By a peculiar coincidence, half of that twenty men was Gooseneck's, and half was Bull's. So naturally Lobo choosed his pals, and Clanton chosed his'n.
"I don't like this," Gooseneck whispered to me. "I'd ruther they'd been mixed up. This is beginnin' to look like a contest between my gang and Bull's. If they win, it'll make me look cheap. Where the hell is Snake River?"
"I ain't seen him," I said, "You ought to of made 'em take off their guns."
"Shucks," says he. "What could possibly stir up trouble at sech a lady-like affair as a spellin' bee. Dang it, where is Snake River? Old Jake said he'd git him here on time."
"Hey, Gooseneck!" yelled Bull Hawkins from where he sot amongst his coharts. "Why'n't you start the show?"
Bull was a big broad-shouldered hombre with black mustashes like a walrus. The crowd begun to holler and cuss and stomp their feet and this pleased Bull very much.
"Keep 'em amused," hissed Gooseneck. "I'll go look for Snake River."
He snuck out a side door and I riz up and addressed the throng. "Gents," I said, "be patient! They is a slight delay, but it won't be long. Meantime I'll be glad to entertain you all to the best of my ability. Would you like to hear me sing Barbary Allen?"
"No, by grab!" they answered in one beller.
"Well, yo're a-goin' to!" I roared, infuriated by this callous lack of the finer feelings. "I will now sing," I says, drawing my .45s "and I blows the brains out of the first coyote which tries to interrupt me."
I then sung my song without interference, and when I was through I bowed and waited for the applause, but all I heard was Lobo Harrison saying: "Imagine what the pore wolves on Bear Creek has to put up with!"
This cut me to the quick, but before I could make a suitable reply, Gooseneck slid in, breathing heavy. "I can't find Snake River," he hissed. "But the bar-keep gimme a book he found somewheres. Most of the leaves is tore out, but there's plenty left. I've marked some of the longest words, Breck. You can read good enough to give 'em out. You got to! If we don't start the show right away, this mob'll wreck the place. Yo're the only man not in the match which can even read a little, outside of me and Bull. It wouldn't look right for me to do it, and I shore ain't goin' to let Bull run my show."
I knew I was licked.
"Aw, well, all right," I said. "I might of knew I'd be the goat. Gimme the book."
"Here it is," he said. "'The Adventures of a French Countess.' Be dern shore you don't give out no words except them I marked."
"Hey!" bawled Jack Clanton. "We're gittin' tired standin' up here. Open the ball."
"All right," I says. "We commences."
"Hey!" said Bull. "Nobody told us Elkins was goin' to conduck the ceremony. We was told a cultured gent from outa town was to do it."
"Well," I says irritably, "Bear Creek is my home range, and I reckon I'm as cultured as any snake-hunter here. If anybody thinks he's better qualified than me, step up whilst I stomp his ears off."
Nobody volunteered, so I says "All right. I tosses a dollar to see who gits the first word." It fell for Harrison's gang, so I looked in the book at the first word marked, and it was a gal's name.
"Catharine," I says.
Nobody said nothing.
"Catharine!" I roared, glaring at Lobo Harrison.
"What you lookin' at me for?" he demanded. "I don't know no gal by that name."
"%$&*@!" I says with passion. "That's the word I give out. Spell it, dammit!"
"Oh," says he. "All right. K-a-t-h-a-r-i-n-n."
"That's wrong," I says.
"What you mean wrong?" he roared. "That's right!"
"'Tain't accordin' to the book," I said.
"Dang the book," says he. "I knows my rights and I ain't to be euchered by no ignorant grizzly from Bear Creek!"
"Who you callin' ignorant?" I demanded, stung, "Set down! You spelt it wrong."
"You lie!" he howled, and went for his gun. But I fired first.
WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARED away I seen everybody was on their feet preparing for to stampede, sech as warn't trying to crawl under the benches, so I said: "Set down, everybody. They ain't nothin' to git excited about. The spellin' match continues--and I'll shoot the first scoundrel which tries to leave the hall before the entertainment's over."
Gooseneck hissed fiercely at me: "Dammit, be careful who you shoot, cain't'cha? That was another one of my voters!"
"Drag him out!" I commanded, wiping off some blood where a slug had notched my ear. "The spellin' match is ready to commence again."
They was a kind of tension in the air, men shuffling their feet and twisting their mustashes and hitching their gun-belts, but I give no heed. I now approached the other side, with my hand on my pistol, and says to Clanton: "Can you spell Catharine?"
"C-a-t-h-a-r-i-n-e!" says he.
"Right, by golly!" I says, consulting The French Countess, and the audience cheered wildly and shot off their pistols into the roof.
"Hey!" says Bill Stark, on the other side. "That's wrong. Make him set down! It spells with a 'K'!"
"He spelt it jest like it is in the book," I says. "Look for yoreself."
"I don't give a damn!" he yelled, rudely knocking The French Countess outa my hand. "It's a misprint! It spells with a 'K' or they'll be more blood on the floor! He spelt it wrong and if he don't set down I shoots him down!"
"I'm runnin' this show!" I bellered, beginning to get mad. "You got to shoot me before you shoots anybody else!"
"With pleasure!" snarled he, and went for his gun.... Well, I hit him on the jaw with my fist and he went to sleep amongst a wreckage of busted benches. Gooseneck jumped up with a maddened shriek.
"Dang yore soul, Breckinridge!" he squalled. "Quit cancelin' my votes! Who air you workin' for--me or Hawkins?"
"Haw! haw! haw!" bellered Hawkins. "Go on with the show! This is the funniest thing I ever seen!"
Wham! The door crashed open and in pranced Old Jake Hanson, waving a shotgun.
"Welcome to the festivities, Jake," I greeted him, "Where's--"
"You son of a skunk!" quoth he, and let go at me with both barrels. The shot scattered remarkable. I didn't get more'n five or six of 'em and the rest distributed freely amongst the crowd. You ought to of heard 'em holler--the folks, I mean, not the buckshot.
"What in tarnation air you doin'?" shrieked Gooseneck. "Where's Snake River?"
"Gone!" howled Old Jake. "Run off! Eloped with my datter!"
Bull Hawkins riz with a howl of anguish, convulsively clutching his whiskers.
"Salomey?" he bellered. "Eloped?"
"With a cussed gambolier they brung over from Alderville!" bleated Old Jake, doing a war-dance in his passion. "Elkins and Wilkerson persuaded me to take that snake into my boozum! In spite of my pleas and protests they forced him into my peaceful $# %* household, and he stole the pore, mutton-headed innercent's blasted heart with his cultured airs and his slick talk! They've run off to git married!"
"It's a political plot!" shrieked Hawkins, going for his gun, "Wilkerson done it a-purpose!"
I shot the gun out of his hand, but Jack Clanton crashed a bench down on Gooseneck's head and Gooseneck kissed the floor. Clanton come down on top of him, out cold, as Mule McGrath swung with a pistol butt, and the next instant somebody lammed Mule with a brick bat and he flopped down acrost Clanton. And then the fight was on. Them rival political factions jest kind of riz up and rolled together in a wave of profanity, gun-smoke and splintering benches.
I HAVE ALWAYS NOTICED that the best thing to do in sech cases is to keep yore temper, and that's what I did for some time, in spite of the efforts of nine or ten wild-eyed Hawkinites. I didn't even shoot one of 'em; I kept my head and battered their skulls with a joist I tore outa the floor, and when I knocked 'em down I didn't stomp 'em hardly any. But they kept coming, and Jack McDonald was obsessed with the notion that he could ride me to the floor by jumping up astraddle of my neck. So he done it, and having discovered his idee was a hallucination, he got a fistful of my hair with his left, and started beating me in the head with his pistol-barrel.