Читать книгу Riders of the Night - Eugene Cunningham - Страница 7

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Out on the street, he looked mechanically toward Pinckney Lathrop’s. After all, he meditated, it was nothing to him who bought him out, if he got the money he wanted. Suppose Pinck’ had been lying; suppose Lance Gregg had commissioned him to buy the Yates half of the Y. If he wanted to pay fifty thousand for it, let Myra worry about the change in partners!

‘Shame, though, for as nice a kid as Myra to fall so hard for that big strutter,’ he shrugged. ‘She is a nice kid ... and, if I’m not very much mistaken, she’s ready to marry him—and wake up finding that he’s a very different proposition as husband.’

It occurred to him that he was very ready for a drink. He had taken his last on the train, with Elinor and the drummers who had made up their poker-party. He grinned faintly at thought of those stern notions of Ol’ Burk Yates, about the education and upbringing of sons. Not a saloon or gambling-house in town had ever seen his face. Ol’ Burk had seen to that! He would have been ‘fit to tie,’ Burk thought, had he been able to see the episodes from his son’s between-terms amusements.

He drifted down to the Congress and in its long bar-room looked about. He saw Turkey Adkins in a far corner, sitting with chair propped against the wall, boot-heels hooked in a round, hat-rim down over his eyes as if asleep. Then he saw Lance Gregg well down the bar. Staring at him, Burk felt the keenest dislike that he had ever known for a human being. He disliked everything about the Wallop-8 owner from his clothes to the way he wore them. The supercilious expression that seemed a very part of Gregg’s handsome features roused in Burk a desire to put a fist against Gregg’s mouth.

There was a bar-tender standing admiringly before Gregg. He was nodding like an automaton, grinning soapily. Yet he was not naturally a servile figure, either, being squatty and powerful, with the look of a broken-down prize-fighter about him. Whether Gregg noticed him, or not, Burk could not tell. But the bar-tender looked sidelong, grinned in entirely different fashion, and came briskly down the bar.

‘Well, what’ll it be, son?’ he inquired. ‘Sa’sp’riller? I got some nice lemon squash, too.’

Burk eyed him steadily. Unabashed, the bar-tender grinned at him, then turned, seemed to study the back-bar, shook his head regretfully and turned about. The drinkers—and those in the rear of Burk in the big room—grinned widely. Someone laughed when the bar-tender made an exaggerated, ladylike gesture with hairy, knobby-knuckled right hand.

‘I’m awful sorry! But somehow, we jist let the mineral water run out. But if you’d come back in a few days, we’d ought to have some in by then.’

A bunch of cowboys roared. Burk thought that the bar-tender must have a reputation for clowning. And this was precisely the sort of comedy a cowtown saloon’s audience would appreciate. But the laughing stopped with the flashing dart of Burk’s hands over the bar-top. They caught the simpering bar-tender-chin and cauliflowered ear. Burk leaned backward with foot against bar-front. He jerked violently, and the bar-tender, yelling and thrashing his hands, was dragged up to the bar-top, then across it. Burk half-turned and the man of drinks continued past him, to land with a thud upon the splintered pine floor.

The impact was upon his face, and when he had slid thus forward for a yard, then rolled over, his features resembled nothing more vividly than a slab of raw beefsteak.

But he was a fighter! Over he rolled. He scrambled to his feet with big fists doubled. He blinked savagely—apparently preparatory to a bull-rush. But Burk had moved silently toward him and, before the bar-tender located him, he swung a pair of alternating hooks that carried each his hundred-eighty pounds behind. The bar-tender crashed again to the floor. This time he stayed there, limp, with mouth gaping.

Burk looked down at him, grinning faintly. Then, while the audience watched with frowningly intent eyes, he turned and went straight back to where Lance Gregg leaned upon the bar, grinning. Burk stopped there.

‘Too bad you don’t do your own fighting, Gregg!’ he said contemptuously. ‘But I suppose that’s the way you’ve kept that pretty-boy face of yours unmarked, this long!’

‘Are—are you talking to me?’ Gregg cried. For once, the tolerantly superior expression was wiped from his face. He seemed shaken off-balance by this unexpected challenge.

‘Don’t act the baby!’ Burk grinned—without humor. ‘You know damned well I’m talking to you. Don’t try to crawfish!’

‘Taking August by surprise has sort of turned your head, it would seem,’ Gregg snapped. ‘But I’ll give you one more chance: You trot along home, sonny. Else you’ll be badly hurt!’

Burk laughed in his face and stood watching him steadily. A sudden wave of red came up into Gregg’s face. The long blue eyes were smoky, opaque.

‘All right, then!’ Gregg said thickly. ‘All right! You asked for it! Now, see if you can stand it!’

With which he drove his fists in lightning alternation straight at Burk’s chin. Burk weaved with the mechanical reaction of the trained boxer. One blow went over his shoulder, but the other he could not quite duck. Though it struck him only glancingly, it would have spun him halfway about but for the dragging weight of Gregg’s other arm, across his shoulder. Burk shook his head, leaned forward, and held with left hand while he drove a short and torrid right to Gregg’s stomach.

Gregg grunted despite himself with the impact of that one. But he slid sideways, away from the bar. Then, in the open, he rushed Burk, swinging furiously but not wildly.

He was perhaps fifteen pounds the heavier. He had an inch or so the advantage in reach. More than that, he had, to counterbalance Burk’s speed and science, the hardness of maturity in his powerful body. He was no mere slugger, either! Burk admitted that as he slid away, bobbing, rolling, ducking, countering. Burk had been school heavyweight champion. He recognized scientific boxing when he saw it. Presently, he knew that he was a good deal the better boxer, but that his recent loafing and drinking had done him no good.

He was getting winded. So he tore in at the first opening he saw and with forehead against Gregg beat a two-handed tattoo on the bigger man that drove him back. But he came in again and Burk was very tired. He whipped up his energy and met Gregg in two-handed fighting. Neither troubled to guard. It was bang-bang-bang! wherever a knotted fist could land—to head or body.

‘Can’t stand much more of this!’ Burk told himself grimly.

So he rushed Gregg the more furiously. He was gasping, now. He was short with a right to the jaw and stumbled. Gregg came at him like a charging cat. Artistically, if automatically, Burk ducked and weaved and side-stepped. For the first time, he could think of Elinor with something besides admiration ... For he was fundamentally a man of his hands, Ol’ Burk’s son. He would have given anything in reason for the condition that would let him end this fight with Lance Gregg out on the floor.

Condition would have done it. He knew that. For he could outbox Gregg and he had hurt the Wallop-8 man time after time. Given good condition, he could wear him down and at the last make a chopping-block of Gregg. But not this time! He was all but nauseated and a swinging right to the heart helped him not at all. He wished fervently that he had never seen Elinor or those genial drummers and their liquor and cigars!

He went down to one knee with a terrific right hook to the side of his head. He came up again and tried to slug. He went down again without landing a blow. He came up and was immediately knocked flat upon his back. Instinctively, he rolled over, trying to suck in enough breath to relieve pumping lungs. He got one knee under him and Lance Gregg, his mouth open, too, rushed at him. It was more push than blow that landed, but Burk was driven sideways. He came up once more, squinting at Gregg, and this time made his feet. He flung both arms around Gregg and hung on desperately.

‘Here! Here!’ a raucous, somewhat nervous, voice cried. ‘Gregg! Burk Yates! Now, y’-all cut out that squabblin’!’

For answer to that, Lance tore himself loose and launched another looping swing at Burk. Burk was inside of it and it missed. He drove one at Gregg’s stomach that didn’t miss. But he took one to the chin that floored him again. As he scrambled up, Faraday, the lank city marshal, slid in between and began expostulating with Gregg:

‘Now, that’s plenty, Gregg! Y’ whupped him plenty! Let it drop, now! He cain’t stand up to y’——’

A haze was swimming before Burk’s eyes. He got somehow to his feet and lurched down the bar, out the back door and through to the outdoors. He leaned against a building and for a while was very sick. A voice sounded at his elbow, presently. He looked blearily at Pinck’ Lathrop.

‘Say, Burk—what the devil you been doin’, anyhow?’

‘What do—you want?’ Burk panted. ‘Make it—short!’

‘I just been thinkin’ about our li’l’ deal. You want to come down to the office an’ talk about it?’

‘No! I don’t want to—talk about anything!’

‘Sick, huh? Well, but this is important, Burk. I told you I’d buy the place—kind o’ on spec’ that I can talk that feller into takin’ the half an’ all—an’ I’ll hand you the money this very day, if you want it. Thirty thousand ...’

‘I’m not selling—for thirty thousand,’ Burk grunted, straightening. He felt better, much better, if still weak.

‘That’s a lot o’ money!’ Pinck’ cried aggrievedly. Then, when Burk was turning toward the Congress’s back door again: ‘I tell you what I’ll do—bein’ it’s you, Burk. I’ll give you thirty-two—inside thirty minutes!’

Burk put out a hand to brace himself against the saloon end-wall and looked at Pinck’ Lathrop without pleasure.

‘Pinck’, it gives me great pleasure to tell you that you are a very artistic liar and actor—but you don’t fool me a bit! I know that your “Englishman” is Yatesville-manufactured, wearing the P-L brand. I know that your client is Lance Gregg—wait a minute! Don’t bother about looking injured and virtuous! I know that! I know that Gregg wants the Y and that’—which was purest inspiration—‘when I walked through your door, it was like an answer to your prayer! For Gregg had already told you that he wanted the Y. Now, I’ll tell you something else!

‘I’m not selling! I’m sticking! I’ve changed my mind about several things in the last little while—por dios! Lance Gregg will never get a foot of Y land’—then he thought of Myra, smiling up at Gregg ... and changed the sentence—‘a foot of my half of the Y, until I’m dead enough to skin! Put that one in the pigeonhole along with that imaginary letter from the synthetic Englishman, Pinck’. But don’t bother me any more!’

He went inside. Around the bar was clustered now a thick crowd of drinkers. They were talking in an excited gabble. They were gesticulating. They turned, grinning, with the fall of Burk’s feet behind them. He looked for Gregg and failed to find him.

‘Gregg’s drifted,’ Turkey Adkins explained, appearing at his elbow. ‘Man! I never thought to see a man wear a look so s’prised as what Lance was wearin’ toward the last, when yuh was takin’ ever’thing he had on the shelf an’ comin’ in for more!’

Hard-handed punchers, cowmen, freighters, townsmen, they crowded around the white-faced Burk. He looked at them with some surprise. You might believe that he had licked Gregg! he thought. Quickly, he was made sure that he could have no more well-wishers if he had put Gregg on the floor, instead of going there himself. But what he wanted, now, was to get away.

Turkey, though, had other ideas. He had Burk’s arm, and he turned him toward the bar where August, a battered spectacle, looked out upon the world through swollen lids.

‘M’ young compadre, here, he’d like to know if yuh got anything in stock but them private drinks o’ yo’s, since he ask’ yuh last time,’ Turkey drawled.

August muttered viciously under breath, and Turkey smiled upon him sweetly.

‘Goodness me!’ he cried. ‘Still belly-achin’? We got to drag yuh out into the open ag’in, before we can order? Fella! If I was yuh, I’d let Jordan roll!’

August whirled and snatched a bottle of Old Crow from the back-bar. He slapped it down on the bar and put glasses out. Turkey filled them and lifted his glass. Over it, he regarded Burk with humorous lifting of one tight mouth-corner.

‘Here’s to the dear ol’ almy motto!’ he drawled. ‘Looks like they do learn a country boy some things that’s useful.’

Presently, drifting side by side down the street toward the hotel, Turkey was moved to conversation:

‘Yuh know, me, I’m likely the changeablest fella yuh ever see, Burk ... I bet yuh I am that! Now, talkin’ about that fo’man job we was augurin’ about—I am broke enough to take it, now that I think the thing over ag’in.’

‘Didn’t want to work for a school-kid, huh?’ Burk nodded.

‘Well,’ said Turkey judicially, ‘I’ll go so fur’s to say I was wonderin’ if the’s any streakiness to yo’ bacon ... An’, too, I wasn’t certain yuh wouldn’t decide to sell out an’ hightail East where the’s a lot o’ high life an’ the gals, they wear purty pink hobbles, an’ when yuh buy ’em yuh git a lot for yo’ money in looks an’ lovin’ kindness—long’s yo’ money holds out. I knowed Lance Gregg had put Pinck’ onto buyin’ yo’ half in the Y—if he could git it for li’l’ or nothin’. I was—right close when he made that dicker with Pinck’. So—all in all—I wasn’t takin’ cards in that game. The’ mightn’t have been fight in yuh!’

‘Fight? You saw me get most thoroughly licked!’

‘Yeh. Licked that time. But, hell! Gittin’ licked is nothin’. We all o’ us git licked now an’ ag’in. It’s how a man acts when he’s gittin’ licked interests me! Whether he climbs up ever’ time he’s knocked down an’ tries for another swing. So—like I was sayin’—I’ll take on that fo’man job. Make it seventy-five a month—an’ ca’tridges, o’ course! Lawdy! Lawdy! The ca’tridges we’re goin’ to use up, when we start after that One-Gang! Yuh can hang that pink hobble over the head o’ yo’ bed, Burk, an’ ever’ time yuh look at it, yuh can figger how much simpler it’d been, if yuh’d gone on down to Santone an’ bought the other one ...’

‘How the devil did you know about that?’ Burk snarled.

‘Froggy, with three drinks into him, he’s a mightily extended talker.’ Turkey grinned seraphically. ‘Well? Which’d yuh ruther have? Garters or ca’tridges? Ca’tridges, huh!’