Читать книгу The Blue Jay - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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Aiming the way that I was towards starting at the bottom and working my way up, with a new name the same as the chaplain had planned for me to take, I wasn’t any too tickled to see the face of that sergeant, of course, but I was plumb happy compared with him.

He give me a wall-eyed look and then he side-stepped right out into the gutter. I started to pass on, but then I changed my mind and turned around and I went back to where he was still standing and looking back at me. He acted like he expected me to hit him.

“I’m armed, Kitchin,” says he. “Don’t try nothing! I’m armed and I won’t take anything from you!”

“Sergeant,” says I, “you got me wrong!”

He put up his hand quick. “I’m not a sergeant, any more,” says he. “I’m doing some ranching up here, Blondy, and it don’t help any to bring up the past!”

I hadn’t liked him when I met him back there in the city, because he took it to heart so mean, the way that I laid him out in the patrol wagon. Now I could see that he was even worse than I had thought.

You take them by and large, the cops are a pretty good lot. Here and there you may run across a rotter, of course. Here and there you’ll find a pretty bad grafter who plays in with the crooks; but it’s never as bad as the newspapers would like to make out, I’ve always thought. A policeman, he’s a fellow that is willing to risk his life for his job, and mostly men that do that sort of work have got to have something that is worth while in them. Take most of those boys down there in the city, they didn’t hold no grudge against me because I had spoiled a few of their faces for a while. One fellow that had a nose out of place used to make a point of coming around to see me, and he used to chat with me, real cheerful. He would tell me how that he was taking boxing lessons, and how he hoped that when I got out of jail, I would drop around to see him, and then he would peel off his uniform and him and me would have it out, and he would try to do for my nose what I had already done for his. I intended to give him the chance, too, and if things ever get laid so that I can take some time off and get back to that time, I’m sure going to call on him and give him his chance at me.

Well, most coppers are that way—clean, hard-hitters—but now and then you’ll come across an exception to the rule. That sergeant had got a busted rib where I hit him in the police patrol. Not really clean busted, but only fractured; nothing hardly worth speaking about at all, between men, but he laid on about it a lot, and he used to come and tell me that when I got out of that jail, I would be lucky if he didn’t have me in again so fast that my head would swim!

Now, all of these things come piling back through my head when I met him up there in Sour City. I seen where he hated to have it known that he had ever been a sergeant, because he felt that he had raised himself a whole long ways above those old days, and that made me dislike him a lot more than I ever had before. Because about the lowest thing that a man can do is try to cut himself loose from what he used to be in his past.

I says: “Randal, if you want me to forget that you used to be a police sergeant—”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” says he. He was pretty eager about it, too. “However,” he went right on, “I don’t suppose that you’re going to be staying around Sour City very long?”

The minute that I seen him, I had decided that I would be moving on as soon as the next freight pulled out from the station, but the way he talked, it made me think that maybe I had better stay on right where I was. It looked like a chance was opening up; and I decided to talk straight to him. The chaplain, he had pretty well persuaded me that you don’t gain anything by talking around the corners about folks.

I says: “Randal, it ain’t hard to see that you want to get rid of me, from here?”

“Not at all!” says he, and he waved his hand; but I could see a fairly sick look on his face. I knew that I was weighing on his mind, pretty bad.

I says: “Now, Randal, you’ve got and worked yourself up to where you’re a rancher that can afford to wear real solid silver spurs, as I see, and handmade boots, and all the rest, and you ain’t fond of the idea of having the folks around here ever know that you used to wear a night stick, quite a bit.”

“You may put it that way,” says he. “I really welcome frank talk!”

“The hell you do!” says I, “but you’re gunna get it! I don’t like you, Randal, and I never did. You was low and mean and ornery, and there ain’t hardly anything in the world that would do me so much good as to sink a hand in your ribs again!”

He give a little grunt and a step back, at that.

“But,” says I, “I know what I can do and what I can’t. And what I can’t do is to make any more trouble. I’ve had my dose. I’ve been licked good and proper and I ain’t gunna forget it. Nothing is ever gunna give the law a chance to send me back to Fulsom, again. Now, Randal, I’m up here not on a bat, the way that you seen me down in town, but mighty quiet and sober. I’m a hard-working man, and I want to get a job and I want to stick to it. You understand? Now, the folks around here ain’t any too fond of employing jail-birds, and you know it. And the easiest thing in the world would be to get me out of this section of the country by just letting the word get out that I’ve been serving a prison sentence. But the minute that I hear any talk like that, I’m gunna know who started it, and I’m gunna come for you. And when I get to you, I’m gunna forget all about prison. If they get me and send me back on account of you and that sort of talk, it’ll be murder, Randal—and I mean it!”

I did mean it, too. Because when I thought of losing a chance to go straight on account of a rat like this here Randal, it fair sickened me. I would like to of wrung his neck right then and there. But Randal understood me. He was pretty grey as he stared at me. Then he begun to nod. He had a long, thin face with deep-set eyes, and now an idea begun to work up in those eyes. All at once, he fetched a hand into a vest pocket and brought out a wallet and he sifted a few bills out of the leather. He holds it out to me.

“Here’s seventy-five dollars,” says he.

“And that’s my price for beating it and keeping my mouth shut?” says I. “I’ll see you in hell first, Randal. Your money is dirt, to me!”

That was pretty free and independent talking, and in more than one part of the range that I could name, it would of got a man shot, right there and on the spot, but it looked like this was not one of them parts of the range. Randal, he just smiled back at me.

He said: “Now, don’t you be a damn fool, Blondy. The thing for you to do, kid, is to step into that store up the street and get yourself a suit of clothes. They’ve got a big assortment, and maybe they’ll have a suit that’ll fit you. They carry hats and shoes, too, and shirts and neckties. You haven’t got enough money there to buy the world, but you got enough to fit yourself out decently. Well, Blondy, that’s what I want you to do, and after you get yourself made up, you come over to the hotel, and you’ll find me waiting for you in the lobby. It’ll be lunch time, then, and you and me will go in and surround some chops, or whatever looks good to you in the eating line. You do what I tell you, and don’t ask any questions until it’s all over.”

I shouldn’t of taken that money, of course. Looking back on it, I can see that I was a fool and sort of a crook to take it, but I’ll give you my word that it wasn’t the idea of getting something for nothing that appealed to me so much. What flabbergasted me, really, was the mystery that was behind all of this, because, mind you, this ex-sergeant of police wasn’t any extravagant, generous sort of fellow. I aim to believe that you can mostly spot a generous man by a sort of a stupid wall-eyed look that he has. You try your hand at it. Just look over the men that you know and you’ll see what I mean quick enough, because the tight-fisted fellows are apt to have a pretty wideawake look—as if they were trying to make out whether you were worth noticing or not—but the generous folks have a sort of a stupid look. When you ask them for something they get a sort of a sick expression.

Now there wasn’t anything stupid about this here fellow Randal. He was as sharp as a rat. There was something up his sleeve. He wanted to get something out of it, and I naturally wondered what it could be. It was a case of my wits against his wits, and I was willing to bet that my brains were as hard as my fist, so far as he was concerned. I decided that I would do what he said. I went up the street to a store and by the grace of God I found out a pretty good-looking brown suit and I got right into it. There was a hard job finding shoes that would fit, but I managed it at last after a pretty tight squeeze, and I sashayed out of that place with a new hat on the side of my head, looking like a new million, you bet.

I found the ex-sergeant in the lobby of the hotel and he give me one squint up and down and nodded:

“You take to it easy,” said he. “You got a knack for spending, I see.”

Then he led me into the dining-room and we settled down to see how much food could be got onto one table, and after that, we seen just how quick that table could be emptied again. And so pretty soon he came around to cigar time and set back and clamped his teeth in a nice-looking black cigar. But I stuck to cigarettes that I rolled myself, because I wanted to keep my head clear.