Читать книгу The Border Kid - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThe Veranda Roof
That night in his sleep, Ricardo had a nightmare. He dreamed that he was lying in the grip of a gigantic hand which encompassed all his body, and the thumb and forefinger were pressed over his throat, as though about to pinch his head off. He looked off at a distance and saw the face of the monster that held him. Darkness and mist lay between, but far away he could see the grim head of William Benn.
He awakened stiff with fright; that night he slept no more! He lay wide awake, staring at nothingness, for some time. At last he got up and tried his door. It was fast locked! It made him strangely uneasy. He went to the window and looked down from it to the roof of the veranda—the bridge of Benn. Beneath and beyond that there was enough starlight to give him a glimmering outline of the river, but most of all he could hear its swift rushing. It was a sleepy, dreamy sound by day, but now it was like an ominous hissing in the ear of Ricardo; it was like a whisper of warning, rising momently louder and louder.
Ricardo leaned out the window and took stock of his situation. He was in the top story of the building, but the eaves projected well above the top of his window. Only by standing up most perilously on the outside of the window could he hope to reach the eaves. There was of course no reason why he should try to escape, except that the locking of his door had given him the sense of being in a prison. Looking down, the difficulty was not so great. There was a large and rather ornamental hood over the window under his own, and if he could get down to that, the roof of the veranda would be immediately beneath!
Suppose he were able to descend, could he climb up again to his chamber?
He considered the matter with the greatest care. The more he considered it, the more interested was he in the possibility. So down he ventured and made the journey with ease; then after shivering for a minute on the top of the veranda roof, and listening to the stamping and shouting of the far-off cataracts, he turned and climbed back to his room, with only a little more difficulty than he had managed the descent; for though he was neither very strong nor very enduring, having always avoided even the slightest tasks during his life, yet he was as light and active as a cat.
The first dawn light came shortly after his return. He felt much more at ease with himself and with his situation in the house since he had discovered that it was so possible to get in and out of his room. So he spent some time dressing carefully, and just as the early morning light turned a strong pink, he heard his lock turned, softly. And nothing more except, afterwards, a few tremors of the floor on which he stood—as though a gust of wind were at that moment shaking the place. But Ricardo stood still, transfixed; he knew that it was the passing step of Selim!
Now that his door was opened, he judged that it was proper for him to leave the room when he pleased; so he went down through the house, which gave him more than ever the impression of a ship. When he reached the lower floor the odor of frying bacon came to him. Breakfast at this early hour seemed to be the rule in that odd household. He could not help sighing, when he remembered the lazy life he had led in the house of Perez. Then he went out through a side door and stood shivering in the morning chill, just in time to see a tall chestnut ridden furiously around the front of the house and put at a series of jumps. There was a fence, a wall, and an earthen mound, and the chestnut took them all gallantly, twisted around, and went back over the same course. Then Ricardo saw that the rider was William Benn.
The hunchback came out of the stable and took the horse as Benn dismounted.
“He’s too soft; you’ll have to work him harder,” Benn said to the fellow.
“One man can’t exercise ten horses,” declared the stableman.
Benn made no answer, but he watched the horse being led away, and then turned toward the house. When he saw Ricardo, he checked himself a little as though in surprise. Then he came on and nodded to the boy.
“You don’t make a long night of it,” he commented crisply. “And that’s a good thing. We keep early hours, here. Breakfast ought to be ready.”
They went into the house again, and big Selim served them with bacon and eggs and coffee and toast. Ricardo ate heartily, for he was very hungry, and after breakfast he asked what he was to do first.
“You’re anxious to begin learning the business, I see,” said William Benn. “But take your time. You’d better use a day or two just looking around. There’s no use trying to learn my business until you’ve learned me. Do whatever you like—but stay between the trees and the river!”
He said this with his faint smile that tipped up the corners of his mouth a little and always made Ricardo think of a demon mocking some poor Christian soul. However, he did not dream of disobeying. He walked around the house, studied the jumps, and tried to make friends with Lew, the stableman. But he could not get a word out of the little man, and when he retired to the house and strove to open a conversation with Selim, he was met by a similar silence. Yet he could see that they were greatly interested in him; he felt their glances following him whenever he was in view.
William Benn had left the place that morning. He did not come back at noon, and Ricardo ate alone, with big Selim stalking about the dining room and placing food before him in stark silence. After lunch, he slept for two hours, and then went down to the river with a fishing rod and tackle which he had found.
He caught nothing, but he killed the time until evening brought William Benn back on a tired, foaming horse. They had dinner together, with hardly ten words from Benn during that time; and afterwards they sat on the veranda—or else Benn walked back and forth along his “bridge,” stopping abruptly at the windows, now and again, and peering at the sweep of the river.
Ricardo followed him up and down with his eyes. He would have given a very great deal to have learned what the business might be for which he was enlisted, or how to explain the strangeness of the three servants, or the grim manner of William Benn himself.
“Can you handle guns?” asked Benn after a time, halting abruptly before the boy.
“I’m not an expert.”
“Go up the river to-morrow until you’re close to the falls. Then start practicing. Selim will fill your pockets with ammunition. And maybe you can persuade him to go along and give you some lessons, eh?”
Ricardo agreed. And Benn explained:
“We have to ride into all sorts of dangerous places. And south of the border there are bandits who would hold you up and strip you of everything as gladly as a blackbird will sing. You have to learn to take care of yourself before you can ride with me!”
Ricardo fell into a study. In the first place, though it was not odd that a merchant should have to ride armed in this part of the world, it was very strange indeed that he should have to go up the river to the waterfalls in order to do his practicing. Unless, to be sure, William Benn wanted to be confident that the explosions of the gun would not be noticed by those who might pass by along the trail. But already Ricardo was beginning to feel that the mere asking of questions would take him nowhere. It did not seem to be expected of him, and he felt a covert challenge from Benn to find out all he could for himself.
In the midst of these thoughts, Ricardo heard a step which he did not recognize. Certainly it was not the shuffling step of Lew, or the scuffle of Wong’s slippers, or the floor-shaking stride of Selim. This was a brisk, decided, heel-first walk, and it brought out onto the veranda a middle-aged man with a tuft of gray at each temple that gave him a peculiar horned appearance. He was dressed like an ordinary cow-puncher, but Ricardo guessed that he was something more. At least, he was certain that he never should forget that keen, resolute pair of eyes.
William Benn, at the sight of the stranger, exclaimed:
“Charlie, what on earth are you doing here?”
Charlie hesitated in the entrance to the veranda, looking not at Benn but at Ricardo.
“I came up because it was time to come.”
Benn whirled upon Ricardo.
“Go up to your room!” he said tersely.
And Ricardo fled, without a further introduction.
In his room, however, he could not rest content; his very soul was on fire to hear what might pass between William Benn and the stranger who was called Charlie.
And, since he had prepared the way before and knew every step of it, he left the room via the window, and climbed swiftly down to the veranda roof. On it he moved with the utmost caution, for he could hear the voices of the two speaking excitedly beneath him.
It was a cold, clear, mountain night. The stars burned very low; a wind was leaping up the valley with pulses of strength, and then falling off again to murmurs. And Ricardo shivered as it struck him and chilled him to the bone.
He found, however, a better place than he had at first hoped for. He discovered that he could slip over the edge of the roof at the farthest corner and there he could stand entirely screened by the tangled branches of a climbing rose. The thorny limbs whipped and frayed him, from time to time, but he paid little attention to that annoyance; for after his first moment on the rail of the veranda, leaning and looking on at this dialogue, nothing else was of importance to him except the words which were passing between his accepted master and this newcomer.
“Cut the talking short,” he heard William Benn say. “The fact is that you wouldn’t wait for me! You’ve chucked the job; or else you’ve blundered ahead with it and spoiled everything!”
“I’ve tackled the job alone. I had to,” said Charlie. “Not alone. I had Sam and Mat with me.”
“Where are they now?”
“Dead!” said Charlie.
