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

>At daylight the Boss rolled out of his bunk, started a fire and put on a kettle of water to get hot. Buckling on his gun he opened the door and started toward the bunkhouse, where everything appeared to be as he had left it the night before.

“It’s a cussed shame,” he growled. “But I can’t risk him bringin’ a posse out here. What th’ devil!” he shouted as he ducked. A bullet sang over his head, high above him, and he glanced at the bunkhouse with renewed interest.

Having notified the Boss of his intentions and of the change in the situation, Jimmy walked around the corner of the house and sent one dangerously close to strengthen the idea that sand was no longer sand. But the Boss had surmised this instantly and was greatly shocked by such miraculous happenings on his range. He nodded cheerfully at the nearing youth and as cheerfully raised his gun. “An’ he gave me a chance, too! He could ‘a’ got me easy if he didn’t warn me! Well, here goes, Kid,” he muttered, firing.

Jimmy promptly replied and scored a hit. It was not much of a hit, but it carried reflection in its sting. The Boss’s heart hardened as he flinched instinctively and he sent forth his shots with cool deliberation. Jimmy swayed and stopped, which sent the Boss forward on the jump. But the youth was only further proving his cleverness against a man whom he could not beat at so long a range. As the Boss stopped again to get the work over with, a flash of smoke spurted from Jimmy’s hand and the rustler spun half way around, stumbled and fell. Jimmy paused in indecision, a little suspicious of the fall, but a noise behind him made him wheel around to look.

A horseman, having topped the little hill just behind the bunkhouse, was racing down the slope as fast as his wornout horse could carry him, and in his upraised hand a Colt glittered as it swung down to become lost in a spurt of smoke. Longhorn, returning to warn his chief, felt savage elation at this opportunity to unload quite a cargo of accumulated grouches of various kinds and sizes, which collection he had picked up from the Bar-20 northward in a running fight of twenty miles. Only a lucky cross trail, that had led him off at a tangent and somehow escaped the eyes of his pursuers, had saved him from the fate of his companions.

Jimmy swung his gun on the newcomer, but it only clicked, and the vexed youth darted and dodged and ducked with a speed and agility very creditable as he jammed cartridges into the empty chambers. Jimmy’s interest in the new conditions made him forget that he had a gun and he stared in rapt and delighted anticipation at the cloud of dust that swirled suddenly from behind the corral and raced toward the disgruntled Mr. Longhorn, shouting Red’s message as it came.

Mr. Cassidy sat jauntily erect and guided his fresh, gingery mount by the pressure of cunning knees. The brim of his big sombrero, pinned back against the crown by the pressure of the wind, revealed the determination and optimism that struggled to show itself around his firmly set lips; his neckerchief flapped and cracked behind his head and the hairs of his snow-white goatskin chaps rippled like a thing of life and caused Jimmy, even in his fascinated interest, to covet them.

But Longhorn’s soul held no reverence for goatskin and he cursed harder when Red’s compliments struck his ear about the time one of Cassidy’s struck his shoulder. He was firing hastily against a man who shot as though the devil had been his teacher. The man from the Bar-20 used two guns and they roared like the roll of a drum and flashed through the heavy, lowlying cloud of swirling smoke like the darting tongue of an angry snake.

Longhorn, enveloped in the acrid smoke of his own gun, which wrapped him like a gaseous shroud, knew that his end had come. He was being shot to pieces by a two-gun man, the like of whose skill he had never before seen or heard of. As the last note of the short, five second, cracking tattoo died away Mr. Cassidy slipped his empty guns in their holsters and turned his pony’s head toward the fascinated spectator, whose mouth offered easy entry to smoke and dust. As Cassidy glanced carelessly back at the late rustler Jimmy shut his mouth, gulped, opened it to speak, shut it again and cleared his dry throat. Looking from Cassidy to Longhorn and back again, he opened his mouth once more. “You you what’d’ju pay for them chaps?” he blurted, idiotically.

IV JIMMY VISITS SHARPSVILLE

BILL CASSIDY rode slowly into Sharpsville and dismounted in front of Carter’s Emporium, nodding carelessly to the loungers hugging the shade of the store. “Howd’y,” he said. “Seen anything of Jimmy Price a kid, but about my height, with brown hair and a devilish disposition?”

Carter stretched and yawned, a signal for a salvo of yawns. “Nope, thank God. You needn’t describe nothin’ about that Price cub to none of us. We know him. He spent three days here about a year ago, an’ th’ town’s been sorta restin’ up ever since. You don’t mean for to tell us he’s comin’ here again!” he exclaimed, sitting up with a jerk.

Bill laughed at the expression. “As long as you yearn for him so powerful hard, why I gotta tell you he’s on his way, anyhow. I had to go east for a day’s ride an’ he headed this way. He’s to meet me here.”

Carter turned and looked at the others blankly. Old Dad Johnson nervously stroked his chin. “Well, then he’ll git here, all right,” he prophesied pessimistically. “He usually gets where he starts for; an’ I’m plumb glad I’m goin’ on tomorrow.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed George Bruce. “So’m I goin’ on, by Scott!”

Grunts and envious looks came from the group and Carter squirmed uneasily. “That’s just like you fellers, runnin’ away an’ leavin’ me to face it. An’ it was you fellers what played most of th’ tricks on him last time he was here. Huh! now I gotta pay for ‘em,” he growled.

Bill glanced over the gloomy circle and laughed heartily. Two faces out of seven were bright, Dad’s particularly so. “Well, he seems to be quite a favorite around here,” he grinned.

Carter snorted. “Huh! Seems to be nothinY’

“He ain’t exactly a favorite,” muttered Dawson. “He’s a—a—an event; that’s what he is!”

Carter nodded. “Yep; that’s what he is, though you just can’t help likin’ th’ cub, he’s that cheerful in his devilment.”

Charley Logan stretched and yawned. “Didn’t hear nothin’ about no Injuns, did you? A feller rid through here yesterday an’ said they was out again.”

Bill nodded. “Yes; I did. An’ there’s a lot of rumors goin’ around. They’ve been over in th’ Crazy Butte country an’ I heard they raided through th’ Little Mountain Valley last week. Anyhow, th’ Seventh is out after ‘em, in four sections.”

“Th’ Seventh is a regiment,” asserted George Bruce. “Leastawise it was when I was in it. It is th’ best in th’ Service.”

Dad snorted. “Listen to him! It was when he was in it! Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!” he chuckled.”

“There hain’t no cavalry slick enough to ketch Apaches,” declared Hank, dogmatically. “Troops has too many fixin’s an’ sech. You gotta travel light an’ live without eatin’ an’ drinkin’ to ketch them Injuns; an’ then you never hardly sometimes see ‘em, at that.”

“Lemme tell you, Mosshead, th’ Seventh can lick all th’ Injuns ever spawned!” asserted Bruce with heat. “It wiped out Black Kettle’s camp, in th’ dead of winter, too!”

“That was Custer as did that,” snorted Carter.

“Well, he was leadin’ th’ Seventh, same as he is now!”

Charley Logan shook his head. “We are talking about ketchin’ ‘em, not fightin’ ‘em. An’ no cavalry in th’ hull country can ketch ‘Paches in this country it’s too rough. ‘Paches are only scared of punchers.”

“Shore,” asserted Carter. “Apaches laugh at troops, less ‘n it’s a pitched battle, when they don’t. Cavalry chases ‘em so fur an’ no farther; punchers chase ‘em inter h—l, out of it an’ back again.”

“They shore is ‘lusive,” cogitated Lefty Dawson, carefully deluging a fly ten feet away and shifting his cud for another shot. “An’ I, for one, admits I ain’t hankerin’ for to chase ‘em close.”

“Wish we could get that cub Jimmy to chase some,” exclaimed Carter. “Afore he gits here,” he explained, thoughtfully.

“Oh, he’s all right, Carter,” spoke up Lefty. “We was all of us young and playful onct.”

“But we all warn’t he-devils workin’ day an’ night tryin’ to make our betters miserable!”

“Oh, he’s a good kid,” remarked Dad. “I sorta hates to miss him. Anyhow, we got th’ best of him, last time.”

Bill finished rolling a cigarette, lit it and slowly addressed them. “Well, all I got to say is that he suits me right plumb down to th’ ground. Now, just lemme tell you some thin’ about Jimmy,” and he gave them the story of Jimmy’s part in the happenings on Tortilla Range, to the great delight of his audience.

“By Scott, it’s just like him!” chuckled George Bruce.

“That’s shore Jimmy, all right,” laughed Lefty.

“What did I tell you?” beamed Dad. “He’s a heller, he is. He’s all right!”

“Then why don’t you stay an’ see him?” demanded Carter.

“I gotta go on, or I would. Yessir, I would!”

“Reckon them Injuns won’t git so fur north as here,” suggested Carter hopefully, and harking back to the subject which lay heaviest on his mind. “They’ve only been here twict in ten years.”

“Which was twice too often,” asserted Lefty.

“Th’ last time they was here,” remarked Dad, reminiscently, “they didn’t stop long; though where they went to I dunno. We gave ‘em more ‘n they could handle. That was th’ time I just bought that new Sharps rifle, an’ what I done with that gun was tumble.” He paused to gather the facts in the right order before he told the story, and when he looked around again he flushed and swore. The audience had silently faded away to escape the moth-eaten story they knew by heart. The fact that Dad usually improved it and his part in it, each time he told it, did not lure them. “Cussed ingrates!” he swore, turning to Bill. “They’re plumb jealous!”

“They act like it, anyhow,” agreed Bill soberly. “I’d like to hear it, but I’m too thirsty. Come in an’ have one with me?” The story was indefinitely postponed.

An accordion wheezed down the street and a mouth-organ tried desperately to join in from the saloon next door, but, owing to a great difference in memory, did not harmonize. A roar of laughter from Dawson’s, and the loud clink of glasses told where Dad’s would-have-been audience then was. Carter walked around his counter and seated himself in his favorite place against the door jamb. Bill, having eluded Dad, sat on a keg of edibles and smoked in silence and content, occasionally slapping at the flies which buzzed persistently around his head. Knocking the ashes from the cigarette he leaned back lazily and looked at Carter. “Wonder where he is?” he muttered.

“Huh?” grunted the proprietor, glancing around. “Oh, you worryin’ about that yearlin’? Well, you needn’t! Nothin’ never sidetracks Jimmy.”

A fusillade of shots made Bill stand up, and Carter leaped to his feet and dashed toward the counter. But he paused and looked around foolishly. “That’s his yell,” he explained. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s arrove, same as usual.”

The drumming of hoofs came rapidly nearer and heads popped out of windows and