Читать книгу Riders of the Night - Eugene Cunningham - Страница 6

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‘So!’ Burk meditated, heading for the Blue Front Mercantile Store of Rufe Redden. ‘Mr. Lance Gregg’s the Power behind the Throne on the Y, these days—the throne Myra’s been talking as if she filled with much pain and unease of mind ... That’s evident when Mr. Gregg dismisses me—half-owner of the outfit—from his supervisory considerations. He will look into the matter of stuff lifted out of our headquarters pasture. He will decide the steps to be taken. Will he, now? I think something’s due for a change—if there’s any possibility of a change doing anything, accomplishing anything, at this late day ...’

He fished in a coat-pocket for a cigarette. His hand brought out, with the package, something pink. A slow smile twisted his tight mouth as he looked down at the fluffy rosette. He stopped short and stared blindly at the false front of Redden’s. Not the weathered planks of the Blue Front, but the hard, bright, prettiness of a girl, he saw. Soundlessly, he shaped a name.

Elinor ... She was a looker—and a lot of fun. She had helped a lot to enliven the long trip from the East; helped to soften the bitter resentment with which he had dropped his pleasant way of living at school, to come and see what pieces were left of his property. Good-looking ... wise ... played poker like a man ... better than some men! For she had helped to thin that roll which was the last of his ready money. He could see her as she leaned from the observation platform there at Cottonwood Crossing, waving at him, smiling with something like promise, then bending quickly, lifting a shapely leg, to fling that garter to him ...

‘I like you lots, Big Boy! ... And I’d like to like you lots better ... I’ll be in San Antonio, at the Gunter, for two weeks ... Put a few cows in your pocket and come to see me ...’

He shook dark head vaguely and jerked his eyes down to look with distaste at Yatesville’s main street. After all, what was there, particularly, to hold him here? The Y was going to hell, if it hadn’t already gone! If he tried taking hold, there would be Myra, prompted by that big, too-good-looking sharpshooter, Lance Gregg ... Bucking him at every turn; unpleasant to deal with ... On the other hand, there was Elinor ... and San Antone ... plenty of other places ... an easy, pleasant life, with for spending the amount of money he ought to get for his interest in the ranch, rundown as it was ...

‘I don’t know why I have to be a cowman, simply because the old man was,’ he told himself. ‘And, what’s worse, a busted cowman! Which seems to be my fate if I stick here and don’t pull out what I can from the wreckage ...’

He turned on his heel and stared downstreet to where the faded sign of Pinckney Lathrop announced dealings in ranch lands and city properties. He hesitated briefly. Even to think of cutting loose from the Y was a wrench. Then he stepped out with face set stubbornly. He walked briskly toward Lathrop’s door and upon the threshold made no pause at all. He walked inside the long, dingy office and back to where Pinck’ sat with hunched shoulders rounding above folded papers with gilt seals, buzz-buzzing their contractual language to himself like a country scholar in the first reader.

‘Hello, Pinck’!’ Burk greeted the agent.

Lathrop turned from the littered old roll-top desk, to peer suspiciously over rimless half-spectacles with small, marble-hard blue eyes. He nodded with recognition of Burk.

‘Hello, young feller. Come home to go to work, huh? About time—if mebbe not time enough ...’

Burk pulled up the wired kitchen chair to sit across from Pinck’, straddling the seat, arms upon the back and chin on arms.

‘Looks like that, huh? Well ... Suppose it looked to be—oh, too much work, for a man who’s known something better?’

Pinck’ stared at him fixedly. His pink, round face was far too small for his gigantic body, just as it was too small for his elephantine ears. But the almost hairless skull was large enough to hold the shrewdest brain in that wide scope of country. Burk knew that, both by hearsay and observation.

‘Oh!’ Pinck’ grunted after a long silence. ‘Oh! Thinkin’ about sellin’ out, huh? Who to—if you don’t mind tellin’? If there’s any money loose in this neighborhood, I would appreciate directions to it. I never seen times so hard around here. But, o’ course, you got Eastern friends an’ I hear they have got some money back there. I’ll be glad to draw up the papers for you, Burk. I ain’t made a dollar in six months.’

‘I haven’t got any prospects lined up,’ Burk snapped impatiently. ‘Myra would buy——’

‘Jawbone, huh?’ Pinck’ nodded contemptuously. ‘Reckon she would have to jawbone me for the price o’ transferrin’ papers. An’ you’d get paid—yeh! in pork!’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Burk scowled. ‘She’s naturally due first chance—if I decide to sell at all. But what would be the use of selling, except to get money! You haven’t got anybody on your lists? Of course, the Y’s rundown to some extent, but hardly enough to cut the price of it—except on the stock. That’s been eaten away, I know, while I was gone——’

‘Ha-ha! Ha-ha!’ Pinck’ barked unpleasantly, glaring at him. ‘I reckon you ain’t looked hard at the Y, lately! It ain’t worth thirty per cent—no, not twenty per cent!—o’ what it was one time. Ol’ Burk an’ Duke Yarborough could’ve sold out one time for a hundred thousand——’

‘A hundred and seventy-five thousand,’ Burk corrected him. ‘I have that tale by heart, you know, Pinck’. They asked two-twenty-five—and didn’t really want to sell at that figure. So don’t try hoorahing me. What could I get for my half, today?’

‘Derned if I know,’ Pinck’ shrugged. ‘ ’Course, I’ll act for you, Burk. I’ll try to hunt up a buyer—that’s my business. An’ I’ll try to sting him for all the hide’ll stand—that’s to my interest because it boosts my five per cent. But don’t go off with no comical notions about what the Y’s worth to a outsider. I don’t want to hunt you up a buyer an’ start dickerin’ an’ then have you howl about the price!’

‘But what would you ask?’ Burk snapped. ‘I’m not going to give you carte blanche—a free hand—to sell me out at any figure you might set. I admit that the Y’s rundown to a certain extent—but that doesn’t affect the land and improvements. I’ll tell you what I’ll do ... I’ll take—sixty thousand for my interest, if you can get me a sizable chunk of cash. If that’s not lowering my sights——’

‘Six-ty—thous-and!’ Pinck’ gasped. He shook his head until one temple of his spectacles came out from behind even his enormous ear. ‘Why—you ain’t got no more chance o’ gettin’ any such ridiculous figure than—than——I told you, Burk, you don’t know what you’re up ag’inst! Now, if you’d said “twenty thousand”——’

‘Don’t be silly! Forty thousand for the Y! I hate to tell you, Pinck’, but you’re right on the edge of giving me a pain in the neck!’

‘I could ask fifty,’ Pinck’ said slowly. ‘If you’d take thirty—providin’ I could squeeze the feller up to that...’

He turned swiftly, reminding Burk of a snake writhing toward its hole. From a pigeonhole of the desk he snatched a bunch of letters and hunted through the stack until he found one in a long envelope. Holding this so that Burk could not see the faces of the pages, he read deliberately. Then he lifted his head and stared blankly at the fly-specked Winchester calendar on the wall. At last, he nodded as to himself.

‘Burk! I got a man might be ribbed up to buyin’. He is—well, I ain’t spillin’ much about him, but I don’t mind tellin’ you he’s a Englishman with plenty money. He wanted a ranch, but not one like the Y. Not a half-interest in one, neither. But mebbe I could iron that out... It’d be cash! All cash! If you’ll take thirty thousand, you can have the money tomorrow! I will pay it to you an’ take my chance on this Englishman! Now, what d’you say?’

Burk shook his head. In his mind’s eye, he could see grim Ol’ Burk Yates standing there beside Pinck’ Lathrop. It was a vivid visualization. He could see that hard-handed pioneer swelling wrathfully, ready for one of his famous explosions. To sell the Yates name out of the famous Y ... To sell at all was bad enough—his father would have thought. But to sell the sweat and the blood and the brains poured into the big ranch for a picayunish thirty thousand dollars——

‘No!’ he said thickly. ‘Hell, no!’

His hand went mechanically to coat-pocket. He fished out the limp cigarette pack and took from it the single remaining cigarette. He put hand to pocket again, hunting a match. His hand touched the garter, and Pinck’, watching him, frowned slightly. For Burk’s sullen face had altered. There was something of uncertainty about it, now.

‘Thirty thousand ...’ Burk was thinking, abruptly. ‘You can cover a lot of territory—have a tolerably full time—on thirty thousand, cash ... Elinor ... “Come get the other one ...” ’

‘No!’ he said again, explosively, jerking hand from pocket without the match. ‘If your Englishman has plenty of money, then he can pay a fair price. I’ll drop to fifty thousand, but not a dime less! And that’s final, Pinck’!’

He stood up so suddenly that the old chair fell over. He picked it up and skated it back against the wall. He lowered at Pinck’, whose smooth little face was infinitely calculating.

‘It won’t be thirty thousand—for either one o’ you—in six months,’ Pinck’ said softly. ‘Way things are goin’—if you could stick an’ work like hell, it’d take years to build back to anything like the old valuation, Burk. An’—mebbe you wouldn’t get a chance to spend them years workin’ ... You heard about—Shorty Willets ...’

‘That’s not bothering me!’ Burk snarled. ‘But I’m willing to sell out—to get out of this damned country—away from these damned people—if I can get a fair price! You tell your Englishman what I’m asking.’

‘Not a bit o’ use. With the conditions bein’ different, anyway, from what he wants, he wouldn’t pay no such price. But—Burk ... I’ll do all I can to sell for you. An’—don’t talk to nobody about the deal bein’ under way, huh?’

‘Hell! I’m not proud of it!’ Burk shrugged sulkily, over his shoulder. ‘Unless you talk, nobody will.’

On the sidewalk he looked once more at Rufe Redden’s. He wondered if Turkey Adkins would be around Rufe’s. If anybody could hand out facts about conditions, it would be Turkey. Anything the grim, independent little rooster gave forth would be the simon-pure quill. He thought of Rufe Redden, too.

He had known the big, blustering storekeeper all his life. Rufe was fifteen years his senior, but he had always been friendly enough with Ol’ Burk’s son and heir. He went up the street and into the store. Rufe, standing well back behind the counter, looked up at him, stared steadily for a long minute, then nodded without cordiality.

‘You back?’ he grunted. ‘School ain’t out already?’

‘For me it is,’ Burk said grimly. ‘For all time. Rufe—it looks to me as if things around here had certainly got into a sweet mess! Funny—a salty population like the people in Yates County, letting a gang of sneaking thugs like this One-Gang buffalo ’em and ride roughshod over everybody and everything!’

‘You been away at school, ain’t you?’ Rufe nodded expressionlessly. ‘Seems like I heard you had. Pennsylvania ... That is right smart of a way from Yatesville, ain’t it?’

Burk reddened angrily. He could guess what Rufe was thinking; which would be what the majority of the oldtimers in the country were thinking—or had long thought: That with his father’s death he should have forgotten such youthful things as going to school; should have stepped into the position left vacant by Ol’ Burk’s going; should have begun—in short—to act a man. Yates County found it hard to understand a man going to school. It branded him as a kid. Unreasonable, of course, but Ol’ Burk, he knew, had owned pretty much the same notion.

‘Don’t rub that in!’ he said irritably and uncomfortably. ‘I only had until the end of this term, to finish. I naturally thought that, with Turkey and Shorty to handle things, the Y’d rock along as well without me as with me. But with Myra’s letter of a week or so ago, I began to see that conditions were a lot worse than I’d dreamed; that I’d better come back and try to protect the Y or—or do something.’

Rufe moved without answer up the inner side of the counter. From a shelf by the door he got his blackened corncob pipe and a package of tobacco. He rammed Mail Pouch into the bowl, staring out across the street with belligerent blue eyes angry under shaggy red brows. There was the flick of a match and the sucking sound of smoke drawn through dirty stem.

‘Stop the stealin’ or—sell out,’ said Rufe at last.

Burk, moving mechanically up beside him, looking mechanically the way Rufe was looking, also saw the two standing before the Star Hotel across and down the street. His dark brows drew together slightly. Myra certainly seemed to have a case on that big swaggerer ... He had her hand and she was smiling up at him. Of course, it was nothing in the world to him; Myra was nothing but his partner in the Y; that she happened to be a girl, instead of a man—well, it was nothing but accident; certainly, it changed nothing. He thought of Elinor’s provocative face ...

Lance Gregg lifted wide-rimmed Stetson with that air he managed to get into his every action. He left Myra and came swinging along, toward the store, but on the far side of the street.

‘Sell out,’ Rufe repeated slowly. ‘To Lance Gregg, huh?’

‘That’s two of you to say that! Turkey said it, too. Now, what’s the idea? What makes you think that Gregg wants the Y?’

‘Who else’d buy?’ Rufe drawled. ‘For money, I mean. Myra ain’t got a nickel.’

Burk scowled from the storekeeper to Gregg’s big figure. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. For Lance Gregg’s course was straight for the office-door of Pinckney Lathrop. Burk thought rapidly and when Gregg turned into Lathrop’s he made a small grunting sound.

‘I—wonder!’ he said aloud. ‘It seemed funny’—he told himself after a moment—‘for Pinck’ to offer to buy with just a vague prospect of selling to his “Englishman” ... I do wonder!’

He turned again to Rufe and asked for smoking material.

‘You’ll have to go down to Judge Amblet’s,’ Rufe grunted, without looking at him. ‘Me, I don’t stock them tailor-made rolls o’ E-gyptian camel-fodder Easterners got to have.’

‘Who the hell asked you for tailor-mades!’ Burk snarled, for some reason furious out of all proportion to the reason. ‘You’ve got Durham, haven’t you? Duke’s Mixture, haven’t you? Then don’t be so dam’ conversational to customers!’

Rufe threw back shaggy head and laughed until he must put big hands to his sides. He turned into the store and from the shelf got a sack of tobacco and book of brown saddle-blanket papers. Tears were in his eyes as he handed them over.

‘That’n’s on the house, Burk,’ he gasped. ‘I reckon mebbe that fool-school never spoiled you—en-tire.’

Burk grinned, a trifle shamefaced. He sifted tobacco into a paper, rolled it deftly, and put a match to it. Over the cloud of smoke, he looked thoughtfully at Rufe.

‘What do you know about Lance Gregg? He told me that the Y was the only outfit the One-Gang dared bother. They didn’t—for instance—trouble the Wallop-8. If they did, he’d settle them. How-come? Is he supposed to be bad medicine from the creek-forks, or something?’

‘It’s true enough that the Y pastures are just a regular practice-ground for the dam’ thieves,’ Rufe nodded. ‘Ary time they ain’t got a safe to blow or a stage or a train to hold up, they do mosey right down to the Y an’ wrap up a bunch o’ hawses or cows or whatever’s handiest. They don’t bother other folks much. Mebbe they leave the Wallop-8 plumb alone—I do’no’. I do’no’ much about Lance Gregg, neither. Except he’s dangerous.

‘He come in around two year back. Bought the Wallop-8 off the bank an’ started in smackin’ folks that laughed at him for a sucker. He killed Tony Vargas right there on my porch. An’ Tony, you know, he was s’posed to be right smart of a gunman. Nah ... it wasn’t bein’ fast on the draw—it was hawse-sense. Tony spread it all over town that he was aimin’ to collect Gregg. But when they met, right there, Gregg had a .41 Remington in the palm o’ his hand. He never made a move an’ that fooled Tony. I reckon he never did rightly sort out his idees o’ what happened till he woke up in the middle o’ Jordan River, with the water leakin’ into him through them two .41 holes Gregg’d made in him.’

‘You think, then, that his gunplay bluffed the One-Gang?’

Rufe looked at him with a sort of wariness in his face. Then he looked away again.

‘Oh ... mebbe ... Quíen sabe? Never can tell.’

Then, though Burk waited, he seemed to forget the topic. Burk thought he understood. Like the rest of the country, Rufe regarded him, not as the Last of the Fighting Yateses, but as a schoolboy—and, therefore, not worthy of any confidences. They put him down as a kid who had inherited more than he could hold. One to another, they said:

‘Ol’ Burk, he never would’ve stood for this One-Gang racket! He’d have tied their tails into Spanish knots an’ piled ’em—a-bellerin’ like bulls, too!’

Soberly, he looked at Rufe.

‘You’ve got something up your sleeve that you don’t figure to spill to me, Rufe. I know it, well enough. Maybe I can guess why, without any trouble, either! All right. That’s your privilege. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. But if I stick here, maybe you won’t mind talking straight out.’

‘Can happen,’ Rufe said inscrutably. ‘Mebbe.’