Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 28

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Beyond dusk five days later Tom Gillette stopped on a ridge and studied a camp fire glimmering beside a creek below. He had ridden hard, and his own buckskin was in a strange corral away behind; the pony carrying him now was the second traded horse. Deadwood, according to his estimate, could be no more than ten miles distant, and it drew him like a magnet. Yet he was weary and hungry, for which reasons the light of the fire had pulled him off the main trail—a tortuous, rutted artery along which the freighters carried supplies into the mushrooming mining camps of the hills.

A pair of men sat beside the blaze. Others moved away the moment he topped the ridge, retreating beyond the rim of light. From this distance he saw nothing of the two in view but a blur of bearded faces beneath drooping plainsmen's hats, and for a time he debated about riding down. Out on the prairie every stranger was welcome to the chuck wagon, and hospitality was the unwritten law. A mining camp was something different; another breed of men, a hundred breeds for that matter, inhabited it, all bent on riches and all suspicious.

In the end hunger got the best of him. He quartered down the slope within hailing distance and stopped again.

"Hello, the camp."

One of the figures by the fire spoke over a shoulder. "Come on down, then."

He advanced, swung his horse so that it put him directly toward the fire, and dismounted. He was instantly aware of a hard and prolonged scrutiny, and further aware of the others out in the shadows. It was a quick camp; horses stood a few yards off. A shotgun rested within arm's reach of the nearest man, and Gillette's questing eyes noted that each of the two wore a Colt on each hip. The ivory tip of a knife stuck from one fellow's boot. Heavy armament, even for prospectors.

"Saw your fire," explained Gillette. "I'm bound for Deadwood, from Nelson, and it's strange country to me. How much farther to town?"

"Fifteen miles."

"Straight along that road?"

"Yeah."

He squatted at the fire, warming his hands. A frying pan filled with bacon lay against a rock and a coffee pot sat beside it. Casually he turned his attention from one man to the other and out of the brief survey he received a warning. He knew his own kind, and he also knew the stamp of the border renegade, for he had been raised in a country where outlaw factions flourished their brief day and died suddenly. These men were of that type. Plainly so. The spokesman's face was heavily pitted above the line of the beard, one ear was without a lobe. The man met Gillette's inspection with a sullen, half-lidded counter glance. Of a sudden he shot a question belligerently across the small interval.

"From Nelson, huh? Travellin' almighty light, ain't yuh?"

"In a hurry," agreed Gillette. "Travelling light."

The spokesman's hand rose to signal to someone out of sight "Look at his pony, Kid."

Spurs jingled. Faces came into the fire's glow, ill-stamped faces, the sweepings and trash of the desert. Without turning he felt himself to be covered from behind. His muscles bunched as he recognized the trap he had let himself into. A sallow youth ambled up, briefly murmuring:

"He's travelled all right. Hoss dusty." And the youth crouched in the circle, staring at Gillette with open antagonism. Gillette turned about; a giant of a man stood a pace to his rear, arms akimbo.

"In my country," said Gillette evenly, "it isn't polite to cover a man's back."

The giant shifted, but the spokesman flared. "Nobody invited you here, fella. How do we know who yuh are or where yuh come from?"

"When a man announces himself that's usually ample. As to the invitation, I'll relieve you of my presence in a hurry."

"Don't be in no rush," growled the spokesman. "Yuh came and yuh stay till we see what's inside yore coco. Sounds like another damned fishin' party to me."

Gillette held his peace. The giant barred his retreat. He understood, however, that the sooner he made his exit the better and the easier it would be. He had fallen in with an errant band of cutthroats and they were weighing him for what he was worth. Six of them, all before him, save for the giant. He heard the Kid mutter a short phrase about the time, and the spokesman, looking sidewise at Gillette, pulled a watch from his pocket and tilted it against the light. At that point the giant moved around until he stood behind this apparent leader of the crowd. "Better do somethin', Hazel."

"Do what?" snapped the leader.

"Don't bite my nose off, old-timer," rumbled the giant, "or I'll pull yuh apart."

Hazel turned to Gillette. "Lemme see yore guns."

"Not my guns," drawled Gillette. "Do I look that green?"

Hazel threw up his head, and a swift anger pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Yuh tryin' to ace me, fella? Do I see 'em or do I take 'em?"

"No powder-burning' around here and now," warned the giant, both to Gillette and to his chief. "It ain't the time."

Gillette was cross-legged; he had done this trick before, he could do it again. He swayed his torso a little forward, seeing in a glance the loose posture of each; they were confident enough of themselves. The Kid spat into the fire. "Oh, hell, let's see what he totes in his pockets an' throw him in the creek. Who's gettin' religious around here now?"

"You'll have to take 'em," snapped Gillette. His legs carried him up in one swift surge and the firelight ran along the blued barrel of his piece. All this in a single sweep of his muscles. "You damned rascals, does a traveller have to show a passport to get into Deadwood? There's where I'm goin', and all you're going to see of my gun is the front end. I'm no deputy and I'm not chasing him, understand? Now swallow it. If you want to make an argument, go ahead."

"You're a dead man," cried Hazel, swaying on his haunches.

"So are you, then," drawled Gillette. "We'll be two of the stillest corpses around Deadwood. Keep your hand away from your belt. Kid—don't teeter like that. Have I got to argue my way to Deadwood?"

"No powder-burnin'," muttered the giant, who seemed to be more peaceably inclined. "Let 'im go—what's it matter?"

"I'm going," muttered Gillette grimly. He stepped backward, retreating foot by foot into the shadows. He had passed one point of danger, and it left him with the same satisfaction that a man has in winning a pot on a bluff. He grinned, though it was a wry grin. "If I see you in Deadwood I'll treat you to a drop of rye. But don't try to stop a Texas traveller. And I sure hope that bacon and coffee chokes you." Talk sometimes served a purpose, and apparently it bridged that parlous interval while he retreated still farther from the fire and reached his horse. He was up on the moment. The man named Hazel started to reach for his gun, but the giant, standing near, kicked his arm away; the Kid's yellow teeth glimmered in the light—the Kid was one of those adolescent white savages turned utterly bad. Tom Gillette studied the faces a moment longer, engraving them on his memory.

"Yore spotted!" cried Hazel. "I'll see the word gets out to bring back yore skelp."

"Something tells me you're a fraud," murmured Gillette. "How long has Deadwood stood for this foolishness?"

"Go on, get out of here," advised the giant. "Don't crowd your luck."

"That's advice, too," said Tom and backed his pony up the slope. The shadows closed about him and the circle, freed of threat, began to stir. The Kid whipped about, and at that moment Gillette touched his spurs and raced away, sliding to the far side of the pony. A juniper bush grazed his face and took his hat; a single explosion followed after, and then the giant's voice rose and fell like a maul. "You cussed little nipple rat, stop that or I'll tear yore lungs outen yuh! Want to spoil..."

The rest of it was lost to Gillette. His pony carried him up and over the ridge; the fire winked out. He regained the trail and galloped steadily onward.

"I stumbled into a convention," he mused. "They've got a piece of business on their chests and I upset 'em."

Weariness came on the heels of the let-down. It seemed he was born into a world full of treachery, full of disappointment. His mother had only thought to make a better man of him in shipping him East to school; yet it seemed to him he would have been better off in Texas, toughening himself inside and out. Four years had left him a little soft, had confused him as to the elemental facts of existence; and again he remembered a piece of his father's advice: "East is sheltered, it's a woman's country. West is for a man, my son, and don't you ever forget it."

How could he forget it? The sight of the P.R.N. ranch boss sliding forward to the saloon floor still sickened him. So thinking, he at last sighted the lights of Deadwood, forded a creek, and rode down the single uneven street of this boisterous Mecca of the West.

Deadwood crouched between hill and creek, its tents and log huts and frame structures rambling along the street in a disjointed double row. There were no sidewalks, and the crowd, wandering from place to place, kept out upon the pock-marked road running between. A cordwood pile and a tent nearly blocked this end of the thoroughfare; Gillette circled around and rode by the suspended sign-boards: Denver Grocery Store, City Market, The Senate, and so on past the outflung beams of lamplight. An occasional tree stood like a sentry on the street. Everywhere was a clutter of boards and timber and boxes—the roughing-in material of a town on the make. Then the street ran up a scarred slope and wound around stumps into the hills. The straggling pines marched down to the very building walls of Deadwood.

He halted by a restaurant and got out of the saddle, both stiff and weary. This was a strange land, and as he met the faces of the men bobbing in and out of the patches of light he was conscious of being out of his proper environment. They dressed differently, they had a different twang to their speech, the stamp of a distinctive profession was plain upon them. A supply wagon lumbered past, eight oxen at the traces; a bull whip cracked like the explosion of a gun, and the wheels groaned in the ruts. He shouldered into the restaurant and sat up to the counter. The time of eating was past, the waitress out in the kitchen. He dropped his head and passed a hand across his face; he wanted nourishment, and he wanted a long sleep before beginning his hunt. The kitchen door opened, light steps tapped across the boards.

"Something—anything you've got to eat," muttered Gillette, head still bent. There was a swift intake of breath, and he raised his eyes.

Lorena Wyatt leaned across the counter. Her hand fell on his arm, and it seemed to him she looked through and through him.

"Why—Tom..."

It was astonishing how the depression and the grime of the long journey vanished. And because he had carried one thought and one desire in his head for so long a time, the phrase that came first to his tongue was a question. "Lorena, I—what did you run off for?"

Her hand retreated and she relaxed. "What's happened to your forehead, Tom? You've been in trouble."

He turned that aside. "What did you run away for? Is your dad here?"

"He went back to Texas. I will never see him again, Tom. Never. Here I am, making my own living."

"All by yourself—among these men?"

"Why not? Look at me. Don't you see how strong I am?" She squared her shoulders and tilted her chin, her cheeks the colour of pink roses. "Why shouldn't I work? What can happen to me? Nothing can hurt me—nothing. Oh, I know what you are thinking. Men sometimes forget the bridle on their tongues—and sometimes they mistake me when I smile at them. I've quit smiling because of that. But what does it matter? All that griminess doesn't hurt me. It doesn't get into my heart, Tom. After work is done I forget it, and I'm free again for another night."

"If I ever heard a man say..." It shook him profoundly, it woke a blind anger. What right had some of these guttersnipes to bully her, to take advantage of their power and her helplessness? "—I'd kill him!" Men of the range, no matter how rough they might be, were trained in rigid courtesy; but the mining camps brought the dregs of the earth along with the decent.

Her small hands formed a cup on the counter. "I know. All good men feel the same toward a woman and it isn't as bad as you believe here. All I'd have to do is speak about it and there are plenty of fine gentlemen to protect me. But we can't live without getting our shoes in the mud. Only—mud doesn't scar. It can be washed away. And at night I'm free."

"Free for what?" he demanded, half angry. "Are you happy here, doing this?"

There was a piece of a smile on her lips, a small quirk at the corners that might have meant anything. She shook her head, refusing to answer. "You're hungry. But I won't let you eat here. I'm through now. Wait for me."

She went back to the kitchen. Tom Gillette moved to the outer door and looked along the street. Deadwood was on the crest of the night, and the yellow dust gutted from the hills during the day now passed across the counters and bars in commerce. A piano somewhere was being hammered, and a crowd roared the chorus of a popular song while the sharp-edged notes of a soubrette sheared through the masculine undertone. This was the dance girl's harvest and the professional man's harvest. And among these men San Saba stalked. Well, a night's rest...Lorena was beside him with a basket. He took it from her, and they passed out and along the street to where the hillside began to climb, Gillette leading his horse.

"Now where?"

"To my cabin. It's only a half mile along the trail and a little to one side."

"And you walk it every night alone, in this darkness? Lorena, you're crowding your luck."

"I have a gun and I've always known how to shoot. Nothing can hurt me, haven't I told you? Nothing—any more." It seemed to him there was a trace of bitterness in the last words, but she quickly covered it by a more practical explanation. "The diggings are travelling on up the canon and farther back into the hills. Some of the old cabins have been abandoned. I use one—it's cheaper."

He shook his head. It was dark along the trees, though here and there the quarter moon shot its silver beams through the branches and created little lakes of light on the ground. The trail grew steeper, and once she slipped. Gillette caught her arm, and her body for the moment swayed against him—swayed and pulled away. "To your left, Tom," she murmured. They walked another hundred yards on a lesser trail. A cabin stood dimly before them, and Lorena opened the door and preceded him. Presently lamplight flooded the place; he went in.

"I have a home," said she, with again that wistful pressure of lips. "It's my own. I don't owe a soul for it. I said I never again would ask a favour in this world. Sit in the chair, Tom. It's a guest chair. I'm going to cook you a meal."

The cabin was old, with a hard dirt floor, a cast-iron stove, a pine bunk, and a pine board table. The chair was nothing more than a dry-goods box; there was but a single window, across which hung a square of burlap for a shade. A bare place, this cabin, yet swept clean and impressed, in the odd arrangements of her effects, by this girl's hand. She had spread an army blanket on the floor for a carpet, and somewhere in this corner of a man's world she had found white sheets and a slip for her bed. The smell of fresh paint hung over the room, a single red meadow flower decorated the table.

She built a fire, she rummaged the basket and placed the dishes with a kind of sweet formality. She was humming quite softly to herself, and from time to time she glanced toward him, and again he had the feeling that she marked his features for her memory. There was a grace to her moving hands, a sturdiness to her small shoulders.

"Say, you ought to be tired," he protested. "How about my wrangling this meal?"

"This is my party—the first party I ever gave. I was tired. I'm not tired now."

He went to the door. A small wind sighed in the treetops and eddied into the room. Away down the slope a camp fire cut an orange pattern in the night; coyotes howled along the distant ridges. What kind of a place was this for a girl like her? Things prowled these shadows. And here she was, all that was desirable in a woman, unprotected except for her own abundant courage. And that wasn't enough.

"Sit down, Tom. Supper's ready. I ate mine at the restaurant."

He closed the door. She had drawn the dry-goods box around to the far side of the table and when he sat down she dropped to the bunk and watched him.

"Well..."

"Not now. This is my party. You eat. Whatever is to come must wait. That was the best steak in the restaurant, Tom. I want you to enjoy it."

All during the solitary supper she watched him, yet when he came to return the glance her eyes fell away. So it went until he had finished and made himself a cigarette, the questions rising. She saw them come, and she staved them off with a trace of confusion.

"Now tell me what brought you here."

"San Saba's in or about Deadwood," said he.

She sat up. "Here? I haven't seen him."

"Well, he wouldn't be the one to advertise himself. It may be he turned off the trail before he got this far, but I don't think so. For a man of his kind Deadwood is too good a hunting ground to pass."

"What are you going to do, Tom?"

His shoulders rose. The girl bent forward with so intent and sober a glance that it bothered him. And she divined his answer. "You don't mean to gamble on your life, do you?"

"I guess it's not much of a gamble, Lorena."

"Oh, yes, it is! He's a dangerous man, he's tricky. He doesn't fight fair, he never fought fair in his whole life. He'd throw you off guard and wait until you weren't looking. Then he'd shoot. Don't I know the man?"

"Once I see him he'll never get out of my sight," replied Gillette quietly. Somehow he felt the need of justifying himself to her. "I'm not doing this for fun; Lorena. I'm fighting against my grain all the time I hunt for him. But the score's too heavy on one end to let him go. Either I've got to hold up my end or I've got to crawl out of Dakota like a yellow dog. The hounds are yapping at my heels. It's been a bad year for Circle G all around. Last week the P.R.N. tried to rustle me poor and one of my men was killed in the scrap. They'll let me alone until they think of some other pretty scheme." His right arm stretched toward her. "Look at it. A killer's hand. The P.R.N. foreman went down before my gun. I didn't ask trouble, but I can't back out now. And San Saba's got to answer for my dad."

"You're not a killer," was her quick retort. "Don't say it of yourself. I hate to see you divided against yourself."

"What else does it amount to? I reckon I should have stayed East and learned to like tea out of a china cup."

"Don't be bitter, Tom. What good is that? You're too much of a man to be anything else than you are or to love any land but this. The East never helped you. It only hurt you."

He ran a hand across his face, and she noticed how the brown skin wrinkled about his eyes, how dogged and unyielding his features could turn. It was so now; she wanted to go over and touch his arm—anything to sweep aside for the time the troubles he carried.

"But this," he went on, indicating the room, "isn't fit for you, Lorena. It makes me cold all over to think of you here alone. You shouldn't do it."

"Nothing can hurt me, Tom."

"What's to become of you?" said he, still on the same thought. "Here you are all alone. You can't live like this—you can't travel the trail by yourself. And there's nobody fit for you in this part of the world. You're wasting the best part of your life. I'm saying it again—you don't belong here."

"I've fought that out—don't bring it back to me. I said I'd never ask another favour of anybody and I never will. I won't ever give anybody the power to hurt me again. Here I came and here I stay until—?"

"Until what?"

She turned her head away, hands moving. "Oh, I don't know, Tom. This is as good a place as anywhere. Until I'm old, I guess."

"You were not meant to live alone. It's unnatural."

That brought the rose tint to her cheeks again. And still with her head averted she asked a muffled question. "Who would want me, Tom?"

He sprang up, he crossed the small space at a single stride.

"I want you, Lorena! Can't you see that all over me, as plain as daylight? I want you!"

She rose, and for the moment he thought she meant to run out of the place. Such was the passing fright on her white face. It lasted only a moment, and then she was looking at him in the manner he knew so well. It took all the fight out of him, it made him humble. "That's what I've been trying to say," he went on quietly. "It's been with me ever since you ran off. What did you do that for? There's nothing behind me I'm ashamed of or afraid of. I waited a week to tell you that. There's no claims on me. Whatever you think of Kit Ballard and myself is wrong. It's wrong."

"I would never have asked you that, Tom. I wanted to hear you say it, but I'd never have asked. I'll never mention her name. That's your own affair—I've got no part in it."

"Well, you know now. I want you, Lorena."

"Tom, it's only pity you feel. And I won't have pity! I'm not the girl you'd want. I can't be. What am I—what do I know or what can I do? I can't help your name any. I see it clearer every day."

"That's wrong. Look at me and you'll know it's wrong."

She began to tremble. Gillette touched her gently, and then he was holding her, murmuring something he had no memory of. All that passed in the succeeding moments was blurred. He knew he kissed her; he heard her speak once and grow still, and the silence of that small room was like the pressure of a vise. Her small hand was pushing him away.

"If it only were true, Tom! What do you suppose I ran away for? Because I couldn't stand being around you any longer! I never wanted to see anybody I ever knew. I wanted to be alone. And now you come and remind me of it again. Haven't I been hurt badly enough?"

He was helpless. He had no words at his command strong enough to convince her, he had no way of breaking through that doubt. So he stepped back, groping for a hat he didn't have. "Time's got to take care of it," he muttered. "I'm not leaving again till it's settled. And I'm not going to let you stay here without protection. I'm sleeping out under those trees."

"That's foolish."

"Let it be. You'll see me till you either get tired of me or take me."

She was a queer girl. A moment ago she had cried; now the familiar smile returned. "Well, if you must do it, there's an old shed beside the cabin with some straw in it. But you only have your saddle blanket. Take one of mine."

He refused the offer and opened the door. "I'll go into Deadwood and stable my horse. Be back right off. It sure makes my blood cold to think of you up in this desolation."

She stood by the table, and as he watched her she threw back her head and laughed. He knew he would never forget the picture she made, nor the expression of her eyes. "Tom, I've had my first party. Whatever happens, I've got that to remember."

"I wish," said he, "you'd be certain of me."

"I've been hurt, Tom."

He said nothing more. Getting into the saddle he rode to Deadwood and left his horse, immediately turning back. The town still blazed, men moved restlessly along the street, in and out of the lanes of light; and as he passed through all this glitter and empty sound he saw a face bent his way. Thirty seconds later it struck him he knew that face, and he stopped dead and turned for a second glance. But the man, whoever it was, had gone. The glimpse he had of it was blurred and indistinct, yet as he wound up the slope it worried him greatly and he tried to reconstruct the features. Coming to the cabin he found the lamplight still glowing in the window. He called to the girl by way of reasurance and went around to the shed.

Lorena's voice carried through the cabin walls softly. "Good- night, Tom." The light winked out. Out of the hills came the night breeze and the distant cry of the coyotes.