Читать книгу The Treasure Trail - Frederick Niven - Страница 7

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“IT seems,” mused Movie Bill, “that whether I want to or not I’ve to butt in on that squeaky-voiced fellow’s affairs.”

He was supposed, in the phrase beloved of Mr. Micawber, to be waiting in Colvalli, “for something to turn up.” It had turned up too, but not in the usual sense. He was really held thrall there by Margaret MacPherson—she of: “Miggles! Marrr-garet, whaur are ye?” He was, in the vernacular, “just batty” about her; but sooner or later, he felt it in his bones, he would have to go.

What avail to stay? He knew what he looked like; for he shaved himself every morning. He knew that he was ugly, ugly facially, not in temper. But he delayed and delayed, and made deep plans to allow of visits to the house a mile out of “town” there, northward, that would rouse no suspicions regarding his state. He knew that she would never be his to care for; but to see her, just to see her, to be near her, held him in Colvalli—ostensibly waiting for that something to turn up.

Now, the day being hot and the veranda in the afternoon, despite its broad eaves, sultry, he lay on his bed, the window wide open and the shades drawn, reading. Books were his consolation, his anodyne. Down on the sidewalk someone who had been to the coast and heard the touring D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, passed humming:

“Hey dee, hey dee,

Lack-a-day dee, misery me;

He sipped no sup and he craved no crumb

But he sighed for the love of a lady.”

Movie Bill sat and threw the book he had been trying to read on to the bureau. The wild rhythmic prose in the form of poetry, by Carl Sandburg of Chicago, had been helping him; but at that pathetic stave of song, sifted up from the sidewalk in the crystal afternoon, he knew he was a fool.

“I’ve got to get a move on,” he told himself. “What’s the good of hanging around just to see her face, just to see her now and then? It will only make it worse for myself when I do go or,” he gloomed at the drawn shade and the slit of gold light below it, “she gets married.”

It was then that what had been only a hum of voices in the next room, punctuated with occasional clinks of a bottle on a tumbler’s edge, rose up clearly.

“I tell you, by heck, I’m going over to haze him if necessary into telling me just where he picked up that galena. One way or another I’ll find out.”

Thus came to Bill one voice and, lower, but still clear, almost in its entirety the speech in response:

“Oh shucks! Foolish to ... cut out the hazing ... don’t know what he dropped anyhow. Pump him. Don’t haze.”

“What was he bringing the specimens back for?” the first voice roared, as of one in a combative state.

“True, true!” spoke the other, consoling. “But don’t you ask about them straight. Pump him.”

“Pump him! By heck, I’ll pump lead into him if he don’t talk well. I’ll handle him easy no more than five minutes, and then—”

“You be careful, Mark. You are liable to shoot a man up before your mind has a chance to imagine ahead and see the electric chair.”

A door slammed. Feet clumped away down the corridor.

Movie Bill raised the shade and stepped out on to the narrow balcony, lit his pipe and leant his elbow on the rail. He saw Mark Bantling make exit on the sidewalk, balancing slightly, resting a hand a moment, fingers spread drunkenly, at the doorpost. He watched him walk across to the livery stable. He watched him ride out. In a saddle Bantling showed no hint of inebriety, but Movie Bill was not unfamiliar with the sight of a man who could scarce walk yet riding passing well. The nature of the man Bantling showed itself to Movie in the callous, bullying manner in which he handled the horse that he rode.

Movie Bill descended to the bare sitting-room and shut the door, for he wished not to be heard speaking on the telephone. He consulted the card of subscribers on the wall and found what he wanted—the T. T. Ranch (Tremaine and Thomas), 6. He took down the receiver and—

“Six,” said he.

“Six,” came the acknowledgment.

He waited.

“’ll ring again,” said the voice.

He waited. There was just a hum suggesting the big space of the range lands, wind in the grass.

“’ll ring again,” came the voice.

Nothing happened. Movie Bill hung up the receiver. An hour later he tried again.

“Six,” he said.

“Six,” replied the voice on the wire.

Nothing.

“’ll ring again.”

Nothing but a faint hum as of the world spinning in space. Then—

“Hullo! Hullo!” came suddenly another voice.

Movie Bill was on the point of saying: “That the T. T. ranch?” but he frowned and did not.

“Do you know who’s speaking?” he enquired.

“Yes, of course I know,” came the voice again; and he recognized it as Bantling’s.

He stood waiting, wondering what to say—decided to say nothing, just wait for the click of the receiver at the other end being hung up.

“Hullo! Toot-toot!” came Bantling’s voice, oddly horrible on the ’phone. “Wrong number. You got the wrong number, old bird. Try Long Distance. Try a heck of a Long Distance. Mine will be gin, thank you!” and then a demoniacal laugh.

Movie Bill’s face showed even more wrinkles than when it was in repose. That disembodied voice on the wire! Horrible! It was as if he had been connected by Central with a lunatic asylum. Then suddenly a little flame of rage rose in him at being thus spoken to by any one, drunk or sober.

“Darn you!” he said. “Can’t you be civil on the wire? What in thunder are you doing in there anyhow? Have you got the information you want, you darn claim-jumper?”

“What? How’s that?” asked Bantling thickly.

“If you touch that fellow Piccolo—” Movie Bill hesitated. He was puzzled. He wondered if the madman had perhaps killed Piccolo. “He’s the goose with the golden eggs, you know,” he said. “Go easy with him.”

“Who the —— are you?” Bantling roared so loudly as to fuzz his voice on the wire.

“Me!” Movie Bill was furious, absurdly furious. “I’m the man that’s going to register that claim—not you!”

Then his rage ebbed. He hung up the receiver so that Bantling would not hear his mirth, for the last words he spoke shook with laughter.

“All the same,” he considered, “he’s in the T. T. ranch house. He’s liable to have killed young Thomas.”

He walked slowly from the Benwell House and crossed the road to the livery stable where he kept his own horses.

The liveryman helped in the saddling, and when all was ready Bill drew the lines over the horse’s head, grabbed a bit of mane and the horn in the quick gesture of an experienced rider. As he swung to the saddle and settled in one movement Baldy stepped up. He rode out into the full blaze of sun again.

“Yes, whether I want to or not,” he mused. “I am sure butting into the life of that fellow Piccolo. That hootch-sodden maniac is liable to have plugged him if Tremaine wasn’t around. Sounded as if he was doing a glorious mad dance at the ’phone. Hope they were either both out or came home heeled.”

He rode on along the winding main road till he came to the two ruts leading to the Tremaine and Thomas ranch, swept his line hand out to the offside and the horse veered round. He dropped the lines once again, and again, on its neck, In a tap-tap-tap to indicate a lope, and then, as one in a moving easy chair, rode on to the house.

“Hullo! Hullo!” he hailed. “Anybody around?”

“Around?” echoed the big empty barn, and that was all.

He dismounted, left the lines “tied to the ground,” and stepped to the door and knocked. There was no answer. He put his hand in his pocket and with the nose of his little automatic pointed ahead, but still in the pocket, he tried the handle sharply, flung the door open, and stood pat. Nothing within! For only sound a natty little nickel alarm clock tick-tocked atop the Grand Piano.

Bill stepped in and stood thoughtful in the big central room. He stared at the telephone box and its two bells, each with a point of light, like big round metal eyes. If only the thing was alive and could speak of itself! Then, right hand still in pocket, holding his automatic, he stepped to a curtain and raised it sharply, very alert. He looked only into a small empty room like a ship’s berth, with two bunks and a window, a dimity curtain on the window’s lower half, and a white cirrus cloud like a feather adrift in air crossing the blue sky beyond the upper half.

The photograph of an elderly gentleman in a tail-coat, holding a plug hat in his hand, and with an elbow on what looked like an unfinished sundial, was on the wall above one of the cots.

“Piccolo’s pa, I guess,” said Movie Bill. “Wonder if he too had a high thin voice when he was excited, like as if he was going to break into a tenor song.”

He had not been smoking as he rode over to the ranch, and so was able to smell very distinctly an odor of tobacco—to be precise, a cigar. He paused at the row of books. Books interested him. He considered their titles, even took up one or two and glanced at them, and was so employed at the shelves when a horse’s whinny caused him to replace the volume in his hand and step outside again.

And there was Piccolo riding into the much-trampled yard between the house and the barn. Piccolo’s eyes were wide, staring at the open door behind the strange horse.

“How-do,” rumbled Movie Bill. “I just came over to see that you were all right.”

Piccolo seemed puzzled.

“I rang you up on the ’phone to see if you were all right,” said Movie, seeing that Piccolo made no reply, “and either I got the wrong number or you had a visitor who answered, and he sounded to me drunk or batty. It worried me. So I rode over to see that you were all right.”

Piccolo looked suspiciously at him.

“Well, that was surely kind of you,” he said.

Movie Bill saw the expression of suspicion and being “all too human” he resented it—and then told himself it was but natural for Piccolo to be “leery” of him. So—

“You see,” he explained further, “I heard a man say he was coming over to see you; and he was pretty well lit up with jig juice. After he was gone a spell I thought I’d just ’phone you to see if you were all right.”

Piccolo was still suspicious.

“That was very kind of you,” he said again, guardedly.

That look of suspicion still remaining, despite the attempts at explanation, Movie Bill was annoyed.

“Yes,” said he. “I don’t mind you losing out, but I don’t want to see you planted. It’s a darn pleasant world to ride around over. I thought to myself: ‘That wisp of a fellow would stand a poor show before a man of that size and weight.’”

“Wisp of a fellow!” came from Piccolo, in a very high shrill note, like that of a blue jay.

“That,” said Movie Bill languidly, “was my consideration translated into words, though maybe I did not speak aloud. But I see you are all right now, so I am satisfied.”

He drew the lines over Baldy’s neck, grabbed a lock of mane, grabbed the horn and swung to his seat as the horse stepped up.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Adios as we used to say in Arizona.” He did not raise his voice. “Tat-ta, as the Welsh say. And to Hanover with you!”

“Who do you claim was the man who came over to see me?” Piccolo shrilled after him, standing in the yard in a belligerent attitude.

“Claim?” enquired Movie Bill over his shoulder. “Claim? I’m telling you. I’m not laying a story before you to argue about and sift in your sieve of a haid! Claim!”

He rode away, and a hundred yards off called himself a fool. That phrase came to him: “Human, all too human.”