foot-bridge, where a man could walk acrost. They'd onst been a gold strike in Apache Canyon, and a big camp there, but now it was plumb abandoned and nobody lives anywheres near it.
I turned east and follered the rim for about half a mile. Here I come into a old wagon road which was jest about growed up with saplings now, but it run down into a ravine into the bed of the canyon, and they was a bridge acrost the river which had been built during the days of the gold rush. Most of it had done been washed away by head-rises, but a man could still ride a hoss acrost what was left. So I done so, and rode up a ravine on the other side, and come out on high ground again.
I'd rode a few hundred yards past the mouth of the ravine when somebody said: 'Hey!' and I wheeled with both guns in my hands. Out of the bresh sa'ntered a tall gent in a long frock tail coat and broad-brimmed hat.
'Who air you and what the hell you mean by hollerin' 'Hey!' at me?' I demanded courteously, p'inting my guns at him. A Elkins is always perlite.
'I am the Reverant Rembrandt Brockton, my good man,' says he. 'I am on my way to Teton Gulch to unite my niece and a young man of that camp in the bonds of holy matrimony.'
'The he--you don't say!' I says. 'Afoot?'
'I alit from the stagecoach at--ah--Hades-Wind Pass,' says he. 'Some very agreeable cowboys happened to be awaiting the stage there, and they offered to escort me to Teton.'
'How come you knowed yore niece was wantin' to be united in acrimony?' I ast.
'The cowpersons informed me that such was the case,' says he.
'Where-at are they now?' I next inquore.
'The mount with which they supplied me went lame a little while ago,' says he. 'They left me here while they went to procure another from a nearby ranch-house.'
