Читать книгу Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition - Ernest Haycox - Страница 69

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Old John Nickum, bearing in mind the recent attacks made on him, took a wide swing over the desert with Clint Charterhouse to inspect a bunch of his cattle in the northwest; having done that, he discovered fresh hoof-prints along the trail and these he followed until they petered out in the hardpan bottom of an arroyo, driving east toward Dead Man's Range. Therefore, it was not until near dusk that Charterhouse got his first sight of Box M home quarters. The first landmark was a high windmill tower standing up between rows of trees; successively the party flanked corral wings, an ice house, several sodded storerooms, an enormous shed for haying implements and wagons, a still more enormous barn, three long bunkhouses built like boxcars, and finally the main house which was constructed in a fashion common to the southern cattle country.

One rambling wing was divided into rooms, each room letting out separately upon a covered porch running the whole length of the place. Lights gleamed pleasantly through an open door, and the fragrance of lilacs hung over the yard. Seastrom and Haggerty turned off and Charterhouse was about to follow them when Nickum interrupted. "You'll be one of the boys soon enough. Consider yourself a guest tonight." A queer, shrunken figure ambled up and took their horses as they dismounted and went up the porch. Nickum led Charterhouse along to a farther door, opened it and stepped through to light a lamp.

"Your room until we get a place for you in the bunkhouse tomorrow. Wash up and come to the main room."

"Not good business for a new hand like me to assume privileges over the crew," observed Charterhouse thoughtfully.

But Nickum, half down the porch, answered gruffly. "It's my pleasure to find guests worth having. I am beholden to you, which is sufficient for me and will be sufficient for all Box M. Allow me to be the judge in my own house."

Alone, Charterhouse surveyed the neat little bedroom with a strange revival of memories long slumbering. The clean plastered walls, the patchwork spread on the bed, the faint smell of lavender brought back a remote childhood. In such a room he once had lived, long, long ago. Here was the peace of family life, here was the impress of some gentle hand reminding him of his own hard, solitary life through all the intervening years. Pouring water into a china basin, he suddenly recalled Sherry Nickum.

Fire had flashed at their meeting; it might flash again. There was nothing flimsy about her. She was old John Nickum's daughter, owning the strong Nickum temper—a girl of the prairie and moulded by its influences. He recalled clearly the picture she made standing in the doorway of blind Bowlus' cabin, slim and stiff, the lazy eyes hot with anger, copper hair shining in the fresh sun.

A bell sounded over the quiet yard. Charterhouse shook the dust out of his coat and passed out to the porch. Men filed around the house with the murmur of their talk sounding peacefully in the dusk. Cigarette tips glittered, the soft wind brushed through the poplar tops. Charterhouse sighed and squared himself at the main door. Nickum waited inside for him and he saw Sherry in a dawn pink dress standing lithe and graceful by a chair; her arms and throat had an ivory beauty and the mass of auburn hair gave her a height and serenity that for the moment utterly destroyed his self-possession. He crossed the threshold and soberly met her glance. Nickum turned.

"Charterhouse—my daughter, Sherry. This is the boy, Sherry, to whom I owe an obligation."

She stepped forward and he felt the pressure of her firm palm in his own calloused fist. A deeper rose dyed her cheeks, the gray and lazy eyes lighted with an inner humor. "I am prepared to forgive—and be forgiven," she murmured. "Welcome to our home, Clint Charterhouse." "Met before?" queried Nickum, puzzled.

"At Bowlus'," said the girl, mouth curling into a smile. "I warned him to get off Box M."

"Nobody can say you ain't had ample warning, Charterhouse," chuckled Nickum. "We will try to be more friendly hereafter. Let's eat."

He went ahead into a small dining room. Sherry walked beside Charterhouse, looking up at him.

"Am I forgiven? You haven't said."

"I would be a presuming man," replied Charterhouse, "if I admitted you needed my forgiveness."

"Spoken gallantly," she said very gaily. "But you didn't feel that way about it this morning."

That made him grin, the fine lines crinkling about his eyes; and the bronzed, thoughtful features lightened tremendously. "I think we both had our Irish up then," he drawled. "You and I seem to have a temper."

"Yes," and she shot a quick look at him, "but I hope we are not going to fight any more."

"Never," said Clint so strongly that her color deepened again. He waited at her chair until she was seated, then went around to his own. A hum of talk came through from the crew's dining room. Heck Seastrom was arguing about something with his characteristic headlong vigor. "I like that chap," went on Clint.

"Seastrom?" grunted Nickum. "Oh, he's all right. Wastes a lot of energy and gets into more jackpots than all the rest of the bunch put together."

"That's why I like him. Used to ride with a partner built just about Seastrom's style. Always got into a lot of horseplay, but when trouble started he was Johnny on the spot. And when trouble finished he was still among those present. A long time ago."

"Now that sounded forlorn and sad," observed Sherry. "Has your life been so checkered?"

He chuckled. "Oh, I'm no tragic figure with a black past. But I sort of felt down when I rode up to your place. It got me to thinking about where I was born and raised and how long it had been since I last slept in a civilized room and ate at a table with a white cloth and silver. I weaned early and have been used to roundup fare ever since. This is a treat. I don't reckon you folks know just how much of a treat it is."

"I can guess," said Sherry. A shadow crossed her clear face. "It is nice to have someone sitting in your chair again. My brother sat there up until a few months ago. He—" very slowly, "was killed from ambush."

Nickum's ruddy cheeks grew tight. "At the same spot they tried to get me. Well, the day will come. No man can survive a hundred chances."

"Dad!"

But Nickum shook his head. "Got to be straight about it, Sherry. If they want me bad enough, they'll get me. I've felt it in my bones a long while. Only one way to beat that gang. Smash 'em before they get out of their tracks."

"That being the case," reflected Clint, "I don't believe I'd hesitate as to choice."

"First sensible opinion anybody's given me for a long time," said Nickum and looked more fully at Clint. "You're right. Buck Manners is wrong. This shilly-shally only gives Shander more time to tighten his lines and spread his poison. Buck's afraid to face the idea of a general war, afraid he won't sleep good at night for having helped bring one on. I'll admit it's hard and a cruel business. But Casabella's always been a hard and cruel county. Lawless, full of cutthroats, full of slippery politicians. I've battled 'em all my life. Now it's either a showdown—their blood or my blood. I don't propose to die, and I don't propose to see Box M pass into other hands. When that happens, Casabella won't be fit for hogs to root in."

"Buck is on your side, don't forget that," Sherry reminded him.

"Sure, sure. But he's trying to spread too much oil, spraddle too many fences. He thinks we can talk a way out of this trouble. If he was thirty years older, he'd know different. Right now Shander and Curly ain't touching his ranch. They want him to feel like everything's all right and that I'm too excitable. But once they get me, Buck Manners won't last half an hour. He don't realize he's playing into their hands that way. Charterhouse, where'd you learn to play Indian, anyhow? You took care of yourself pretty well in the last forty-eight hours."

"Matter of horse sense, I reckon," mused Clint.

"We need more horse sense in this country," growled Nickum. "You took the initiative and did something on your own account, which is more than any of my men would do. They'll follow well but they can't lead worth a damn. I can't be everywhere at once and I can't smell down tracks like I used to. Can't ride as long and as hard, either. You willing to be a lieutenant around here?"

"How about Haggerty?"

Sherry frowned. "I wish he was some place else," she broke in.

"He's a good prod for the men," countered Nickum. "I'd like him better if he controlled his temper. Never mind Haggerty. He will do what I tell him and if he doesn't like taking orders from you—which it will amount to—then he must go. I am offering you plenty of room and responsibility."

"You don't know much about me," reflected Clint.

"I'll stand on my judgment," declared Nickum.

Clint found the girl watching him with a trace of anxiety. Her white hands rested quite still on the table and her rounding lips were pursed together. He thought he saw sudden warmth in the gray eyes; and whatever cautions and qualifications might have been in his head, they dissolved then and there.

"Take it," he decided laconically.

Father and daughter looked at each other. Nickum cleared his throat two or three times irritably. "Don't mind saying that lifts a load off my shoulders, Charter-house. You will consider that room your own, this table your proper place, and the house open to you at all times."

The girl smiled brilliantly. They rose and went back to the living room; night chill already had come through the house, and Sherry touched a match to the fireplace. Clint ranged beside it with a sense of comfort sweeping over him like some powerful drug. After all the long years of drifting about, anchorless and alone, he felt as if he were at last home. The room, its lights and shadows and its high beams, took on a strange familiarity. Sherry Nickum smiled up at him, murmuring, "You are a very solemn man sometimes, Clint Charterhouse. You were looking far off, far ahead then. What did you see?"

He shook his head, the fine feeling partly fading away. This was the girl who had sworn herself to another man; all that beauty and vigor and gay spirits were for Buck Manners.

"I wish I could say I saw something," he said, still sober, "but I guess I was just looking at blank space."

"Depends," was Sherry's very soft answer.

Nickum roused himself and lowered his pipe. "I'll collect the boys in the morning and explain your place among—"

A horse clattered across the yard's packed earth and a rowdy hail shot through the door. "Put another log on the fire—here comes a fella!"

Buck Manners appeared in the doorway, hat off, yellow hair tousled and a broad smile on the magnetic face. Charterhouse thought a part of the smile sank away when Manners saw him there; and certainly there was a swift and broadening flare of interest in the man's eyes. But he spoke casually around the circle.

"Nickum—hello again. Sherry, you look like something just this minute out of a picture. How, Charterhouse. Glad to see you again. John put the Box M brand on you?"

"Yeah," agreed Clint. "So short a time ago you can smell scorched skin."

"Thought you'd been rope-burned and scary," remarked Manners, adjusting himself indolently in a fat easy chair. He rolled a cigarette, eyes passing between Charterhouse and the girl with quick, decisive flashes.

"I guess I've been gentled," drawled Clint. He met the rollicking ranchman's blue eyes and found himself wondering at the hard, observant brightness that appeared and disappeared within the surface humor. He had already matched strength with Manners; the man was a fighter, for all his easy-going ways. It was difficult to tell at what point he would switch from careless indifference to tremendous strength.

"Well, you'll never wear a better brand," decided Manners. And added a lazy afterthought. "No matter how many others you may have worn before."

Clint asked himself a silent question. "What's the snapper to that, I wonder. Might be just an observation, Might be a dig."

Sherry broke in. "You've just missed supper, Buck. I'll sit at the table with you, though."

"Thanks no. Ate early. Only figure to stay for a spell. These days I don't like to pull away from the ranch for too long. Never know what's going to happen next. By the way, John, I wanted to pass on a piece of information you might use. Curly's shifted his territory. He's grazing over in Dead Man lately. I've seen campfires there the last few nights; also have heard a few stray noises passing my place when honest folk sleep."

"Moving closer to me," was Nickum's grim remark. "The wolves slink in and wait for a chance. I wonder how many tough nuts he's got, Buck?"

"Ten-fifteen, I suppose," judged Manners, watching his cigarette smoke curl to the ceiling. "Maybe more. Charter-house, you may have a better guess."

"As how?" Clint demanded.

"Well, you were at Shander's last night and got some dope, didn't you?"

"Mostly I was worrying about getting away. Curly was there with some of his men, though. How many, I couldn't say, for part of the bunch might have been Shander's own riders."

"Shander don't carry a big outfit. Only about twelve-fourteen hands."

"This Curly," went on Charterhouse, "is a fool for being proud of himself. If I was a brush jumper, I'd keep my face hid. He took the pains to introduce himself to me, saying he wanted me to know him next time we met."

"That's Curly's weakness, all right," grinned Manners. "He likes to grandstand. But don't figure him any the less wild for that trick. He's a white savage. Shoot you back or front, makes no difference to him."

"I judged that," mused Clint, whereat Manners studied him again through the smoke.

Sherry, standing so quietly by the fire, had observed all these silent interchanges with soberly pursed lips. Being thoroughly feminine, she had compared them from the moment they faced each other; a tall, laughing man with yellow hair and a reckless exuberance of spirit placed beside an equally tall man whose smile was slow and seldom and whose features were bronzed, almost gaunt. One found life a great game and pursued it with zest; the other had traveled a lonely trail. The sun and the rain, the burning heat and the knife slash of the blizzard had whipped him down to flat sinews and fashioned him so that even here in the room he could not drop the trick of appearing to look far across the horizons.

"Just wanted to tell you that for your own information, John," pursued Manners. "Any plans?"

"I will sleep on it," said Nickum. "If I feel in the morning as I feel now, the war is on. They have tried twice for me. I reckon that's excuse enough to tame Casabella. Ten years ago I wouldn't have needed the sleep. I'd be in the saddle now. When a man gets older, he seems to take longer stock."

"You've got my outfit to draw on any time you see fit," Manners told him.

"Thanks. My outfit is big enough. All I have been needing is one man able to plunge ahead and use his own head while he fights. I've got him now, I think. This boy here—" pointing to Charterhouse. "Consider him as a member of the family, Buck."

Manners lifted his head, plainly surprised. "Member of the family?"

Sherry flushed visibly. Nickum filled his pipe. "I mean that from now on you're to consider him second man around here. If he asks you for help or advice, I want you should consider it the same as if I personally asked it."

"Gladly," agreed Manners, the word sounding rather dry. "I'll say, however, that I have been offering myself for that sort of work a great many months before Charter-house came along. As a prospective member of the family—" grinning at Sherry, "what's wrong with my good right arm?"

Nickum chose his words very carefully, tamping down his tobacco. "I've known you since you were a kid, Buck. Life never was very hard on you. Everything come easy, go easy. You like to keep on even terms with folks, you like to play peacemaker. You never had to fight crooks on their own terms. I'm welcoming you as a son-in-law gladly. Don't doubt it. But you ain't a bloodhound. Take Charterhouse here. He fell into trouble the minute he hit Angels. I bit him in the ear. So did Haggerty. Had his horse stolen. Shander grabbed him and tried to keep him.

"He shoots his way out of that, puts two and two together and trails all over hell's half acre, climbs a tree, smells out that Mexican ambushed to get me and pots him cold. Then comes to Angels and accepts a ribbed fight and downs Graney. No uncomplimentary comparisons. Buck, but Charterhouse was born with a nose for trouble and seems to have been raised to all the bitter tricks. That's the man I need. He's had my sort of a life—the only kind of a life that will pay dividends in fighting Shander."

Manners rose, laughing shortly. "I know I was born with a gold spoon, John, but it hurts to have it put so plainly. I'm not grousing. I know the fellow's good. He muscled me down, and by Judas, that means he's blamed good. I'll cooperate with him any time. That goes, Charterhouse. But I still may be useful. When you get ready to crush 'em, let me join in."

"You're not going so soon," protested the girl.

"Really must get back," said Manners. He put out his hand to Charterhouse. "Good luck, old horse."

"Thanks," drawled Charterhouse. "Don't consider me as high as Nickum does."

"He seldom ever makes a mistake," replied Manners. "I hope he isn't making one now. Sherry, my love, good night and I wish you didn't look so blessed pretty with a handsome young fellow like Charterhouse around. I may lose all my advantage with you."

The color of her face deepened but she flashed a mischievous glance between them. "I doubt if you need worry Buck. It is my impression that Clint Charterhouse has never looked at a woman twice."

"I wish I could depend on it," retorted Manners, "but there's something wrong with his eyes if he doesn't look at you twice."

The two of them went to the porch. Charterhouse heard a low chuckle and a tinkling laugh and then the beat of hoofs traveling swiftly out. He stared into the fire somberly. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, he reflected, but it would save him heartbreak if he kept them away from Sherry Nickum.

She came back, sober and thoughtful. "Dad, I don't believe he relished your comparisons."

"Man's got to swallow the truth, sweet or bitter," granted Nickum.

Charterhouse spoke. "You have made an enemy for me."

"Buck?" grunted Nickum, astonished.

Charterhouse nodded. "Just so."

"Hell, that's a foolish idea," retorted Nickum. But Sherry caught Clint's eye and though he was no hand at reading unspoken thoughts, he knew she agreed with him. She put an arm to his elbow.

"Walk with me."

There was a shawl on a table by the door that she took up and whipped around her shoulders. They crossed the porch and strolled along the yard with the lights of the bunkhouses making yellow pathways across the earth. Water trickled near by, the trees were sighing with the wind and horses stamped patiently in the barn. The moon hung rakishly in a corner of the sky, pale against all the surrounding darkness; and memories kept returning to Clint.

"Like coming into shelter after a hard day outside," he mused aloud. "I never knew anything could be so peaceful or quiet. Reckon I have missed a great deal so far."

"I'm glad to know you've found that missing element here," said she quietly.

"Found it, and will lose it again."

"Why so? You sound so wistful, as if there never was any real happiness possible for you."

"Don't make me out a man with a sorrowful past," he warned her. "I've just wandered along, nothing much behind and nothing much ahead."

"Then I was right when I told Buck you never cared to look at a woman twice?"

"Up till now," said Clint and fell silent.

"Somewhere," she murmured, "you learned how to speak gallantly."

They turned, swinging along another row of trees, crossed a ditch with her body swaying lightly against him and lightly away. He saw the pale silhouette of her face, dim and beautiful against the velvet curtin of this prairie night and was troubled with the faint fragrance of her hair.

"I brought you out," she continued after a long while, "to say that I am truly sorry for my temper this morning. I was uncertain, and I can never find any kindness in my heart for those men who killed my brother. But—we'll not quarrel like that again, Clint Charterhouse. As long as you stay here I want you to regard this as home. I'll feel happy if you do."

"Let's scratch my remarks off the record, too," he drawled. "I'd rather have your good wishes—"

There was no need of finishing the sentence. He let it trail into the shadows. Part of his attention, so long trained to watchfulness that it never wholly slept, kept striking back to a blurred poplar trunk near the house. He thought he had seen a slight shifting there. After they went over the ditch and circled the barn he lost sight of the tree; when he picked up a view of it again, the outline of the trunk was distinctly slimmer.

"I wanted to say something else as well," said the girl, finding more difficulty with her words. "You spoke of having made an enemy. I hate to say it, but I think you have. Buck is a fine, straight man. I know him better than anybody else, I think, and I've never known a more thorough gentleman. Yet Dad hurt him, even if he didn't show it through his smile. Buck is proud of his strength and proud of everything he owns. You don't know that side of him. I do. Now and then I catch flashes of it that are startling."

"I understand," said Clint. "When he wants a thing he wants it pretty bad and is willing to scrap for it. I take him to be a pretty able scrapper."

"Then you do see what I mean. He has never revealed himself, but I have often thought he would like to rule Casabella for the sense of power it would give him. To be able to justify all that energy and ability that he can't find an outlet for now. What I wanted to say was that you must, whatever else you do, be straight, frank and shoulder to shoulder with him. Promise me you'll never permit yourself to get into an argument with him. Promise me that."

"A large order," mused Clint, surprised. "Who knows what will happen next? Why are you asking it?"

"Because," murmured Sherry just above a whisper, "because—I should hate to think of you two quarreling. You're both rather proud and strong-willed."

"I won't take a step out of my way to antagonize him," he promised. "And I will accept his advice and experience wherever possible."

She sighed. "I couldn't ask any more of you. It seems silly to think you'd ever have reason to cross swords. It won't happen, mustn't happen. But—"

They were at the porch. Nickum stood in the doorway, calling down to them. "Well, I don't need to sleep on it, after all. We'll battle this business out. No matter who gets hurt, we're going to clean up the dirty stables from corner to corner. In the morning, Charterhouse, I want you to go to the Bowlus place with me. We start our campaign in that stretch of country and it's wise to show you around."

The girl murmured "good night" and turned in. Charterhouse saw her face white and troubled as she passed the door; troubled and grieving over the bloodshed that inevitably marched nearer, because she was a woman. Nickum knocked the ashes from his pipe and silently followed her. Charterhouse swung along the porch to his own room, entered and pushed the door nearly shut. Through the small aperture remaining he watched the yard with a close attention. A man slipped from another dark angle and crossed quickly to the bunkhouses; instead of going into any of them, he disappeared somewhere beyond. A great deal later, when Charterhouse was in bed, he heard spaced shots come faintly off the prairie. His mouth tightened.

"There's a leak around here," he mused.

Meanwhile, Sherry Nickum stood in front of her mirror and studied the dark reflection thrown back. In the course of this eventful day she had discovered something that both stirred and depressed her. A struggle as old as the ages, yet as new as each life took hold of her heart. Until it was settled she would never walk without one certain picture in her mind—tall and exuberant Buck Manners standing so indolently sure of himself in front of Clint Charterhouse whose clean-chiseled features seemed wistfully pointed to the promise of happiness hiding beyond the elusive horizons. She too heard the spaced shots; and her eyes clouded.