Читать книгу Painted Ponies - Alan Le May - Страница 9

Table of Contents

SLIDE MORGAN lit clumsily, having misjudged the distance to the ground. As he sprawled forward on hands and knees the big, shadowy forms of two horses loomed over him. A wiry hand seized his left wrist before he could rise, jerked him to his feet, and planted his hand upon the maned neck of a horse. Morgan felt pliant reins under his fingers, and, groping for the stirrup, swung up.

As his horse moved forward, yanking him into his seat, Morgan began to get his bearings. There was no moon, but the faint mistiness of starlight enabled him to make out dim forms. Talky Peters was already mounted; he could see the man’s broad hat, blocking a place out of the dim sky like a black saucer. Talky’s horse was moving off at a shamble.

“Will yuh move?” Peters inquired. “Of all the slow fellers! Come up here!”

As Slide spurred his horse alongside, Talky reined over, until his knee jammed against Morgan’s with the force applied by a horse when he leans against another.

Behind them, somewhere in the second story of the Happy Chance, they heard a splintering crash.

“Five fellers went up the Red Crick trail about an hour ago,” Talky told him hurriedly. “They’re goin’ to the Black Hills country on this gold scare, an’ they couldn’t wait till mornin’. We’ll dig over an’ cut into their tracks. Then you turn in the trail, an’ cut back towards town about fifty yards. Then swing west an’ north in a wide circle—anyways half a mile off the trail.

“The trail goes northwest along the crick. Ride alongside it, only about a half mile away. I’ll prod along. When yuh hear me singin’ ‘Maria Suzanne,’ come in onto the trail. That’ll be about ten miles out. If yuh lose track of the trail, cut east once in a while, ’til yuh can see the crick, then swing out again. See? That way we’ll dumfound ’em complete.”

“Punk,” Morgan adjudged. “I’m supposed to stay in singin’ distance, sight unseen in the dark, an’ half a mile away. Ain’t that kind o’ crazy?”

“No, it ain’t crazy!” Talky answered abruptly.

“Why not jest mosey along the trail until we hear them comin’, then duck one side an’ leave ’em pass?” There was a momentary pause.

“Yuh got to cut out this argument,” said Talky in a strained voice. “They’ll be comin’ any minute. Do like I say! If yuh miss me in the dark, follow out the left fork o’ the trail to Hickory Lookout. It swings west up there. It’s a easy little forty-mile ride, an’ yuh can’t miss the trail except by ridin’ over it.”

“Whooee,” said Slide. “Forty miles. I think I’ll go back to the Happy Chance an’ get a night’s rest first.”

“Here’s the trail,” said Talky shortly, swerving his horse into it. “You sure are a frivolous gent. I see why they call yuh Slide. If ’twasn’t for yore friends you’d Slide right off the edge. Now cut back fifty yards, then swing west and light out!”

“ ’Sall flapdoodle,” said Morgan; “never see such a bother.” But he obeyed.

As he pivoted the horse the black gelding resisted; but Slide tapped the animal with his roweled spurs and they sprang down the trail toward the foot of Roaring River.

After ten long jumps Slide reined the horse away from the town, due west. They swung away into the night, the black settling into the walloping, swaying stride that marks the born pacer. Slide’s spirits began to rise with the head-clearing exhilaration of the night air, and the hammering lift of the pacing horse.

Irregularities of ground heaved under them, or dropped sharply away; sagebrush swished against the horse’s cannons, and taller brush rattled against the rider’s chaps. But nothing altered the pacer’s long, slashing stride.

The chinking drag upon all his pockets recalled to Morgan his fortune at the wheel of chance. His hands moved to stow the money more securely, and as he fingered the milled edges of the heavy handfuls of gold pieces he chuckled exuberantly.

“I’ll bet I’m the luckiest leather-pounder alive,” he told the horse.

“Easy swing, easy slide,

Easy eat, easy ride,

Let the leather in the saddle take the wear;

Easy come, easy go,

Spend it fast, get it slow,

One place is like another, anywhere!”