Two gun bob, p.51
Two-Gun Bob, page 51
It was white and pulpy, and drew its quaking bulk along the ground, worm-fashion. But it had wide flat tentacles, and fleshy feelers, and other adjuncts the use of which I am unable to explain. And it had a long proboscis which it curled and uncurled like an elephant's trunk. Its forty eyes, set in a horrific circle, were composed of thousands of facets of as many scintillant colors which changed and altered in never-ending transmutation. But through all interplay of hue and glint, they retained their evil intelligence–intelligence there was behind those flickering facets, not human nor yet bestial, but a night-born demoniac intelligence such as men in dreams vaguely sense throbbing titanically in the black gulfs outside our material universe. In size the monster was mountainous; its bulk would have dwarfed a mastodon.
But even as I shook with the cosmic horror of the thing, I drew a feathered shaft to my ear and arched it singing on its way. Grass and bushes were crushed flat as the monster came toward me like a moving mountain and shaft after shaft I sent with terrific force and deadly precision. I could not miss so huge a target. The arrows sank to the feathers or clear out of sight in the unstable bulk, each bearing enough poison to have stricken dead a bull elephant. Yet on it came, swiftly, appallingly, apparently heedless of both the shafts and the venom in which they were steeped. And all the time the hideous music played a maddening accompaniment, whining thinly from the pipes that lay untouched on the ground.
My confidence faded; even the poison of Satha was futile against this uncanny being. I drove my last shaft almost straight downward into the quaking white mountain, so close was the monster under my perch. Then suddenly its color altered. A wave of ghastly blue surged over it, and the vast bulk heaved in earthquake-like convulsions. With a terrible plunge it struck the lower part of the column, which crashed to falling shards of stone. But even with the impact, I leaped far out and fell through the empty air full upon the monster’s back.
The spongy skin yielded and gave beneath my feet, and I drove my sword hilt-deep, dragging it through the pulpy flesh, ripping a horrible yard-long wound, from which oozed a green slime. Then a flip of a cable-like tentacle flicked me from the titan's back and spun me three hundred feet through the air to crash among a cluster of giant trees.
The impact must have splintered half the bones in my frame, for when I sought to grasp my sword again and crawl anew to the combat, I could not move hand or foot, could only writhe helplessly with my broken back. But I could see the monster and I knew that I had won, even in defeat. The mountainous bulk was heaving and billowing, the tentacles were lashing madly, the antennæ writhing and knotting, and the nauseous whiteness had changed to a pale and grisly green. It turned ponderously and lurched back toward the temple, rolling like a crippled ship in a heavy swell. Trees crashed and splintered as it lumbered against them.
I wept with pure fury because I could not catch up my sword and rush in to die glutting my berserk madness in mighty strokes. But the worm-god was death-stricken and needed not my futile sword. The demon pipes on the ground kept up their infernal tune, and it was like the fiend’s death-dirge. Then as the monster veered and floundered, I saw it catch up the corpse of its hairy slave. For an instant the apish form dangled in midair, gripped round by the trunk-like proboscis, then was dashed against the temple wall with a force that reduced the hairy body to a mere shapeless pulp. At that the pipes screamed out horribly, and fell silent for ever.
The titan staggered on the brink of the shaft; then another change came over it–a frightful transfiguration the nature of which I can not yet describe. Even now when I try to think of it clearly, I am only chaotically conscious of a blasphemous, unnatural transmutation of form and substance, shocking and indescribable. Then the strangely altered bulk tumbled into the shaft to roll down into the ultimate darkness from whence it came, and I knew that it was dead. And as it vanished into the well, with a rending, grinding groan the ruined walls quivered from dome to base. They bent inward and buckled with deafening reverberation, the columns splintered, and with a cataclysmic crash the dome itself came thundering down. For an instant the air seemed veiled with flying debris and stone-dust, through which the treetops lashed madly as in a storm or an earthquake convulsion. Then all was clear again and I stared, shaking the blood from my eyes. Where the temple had stood there lay only a colossal pile of shattered masonry and broken stones, and every column in the valley had fallen, to lie in crumbling shards.
In the silence that followed I heard Grom wailing a dirge over me. I bade him lay my sword in my hand, and he did so, and bent close to hear what I had to say, for I was passing swiftly.
“Let my tribe remember,” I said, speaking slowly. “Let the tale be told from village to village, from camp to camp, from tribe to tribe, so that men may know that not man nor beast nor devil may prey in safety on the golden-haired people of Asgard. Let them build me a cairn where I lie and lay me therein with my bow and sword at hand, to guard this valley for ever; so if the ghost of the god I slew comes up from below, my ghost will ever be ready to give it battle.”
And while Grom howled and beat his hairy breast, death came to me in the Valley of the Worm.
Gents on the Lynch
Blue Lizard, Colorado,
September 1, 1879.
Mister Washington Bearfield, Antioch, Colorado.
Dear Brother Wash:
Well, Wash, I reckon you think you air smart persuading me to quit my job with the Seven Prong Pitchfork outfit and come way up here in the mountains to hunt gold. I knowed from the start I warn’t no prospector, but you talked so much you got me addled and believing what you said, and the first thing I knowed I had quit my job and withdrawed from the race for sheriff of Antioch and was on my way. Now I think about it, it is a dern funny thing you got so anxious for me to go prospecting jest as elections was coming up. You never before showed no anxiety for me to git rich finding gold or no other way. I am going to hunt me a quiet spot and set down and study this over for a few hours, and if I decide you had some personal reason for wanting me out of Antioch, I aim to make you hard to ketch.
All my humiliating experiences in Blue Lizard is yore fault, and the more I think about it, the madder I git. And yet it all come from my generous nature which cain’t endure to see a feller critter in distress onless I got him that way myself.
Well, about four days after I left Antioch I hove into the Blue Lizard country one forenoon, riding Satanta and leading my pack mule, and I was passing through a canyon about three mile from the camp when I heard dawgs baying. The next minute I seen three of them setting around a big oak tree barking fit to bust yore ear-drums. I rode up to see what they’d treed and I’m a Injun if it warn’t a human being! It was a tall man without no hat nor gun in his scabbard, and he was cussing them dawgs so vigorous he didn’t hear me till I rode up and says: “Hey, what you doin’ up there?”
He like to fell out of the crotch he was setting in, and then he looked down at me very sharp for a instant, and said: “I taken refuge from them vicious beasts. I was goin’ along mindin’ my own business when they taken in after me. I think they got hyderphoby. I’ll give you five bucks if you’ll shoot ’em. I lost my gun.”
“I don’t want no five bucks,” I says. “But I ain’t goin’ to shoot ’em. They’re pecooliar lookin’ critters, and they may be valurebul. I notice the funnier-lookin’ a animal is, the more money they’re generally wuth. I’ll shoo ’em off.”
So I got down and says: “Git!” and they immejitly laid holt of my laigs, which was very irritating because I didn’t have no other boots but them. So I fotched each one of them fool critters a hearty kick in the rear, and they give a yowl and scooted for the tall timber.
“You can come down now,” I says. “Dern it, them varmints has rooint my boots.”
“Take mine!” says he, sliding down and yanking off his boots.
“Aw, I don’t want to do that,” I says, but he says: “I insists! It’s all I can do for you. Witherington T. Jones always pays his debts, even in adversity! You behold in me a lone critter buffeted on the winds of chance, penniless and friendless, but grateful! Take my boots, kind stranger, do!”
Well, I was embarrassed and sorry for him, so I said all right, and taken his boots and give him mine. They was too big for him, but he seemed mighty pleased when he hauled ’em on. His’n was very handsome, all fancy stitching. He shaken my hand and said I’d made him very happy, but all to once he bust into tears and sobbed: “Pore Joe!”
“Pore who?” I ast.
“Joe!” says he, wiping his eyes on my bandanner. “My partner, up on our claim in the hills. I warned him agen drinkin’ a gallon of corn juice to inoculate hisself agen snake-bite – before the snake bit him – but he wouldn’t listen, so now he’s writhin’ in the throes of delirium tremens. It would bust yore heart to hear the way he shrieks for me to shoot the polka-dotted rhinocerhosses which he thinks is gnawin’ his toes. I left him tied hand and foot and howlin’ that a striped elephant was squattin’ on his bosom, and I went to Blue Lizard for medicine. I got it, but them cussed dawgs scairt my hoss and he got away from me, and it’ll take me till midnight to git back to our claim afoot. Pore Joe’ll be a ravin’ corpse by then.”
Well, I never heard of a corpse raving, but I couldn’t stand the idee of a man dying from the d.t.’s, so I shucked my pack offa my mule, and said: “Here, take this mule and skeet for yore claim. He’ll be better’n walkin’. I’d lend you Satanta only he won’t let nobody but me ride him.”
Mister Witherington T. Jones was plumb overcome by emotion. He shaken my hand again and said: “My noble friend, I’ll never forgit this!” And then he jumped on the mule and lit out, and from the way he was kicking the critter’s ribs I reckoned he’d pull into his claim before noon, if it was anywheres within a hundred miles of there. He sure warn’t wasting no time. I could see that.
I hung his boots onto my saddle horn and I had started gathering up my plunder when I heard men yelling and then a whole gang with Winchesters come busting through the trees, and they seen me and hollered: “Where is he?”
“We heard the dawgs bayin’ over here,” says a little short one. “I don’t hear ’em now. But they must of had him treed somewheres clost by.”
“Oh, Mr. Jones,” I said. “Well, don’t worry about him. He’s all right. I druv the dawgs off and and lent him my mule to git back to his claim.”
At this they let forth loud frenzied yells. It was plumb amazing. Here I’d jest rescued a feller human from a pack of ferocious animals, and these hombres acted like I’d did a crime or something.
“He helped him git awayl” they hollered. “Le’s lynch him, the derned outlaw!”
“Who you callin’ a outlaw?” I demanded. “I’m a stranger in these parts. I’m headin’ for Blue Lizard to work me a claim.”
“You jest helped a criminal to escape!” gnashed they, notably a big black-bearded galoot with a sawed-off shotgun. “This feller Jones as you call him tried to rob a stage coach over on Cochise Mountain less’n a hour ago. The guard shot his pistol out of his hand, and his hoss got hit too, so he broke away on foot. We sot the dawgs on his trail, and we’d of had him by now, if you hadn’t butted in! Now the dawgs cain’t track him no more.”
“Call ’em back and set ’em on the mule’s trail,” sejests a squint-eyed cuss. “As for you, you cussed Texas hill-billy, you keep on travelin’. We don’t want no man like you in Blue Lizard.”
“Go to the devil, you flat-nosed buzzard,” I retort with typical Southern courtesy. “This here’s a free country. I come up here to hunt gold and I aim to hunt it if I have to lick every prospector in Lizard Cañon! You cain’t ride me jest because I made a honest mistake that anybody could of made. Anyway, I’m the loser, ’cause he got off with my mule.”
“Aw, come on and le’s find the dawgs,” says a bow-legged gun-toter with warts. So they went off up the cañon, breathing threats and vengeance, and I taken my plunder on my shoulder and went on down the cañon, leading Satanta. I put on Mister Jones’s boots first, and they was too small for me, of course, but I could wear ’em in a pinch. (That there is a joke, Wash, but I don’t suppose you got sense enough to see the p’int.)
I soon come to the aidge of the camp, which was spread all over the place where the canyon widened out and shallowed, and the first man I seen was old Polk Williams. You remember him, Wash, we knowed him over to Trinidad when we first come to Colorado with the Seven Prong Pitchfork outfit. I hailed him and ast him where I could find a good claim, and he said all the good ones had been took. So I said, well, I’d strike out up in the hills and hunt me one, and he says: “What you know about prospectin’? I advises you to git a job of workin’ some other man’s claim at day wages till they’s a new strike up in the hills somewheres. They’s bound to be one any day, because the mountains is full of prospectors which got here too late to git in on this’n. Plenty of jobs here at big wages, because nobody wants to work. They all wants to wade creeks till they stub their fool toe on a pocket of nuggets.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll pitch my camp down on the creek.”
“You better not,” says he. “These mountains is full of hyderphoby skunks. They crawls in yore blankets at night and bites you, and you foam at the mouth and go bite yore best friends. Now, it jest happens I got a spare cabin which I ain’t usin’. The feller who had it rented ain’t with us this mornin’ account of a extry ace in a poker game last night. I’ll rent it to you dirt cheap – ten dollars a day. You’ll be safe from them cussed skunks there.”
So I said: “All right. I don’t want to git hyderphoby.”
So I give him ten dollars in advance and put my plunder in the cabin which was on a slope west of the camp, and hobbled Satanta to graze. He said I better look out or somebody would steal Satanta. He said Mustang Stirling and his outlaws was hiding in the hills clost by and terrorizing the camp which didn’t even have a sheriff yet, because folks hadn’t had time to elect one, but they was gittin so sick of being robbed all the time they probably would soon, and maybe organize a Vigilante Committee, too. But I warn’t scairt of anybody stealing Satanta. A stranger had better take a cougar by the whiskers than to monkey with Satanta. That hoss has got a disposition like a sore-tailed rattlesnake.
Well, while we was talking I seen a gal come out from amongst the cluster of stores and saloons and things, and head up the canyon with a bucket in her hand. She was so purty my heart skipped a beat and my corns begun to throb. That’s a sure sign of love at first sight.
“Who’s that gal?” I ast.
“Hannah Sprague,” says Polk. “The belle of Blue Lizard. But you needn’t start castin’ sheep’s eyes at her. They’s a dozen young bucks sparkin’ her already. I think Blaze Wellington’s the favorite to put his brand onto her, though. She wouldn’t look twicet at a hill-billy like you.”
“I might remove the compertition,” I sejested.
“You better not try no Wolf Mountain rough stuff in Blue Lizard,” warned he. “The folks is so worked up over all these robberies and killin’s they’re jest in a mood to lynch somebody, especially a stranger.”
But I give no heed. Folks is always wanting to lynch me, and quite a few has tried, as numerous tombstones on the boundless prairies testifies.
“Where’s she goin’ with that bucket?” I ast him, and he said: “She’s takin’ beer to her old man which is workin’ a claim up the creek.”
“Well, listen,” I says. “You git over there behind that thicket and when she comes past you make a noise like a Injun.”
“What kind of damfoolishness is this?” he demanded. “You want to stampede the hull camp?”
“Don’t make a loud whoop,” I says. “Jest make it loud enough for her to hear it.”
“Air you crazy?” says he.
“No, dern it!” I said fiercely, because she was tripping along purty fast. “Git in there and do like I say. I’ll rush up from the other side and pertend to rescue her from the Injuns, and that’ll make her like me.”
“I mistrusts you’re a blasted fool,” he grumbled. “But I’ll do it jest this oncet.”
He snuck into the thicket which she’d have to pass on the other side, and I circled around so she couldn’t see me till I was ready to rush out and save her from being sculped. Well, I warn’t hardly in place when I heard a kind of mild war-whoop and it sounded jest like a Blackfoot, only not so loud. But immejitly there come the crack of a pistol and another yell which warn’t subdued like the first. It was lusty and energetic.
I run towards the thicket, but before I could git into the open trail old Polk come b’ilin’ out of the back side of the clump with his hands to the seat of his britches.
“You planned this a-purpose, you snake in the grass!” he squalled. “Git outa my way!”
“Why, Polk!” I says. “What happened?”
“I bet you knowed she had a derringer in her stocking,” he howled as he run past me with his pants smoking. “It’s all yore fault! When I whooped she pulled it and shot into the bresh! Don’t speak to me! I’m lucky that I warn’t hit in a vital spot. I’ll git even with you for this if it takes a hundred years!”
He headed on into the deep bresh, and I run around the thicket and seen Hannah Sprague peering into it with her gun smoking in her hand. She looked up as I come onto the trail, and I taken off my hat and said perlite: “Howdy, Miss. Can I be of no assistance to you?”
“I jest shot a Injun,” says she. “I heard him holler. You might go in there and git the sculp, if you don’t mind. I’d like to have it for a soovenear.”
