Читать книгу The Blue Jay - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

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“What is your name?” says I to the storekeeper.

“Gregorio,” says he. “I am Gregorio, son of Pedro Oñate—”

“Hold on, Gregorio,” says I. “I just want a name to call you by and not a song to sing to you!”

“Ah, well, señor!” says he. But he was pretty good-natured. It was plain that he was sort of tickled by me giving the dollar to the kid after the knife-heaving.

“Have you got any saddles, here?” says I.

“Señor!” says he, and he waves to the front of the store, where there was a whole mob of them saddles.

“Sure,” says I, “they’re leather to sit in, but have you got any saddles?”

He give me a look. You see, a fancy saddle is about one-half of a Mexican’s life.

“Señor,” says he, “as one gentleman to another, I shall show you a saddle which any caballero would be proud to sit in.”

He goes back in the store and pretty soon he brings out a humdinger, all set over with silver what-nots. I give it a look and it sounded to me. What I wanted to do, was to walk out there to the bunkhouse on that ranch not like a fancy tramp, but with a gun and a saddle on me, like I really belonged on the range, and like I had done something that was worth while, on the range. A good saddle would be a pretty fair proof of it. This here saddle was a corker, all worked with fine carvings, and covered with polished silver that pretty near dazzled you just to look at it.

“How much?” says I.

Gregorio closed his eyes.

“Ah,” says he, “when I think how much I gave for it! But no—I can never hope to get that much out of it! Besides, I like you, señor, and for my friends, I have no thought. Money does not exist. To you, then, señor, I give this saddle away—for four hundred dollars!”

It gave me a start, the naming of a price like that for just a saddle, but when I come to look at the thing closer, and fingered it, I felt like I had to have it, because I was pretty sure that a saddle like that would show those hard-eggs on the Randal ranch that I was no freezeout or bluffer.

Just then a little voice pipes up at my shoulder: “Mas sabe el loco en su casa, que el cuerda en la ajena.” Which is one of them neat Spanish proverbs: and it means, in case you don’t know Spanish, that a fool in his own house knows a lot more than a wise man does away from home.

I looked around and there was that Pepillo. He had kicked off his wooden huarachos and so he had sneaked into the store without making no noise in his bare feet.

Gregorio had seemed to like the kid well enough when he seen him in the street, but inside of the store, it was a different story.

“Little thief, and son of a thief,” yells Gregorio. “Have I not told you that if I found you in my store again—”

He laid a hand on the counter, like he would jump over and squash that kid flat, but Pepillo just stood where he was, and he lifted up one foot and scratched the heel of it on his other shin. You would be surprised to see his feet, they was so small and so soft, pretty near like a baby’s. It made me see how young he was. He sticks out his chin and he makes a face at Gregorio.

“Old fat fool!” says he. “Do you think that I fear you when I have found a friend such as this señor?” And he puts his arm through mine, as free as you please.

Well, I was plumb tickled. It gives me a sort of a nice warm feeling all over, though I knew that the little devil, he was just throwing a bluff to work me and keep a high hand over Gregorio. Gregorio got madder than ever, but he looked from the kid to me.

He says: “Do not be deceived, señor. This little rat, for a whole fortnight he has been in this city making friends and using them and losing them again when he is through with them. The little thief has a charm in his hands. He steals a watch while you smile at him!”

I looked down at the kid. “Look here, Pepillo, d’you steal?”

Well, he cocks his head up and looks at me plumb trusting out of them big brown eyes of his—or was they black? I never can make out. He says: “Si, señor?”

“What!” I yells at him. “Are you a thief?”

“Si, señor,” says he, as cool as a waterlily. “And what I steal, I sell to this Gregorio.”

Gregorio ripped out a couple of volleys of cusses and reached for a blacksnake, but his face was pretty red and I guessed that there must be something in what the kid had said.

“Leave Pepillo be,” says I, “and let’s get on with the saddle. What do you know about this here saddle, Pepillo?”

“I know the gentleman who sold it to Gregorio,” says Pepillo.

“It is a lie!” says Gregorio, but he looks pretty sick.

“He was very ill, that gentleman,” says Pepillo. “He has sold everything except this one saddle. He asked five hundred dollars for it and said that it cost him a thousand, but Gregorio said that who will buy a used saddle that another man has sat in? And he bought the saddle for eighty dollars!”

“When I come to die—” begins Gregorio, very solemn.

“Here, Gregorio,” I busts in, “you and me want to do some business, but we ain’t got any extra time on our hands. I’ll give you a hundred and fifty dollars for that saddle. That’s pretty near a hundred per cent on your investment.”

“When a rat squeaks, do you believe it?” says Gregorio. “This boy is the son of the devil, and all the city knows it. I should be bankrupt if I—”

“Put the saddle away, then,” says I. “There’s a thirty-dollar saddle at the door that would suit me good enough—”

He picks up the saddle but his motions are pretty slow, and finally he says: “Amigo mio, though I lose money dreadfully, still I should like to see a true caballero sitting in this saddle, and is there any man as worthy as you, my dear friend? No, you shall have it—for two hundred dollars!”

Well, it was worth that money and a lot more—just the silver work would of cost a lot more—so I paid the cash, though Pepillo groaned and wiggled, and said that it was robbery. He had saved me two hundred on the price, at that.

Next I got me a big leather carryall; one of them expansible things that you can crowd everything into up to a whole hoss. I bought me enough junk to pretty well fill it out, and everything was amazing cheap. Then it come to guns, and I had Gregorio show me a whole rack filled with Colts. I looked them all over. Matter of fact, they was all new-looking and very fine, but new looks wasn’t what I wanted. I pretended to try them all and not to like the balance of them.

“Gregorio,” said I, “I ask for a gun, but I mean that I wish to have a friend that can be relied upon. Do you understand?”

He understood nearly everything, that Gregorio, and now he squinted at me. He hesitated for a long time.

“Señor,” said he, “you have been a good customer. Here is a little treasure that I have been keeping for myself. But what can a man keep from a good friend? Here is a gun which has been proved; I dare not say by whom!”

And he pulled out from his own clothes an old-fashioned Colt. He handed it to me and I give it a look. It had a wooden handle that was black with time and with sweat and polished by a lot of fingering. I looked it all over. And finally, on the underside of the barrel, I seen seven little notches that had been filed into the good steel.

I knew what that meant. This here gun had killed seven men. And it had just that sort of a mean look, I can tell you. It couldn’t of been more to my taste. I wanted to tote a gun along with me that would look pretty bad and dangerous to the boys out there on the ranch, if they was to see it. And what could I of found more than this?

Gregorio wanted forty dollars, which was highway robbery for an old gun like that, but I had to pay twenty-five before I could get it—and the luck that went along with it.

“Because,” whispered Gregorio, “the señor who owned this gun after all died in a peaceful sick bed. Is it not strange?”

It suited me. I stowed the gun away and carried my saddle and carryall out to the veranda, while Gregorio went to get me a buckboard that would take my stuff around to the hotel. Pepillo waited with me on the veranda. I handed him a five-dollar bill, which was small pay for all the money that he had saved me in the store. He looked at the bill without a lot of interest, I thought, seeing how one dollar had seemed to mean so much to him before.

“Ah, well, señor,” says he, “you are to go away, then?”

“And you, Pepillo?” says I.

“God knows, señor,” says he. “But it will be a long time before I meet another of whom I am afraid.”

“Hey!” says I. “You mean that you’re afraid of me?”

“For Dios!” says Pepillo. “My ankles still burn like fire where you caught them. The devil is in those big hands of yours. Why should I not fear you? If I cursed you and threw knives—that was only a greater token that I feared you the more!”

He was a puzzler, that kid. I took to him a lot, I can tell you, and by the sick sort of a way that he opened his eyes and looked up to me, you would of thought that he was feeling pretty bad, too. Gregorio come around the corner with the buckboard.

“Gregorio,” I hollered all at once, “give this boy some clothes and shoes and such and fix him up. He is my mozo; he goes with me!”