Paid Off: A Complete Adventure Novelette

“Bow-legged runt, eh? And my Skewball pony’s a crow-bait, eh? And I’m too —— small for a growed-up man tuh tackle, am I?”

Each grunting, panting question was punctuated by a stinging slap. Shorty Carroway’s breath came in gasps from between a pair of bruised, bleeding lips.

His weight resting on the heaving chest of the big man under him, knees jammed into the bulging muscles of that beaten man’s forearms, Shorty’s full-swung slaps jolted the swollen, battered face. Then the little cowpuncher’s hand gripped the shock of hair and raised the big head from the sawdust-covered floor.

“Got a plenty?”

Shorty shifted his weight to one side and a sharp-roweled, long-shanked spur raked the ribs beneath the big man’s heavy mackinaw. He grinned mirthlessly into the bloodshot eyes of the heavyweight champion of the Little Rockies.

“Yuh made a crack a few minutes ago that you was the toughest gent in Montana,” grunted Shorty. “Yuh took in too much range, yuh sway-backed, muscle-bound, stove-up ox. Well I’m from Arizona, sabe? And down there, we got cripples that kin lay aside their crutches and whup you. Yuh picked on me because I’m kinda small and a stranger, and yuh grabbed yorese’f a handful uh hornets, didn’t yuh? Got a plenty, —— yuh?”

Another slap sent the miner’s head back into the sawdust.

Tad Ladd, partner of the fighting cowpuncher, paced up and down before a crowd of miners and cowpunchers who crowded backward behind the battered pool table and abandoned faro layout.

“That’s my li’l’ ol’ runt of a pardner, yonder,” he taunted the surly crowd. “My danged li’l ol’ bench-legged pard. Watch him,hombres! Watch him clost while yuh see yore Alder Gulch champeen git his needin’s. Got ary more sledge-swingin’, snuff-eatin’, loud-mouthed fightin’ men that wants tuh git worked down to Shorty’s size and whupped by a gent that does it scientific? Got ary more nasty remarks tuh make about the ponies that me and my pardner rides? Got ary——”

“What the —— goes on in here?”

The voice came from the doorway in no uncertain tones. A gray mustached, white-haired man of stocky build stepped through the swinging doors. To the lapel of his open vest was pinned a sheriff’s badge. A blue-barreled .45 covered Tad.

Behind the sheriff stood a mottle-faced, white-aproned man in shirt sleeves. The man’s clothes were torn and dust-covered. His pudgy hands and mottled face were covered with small cuts.

Tad shoved his gun back into the waistband of his faded overalls. He grinned pleasantly at the sheriff, nodded, then his grin widened as he looked at the portly man in the discolored apron.

“So yo’re back, eh?” he said pleasantly. “Jest like a danged jack-in-the-box. I pitch yuh out the window and yuh come back through the door.”

Tad turned to Shorty, who, heedless of the interruption, was lending an attentive ear to the pleadings of the whipped miner.

“Let up on the big rock-buster, Shorty,” he called. “John Law has done took chips in the game.”

Tad’s words had much the same effect as a bucket of ice water thrown on a couple of fighting dogs. Shorty got to his feet, felt of a discolored and partially closed eye, and reached for papers and tobacco. He grinned uneasily into the cold-blue eyes of the sheriff.