WHEN EVERYBODY KNEW

By Raymond S. Spears

Of course it was easy to understand Patient Bob’s handling of the bad man.


A swaggering monster of a man, with long, tangled black hair, a cascade
of blue steel whiskers and sunken caverns for eyes, thundered on thick
soled boots into the Many Moons Barroom where he surged with long and
eager strides to the center of the three man width of liquid counter. As
he approached, those between him and his apparent point of destination
spread swiftly to right and left.

“Set ’er up!” he growled, shaking his head, snorting, and turning from
side to side till he had surveyed the whole circumference of the
establishment with his sunken, glowing eyes.

He drank what looked to be a ridiculously little drink for so huge a
carcass; he wriggled all the way down as the tiny shot burned in his
throat. He gurgled and choked, as if the drink were in proportion to
him, and after four or five fillings of the barrel shaped little glass
he reached tentatively for the outflaring yellow handled revolver which
was of a size in proportion to his beef. He gave sidelong glances into
the big mirrors behind the bar after three or four false alarms with his
gun. And he had a drink after each half completed movement. Then
suddenly he pulled and let go a shot. He looked around. The bartenders
stood with their hands lifted, like squirrels’ paws, and other patrons
of the place were skittering without dignity out of the way, drawing
toward the front and rear entrances through which the ones who always
avoided trouble vanished like mist cloud shadows. The big fellow took
some more drinks, and at intervals in a tentative kind of way he let go
a booming shot. And presently, when he had reloaded his cylinder twice
from loose ammunition in his trousers pockets he threw a pinch of silver
on the bar, enough to pay for his drinks, and surged into the square.

There, with his big legs spreading, he weaved and swayed while he looked
around. Court House Square of Boxelder was a glow and a sparkle of
yellowish lights, with here and there the colors of red, green, blue and
sundry hues, the brighter places being saloons, dance halls, gambling
places, the most ornate of which had pool and billiard tables imported
at enormous cost. Large boxlike buildings were dull--the reputable
emporiums of trade, where hardware, food, dry goods and outfits were to
be bought.

Swing doors were flashing to the shadows of ingoing or outgoing figures.
As he looked around, the big fellow caught flashes of sparkling points,
the eyes of humans, shining in the gloom like those of dogs or cats,
some green, some golden, some purple.

               *       *       *       *       *

“I’m Bill of Buck Hill!” the man murmured in his throat, so that it
sounded like a growl; and then, louder, “I’m Rearin’ Bill of Buck Hill!”

He looked around rather expectantly, and raised his chin higher,
throwing back his head.

“I’m Rearin’ Bill of Big Buck Hill!” he shouted. “I’m two yards wide and
nine feet high--_Woo-who-o! Woo-who-o!_”

At that shout--“_Woo-who-o!_”--men, standing at every bar around the
square and all the way down to the Claybank Delight, turned and glanced
at one another.

“’Tain’t Texas!” One shook his head. “That’d be _e-yeow-w!_”

“’Tain’t Prairie--hit’d be _Hi-i-i-i!_”

“’Tain’t Rebel--’tain’t Yank.” An old veteran shook his head.

“’Tain’t old Mississip’ shanty boat landing whoop er soundin’ hail.”

“Ner mule skinnin’ cowboy--none of them!” another declared.

“That’s green timber!” a square shouldered, high headed man remarked as
he turned a sheet of a weekly paper in the lobby of Squint Legere’s
hotel.

“My lan’! He’s bad!” A bystander shook his head. “Y’ c’n tell that--the
way he growls-- My lan’!”

“Who is he?” some one asked, and another raised a warning hand.

“Cyarful, ol’ man! He’s from Buck Hill. I’ve been t’ Buck Hill. Hit’s
way yonder in the head of Snake Creek Bad Lands. My land’! I was glad
the sun didn’t set on me up theh; yes, indeedy! He’s Rearin’ Bill--my
lan’! Don’t ’tagonise ’im. He comes from a bad country!”

The hoarse, rumbling growling of the man thus identified came around the
square in the middle of the street. Horses hitched along the rails
turned their heads to look at the phenomenon going by, twitching their
tails and snorting a little under their breaths. A dog ran out in the
dark from the sidewalk, wagging its tail, yipping as it pranced. Rearing
Bill turned and growled at the vagrant beast, and the dog stood on its
hind legs in an enthusiastic invitation to come on and play!

Some one laughed in the gloom of a passageway between two saloons.
Rearing Bill threw a bullet into that shadow insult and then slammed two
shots which sent the dog squealing in creased terror the other way
around the square. A man’s yell of alarm rose frantically from the
passageway and the clatter of loose boards and the fall of a stack of
booming empty kegs reverberated around.

“_Woo-who-o!_” Rearing Bill whooped, and the echoes returned from faces
of Bad Land cliffs.

“Lawse, he c’n shore yell!” listeners said in low voices.

               *       *       *       *       *

As the big fellow shambled nearer, the gamblers around the tables
hesitated, the drinkers at the bars held their liquor poised, looking
over their shoulders at the front doors; and those with nothing special
to divide their attention withdrew to the rear or side entrances. The
bartenders, who must perforce stay and take it, wiped their hands on
their aprons, their fingers twiddling, all except Flat Face Dink of
Squint Legere’s liquid annex. Flat Face Dink lifted the corner of his
lips; then he gave the long, red, cherry wood bar an extra dry polish.

“My gracious!” the observing Tid Ricks whispered. “Dink don’t care f’r
anybody in the world! He’s all nerve, Dink is! Come the devil himself
and Flat Face’d say to him, ‘Name yer pisen, old boy--how’s hell t’day?’
He would, honest! I bet he would.”

A heavy footfall out in front of Legere’s shook the planks till they
boomed and creaked. Rearing Bill of Big Buck Hill surged into the middle
of the barroom. Tid Ricks shrank into a corner. Patrons along the bar
watched anxiously through the mirror reflections. Flat Face Dink
deliberately turned his back and stacked up a pyramid of glasses.

“I want pisen!” the newcomer declared, shambling toward the bar, where
they gave him ten feet width according to his size, looks and actions.

Flat Face Dink flipped up a quart bottle, tall, straight sided and long
necked, and set up a thick, fluted glass to hold two good liquor drinks.
Rearing Bill looked at the glass, picking it up.

“Put ’r thar, mister!” Rearing Bill said, enthusiastically. “You got a
measure ’cording to the man here--put ’r thar!”

Flat Face Dink colored happily under that praise, and drank with Rearing
Bill, something he never did except with the most distinguished of
patrons.

Rearing Bill holstered his gun with the stained ivory handles. He was a
gentleman among gentlemen, in Squint Legere’s, all on account of the
appreciation of Flat Face Dink of the appropriateness of measures for a
man, serving glasses according to one’s size. Rearing Bill surged forth
into the street again, popped away a couple of times and went on his
way.

He began to sing:

    “I’m Rearing Bill of Big Buck Hill.
        Snake pisen is my cure.
    Of human flesh I eat my fill;
        An’ I takes my whisky pure.”

He ended the verse with a chorus of shots. He aimed at lights, which
crashed in broken glass, for he could shoot pretty straight. His gunfire
made the horses nervous, and they pranced around. When he was on one
side of the square men scurried on the opposite side to remove their
mounts, either racing out to the livery barn and corral or down toward
Strollers’ Campground on the creek bottom.

Rearing Bill’s horse was built on his own generous scale, but he had
begun to ride it when it was too young; and now the beast, which would
have been a good draft horse, was a swayback with a tired look in the
lop of its ears. When Rearing Bill came by, however, the animal pranced
and shook nervously.

               *       *       *       *       *

Word had been sent to City Marshal Pete Culder, who was out in his home
cabin. The messenger said that Rearing Bill from Buck Hill had come to
town. At least, the fellow had said he was Rearing Bill and acted as bad
as they make them. Culder promised to come right down, but he wasn’t
seen by any one on that hectic night.

After shooting up Court House Square the disturber went into saloons and
took tentative shots at bottles and glasses. Keen observers noticed that
he shot with accuracy. He held his biggest of revolvers with a free,
powerful grip which on the pull landed the lead slugs in whatever he
aimed at, whether tin lamp base or peak glass on a pyramid of glasses.

Rearing Bill shambled from saloon to saloon. On each circuit he became
more uproarious, more exacting in his demands; and when in the Happy
Medium a frightened bartender put out a half size whisky glass instead
of a double size according to the fashion set by Flat Face Dink, Rearing
Bill with a grizzly-like swipe of the muzzle of his gun knocked the
unfortunate liquor clerk senseless. He then stood, amused for an instant
by the spectacle of the poor devil sprawled limp on the floor.

“Heh!” Rearing Bill snarled. “Cheat me on m’ liquor, eh! Heh!”

He turned, surging to glare from sunken eyes at the white faced
onlookers. As he stared at them one by one they all shrank, watchful of
the swinging of the carelessly handled revolver, the drunken man’s
unsteady finger on the trigger, the hammer drawn back at full cock and
the big, powerful paw holding the barrel as steady as a mounted cannon.

               *       *       *       *       *

There was in Boxelder a shiftless, shaky, friendless hanger-on known as
Odd Jobbing Det Linver, a huddled up, raggedly dressed fellow who was
kicked around by every one. There had been an interval of ten or fifteen
minutes’ quiet when Odd Jobbing Det appeared in Squint Legere’s barroom.
The man who had been reading the weekly paper in the lobby laid it on
the hotel clerk’s desk and entered the barroom from the lobby just as
Det entered from the rear alley, looking anxiously behind him.

Rearing Bill had catfooted, as softly as a grizzly bear on the sneak,
into the front entrance. Flat Face Dink looked up with a genial smile of
welcome, so the bully grinned widely as he started for the bar. Thus Odd
Jobbing Det backed right into the very big fellow he was scared to meet.
It was an abrupt collision.

Rearing Bill grunted. He glanced around, stopped and saw the cringing,
shrinking wretch who looked up at him with utterly abject fear. For an
instant Rearing Bill stared and glared; then he began to grin as he
surged at the victim thus thrown in his way. Odd Jobbing Det backed till
he was stopped by the wall. Then Rearing Bill cuffed and kicked, abusing
the wretched weakling, who blubbered, whimpered, choked and begged. The
more he pleaded for mercy the more the bully slapped and poked him with
the big revolver.

“I’ve a notion to kill you,” Rearing Bill suggested tentatively,
“’sultin’ me thataway. I’ve a notion to cut yer heart out an’ eat it!
I’ve a notion to shoot ye--’sultin’ me. Me--bumping into me--walkin’ all
over me. I’ve a notion to kill an’ eat ye f’r breakfast--”’

The spectators, shrinking along the walls, edging away, froze with
expectancy as they saw the tentative suggestion of murder congealing
into determination to kill. Rearing Bill had worked himself up to a
fury. He was weaving in savage ferocity. He glanced around, covertly
from under his bushy brows, taking in the white faces and the fears in
the eyes of the beholders.

“Yes, sir, I’m going t’ kill you!” he suddenly snarled.

But, like a cat playing with a victim Rearing Bill deliberately delayed.
Here was a worthless, terror stricken, utterly helpless and friendless
victim. Odd Jobbing Det looked his sorry misery and his voice went up in
a shrill breaking wail of hopeless terror, for he felt the drunken
brute’s determination to “get a man”, establishing a reputation as bad,
killing to see a victim kick.

The man who had been reading the paper gazed curiously at the spectacle.
He had recognized the whoop of Rearing Bill as that of a green timber
woodsman, a logger from the pine, spruce or hemlock belt somewhere. Now
he saw the big fellow clearly and, staring at him in surprise,
recognized him.

“Why, you damned skunk!” he muttered, just like that, and started
straight across the barroom, bare handed.

There was a gasp of amazement among the other spectators. Rearing Bill
heard or felt the difference in the echo. He froze for an instant as he
cunningly turned his eyes to look out of their corners. He discovered
the swift approach of the spectator and turned to look.

Rearing Bill’s face convulsed. A regular gorilla expression of ugliness
and cruelty crossed his features. He had clicked his teeth and shaken
his tangled mane, fluffing up his steel black whiskers. At sight of the
interrupter he shrank in precisely the same way that Odd Jobbing Det had
done, and lines of cruel satisfaction changed to the same quivering of
terror and pleading.

“I didn’t mean nothing! I didn’t mean nothing! I were jes’ foolin’!”
Rearing Bill’s voice rose higher and shriller. “I wa’n’t really goin’ to
hurt ’im, Mister Benson! Hones’--honest!”

“You lie!” the other exclaimed, cuffing the big face backhandedly. Under
cover of the stinging blow, Benson snatched the huge revolver from the
loose grasp of the bully’s hand.

Then with the barrel of the weapon Benson pounded the big fellow across
the floor, backward. Rearing Bill yelped, cried out, choked and at last
turned to run. Contemptuously, Benson gave him a kick; and then as the
bully yelled he fired the big gun at the floor under him so that the
huge boots bobbed high and thumped to frantic efforts at escape,
crashing out into the night. Outside Rearing Bill raced, plunging to the
swayback drayhorse, and he rode furiously away in the dark, heading up
Snake Creek.

               *       *       *       *       *

When he was out of hearing, his nervous yelps lost away in the Bad Land
distance, the crowd came back into Squint Legere’s barroom to see what
miracle had changed the echo of Rearing Bill’s whoops. They found the
other stranger, Benson, unloading Rearing Bill’s revolver of the yellow
stained ivory handles. Bystanders whispered excitedly at what this
fellow had done, barehanded, right after calling Rearing Bill a skunk.

“My lan’!” Tid Ricks gasped. “I never hoped to see anybody brave as
that--my, gracious! He just acted like he wa’n’t ’fraid of nothing in
the world, yes, sir! Why, he slapped that big feller ’fore he even took
his gun away! It was the nerviest thing anybody eveh did get to see!”

Squint Legere did the honors. Benson just must take a drink.

“I’ll take one,” he assented, “and no more.”

He meant it. No one urged, or even suggested, a second drink. Benson
went to the night clerk for his room key. Legere checked him at the foot
of the stairs.

“Excuse me,” Legere said. “’Course, I mind my own business--but you knew
him?”

“Oh, yes! Went to school together.”

“That so! Back East, I expect?”

“Yes, Minnesota.”

“That makes me think. You’re Benson--Robert Benson,” Legere said, “I see
by the register.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Not--uh--not Patient Bob--uh?”

“Why--” the flicker of a reminiscent smile crossed his face--“I’ve been
called that--”

“Shu-u!” Squint exclaimed, softly. “’Course, I mind my own business,
Mister Benson!”

“’Course, know that. Well, goodnight!”

Squint Legere returned to the bar where he was awaited with interest by
a curious crowd.

“He’s Patient Bob,” Squint remarked in a low voice.

“Not ---- Say, Patient Bob Benson! Shu-u-u-u!” voices gasped.

“An’ I seen ’im settin’ theh all the ev’ing, reading the paper, cool as
you please!” Tid Ricks broke the silence. “Why, he neveh even looked up
when that old fourflusher come shootin’ by, no, suh! I seen it with my
own eyes. I knowed he was _good_. Same time I neveh dreamed he was
Patient Bob--but when he got to goin’--’course--”

“’Course!” others assented. “Anybody’d knowed, then, he was _good_!”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 15, 1928 issue of
Adventure magazine.]