Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 36

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"Politeness is shorely a shield that stops many a bullet. Still an' all, if a feller has got to insinuate hisself into another party's quarrel, it's plumb best to omit apologies until the shootin' is over...I nev' yit did see a red- headed gent that wa'n't burnin' to right the wrongs of this yere unjust world."—Parting advice of Joe Breedlove to Tom Lilly.

The blazing, blood-red sun dropped over the western rim and left the valley to a twilight peace. Tom Lilly riding his weary buckskin toward the distant huddle of buildings that formed the isolated town of Powder, felt the first of the evening's breeze. It had all the effect of a cold shower on man and beast; Lilly wiped the crusted sweat from his face and washed his parched throat with a drink.

"Another day, another dollar. Buck, you got a restless, homeless no-account for a rider."

The pony raised its ears and quickened the pace Dust rose behind in swirling eddies. Night threw successive darkening cobalt shadows across the land, through which twinkled here and there the light of a homesteader's shack; eastward the high mesa became nothing but a stark outline against the sky.

It was new country to Tom Lilly. For that reason and no other was he here. The lure of the unknown, the unseen drew him like a magnet. Beyond the hill was always the promise of fairer fields, the hint of great adventure. And as tired as he was, a small excitement burned in his blue eyes and compressed the muscles of his lean, sun-blackened face as he drew upon Powder and beheld the lights shining out of the windows into the rutty, dusty street. This was the whole story of Tom Lilly and explained the wistfulness of his features, the temper that slumbered fitfully beneath the sorrel-red thatch of hair. He was a wanderer, a seeker of something that could never come to pass; Joe Breedlove, his partner back on the H-H, had said this in plain blunt language—though rather sorrowfully—when Tom was on the point of moving.

"Yuh ain't foolin' me, old-trapper, with that poker face o' yourn. I reads you mos' clearly. Yore a red-haired gent with misbegotten idears o' romance. All red-heads is the same, which is a fact. Yuh have traveled a hell of a lot o' trails before yuh camped here, without findin' anything to please yuh. Better stick to these diggin's, amigo. Yuh won't locate any better. All you'll do is grow gray an' mis'ble. Ain't I seen how these roamers end up? Usually over a bar'l o' spuds in some town restaurant. Yeah, a broken-down old codger washin' dishes fer a livin'. Ain't that a fine end fer an A-l top hand?"

But Tom Lilly tightened his cinches and tied down his blanket roll, smiling in a faint sheepish way. "Lots of country I ain't seen, Joe. If I don't like it I'll mosey back."

Joe Breedlove shook his head. "Yore kind don't back track." Then the man's big paw gripped his friend's arm. "Well, yuh know best. If yuh ever git in a jam, drop a line or send up a smoke signal. I'll come-a-runnin'."

"Sho'," muttered Tom, losing his grin. He had ridden off with a very brief farewell. Now, as he entered this straggling town street, he was recalling those words. "The hardest part about movin'," he said to himself "is leavin' a good Joe like that behind." He had said goodbye often, yet never with quite the same depression of spirit. "He was shore a square gent. Well, here we are, and where are we?"

Powder was just another desert town. Tom Lilly had seen a hundred built in the same loose-jointed shackling fashion, with a dozen or more false-fronted frame buildings abutting a dirt street. There would be two or three saloons with their kerosene lights beckoning through the swinging doors, a general store, a restaurant, a jail and, somewhere near the edge of town, a livery stable. Lilly rode slowly, looking for this latter establishment. Men moved in the shadows, their cigarette tips gleaming. Dishes rattled in the restaurant and from the nearest saloon came the flat, unmelodious notes of a piano. Powder was tuning up for the night, given a new lease on life by the evening breeze. Lilly, turning his horse into the stable, felt depressed. It was the same old story over again; Joe Breedlove was right—he would travel the long trail until he could no longer sit in the saddle, looking for something not to be found. How could he find it when he didn't know what he looked for? Just another stray critter never thrown and branded. He slipped off the buckskin, seeing the stable roustabout amble through the door.

"This pony," said he, "gets oats. Where's yore brush and currycomb?"

He led the animal to a stall, slipped off the gear and set to work with the implements the roustabout produced. The latter, displaying the indirect curiosity of his kind, spoke casually.

"Hope it ain't this hot where you come from."

"We had rain there in 1903," opined Tom gravely. "Where's a good place to eat?"

"They's only one place, which is the Star. You won't mind it too much if yore hungry, I might add they's usually a gentleman's game o' poker in progress at Jake Miner's place. Mos' stranger like to know, so I'm a-tellin' you. Mama Ringo runs the hotel if it's your desire to sleep on a real four-bit bed. The sher'ff an' marshal are both tol'rant to'rds ord'nary misdemeanors o' the peace. I might add the likker here abouts is thirty proof an' the cards entirely without marks. Which constitutes the whole story o' this hole in the ground. It's a nice leetle place—if you don't stay long."

"You shore are a compendium of useful knowledge," averred Lilly, strolling out. "Civic pride is a jewel of great renown."

The roustabout's retort was a short and emphatic word that exploded in the darkness. Tom Lilly, smiling slightly, crossed to the Star and had his supper in solitary state. Powder had unanimously eaten and departed to its pleasures, leaving the latest arrival to finish his steak and onions among a debris of dishes. It was a meal, nothing more than that and Tom paid his bill and walked out, hungry; not for food, but for the palaver of his own kind, for the rough joke and the twang of a familiar voice. It was always thus when restlessness drove him onward and away from friends. He was forever an alien in a strange land, left to his own sober, wistful thoughts. Under the impulse of this loneliness, he built himself a cigarette and headed for Jake Miner's.

But before he reached the door the jingling of the piano, the rattling of chips and the hum of voices suddenly ceased. A silence, uneasy and expectant, pervaded the place and when he pushed through the swinging portals he became a witness to a scene that jerked at his nerves and sent a warning down his right arm. There was something going on here out of the ordinary, something that made him brush the butt of his gun with careful fingers and move quickly to a rear wall. It was such a little drama as he had often seen before and within thirty seconds his quick-acting, partisan temper was thoroughly engaged on the side of a man who appeared to be the under dog. And of a man not of his own kind or profession.

He was a nester, this fellow. That was obvious from a glance at the shabby overalls and the sallow, bewhiskered face. He had a gaunt, weather-beaten frame and a pair of hands warped out of shape by hard labor. A very homely man, who leaned uneasily against the mahogany bar and gripped a glass of whisky that had not been touched. He was perhaps forty, but he looked older, and from beneath bushy sun-bleached brows a pair of faded blue eyes stared out in mixed defiance and fear. Lilly leaned against the wall, hearing a faint whisper float across a near table. "Trono'll shore kill 'im. He shore will." And Lilly, growing angry on the instant, turned his attention to the second party at the bar.

Trono was smiling in the tight malevolent way of a man enjoying himself over a victim. He was a short and burly creature with immense shoulders and arms; a thick, columnar neck supported a face that was as swart as any Indian's; but here the resemblance stopped, for his chin was of the outthrust, cleft kind and he had bulging green eyes. Somewhere he had been engaged in desperate fighting, one mark of which ran across the high bridge of his nose and up in to the half-bald bullet head. Undeniably he was of the cattle range, and he was taking a cowman's attitude toward the nester. He lifted his own whisky glass, speaking in a rumbling, husky voice.

"We'll drink to the sudden death o' all nesters. Down she goes."

"Well, I dunno's that's perlite," protested the other. "I'm a peaceable feller, a-mindin' my own business."

"Mean to say yuh won't drink with a man?" roared Trono. "That's the sorta insult that don't go down in this country! Why, you—"

"Oh, I'll drink if it'll soothe yer feelin's any," said the nester, raising his glass.

Trono was grinning. And when the nester was about to drink, one massive arm swept across the intervening space and slapped the glass to the floor. The nester spewed the liquor from his mouth and wiped his eyes. His flat chest rose and fell with an excess of outraged feeling, but in the end he spoke quite mildly. "Seems to me you be tryin' to pick trouble. I want these fellers to know I ain't startin' no trouble. It's a free country."

"Free fer anything but bugs," broke in Trono, working himself to a rage. "Y' know what we do with bugs, mister? We bash 'em! Better take warnin' an' clear out."

"No, I don't guess I'll give up," said the nester. Tom Lilly inwardly applauded the man's courage. It took nerve to stand in the midst of a crowd of cowpunchers and declare himself. Even more nerve to say what he went on to say. "Pilgrim Valley wa'n't created jes' purposely fer the Octopus an' his JIB ranch, though you seem to think so. I'm holdin' my land by gov'ment consent. Mean to prove it an' farm it."

"Oh, you do?" muttered Trono, bearing down on the final word.

The nester hastened to take the sting from his pronouncement. "Ain't no reason fer you folks to git sore. They's aplenty land left to run cows on. Shucks, I'm only holdin' a half section outen three-four hundred thousand acres."

"Bugs breed," replied Trono. "Leave one alone an' he hatches a hundred more. No, that ain't no argument. Hey, where you goin'?"

The nester had started to back off. Trono's right hand dropped half way to his gun and the nester's whole body stiffened; he, too, made a gesture toward his coat pocket, only to throw both arms free of his body as if to show he meant no trouble. It was a cruel ordeal and the mark of it appeared on his lean face in deep furrows and fine beads of sweat. Tom Lilly sighed to relieve the pressure of his accumulating anger. First and foremost he was a cowman, with most of the prejudices of that class. But he fought fair, always, and now his sympathies were entirely with the nester who was being badgered. It bore hard on him to stand back and watch this quarrel being trumped up by Trono; for there could be only one end to it. It was obvious that Trono meant there should be but one end.

"I'm goin' about my business," muttered the nester, rubbing his lips with a trembling hand. "I know you, Mister Trono. You figger to cause trouble. You've allus tried to haze me off my claim. Well, if I was a younger feller I might stand up to you. All I ask is to be let alone. It's a free country and they's plenty o' room fer all o' us in it. I'm gettin' along in years an' there's nobody to take care o' me when I break down, so I want to make a little stake afore I die. Now you leave me be."

Lilly checked an impulse to step forward between the men. His sharp eyes caught the stiffening muscles beneath Trono's coat and the sudden flare of fire in Trono's eyes. The killer instinct was there; he had seen such a light before. But, on the verge of acting, he took hold of himself. It was not his quarrel and nobody had asked him to interfere. The strictest kind of unwritten rules guarded such an affair and held him in his place. Even so, as he watched Trono gather himself, he had come to a decision. Trono's voice droned throughout the room.

"Callin' me a trouble maker, you damn fool? Come back here an' drink!"

What passed in the succeeding moments was something that only swift eyes might see. Trono's arm dropped and seemed to waver. It was only a gesture, yet it might have been the first move to draw his gun. The nester, badgered until his nerves were torturing him, saw that gesture and copied it. But where Trono had been clever, he was only clumsy. He could not feint. One paw started downward and could not stop. After that it was murder. Trono's gun gleamed in the light; the room rocked and roared and someone cried out a warning. That was Tom Lilly's voice, though he never knew it. His eyes, passing from side to side, saw the nester struggle with his weapon and stand a moment; then like a man crushed by a burden, he buckled at the knees and fell forward. The life was out of him before he struck the floor. His lean, bewildered face stared dumbly through the trailing gun smoke. Not a soul in that room moved, not a word was spoken until Trono's harsh voice broke the spell.

"You boys saw it. You saw he went for his gun. I'd 'a' been plugged cold if I'd waited. Plain self-defense, understand? Such actions is about all you can expect from a nester." And he swept the crowd with a hard, cold glance. For one instant his attention was fixed on Tom Lilly; then he walked from the place. Lilly rubbed his hands along his coat edge and tried to clear the unreasoning, white-hot rage from his head. A kind of whistling sigh passed ever the onlookers and the bartender's carefully indifferent words reached him.

"Some o' you gents lug him into the side room. I don't want my floors all bloodied up."

Lilly turned away from the sight and built himself a cigarette with unusually awkward fingers. One of the men at the near table shuffled a deck and spoke philosophically. "Well, that's another chalked up to Theed Trono in behalf o' the JIB. God-darnit, why didn't the fool stay clear o' Trono?"

Lilly bent forward, speaking with a sharp rise o| voice. "Does this Trono hombre run this JIB rancho?"

The group at the table turned toward him and spent some time in a carefull inspection. He was rewarded finally by a brief word. "Not exactly, stranger. Though I'd say he had a-plenty to say about it. Fact is, he's old Jim Breck's foreman. Who is Jim Breck? You shorely must be from distant parts. Jim Breck is chief factotum o' Pilgrim Valley."

"And where might that be?"

"South thirty miles or so. It's behind the string o' Buttes you might see from here of a day. Though if yore lookin' fer a job you won't have to ride that far."

"I'm han'somely obliged, but I mistrust my ability to work under that Trono gent," said Lilly. "I take it this here nester occupied unhealthy soil."

"Well, you can read the picture an' title fer yourself," answered his informant somewhat briefly, and turned away. Lilly understood the meaning of this perfectly. Trono, he decided, in a wave of disgust, had Powder buffaloed. He said as much in an audible phrase that was addressed at nobody in particular. It was meant to provoke attention and it succeeded admirably. The group turned on him with sharpened interest and the spokesman put a direct question. "Who the hell are you, amigo, to tell us what the trouble is? You a candidate for the unpopularity contest?"

"I'm just a simple creature," murmured Lilly, "that never learned the a-b-c's from any book. But I was always taught murder was a crime."

"Mebbe you'd like to try yore luck with Theed Trono."

Lilly ground the cigarette beneath his boot heel and stared at a group with a cold directness. Ice edged his words. "You can bet your last chip, fellow, that if I ever do, there'll be more'n one bullet fired. That's information for general publication." He swung and left the saloon, knowing that every soul within the room had heard his last statement. Knowing, too, that in time the challenge would reach Theed Trono. He had meant it as a deliberate challenge; etiquette had kept him out of a poor nester's trouble, but there was nothing in the books that forbade a man starting an entirely new quarrel if he was so minded. As he walked somberly down the dark street he had a clear picture of Trono's savage, bullying face. Why, the man had committed the coldest kind of murder and these fellows stayed glued to their seats! It was enough to rouse the spirit of an Eskimo, for a fact. What sort of a fool was this Trono and what kind of an outfit was the JIB to allow such free-handed killing?

He paused in front of the livery stable, sympathies more and more engaged in the affairs of the dead nester. There was a volcanic upheaval inside him and he stared narrowly through the dark, recalling the sage words of Joe Breedlove. "I nev yit did know a redheaded gent that wa'n't burnin' to right the wrongs of this yere unjust world." Well, that wasn't exactly so. He, Tom Lilly, wasn't going around with a chip on his shoulder, but there certainly was such a thing as fair play in the world.

The stable roustabout ambled out of the doorway and murmured. "Ain't the flesh pots lured yuh yet?"

Tom Lilly built another cigarette and began delving for information. "Once upon a time there was a nester—"

"Yeah. I heard that shot in the saloon. The ways o' man are plumb mortal."

"Where might that nester have had his claim, anyhow?"

"Jes' inside Pilgrim Valley, offen the road to the JIB about four miles. They's a nice cold spring on the place, which shore has been poison bait fer many a foolish feller."

"In other words," said Lilly, "the JIB has sort of illegally swallowed a lot of gov'ment entry land along with its rightful range an' objects to a man peaceably settlin' thereon."

"If yore askin' fer an opinion I ain't got any. If it's a question o' facts, then I guess you don't need no correction on the foregoin' statement."

"Well, it's an old game," murmured Lilly. "But mos' usually a cattle outfit will draw the line at cold murder. Pilgrim Valley, I reckon, is exclusively JIB territory?"

The roustabout happily fell upon a remembered phrase. "The memory o' man runneth not to the contrary."

"Sho'," approved Lilly, glowering at the shadows. A vague excitement gripped him and he felt a sense of personal injury. Theed Trono was taking in too much territory and so was a ranch that tried to keep settlers off government land. Boiled down, it amounted to nothing more than a curtailment of his own liberty, for if the nester was shooed off, then they'd shoo him off too. No, that was a situation hardly bearable. He threw away the cigarette with a hunch on his shoulders. "Ain't there a land office here?"

"Over the gen'ral store. See the yaller light? He sleeps there, too. An old dodo bird that come out here to die an' ain't been lucky at it yit." As Lilly drifted away the roustabout sent a warning whisper after him. "Don't you be a fool, amigo."

"It's a man's born privilege," replied Lilly, crossing the street. "A privilege I shore do exercise a lot, too," he said to himself, climbing the stairway. He steered for a door emitting a single beam of light through the keyhole and knocked once. A grumbling invitation was evoked and he entered a room that was both an office and a kind of living quarters. On an army cot behind the counter—a counter heaped with record books and plat maps—was stretched an ancient fellow with tobacco stained whiskers and a parchment skin. Amber eyes moved fretfully toward Lilly. "What you want?"

"Aim to file on some land."

The old fellow stroked his faded whiskers and grinned a toothless grin. "Wal, my conscience is clear, friend. Takes a lot o' people to make the world. Don't never say I encouraged you."

"Cheerfulness," opined Lilly, "is a priceless thing. Don't get up if it hurts you, though I'd like to have you show me one particular spot on yore maps."

The old man groaned and hoisted himself an inch at a time. "Ain't there nothin' I can do to restore sanity. Le's see; have you got a thousand dollars, a copper lined stomach, the strength o' a horse? Have you—?"

"Yore makin' that up," interrupted Lilly. "Just state gov'ment requirements."

"Upon which portion of this earth's crust do you aim to take root?"

"Why, there was a claim relinquished half an hour ago by a gentleman in Jake Miner's place. It's over in Pilgrim Valley an' it's got a spring on it. I don't doubt but what you recall the spot."

The answer came quickly enough. The old man's face drooped a little and he made aimless figures on the counter with his pencil. "If the advice of a friend is worth anything, my boy, you don't want land there."

"JIB got you buffaloed, too?"

The other shook his head. "I'm too far along to mind bein' shot. It'd be a blessin' to die that sudden. But they wouldn't tackle a government official. You watch your step."

"Show me this place," insisted Lilly. And the old man displaying visible reluctance, turned the book to a certain page and with traveling pencil point indicated the homestead. "Hamby was a nice feller, too," he opined. "I thought it was jes' an ordinary shot when I heard it. Well, you understand, there's formalities to go through with before you can file. If you want to squat until then it'll be all right. Better take lots of cattridges."

Lilly turned toward the door. "Consider me as bein' entered, then. I'm here to stay." He walked out, going cautiously down the stairway. There was a matter of supplies to take care of, but these could wait until later in the evening. Right at present he felt inclined to return to Jake Miner's place; he had laid an egg there that by now ought to have hatched something. Poised in the doorway he heard voices floating through the darkness and by and by Theed Trono came into the small reflection of the hotel light. There was another man with him—the tall, horsey-faced type familiar throughout the cattle country. England was stamped all over the long, out-thrust chin and the prominent nose. Only for a moment were they suspended in this yellow beam. Lilly tarried thoughtfully, mind revolving around several pieces of information he had gathered. What he now proposed to do was enter Pilgrim Valley and challenge Theed Trono's attention; Theed Trono, who was a killer foreman walking under the protection of the JIB, and its owner. Men seemed to be reluctant to speak of the owner of this ranch. The roustabout had mentioned his name—it was Jim Breck—casually and with no desire to go on. And the nester had called him an octopus. Fitting title.

"Well, if Breck instigated the shootin' the devil will shorely pay him for it."

With this reflection he advanced on the saloon and pushed through the door and into trouble. Trono was at the bar, his eyes quite hard and bright; when he saw Lilly advancing he put his whisky glass carefully on the bar and thrust his bullet head forward as if wishing a closer view of this new specimen. Once again Lilly was aware of the pervading silence of the expectancy half-veiled in men's eyes. The Englishman, he noticed, had not entered the saloon.

"Amigo, I been hearin' things about yuh."

It was Trono's voice, unpleasant and blunt. Lilly inclined his head, eyes pinned on the burly one. "Always been my policy to declare myself," he admitted. "Whatever you heard about me goes."

"Uhuh. Pass some remark about more'n one bullet flyin?"

"That's correct."

"Ain't you a little previous with them rash words?" growled Trono. He closed the fingers of one hand as if to show Lilly the power that was in his arm. "Usually a gent don't go huntin' fer trouble."

"Fatal error of my education," admitted Lilly.

"It's apt to be fatal, shore enough," said Trono, displeasure growing. "I think I got an apology comin' from you. Gettin' pretty bad when a man can't perform his chores 'thout bein' libelled. I'm listenin'."

"You'll listen a long, long while, hombre," replied Lilly. He had a hard struggle with the flame of outraged anger that blazed up. "To shorten this palaver I will add that I don't like yore methods or yore manners. I hear you don't allow nesters in Pilgrim Valley. Tomorrow mornin' I'll be on my way up there. You'll find me squattin'. Better change yore style, mister, before you try to run me off."

Fighting talk. A cooler head would not have invited trouble in such a way. But Tom Lilly's sympathies were in control and he was willing to force the issue. He saw quite clearly that sooner or later he would clash with this Trono and he was willing that the fight should come and be done with. Trono seemed plunged in deep thought, studying Lilly with a long, deliberate glance. Evidently the swart foreman saw something in his adversary that bade him move carefully. Lilly was no half-broken nester. That gun butt was placed in the careful manner of a man who had experience.

"Well," he muttered, "if yore lookin' fer trouble, they's folks that'll oblige yuh. Personally I'm a peaceable man—" He seemed to feel that he was losing ground, so he finished with a huge roar. "But I'll give yuh twenty-four hours to pull freightl After that I'm shootin' at sight!"

"A large and clear statement," observed Lilly and turned squared around. It was fifteen feet to the door and at each step he expected to hear a warning shout. None came. He reached the street with mingled regret and relief. "I shore played my cards to the limit that time. Joe Breedlove wouldn't scarcely care for such sword-swallowin'."

There was another question in his mind and he re-traced his steps to ask it of the roustabout. "Say, tell me somethin' more about this Jim Breck."

The answer rolled solemnly out of the doorway. "Sooner or later, amigo, he'll cross yore path. An' you won't never fergit it. That's the old Octopus."

The meeting of Lancelot Stubbins and Theed Trono had been very brief and very private. Only by a moment of carelessness had Stubbins permitted himself to be drawn into the patch of light near the hotel. It was here that Lilly had seen the man's English features, and in turn Stubbins had caught a glimpse of the newcomer. The next moment he had pulled Trono into the helter of the shadows, grumbling at his own negligence. "That was foolish. Well, I'll turn into this alley. Trono, I wish you could hustle things a bit."

"Tomorrow night is plenty soon, ain't it?"

"How's Breck now?"

"Seems like he's losin' his grip faster ner usual. He don't get around like he used to a month back."

"His kind goes down all in a pile," observed Stubbins. "I don't believe it'll be long now. Then you and I can do what we want to."

Trono was dubious. "You got to consider the girl, Stubbins. She's a fighter like her daddy."

Stubbins laughed. "Trono, I've got a way with women. Don't let that worry you. It's only old Jim Breck I'm afraid of. He's stung me too many times when I thought he was licked. We can afford to wait. Tomorrow night, then, at the usual place."

"Uhuh," said Trono, started toward the saloon. Stubbins looked back toward the hotel and saw Tom Lilly advancing also upon the saloon. But the stranger made no particular impression on Stubbins, whose mind was filled with other things, and thus preoccupied he slipped between buildings and rode from town.