The Orphan by Clarence E. Mulford (best books to read now .txt) 📖

say. I sort of figured that it would tell us when to hitch up to the buckboard and go after him. Fearing that he might land before the foreman got back, I went and opened it up.

“It was from the Old Man, all right, but it was no go for him that spring. He was sick abed in New York, and said as how he was plumb sorry he couldn’t get out to see his boys, and so was we sorry. But he said as how he was sending us a friend of his’n who wanted to go hunting, and would we see that he didn’t shoot no cows. We said we would, and then I went on and found out when this hunter was due to land.

“When the unfortunate day rolled around I straddled the buckboard and lit out for Whisky Crossing, twenty miles to the east, it being the nearest burg on the stage line. And as I pulled in I saw Frank, who drove the stage, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

“‘I reckon that’s your’n,’ he said, pointing to a circus clown what had got loose and was sizing up the town.

“‘The drinks are on me when I sees you again, Frank,’ I said, for somehow I felt that he was right.

“Then I sized up my present, and blamed if he wasn’t all rigged out to kill Indians. While my mouth was closing he ambled up to me and stared at my gun, which must ’a’ been purty big to him.

“‘Are you Mr. Fisher’s hired man?’ he asked, giving me a real tolerating look.

“Frank followed his grin into the saloon, leaving the door open so he could hear everything. That made me plumb sore at Frank, him a-doing a thing like that, and I glared.

“‘I ain’t nobody’s hired man, and never was,’ I said, sort of riled. ‘We ain’t had no hired man since we lynched the last one, but I’m next door to the foreman. Won’t I do, or do you insist on talking to a hired man? If you do, he’s in the saloon.’

“‘Oh, yes, you’ll do!’ he said, quick-like, and then he ups and climbs aboard and we pulled out for home, Frank waving his sombrero at me and laughing fit to kill.

“We hadn’t no more than got started when the hunter ups and grabs at the lines, which he shore missed by a foot. I was driving them cayuses, not him, and I told him so, too.

“‘But ain’t you going to take my luggage?’ he asked.

“‘Luggage! What luggage?’ I answers, surprised-like.

“Then he pointed behind him, and blamed if he didn’t have two trunks, a gripsack and three gun cases. I didn’t say a word, being too full of cuss words to let any of ’em loose, until Frank wobbled up and asked me if I’d forgot something. Then I shore said a few, after which I busted my back a-hoisting his freight cars aboard, and we started out again, Frank acting like a d––n fool.

“The cayuses raised their ears, wondering what we was taking the saloon for, and I reckoned we would make them twenty miles in about eight hours if nothing busted and we rustled real hard.

“Well, about every twenty minutes I had to get off and hoist some of his furniture aboard, it being jolted off, for the prairie wasn’t paved a whole lot, and us going cross-country. Considering my back, and the fact that he kept calling me ‘My man,’ and Frank’s grin, I wasn’t in no frame of mind to lead a religion round-up when I got home and dumped Davy Crockett’s war-duds overboard for Jed to rustle in. I was still sore at Jed for bringing that letter.

“Davy Crockett dusted for the house and ordered Sammy Johns to oil his guns and put them together, after which he went off a-poking his nose into everything in sight, and mostly everything that wasn’t in sight. When he got back to the house from his tour of inspection he found his guns just like he’d left them, and that was in their cases. Then he ambled out to me and registered his howl.

“‘My man,’ he said, ‘My man, that hired man what I told to put my guns together ain’t done it!’

“‘Oh, he didn’t?’ I said, hanging on to my cuss words, for I was some surprised and couldn’t say a whole lot.

“‘No, he hasn’t, and so I’ve come out to report him,’ he said, looking mad.

“‘My man!’ said I, mad some myself, and looking him plumb in the eyes. ‘My man, if he had I’d shore think he was off his feed or loco. He ain’t no hired man, but he is a all-fired good cow-puncher, and I’m a heap scared about him not filling you full of holes, you asking him to do a thing like that! He must be real sick.’

“He didn’t have no come-back to that, but just looked sort of funny, and then he trotted off to put his guns together hisself. I hustled around and saw that some work was done right and then went in to supper. After it was over my present got up and handed me a gun, and I near fell over. It was a purty little Winchester, and I don’t blame him a whole lot for being tickled over it, for it shore was a beauty, but it oozed out a ball about the size of a pea, and the makers would ’a’ been some scared if they had known it was running around loose in a grizzly-bear country.

“‘I reckon that’ll stop him,’ he said, happy-like.

“‘Stop what?’ I asked him.

“‘Why, game–bears, of course,’ he said, shocked at my appalling ignorance.

“‘Yes,’ said I, slow-like, ‘I reckon Ephraim may turn around and scratch hisself, if you hits him.’

“‘Why, won’t that stop a bear?’

“‘Yes, if it’s a stuffed bear,’ I said.

“‘Why, that’s a blamed good rifle!’

“‘It shore is; it’s as fine a gun as I ever laid my eyes on,’ I replied, ‘for prairie dogs and such.’

“Then I felt plumb sorry for him, he being so ignorant, and so when he hands me a peach of a shotgun to shoot coyotes with I laid it down and got my breach-loading Sharps, .50 caliber, which I handed to him.

“‘There,’ I said, ‘that’s the only gun in the room what any self-respecting bear will give a d––n for.’

“He looked at it, felt its heft, sized up the bunghole and then squinted along the sights.

“‘Why, this gun will kick like the very deuce!’ he said.

“‘Kick!’ said I. ’Kick! She’ll kick like a army mule if you holds her far enough from your shoulder. But I’d a whole lot ruther get kicked by a mule than hugged by a grizzly, and so’ll you when you sees him a-heading your way.’

“‘But what’ll you use?’ says he, ‘I don’t want to take your gun.’

“Well, when he said that I reckoned that he had some good stuff in him after all, and somehow I felt better. There he was, away from his mother and sisters, among a bunch of gamboling cow-punchers, and right in the middle of a good bear country. I sort of wondered if he was to blame, and managed to lay all the fault on his city bringing-up.

“‘That’s all right,’ says I, ‘I’ll take an old muzzle-loading Bridesburg what’s been laying around the house ever since I came here. It heaves enough lead at one crack to sink a man-of-war, being a .60 caliber.’

“Well, bright and early the next morning we started out for bear, and I knowed just where to look, too. You see, there was a thicket of berry bushes about three miles from the ranch house and I had seen plenty of tracks there, and there was a grizzly among them, too, and as big as a house, judging from the signs. The boys had wanted to ride out in a gang and rope him, but I said as how I was saving him for a dude hunter to practice on, so they left him alone.

“We footed it through the brush, and finally Davy Crockett, who simply would go ahead of me, yelled out that he had found tracks.

“I rustled over, and sure enough he had, only they wasn’t made by no bear, and I said so.

“‘Then what are they?’ he asked, sort of disappointed.

“‘Cow tracks,’ said I. ‘When you see bear tracks you’ll know it right away,’ and we went on a-hunting.

“We had just got down in a little hollow, where the green flies were purty bad, when I saw tracks, and they was bear tracks this time, and whoppers. It had rained a little during the night and the ground was just soft enough to show them nice. I called Davy Crockett and he came up, and when he saw them tracks he was plumb tickled, and some scairt.

“‘Where is he?’ he asked, looking around sort of anxious.

“‘At the front end of these tracks, making more,’ said I.

“‘And what are we going to do now?’ he asked, cocking the Sharps.

“‘We’re going to trail him,’ said I, ‘and if we finds him and has any accidents, you wants to telegraph yourself up a tree, and be sure that it ain’t a big tree, too.’

“’”Be sure it ain’t a big tree!“’ he repeated, looking at me like he thought I wanted him to get killed.

“‘Exactly,’ said I, and then I explained: ‘The bigger the tree, the sooner you’ll be a meal, for he climbs by hugging the trunk and pushing hisself up. A little tree’ll slide through his legs, and he can’t get a holt.’

“‘I hope I don’t forget that!’ he exclaimed, looking dubious.

“‘The less you forgets when bear hunting,’ said I, ‘the longer you’ll remember.’

“We took up the trail and purty soon we saw the bear, and he was so big he didn’t hardly know how to act. He was pawing berries into his mouth for breakfast, and he turned his head and slowly sized us up. He dropped on all fours and then got up again, and Davy Crockett, not listening to me telling him where to shoot, lets drive and busted an ear. Ephraim preferred all fours again and started coming straight at us, and Moses and all his bullrushers couldn’t have stopped him. He was due to arrive near Davy Crockett in about four and a half seconds, and that person dropped his gun and hot-footed it for a whopping big tree. I yelled at him and told him to take a little one, but he was too blamed busy hunting bear to listen to a no-account hired man like me, so he kept on a-going for the big tree.

“I figured, and figured blamed quick, that the bear would tag him just about the time he tagged the tree, and so, hoping to create a diversion, I whanged away at the bear’s tail, him running plumb away from me. I was real successful, for I created it all right. When he felt that carload of lead slide up under his skin he braced hisself, slid and wheeled, looking for the son-of-a-gun what done it, and he saw me pouring powder hell-bent down my gun. He must ’a’ knowed that I was the real business end of the partnership, and that he’d have trouble a-plenty if he let me finish my job, for he came at me like a bullet.

“‘Climb a little tree! Climb a little tree!’ yelled Davy Crockett from his perch in his two-foot-through oak.

“I wasn’t in no joyous frame of mind when a nine-foot grizzly was due in the next mail, but I just had to laugh at his advice when I sized up his layout. As I jumped to one side the bear slid past, trying awful hard to