Robert E. Howard by A Gent From Bear Creek & Others

Author:A Gent From Bear Creek & Others [Creek, A Gent From Bear & Others]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-12T08:45:38+00:00

CHAPTER IX

CUPID FROM BEAR CREEK

WHEN I reined my hoss towards War Paint again, I didn’t go back the way I’d come. I was so far off my route that I knowed it would be nearer to go through the mountains by the way of Teton Gulch than it would be to go clean back to the Yavapai-War Paint road. So I headed out.

I aimed to pass right through Teton Gulch without stopping, because I was in a hurry to get back to War Paint and Dolly Rixby, but my thirst got the best of me, and I stopped in the camp. It was one of them new mining towns that springs up overnight like mushrooms. I was drinking me a dram at the bar of the Yaller Dawg Saloon and Hotel, when the barkeep says, after studying me a spell, he says: “You must be Breckinridge Elkins, of Bear Creek.”

I give the matter due consideration, and ‘lowed as how I was.

“How come you knowed me?” I inquired suspiciously, because I hadn’t never been in Teton Gulch before, and he says: “Well, I’ve heard tell of Breckinridge Elkins, and when I seen you, I figgered you must be him, because I don’t see how they can be two men in the world that big. By the way, there’s a friend of yore’n upstairs — Blink Wiltshaw, from War Paint. I’ve heered him brag about knowin’ you personal. He’s upstairs now, fourth door from the stair-head, on the left.”

So Blink had come back to Teton, after all. Well, that suited me fine, so I thought I’d go up and pass the time of day with him, and find out if he had any news from War Paint, which I’d been gone from for about a week. A lot of things can happen in a week in a fast-moving town like War Paint.

I went upstairs and knocked on the door, and bam! went a gun inside and a .45 slug ripped through the door and taken a nick out of my off-ear. Getting shot in the ear always did irritate me, so without waiting for no more exhibitions of hospitality, I give voice to my displeasure in a deafening beller and knocked the door off’n its hinges and busted into the room over its rooins.

For a second I didn’t see nobody, but then I heard a kind of gurgle going on, and happened to remember that the door seemed kind of squishy underfoot when I tromped over it, so I knowed that whoever was in the room had got pinned under the door when I knocked it down.

So I reched under it and got him by the collar and hauled him out, and sure enough it was Blink Wiltshaw. He was limp as a lariat, and glassy-eyed and pale, and was still trying to shoot me with his six-shooter when I taken it away from him.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I demanded sternly, dangling him by the collar with one hand, whilst shaking him till his teeth rattled.

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