Читать книгу Trail Smoke - Ernest Haycox - Страница 4

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He rode out of Morgantown at a short trot, as deliberate in retreat as he had been in attack. But when he turned the first bend of the road he set his horse to a fast, reaching canter and held it.

The road kept winding and climbing, with lesser roads angling off at intervals to ranches hidden somewhere behind the trees. Now and then, up an occasional vista, he got a brief view of the Gray Bull peaks, but otherwise his roving glance struck against the solid green wall of the forest. The day was fresh and still, with the fragrance of pine resin strong in it. All the details of this mountain world were vivid and pleasant. They fed his senses in a way that was strange to him, fulfilling a hunger he did not understand, covering him with a comfort and a familiarity even as his regretting thoughts dwelt on the scene in Morgantown. He had crossed the desert to find ease and rest—the deep desire of his life; yet the echoes of that night bullet had laid an ancient pattern of trouble over these hills, and he was trapped in the pattern. The ways of a man's life, he thought wistfully, always caught up with him.

Around the next quick bend of the road he came upon a man riding loosely and sleepily, the fatness of his body jiggling to the motion of the horse. A black-brimmed stetson slanted over his features and hid them until the sound of Surratt's nearing pony roused him. He hauled himself back in the saddle then and hoisted his shoulders. His eyes were a sparkling black, set close to a gigantic nose that brought the rest of his face to a point. He stopped immediately, and Surratt, following suit, saw some kind of an emotion ripple through this vast hulk and straighten the loose lines of a pendulous mouth. Surratt dropped his hands on the saddle horn. Severe and motionless he watched the man scan him and identify him. He said then:

"You never saw me before, Blackjack. And I don't know you. Do you get it?"

The man's lips spread and became loose again. He folded both arms across his bully chest and seemed to struggle darkly with his confused thoughts. His eyes dropped from Surratt, and that was all. Surratt went by him. Three hundred yards up the slope he saw a fence and a road paralleling it. This he followed, passing into the semidarkness of the pines, into a thick warm silence. Five minutes later the trees dropped away and left him on the edge of a rolling basin surrounded by timber and ridges. A creek slashed its way through the meadow, glistening under the sunlight; across the creek stood a ranch house, long and low and gray, surrounded by the customary clutter of sheds and corrals of cattle land. Surratt went over a plank bridge, lifting a hollow signal of arrival, and circled the house. A dark little man sat on the edge of the porch oiling a rifle. He looked up with the sharpest and briefest of glances, and returned his attention to the gun. Surratt dismounted.

The man's head instantly lifted again. He said, uncharitably: "Anybody invite you to light here?"

"Torveen's place?"

"Yeah."

Surratt shrugged his shoulders. He walked to an empty box and overturned it and sat down; he got out his pipe and loaded it. But his nerves were alert, keened by the suspecting unfriendliness of that other man's attention. He was beyond forty, Surratt judged, and gray at the temples; there was a thinness of body and temper about him, a wicked excitability. Something struck Surratt on his left side then, something that had weight but no physical substance. He got a match out of his pocket and lighted it, his glance sliding quickly along the porch. A sort of an ell ran back from the left corner of the house, with four doors opening into what he judged to be kitchen and bunkroom. His eyes went along the ell and reached a window and stopped. Behind the window was the attentive face of a young man, pallid and prematurely etched by lines of violence.

Surratt ground the burnt match into his palm, creating a sooty disk there. He pulled smoke into his lungs, his lips lengthened and tightened. The feel of this place was bad. It rubbed his fur the wrong way, it kept plucking at his senses, it cocked his muscles. A horse scudded out of the trees. Looking up, he saw Sam Torveen wheel around the house and step to the ground. The little man on the porch rose immediately. He stared at Torveen.

"You know this fella?"

"Sure," said Torveen.

The man's wire-edged features snapped to anger. He said something under his voice and picked up his gun and went scowling through a doorway, into the ell.

Torveen's grin streaked angularly across his sandy cheeks. "You may like Nick Perrigo," he said carelessly. "Or you may not. He's my foreman. Come inside." The restlessness of this redheaded man sent him across the porch at a high stride. Soberly following, Buck Surratt came into a long bare room cluttered with the gear of a cattleman. There was a bunk at one end, and a fireplace, and a desk with a tally book and a pad of writing paper on it, and two chairs. The windows had wooden shutters that closed from the inside; a stand containing four rifles stood near the bunk. Torveen dropped into a chair. He hooked a leg over the chair's arm and began swinging it. The greenness of his eyes was brighter and there was the stronger impression of a controlled rashness playing behind that color.

"Want a drink?"

"No."

"You've heard my name mentioned. I don't know yours."

"Buck Surratt."

Sam Torveen bent forward. "What was the idea of that play against Bill Head?"

Surratt said, gently: "Just to freeze things up long enough for me to get out of town."

"Supposin' the play hadn't worked?"

"It worked."

"Supposin' it hadn't?" insisted Torveen.

"I never figure more than one step ahead at a time," murmured Surratt.

"The hell you don't," countered Torveen. "You're half a mile ahead of yourself, every foot of the way. I been laughin' to myself ever since—the way you framed that." His grin was hard and cheerful. "You're trapped in town but you walk up to Bill Head, give him hell, and ride off before he can get unsnarled from his surprise. If he was a man quick on the recoil you couldn't of made that play stick, friend Buck. But you pegged him as bein' slow. I take off my hat to you."

Surratt's mind reviewed the scene in Morgantown methodically. There was a need in him for information, as there always was. "Who's Bill Head?"

"He runs the Crow Track for his old man, who's a cripple. It's a big jag of land, north of here, up in the hills."

"There was a dark, heavy fellow standing beside him."

"Dutch Kersom, another old-timer with plenty of cattle. I already named you Ab Cameron. The fourth fellow, the one with the bony face, was Hank Peyrolles. They'll account for eighty per cent of the beef in this section."

"The sheriff's not a proud man," reflected Surratt, "and the marshal just does what he's told."

Torveen chuckled broadly. "You're figgerin' again." But his eyes were curious. "Why did you ride into Morgantown, instead of goin' back to the desert? You must of known that shot would get you in trouble."

Surratt looked at Torveen steadily. Torveen shook his head and made a dry observation. "Pm not sayin' you did the shootin', Surratt. I meant that you're a stranger and you're pulled into it."

"Where would I run?"

Torveen remarked, very quietly: "So you're here, for reasons of your own. The pay is thirty a month."

"If I stay."

Torveen had a poker expression on his roan cheeks. "You came for a reason. It still holds good, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Surratt. But his thoughts were on Nick Perrigo and the pallid face in the window, and his mind balanced evenly, with no decision. He could not resolve the puzzle. The reflection of it crept faintly into the studying soberness of his cheeks.

Slack in his chair, Torveen watched this out of his jade eyes. "Your head," he murmured, "never stops working. You got this ranch sized up and there's somethin' about it you don't cotton to."

"That's right."

Torveen shifted his body. The smile left him, the corners of his mouth stiffened. Inscrutably patient, Surratt searched the sandy cheeks of this Torveen, seeking some solid bottom behind the surface recklessness, beyond the skeptical glint of deviltry. He could not help it. All the hard training of his years had disciplined him to silence, to patience, to a perpetual vigilance against the trickeries of men. Faintly, he saw something now. Torveen's cheeks relaxed and a strain showed itself and his tone became ragged. He said: "If you stay, you'll find out for yourself. I need help, friend Buck, but I'll tell you no more—and I'm not askin' you to stay."

A steel triangle on the porch began to beat harsh sound across the day. It was noon, it was dinnertime. Boots scraped the porch boards and there was a rider coming in from the meadow. Torveen said, "Let's eat," and rose and led the way to the porch. He ducked through a door of the ell, into a dining room. Coming in, Surratt found three men already at the table and an enormous Chinaman standing against the wall. Then a fourth man entered and took his place, staring at Surratt with one brief, curious glance. Surratt sat down, silently reversing his capsized plate. Torveen said to the crew in his casual touch-and-go voice: "The name of the new member is Buck Surratt. Wang, if you don't quit puttin' so damn many eggshells in the coffee I'm going to throw a plate at you."

The Chinaman didn't stir and didn't show a change of expression. Torveen reared his head, obviously irritated. "I meant that," he grunted. But he covered the irritation instantly, nodding his head at the individuals in the crew as he named them for Surratt. "You know Perrigo, the gentle soul. The kid there is Ferd Bowie. Good-lookin' gander near you uses a title called Chunk Osbrook. It may be his real name, I don't know. Last man there answers to Ed."

They looked briefly at him without acknowledgment. For his part, Surratt went imperturbably on with his eating. But his mind registered them with a camera clarity and their faces told him things they hadn't intended to tell. This Ed was an easy-going misfit in a crowd that had a jarring, explosive note. Perrigo sat stirring his coffee with a bitter and unpleasant concentration on his dry, drawn features. The kid—Ferd Bowie—was bony and peaked. He still had an adolescent down on his cheeks, but there was a sallow savagery all about his look that told Buck Surratt of wickedness too early learned. Chunk Osbrook lifted a pair of ink-black eyes and seemed to measure Surratt for weight and reach. He was blunt and solid and proud of his strength, and Surratt understood then he would never be satisfied until he had demonstrated it. Buck Surratt suddenly remembered another man in his past who had been like that.

They ate out their hunger and left the room. More leisurely, Surratt listened to their idle palavering on the porch. When he was through he went out there and packed his pipe and glanced through the soft bright heat of the meadow, not noticing them. The talk had stopped with his appearance and the silence was a morose, alien thing. Torveen stood in the doorway of the main house, indifferent and minutely smiling, as though he were removed from this animosity and impartial to it. But Surratt detected the irony of that man's glance.

He tried another match on his pipe and clenched it between his teeth. Stepping off the porch he walked over to his pony and unlashed the blanket roll. The stillness behind him was hard and continuing, and he had no need to turn to see how closely they were watching him. He strolled back to the ell and went along it to the end door. Inside, he saw a dozen double-decked bunks surrounding a stove md a table and four home-made chairs. Heat and stale smoke and the horsy smell of men's clothes lay thick through the room. He dropped his roll on an empty bunk and walked back to the porch.

Nick Perrigo sat on the porch edge, his back bent far forward, his hands on his knees. He glowered at the dust; the nerve-ridden thinness of his face sharpened. He said idly: "Chunk, you left your tobacco in the bunkroom."

Chunk Osbrook rose with a jerk, as though released from enforced waiting. His spurs dragged along the porch. Not looking that way, Surratt heard him strike the flat of his hand against the building wall and go into the bunkroom.

There was a quality of expectancy flowing out from this crew that fanned across Surratt's cheeks; it was an intangible thing other men might not have felt But for him, trained in the shadings of trouble, it registered on receptive senses and ticked a coolness along his nerves. In the bunkroom something fell to the floor. He turned then and stared at these men. They were looking away from him, motionless against the sunlight—and waiting. There was, he thought regretfully, nothing new in this pattern; it was the pattern of his life and all the running in the world would not help him. He walked back to the bunkroom door and went in.

It was his blanket roll on the floor, thrown there by Chunk Osbrook. The man stood backed up against the table, his feet braced apart. A slow, deep breathing lifted and lowered the heavy arch of his chest; and his eyes were round and bright and greedy. He said:

"Your junk was in my way."

Surratt walked around the table. The space was narrow and he had to pull his shoulders aside to avoid brushing Osbrook. He went on around. Osbrook made a swift wheel and sudden doubt shaded the glitter of his desire. The table lay between them. Surratt put his hands at the edge of the table, gripping it. His thoughts were dismal then, darkened by the going of a hope. The ways of a man's life always caught up with him. Somewhere was peace but not for him; and this chore had to be done. There wasn't any emotion in his voice.

"The boys wouldn't want to miss this, Chunk."

The sweep of his hands carried the table up against Chunk Osbrook's taut frame and destroyed the rush the man was set to make. Osbrook flung the table aside with a lunge of his arm. Rage came out of Buck Surratt in a gust of breathing and turned his face white. He threw himself against Osbrook, the point of his shoulder driving Osbrook across the floor to the doorway. Osbrook struck against the casing and ripped up a jabbing blow that caught Surratt wickedly in the belly. They fought and heaved and wrestled around the doorway, using their knees and their elbows. But Surratt dislodged Osbrook from the casing and drove him to the edge of the porch. Osbrook fell off backwards, landing on a shoulder.

Surratt jumped down to the dust and leaped aside. Osbrook, on his knees, made a dive for Surratt's legs and missed. He rolled on and lunged up to his feet—and charged, his knees driving him, his shoulders low and crouched. Surratt met him savagely. He broke up that lowering, bull-like rush. He sheered away those flogging arms and reached Osbrook's turning temple with one sledging smash. It exploded through the man's head and he saw Osbrook's eyes mirror the streaked craziness it produced. It took the power out of Osbrook's fists; they sagged and struck without aim, and then Surratt crashed his temple again and sent him down into the dust. Osbrook was blind, he was half knocked out, but the attacking instinct still held him together and he reared back on his knees and made another grab for Surratt's legs. Surratt kicked the man's hands aside and tramped a half circle around Osbrook. He reached down and got Osbrook around the neck, hauling him up that way. There wasn't any pity in him as he battered that broad and dogged face at will. Osbrook's lips began to drip and spread formlessly, and when he fell he rolled a little and his hands reached vainly for Surratt; and then he was through, his legs squirming involuntarily.

Surratt walked backwards; he turned. The crew hadn't stirred. They didn't stir now, but the color of Ferd Bowie's eyes was deep and hating, and the wildness of his disappointment burned bright spots on his starved, consumptive cheeks. Nick Perrigo stared at his feet, bitter and biding his time. The other man, Ed, rested his body on the building wall and seemed afraid of all this. Sam Torveen remained in the doorway, an obscure smile on his face; he was behind the crew and they didn't see him raise a hand toward Surratt in a half-saluting manner.

There were three of them here, Surratt understood, who respected nothing but the whip—Perrigo and Bowie and Chunk Osbrook. Pity or generosity they didn't know. He cast a quick look behind him to where Osbrook had risen uncertainly. He looked back to the porch again, the temper in him still pitched to kill.

He said: "Is that all—or is there some more?"

They had nothing to say. He hadn't felt Osbrook's blows and hadn't been aware of being struck. But suddenly his body began to hurt where those blows had landed.

Twilight flowed across the meadow in indigo ripples, and somewhere in the depths of the hills a coyote's howl thickened the land's deep loneliness. A faint wind came off the Gray Bull peaks and rustled through the trees like the echoes of a distant waterfall. Abruptly it was dark, with the lights of the ranch laying rich yellow beams across soft blackness. Ferd Bowie's horse clacked over the creek bridge and Ferd Bowie wheeled into the yard. He said, "All right," and got down.

The crew made vague shapes on the porch. Somebody ticked a cigarette through the air, and when it fell its burning tip burst into a vivid spray of light. They had been waiting here, the sense of it very strong to Surratt—and now the waiting was done and they were rising along the porch. Sam Torveen's voice was keen and a little whipped-up. "Everybody inside." He turned into the big room, the others at his heels. Following, Surratt heard horses traveling down the road.

Torveen stood in the center of the room, his red hair ragged on his forehead. He was smiling again, crookedly.

"Some of them will come in and some will stay in the yard. Ed, you go stand at the corner of the house." He looked at Buck Surratt, that glinting amusement strong in his eyes. "You came up here for reasons of your own, friend Buck. The reasons are about to appear." He moved around the room, closing the wooden shutters against the windows and dropping the bars across them. He returned to the table, caught up the lamp and placed it in a corner of the room where its light would not make a background. Perrigo and Bowie and Chunk Osbrook had posted themselves around this room, making dark and studied shapes. The oncoming men boomed across the plank bridge. They were in the yard presently—and halted. A voice that was familiar to Surratt hailed the house.

"Torveen. I want to see you."

Torveen reached the doorway. He stopped there. He seemed to be suppressing laughter. "Come in, Bill." A boot began scraping behind Surratt, and he stared around and saw the kid, Ferd Bowie, waving a little. He said: "Stop that, kid." The kid's glance burned wickedly on him. Torveen had taken a few deliberate back steps into the room; and now men filed in and made a sober, alert rank there. He recognized Bill Head and the sheriff. The others were strange to him.

Bill Head's ruddy face veered and his eyes found Surratt The angry memory of Morgantown wrote itself across the man's bold features. He said to Surratt: "Get your belongings. You're going to Morgantown."

Torveen laid his electric grin on Head. He said: "You offered this man a job today. What for, Bill?"

"To keep my eyes on him," grunted Head.

"He's got a job here—and I'll keep my eyes on him."

"No," grunted Head. "He's bein' arrested."

Torveen turned his attention to the sheriff. "You got a warrant, Ranier?"

"Yeah."

Surratt spoke quietly. "What for?"

"The killin' of a man named Leslie Head," said Ranier.

Silent laughter showed across Torveen's eyes. "Tear up the warrant, Sheriff."

Bill Head swung and threw his shoulders forward. "What?"

"He ain't goin'."

The breathing of these men filled the room. Lamplight disturbed and stained their expressions. The shadow of violence lay here. The sheriff's body was stiff and crooked. Bill Head seemed to be rummaging his mind. Surratt thought that his first impressions had been right; the man was slow on the bounce. But it was to be seen now that he had an implacable stubbornness.

"That's bad, Torveen."

Torveen said, almost idly: "I stand back of my men. You should have known that before you came. You might have guessed a warrant would do you no good. There is no way of getting Surratt except by takin' him. You think you want to take him, Ranier?"

Sweat glinted along the sheriff's forehead. His eyes turned and begged Head for an answer. Behind Surratt the kid's feet were restlessly shuffling again.

Head said definitely: "No. We'll leave the gunplay alone. It isn't necessary." He directed his talk at Surratt. "Better consider this and ride into Morgantown tomorrow. You're in a trap. If I don't see you in town twelve hours from now it's open season on you, wherever you're found."

"That's plain," said Torveen cheerfully.

Head's face showed the sting of the remark. It was flushed and irritated. "You better take a long look at your own hole card, Sam. Come on."

They filed out. Motionless, Surratt listened to them mount and ride away. Nobody spoke until the echo of their departure had died beyond the trees. Ed came across the porch then and put his head through the doorway. Torveen said: "You plant yourself on the bridge, Ed, and stay till you're relieved."

It broke up the party. Ed disappeared, and Perrigo led Osbrook and the kid out of the room. Torveen turned on Surratt. He had ceased to smile.

"Your reason for comin' up here was to get yourself some protection you saw you were goin' to need. Well, I gave you the protection. That's my part of the bargain. But call it quits if you want. I'll not hold you from ridin' away."

Surratt murmured: "I don't welsh on my debts."

"I didn't think you would," drawled Torveen. "Well, I told you I had my reasons, too. You'll discover them soon enough. As for the crew I've got, you know their kind. But I'm in a fight and I can't be nice about my choice of men." He stopped, framing some further explanation. Surratt saw it die. Torveen only added: "What you have to do to those boys is your business, not mine. I guess you've figured that already, so I don't have to warn you."

Surratt turned to the porch. He went along it, stepping into the bunkroom. Osbrook was lying on one bunk, Perrigo on another. The kid sat up to the table, playing solitaire in moody silence. None of them looked directly at him, yet as he unrolled his blankets and pulled off his clothes he felt the effect of a sidewise, covert scrutiny. He rolled into the bunk and put a palm over his eyes and stared above him, slowly balancing the help they had given him against the unqualified hatred they bore him. There was the thread of motive running through this contradiction, but he could not ferret it out They were men who answered only to the whip: they did not understand softness. He knew then he had something to do here.

He turned his head toward the kid and spoke bluntly, ungently. "Kill that light, kid."

Ferd Bowie's head jerked. The sullen hatred that was so strong in him poured across the room. He burst out: "What the hell did you come here for?"

Surratt reared from his blankets. He put a hand on the edge of the bed. "If I come over there, runt, I'll spank you dry. Put out the light."

The kid kicked back his chair, rising. There was a violent agony of choice printed on his sallow cheeks. Nick Perrigo remained still on his bunk and looked at this scene with a bright, scheming attention. But the kid blew out the light and stamped from the room. Presently Surratt heard Perrigo get up and call Osbrook. They went out. A door slammed down the porch. In a moment he heard their voices rising and quarreling with the fainter voice of Torveen.

Something was plain enough to Surratt then. Torveen hired them because he needed them. But it appeared they had gotten beyond his control. Maybe this was why Torveen had offered him the job. He considered it slowly. But he was tired, and there was a sharp regret in him for the ways of life he could not escape and the hope of something he could not name and could never reach; and presently he fell asleep.