I pulled up the hosses beside the tree where Jack Sprague was still tied up to. He gawped at Miss Devon and she gawped back at him.
'Listen,' I says, 'here's a lady in distress which we're rescuin' from teachin' school in Chawed Ear. A mob's right behind us. This ain't no time to think about yoreself. Will you postpone yore sooicide if I turn you loose, and git onto this stage and take the young lady up the trail whilst the rest of us turns back the mob?'
'I will!' says he with more enthusiasm than he'd showed since we stopped him from hanging hisself. So I cut him loose and he clumb onto the stage.
'Drive on to Kiowa Canyon,' I told him as he picked up the lines. 'Wait for us there. Don't be scairt, Miss Devon! I'll soon be with you! B. Elkins never fails a lady fair!'
'Gup!' says Jack, and the stage went clattering and banging up the trail and me and Joshua and Bill taken cover amongst the big rocks that was on each side of the trail. The pass was jest a narrer gorge, and a lovely place for a ambush as I remarked.
Well, here they come howling up the steep slope yelling and spurring and shooting wild, and me and Bill give 'em a salute with our pistols. The charge halted plumb sudden. They knowed they was licked. They couldn't git at us because they couldn't climb the cliffs. So after firing a volley which damaged nothing but the atmosphere, they turnt around and hightailed it back towards Chawed Ear.
'I hope that's a lesson to 'em,' says I as I riz. 'Come! I cain't wait to git culture started on Bear Creek!'
'You cain't wait to git to sparkin' that gal,' snorted Joshua. But I ignored him and forked Cap'n Kidd and headed up the trail, and him and Bill follered, riding double on Jack Sprague's hoss.
'Why should I deny my honorable intentions?' I says presently. 'Anybody can see Miss Devon is already learnin' to love me! If Jack had my attraction for the fair sex, he wouldn't be luggin' around a ruint life. Hey, where's the stage?' Because we'd reched Kiowa Canyon and they warn't no stage.
'Here's a note stuck on a tree,' says Bill. 'I'll read it--well, for Lord's sake!' he yelped, 'Lissen to this:
''Dere boys: I've desided I ain't going to hang myself, and Miss Devon has desided she don't want to teach school at Bear Creek. Breck gives her the willies. She ain't altogther shore he's human. With me it's love at first site and she's scairt if she don't marry somebody Breck will marry her, and she says I'm the best looking prospeck she's saw so far. So we're heading for War Paint to git married.
Yores trooly, Jack Sprague.''
'Aw, don't take it like that,' says Bill as I give a maddened howl and impulsively commenced to rip up all the saplings in rech. 'You've saved his life and brung him happiness!'
'And what have I brung me?' I yelled, tearing the limbs off a oak in a effort to relieve my feelings. 'Culture on Bear Creek is shot to hell and my honest love has been betrayed! Bill Glanton, the next ranny you chase up into the Humbolts to commit sooicide he don't have to worry about gittin bumped off--I attends to it myself, personal!'
THE END
CONTENTS
TEXAS JOHN ALDEN
By Robert E. Howard
I hear the citizens of War Whoop has organized theirselves into a committee of public safety which they says is to pertect the town agen me, Breckinridge Elkins. Sech doings as that irritates me. You'd think I was a public menace or something.
I'm purty dern tired of their slanders. I didn't tear down their cussed jail; the buffalo-hunters done it. How could I when I was in it at the time?
As for the Silver Boot saloon and dance hall, it wouldn't of got shot up if the owner had showed any sense. It was Ace Middleton's own fault he got his hind laig busted in three places, and if the city marshal had been tending to his own business instead of persecuting a pore, helpless stranger, he wouldn't of got the seat of his britches full of buckshot.
Folks which says I went to War Whoop a-purpose to wreck the town, is liars. I never had no idea at first of going there at all. It's off the railroad and infested with tinhorn gamblers and buffalo-hunters and sech-like varmints, and no place for a trail-driver.
My visit to this lair of vice come about like this: I'd rode p'int on a herd of longhorns clean from the lower Pecos to Goshen, where the railroad was. And I stayed there after the trail-boss and the other boys headed south, to spark the belle of the town, Betty Wilkinson, which gal was as purty as a brand-new bowie knife. She seemed to like me middling tolerable, but I had rivals, notably a snub-nosed Arizona waddy by the name of Bizz Ridgeway.
This varmint's persistence was so plumb aggravating that I come in on him sudden-like one morning in the back room of the Spanish Mustang, in Goshen, and I says:
'Lissen here, you sand-burr in the pants of progress, I'm a peaceable man, generous and retirin' to a fault. But I'm reachin' the limit of my endurance. Ain't they no gals in Arizona, that you got to come pesterin' mine? Whyn't yuh go on back home where you belong anyhow? I'm askin' yuh like a gent to keep away from Betty Wilkinson before somethin' onpleasant is forced to happen to yuh.'
He kind of r'ared up, and says: 'I ain't the only gent which is sparkin' Betty. Why don't you make war-talk to Rudwell Shapley, Jr.?'
'He ain't nothin' but a puddin'-headed tenderfoot,' I responded coldly. 'I don't consider him in no serious light. A gal with as much sense as Betty wouldn't pay him no mind. But you got a slick tongue and might snake yore way ahead of me. So I'm tellin' you--'
He started to git up in a hurry, and I reached for my bowie, but then he sunk back down in his chair and to my amazement he busted into tears.
'What in thunder's the matter with you?' I demanded, shocked.
'Woe is me!' moaned he. 'Yuh're right, Breck. I got no business hangin' around Betty. But I didn't know she was yore gal. I ain't got no matrimonial intentions onto her. I'm jest kind of consolin' myself with her company, whilst bein' parted by crooel Fate from my own true love.'
'Hey,' I says, pricking up my ears and uncocking my pistol. 'You ain't in love with Betty? You got another gal?'
'A pitcher of divine beauty!' vowed he, wiping his eyes on my bandanner. 'Gloria La Venner, which sings in the Silver Boot, over to War Whoop. We was to wed--'
Here his emotions overcome him and he sobbed loudly.
'But Fate interfered,' he moaned. 'I was banished from War Whoop, never to return. In a thoughtless moment I kind of pushed a bartender with a clawhammer, and he had a stroke of apperplexity or somethin' and died, and they blamed me. I was forced to flee without tellin' my true love where I was goin'.
'I ain't dared to go back because them folks over there is so prejudiced agen' me they threatens to arrest me on sight. My true love is eatin' her heart out, waitin' for me to come and claim her as my bride, whilst I lives here in exile!'
Bizz then wept bitterly on my shoulder till I throwed him off in some embarrassment.
'Whyn't yuh write her a letter, yuh dad-blamed fool?' I ast.
'I can't write, nor read, neither,' he said. 'And I don't trust nobody to send word to her by. She's so beautiful, the critter I'd send would probably fall in love with her hisself, the lowdown polecat!' Suddenly he grabbed my hand with both of his'n, and said, 'Breck, you got a honest face, and I never did believe all they say about you, anyway. Whyn't you go and tell her?'
'I'll do better'n that if it'll keep you away from Betty,' I says. 'I'll bring this gal over here to Goshen.'
'Yuh're a gent!' says he, wringing my hand. 'I wouldn't entrust nobody else with sech a sacred mission. Jest go to the Silver Boot and tell Ace Middleton you want to see Gloria La Venner alone.'
'All right,' I said. 'I'll rent a buckboard to bring her back in.'
'I'll be countin' the hours till yuh heaves over the horizen with my true love!' declaimed he, reaching for the whiskey bottle.
So I hustled out, and who should I run into but that pore sapified shrimp of a Rudwell Shapley Joonyer in his monkey jacket and tight riding pants and varnished English boots. We like to had a collision as I barged through the
