Читать книгу Trail Town - Ernest Haycox - Страница 6

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THE near doorway of The Pride was empty, the onlooking Texans having moved back along the street and along the saloon wall. As Mitchell reached the doorway he cast one glance behind him and his eyes lifted and he saw Sherry Gault framed in her window on the second floor of Webber's House. Every thought in him had been fixed on the chore ahead but now one sweep of feeling took him away from this night so that the shape of her body, full and rounded and still, caught all his imagination and all his desires until there was no other thing which greatly mattered. He had known her for a year, had seen her frequently, had now and then spoken to her; but this night it was as though, long looking at the cold and distant brightness of a star, he saw that star blaze and fall and fill the sky.

In the deeper shadows he heard a familiar voice call, "Wait—wait," and that sound brought him all the way back to Race Street. Turning, he found Tom Leathers in the middle dust of the street, watching this scene with a practiced eye; for Tom Leathers, long his close friend and once his riding companion in younger days, was a man who had seen sin in its many forms and knew the shape of it from memory. Leathers was laughing as though this night amused him, but even in his laughter was the small metal strike of temper rising to the occasion.

"Wait for what?" asked Mitchell.

"Why," said Leathers, letting his smile grow, "I just wanted to ask you if I could get drunk."

To the Texans massed along The Pride's outer wall he was only a lone man, moved by no serious purpose. Mitchell knew him better. Tom Leathers had warned him to use a little caution and now, as he smiled and spoke, Tom Leathers looked at the Texans on the street with his bright, guileless smile and searched them for trouble.

"I guess," said Mitchell, "you know the way to do it."

"Why," called Leathers, enjoying himself, "I have looked on the flowers of nature and I have listened to the little brook and I have smelled me the smell of summer in the hills and I am a virtuous man on the edge of embracing the wicked temptations of this here Babylon."

"You're full of hot air, which is worse than whisky," Mitchell told him and turned to The Pride's door. He stood in the outflashed beam of light, facing The Pride's long barroom. The piano music went on, without much melody, and Charley Fair stood at the bar with a few of his horsemen around him, vainly waiting for the crowd to march up for the offered free drink. The Texas trail hands made a wall across the room and they faced the doorway and they were waiting. The redhead puncher stood behind that wall.

He turned from the doorway and walked to Briar. Behind him, Tom Leathers's voice issued its mild reflection: "I will just get a temporary smell." Swinging into Briar, Mitchell looked back and saw that Leathers now strolled idly toward The Pride as though nothing mattered. Mitchell walked swiftly down the Briar Street side of The Pride and came to the saloon's rear door, which was closed; he opened it, coming into Charley Fair's back office and laid a hand on the inner door's knob, turning it and pulling the door wide. When he stepped through it he was behind the crowd and he was close by the redhead puncher.

"All right," he said. "Come with me."

The redhead wheeled, half lifting a hand, and the nearest men pivoted and somebody yelled, "Anchor!" The piano stopped and Cap Ryker's voice rolled out its massive thunder: "Knock him down—knock him down!" Cap Ryker was near the bar. Charley Fair reached out a hand to restrain him but the huge Texan came through the crowd, tearing a broad pathway and roaring as he rushed. He had not checked his gun with the barkeep and now, ten feet from Mitchell, he reached for it. Mitchell knocked the redhead aside. He jumped at Cap Ryker and brought the barrel of his own gun overhand and cracked it across Cap Ryker's temple. Cap Ryker fell like a mountain landslide, the sound of his collapse running back throughout the great hall.

The redhead cried, "Somebody got a gun! Shoot this proud—!" All these Texans were moving in on Mitchell; they swayed in a slow mass, not yet fully gathered for a run. The redhead started a second yell.

Mitchell reached back and caught the redhead at the shirt collar, pulling him in. He slid the crook of his arm around the redhead's neck and bent the redhead backward, slowly cutting off the man's cry, slowly strangling him, slowly twisting his spine. He dropped the redhead, hearing that man's great gasp. He said, "You boys have had your fun. Now the town's closed for the night. Kill your lights, Charley, and shut up the bar."

Charley Fair said, "Wait—"

"Turn out those lights," said Mitchell. He watched the crowd; he felt its hatred as a scorching heat. But he had stopped trouble dead, he had tied this crowd up. Having done so, now he had to get it in motion again, toward the doors. Charley Fair's housemen moved around the walls, turning down the lights until half darkness came.

Mitchell said, "Sorry, Red. You bucked the tiger on the wrong night." He watched the redhead pull himself from the floor, but from the edge of his vision he noticed the slow shift of the men in front of him. Some of the Anchor outfit came up to take care of Cap Ryker who lay senseless still, and a hole appeared in the crowd. Mitchell moved into it and walked out across the room and into the street.

Leathers murmured softly, "That's luck," and continued to watch the saloon with his steady eye.

Trouble had telegraphed itself all through the town. Men remained along both sides of Race, listening and watching. The music in The Dream had quit and the women there clustered around the corner of Ute Street, the sequins of their dresses glittering in the light. The buckskin stood in its tracks, its ears lifting when Mitchell moved from The Pride. Mitchell stepped into the saddle and waited.

Light died from The Pride's windows and men moved out. He watched them drift along the walk and scatter toward their racked ponies. He watched them swing up. But they stood fast, waiting for another break and eager for it, and somebody called in a steady, hard voice, "Anchor, come here."

Cap Ryker rolled out of The Pride with two men giving him a hand. He stopped on the street to pull himself together and he saw Mitchell above him on the buckskin. He looked long at the marshal, never speaking, and moved on. All the outfits were collected and the riot and revel had gone completely from Race Street, leaving it dismal. Cap Ryker climbed to his saddle and took up his reins. He swung half around, facing Mitchell, and his voice began to roar.

"Now I'll tell you something, friend! This is what I say and I swear on my mother's memory! I am going back down the trail. I am going to spread the name of this dirty, crooked, miserable, cheating hellhole, and I am going to spread your name. And I will be back before the month is out. Before the month is out this town will be dead—and so will you! Anchor—come on!"

The outfit whirled away. One by one, other outfits and other groups trotted down Race, turned the corner of The Drovers', and were gone. Presently Race was empty and the music had entirely faded and the lights went out one by one. Charley Fair came from his place and looked up at Mitchell.

"This time, Mitchell, you went too far."

"Figure out a better way."

"You buffaloed the wrong man. He's no cowhand to be kicked around. You did a lot of damage."

"Figure out a better way," repeated Mitchell, and rode up the street to the jail office. Ad Morfitt stood in the doorway.

"You're early," said Mitchell.

"Midnight," grumbled Morfitt. "Sounded like there was some fun going on."

"Another night." Mitchell went into the jail office and walked over to unlock the cell.

Hazelhurst came out complaining. "Damned vile smell in there."

"The smell of sin," said Mitchell.

Morfitt turned in the doorway. "Man's only got so much luck in the bank. Your account is gettin' small, Dan."

Hazelhurst said, "The odds are wrong."

Mitchell hung up his gun. "Your town, Ad," he said, and moved toward the doorway. The twelve-hour pull, with all its action, had tired him. He didn't know it, but his nerves were wire-tight. He looked back at Hazelhurst, smiling. "You know a better game, George?" he asked, and moved into the street.

From her window, Sherry Gault had closely watched everything occurring on the street, and had guessed at the scene inside Charley Fair's saloon. Mitchell alone had broken up the crowd, alone had emptied the town. Perhaps Balder and Fair laid down the rules but to her logical mind it was Mitchell who made the game work. This man had power and power was a thing she greatly admired. It was one thing to be farseeing and scheming and tirelessly shrewd, as was Ford Green; it was another thing to sit on a horse in the middle of Race Street and look out on a mass of men, gambling with every passing moment, and at last breaking those men to a stronger will. Reluctantly, Sherry Gault gave Dan Mitchell credit for his strength. And then as he wheeled from Race Street into Briar her admiration changed to scornful anger. One moment great in her eyes, he now became common and unadmirable. For she knew, as the whole town knew, that when his night's tour was done he turned toward Big Annie's. Methodical in all things, he was methodical in this.

"You fool," Sherry Gault said aloud, "you cheap fool." And standing quite still, she was astonished that he had the power to make her angry.

Mitchell took the buckskin to Brinton's stable and returned to pass down Race. Ad Morfitt at this moment moved along the lower end of the street, a stolid, unimaginative night watchman setting forth upon his weary rounds. In the space of a quarter hour River Bend had made the full swing from sound and fury to an impoverished stillness through which Ad Morfitt's boots beat up dismal echoes. Here and there saloonmen stood before their establishments to catch the night air and the gamblers strolled down to The Drovers' for a late game themselves. Mitchell entered Briar, reached Bismarck Alley, and let himself into Big Annie's house without knocking. Tom Leathers had preceded him and now sat in the ornate parlor, idly tinkering with a little jug that gave out music when lifted. This parlor reflected Big Annie's tastes—its red-rose-spattered rug, its ebony Chinese chairs, and its mirrors all gilt and cupid-strewn—and it had been bought from the ample revenues of The Dream dance hall which Big Annie owned.

Somewhere in the back of the house Big Annie's raw Irish voice called: "I'll be in."

Deep in a chair, Tom Leathers relaxed and beamed like a brother. "You sure ran that string right down to the frayed end."

"One more night," said Mitchell and let all his muscles go idle.

"This is sure one giddy palace," observed Leathers. "One jump from sagebrush to the loot of Chinese emperors." He was pleased with the fancy. He was a healthy man with a fair smooth face and a shrewd eye. His seeming youngness and his complete attitude of "I don't give a damn" were an excellent mask for a tough, quick-witted fighter. The gleam of affability and sound good humor in his brown eyes was real, but he had a bottom beyond that, made of rock.

"You're a stranger in town," said Mitchell.

"Got tired of being pure and uncontaminated. Thought I'd steep myself in sin for a couple of days." He grinned whitely at Mitchell. "You look thin. Sorrows and cares of the world have got you down. Burdens on your shoulders. What's a free man doing in harness when he don't have to be?"

"Don't know," Mitchell said. With this man in older days he had ridden the desert and searched the hills. The memory of that freedom and irresponsibility came to him now as a strong, raw wind. He had not known until this moment of contrast how completely Race Street imprisoned him. After a twelve-hour tour he felt dry, like an apple run through the mill. He spoke softly, begrudging Leathers's freedom: "You damned saddle bum."

"Last night," drawled Leathers, knowing this would sting, "I spread my blanket on Cabin Creek. I hooked a trout for supper and built me a fire and rolled in the blankets. I heard a big bullfrog honk. There was a bear a-gruntin' in the thicket. And I got to thinkin' of a fellow I rode with once. But he turned proud and went to town and took to packin' a star and now there's a crease down the middle of his eyes from waiting for somebody to dry-gulch him. The man's a fool. Life's mighty sweet when you take it as she comes."

"Sand in your boots," said Mitchell. "Holes in your socks. You've got dyspepsia from your own cooking. If life's so damned sweet why come to town? Don't sit there and lie to me."

"I sleep well," pointed out Leathers, "and I don't have to watch any alleys when I ride by."

They bickered amiably until Big Annie came in with a jug of hot water, a bowl of sugar, and a whisky bottle. She put these things on a table and mixed a toddy for both men and one for herself. She took a chair and reached down and removed her shoes and greatly sighed. As she sipped her drink she kept her eyes on Mitchell. The study of man was Big Annie's trade, from which she had grown rich and powerful in this town, knowing as much of its politics as any man. Liking Dan, she had on occasion dropped stray pieces of information which had served him well. Now she said:

"Charley Fair won't love you for what happened tonight. Neither will the storekeepers. You'll hear from Ed Balder. The Texans will hate you more—and so you have pleased nobody."

"Just like him," said Leathers. "Nothin' small about the things he does. Whole hog. Large and fancy and complete."

Big Annie, being twenty years older than Mitchell, spoke to him as a son. "A peace officer never has any real friends. He's always in the middle. Now if you were a politician you'd join up outright with one side or the other and be safe, as long as your side was safe. But no, you play it alone. You ought to get out."

"Sure," chimed in Leathers, "he has got to share the burdens of the universe."

Mitchell grinned at these good friends, slowly relaxing and losing the tension of the day. It was for this reason he came to Big Annie's at the end of his long tour. This woman asked no favors. Here he might sit and drink his toddy and smoke his night cigar and feel no need of vigilance. Riding the streets of River Bend from noon to midnight, a man grew cold and aloof, he became an animal on the prowl with every muscle drawn and every nerve strained. He grew to look upon people with suspicion until all faith in human nature went away. So now he sat in this big chair and nursed back his faith and his sense of humor and his ease.

She said, "You're in the middle. This town is two sides, Balder's side and Charley Fair's side. It's like two bulls in the same pasture. You're the man keeping them apart. But someday they'll meet, head down, and you'll be caught between the horns."

"That's right," he said, still smiling at her. "This is a good drink, Annie."

"Ah," she said, "you're proud. You think you can ride between the factions. So has many another man. Sooner or later one side will get too strong, and then the fight will come and you will be caught in it and you'll be alone, neither side helping you."

"This town is mine," he told her, "until some man comes along who can bring on the fight."

"He'll come, Dan."

"Why," said Mitchell, "he's here now but he's not ready."

"Who's that?"

"Ford Green."

Big Annie thought about it, wrinkling her homely face. "Maybe. I don't trust quiet men. But how will he do it, and what does he want?"

"Don't know yet," said Mitchell.

The girls from The Dream, done with work, came into the house and moved up the stairs in their short, bright dresses. Having smiled steadily during the night, they were weary of smiling now; having danced through four solid hours with the wild and clumsy Texans, they had no present interest in men and glanced incuriously at Mitchell and Leathers and went on up to their quarters.

Leathers, always cheerful and self-possessed, suffered an odd change. He sat low in the chair, growing grave. He watched these girls and he watched the door and presently when a last girl came in and paused before them, Leathers sighed quietly to himself and dropped his eyes to the toddy glass.

Mitchell said, "Better have a toddy, Rita."

She was slim, with black hair pulled back from a round, pale and lost face. She said, "No," in a disinterested voice.

Mitchell said, "You want to walk out in the sun and put on some color."

"Why?" she asked. She watched Mitchell, as though she really wanted to know if he had an answer for that. She had not looked at Leathers, but in a little while, with a rather deliberate effort, she turned her attention to him and said, "Hello."

Without his smile, Leathers had a sharp pair of eyes, and it seemed to Mitchell, who observed this scene with his interest hidden, that Rita was afraid of Leathers and made herself look at him out of effort. Mitchell had noticed this before and had also noticed that Leathers's laughter and easy humor always dried up before her.

"Guess you'd be tired," said Leathers, just making talk.

"Oh," she said indifferently, "I suppose," and turned away from them. She walked up the stairs slowly, her hand pulling on the banister. Leathers stared at that stairway after she had gone. He had forgotten his drink.

Mitchell got up. "What's troubling her, Annie?"

Big Annie, a talkative woman when she chose to be, could also be reserved; and it was a point of pride with her that she took care of her girls and neither talked about them nor permitted talk about them. So she only said, "Didn't notice she was."

Mitchell drawled, "Good night," and left Big Annie's, Leathers trailing behind. Down Briar, Leathers stopped and murmured, "See you later," and faded away. Warmed by the toddy, Mitchell came to Race and aimed for Webber's. The night was soft and warm and the town silent and as he strolled forward he saw Sherry Gault's room lights die. He moved up the stairway to his own room and went to bed and for a little while his mind played over every scene of the day, selecting those things which had a meaning and putting them in a back part of his head; and then he remembered Sherry Gault as she had been silhouetted against the light of her window earlier in the evening and one fresh, strong wave of imagination tumbled his other thoughts away. And so he fell asleep.

Leathers returned to Bismarck and stopped at the back end of The Pride. He built a cigarette and lighted it, the match a startling burst in the alley's dark. He heard Ad Morfitt plugging up the alley and he spoke in a casual voice, so as not to take Ad by surprise: "Evenin', Ad."

Morfitt said, "Don't you ever sleep?" and went on.

Leathers settled against The Pride's wall and looked up at the second floor of Big Annie's, and had his own long, wondering thoughts.

At seven-thirty in the morning, crossing from Webber's to the stable, Mitchell met Ad Morfitt at the mouth of Bismarck Alley. Morfitt gave him a sleepy look and continued on; but in a moment he swung back. "Jett Younger came in with four of his crowd about three o'clock this mornin'. Still here—at Thacker's Lodging House. Rode up in a hell of a hurry."

Mitchell went on to the stable. He saddled the gray road horse, turned through Willow and Antelope and struck out across the flats toward the Aspen Hills. Not more than a mile ahead of him another rider raked up a steady dust, traveling at a lope. The gray had the morning bit in his mouth and went on at a first great run, eating up the interval, and presently the rider ahead looked around and drew in. Coming abreast, Mitchell lifted his hat to Sherry Gault.

The early air had brought strong color to her cheeks. She sat quite straight on the sidesaddle and her glance forced its reserve steadily against him. She said in a neutral voice, "Since we are going the same way we might as well ride together."

"That's the reason I let the gray have its head."

Always she had for him that mixture of interest and repulsion, as though she were drawn by certain qualities she saw and yet could not wholly believe them. He turned beside her and for half a mile they rode on in silence. Sun struck the surface of Spanish Fork's water in bright, slanting flashes and changed the color of the creases in the nearing Aspen Hills. They came upon the footslopes of the hills, rising with the loops of the dirt road.

She said, "Do you know just what your job is in that town?"

"Yes."

"Do you really know?" She spoke in a slightly different tone, less friendly. "Your job was described to me last night by a man who called you a chore boy for Ed Balder and Charley Fair." She was never less than blunt to him, her talk consistently warmed or chilled by an emotion toward him that he could not define.

"Probably right," he agreed.

"If I were a man I would rather be called a scoundrel or a thief. Anything but that."

"Maybe," he said. He was easy in the saddle, the sunlight reaching beneath his hat and painting its stain on the dark tan of his jaw. He had his own rough temper and when he looked directly at her she saw an expression that brought up her full guard. But he had nothing to offer and so she spoke again.

"You run through a good deal of danger on that street at night. What holds you to a job in which you are not your own master? If you must fight for something, why not for something of your own?"

"Pride," he said. "The same kind you have."

"And it permits you to spend time in Big Annie's?"

He had never had a woman speak so plainly to him and for a moment he was embarrassed and showed it. The words had come out of Sherry Gault in a kind of thoughtless haste and when he turned he noticed her color deepen; she had rather shocked herself. "Big Annie," he said, "is one of my best friends. I go there because she likes my company and I like hers. She asks for nothing and her place is safe."

"Safe?" said Sherry Gault.

"Maybe the wrong word. Should have said a refuge. A refuge from Race Street and the Charley Fairs and Ed Balders of the town."

They were on the Aspen grade, climbing slowly around its turns. Near the summit she turned on him again. "Why did you want to overtake me?"

"Last night," he said, "I saw you standing in the window."

He added nothing to it. At the top of the grade, at the turnoff to his own ranch, he pulled in and removed his hat. But Sherry Gault said, "What else?"

"Every man sees his own kind of beauty." He smiled, and ceased to smile. The guard was up in her eyes again and she looked at him with an expression she had shown him so many times before, full of dislike and some scorn and yet with an interest she could not suppress. Then he dryly added, "Tough on me, but you are the kind of beauty I see nowhere else. No other woman possesses it for me."

From the moment he had first met this girl he had guessed her depth. No woman could show the world so much pride without having somewhere the power of great emotions. In her eyes and lips lay flexible capacities carefully controlled—as though she feared to reveal herself. Now he had a view of the undertow of her spirit. Startled by his direct words, she forgot her reserve and looked upon him with the full-open eyes of a woman momentarly and completely engrossed.

"From you," she said in a wondering tone.

"From the man who rides in dust and deals in the grime of other people. From the man who may be Ed Balder's chore boy or Charley Fair's crook."

She threw her question at him: "Are you either of those things?"

"I ride the town twelve hours a day. Nobody knows what I am and nobody will know until the town breaks up."

"Will it break up?"

"Nothing stays half one thing and half another. It will break."

"And where will you stand then?"

He said, "We were talking of what a hungry man sees in a woman, Sherry."

She dropped her eyes and her lips moved and pressed together. When she again looked at him she was once more hiding behind reserve. "Don't say that to me again."

"I probably will."

She had on riding-gloves. Suddenly she removed the glove from her left hand and held it out, showing the engagement ring on her finger. This was her answer, but he shook his head. "That makes no difference to me."

"In some things," she told him, very carefully choosing her words, "I admire you. Last night, watching you on Race Street, I thought you were a great man—until you turned into Bismarck. For a little while you were all that a man should be. But this job has left its scars on you. Some of the deception and brutality and looseness you see all day has gotten into you. When you speak to me as you do now it is as though you laid the barrel of your gun over my head." She was on the edge of real anger. "Go tell Ford Green what you have said to me."

"I will," he answered. "I will, today."

She gave him a half-startled glance. The anger dissolved. "No, don't do it. You have enemies enough."

"It won't be adding another. He's my enemy now."

"How did you know that?"

"The man's ambitious. What does he want?"

"I'll let him tell you that, in his own good time." She straightened in the saddle. "I like ambitious men. I like men who go after the things they want I don't like men who are content to ride through their days without effort."

His body threw a shadow across her. Sometimes, as at present, he seemed taller and heavier than she supposed him to be. His face had its heavy, solid bones covered by a skin deeply tanned and without a wrinkle. When he smiled—and he was smiling now—he seemed very young and in his eyes was his approval of her and a clear, bold expression of want.

She said, rather hurriedly, "Don't ride with me again, please. It might lead Ford to think the wrong things."

Now he was pleased and let out a great, long laugh. He dipped his hat to her, watching resentment cover her cheeks. She was really angry. He said, "I'll ride with you again some other day," and took the trail toward his ranch.