Читать книгу Lucky Larribee - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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It looked accidental. It almost had to be accidental. The trouble was that three accidents do not usually happen in a row, in the course of as many seconds. Even young Mr. Ransome forgot his dignity a little and stared.

As for the famous Mullins, he said to his third companion, “He’s a ringer. Take him together. You try his head, me his middle. We’ll knock the lights out of him.”

Mr. Mullins had not quite recovered his breath, however. For that reason he was a little behind in the charge that ensued, and his gallant friend went nobly on, half a step in the lead, bereft of help by that small but vital margin. When he saw that he was somewhat ahead of his friend, he was not abashed. Neither was he troubled by the sight of the two men twisting and squirming on the ground. Instead, he fairly leaped at the head of Larribee so that the latter, throwing up a hand as to ward off the attack, happened to strike with his closed fist upon the very point of the other’s chin.

The impact flung the man backward straight upon Mullins, and the two rolled over and over at the feet of Larribee. Then, for the first time the spectators found their tongues for a long, wild, whooping shout. They agreed that they had been sold, that yonder sleek-faced youth was some famous character who had chosen to hide his prowess behind a mask of humility. And many a one among them shrugged his collar a little more warmly up about his neck.

Larribee reached into the heap and plucked forth Mullins by the hair of the head. It was a dazed and gaping face that was dragged upwards. Not only was there a severe and cramping pain in the body of the ex-pugilist, but he had just fallen on his head, with the weight of his friend’s body to push his face into the dust. He panted loudly, and his breath was white with the dust.

“Who was it that wanted to speak to me, Mr. Mullins?” asked Larribee.

The eyes of Mullins rolled wildly, and it happened that at this moment he looked towards young Mr. Ransome. He really intended no harm to Josiah Ransome III, but the face was familiar in the general haze which possessed his mind, and he pointed with a vague finger.

“Mr. Ransome—” he said.

Larribee dropped him, and turning about on his heel, he sauntered slowly to young Ransome and stood smiling before him.

He was the only one of those present who was smiling at the moment. The onlookers leaned forward in their chairs and gaped, but they did not grin either at one another or at the two who were now facing each other. Young Mr. Ransome looked just a trifle pale, but his head was as high as ever. Larribee was still smiling in his good-natured, rather sleepy way as he stood before the prince of the town.

“Did you send for me, Mr. Ransome?” he said.

Ransome looked him over. He tried to think of some cutting retort, but his wits were not particularly active at the moment. So he kept silent and continued to survey the sleekness of Larribee.

“Did you want me so badly,” said Larribee, “that you sent a man in and had three more waiting for me when I came out? You know, Mr. Ransome, I’m only a humble fellow. I’m not proud, and I never aspire to a guard of honour. But now that I’m here, thank you, what is it that you want to say to me?”

Mr. Ransome decided at last what he should do. He turned his back upon the other and said to a loitering boy: “Untie that horse for me, my son, will you?”

And he threw a quarter towards the lad.

Larribee touched his arm.

Now, young Josiah Ransome was a fellow of infinite spirit, and when he felt himself touched by one whom he put down as a worthless vagabond, his blood fairly boiled. He forgot the thin frost of terror which he had felt the moment before, when he saw this sleek mauler of men advance towards him, and, whirling around on one heel violently, he threw off the grasp of Larribee with one hand, and with the other snatched out a good revolver, a shining Colt.

“Keep your hands off, you hoodlum,” said young Mr. Ransome, “or I’ll teach you—”

He got out this much of his remark in the proper style, but then his gun hand fell into a grasp such as Josiah Ransome never had conceived of. It grated the bones of his fingers against the wood and steel as though there were no intervening padding of flesh whatever. It numbed his hand to the wrist and upward.

But what made this all the more unreal and horrible was that the face of Larribee did not alter in the least, but remained as sleekly smiling, as sleepily good-humoured as ever, as he said: “I didn’t know that guns were manners, Ransome. But if they are—”

With this he literally lifted the young fellow before him and cast him backward. Mr. Josiah Ransome, as he fell, blindly fired his revolver into the thin blue face of the sky, which was the only basis upon which this encounter could have been described as a gun fight, the usual description in narrating it later on by all those who saw the affair. In falling, young Ransome struck the edge of the veranda, spun over, and fell straight down, a full three feet. His forehead was opened up by the iron edge of the boot-scraper beneath, and the blow knocked the wits quite out of his handsome, gay young head.

No one stirred to pick him up except Larribee himself. He gathered Josiah Ransome in his arms, carried him into the saloon end of the Potswood place, and with his own hand poured a dram of whisky down the unconscious throat.

Ransome wakened with a coughing and spluttering; a doctor was called to sew up the spouting, gaping wound; and in the midst of the confusion, Larribee quietly got out of the mix-up and went home.

The first person he saw was Mrs. Dent, who cried out: “Have you been stealin’ chickens, you great big thing? What’s that blood on your coat?”

“Just a little accident,” said Larribee.

“Get out to the barn,” said she. “Mr. Dent, he wants you.”

So Larribee went out to the barn and received hard words; and that was why he happened to be mounting on a scaffolding, slowly, slowly drawing a paintbrush back and forth over the rough boards, whistling gently to himself, squinting at his work as though he were a landscape artist, when Marshal Steve Hannahan came galloping out on his foaming horse.

There was a five-foot gate leading into the Dent corrals, but the marshal did not stop to unbar it. He simply leaped his mustang across it, and though the rear legs of the mustang knocked off the top bar of the gate and left their skins behind, though the blow nearly tumbled the poor brute on its head, the marshal gave the thing not a thought as he dashed on and pulled up under the scaffolding of the painter.

Wilbur Dent had heard the crash of the broken gate and came hurrying out from the barn prepared to swear, but when he saw the marshal he thought better of it. He was a silent witness to what followed. The marshal was in a rage.

He called out: “Are you the blackguard by name of Larribee who’s been rioting at the Potswood?”

Larribee stopped painting, restored his brush carefully to the bucket of paint, turned a little on the scaffolding plank that supported him, looked down with attention at the marshal, and then, as a puff of wind blew Hannahan’s coat open and showed the flaring steel medal inside, Larribee raised his hat in salute.

“I’ve been at the Potswood, sir,” said he.

The marshal was hot. “Don’t you ‘sir’ me,” he said. “I’ll have you know who runs Potswood, and I’m the man. You dice-throwing, card-marking vagabonds I’m going to put down and give the decent people a show in this town. Climb down off that scaffold and I’ll give you a lesson!”

“Well, sir,” said Larribee, “if you’ll just hand that ladder over here, I’ll come right down.”

“Hand you the—hand yourself the ladder, confound you,” said the marshal. “Get off that scaffold and get quick, or I’ll have you down, ladder or no ladder. I’ll have you down in such a shape that you won’t be getting up again in a hurry! I’ll teach you to blackguard and riot! I’ll teach you to slug the first citizens of Fort Ransome! I’m going to make an example of you!”

He made his quirt sing through the air as he spoke, as though he intended to scorch his lesson into the hide of Larribee with those lashes. The swinging of the quirt made the mustang swerve and rear right under the scaffolding. It was so very close that one of the marshal’s legs scraped against the wall of the barn, and Larribee was so alarmed that he started violently and uttered a faint exclamation which Daniel Dent said was “Well, well sir!” At the same time, his careless right hand tipped over the bucket of white paint, so that the entire contents spilled straight downward and exactly hit the centre of the marshal’s upturned face!

The mustang, at the same moment, alarmed by that downward flashing stream of white, bucked with all its might, and the marshal came out of the saddle and landed in a violent sitting position in the dust.

Even then he upheld his high reputation. He was blinded with pain, but he got his two guns into his hands and fired two shots at the exact moment when he landed in the dust.