Читать книгу The Wild Bunch - Ernest Haycox - Страница 5
II. — VOICE OF HATE
ОглавлениеGOODNIGHT made a slow swing to search the roundabout shadows. The nearest house was two hundred feet away, showing no light. Farther toward the center of town a pair of men stood momentarily on a corner and then walked into the Trail, leaving the street empty. Goodnight stepped behind the shed, coming close by Niles Brand. Starlight and a thin slice of a moon sent down a glow upon the sharp, small smile of his partner and the ruddy face with its pleasant irony.
"How long you been here, Niles?"
"A week. Just layin' around, watchin' men come and go. Keepin' my ears open. This is a hell of a town. Frank."
"He's around here somewhere," repeated Goodnight. "A man will only run so far. Then he stops runnin', like a stampeded steer with no more steam to run on. These Owlhorns have got a reputation for shelterin' wild ones. He's probably here."
"If he didn't stop somewhere else before he got here."
"I raised a smell of him back on the other edge of this desert. He had put up at a line camp, nursing a bad leg. Man described him—young and gray at the edges of his hair. He pulled out after two days, headed east across the desert."
"That sounds like him," said Niles.
"If he started over the desert," pointed out Goodnight, "he wouldn't stop until he got to the next set of mountains. That's here."
"These hills," said Niles, "are two hundred miles long and fifty miles deep. How you goin' to cover all that?"
"Pretty soon he'll get awful tired of living alone. Then he'll come into town for a bust. We'll stick around and wait."
Niles said again: "This is a hell of a town, Frank." He searched for his tobacco and he rolled a smoke blind, and struck and cupped a match to his face. His skin was of the florid kind, burned to a violent red. His eyebrows were bleached to the shade of sand. Momentarily the match light danced frosty and bright in his eyes. He breathed deeply on the cigarette. "Everybody walkin' around, watchin' for somebody else to make a false move. Never saw anything like it."
"Why?"
"The big outfits in the desert summer-graze their beef up in the hills. Last few years smaller outfits have started in the hills, cutting in on the range the desert bunch used to have. Been some battles on that. Then these hills are full of crooks hidin' out, and they been nibblin' away at the desert stuff, drivin' it into the timber and sellin' it to the hill people. As I get it there's a fellow named Boston Bill who's got a dozen wild ones together. They're in the business. Talk seems to be that this Bill delivers the desert beef to a hill ranch run by a man named Hugh Overman. There's a lot of these small hill ranches and they all stick tight, figurin' the desert crowd to be legal game."
"We'll just stay around here and wait," said Goodnight.
"Move easy," said Niles Brand. "All strangers cornin' in here are watched. A man's on one side or he's on the other and they'll peck at you and me until they find out. Every time I walk down the road I wonder when somethin' is goin' to bust."
"If we have to meet to talk," said Goodnight, "make it here at night."
"I been offered a job," said Niles. "Chambermaid in the stable."
"Take it," said Goodnight. "That gives you a reason for staying here."
"Oh, my God," groaned Niles. "Me doin' that. What'll you do?"
"I'll find something."
"Be careful who you mix with," said Niles. "Awful easy to get with the wrong crowd."
"All we want is a man," said Goodnight.
"If I ever get a decent bead on him I'll shoot him—and that's the end of it."
"No," said Goodnight, soft and final. "Not that easy for him, Niles." He stepped aside from the shed and gave the street a careful study. A sudden shout came from the heart of town and two or three riders appeared, lifting the deep dust around them; they halted at the saloon on the far corner. Goodnight stepped forward, moving idly back toward the hotel. He passed two dark houses and he passed a third with a light shining out of an open door; he looked through the doorway and saw a woman inside, her back turned to him. Her dress was brown, edged with some kind of metal thread that struck up a sharp shining; and then he remembered the girl who had been in the hotel's dining room. It was the same dress, the same girl.
Beyond her house stood the back side of the hotel, with a narrow alley between. A man sat on a box in the alley's mouth, an old man with white whiskers short-cropped and a narrow goatee. He had his legs crossed, one leg swinging on the other with a quick up-and-down rhythm, and his glance slanted up at Goodnight from beneath the tilted brim of his hat. Goodnight went by him, but a sharp warning struck through him and he turned back to face the old man. He watched the old fellow and wondered how much the latter had seen.
The old man's head came up. He had a sly humor on his face, a bright and beady wisdom in his eyes. He said: "You know why I sit here in the alley? There's always more wind comin' down an alley on a hot night. That's why I sit here."
"Good place to see a lot," said Goodnight.
"I see a lot and I know a lot," said the old one. "I know more'n I ever tell. If I told what I knew I wouldn't be an old man. I'd be a dead one. I guess I'm the only one in town that ain't lined up."
"Lined up how?"
"Lined up," said the old one with a touch of impatience. "On one side or the other side. I'm so old nobody cares where I am. But if they knew how much I knew, they'd care. So I keep still. You ain't lined up, either?"
He made it as a hopeful question, a magpie curiosity glittering in his eyes. His leg stopped teetering and he bent forward and waited for the answer.
"No," said Goodnight. "I'm not lined up," and moved away. He heard the old one's odd chuckle, half wise and half foolish, and he thought: "He saw Niles and me." That was something to remember. He reached the hotel and put his back to its corner and rolled a smoke to demonstrate his idleness. The Trail saloon was before him. The other saloon, the Texican, stood over the dust to his right; before it the newly arrived riders now stood. He lighted the smoke, his interest lifting little by little, prompted by things which he could feel but could not see; and he noticed a man ride out of the hills on a huge bay horse—a little man with a pock-marked face and a set of elbows flopping up and down to the horse's gait. The little man reached the hotel and dropped off, and then he looked around him in all four directions and his glance stopped longest on the men posted in front of the Texican. They were watching him with an equal interest and after he vanished through the hotel's doorway they disappeared into the Texican. In a few moments they returned with three others and all of them stood in a close group; softly speaking; then the group broke and the various men spread into the shadows, one man remaining in front of the saloon.
He had about finished his smoke. He dropped it and ground it out, hearing quick steps behind him. The girl who had been in the hotel's restaurant passed him and looked at him, and went on. He crossed the dust to the Trail, feeling the effect of her nearness, and looked around as he shoved the saloon's door before him; she had reached the front of a store and she had stopped, her glance on him.
He stepped into the Trail. He lifted one finger and laid his elbows on the bar and put his weight on them; and suddenly he felt fine, with a fresh current of interest running through him as he thought of the girl's face and the steady expression in her eyes. The barkeep was a little slow in the way he brought the bottle and glass. The barkeep gave him a head-on glance. "You drank your last drink at the Texican, didn't you?"
"That's right."
"Bob," said the barkeep, calling down the room. "He drank his last drink at the Texican."
Four other men were in this saloon. One of them stood at a small window and looked out toward the Texican; the other three stood by, silent and attentive. The man at the window turned about, solid of shoulder and wearing a bristle-sharp mustache. He came forward, the other three immediately following him. He got directly in front of Goodnight, who had made a turn-about from the bar. Suspicion lay in the room. Tension held the men tight.
Bob said: "Don't you know enough to keep in your own back yard?"
"Whose yard is this?"
One of the others said: "He rode into town before supper."
"Maybe you're strange," said Bob. "Where you from?"
"That's my business, Bob."
"Is it?" said Bob, very soft. "Now maybe." He searched Goodnight with a glance that believed nothing. "And maybe you're not strange. Maybe you know what you're doin'."
"Let's all have a drink and find out what I'm doing," suggested Goodnight.
"Easy won't do it," said Bob. "If you've come over from the Texican to pull a stunt . . ." He stopped and he gave that idea some thought. He walked to the door and slightly opened it, looking toward the Texican. He came back. "You go back there and say we'll meet anything they start."
"You go tell them," said Goodnight. He had this Bob in front of him, with the three others on his flank; they boxed him in and he saw the growing thought of action in Bob's eyes. He made a quarter turn toward the others and he noticed the instant hardening of Bob's face. "Bob," he said, "back up . . ."
A man outside yelled, long and full, and immediately afterwards a gun shouted. Bob dropped his hand toward his gun and made half a pull before Goodnight's right hand came off the bar with the whisky bottle standing there. He aimed it high, grazing it across the top of Bob's skull Bob's knees buckled and he dropped on his hands. Goodnight jumped past him, to face the others.
But the others were rushing for the street, no longer thinking of him. He gave a quick look at Bob, who rested on his hands and knees and tried to shake the fog out of his head. He reached down and seized Bob's gun lying near the bar; he bent and hooked an arm under Bob and hauled him to his feet. Sense came swiftly back to Bob. He battled down Goodnight's arm and stepped away. "Hell with you."
"If you want a fight there's one on the street. Let's both go look at it." He returned Bob's gun muzzle first and ran for the door, Bob behind him. He pushed through and stopped on the edge of the walk so abruptly that Bob ran into him and pushed him aside. Then Bob's voice called over the dust to a man—to the pock-marked man who had recently arrived in town—now slowly backing away from the Texican and away from a little group of men standing hard by the Texican. "Come here, Slab." Bob ran past Goodnight into the dust, reached Slab and took stand with him, backing away as Slab backed away.
The old ways of violence, never changing, never different, slowly worked through this town and this little stretch of time. The group now forming at the Texican had been patiently building a trap for Slab and now were about to spring it. He saw two other men deep down the north end of the street sitting a-saddle, as though waiting a signal; he discovered Niles Brand posted at the hotel corner, looking on at all of this with his half-smiling interest, and he saw the girl come out of the store which adjoined the hotel. She walked forward to the hotel corner, glanced quickly at the men face to face over the dust, and deliberately cut between them on her way to the diagonal corner.
Bob and Slab had retreated very slowly, one reluctant pace at a time, until they were within twenty feet of the Trail. There had been three others waiting here, but now, out of one dark corner and another of this town, more men had come to place themselves in support of Bob and Slab until there were half a dozen waiting. A voice anonymous and unlocated, yelled "Hep," and suddenly the two horsemen far down the street shot forward on the dead run, headed for the intersection.
Goodnight shouldered through the men grouped together and ran for the girl who still was in the street. The pair of horsemen rushed forward. Bob's voice cut cold and confident through the night: "Run us down and you'll never live!" The sound of those two riders was dull and heavy and seemed to grow out of all proportion, and then Goodnight lifted his glance beyond the girl, to the black end of the cross street, and saw a line of men spill out of the timbered canyon into town. He thought: "Somebody laid this trap—and somebody's going to get fooled."
He reached the girl and seized her arm and hurried her on, across the dust to the far walk. He pushed her against the wall of a building and held her there, feeling the even strike of her heart against his arm. She looked up at him and her lips drew back from her teeth in a smile. "Ah," she murmured, "nothing will happen to me. But it is nice to have your concern."
The group from the hill rushed full into the heart of the town. He heard Bob crying out, now lost somewhere in the rush of horses. A great figure of a man, blackly whiskered, led this bunch and his voice was a hammer blow against iron. "Knock them down—knock them down!" The quick, lean report of a rifle followed on his words and one rider gave a great cry and rolled like a drunk on the leather. Lifting his eyes, Goodnight saw a man in the window of the hotel's corner second-story room, both elbows on the window sill, his face hidden as he snuggled against the rifle stock and took aim.
The big bearded one shouted and pointed, and fired at the window. The horses milled, swung wildly around and came onto the walks. A horse backed full into Goodnight and lashed out with its feet and broke a board beside him, and swung again, pinning the girl against the wall. Goodnight reached up, caught the rider at the elbow and hauled him from the saddle.
The firing burst up with a sultry violence. The unhorsed rider struggled around and struck out with a fist, catching Goodnight in the throat. Goodnight hooked a punch straight up from his belt into the man's chin and drove him away in a spinning turn. He drew his gun then, expecting more of a fight, but the man never turned back; he ran and ducked through the confusion, trying to reach his horse. Goodnight heard Niles Brand's voice somewhere near. He turned and discovered his partner working a zigzag way across from the Texican. Niles reached him, softly growling, "There he is—with this new bunch!"
"Get away from me," said Goodnight. "You damned fool—get away!" The confusion grew greater and the horses were again breaking under the sudden fire of other rifles thus far hidden. He had his back to the girl, sheltering her body with his own as the horses reared around upon the walk and moved at him. He saw a thin, straight face move through the crush, a young face stretched thin by the heat and the lust of the fight. A rim of gray hair showed below his hat and he was grinning, and in a moment disappeared in the shadows. The big man with the rough black whiskers was calling them all out and the bunch ran back toward the head of the street and at last faded back into the canyon.
Dust was a silver screen through which he saw the turned shape of a man on the ground. Men, many men, came out of the town's black spots, walking toward the Texican. Bob was gone, and the pock-marked Slab, and all those who had stationed themselves by the Trail. He saw Harry Ide step from the hotel and he guessed it had been Ide who fired from the second-story room of ihe hotel. The hill crowd had set a trap, but the desert bunch had known of it and had set one of their own. He thought: "A hell of a lot of shootin' for no results," and Temembered he had the girl behind him. He turned on her.
She watched him with the same expression he had noted in the dining room—direct and speculative, barely showing interest, barely giving him hope. He watched her lips change and form a new shape; he saw her smile spread warm over her face.
He said: "Who was the big fellow with the whiskers?"
"Hugh Overman."
"That his crew?"
"They all came out of the hills," she said.
Harry Ide had gone into the Texican, the crowd drifting with him. Niles Brand stood over in the stable's archway, smoking a cigarette.
"I'll walk back with you," said Goodnight.
She gave him a studying glance and for a moment some answer was balanced in her mind; then she shrugged her shoulders and turned with him, walking over the dust toward her house beyond the hotel. Goodnight threw a glance at Niles; he made a small motion with his hand.
She saw that. She said: "You'll have to be more careful—you and your friend. This town has nothing but ears and eyes. You are being watched now. You'll always be watched."
"Kind of an uneasy town."
"This town," she murmured, and shook her head. She kept in step with him, across the dust and down the street. The old man, he noticed, still sat in the alleyway. The girl gave him a swift look and a sharp word. "Go somewhere else, Gabe."
Gabe murmured, "Yes'm," and faded back. When she reached the small porch of her house she stopped and faced him. He was full in the beam of her doorway's light, and by impulse she touched his chest and pushed him back until he was in the shadows. "You must be more careful," she said.
He came near her, looking down at her lips. They lay closed but without pressure, full at the centers. She had to lift her head to meet his eyes, and suddenly her eyes were heavy and the veiled expression broke and he saw want come to her. He put his hands at her hips and swayed her against him and kissed her full and heavy on the lips, and stepped back.
Her eyes turned blacker and the self-confidence grew oddly bitter. "You did it very easily, didn't you?" she murmured. There was the power of hatred in her and he felt it burn against him now, shocking him and shaming him. He came to her again, not touching her but so near to her that he caught the fragrance of her hair.
"I guess I've been alone too long. When I saw you in the dining room you were the strongest thing in this town."
"Any woman can do that to a hungry man."
"You're not any woman."
"What am I?" she said, letting her voice drop to a whisper.
"Not like anything I've ever seen before."
He turned to go and was stopped by the quick soft murmur of her voice. "What is your name?"
"Frank Goodnight."
"Do you know mine? Have you asked about me?"
"No."
She came near him, whispering in his ear. "Rosalia Lind. Will I see you again?"
"Yes."
She stepped back and he saw her self-assurance return. She had gone beyond her pride and she was annoyed at herself. "Be more careful than you have been," she told him. "The men in the Trail are all hill people. The Texican is only for men from the desert. You went to both places."
"You saw me?"
She watched him, her face shadowed and soft. "I have watched you," she murmured and turned into her house.
He looked both ways on the street and saw nothing to warn him; and moved down the street idly to the shed. He paused here, making up a smoke. He heard Niles grumbling at him from the blackness behind the shed. "You're doin' mighty well for yourself as a pure stranger. You know who she is?"
Goodnight said: "Who you talkin' about?"
"The girl. That girl walkin' through this town like a dyin' man's vison of Paradise. She's Rosalia Lind."
"So she said."
"You see that hotel just the other side of the saloon? That's hers. You see the store next to it? That's hers. She had a father who started this town. I guess he owned the town. He's dead, and it is all hers. Her dad came from Kentucky. There were some other Kentucky men that came with him—and these people hang together awful tight. If she lifted her finger six men would show, up from nowhere and cut your throat. The boys from the desert know that and so do the riders from the hills. They step around her pretty soft and easy."
"All right," said Goodnight. "You almost tipped over the cart, comin' to talk to me on the street."
"There he was. One bullet would have ended all this wandering around."
"I'll find him. The one with the sharp face—smiling?"
"That's the man. But try to get him out of those hills. He's smart. He got himself in with Overman. Try to get him away from Overman. It's the same as a bodyguard."
Goodnight drew his cigarette down to a bright butt and flicked it to the dust. "Stick around here, Niles. I'm going up in those hills."
"Doin' what?"
"Don't know yet. I'll catch him off first base. Sooner or later. You stay here until I shout."
He turned back. He walked to the corner of the Texican and rounded the corner, and came upon Harry Ide standing there.
Ide grinned at him. "Well," he said, "you see what the town's like."
"That's right," answered Goodnight.
"Stayin' around," said Harry Ide, "or coming back to my place?"
"I'll be ridin' around," said Goodnight.
"Go ahead and ride," said Harry Ide. "But you see how it goes. A man can't stay in the middle."
"This Overman dug a hole for you," commented Goodnight.
"So he did," said Ide. "And we saw him dig it."
He kept his smile as he talked. It was a hard smile; it had weight and threat. He looked about him, keening the night for its treachery, and gave Goodnight a short nod and crossed the street, going into the darkness beyond the hotel.
Goodnight moved into the stable; he paid his bill and saddled the horse. He rode out and gave the horse a drink and afterwards started toward the hills, but within a dozen feet he turned squarely about and rode back, turning the saloon's corner. He stopped in front of Rosalia's house and got down, and saw her on the porch. He went to the porch steps and halted. There was no particular reason why he had returned, or if there was a reason he could not drag it out of his head. He stood puzzled before her, watching the door light make its streaming shine along the smoothed blackness of her hair. She watched him and she waited for him to speak; she was round-shaped in the light, she was still, with her lips lying together in gentle fullness. Her eyes were shadowed to him and he could not see the expression in them. Her breasts lifted softly and softly fell to her breathing. He came up the steps to her and he had the impulse to seize her, and fought it back with difficulty. The pull of her presence was that urgent, straining him forward against his sense of propriety. A woman had not done this to him before.
She said in a small, murmuring tone: "Why are you here?"
"You can pull a man against his wishes," he said. "You know that?"
"Is it against your wishes?" she asked him. He saw her draw together and harden her spirit against him.
He said: "Turn around."
She held herself still. She whispered. "What interests you?" But he didn't answer and in a moment she swung until her face was in the light. He looked at her eyes, at the glow which seemed to lie below the dark coloring. It came out of her from deep places. It wasn't just the lamplight shining; it was part of her spirit. He said: "A man can ride a long way on the memory of that."
Her answer came at him swiftly: "How far are you riding?"
"I don't know."
He returned to his horse and stepped to the saddle. He heard her say: "You can't escape anything by riding. It rides with you."
"I will see you again," he said and went on. At the corner of the Texican he had a view of the main road running back through town. Harry Ide had vanished in the darkness, but at this moment Boston Bill Royal stepped from the dark side of the store opposite and looked up at him, now not amused or indifferent.
"You scatter yourself in too many places, my friend," he said.
Goodnight said curtly: "You had better judge your own actions," and rode straight for the canyon's mouth, leading into the Owlhorns: A mile from town he felt the weariness of his horse grow greater and he pulled into the timber, made cold camp and fell asleep.
Boston Bill listened to the sound of Goodnight's horse rattle against the stony underfooting of the road and entirely die in the timber above town. Afterwards he circled the Trail and walked quickly along the back end of a row of houses and came again to the street at the north end. He stopped here, watching the shadows for sight of Harry Ide. He saw nothing and in a little while he grew tired of the wait and moved back toward the saloon. When he passed the edge of the adjoining building Harry Ide's voice struck him from the rear.
"Just a minute, Bill."
Bill stopped, one foot in advance of the other. He waited, not turning and not drawing his feet together until Ide spoke again.
"Step back here. I want to talk to you."
Bill turned about and faded into the space between the two buildings. He reappeared ten minutes later and paused to look around him. He had not been seen, he thought, and he pulled his shoulders together and crossed over and moved down the inside wall of the hotel, thereby coming into the rear of Rosalia's house. He knocked on her back door and let himself in. She was in the front room; her face changed when she saw him.
He had sharp eyes and a quick mind. He saw the change and thought he knew its meaning. He said irritably: "Better be careful of strangers. You know nothing about that man."
"Next time," she said, "wait until I open the door before you come in."
"What did he want?" he demanded. "What brought him to you? How did he come to know you?"
She lifted her shoulders, facing him with a cold sureness. "Did you hear what I said?"
He came to her, smiling; he lifted his arms to her. She stood fast, commanding him by the stern expression on her face. She brought him all the way down from his careless confidence; she made him sober and restless and unsure. He turned irritable again. "I can't keep up with your changes. You're warm, you're cold. One time you're charming. Now you freeze me with dislike."
"I never change," she said.
"You're something all covered over. I never am able to tear the covering aside."
"What do you think is inside?"
"Heaven or hell. In a woman there's little distinction between the two."
"You always want to explain things," she said. "Nothing's ever that mixed up. Everything's much more simple."
"When I first met you," he recalled, "you were charming. You liked me."
"Perhaps I saw something in you."
"Why have you changed?"
"Perhaps I see something else."
He flushed. His pride was injured. "Now you see something in a new man. But you will see something else in him. Let him alone."
"Who are you to say that?"
"Rosalia," he said, "I want you."
"Wanting's not enough."
"What is enough?"
She shook her head. "That is for you to find out."
"There's never been a soul in this world I cared enough about to change for. There's never been one for whom I'd give up all that I am, or have, and do what was asked of me. Not until I came here. You have that power."
"I don't want it," she said.
"There's cruelty in you," he said.
"Honest people are always cruel."
He studied her, his mouth small, his eyes half-shut. The color of his face was stronger than usual and pride caused him to keep his injured feelings hidden. He brought on a smile. "You are accustomed to a high hand. You've always had your way. You've used the whip when you wanted. But remember this—you're a woman and a whip won't do if you want a man."
"Perhaps," she said.
Irony came quickly to him. He bowed to her, still smiling. "This seems to be a one-sided conversation."
"You use so many words to say so little."
That touched him and he grew openly angry. "I've heard that said before, today. By your friend—by the man who just visited you."
She said, spare and dry: "Pull out, Bill. If you don't know it, Harry Ide's in town. Better watch him."
"I have known that for an hour."
"Have you?" she commented, and looked closely at him. He met her glance until he was warned by the things she might be seeing, and turned sharp on his heels and left by the rear door.
She was thinking: "He gave himself away. He has seen Harry Ide—talked to him. I did not know he would betray his people." She thought of it, but not for long. A sweet, sharp feeling ran through her. She stood still, letting all of it warm her and trouble her—and remembered the power of Goodnight's arms. He had come back to look again upon her, and she knew why he had come back. He had been uncertain of her. He still was. She thought: "I should not have let him kiss me." Her expression darkened and momentarily she disliked herself. "Why did I do it?" She tried to answer the question and could not, and turned impatient. "I did it," she decided, "and that's enough. If it isn't enough for him, let him never come back." She moved to the porch and she stood in the shadows, feeling the first coolness of night come. "How else could I have acted? If a thing happens, it happens. I hope he comes back."