Читать книгу The Border Kid - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe Right Sort of Men
The announcement that the two men were dead threw William Benn into a passion. He paced the “bridge” unsteadily.
“I search the world to get the right sort of men,” said he, “and I train them, and I spend money on them like water. And then you get your hands on them and spend them like greenbacks! By gosh, Charlie, I’ll not carry on with this sort of handling on your part!”
Charlie sat in a chair near the inside wall; he kept erect in it, and Ricardo could guess that this was simply because the man had spent so many hours in the saddle that he was accustomed to bearing his own shoulder weight without slouching.
To the outburst of big William Benn the other made no rejoinder. He merely shrugged his shoulders and continued to watch his companion with a fixed stare, as one who sees what is before him, but also finds the time and energy to think of something else.
“Go on, then,” said William Benn. “You lost the two of them?”
“I lost the pair of them.”
“And what have you got in exchange?”
“Fifteen thousand.”
“Fifteen thousand? They were worth ten thousand apiece!”
Young Ricardo listened with bulging eyes. In the business of William Benn and this other fellow, it appeared that human beings were set down at a cash price. He could not help wondering if his own blood, therefore, would be shed for a certain number of thousands! It cast another light upon the many kindnesses of his benefactor.
“Ten thousand is too high a price,” said Charlie, “for any gent under thirty. You know that, Bill. Don’t try to kid me out of it. I know the facts!”
“You got fifteen thousand. Don’t tell me that you got it out of the Ranger bank?”
“That’s where it came from.”
He seemed to have settled himself to resist a tirade on this subject, and Ricardo caught his breath, expecting the same thing. But nothing was said by William Benn. Instead, he raised himself to his full height, and then a little upon his toes, and one clenched hand was raised quivering until it was level with the top of his head.
But he allowed that hand to fall without speaking a word. Words, after all, were feeble, compared with such a gesture.
“You took down fifteen thousand,” he said, “and you knew that we could get half a million out of that place?”
“You want to make up your mind without listening to sense,” said Charlie.
“Lemme hear the great Charles Perkins, then,” said William Benn with irony. “Lemme hear all that was going on inside of your head, Charlie!”
“We had the night watchman fixed. You know that,” said Charlie.
“Of course, I know that. I did the fixing!”
The truth began to break in upon the unwilling mind of Ricardo. This generous Benn, this kind benefactor, was simply a robber—and a robber, among other things, of a bank!
“I did the fixing and I did it cheap. As neat a job as I ever turned in my life,” said Benn, with pride.
“It was too cheap to last,” said Charlie.
“Who says that?”
“I say that. He wasn’t satisfied. He began to see that the bank couldn’t be had except through him. He came to me and wanted more money.”
“You told him to be quiet, of course!”
“I didn’t! I didn’t tell him that. The reason was that he meant what he said.”
“You let him bluff you?”
“Billy,” said the other, quietly, “no one bluffs me, and you know it!”
William Benn shrugged his shoulders and took an impatient step or two up and down the room.
“Go on,” said he. “What happened? You gave him more coin?”
“I gave him five hundred on the spot and I promised him a lot more!”
“You let him bleed you—and of course then he came back again.”
“He did.”
“I knew that!”
“When he came back,” said Charlie Perkins softly, “I was half of a mind to chuck the entire job just for the sake of putting a slug of lead through him. And I wish that I had, the sneaking traitor!”
He added: “The whole job may teach you that if you want a man’s job done, you’ve got to pay for a man. You’ve been out fishing again, and you’ve landed a soft-looking sucker, by my way of thinking!”
“You mean the greaser kid?” asked William Benn, carelessly.
Ricardo, flushing with anger, could guess that they were talking about him.
“I mean just that,” said Charlie. “What’s he good for? What are you going to do with him?”
“He may be a loss,” admitted Benn, “but then again I may cut my way into a lot of money with that boy, Charlie. He has a touch of something rare about him. But go on with your yarn. I want to know how the boys died.”
“You’ve got to wait for a minute, then. I say that the watchman began to drink, and when he began to drink, he began to talk.”
“About what?”
“About money that he expected to have before long. He began to let people know that he expected to come into a fine bundle of hard cash, and when that happened, he would do his best to change his way of living. He’d buy a ranch and settle down and live like a white man!”
“And you let him talk like that?”
“I warned him not to. But he laughed at me. He began to know it all. A fool like that can’t be handled—a cheap fool like that, Bill!”
“You throw it up to me because I bought him?”
“You’ll see how much of him you bought before long!”
“Well, then, it went along like this: and you let the thing drift into shallow water. Great Scott, Charlie, couldn’t you keep a lookout?”
“I was keeping a lookout day and night. I was wearing eyes in the back of my head, and sleeping no sounder than a wild cat. I wanted to go ahead and make the break before another day passed, but I wanted to wait for you, too.”
“My fault, I suppose?” sneered William Benn.
“Of course, it was your fault! You should have known that your place was there, where the deal was cooking. Instead of that you were off gathering in another crop of suckers! You were getting this thin-handed beauty of a greaser boy! That was what kept you so occupied!”
William Benn shrugged his shoulders high and let his big head thrust out.
“Keep to your own work, Charlie. Don’t horn into mine. Now what happens? You wanted to wait for me—but, after all, by gosh, you didn’t wait for me!”
“Of course, I didn’t. Because I saw, finally, that things were off balance, and that the fool watchman was all ready to break out talking. And that, as a matter of fact, was what actually happened!”
“Let’s have it short and sweet, Charlie. I’ve had enough of the preliminaries.”
“I got the boys together. We planted everything as carefully as we could. We had the combination of the small safe and we had the powder for the big safe.”
“Powder?”
“Soup. You know what I mean.”
“The watchman was going his rounds. He gave us the high sign. We went straight in through the front door. The watchman was to keep going the rounds and make sure that everything was all right on the outside. I sent the boys after the little safe, first of all. We gutted it. That’s where the fifteen thousand came from, and that was only a small part of what was there.”
“Go on. You wasted some time on the little safe and then you went for the big vault?”
“We went for that. I had the yellow soap to make the mold. Mat had the soup. And as we got up to the door of the big safe they opened on us!”
“Who did?”
“Why, there were eight men with repeating rifles in that bank, old son. The watchman had talked, all right. And finally he’d talked to the president. Another man than Ranger would have taken things easy and simply put on an extra guard, but Ranger, he wanted to use that bank as a trap and snap the lot of us. And he came close to doing it.”
“Ranger’s a fighting man, of course,” said William Benn.
“He is,” said the other, “but he’s fought his last fight.”
“He’s done for?”
“He is. They blasted away at us from behind cover. The boys went down with their shooting irons in their hands. They didn’t have a chance. The fellows had switched on a big ceiling light that showed us up perfectly, and the two lads went down almost with the first volley. I managed to smash that light in the ceiling with a lucky shot. Then I worked out of the bank. I lay for a minute alongside of one of those hounds and shot toward the safe, like I was one of them. There was such a racket, and the room was so full of smoke, that nobody could be sure of anything. I got through to the back door, and there who did I run into but the night watchman. I didn’t waste a bullet on him. I smashed his head with the butt of my Colt.”
“And then you rode for it, Charlie?”
“I did not. I waited an hour. Then I went to Ranger’s town house. I knew pretty well that he’d be spending the night there instead of going back to his ranch. I rang the front-door bell and told the Mexican girl that came to answer it that I wanted to see Ranger about the robbery. Ranger himself came down into the hall.
“ ‘I can tell you about the third man at the bank,’ says I.
“ ‘I want to know that,’ says he. ‘Who was he?’
“ ‘Me!’ says I. ‘Fill your hand.’
“He made a quick draw, but I was ready for him, and I stopped his heart with my first shot. Then I started for home, and here I am!”
