Читать книгу Painted Ponies - Alan Le May - Страница 6

As Morgan bit into his third sandwich, fragments of the conversation about him began to filter to him through the fragrant steam of the beef under his nose. He found himself pausing to listen to some of the remarks.

“Hear the Horse Creek outfit’s put up five thousand gold for the ears o’ Injun Frank.” The low voice drifted to Morgan across a burly shoulder.

“That’s Vigilante blah,” said a dark, sharp-faced man.

“Wouldn’t say such. Not too loud. Might start arguments. Considerable shootin’ fools has flocked over to the Vigilantes, recent.”

“Blah.”

“See Marve Conklin’s back—empty-handed,” said a third voice, husky and deep.

“Hear Marve says not,” said the burly man.

“Reckon if he had ears in his pockets the world would know it,” said the sharp-faced one.

“I heard somethin’ more,” said the burly man, in a small, close-lipped voice. “I heard Marve aims to take Injun Frank in, ’fore the night’s out, by not no more than reachin’ out his hand.”

The voices became hard to understand; not whispered, but casually constrained, so that their import was almost lost in the general hum, the clatter of the tin piano, the ring of glasses on the bars, and the chink of restless coin.

“Must figure he’s pretty close by,” suggested the dark man, eyeing the burly speaker.

The answer was barely audible to Slide Morgan’s straining ears.

“In this room.”

The three fell silent, and presently separated tacitly, as men who have probed too deeply into a ticklish subject, and at the wrong time. Morgan bought more bread and beef, speculating upon this Indian Frank, whose fortunes in some mysterious way seemed to border on his own.

Then a voice began to sing behind him, mockingly intoning his own particular song:

“Easy swing, easy slide,

Easy eat, easy ride,—”

He turned to find a short, bow-legged cowboy who sung stridently through his nose.

“Jake Downey!” Morgan shouted; and the short cowboy’s face burst into an exultant grin.

Slide snatched the man’s hat down over his eyes, seized him in his arms, and executed three waltzing whirls that brought them up against the opposite bar with a bang.

“Is that the way to treat a purty near absolute stranger?” Downey asked. “You old son-of-a-gun! Who yuh ridin’ fer?”

“Nobody. I just come up from down on the Solomon.”

“Then yo’re ridin’ for me. Foreman, I am!”

“Whoopee! Come up some, huh?”

“Not up so much. Old Seth Russell gimme the meanest, stinkin’est job he could cook up. Three riders an’ myself, stuck up here at the Hickory Lookout camp, waitin’ round to git kilt.”

“Where’s Hickory Lookout?”

“Well, yuh ride way up yonder along Red Crick, an’ when yore plumb wore out, that’s it. Seth’s shoved two thousand Box R head across the Platte into Injun country; also enough head o’ horse to be a nuisance, and a bait to git murdered with. Me an’ the boys aim to keep the stock out from among the Injuns, an’ the other way round.”

“Sounds real attractive,” Morgan agreed.

“An’ now, to add corruption onto misery, two o’ the boys has lit out with a gang o’ crazy men fer the Black Hills. The whole mob here has gone clean nutty over somebody findin’ a little piece o’ gold up there. Prob’ly they’ll git kilt on the way. I hope so. Anyway yo’re signed on.”

“I s’pose.”

“Say—you know Talky Peters?”

“Nope.”

As Jake Downey half turned to look about over his shoulder, Morgan noticed that a deliberate sureness of movement was replacing the nervous activity that Jake once had shown. His blunt red face was thickening through the jowls. Sixteen years before he had been a rider for the Pony Express; but that was before Slide Morgan’s time.

A lean, sandy young man now strolled up with outspread ears, his air quizzically mournful. A smouldering cigar drooped at a steep slant from one corner of his mouth, counter-balancing the backward tilt of his hat with peculiar effect. He had the expression of one who looks upon an act of mortal folly, with a superior foreknowledge of the result.

“This is him,” said Jake. “Slide, meet up with Talky Peters. Talky, shake hands with Slide Morgan.”

The two men shook hands gravely.

“Both goin’ to ride with me,” Jake explained. “Yo’re all I got. I could purty near cry.”

They had a drink.

“I think my luck’s leakin’,” said Slide. “What say we have a turn at the wheel?”

Both declined, and Morgan left them to shoulder back into the crowd about the spinning bowl. He noticed a lean face, with thin lips about which hung a faint trace of a mocking smile; and a pair of curiously light eyes, expressionlessly set upon his. It was the man who had thrust Slide’s silver dollar off of his chosen number. Certainly Morgan had no quarrel with the man now, and he grinned. The light eyes dropped to the wheel without sign of recognition. In the next moment Slide forgot the man in the shifting fortunes of the game.

If Morgan’s luck were ebbing it showed no sign of it yet. He lost repeatedly for every time that he won; but one win at roulette covers many a loss. Morgan’s cash resources began to grow. As he won he placed larger stakes, and won again. The whirling bowl held him with a hypnotic lure; the faces about him hung in a golden blur of tobacco smoke, veiled in a haziness with which his many drinks had much to do.

The little white ball bounded and skipped in the whirling bowl, aimlessly deciding the fortunes of the men who played; and again and again, with an uncanny repetition, the lot fell to Morgan. How long he stood there watching that dizzy wheel he did not know; but as he played he lost all count of how much he had won, knowing only that his pockets were becoming heavy and bulging with silver and gold.

When a hand with iron fingers gripped his elbow and dragged him out of the staring throng, he reeled away with the belief that he had made a killing, a historic slaughter, one that would be told of for years. He thought that he must have all but broken the game.

“Leggo!” he snapped at Jake Downey, the man with the commanding grip. Morgan’s eyes were red and smouldering. “Yuh want to smear my luck? Leggo, I say! I’m gonta break that wheel!”

“Time yuh bought a drink,” said Jake gruffly. Then, growling into his ear, “Fer God’s sake come over here! D’yuh wanta die? There’s somethin’ goin’ on here, an’ I don’t like the looks!”

Slide subsided, and allowed himself to be led to the bar, where he called for drinks. Downey talked very low and rapidly into his ear. “Act like I’m tellin’ yuh jokes—keep laughin’—an’ when I laugh, laugh fit to die!”

He suddenly slapped Slide Morgan’s shoulder, and burst into a loud guffaw. Morgan was unable to comprehend what Downey was getting at; but he was high-strung, and over-stimulated by alcohol and fortune, so that laughing was easy. He followed suit.

“What kind o’ ruckus you been in?” Jake demanded softly, his face jovial, but his voice tense.

“Don’t rightly know,” Slide answered, picking his words slowly, to conceal the thickness of his tongue. “I was ridin’, about twenty miles out, when four strangers rode out on me sudden, wavin’ their guns, an’ yellin’ for me to give up. I can’t tell yuh what was the idee. I slapped in the steel an’ struck out. I happen to be ridin’ a streak o’ horse flesh. So I shook ’em off, after a little loose swappin’ o’ lead. I didn’t hit no one. I think one of ’em was the constable; I dunno.”

They both laughed again, leaning close together on the bar.

“They got an idee yo’re Injun Frank,” Jake said. “There’s a reward out.”

“But I can prove—”

“Mebbe. But by then, if yuh ain’t lynched already, you’ll be shook loose of all this coin, an’ be rode over to Horse Crick—eighty-five miles if it’s a foot. An’ after that they’ll be so darn disappointed they’ll mebbe git kind o’ rough.”

“They ain’t takin’ me any place,” said Slide with half-drunken conviction.

Jake Downey laughed tremendously, and Slide rallied enough to imitate him.

“Do what I say,” Jake grated, dropping all parley. “Act as drunk as yuh can. I’ve hired a room upstairs. I’ll act like I’m helpin’ yuh up there. Talky Peters is puttin’ my horse under the window. Come along!”

He dragged one of Morgan’s arms across his own shoulders. Slide pretended to stagger, and Jake Downey led him to a rear corner where a narrow stairway opened. Up they went, clumping heavily and unrhythmically on the squeaking treads, like drunken men. A man with a beard, and a woman who reeked of cheap perfume, stood aside at the dim stairhead to let them pass. Then Jake turned to the right and kicked open a door of rough boards. A candle on a narrow shelf struggled perilously against the draft as they pushed into a tiny room.

Jake Downey immediately barred the door. The window was shut, and the little place was dense with airless heat, but he appeared not to notice that.

“Now you listen,” he said, “an’ listen fast. This Roaring River show is run by Abner Cade. He owns the Happy Chance, and he runs the Vigilantes we got here. An’ he’s shore fastened onto you. You’ll know him when yuh see him because his eyes is light colored, like dishwater—purty near white.”

“I had a run-in with him at the wheel,” Morgan guessed suddenly.

“No, the one playin’ roulette was Lew Cade—Ab’s brother,” Downey told him. “Shut up! You’ve shot at the constable, an’ some other Vigilantes, an’ you’ve purty near broke their wheel, an’ yuh got five thousand dollars’ reward on yore head, an’ yo’re marked fer a low, murderin’ Injun half-breed. Yuh must have upwards o’ ten thousand dollars in yore pockets right now. That makes yuh worth fifteen thousand dollars to ’em, an’ now yuh tell me yuh had a row with Ab’s brother! Anybody in yore fix wants to scorch out o’ here!”

“Oh, all right, all right,” Morgan conceded. “Anythin’ to suit.”

“Talky Peters is waitin’ down in back here, below the window. They got a man watchin’ yore horse, so Talky’s holdin’ mine fer yuh. He’ll ride with yuh—an’ he’s a lad that won’t give a inch, if it comes to shootin’ it out.”

He heaved at the parchment-paned window; it stuck, so he kicked out the tough pane. A rush of fresh air relieved the hot stagnation of the little room.

“It’s only two whoops to the ground. Now you jump!”

“Here!” said Morgan. “Take the money!”

“You fool!” snarled Downey. “Here they come!”

Morgan hesitated a second to listen. On the stairs he heard the tramp of many feet; not the loud clumping of careless men, but the quiet steps of a number that made the stair timbers creak and groan.

“Jump!” commanded Downey grimly.

With a swift grin at Jake’s exasperated face, Slide Morgan lowered himself over the window ledge, and dropped.