Читать книгу The Blue Jay - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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He didn’t like the idea of putting a contract like that in writing. As he pointed out, I could use that contract to extract blackmail out of him, in case I threw up the overseer job on the ranch. But I showed him that in case I couldn’t make a go of the thing, I wouldn’t be able to get much out of him. The only opinion he had to be afraid of was his grandfather’s and the only person that could let him win his grandfather’s respect—and money—was me.

Randal thought it all over very slowly, his eyes fixed on a far corner of the room, but not a shadow of a frown on his face. I could tell that he was a deep one by that. Your simple chap will wrinkle his face into a knot when he’s working out a problem, but your real deep one never bats an eye. Finally Randal looks me in the eye:

“Old timer,” says he, “I think that you’re about as downright bad a case as—I am!”

“You flatter me,” says I. “But does the thing go through?”

“It goes through as slick as a whistle,” says he. “I’m putting all my dice in this one box and I can’t keep any up my sleeve. So here goes!”

He pulled an old envelope out of his pocket and he tore it open, and on the two sides of it, in a fine, clerical hand, he wrote out that contract, and signed it and passed it over to me.

Of course he hadn’t missed a chance to put in some ‘if’s’ and ‘buts’ that changed the whole meaning, but I had him cross them out and then that contract made slick reading, for me. When I folded it up and shoved it into my wallet, I asked him what the next stage was to be, and he said that we had to get ready to go out to the ranch. The reason that he had bought me the new suit was partly because he wanted to open my mind and get me prepared for something big to come, and partly because I would have to make a pretty good impression on the boys at the ranch, because if I walked in on them dressed like a tramp, they wouldn’t respect me none.

There was good sense in that, of course. They say that clothes don’t make the man, but I’ve noticed that from your best girl up to the gent that you touch for a loan, the clothes you wear make the difference between getting inside the door and being left out in the cold.

The idea of Randal was that I should lay hold of a suitcase, buy some stuff to put in it, and then drive out with him in the buckboard. I agreed that that was a pretty good idea. He had some business to attend to, and so I said that I would go out and do the buying, and I asked him what money he wanted to let me have.

He fair staggered me, at that. He pulled out a wad of money and told me to go as far as that would take me. When I counted the wad, there was five hundred in it!

I could see that Randal didn’t figure me for any piker that would be apt to take my money and my clothes and board the first train out of the town. He expected that I would try for the big game, and I decided that I would show him that he wasn’t wrong in trusting me to play for the main graft.

I went down to the Mexican quarter of Sour City; that is to say, on the northern side of the creek, where the water put an end to the white-man’s town and let the greasers begin. I wanted to try the Mexicans for the stuff that I needed, because I knew that in that part of the town I was more apt to find stuff such as I wanted; also, what happens among greasers doesn’t float back to the whites—it’s dead and buried right where it happened—and I didn’t want to have any curious eyes watching me and reporting me so’s the boys out on the ranch might hear about it.

The white side of Sour City was as slick as you please, all dressed up with shiny pavements, and such, but across the creek, you wouldn’t believe what a difference! Nothing but twelve inches of dust in the streets, with the wind stirring up drifts and pools in it, all the time, and when a horse galloped in that part of the town, he left a regular fog behind him, as high as the tops of the houses. Everything was dirty, and broken down, and lazy, and comfortable. In the doorways, you would see the old greasy señoras setting and patting out their supply of tortillas for that evening. And here and there a couple of pigs would be squealing at each other while they tried to root at the same spot in the dirt. And there was kids around that wasn’t bothered much with clothes; mostly a shirt or a pair of trousers, but not the two together at the same time. But everybody looked happy and sort of in tune with things.

I seen a great big store where there was new stuff and second hand, everything that a body could want or even think of. All along the front of the veranda, on pegs and nails, there was old saddles, bridles, quirts, spurs, chaps, stirrup leathers, stirrups, and saddle flaps, saddle-bags, pack-saddles, and blackwhips, and blacksnakes, and four-hoss lashes, with bits in a thousand fancy Mexican styles for the torturing of a good hoss; and all the spurs different too. That was the sort of a store that a kid could stand in front of and wish for a whole year together—and make a new wish every ten seconds!

There was a kid there, too. He was a slim-built brat about thirteen or fourteen. His voice hadn’t changed yet. It was high and thin, but it hadn’t begun to crack yet. It was more like a woman’s. He was pretty ragged, but anyway he had enough clothes of one sort or another to cover him down to the calves of the legs. He wore huarachos—wood, of course—and he had a battered old felt hat jammed down on a head that was covered with an extra thick thatching of black hair.

He held out his hand before me and asked me, with his head onto one side and his voice whining, would I please help a poor orphan what had no father nor no mama, so he could get a little to buy a loaf of bread, which he would eat it with cold water and bless the God that sent me along to relieve the poor.

“Ain’t you got a cent on you, kid?” says I.

“Ah, señor! Alas, señor, there has been no kindness here to-day!”

I reached down and grabbed him by the ankles and heaved him up into the air. Out from his pockets come a rain of silver and coppers that rattled on the floor of the veranda of the store, and some of the coins rolled into the deep dust of the street, and a few of them slipped down through the cracks in the boards. Then I give him a toss to one side and he spun through the air and looked as though he was going to land on his head. But he didn’t, because he was as active as a cat. He righted himself while he was still sailing through the air and hit the ground on hands and feet.

He was a surprise, that little scalawag. Instead of bursting out into boohooing because he’d lost all that money, he ripped a couple of man-sized Spanish cuss-words at me, and a voice behind me said: “Jump, señor!”

I didn’t wait to ask why I ought to jump. I did it, and got back through the door of the store just as a wink of light come jump through the air where I had been standing, and there was a knife sticking into the door jamb and humming like a overgrown hornet.

“That Pepillo ees wan devil, no?” says the storekeeper.

“Say it in Spanish,” says I, “I know the lingo.”

“He will hang soon,” says the storekeeper, in Spanish.

But he didn’t seem to take the kid serious in spite of the knife. He just stood up there and grinned out at the street where Pepillo was ferreting the coins out of the dust.

He kept one eye on his work and the other eye on me, all the time, and he talked, too, with hand and tongue—he was sure ambidextrous. To give you some idea of the language that that kid was capable of, leaving out all the high spots that might hurt your ears if they’re sensitive to such stuff: “Gringo dog,” says this Pepillo, “one night I shall come where you sleep and put a knife between your ribs. Or perhaps I shall rip up your belly, son of a thief! Come out, coward, to fight with me. For I have still another knife! I do not fear you! Come, pigface!”

I pulled the knife out of the wood where he had stuck it and I threw it back into the dust.

“You little snake,” says I, “does your mama know what you’re about?”

“My mama watches me from the blue Heaven and puts a curse on all gringo dogs,” says this kid. “The devils will roast you for ten thousand years on a white fire and stick spits through your middle to turn you over the flames!”

I heard the storekeeper chuckling behind me. Matter of fact, I couldn’t help laughing, too, there was so damn much venom in that kid and there was so little fear in him, too.

He reached for the knife that I had thrown down into the dust in front of him, and I waved my arm so that the shadow swung over him. Well, sir, the way that kid side-stepped out of the way of any chance of danger was a caution. He chucked his knife almost with his back turned to me, I thought, and the damn blade skinned along a quarter of an inch from my temple. Another bit in, and it would of slipped through my eye into my brain and that would of been the end of Blondy Kitchin and this here yarn.

I dunno why I wasn’t madder or more scared, but that kid just tickled me, really. For one thing, he was so doggone handsome, which you wouldn’t believe it! And then again, as he stood there ripping out cusses and telling me where I was bound to go when I went west, his voice had a sort of a sweetness to it—like a bird, only a bird that was singing very mad. Yes, he tickled me all over, more’n any kid that I ever seen before. First thing that I knew, I’d grabbed a dollar out of my pocket and heaved it at his head.

He put up his hand and snatched the flash of that coin out of the air and he stood there looking down to it in his palm. I dunno that ever he had seen a whole dollar before, by the look on his face, and the way that he said: “Dios! Dios! Dios!” over and over. You would of thought that I had handed him a ticket to Heaven.