"And I reckon that settles that!" I panted. "I dunno how this all come about, but you can call up yore women and chillern and tell 'em they're now citizens of the United States of America, by golly!"
I then picked up the keg, because I was hot and thirsty, but Fat Bear says: "Wait! Don't drink that! I—"
"Shet up!" I roared. "After all I've did for the nation tonight, I deserves a dram! Shame on you to begredge a old friend—"
I taken a big gulp—and then I give a maddened beller and throwed that keg as far as I could heave it, and run for water. I drunk about three gallons, and when I could breathe again I got a club and started after Fat Bear, who clumb up on top of a lodge.
"Come down!" I requested with passion. "Come down whilst I beats yore brains out! Whyn't you tell me what was in that keg?"
"I tried to," says he, "but you wouldn't listen. I thought it was whiskey when I stole it, or I wouldn't have taken it. I talked to Shingis while you were hunting the water bucket, jest now. It was him that put the skunk in the medicine lodge. He saw Ondrey hide the keg on Sir Wilmot's side of the council circle; he sneaked a drink out of it, and that's why he did what he did. It was for revenge. The onreasonable old buzzard thought Sir Wilmot was tryin' to pizen him."
So that's the way it was. Anyway, I'm quitting my job as soon as I git back to Saint Louis. It's bad enuff when folks gits too hifaluting to use candles, and has got to have oil lamps in a trading post. But I'll be derned if I'll work for a outfit which puts the whale-oil for their lamps in the same kind of kegs they puts their whiskey.
Your respeckful son.
Boone Bearfield.
A Gent From The Pecos
Table of Contents
I WAS in the Buckhorn Saloon in San Antonio, jest h’isting a schooner of Pearl XXX, when my brother Kirby come staggering in all caked with dust and sweat, and stuck out a letter at me.
“Pap sent it,” he gasped. “I’ve rode day and night to find you!” He then collapsed onto the floor where he lay till I picked him up and laid him on the bar and started the barkeep to pouring licker down his throat. It’s a long way from our cabin to Santone, and he must of had a hard ride. I figgered the letter he brung must be arful important, so after I’d drunk my beer and et me a sandwich offa the free lunch counter, I onfolded it and read it. It was from Aunt Navasota Hawkins, over in East Texas, and it was addressed to Mister Judson Bearfield, Wolf Mountain, Texas, which is Pap, and it said:
Dear Jud:
We air in awful trouble. Somethin happened none of us never drempt could happen. Uncle Joab Hudkins has took to stealin hawgs! You won’t believe this I know Judson because none of the family never stole nothin in their life before but it’s the truth. The Watsons ketched him in their pigpen tother night and filled his britches with bird-shot and I will not repeat his langwidge whilst we was picking them shot out of his hide Judson. The whole clan gathered around and argyed with him Judson but we wouldn’t move him all he said was he wisht we would mind our own dadburned business. He was very cantankerus Judson and you ought to of heard what he called Uncle Saul Hawkins when Uncle Saul told him he had disgraced the family.We could not do nothin with him so we left Cousin Esau Harrison to see he didn’t git out of the house till we could decide what to do. But he hit Cousin Esau over the head with the axe handle I use to stir hominy with and has run off into the woods Judson it is tarrible we don’t know what he’s up to but we suspects the wust. We have apolergized to the Watsons and offered to pay them for any damage he done but you know how them Watsons is Judson they say nothin will wipe out the insult but blood. It looks like they air goin to force a feud onto us we have got enough feuds as it is Judson. And so will you please send Pikeston over here to help find Uncle Joab and settle them Watsonses’ hash.
Yore lovin Ant Navasota Hawkins
On the bottom of her letter Pap had writ, “Pike, pull for Choctaw Bayou as fast as you can peel it and don’t take no sass from them cussed Watsons.”
Well, I was so overcame for a few minutes all I could do was lean on the bar and drink a pint of tequila. To think as a relative of mine would stoop to pig stealing! Why, us Bearfields was that proud we wouldn’t even steal a hoss. I dunno when I ever felt so low and wolfish in my spirits. I felt like the whole world knowed our shame and was p’inting the finger of scorn at us.
When Kirby come to he said he felt the same, and he said he aimed to shoot the first illegitimate which even said “hawg” at him. But I cautioned him to guard our arful secret with his life, and I told him to go around to the wagon yard where my hoss Satanta was, and arrange for his board whilst I was gone.
I then bought me a ticket for Houston and clumb aboard the train without telling my friends good-by; I was too ashamed to look ’em in the face with a pig thief in the family.
That was a irksome journey. All I could think of was pigs and when I dozed in my seat I dreampt about pigs. It was a dark hour for the Bearfield pride, and I got tetchier every minute.
When I got to Houston I imejitly went to a livery stable to rent me a hoss, and there I run into the same difficulty I always run into whenever I gits east of the Trinity. They warn’t a hoss in town which was big enough and strong enough to tote my weight any distance. I dunno why them folks raises sech spindly critters. They claims their hosses is all right, and I’m jest bigger’n a human being ought to be. Well, I ain’t considered onusually gigantic on Wolf Mountain, but I have already noticed that men on Wolf Mountain grows bigger’n they does in most places. So I reckon I do look kind of prominent to strangers, being as I stand six foot nine in my socks and weigh two hundred and ninety-five pounds, all bone and muscle. In addition to which modesty forces me to remark that I’m jest about the best man in a free-for-all on Wolf Mountain or anywheres else that I ever been, either.
Anyway, I finally pitched on a squint-eyed mule named Sinclair’s Defeat, which was big enough even for me, and I forked him and headed for the home-range of my erring relative. I was in the piney-woods by now, and I felt plumb smothered with all them trees and sloughs and swamps, and no hills nor prickly pears nor prairies.
Them woods was full of razorback hawgs and every time I seen one it reminded me of the family shame, so I was in a regular welter of nervous irritation time I got to Sabineville, where my kinfolks does their trading. It was about noon, so I put Sinclair’s Defeat in the wagon yard and seen he was fed and watered, and then I went to the restaurant. I hadn’t been to Sabineville since I was a kid, and didn’t know nobody there, but everybody I met stopped and gaped like they never seen a man my size before. They all had their guns on under their shirts and so did I, because I hid mine when we pulled into Houston.
I sot down in the restaurant and the waiter ast me what I’d have. I ast him what he had, and he says, “We got some nice roast pork!”
“Listen here, you!” I says, rising in wrath. “Maybe you think you can mock me with impunity because I’m a stranger in yore midst. But the man don’t live which can throw the family scandal in my face and survive!”
“What air you talkin’ about?” gasped he, recoiling.
“Don’t try to ack innercent,” I says bitterly. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know how come you to recognize me, but the best thing you can do is to pertend not to know me. Bring me a beefsteak smothered with onions and nine or ten bottles of beer, and lemme hear no more about pork if you values yore wuthless life!”
He done so in fear and trembling, and I heard him whisper to the cook that they was a homicidal maneyack outside; but I didn’t see none.