Did I act mean? I wonder sometimes whether I done right for Jim, for Curly.
Dog-gone Hawkins was as mad as a wet hen, too hoarse for further comments when, after a couple of hours, he rode off alone to hunt robbers; so we had to follow to save the old man from being shot. I came up abreast as soon as I could, and in a voice all hushed into whispers, he just invoked black saints and little red angels to comfort me on a grid.
I reckon it was four o'clock when our circus, all hot and dusty after a ten-mile ride, charged down upon La Soledad. The place looked so blamed peaceful that the Marshal stared pop-eyed.
"Wall, I'll be dog-goned!" says he, and let us riders traffick around innocent, trampling out all the ground sign. When he saw Cocky's memorandum on the door of the shack he couldn't bear it any longer.
"Chalkeye," says he, "I'll be dog-goned if that ain't--'Gawn with the buckboard for grub.' If that ain't enough to scorch a yaller dawg!"
"And yet," says I, "you blamed us for hanging back!"
"Wall," he groaned, "the drinks is on me this time. Let's go home."
But I knew Jim's handwriting, I knew that he and Curly were with the buckboard, I knew that the brains of McCalmont himself were behind a play like this.
I looked up the Grave City trail, the way to my ranche, the way that the buckboard had gone with my kids.
"You may go home, sir," says I, "but I'm off to my home before you leads me any more astray, corrupting my pure morals."
Dog-gone Hawkins froze me with his eyes. "Ef your soul," he says, "were to stray out on to your dog-goned cheek it would get lost!"
I'm always getting misunderstood like that by people who ought to know better. You see, I had to shock old Hawkins, or he would notice at once that I aimed to follow the buckboard.
"Cyclists," says I, "dawg-traps, sulkies, buggies, waggons, sore-back horses, mules, tenderfoot--look at yo' circus and say if that ain't enough to corrupt a long-horn's mortals. Hello, look at that!"
A man was coming down from the north, lickety-split on a roan with a rangy stride. He wore sombrero, shirt, shaps with streaming fringes, a brace of guns to his belt. He rode with a cowboy swing to his broad shoulders, and his face was black with rage as he pulled up facing our crowd--guns drawn for war.