Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 87

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The Copperhead school was tonight the rendezvous for every able-bodied man, woman, and child within forty miles. Sounds of revelry emerged from every opening and floated across frosty air; lights gleamed through every opening, and the brisk melody of guitar and fiddle made lively rhythm. Men whooped cheerfully, women laughed; and the movement of the crowd never stopped, for Yellow Hill believed in playing with energy.

Copperhead school itself never could have held them all, but there was no need of that. The school was only a minor appendage built on to Casper Flood's enormous hay barn. Tonight the floor was cleared, cleaned, and waxed, and if the footing was sometimes rough nobody cared. All around the walls sat the matrons who no longer found comfort in the actual struggle, the patriarchs who secretly cherished a desire to shine as dancers and were restrained by family opinion, and the children—many of whom were sound asleep on improvised beds.

Midnight long since had passed, yet the dance went buoyantly on. Carriages departed, riders came in. Out under a tree men foregathered between dances to partake of cheer; and just inside the door a clump of punchers formed the inevitable stag line. In another corner of the barn stretched a mammoth table which earlier in the evening had groaned under vast mounds of sandwiches, fat hams, haunches of beef and cakes by the dozen. At present it resembled the devastated field of a great battle. Yet the folks still trooped to it, the hot coffee still steamed out of the enormous blackened pots, and from somewhere food still was fetched. And the music went on, and the dancers swirled under the gleaming lights.

"The best dance," sighed Mrs. Casper Flood, "I ever remember. Don't Dave and the Monterey girl look well? Seems like they fit."

"Ha," said Mrs. Jim Coldfoot, who had been eyeing a dark corner of the barn. "They had ought to fit. Been chasin' together long enough. Who's he goin' to marry, I want to know? I notice he pays his attention pretty evenly between the Monterey woman and Eve. Why didn't he bring Eve to this dance 'stead of Lola Monterey?"

"Why don't you ask Dave?" inquired Mrs. Casper Flood ironically.

"Would if I thought he'd tell," said Mrs. Jim, in no manner abashed. "All I got to say is if Eve Leverage likes him and is put out by his goin' with that other girl, then she keeps it well hid, the little devil."

The music stopped with a flourish and couples began circling for seats. By degrees intimate friends collected in small knots. Presently Denver and Steele and Steers, with their partners, gathered at the table. Niland came up and joined; and lastly the Englishman arrived with one of the Fee girls. The Englishman, alone of all that assemblage, was dressed in full evening habit. His ruddy face was a burnished crimson above the utter whiteness of a stiff shirt. He bowed and he bent with a scrupulous nicety. He was urbanity and polish personified.

It was a tribute to Almaric St. Jennifer Crèvecoeur Nightingale that the circle at the table opened readily to admit him; and it was a still greater tribute that this circle began to cast humorous comment on his get-up. For when cattleland abandons formality toward a man, that man is accepted.

"What I wish to know," demanded Niland, indicating the full dress, "is do you pin it on or buckle it on?"

"Let's widen the inquiry," added Denver. "Do you step into it, climb into it, or roll into it?"

"One acquires the knowledge by degrees," said Nightingale gravely. "It takes ten years to learn the proper angle at which to wear a top hat. Why, dear fellas, every curve and cut is prescribed by tradition, hallowed by memory. What you see before you is the cumulative sartorial wisdom of ten gen'rations of Nightingales, most painfully acquired. Why, my great-great-great- grandfather on the Jennifer side earned the Garter for no less a service than showing His Majesty how to be seated in a chair without wrinkling his tails. At Culloden, where one of my ancestors commanded, the battle order was delayed ten hours till swift couriers could find a daisy for this said revered ancestor to wear in his buttonhole durin' the battle. And, mind you, the enemy was so versed in etiquette it refused to attack us until my sire had found the daisy."

"Ah!" sniffed Steve Steers suspiciously.

"Upon my word," stated the Englishman, grave as a hanging judge.

"Don't let them kid you, Nighty," broke in Steele. "I sported one of those in the bygone years. It was a pleasure—as most things were to me, then."

"I reckon you acquire a taste for it," reflected Denver, "like olives or eggplant."

Mrs. Jim Coldfoot was discovered on the edge of the circle, aimlessly stabbing at food. It was apparent she meant to miss no word exchanged by these people.

"I like to see men in dress suits," said Lola.

"I could think of nothing more charming," added Eve.

"Now, there!" exploded Niland. "Right there's the insidious influence of the get-up. Nighty wears it, the women fall for it, and pretty soon we'll all have to follow in line. I consider this grave enough for the vigilantes."

"Supposing," suggested Denver, "we excuse ourselves for a smoke and consider the state of affairs at mature length?"

"Is it just a smoke you want?" was Debbie Lunt's malicious question. She looked at Steve, and he joined the departing men uneasily, while the rest of the women laughed.

Out in the yard they assembled. There was a slight gurgle. "What was that the Governor of South Ca'lina said to the Governor of North Ca'lina?" asked Steve. "Personally I despise strong drink, but my feet's hurtin' me awful."

"Don't see why they should," retorted Denver. "You been ridin' around all evenin' on somebody else's feet."

"I'd kill any other man for that," growled Steve, and began to cough. "Whoosh! Somebody hit me on the back 'afore I strangle. Who kicked me in the stummick?"

The Englishman, not yet quite up to the group, was suddenly plucked on the sleeve. A pair of shadows said "Shush!" in unison and drew him away. "It's us, Meems and Wango. Yore a stranger in the country and had ought to be introduced to somethin' nice. Come right over here. By this wagon. Lean agin it while I get the bottle. Don't want nobody else to see or they'd jest swamp us."

"But—" began Nightingale and was pushed against the wagon's side with cordial insistence.

"That's all right. Don't let yore gen'rosity get the best of you. Wango and me believe we owe it to a stranger once, anyhow. Here it is, the finest whisky money can buy. Take a drink. Take a big drink. Hell, take two-three drinks and see if we ain't got the best—"

"Oh, very well," agreed Nightingale and accepted the bottle. The partners crowded beside him, patted him on the back. Nightingale lowered the bottle. "Is this what you are proud of?"

"Ain't it the doggonedest, bestest—"

The Englishman belched magnificently. "I think your trust in nature is jolly well misplaced. Thanks for the disinfectant, and excuse me while I join my friends."

Meems and Wango waited until Nightingale had crossed the yard, then turned toward their horses. "After that," said Meems, "I think we better take our leave. Never know what a furriner will do."

"Yeah," agreed Wango. Together they swung to saddle and aimed for the maw of Copperhead bridge. Wango spoke doubtfully. "Say, Buck, do yuh think that was really funny?"

"Sure it was funny," insisted Meems. "I thought I'd die of laughin'—"

"That's a long jump and run from any proof it's funny," gloomed Wango. "Supposin' he takes exception?"

"Ah, shucks, Englishmen don't get mad. They just look pained."

"Well, mebbe it was funny."

"Sure it was funny. Haw, haw!"

"Damned if it wuzn't funny! Haw, haw, haw!"

The echo of this blank and hollow laughter ran back through the covered bridge and dismally died. A rider came out of the Sky Peak region, flailing down the sloping road. Meems and Wango, chary birds, moved off the highway without comment and halted. The rider ran past but drew to a walk at the bridge and went quietly across. Meems and Wango proceeded onward.

"Make him out?" whispered Wango.

"Yeah. I saw."

"Now, I wonder—"

"Shut your face. Yuh didn't see him atall, get me? You and me don't know nothin'. And is happy as such."

"Gosh, we're ign'runt ain't we, Buck?"

"You bet. I misdoubt they's two fellas in the world that knows as much as we do and is so plumb ign'runt."

Denver and his friends returned casually to the dance hall. It was Steve Steers who, stepping around Nightingale, first saw what had happened. Compressing his lips, he began to wigwag at the others. The Englishman walked forward to his lady and bowed ceremoniously; and by this time there were twenty people grinning at him. The Englishman began to feel something wrong and swung about, thus exposing his back to the length of the hall. Somebody whooped joyously. Whereat Nightingale twisted his neck, and looked among his friends.

"Do I," he demanded, "look odd?"

"Who've you been associatin' with lately?" Denver asked.

"Hm," breathed Nightingale. "Did those extr'ord'n'ary fellas, Meems and Wango, have an ulterior motive?" He bowed again at his lady and with a calmness that was iron-like shucked his coat to expose all the bracing and lacing and scaffolding of his shirt. He held up the back of the coat critically. Upon it clung a square sheet of paper, damp with paste, and across the paper was inscribed:

FOR RENT OR HIRE

SEE JAKE EPSTEIN

NOBBY CLOTHIER.

"So they took me," observed Nightingale, ripping off the sign. And though he maintained the utmost gravity, something like a beam of laughter sparkled in his azure eyes.

The women were outraged. But Denver chuckled broadly. "Well, we've got one point cleared up about that rig. He doesn't pin it on; he buckles it on."

Cal Steele, smiling languidly, let his glance play around the hall. His head jerked, and on the moment darkness came to his face. Rather forcibly he recovered his smile and murmured to Eve, "Just excuse me a minute." He strode out of the barn.

"Folks," said Eve, "in two or three hours it will be daylight. Most of our men have a day's work ahead. Supposing we go home."

"I think I do more work than anybody here," put in Nightingale. "Keepin' out of my foreman's way."

Steve Steers flushed and appeared uncomfortable, as indeed he had appeared most of the evening.

"Always was an officious rascal," drawled Denver. "The trouble is to keep him on the job. Temperamental I mean."

"Ain't I among friends?" was Steve's plaintive groan.

Debbie started to defend him with tartness, but Cal Steele returned and drew the circle's attention. Worry stamped his cheeks. He spoke without the customary ease, almost jerking the words out.

"This is bad. I've got to go home. Now. David, could I appeal to you to see that Eve is taken care of? Eve, my dear, I'll make up for this—"

"It's all right," Eve assured him quickly.

Denver was watching his friend with sharp attention. "Want help, Cal?"

"No. Not at all. But I've got to go."

It was Steve who had to crown his evening's misery by one supremely inopportune remark.

"Well, yuh got two girls now, Dave. What you goin' to do with 'em?"

In itself the statement was harmless; but it brought to the minds of all the long-standing question in Yellow Hill concerning Dave and Lola and Eve. In the moment of dead silence Steve saw his mistake and was practically paralyzed. He turned a dull red. It was Eve, herself flushed, who bridged the strained scene.

"That's soon settled," said she coolly. "Let Lola come home with me tonight."

"I would like that," replied Lola, dark eyes shining across at Eve.

Cal Steele gave the group a short flickering smile. "Goodnight to you all. I have had the evening of my life. And until we meet again—bless you, my children."

Denver was plainly worried, and he started after Steele. "Sure you don't want help, Cal?"

But Cal Steele shook his head. "Dave, old man, if I did I'd come to you first of all." The inner strain of his thoughts aged him; he stared at Denver like a man racked and wrung. "Just remember that. I'd always come to you first—and last. So long."

He disappeared, leaving behind the hint of trouble. Some of the sparkle went from the party, and by common consent they slowly paid their farewells and walked from the hall. Denver put Eve and Lola in his rig and went over to intercept Steve. "Listen, when you leave Debbie home, why not cut around by the rock road to the ranch? Just to see if anything's on the wing?"

"Can do," grunted Steve.

Dave hurried back and found his foreman, Lyle Bonnet, loitering in the stag line. "Pick up what boys you find from the outfit," he told Bonnet, "and take the straight tail to Starlight. If you hear anything, have a look. Now, hustle."

He returned to the buggy, spread the robes around Lola and Eve, and silently aimed for the Leverage ranch. In the course of the ride he hardly spoke a dozen words, wrapped as he was in uneasy thought. At the Leverage house he helped them down and turned the buggy about. They stood on the porch a moment, the fair, clear-minded, and boyish Eve beside Lola, who seemed to him so often all fire and flame. It struck him queerly that these two, opposites in character, should tonight be sharing the same house. Eve's drowsy, practical, "Goodnight, Dave, go home and get some sleep," made a pleasant melody in the night. Lola only said, "Goodnight," in a slow whisper, but somehow it was in Dave's ear all the way across the yard. In the main road he put the horse to an urgent pace, the thought of Cal Steele's drawn face troubling him.

Eve lighted a lamp and showed Lola to the guest room. "Sleep as late as you please. I'll take you to town in the morning. We've had a splendid evening, haven't we?"

Lola's dark eyes glowed. "Tonight you smoothed over the hard truth, and I admired you more than ever I thought I would." She threw back her head and acted out Steve's unfortunate sentence. "'Well, you've got two girls now, Dave. What are you going to do with them?' But David could not answer it if he wanted. He doesn't know. Neither do you, nor I."

Eve seemed a little pale and tired. "I have been wanting to ask you something for a long while. Did you find the three years' absence to help any? With David?"

"Why?"

Eve answered slowly. "If I thought my leaving for a time would make any difference I'd go tomorrow."

"And come back on the next train for fear of losing," said Lola. "I know."

"What would you do to please him?" asked Eve.

"You see me standing here. I could be a thousand pleasanter places. There is your answer. I would go any place for him, do anything. Do you understand that?"

Eve's body stiffened. The message in Lola's eyes, the blaze of feeling repelled her. Lola laughed softly. "You wouldn't, would you? You want to be discreet. You are afraid. You want things without paying for them."

"That is not love," said Eve quickly.

"Not your kind. But it is my kind. Love is everything. Like fire, like torture, like thirst. You must be half a savage to know it. I'm half a savage. You're not."

"But it isn't love," repeated Eve, biting her lip.

"Not your kind," said Lola, a trace of scorn in her words. "Let me tell you. David Denver is too strong a man to be held completely by any one woman. He is kind, yet when the black mood is on him he could double up his fist and destroy. He speaks softly, yet always with a fire burning deep down in him. He will never be happy, he will never find all that he wants in any one woman. Yet my kind can hold him—for a little while. What I must do to have him—that I'll do. But never, never will it be enough. I throw myself away gladly. And in the end he will destroy me. That is love. You know nothing about it. Go East, where you won't be hurt."

"You don't know him at all," said Eve.

Lola's mood changed on the instant. "Of course I don't. If I knew him—I could have him! You—what do you know that I don't? Tell me that!"

"Isn't it a little late for us to be talking so?" asked Eve.

"You are very calm and very wise, aren't you? You are one thing—I am another. Perhaps if both of our natures were in one woman Dave would puzzle himself no longer."

"Sometimes," said Eve with a shadow on her face, "I think I am two women—and one of them is like you, but never able to come out and be seen. Goodnight."

Denver drove the buggy across his yard and unhitched, throwing the horse into a corral. Lyle Bonnet came off the main house porch.

"No developments?" asked Dave.

"Nothin'," said Bonnet, sleepy-voiced. "There was a few shots beyond Starlight about an hour ago. But I'd say it was some galoot comin' home from the dance."

"I suppose," agreed Dave. "You better turn in."

As for himself, he crossed through the main room and settled down on the south porch of the house. From this vantage point he could, on a clear day, look down the sweep of Starlight canyon and on into the open prairie for thirty miles or more. He liked to sit here and feel that he was for a while above the heat of the world. It gave him a sense of peace. But tonight he could not summon back that peace. Cal Steele's face, strangely distorted, kept rising before him. Yellow Hill was going to war, no doubt of it. Riders were in the night and man's hand was set against man's hand. Jake Leverage had not been at the dance, nor had Lou Redmain. These men were busy elsewhere. And behind them were many riders on the hunt.

"So it will be," he muttered. "And how long will I be able to stay up here and mind my affairs? God knows. I despise posses about as much as I despise outlaws. Who is to say whether the hunted is so much blacker than the man hunting? Let every man stand responsible for his acts, and let every man fight his own fights. Yet that is something soon enough impossible to do. Then what?"

Starlight throbbed with weaving, swirling shadows; the sky was hidden behind the fog mist. The country seemed to lie uneasy. Denver, who responded quickly to the primitive moods of the earth, felt the shift and change as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

"I will fight my own fights," he said to himself. "No matter whom it puts me against. I don't want to go against Redmain, but if it must be then it shall be. All I ask—"

He stiffened and turned his head slightly to the wind. Above the slow rustle of the night emerged a foreign disturbance. It came from the upper trail—a tentative, cautious advance of a horse. Denver slid his feet quietly beneath him, rose, and slipped into the house. He dimmed the lamp and went out to the yard, going on to the vague bulk of a pine trunk. There was a rider just above the place; and that rider seemed to be turning with considerable hesitation from one angle of the slope to another. Denver waited patiently.

Then the horse stopped, but from the shadows came a weird sobbing noise that shot a chill along Denver's nerves. He left the tree and challenged. "Who's there?"

A trembling reply came back. "Dave—oh, Dave—!"

"Cal!" shouted Denver, racing forward.

"Dave, my God, I'm shot to ribbons!"

Denver reached the horse as his friend started slipping from the saddle. He caught Steele in his arms, feeling the warm blood all along the man's clothes. "Cal, by all that's—! Hang onto yourself! I'll have you layin' easy in a minute. Doc Williamson will get here right away. Cal!"

Denver stumbled across the yard. The bunkhouse door sprang open, and men ran out. Somebody dashed for the house and turned up the lamp. Denver marched in, laid Steele on a couch, ripping at the crimson wet shirt. But Steele rolled his head in negation and opened his eyes, staring up at Denver.

"No use—doin' that. I'm—shot—to—pieces."

Denver cursed bitterly. "Who did it, Cal? By the livin' Christ, I'll rip the throat out of the man!"

Steele's lips began twitching. "I said I'd—come to you—first or last, didn't I?" he murmured. "Tried to do you a favor, old boy. Like you'd do me. Listen to me—"

But there was no more from Cal Steele then, nor ever would be. His head slid forward, and the invisible hand of death reached down to place the everlasting seal upon that fine face.