Читать книгу Trails Meet - B.M. Bower - Страница 6

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ALOOF and silent, Jess stood beside the mantel a passive spectator, while the two Diamond Slash men made gruesome preparation for their departure. The furious gale of the evening had settled to a steady drumming of rain on the roof, adding a melancholy note to the whole sordid tragedy. That they were loyally trying to protect the interests of their employer he had no doubt whatever, though he could not see the necessity of so much secrecy and lying. Even though their motive was honest, he did not like the idea and would have no part in it. There were moments when he might have helped, yet he leaned against the mantel with his hands in his pockets and watched them disapprovingly.

They had removed the bandage and what traces they could of the dressing and were replacing the garments he had pulled hastily off Parsons. They were in a hurry to be gone, he could see that; and yet Ritchie's nervous haste was suspended while he examined one by one each letter, card or scrap of writing which Parsons' pockets contained. He was going through a monogrammed bill-fold when he first felt himself observed.

"Favorite stunt of a suicide is to write some kinda letter telling all about why they done it," he explained, looking across at Jess. "Anything like that on Al, I want to glom it before the coroner gets hold of it."

"If it's there you'll find it," Jess made dry comment.

"I sure aim to," Ritchie retorted gruffly, and boldly dropped two flat keys into his pocket.

"There'll sure be hell a-poppin' if you don't find it," Bob Francis declared. "You through with that coat, Tom? Let's get it on 'im and get goin'."

Ritchie's fingers went questing here and there, feeling out the lining. He did not answer but presently he tossed the coat to Bob.

"Nothin' there. Maybe Jess'll help you put it on him."

"Help him yourself, Tom," Jess refused. "My work begins after you fellows remove yourselves."

"Yeah? What you goin' to be so damn busy about?" Ritchie stood tense, eyeing Jess sharply.

"Well, for one thing, Chuck's bedding will need to be washed and dried. Why? What did you think I was planning to do?"

"Hard to say," Ritchie muttered and turned to help the restive Bob. "Only, if you'll take my advice, you'll stick close to camp for the next few days. When the news gets up in here, you hear it like it's all a big su'prise. See?"

"I haven't a doubt it will be," Jess made laconic retort. "Has it occurred to you that a suicide note is usually left at home? I never heard of one being found sewed into a coat lining. Did you?"

Ritchie gave him a black look. "You can't figure a crazy man. Al was a mountain rat for hiding things away."

"Yeah, even when he was sober," Bob gave his habitual confirmation.

Jess let it go. He built up the fire again, lighted the lantern and went out for more wood, lingering over the errand, hating to go back. When he did go in, Ritchie was pushing cartridges into the cylinder of Al Parsons' gun. He shifted his body to block Jess's view, and Jess threw down the wood and said nothing. It was none of his business what they did. He sat down before the fire, his back to the room and his unwelcome callers, and stared moodily into the flames. Let them manage the thing themselves. He would have nothing more to do with it.

He heard them muttering, arguing about which horse should carry the body of Parsons. It seemed to him that Bob Francis was already taking advantage of his position, talking back to Ritchie in a way no foreman should tolerate. Ritchie would have to put up with it now; he would not dare fire Bob. A nasty business, any way you looked at it.

Without turning his head to look, he was keenly aware of each movement behind him. Ritchie gruffly asked him to help carry the body out and lift it on the horse huddled on the sheltered side of the cabin, but Jess refused to move.

"I carried him in alone," he said curtly. "The two of you should be able to carry him out."

"Oh, to hell with you!" swore Ritchie. "You'd come down off your perch damn quick if we took a notion to pin the shooting on you."

"Do you want to try it, Tom? You'll have to make up your mind pretty quick, remember. Once you get him away from here—"

"Oh, come on, Tom. Don't be a damn fool," Bob Francis expostulated. "You told Jess to keep outa the whole thing, didn't you? Take a hold of his feet, there. For criminey sake, let's get goin'!"

Jess watched them shuffle out into the rain, Bob in the lead with the lantern hung upon his arm, the dead man sagging between them. At the door Ritchie turned his head and looked back. Jess hoped that he could remember his face as it was then; dark, troubled, fierce questioning hostility in his eyes. Then he was gone and Jess was staring at the gleaming lances of rain driving slantwise across the doorway.

He was still gazing abstractedly out into the dark when yellow lantern light came flickering. Bob Francis stood framed in the doorway.

"Here's your lantern, Jess. And say, don't you pay no attention to Tom. His nerves is shot to hell over this thing. He never meant nothin'. You just—"

Off in the dark Ritchie ripped out an impatient oath. Bob set the lantern just inside the door and disappeared. Jess heard the rattle of his slicker and the squashy sound of his hurrying footsteps. There followed the indistinct tones of argument, then the pluck-pluck of hoofbeats receded down the trail.

Until all sound of their going blurred and merged with the drumming of rain, Jess stood where he was by the hearth. Abruptly he roused from listening, looked thoughtfully around the cabin, making up his mind to something. He went over and gathered Chuck's blankets into a bundle, picked up the lantern and went bareheaded out into the rain, carrying the bundle out away from his body as if it were something foul. Carefully, unheeding the storm, he stretched the blankets neatly on the rain-tautened clothesline, pinning the folds securely as he went.

Inside again, he hung the lantern from a nail where it would light the farthest corner from the fire, trimmed the lamp wick and turned it high. Resolutely he got out his drawing board from behind his bunk, unlocked a small steamer trunk and lifted out a roll of pastel paper, a box of French crayons. With frowning intentness he chose a gray-green tinted paper, fastened it with meticulous exactness to the board, opened his pastel box and fingered the crayons, choosing one or two and testing them on the paper.

"Treacherous devils—they'd finish me!"

Jess tensed, looked quickly toward Chuck's bunk stripped to its mattress. So abruptly had he remembered that stark terror of Parsons', for a second it had seemed almost as if he actually heard him utter the words. Nerves, of course; the effect of not knowing Parsons had carried the delusion of enemies. He supposed that was a common enough malady of the brain, though at the time he had been shocked into belief. But of course, if Parsons had been drinking heavily for days, he would be in a condition to imagine any horror, commit any wild deed.

Jess lighted a cigarette, tucked it into a corner of his mouth and squinted at the paper. Absently he lifted a thumb tack from a corner, smoothed an invisible slackness in the sheet, reset the tack in the hole it had first made in the soft wood. He sighed, moved the drawing board abstractedly to an angle where the light struck full upon it, then discovered that his lifted glance fell full upon Chuck's denuded bunk.

That would not do at all. No use in dwelling upon the ugly tragedy now. There was nothing to be gained by thinking about it and he hoped to accomplish something by forgetting it for a few hours. This evening—or what was left of it—was much too rare an opportunity to waste. He had looked forward to it, had hurried his chores so that he would be free soon after Chuck left. The sudden wind-storm that drove smoke back down the chimney had balked his plan at first, then Parsons—But that was over and done with. He would forget Parsons; wipe the whole thing out of his mind.

He moved the drawing board to the other side of the room, set it tilted like an easel on a shelf, held it there with a rawhide thong stretched from nail to nail on either side, rearranged his lights. With the dropping of the wind the room was warm; too warm. He took off his coat, then remembered that the working sketch of the picture he meant to draw was in the little loose-leaf sketch-book he always carried in his pocket. As he held the coat up and fumbled for the book, he had a flashing mental picture of Ritchie feeling along the lining of Parsons' coat, looking for a suicide note. Ritchie's avid intentness—

No, he had to cut out such thoughts. He couldn't afford to give another minute to that grisly affair. There was another picture he must capture and bring into concrete form of color and line. As he pulled out the book and found the small, hastily sketched scene, his lips twitched whimsically, remembering how his father had ridden up and caught him sitting there apparently idle on his horse when he should have been very diligently active.

Not two weeks ago, that had been. He could well understand how it would strike an old cowman to see a fellow deliberately waiting to draw a picture of a cow bogged down to her forequarters in alkali mud, when he should be tossing his loop on her and dragging her out on solid ground. He could see his dad's point of view, all right, though there was more than that behind his torrent of invective. Some of the things the old man had said to him rankled. They had been spoken with the barbed bitterness of narrow-minded injustice. An old rangeman with no understanding nor even a liking for art, Dave Robison had combed his vocabulary for abusive words enough to express the contempt he felt for his oldest son.

Jess pushed the incident from him as he had pushed the thought of Parsons, and studied the sketch with deep satisfaction. There was the cow, true to the life in every pencil stroke. A regular Russell picture she had made, with her drooped horn caked with mud and the slack posture of shoulders and neck accenting the dull resignation of her eyes fixed upon him. Every authentic detail he had drawn with swift accuracy, even to the stringy slaver of her muddy jaws.

While he laid color upon color for his sky effect, blending and rubbing them into the paper with his finger tips, smudging a deeper hue of cloud here and there, touching edges with flecks of orange until sunset glowed splendidly over the blank gray of his middle distance, he forgot Parsons and the shabby passing of his dwarfed soul within that room. He was thinking of some of the things his father had said to him that day. How he cursed the day he ever gave in to Jess's mother and sent such a lazy worthless young whelp to school; how he never would be anything better than a range bum, not worth his grub to any cow outfit.

That Jess had finished his sketch while his father upbraided him, and afterwards had gone calmly about the rescue, had counted for nothing. That he had thrown his rope with a negligent skill that dropped the loop neatly over the cow's two horns, and that he had dragged the cow out to solid ground and loosened the loop like an old hand, went unregarded. The cow had struggled to her feet, stood wabbly for a minute and then had wanted to fight either or both horsemen, but that did not count for anything either. Nothing counted save the enormity of the offense. Jess knew that his father would have given anything for the nerve to lash him with his quirt and that his father did not quite dare the attempt. He never had dared lay hands on him since Jess was a gangling boy of fourteen or so. There was something that awoke and looked out through Jess's eyes at such times; something his father dared not face.

Jess did not know that, but he did know that his being sent up to Alder Spring camp to help Chuck get out corral poles before round-up time was calculated as a punishment for his picture making. No man on the ranch wanted to "bach" with Chuck, who was the nagging kind of bully. Chuck had jeered the steamer trunk, but had he known what that trunk contained, he would have made life unbearable. Artists and poets were contemptible weak creatures, in Chuck's opinion, and he did not make life too pleasant as it was.

Jess worked fast. As the scene grew under his fingers, it caught and held him, shutting out his father, Parsons, Chuck, the darkening coals within the fireplace, the drumming rain, the passing hours. For him nothing existed save that moodily brilliant sunset, the enchanted emptiness of the prairie, the stagnant pool that had become a boghole and the spotted cow with the drooped horn lying there half submerged, too hopeless to struggle, fear staring out of her eyes. For greater dramatic interest he set a wolf upon the nearest slope, thinking that is where Russell (who was his secret inspiration and idol) would have put a wolf to wait.

At three o'clock in the morning Jess rubbed out the wolf, hid drawing board and picture behind his bunk, carefully removed all traces of his work and went to bed.