'Where's he?' I yelled, glaring around.
'Knowin' his nature as I does,' said Judkins, working his jaw to see if it was broke in more'n one place, 'I would sejest that he snuck out the back door whilst the fightin' was goin' on, and is now leggin' it for the corral he's got hid in the thicket behind the cabin, where he secreted the bay mare he rode the night he held up the stagecoach.'
Glory pulled a pistol out of one of 'em's belt which he'd never got a chance to use, and she says: 'Go after him, Breck. I'll take care of these coyotes!'
I taken one look at the groaning rooins on the ground, and decided she could all right, so I whistled to Cap'n Kidd, and he come, for a wonder. I forked him and headed for the thicket behind the cabin and jest as I done so I seen Donovan streaking it out the other side on a big bay mare. The moon made everything as bright as day.
'Stop and fight like a man, you mangy polecat!' I thundered, but he made no reply except to shoot at me with his six-shooter, and seeing I ignored this, he spurred the mare which he was riding bareback and headed for the high hills.
She was a good mare, but she didn't have a chance agen Cap'n Kidd. We was only a few hundred feet behind and closing in fast when Donovan busted out onto a bare ridge which overlooked a valley. He looked back and seen I was going to ride him down within the next hundred yards, and he jumped offa the mare and taken cover behind a pine which stood by itself a short distance from the aidge of the bresh. They warn't no bushes around it, and to rech him I'd of had to cross a open space in the moonlight, and every time I come out of the bresh he shot at me. So I kept in the aidge of the bresh and unslung my lariat and roped the top of the pine, and sot Cap'n Kid agen it with all his lungs and weight, and tore it up by the roots.
When it fell and left Donovan without no cover he run for the rim of the valley, but I jumped down and grabbed a rock about the size of a man's head and throwed it at him, and hit him jest above the knee on the hind laig. He hit the ground rolling and throwed away both of his six-shooters and hollered: 'Don't shoot! I surrenders!'
I quiled my lariat and come up to where he was laying, and says: 'Cease that there disgustin' belly-achin'. You don't hear me groanin' like that, do you?'
'Take me to a safe, comfortable jail,' says he. 'I'm a broken man. My soul is full of remorse and my hide is full of buckshot. My laig is broke and my spirit is crushed. Where'd you git the cannon you shot me with?'
''Twarn't no cannon,' I said with dignity. 'I throwed a rock at you.'
'But the tree fell!' he says wildly. 'Don't tell me you didn't do that with artillery!'
'I roped it and pulled it down,' I said, and he give a loud groan and sunk back on the ground, and I said: 'Pardon me if I seems to tie yore hands behind yore back and put you acrost Cap'n Kidd. Likely they'll set yore laig at Chawed Ear if you remember to remind 'em about it.'
He said nothin' except to groan loud and lusty all the way back to the cabin, and when we got there Glory had tied all them scoundrels' hands behind 'em, and they'd all come to and was groaning in chorus. I found a corral near the house full of their hosses, so I saddled 'em and put them critters onto 'em, and tied their laigs to their stirrups. Then I tied the hosses head to tail, all except one I saved for Glory, and we headed for Chawed Ear.
'What you aimin' to do now, Breck?' she ast as we pulled out.
'I'm goin' to take these critters back to Chawed Ear,' I said fiercely, 'and make 'em make their spiel to the sheriff and the folks. But my triumph is dust and ashes into my mouth, when I think of the way my folks has did me.'
There warn't nothing for her to say; she was a Bear Creek woman. She knowed how Bear Creek folks felt.
'This here night's work,' I said bitterly, 'has learnt me who my friends is--and ain't. If it warn't for you these thieves would be laughin' up their sleeves at me whilst I rotted in jail.'
'I wouldn't never go back on you when you was in trouble, Breck,' she says, and I says: 'I know that now. I had you all wrong.'
We was nearing the town with our groaning caravan strung out behind us, when through the trees ahead of us, we seen a blaze of torches in the clearing around the jail, and men on hosses, and a dark mass of humanity swaying back and forth. Glory pulled up.
'It's the mob, Breck!' says she, with a catch in her throat. 'They'll never listen to you. They're crazy mad like mobs always is. They'll shoot you down before you can tell 'em anything. Wait--'
'I waits for nothin',' I said bitterly. 'I takes these coyotes in and crams them down the mob's throat! I makes them cussed fools listen to my exoneration. And then I shakes the dust of the Humbolts offa my boots and heads for foreign parts. When a man's kin lets him down, it's time for him to travel.'
'Look there!' exclaimed Glory.
We had come out of the trees, and we stopped short at the aidge of the clearing, in the shadder of some oaks.
The mob was there, all right, with torches and guns and ropes--backed up agen the jail with their faces as pale as dough and their knees plumb knocking together. And facing 'em, on hosses, with guns in their hands, I seen pap and every fighting man on Bear Creek! Some of 'em had torches, and they shone on the faces of more Elkinses, Garfields, Gordons, Kirbys, Grimeses, Buckners, and Polks than them Chawed Ear misfits ever seen together at one time. Some of them men hadn't never been that far away from Bear Creek before in their lives. But they was all there now. Bear Creek had sure come to Chawed Ear.
'Whar is he, you mangy coyotes?' roared pap, brandishing his rifle. 'What you done with him? I war a fool and a dog, desertin' my own flesh and blood to you polecats! I don't care if he's a thief or a liar, or what! A Bear Creek man ain't made to rot in a blasted town-folks jail! I come after him and I aim to take him back, alive or dead! And if you've kilt him, I aim to burn Chawed Ear to the ground and kill every able-bodied man in her! Whar is he, damn yore souls?'
'I swear we don't know!' panted the sheriff, pale and shaking. 'When I heard the mob was formin' I come as quick as I could, and got here by the time they did, but all we found was the jail winder tore out like you see, and three men layin' senseless here and another'n out there in the thicket. They was the guards, but they ain't come to yet to tell us what happened. We was jest startin' to look for Elkins when you come, and--'
'Don't look no farther!' I roared, riding into the torch-light. 'Here I be!'
'Breckinridge!' says pap. 'Whar you been? Who's that with you?'
'Some gents which has got a few words to say to the assemblage,' I says, drawing my string of captives into the light of the torches. Everybody gaped at 'em, and I says: 'I interjuices you to Mister Jugbelly Judkins. He's the slickest word-slingin' sharp I ever seen, so I reckon it oughta be him which does the spielin'. He ain't got on his plug-hat jest now, but he ain't gagged. Speak yore piece, Jugbelly.'
'Honest confession is good for the soul,' says he. 'Lemme have the attention of the crowd, whilst I talks myself right into the penitentiary.' You could of heard a pin drop when he commenced.
'Donovan had brooded a long time about failin' to take Cap'n Kidd away from Elkins,' says he. 'He laid his plans careful and long to git even with Elkins without no risk to hisself. This was a job which taken plenty of caution and preparation. He got a gang of versatile performers together--the cream of the illegal crop, if I do say so myself.
'Most of us kept hid in that cabin back up in the hills, from which Elkins recently routed us. From there he worked out over the whole country--Donovan, I mean. One mornin' he run into Elkins at the Mustang Creek tavern. He overheard Elkins say he was broke, also that he was goin' back to Bear Creek and was aimin' to return to War Paint late that evenin'. All this, and Elkins' singed sculp, give him a idee how to work what he'd been plannin'.
'He sent me to meet Elkins and git him drunk and keep him out in the hills all night. Then I was to disappear, so Elkins couldn't prove no alibi. Whilst we was drinkin' up there, Donovan went and robbed the stage. He had his head shaved so's to make him look like Elkins, of course, and he shot old Jim Harrigan jest to inflame the citizens.
'Hurley and Jackson and Slade was his men. The gold Jackson had on him really belonged to Donovan. Donovan, as soon as he'd robbed the stage, he give the gold to Jalatin who lit out for the place where me and Elkins was boozin'. Then Donovan beat it for the cabin and hid the bay mare and put on his wig to hide his shaved head, and got on another hoss, and started sa'ntering along the Cougar Paw-Grizzly Run road--knowin' a posse would soon be headin' for Bear Creek.
'Which it was, as soon as the stage got in. Hurley and Jackson and Slade swore they'd knowed Elkins in
