Читать книгу By Dim and Flaring Lamps - Alan Le May - Страница 12

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Shep had twenty hours’ notice that Rodger Ashland was coming aboard, for whatever good that might do him. Seeing he could do nothing to ward Rodger off, the news served to spoil a day for him, and not much else. But it spoiled no day for Julie. She got the word in a letter picked up at Grand Gulf and instantly ran to tell Shep all about it. She was displaying the same kind of little-girl delight with which she had welcomed Shep aboard at St. Louis—shining-eyed, tippy-toed, bubbling—he had never seen anything half so disgusting. His response was a nonplussed silence.

“To-morrow,” she harped on it. “He’ll come aboard at Natchez early to-morrow!”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted him to. We agreed on it. We’ve been writing back and forth all along.”

“That’s nice.”

“You don’t like him, do you? I can see you don’t. You look as though you’re clouding up to rain!”

“Sorry.”

“Well, you’ll surely like him when you know him better. I’m going to get you two together.”

“I see.” He could have told her that he and Rodger Ashland had detested each other on sight, long ago; and nothing had ever happened to change that. Instead, he asked her bluntly, “Are you going to marry that rooster, Julie?”

She was taken off-balance, so that she hesitated. “Do you mean, are we engaged? Well ... no; at least, not now. We had a kind of half-way understanding for a while. But it—it got put off. No. I’m not engaged to him.” She went back to her tone of anticipation. “He may ride with us all the rest of the summer. I think you’re mean, not to be happy over it. I’m happy.”

“I can see you are.”

“Oh! You!” She lost patience with him, and went whisking off. She sure needs taking care of, he thought, preventing his eyes from following her. I don’t see how I can ever bring myself to trust it to anybody else. But his own chances of getting it done were on the downturn, worsening badly.

He had noticed the coincidence that Rodger was at Natchez, where he was rumoured to be keeping an octoroon mistress. This sort of carrying-on was a commonplace among the gentry who could afford it; the kind of thing you might not talk about openly, or to the wrong people, but accepted as happening, without much feeling about it one way or the other. He set small store by rumours and saw no reason for either believing or disbelieving this one. And yet ... the thought of Rodge coming to Julie direct from the arms of a high-yaller gal was peculiarly sickening to him.

I may kill him, he thought idly. No, I won’t. I can’t do that. I can’t ever do that. He had remembered that Rodger was Julie’s cousin. His father was her Uncle Ty, and his mother, who had been Diligence Delorme, was Julie’s Aunt Dil. This consanguinity raised no barriers whatever between Rodge and Julie, in the sentiment of the day—cousins married all the time; yet it permitted a lot of near-liberties, objectionable to Shep in this case. And what was most troublesome of all, it made Rodge inviolate, as Julie’s blood kin. He recalled a story about an old woman in eastern Kentucky, whose husband fell to feuding with her family. “Shucks,” she remarked as she shot him, “he ain’t no kin of mine.”

From a distance, as the Royal Oaks neared the Natchez landing, Shep got the hiccups watching Julie’s increasing eagerness, and guessed his breakfast wasn’t setting well. But he stayed to see Rodger Ashland appear, just to make sure the worst had actually happened. Rodge was travelling light, except for guncase, saddle, and bridle, items many gentlemen carried; he looked in good shape, and darkly tanned. As he came up the plank the band, with possibly accidental timing, struck up a popular march called “Hail to Our Fire Chief,” and Ashland coolly lifted his hat. Shep had had enough. He got out of there, in no mood for witnessing a nauseating reunion.

Rodger Ashland was almost as tall as Shep, and could turn himself out with unsurpassed elegance when he wanted to. This was not often, for he had the cannon-metal cheek to appear at breakfast barefoot and unshaved if he felt like it. He had his father’s black eyes and hair, and the same white forehead Trapper had, from always wearing his hat. Like his father, too, he was lean-cheeked, with the same high and bony nose; except that Rodger’s nose had a slight crook in it. Shep had put it there, when he was fourteen and Rodge two years older. Now that young ladies could be found to say that Rodger Ashland was the handsomest man in Missouri, Shep Daniels supposed he could blame himself. He considered that he had improved Rodger’s appearance immensely by breaking his nose.

The ambuscade in which this happened had not been about anything. Rodge had been fooling around the forecastle, as the open main deck in the bows was called, asserting his right to get in the way if he felt like it, and Shep, of course, was bringing some mules aboard. One of these tripped himself in a coil of rope, while Rodger Ashland somehow managed to set foot in another loop of the same rope. To the credit of Rodger’s agility, he did not actually fall. He was jerked almost into a somersault, but turned in the air, partly caught himself, slipped, caromed off a winch; grabbed a hanging rope that was not fastened at the other end; and finally pulled up, flailing for balance, on the guards. It seemed to go on for a long time, and everybody in sight, which included most of the passenger list, was howling; except the black deck-hands, who had no laughing licences, so turned their heads away.

Shep freed the mule, and still had time to snatch Rodge back before he fell in the river. And next, by pure accident, they put on one of the oldest, most sure-fire clown routines known to man. Rodge took a mighty swing at Shep’s head, just as Shep stooped to pick up Rodger’s hat, so that the blow whistled over; and as Rodge recovered his balance, Shep was offering him his hat, unaware of the attempt Rodge had made upon him. The crowd roared again, and Rodger charged; it was Shep’s left hand, stuck out to fend him off, that broke Rodger’s nose.... The incident had set the pattern of their relationship. There are people who are strangely unlucky for certain others; and Shep had continued to be poison to Rodge throughout their early years.

For two days, after leaving Natchez, Rodger and Julie Delorme were inseparable, oblivious to the existence of everybody except each other. Their behaviour was more nearly that of honeymooners than anything normal. Shep was soon aware that he should have begun making love to Julie long ago. He certainly could not start now, with the two of them so hideously glued together as they were. For those two days it looked as if his chance might never come again.

Abruptly something busted; throughout the third day Julie and Rodger scarcely spoke. Rodge even had his baggage brought on deck at Baton Rouge, but Julie sent it back to his stateroom. After that they were friendly again, not as honeymooners this time but at least as old acquaintances. This lasted a little while, then blew up again during the New Orleans turnaround, when Rodge and Julie shared a late night ashore with Caleese. And that was how it went, on again, off again, for a thousand miles; except that on the upstream run Julie was treating Shep and Rodger Ashland exactly alike, in so far as such a thing was possible.

Shep was trying to make up his mind whether or not there was any likelihood that Rodger Ashland was a night rider, as Trapper imagined. He was getting more opportunity to study Rodge than he considered should be forced on a hog, but he wasn’t learning much. He could often recognise a dishonest or dangerous man, but he could never place a stranger as definitely honest. And though he was pretty good at judging what a man was likely to do next in an immediate situation, such as a horse trade, he could not predict what the same man would do in some other situation in which Shep had never seen him.

There was plenty of money behind Rodge, and unless he got himself disowned, it would all be his someday; though probably he couldn’t lay hands on much of it right now. Tyler Ashland was a man who stood no nonsense from anybody, and this included his son. To Rodger Ashland, Tyler had applied, or tried to apply, a harsh righteousness of discipline he had never experienced himself. Shep had never seen Tyler Ashland talk to Rodge for more than two minutes at a time without beginning to chew his moustache and get mad. It was not hard to see how Rodge might find himself hard up for cash or why he might seek adventure as far away from his father as he could get.

On the other hand, Shep could see no sign of his spending much. He didn’t need money to ride the Delorme boats, and his gambling losses were trivial. His clothes were good, but he carried only what he needed. Tyler Ashland would allow his son as much money as Rodger was visibly using, for the sake of appearances alone, and no quarrel short of outright disinheritance would be likely to cut off the supply. If Rodge was night riding, Shep could see no evidence of it.

He was fighting off a deadly fear that Julie was going to be lost to him; perhaps was already lost. If Pap had taught him anything, it was that fear was a sickness, not only disagreeable but disabling. It could make a dog bite you, or a mule kick you, or turn people against you, though they never knew why they turned. It could bind your muscles and turn them clumsy, and make your rifle miss. So he rejected his fear and made himself consider coolly just how much time he could figure on before he must make his move. He knew now that he could count on Jim Sam to sit back in the breeching, hostile to all suitors alike, but uncommonly strong ties between father and daughter were fraying out at one end. Caleese would keep a tight rein while she could, and that would have been decisive once; now, though, Julie was demanding obedience, in room of the discipline Caleese had always exacted. If between them they could get Julie through this one more summer ... Shep wouldn’t bet a nickel on it. Disarmed and empty-handed as he was, he would have to make his move this year, this summer—this very trip.

What steadied him more than anything, and saved the journey from becoming a nightmare, was that on the upstream trip he had plenty of work to do. At Baton Rouge, where the Royal Oaks stopped only half an hour, he got the first indication that his buying might go better than expected. A portly and red-faced gentleman was waiting there with ten head, every one of them held on lead by its own Negro hostler. “The cream of the crop, suh,” he told Shep Daniels. “The pride of Singin’ Tree plantation!”

Shep saw two among the ten he might barely make do in a pinch. But in the background four more horses were being loose-herded apart, as if in an unsuccessful effort to hide them. “What are those back there?”

“You embarrass me, suh. I hadn’t meant to bring those; they broke out and followed the others. I fea’ they are very expensive hosses. But in wretched condition, not up to themselves at all ...”

Oh, is that so? Fat, though, and groomed to the teeth. Also they were the horses he was obviously expected to buy, discovering them for himself, and paying a premium. Shep was badly cramped for lack of time to haggle, and had to foreshorten or drop out such accepted procedures as pretended loss of interest and trifling offers on animals he didn’t want. Jim Sam was shouting at him from the hurricane; bells began to ring. “Throw in these two here, and it’s a deal on the four,” Shep said, waving the counted-out price to which he had beaten down the owner.

“Split the difference! One hoss—your pick, suh—for lagniappe!” And five head went aboard.

After that there were horses waiting for him all along the river. The word had spread, and the Royal Oaks was sometimes flagged down for horse showings he had not arranged, at woodyards and one-plantation landings. Shep could have bought the same horses cheaper if he had had time to work on it, and he assumed he was picking up some snides among them. But he was getting horses, by ones and twos and little bunches, more than he had dared hope. And over all he was buying low, compared to prices on the Missouri and on the Ohio. On the way north to Memphis he accumulated forty-seven head.

And sometimes a rare sun-burst lighted up the darkness of his prospects. The brightest of these were unwittingly set up by Captain Delorme. Jim Sam always had a captain’s table, preferring to choose his own company. But, though he disliked Rodger Ashland and was annoyed to indigestion by the sight of him beside Julie at every meal, he could not very well bar Rodger from his table. Not his own nephew, his own blood kin. So, to dislodge him, he moved Julie to the seat on his own right, and installed Shep Daniels on the other side of her, as a buffer. What he liked about Shep was that he considered him of no possibility whatever as a son-in-law. Couldn’t imagine his aspiring to it. And he had never yet caught him trying to get Julie alone, which had become the chief object in life of all the other whelps in creation.

After the rearrangement, Julie sometimes held Shep’s hand under the table. Not always; not consistently, nor predictably, but sometimes. It was another off-again, on-again kind of caprice, without relationship to anything that had been said or had taken place. But when it happened, the steamboat turned to gold, the candle flames became jewels; and Shep believed in himself, and the future, and even in his own luck, for quite a while.

Obviously Rodger Ashland never thought of Shep as a rival, but as a nuisance, like a buzz-fly that circles and lights on you, circles and lights, too quick to slap, too persistent to be driven off. But one thing Rodge knew to perfection, better than all the other eligible young men put together, was how to get in Shep’s way, effortlessly, without seeming to try; he could block Shep out of a conversation or leave him pinned while he walked Julie away. Actually, these methods worked better on all the others than they did on Shep. The clouds of young gentry began to drop away, and above Memphis had disappeared from the Royal Oaks. But Shep and Rodger Ashland held on, deadlocked; neither one of them could get Julie alone any more.

A head-on collision was inevitable. Shep knew that, though he was unsure which of them would run out of patience first; and he failed to predict Rodger Ashland’s choice of time and place.