Читать книгу The Dry Ridge Gang - Bertha Muzzy Sinclair - Страница 3

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Ray talked of buffalo hunts, Indian fights and cold-eyed two-gun men incessantly after we left Chicago behind us. He talked so much that I half expected to hear the train whistle and slow down and stop because an old bull buffalo was disputing the right of way, perhaps. Or a vast herd of antelope had chosen that moment to flee across the track and couldn’t turn off for a mere express train. All jokes aside, I did half expect that one could see deer sign just outside the town which was our destination. I also believed that men of the town wore six-shooters bolstered at their hips as a matter of course.

I should have known better, I suppose. I did know that as a rule one cannot place much dependence upon another man’s description of a person or place. But Ray was so enthusiastic about the wildness of his West that he had me fooled. And when we stepped down from the Pullman upon a broad concrete platform neatly blocked out in large diamond pattern and stained an elegant dark red, and looked across it, through a sprinkling of well-dressed men and women, all with pleased expectant faces (greeting those just arrived from a journey, or hurrying off upon adventures of their own), to a red depot with pillars and a fancy roof, it occurred to me that Ray had been slightly misleading. I began to doubt the deer and the mountain lion coming down along the river just outside town on moonlight nights.

And when Ray grabbed his suitcase and took long steps toward a shiny surrey of the latest design, drawn by still shinier sorrels shying away from the train with wide eyes and flaring nostrils, I said a word under my breath and followed.

“We have this kind of wilderness back in the corn belt,” I snorted, as I came up with him. He didn’t so much as look around.

“Hello, Dad!” he was shouting at the big, placid-faced man in the light gray suit and expensive Panama that smacked of New York. “Here we are—and here you are, just exactly on time as usual. Got a new team, I see. Come on, Walter! Hurry up, man! I want you to meet my dad, the he one of all Montana!”

I hurried, but I did not run, as Ray did the last few steps. He was not my dad, and I could not see the necessity of thrusting men aside and knocking down women and little children in order to reach him and shake his hand three seconds sooner. Furthermore, I wanted to look him over and revise my mental picture of him. Thanks to Ray’s hero worship of his father and everything pertaining to him, I had expected a big, broad-shouldered, sombreroed man with flowing mustache, weather-tanned face and two guns, one riding either hip. Yes, and a sheriff’s star pinned to his vest. Well, he was big enough, and his Panama was a shade wider in the brim than most, but he was smooth-shaven and suave, and he looked like a senator or a banker or something.

By the time I arrived Ray had a foot on the hub of the front wheel—a risky proceeding, I thought, with those horses humped up ready to jump out of their harness any second—and he was talking a blue streak, mostly asking questions, I gathered, and giving no time for his father to answer any of them. So far as I could see, he had forgotten my existence for the moment. I just stood there behind him with my suitcase in my hand and waited for him to snap out of it.

A silk-hatted old gentleman with a dignified bulge to his white waistcoat came nipping up alongside me. He lifted the shiny hat and said, “How d’ you do, Sheriff Whitcome?” in a tone of respect that impressed me even in that confused moment.

I stepped back while the old gentleman shook hands with Ray and inquired after his health and his success at school, and the health of an aunt back east, and the state of the weather when he left—

But the sheriff, his keen eyes dancing with laughter as he looked at me over the man’s head, ended the polite questionnaire by reaching out and flicking me lightly on the shoulder with the tip of his whalebone buggy whip.

“Come up here in the seat with me, young man,” he commanded, in a particularly friendly tone. “I’ve heard all about you—far as I’m concerned, no introduction is necessary. I know who you are and you know who I am, so we’ll just cut out the red tape. Mighty glad to have you with us, Walter.” He shifted the reins and shook hands with me, and his clasp was firm and friendly and gave me a pleasant glow of being accepted as one of his family.

He leaned out toward the two on the platform. “See you later, Judge. I promised to have these young cubs at the ranch in half an hour after the train pulled in. The women folks’ll check up on me—they’d see the train go by. So I’ve got just twenty-five minutes to do it in, and I’ll bet they’re holding the watch on me to see if I make good. Get in behind, Ray. I’ll send a man in after the plunder. So long, Judge.”

The pompous old man in the white vest stepped back hastily, bowed and put on his glistening top hat, all in one motion, as it seemed to me. We turned on two wheels and went careening down a side street, whipped into the planked approach to a long iron bridge across the river and went clattering across, leaving the steel rods and cables humming long after we had passed. The sorrel horses nipped at each other’s manes, broke into a canter and were pulled firmly back to a trot. A scattering of small houses in bleak little yards set off from the rolling prairie with untidy picket fences zipped past, and we ducked under the railroad, crossed another, bluer river and so reached at last the prairie road winding brown across the little ridges before us.

I don’t think a word was spoken during the first half of the drive. Ray’s father gave his entire attention to the horses—and they certainly needed it, if I am any judge. Devils for mischief, both of them. Constantly nipping and then trying to bolt; lunging ahead as if they really meant to run away with the surrey. They didn’t succeed in doing anything except keep the sheriff busy watching them, though it looked as though he was used to such performances and really thought nothing of it. I wasn’t much accustomed to horses, though—at least, not that kind. It was some minutes before I realized they really weren’t doing a thing he didn’t want or permit. I saw that he was letting them go, just keeping them barely under control. He wanted to make up those five minutes lost at the station.

So then, having seen that it was all right, I began to take stock of Ray’s father. Ray had told me all about him, of course, and how he had been sheriff of the county for fifteen or twenty years and probably would go on being sheriff as long as he lived. No one had a chance against him, or seemed to want one. He was something important in a bank—director, and also something else; second vice president, I believe it was. Owned a lot of property, had a big ranch five or six miles out of Porcupine, was in fact one of the leading citizens of the county.

Well, he certainly looked it. He was a big man. I don’t mean fat, exactly, but big. I guessed he was an inch or more over six feet and I’m sure he must have weighed over two hundred. His face, as I said before, was peculiarly placid for a sheriff; almost benign, with a strong nose and a mouth tucked in at the corners in what looked like a half smile. I liked his eyes, and yet when he looked straight at me, there was something hidden in his look, if you get what I mean. Those eyes of his had a permanent sort of twinkle, as I afterwards discovered, but behind the twinkle the man himself stood watchful, entrenched behind his smile.

I don’t believe I saw so much that first day. The sheriff’s eyes were a friendly blue, with a tinge of hazel next the pupils. If I seem to be going too much into detail, it is because Ray’s father had been held up before me as a heroic figure, the kind of pioneer who helped to build an empire in the wilderness. And he is important to the story.

I could picture him doing big things easily and without fuss or flurry. I felt that his friendship must be worth having, and I could understand how no other man had been big enough to walk in his official shoes. Men and women would lean on his strength. They would sleep sounder at night, knowing that he was on the job, making things tough for the lawless. I thought I should take to the tall timber if I ever broke a law in this county and got Sheriff Whitcome on my trail. Ray said he always got any man he went after, and I believed it.

He turned suddenly, gave me one keen look which must have measured me mentally, morally and physically, turned his head and looked at Ray, leaning back complacently in the seat behind me. “Those the latest collars?” he drawled unexpectedly, and my hand went up instinctively to mine. They were pretty high, all right, certainly not meant for comfort. We had wanted to arrive in style and it was Ray who had suggested the gray peg-top trousers and our high collars.

But his father did not wait to be told, but came on from another angle. “Heeled with all the implements for amusing yourselves, I suppose? Going to be college boys, down on the farm. Got a set of boxin’ gloves and a punchin’ bag, I’ll bet, and a football and so on.”

“Not on your life, Dad,” Ray corrected him. “We’re going to hunt and fish a lot, and be appointed deputies under you and help chase outlaws. I’ve promised Walter you’ll have a good supply on hand—Walter’s the human bloodhound type and he’s liable to bust his leash if he smells blood. He wants a good man hunt.”

Ray always took a crack at me if he got any kind of opening and insisted on calling me names utterly misleading. In reality, I am and always have been the most peace-loving mortal in the world, and would much rather wade in a good trout stream than in gore, any day in the week.

His father chuckled and gave me another swift measuring glance from the tail of his twinkling eye. “Oh, all right,” he yielded indulgently. “I guess I can furnish the game. There’s the Dry Ridge gang been hellin’ around over the country lately. You can turn yourselves loose on their trail—if they’ve got one, which I’m beginning to doubt. They’ll furnish you boys all the huntin’ you want.”

I must have looked almost as skeptical as I felt, for he laughed a big bellowing laugh that scared the sorrel team into a gallop again.

“Oh, it’s straight goods,” he assured me, when he had brought them down to a fast, sweeping trot again. “There’s a Dry Ridge gang, all right, and they’re plumb wild and hard to catch. No killin’s so far, but they’ve done about everything else, I guess. Robbed a bank here—the Citizens’ State—about a week ago. Made quite a haul, too. I was up the line when it happened. Just got in yesterday from a four-day hunt.”

“Gosh, Dad!” Ray’s tone was incredulous that his infallible father should have to confess failure. “Didn’t you get any clues, even?”

The sheriff laughed again, but not so loud this time. “Well, m’ son, I wasn’t out huntin’ clues. What I wanted was the men that turned the trick. I didn’t get ’em—no. Nor any sign of ’em beyond Dry Ridge. I bet I’ve followed that bunch forty times to Dry Ridge and lost ’em. I’m liable to follow ’em forty times more before I tie onto ’em. But I’ll get ’em some day. They can’t always get away—” He paused, shaking his head, his lips drawn tight. Then he returned to his banter. “So if it’s hunting bold, bad men you want, fly at it, son. Yuh might win enough to pay some of them danged fraternity bills, if you’re lucky. There’s a reward posted on every one of ’em.”

“You bet we will. We’ll just take him up on that, eh, Walter? If the sheriff is losing his grip, it’s about time the son and heir should come to the rescue. Cheer up, Dad. We’ll find your lost bandits for you. Walter’s all equipped for the chase. He’ll get a line on ’em right away.”

That speech got me another keen look from the big man beside me. “That right?” His tone was dubious, and no wonder. I certainly bear none of the well-known earmarks of the sleuth.

“About the only thing I ever got a line on is a few trout,” I told him, feeling stiff and uncomfortable. “I came fully equipped for that, at least. Ray’s just trying to spoof you, Mr. Whitcome.”

“Not on your life, Dad. Don’t you believe him. This lad’s bright. You ought to see him on the trail of anything he makes up his mind he’s got to have. Why, he—”

“I haven’t got to have a bank robber,” I snapped over my shoulder, to shut him up. “If I trail anything, it will be a good trout stream. What flies will they be taking this time of year, Mr. Whitcome? I’ve made up some of my own that get dandy results up in Maine and Vermont. I’m anxious to see what they’d do here.”

“Lord, you’ll have to talk to Ellie about that,” the sheriff said in a relaxed tone, as if he were glad to get away from the subject of that bank robbery. Probably did get under the skin, sort of, to have a reputation for always getting his man, and then not be able to get that gang.

We talked about fishing from there in to the ranch. At least I talked, and the sheriff drove the sorrels and listened, and got us to the door exactly on time.