bleeding freely, and crashing through them bushes like a wild bull. Evidently the time for stealth and silence was past. I busted into the open and seen Bill hopping around on the aidge of the ledge trying to git holt of Jack which was kicking like a grasshopper on the end of the rope, jest out of rech.
'Whyn't you sneak up soft and easy like I said?' howled Bill. 'I was jest about to argy him out of the notion. He'd tied the rope around his neck and was standin' on the aidge, when that racket bust loose in the bresh and scairt him so bad he fell offa the ledge! Do somethin'.'
'Shoot the rope in two,' I suggested, but Bill said, 'No, you cussed fool! He'd fall down the cliff and break his neck!'
BUT I SEEN IT WARN'T a very big tree so I went and got my arms around it and give it a heave and loosened the roots, and then kinda twisted it around so the limb that Jack was hung to was over the ledge now. I reckon I busted most of the roots in the process, jedging from the noise. Bill's eyes popped out when he seen that, and he reched up kind of dazed like and cut the rope with his bowie. Only he forgot to grab Jack before he cut it, and Jack hit the ledge with a resounding thud.
'I believe he's dead,' says Bill despairingful. 'I'll never git that six bucks. Look how purple he is.'
'Aw,' says I, biting me off a chew of terbacker, 'all men which has been hung looks that way. I remember onst the Vigilantes hung Uncle Jeppard Grimes, and it taken us three hours to bring him to after we cut him down. Of course, he'd been hangin' a hour before we found him.'
'Shet up and help me revive him,' snarled Bill, gitting the noose off of his neck. 'You seleck the damndest times to converse about the sins of yore infernal relatives--look, he's comin' too!'
Because Jack had begun to gasp and kick around, so Bill brung out a bottle and poured a snort down his gullet, and pretty soon Jack sot up and felt of his neck. His jaws wagged but didn't make no sound.
Glanton now seemed to notice my disheveled condition for the first time. 'What the hell happened to you?' he ast in amazement.
'Aw, I stepped on old Brigamer,' I scowled.
'Well, whyn't you hang onto him?' he demanded. 'Don't you know they's a big bounty on his pelt? We could of split the dough.'
'I've had a bellyfull of old Brigamer,' I replied irritably. 'I don't care if I never see him again. Look what he done to my best britches! If you wants that bounty, you go after it yoreself.'
'And let me alone!' onexpectedly spoke up Jack, eyeing us balefully. 'I'm free, white and twenty-one. I hangs myself if I wants to.'
'You won't neither,' says Bill sternly. 'Me and yore paw is old friends and I aim to save yore wuthless life if I have to kill you to do it.'
'I defies you!' squawked Jack, making a sudden dive betwixt Bill's laigs and he would of got clean away if I hadn't snagged the seat of his britches with my spur. He then displayed startling ingratitude by hitting me with a rock and, whilst we was tying him up with the hanging rope, his langwidge was scandalous.
'Did you ever see sech a idjit?' demands Bill, setting on him and fanning hisself with his Stetson. 'What we goin' to do with him? We cain't keep him tied up forever.'
'We got to watch him clost till he gits out of the notion of killin' hisself,' I says. 'He can stay at our cabin for a spell.'
'Ain't you got some sisters?' says Jack.
'A whole cabin-full,' I says with feeling. 'You cain't hardly walk without steppin' on one. Why?'
'I won't go,' says he bitterly. 'I don't never want to see no woman again, not even a mountain-woman. I'm a embittered man. The honey of love has turnt to tranchler pizen. Leave me to the buzzards and cougars.'
'I got it,' says Bill. 'We'll take him on a huntin' trip way up in the high Humbolts. They's some of that country I'd like to see myself. Reckon yo're the only white man which has ever been up there, Breck--if we was to call you a white man.'
'What you mean by that there remark?' I demanded heatedly. 'You know damn well I h'ain't got nary a drop of Injun blood in me--hey, look out!'
I glimpsed a furry hide through the bresh, and thinking it was old Brigamer coming back, I pulled my pistols and started shooting at it, when a familiar voice yelled wrathfully, 'Hey, you cut that out, dern it!'
THE NEXT INSTANT A pecooliar figger hove into view--a tall ga'nt old ranny with long hair and whiskers, with a club in his hand and a painter hide tied around his middle. Sprague's eyes bugged out and he says: 'Who in the name uh God's that?'
'Another victim of feminine wiles,' I says. 'That's old Joshua Braxton, of Chawed Ear, the oldest and the toughest batchelor in South Nevada. I jedge that Miss Stark, the old maid schoolteacher, has renewed her matrimonical designs onto him. When she starts rollin' sheep's eyes at him he always dons that there grab and takes to the high sierras.'
'It's the only way to perteck myself,' snarled Joshua. 'She'd marry me by force if I didn't resort to strategy. Not many folks comes up here and sech as does don't recognize me in this rig. What you varmints disturbin' my solitude for? Yore racket woke me up, over in my cave. When I seen old Brigamer high tailin' it for distant parts I figgered Elkins was on the mountain.'
'We're here to save this young idjit from his own folly,' says Bill. 'You come up here because a woman wants to marry you. Jack comes up here to decorate a oak limb with his own carcass because one wouldn't marry him.'
'Some men never knows their luck,' says old Joshua enviously. 'Now me, I yearns to return to Chawed Ear which I've been away from for a month. But whilst that old mudhen of a Miss Stark is there I haunts the wilderness if it takes the rest of my life.'
'Well, be at ease, Josh,' says Bill. 'Miss Stark ain't there no more. She pulled out for Arizona three weeks ago.'
'Halleloojah!' says Joshua, throwing away his club. 'Now I can return and take my place among men--Hold on!' says he, reching for his club again, 'likely they'll be gittin' some other old harridan to take her place. That new-fangled schoolhouse they got at Chawed Ear is a curse and a blight. We'll never be shet of husband-huntin' 'rithmetic shooters. I better stay up here after all.'
'Don't worry,' says Bill. 'I seen a pitcher of the gal that's comin' from the East to take Miss Stark's place and I can assure you that a gal as young and pretty as her wouldn't never try to slap her brand on no old buzzard like you.'
'Young and purty you says?' I ast with sudden interest.
'As a racin' filly!' he declared. 'First time I ever knowed a school-marm could be less'n forty and have a face that didn't look like the beginnin's of a long drouth. She's due into Chawed Ear on the evenin' stage, and the whole town turns out to welcome her. The mayor aims to make a speech if he's sober enough, and they've got up a band to play.'
'Damn foolishness!' snorted Joshua. 'I don't take no stock in eddication.'
'I dunno,' says I. That was before I got educated. 'They's times when I wisht I could read and write. We ain't never had no school on Bear Creek.'
'What would you read outside of the labels onto whiskey bottles?' snorted old Joshua.
'Funny how a purty face changes a man's viewp'int,' remarked Bill. 'I remember onst Miss Stark ast you how you folks up on Bear Creek would like for her to come up there and teach yore chillern, and you taken one look at her face and told her it was agen the principles of Bear Creek to have their peaceful innercence invaded by the corruptin' influences of education. You said the folks was all banded together to resist sech corruption to the last drop of blood.'
'It's my duty to Bear Creek to pervide culture for the risin' generation,' says I, ignoring them slanderous remarks. 'I feels the urge for knowledge a-heavin' and a-surgin' in my boozum. We're goin' to have a school on Bear Creek, by golly, if I have to lick every old mossback in the Humbolts. I'll build a cabin for the schoolhouse myself.'
'Where'll you git a teacher?' ast Joshua. 'Chawed Ear ain't goin' to let you have their'n.'
'Chawed Ear is, too,' I says. 'If they won't give her up peaceful I resorts to force. Bear Creek is goin' to have culture if I have to wade fetlock deep in gore to pervide it. Le's go! I'm r'arin' to open the ball for arts and letters. Air you-all with me?'
'No!' says Jack, plenty emphatic.
