Читать книгу Canyon Passage - Ernest Haycox - Страница 4

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AS soon as he entered Portland, Logan Stuart stabled his horse at the Fashion Livery on Oak and retraced his way along Front Street toward the express office. A violent southwest wind rolled ragged black clouds low over the town and the flatly swollen drops of an intemperate rain formed a slanting silver screen all around him, dimpling the street's watery mud and dancing a crystal dance on glistening rooftops. The plank walk-ways across the street intersections were half afloat and sank beneath his weight as he used them; at two o'clock of such a day the kerosene lights were sparkling through drenched panes and the smell of the saloons, when he moved by them, was a rich warm blend of tobacco, whisky and men's soaked woolen clothes.

Three or four sailing ships lay at the levee with their bare spars showing above the row of frame buildings on Front. Beyond Seventh, in the other direction, the great fir forest was a black semicircle crowding Portland's thousand people hard against the river. Tradesmen's shingles squealed on their iron brackets and a raw wild odor—of massive timbered hills and valleys turned sweet by rain—assailed Logan Stuart and as he turned into the express office he saw a stocky shape, vague in this agitated twilight, wheel abruptly through a saloon's doorway ahead of him. A four-horse dray came up Front at the moment, the great wheels of the dray plunged half to the hubs; the teamster's cursing, issued with vigor, was instantly lost in the steady tempest.

The express office was warm and quiet once the door had closed behind Logan Stuart. He dropped his saddlebags on the counter and watched a young man with a dry, cool visage rise and come forward. The young man, Cornelius van Houten, wore a pair of steel-rimmed glasses in whose lenses the room's yellow lamplight bloomed.

"Damp day," said van Houten. "How's Jacksonville?"

"Lively," replied Stuart and opened the saddlebags to lay upon the counter a dozen gold pokes crowded skintight with nuggets and dust. With the drawstring clinched at the end of each, they looked like fat summer sausages.

"Credit to account?" asked van Houten.

"I'll take back specie. We're shy on cash at the diggings. What time do you open in the morning?"

"Tomorrow's Sunday."

"Put the specie in the saddlebags. I'll get them before you close tonight and keep them in my hotel room."

"I'd guess you've got seven thousand there—and that's no trinket to be left loose in a hotel room."

"Cornelius," said Stuart with a smile that broke the rough reserve on his face, "gold is only yellow gravel."

"Ah," said van Houten, agreeably dissenting, "but the yellow color makes a difference."

"Butter's yellow, too, and you can spread it on bread. Ever try that with gold?"

"For a man of business," commented van Houten, "you have got odd notions. Were I a banker, as I someday shall be, I should conclude you unsound and lend you nothing."

"A man can choose his gods, Cornelius. What are your gods?"

"What?" asked van Houten.

Logan Stuart returned to the intemperate day.

The rain had thickened until the buildings across the street squatted half vague in the sparkling downpour and ropy cascades splashed upon the sidewalk from gorged eaves. Out in the middle of the street a man stood on the surface of a stump with a set of muttonchop whiskers wetly plastered to his jowls and watched the yellow mud slowly flow around him. Stuart turned into a store at the corner of Alder, bought himself some dry clothes and made a couple of purchases for the Dance family away down the Oregon- California road, and thereafter walked a narrow plank across Front Street and entered a barber-shop near the American Exchange Hotel.

He had a bath, a shave and a haircut; and with a cigar fragrantly ignited between his lips, he went on to the American Exchange, got a room and ascended to it. He laid his wet clothes over a chair, walked a restless circle around the room and brought up at one of the two windows in the room to watch the storm-battered street below him. Above him, the peak of the hotel roof emitted a dull organ tone as the wind struck it With one shoulder tipped against the windowsill he achieved a moment's stillness not characteristic of him. He was a man of loose and rough and durable parts, like a machine intended for hard usage; there was no fineness or smoothness about him. His long mouth was expressive only when he smiled and his heavy nose swelled somewhat at the base to accommodate wide nostrils. He had the blackest of hair, lying in long chunks on his head; his eyes were sharp gray and well-bedded in their sockets—and all this made a face which in repose held the mixed elements of sadness and strong temper. Only when that face lightened did it show any sign of the rash streak which he possessed. He was a little under six feet, long of arms and meaty of legs, with a chest that had breadth rather than thickness. A scar shaped like a fish hook stood at the left corner of his mouth, the relic of some fist fight he had been rather eager to indulge in when younger. Now at twenty-eight he had better control of himself.

He could stand still only for a short while, and suddenly turned from the window, left the room and descended the stairs to the saloon which adjoined the American Exchange's lobby.

Henry McLane saw him at once and beckoned him over for a drink. "Just to keep the chills out," said Henry. "How's things at the mines?"

"Brisk," said Logan Stuart and heard the hoarse whistle of a steamboat in the river; that would be the Belle coming in from the Cascades run. He made room for himself at the crowded bar, beside Henry McLane, who removed his stovepipe hat and thumped it like a drum to catch the barman's attention. At five o'clock there was no natural light left in this drowned world.

"What are the Indians going to do this year?" asked Henry McLane.

"It is, so far, quiet and uncertain."

The barroom was at this hour of a bad day crowded, smoky and cheerful. Portland was a new and small town on the scarcely explored northwest coast, therefore Portland was still largely a town of bachelors arrived in search of the business chance; and the American Exchange bar served them both as a club and a commercial meeting point. Here were the plain types of a new land: the ship captain with his benign mutton chops and his frosty eyes; the farmer stained with the back country's mud roads; the emigrant whose manner was brisk and blunt and hearty and whose voice was pitched to Oregon's deep timbered reaches and long open plains; and the New Englander, so sharp and so cool, who had come here specifically for the mercantile advantages to be had in a fresh land and who meant to seize them and make his fortune. There was an Eastern twang in the room's talk, mixed with Iowa, mixed with Missouri, and mixed with Virginia's softness.

"Logan," said Henry McLane, "I have got a consignment of goods from the brig Alice, to be delivered to Clay and King at Jacksonville. I shall ship by the boat Canemah to Salem. Do you wish the business of packing it from there? General hardware, a few bolts of cloth, buckets, tin dishes, rope."

"How many mules will it make?"

"Twenty, I suppose. What's your freight?"

"Three dollars the mule per day."

McLane studied it a moment and nodded his head. "Agreeable. It will be at Salem on the twentieth of the month."

The deal having been made, Logan Stuart bought the second round of drinks, after which McLane excused himself. "I have got to see if George Miller can take a load of windows out toward Gale's creek."

"Windows—windows with glass?"

"We are becoming civilized," said McLane and moved away to intercept a man in muddy boots, round fur cap and a huge army overcoat. "George," he called through the steady confusion of the saloon. "George!"

The place was packed. Logan Stuart pressed his way through the crowd and circled a group who were deep in reminiscences concerning the emigrant trail. Five of Portland's leading businessmen sat at a poker table, closely engaged with some business speculation of their own; and a ship captain near by was in half an argument with another man. "Lumber's selling sky high in San Francisco and you'll make a handsome profit. You have got to let other men make a little. Don't haggle so damned much over the freight, my friend, or I'll pull out of here in ballast." When he left the saloon, Logan Stuart observed that Henry McLane was at the bar again, sealing another bargain.

He crossed to the clerk's desk. "Miss Lucy Overmire arrived?"

"In Ten," said the clerk, "just off the Cascades boat. She has been asking for George Camrose."

Stuart walked up a stairway whose red plush runner was stained with the day's fresh mud.

He turned down the hall and he stood a moment in front of her door, visualizing her face with a keen start of interest; then he knocked and heard her voice murmur, "Come in, George."

She was in the center of the room when he opened the door and she had a smile on her face. But it was a smile meant for Camrose and he now observed the smile change character. Something went out of it, he didn't know what; and something came into it, nor did he know what that quality was.

"George knew I was coming up, and asked me to bring you home. He had a sudden trip to make toward Crescent City."

"Will you mind having me on your hands, Logan?" Then quite unexpectedly she broke into a small, free laugh. "That was a foolish question. You don't mind women on your hands."

"Who has given me that reputation?" he asked.

"Rumor."

"Rumor borne by George Camrose," he said. "The man is building up his faithfulness at my expense. Have you got stout clothes? We leave before daylight and the weather is foul."

"I do not mind," she said and watched him with her lips retaining the smile in their corners.

There was a speculative light in her eyes and the shape of judgment on her face—and this too was something familiar to him. They knew each other very well. She wore a brown and beautiful dress and her black hair was softly, shiningly plaited back of her head. She was a filled-out and mature woman within her clothes.

"Supper?" he said.

She moved to the bureau mirror to give herself a swift glance; and, catching up a shawl-like wrap, she moved down the stairs with him into the dining room. Talk made a great racket in the place; at the bachelors' table in the center of the room Logan Stuart saw Henry McLane, turned pink and dignified with his business trips to the bar.

She sat across from Stuart, pleasantly still; she was aware of her surroundings and occasionally her eyes showed curiosity and some vagrant thought stirred her face. Then he found her attention on him, once more with its deep and well-guarded interest. Sometimes warmth lay between them, strong and unsettling, and his own expression would sharpen; and at times like these the bare repose of his face would break, giving way to smiling restlessness. It was these times when she looked at him most observantly, trying to read him.

"How was your visit?" he asked. "How was The Dalles?"

"Quiet," she said. "But, Logan, there are a lot of cattle and horses up there which have been abandoned by the emigrants when they came down the river. They could be gotten for very little. Perhaps it would be profitable to buy and drive them to Southern Oregon."

"See any mules?"

She sat still, trying to remember, and for an instant he saw in this stillness a quality that struck roughly through him.

"No," she said. But she observed the change of his expression and her guard lifted again. They ate a silent meal and moved back to the stairs. He walked up to her door with her and paused a moment.

"Five o'clock," he said. "And dress warm. We'll make Salem the first day and the head of the Long Tom the second. We ought to be in Jacksonville Friday afternoon. Is that traveling too fast for you?"

"No," she said. "I suppose you're going down to play a little poker now."

"I guess not. Good night."

Her answering "Good night" followed him. He went past the door of his own room and stopped at the stairs, looking back. She still stood by her door, the hall lamp showing the outline of her face.

"A woman, Logan?"

He laughed, and saw a sudden gust of anger come to her. She turned in and closed the door. He had been amused at her suspicion but, going down the stairs, he no longer found amusement in her judgment of him. He was restless, he was irritated and he thought: "George must have made me out a hell of a fellow. I shall have to speak to him." He heard the beat of the rain on the hotel wall and he went back up to his room for his coat and hat; afterwards he walked along the black gut of Front Street and crossed over to the express office. Van Houten had delayed closing time for him; and now brought the saddlebags out of the big company safe.

"Sure you want to keep this in the hotel room?"

"It's all right," said Stuart and slung the bags over his shoulder. He waited while van Houten snuffed out the lamps and damped the cast-iron stove. Van Houten took up a dragoon pistol from behind the counter and locked the office door. He said something which was washed away by the tidal wind, and put himself between Stuart and the building walls as they walked back toward the American Exchange. He fell from the narrow crossing plank, up to his boot tops, and bitterly swore. At the hotel's doorway he stopped and said, "Luck." By the light glowing through the doorway Stuart saw that the young man had carried the dragoon pistol cocked and presented all the way from the express office.

"Keep your feet dry," said Stuart and watched van Houten vanish completely three steps onward; it was that black a night. He crossed the lobby and tramped up the stairs, at the upper landing he paused and then went on to Lucy Overmire's door. He knocked and heard her voice, still cool, call him in.

She stood by the window, now turning to look at him and show him the same reserved judgment he had seen before. "No," he said, "it wasn't a woman."

"Why didn't you say so, then?"

"You're marrying George, not me," he said.

"Why should I tell you where I'm going?"

Suddenly they were laughing at each other. She came across the room, the room's light richening her cheeks; she looked up at him, speaking with a blended sharpness and softness. "I'd never want a woman to make a fool of you, Logan."

"Do you question George like this?"

"Why," she said, "it has never occurred to me to doubt him."

"I am flattered by the distinction," he dryly said.

"George is less vulnerable than you, with women. He judges them more critically. You have too much compassion in you, Logan. You're fair game."

"Am I?" he said. "Yet he's engaged, and I am not."

"What have you got in the saddlebags?"

"Gold coin."

"I watched you from the hotel window. There was a man standing at the corner of Alder as you passed. He followed you across the mud."

"Good night, Lucy," he said and left the room. Noise came robustly up from the lobby and saloon. In his own room he put the saddlebags beneath the mattress at the head of the bead. He stripped to his woolen underwear and drank from the water pitcher, and then braced a chair under the door's knob. There were no catches on the two windows, but they were both fifteen feet or more above the street level and not to be worried about. He slid his revolver under the pillow, turned out the light and lay flat on his back, listening to the steady slash of the rain against the hotel; now and then a harsher gust of wind shook the whole structure. For a moment he thought of Lucy as she stood in her room, a fairer woman than any man had a right to expect; he remembered her face as it lightened with laughter, and the tones of that laughter, and he remembered how still her eyes could be, how deep in them were the strange things she felt. He fell asleep...

He was a man who slept without dreaming, and who slept light. Thus when a gust of cold wind touched the back of his head his eyes came instantly open. He lay with his back to the side window and he had his arms beneath the bed covers so that he could not easily reach his revolver. There was a faint sliding sound in the room, and the sibilance of a man's heavy breathing. The breathing diminished for a little while, and then it grew greater and Stuart felt a hand move gingerly along the bed's edge. Stuart pictured the man's location—and swung and raised himself and seized the heavy shadow before him. His arms went around a thick body; he was carried off the bed by the man's rapid turn, and he was dropped to his feet. He hung on. He butted the top of his head against the prowler's chin and heard it crack; then the prowler's forearm came down on the back of his neck with all the power of a club. It stunned him and sent him falling backward upon the bed. He got his feet up and he plunged them full into the prowler's belly as the latter was about to fall upon him. His head ached in full violence, and flashes of light danced before his eyes. He heard the prowler stumble backward and curse under his breath; and then he reached under his pillow and seized up his gun. He righted himself on the bed for a shot. He fired at the man's moving shadow and in another moment the prowler, rushing low across the room, went out through the window, taking sash and glass with him.

He heard the man fall in the alley below. When he reached the window he saw nothing in the alley's black strip below him, but he caught the last swashing echoes of the man's steps as the latter ran through the pure mud toward the river.

Cold wind poured through the window and there was a racket in the hotel's hallway. The chair blocking the door capsized and the door wheeled open, letting in the sallow light of a hall lamp. A man peered through the doorway. "What the hell's going on—"

"Nothing," said Stuart. "Close the door and go away."

The door swung shut, blocking the violent gust of wind. Stuart stood still a little while, slowly turning his neck from side to side. "A funny one," he thought. "He must have had an arm like a chunk of oak. Damned near tore my neck apart." He settled down on the bed, he lay gingerly back, favoring the steady ache; he lay flat, staring up to the black ceiling. "It might have been Bragg," he said to himself. "It might have been."

The door opened again and Lucy's voice came across the room, gently disturbed. "Logan."

The light was faintly on her and he saw her tall-shaped in her robe with her hair braided down behind. He saw the vague silhouette of her face as she walked toward him and stood over his bed. "Logan."

"Nothing at all," he said. "He got away. It was a bad try." His head quit aching; it ceased to pound as abruptly as it had begun, and presently he felt good. "Lucy, get out of here."

She stood wholly motionless, looking down at him. She said: "Did you get hurt?"

"No. You go on."

He watched her as she retreated; he saw her turn and look back a moment, and then close the door.