The Magic Quirt

 

Ye're powerless! With the magic wave of my left paw I creates you a statue! With a quick thumbin’ of my right, I creates you a corpse!”

 

BANG! BLOWIE!

 

But it wasn’t Old Laramie’s imaginary gun. It was a real, honest-to-gosh shootin’ iron. And Bessie and Mac recognized it as such, reared against the remorseless weight of the unbraked wagon, got shoved ahead, reared again and then, bronc fashion, scared to death, lit out like the Cannonball Stage straight down the curving road.

 

Whoever it was that had shot was not in sight. The road’s curve hid him. But the speed with which Old Laramie was traveling would very shortly remedy that.

 

His old slouch hat whipped back in the hurricane and the chin thong nearly strangled him. He tried to grind home the brake shoe but he missed and had to use both hands and both feet to hold on. The reins were loosely tied to the brake and to reach them was impossible. He couldn’t reach his rabbit’s foot and his Little Jim Dandy Guaranteed Lucky Ring was carelessly left in camp!

 

Old Laramie once upon a time had been as tough as the next one, but three bullet holes, a sense of defeat and old age had ended that. He screamed like a wounded mountain lion and the scenery blurred by.

 

The chuck wagon finished the curve on two wheels, swapped to the other two, came back and tried to lean over the hundred-foot drop into the dry arroyo. 

 

Straight ahead were six pack animals, clinging to the cliff beside the road as only burros can do. Directly in the track of the plunging wagon were two mounted men, holding guns on somebody or something out of Old Laramie’s view.

 

But the horsemen weren’t there long. They gave a white-eyed look at the cometing wagon and dug spur. Their outraged mounts reared and fought, to break away down the road in an uncontrolled run. The riders were out of sight and still going an instant later when Mac, tangling with a sideswiped burro, upset the chuck wagon entire, flat and loud in the middle of the road.

 

Old Laramie floated to an easy landing in sand and sagebrush. The sound of breaking crockery gradually ceased to echo in the surrounding arroyos. The dust dropped slowly down in the dusk.

 

Old Laramie spat, sat up, felt of his bones and then swore luridly and long. That seemed to relieve him somewhat and he looked at his horses. They were bruised but had struggled to their feet with no bones broken. The chuck wagon, however, had spilled everything from frying pans to cockroaches.

 

“¡Ah, gracias, gracias!” wailed somebody. “¡Gracias, amigo! ¡Gracias infinitas para todos mandados!”

 

Old Laramie understood very little Spanish but he knew he was being thanked and he turned to find a small, fat Indian from over the line waddling up, bowing and advancing.

 

Three small children now rose wide-eyed from the sage and a woman, as fat as her man, came off a rock above the trail carrying a fourth child.

 

It was a very strange thing, thought Old Laramie. Sure these Mexican Indians didn’t seem to be good bait for the owl-hoots.

 

The flood of Spanish went on with much flinging of the arms, and when it seemed that he was about to get kissed by the woman, Laramie got gruff.

 

“Hell, wasn’t nothin’! Gimme a hand with this yere wagon.”

 

They gave him a hand. The three kids picked up groceries and pans while the man and his wife aided to rig a block and tackle to right the wagon.

 

It was quite dark when the task was done and Laramie, less breakage, was ready to proceed on his way. He was getting mighty anxious when he thought of how Lee Jacoby would take this. For he should have been at Camp Seven something before supper time.

 

The little Indian was jabbering with more thanks.

 

“Quit it,” said Laramie. “I would’ve done it for anybody. But just now I got to go.”

 

“¡Señor, su pago!”

 

“Pago yourself,” said Old Laramie genially. “But I got to go. I’m goin’ to be roasted, clothes, hoofs and hide, as it is!”

 

The Indian was pulling forth a fat sack. From it he poured a small torrent of silver and gold coins. Laramie’s eyes popped. So that was the bait! But he found that he was about to be paid. This unsettled him.

 

“Dang it, you ornery little cactus-eater. I didn’t do you no favor on purpose. My horses run away and . . .”

 

The Indian tried to push the money at him but he finally succeeded in pushing it back. There was an immediate conference between the Mexican and his wife and finally the man went to the sad little burros and dug into a pack.

 

The thing which he now extended to Laramie glittered in the starlight. And the man made a valiant attempt at English.

 

“See! Thees theeng. Látigo. Make beeg man. Muy fuerte man, látigo he take. Beeg man make. Muy fuerte. Me not Indian. Me Aztec. You savvy? You keep. You beeg, beeg man. Mucho lucky. Mucho! ”

 

Puzzled, Laramie took the object and found it to be a silver-mounted quirt. He was too anxious to get to Camp Seven to delay and so, saluting with the quirt, hastily got started before the thanks began again.

 

Mac and Bessie picked their way amongst the rocks of the canyon and soon came out on the flat where, in the distance, a fire marked the whereabouts of Camp Seven.