Читать книгу Gunmen's Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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The crisis drew near in Jerry’s life; the people of Sloan almost held their breath while they watched developments. The mortgages on the old Peyton place were to be foreclosed and neither man, woman, nor child in the town expected the son of Hank Peyton to look quietly on while the land and the house changed hands. The men who held the mortgages had lawyers for agents; the lawyers had Sheriff Sturgis; Sheriff Sturgis had a posse of good men and true at his call; yet for all that, he was observed to wear a look of concern. The sheriff was not a student, but he had a natural belief in inherited characteristics, and he had known Hank Peyton when Hank was in his prime. Nevertheless, the storm broke from an unexpected quarter.

Jan van Zandt held one of the outlying alfalfa farms near the Peyton place, and one day he found Jerry’s buckskin mare lying with a broken leg in his largest irrigation ditch; she had come through a rough place in his fence and slipped on a concrete culvert. Jan van Zandt sent a farmhand to tell the tidings to young Peyton; in the meantime he got on his fastest horse, made a round of his neighbors, and returned with a dozen men at his back. They sat down with shotguns and rifles near at hand to wait for Jerry.

He came alone and he came on foot, for there was nothing on his place except the buckskin that he deigned to ride. At first he paid no attention to the men, but sat for a long time holding the head of the patient, suffering horse before he shot her through the temple; only then did he turn to Jan van Zandt.

Jan stood with a double-barreled shotgun in both big hands, and from a distance he kept shouting that he knew he was to blame for letting the fence fall into disrepair, and that he would settle whatever costs the law allowed.

“You fool, do you think your money can buy me another Nelly?” Jerry asked.

Then he went to Jan van Zandt, took the shotgun out of the big hands, and beat the farmer until he was hardly recognizable. The friends of van Zandt stood by with their guns firmly grasped but they did not fire because, as they explained later, they might have hurt Jan by mistake.

Afterward Jerry refused to bring suit for the value of his horse; but as soon as Jan was out of bed he filed a suit for damages in a case of assault, and he won the suit. The cowpunchers rode in singly and in pairs to Jerry and offered their assistance against the “dirty groundhogs,” but Jerry turned them away. He sold most of the furniture in his house and the rest of the horses to pay the fine; but with the money he sent a note to Jan van Zandt warning him fairly that Nelly was still unpaid for and that in due time he, Jeremiah Peyton, would extract full payment; he only waited until he discovered how such a payment could be made.

It was another occasion for Jan van Zandt to mount his fastest horse—he was quite a fancier of fine breeds—and this time he rode straight into the town of Sloan, thrust Jerry’s note in front of the sheriff, and demanded police protection.

The sheriff was a fat, shapeless man, with a broken nose, little, uneasy eyes, and a forehead which sloped back and was immediately lost under a coarse mop of hair. His neck was put on his round shoulders at an angle of forty-five degrees, and as he was continually glancing from side to side he gave the impression of a man ducking danger, or about to duck. It was strange to see big Jan van Zandt lean over the desk and appeal to this man, and of the two, the sheriff seemed by far the more frightened. His twinkling, animal eyes looked everywhere except at Jan van Zandt until the story was over.

Then he said: “You got some fine horses out there, haven’t you, Jan?”

“The best in the country,” Jan replied readily, “and if you pull me through this you can take your pick.”

“You got me all wrong,” the sheriff said. “I don’t want any of your hosses. But if I was you I’d not feel safe even if I had six men with guns around me day and night. I’d get on my fastest hoss and hit straight off away from Sloan.”

The big man turned pale, but it was partly from anger. “Are you the sheriff of this county, or ain’t you?” he asked.

“Just now,” answered the sheriff, grinning, “I wish to heaven that I wasn’t.”

From anyone else that speech would have been a damaging remark, but the record of the sheriff was so very long and so very straight that not even the farmers of Sloan had dared to think of displacing him. He was a landmark, like the old Spanish church in Sloan, and his towering reputation kept the gunmen and wrongdoers far from the town. The admission of Sturgis that he feared young Peyton therefore made Jan van Zandt set his jaw and stare.

“You want me to move?” he said at length. “You want me to give up my home?”

The sheriff looked at him curiously. Sturgis was not accustomed to these homemakers, as yet; but he dimly realized that Jan van Zandt’s hearth was his altar and that he would as soon renounce his God as leave his house.

“I don’t want you to give up nothin’,” the sheriff said. “I want you to take a vacation and beat it off. Stay away three months; and before the end of that time Jerry will be gone—the only thing that keeps him here now is you.”

“Go away,” repeated Jan van Zandt huskily, “and leave my wife and my girls out there—alone?”

“Good heavens, man!” burst out Sheriff Sturgis. “D’you think Jerry Peyton would lay a hand on your women-folk? I tell you, van Zandt, the boy is clean—as my gun!”

“He’s a bad man,” Jan van Zandt solemnly said. “Sheriff, I’ve seen him as close as I see you now, and I’ve seen him worked up.”

The sheriff noted the black and blue patches on the face of van Zandt, but he said nothing.

“He’s bad all through, and when a man is crooked in one thing he’s crooked in everything.”

“Listen to me,” the sheriff said. “I’ve lived—”

“Right’s right,” interrupted van Zandt stubbornly. “One bad apple’ll spoil a whole barrel of good ones. That’s true, I guess, and if it’s true, then if there was ever any good in Peyton the bad has turned him all rotten long ago.”

Sturgis looked at the pale, set face of the farmer with a sort of horror. He felt tongue-tied, as when he argued with his wife on certain subjects; and all in a breath he hated the narrow mind of van Zandt which used maxims in place of thought, and at the same time he respected a man who was determined to stay by his home even if he had to die there.

The little, bright eyes of the sheriff looked out of the window and followed a rolling, pungent cloud of dust down the street; in the narrow mind of the farmer he had caught a glimpse of certain rocklike qualities on which a nation can build. He sprang to his feet and banged his fist on the desk.

“Get out of here and back to your home,” he said. “I’ve seen enough of your face. Peyton says he expects payment for his mare, does he? Well, he has a payment coming to him, I guess!”

“I’ll give him what the law grants him,” said van Zandt, backing toward the door but still stolid.

“Aw, man, man!” groaned Sturgis. “You come out of smooth country and smooth people. What kind of laws are you goin’ to fit to a country like this?” He waved through the windows toward the ragged mountains which lifted to the east of Sloan Valley.

Jan van Zandt blinked, but he said nothing and he thought nothing; he saw no relation between law and geology.

“Go back to your home,” repeated the sheriff. “How do I know Peyton is going to try to harm you? I’m here to punish crimes, not read minds. Get on your way! What do I know about Peyton?”

“You told me yourself that if you was in my place—”

“But I ain’t in your place, am I? What a man thinks don’t count on a witness stand, does it? Legally, I know Peyton is a law-abidin’ citizen.”

“Sheriff Sturgis,” said the farmer sternly, “leastways I’ve learned something out of this talk with you. You call him law-abidin’? I know he’s young, but he has a record as long as my arm. D’you deny that?”

The sheriff swallowed. “Gunslingers don’t count,” he said. “S’long, van Zandt.”

Sturgis stood at the window, scowling, and watched the big farmer mount his horse. It was a chestnut stallion, a full sixteen hands tall, clean limbed, straight rumped, with a long neck that promised a mighty stride. He made a fine picture, but what good would he be, thought the sheriff, in a twenty-four-hour march across the mountains? Or how would those long legs, muscled for speed alone, stand up under the jerking, twisting, weaving labor of a roundup. The chestnut was a picture horse, decided the sheriff, made for pleasure and short easy rides, together with a long price.

Jan van Zandt disappeared down the street, borne at a long, rocking gallop, and the sheriff turned his glance to his own little pinto, standing untethered, with the reins thrown over his head. The pinto had raised his lumpish head a trifle and opened one eye when the stallion started away with a snort; then he dropped back into his sullen slumber, his ears flopping awry, his lower lip pendent, one hip sagging.

The pinto was six, but he looked sixteen; he appeared about to sink into the dust, but if a choice was to be made between that pinto and the chestnut stallion for a sixty-mile ride the sheriff would not have hesitated for a second in making his decision. He was so moved as he thought of these things, that he leaned out of the window and cursed the mustang in a terrible voice, and the pinto raised his head and whinnied softly.