The Long Dim TrailHooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
General
The Long Dim Trail
Hooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
Arizona -- Fiction; Cowboys -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
"The cabin had one door an' a little winder. Hasayampa was lyin' on his
bunk with a candle stuck in a beer-bottle on a box longside him, right
under the winder. Suddenly ol' Killem hopped right through the winder
glass and landed plump on top of Hasayampa. He jumped up to kick Killem
out, but before he done it, derned if that lion didn't come through the
same way, but he knocked over the box and put out the candle. Then
Killem and the lion started in for fust blood.
"Hasayampa's six-shooter had been knocked off'n the box and Hasayampa
made a break fer the door--the room seemed a leetle bit crowded just
then--but the door was locked and the key somewhar on the floor. He
begun scratching for that key.
"Just about this time the stovepipe got knocked down. Thar warn't mutch
fire, but plenty of smoke. Next thing they hit the table whar he had
piled up all the tin plates, cups and pans that he washed on Sundays.
Hasayampa said the noise was somethin' fierce, for Killem was yellin',
'Pen and ink,' the lion was screechin' its head off, and both of 'em
kickin' tin things in every direction.
"All this time Hasayampa was havin' troubles of his own. He was clawin'
the floor, lookin' for the key or his six-shooter. He didn't care which,
but he wanted one of 'em and he wanted it in a hurry, which wasn't
unreasonable noways, when you remember it was his own property he was
huntin'. He finally got on his stomach and spun aroun' like a cartwheel
and that was how he found his gun. Trustin' to luck he edged closer to
the noise and put his gun against somethin' and fired. Thar was a yelp
from Killem, a screech from the lion, then somethin' flopped around on
the floor, but whether it was the lion or the dorg, was a conundrum
Hasayampa wasn't prepared to answer off hand.
"Things got quiet. He crawled careful till he found the candle and lit
it, holdin' his gun ready. Then he looked aroun'. Thar was Killem
settin' scrintched up in one corner of the room, a bullet hole through
one ear, but thar warn't no lion nowhar to be seen, and Hasayampa
figgered he had shot Killem and the lion had gone out the winder, same
route he took comin' in. Hasayampa did some tall cussin, and begun
pickin' things up, when he seen the end of the lion's tail stickin' out
under the bunk. He backed off without losin' no time and shot under the
bunk. The lion never even kicked.
"After he'd waited to be sure it was dead, Hasayampa hauled it out by
the tail, feelin' mighty big at such a shot in a dark room. Then he
begun to hunt to see whar the bullet went in. Thar was just one bullet
hole, and that was when he shot it under the bunk. He had missed it clar
the fust time, but that lion was as dead as a door-nail when he fired
the second shot, and Hasayampa knowed it."
Limber looked at Powell gravely, "Now don't that beat you?"
"But what happened?" demanded the Doctor. "Even Hasayampa must have had
some theory about it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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