Part 2

I sets down on the table and rolls a smoke.

“Magpie,” says I, “what do yuh know about snakes?”

He drops the paper and sets up straight in his chair. He’s got sort of a foolish look about his face, and he sort of gawps at me:

“Uh-uh—snakes? I—I don’t sabe, Ike?”

“I didn’t think yuh did. A man’s a sucker to ask questions of folks he knows can’t answer ’em.”

He uncoils from his chair, slides his gun around to the front and faces me.

“Ike, I got a question to ask you. Were you——”

Just then the door bangs open, and in comes Art Miller, all out of wind. He flops in a chair and pants:

“I—I told yuh! The—uh—uh—stage was huh-held up. About fuf-five miles down the road. Took all I had—dang the luck!”

“Mail, too?” I asks, and he nods. “Everything, I told yuh!”

“Well, well!” says I. “That must ’a’ been Kid Corey or Blazer Bailey. Worthy of your steel. Magpie.”

“Well, ain’t yuh going to move?” yelps Art. “Going to let ’em get plumb away as usual?”

“Which way did they go?”

“Towards Paradise. Yuh never can tell which way he went after he got out of sight.”

“Any danged fool knows that,” agrees Magpie. “I reckon I better go after him.”

“I reckon yuh better had,” pants Art, and then lopes back up-town.

Magpie fusses around getting ready, oiling his guns and fixing a cinch on his saddle.

“You sure do go right after ’em, Magpie,” says I. “You ought to be called ‘Sudden’ Simpkins. Don’t let me hurry yuh. I’ll go away so yuh can oil your boots and shave. Haste makes waste, Magpie.”

* * * * *

I goes up-town, and she’s boiling. They’re organizing a posse to work independent of the sheriff’s office, but I don’t join. I got sweeter things to think of than killing or incarcerating my feller men. The little feller without no pants on, carrying a bow and arrer seems to beckon me.

I forks my bronc and rides north, lingering along, building air-castles and so forth. My bronc ain’t none too energetic, and we consumes plenty of time.

I dips into a cañon and rides up a cow trail, when a man with a pack-animile cuts my path, and I recognizes Magpie Simpkins. I keeps behind him, and pretty soon he gets off his bronc and seems to be picking up something off the ground. I rides up slow behind him, and rolls a smoke. The son-of-a-gun is so busy he don’t hear me until I clears my throat and then he whirls around with his hands full of flowers.

We looks at each other for half a minute, and then he grins, sort of foolish-like and holds out his hands:

“Daisies,” says he. “Daisies.”

“Not today, little girl,” says I. “I ain’t got no water to put ’em in.”

“Dang fool,” he snorts.

“That’s what I thought when I rode up.” I agrees. “From the looks of your pack I’d say you was on a protracted trip, I thought Art said the robber went south.”

“Uh-huh,” he nods, smelling his bouquet. “I got to deliver this load before I’m free to hunt outlaws, Ike.”

“For her?” I asks, and he nods.

“She’s paying for it, ain’t she?”

“Do you think I’d let her?” he snaps. “A feller’s got to do something for his sweetheart, ain’t he? I paid for that other load, too.”

“I’m going down and kill that storekeeper,” says I. “I did, too.”

“Haw!” says Magpie, when I begins to laugh.

He hauls out a roll of bills, and spits on his thumb.

“How much did yuh pay, Mister Harper?”

“Seventeen-fifty,” says I, and he counts it out and hands it to me. “That squares it, I don’t want her under obligations to no other man. Sabe?”

“You think for a minute that you can buy me off?” says I. “You think my heart’s love is for sale—for seventeen-fifty? When did you get a mortgage on the lady, Mister Simpkins?”

“We’ve come to an understanding,” he states. “She accepts my protection, exclusive. Well, I must be going on. Adios.”

He moves on and I rides with him. It sort of irritates him, and he swings around in his saddle.

“Harper,” says he—that’s the first time he ever called me just Harper—“Harper, you’ve heard that old saying, ‘Three is a crowd’? Well, I don’t like crowds. Sabe?”

“The back-trail is open,” says I, “You can’t give me orders.”

“Dang you, Ike!” he wails. “Ain’t you got no finer feelings?”

“Not since I lived with you, Magpie. You’d blunt a piledriver.”

We sets there and glares at each other for a spell. I rolls a smoke, and he follers suit.

“No bowels of compassion?” he asks, sad-like.

“Not a gut.”

“Ike,” says he, after a while, “will you do me a favor? Just for old times’ sake, Ike?”

“Shoot,” says I.

“Well, Ike, I—I—I sort of got—well, she’s beginning to see things my way, and all I asks is ten minutes alone with her. You stay away for ten minutes after I goes inside, and then you can come in and congratulate the happy couple. Will yuh do it, Ike?”

“That’s a mighty big favor, Magpie,” I observes after sufficient thought. “You and me been more or less friendly for years and years, Magpie, and—well, I’ll do it. I’ll give yuh ten minutes start of me. Cut your wolf loose and go a-howling.”

“Ike,” says he, with tears in his voice, “you’ll never regret it. As soon as we’re married I’ll have you up to supper.”

“If you can propose in ten minutes, Magpie, I’ll cook for you all the rest of your life for nothing. Propose in ten minutes! Why, you can’t spit inside of fifteen. Go ahead and have it over with.”

We pilgrims on until we tops a hill above her cabin. I stops there and lets Magpie go on down. I’m to stick there until I figures that I can make the cabin ten minutes after he goes inside.

I rolls a smoke and watches him take his animile around to the back, and then open the door and walk right inside.

“Getting danged familiar,” says I to my bronc. “Going in without knocking.”

I’m glancing around the landscape, when I sees two men on hosses cut across behind me not a quarter of a mile away. Suddenlike I sees some more off to my left. They’re acting queer, so I spurs my bronc for a better place to see.

_Zow-w-w-w. Flup-p-p-p._

A bullet goes past my ear, and another sticks into the ground a few feet short and fills my bronc’s eyes full of sand.

“Bronc,” says I, “somebody desires our de-mise. Let’s away.”

I sticks the spurs in his ribs, and races down the hill. That cabin is the best cover in sight and, while I may be a little ahead of time, I feels that Magpie will forgive me.

I hits that door just ahead of a handful of lead and sort of busts up the courtship. The lady looks sort of sick, and when I busts in Magpie pulls his guns.

“Everybody get down low!” I yelps.

“Who and what is it, Ike?” asks Magpie, ducking when a bullet dusts some of the mud from between the logs near his face.

“Danged if I know! They smokes me up and chases me here.”

“Save me!” yelps the lady, sprawling on the bunk. “I’m sick as ——!”

Such language makes me glance up, but I glues my eyes back to that crack again, where I got some chinking pushed out. I sees a bronc’s legs, so I elevates the muzzle of my gun and salutes him.

* * * * *

A couple of bullets whispers logs, so I rolls over past the bed. My elbow bumps on something, and I glances down.

“Come here!” I yells. “Here’s a cellar!” and I begins tugging at the carpet what covers the door. If the carpet hadn’t been ripped I’d ’a’ never found it. Magpie skids over to me on his hands and knees, and begins heaving on the handle.

“Don’t!” yelps the lady. “Don’t go down there! There’s a—a—snake down there!”

“Preferable to hot lead,” I yells, and slips over the square hole in the floor.

Magpie don’t wait to crawl down—he hopped. _Bang._ A gun explodes right at my lower extremity, and I feels that I got to buy a new pair of suspenders. It sure was close. I lets loose and drops about seven feet. The door drops back and we’re in darkness.

“Did I fall on yuh, Ike?” asks Magpie.

“You did not,” says I, groping around.

“Well, I fell on somebody,” he proclaims. “Got a match handy?”

I lights a match and sees Magpie setting on a man’s stummick. The feller looks sort of yaller in the face, and I don’t think he’s got much fight left in his carcass, He’s still got a gun in his hand, the same of which we removes. Magpie looks him over and snaps some bracelets on his wrists.

“Safety first, Ike,” says he. Another match shows a rifle against the wall. Sudden-like Magpie remembers.

“Gosh, Ike! We’ve forgot the lady!”

There’s a box down there, which we hauls over under the door. Magpie climbs up and lifts the trap so we can see, and it sure is some tableau.

The door is open. There stands that feller Brand, with a grin on his face, and behind him is all the Piperock population that can crowd in. The lady is standing there against the wall, and all to once she drops her hand.

_Bang_ This Brand person’s gun comes up and explodes, and the lady falls on her face. Magpie moves some quick. He flops out of that cellar, whirls on the crowd with a gun in each hand.

“You danged coward!” he yelps at Brand. “Shoot a defenseless woman, will yuh! Drop your guns!”

Every gun in sight hit the ground, and the lady staggers to her feet.

“Give me a gun,” she pants at Magpie, but Magpie just stares at her.

I takes a look and stares a few lines myself. Her hair is on her shoulder—plumb off her head, and the hair of her head is brown and parted on the side.

“Uh—uh—” stutters Magpie.

Brand steps over and takes the guns out of Magpie’s unresisting hands. Brand turns to the partly scalped person:

“Better set down, Kid. You got plenty of nerve, but we seem to have got you this time, eh? Little pale around the gills.”

“Pale around the gills, eh?” snarls the person. “Dang you, Brand, you would be too. That blasted fresh sheriff busted in a while ago without knocking and I had to swaller my chew. I been too sick to fight.”

“Where’s Blazer?”

“In the cellar with irons on.” says I. “We’d ’a’ had this Kid Corey, too, if yuh hadn’t been so blasted previous. Any time yuh don’t think this sheriff’s office is on the job yuh got another think coming.”

“I suppose that’s why Simpkins threw a gun down on me when I shot at the Kid,” laughs Brand. “Did I hit yuh, Kid?”

“No, dang yuh! It burnt my ribs, so I drops safe. I’m just getting over one chunk of lead in the shoulder. That’s why I had to let my hand down, Brand. It hurt like thunder. I told that fool of a Blazer to lay low with me, but he thought we had some easy pickings around here. I kept cases on the sheriff’s office, that’s about all I was able to do. Didn’t I make a good female?”

“Magpie ain’t to blame,” says I. “I’d ’a’ likely fell, too, if I’d ’a’ been as susceptible as Magpie. He was wise to Blazer, but not to the Kid. I reckon the money is in that box in the cellar, ain’t it, Kid?”

“There ain’t no use lying about it—it is,” he states.

“What I’d like to know is this,” states Ricky Henderson, “who was we shooting at? Was it Blazer or the Kid?”

“Neither one,” says I. “You was shooting at me. Danged fools try to take the law in their own hands and mess things up. Think the sheriff don’t know his business, and—gosh, I sure do hate a posse.”

We deposits the Kid and Blazer in jail, and then me and Magpie goes back to our shack. I puts on some water for coffee, and then turns to Magpie.

“Shall I make coffee like she did?” I asks.

Magpie lays his hat on the table.

“Ike, you make it according to the old formula. I’m sick for a cup of real coffee.” He smokes for a while and then——

“Ike, old-timer, we been a pair of fools.”

“Have been,” I agrees. “Lucky fools, Magpie. Luck in finding that trap-door: lucky that I didn’t give you ten whole minutes alone with her—him. You might ’a’ proposed, Magpie. Aw, yes, you would, old-timer, ’cause you was loco with love. Did yuh kiss her—him, Magpie?”

“No-o-o. I was going to, Ike—honest to gosh! But I sudden-like recognized that picture, which we deciphers to be her dear departed, and then I didn’t. Sabe?”

“Oh, ho! So you lost heart when yuh recognized him, eh? Who was he?”

“Well, Ike, she didn’t lie about it—now, did she? She only said he was a good man. He sure was, Ike. Best they ever made.”

“I’ll bite, Magpie. Who was he?”

“Abraham Lincoln.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 18, 1918 issue of _Adventure_ magazine.]