Law Rustlers

Author of “The Devil’s Dooryard,” “Sun-Dog Trails,” etc.

Me and “Hashknife” Hartley sets there on our broncs and spells out the old sign, just like it was the first time we ever seen it. The good Lord only knows why we’re back at the old sign. Willer Crick don’t mean nothing to us. Glory Sillman lives, or did live, on Willer Crick, but her name ain’t never figured in any of our conversations since the day we fogged away from Willer Crick.

We kinda left that part of the range in a hurry that day; left a surprised bunch of folks watching our dust, while a couple of enterprising bad-men went home to get patched up and another bunch throwing lead at the wrong parties, just because said parties had a gray and a roan horse.

No, Willer Crick has been a closed incident to us. Not that we’re silent folks, ’cause we ain’t. I can talk the bark off a greasewood, and Hashknife Hartley—man, he’s a conversationalist. It’s kinda funny that we never talked about the Willer Crick folks, ’cause they sure are worth talking about. Sol Vane, who does the lawin’ for the Crick, Jim Sillman, one of the Council of Three, old Ebenezer Godfrey—they’re one goshawful layout.

Of course Ebenezer Godfrey is dead. Jim Albright and Pete Godfrey, his illegal heirs, are dead, we think, but there’s a plenty of that misguided tribe left. Ebenezer was killed by Pete and Jim, ’cause the old man wouldn’t die soon enough for one of them to get visible means of support, in order to marry Glory. The old man was hard-boiled enough to hang on to life until he could will everything he owned to me and Hashknife. Willer Crick, being a closed corporation, didn’t accept me and Hashknife to any great extent.

They stole old Godfrey’s body in order to establish what Sol Vane called “corpus delectable,” but we got it back, or rather hid it again. We buried some dynamite in the front yard and Sol, Pete and Jim dug into it, thinking we had planted the old man there. Sol lost all his hair and all we could find of Jim and Pete was a hat with the crown gone.

Me and Hashknife weathered considerable storm, but there wasn’t no use in defying the lightning too much, so we got out by the skin of our teeth, with a Winchester rifle and a vest-pocket derringer.

Me and Hashknife cut cards to see which of us would marry Glory Sillman, accept five hundred dollars in place of a wife and then leave the country. This was to save Jim Sillman from the law of the Crick, and would also allow Glory to go outside and get educated like a human being. Willer Crick had a peculiar law. It seems that they rules that a girl has to stay on the crick until she gets married. After she’s hooked up she can leave. Of course, they means to make her marry one of their own bunch, but their law don’t specify that. It also seems that the sins of one of the family is visited upon all the rest of that family.

Jim Sillman explains that everything he owns is on the crick, and that if Glory breaks the law they’re liable to take away his property as punishment. Kind of a weak way of looking at things, but we can’t all think alike thataway. He offers us five hundred dollars cash if one of us will marry her. This gives her the right to pull her freight out of there and also saves him from their locoed law.

Glory don’t want a regular husband, and it’s a cinch that me and Hashknife ain’t noways hankering for a wife, but it’s a sporting chance and we takes it. We never collected that five hundred for the simple reason that the “uncle,” who was financing the law-breaking scheme, turned out to be the sheriff of Yolo, who had been trailing me and Hashknife for six months.

Sometimes I’m kinda sorry we didn’t smoke up that bunch and take Glory along with us. I spoke to Hashknife about it the day we left there.

“Easy enough,” says he. “I could ’a’ downed her uncle and her pa—easy. Any girl would whoop with joy to see her uncle and paw full of lead. Maybe she’d ’a’ married you, Sleepy, dang your homely face. Maybe she’d ’a’ married me—me bein’ handsome; but any old way yuh take it, we’d ’a’ busted up—me and you. Yuh can’t keep a wife and a bunkie.”

“Hashknife,” says I, “would yuh rather have me than a wife?”

“You danged porkypine, I don’t have to support you.”

It’s been quite a while since me and Hashknife hit for the open trails. We stayed at the Circle Dot a lot longer than we ever stayed any one place before, but when the snow fades off the hills and the grass shows green on the slopes and you can smell the sunshine—we’re traveling.

“Where?” I asks.

“Anywhere,” says Hashknife, jingling three months’ pay. “We’re follerin’ our noses, cowboy. Maybe we’ll get to Alaska this time.”

I reckon that mostly all human beings have some outlook in life. Some of ’em looks forward to the day when they can set down by the fire and let a hired man herd the sheep, while some looks forward to the day when they can hunt a warm climate in the Winter and know that somebody is at home to do the chores.

Me and Hashknife looks forward to Alaska. What in —— we are going to do up there has nothing to do with it. It’s something to look forward to, as the horse-thief said to the posse when they comes in sight of a limbless tree.