winder where I was. He was shaking like a leaf.
'Somebody comin' up the road afoot!' he says.
'It's pap!' gasped Kit. Her and Harry was shore scairt of the old man. They hadn't said a word above a whisper you could never of heard three yards away, and I was kinda suiting my voice to their'n.
'Aw, it cain't be!' I said. 'He's in Wolf Canyon. That's Uncle Shadrach comin' home to sleep off his drunk, but he's back a lot earlier'n what I figgered he would be. He ain't important, but we don't want no delay. Here, Kit, gimme that bag. Now lemme lift you outa the winder. So! Now you all skin out. I'm goin' to climb this here tree whar I can see the fun. Git!'
They crope out the side-gate of the yard just as Uncle Shadrach come in at the front gate, and he never seen 'em because the house was between 'em. They went so soft and easy I thought if Cousin Buckner had been in the house he wouldn't of woke up. They was hustling down the road towards the buckboard as Uncle Shadrach was coming up on the porch and going into the hall. I could hear him climbing the stair. I could of seen him if they'd been a light in the house, because I could look into a winder in his room and one in the downstairs hall, too, from the tree where I was setting.
He got into his room about the time the young folks reached their buckboard, and I seen a light flare up as he struck a match. They warn't no hall upstairs. The stairs run right up to the door of his room. He stood in the doorway and lit a candle on a shelf by the door. I could see Joshua standing by the bunk with his head down, asleep, and I reckon the light must of woke him up, because he throwed up his head and give a loud and ringing bray. Uncle Shadrach turned and seen Joshua and he let out a shriek and fell backwards downstairs.
THE CANDLE LIGHT STREAMED down into the hall, and I got the shock of my life. Because as Uncle Shadrach went pitching down them steps, yelling bloody murder, they sounded a bull's roar below, and out of the room at the foot of the stair come prancing a huge figger waving a shotgun in one hand and pulling on his britches with the other'n. It was Cousin Buckner which I thought was safe in Wolf Canyon! That'd been him which Kit heard come in and go to bed awhile before!
'What's goin' on here?' he roared. 'What you doin', Shadrach?'
'Git outa my way!' screamed Uncle Shadrach. 'I just seen the devil in the form of a zebray jackass! Lemme outa here!'
He busted out of the house, and jumped the fence and went up the road like a quarter-hoss, and Cousin Buckner run out behind him. The moon was just comin' up, and Kit and Harry was just starting down the road. When she seen her old man irrupt from the house, Kit screeched like a scairt catamount, and Buckner heard her. He whirled and seen the buckboard rattling down the road and he knowed what was happening. He give a beller and let bam at 'em with his shotgun, but it was too long a range.
'Whar's my hoss?' he roared, and started for the corral. I knowed if he got astraddle of that derned long- laigged bay gelding of his'n, he'd ride them pore infants down before they'd went ten miles. I jumped down out of the tree and yelled: 'Hey, there, Cousin Buckner! Hey, Buck--'
He whirled and shot the tail offa my coonskin cap before he seen who it was.
'What you mean jumpin' down on me like that?' he roared. 'What you doin' up that tree? Whar you come from?'
'Never-mind that,' I said. 'You want to catch Harry Braxton before he gits away with yore gal, don't you? Don't stop to saddle a hoss. I got a light wagon hitched up behind the corral. We can run 'em down easy in that.'
'Let's go!' he roared, and in no time at all we was off, him standing up in the bed and cussing and waving his shotgun.
'I'll have his sculp!' he roared. 'I'll pickle his heart and feed it to my houn' dawgs! Cain't you go no faster?'
Them dern mules was a lot faster than I'd thought. I didn't dare hold 'em back for fear Buckner would git suspicious, and the first thing I knowed we was overhauling the buckboard foot by foot. Harry's critters warn't much account, and Cousin Bill Gordon's mules was laying their bellies to the ground.
I dunno what Kit thought when she looked back and seen us tearing after 'em, but Harry must of thought I was betraying 'em, otherwise he wouldn't of opened up on me with his six-shooter. But all he done was to knock some splinters out of the wagon and nick my shoulder. The old man would of returned the fire with his shotgun but he was scairt he might hit Kit, and both vehicles was bounding and bouncing along too fast and furious for careful aiming.
All to onst we come to a place where the road forked, and Kit and Harry taken the right-hand turn. I taken the left.
'Are you crazy, you blame fool?' roared Cousin Buckner. 'Turn back and take the other road!'
'I cain't!' I responded. 'These mules is runnin' away!'
'Yo're a liar!' howled Cousin Buckner. 'Quit pourin' leather into them mules, you blasted #$%&@*, and turn back! Turn back, cuss you!' With that he started hammering me in the head with the stock of his shotgun.
WE WAS THUNDERING along a road which run along the rim of a sloping bluff, and when Buckner's shotgun went off accidentally the mules really did git scairt and started running away, just about the time I reached back to take the shotgun away from Cousin Buckner. Being beat in the head with the butt was getting awful monotonous, because he'd been doing nothing else for the past half mile.
I yanked the gun out of his hand and just then the left hind wheel hit a stump and the hind end of the wagon went straight up in the air and the pole splintered. The mules run right out of the harness and me and the wagon and Cousin Buckner went over the bluff and down the slope in a whirling tangle of wheels and laigs and heads and profanity.
We brung up against a tree at the bottom, and I throwed the rooins off of me and riz, swearing fervently when I seen how much money I'd have to pay Cousin Bill Gordon for his wagon. But Cousin Buckner give me no time for meditation. He'd ontangled hisself from a hind wheel and was doing a war-dance in the moonlight and frothing at the mouth.
'You done that on purpose!' he raged. 'You never aimed to ketch them wretches! You taken the wrong road on purpose! You turned us over on purpose! Now I'll never ketch the scoundrel which run away with my datter--the pore, dumb, trustin' #$%&f!@* innercent!'
'Be ca'm, Cousin Buckner,' I advised. 'He'll make her a good husband. They're well onto their way to War Paint and a happy married life. Best thing you can do is forgive 'em and give 'em yore blessin'.'
'Well,' he snarled, 'you ain't neither my datter nor my son-in-law. Here's my blessin' to you!'
It was a pore return for all the trouble I'd taken for him to push me into a cactus bed and hit me with a rock the size of a watermelon. However, I taken into consideration that he was overwrought and not hisself, so I ignored his incivility and made no retort whatever, outside of splintering a wagon spoke over his head.
I then clumb the bluff, making no reply to his impassioned and profane comments, and looked around for the mules. They hadn't run far. I seen 'em grazing down the road, and I started after 'em, when I heard horses galloping back up the road toward the settlement, and around a turn in the road come Uncle Jeppard Grimes with his whiskers streaming in the moonlight, and nine or ten of his boys riding hard behind him.
'Thar he is!' he howled, impulsively discharging his six-shooter at me. 'Thar's the fiend in human form! Thar's the kidnaper of helpless jassacks! Boys, do yore duty!'
They pulled up around me and started piling off their horses with blood in their eyes and weppins in their hands.
'Hold on!' I says. 'If it's Joshua you fools are after--'
'He admits the crime!' howled Uncle Jeppard. 'Is it Joshua, says you! You know dern well it is! We been combin' the hills for you, ever since my gran'datter brought me the news! What you done with him, you scoundrel?'
'Aw,' I said, 'he's all right. I was just goin' to--'
'He evades the question!' screamed Uncle Jeppard. 'Git him, boys!'
'I TELL YOU HE'S ALL right!' I roared, but they give me no chance to explain. Them Grimeses is all alike; you cain't tell 'em nothing. You got to knock it into their fool heads. They descended on me with fence rails and rocks and wagon spokes and loaded quirts and gun stocks in a way which would of tried the patience of a saint. I always try to be as patient with my erring relatives as I can be. I merely taken their weppins away from 'em and kind of
