Things went kind of nervous that day at Palomitas. All the boys seemed to have a feeling, somehow, there was going to be happenings; and we all just sort of idled round waiting for ’em––taking more drinks ’n usual, and in spite of the drinks getting every minute lower and lower in our minds. Except the day Hart’s aunt spent with him, and Santa Fé Charley run the kindergarten, I reckon it was the quietest day we ever went 61 through––at least till we got along to the clean-up that turned Palomitas into what some of us felt was a blame sight too much of a Sunday-school town.
One reason why we all was so serious was because the Sage-Brush Hen––who started most of what happened––didn’t show up as usual; and all hands got a real jolt when some of the boys went off to the Forest Queen to ask about her, and old Tenderfoot Sal told ’em she was laying down in her room and wasn’t feeling well. The Hen being always an out-and-out hustler, and hard as an Indian pony, her not being well shook us up bad. Everybody was friends with her, same as she was friends with everybody––even when she got into one of her tantrums, and took to jawing you, you couldn’t help liking her––and knowing she wasn’t feeling like she ought to feel put a big lot more of a damper on all hands. So we just kept on taking drinks and getting miserabler with ’em––and feeling all the time surer something was coming bouncing out at us from round the corner, and wondering what kind of a stir-up we was likely to have.
It was along about four o’clock in the afternoon the cyclone struck us; and it was such a small-sized one, when we did get it, we didn’t know whether to laugh or swear. But the cyclone himself didn’t think there was anything small about him: being Hart’s nephew––so scared to death all the few wits he ever had was knocked clean out of him––who come into Palomitas, white as white-wash, riding bareback one of the coach mules.
He just sort of rolled off the mule, in front of the Forest Queen, and went in to the bar and got four drinks in him before he could speak a word––and then he said he’d been held up at the Barranca Grande by about two hundred road-agents who’d opened up on him and killed all the mules except the one he’d got away on; and his getting away at all, he said, was only because he’d put up such a fight he’d scared ’em––and after that because they couldn’t hit him when once he was off, and had the mule going on a dead run. Then he took two more drinks, and told his story all over again; and as it was 63 about the same story both times––and he so scared, and by the time he told it over again so set up with his drinks, it didn’t seem likely he’d sense enough left to be lying––the boys allowed like enough it was true.
What he had to tell––except he piled on more road-agents than was needed––was about reasonable. He said he’d done well enough as far as Pojuaque––where he’d had his dinner and changed mules, same as usual, at old man Bouquet’s. And after he’d left Pojuaque he’d got along all right, he said, except he had to go slow through the sandhills, till he come to the Barranca Grande.
It’s a bad place, that barranca is. The road goes sharp down into it, and then sharp up out of it––and both banks so steep you want all the brakes you’ve got to get to the bottom of it, and more mules than you’re likely to have to get to the top on the other side.
Well, Hart’s nephew said he’d just got the coach down to the bottom of the barranca––he’d took the last of the slope at a run, he said, and was licking away at his mules for 64 all he was worth to start ’em up the far side––when the road-agents opened on him, being hid in among the cedar-bushes, from the top of the bank and from both sides of the trail. You never seen such a blaze of shooting in all your life, Hart’s nephew said; and he said before he’d a chance to get a gun up all his mules was hit but one. He said he jumped quick from the box, taking both Winchesters and the shot-gun with him, and having his guns and the derringers in his belt beside, and got behind the one mule that hadn’t been downed and opened up on the bushes where the smoke was and let go as hard as he knowed how. He said he must a-killed more’n twenty of ’em, he guessed, judging by the yelling and groaning, and by the way they slacked up on their fire. Their slacking that way give him a chance, he said, and he took it––cutting the mule loose from the harness with one hand, while he kept on blazing away over her back with the other; then letting ’em have it from both hands for a minute, from what guns he had left that wasn’t empty, to sort of paralyze ’em; and 65 then getting quick on the mule’s back and starting her down the barranca on a dead run.
He had balls buzzing all about him, he said, till he got out of sight around a turn in the barranca; and he said before he made that turn he looked back once and saw a big feller up on top of the bank letting off at him as hard as he could go. Just to show he still had fight in him, he said, he let off back at him with his two derringers––which was all he had left to shoot with––and he was pretty sure, though of course it was only luck did it with the mule bouncing him so, the big feller went down. He was a tremendous tall man, he said; and he guessed he was a Greaser, seeing he had a big black beard and was dressed in Greaser clothes.
He said he didn’t mind owning up he was scared bad while he was in it; but he said he guessed anybody would a-been scared with all them fellers shooting away at him––and, as he’d made as good a fight of it as he knowed how, he didn’t think he was to be blamed for ending by running from such a 66 crowd. He kept on down the barranca for about two miles, he said, till he struck the cross-trail to Tesuque; and he headed north on that till he got to Pojuaque––where he give the mule a rest, she was blowed all to bits, the mule was, he said; and he got some of old man Bouquet’s wine in him, feeling pretty well blowed to bits himself; and then he come along home.