-- told you he wouldn't let nobody but me ride him,--I says as I hauled him out, but his langwidge ain't fit to be repeated. The poke was lying clost by, busted open. When I picked it up, it didn't look right. I struck a match and looked.
That there poke was full of nothing but scrap iron!
I was so stunned I didn't hardly know what I was doing when I taken the poke in one hand and Mister Jones--neck in the other--, and lugged--m back to the cabin. The mob had Mister Jones-- six men outside tied up, and was wiping the blood off--m, and I seen Shorty and Black-Beard and Squint-Eye and the others, and about a hundred more.
--hey--e Stirling-- men all right,--says Warts.--ut where-- Mustang, and that hill-billy? Anyway, le-- string these up right here.----ou ain't,--says Black-Beard.--ou all elected me sheriff before we come up here, and I aims to uphold the law--ho-- that?----t-- Old Man Sprague,--says somebody, as a bald-headed old coot come prancing through the crowd waving a shotgun.
--hat you want?--says Black-Beard.--on't you see we--e busy?----demands jestice!--I howled Old Man Sprague.--been abused!-- At this moment I shouldered through the crowd with a heavy heart, and slang the poke of scrap iron down in front of him.
--here it is,--I says,--nd I--l swear it ain't been monkeyed with since Blaze Wellington gave it to me!----ho-- that?--howled Sprague.
--he hill-billy!--howled the mob.--rab him!----o, you don't!--I roared, drawing a gun.----e took enough offa you Blue Lizard jackasses! I-- a honest man, and I--e brung back Mister Jones to prove it.-- I then flang him down in front of them, and Warts give a howl and pounced on him.--ones, nothing!--he yelled.--hat-- Mustang Stirling!----confesses,--says Mustang groggily.--ock me up where I can be safe from that hill-billy! The critter ain't human.----omebody listen to me!--howled Old Man Sprague, jumping up and down.--demands to be heard!----done the best I could!--I roared, plumb out of patience.--hen Blaze Wellington give me yore gold to guard--
--hat the devil air you talkin'tabout?--he squalled.--hat wuthless scoundrel never had no gold of mine.----hat!--I hollered, going slightly crazy. Jest then I seen a feller in the crowd I recognized. I made a jump and grabbed him.
--ranner!--I roared.--ou was at Wellington't shack when he give me that poke! You tell me quick what this is all about, or--
--eggo!--he gasped.--t warn't Sprague-- gold we hid. It was our--. We couldn't git it outa camp because we knowed Stirling-- spies was watchin'tus all the time. When you jumped Blaze in the Belle of New York, he seen a chance to git--m off our necks. He filled that poke with scrap iron and give it to you where the spy could see it and hear what was said. The spy didn't know whether it was our gold or Sprague--, but we knowed if he thought you had it, Stirling would go after you and let us alone. He did, too, and that give Blaze a chance to sneak out early tonight with it.----nd that ain't all!--bellered Old Man Sprague.--e taken Hannah with him! They--e eloped!-- My yell of mortal agony drownded out his demands for the sheriff to pursue--m. Hannah! Eloped! It was too much for a critter to endure!
--w, don't you keer, partner,--says Shorty, slapping me on the back with the arm I hadn't busted.--ou been vindicated as a honest citizen! You--e the hero of the hour!----pare yore praise,--I says bitterly.---- the victim of female perfidy. I have lost my faith in my feller man and my honest heart is busted all to perdition! Leave me to my sorrer!-- So they gathered up their prisoners and went away in awed silence. I am a rooint man. All I want to do is to become a hermit and forgit my aching heart in the untrodden wilderness.
Your pore brother,
PIKE
P. S.--The Next Morning. I have jest learnt that after I withdrawed from the campaign and left Antioch, you come out for sheriff and got elected. So that-- why you persuaded me to come up here. I am heading for Antioch and when I git there I am going to whup you within a inch of yore wuthless life, I don't care if you air sheriff of Antioch. I am going to kick the seat of yore britches up around yore neck and sweep the streets with you till you don't know whether yo--e setting or standing. Hoping this finds you in good health and spirits, I am,
Yore affectionate brother,
P. BEARFIELD ESQUIRE.
The Grim Land
From Sonora to Del Rio is a hundred barren miles
Where the sotol weave and shimmer in the sun--Like a horde of rearing serpents swaying down the bare defiles
When the scarlet, silver webs of dawn are spun.
There are little--obe ranchos brooding far along the sky,
On the sullen dreary bosoms of the hills;
Not a wolf to break the quiet, not a desert bird to fly
Where the silence is so utter that it thrills.
With an eery sense of vastness, with a curious sense of age,
And the ghosts of eons gone uprear and glide
Like a horde of drifting shadows gleaming through the wilted sage--They are riding where of old they used to ride.
Muleteer and caballero, with their plunder and their slaves--Oh, the clink of ghostly stirrups in the morn!
Oh, the soundless flying clatter of the feathered, painted braves,
Oh, the echo of the spur and hoof and horn.
Maybe, in the heat of evening, comes a wind from Mexico
Laden with the heat of seven Hells,
And the rattlers in the yucca and the buzzard dark and slow
Hear and understand the grisly tales it tells.
Gaunt and stark and bare and mocking rise the everlasting cliffs
Like a row of sullen giants hewn of stone,
Till the traveler, mazed with silence, thinks to look on hieroglyphs,
Thinks to see a carven Pharaoh on his throne.
Once these sullen hills were beaches and they saw the ocean flee
In the misty ages never known of men,
And they wait in brooding silence till the everlasting sea
Comes foaming forth to claim her own again.
Pigeons from Hell
I
THE WHISTLER IN THE DARK
Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of imminent peril. He stared about wildly, unable at first to remember where he was, or what he was doing there. Moonlight filtered in through the dusty windows, and the great empty room with its lofty ceiling and gaping black fireplace was spectral and unfamiliar. Then as he emerged from the clinging cobwebs of his recent sleep, he remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He twisted his head and stared at his companion, sleeping on the floor near him. John Branner was but a vaguely bulking shape in the darkness that the moon scarcely grayed.
Griswell tried to remember what had awakened him. There was no sound in the house, no sound outside except the mournful hoot of an owl, far away in the piny woods. Now he had captured the illusive memory. It was a dream, a nightmare so filled with dim terror that it had frightened him awake. Recollection flooded back, vividly etching the abominable vision.
Or was it a dream? Certainly it must have been, but it had blended so curiously with recent actual events that it was difficult to know where reality left off and fantasy began.
Dreaming, he had seemed to relive his past few waking hours, in accurate detail. The dream had begun, abruptly, as he and John Branner came in sight of the house where they now lay. They had come rattling and bouncing over the stumpy, uneven old road that led through the pinelands, he and John Branner, wandering far afield from their New England home, in search of vacation pleasure. They had sighted the old house with its balustraded galleries rising amidst a wilderness of weeds and bushes, just as the sun was setting behind it. It dominated their fancy, rearing black and stark and gaunt against the low lurid rampart of sunset, barred by the black pines.
They were tired, sick of bumping and pounding all day over woodland roads. The old deserted house stimulated their imagination with its suggestion of antebellum splendor and ultimate decay. They left the automobile beside the rutty road, and as they went up the winding walk of crumbling bricks, almost lost in the tangle of rank growth, pigeons rose from the balustrades in a fluttering, feathery crowd and swept away with a low thunder of beating wings.