Читать книгу Dark Horse - B.M. Bower - Страница 7

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ANDY GREEN, having arrived in Dry Lake on the noon train the day before, "caught a ride" within an hour to the Rogers ranch. From there to the Flying U transportation would be simple; a borrowed saddle horse could be returned at his convenience—or, the next day being Sunday, Bert would probably ride over with him and bring the horse back. And when Cal Emmett rode into the yard on Sunday morning with his invitation for Bert, Andy greeted him like a brother. Lady Luck, in Andy Green's opinion, might nearly always be depended upon to play him for a favorite.

"Yuh know, Cal, my brain has been turning somersaults trying to scheme some way to get a lovely bunch of red loco over to the ranch to-day," he confided. With one arm thrown affectionately over the neck of Cal's horse and with his hat pushed back from his forehead, Andy looked innocent and earnest as a school-boy.

"Red loco?"

"Yeah. Bert's cousin's here on a visit from the East. You haven't seen her yet. Prettiest red hair you ever saw in your life. Complexion like rose leaves floatin' in sweet cream. Eyes—"

"Hull-ee gee!" Cal's eyes rounded into the baby stare his fellows knew of old. "You wanta drift clean over the ridge, old-timer. If yuh mean Myrt Forsyth, I know that bunch of poison weed to a fare-ye-well."

"That's her name. But man, oh, man! She sure ain't poison to me!" Andy looked as if he meant it. "Now I'll get to ride with her to the ranch. She can watch me tame a bronc. With them blue eyes of hers looking down from the top rail—man, I can gentle chain lightning till you can roll it up like barb wire!"

"Loco is right," observed Cal sententiously. "You've got it in your system and there's only one cure 't I know of." He grinned, and added in response to Andy's questioning look, "Go on till you get your belly full. If it don't kill yuh, you're cured."

"That's the kinda medicine I'm crying for," Andy declared boldly. "But what's eatin' on you, Cal? She says she was out here, awhile back. Did you fall for that little gal yourself and get turned down?"

"Never you mind what I done. Get a move on. The boys was hopin' you'd show up to-day—they've got a horse or two picked out for you to ride. Nice easy ones. You better git over there before they frame something on yuh." Cal turned away then to shake hands with a fragile-looking young woman with shining red hair waving distractingly around her Dresden china brow, and long, heavy-lidded blue eyes whose briefest glance was calculated to raise a man's pulse at least ten beats a minute.

"Cal!" she breathed, laying her free hand over his. "You, of all people!"

"Same to you, Myrt," Cal smiled down at her. "I sure never expected to see you this morning."

Andy Green watched the two with narrowed eyes. That hand clasp was too significant, their fingers loosened too reluctantly to please him. It seemed to hint vaguely at past tenderness which might flare up again with the slightest encouragement. Andy did not like it. No one at the Flying U had ever mentioned Bert Rogers' cousin. Knowing the Happy Family, it certainly was queer that none of the boys had ever joshed Cal about her. They did whenever he looked at a girl—why not Myrtle Forsyth?

The mystery nagged at Andy. The ride to Flying U Coulee was not what he had hoped for. Cal and Myrtle kept harking back to her first visit in a way that made him an outsider. After a wonderful evening with her, sitting in the bay window of the Rogers house watching the storm, with Myrtle squealing and clutching his arm whenever there came a flash of lightning, it did not look right to him that she should be all eyes for Cal this morning.

Though it might not be polite to "horn in" on their conversation, Andy owned a little streak of stubbornness. He would not let them pair off by themselves as he suspected they would do at the first chance, but rode right with them and broke in with questions about the boys and the ranch and all that had happened since he had left ten days before. Not that he was so darned anxious to know; he'd get the news soon enough from the boys. But when Cal was answering his questions, he couldn't talk to Myrtle and gaze into those blue eyes of hers.

The trick served its purpose for the time being, and they heard all about Big Medicine's adventure. But that only gave Andy a new grievance. Myrt Forsyth sure wasted a lot of sympathy on the stranger; more than he had coming to him. All right to be sorry—but she needn't have called him "that poor, poor boy" so often. The one cheerful note was that Cal was getting sore about it too.

For this reason Andy Green was not in his normal sunny humor when he left the two at the corral where the Happy Family were foregathered and rode on up to the White House with a letter for the Countess which was marked "Important, Rush!" in the Little Doctor's well-known handwriting.

"Keep away from that horse's heels," he paused to admonish a small Pilgreen child, who ran down the steps as he was about to enter the kitchen. "He'll lam your head off!"

"I wanta ride! Can I have a ride?" Two other young Pilgreens were converging upon the horse.

"No, you can't. Keep away, now. He'll take an ear off you in a minute." Scowling, Andy waited until they had withdrawn a little, then walked inside. The Countess rose from looking into her oven, gave him a harassed frown and beckoned him into her immaculate pantry.

"What under the shinin' sun am I goin' to do with them kids?" she demanded accusingly. "They've been here an hour, and I'd ruther have the locusts of Egypt devourin' the land."

"I dunno. What did Moses do with the locusts?" Andy looked up from searching for the Little Doctor's letter among a conglomeration of papers such as men carry for no reason whatever in their inside coat pockets.

"I'm a Christian woman, but if I don't feed them kids poison fly paper before the day's over—"

"Think it would work?" Andy grinned and returned to his search. In his present mood he could sympathize with the Countess as never before.

"Something's got to. You're so good at thinkin' up tricks, I should think you could do something. That old woman'll drive me to murder, if the kids don't." She listened through the closed door, heard the crash of falling tin-ware in the kitchen and gave Andy one desperate look as she rushed out. Having found the letter he was seeking, Andy helped himself to a doughnut from a two-gallon stone jar and went out, taking large bites.

"Gimme a doughnut. I wanta doughnut! Maw, can't I have a doughnut?"

Andy ate fast, moving forward in the midst of beseeching young Pilgreens. As the last crisp morsel disappeared down his throat, he reached the Countess. Through the open doorway Mrs. Pilgreen could be seen in the living room, solemnly rocking, with her hands folded in unaccustomed idleness across her starched white apron. Andy gave her one swift, appraising look. An overworked ranch woman on a Sunday visit is pretty hard to dislodge, as he had long ago learned from observation, but there was something in her personality that grated on his nerves. He turned to the Countess and said, in a voice pitched to carry above the clamor of young voices:

"Here's a letter from Mrs. Chip. Somebody ought to telegraph Chip not to bring her and the kid home yet. With smallpox on the ranch—"

In the living room Mrs. Pilgreen had stopped rocking. The Countess gasped, caught Andy's look and nodded.

"I don't know what under the shinin' sun we're goin' to do," she complained fretfully. "D' you s'pose that pore feller they brought in last night—"

"It's a wonder he ever got this far. They're all stirred up over it in town. Worst case—"

There was a swish of starched calico, and Mrs. Pilgreen stood glaring in the doorway. Behind her stood Annie, her listless blue eyes wider than Andy had ever seen them.

"Louise Bixby, d' you mean to tell me there's smallpox on this ranch and we was let to come here without a word bein' said?" The old lady's eyes glittered as they darted quick glances from one to the other.

"You come of your own accord," snapped the Countess. "I'm sure I never asked you."

"You'd let us expose these innocent children without a word of warnin'. Annie, you get them kids' bunnits on 'em, quick. Alviry, you run tight as you can and tell your paw we're goin' home this minute."

More was said, to which Andy Green listened with a lifting of his spirits. Through the window he watched the departure. More than ever Mrs. Pilgreen resembled a hen turkey anxiously hustling her brood in out of the wet. The Countess, waiting until they were well through the big gate, turned then upon Andy Green.

"The Bible says a tongue without a bridle on is worse than a runaway horse, and I guess it's so," she snorted. "Why under the shinin' sun couldn't you think up something besides that? Lyin' outa whole cloth—she'll backbite this bunch for the rest of the summer. I should think you'd be afraid the wrath of the Lord'd fall upon yuh for talkin' that way." But the twinkle in her near-sighted blue eyes softened the rebuke.

"Oh, I don't know." Andy pushed back his hat and ran his fingers absently through his hair where it was inclined to curl at the temples. "I did hear something about smallpox in town. Jimmy Myers at the store was talkin' about it while he was loading the groceries for Rogers. They've got a case, or think they have. Jimmy was kiddin' old Rogers about layin' in a supply because he'd be scared to show up in town again for a month. I didn't get the straight of it—Jimmy's an awful liar. But I wasn't lyin' outa whole cloth, Countess. And anyway, it worked."

"It's workin' like a jug of yeast," the Countess complained, glancing uneasily down the path. "'Tain't much to start with, but if it's left long enough, it'll be all over the suller. Let Sary Pilgreen tell that yarn a few times and she'll have us all dead and buried and the coroner settin' on us. Seems to me you coulda thought up something that wouldn't spread so easy. I d'know but what, if I slapped one of them kids, it woulda had the same identical effect of startin' 'em fer home and she wouldn't find so much to talk about!"

"Well, by gracious!" Andy exclaimed, in a hurt tone. "If there's no gratitude around this ranch, how about another doughnut? They certainly are fine; about as good as I ever laid a lip across."

The Countess succumbed to the flattery and gave him three, which Andy strung neatly on the butt end of his quirt, the Countess scolding him continuously. She told him to get along out of the kitchen or she wouldn't have a crumb of anything left, and she pinched her lips tightly together to keep from smiling at him. So Andy mounted and rode down to the bunk-house—a distance of about fifty yards—carrying the quirt like a spear. He dismounted there and went in after his chaps, spurs and a new silk neckerchief. As he stood before the uneven square of broken bar mirror, adjusting the shining folds of blue silk around his throat, he suddenly decided that he needed a shave. Anyway, the Pilgreens might not have left yet, and it would do no harm to wait awhile before he showed up at the stable. And this thought reminded him to take a look at the lightning-struck jasper Big Medicine had carried all the way from Dry Gulch.

Andy pivoted slowly, scanning each bed as he turned. He had the bunk-house to himself. The fellow couldn't be much hurt, after all. With a sudden chill running down his spine, Andy stepped back to where he could crane through a window and see the trail where it left the stable yard. If old lady Pilgreen saw that fellow walking around—but no, there they went, driving off in their lumber wagon, the Happy Family with Myrtle Forsyth watching them go. Andy's eyesight was keen, but to satisfy himself, he made a deliberate count of the figures down there. No sign of the pilgrim anywhere. Then, just as he was turning away puzzled, he saw the fellow emerge from the mess house a few rods away and go down the path, walking wide, as a man will do who has saddle sores to think about.

Andy grinned in complete understanding. He knew that gait and all that it implied. He watched until the group at the stable turned to receive the stranger and moved on toward the corral out of sight, then got his white enamel shaving cup and ducked across to the mess house to beg hot water from old Patsy. Though he would not admit to himself that he felt any uneasiness whatever over the competition foreshadowed down there, he wasted no seconds after that.

Smooth and bearing a faint odor of bay rum, Andy pinched his gray hat crown into the creases he favored most, set it upon his fresh-combed brown hair at a jaunty angle which he also especially favored, pulled his chap belt into position, stepped into the saddle and rode leisurely down the slope, munching the third doughnut as he went along and looking very well satisfied with life.

His reception was all that he hoped it would be. Myrtle Forsyth, standing on the rear end of a hay-rack backed against the corral, was clinging to the top rail and watching breathlessly the saddling of a bronc inside. But she saw Andy at once and beckoned with a slim, gloved hand. Andy left his horse standing with dropped bridle reins and climbed the fence limberly, settling himself astride the top rail to which she clung.

"You bad, wicked man! You told a fib, didn't you? All the boys said so when those poor Pilgreens started home." She shook a finger at him, with a sidelong glance which any man would have found disturbing. "They say no one can believe a word you say! I think you're perfectly awful!"

Andy opened his mouth to defend himself, but some of the boys in the corral had spied him and he was given a minute's respite while he answered their helloes. When he turned to the girl, she was looking at the stranger who leaned against the fence near the gate, peering into the corral between poles.

"That's the poor boy you fibbed about," she murmured. "If you had only known what really is the matter with him—I think it's the most tragic thing I ever heard of!"

Andy glanced again. "He looks all right to me," he said. "Better than I'd expect, after what happened to him last night."

"Oh, but you haven't heard!" She leaned closer, speaking behind her hand. "That poor boy—he just tottered down here as the Pilgreens were driving away—and it's lucky for you he didn't come before they left—that lightning shock gave him amnesia!" Since she apparently expected astonishment, Andy permitted his mouth to sag open.

"Mr. Rapponi and that huge man they call Big Medicine were telling me all about it. They say he doesn't remember who he is or where he came from, or anything." She looked at Andy sidelong. "Mustn't it be simply dreadful not to know anything about your past?"

"That depends," said Andy, gazing thoughtfully at the unquiet group in the middle of the corral. "It's a heap worse not to know anything about your future, don't you think?"

"Oh, but Big Medicine says the poor boy is just worried sick over it. He tried so hard to tell them his name,—oh, he's looking this way. I hope he didn't hear."

Whether he heard or not, the stranger had turned and was walking slowly toward them. Andy watched him curiously. Barring the unmistakable stiff gait of a saddle-galled man and a slight uncertainty in his movements as if he might still be somewhat dazed from the shock, the fellow seemed little the worse for his experience. He was dressed in gray tweed trousers and coat, pale blue shirt and dark blue tie. In spite of the wrinkles and travel stains, his clothes gave him the look of a city-bred man; the pilgrim type which furnishes so much amusement on the cattle ranges. But he carried his shoulders well and his bare head balanced itself almost haughtily upon a powerful neck. His hair was blond and almost as curly as Pink's, and his eyes were blue and set in shallow sockets, curiously pointed at the corners. They did not, however, look especially dazed or bewildered. They were sophisticated eyes, and though they had an Irish twinkle, they did not invite one to share the joke.

"Howdy," said Andy, in a tone that did not commit him to anything.

"Hello yourself," said the other. "I don't remember seeing you around here before." His eyes went to the girl, which of course was natural. "You don't happen to know who I am, do you? I was afraid you wouldn't. No one around here seems to."

"You—you can't remember who you are, at all?" Myrtle's eyes and her voice were soft with sympathy.

"I could be a Chinaman for all I know. So far as I can tell, I'm nameless." He laughed shortly.

"I think it must be perfectly thrilling, not to know your name or anything about your past," said Myrtle, in a tone that jarred on Andy's nerves.

"The present is thrilling enough for me," said the stranger. "I'm not worrying right now about my past." And he laughed in a diffident way as he climbed up beside her.

Andy's black eyebrows came together. He looked at Myrtle and saw her edging along to make room for the fellow. She seemed to have forgotten all about last evening in the bay window at the Rogers ranch. And although he stubbornly held to his place beside her, not once did he turn his face toward her. So far as he was concerned, that particular rail was occupied only by Andy Green.