“Let’s go, folks,” says Hashknife. “We’ve got to see the judge.”
We looked back after we got started, and sees Molly setting there in the
bumpy old wagon with her hands folded in her lap, but she wasn’t feeling
the jolts of that old dead-ex wagon.
Old Judge Stevens was plumb receptive. The whole gang of us enters his
office, and after he reads that confession he goes straight up.
“Get him out?” he howls. “Will I? Of all the rotten deals----”
“Come on, Sleepy,” says Hashknife, taking me by the sleeve. “Let’s get
out before the old coot dies from apoplexy.”
Crosby grabbed us at the door and he’s trembly all over.
“Where you going?” he asks. “Me and Older want you to take third
interest in the new outfit. No, no, you can’t refuse! Why, man alive,
we’ve----”
“Just a minute,” grins Hashknife. “Me and Sleepy has got to see a man.”
We manages to get away before he kissed us, and then we met the man. He
asked us what we’d have, and we told him. We bathed our souls in it, and
we grew light-hearted and gay.
“Sleepy,” says Hashknife, “we’ve got seventeen hundred dollars and a
third interest in a cow outfit. Do we settle down to a ripe old age?”
“And give up our hunt for Toothpick Thompson, Hashknife?”
We looks at each other and both shakes our heads at the same time.
“Tell you what we’ll do: We’ll give Molly and her feeance seven hundred
and fifty to start housekeeping on, eh? Fine! A thousand is plenty for
us.”
We talked to the man again, and later on we finds Molly and her dad and
Older. Hashknife makes an elaborate bow, forgets the speech we framed
up, but gives Molly the check. He orates in favor of giving Molly and
her man the third interest and keeping the cow outfit in the family.
I starts in where Hashknife left off and talked so danged fast that they
can’t refuse. Molly kissed both of us, and I think I kissed Older and
Crosby. Hashknife says I did, but I don’t remember kissing Older.
Next thing I remember is meeting the restaurant person with the long
lock of hair and ancient cigaret.
“The sheriff sloped,” says he. “Hope he never comes back.”
“Whyfore he sloped?” I asks.
“Shot a feller who didn’t have no gun. I hope they catch him and hang
the son-of-a-rooster. Know what he done--him and Spooner? They arrested
Shorty Blewett just when he was going to pay me the seventeen dollars he
owed me.”
“Who did he shoot?” asks Hashknife.
“Brill. Betcha the JHE outfit will make him hard to catch.”
“Kill him?”
“Not dead. They sent him to Divide on a buckboard. Brill took a few
drinks and met the sheriff. Nobody knows why Ells shot him, but Brill
was unarmed and--that’s bad business. The sheriff packed a horse and
lit out.”
Hashknife writes him out a check for seventeen, and we both shakes hands
with the feller. Then we went on. In the saloon where we had our first
run-in with Ells the bartender sets ’em up to us and acts real friendly.
“Got a note for you,” says he, handing Hashknife a slip of paper. “Brill
wrote it after he was shot. Said to slip it to the tall one.”
Hashknife leans against the bar and reads it over several times. Then he
digs down inside his shirt and pulls out a little buckskin sack, which
he turns around and around in his fingers. Pretty soon he says:
“Sleepy, will you take this and give it to Molly? Tell her it’s a
Christmas present to her and Shorty from Hashknife Hartley. Tha’s all,
cowboy.”
Molly didn’t know what to say, and I went away before she said it. I had
to hunt all over town to find Hashknife, and then I meets him coming out
of the bank. We gets on our broncs and as usual I follers Hashknife out
of town.
We rides along quite a while in silence and then Hashknife starts
singing, “If I ne-e-e-e-ver had ’a’ met you, I ne-e-e-e-ver would ’a’
loved you, git along my little dogie, git along my little dearie----”
“Did you get that thousand dollars, Hashknife?” I asks.
“Minus seventeen dollars,” says he. “No, but it’s safe, Sleepy.”
“Where?”
“In a church.”
“Go ahead and talk.”
“I was in the bank to get it, Sleepy. Little old coot comes jigging in,
and lays down a dollar and eighty cents. Funny little coot, Sleepy, with
eyes like a tired dog. Says to the cashier----
“‘Here is a little more--very little; but each cent brings us nearer to
a church in Badger City.’
“You building a church?” I asks, and he smiles--not grins, Sleepy--and
says----
“‘We are not building yet, brother, but we have hopes.’
“I hands him the check and says to him----
“‘If every dollar brings a hope, pardner, have nine hundred and
eighty-three hopes on us.’”
We drifts along for a while, and then Hashknife turns to me.
“Sleepy, you ain’t sore, are you?”
“Yeah, I am; sore that we gave two hundred and fifty to Brill when the
church business is so hopeless. I ain’t asking much, Hashknife, but I’d
admire to know what that present was which I gave Molly?”
“A bullet, Sleepy--just a old lead bullet.”
“Merry Christmas,” says I. “You’re a regular Santa Claus.”
“Once upon a time,” says Hashknife, “there was two jiggers, who--well,
one of them says public-like----
“‘I’m going to shoot Hashknife Hartley.’
“Hashknife rises up on his hind legs and orates--
“‘If you do I’ll dig out the bullet and make you eat it if I have to
foller you the rest of my life.’
“That was the bullet, Sleepy. I didn’t make good.”
We rides along for a while, and then Hashknife turns in his saddle and
hands me back the note which the bartender had given him. It read:
DER SIR--Shorty Blewett is a nice feller, but maybe you
like to know he is Toothpik Tomson just the same but
diferent name. Yours truly, BRILL.
I stares at Hashknife’s homely, sober face, and all to once he breaks
into a big grin.
“Aw, I ain’t mad at nobody, Sleepy. She’s a great old world.”
“Uh-huh, and few of us ever get out of it alive, Hashknife.”
“Yeah, that’s a fact, cowboy, but she helps a lot if we can help here
and grin when we leave for the hereafter--ho, hum-m-m-m-m. Git along
my little dogie, git along my little dogie; we’re going to Montana on
the old Lo-Lo trail.”
And that was whatever.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 18, 1920 issue of
Adventure magazine.]