Part 1

HELPED BY A HORSE DOCTOR

By W. C. Tuttle

Author of “The Color of His Boots,” “Assisting Ananias,” etc.

In the middle of the cabin stood Magpie Simpkins, my pardner, and facing him is a fat _hombre_, dressed like a cross between a short-card artist and a perfume pedler. They don’t see me. From the expression on their faces, I’d say that their minds are null and void as far as I’m concerned.

Magpie ain’t got no gun on his hip, which is unusual, and I can see by the expression in his eyes that he’s laboring under a heavy strain.

The fat feller lifts one hand above his head, spreads the fingers and then shuts all but two. Magpie gazes upon that hand with awe in his eyes, and then up goes the fat feller’s other hand with the first and second fingers crossed. Then the fat man drops his right hand and rubs his finger across his nose.

Magpie’s eyes are as wide as saucers and the perspiration seems to gather on his noble brow. Then Magpie lifts his right hand even with his ear, sticks his thumb in said ear and wiggles his fingers.

All to once I gets the solution of the mystery. This fat feller is one of them hypnotist _hombres_, and he’s got poor Magpie into a spell.

With the Harper tribe, to think is to act so I bent my gun over the hypnotist’s head. He slumps to the floor and Magpie stares at me, leaning on our table to support his wobbly legs.

“As soon as he gets rational I’ll have him snap his fingers and bring you back,” says I, rolling a smoke.

Magpie stares at me.

“Yeah?” says he foolish-like. “Bring me back?”

“Uh-huh. Just take it easy, old-timer. You likely think you’re Napoleon Bonaparte or Paul Revere right now, so I won’t start no arguments. Just hang on to yourself and I’ll hoodle this here brain-mixer into bringing you up to date. _Sabe?_”

I don’t know yet what Magpie hit me with, but I suspicion the sirup pitcher, it being the only thing of that weight on the table. I fell plumb out into the yard and retaliates by heezing three .44’s through the closed door. I felt insulted a lot. I went up to see Doc Milliken, the horse doctor, and he takes three stitches in my alabaster brow with a sack-needle and binding-twine.

I asks him what he knows about hypnotism, and he says--

“Ike, you wasn’t hypnotized--you was assassinatized.”

I asks him if a feller could be hypnotized to such an extent that he’d throw a pitcher at his best friend.

“Well,” says Doc, “I reckon he would. A feller you can stick pins into without hurting him is liable to do anything. You see, Ike, his mind could be influenced by the hypnotist. Did Magpie hit you?”

“According to science, Doc, it wasn’t Magpie throwed the pitcher, but he must ’a’ been influenced by another party.”

“Yeah,” says Doc. “After looking at the cut you got, Ike, I’d say it was the Democrat or Republican party.”

Then I meets “Dirty Shirt” Jones. Dirty looks me over careful-like.

“Somebody been loving you with a rock, or had you proved the assertion that familiarity breeds contempt and stroked that danged jassack of yours from the rear? You ought to get a divorce from that pet. Some day he’ll kick you so hard that folks will say, ‘The poor devil would be a lot better off if the grim reaper would come along and harvest his soul.’”

“I got this through Magpie,” says I.

“My ----! He must be a mess, Ike!”

“You don’t _sabe_, Dirty. He was responsible but not accountable. Another mind influenced him.”

“Somebody told him to do it?”

“Transmigration of thought.”

“Did Magpie tell you this, Ike?”

“Doc Milliken explains the principles.”

“Well, you ---- fool!” snorts Dirty. “A feller busts your head open and a horse doctor explains why, and you kiss everybody. Well, well! This being the time of the year that a snake sheds its skin and becomes so obstreperous that it strikes at everything, let’s me and you inoculate ourselves against such freaks of nature. A stitch in time is worth a pound of beans in the hand.”

“Dirty, you’d intoxicate any snake that would be brave enough to strike you. You’re already inoculated against everything.”

Dirty lifts out his old Colt, spins the cylinder and rings the bell on the Mint Hall three times in a row, and grins:

“Not yet, Ike. Wait till I miss one out of three.”

Inside Buck’s place we finds “Mighty” Jones standing on the rail and orating aloud. He’s saying:

“Not by a ---- sight! Don’t believe in it. I’m strong for a Vigilance Committee and I’ll help lynch anybody, but I won’t be part and parcel to no danged secret nor underground society.”

“I’ll join the Vigilantes,” says Dirty. “I’m against everything but hanging. What’s the oration all about, Mighty?”

“Mighty is anti everything,” says Buck. “He’s one of them mavericks who is wishful to heave a monkey-wrench into the machinery of progress. Ain’t it a fact, Magpie?”

We turns and gazes upon Magpie, leaning against the doorway.

“I’d say you wasn’t missing the mark much,” admits Magpie, “but Mighty ain’t alone. Seems to me there is lots of others who sort of backfire on anything pertaining to progress.”

“Meaning me, I suppose,” says I. “That’s why you leans a heavy pitcher upon my brow and never even looks to see if I’m dead or not.”

“The dead don’t splinter a man’s door with lead, Ike,” says he.

“You proved--howdy, judge.”

“Tol’able,” admits Judge Steele, coming in. “How goes the fraternity?”

“Great,” admits Magpie. “I’ve took it all and I’m ordained to pass it on. Just finished in time, too, ’cause that rat-headed hooch-hound, over there--”meaning me--“bent his gun over the dome of the Exalted, Most Generous High and Mighty Ruler of the Universe, and it sort of slowed things up.

“Then the danged fool shot three times through the door and the Exalted person removed one of my window frames as he went out. But I got all the dope.”

“Charter?” asked the judge.

“Betcha. Everything is hunkydory, judge.”

“’Tis a day of thanksgiving,” says the judge pious-like. “I will propose that we rise and drink a toast to the Piperock branch of the Loyal Legion of Lizards. Gents, take off your hats and stand uncovered before Mister Simpkins, the Grand--uh--what is it all, Magpie?”

“Unlimited, Imperial, Unrestrained, Perfect, Exalted, Grand----”

“Whoa!” yelps Dirty Shirt, cocking his gun. “Stop that, Magpie! You can’t talk that way and----”

“You’re drunk, Dirty,” says Magpie disgusted-like.

Dirty blinks his eyes and rocks on his heels. Then he steps outside, shoots three times at the bell and misses all three. Then he steps to the door and bows.

“Gents, I apologize--I’m drunk.”

* * * * *

I’m sitting down on the sidewalk, thinking over the sins of mankind, when all to once comes an awful crash in Buck’s place and Mighty Jones skids out on his shoulders. He turns around, drapes his feet over the edge of the sidewalk and feels of his neck.

“Stumble coming out?” I asks.

“Ike, did you ever hear the story about the feller who draped himself over a bar and says out loud, ‘I can lick any man in the house.’ Nobody said anything, so he says, ‘I can lick any man in the town.’ Everything is peaceful, so he gets brave and says, ‘I can lick any man in the county.’ But that don’t get results. Then he gets awful humpy and says, ‘I can lick any man in the State!’ He gets busted wide open by a little feller. When he gets normal he says, ‘I covered too much territory.’”

“What did you say, Mighty?” I asks.

“Me? Huh! I said I never seen the lodge I couldn’t lick.”

Then cometh “Hassayampa” Harris from Curlew. He sets down with us and Mighty opens up on him like this:

“Hassayampa, secret societies are the bane of existence. ’Cause why? When you becomes a member of a society you forgets your duty to mankind. Supposing a horse-thief joins? They’re eligible, as long as they’re all right morally. Then he steals a horse. Is a brother member going to squeal on him? No, sir! Hoss-stealing becomes a cinch under them conditions and it ain’t long before each and every one of that society are rustlers.”

“Which is logic, but not explanatory,” admits Hassayampa. “Who brings us the society idea, Mighty?”

“I does,” says Magpie, who has come up behind us. “I am knowed officially as the Unlimited, Imperial, Unrestrained, Perfect, Grand Protector of the Temple of Piperock.”

“My ----!” gasps Hassayampa. “You are? Well, you’re about all you can ever expect to be in this life, Magpie. What temple are you supposed to protect?”

“The Imperial Temple of the Loyal Legion of Lizards.”

Hassayampa opens his mouth to say something and then fusses in his pocket until he finds a piece of paper. He looks at us and then reads:

“Beans, flour, hominy, prunes, bacon and dried apples. Thank gosh, I’m still sane enough to read my supply list. So-long.”

Hassayampa crosses the street. I says to Magpie--

“What did that title cost you, Unlimited?”

“The complete instructions, et cettery, cost me one hundred dollars.”

“How do yuh reckon you’re going to get even?”

“Even! Say, Ike, it’s the biggest proposition you ever seen. Come on down to the cabin and I’ll explain. I figure you in on this, old-timer, and I excuse you for making me hit you with that pitcher.”

“You’re welcome, but don’t figure me, Magpie. I’ll go down to the cabin and move out my other overalls and boots. I’m all through, finished and done. _Sabe?_”

“Not after you sees into the scheme, Ike. She’s a mint.”

“Scenery” Sims is there at the cabin and him and Magpie goes through them motions with their fingers.

“What’s his title?” I asks.

“Scenery is the Grand Imperial Chancellor of the Temple.”

“Any more titled snake-hunters around here?”

“We’re the only two,” squeaks Scenery. “We’re om-nippy-tent, ain’t we, Magpie?”

“Yea. We are the forerunners of a great enterprise, Scenery.”

“You’re a pair of half-witted woodchucks,” says I, hunting for my extra pair of boots. “What is the big idea?”

“Never mind them old boots,” says Magpie. “Set down here at the table and let me explain it to you. Now, Ike, I asks you to tell me how many Piperockers has shuffled off this mortal coil in the last two years.”

“Why ask me about death?” I asks.

“None,” squeaks Scenery like he’d discovered a new island.

“Some danged close calls,” says I.

“Close don’t count in nothing but pitching horse-shoes,” says Magpie. “Here is the idea: The Loyal Legion of Lizards is what is knowed as a benevolent order. It means life insurance, Ike. Me and Scenery has figured it all out. We paid a hundred dollars for the charter and business, and the benevolent part is all our own doings. I got the blanks printed at Silver Bend.

“A feller comes to us and says, ‘I am wishful to become a Lizard.’ He gets examined by Doc Milliken, who looks him over for symptoms of spavin, et cettery, and if he passes we initiates him into the order.

“Then he pays us five dollars a month and we agrees to pay him, at the time of his demise, five hundred dollars in a lump. We has plans to give Thatcher’s orchestra a membership free, which don’t insure them, and also a free membership to the Cross J quartet. By so doing we has our music furnished free, and we sure has a quartet which can sing at funerals.”

“Not at mine,” says I. “I want a quiet funeral, without no casualties but me.”

“Ain’t she some scheme, Ike?” asks Magpie. “Suppose we gets a hundred men to join. That’s five hundred a month, ain’t it? Ain’t that six thousand per year?”

“Where do I come in, Magpie?” I asks.

“You’ve got three hundred in the bank, ain’t you? We’ll give you a title and let you in on a third interest. _Sabe?_”

“Not with my money, Magpie! Not a chance in the world. That little old grubstake stays right there. _Sabe?_ You’ve got a siren’s voice, but this time my ears are full of alkali dust. My _manitou_ says for me to hang on to what I’ve got, and my medicine is good. This is one time that Ike Harper don’t assay a trace of affection for your nice little scheme.”

Magpie gets up and leans across the table.

“Ike, do you mean to set there and tell me that you refuse riches?

“Ain’t you got foresight enough to see yourself setting on a plush chair while the money rolls in? Think, you ---- fool! Me and you has been pardners in misery so long that I’d almost go down on my knees and beg you to come in with us, but I won’t do it, Ike. Nope. No, I won’t go down on my knees to you, you ossified hoot-owl. Do you know what I am going to do, Ike?”

“Yes,” says I, “I know. What is my position in the scheme?”

“Now, that’s talking sense, Ike. You’ll be engaged in going out among ’em, and talking ’em into the fold. You will describe the beauties of the Legion until they begs to be let in.”

“In plain United States, I pays three hundred for a pedler’s license, eh? How many members has you got already?”

“None. The field is virgin, brother. We’ll open for business in the Mint Hall tonight; so go ye out and gather them in.”

“Is anybody barred?”

“Not to begin with. We may find flaws in their title later on.”

“You’ve wished wealth upon yourself,” squeaks Scenery.

“Yeah, that may be,” says I, “but I won’t live to enjoy it.”

“Write yourself a policy,” advises Scenery, but I slammed the door and went towards town. I ain’t been in Piperock for two months, but she ain’t changed none. I thinks over my three hundred dollars, and looks at the bunch of application blanks in my hand. I figures that a life-insurance agent in Piperock has got about much chance as a jassack has in the Suburban Handicap.

* * * * *

Piperock looks as peaceful as a dove. In fact, she looks too peaceful. She looked natural when I was there a few hours before, but right now she’s unnatural. In the middle of the street lays a stiff-brim Stetson hat, and it spins and rolls in the wind like a roulette wheel on a busted spindle.

Comes the snap of a gun and the hat hops high and lights flat on the brim, like it defied anybody to move it again. From the entrance of the Mint Hall comes the wailing yell:

“You hit that hat again and I’ll massacree yuh! I resign! Dang it, I tell yuh I resign!”

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

Three bullets cuts splinters out of Buck’s door.

_Bang! Bang!_

I sees the splinters fly from Pete Gonyer’s blacksmith-shop door.

_Bang! Bang!_

I hears a couple of bullets spin off the sidewalk down by Ricky Henderson’s barber-shop. I figures it’s about time for me to find an ambush; so I kicks Wick Smith’s store door open and falls inside. A couple of bullets whisper to me as I go in, but I don’t reply, ’cause I don’t know what to say.

Wick is in there, stuffing shells into his pockets, and he tosses me a new box of .44’s. I sets down behind a keg of nails.

“What seems to be the argument?” I asks.

“Council meeting.”

“Injuns?”

“Naw! Injuns got sense. If you see ‘Tombstone’ Todd, ‘Ornery’ Olsen or ‘Half-Mile’ Smith--kill’m, Ike.”

“You sure are filled with sweet thoughts, Wick,” says I. “Tell me what council you’re talking about.”

Wick stops stuffing shells into a rifle and stares at me.

“You been away, ain’t you, Ike? Thought so. Piperock is incorporated.

“Yes, sir. Got a mayor, aldermen, et cettery. I’m the mayor.”

“Oh! That’s the reason everybody is trying to kill everybody else, eh? Political battle?”

“Naw! I makes a motion that we puts a city tax on horse-thieves, cow-rustlers, et cettery, and them three _hombres_ I mentioned got up and squalled at me for trying to put the population out of business. I signed the ordinance, proclaimed it as passed and then fell out of the second-story window. I went there without a gun, like a danged fool.

“Mighty Jones gets up and states that he is in favor of getting us a judge who is more addicted to justice than to cactus juice. Judge Steele hammers Mighty on the head with his cane, the same of which makes Mighty act childish with his gun. He misses the judge and hits Pete Gonyer in the watch. Uh-huh. It ruins Pete’s Swiss timepiece, and his anger rises. Pete and the judge are over in Pete’s shop, shooting at Mighty, who is under the sidewalk in front of Ricky’s place.

“‘Old Testament’ Tilton asks that we pass an ordinance making it a felony to sell liquor in the city limits, and now he’s up in Sam Holt’s hay-mow, while Buck sets down below with a shotgun waiting for Testament to change his mind.”

“Who is up in the Mint Stairway?”

“I don’t know, Ike, but it’s likely ‘Doughgod’ Smith, the marshal. Every time somebody shoots at him he resigns. He’s resigned eight times since I jumped out of the window. Now, Ike, who are you for?”

“Me,” says I, “I’m going to sell ’em life insurance, Wick.”

“For why is that?” asks Wick interested-like.

“Protection. Costs you five per month while you live, and when you die you get five hundred.”

“After I’m dead? That’s a ---- of a lot of good, after I’m dead.”

“The city won’t have to bury you, Wick.”

“I could pack dynamite in my pocket and get the same results, Ike.”

He shoots a few times at Buck’s place, takes a fresh chew and loads up.

“Nossir, I don’t need protection--but them three does. I sure am going to blow out their candles.”

“Good!” says I. “Here’s a idea; why not take out insurance for all three of them and cash in fifteen hundred to the good? You can bury them for five dollars per head, and that leaves you fourteen hundred and seventy to the good.”

Wick chaws industrious for a while and then:

“Five dollars ought to bury the three, Ike. Can I take ’em out like you say?”

“I ain’t plumb conversant with the details, Wick, but I reckon you can.”

“Write ’em out. Them snake-hunters ain’t going to live no month, but you can keep the difference.”

I ducked bullets to get enough light to write ’em out, and Wick signed all three. Then I sneaked out a back window and around behind Ricky’s shop. Some lead is still seeping around so I rolls a smoke and took it easy. After while I says, fairly loud:

“Mighty Jones! This is Ike speaking.”

“Bring me some .44’s, Ike,” comes a muffled voice. “Help out a good cause. Play snake or lose your head.”

I manages to angle under the sidewalk and give him the shells.

“Mighty, who’d bury you if you got killed?” I asks.

He fills his gun thoughtful-like.

“Never gave it a thought, Ike. Friends, I reckon.”

“Friends in life may renege in death.”

“You sure touches me deep-like, Ike.”

“Sure. Maybe they just dig a hole, throw you in and say, ‘Here goes nothing,’ or they might put you in a pauper’s grave.”

“What is a pauper, Ike?”

I made a guess and says--

“A retired sheepherder.”

Mighty picks some splinters out of his whiskers and sends a few shots at the shop door.

“That’s awful, Ike. Ain’t there no way to dodge it?”

“In my hand I has the antidote. Sign on the dotted line. You pay us five dollars a month and we guarantee five hundred when you die.”

“When--I--die? Shucks, I ain’t going to die, and besides that money don’t cheer me none if I do. You better go over and insure that danged judge and blacksmith, Ike.”

“Why don’t you do it? Kill ’em off and collect the thousand.”

Mighty stares at me and nods.

“I’ll do it. Can you change a twenty? Now, keep down when you get out, ’cause I want a witness left to prove it was all legal. _Sabe?_”

I manages to get behind the shop, where I tells Dirty he’d be safe, but he contends that he’s in better shape to shoot where he is. I peers around at the street but she don’t look safe. I’ve got to get across; so I signs my name to an application, pins a five-dollar bill to same, tightens my belt and hit that street at a mile-a-minute clip. Uh-huh, I got across.

A bullet cut the sack of tobacco out of my hip pocket and another turned my hat around on my head, but I’d ’a’ got across in fine shape if I hadn’t been running regardless and forgot the hitchrack.

* * * * *

I must ’a’ been looking back when I hit that rail. I feels a awful pain in my chest and my feet begins to whirl over my head. I reckon I went over twice before I fell loose, and then I walked right into a loose buggy-wheel, which almost spoiled all the future I ever looked forward to.

A loose wheel is peculiar. It never does things according to rule and has a awful way of acting when you step into it. Me and that wheel kept company for quite a while. At times it seemed to want to travel and then again it wanted to lay down on me. It ends up by running across my neck and pulling one of my boots off at the same time.

As a protection to the coming generation I hung the darn thing over a post, and it fell down before I got away, and landed on my feet. Then I got mad, kicked it in the hub with my right knee-cap and went away with the feeling that five dollars per month was very little to pay for a decent burial.

I crawled up to the back door of Buck’s place, knocked and fell flat to let the bullets pass unhampered.

“This is Ike Harper!” I yells.

“Come in,” says Tombstone. “Crawl under the pool table with the rest of us and let Wick waste his lead.”

Tombstone and Half-Mile are on the floor, but Ornery is laying on top of a pile of boxes near the roof, where he can shoot into the tops of Wick’s windows. Every little while a bullet seeps in and travels around a while.

“Who you gunning for, Ike?” asks Tombstone.

“Business. Who’s going to bury you _hombres_ when you die?”

Ornery almost falls off his perch.

“When we die?” asks Half-Mile, fussing with a stuck shell. “Seems to me you’re taking a lot for granted. Who says we’re going to die?”

“Wick Smith predicts it.”

“Wick Smith!” yelps Ornery, sitting up. “That penurious----”

_Crash!_

The pile of boxes buckles in the middle and Ornery hits the floor on his back. Then he gets up and walks circles like a tired pup, and then sets down on the floor.

“What seemed to occur?” asks Tombstone.

Ornery feels of the top of his head and begins singing soft and low:

“Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly; beat the dead march as you bear me along. Take me-e-e-e-e out to the prairie-e-e-e-e and lay the sod o’er me-e-e-e-e, for I’m a po-o-o-o-o-o-r cowboy and I know I’ve done wr-r-r-r-r-r-ong.”

“You sure did,” nods Half-Mile, “when you raised up.”

“Knocked senseless,” says Tombstone.

“No, sir,” objects Half-Mile. “He was born thataway. He just couldn’t stand the rattle when the bullet hit his head.”

“A inch higher and the city would have had to bury him,” says I.

“We’re all thataway, I reckon,” grins Tombstone.

“Which is the reason I am here,” says I. “I am prepared to guarantee you five hundred dollars when you die, gents, and it only costs you the measly sum of five dollars per each. Prepare for death.”

“Hurrah for ----! Who’s afraid of fire?” mumbles Ornery.

“Not me,” says Tombstone. “A five in the hand is worth a million when I’m dead. Somebody’d take that five hundred and drink it up, and I’d be lucky to get planted in a hole. Anyway, we’re here to kill--not to get killed.”

“Then consider Wick. Right now he ain’t worth a cent dead. You’d all be called upon to help bury him. Suppose his demise would pay you each five hundred dollars?”

“I--I’ll kuk-kill him for a dollar-eighty,” mutters Ornery, “and----”

“Shut up!” snaps Tombstone. “What’s the idea, Ike?”

I outlines it to them, and they give me three cheers.

“If we don’t kill him this month can we ante again next month?” asks Half-Mile.

“Just as long as it takes you,” says I, and tucks the fifteen into my pocket.

I uses oratory to get an audience with the judge and Pete. I stands at the corner of the building and discourses thusly:

“Gents, I am neutral. I ain’t mad at nobody and my mission is peace on earth and something to bury you with when you die. Can I come in?”

“It’s the voice of Ike Harper but the argument of a undertaker,” says Pete. “Come on in, you danged old pelican.”

I got the anvil between me and Mighty Jones and fills out two more applications.