'What you lookin' at me for?' he demanded. 'I don't know no gal by that name.'
'%$&*@!' I says with passion. 'That's the word I give out. Spell it, dammit!'
'Oh,' says he. 'All right. K-a-t-h-a-r-i-n-n.'
'That's wrong,' I says.
'What you mean wrong?' he roared. 'That's right!'
''Tain't accordin' to the book,' I said.
'Dang the book,' says he. 'I knows my rights and I ain't to be euchered by no ignorant grizzly from Bear Creek!'
'Who you callin' ignorant?' I demanded, stung, 'Set down! You spelt it wrong.'
'You lie!' he howled, and went for his gun. But I fired first.
WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARED away I seen everybody was on their feet preparing for to stampede, sech as warn't trying to crawl under the benches, so I said: 'Set down, everybody. They ain't nothin' to git excited about. The spellin' match continues--and I'll shoot the first scoundrel which tries to leave the hall before the entertainment's over.'
Gooseneck hissed fiercely at me: 'Dammit, be careful who you shoot, cain't'cha? That was another one of my voters!'
'Drag him out!' I commanded, wiping off some blood where a slug had notched my ear. 'The spellin' match is ready to commence again.'
They was a kind of tension in the air, men shuffling their feet and twisting their mustashes and hitching their gun-belts, but I give no heed. I now approached the other side, with my hand on my pistol, and says to Clanton: 'Can you spell Catharine?'
'C-a-t-h-a-r-i-n-e!' says he.
'Right, by golly!' I says, consulting The French Countess, and the audience cheered wildly and shot off their pistols into the roof.
'Hey!' says Bill Stark, on the other side. 'That's wrong. Make him set down! It spells with a 'K'!'
'He spelt it jest like it is in the book,' I says. 'Look for yoreself.'
'I don't give a damn!' he yelled, rudely knocking The French Countess outa my hand. 'It's a misprint! It spells with a 'K' or they'll be more blood on the floor! He spelt it wrong and if he don't set down I shoots him down!'
'I'm runnin' this show!' I bellered, beginning to get mad. 'You got to shoot me before you shoots anybody else!'
'With pleasure!' snarled he, and went for his gun.... Well, I hit him on the jaw with my fist and he went to sleep amongst a wreckage of busted benches. Gooseneck jumped up with a maddened shriek.
'Dang yore soul, Breckinridge!' he squalled. 'Quit cancelin' my votes! Who air you workin' for--me or Hawkins?'
'Haw! haw! haw!' bellered Hawkins. 'Go on with the show! This is the funniest thing I ever seen!'
Wham! The door crashed open and in pranced Old Jake Hanson, waving a shotgun.
'Welcome to the festivities, Jake,' I greeted him, 'Where's--'
'You son of a skunk!' quoth he, and let go at me with both barrels. The shot scattered remarkable. I didn't get more'n five or six of 'em and the rest distributed freely amongst the crowd. You ought to of heard 'em holler-- the folks, I mean, not the buckshot.
'What in tarnation air you doin'?' shrieked Gooseneck. 'Where's Snake River?'
'Gone!' howled Old Jake. 'Run off! Eloped with my datter!'
Bull Hawkins riz with a howl of anguish, convulsively clutching his whiskers.
'Salomey?' he bellered. 'Eloped?'
'With a cussed gambolier they brung over from Alderville!' bleated Old Jake, doing a war-dance in his passion. 'Elkins and Wilkerson persuaded me to take that snake into my boozum! In spite of my pleas and protests they forced him into my peaceful $# %* household, and he stole the pore, mutton-headed innercent's blasted heart with his cultured airs and his slick talk! They've run off to git married!'
'It's a political plot!' shrieked Hawkins, going for his gun, 'Wilkerson done it a-purpose!'
I shot the gun out of his hand, but Jack Clanton crashed a bench down on Gooseneck's head and Gooseneck kissed the floor. Clanton come down on top of him, out cold, as Mule McGrath swung with a pistol butt, and the next instant somebody lammed Mule with a brick bat and he flopped down acrost Clanton. And then the fight was on. Them rival political factions jest kind of riz up and rolled together in a wave of profanity, gun-smoke and splintering benches.
I HAVE ALWAYS NOTICED that the best thing to do in sech cases is to keep yore temper, and that's what I did for some time, in spite of the efforts of nine or ten wild-eyed Hawkinites. I didn't even shoot one of 'em; I kept my head and battered their skulls with a joist I tore outa the floor, and when I knocked 'em down I didn't stomp 'em hardly any. But they kept coming, and Jack McDonald was obsessed with the notion that he could ride me to the floor by jumping up astraddle of my neck. So he done it, and having discovered his idee was a hallucination, he got a fistful of my hair with his left, and started beating me in the head with his pistol-barrel.
It was very annoying. Simultaneous, several other misfits got hold of my laigs, trying to rassle me down, and some son of Baliol stomped severely on my toe. I had bore my afflictions as patient as Job up to that time, but this perfidy maddened me.
I give a roar which loosened the shingles on the roof, and kicked the toe-stomper in the belly with sech fury that he curled up on the floor with a holler groan and taken no more interest in the proceedings. I likewise busted my timber on somebody's skull, and reched up and pulled Jack McDonald off my neck like pulling a tick off a bull's hide, and hev him through a convenient winder. He's a liar when he says I aimed him deliberate at that rain barrel. I didn't even know they was a rain barrel till I heard his head crash through the staves. I then shaken nine or ten idjits loose from my shoulders and shook the blood outa my eyes and preceived that Gooseneck's men was getting the worst of it, particularly including Gooseneck hisself. So I give another roar and prepared to wade through them fool Hawkinites like a b'ar through a pack of hound-dogs, when I discovered that some perfidious side-winder had got my spur tangled in his whiskers.
I stooped to ontangle myself, jest as a charge of buckshot ripped through the air where my head had been a instant before. Three or four critters was rushing me with bowie knives, so I give a wrench and tore loose by main force. How could I help it if most of the whiskers come loose too? I grabbed me a bench to use for a club, and I mowed the whole first rank down with one swipe, and then as I drawed back for another lick, I heard somebody yelling above the melee.
'Gold!' he shrieked.
Everybody stopped like they was froze in their tracks. Even Bull Hawkins shook the blood outa his eyes and glared up from where he was kneeling on Gooseneck's wishbone with one hand in Gooseneck's hair and a bowie in the other'n. Everybody quit fighting everybody else, and looked at the door--and there was Soapy Jackson, a-reeling and a-weaving with a empty bottle in one hand, and hollering.
'Big gold strike in Wild Hoss Gulch,' he blats. 'Biggest the West ever seen! Nuggets the size of osteridge aigs--gulp!'
He disappeared in a wave of frenzied humanity as Yeller Dog's population abandoned the fray and headed for the wide open spaces. Even Hawkins ceased his efforts to sculp Gooseneck alive and j'ined the stampede. They tore the whole front out of the city hall in their flight, and even them which had been knocked stiff come to at the howl of 'Gold!' and staggered wildly after the mob, shrieking pitifully for their picks, shovels and jackasses. When the dust had settled and the thunder of boot-heels had faded in the distance, the only human left in the city hall was me and Gooseneck, and Soapy Jackson, which riz unsteadily with the prints of hob-nails all over his homely face. They shore trompled him free and generous in their rush.
Gooseneck staggered up, glared wildly about him, and went into convulsions. At first he couldn't talk at all; he jest frothed at the mouth. When he found speech his langwidge was shocking.
'What you spring it this time of night for?' he howled. 'Breckinridge, I said tell him to bring the news in the mornin', not tonight!'
'I did tell him that,' I says.
'Oh, so that was what I couldn't remember!' says Soapy. 'That lick McDonald gimme so plumb addled my brains I knowed they was somethin' I forgot, but couldn't remember what it was.'
