APPLY TO HUGH McCLINTOCK
Hugh dropped into the office of the Piodie _Banner_ and paid for an
advertisement in the paper and for two hundred and fifty posters set
with display type.
The editor glanced over the copy. “I can get the bills out this
afternoon. The ad will appear in the morning.”
The sheet of paper handed in by McClintock bore no evidence of being
loaded with dynamite. Upon it was printed roughly with a pencil this
notice:
FOUND
In the Alley between Turkey Creek Avenue
And Monument Street
(At the Sacramento Storage Warehouse)
ONE BOWIE KNIFE WITH FOURTEEN NOTCHES
Owner Can Have Same By Claiming and Proving Title
To Property
Apply To Hugh McClintock
The owner of the printing plant looked the copy over a second time.
“’Course, I’m not here to turn business away, Mr. McClintock, but—well,
are the dodgers necessary? Wouldn’t the ad in the paper be enough?”
“Maybe so. But I want to be sure the owner sees it. I reckon I’ll take
the bills, too,” Hugh said easily.
He hired an old coloured man to tack up the bills on buildings, fences,
and posts. To make sure that they were in conspicuous places Hugh went
along himself. He also made arrangements with saloon keepers and
gambling house owners by which he was allowed to have the posters put on
the walls of these resorts. His manner was so matter of fact that not
one of his innocent accomplices suspected there was more behind the
advertisement than appeared on the face of it.
“Fourteen notches. Looks like it might be Sam Dutch’s bowie you found,
stranger,” one bartender suggested. “This camp sure howls, but I reckon
it ain’t got many fourteen notchers. Only one far as I know.”
“If the knife belongs to Mr. Dutch he can have it by applying for it,”
Hugh said mildly.
“I expect he can have ’most anything he wants in this man’s town if he
sure enough asks for it,” the man in the apron grinned.
In the middle of the afternoon, at which hour he first daily appeared to
the world, Sam Dutch slouched down town with a story already prepared to
account for his battered face. The tale he meant to tell was that in the
darkness he had fallen into a prospect hole and cut his cheeks,
forehead, and lips on the sharp quartz he had struck.
On a telegraph pole near the end of Turkey Creek Avenue a poster caught
his eye. He read it with mixed emotions. The predominating ones were
rage, a fury of hate, and an undercurrent of apprehension. He tore the
bill down and trampled it in the mud under his feet.
Half a minute later he saw a second bill, this time on the side of a
store. This, too, he destroyed, with much explosive language. Between
Rawhide Street and the Porphyry Lode saloon he ripped down three more
notices of the finding of a bowie knife with fourteen notches. When he
stopped at the bar and ordered a brandy sling the man was dangerous as a
wounded grizzly.
The bartender chatted affably. He was in the habit of saying that he had
not lost any quarrels with gunmen and he did not intend to find any.
“Fine glad day, Mr. Dutch. Nice change from Monday. Hotter’n hell or
Yuma then, I say.”
The bad man growled.
“I was sure enough spittin’ cotton. Went up the gulch with T. B. Gill.
Creek’s dry as a cork leg. Good rain wouldn’t hurt none,” the young
fellow went on.
“’Nother’fthesame,” snarled Dutch, his voice thick with uncontrollable
fury.
The bartender made a mental comment. “Sore’s a toad on a hot rock this
mo’ning.” He tried another subject, with intent to conciliate. “Young
fellow in a while back and wanted to hang up a bill. I said, ‘Sure, hop
to it.’ Ain’t lost any hog stickers myse’f, but maybe some other
gent——”
Dutch glared round, found the bill with his eyes, and dragged out a navy
revolver. Three bullets crashed through the poster and the wall back of
it. The killer whirled and flung the fourth shot at the man behind the
bar.
But that garrulous youth was fleeing wildly for safety. He had no
intention whatever of being Number Fifteen. Between him and the back
door was a table. He took it in his stride with all the ease of a
champion hurdler. Down the alley he went like a tin-canned cur with a
mob of small boys behind.
Inside of ten minutes Piodie knew that Sam Dutch was on the warpath
again and that no man who did not want a permanent home on Boot Hill
would be wise to mention posters or bowie knives to him. Piodie made a
good many guesses as to the truth of the situation. Something had taken
place that the town knew nothing about. The poster, Dutch’s battered
face, his rage, and the absence of his bowie knife from its accustomed
sheath in the man’s boot, all bore some relation to the mystery.
“Who is this Hugh McClintock, anyhow?” asked a citizen newly arrived
from Ohio. “Anybody know anything about him?”
Irish Tom Carberry grinned. He was at the post office getting his mail
when the innocent question drifted to him. He looked at the stranger.
“Sam Dutch knows him. So do I. We know him domn well.”
He gave no further information, but after he had gone another former
resident of Aurora whispered advice to the Ohioan. “Better not be so
curious in public, friend.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s liable to be a killin’ before night. Don’t you see
McClintock has served notice on Dutch that he can’t be chief of Piodie
while he’s here? It’s up to Sam to make good or shut up.”
“All I asked was——”
“We done heard what you asked. It ain’t etiquette in Nevada to ask
questions unless you aim to take a hand in the play. You ain’t declarin’
yoreself in, are you?”
“Bet your boots I’m not. None of my business.”
“You said something that time.” The former Aurora man walked away.
The man from the Western Reserve looked after him resentfully. “This is
the darndest place. I ask a question, and you’d think I’d made a break
of some kind. Is there any harm in what I said? I leave it to any of
you. Is there?” he asked querulously.
Jim Budd drew him aside and explained. “Hell’s bells, man, don’t be so
inquisitive! I knew a fellow lived to be a hundred onct ’tendin’ to his
own business. But I’ll tell you who Hugh McClintock is, since yore
system is so loaded with why-fors and who-is-hes. The Kid’s the man that
ran Dutch outa the Esmeralda country. He’s the man whose vote saved
Irish Tom from being hanged when the stranglers got busy at Aurora. He’s
the shotgun messenger who bumped off Black Hank Perronoud when he held
up the Carson stage. No gamer man ever threw leg over leather. I’d
oughta know, for he rode pony express for me two years through the
Indian country.”
“Are he and Dutch going to fight?”
“Great jumpin’ Jehosophat, how do I know?” rasped the fat man irritably.
“I’m no tin god on wheels, an’ I ain’t no seventh son of a seventh son.
If I was I’d go locate me a million-dollar mine _pronto_. You know the
layout well as I do. Do yore own guessin’, an’ _do it private_.”
Dutch whispered a word in the ears of his satellites Vance and Hopkins
later in the day. Those two gentlemen made together a tour of the town
and tore down all the bills McClintock had tacked up.