of brotherly love is more'n I can stand.'
We set our hosses there a minnit and watched them pilgrims dance and listened to 'em singing. I squints across at Cousin Bearfield's face and doggoned if it don't look almost human in the firelight. He hauls out his plug of tobaccer and offers me first chaw. Then we headed yonderly, riding stirrup to stirrup.
Must of been ten miles before Cap'n Kidd retches over and bites Cousin Bearfield's hoss on the neck. Bearfield's hoss bites back, and by accident Cap'n Kidd kicks Cousin Bearfield on the ankle. He lets out a howl and thumps me over the head, and I hit him, and then we gits our arms around each other and roll in the bresh in a tangle.
We fit fer two hours, I reckon, and we'd been fighting yet if we hadn't scrambled under Cap'n Kidd's hoofs where he was feeding. He kicked Cousin Bearfield one way and me the other.
I got up after a while and went hunting my hat. The bresh crackled, and in the moonlight I could see Cousin Bearfield on his hands and knees. 'Whar air ye, Cousin Breckinridge?' says he. 'Air you all right?'
Well, mebbe my clothes was tore more'n his was and a lip split and a rib or two busted, but I could still see, which was more'n he could say with both his eyes swole that way. 'Shore I'm all right,' I says. 'How air you, Cousin Bearfield?'
He let out a groan and tried to git up. He made 'er on the second heave and stood there swaying. 'Why, I'm fine,' he says. 'Plumb fine. I feel a whole lot better, Breck. I was afraid fer a minnit back there, whilst we was ridin' along, that that daggone brotherly love would turn out to be catchin'.'
THE END
CONTENTS
PISTOL POLITICS
By Robert E. Howard
Politics and book-learning is bad enough took separate; together they're a blight and a curse. Take Yeller Dog for a instance, a mining camp over in the Apache River country, where I was rash enough to take up my abode in onst.
Yeller Dog was a decent camp till politics reared its head in our midst and education come slithering after. The whiskey was good and middling cheap. The poker and faro games was honest if you watched the dealers clost. Three or four piddlin' fights a night was the usual run, and a man hadn't been shot dead in more than a week by my reckoning. Then, like my Aunt Tascosa Polk would say, come the deluge.
It all begun when Forty-Rod Harrigan moved his gambling outfit over to Alderville and left our one frame building vacant, and Gooseneck Wilkerson got the idee of turning it into a city hall. Then he said we ought to have a mayor to go with it, and announced hisself as candidate. Naturally Bull Hawkins, our other leading citizen, come out agen him. The election was sot for April 11. Gooseneck established his campaign headquarters in the Silver Saddle saloon, and Bull taken up his'n in the Red Tomahawk on t'other side of the street. First thing we knowed, Yeller Dog was in the grip of politics.
The campaign got under way, and the casualties was mounting daily as public interest become more and more fatally aroused, and on the afternoon of the 9th Gooseneck come into his headquarters. and says: 'We got to make a sweepin' offensive, boys. Bull Hawkins is outgeneralin' us. That shootin' match he put on for a prime beef steer yesterday made a big hit with the common herd. He's tryin' to convince Yeller Dog that if elected he'd pervide the camp with more high-class amusement than I could. Breck Elkins, will you pause in yore guzzlin' and lissen here a minute? As chief of this here political organization I demand yore attention!'
'I hear you,' I says. 'I was to the match, and they barred me on a tecknicality, otherwise I would of won the whole steer. It warn't so excitin', far as I could see. Only one man got shot.'
'And he was one of my voters,' scowled Gooseneck. 'But we got to outshine Bull's efforts to seduce the mob. He's resortin' to low, onder-handed tactics by buyin' votes outright. I scorns sech measures--anyway, I've bought all I'm able to pay for. We got to put on a show which out-dazzles his dern' shootin' match.'
'A rodeo, maybe,' suggested Mule McGrath. 'Or a good dog-fight.'
'Naw, naw,' says Gooseneck. 'My show will be a symbol of progress and culture. We stages a spellin' match tomorrow night in the city hall. Next mornin' when the polls opens the voters'll still be so dazzled by the grandeur of our entertainment they'll eleck me by a vast majority.'
'How many men in this here camp can spell good enough to git into a spellin' bee?' says I.
'I'm confident they's at least thirty-five men in this camp which can read and write,' says Gooseneck. 'That's plenty. But we got to find somebody to give out the words. It wouldn't look right for me--it'd be beneath my offishul dignity. Who's educated enough for the job?'
'I am!' says Jerry Brennon and Bill Garrison simultaneous. They then showed their teeth at each other. They warn't friends nohow.
'Cain't but one git the job,' asserted Gooseneck. 'I tests yore ability. Can either one of you spell Constantinople?'
'K-o-n--' begun Garrison, and Brennon burst into a loud and mocking guffaw, and said something pointed about ignoramuses.
'You $%#&*!' says Garrison blood-thirstily.
'Gentlemen!' squawked Gooseneck--and then ducked as they both went for their guns.
* * * *
THEY CLEARED LEATHER about the same time. When the smoke oozed away Gooseneck crawled out from under the roulette table and cussed fervently.
'Two more reliable voters gone to glory!' he raged. 'Breckinridge, whyn't you stop 'em?'
''T'warn't none of my business,' says I, reaching for another drink, because a stray bullet had knocked my glass out a my hand. 'Hey!' I addressed the barkeep sternly. 'I see you fixin' to chalk up that there spilt drink agen me. Charge it to Jerry Brennon. He spilt it.'
'Dead men pays no bills,' complained the bartender.
'Cease them petty squabbles!' snarled Gooseneck. 'You argys over a glass of licker when I've jest lost two good votes! Drag 'em out, boys,' he ordered the other members of the organization which was emerging from behind the bar and the whiskey barrels where they'd took refuge when the shooting started. 'Damn!' says Gooseneck with bitterness. 'This here is a deadly lick to my campaign! I not only loses two more votes, but them was the best educated men in camp, outside of me. Now who we goin' to git to conduck the spellin' match?'
'Anybody which can read can do it,' says Lobo Harrison a hoss-thief with a mean face and a ingrown disposition. He'd go a mile out of his way jest to kick a dog. 'Even Elkins there could do it.'
'Yeah, if they was anything to read from,' snorted Gooseneck. 'But they ain't a line of writin' in camp except on whiskey bottles. We got to have a man with a lot of long words in his head. Breckinridge, dammit, jest because I told the barkeep to charge yore drinks onto campaign expenses ain't no reason for you to freeze onto that bar permanent. Ride over to Alderville and git us a educated man.'
'How'll he know whether he's educated or not?' sneered Lobo, which seemed to dislike me passionately for some reason or another.
'Make him spell Constantinople,' says Gooseneck.
'He cain't go over there,' says Soapy Jackson. 'The folks has threatened to lynch him for cripplin' their sheriff.'
'I didn't cripple their fool sheriff,' I says indignantly. 'He crippled hisself fallin' through a wagon wheel when I give him a kind of a push with a rock. How you spell that there Constance Hopple word?'
Well, he spelt it thirty or forty times till I had it memorized, so I rode over to Alderville. When I rode into town the folks looked at me coldly and bunched up and whispered amongst theirselves, but I paid no attention to 'em. I never seen the deputy sheriff, unless that was him I seen climbing a white oak tree as I hove in sight. I went into the White Eagle saloon and drunk me a dram, and says to the barkeep: 'Who's the best educated man in Alderville?'
Says he: 'Snake River Murgatroyd, which deals monte over to the Elite Amusement Palace.' So I went over there and jest as I went through the door I happened to remember that Snake River had swore he was going to shoot me on sight next time he seen me, account of some trouble we'd had over a card game. But sech things is too trivial to bother about. I went up to where he was setting dealing monte, and I says: 'Hey!'
