"Well," I said, "here's a five dollar gold piece to pay for the dern hawg's tail, and you let J. Pembroke alone!"
"Gold cain't satisfy honor," he said bitterly, but nevertheless grabbing the coin like a starving Kiowa grabbing a beefsteak. "I'll let this here outrage pass for the time. But I'll be watchin' that maneyack to see that he don't muterlate no more of my prize livestock."
And so saying he went off muttering in his beard.
I went back to where I left J. Pembroke, and there he was talking to Miss Margaret which had jest come up. She had more color in her face than I'd saw recent.
"Fancy meeting a girl like you here!" J. Pembroke was saying.
"No more surprising than meeting a man like you!" says she with a kind of fluttery laugh.
"Oh, a sportsman wanders into all sorts of out-of-the-way places," says he, and seeing they hadn't noticed me coming up, I says: "Well, J. Pembroke, I didn't find yore wild boar, but I met the owner."
He looked at me kinda blank, and said vaguely: "Wild boar? What wild boar?"
"That 'un you shot the tail off of with that there fool elerfant gun," I said. "Lissen: next time you see a hawg-critter you remember there ain't no wild boars in the Humbolts. They is critters called haverleeners in South Texas, but they ain't even none of them in Nevada. So next time you see a hawg, jest reflect that it's merely one of Uncle Jeppard Grimes' razorbacks and refrain from shootin' at it."
"Oh, quite!" he agreed absently, and started talking to Miss Margaret again.
So I picked up the elerfant gun which he'd absent-mindedly laid down, and said: "Well, it's gittin' late. Let's go. We won't go back to pap's cabin tonight, J. Pembroke. We'll stay at Uncle Saul Garfield's cabin on t'other side of the Apache Mountain settlement."
Like I said, them cabins was awful clost together. Uncle Saul's cabin was below the settlement, but it warnt much over three hundred yards from cousin Bill Kirby's cabin where Miss Margaret boarded. The other cabins was on t'other side of Bill's, mostly, strung out up the run and up and down the slopes.
I told J. Pembroke and Miss Margaret to walk on down to the settlement whilst I went back and got the hosses.
They'd got to the settlement time I catched up with 'em, and Miss Margaret had gone into the Kirby cabin, and I seen a light spring up in her room. She had one, of them new-fangled ile lamps she brung with her, the only one on Bear Creek. Taller candles and pine chunks was good enough for us folks. And she'd hanged rag-things over the winders which she called curtains. You never seen nothing like it. I tell you she was that elegant you wouldn't believe it.
We walked on towards Uncle Saul's, me leading the hosses, and after awhile J. Pembroke says: "A wonderful creature!"
"You mean Dan'l Webster?" I ast.
"No!" he said. "No, no! I mean Miss Devon."
"She sure is," I said. "She'll make me a fine wife."
He hirled like I'd stabbed him and his face looked pale in the dusk.
"You?" he said. "You a fine wife?"
"Well," I said bashfully, "she ain't sot the day yet, but I've sure sot my heart on that gal."
"Oh!" he says. "Oh!" says he, like he had the toothache. Then he said kinda hesitatingly: "Suppose--er, just suppose, you know! Suppose a rival for her affections should appear? What would you do?"
"You mean if some dirty, low-down son of a mangy skunk was to try to steal my gal?" I said, whirling so sudden he staggered backwards.
"Steal my gal?" I roared, seeing red at the mere thought. "Why, I'd--I'd--"
Words failing me I grabbed a big sapling and tore it up by the roots and broke it acrost my knee and throwed the pieces clean through a rail fence on the other side of the road.
"That there is a faint idee!" I said, panting with passion.
"That gives me a very vivid conception," he said faintly, and he said nothing more till we reched the cabin and seen Uncle Saul Garfield standing in the light of the door combing his black beard with his fingers.
Next morning J. Pembroke seemed like he'd kinda lost interest in b'ars. He said all that walking he done over the slopes of Apache Mountain had made his laig muscles sore. I never heard of sech a thing, but nothing that gets the matter with these tenderfeet surprises me much, they is sech a effemernate race, so I ast him would he like to go fishing down the run and he said all right.
But we hadn't been fishing more'n a hour when he said he believed he'd go back to Uncle Saul's cabin and take him a nap, and he insisted on going alone, so I stayed where I was and catched me a nice string of trout.
I went back to the cabin about noon, and ast Uncle Saul if J. Pembroke had got his nap out.
"Why, heck," said Uncle Saul, "I ain't seen him since you and him started down the run this mornin'. Wait a minute--yonder he comes from the other direction."
Well, J. Pembroke didn't say where he'd been all morning, and I didn't ast him, because a tenderfoot don't generally have no reason for anything he does.
We et the trout I catched, and after dinner he perked up a right smart and got his shotgun and said he'd like to hunt some wild turkeys. I never heard of anybody hunting anything as big as a turkey with a shotgun, but I didn't say nothing, because tenderfeet is like that.
So we headed up the slopes of Apache Mountain, and I stopped by the schoolhouse to tell Miss Margaret I probably wouldn't get back in time to take my reading and writing lesson, and she said: "You know, until I met your friend, Mr. Pembroke, I didn't realize what a difference there was between men like him, and--well, like the men on Bear Creek."
"I know," I said. "But don't hold it agen him. He means well. He jest ain't got no sense. Everybody cain't be smart like me. As a special favor to me, Miss Margaret, I'd like for you to be exter nice to the poor sap, because he's a friend of my friend Bill Glanton down to War Paint."
"I will, Breckinridge," she replied heartily, and I thanked her and went away with my big manly heart pounding in my gigantic bosom.
Me and J. Pembroke headed into the heavy timber, and we hadn't went far till I was convinced that somebody was follering us. I kept hearing twigs snapping, and onst I thought I seen a shadowy figger duck behind a bush. But when I run back there, it was gone, and no track to show in the pine needles. That sort of thing would of made me nervous, anywheres else, because they is a goodly number of people which would like to get a clean shot at my back from the bresh, but I knowed none of them dast come after me in my own territory. If anybody was trailing us it was bound to be one of my relatives and to save my neck I couldn't think of no reason why anyone of 'em would be gunning for me.
But I got tired of it, and left J. Pembroke in a small glade whilst I snuck back to do some shaddering of my own. I aimed to cast a big circle around the clearing and see could I find out who it was, but I'd hardly got out of sight of J. Pembroke when I heard a gun bang.
I turned to run back and here come J. Pembroke yelling: "I got him! I got him! I winged the bally aborigine!"
He had his head down as he busted through the bresh and he run into me in his excitement and hit me in the belly with his head so hard he bounced back like a rubber ball and landed in a bush with his riding boots brandishing wildly in the air.
"Assist me, Breckinridge!" he shrieked. "Extricate me! They will be hot on our trail!"
"Who?" I demanded, hauling him out by the hind laig and setting him on his feet.
"The Indians!" he hollered, jumping up and down and waving his smoking shotgun frantically. "The bally redskins! I shot one of them! I saw him sneaking through the bushes! I saw his legs! I knew it was an Indian instantly because he had on moccasins instead of boots! Listen! That's him now!"
"A Injun couldn't cuss like that," I said. "You've shot Uncle Jeppard Grimes!"
Telling him to stay there, I run through the bresh, guided by the maddened howls which riz horribly on the air, and busting through some bushes I seen Uncle Jeppard rolling on the ground with both hands clasped to the rear bosom of his buckskin britches which was smoking freely. His langwidge was awful to hear.