Читать книгу The Strange Death of Manny Square - A. B. Cunningham - Страница 4

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Ed Lefferton, carpenter and undertaker, was the first outside the immediate family to learn of Manny Square’s death. Fred Sutton, one of Manny’s hired men, had dropped down from the point to tell Lefferton there was work for him to do up on the hill. Lefferton was properly astonished, although he did manage to say something about the treachery of mules in general and of old Lige in particular.

“And a white mule is worse ’n any other kind,” he said, his big square face grim with sure knowledge. “I’ve hearn they’d wait twenty years for a crack at a man.”

Fred said, “Right.” He had the air of not being able to tarry. “Old Lou wanted you to come up as quick as you could. I’ll have to be scootin’ back to work.”

“You’re not workin’ today, are you—I mean with Manny dead?”

Fred grinned. He was a handsome fellow, well-built and blond, a white scar on his upper lip giving him a certain distinction. “You know Old Lou,” he said. “She don’t like to see anyone idle.”

Lefferton pondered this. Then he said, “I can’t go 23 this minute. But tell her I’ll be up soon’s I can git away.”

For Lefferton had thought that he would like to have Jess Roden go with him. It was a three-mile walk, and the sheriff was always good company. Besides, Roden’s interest in any unusual death amounted almost to an obsession. So after Sutton had gone, Lefferton explained to Mayme Everett his housekeeper that he would maybe be gone all morning, and struck down the bottom to the sheriff’s house.

It was not eight o’clock, but Jess Roden had been up for more than two hours. He had cooked an enormous stack of flapjacks, spread his own with new cane molasses, given the dogs theirs straight, and then taken them outside for a bit of training. They were four—Big-Boy, the vast flat-headed mastiff tall as a calf; Dace, the shaggy squirrel-dog, black and white in color and truculent in disposition; Carlo, the red bird dog, soft-eyed and loping, his red plume waving; Lead, the bony-tailed coon-hound, mournful, indefatigable on the trail.

Roden was teaching Big-Boy to obey signals without words, for the two often worked together where words might be dangerous. A slight backward jerk of the head meant that the dog was to approach; a shake, that he was making a mistake. A thrust of the hand 24 palm outward was the sign to go farther; a quick waggle, that he was to give up the attempt. The dog was so eager that he panted, saliva dripping from his red lips. His ears did his talking for him: pointed for attention, flat for comprehension and joy, quivering as a response to praise.

“I guess you can tell, eh, old feller?” Roden said fondly, calling the dog to him and patting the great flat head. At which Dace, jealous, growled under his breath, and Carlo waved his plume. Only Lead went toward the corn crib for his morning siesta in the early sun.

Ed Lefferton rounded the house. “Bad news, Jess,” he said.

Roden looked at him, quick to catch the portent of the brief words. “Out with it!”

“Old Lige got Manny Square last night.”

“You mean kicked him?”

“Killed him.”

While Roden was training the dog, his expression had been watchful and critical; at Lefferton’s sudden appearance, it had changed to curiosity. But at the mention of a death his whole face grew sensitive and fluid. It might have been a part of his mind, participating in his thought.

“Who told you?”

“Fred Sutton. They sent for me.”

“When did it happen?”

“Some time last night. They found him about six o’clock.”

Roden said slowly, “It’s hard to believe, Ed. I don’t mean that Lige couldn’t kick him. But to kick him jest right to kill him—that’s what’s hard to believe.”

“He got him right in the face,” Fred paused, his square face serious. Then he said, “Do you think mules is as smart as they say, Jess? I mean havin’ it in for a feller, and waitin’ till everything’s jest so, and then—”

Roden interrupted him. “You on your way?”

“Yes.”

Roden called the dogs. Dace came bounding, Carlo waved his plume and snuffed eagerly through loose lips, Lead rose as though stiff and came slowly, Big-Boy grinned, wagging his stub tail.

“You stay here—see?” Roden said to them. They dropped their ears, dispirited. But they brightened when he waved vaguely and said, “Watch the place.”

The way led up the river. The early morning presaged the glory which would come later in the day. It was Tuesday, the third of September. The world was just recovering from the dog-day heat of August, when the ragweeds drooped dusty by the roadside and the pennyroyal gave off its permeating sharp odor. The 26 willows on the river bank were displaying their first yellow; the air was crisp with a certain cool invigoration.

The men were going at a sharp pace, each thinking his own thoughts. Finally Roden asked, “Did you tell me all you know about it?”

“Pret-near. You know about old Lige. Since the time he fell in the quarry someone’s always gone out and stabled him at night. Guess the job fell to Manny last night. Lige was in his stall, haltered and everything. Manny was back agin the wall, his face caved in.”

“Hit him straight, eh?”

“Couldn’t a measured it better. That’s why I asked was a mule like they say—knowin’ when everything was jest right.”

They passed the bend in the river, struck up the steep hill.

“A mule is smart,” Jess Roden finally said. “But not that smart. It wouldn’t happen once in a thousand years.”

They reached the lower limits of Grady Heard’s stone quarry. The place might have been the excavation for a vast stadium. Where the hill had once curved gradually downward, a great gash, semicircular and ragged, had been blasted out, the base and fringes a litter of small stones, the center boring 27 straight into the mountain and leaving a sheer face of rock a hundred and fifty feet high at the back. Already, somewhere in the great basin, was the pounding of men at work.

“This is one thing Manny won’t have to worry about any more,” Lefferton said with a crooked grin.

For answer, Roden looked quickly up at the extreme summit of the quarry where a single wire, precariously strung on unsteady posts, ran along the lower edge of Manny Square’s pasture. Lefferton followed the sheriff’s glance and chuckled dourly.

“It was jest like Manny to string that one wire up there,” he said. “He could’ve saved the stock he lost if he’d’ve built a good strong fence along the edge.”

“Manny wouldn’t do that! He felt it was Heard’s fault the quarry was there, and that it was Heard’s business to take the precautions.”

“Yeah. But Heard wouldn’t build a fence. He said he didn’t need it.”

Roden grinned thinly. “So there you are. Heard wouldn’t because he didn’t need it, and Manny wouldn’t because it wasn’t his place to. And they had to fight it out.”

“They never actually fit,” Lefferton put in quickly. “Manny was too little to take Heard on.”

“But he got even.”

Lefferton chuckled. “I’ve hearn that along toward the last, every time Manny lost a hog or a calf or something down the quarry, he saw to it that an equal thing of Heard’s come by an accident some way.”

“That’s right. Once he lost a heifer over the quarry, and the next day one of Heard’s was down there, dead.”

Grady Heard loomed to the left of them, swinging a sledge. He was unaware of their approach, but stood on a great wedge-shaped piece of rock which had evidently been blasted out the day before, and struck it powerfully in a straight line, up and down, so as to break it in two. He saw them when they were within a few feet of him. He straightened and stood waiting, as though to demand a reason for their coming.

For no one took liberties with Grady Heard. He stood well over six feet and was powerfully built, with broad square shoulders and strong legs. Something in his eyes kept men at a distance. They were black, and glowed as with a suppressed fury.

“Well?” he said. He crooked the index finger of his left hand and scooped the sweat from his forehead.

Roden said, “Manny Square was killed last night, Grady.”

“How’s that?” The words exploded from his great chest.

“Old Lige kicked him in the face. Fred found him this mornin’.”

Grady Heard seemed to comprehend slowly. His eyes widened. He slid a hand down the sledge handle and lifted the iron as though he would examine it, obviously unaware of what he was doing. One end of the hammer showed hard steel; the other end was covered with a thick pad which might once have been part of the top of a felt boot. He used the padded end to strike a stone which he wished merely to jar apart. Now he stood for a moment absently picking at the wire which held the pad. He expelled his breath slowly.

“You on your way up?” he asked of the men.

“Yes. Ed’s to do the work.”

Grady Heard seemed to come to a decision. “If anyone says anything, tell them I’ll come up if I’m needed.” There was a mingling of defiance and resolution in his voice. He stepped from the stone and turned to face it, beginning a measured and continuous tapping down the surface with the padded end of the hammer.

Roden stood a moment to watch: Grady Heard was famed for the accuracy with which he could break a stone. The thick pad now kept the sledge from shattering; there were only the muffled jars, following the 30 cleavage made in the side of the rock. And in a little while there was a rift when the stone flashed apart, the two straight edges dividing.

“Neat work,” Roden said.

Heard whirled; he might have forgotten the men.

They went on. When they had reached the edge of the quarry and were scaling the steep slope, Lefferton said, “I’d hate to have Grady sore at me.”

“No reason why he should be.” Roden was in unexpected good humor: what had promised to be a listless day had turned to interest. He almost twinkled as he said, “Chances are, when you have any dealings with him he’ll be harmless!”

They were at the top of the quarry. Manny Square’s pasture ran smooth and green down to the very edge of the precipice, only the single wire guarding against the sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot drop. The two men paused, each realizing that the single straggling wire represented one of the bitterest feuds ever to prevail in the county. For Grady Heard had followed the excellent stone to the precise line of his property, and then had kept on blasting in and down. Manny Square had first protested, saying the cut was spoiling the view of his place from the river. And on the occasion when he had lost his first heifer down the precipice, Manny had descended to the floor of the quarry to 31 await Heard’s coming, the dead calf not far away. It must have been quite a meeting, though there were no witnesses—Manny Square quiet but obdurate, his face bleak with anger and outrage, and big Grady Heard insulting in his prodigious strength and self-assurance. For Heard had come, and he had seen. He was properly sympathetic. But he said, swinging his sledge,

“Know what I would do if I was in your place?”

Manny Square spoke with restraint, watching Heard. “What?”

“I’d build me a good fence up there.” He brought the sledge down on a stone; for him the interview was over.

Manny Square turned very slowly. He brushed an imaginary bit of dust from the knee of his trousers. Any sort of fight between them was out of the question, for Manny was slight as a woman and Heard was a giant. But Manny went to Pine Ridge to inquire into the law. There he was told by a suave attorney named Grimback that Heard was within his rights. He was on his own property; he did not need to build a fence, since nothing could scale the face of the quarry. Manny would have to protect himself.

Square would gladly have gone half way; he was not a man to court trouble. But Heard had talked 32 down at the depot. He had said that Square was only jealous of Heard’s graveled driveways, of his big stone barn. He had also predicted that Manny would build the fence. And almost before either was aware, they had so committed themselves that there was no turning back without loss of face. Heard went ahead, blasting deeper; Manny was more reluctant, troubled by this thing which had risen to harry his days. Perhaps also he realized more clearly where it would lead; for in the end the bitterness between the two men had become cankerous and implacable. Of late it had entered a new phase where, as Ed Lefferton said, for every head of stock lost by Square down the quarry, a similar head of Heard’s managed to be found dead in approximately the same way. No one could connect Manny directly with the coincidence, but Deer Lick wagged its head and waited.

Jess Roden twanged the single wire and turned up the hill. “More devilment can come from a line-fence squabble than from anything else but money and a woman,” he said.

“All the same, Grady will feel cheap now.” Lefferton displayed flashes of discernment.

“Maybe. Maybe he’ll be glad of it.”

Ahead of them up the rolling slope was the great Square barn. The lot ran out behind it, strongly 33 fenced. Two or three men hung about the door leading to the horse stalls. On the far side of the lot Fred Sutton broke stone for a neat graveled runway for the cattle. And at the fence just above the upper corner of the barn, now securely tied where he could do no harm, was Lige, the big white mule.

Wayne Square came a few steps to meet Lefferton and the sheriff. The usual fat smile was gone from his face. He shook hands with both men, soberly, returned with them to the lower corner of the barn. “They found him right in there,” he said, nodding toward the open door.

Lefferton clucked sympathetically, peering in. Roden, not facile at any expression of sympathy, merely looked skyward and rubbed his hands. Wayne gave them time to look, then drooped against the building.

“The hard thing is,” he said helplessly, “that it almost didn’t happen. Manny went to Pine Ridge yesterday and expected to stay all night. If he hadn’t come back, he would be alive today.”

Roden said absently, his eye on old Lige, “He had planned to be away for the night, eh?”

“That’s right. He had made all arrangements.”

“What caused him to come back?”

“No one knows. No one knew he was back till Fred found him.”

“Too bad,” Cary Davis said. He had been a close friend of the dead man’s. “And he went before he made his will, after all. He told me a few weeks ago that he was going to fix it up this winter.”

Ben Neal spoke up. He was a big black from Niggertown, heavy-shouldered and surly-faced. He had once worked for Manny. “And when he come back and see ol’ Lige in de field, he fotched him to de bahn.”

“I had told him a hundred times to get shet of that mule,” Wayne said. “But he wouldn’t. He paid it more mind than any horse he had.”

“He did so!” Ben Neal corroborated. “Befo’ he canned me—when I was workin’ for him, he told me to see dat Lige was always well tended.”

Roden studied the big Negro curiously. Manny Square had discharged him less than a year before for his rough handling of a purebred boar. Neal had left sullenly, knowing that a discharge from Square would make it difficult for him to get work anywhere else. He had gone through a pretty tough winter. Yet here he was at Manny’s death, the heavy shoulders properly drooped and the surly face ludicrous with sympathy. He pulled a cap from his round skull.

“Sho am sorry, Mistah Wayne. Comes anything us kin do, you say de word.” He replaced the cap, settling 35 it snugly on his ball-like head, climbed the fence, and started down the hill.

“How did he know Manny was dead?” Roden wanted to know.

“Why—I guess he was just passing,” Wayne Square said. “The word hasn’t got around much yet.”

There was the sound of footfalls in the cow stalls. Roden glanced toward the upper door as Beth Square stepped into the barnyard. She hesitated for a moment, her eyes on Fred Sutton pounding stone a few yards away, then turned toward the group of men. She had pulled on her husband’s old hat and coat as she often did when running out of the house to do some chore, and the result was a startling reminder of the little man who so recently himself had been busy about the place. She smiled at the men, although there was something apologetic and woebegone in her face.

“Mother Square saw you come up the hill, Mr. Lefferton,” she said. “She wants you to come up to the house.”

“Right. I was on my way. Comin’, Sheriff?”

Beth halted briefly outside the cow stalls, leaving the men to go on ahead. She looked about her in a way that was both benumbed and distracted—at Lige the mule, at the cattle lane beyond the fence, at Fred Sutton. Then she uttered a small sound which might have 36 been a sob or a plea, and ran through the barn after the men.

She was panting when she overtook them, and they were three abreast as they reached the kitchen door. Old Lou was standing just outside the screen, dressed in black, one hand holding her pince-nez glasses and the other on the small black button which worked a spring. Beth ran up to her, still distracted but pitifully eager, as though to announce the fact that she had fulfilled the old lady’s command. But Old Lou ignored her; by a squaring of the shoulders and an upward swing of the pince-nez, she even succeeded in eliminating the younger woman altogether.

“Ah, Mr. Lefferton. I was afraid you had forgotten.”

But Lefferton was unawed by the Square hauteur. “Where is Manny?” he demanded briskly.

“Mr. Roden,” she said formally, then turned toward Lefferton who was already through the door. “Do you wish Mr. Roden to come with you?”

“He helps,” Lefferton said briefly; and Roden also stepped through the door.

Manny Square was laid out on a bed in a small guest room which opened off the spacious living quarters. Roden stopped just inside, cupping the back of one hand in the palm of the other, his eyes eager but respectful. Lefferton strode to the bed and drew back 37 the sheet with professional directness. Manny Square lay small and neat and straight, his hands folded on his chest. Two pennies lay on his eyelids to keep them closed. The face had evidently been a ghastly sight at first, but it had been bathed and shaped till the deep imprint of the mule shoe showed only as an elongated half-circle over the putty-white features. The mouth even held a suggestion of the clipped smile which had been characteristic of the man during his lifetime.

Lefferton whipped from his pocket a cloth measuring tape and with deftness and speed set about taking the few measurements he would need in determining the size of the coffin; for he kept no coffins in stock, but made each one as it was needed. Through his preoccupation he heard the voice of old Mrs. Square, low but imperious.

“... black walnut,” he heard. “The very best you can do. And I want a box for the coffin to rest in. I would suggest beechwood, or maple. Very hard and mitered....”

Roden had been standing perfectly still, only the slow rubbing of his hands betraying his interest. He stepped a bit closer to the head of the bed, making the movement as inconspicuous as possible. His eyes strained toward the dead man’s face. There was something peculiar about the cut, something not quite 38 right. He had pictured the face even before he saw it—the somewhat long and dished face of Manny Square, and over it the elongated semicircle of old Lige’s shoe. The gash would be deep at the bottom, down about the mouth or chin, as the mule’s foot would come from the ground and strike, not flat, but at an incline, the toe first. It was this that had been in Roden’s mind when he protested that such a kick would hardly kill a man, as the principal force of the blow would strike not at the vulnerable forehead but toward the mouth and chin; enough to shatter a jaw or knock a man unconscious, but not enough to kill him.

But here he saw something entirely different. Not the toe but the heel of the shoe had struck first. The murderous work had been done on the forehead. The imprint just below the nose was negligible, hardly more than enough to break the skin of the upper lip.

“... both the inside and outside of the coffin with black velvet,” Old Lou’s voice swept on. “If you cannot procure it here, send for it. To Bennington, if necessary. A telegram would start it on the afternoon train.”

Roden glanced at her, half impatient that she should be going on and on in the face of the tragedy which had overtaken her son. But at once he was filled with 39 a grudging admiration. She was steadying herself against the wall; her skirts were shaking from the trembling of her knees. But she was carrying on, going through with it. The old lady had something, all right—pride, will. She wasn’t going to give way, break down. She was going to see the thing through, carrying it off like a Square.

Half ashamed of his intrusion Roden slipped through the door. Manny’s wife was standing just outside. It was as though she felt herself an outsider: her eyes strained toward the figure on the bed, and there was again the woebegone apology on her face. But she checked herself at the threshold, awaiting the pleasure of her betters.

But once more out in the sunshine, the sheriff forgot the human side of the tragedy and returned to the impossible gash on Manny Square’s face. A mule kicks from below, its toe inclined outward. Consequently the toe strikes first, makes the deepest mark. To cut as it had on Manny’s face, the shoe would have to be reversed on the foot, and then it would be upside down.

He was walking slowly toward the barn. And there before him was old Lige, securely tied to the fence. Roden glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him, and trotted toward the corner 40 of the barn. Lige was in his way an institution. He was old, all of fifteen years, and the only white mule for miles around. He was irascible and truculent as a moose—tall and bony, with great lop ears and an evil eye. He seemed always to be viewing the world with derision, his loose lips flapping back from long yellow teeth in a sardonic and evil grin.

He was too old and captious to be of any service about the farm, but Manny Square had turned a deaf ear to all suggestions to get rid of him. Between mule and man was a strange bond, the man eccentric and determined, the mule derisive and fractious. The complaint was general that Manny paid more attention to Lige than to his favorite purebred. It was true that when Lige slipped down the quarry, his master spent an entire morning rescuing him; tying a great laprobe under the mule’s shoulders and hauling him up the precipice with an improvised windlass. Lige had showed his gratitude on reaching firm ground again by baring his yellow teeth and trying to take a nip at Manny’s shoulder. But the man only grinned his tight-lipped grin, clouted the animal over the rump, and went through the remainder of the day as if much relieved at Lige’s rescue. Thenceforward he always saw to it that the mule was safely stabled every night. It had evidently been his concern to put the mule up 41 on an unexpected return from Pine Ridge that had led to the little man’s death.

And yet—had it? Roden’s doubts increased. To receive such a blow on the face Manny would have had to be practically on his hands and knees back of the mule. Only then could the tips of the shoes have smashed first. Roden’s glance back over his shoulder had followed the thought that he might make a test on Lige himself.

He was careful to keep the mule between him and Fred Sutton who continued to break stone in the cow yard. The other men had drifted away. For a moment the sheriff stood looking the big animal over. It returned his stare, its eyes red and glowing with a sort of suppressed malevolence. All at once it uttered a garbled and vicious sound. It pranced, drew to the end of the halter; finally jumped at the fence and began to bite slivers from the topmost rail. Its hindquarters were toward the barn, the solid wall not three feet away.

Roden picked up a long cornstalk. He darted a quick glance over Lige’s back to make sure Fred Sutton was still occupied, then jabbed the sharp stalk into the mule’s flank. The response was as instantaneous as it was savage. The mule threw its weight on its shoulders and with both hind feet let fly at the barn.

The crash brought Fred Sutton’s eyes up. Roden had dropped the stalk and was standing at a safe distance. He grinned toward Sutton. “He’s playful in a way I don’t like,” he said.

Sutton grinned back. “He always is.”

And then, as the mule swung on the halter, Roden sidled toward the wall and examined the marks. They were as he had known they would be—the toes deep in the wood, the tips hardly discernible at all.

Manny Square hadn’t been killed by the mule.