Читать книгу Lucky Larribee - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9
CHAPTER 7
ОглавлениеDan Gurry was walking up and down in the corral. He was greatly troubled, but he did not speak loudly. His emotion was too great for that.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m mighty sorry about poor Creary. I don’t mind saying that I’m going to look after him, and the doctor says that he’s got two chances in three of walking again—some day. For my part, I’m making my last stand and my last try. There is the finest piece of hossflesh in the world, bar none. That’s my opinion, and I ain’t alone. If I could get that hoss on to a race track, I’d make history with him. I’ve got reasons. I’ve seen him in the pasture along with Bright Hour, that mare that’s burned up the tracks south and north. And I’ve seen him run past Bright Hour as though she were hitched on to a dray.
“I ain’t lyin’. I’ve invested years in Sky Blue. I’ve invested more than time and money, too. Now, gentlemen, I’ve got an idea that as good riders as any in the world are right here in Fort Ransome. I ain’t going to go to Russia to try Cossacks. If Sky Blue can’t be ridden here, he can’t be ridden anywhere. I ask you, gentlemen, if there’s one among you that’ll try to back this colt. I offered you a thousand. That’s nothing. The man that can break this colt—and three ridings I’ll call breaking—I’ll give him a quarter interest in the stallion!”
He paused. The Ransomes looked towards the big form of Larribee, but he lounged easily, resting one arm against the corner post of the corral and regarded the situation with no apparent interest. And no one volunteered to ride the stallion, even for the sake of the one-quarter interest in him. Tough as they were, those men had seen Creary smashed like rotten wood, and they held back. It looked like the stallion’s day!
Gurry was in despair. He stood stock-still at last, and dropping his fists upon his hips, he said: “Gentlemen, I’ll give a half interest in Sky Blue to the fellow who can ride him three times. It’s not so much, if anybody can climb into the saddle and stick there for a time. There’s somebody in the world who can turn the trick, I know, and the minute that he rides this horse, that’s when Sky Blue will make both of us rich, and rich quick. I’m offering you a half interest in Sky Blue, any man of you who can stick in the saddle.”
A stir and a muttering went through the crowd. As brave horsemen as ever rubbed saddle leather with their knees stood about the big corral, and the appeal which Gurry made was reinforced by the picture of Sky Blue in the centre of the arena, with the wind ruffling his mane and his tail, and his fearless eyes turning from side to side.
“Gentlemen!” said Gurry, “he can beat the wind and carry a mountain!”
Looking at the stallion, Gurry’s statement seemed almost credible.
However, though the crowd muttered and stirred, every man was looking around for some other to be the hero.
Potswood, the gambler, had only one leg. The other had been almost deliberately shot off him in a brawl during his early days. Now he had two of his followers lift him on their shoulders. He was a little man who wore a forelock hanging, like that with which Napoleon is so often pictured. His face was round and red as beet. He always looked as if about to explode with anger, and as a rule he was. Now he was in a plain fury.
“Ladies and gents,” he shouted. “If it wasn’t for the ladies, I’d say what I thought of the two-legged things I see around here wearin’ pants. They ain’t men. I come from a part of the country where the women would tuck up their skirts and hop into the saddle sooner than see a hoss go without a challenge. I’ll give something extra. I’ll tack another thousand on to what Dan Gurry offers to the boy that can ride the stallion three separate times. Step up here, you boys that pretend you got blood in your bodies. A thousand for yourselves, and Fort Ransome saved from a pile of shame. Everyone west of the river will laugh at us when they hear how we let a horse stamp in our faces!”
A number of people set up a hearty clapping of hands as Potswood was lowered to the ground again. And the loudest applauders were the very men who, under different circumstances, would have tried their luck at once on the back of the big horse. But now they were still looking around, as though they felt no burden of responsibility, and were expecting some more worthy champion to appear. The fact was that their last picture of the stallion in mid-air, snapping Creary loose, still overawed them. Such an incarnation of power and cruel intelligence they never had seen before in horseflesh, and not a man there moved to enter the corral for a long moment.
Then Larribee leaned over to the side, slipped between the bars, and walked quietly towards Gurry.
The applause instantly ended. There was one breathless whisper of “Larribee”, and some adding: “The tramp”, and others “The Dents’ tramp”, and others “The Dents’ fighting man”. But he looked more like a tramp, in his ragged, torn clothes, as he approached Gurry.
The latter was new to the town and had heard nothing of the recent exploits of Larribee. He merely said, as he looked over the sleek face and shoulders of the man:
“You want to try Sky Blue?”
“Yes,” said Larribee.
“You ain’t’ drunk, friend?” asked Gurry.
“I’m to ride him three times. Is that the idea?” asked Larribee, ignoring the question.
“You ride him three times,” said Gurry. “You can lump the three times together, if you want. If you take the kinks out of him the first ride, you can try him again the second a few minutes after you’ve got off him. But three times he’s got to be backed and rode. I’ve seen too many hosses backed once, and then pile their rider the second try.”
“Well,” said Larribee, “I’ll make my try with him.”
And with a nod to Gurry, he sauntered on towards the stallion.
“Look!” said Arabelle Ransome. “He hasn’t even spurs on his heels, not a whip! And yet he’s going to try to ride that demon of a horse. What sort of man is he?”
“Arabelle,” said Mrs. Ransome, “I don’t want to be short with you, but the manner in which you’ve carried on—”
“Oh, hush up!” said Arabelle. “You’re so excited your own self that you’re ready to run away, and you know it!”
Mrs. Ransome did not even answer; her eyes were fixed straight before her on the stallion and the man who approached it. Young Josiah Ransome, looking gloomily down, saw a thorny bur rolling at his feet. He picked it up idly, because he had to have something to do with his hands in order to keep his tongue quiet. There were many things that he wanted to say to his cousin, Arabelle. And he knew that to utter them would be his ruin, so far as she was concerned. So he gripped the thorny bur gently and felt the stickers, hard and pointed as needles, pass through the callous skin as though it had been tissue paper.
The pain relieved him and half occupied his attention.
In the meantime, as all the onlookers pressed gradually closer and closer to the fence, Larribee walked up to the stallion, not from the side, but straight on towards his head. Sky Blue endured that approach until the extended hand was a foot from his nose. Then he bounded a rod to the side and waited again, snorting, his head raised and his neck arched so that the mane seemed like the decoration on an ancient helmet.
Larribee paused and laughed; and then he went slowly on towards the horse again.
Sky Blue canted his great head a little to the side as he listened. It seemed to him that he had heard this voice before, somewhere in the beginning of his life. It called up to him, very vividly, the smell of corn, yellow as gold and still ripening on the cob, the sweet scent of the feed box, and the whistle of the wind through the grass on a bright spring day when the clouds go over the heavens in little companies of twos and threes.
Then he thought of a winter day when the sun was shining through for an hour, and he could stand on the lee side of the barn and soak up the warmth like a sponge, and letting it seep through his blood and penetrate his bones with comfort.
He shook his head to get these fancies out of it. He shook his head, and found that the hand of the man was close to his nose.
He sniffed at that hand. There was a good smell about it. It came out to meet his sniff, and the strong tips of the fingers rubbed him between the eyes, never against the curl of the hair or the grain of it there, but downward, with the touch of one who understands how a horse should be caressed.
At this moment something happened to Sky Blue very much like what happens when an electric wire bearing a strong current is grounded.
In a trice a current was flowing through the stallion, and the touch and the voice of the man were as one, soothing him.
He allowed that hand to take the reins of his bridle and draw them over his head, lingering an instant to rub the ears.
Then the stranger stood beside him.
“What’s the matter back here?” asked Larribee. “What’s the matter with you under the saddle, old son?”
He loosened the girths. He passed his hand under the blanket and over the back and the loins, smooth and damp, like steamed silk. On either side of the backbone there was a deep sheeting of muscles, as hard and elastic as rubber. From that point, arching back across the hips, over the mighty quarters, there was one long succession of interweaving, interchained muscles hooked at last to the hocks and tapering down, through iron-hard sinews, to the fetlock joint and the pastern.
“By Jove,” said Larribee as something broke loose in him like a freed river from a dam, “there never was a horse before. This is the only one!”