Читать книгу The White Cheyenne (Max Brand) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Макс Брэнд - Страница 11

I wasn’t surprised that they changed their minds. I would simply have been very much surprised if they hadn’t, because this affair of The Doctor’s flight was enough to send a chill through me. If you had seen him and felt him, as I did, you would have agreed with me, I have no doubt.

It was a great sight to see Running Deer brought out from the prison in which he had been kept. No doubt he had despaired of life a hundred times while he was in it, but when he came out, he was as calm as stone. They had given him a buffalo robe—so much had he risen in their estimation and value since it was known that he was to go free—and they restored to him his war pony. He rode out of Zander City at a walk, though a shudder must have run through his flesh when he found his back turned upon such enemies as he could not help knowing that he had in that town. I watched him out of sight; then I started hunting for a place to spend the night.

There would be plenty of ways of spending the evening, as I could see. The moment the sun went down Zander City began to light up; new voices were heard, and like rats out of holes, where they had been hiding during the day, men came out to work for their living by lamplight—at card tables, and the like. Zander City had looked rough and tawdry, only, in the sun; when the lamps were lighted there was a lure about it.

One forgot that the prairie was a flat sea of land all around; one remembered the great arch of the sky above, and looked toward the stars.

There would be plenty of ways of spending the evening, and I was anxious to enter a dozen doors that I marked as I went down the street, because I liked cards as well as the next man, and had already won and lost my little fortunes.

Nobody but a fool spends the evening without having provided for the night. I began to hunt for a lodging. The first “hotel” at which I inquired was built nine-tenths of canvas and one-tenth of unplaned boards, and I was showed to a little cubby-hole about two by six. I could have that bed in the night. It was occupied in the day.

This was not for me. I was never rough enough to enjoy that sort of thing. I continued my search until one rough proprietor bellowed at me: “What d’you take this for? The minister’s house?”

That put an idea in my head. When the minister’s house was pointed out to me, I saw a good-sized, well-built house with a neat garden around it, and was glad of the sight, I can tell you. I had no doubt that the very thought of a minister’s presence was enough to scare most of the choice spirits of the town away from that house, but I was not of that kind. I had sense enough to realize that a minister is just as human as the next man, and I was willing to put up with a little cant for the sake of a fair deal of cleanliness and good cooking. Also, I did not see how any man of God could possibly charge such outrageous rates as the professional hotel keepers of Zander City.

I went up to the door and knocked. It was opened to me by a girl in blue calico—the prettiest girl in the world! I only had a flash of her eyes opening at me, and I heard her say that she would ask her mother.

Then her mother came; she was not the prettiest thing in the world. Oh, she had been handsome enough in her time, I have no doubt, but where girls come by their beauty I never could understand. I have never seen a case of true inheritance. Now and then, heaven opens on a birth and gives a girl child the golden touch.

So it was with the minister’s daughter, Peggy.

When I saw Marcia Gleason for the first time, I simply wanted to turn around and run. She had been working in flour. It was still in the creases of her fingers; it was dusted over her forearms. They were big arms, but the fat could not completely disguise the muscle that lay beneath. The breadth of her knuckles was convincing, too. Instantly I made up my mind that I did not have to ask who was the master in this house. At least, I did not care to have any trouble with the mistress thereof.

She said to me: “Yes, young man, I take lodgers and boarders, now and then, when I get ones with good recommendations, and I don’t mind saying that it’s a pretty hard job to find that same in this town. Who sent you to me?”

It angered me a little. I have known a great many people who like frank, outspoken women. I hate them. When a woman loses her sweetness, she might as well cease life, too. Because all that she becomes then is a sort of imitation of a man, and they are not the stuff of which men can be imitated well.

At any rate, this Marcia Gleason loomed over me with her talk about recommendations, and such things, until I was an angry man, I can tell you.

I said: “I was sent here by a hotelkeeper in the town who said: ‘You must be looking for the minister’s house.’ So I took him at his word, and here I am.”

She opened her eyes a little at this and gave the door a half swing, as though she would have slammed it in my face.

Many a time thereafter I have heard her wish aloud that she had slammed it in my face, because that would have shut out a great deal of trouble from the life of her family. However, she didn’t quite make up her mind.

When a woman is a bully, she is three times as cruel as any man. This woman was a bully, you see, and it rather amazed her to hear such talk. Because you can depend upon it that the more vigorously masculine a woman is, the more certainly she will demand that she be treated like a lady of the gentlest breeding! Your Western women have their grand qualities, but that’s apt to be their defect.

She jerked the door wide and said: “Come in, young man.”

I followed her into the parlor, and she sat me down in the first comfortable chair that had received me since I left Charleston. Then she leaned her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists. She said:

“You’ve had education, I see. You speak well enough. So what are you doing out here?”

“Watching the natives and their queer ways,” said I.

“You act,” said she, “as if you meant to include me in the list.”

“Madame,” said I, “I am afraid that you are suspicious.”

“Humph!” she said, doing her thinking shamelessly aloud. “Sometimes these frank men are honest, and sometimes they are the worst crooks in the whole lot. I suppose that you haven’t got any recommendation?”

“I didn’t think that recommendations were needed on this side of the Mississippi,” I told her. Then I got up to leave.

She said: “You can stay! I like something about the sassy way that you have with you. But hold on. Let me have a look at your horse!”

She went to the front door and looked at Sir Thomas. By her exclamation I knew that she understood horses. It warmed my heart toward her not a little.

She said: “That puzzles me more than ever. No man in Zander City ought to have a horse as fine and as fast as that unless he is a born gentleman and can afford the luxury—or unless he needs to have all of that speed at his command!”

She turned around and glared at me in her frank, manly way. “I wonder what you are?” said she.

“I don’ know,” said I.

“Humph!” said she. “You won’t give me a single trick, I see. And I’ll have to take you into the house if for nothing else than to find you out. You can bring your things in, I suppose!”

I went out to get my pack off the back of Sir Thomas, and I heard Mrs. Gleason sing out: “Peggy, go open the windows in the side bedroom.”

“They have enough money to keep a servant—a little negress or a half-breed,” said I to myself, and I trudged up the stairs with my pack.

When I got to the side bedroom, the girl of the front door came out into the hall and gave me a sort of half-frightened smile of apology, as though she had been intruding by entering a room that was to be mine!

That was Peggy!

I dumped my pack on the floor of that room and kicked the door shut. Then I slumped down on the bed with my chin in my palm and groaned. I could feel it coming over me; there was the same sickness in the pit of the stomach, waviness in front of the eyes, and fluttering in the heart. That sounds like a description of homesickness, perhaps. It will do equally well for love.

I had been in love nearly every year of my life since I was twelve. Each time, it was just the same. I would have married any one of the lot, and after marriage, I suppose that I would have sworn that I never could have been happy with any other woman. Then along came a trip to a new county, or her other and older beau showed up. So I was left heartbroken until another pretty girl came along.

I have this satisfaction—they were all pretty, they were all gentle. Too, they were all tender. A score of them would not have been able to rake together enough brains to overstock any one head. All the same, each of them was wonderful, feminine—with the golden touch which can burn a Troy or build it again.

As I sat on the bed, I said aloud: “That is her mother’s work—calling a young nymph, a goddess, a perfectly sweet thing like that by such a name as—Peggy! Peggy for that!”

So spoke I, aloud, but in my heart of hearts I was groaning because I knew that I had been touched to the heart by the fatal arrow again. Already I was such an old hand in these affairs that I did not even waste time hoping; I simply wondered how long the ravages of the disease would continue before it had worked out its strength. Because I was never what you could call a successful lover. I lacked the flash and the fire of the perfect liar. That is what one needs to be in order to win one of those flowers of whom I am speaking—that, or else wear a uniform, coming newly home from the wars with a bar or two on the shoulders and a casual air of speaking of the deaths which have rubbed elbows with you now and anon.

I lacked those graces; therefore I merely sat there and half closed my eyes, wondering, bitterly, how long it would last.