Читать книгу The Ranchman - Charles Alden Seltzer - Страница 6

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After breakfast—leaving a widely grinning waiter, who watched him admiringly—Taylor reentered the Pullman.

Stretching out in the upholstered seat, Taylor watched the flying landscape. But his thoughts were upon the two men he had overheard talking about the girl in the diner. Taylor made a grimace of disgust at the great world through which the train was speeding; and his feline grin when his thoughts dwelt definitely upon Carrington, indicated that the genial waiter had not erred greatly in saying Taylor was not “scary.”

Upon entering, Taylor had flashed a rapid glance into the car. He had seen Carrington and Parsons sitting together in one of the seats and, farther down, the girl, leaning back, was looking out of the window. Her back was toward Taylor. She had not seen him enter the car—and he was certain she had not seen him leave it to go to the diner. He had thought—as he had glanced at her as he went into the smoking compartment—that, despite the girl’s seemingly affectionate manner toward Parsons, and her cordial treatment of the big man, her manner indicated the presence of a certain restraint. And as he looked toward her, he wondered if Parsons or the big man had told her anything of the conversation in the diner in which he himself figured.

And now, looking out of the window, he decided that even if the men had told her, she would not betray her knowledge to him—unless it were to give him another scornful glance—the kind she threw at him when she saw him as he sat behind the two men when they had been talking of Dawes. Taylor reddened and gritted his teeth impotently; for he knew that if the two men had told her anything, they would have informed her, merely, that they had again caught him listening to them. And for that double offense, Taylor knew there would be no pardon from her.

Half an hour later, while still thinking of the girl and the men, Taylor felt the train slowing down. Peering as far ahead as he could by pressing his face against the glass of the window, Taylor saw the train was entering a big cut between some hills. It was a wild section, with a heavy growth of timber skirting the hills—on Taylor’s side of the train—and running at a sharp angle toward the right-of-way came a small river.

Taylor recognized the place as Toban’s Siding. He did not know how the spot had come by its name; nor did he know much about it except that there was a spur of track and a water-tank. And when the train began to slow down he supposed the engineer had decided to stop to take on water. He found himself wondering, though, why that should be necessary, for he was certain the train had stopped for water a few miles back, while he had been in the dining-car.

The train was already late, and Taylor grinned as he settled farther back in the seat and drew a sigh of resignation. There was no accounting for the whims of an engineer, he supposed.

He felt the train come to a jerking stop; and then fell a silence. An instant later the silence was broken by two sharp reports, a distinct interval between them. Taylor sat erect, the smile leaving his face, and his lips setting grimly as the word “Hold-up” came from between them.

Marion Harlan also heard the two reports. Stories of train robberies—recollections of travelers’ tales recurred in her brain as she sat, for the first tense instant following the reports, listening for other sounds. Her face grew a little pale, and a tremor ran over her; but she did not feel a bit like screaming—though in all the stories she had ever read, women always yielded to the hysteria of that moment in which a train-robber makes his presence known.

She was not frightened, though she was just a trifle nervous, and more than a trifle curious. So she pressed her cheek against the window-glass and looked forward.

What she saw caused her to draw back again, her curiosity satisfied. For on the side of the cut near the engine, she had seen a man with a rifle—a masked man, tall and rough-looking—and it seemed to her that the weapon in his hands was menacing someone in the engine-cab.

She stiffened, looking quickly around the car. None of the passengers had moved. Carrington and Parsons were still sitting together in the seat. They were sitting erect, though, and she saw they, too, were curious. More, she saw that both men were pale, and that Carrington, the instant she turned, became active—bending over, apparently trying to hide something under a seat. That movement on Carrington’s part was convincing, and the girl drew a deep breath.

While she was debating the wisdom of permitting her curiosity to drive her to the door nearest her to determine what had happened, the door burst open and a masked man appeared in the opening!

While she stared at him, he uttered the short, terse command:

“Hands up!”

She supposed that meant her, as well as the men in the car, and she complied, though with a resentful glare at the mask.

Daringly she turned her head and glanced back. Carrington had his hands up, too; and Parsons—and the tourist, and the other man. She did not see Taylor—though she wondered, on the instant, if he, too, would obey the train-robber’s command.

She decided he would—any other course would have been foolhardy; though she could not help remembering that queer gleam in Taylor’s eyes. That gleam, it had seemed to her, was a reflection of—not foolhardiness, but of sheer courage.

However, she had little time to speculate. The masked man advanced, a heavy gun in his right hand, its muzzle moving from side to side, menacing them all.

He halted when he had advanced to within a step of the girl.

“You guys set tight!” he ordered gruffly—in the manner of the train-robber of romance. “If you go to lettin’ down your sky-hooks one little quiver, I bore you so fast an’ plenty that you’ll think you’re a colander!” Then he turned the mask toward the girl; she could feel his eyes burning through it.

“Shell out, lady!” he commanded.

She stared straight back at the eye-slits in the mask, defiance glinting her own eyes.

“I haven’t any money—or anything of value—to give you,” she returned.

“You’ve got a pocketbook there—in your hand!” he said. “Fork it over!” He removed his hat, held it in his left hand, and extended it toward her. “Toss it in there!”

Hesitatingly, she obeyed, though not without a vindictive satisfaction in knowing that he would find little in the purse to compensate him for his trouble. She could see his eyes gleam greedily as he still looked at her.

“Now that chain an’ locket you’ve got around your neck!” he ordered. “Quick!” he added, savagely, as she stiffened and glared at him.

She did as she was bidden, though; for she had no doubt he would kill her—at least his manner indicated he would. And so she removed it, held it lingering in her hand for an instant, and then tossed it into the hat. She gulped as she did so, for the trinket had been given to her by her father before he left home to go on that pilgrimage from which he had never returned.

“That’s all, eh?” snarled the man. “Well, I ain’t swallowin’ that! I’m goin’ to search you!”

She believed she must have screamed at that. She knew she stood up, prepared to fight him if he attempted to carry out his threat; and once on her feet she looked backward.

Neither Carrington nor Parsons had moved—they were palely silent, watching, not offering to interfere. As for that, she knew that any sign of interference on the part of her friends would result in their instant death. But she did not know what they should do! Something must be done, for she could not permit the indignity the man threatened!

Still looking backward, she saw Taylor standing at the end of the car—where the partition of the smoking-compartment extended outward. He held a gun in each hand. He had heard her scream, and on his face as the girl turned toward him, she saw a mirthless grin that made her shiver. She believed it must have been her gasp that caused the train-robber to look swiftly at Taylor.

Whatever had caused the man to look toward the rear of the car, he saw Taylor; and the girl saw him stiffen as his pistol roared in her ears. Taylor’s pistols crashed at the same instant—twice—the reports almost together. Afterward she could not have told what surprised her the most—seeing the man at her side drop his pistol and lurch limply against a corner of the seat opposite her, and from there slide gently to the floor, grunting; or the spectacle of Taylor, arrayed in cowboy garb, emerging from the door of the smoking-compartment, the mirthless smile on his face, and his guns—he had used both—blazing forth death to the man who had threatened her.

Nor could she—afterward—have related what followed the sudden termination of the incident in the car. Salient memories stood out—the vivid and tragic recollection of chief incidents that occurred immediately; but she could not have even guessed how they happened.

She saw Taylor as he stood for an instant looking down at the man after he came running forward to where the other lay; and she saw Taylor leap for the front door of the car, vanish through it, and slam it after him.

For an instant after that there was silence, during which she shuddered as she tried to keep her gaze from the thing that lay doubled oddly in the aisle.

And then she heard more shooting. It came from the direction of the engine—the staccato crashing of pistols; the shouts of men, their voices raised in anger.

Pressing her cheek against the window-pane, and looking forward toward the engine, she saw Taylor. With a gun in each hand, he was running down the little level between the track and the steep wall of the cut, toward her. She noted that his face still wore the mirthless grin that had been on it when he shot the train-robber in the car; though his eyes were alight with the lust of battle—that was all too plain—and she shivered. For Taylor, having killed one man, and grimly pursuing others, seemed to suggest the spirit of this grim, rugged country—the threat of death that seemed to linger on every hand.

She saw him snap a shot as he ran, bending far over to send the bullet under the car; she heard a pistol crash from the other side of the car; and then she saw Taylor go to his knees.

She gasped with horror and held to the window-sill, for she feared Taylor had been killed. But almost instantly she saw her error, for Taylor was on his hands and knees crawling when she could again concentrate her gaze; and she knew he was crawling under the car to catch the man who had shot from the other side.

Then Taylor disappeared, and she did not see him for a time. She heard shots, though; many of them; and then, after a great while, a silence. And during the silence she sat very still, her face white and her lips stiff, waiting.

The silence seemed to endure for an age; and then it was broken by the sound of voices, the opening of the door of the car, and the appearance of Taylor and some other men—several members of the train-crew; the express-messenger; the engineer, his right arm hanging limply—and two men, preceding the others, their hands bound, their faces sullen.

On Taylor’s face was the grin that had been on it all along. The girl wondered at the man’s marvelous self-control—for certainly during those moments of excitement and danger he must have been aware of the terrible risk he had been running. And then the thought struck her—she had not considered that phase of the situation before—that she must have screamed; that he had heard her, and had emerged from the smoking-room to protect her. She blushed, gratitude and a riot of other emotions overwhelming her, so that she leaned weakly back in the seat, succumbing to the inevitable reaction.

She did not look at Taylor again; she did not even see him as he walked toward the rear of the car, followed by the train-crew, and preceded by the two train-robbers he had captured.

But as the train-crew passed her, she heard one of them say:

“That guy’s a whirlwind with a gun! Didn’t do no hesitatin’, did he?”

And again:

“Now, what do you suppose would make a guy jump in that way an’ run a chance of gettin’ plugged—plenty? Do you reckon he was just yearnin’ fer trouble, or do you reckon they was somethin’ else behind it?”

The girl might have answered, but she did not. She sat very still, comparing Carrington with this man who had plunged instantly into a desperate gun-fight to protect her. And she knew that Carrington would not have done as Taylor had done. And had Carrington seen her face just at that moment he would have understood that there was no possibility of him ever achieving the success of which he had dreamed.

She heard one of the men say that the two men were to be placed in the baggage-car until they reached Dawes; and then Carrington and Parsons came to where she sat.

They talked, but the girl did not hear them, for her thoughts were on the picture Taylor made when he appeared at the door of the smoking-compartment arrayed in his cowboy rigging, the grim smile on his face, his guns flaming death to the man who thought to take advantage of her helplessness.