"My heart quakes at the feah that these cowboys have gawn away. Please step this way—and 'ware stumbling on these sidings—this way, Misteh Ryan—this way——"
The voice died away, and Bowles was putting out to follow, when all of a sudden he and the negro were seized from behind, gagged, roped, and generally detained. Off among the sidings Mr. Ryan had a gag in his mouth, a rope round his elbows; then felt himself caught up into the starlight and thrown on a horse while his feet were hobbled under the animal's belly. In the station a robber was playing tunes with an axe on the keys of the telegraph, and the wires were being lopped with a pair of shears. Speaking generally, a whole lot of silence was being procured, and from a robber point of view things worked harmonious until the first bunch of riders went thundering away into the desert.
As it happened, the City Marshal and his deputy, Shorty Broach, straying into these premises to send off a telegram, found the operator and the negro lying gagged and bound on the platform; so when they heard the robbers loping off they sized up the whole situation. They were just too late to get robbers, but plenty swift in turning out the town.
This news of a fresh outrage hit old Grave City sudden, surprising, right in the middle of sleep time, and the whole town swarmed out instant like a hornets' nest for war. Some of the people were full of sleep, others were full of whisky; some had their war-paint, some had a blanket; but all of them felt they were spat on, all of them howled for vengeance. For a whole week the town tribe and the range tribe had been at war, and here was some idiot making a howl about robbers! This was certainly another case of cowboys in town, and the verdict was sudden—to lynch the cowboy leader, Mr. Chalkeye Davies.
It being some expedient first to catch this Chalkeye, these warriors began to make haste and get mounted for pursuit. But from the first things seemed to go wrong, for one after another the horses which had been standing in the street went jumping roaring crazy, pulling back till their reins broke, bucking off their saddles, whirling around the town, and stampeding away to the desert. The people saw that loco weed had been prevailing over the plain sense of these animals; then they found the stables an aching solitude, and the telegraph wrecked to prevent them calling for help, and everything done thoughtful and considerate by felonious parties unknown who had stolen the only millionaire in Arizona. Soon they remembered there had been a whole lot of unpleasantness between Mr. Ryan and Chalkeye. Thus the more they considered, the more their noses went sideways of the truth, smelling the poisonous iniquities of this Chalkeye outlaw.
The town was left afoot, and yet from private stables horses were raked up, enough to mount a posse of thirty men. By this time it was too late to chase, but the Marshal reckoned that, with a shine of bicycle lamps, he could track until daylight, and keep on the robbers' trail until he got more help. He never ruminated on the thoughtful, prophetic way in which these motions were foreseen. Just abreast of the Jim Crow Mine the leading horse of that posse blew up with a loud bang, and Shorty Broach was projected into a prickly-pear bush. That is how he got his new pseudonym, which is Pincushion Shorty to the present day. On the whole that posse concluded to go home rather than face a pavement of live dynamite.
CHAPTER XXIII
A HOUSE OF REFUGE
Looking back upon the whole discussion between the du Chesnay and Ryan families, I see myself sitting around meek and patient, shy, timid, cautious, and fearfully good, and yet I got all the blame. Of course, I ought to have shot old man Ryan, just as an early precaution, so it's best to own up that I was all in the wrong for dallying. But after that, there was the massacre of the leading Grave City felons; I got the blame. Next came the hunting and escape of Curly and Jim; I got the blame. Furthermore, there was the flight of Curly and Jim from La Morita prison, followed by business transactions with the Frontier Guards; I got the blame. And, moreover, there was the sliding out of Curly, Jim, and the robbers from Cocky Brown's ranche at La Soledad, with certain vain pursuits by a posse of citizens; I got the blame. Lastly, there was the stealing of all the horses and a millionaire out of Grave City; I got the blame. Whatever happened, I always got the blame. It's plumb ridiculous.