She turned pale and whispered, “For Heaven’s sake, be careful, Mr. Garfield; that’s one of Hawkins’ men sitting right there!”
He turned around and seen me, and he turned pale, too, under his whiskers, but he riz up and shaken his fist at me, and said, “Well, you heered what I said, and I ain’t takin’ it back! Bill Hawkins is a thief, and all his men air thieves! Everybody in this country knows they’re thieves, only they’re too skeered to say so! Now, go ahead and shoot me! You and yore gang of outlaws has stole me out and ruined me till I might as well be dead. Well, what you goin’ to do?”
“I’m goin’ to eat this here can of cling peaches if you’ll quit yellin’ at me,” I said, and him and Miss Joan looked astonished, and he sot down and mumbled in his beard and she looked sorry for him and for herself, and I et my peaches.
When I got through, I said, “How much I owe you, miss?”
She looked like she’d just saw a ghost and said, “What?”
“How much, please, ma’am,” I said.
She said, “I never heard of one of Hawkins’ men paying for anything—but it’s a dollar, if yo’re not kidding me.”
I laid down my dollar, and just then somebody shot off their gun outside. In come Hawkins’ man Curly. He was drunk and weaving and he shot his pistol into the roof and yelled, “Gimme some grub and be quick about it!”
Old man Garfield turned white under his whiskers and doubled his fists like he yearned to do somebody vi’lence, and Miss Joan looked scared and started fixing the grub.
Curly seen me and he guffawed, “Howdy, sheriff, you long-legged Texas sage-rooster! Haw! Haw! Haw! That there was the funniest one Bill ever pulled!” So he sot down and breathed whisky fumes all over the place, and when Miss Joan brung his vittles, he grabbed her arm and leered like a cat eating prickly pears, and says, “Gimme a kiss, gal!”
She says, quick and scared, “Let me go! Please let me go!”
* * * * *
I got up then and says, “What you mean by such actions? I never heered of such doins in my life! You release go of her and apolergize!”
“Why, you long, ganglin’ Texas lunkhead!” he yelped, reaching for his gun. “Set down and shet up before I pistol-whips the livin’ daylights outa you!”
So I split open his scalp with my gun barrel, and he fell onto the floor and kicked a few times and layed still. I hauled him to the back door and throwed him down the steps. He fell, head first, into a garbage can which upsot and spilled garbage all over him. He laid there like a hawg in its trough, which was the proper place for him.
“Pap told me other places was different from Texas,” I says fretfully, “but I never had no idee they was this different.”
“I’m getting used to it,” she says with a kinda hard laugh. “The people that live here are good folks, but every time Hawkins and his gang come into town I have to put up with such things as you just saw.”
“How come you ever come out here in the first place?” I asked, because it was just dawning on me that she must be one of them Eastern tenderfoots I’d heard tell of.
“I was tired of slaving in a city,” she said. “I saved my money and came West. When I got to Denver I read an advertisement in a newspaper about a man offering a restaurant for sale in Smokeville, New Mexico. I came here and spent every penny I had on it. It was all right, until Hawkins and his gang started terrorizing the town.”
“I was all set to buy her out,” said old man Garfield mournfully. “I used to be a cook before I was blame fool enough to go into the cattle business. A resternt in Smokeville for my declinin’ years is my idee of heaven—exceptin’ Hawkins and his gang. But I can’t raise the dough. Them thieves has stole me out. Five hundred buys her, and I can’t raise it.”
“Five hundred would get me out of this place and back to some civilized country,” said Miss Joan, with a kind of sob.
I was embarrassed because it always makes me feel bad to see a woman cry. I feel like a yaller dawg, even when it ain’t my fault. I looked down, and all to onst my gaze fell onto the badge which Hawkins had pinned onto my shirt.
“Wait here!” I said suddenly, and I taken old man Garfield by the neck and shoved him down in a chair. “You all stay here till I get back,” I says. “Don’t go no place. I’ll be back right away.”
As I went out the front door, Curly come weaving around the building with egg shells in his ears and ’tater peelings festooned on him, and he was mumbling something about cuckoo clocks and fumbling for his gun. So I hit him under the jaw for good measure and he coiled up under a horse trough and layed there.
I heard a gun banging in the Eagle Saloon, which was about a block west of the resternt, and I went in. Sure enough, Bill Hawkins was striding up and down in solitary grandeur, amusing hisself shooting bottles off the shelves behind the bar.
“Where’s the rest of the fellers?” I asked.
“In the Spanish Bar at the west end of town,” he said. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothin’,” I says.
“Well,” says he, “I’m goin’ to the resternt and make that gal cook me some grub. I’m hungry.”
“I reckon that’s what’s sp’ilin’ yore aim,” I says.
He jumped like he was stabbed and cussed. “What you mean, sp’ilin’ my aim?” he roared.
“Well,” I said, “I seen you miss three of them bottle tops. Back in Texas—”
“Shet up!” he bellered. “I don’t want to hear nothin’ about Texas. You say ‘Texas’ to me just once more and I’ll blow yore brains out.”
“All right,” I said, “but I bet you can’t write yore initials in that mirror behind the bar with yore six-guns.”
“Huh!” he snorted, and begun blazing away with both hands.
“What you quittin’ for?” I asked presently.
“My guns is empty,” he said. “I got to reload.”
“No, you don’t,” I says, shoving my right-hand gun in his belly. “Drop them empty irons!”
He looked as surprised as if a picture had clumb off the wall and bit him.
“What you mean?” he roared. “Is this here yore idee of a joke?”
“Drop them guns and h’ist yore hands,” I commanded.
He turned purple, but he done so, and then dipped and jerked a bowie out of his boot, but I shot it outa his hand before he could straighten. He was white and shaking with rage.
“I arrests you for disturbin’ the peace,” I said.
“What you mean, you arrests me?” he bellered. “You ain’t no sheriff!”
“I am, too,” I said. “You gimme this here badge yoreself. They’s a law against shootin’ holes in saloon mirrors. I tries you and I finds you guilty, and I fines you a fine.”
“How much you fines me?” he asked.
“How much you got?” I asked.
“None of yore cussed business!” he howled.
So I made him turn around with his hands in the air, and I pulled a roll outa his hip pocket big enough to choke a cow.
“This here dough,” I said, “is the money you got from sellin’ the steers you stole from pore old man Garfield. I know, from the remarks yore men let drop while we was ridin’ to Smokeville. Stand still whilst I count it, and don’t try no monkey business.”
So I kept him covered with one hand and counted the dough with the other, and it was slow work, because I hadn’t never seen that much money. But finally I announced, “I fines you five hundred bucks. Here’s the rest.” And I give him back a dollar and fifteen cents.
“You thief !” he howled. “You bandit! You robber! I’ll have yore life for this.”
“Aw, shet up,” I says. “I’m goin’ to lock you up in jail for the night. Some of yore gang can let you out after I’m gone. If I was to let you go now, I’d probably have some trouble with you before I could git outa town.”