Читать книгу Lucky Larribee - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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Larribee, who had taken what he considered his dismissal for the day, went down the street towards the centre of Fort Ransome. He had with him a pocket-knife, a pipe, tobacco, and some matches. What he wanted was money. He wanted a drink, and he wanted it badly. Then he wanted to sit down with a cool patch of sea-green felt before him, and either the rattle of the dice or the whisper of cards to make the music which he loved to hear.

There was no pride in Larribee. He wore the same clothes which had almost been dragged from his back on the first night he played cards in Fort Ransome, but he cared not for the rents or the stains on coat and trousers, nor that he looked the part of a loafer.

When handsome young Joe Ransome, son of the major and grandson of the founder of the town, rode up to the Potswood entrance, he tossed the reins to Larribee and called out: “Tie the horse up, my boy!” And he flung a coin into the dust at the feet of Larribee.

Larribee was not proud. He tethered the horse, regardless of the sneers of the bystanders, by-sitters rather, for they were all lined up in the chairs that backed against the wall of the Potswood veranda. Then he mined in the dust where the coin had fallen and picked up a twenty-five-cent piece. He spun it in the air, watched it glitter at the height of its rise, and was pleased by the comfortable spat of it in the palm of his hand when it fell.

To a poor man, something is an infinity better than nothing; and besides, to Larribee this was a lever with which he might open important doors after he had finished making it grow.

He leaned against one of the pillars of the veranda. He filled and lighted his pipe, while he looked up and down the row of sneering, hostile faces. He had “taken water” three times in Fort Ransome, where a man was supposed, first and last, to be a man.

But Larribee was not proud. He saw the contempt, but he regarded it not.

“I’ll match you,” he said to a trapper clad in deerskins from the plains. “I’ll match you a quarter against a quarter.”

“Oh, you—take yourself off,” said the trapper. “Your hands ain’t clean enough to play with me!”

Those who heard the remark laughed loudly. Some of them watched Larribee for a moment with cruelly expectant eyes, but he paid no heed to the rebuff.

He walked down the veranda and leaned against another pillar.

“I’ll match you,” he said to a trapper clad in deerskins from a long-tailed coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked the part of a gambler. The latter stared at Larribee up and down.

“Quarters be blowed,” said he. “But still, a principle is a principle. Here you are.”

“Heads!” said Larribee.

The stranger spun his coin as Larribee spoke. It clinked on the veranda floor. “Heads it is,” said the gambler and kicked the coin towards Larribee, who gathered it up.

“I’ll give you revenge,” said Larribee smiling gently.

“Find out some small fry. I don’t want to waste my time,” said the gambler. “But—well, here you are!”

He spun a fifty-cent piece. It went the way of the quarter. He lost a dollar, two dollars, four dollars, eight.

Then he stopped in the act of drawing out gold, and squinted at Larribee.

“What the deuce does he do?” he asked.

He was not angry, only curious.

“He sees ’em as they start up in the air, and knows how they’ll fall,” said a confident neighbour.

The gambler dropped the gold back into this pocket.

“It’s a good trick, boy,” said he. “It’s a good trick for picking up a bit of chicken feed here and there.”

Larribee went into the bar. He had a stiff drink of whisky which was coloured juice and raw alcohol. A half-breed, a Negro, a decrepit full-blooded Indian, and a plains trader with a prosperous appearance were all leaning at that bar. Larribee shook dice with the Negro, lost five dollars and won forty. He went into the gambling rooms after that.

There were three of them, each turning a corner from the other. For the sake of making more bullets fly wide, said the inhabitants of Fort Ransome, callous but very tolerant.

Larribee found a score of men playing, for it was too early in the day to enlist the interest of the majority. The effect of last nights’ poisonous liquor had not yet worn off, and they had not built up sufficient enthusiasm on this new day’s supply. About sunset the play would grow higher, the players more numerous.

Larribee played red and black at roulette. He lost all but a dollar in half an hour’s play. He shifted to numbers, playing combinations, and in ten minutes he had an even hundred. He put ten dollars on the nine; the ball clicked home on the nine, and Larribee took three hundred and fifty dollars from the table.

That was a poker stake. But there was no poker to be played. In fact, no game of any size was going on except in a far corner of the farthest room, where young Josiah Ransome, third of that name, was rolling dice on a blanket, bouncing them off a wall before the call. Larribee joined the group. There were five of them, all well-dressed, all apparently well in funds. They looked coldly aside at him.

“That’s my horse-boy,” said young Ransome, laughing. “Let him lose his money if he wants to. This is a democracy, gentlemen.”

Larribee was not proud. He stood on the extreme edge of the group, at a corner of the table. The house was not represented. It was merely a private game, a “gentleman’s” game. He lost a hundred dollars before he got the box; then he won a thousand in four straight rolls. Young Ransome had lost more than half of it.

He was a well-made youth, straight, tall with a proud head proudly carried. After the fourth cast he fastened his eyes on Larribee for a long moment; then he left the room and went out into the bar. There he called the barkeeper to one side and said to him: “There’s a ragged fellow in the rooms shaking dice, and I think he’s crooked. What do you know about him?”

“By name of Larribee he is,” said the barkeeper. “He’s more crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. Dice or poker or matching coins, he’s more slippery than a greased pig. You ain’t been playing with him, Mr. Ransome?”

Ransome stepped back from the bar and surveyed its length. Near the farther end he saw a bulky pair of shoulders, a small head, a jaw made to endure batterings.

“Mullins!” he called. “Leave that whisky and come here!”

Mullins looked about with a scowl, but when he saw the speaker he put the glass back on the bar and approached. He even touched the brim of his hat, for the Ransomes were as hereditary princes in the town which had been named after them.

“Yes, sir,” said Mullins, at attention.

“There’s a fellow named Larribee—” begun Ransome.

“I know the yellow dog,” said Mullins.

“He’s been cheating at dice,” said Ransome, “and he’s not quite fit for me to handle. Here’s a trifle.”

“No, sir,” said Mullins. “To clean up that little jot it’ll be a pleasure to me. I wouldn’t shame myself by takin’ your money for it, Mr. Ransome.”

He went out on to the veranda and looked about him.

He was a known man, this Mullins. He, and no other Mullins, had stood up for forty red, bare-fisted rounds against terrible Jem Richards in the height of that champion’s career. Now, older, a little slower, he was still great enough to command a following of his own kind in Fort Ransome. At his nod, three burly fellows came up to him. He said to one: “Go in and find that Larribee. Tell him there’s a friend wants him right bad out here. Then you can stand by, you boys, and see a show.”

So it was that Larribee was tapped on the shoulder and called forth.

He came unwillingly. The game was good, the stakes were high, and he was more than holding his own after his first fine run of luck. So he came out, frowning a little against the brightness of the outer day.

“You’re Larribee,” said Mullins. “You called me a blankety-blank a while ago. I’m gonna hear you apologize out here, and loud.”

The bystanders grinned, all except young Ransome. He stood rather coldly aloof. He was seeing justice administered, as was his duty. He felt that Fort Ransome should be kept fairly clean.

“All right,” said Larribee. “I’m not proud. I didn’t call you names. I never call anybody names, Mr. Mullins. But I apologize, just the same.”

“You sneakin’ cur,” said Mullins, snapping his teeth like an angry dog to work up his temper. “I dunno that just apologizin’ is good enough for me. I’m gonna give you a taste of what’s what in the old country. I’m gonna bash in your face for you.”

He had talked enough to oil his excitable temper. Now he drew back a fist oddly small and compact compared with the bulk of his arm and the shoulder behind it. He drew it back and hit like a good marksman for the head of Larribee.

Larribee ducked. It seemed as though the wind of the blow travelled before it and tipped the head of Larribee aside. The massive arm of Mullins went over his shoulder, and Larribee, with a surprised look, appeared to stumble forward and to save himself by grasping at the shirt of Mullins just over the heart.

The great Mullins staggered backwards. His face had turned grey in streaks, as though he had been slapped by a many-lashed whip. His body was canted sharply to the left, the heavy fence of his forearms was erected defensively before his face, and he bit at the air with gasps.

“Cheese it, Jerry,” muttered one of Mullins’s champions. “The rat got in a lucky wallop. You on this side and me on that—”

They charged young Larribee with fists ready like horns, and he swayed down like a man paralysed with terror, flinging himself face downwards upon the veranda floor in token of submission. So it chanced that the swinging punches just grazed the top of his head as Larribee unexpectedly straightened and came erect, as it were, by reaching for the body of one man with his right and for the other with his left.

The two champions sat down. Then one, gasping, with an expression of agony, toppled slowly over on his side.