Читать книгу Canyon Passage - Ernest Haycox - Страница 6

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JACKSONVILLE'S idle men made a circle on the street, drawn by the sound of trouble, drawn by the hope of trouble; and lanterns hung high to make this drama visible to hungry eyes. Stuart heard someone softly begging with his voice: "Go at him Vane, he's offerin' you a fight don't refuse it." He laid the edge of his shoulder against the ring of men and roughly shoved a way through until he was inside the circle. In the center of this circle stood Vane Blazier, his black hair streaming over a hatless head, his arms down and his body motionless as he faced Honey Bragg. Honey Bragg had already struck, for a single furrow of blood made a track on the boy's jaw. At the present moment Honey Bragg waited back, smiling.

"Boy," he said, "never crowd me."

"Nobody crowded you," said Blazier.

"You got in my way," said Honey Bragg. "You wanted a fight, I guess."

"The hell I did," said Blazier. "You walked across the street at me."

"Well," said Honey, his words rising and falling, "now you call me a liar. I am going to bust you up proper, boy. I am goin' to scar you. I'm goin' to cripple you good. I'm goin' to gouge out your eyes and kick you in the belly till you walk straddle. I am goin' to smash your teeth to snags and bust your nose flat, so you'll whistle when you breathe."

More lanterns danced in the night, dipping and swaying in eager hands. Vane Blazier's eyes were bitter-black, his face gray and grown old. He stood fast because his pride would not let him move, but his legs trembled. He was afraid yet dared not show fear.

Honey Bragg saw all that too with his bright attention. Smiling, he pulled his lips flat against his heavy teeth; the smile was a crushed half-moon against an olive-dark skin faintly shining with sweat. He had short hair curled against a round head and an extremely short neck joined into huge shoulders and arms. He was pleased with himself and his nostrils were sprung open and he tilted his head back to study the boy in the way a man might measure an ox for a slaughter-house sledging; the feeling of it came out of him, the malign enjoyment was quite clear.

"Go on," said Vane Blazier, scarcely audible. "Let a man alone. I didn't pick this fight."

"He's calling me a liar again," said Bragg. "I don't like that, boys. You know me. You know I couldn't take that even from a kid that don't know better. I am going to drive him around a bit and break him up before I drop him. Give me room and I'll show you some fun."

The eager miners crowded nearer, shoved up by others lately arriving. The greasy lamplight flickered and flashed on all those eyes so narrowly watching for the promised brutality so that Stuart saw the lust for violence there, the greed for raw action, the fetid stirring of jungle wants. They were good men, with stamina and courage and kindness. Individually they were, but they were in a pack now, and the smell of the pack was on them as the uniform expression of the pack was on their faces, making all faces alike—the hollow-eyed expectation, the partly opened mouth, the tensed cheek muscles.

Honey Bragg had his fascinated and hostile audience in the palm of his hand. He had no friends here, for he was a man suspected of many things; in the heart of every onlooker was the hope that Vane Blazier would cripple him—a hope that had no foundation in view of his skill. Honey Bragg understood all this, and it pleased and amused him as he stood poised for the butchering. Vane Blazier knew it, too, and now cast a starved glance around him, whereupon Stuart moved across the open space, took place beside Blazier and faced Honey Bragg.

Honey Bragg had not been aware of Stuart's presence. This quick change of the scene set him physically back; he had been poised to attack, his heavy legs slightly spraddled, his round head tipped forward and his elbows crooked. His first reaction was to draw up his head and drop his arms; then he straightened and the smile went off his face while he watched Stuart with a moment's most profound attention. If it caught him off guard, it likewise startled the crowd. The murmuring, the advice, and the listless shifting ceased until there was no sound whatever around the circle.

"A little trouble here, Vane?" asked Stuart, casually. He dropped a hand on Blazier's shoulder and he glanced at Bragg with a face quite heavy, quite homely.

"Hello, Honey," he said.

Honey Bragg stirred from his preoccupied silence. His grin came back to him. "Why, Logan—how are you, my friend?"

"Hear you've been away."

Honey Bragg mentally picked the question apart through a moment's silence; he covered the silence with his continued cheerfulness. Presently he gave out a short laugh. "I'm here and there," he said. "I'm a restless man, always moving."

"How's the horse ranch, Honey?"

"Fine as silk. No horses now. Ain't seen you go by the place last few days."

"I've been away, too, Honey," said Stuart. "Well, you're a restless man, like me," said Honey, repeating his brief laugh.

"I notice you favoring your right leg," said Stuart.

"Horse bucked me off."

None of this talk made sense to the crowd which, hungering for a fight, now looked on with ill-curbed attention. All these roundabout men listened with closest interest, their glances darting from Logan to Bragg, and back to Logan. They waited for Logan to go on speaking, or for Honey Bragg to answer, but the moments dragged while Stuart stood idle and wordless. Bragg's narrow-placed eyes rolled from side to side as he cast a speculative glance around the circle. He stared a moment at Vane Blazier and brought his attention and its grinning brightness once more to Stuart.

He covered himself well, Stuart thought; there was a full anger in this man but, save for the fugitive shadows which chased themselves in and out of his mouth corners, he kept his mask of humor well in place. He would be calculating whether or not to push the issue, he would be balancing the fight and all that it might mean very cleverly in his head. Meanwhile Stuart said nothing; the burden was on Honey Bragg.

A small flurry of motion went through the crowd which now realized how things were going; Honey Bragg raked that circle with a glance which quickly suppressed the discontent. Then the smile came easily back to Honey Bragg. He said: "I'll see you sometime, Stuart," made a turn and broke a path through the ring with a violent use of his shoulders and arms.

He got to his horse and swung up, waited a moment for a pair of men to join him—and thus he ran out of town.

A muffled and exasperated grumbling ran around the circle. Somebody said, "Well, by God, it was a freeze-out." Then with a thoroughly unsatisfactory scene irritating them, the various miners drifted toward Jacksonville's deadfalls. Stuart said something very quietly to Vane Blazier who turned up the street.

He himself stood a short while longer on the street, listening to the three horses of Honey Bragg's party run eastward toward the valley, toward the ranch which Bragg operated some five miles away; and he was thinking: "He was afraid to bring it to a head. He's not ready."

"Well, Logan," said somebody, "you found out, didn't you?"

He turned to see Joe Harms and Jonas Over-mire—Lucy's father—in the shadows hard by Howison's hay shed. Joe Harms sat, as he usually did, on a bench in front of the shed, a radical little man wearing a shabby suit, a head of thin white hair and a white goatee on a frail chin. This bench was Joe Harms's pulpit, on which he spent most of his day, and from which he dispensed his acid comments on the injustices of the rich and the ignorance of the poor. Overmire made a strange partner for him, being a lawyer, a man of some property and considerable education; yet the two were frequently together. Argument, amiable or heated, was a bond between them.

It was Joe Harms who had spoken. Walking toward Howison's, Stuart saw the little man in his favored position, stooped over with his arms propped on his legs, his head thrown back to Stuart with his sharp and dissenting glance.

"What did I find out, Joe?"

"That he'll back down."

"No," said Stuart, "that wasn't what I found out."

Joe Harms inquisitively cocked his head and waited for an explanation that didn't come. Then he added: "You know somethin' about him. That's why he backed down. What do you know about him?"

Logan said, "You figure something out, Joe," and walked toward his store.

After he had gone on beyond earshot, Over-mire murmured: "He put the weight on Honey Bragg, and Honey broke."

"Honey's nerve is good as any man's. Good as Stuart's. But you notice him stop and think, whilst he was watchin' Stuart? He added somethin' up—and it didn't add right. So he backed off."

"What would that be?"

"I'd like to know," said Harms. He brooded upon it awhile and presently added in a tone that was arbitrary and wholly beyond doubt: "Stuart's got to fight him."

"Why?"

"Because," said Harms with his continuing certainty, "the town won't have it any other way. The boys were promised a fight and they didn't get it. Stuart's got to do it."

Camrose and Lucy were up the street and as Stuart went toward them he thought: "He disclosed his hand in backing away. It is well to remember." He stopped before the pair, and he observed Lucy's face to be stained with trouble.

"Playing a little poker tonight?" asked Cam-rose.

"No," said Stuart. "I'm going out to Scotts-burg early in the morning. Good night." He started into the store, but Lucy reached out and took his arm and said, "Walk up the hill with us."

"You know," said Camrose, as they ascended the gentle grade, "I believe you would have enjoyed a rousing battle with Bragg."

"I was disappointed," admitted Logan. "But not for that reason."

"Ah," said Camrose. "The town's got it right, after all."

"What's that?"

"I heard the boys talking as they came back. They thought it was all very queer. Something under the woodpile."

"It will give the boys something to discuss on idle nights."

"You bet it will. They'll talk you two into a fight."

"Don't say that," said Lucy with some sharpness.

They had reached the Overmire house, and Camrose turned toward Lucy to say good night.

Stuart stepped aside and made it a plain business to fish out his pipe and go through the motions of filling it. He had no wish to witness the intimacy between them; it was their affair, in which he had no proper part. But a renewed irritation went through him when he heard Camrose say so calmly to her: "I shall see you tomorrow. I have missed you."

"That's nice of you, Georoge," she answered, and once more Stuart caught that balanced and faintly formal thing between them. It was like a ceremony they had learned. He lifted his attention from the pipe and watched George bend forward to salute her with a brief kiss. George was smiling and his comment was faintly malicious.

"Logan disapproves. I see it all over him."

Logan said brusquely: "You ought to do your kissing in private, George. And you ought to do it better."

"Well, Logan, I shall ask you again: Can you do better?"

Stuart took the pipe from his mouth. An impulse rolled through him and made him reckless and then he was smiling down at Camrose and at Lucy. "George," he murmured, "you're making a mistake."

He waited for Lucy's voice to end this nonsense, to settle it at once by a rebuke that would send both of them away. He watched her, expecting it, and saw that it would not come. She had not moved. She was looking at him with her face lifted, her lips motionless. He saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom, he saw the moonlight whiten her throat and he came hard upon her, drawing her toward him with one sharp gesture. Even then he waited for her protest and was astonished that it did not come; and he bent his head and kissed her, and despised George Camrose at the moment. Her mouth was firm when he touched it but the firmness dissolved before his rough handling and a warm wind whirled through him, and he felt the lightly clinging touch of her hands behind his shoulders. She steadied herself and did not pull away.

George Camrose's idle voice came from the outer distance: "You see, Lucy. Rough and clumsy in all that he does. There is no skill to the man at all."

Stuart stepped back. He had his pipe clenched in his hand and he had pressed it against her, and now he wondered if he had hurt her with it. She stared at him, saying nothing at all. Suddenly George Camrose turned down the hill with his laughter coming back in full echo, as though he had witnessed a great joke. He was still laughing when he reached the main street and turned east upon it.

"Logan," murmured Lucy, "I guess I don't like you."

"I should not blame you. Good night."

She reached out and caught his hand. He was sweating and his hand was damp and it embarrassed him that she should discover this. "Wait," she said. "I don't like you when I think of you kissing other women as you did me. Do you know what you'll lead them to believe? Do you know what they'll expect of you?"

"The truth is," he said, "that you and George are both wrong. I have had no affairs with women."

The information seemed to shock her. She looked keenly at him through the darkness, she put a hand on his coat and the sharp pressure of her fingers bit into his arm. "Logan," she whispered. "Oh, Logan." Then she wheeled quickly and went into the house.

Camrose moved through the street's lamp-stained shadows at a rather rapid pace, eager to have his feet under Jack Lestrade's poker table. The scene between Stuart and Lucy had passed out of his head as a thing which, while temporarily amusing, had no importance. He dropped a casual nod to Overmire and Joe Harms in front of Howison's barn, and he stopped a moment before the Bolden & Wilson Express Company's office—of which he was local manager—to try the door's lock and to test the solid wooden shutters which covered the windows. He had just stepped away from the door when a miner came out of Blacker's deadfall across the street's dusty surface, saw him, and came quickly over. "Looking for you," said the miner. "Be all right if you open the safe and let me have the dust I stored with you?"

It was Johnny Steele who had prospected along the Applegate, had left a well-filled poke at the express office for safekeeping, and had announced he would be gone on a trip for a couple of months. Camrose thought, "What the hell brings him back so soon?" and his mind ran rapidly from one excuse to another. Steele saw his hesitation and was somewhat apologetic.

"I realize it is a nuisance at this hour. But I've got some poker to play tonight."

Camrose made a show of agreeableness. "That's all right," he said, and reached for his keys. When he got inside the dark office he lighted a lamp and turned back to Steele. "I'll have to ask you to stay outside while I open this thing. You understand it's a company rule."

"Sure, sure," said Steele and backed from the office.

Camrose locked the door and moved around the counter to the massive safe with its gilded eagles. He crouched down and rapidly twirled the knob, a tighter expression now on his face. When he got the doors open he glanced at the window shutters to reassure himself that they kept out curious eyes, and he rummaged through a heavy layer of buckskin gold pokes—each with its owner's name and the amount of dust it contained attached to it—until he found Steele's. He looked at the tag and rose to lay the poke on the gold scales. "Eight ounces," he said to himself in a toneless murmur.

He looked again into the safe, his mind spurred to extraordinary swiftness by a faint sense of desperation. He thought: "Jackson, no. Bellemyer, Stroud, McIver." McIver. Perhaps. McIver was away down at Kerbytown and probably wouldn't be back for a month. He took up Mclver's pouch, opened it, and was careful to sift out upon the scales only the fine gold. This he transferred to Steele's poke until he was within two ounces of the required weight; then he found a small envelope of particular-shaped nuggets which, in originally borrowing from Steele's poke, he had taken care to remove and save. Now he replaced them at the top of the poke, weighed it again, spilled in a small quantity of additional dust to make the weight correspond with the tag, and cinched it.

Having returned McIver's poke to the safe, he went over to let in Steele. "There you are," he said, and pointed to the miner's poke still lying on the scales.

Steele gave the scales and the tag a casual glance. "Thanks for the trouble," he said, and opened the drawstrings to have a look at the top nuggets; he picked out one with thumb and forefinger. "See that? I remember where I found it. Damnedest thing. It was inside an old Indian skull. Well, I'm obliged. Owe you something?"

"No," said Camrose, "glad to do you the favor," and watched Steele replace the nugget.

Steele's head was bowed over the poke for a moment, and Steele seemed thoughtful, and a smallest expression of puzzlement came to him. Then he cinched up the poke and left the office.

Camrose closed and locked the safe and stood for a moment with his arms on the counter, his face somewhat flushed and preoccupied. He thought: "What did he see that bothered him? What did I do wrong?" A slow fear moved small and distant somewhere within him. Presently he extinguished the light and left the office, locking the door behind him, and continued toward Lestrade's.

Lestrade's cabin was a few hundred yards beyond the settlement, built in a shallow canyon and surrounded by pine timber. When Camrose got to the place he found Neil Howison, Dr. Balance and Lestrade already seated at a poker game. Since they were all old acquaintances who met here almost nightly, there was nothing much to be said by way of greeting. Camrose simply sat down in a chair, received chips and cards, and began to play.

"Where's Logan?" asked Neil Howison.

"Probably asleep. He's going out tomorrow to Scottsburg."

"Always on the move," commented Howison. "I guess I haven't got the energy he's got."

There was a small fire on the fireplace hearth and a pot of coffee suspended from the crane. Mrs. Lestrade sat by the blaze and from his place at the table Camrose watched the flame color her face and increase the mystery he always found upon it. She was, he thought, far too beautiful and polished a woman for these rough parts; she was meant for gentler places and she had come out of far pleasanter surroundings. Faithfully she had followed her husband in his search for health, silently enduring his strange tempers.

"Energy," said Lestrade in a half-mocking voice. "Well, I envy any man the possession of it."

He sat back, the room's heat lightly flushing normally colorless cheeks. He wore a jaded and disillusioned air, as though he understood the world pretty well and had little use for it. His face was of the brittle, narrow and handsome sort and he never failed to keep himself in the best of clothes. Apparently he had money and apparently excellent connections somewhere. His interest in life had pretty well narrowed itself down to a search for health.

"I understand," he said, "that Logan and Honey Bragg were pretty close to a fight."

"Bragg backed down," said Howison. Lestrade showed a tinge of interest. "Never heard of him doing that before."

"I don't understand Logan's interference," said Howison. "He's been around here long enough not to step into another man's quarrel."

Dr. Balance, older than the rest of them, reached for the whisky bottle and poured himself a comfortable jot. Always a busy man, he came here to relax his middle-aged bones, to hide out for a short while from the incessant calls upon him; he had white hair, a well-larded figure and a pair of eyes which had a good deal of power. "It may be," said he in a dry manner, "that he disliked seeing young Blazier slaughtered. The rest of you, being intent on a Roman holiday, perhaps did not consider that point of view."

Howison made his frank admission. "I don't know of anyone around here who cares to meet Bragg. It would be a grisly business."

"A comment on this town," said Balance, "that Stuart should be the only one."

Howison shook his head. "It was an odd approach. I don't recall Logan made any challenge. It was softly done, by George it was. Then it was entirely up to Bragg. I got the distinct feeling there was considerably more to it than what we saw."

Lestrade lifted his head, now definitely interested. "What would that be?"

"I don't know," said Howison.

They played on in this manner, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. Later Lestrade came back to the subject, speaking to Camrose. "Better tell Logan to walk softly with Honey Bragg."

Camrose said: "Let Honey Bragg walk softly."

"Bragg's a sort of friend of mine. You can't fight white man's style against a damned beast. I shouldn't like to see Logan crippled."

"You've got some queer friends," suggested Dr. Balance.

Lestrade said amiably: "I did not say I liked him, or trusted him, or would defend him. I only said he was a friend."

"Good God," said Camrose, "what's your definition of a friend?"

"Any man, I suppose, whose character lends support to my belief that the human race is a great mistake." He was seized with a fit of coughing and bent forward in the chair, his face coloring from the effort. Dr. Balance observed him professionally, but said nothing. Lestrade murmured: "It is always cold and damp. Is there no heat anywhere in the world?"

"You ought to live in the Southwest," said Camrose. He watched Marta Lestrade rise from her chair, turn around the room and pause in a corner. Her hair was silk-fine and as black as the blackest thing in nature; her features in repose were clear and settled and sad. The sadness, he had observed, was a constant thing, tinging every other expression her face revealed. Her eyes touched him and he thought—as he had thought before—that beneath her faithfulness a great fire burned.

"Why run from pillar to post?" said Lestrade. "The day of ending comes soon enough. It might as well come here as elsewhere."

Boots trotted through the night and a fist struck the door, and the door opened to show a miner. "Balance," he said. "There was a cave-in up at Happy Camp. We brought a man in. He's got a crushed chest."

"I'll be there. Go back and get his shirt off."

The miner went away at the same time gait while Balance cashed in his chips. "Marta," he said, "could I have some coffee?"

"You're cool about it," observed Lestrade. "And in no hurry."

The doctor stood up and accepted the coffee. He made a bow to Mrs. Lestrade and sipped at the drink gingerly. "No, I'm not in a hurry. I work long, but I keep a pace. Otherwise I would die. As for the man, if his chest is really crushed there is no need to hurry. I can do little for him. And of course I am cool. Only a fool would get excited." He put the cup down, smiling away the rebuke he now proceeded to give Lestrade. "But although I may be cool, Jack, I am not cynical. If I were an amateur philosopher with time idle on my hands, as you have, I might afford that luxury."

"Why, damn you," said Lestrade with good-natured venom. "Do you mean to say, after all your experience with the sweaty, dirty carcasses of people, their dumb brute follies, their superstitions and ignorances and crooked cheap passions, that you still regard them with any degree of pity or sympathy?"

The doctor's tongue could be sharp when he chose to make it; he made it so now. "You're no realist. You're a dabbler. I know more about people in a minute than you do all year. I know what they're made of and I know what they can do when their resources are strained. I do more than pity them. I respect them." Having said it, he calmly continued sipping his coffee.

"Ah," said Lestrade, with an impatient wave of his hand.

Camrose said: "Death comes sooner if a man gives up. I think you've already made your surrender."

Lestrade stared at him. "You're no better than I am for sympathy. Mostly you are out for George Camrose. You do not waste energy in any other direction."

Camrose smiled. "You may be right. I presume it is fortune we are all after. So then it becomes a matter of how it shall be soonest reached."

Marta Lestrade watched him as he talked. He was conscious of the force of her dark, wary eyes. Lestrade likewise studied him with considerable calculation. "It is a series of figures nicely lined up in your ledger. I wish you luck. It is a brutal world. A world meant for fighting and survival. The Christian virtues are for the meek and mild—to console them in their failures."

"There is a tide," said Camrose, "and the thing is to go with the tide."

"Do not float on this tide too long," warned Lestrade. "The first two years of any mining camp are always the best. After that the slack sets in." He put his arms negligently over the back of his chair. "You are the complete opposite of your friend Stuart."

"He requires different things of this world."

"What does he require?" asked Lestrade.

"A good fight, a good laugh, a good run. He has the common touch. Most people will love him where they will care little for the likes of you or me. Perhaps it is his vitality."

"A pretty sermon," commented Lestrade and rose from his chair. "Pretty enough to put me to bed. But, remember, fortunes are not made on sentiment. Fortunes are made by rude and rough ways. Fortunes are seized, and when you close your hands upon them, you must necessarily smash something else, and somebody else."

"I have dwelt even upon that somewhat," murmured Camrose, still smiling.

Lestrade stood at the doorway of the cabin's second room, seemingly frail in the lamplight, yet humorously contemptuous of frailty. "You have dwelt on many things, apparently."

Howison got up from the table. "It is a dull conversation. The both of you are worrying a dead rabbit around the floor."

"Certaintly they are," said Dr. Balance and laid down his empty cup.

"I'll walk to the camp with you, Doc," said Howison. "I'm of poor sorts tonight."

"What's your trouble?" asked Balance.

"I sent Bill Brown as express to Yreka tonight, carrying considerable gold. I'll feel better when I know he has gotten safely through."

Balance stood a moment, watching Lestrade and Camrose with his dissecting attention; it was as if he had seen symptoms of a sort about these men and now took the time to hunt down causes. Presently his lips folded together and with a nod at the room he turned out of the place with Howison.

Lestrade, posed at the edge of the cabin's adjoining room, smiled faintly at Camrose. "The doctor does not like us tonight," he observed. He made a graceful flourish of his hand toward his wife, said, "Entertain our guest, Marta," and closed the door behind him.

Mrs. Lestrade placed her back to the fire and drew both hands behind her, the effect of which was to pull her body straight and slim within her dress. She looked across to him and he thought he observed once more the suppressed rebellion within her. "Do you believe all the strange things you've been saying?" she said.

"As between men I do," he said. He rose and walked toward her, excited by her. "As for a man and a woman..."

He was not certain of himself, or of her. He paused, on the edge of daring, on the verge of adventure. She seemed to be waiting for him to continue; her silence pushed him forward as much as anything else. He turned back and got his hat and said, "I shall be going." Then he came before her again and struggled with the notion of seizing her and kissing her. It occurred to him she must be seeing that impulse in him, but if she saw it she made no attempt to restrain him. He held himself tightly together, his voice dropped low. "Who knows what happens between a man and a woman? It can't be explained. Good night."

He swung and left the house. Mrs. Lestrade moved around the room, picking up the dishes on the table. The inner door opened and Les-trade appeared there, watching his wife with an odd critical glance. "Gone already?"

"Had you expected him to stay?"

He had become a harder man, merely by his passage in and out of the other room. There was a sharpness on him now to replace his former weary invalid's manner. He took his hat from its wall nail and moved to the door, Marta's glance following him. She said: "To Bragg's?"

"Yes," he said. "Marta—be nice to Cam-rose."

"Why?" she asked. "So that he will keep coming here to lose more money?"

He searched her face and weighed her darkly reserved manner. It amused him to say: "When I am dead he might make you an excellent marriage."

"At least," she answered, "it would be a marriage."

Balance and Howison walked in complete silence all the way to the middle of town, at which point the doctor turned toward his office. Howison called after him: "See you tomorrow night for another game."

Balance paused and turned about and shook his head. It occurred to Howison that the doctor carried something in his head which he had not meant to speak of, and it was clear that he overcame some doubts in order to say what he at last did say. "No, Neil. Not tomorrow night. Nor the night after—or any other night."

"Quitting poker?"

"At that place, yes. I would advise you to do the same."

"The conversation bored me, too, Doc. But it was a passing thing."

"Neil," said Balance, "I should like to tell you something. Our friend does not have consumption."

"What is it, then?" asked Howison.

"That is the point. He by no means is an invalid."

Howison had the extreme desire to question the doctor further, but before he could do so Balance swung and moved on to his office.