The Devil’s Dooryard
“I has to disagree with yuh, cowboy. There is some romance left. Alittle barb-wire and a few sheep don’t cut the romance out of thecow-land. She’s there, Sleepy.”
“Where?” I asks politely. “Me and you ain’t found none of it, Hashknife.Since we shook loose from Willer Crick we ain’t done nothin’ moreromantic than gettin’ bucked off or lettin’ a gun go off accidental.There ain’t a man left in the cow-country that would get ambition ifsomebody called him a liar, and the villains has gone plumb out of thefemale-stealin’ business.”
“Well, get off your bronc, Sleepy. Folks’ll think you’re a statoo on ahorse. I’m too hungry to argue. Git off and look for romance, cowboy.”
“In this town? Shucks. False fronts, licensed gamblin’-house,livery-stable, general merchandise store and a barber-shop.Romance ——!”
“We-e-e-ll, get off. Some ham and eggs looks plenty romantic to me.”
I gets off my bronc, limbers up my legs and looks around. The sign onthe store proclaims it to be the Sundown Mercantile Company.
“Sundown City,” says Hashknife. “She’s a cow-town, pure and simple.”
“Pure and simple ——!” says I.
“Why argue?” he says, sarcastic-like. “All day long you finds fault.You’d kick if yuh was goin’ to get hung, Sleepy Stevens. Ain’t nothin’right in your eyes?”
“Pure and simple ——”
I reckon the argument had gone far enough, but that wasn’t no way tobust it up. A bullet splinters the top of the tie-rack, another onebusts the glass in the store-window and another one scorches a lousy dogwhich was asleep in the shade of the saloon porch, and it wentki-yi-ing off down the street. Three punchers comes gallivantin’ outof the saloon-door, sifting lead back inside, while several more oozesout the back door, hunting for a place to get behind. I never seen somuch lead wasted and nobody saturated. Somebody heezes more bullets inour direction, and I stands there with my mouth wide open untilHashknife kicks my feet from under me, drops a rifle in my lap and thendoes a dive across the sidewalk.
“Yuh might do a little somethin’ for yourself,” says he, as I sits theredigging dirt out of my eyes from the last bullet. Then he yells:
“Sleepy, you —— fool, get under cover! Ain’tcha got no sense?”
I crawls under the sidewalk and sprawls beside him.
“Yuh ain’t got the sense that —— gave geese in Ireland,” says he. “Watchasettin’ over there for? You ain’t got no brains a-tall.”
“I never got hit,” says I.
“You never got— Saya-a-y! Oh, you didn’t get hit, eh? Well, that’s toobad!”
“Well, what they shootin’ at me for?”
“We might ask ’em—some time. Dang yuh!”
That last wasn’t for me. A puncher raised up out of a wagon-box acrossthe street and his bullet plowed a furrow in the sidewalk between me andHashknife. Hashknife’s .45-70 spoke its little piece, and soon we seenthat feller hop a circle plumb around the corner. Somebody else took ashot at him on the wing, but I reckon that he was so bow-legged that hedidn’t get hit.
Another Johnny Wise got up on the roof of that gambling-house and beginsto spin lead promiscuous-like, sort of protecting himself with the topof the false front, but he didn’t reckon on an