Читать книгу The Blue Jay - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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Well, that speech came bursting out of me, as you might say, out of the largeness of the heart. I felt as though I was offering somebody the world. I guess that I expected this here young Pepillo to fall on his knees, or something, and give thanks for what I intended to do for him. Well, he didn’t. He hauls off and gives me an ugly eye. He says:

“What mozo?”

“Why,” says I, “you, of course.”

“Me?” says Pepillo, waving his eyebrows up to the top of his forehead and jabbing his thumb into his breast. “Did you say Pepillo?”

“Sure,” says I. “I’ve sort of took a fancy to you. I’m gonna make you, kid. I’m gunna dress you up like you was a millionaire. I’m gunna make you look like a gentleman!”

You should of seen his face. It went sort of black.

“Ha! Ha!” says Pepillo, trying to laugh, but only choking. “It is a good joke. Por Dios, I laugh—I laugh. You are to make a gentleman of me. You are to make me a—it is too much! And I am the son of—”

He stopped himself with such an effort that his teeth barely clicked in time to shut back the word and his lips remained grinning back, so that on my word, he looked like a damned young wolf.

“You are the son of who?” says I.

“Your master, gringo swine!” says this young brat, and he pours out a stream of Spanish cussing that fair made my hair rise. You could say this for that Pepillo’s system of cussing: he didn’t leave nothing out, but he started right in at the beginning and he traced all my family tree, and you can bet that it was a thorn tree!

Now I tell you true, if any other kid this side of hell had tried to hand such a line of talk to me, I would of tied him up and skinned him alive as a starter, and after that I would of taught him manners while he was raw. But Pepillo was different. Right in the midst of his cussing and his raging and his raving, it was sort of entertaining, if you know what I mean. If you had been there to watch him you would of said that the graceful way he had was like a bird putting its head from side to side while it sung as though it would bust its heart.

Pepillo was that way; like a singing bird. That voice of his wasn’t never nothing but musical. It was a sort of a pleasure to be damned by Pepillo. When he cussed, it wasn’t any ordinary cussing, either. He used his wits and made it interesting. I wish that I could remember exactly how he would light in and dress anybody down, but his tongue moved just a shade faster than my thoughts could travel, and so he was always a jump around the corner from my memory.

“All right, Pepillo,” says I. “I am a gringo swine while there is nobody else around but you and me. You savvy? But the minute that another gent hears you using language like that on me, I’ll right up and break you in two!”

He seemed to like that idea. He stopped cussing and began to laugh at me and at the whole idea, and you could see that he was tickled all over.

“Then, señor,” says he, “you would have me to be your mozo, and what would you do for me?”

“I would keep you in decent clothes,” says I. “I would see that you got a chance at schooling, even if I had to teach you myself—”

Pepillo puts back his head and laughs again. Doggone me if it wasn’t a queer sensation to let myself be laughed at by anybody, particularly by a little runt of a kid, like that; but he had that sort of a silly, sweet sound to his laughter, the same as he had in his cussing, and I liked to hear it.

“All right, señor,” says Pepillo, “and what else will you do for me?”

“Teach you manners,” says I.

“How?” says he.

“This way,” says I, and I make a pass at him. I grabbed thin air. He was just a mite faster moving than the lash of a four-horse whip when it curls over to snap the haunch of the near leader.

“You would beat me?” says Pepillo, dropping his head a little on one side and looking thoughtful.

“I would give you such a licking as nobody else could ever improve on,” says I, “if I had the running of you, youngster!”

“So!” says Pepillo. “I am to be beaten and taught manners, and sent to school, maybe. And what else will you do?”

It appealed to something serious in me and I said: “Look here, kid, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll start in and make a change in you. I’ll keep you dressed clean and decent. I’ll see that you have enough to eat. I’ll see that nothing too much is ever asked of you. And besides that, I’ll see to it that you get some of the bad ideas out of your head. I’ll see that you turn straight. You got the makings of a damned little good for nothing thief, and d’you know what comes of thieves and such like, kid?”

“Ah,” says Pepillo, making his eyes as big as moons, “tell me!”

“They die with a rope around their throats,” says I.

“So!” gasps Pepillo. “Ah, señor!”

“You little devil,” says I, “you’re laughing at me, ain’t you? But I tell you: what you need is a master, and I’ll be one to you. I’ve been through hell myself, kid, and I know how to keep you from having to go through the same thing. You hear me talk?”

Pepillo leaned up against the side of the store, thinking very dark. He looked up to me, once or twice, with a smile in his eyes and on his lips, as if he was thinking what an awful lark it would be, and what an awful fool he would make out of me. Then he says:

“You might beat me, señor. You might take a very cruel whip and beat me with it until the blood ran down through my clothes, but if you laid a hand on me, señor, I should stab you to the heart!”

He looked like he meant it, too. He looked about as meek and submissive as a young loafer wolf.

“All right” says I. “I’ll treat you like your name was Taliaferro. But if you join up with me, you got to promise that you’ll stick to your side of the contract for a whole year. Y’understand? Before I’ll blow in the price of a suit of clothes and all the rest on you.”

“You shall have my hand on it!” says he.

I reached out and flicked a forefinger under his throat, and sure enough, I got hold of a silk string and jerked out a little ebony cross worked with fine gold and even set with jewels.

“Damn this hand shaking!” says I. “You’re a Catholic, and you’ll swear by the cross that you wear around your neck, youngster!”

He had clapped both hands over the cross and turned red and then pale. He was all worked up.

“You dog—you son of a dog—you bull-faced, big-jawed, stupid-eyed—”

“Go on,” says I, “and when you get tired, let me know when you will talk sense again.”

Well, he was a queer kid. All at once he stood up straight and he said “what shall I swear to you, señor, and what is your name?”

“Kitchin is my name,” says I. “Which mostly they call me Blondy, you know.”

“That’s not a name,” says this kid.

“My real name is a joke,” says I.

“I cannot swear to a false name,” says he, very seriously.

“It would spoil my time on the range if it was knowed,” says I. “But as a matter of fact my front name is really Percival! That’s a hot one, ain’t it!”

“Then what am I to swear to you, Don Percival?” says he.

“To stick by me for a year and to do what you’re told all that time.”

“And you, señor?”

“I’ll give you my word that I’ll treat you fair and square, on my word of honor.”

“You will not swear, then?”

“Not me, kid. I ain’t struck any need of having any God in my rambles around this little old world. The nearest I’ve come to the power of God was twenty gents done up in blue coats and brass buttons, and wearing clubs—but they wasn’t nothing to swear by.”

Pepillo nodded: “Your word of honor is good enough for me,” says he. He was tremendous serious as he went on: “I am a very bad boy, señor. I have done much wrong in my life. And if you can make me into a good man—”

Even in spite of his seriousness there was something about that that made him bust out laughing. When he sobered up, he grabbed hold on his cross and he tilted his head up to the sky, and he says, soft and shaky:

“I shall work for you and serve you in all things, so help me God!”

And he looked down slowly towards the earth again and stood there a while, thinking.

“Hey, Pepillo,” says I, “smile, will you?”

“Ah, Señor Kitchin,” says he, “it is a serious thing. It is a year out of my life, but I give it into your hands because I know that you will take care of me!”

He walked into the store to get fitted out by Gregorio, and I tried to figure out whether I liked him best sassy or serious, but I couldn’t—except that when he was serious there was something about him that sort of scared me.

But in another minute I could hear him chirping in the store as gay as ever, and swearing at Gregorio, and beating the prices down. And that was a relief, I can tell you!