“You would!” he asserted bloodthirstily.
“And bein’ a peaceful critter,” I says, jabbing my muzzle into his back, “I takes this here precaution. Git goin’ before I scatters yore remnants all over the floor.”
* * * * *
The jail was a short distance behind the stores and things. I marched him out the back door, and his cussing was something terrible every step of the way. The jail was a small, one-roomed building and a big fat egg was sleeping in the shade. I give him a kick in the pants to wake him up.
He throwed up his hands and yelled, “Don’t shoot! The key’s hangin’ on that nail by the door!” before he got his eyes open.
When he seen me and my prisoner his jaw fell down a foot or so.
“Be you the jailer?” I asked.
“I’m Reynolds, Clanton’s deperty,” he said in a small voice.
“Well,” I says, “onlock that door. We got a prisoner.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Ain’t that Bill Hawkins?”
“Sure it is,” I said impatiently. “Hustle, will you?”
“But, gee whiz!” says he. “You ain’t lockin’ up Bill Hawkins!”
“Will you onlock that door and stop gabblin’?” I hollered in exasperation. “You want me to ’rest you for obstructin’ justice?”
“It’s agin’ my better jedgment,” he said, shaking his head as he done my bidding. “It’ll cost us all our lives.”
“And that ain’t no lie!” agreed Hawkins bitterly. But I booted him into the jug, paying no attention to his horrible threats. I told Reynolds to guard him and not let him out till next morning, not on no conditions whatever. Then I headed back up the street for the resternt. Noises of revelry was coming from the Spanish Bar, way down at the west end of the street, and I figgered Hawkins’ braves was still down there.
* * * * *
When I come into the resternt, Miss Joan and old man Garfield was still setting there where I left ’em, looking sorry. I shoved the wad I had took from Hawkins into old man Garfield’s hands, and I says, “Count it!”
He looked dumfounded, but he done so, kind of mechanical, and I says, “How much is they?”
“Five hundred bucks even,” he stuttered.
“That there is right,” I said, yanking the roll out of his hands, and giving it to Miss Joan. “Old man Garfield is now owner of this here hash house. And you got dough enough to go back East.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Miss Joan, kinda dazedly. “Whose money is this?”
“It’s yourn,” I said.
“Hold on,” says old man Garfield. “Ain’t them Bill Hawkins’ ivory-handled guns you got stuck in yore belt?”
“Uh-huh,” I says, laying ’em on the counter. “Why?”
He turned pale and his whiskers curled up and shuddered. “Is that Hawkins’ dough?” he whispered. “Have you croaked him?”
“Naw,” I says. “I ain’t croaked him. He’s in the jail house. And it wasn’t his dough. He just thought it was.”
“I’m too young to die,” quavered old man Garfield. “I knowed they was bound to be a catch in this. You young catamount, don’t you realize that when Hawkins gits outa jail, and finds me ownin’ this resternt, he’ll figger out that I put you up to robbin’ him? He knows I ain’t got no money. You mean well, and I’m plumb grateful, but you done put my aged neck in a sling. He’ll tear this resternt j’int from rafter, and shoot me plumb full of holes.”
“And me!” moaned Miss Joan, turning the color of chalk. “My Lord, what will he do to me?”
I was embarrassed and hitched my gun belt.
“Dawg-gone it,” I says bitterly, “Pap was right. Everything I does is wrong. I never figgered on that. I’ll just have to—”
“Sheriff !” hollered somebody on the outside. “Sheriff!”
Reynolds staggered in with blood streaming from a gash in his head.
“Run, everybody!” he bawled. “Hawkins is out! He pulled the bars outa the winder with his bare hands and hit me on the head with one, and he taken my gun, and he’s headin’ for the Spanish Bar to git his pards and take the town apart! He’s nigh loco he’s so mad, and ravin’ and swearin’ that he’ll burn the town and kill every man in it!”
At that old man Garfield let out a wail of despair, and Miss Joan sank down behind the counter with a moan.
“Le’s take to the hills,” babbled Reynolds. “Clanton’s hidin’ out there somewhere, and—”
“Aw, shet up,” I grunted. “You all stay here. I’m sheriff of this here town, and it’s my job to pertect the citizens. Shet up and set down.”
* * * * *
And, so saying, I hurried out the back door and turned west. As I passed the corner of the building I noticed that Curly was still laying where I left him, being overcome with licker and swats on the dome, though he was showing some signs of life.
I run along behind the backs of the buildings, dodging from one to the other. The Spanish Bar was on the same side of the street as the resternt, so I didn’t have to cross the street to get to it. Evidently, word of the impending massacre must have spread, because the town was perfectly still and tense, except the racket that was goin’ on in the Spanish Bar, where evidently the bold bandits was priming on raw licker and blasphemy for wholesale murder.
I ducked into the back door and was in the saloon before they knowed it, with a gun in each hand. They all whirled away from the bar and glared at me; there was Red, Squint, and Arizona. Hawkins wasn’t there; I heard him bellering out in the street for Curly.
“Don’t move,” I cautioned ’em.
But as if my remark was a fuse to set off a explosion, they all yelled and went for their guns.
I killed Red before he could unleather his irons, and Squint only got in one shot which chipped my ear before I perforated his anatomy in three important places. Arizona missed me with his left-hand gun, but planted a slug in my thigh with his right, before giving up the ghost, hot lead proving harder than even his skull. It was short and deadly as a concentrated cyclone—guns roaring at close range—bullets spatting into flesh—men falling through the smoke. And just as Arizona dropped, Hawkins loomed in the door with Reynolds’ gun in his hand.
He was big as a house anyhow, and he looked even bigger through the curling smoke, with his eyes blazing and his mustaches bristling. He roared like a hurricane through the mesquite, and we fired simultaneous. His bullet lodged in my shoulder, and the last slug in my right-hand gun knocked his pistol out of his hand, along with a finger or so.
He then give a maddened roar and come plunging at me bare-handed. I planted the last three bullets of my other gun in various necessary parts of his carcass as he come, but they just seemed to irritate him. The last shot went into his belly so close the powder burned his shirt. Every other man I ever shot that way imejitately bent double and dropped, but this New Mexican grizzly merely give a enraged beller, jerked the gun outa my hand, fell on me and started beating my brains out with the butt.
He derned near scalped me with that .45 stock. We rolled over and over across the bloodstained floor, bumping over corpses and splintering chairs and tables, him bellering like a bull and choking me with one hand and bashing my head with the gun handle in the other one, and me feeding my bowie to him free and generous in the groin, breast, neck, and belly. I fed it to him sixteen times before he stiffened and went limp. I could hardly believe I’d won. I’d begun to think he couldn’t be croaked. I rize up groggily and shaken some of the blood outa my eyes, and pulled back a loose flap of scalp, and stared dizzily at that shambles—
Presently the awed citizens of Smokeville crept out of their refuges and looked in pallidly to where I sot amidst the ruins, with my bloody head in my hands, weeping bitterly. Old man Garfield was there, and Miss Joan, and Clanton and Reynolds, and a lot of others.