Cowboys -- Fiction; Ranch life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
"Yeee-pah!" he screamed, as the way cleared up before him. "Hunt your
holes, you prairie dogs, or I'll shore deal you misery! Out of my road,
you dastards—I'm lookin' for that alcalde!" He fought his way down the
corridor, leaving his mark on every man who opposed him, and Pete Monat
came half way to meet him. Pete had been a fighter himself when he
first broke into the Geronimo jail and the confinement had not thinned
his sporting blood. He held the alcalde's strap behind him, doubled
to give it weight, and at the very moment that Pecos came lunging in
he laid it across his cheek with a resounding whack. The angry blood
stood out along the scar and before Pecos could dodge back he received
another welt that all but laid him low.
"Hit 'im again! Smash 'im! Fly at 'im, Pete!" yelled the crowd without,
and at the appearance of a leader the beaten gang of hobos came out of
their holes like bloodhounds. Pecos heard the scuffle of feet behind
him and turned to meet them. The fury in his eye was terrible, but he
was panting, and he staggered as he dodged a blow. For a single moment
he appraised the fighting odds against him—then with an irresistible
rush he battered his way past the alcalde and grabbed the back of
his chair. In the sudden turmoil and confusion that humble throne of
justice had been overlooked. It stood against the grating beyond which
Boone Morgan and his deputies cheered on the kangaroos, and as Pecos
whirled it in the air their shouting ceased.
There was a crash, a dull thump, and Pete Monat pitched forward with
his throne hung round his neck. The strap which had left its cruel mark
on Pecos fell to the floor before him, and Pecos, dropping the broken
back of the chair, stooped and picked it up. The alcalde lay silent now
beside the inert body of his sheriff and a great hush fell upon the
prison as he stood over them, glaring like a lion at bay. He held up a
bruised and gory fist and opened it tauntingly.
"Here's your dollar," he said, waving the bloody bill above his head,
"come and git it, you sons of goats! You don't want it, hey? Well,
git back into your cells, then—in with you, or I'll lash you to a
frazzle!" They went, and as the interlocking doors clanged behind them
Pecos turned to Boone Morgan and laughed. "That's what I think of your
Kangaroo Court," he said, "and your own dam' rotten laws. Here's to the
revolution!"
He flung his blood-red arms above his head and laughed again, bitterly;
and after they had carried out the injured he paced up and down the
corridor all night, cursing and raving against the law, while the
battered inmates gazed out through their bars or nodded in troubled
sleep. It was the revolution—no laws, no order, no government, no
nothing! The base hirelings of the law had thrown him into jail—all
right, he would put their jail on the bum.
CHAPTER XV
THE REVOLUTION IN FACT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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