Читать книгу Gunmen's Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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When the doctor told Hank Peyton that he was about to die, Hank took another drink and closed the secret inside his thin lips; but when, on the third morning following, he fell back on his bed in a swoon after pulling on his boots, Hank lay for a long time looking at the dirty boards of the ceiling until his brain cleared. Then he called for his tall son and said: “Jeremiah, I’m about to kick out.”

Jerry Peyton was as full of affection as any youth in the town of Sloan, but the regime of his father had so far schooled him in restraining his emotions that now he lighted a match and a cigarette and inhaled the first puff before he answered: “What’s wrong?”

“That’s my concern and not yours,” the father said truthfully. “Further’n that, I didn’t call you in here for an opinion. The doctor give me that three days ago, Jeremiah.” He always pronounced the name in full; he characteristically despised the nickname which the rest of the world had given to his son. “I got you here to look you over.”

He was as good as his word, but the only place he looked was straight between the eyes of Jerry. At length he sighed and turned his glance back to the ceiling, a direction which never changed while he lived. “I’m about to kick out,” went on the father, “and bringing you up is about all the good I’ve done, and, take it all around, I’m satisfied.”

After a moment of thought he said to the ceiling: “You ain’t pretty, but you can ride straight up. Answer me!”

“Yes,” said Jerry.

“You talk straight.”

“Yes.”

“You shoot straight.”

“Some say I do.”

“You got a good education.”

“Fair enough. But not too good.”

“Ain’t you got a diploma from the high school?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t talk back. I say you’re educated and mostly I run this roost. What?”

“Yes,” Jerry replied.

“I leave you a house to live in and enough cows to grow into a real bunch—if you work. Will you work?”

“Is this a promise you want?” asked Jerry, troubled.

“No.”

“Well, I’ll try to work.”

“I leave you one thing more.” He fumbled under the bedding and drew out a revolver. “You know what that is?”

“The Mexicans call it the Voice of La Paloma.”

“They call it right. You take that gun. Before you die you’ll hear men say a lot of things about your pa—and mostly they’ll be right; but afterwards you go home and pull out this old gun and say to yourself: ‘He was a crook; he was a hard one; but he had plenty of grit, and he done for La Paloma that made the rest take water.’ ”

“I shall,” said Jerry.

After a time the father said: “Look at my legs.”

“Yes.”

“The boots?”

“They’re on.”

“Good,” said Hank Peyton. He added a moment later: “How do I look?”

“Like you’d hit the end of your rope.”

“You lie,” said Hank, “I can still see the knot in the ceiling.” And forthwith he died.

When he was buried, the old inhabitants of Sloan said: “Who would of thought Hank Peyton would die in bed?” And the new inhabitants, who were the majority, added: “One ruffian the less.”

Around Sloan, the government had built a great dam to the north and irrigation ditches were beginning to spread a shining, regular pattern across the desert. Very few of the cowmen took advantage of all the opportunities which water threw in their way; but a swarm of newcomers edged in among them and cut up the irrigation districts into pitiful little patches of green which no true cattleman could help despising; the shacks of Sloan gave way to a prim, brick-fronted row of stores; the new citizens elected improvement boards; they began to boost.

Very soon Sloan was extended in all directions by a checkering of graded streets and blocks which the optimists watched in confident expectation. But old-timers were worried by floors so cleanly painted that spurs could not be stuck into them when one sat down; they scorned, silently, the stern industry and sharpness of the homemakers; and many a cowpuncher was known to ride up the main street, look wistfully about him, and then without dismounting turn back toward his distant bunkhouse; for of the many faces of civilization, two were turned to each other eye to eye in Sloan, and the differences were too great for composition.

For instance, among the cattlemen, law was an interesting legend which in workaday life was quite supplanted by unwritten customs; among the farmers and shopkeepers of Sloan, law was an ally or an enemy as the case might be, but always a sacred thing. From that point of view, Hank Peyton was one of the most fallen of the profane, and therefore the townsfolk drew a breath of relief when they heard of his death.

It cannot be said that even the cowpunchers grieved very heartily; but they respected at least certain parts of his character, and above all they had an abiding affection for his son, Jerry. For his sake they were both sorry and glad, and it was generally understood among them that when his father was out of the way, Jeremiah Peyton would shake up the old Peyton place and put it abreast of the times. They waited in vain for the signs of uplift. Jerry was willing enough to talk over changes and improvements with the wiser and more experienced heads among his neighbors, but when it came to tactics of labor he failed miserably, no matter how excellent his strategy of planning might be.

Sheriff Sturgis, who was the only county official to retain his place in the new regime, said: “The trouble with Jerry is that his dad sent him away to school for just long enough to spoil any likin’ for work he might of had; but he didn’t stay in school long enough to learn a way of sittin’ down and makin’ a livin’.”

This was the general opinion, for after the death of Hank Peyton, Jerry drifted along in his usual amiable manner. He made enough busting broncos in the roundup seasons to see him through the remainder of the year in idleness, and he picked up from his little bunch of cows a few bits of spending money. The cowmen excused him for virtues of courage and generosity, but the townsfolk saw only the black side of the picture, and in their eyes Jerry was “plain lazy.”

They waited for the latent fierceness of his lawbreaking father to appear as the fortunes of the son declined month after month. His personal appearance remained as prosperous as ever, but the townsfolk noted with venomous pleasure that his little string of horses was gradually sold off until he retained only a few cow-hocked, knock-kneed mustangs, and one buckskin mare with the heart of a lion and the temper of a demon.

It may be gathered that, by this time, Jerry had reached a point of argument between cowpuncher and farmer. The one faction held that he retained the buckskin because he loved her; the farmers were certain that he kept her only because of her viciousness and the fights which it gave him.

In truth, they could not understand him. Jerry was a tall, gaunt man with heavy shoulders, a pair of straight gray eyes, and a disarming smile; he was, indeed, a mass of contradictions. When he sat in silence he had an ugly, cold look; when he was animated he was positively handsome. The cowmen understood him hardly more than the farmers, but they had faith, which levels mountains.

All this time Jerry may have known that he was frequently the subject of conversation, though none, even of his closest friends, had courage enough to tell him what was said; but whatever he knew, Jerry was content to drift along from day to day, sitting ten hours at a time on his front veranda, or riding to town and back on the buckskin.

From time to time the danger of approaching bankruptcy stood up and looked him in the face; but he was always able to blink the thought away—and go on whistling. Only this thing grew vaguely in him—a discontent with his life as it was, a subtle displeasure which was directed not against men but against fate, a feeling that he was imprisoned. In the other days he had always thought that it was the stern control of his father which gave him that shackled sensation, but now the first of the month, and its bills, was as dreaded as ever was any interview with terrible Henry Peyton, drunk or sober. He was not a thoughtful man. Sometimes his revolt was expressed in a sudden saddling of the buckskin mare and a wild ride which had no destination; more often he would sit and finger the Voice of La Paloma.

It was an odd name for a revolver, for La Paloma means the dove; but there was a story connected with the name. Once upon a time—and after all it was not so long before—a little man with a gentle voice came to Sloan, and because of his voice the Mexicans called him La Paloma. He was an extremely silent man; he hardly ever spoke, and he never argued. So that when trouble came his way he put his back to the wall and pulled his gun. In a crisis the first explosion of his gun was his first word of answer, and eventually the imaginative Mexicans called the weapon the Voice of La Paloma.

After a time the reputation of La Paloma followed him to Sloan from other places. A federal marshal raised a posse to find the little man. They found him but they did not bring him back, and with that a wild time began around Sloan, in which the officers of the law figured as hawks, and La Paloma was a dove who flew higher still and knew how to swoop from a distance and strike, and make off with his gains unharmed. He kept it up for months and months until Hank Peyton crossed him.

There was an ugly side to the story, of how Peyton double-crossed the outlaw, after worming his way into La Paloma’s confidence, and sold him to the federal marshal. Be that as it may, the bandit learned the truth before the posse arrived and started a single-handed fight with Jerry’s father. When the marshal arrived, he found Peyton in the cabin, shot to pieces, but with the gun of La Paloma in his hand, and the bandit dead on the floor.

It was small wonder that that story kept running through Jerry’s head day by day as his inheritance melted through his prodigal, shiftless fingers. Before long, little would remain except the Voice of La Paloma, and whenever Jerry thought of that time of destitution he looked at the revolver and remembered the carefree life of La Paloma; there were no shackles on his existence. His commission to a free life was this little weapon, and for a signature of authority it bore eleven notches, neatly filed.