Читать книгу Painted Ponies - Alan Le May - Страница 21

For almost an hour, an hour that had seemed like five, they had sat in silence, Slide and Talky Peters. The kerosene lantern that hung from the beams above cast broad, lumpy shadows behind them upon the close-pressing walls.

Talky Peters rose and stretched. He strolled to the grub boxes at the end of the shanty, and quietly began to rearrange some of the materials he found therein. Morgan saw him roll a third of a sack of flour into a compact bundle, and tie it with string. Then Talky cut a slab of bacon in two, stacked the two pieces, and wrapped them in a clean piece of gunny sacking.

“Whatcha doin’?” Slide asked.

“Nothin’.”

Talky placed the two packages on a shelf, and on them a can of baking powder. There was another long silence.

“Wasn’t that Jake’s black pacer yuh rode back?” Morgan asked.

“Uh-huh.” Talky offered no explanation.

They were alone. After Slide’s brief narrative of what had happened at the Arrow C, Jake Downey had averred that he didn’t so much like Slide’s description of the way Lew Cade had looked after Morgan had laid him out; and he guessed he would ride over and see how things were coming on. Talky had gone with him.

For two hours Morgan had played seven up with the other hand, a man named Wilkes. Then Talky had returned bearing news of an indifferent nature.

Upon hearing that Lew Cade was still unconscious, Wilkes had been overcome by curiosity, and had ridden off for the Arrow C.

Slide Morgan played solitaire with steady hands. Another hour passed, slowly ticked away by the cheap clock on the shelf. It was eleven o’clock.

“Ought to be back by now,” said Morgan.

Talky was silent for some minutes. “Looks like you’ll have to ride,” he said at last.

“Me? No, not me. I don’t do things that way.”

“Happy Bent rode for the doc at Roarin’ River,” said Talky.

“No sense in that.”

“I dunno. Looked like he had a hole in his head, to me.” Talky’s thin, angled face wore the look of one who watches a badly managed affair with a faint, sarcastic amusement, but his voice was freighted with gloom.

“Be a long time before the doc can get there, anyway,” Morgan observed.

“They’ll be there by sun-up. Abner Cade will be there, too. An’ that’s jest the same as sayin’ there’ll be holy hell poppin’ if Lew ain’t comin’ around by then.”

“I don’t care. Let ’er pop. Lew Cade asked for it.”

“Yuh don’t realize what an unlucky pick yuh made, Slide.”

“I didn’t pick Cade. He picked me, Talky.”

“I know. But this Abner Cade is p’ison, if ever he gets on a tear. He’s runnin’ the Vigilantes, yuh know; an’ they’s always a lot o’ rip-rap an’ bobtail ready to string along with any one that’s causin’ trouble, pervidin’ they’s no hit-back.”

“How’d yuh figger no hit-back?” demanded Slide, looking up.

“Well, the five big brands are backin’ this Vigilante play; an’ from what Jake says, the big fellers don’t know you very well up here. An’—”

“I know that. But—”

“An’ if yuh figger yore goin’ to get a square trial, an’ get off by jest givin’ yoreself up—”

“Abner Cade isn’t goin’ to get hands on me, nor none of his kind,” Morgan stated. “I got an argument in me yet. You ask Lew Cade.”

Talky digested this for some time.

“I dunno as us three can stand ’em off very long,” he decided at last. “O’ course if we could pick off Ab Cade, the rest might get discouraged, an’ throw up the game. But that would bring the Flyin’ B crowd into it. Ab owns a lot o’ stock in the Flyin’ B. Mebbe by then Seth Russell would get heated up, though; that would throw twenty-five—thirty men in on our side. The old man is kind o’ sour on the Flyin’ B. But then there’s the Bar 66 feelin’ kind o’ edgy toward Seth, an’ awful strong Vigilante. I s’pose—”

“Holy Smoke!” exclaimed Morgan. “What yuh framin’, a general war? Yuh started with three men, an’ now yuh got about a hunderd in. Where’d yuh figger three in the first place? I’m one, ain’t I? This is my scrap!”

“I guess yuh figger me and Jake is goin’ to hide someplace outside, in case Ab comes for yuh. Or mebbe set here an’ read the catalogs while you stand ’em off. I guess you see me an’ Jake crawlin’ under the bunks when the bullets start leakin’ through the walls on three-four sides.”

“Good gosh!” snapped Morgan. “I never see such a fuss about one feller bein’ lammed on the head in a fair fight!” He swept his cards together disgustedly. “This country must be full o’ nothin’ but old ladies. Ridin’ fifty miles after a doc because a lyin’ rattlesnake collected himself a headache! Vigilantes this, Vigilantes that. Yuh talk like yuh want to get rid o’ me!”

“No-no. We jest—”

“Don’t worry! I’m ridin’!” Slide’s high cheek bones flushed, and his dark eyes struck fire. “I wouldn’t stay on any range where they’s nothin’ but fool notions an’ corruption. I’m goin’ some place where a cattle country is!”

“That’s what I’m goin’ to do,” agreed Talky Peters equably. He fumbled at his hat-bent ears, ears that stuck out from his head like brackets.

They fell into silence. The minutes dragged slowly by, measured by the steady clicking of the cheap clock. For a long time Talky Peters intoned the inexhaustible stanzas of his favorite song in a mournful quavering tenor:

“The cowboy laid his head upon his saddle;

An’ they heard his voice a-moanin’, soft an’ low—

Oh Maria, oh Maria, doncha leave me,

I’m a-dyin’ now, Maria, doncha go.

“Maria Suzanne! The darkness was a-fallin’;

Maria Suzanne! He couldn’t lift his haid;

Maria Suzanne! He thought he heard her callin’;

An’ w’en they trun him over, he—was—daid.”

(Very softly and lugubriously):

“Maria Suzanne! The mold is on his saddle;

Maria Suzanne! You should of spoke before;

Maria Suzanne! His grave is cold an’ lonely;

You’ll never see yore lover, an-ny mo-ore.”

The song died away. Presently a trade rat ran along the edge of the floor, carrying a tin spoon to some hidden treasure cave under the walls. A horse squealed out in the corral. There was the constant flabby snap of the cards that Morgan played in his solitary game of chance. The foreheads of the two men were moist with the heat of the night.

It was twelve o’clock.... It was one....

At one fifteen they made out the distant sound of a galloping horse. Morgan’s cards hung poised for a moment in his hands while he listened. Then he very softly played the ace of hearts and laid the deck down. His cold hands sought his pockets. Talky also listened intently, but he did not move.

They heard the running horse swiftly approach, moment after moment; until at last they heard the animal brace himself to a short, bounding stop just outside. Then Jake Downey appeared, his ruddy face wet with sweat.

With his movements studiedly deliberate in his habitual manner, Downey walked to the water bucket and drank. The others sat motionless, waiting for the news that still delayed.

“Lew Cade is dead,” Jake said at last.

The two that had waited sat in silence for a little time, their hands quiet. The trade rat appeared silently on a lofty shelf, his shadow bigger than a cat. Slide Morgan played the king of spades, and turned the card beneath.

Through the cards he could see the loft of the cabin by Moccasin Lake; a rude bunk; upon it a figure seen by candle light, uncouthly rigid, unnaturally long, its hardened face hidden by the trailing sheet.