late this evenin' or tonight, and when I git the money I'll send it to you. I'm broke right now, but I ain't goin' to be broke long.'
'All right,' he said, eyeing my scorched skull in morbid fascination. 'You got no idee how pecoolier you look, Breckinridge, with that there bald dome--'
'Shet up!' I roared wrathfully. A Elkins is sensitive about his personal appearance. 'This here is merely a temporary inconvenience which I cain't help. Lemme hear no more about it. I'll shoot the next son of a polecat which calls attention to my singed condition!'
I then tied a bandanner around my head and got on Cap'n Kidd and pulled for home.
I arriv at pap's cabin about the middle of the afternoon and my family rallied around to remove the buckshot from my hide and repair other damages which had been did.
Maw made each one of my brothers lend me a garment, and she let 'em out to fit me.
'Though how much good it'll do you,' said she, 'I don't know. I never seen any man so hard on his clothes as you be, in my life. If it ain't fire it's bowie knives, and if it ain't bowie knives, it's buckshot.'
'Boys will be boys, maw,' soothed pap. 'Breckinridge is jest full of life and high spirits, ain't you, Breckinridge?'
'From the whiff I got of his breath,' snorted Elinor, 'I'd say they is no doubt about the spirits.'
'Right now I'm full of gloom and vain regrets,' I says bitterly. 'Culture is a flop on Bear Creek, and my confidence has been betrayed. I have tooken a sarpent with a British accent to my bosom and been bit. I stands knee-deep in the rooins of education and romance. Bear Creek lapses back into ignorance and barbarism and corn- licker, and I licks the wounds of unrequited love like a old wolf after a tussle with a pack of hound dawgs!'
'What you goin' to do?' ast pap, impressed.
'I'm headin' for War Paint,' I said gloomily. 'I ain't goin' to stay here and have the life rawhided outa me by Glory McGraw. It's a wonder to me she ain't been over already to gloat over my misery.'
'You ain't got no money,' says pap.
'I'll git me some,' I said. 'And I ain't particular how. I'm going now. I ain't goin' to wait for Glory McGraw to descend onto me with her derned sourcasm.'
So I headed for War Paint as soon as I could wash the soot off of me. I had a Stetson I borrowed from Garfield and I jammed it down around my ears so my bald condition warn't evident, because I was awful sensitive about it.
Sundown found me some miles from the place where the trail crossed the Cougar Paw-Grizzly Run road, and jest before the sun dipped I was hailed by a pecooliar-looking gent.
He was tall and gangling--tall as me, but didn't weigh within a hundred pounds as much. His hands hung about three foot out of his sleeves, and his neck with a big adam's apple riz out of his collar like a crane's, and he had on a plug hat instead of a Stetson, and a long-tailed coat. He moreover sot his hoss like it was a see-saw, and his stirrups was so short his bony knees come up almost level with his shoulders. He wore his pants laigs down over his boots, and altogether he was the funniest-looking human I ever seen. Cap'n Kidd give a disgusted snort when he seen him and wanted to kick his bony old sorrel nag in the belly, but I wouldn't let him.
'Air you,' said this apparition, p'inting a accusing finger at me, 'air you Breckinridge Elkins, the bearcat of the Humbolts?'
'I'm Breckinridge Elkins,' I replied suspiciously.
'I dedooced as much,' he says ominously. 'I have come a long ways to meet you, Elkins. They can be only one sun in the sky, my roarin' grizzly from the high ranges. They can be only one champeen in the State of Nevada. I'm him!'
'Oh, be you?' I says, scenting battle afar. 'Well, I feels the same way about one sun and one champeen. You look a mite skinny and gantlin' to be makin' sech big talk, but far be it from me to deny you a tussle after you've come so far to git it. Light down from yore hoss whilst I mangles yore frame with a free and joyful spirit! They is nothin' I'll enjoy more'n uprootin' a few acres of junipers with yore carcass and festoonin' the crags with yore innards.'
'You mistakes my meanin', my bloodthirsty friend,' says he. 'I warn't referrin' to mortal combat. Far as I'm consarned, yo're supreme in that line. Nay, nay, B. Elkins, esquire! Reserve yore personal ferocity for the b'ars and knife-fighters of yore native mountains. I challenges you in another department entirely.
'Look well, my bowie-wieldin' orang-outang of the high peaks. Fame is shakin' her mane. I am Jugbelly Judkins, and my talent is guzzlin'. From the live-oak grown coasts of the Gulf to the sun-baked buttes of Montana,' says he oratorical, 'I ain't yet met the gent I couldn't drink under the table betwixt sundown and sunup. I have met the most celebrated topers of plain and mountain, and they have all went down in inglorious and rum-soaked defeat. Afar off I heard men speak of you, praisin' not only yore genius in alterin' the features of yore feller man, but also laudin' yore capacity for corn-licker. So I have come to cast the ga'ntlet at yore feet, as it were.'
'Oh,' I says, 'you wants a drinkin' match.'
''Wants' is a weak word, my murderous friend,' says he. 'I demands it.'
'Well, come on,' I said. 'Le's head for War Paint then. They'll be plenty of gents there willin' to lay heavy bets--'
'To hell with filthy lucre!' snorted Jugbelly. 'My mountainous friend, I am an artist. I cares nothin' for money. My reputation is what I upholds.'
'Well, then,' I said, 'they's a tavern on Mustang Creek--'
'Let it rot,' says he. 'I scorns these vulgar displays in low inns and cheap taverns, my enormous friend. I supplies the sinews of war myself. Foller me!'
So he turnt his hoss off the trail, and I follered him through the bresh for maybe a mile, till he come to a small cave in a bluff with dense thickets all around. He reched into the cave and hauled out a gallon jug of licker.
'I hid a goodly supply of the cup that cheers in that cave,' says he. 'This is a good secluded spot where nobody never comes. We won't be interrupted here, my brawny but feeble-minded gorilla of the high ridges!'
'But what're we bettin'?' I demanded. 'I ain't got no money. I was goin' down to War Paint and git me a job workin' somebody's claim for day-wages till I got me a stake and built it up playin' poker, but--'
'You wouldn't consider wagerin' that there gigantic hoss you rides?' says he, eyeing me very sharp.
'Never in the world,' I says with a oath.
'Very well,' says he. 'Let the bets go. We battles for honor and glory alone! Let the carnage commence!'
So we started. First he'd take a gulp, and then me, and the jug was empty about the fourth gulp I taken, so he dragged out another'n, and we emptied it, and he hauled out another. They didn't seem to be no limit to his supply. He must of brought it there on a whole train of pack mules. I never seen a man drink like that skinny cuss. I watched the liquor careful, but he lowered it every time he taken a swig, so I knowed he warn't jest pertending. His belly expanded enormous as we went along and he looked very funny, with his skinny frame, and that there enormous belly bulging out his shirt till the buttons flew off of his coat.
I ain't goin' to tell you how much we drunk, because you wouldn't believe me. But by midnight the glade was covered with empty jugs and Jugbelly's arms was so tired lifting 'em he couldn't hardly move. But the moon and the glade and everything was dancing around and around to me, and he warn't even staggerring. He looked kind of pale and wan, and onst he says, in a awed voice: 'I wouldn't of believed it if I hadn't saw it myself!' But he kept on drinking and so did I, because I couldn't believe a skinny maverick like that could lick me, and his belly kept getting bigger and bigger till I was scairt it was going to bust, and things kept spinning around me faster than ever.
After awhile I heard him muttering to hisself, away off: 'This is the last jug, and if it don't fix him, nothin' will. By God, he ain't human.'
That didn't make no sense to me, but he passed me the jug and said: 'Air you capable, my gulf-bellied friend?'
'Gimme that jug!' I muttered, bracing my laigs and getting a firm hold of myself. I taken a big gulp--and then I didn't know nothing.
When I woke up the sun was high above the trees. Cap'n Kidd was cropping grass nearby, but Jugbelly was gone. So was his hoss and all the empty jugs. There warn't no sign to show he'd ever been there, only the taste in my mouth which I cain't describe because I am a gent and there is words no gent will stoop to use. I felt like kicking myself in the pants. I was ashamed something terrible at being beat by that skinny mutt. It was the first time I'd ever drunk enough to lay me out. I don't believe in a man making a hawg out of hisself, even in a good
