“I’m prospectin’ for gold,” I says. He kinda turned purple, and his eyes got red and he snorted through his whiskers and says, “Don’t you try to make no fool outa William Hyrkimer Hawkins! The boundless prairies is dotted with the bones of such misguided idjits. I ast you a civil question—”
“I done told you,” I said. “I’m huntin’ me some gold. I heard tell they git it outa rocks.”
He looked kinda stunned, and the men behind him haw-hawed and said, “Don’t shoot him, Bill, the blame hillbilly is on the level.”
“By golly,” he said, twisting his mustash, “I believe it. But he ain’t no hillbilly. Who’re you, and where you from, and where you goin’?”
“I’m Buckner Jeopardy Grimes,” I says. “I’m from Knife River County, Texas, and I’m on my way to the gold fields of Californy.”
“Well,” says he, “you still got a long way to go.”
“Ain’t this Californy?” I says.
He says, “Naw, this here is New Mexico. Come on. We’re ridin’ to Smokeville. Climb on yore cayuse and trail with us.”
“What you want this gangle-legged waddy grazin’ around with us for?” demanded one of the fellers.
“He’s good for a laugh,” said Hawkins.
“If you like yore humor mixed up with gun smoke,” opined a bald-headed old cuss which looked like a pessimistic timber wolf. “I’ve seen a lot of hombres outa Texas, and some was smart and some was dumb, but they was all alike in one respect: they was all pizen.”
Hawkins snorted and I mounted onto my brother Jim’s horse and we started for Smokeville, wherever that was. They was four men and Hawkins, and they called thereselves “Squint” and “Red” and “Curly” and “Arizona,” and next to some of my relatives on Knife River, they was the toughest-looking gang of thugs I ever seen in my life.
* * * * *
Then after a while we come in sight of Smokeville. It wasn’t as big as Knife River, but it had about as many saloons. They rode into town at a dead run, hollering and shooting off their pistols. I rode with ’em because I wanted to be polite, but I didn’t celebrate none, because I was a long ways from home and low in my spirits.
All the folks taken to cover, and Hawkins rode his horse up on the porch of a saloon. There was a piece of paper tacked on the wall.
His men says, “What does it say, Bill? Read it to us!”
So he spit his tobaccer out on the porch, and read:
Us citizens of Smokeville has passed the follerin’ laws which we aims to see enforced to the full extent of fines and imprisonment and being plugged with a .45 for resistin’ arrest. It’s agin’ the law to shoot off pistols in saloons and resternts; it’s agin’ the law for gents to shoot each other inside the city limits; it’s agin’ the law to ride horses into saloons and shoot buttons off the bartender’s coat.
Signed: Us citizens of Smokeville and Joe Clanton, sheriff.
Hawkins roared like a bull looking at a red bandanner.
“What air we a-comin’ to?” he bellered. “What kind of a government air we livin’ under? Air we men or air we jassacks? Is they no personal liberty left no more?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I never heered of no such laws back in Texas.”
“I warn’t talkin’ to you, you long-legged road- runner!” he snorted, ripping the paper off the wall. “Foller me, boys. We’ll show ’em they can’t tromple on the rights of free-born white men!”
So they surged into the saloon on their horses and the bartender run out the back way hollering, “Run, everybody! Hawkins is back in town!”
So the feller they called Squint got behind the bar and started servin’ the drinks. They all got off of their cayuses so’s they could drink easier, and Hawkins told me to take the horses out and tie ’em to the hitching rack.
I done it, and when I got back they’d dragged the sheriff out from under the bar where he was hiding, and was making him eat the paper Hawkins had tore off the wall. He was a fat man with a bald head and a pot belly, and they’d tooken his gun away, which he hadn’t tried to use.
“A fine specimen you be!” said Hawkins fiercely, sticking his gun muzzle outa sight in the sheriff ’s quivering belly. “I oughta shoot you! Tryin’ to persecute honest men! Tryin’ to crush human liberty under the mailed fist of oppressive laws! Sheriff ! Bah! We impeaches you!” He jerked off Clanton’s star and kicked him heartily in the pants. “Git out! You ain’t sheriff no more’n a jack rabbit.” Clanton made for the door like he had wasps in his britches, and they shot the p’ints off his spurs as he run.
“The nerve of these coyotes!” snorted Hawkins, downing about a quart of licker at a snort and throwing the bottle through the nearest glass winder. “Sheriff ! Ha!” He glared around till he spied me. Then he grinned like a timber wolf, and says, “Come here, you! I make you sheriff of Smokeville!” And he stuck the badge on my shirt, and everybody haw-hawed and shot their pistols through the roof.
I said, “I ain’t never done no sheriffin’ before. What am I supposed to do?”
“The first thing is to set up drinks for the house,” said Red.
I said, “I ain’t got but a dollar.”
And Hawkins said, “Don’t be a sap. None of my men ever pays for anything they get in Smokeville. I got a pocketful of money right now, but you don’t see me handin’ out none to these sissies, does you?”
So I said, “Oh, all right then, the drinks is on me.”
And everybody yelled and hollered and shot holes in the mirror behind the bar and guzzled licker till it was astonishing to behold. After a while they scattered up and down the street, some into other saloons, and some into a dance hall.
So I taken brother Jim’s horse down to the wagon yard and told the man to take care of him.
He looked at my badge very curious, but said he’d do it.
So I said, “I understand none of Mr. Hawkins’ men has to pay for nothin’ in Smokeville. Is that right?”
He kinda shivered and said that Mr. Hawkins was such a credit to the country that nobody had the heart to charge him for anything, and them which had was not now in the land of the living.
* * * * *
Well, this all seemed very strange to me, but Pap once told me that when I got outa Texas I would find folks in other parts had different customs. So I went back up the street. Hawkins’ gang was still raising hell and very few folks was in sight. I never seen people so scared of five men in my life. I seen a resternt up toward the east end of the street, and I was hungry and went in. They was a awful purty gal in there.
I would ’a’ beat a retreat, because I was awful bashful and scared of gals, but she seen me and kinda turned pale, and said, “What—what do you want?”
So I taken off my hat, and said, “I would like a steak and some aigs and ’taters and a few molasses if it ain’t too much trouble, please, ma’am.”
So I sot down and she went to work and slung the stuff together, and purty soon she looked at me kinda apprehensive, and says, “How—how long are you men going to stay in Smokeville?”
I said I jedged the gents would stay till all the whisky was gone, which wouldn’t be long at the rate they was demolishing it, and I says, “You’re a foreigner, ain’t you, miss?”
And she says, “Why do you ask?”
“Well,” I says, “I ain’t never hear nobody talk like that before.”
“I am from New York,” she says.
So I says, “Where at is that?”
She says, “It’s away back East.”
“Oh,” I says, “it must be somewheres on t’other side of the Guadalupe.”
She just hove a sigh and shaken her head like she wished she was back there, and just then in come a old codger, with whiskers, which sot down and likewise hove a sigh, clean up from his boot tops. He said, “T’ain’t no use, Miss Joan. I can’t raise the dough. Them thievin’ scoundrels has stole me plumb out. They got the last bunch the other night. All I got on my ranch is critters too old or too sorry for Bill Hawkins to bother to steal—”