The Coming of Cassidy by Clarence E. Mulford (children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

his head over the rim of the ledge and looked down upon a good-natured crowd that lounged in the shadow of the wall and told each other all about it. Jimmy was the important center of interest and he was flushed with pride. It would take a great deal to make him cut short his hour of triumph and take him away from the admiring circle that hedged him in and listened intently to his words. “Yessir, by G-d,” he was saying, “just then I looks over th’ top of a li’l hill an’ what I sees makes me duck a-plenty. There was a dozen of ‘em, stringin’ south. I knowed they’d shore hit that”

“Hey, Kid,” said a humorous voice from above.

Jimmy glanced up, vexed at the interruption. “Well, what?” he growled. Bill grinned down at him in a manner that bid fair to destroy the dignity that Jimmy had striven so hard to build up. “She says all right for you. She’s done let you down easy for that whoppin’ big Greaser lie you went an’ spun her. She wants to know ain’t you comin’ up so she can talk to you? How about it?”

“Go on, Kid,” urged a low and friendly voice at his elbow.

“Betcha!” grinned another. “Wish it was me! I done seen her in Logan.”

Jimmy loosed a throbbing phrase, but obeyed, whereat Bill withdrew his grinning face from the sight of the grinning faces below. “He’s comin’ ma’am; but he’s shore plumb bashful.” He looked down the canyon and laughed. “There they go to get Purdy off ‘n his perch. I’m natchurally goin’ to lick anybody as tries to thrash that man,” he muttered, glancing at George as he passed Jimmy on the ledge. George grinned and shook his head. “I’m going to give him the spree of his sinful, long life,” he promised, thoughtfully.

Far to the west, silhouetted for a moment against the crimson sunset, appeared a row of mounted figures. It looked long and searchingly at the mesa and slowly disappeared from view. Bill saw it and pointed it out to Lefty Dickinson. “There’s th’ other eight,” he said, smiling cheerfully. “If it wasn’t for Whiskey Jeff’s lookin’ glass that eight’d mean a whole lot to us. We Ve had the luck of fools!”

VI HOPALONG’S HOP

HAVING sent Jimmy to the Bar-20 with a message for Buck Peters and seen the tenderfeet start for Sharpsville on the right trail and under escort, Bill Cassidy set out for the Crazy M ranch, by the way of Clay Gulch. He was to report on the condition of some cattle that Buck had been offered cheap and he was anxious to get back to the ranch. It was in the early evening when he reached Clay Gulch and rode slowly down the dusty, shack-lined street in search of a hotel. The town and the street were hardly different from other towns and streets that he had seen all over the cow-country, but nevertheless he felt uneasy. The air seemed to be charged with danger, and it caused him to sit even more erect in the saddle and assume his habit of indifferent alertness. The first man he saw confirmed the feeling by staring at him insolently and sneering in a veiled way at the low-hung, tied-down holsters that graced Bill’s thighs. The guns proclaimed the gun-man as surely as it would have been proclaimed by a sign; and it appeared that gun-men were not at that time held in high esteem by the citizens of Clay Gulch. Bill was growing fretful and peevish when the man, with a knowing shake of his head, turned away and entered the harness shop. “Trouble’s brewin’ somewheres around,” muttered Bill, as he went on. He had singled out the first of two hotels when another citizen, turning the corner, stopped in his tracks and looked Bill over with a deliberate scrutiny that left but little to the imagination. He frowned and started away, but Bill spurred forward, determined to make him speak.

“Might I inquire if this is Clay Gulch?” he asked, in tones that made the other wince.

“You might,” was the reply. “It is,” added the citizen, “an’ th’ Crazy M lays fifteen mile west.” Having complied with the requirements of common politeness the citizen of Clay Gulch turned and walked into the nearest saloon. Bill squinted after him and shook his head in indecision.

“He wasn’t guessin’, neither. He shore knowed where I wants to go. I reckon Oleson must ‘a’ said he was expectin’ me.” He would have been somewhat surprised had he known that Mr. Oleson, foreman of the Crazy M, had said nothing to anyone about the expected visitor, and that no one, not even on the ranch, knew of it. Mr. Oleson was blessed with taciturnity to a remarkable degree; and he had given up expecting to see anyone from Mr. Peters.

As Bill dismounted in front of the “Victoria” he noticed that two men further down the street had evidently changed their conversation and were examining him with frank interest and discussing him earnestly. As a matter of fact they had not changed the subject of their conversation, but had simply fitted him in the place of a certain unknown. Before he had arrived they discussed in the abstract; now they could talk in the concrete. One of them laughed and called softly over his shoulder, whereupon a third man appeared in the door, wiping his lips with the back of a hairy, grimy hand, and focused evil eyes upon the innocent stranger. He grunted contemptuously and, turning on his heel, went back to his liquid pleasures. Bill covertly felt of his clothes and stole a glance at his horse, but could see nothing wrong. He hesitated: should he saunter over for information or wait until the matter was brought to his attention? A sound inside the hotel made him choose the latter course, for his stomach threatened to become estranged and it simply howled for food. Pushing open the door he dropped his saddle in a corner and leaned against the bar.

“Have one with me to get acquainted?” he invited. “Then I’ll eat, for I’m hungry. An’ I’ll use one of yore beds tonight, too.”

The man behind the bar nodded cheerfully and poured out his drink. As he raised the liquor he noticed Bill’s guns and carelessly let the glass return to the bar.

“Sorry, sir,” he said coldly. “I’m hall out of grub, the fire’s hout, hand the beds are taken.

But mebby ‘Awley, down the strite, can tyke care of you.”

Bill was looking at him with an expression that said much and he slowly extended his arm and pointed to the untasted liquor.

“Allus finish what you start, English,” he said slowly and clearly. “When a man goes to take a drink with me, and suddenly changes his mind, why I gets riled. I don’t know what ails this town, an’ I don’t care; I don’t give a cuss about yore grub an’ your beds; but if you don’t drink that liquor you poured out to drink, why I’ll natchurally shove it down yore British throat so cussed hard it’ll strain yore neck. Get to it!”

The proprietor glanced apprehensively from the glass to Bill, then on to the business-like guns and back to the glass, and the liquor disappeared at a gulp. “Wy,” he explained, aggrieved. “There hain’t no call for to get riled hup like that, strainger. I bloody well forgot it.”

“Then don’t you go an’ ‘bloody well’ forget this: Th’ next time I drops in here for grub an’ a bed, you have ‘em both, an’ be plumb polite about it. Do you get me?” he demanded icily.

The proprietor stared at the angry puncher as he gathered up his saddle and rifle and started for the door. He turned to put away the bottle and the sound came near being unfortunate for him. Bill leaped sideways, turning while in the air and landed on his feet like a cat, his left hand gripping a heavy Colt that covered the short ribs ‘of the frightened proprietor before that worthy could hardly realize the move.

“Oh, all right,” growled Bill, appearing to be disappointed. “I reckoned mebby you was gamblin’ on a shore thing. I feels impelled to offer you my sincere apology; you ain’t th’ kind as would even gamble on a shore thing. You’ll see me again,” he promised. The sound of his steps on the porch ended in a thud as he leaped to the ground and then he passed the window leading his horse and scowling darkly. The proprietor mopped his head and reached twice for the glass before he found it. “Gawd, what a bloody ‘eathen,” he grunted. “‘E won’t be as easy as the lawst was, blime ‘im.”

Mr. Hawley looked up and frowned, but there was something in the suspicious eyes that searched his face that made him cautious. Bill dropped his load on the floor and spoke sharply. “I want supper an’ a bed. You ain’t full up, an’ you ain’t out of grub. So I’m goin’ to get ‘em both right here. Yes?”

“You shore called th’ turn, stranger,” replied Mr. Hawley in his Sunday voice. “That’s what I’m in business for. An’ business is shore dull these days.”

He wondered at the sudden smile that illuminated Bill’s face and half guessed it; but he said nothing and went to work. When Bill pushed back from the table he was more at peace with the world and he treated, closely watching his companion. Mr. Hawley drank with a show of pleasure and forthwith brought out cigars. He seated himself beside his guest and sighed with relief.

“I’m plumb tired out,” he offered. “An’ I ain’t done much. You look tired, too. Come a long way?”

“Logan,” replied Bill. “Do you know where I’m goin’? An’ why?” he asked.

Mr. Hawley looked surprised and almost answered the first part of the question correctly before he thought. “Well,” he grinned, “if I could tell where strangers was goin’, an’ why, I wouldn’t never ask ‘em where they come from. An’ I’d shore hunt up a li’l game of faro, you bet!”

Bill smiled. “Well, that might be a good idea. But, say, what ails this town, anyhow?”

“What ails it? Hum! Why, lack of money for one thing; scenery, for another; wimmin, for another. Oh, h—l, I ain’t got time to tell you what ails it. Why?”

“Is there anything th’ matter with me?”

“I don’t know you well enough for to answer that kerrect.”

“Well, would you turn around an’ stare at me, an’ seem pained an’ hurt? Do I look funny? Has anybody put a sign on my back?”

“You looks all right to me. What’s th’ matter?”

“Nothin’, yet,” reflected Bill slowly. “But there will be, mebby. You was mentionin’ faro. Here’s a turn you can call: somebody in this wart of a two-by-nothin’ town is goin’ to run plumb into a big surprise. There’ll mebby be a loud noise an’ some smoke where it starts from; an’ a li’l round hole where it stops. When th’ curious delegation now holdin’ forth on th’ street slips in here after I’m in bed, an’ makes inquiries about me, you can tell ‘em that. An’ if Mr. Mr. Victoria drops in casual, tell him I’m cleanin’ my guns. Now then, show me where I’m goin’ to sleep.”

Mr. Hawley very carefully led the way into the hall and turned into a room opposite the bar. “Here she is, stranger,” he said, stepping back. But Bill was out in the hall listening. He looked into the room and felt oppressed.

“No she ain’t,” he answered, backing his intuition. “She is upstairs, where there is a li’l breeze. By th’ Lord,” he muttered under his breath. “This