The Exploits of Buckner Jeopardy Grimes - ebook

A MAN-EATING JEOPARD

I’M a peaceable man, as law-abiding as I can be without straining myself, and it always irritates me for a stranger to bob up from behind a rock and holler, “Stop where you be before I blow your fool head off !”

This having happened to me I sat still on my brother Bill’s horse, because that’s the best thing you can do when a feller is p’inting a cocked .45 at your wishbone. This feller was a mean-looking hombre in a sweaty hickory shirt with brass rivets in his leather hat band, and he needed a shave. He said, “Who are you? Where you from? Where you goin’? What you aimin’ to do when you get there?”

I says, “I’m Buckner J. Grimes of Knife River, Texas, and I’m headin’ for Californy.”

“Well, what you turnin’ south for?” he asked.

“Ain’t this here the trail to Piute?” I inquired.

“Naw, ’tain’t,” he answered. “Piute’s due west of here.”

All at once he stopped and seemed to ponder, though his gun muzzle didn’t waver none. I was watching it like a hawk.

Pretty soon he give a kinda forced leer which I reckon he aimed for a smile, and said, “I’m sorry, stranger. I took you for somebody else. Just an honest mistake. This here trail leadin’ off to the west goes to Piute. T’other’n goes south to my claim. I took you for one of them blame claim jumpers.” He lowered his gun but didn’t put it back in the holster, I noticed.

“I didn’t know they was any claims in Arizona,” I says.

“Oh, yes,” says he, “the desert is plumb full of ’em. For instance,” says he, “I got a chunk of quartz in my pocket right now which is just bustin’ with pure ore. Light,” says he, fumbling in his pocket, “and I’ll show you.”

Well, I was anxious to see some ore, because Pap had told me that I was just likely to hit it rich in Californy; he said an idiot was a natural fool for luck, and I wanted to know what ore looked like when I seen some. So I clumb down off of brother Bill’s horse, and the stranger hauled something out of his pocket, but as he poked it out toward me, it slipped off his palm and fell to the ground.

Naturally I leaned over to pick it up, and when I done so, something went bam! and I seen a million stars. At first I thought a cliff had fell on me, but almost simultaneous I realized the stranger had lammed me over the head with his pistol barrel.

The lick staggered me, but I didn’t have to fall like I done. I done that instinctive hit on my side and tumbled over on my back and laid still, with my eyes so near shut he couldn’t tell that I was watching him through the slits. The instant he’d hit me he lifted his gun quick to shoot me if I didn’t drop, but my flop fooled him.

He looked down at me scornful, too proud of his smartness to notice that my limp hand was laying folded over a rock about the size of a muskmelon, and he says aloud to hisself, he says, “Another idiot from Texas! Huh! Think I’m goin’ to let you go on to Piute and tell ’em about bein’ turned back from the south trail, and mebbe give them devils an idee of what’s cookin’ up? Not much, I ain’t. I ain’t goin’ to waste no lead on you, neither. I reckon I’ll just naturally cut your throat with my bowie.”

So saying, he shoved his gun back in its holster and drawed his knife out of his boot, and stooped over and started fumbling with my neck cloth, so I belted him free and hearty over the conk with my rock. I then pushed his limp carcass off me and rose.

“If you’d been raised in Texas like I was,” I says to his senseless hulk more in sorrer than in anger, “you’d know just because a man falls it don’t necessarily mean he’s got his’n.”

He didn’t say nothing because he was out cold; the blood was oozing from his split scalp, and I knowed it would be hours before he come to hisself, and maybe days before he’d remember his own name.

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