cause.
I saddled Cap'n Kidd and pulled out for War Paint, and stopped a few rods away and drunk five or six gallons of water at a spring, and felt a lot better. I started on again, but before I come to the trail, I heard somebody bawling and pulled up, and there sot a feller on a stump, crying like his heart would bust.
'What's the trouble?' I ast, and he blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked up mournful and melancholy. He was a scrawny cuss with over-sized whiskers.
'You beholds in me,' says he sobfully, 'a critter tossed on the crooel tides of fate. Destiny has dealt my hand from the bottom of the deck. Whoa is me!' says he, and wept bitterly.
'Buck up,' I said. 'Things might well be wuss. Dammit,' I said, waxing irritable, 'stop that blubberin' and tell me what's the matter. I'm Breckinridge Elkins. Maybe I can help you.'
He swallered some sobs, and said: 'You air a man of kind impulses and a noble heart. My name is Japhet Jalatin. In my youth I made a enemy of a wealthy, powerful and unscrupulous man. He framed me and sent me to the pen for somethin' I never done. I busted free and under a assumed name, I come West. By hard workin' I accumulated a tidy sum which I aimed to send to my sorrowin' wife and baby datters. But jest last night I learnt that I had been rekernized and the bloodhounds of the law was on my trail. I have got to skip to Mexico. My loved ones won't never git the dough.
'Oh,' says he, 'if they was only some one I could trust to leave it with till I could write 'em a letter and tell 'em where it was so they could send a trusted man after it! But I trust nobody. The man I left it with might tell where he got it, and then the bloodhounds of the law would be onto my trail again, houndin' me day and night.'
He looked at me desperate, and says: 'Young man, you got a kind and honest face. Won't you take this here money and hold it for my wife, till she can come after it?'
'Yeah, I'll do that,' I said. He jumped up and run to his hoss which was tied nearby, and hauled out a buckskin poke, and shoved it into my hands.
'Keep it till my wife comes for it,' says he. 'And promise me you won't never breathe a word of how you got it, except to her!'
'A Elkins never broke his word in his life,' I said. 'Wild hosses couldn't drag it outa me.'
'Bless you, young man!' he cries, and grabbed my hand with both of his'n and pumped it up and down like a pump-handle, and then jumped on his hoss and fogged. I thought they is some curious people in the world, as I stuffed the poke in my saddle-bags and headed for War Paint again.
I thought I'd turn off to the Mustang Creek tavern and eat me some breakfast, but I hadn't much more'n hit the trail I'd been follerin' when I met Jugbelly, than I heard hosses behind me, and somebody hollered: 'Stop, in the name of the law!'
I turnt around and seen a gang of men riding towards me, from the direction of Bear Creek, and there was the sheriff leading 'em, and right beside him was pap and Uncle John Garfield and Uncle Bill Buckner and Uncle Bearfield Gordon. A tenderfoot onst called them four men the patriarchs of Bear Creek. I dunno what he meant, but they generally decides argyments which has got beyond the public control, as you might say. Behind them and the sheriff come about thirty more men, most of which I rekernized as citizens of Chawed Ear, and therefore definitely not my friends. Also, to my surprise, I rekernized Wild Bill Donovan amongst 'em, with his thick black hair falling down to his shoulders. They was four other hard-looking strangers which rode clost beside him.
All the Chawed Ear men had sawed-off shotguns and that surprised me, because that made it look like maybe they was coming to arrest me, and I hadn't done nothing, except steal their schoolteacher, several weeks before, and if they'd meant to arrest me for that, they'd of tried it before now.
'There he is!' yelped the sheriff, p'inting at me. 'Han's up!'
'Don't be a damn' fool!' roared pap, knocking his shotgun out of his hands as he started to raise it. 'You want to git you and yore cussed posse slaughtered? Come here, Breckinridge,' he said, and I rode up to them, some bewildered. I could see pap was worried. He scowled and tugged at his beard. My uncles didn't have no more expression onto their faces than so many red Injuns.
'What the hell's all this about?' I ast.
'Take off yore hat,' ordered the sheriff.
'Look here, you long-legged son of a mangy skunk,' I said heatedly, 'if yo're tryin' to rawhide me, lemme tell you right now--'
''Tain't a joke,' growled pap. 'Take off yore sombrero.'
I done so bewilderedly, and instantly four men in the gang started hollering: 'That's him! That's the man! He had on a mask, but when he taken his hat off, we seen the hair was all off his head! That's shore him!'
'Elkins,' said the sheriff, 'I arrests you for the robbery of the Chawed Ear stage!'
I convulsively went for my guns. It was jest a instinctive move which I done without knowing it, but the sheriff hollered and ducked, and the possemen throwed up their guns, and pap spurred in between us.
'Put down them guns, everybody!' he roared, covering me with one six-shooter and the posse with the other'n. 'First man that pulls a trigger, I'll salivate him!'
'I ain't aimin' to shoot nobody!' I bellered. 'But what the hell is this all about?'
'As if he didn't know!' sneered one of the posse. 'Tryin' to ack innercent! Heh heh heh--glup!'
Pap riz in his stirrups and smashed him over the head with his right-hand six-shooter barrel, and he crumpled into the trail and laid there with the blood oozing out of his sculp.
'Anybody else feel humorous?' roared pap, sweeping the posse with a terrible eye. Evidently nobody did, so he turnt around and says to me, and I seen drops of perspiration standing on his face which warn't caused altogether by the heat. Says he: 'Breckinridge, early last night the Chawed Ear stage was stuck up and robbed a few miles t'other side of Chawed Ear. The feller which done it not only taken the passengers' money and watches and things, and the mail sack, but he also shot the driver, old Jim Harrigan, jest out of pure cussedness. Old Jim's layin' over in Chawed Ear now with a bullet through his laig.
'These born fools thinks you done it! They was on Bear Creek before daylight--the first time a posse ever dared to come onto Bear Creek, and it was all me and yore uncles could do to keep the boys from massacrein, 'em. Bear Creek was sure wrought up. These mavericks,' pap p'inted a finger of scorn at the four men which had claimed to identify me, 'was on the stage. You know Ned Ashley, Chawed Ear's leadin' merchant. The others air strangers. They say their names is Hurley, Jackson and Slade. They claim to lost considerable money.'
'We done that!' clamored Jackson. 'I had a buckskin poke crammed full of gold pieces the scoundrel taken. I tell you, that's the man which done it!' He p'inted at me, and pap turnt to Ned Ashley, and said: 'Ned, what do you say?'
'Well, Bill,' says Ashley reluctantly, 'I hates to say it, but I don't see who else it could of been. The robber was Breckinridge's size, all right, and you know they ain't many men that big. He warn't ridin' Cap'n Kidd, of course; he was ridin' a big bay mare. He had on a mask, but as he rode off he taken off his hat, and we all seen his head in the moonlight. The hair was all off of it, jest like it is Breckinridge's. Not like he was naturally bald, but like it had been burnt off or shaved off recent.'
'Well,' says the sheriff, 'unless he can prove a alibi I'll have to arrest him.'
'Breckinridge,' says pap, 'whar was you last night?'
'I was layin' out in the woods drunk,' I says.
I felt a aidge of doubt in the air.
'I didn't know you could drink enough to git drunk,' says pap. 'It ain't like you, anyway. What made you? Was it thinkin' about that gal?'
'Naw,' I said. 'I met a gent in a plug hat named Jugbelly Judkins and he challenged me to a drinkin' match.'
'Did you win?' ast pap anxiously.
'Naw!' I confessed in bitter shame. 'I lost.'
Pap muttered disgustedly in his beard, and the sheriff says: 'Can you perduice this Judkins hombre?'
'I dunno where he went,' I said. 'He'd pulled out when I woke up.'
'Very inconvenient, I says!' says Wild Bill Donovan, running his fingers lovingly through his long black locks, and spitting.
'Who ast you yore opinion?' I snarled blood-thirstily. 'What you doin' in the Humbolts? Come back to try to git even for Cap'n Kidd?'
