Читать книгу Hands Up! - Frederick John Niven - Страница 10

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I stepped over anon to the hotel for dinner. One or two men sat on the verandah with a hungry look and I eyed them with interest, wondering whence they had come; among them sat, with a dictatorial air, a tall bearded man, with a lean, red face, bloodshot eyes, and a beard like dirty tow. He saw me advance and said he:

"Good-day. Are you looking for the proprietor?"

"Proprietor?" said I. "I suppose he's inside."

The man gave a hiccough and said: "This establishment has changed hands. I'm the pro-prietor here now."

I saw the scattered men look at him curiously. They had the air of not taking part.

"Oh!" I said.

"Yes," said he, "Oh!—as you say. Do you want lunch?"

"Yes," I said, "I came over for lunch."

"Well," said he, "I'm very sorry, but I don't intend to have lunch here except for residents. I can't serve people passing through. Are you a hobo? I don't remember your face at all."

Now a hobo is a tramp, a beggar at doors, and so I looked this drunken new proprietor, as he called himself, up and down, and said I:

"Seeing that I'm not going to eat at your house—not even if you put up a free lunch—I don't see that you have any call to know anything about me. Good-day to you—and I hope you may flourish in your establishment."

I wheeled about and trudged back to the depôt, more than ever conscious of my empty stomach and intending to ask Scotty if I could obtain a lunch anywhere else, consoling myself, at least, with the recollection of the tinned goods in the store—tinned salmon, tinned tomatoes, tinned everything, all round the store in the deep shelves.

But hardly had I reached the platform, across the "square," than one of those who had been sitting on the verandah came after me with a "Mister!"

I turned about.

"Say, mister," he said, "that fellow ain't the pro-prietor. The ho-tel ain't changed hands at all. Lunch will be on within half an hour. He's only a fellow who comes in from his ranch about once a month and thinks he's a sure-thing wag. That's what he calls his fun, going on like that."

"Thank you very much, sir," I said. "I'll be over again for lunch, then. Thank you very much."

"Be careful of the wag," he suggested. "He sometimes gets nasty when people don't see that he's funny. The way you answered him just now puzzled him. He weren't sure how to take it. He carries a gun—and I see you don't." And with a nod he turned back for the hotel, but I remained, for the time being, because the whistle of an approaching train broke out far off in the hills, and I wanted to be on hand to help to carry Douglas aboard.

Scotty had come on to the platform at sound of the whistle, carrying a red flag.

"Going to flag this freight," he said, "and get Douglas in the caboose."

The locomotive with its string of sun-scorched cars came in sight; Scotty waved his flag and the string drew slowly into the depôt—the conductor dropping off to see why he had been stopped.

"It's Douglas," said Scotty; "he's had an accident."

"The hell he has!"

So we carried Douglas into the caboose at the end of the string of cars. The pump-car on which the Doc had come up was lifted on to a flat car, the men piled into the caboose, the Doc followed—and away went the train.

I was unsettled, restless. I felt that something was going to happen. One does not often have such feelings in the sage-brush lands. Cities, jostling crowds, going up and down in elevators, hanging on to straps in crowded cars—these things breed the nervous sense of "something going to happen." The sage-brush makes one "feel good."

It must have taken us some time to get Douglas aboard, for, when I looked over to the hotel, I saw that the verandah was deserted. The men had evidently gone in to lunch.

"When do you take lunch?" I asked Scotty.

"Eat lunch you mean," said he. "I eat lunch right now. When that freight goes through I'm free till the west-bound passenger. Are you going over?"

"Yes," I said.

"Wait for me, then, till I lock the door," said he.

"I shouldn't think you need lock a door here," I said.

"It's my instrument," he said. "I love that instrument of mine. I never leave it without locking the door. You come in and I'll show you just what kind of instrument she is. She ain't a railway one. I always pack my own instrument everywhere."

And so he carried me in to expatiate on it while my stomach cried more persistently for nourishment. The sage-brush lands nurture an appetite in a newcomer that is nothing short of fierce. I think Scotty talked for half an hour about his "instrument," waving his lean hands over it, talking about it in the way some parents talk about their children.

Into us, thus employed, following a courteous knock, came the man who had strolled over from the hotel after me a little while back to explain about the waggish individual's waggish attempt to make me have a lunchless day.

"Excuse me, gents," he said. "Lunch is pretty nearly through. If you don't——"

"Oh, they always save me my lunch," began Scotty.

"I told the pro-prietor that you were wanting lunch, sir——" to me.

"We'll get," said Scotty, and waved his arm like a man herding hens, seemed to bundle us out of the room, looking at the newcomer sternly, as if he would bid him keep his eyes off the treasured instrument.

We had come to the platform steps at the end of the depôt buildings, the cowboy who had been so solicitous about my lunch a little in advance.

"What this?" he cried, looking across toward the hotel. There we stood and stared. The hay-beard person who was "in town" to have a "good time" was gathering up the reins of a very excited horse, a horse standing in the shafts of a light buck-board like a hound in leash. From far off as we stood even, we could see by the gestures of hay-beard, he sitting on the seat with legs out-thrust, that he was grandiloquently inebriated. A man ran out of the hotel door, dashed across the verandah, and snatched for the horse's head. The horse swerved away. The man who had tried to catch its head vaulted over the rail; but his feet sank so deep in the sand that he half fell. As he did so hay-beard gave the whip a wild sweep, yelled, wheeled away from the hotel, and fiercely urged the horse. It plunged through the sand, found firmer footing on the waggon-road that twined past the hotel and up to the railway track, which it crossed on planks laid between the lines. Up came the buck-board, hay-beard wielding the long lash of the whip. He drove splendidly—too splendidly. There was too much drunken swagger about it. He caught sight of us as he swept along the waggon-road, waved a mocking arm to us, wheeled the buck-board abruptly at the bend on to the track and—well! The next thing we saw was the horse galloping across the track with a shaft hanging to left, a shaft to right; the buck-board overturned; hay-beard on his chest, legs in air, chin sticking out like one swimming, still clutching the reins. Then he went head over heels at the sloping planks that led up to the track and rolled over and over there. The horse simply crossed the track, wheeled about, flung its head up and, turning round, trotted back to the hotel verandah—and stood there.

Out of the hotel poured the men, and ran in the direction of hay-beard. We, on our part, merely watched from the platform. Hay-beard rose, aided slightly by the man who had tried to catch the horse from the verandah, stood staring and feeling his side, felt his arm, and came over to the depôt, the cluster of men to rear, with evidently the owner of the horse and buck-board strutting beside him with determined jowl.

"Is the Doc here? They tell me the Doc is here. Is he gone?" asked hay-beard.

"Yap! Gone!" snapped Scotty.

"I've broke my arm, by——!" said hay-beard.

Scotty stepped down.

"Let me feel;" and he felt the arm. "Maybe it's only twisted. Yap! Broken!"

"When's the next train?"

"You know the trains."

"I mean a freight train. Any freight before the passenger?"

"Nope! Not another;" and Scotty moved off.

"Oh well, I'll set in the shade here and wait for the train;" and hay-beard, with his arm hanging loose, moved off to the end of the station buildings.

"Couldn't you wire for the Doc again?" I asked.

"For him! No! He ain't got no appreciation. He's the kind of man if I wire for the Doc he would think me his slave—and he would like as not try to stand off paying the Doc his fee and I would go and offer to pay it and the Doc would be indignant and say 'Call off—Call off'—and that coyote would think he had done a smart deal. That's the kind of man he is. Come and eat."

The little crowd thinned, even the owner of the buck-board departing with a mere: "Well, mister, you're going to pay for a new buck-board when you get on your legs again." We went to "eat" lunch, Scotty and I, in the sun-blinded cool rear room of the hotel.

There had been plenty of incidents in that day. But I still felt more looking on at a show than as if they were my own incidents. You understand me? These were not my affairs.

We ate lunch and sat on the verandah afterwards with the remaining boys. One by one they departed—disappearing from the verandah and anon re-appearing on horseback and riding out of Black Kettle, one (who carried no blanket roll on his saddle) riding away by the waggon-road across the railway and straight up hill. Another (who packed a blanket, I noticed) rode away back of Black Kettle into the great plain striped with brush, and anon with sand and anon with grassy stretches. From the end of the house one could see him fade in that immensity.

I sat there smoking, watching two more riders cross the track. I heard the flap-flap of the boards as the ponies stepped across the crossing, watched the horses go up and up—noted how they seemed, as they took the last roll, very tall, and their riders very tall, then how they went over the last roll like little boats over a wave, and disappeared.

At last one said: "It do seem a pity for him over there. Reckon I'll step over and see how he's making out," and he stepped off the verandah and went ploughing over to the depôt buildings.

Just there he stopped and we who still sat on the verandah looked up. A frightful yelling broke out Westwards and grew louder. Then a metallic rattling. What was it? Was it the Dago gang? Had they come by some liquor up there at the camp, and were they coming down to Black Kettle?

The rattling grew in volume—the rattle of a pump-car. There is a kind of agitation comes over one when any noise breaks out that one does not understand. It was a relief to recognise the sound of a pump-car. Then suddenly round the bend came two horsemen, riding parallel with the track; they were whooping, screaming; and on the track, urging their pump-car and whooping and yelling, came the section gang, the gang whose boss had been so decent to me.

It was only an arrival in town.

The men on the verandah smiled and tilted their chairs afresh and leant their backs to the wall, puffed their cigars into a glow. The horsemen, with final yells, rode clean up to the hitching-posts, flung off their horses, and came over to the hotel (less elegant on foot than on horseback, for they were both bow-legged with much riding) clattered up the steps and entered. The section men's car slid into the depôt beside the platform before they could stop it. They stepped off laughing. Then we saw them talking to hay-beard and presently hay-beard got up from where he had been lying limp, and with much grimacing with the pain of his arm got over to the pump-car and stood on it. The men all piled on again and away they went, hay-beard propped in the centre beside the pump.

"That section boss is a very good sort," said a man, bringing his chair down from the tilt, rose, said: "Well, so-long, gents," and departed.

Scotty also rose, and stretched.

"Come over," he said. "I got to get over."

I strolled across with him, loafed for an hour or so about his door, merely acclimatising myself, letting the air of the place lull me, but still with that sense of waiting.

"Say! I forgot to give you your mail," said Scotty. "Something for you," and he handed me a fat packet that he had discovered.

It was a bundle of Old Country papers from a New York agency. I opened them easily—thinking how cute I had been to write, before I went up to the extra gang, for Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London papers, all together, and not to write for those only on and after the date of my encounter with the black-mailing tramp, but for a full month before that date.

It was, of course, only the Glasgow Herald I troubled about now. I was the boy to cover my tracks, I thought. I was a "cute" individual. I opened the Herald of the day after that trouble with the lurcher. I glanced it through. No—no "Horrible Discovery."

I glanced through the next day's. No, nothing. I looked through the Heralds for the whole week. Nothing! Nothing at all about the body behind the bushes.

I looked up abruptly and found Scotty scrutinising me under his thin brows and biting the ragged end of his yellowed moustache. He let his gaze lose its intentness, did not look away, but gazed as it were absently through me.

I returned to my perusal, but with a manner guardedly easy, looking up and down the columns more lightly; I hoped not too lightly, lest my change of manner might but increase Scotty's curiosity. Suddenly I saw this:

"The tramp who was found in the park overlooking Drummond Terrace three days ago and taken to the Western Infirmary has regained consciousness. Although he has clearly been assaulted, and is suffering from injuries received, he will say nothing of how he came by his injuries."

I sat back in my chair. I forgot all about Scotty again. I only thought: "I need never have bolted at all!"

Scotty's beloved instrument was tick-ticking and he bent to it. The tick-ticking went on. I sat looking at a muss of type, a haze of print. I sat with the papers on my lap, staring—and then, slowly, my eye seemed to focus to the print again. What was this? I choked, and stared, and looked at the paper.

Suddenly, at Jamieson Gardens, Jane Elizabeth Barclay.

If that accursed tramp had been within reach I would have killed him indeed then! He lived—and my mother was dead—no need to ask how—of a broken heart at my non-appearance, at my disappearance. I stood up, so Scotty told me afterwards, and raising my fist to heaven cried: "Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!"

But at the time Scotty was eager on something else and he only shouted: "Shut up! Damn it!"

I sat down it seems. The instrument ceased to click its long message. He turned to me and said:

"Say! Say! What do you think? The passenger has been held up at Antelope Spring."

"Oh!" I said and sat with gulping breaths.

"Held up!" he shouted. "Who by, do you think? By the Apache Kid! What do you think of that? They're going right through to Lone Tree—non-stop to get next to the Sheriff there."

"Eh? Oh—that's very interesting," I said.

"My God!" he cried. "You—you're bug-house!" And he fled out to pour his news into some more sane ears.

I heard anon a whistle scream outside—heard the roar of a train coming into Black Kettle—heard it pass on, without cessation. The room hummed with its passage and clatter—and then a whistle beyond Black Kettle pealed out—another further off—and silence fell again.