Author of “Alias Whispering White,” “Hashknife--Philanthropist,” etc.
The longer I inhabits this vale of tears, the more I believe in the
saying, “Honesty is the Best Policy.” A feller may get awful lonesome
and all that, but he don’t have to wear his holster tied down and take
his drink with his back to the bar.
I don’t want you to get the idea that me and “Hashknife” Hartley are bad
_hombres_, ’cause we ain’t--not so awful. We don’t make a practice of
throwing rocks at cripples and we haven’t a single mortgage on anybody’s
old homestead.
Taking it by and large, there ain’t many folks who can point their
finger at “Sleepy” Stevens and Hashknife Hartley and say--
“You’re wanted some place.”
But at that it don’t take many pointed fingers to make you feel that
you should have growed up according to the Golden Rule, went to
Sunday-school more than one week before Christmas and educated yourself
to be a harness drummer or a hotel clerk.
Hashknife is just a long, thin, angular, hatchet-faced _hombre_ with a
perpetual grin on his face. Some time or other he’s been red-headed and
freckled, but the desert sun, Dakota blizzards and Montana alkali has
faded it until he’s just a roan. I won’t brag about myself, ’cause I’m
telling the story. _Sabe?_
I found an old newspaper one day when me and Hashknife are working for
the Triangle A outfit over on the Flathead.
I’m digging under a bunk after a short piece of rope when I unearths
this old sheet, and something thereon seems to catch my eye.
It shows some pictures of bucking broncs and fellers bull-dogging
steers, and the center picture shows a silver-mounted saddle, all
scrolled up with fancy jiggers. The top of the page shows this line:
WHERE DID THEY GO?
RIDERS BUCK OUT OF SIGHT AND
LEAVE COVETED TROPHY
I takes the paper out where Hashknife is putting a new _hondo_ on his
rope and sets down beside him. His cigaret sizzles his mustache before
he gets through reading it, and then he nods his head and goes back to
work.
“She must ’a’ been some hull,” I observes.
“Yeah. Cost a hundred and eighty bucks, Sleepy. Saddle-maker told me
that he didn’t make a cent on it. You’ve got to pay big for all that
fancy scroll stuff, and there must be a heap of silver in all them
ornyments.”
“Nobody knows where they went,” says I. “Just bucked out.”
Hashknife scratches his nose and peers at that _hondo_.
“Thank ----! What folks don’t know won’t hurt ’em, Sleepy.”
Just to wise you up a little, I’m going to let you in on a little
happenstance. The towns of Yolo and Pecos ain’t far apart. Yolo is the
county seat, the same of which is the place where the sheriff holds
forth. Pecos holds such a wayward reputation that the sheriff stations
a deputy there to keep as much peace as he can get his hands on to.
A feller inhabits Yolo for a few days--feller who rides a pinto
horse. He’s wishful to buck a game of chance, but soon finds out that
they’re cinch games. He rises in his wrath and proclaims he’s been
gypped by said crooked pastime. Naturally there’s a few interested
parties who objects to having their morals paraded, and they rises to
the occasion--too late.
The rider of a calico bronc relieves ’em of their visible supply of
worldly goods, exchanges lead compliments with the sheriff and fades
out of Yolo with the sheriff on his trail.
Simultaneously a rider of a calico horse goes into a bank in Pecos and
takes what’s in sight without leaving any security, and he fades out
with the festive deputy in pursuit.
Now, these pinto riders don’t know each other, but they meets in the
mesquite, asks and answers a few questions, sends a few hunks of lead
on their back trails, and fades down a coulée while the over-anxious
sheriff and his hired killer lays out there in the brush and heaves
lead at each other.
It’s natural that the sheriff holds a grudge against them two after a
dirty trick like that. In due course of time them two bad, bad men gets
rid of their pinto broncs and decides to go the straight and narrow way.
They works honest-like to get enough money to buy a pair of horses and
gets them lifted from the corral the first time they rides to the town
of Wisdom. Said thieving operation leaves them on foot, and they casts
around for another chance to be good--if possible.
The town of Pemberton is pulling off a round-up show; so me and
Hashknife ships our rigs up there. Hashknife can ride anything you
can cinch a hull on to, and what he can’t ride he turns over to me.
Uh-huh, I sure can ride.
If my head was as educated to the twists of business as my legs are to
the twists of a bronco I’d be packing the Standard Oil company for a
pocket-piece.
Me and Hashknife circulates around until we finds an Easterner who is
willing to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for the prize saddle, and
then we enters the bucking contest. It is supposed to be for the
world’s championship, the same of which she ain’t--not by several good
riders who are too poor to come that far.
Anyway, they handed us some regular outlaw broncs, and we got all the
jolts that buckaroos are heir to, and the crowd seems to appreciate it
a heap.
Things goes along for three days with a lot of perfectly good riders
dragging their saddles back to the stable. The top riders are getting
fewer and fewer and the broncs tougher and tougher, until we sudden-like
realizes that we’re all that’s left.
Hashknife and Sleepy rides for the championship. It don’t make no
difference who wins, ’cause we splits that two hundred and fifty anyway.
They decides to have us ride the finals together. Hashknife draws El
Diablo, a roan outlaw from Wyoming, and I gets Gray Wolf, a
hammer-headed man-eater from Idaho. They’re a educated pair, if you
asks me. They’ve got just one idea in their empty heads, and that is
to have nothing on their backs but hair.
It takes four men to keep Gray Wolf’s feet on the ground long enough to
cinch the hull--even with a blind over his eyes. Hashknife’s helpers are
having the same kinda trouble.
We’re saddling in front of the grand stand, where the crowd can see all
the fun. I steps in beside my animal, slips my foot into the stirrup,
and for a moment I looks at the crowd.
Man, I plumb forgot that I was going to ride for the championship. I
swung into that saddle all humped up, catches that other stirrup,
yanks the blind and slams the spurs into Wolf before he has a chance
to get set.
* * * * *
He just makes one whale of a hop, and lights running. I seen Hashknife
go high and handsome, and then my animal bucks right into him. Lucky for
us that neither horse went down. As we came together I yelps one word at
Hashknife, and then set my spurs into that gray outlaw.
I don’t know what the crowd thought. Gray Wolf sailed across the rail
of that race-track like a bird, took a slant at the outside fence and
tore down about fifteen feet of it. The boards are still in the air
when I looks back, and here is Hashknife right at my heels, and that
Diablo animal is running like its namesake was hanging on to its
tail.
There’s one nice thing about an outlaw bronc--he don’t quit. We just set
there and rode. It took about five miles for either bronc to grab a deep
breath, and then they just grabbed it and started all over again.
We must be about ten miles from Pemberton before we stopped. There ain’t
nobody behind us. It would take airships to find us in that hump-backed
country, so we relaxes on the backs of the two worst horses in the
world--supposed to be--and rolled smokes.
“You sure it was him?” asks Hashknife.
“Think I don’t know that long, stoop-shouldered, wolf-faced _hombre_?”
“Well, well!” says Hashknife. “Who’d a thunk he’d be there? But I reckon
it’s a good place to look if you’re hunting for some certain puncher,
Sleepy. Did he know you?”
“Well, he didn’t wave at me--if that’s what you mean. He was right in
the front row, and I seen him stand up to let somebody pass.”
“Quite a ways from Yolo,” observes Hashknife. “Yes, sir, she’s quite
some ways. I don’t know how we ever made our getaway on these buckers.
Ordinary-like we’d still be in that arena, wishful but ashamed to pull
leather. I reckon it’s just luck that we got a pair of outlaws that
felt it was their day to race instead of buck.”
“Uh-huh,” says I. “Come what may, Hashknife, we’re horse-thieves, and
may the Lord have mercy or our luck hold out.”
“Amen. Where do we go now?”
“Well,” says I, “they tells me in school that a straight line is the
shortest distance between two points. Pemberton is due west; so if we
goes due east we will eventually arrive at the longest distance from
Pemberton, which contradicts the theory, but which is a glaring fact.
What do you think?”
“My ----, don’t ask me, professor. We better cinch up a little, ’cause
these broncs are liable to get back to their original ideas, and I ain’t
no pe-destrian--me.”
Hashknife is musical. When he’s thinking deep-like he often raises his
voice in song, which goes like this:
Everybod-e-e-e loves a little lo-o-o-vin’,
Little bit o’ lovin’ is fine.
To a poor cowboy in a cactus lan’
Little bit o’ lovin’ is simply gran’.
Chasin’ dogies, bustin’ broncs,
Drinkin’ up his money in honkatonks;
To a tough ol’ rooster, no good a-tall,
Little bit o’ lovin’ is heaven, that’s all.
“Lot of truth in that song, Sleepy,” says he. “Love keeps everybody
moving, old-timer.”
“All but two of us, Hashknife. Love let out that contract to the sheriff
of Yolo.”
“That’s true, Sleepy, but love laughs at blacksmiths, you know.”
“Locksmiths, Hashknife. I reckon love laughs at punchers, too. She sure
always gives me the merry ha, ha. You ought to get married, Hashknife.
You’re homely as ----, but you’ve got a face that nobody ever gets tired
of. Yes, sir, that face of yours can be looked upon and mistaken for
lots of things.
“Now, if you was married, Hashknife, and the sheriff showed up at your
teepee, he’d say:
“‘If there ain’t Hashknife, the son-of-a-gun! Married, too! Well, well!
He can’t take a drink without asking his wife. She’s packing his Bull
Durham and lets him have half enough cigarettes, and she won’t let him
have enough money at one time to set into a four-bit jack-pot game.
“‘He’d be tickled to death to have me arrest him, but I won’t. Naw, sir.
Dawgone him, he’s got to suffer for his sins.’”
“As a prophet, Sleepy, you’re a total loss,” says he. “Never mind my
face, ol’-timer. I ain’t pretty to look upon, but I’ve sure got a heart
in my bosom.”
“According to the laws of anatomy,” I admits; “but females don’t hanker
to marry a man just because his insides are all in their proper places.
You’ve got gall on your liver, too, Hashknife, and she shows a lot more
externally than your heart does.”
“All right; all right, Sleepy. You knows so danged much about physiology
that I wonders why you ain’t a doctor with a diplomy on the wall instead
of being a common puncher with a price on your head.”
* * * * *
We points east until midnight, and then stakes out our broncs and
grabs a little sleep. The next day about noon we hits a ranch. There
ain’t nobody there but the Chink cook, but he’s plenty for our needs.
He’s one good cook, you bet your life, and he don’t roll his eyes
when me and Hashknife consumes eight eggs per each and a pound or two
of ham.
“John,” says Hashknife when we’re filled, “where do we come to if we
rides straight up that way?”
The Chink considers it for a minute.
“Maybeso you find Willow Cleek lange. Bimeby you find Wind Liver lange.
Too far, I no _sabe_.”
“Wind River range good place, John?”
“Pletty good, you _sabe_? Willow Cleek dam bad!”
“Willow Creek bad, eh? What’s the matter--rustler?”
“Maybeso. Evelybody clousin. You _sabe_? Maybeso bloodah, sistah,
clousin. All ’lated. You _sabe_? No good.”
“All related, John?”
“Betcha life! Allee time fam’ly fight. Too much clousin, dam bad!”
“All same Chinamen; eh, John?” grins Hashknife.
“Allee same ----!” grunts the Chink, which shows he’s range broke.
“China boy maybeso have plenty sistah, bloodah, clousin, yessah. China
boy no hate ’lation. China boy he say:
“‘I please hope you make plenty money. I plenty glad you get litch.’
Yessah, you betchum.
“Willow Cleek he say--
“‘Go to ----! I hope you get lynch fo’ stealum cow.’”
“How about outsiders, John?” I asks. “No relation folks?”
“Ver’ bad place. You _sabe_? No ’lation--last quick. Evelybody makeum
hard to catch. You _sabe_? Dam bad lange, you betchum.”
“Much obliged, John,” says Hashknife.
“All lite, you fin’ out. Goo’-by.”
“My gosh!” grunts Hashknife as we rides away. “Don’t never tell me that
a Chink can’t read human nature. He knowed there wasn’t no use warning
me and you.”
“We ain’t got no use for Willow Creek, Hashknife.”
“Sure not, Sleepy, but she must be some queer layout. Any time a
Chinaman opines a place to be _hyas cultus_, she must be worse and
more of it.”
We cuts across the hills until about four o’clock, when we strikes a
road. Just about that time we meets a saddled bronc with reins dragging,
and we sets there and watches it swing around us; never offering to stop
it. All to once our ears gets this salutation:
“Of all the ignorant, imbecilic know-nothing punchers I ever seen,
you’re the worst. Why in thunder don’t one of you imitation punchers
hang a rope on that animal?”
We looks up. She’s standing in the middle of the road, a hand on each
hip, and glares at us. She’s a frail-looking little maid, with a big mop
of gold-colored hair and a freckled nose. Man, I’ve seen blue eyes in my
time, but they’re all faded looking beside hers.
Mad? Holy mackinaw, that girl is madder than a bob-cat with its tail
caught in a trap.
“Your hoss?” asks Hashknife. “Belongs to you?”
“Do you see any other animal around here?” she snaps. “What in the name
of ossified owls do you think I was yelling about? If that don’t answer
your question, Mister Long-Legs, I’ll add this much--y-e-s! Now, if
you’re too lazy to toss a rope----”
“How’d he get away from you?” asks Hashknife, shaking out his loop.
“I was playing the piano and left the parlor door open,” says she; and
all you’ve got to do is look at them blue eyes to know she’s telling the
truth.
“Wait!” says she, “Maybe you’d like to know more. My name is Glory and
the horse’s name is Beans, and I’m seventeen and Beans is six, and the
saddle was bought in Ranger. I’ve got a sister who married a preacher,
and my pa came from Missouri, and ma is originally a Swede, and Beans
was bought from ‘One-Eyed’ Olson, and if you don’t get busy he’ll be
back home before you get your mouth shut.”
She stops all out of breath.
“My ----!” grunts Hashknife, “My ----! Yes’m.”
Hashknife is a good roper. That long boy can heave the hemp as far
as the best of ’em, but Diablo ain’t educated to no rope, and when
Hashknife drops the loop over that runaway bronc Diablo won’t stay
right end to.
No, sir, that fool outlaw whirls right around and went the other way,
which is against all rules. It was a good rope. She sure seen her duty
and done it right. Hashknife’s latigo busted, and he sets up there in
the air with nothing between his legs but the saddle.
He comes to earth in a tangle of mesquite, and Beans gets stopped so
quick he turns a flip-flop. I drops my loop on Diablo as he comes
past, and when the rope tightens I gets treated to some of the
fanciest bucking I ever experienced. Gray Wolf came back to life and
done just what the Pemberton audience figured he’d do.
I reckon he’d be bucking yet, but the rope got looped around his front
legs, and we comes down in a heap. Anyway we stay with Diablo, and when
I got back to the road I finds Hashknife setting there on a rock, with
his head in his hands.
* * * * *
“What became of the lady fair?” I asks.
Hashknife squints at me and points off up the road.
“She--she said to tell you it was worth paying to see. Said we ought to
lose our ropes and join P. T. Barnum, Sleepy.”
“Yeah?” says I. “Wonder if she knows that Barnum is dead?”
“Is he?”
Hashknife gawps at me and scratches his head.
“Well, I reckon maybe she does, Sleepy. Daw-w-gone!”
We fixes Hashknife’s latigo and pilgrims on up the road. Hashknife acts
a heap thoughtful.
“I never in all my danged life----”
“Neither did I,” says I, and Hashknife grins.
“Rampagin’ little bob-cat.”
“Name’s Glory. Pa’s from Missouri; ma’s a Swede.”
“Keeps Beans in the parlor,” adds Hashknife. “Lucky bronc.”
Then Hashknife bursts into song:
“Chasin’ dogies, bustin’ broncs,
Drinkin’ up his money in the honkatonks;
Tough ol’ rooster, no good a-tall----
“Say, Sleepy, that love thing is mighty queer. She’s a heap like
electricity. You don’t know what it looks like or where it comes from,
but she sure can jolt ---- out of a feller. There’s the first signpost
I’ve seen since I left Kansas.”
It’s an old board dangling on a drunken post at the forks of the road.
The words are partly faded out, but she’s still readable.
THERE IS A CLICK ON WILLER CRICK
THE WORST IN ALL THIS NASHUN.
THE HITE OF THEIR AMBISHUN-IS
TO BEAT THEIR OWN RELASHUN.
“Hashknife,” says I, “we are at the turning of the ways. Yonder lieth
the road to Willer Crick; ahead of us lies the road to ---- knows where.
The Chink warned us.”
Hashknife reads the poem over again.
“She speaks fluently of ‘their own relation,’ Sleepy. Being as me and
you ain’t blood brothers to the ‘click’, maybe--What do you think?”
“Anyway,” says I, “the Stevenses never did believe in signs, and taking
advice from a Chink never was our motto.”
“Pshaw! Your folks and mine belongs to the same church, Sleepy.”
Some gentle buckaroos leave their six-guns hanging in the barn or the
house when they goes out to ride buckers, but me and Hashknife never
imitated that dangerous custom; therefore we’re still heeled.
Hashknife packs a .41 Colt on his hip and a .45 derringer in his vest
pocket, but I takes a chance with a ordinary .44 Colt on my hip. I
carried a bowie-knife once, but I was always afraid I’d cut myself,
or that somebody’d take it away from me and start carving, so I threw
it in the river.
I chides Hashknife a heap over that derringer. Little two-barreled
cannon, which is liable to knock a finger off when it roars. I don’t
like ’em.
Me and Hashknife are just ordinary shots. I never seen but two punchers
that was what you’d call good shots. A prospector killed one of ’em with
a pick handle, and the other shot himself accidental.
We comes to a ranch-house pretty soon. A feller is setting on the steps,
cleaning a rifle; so we went on. Willer Crick ain’t what you’d designate
as being a land of milk and honey.
Away back in the dim and distant past she got shook up and pawed over by
a mighty power, which left her hump-backed to a startling degree. She’s
a place that’s had her ups and downs, and it don’t take no scientist to
point out that fact.
“’Pears to me that I hears shots,” observes Hashknife, stopping his
bronc. “There she goes again!”
“Hashknife,” says I, “you’re getting nervous like a old widder woman.
Ain’t folks got a right to shoot?”
“I--I reckon they has, Sleepy. Oh, sure. Just wondered--that’s all.”
We rides down around a curve, and ahead of us we sees a ranch-house.
She’s sort of a tumble-down affair with a swaybacked roof. Taking it
by and large, she needs a heap of fixing to be up-to-date in any
respect.
We’re beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, so we swings off the main
road, goes through the open gate and rides up to the house. There’s
something beside the steps, sort of like a heap of clothes; so we rides
up closer.
“Holy henhawks!” grunts Hashknife. “Corpse!”
It’s a human being and Hashknife wasn’t shooting very wide when he
pronounced it a corpse. It’s an old feller with white hair and whiskers,
and he’s laying there sort of doubled up over a Winchester. There’s a
dozen empty shells scattered around, which shows that he threw some lead
before he quit. Hashknife tears open his shirt and feels of his heart.
“Flickerin’,” pronounces Hashknife. “Let’s take him in out of the sun.”
The inside of the house is on a par with the outside. We lays the old
feller on a worn-out sofy, and then rustles some water. He appears to
have stopped a lot o’ lead, but after we sluices him a little he opens
his eyes.
He stares at us for a few seconds, and then he busts loose. Talk about
profanity! Man, he could sure handle it proper. Make a feller sort of
feel queer to hear a man, skidding West as fast as his heart can pump
blood out of bullet-holes, cursing like a mule-skinner. Sure he was
conscious.
“Who in ---- are you?” he asks when his supply of words seems to run
short.
We tells him who we are, an’ he actually grins.
“Find me a pencil and paper,” he croaks. “---- me if I don’t get even!
Kill me for my money--will they! ---- murderers!”
“Who shot you?” asks Hashknife.
“None of your ---- business! Find me that paper and pencil! I can’t
live long, but I’ll stick long enough to get ---- good and even with
Albright.”
I rustled a sheet of paper and a pencil, and handed him a book to hold
it on.
“Now hold me up, so I can write, ----it!”
He sure wrote a wabbly hand. He asks us to spell our names for him, and
he chuckles to himself as he writes.
Once I thought the old boy was gone. He dropped the pencil, but I gave
it to him and he cursed his weak fingers. He managed to sign a name at
the bottom, and then dumped book and all off his lap.
“They lose!” he whispers. “I don’t know you fellers, but by ---- I’ve
got to chance it! I wouldn’t die fast enough to suit ’em; so they----”
* * * * *
“Well,” says Hashknife soft-like, “he didn’t suffer none. Barring his
tongue, I wouldn’t mind having him for a gran’paw. He sure had the
constitution of a grizzly.”
Hashknife picks up the paper and squints at it. It reads:
To anybody concerned:
I hereby states that everything I own in this world is hereby
given to Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens. This means
everything.