Читать книгу Six-Gun Country - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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In all the time I had been hunted by the law, I had had no apprehension quite like that which I experienced when I learned that Andrew Chase had come into the hills to fight it out with me.

I could not get it out of my head that Andrew was invincible, for he had been more than a hero in my eyes ever since that day when he had knocked me flat into the dust after I had fought a fair fight with his brother Harry, and for the second time gained a victory that Harry would have given a great deal to have won.

Now you will remember that I was properly convinced that Andrew Chase was at the bottom of all this mess that I was in. After I had stood up against his brother, Harry, in a gunfight, and come out of the battle unscathed, Andrew had taken the situation into his own hands.

Then there had followed the hiring of Turk Niginski, a gunman, whose services had been bought to put me out of the way, for, reasoned Andrew, it was better that I should die than that his brother should face my weapons again and lose his life.

But Niginski had failed in his undertaking, and you will remember how I had whirled in the saddle and shot him dead, and then ridden straight to the sheriff with my true story of self-defense.

There had followed the trial, and my conviction and sentence to twenty-five years’ imprisonment. Not even Father McGuire, with whom I had lived since the age of fourteen, could do anything for me. It remained for Tex Cummins, at that time a perfect stranger to me, to plan my escape and furnish me with a mount with which to make my getaway into the hills.

It was upon that first ride away from pursuit as a fugitive of the law that I met Margaret O’Rourke, “Mike” as I called her, and had fallen promptly in love with her.

So when I had heard that Andrew Chase had come into the hills to get me, and had learned further that he had had the audacity to make friends with Mike, I had promptly warned her to beware of Andrew Chase, that he was not to be trusted. Whereupon we had had a falling out, and I had gotten myself deeper into the entanglements with the law by my headlong rush into more mischief.

Then had come the message that Mike wished to see me, and my heart had swelled within me, only to have my hopes as quickly dashed upon the rocks by her announcement that she loved Andrew Chase and that she had sent for me to exact a promise from me not to fight him for fear that he might lose his life. From that moment I had promptly become a madman, had rushed out into the night, only to meet Andrew and to thrash him to within an inch of his life. Then I had brought him, torn and bleeding, to Mike.

After I heard that Andrew Chase had gained enough strength to leave the bed into which I had put him, and when I heard that, in shame because he could not face the men of the mountains, and because he dared not return to his home in Mendez, he had ridden east; after I heard all this news, I decided to go to see Margaret O’Rourke and ask her, frankly, what chance I had with her.

It was not, really, that I wished to gloat over her because the man she had chosen to love had turned out a rascal—or a rascal to a certain degree, at least. But I knew that Margaret O’Rourke was too brave and too kind and too honest to leave me in doubt as to whether or not I had any hope of winning her in the end. If I had not the shadow of a chance, I frankly wished to tell her that I would never see her face again.

I had had to learn to make decisions and abide by them before. It was now three years since I had lived outside of the law with a price on my head, and the only reason that I had been able to avoid the long arm of the law, I very well knew, was that I had made certain resolutions and stuck grimly to them.

Above all, for instance, I had decided early in my career that I would never associate myself with a partner. For one may be sure of oneself, but never of one’s companion, and I had heard of and seen too many keen, alert, intelligent men who could not defy the law because they could not live without companionship. Their companion always proved the weaker link by which their strength was broken.

It was a bitter thing to live like a lone wolf in the mountains through all manner of weather, ever on the alert, and never leaving my secure retreats unless there was an absolute need to go down among other men for the sake of food or of money.

I had clung to that schedule for three years, and the result was that the headhunters had gone without my scalp.

When a man has denied himself human companionship and human liberty, it is possible for him to forswear even the joy of seeing the woman he loves.

With that in mind, I saddled Roanoke and went down to see Margaret O’Rourke.

I rode through the day until I was in the forest at the edge of the big valley. Then, in the dusk, I sent Roanoke down the steep descent to the floor of the valley itself—a dizzy pitch which no horse could have negotiated, but the mule, as a mountain flyer, was to the manner born. He skidded or bounced down the ragged slopes and then bore me across the valley at his swinging trot.

I came up the ravine where O’Rourke lived, in the black heart of the night. It was no longer necessary for me to whistle my signal from beneath the trees opposite the house. All I had to do was to make sure that no one was in the house except the family. They knew me now, and I felt that I knew them well enough to trust them—once in a long while!

For, other than upon exceptional occasions, there were only three people in the world whom I would really trust, and they were Sheriff Dick Lawton, Father McGuire, and Margaret O’Rourke herself. An odd assemblage for an outlaw to know, you may say!

So I left Roanoke under the trees, picking at the grass in the darkness, and I went across to the house to scout around. I looked in the dining room first, to see if Pat O’Rourke had any callers. There were none. He sat in one chair with his boots scarring the cane bottom of another chair, and the newspaper spread in front of him.

But I was fairly certain that Margaret herself was entertaining company, for I could hear her singing and playing the piano in the parlor. Certainly she would not be so gay except for the sake of another person—not when it was a scant fortnight since the man she loved had left the house.

I slipped up onto the porch and peeked in under the bottom of the shade. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that she was alone in the room, with her head tilted back, singing like a bird!

So I went to the front door and tapped softly. She opened it a moment later, and when she saw me, she cried out happily and drew me into the room.

“I thought that you were never coming again, Leon,” said she.

“I wasn’t sure that you’d ever want to see me again,” I explained.

“You might take off your hat,” said she.

I snatched it off. One can’t be three years in the high rocks and remember all the amenities of polite society.

“Confound it, Mike,” said I, getting a little red, “you might give me time to get my bearings.”

She looked me up and down, surveying my ragged clothes and the two guns strapped at my hips and the Indian brown of my face and hands; and she smiled her crooked smile, which sank a dimple exactly in the center of one cheek.

“There you are,” said Mike. “You haven’t been here ten seconds—and you begin to fight so soon!”

“That’s not fair,” said I. “I came—”

“Well, sit down,” said she. “Shall I let the family know that you’re here?”

“Darn the family,” said I. “I want you. I’ve gone on short rations for a long time so far as seeing you is concerned.”

She sat down on the piano bench, still studying me.

“You’re bigger than ever, Lee,” said she.

“What I’ve come to say—” I began again.

“And that frown,” said she, “is getting to be a habit.”

“All right,” said I, settling back with a sigh, “when you’re through looking me over, I’ll try to talk.”

“There is to be a pardon granted to you, isn’t there?” she asked. “I understand that Sheriff Lawton is doing a great deal to square you with the law.”

“I don’t know. I don’t dare to think about it.”

“Everyone else is thinking, though,” said she. “We hear that Sheriff Lawton has made a trip to see the governor and talk to him about you.”

“Sheriff Lawton is an honest man!” said I.

“Then there’s word that Father McGuire has gone from Mendez to back up Lawton with the governor.”

“God bless Father McGuire,” said I. “I’d rather have his good word than be president of the United States!”

“But all the trouble is going to end, Lee. Oh, how glad I am! It’s making an old man of you!”

“What I want to know,” said I, “is just exactly how glad you are.”

“Nobody in the world could be happier about it,” said she.

“Wait a minute,” said I, feeling that old, wild hope surge up in me. “Think that over before you say it.”

She answered gently: “Unless you’ve found a girl to marry you, Leon Porfilo.”

“I’ve found the only girl that I can ever marry,” said I, very solemn. “That’s what I came down here to talk about.”

She shook her head.

“Oh,” I explained, “I don’t mean that I want any promises. I want a chance to hope. That’s all.”

She said nothing, but looked at me sadly and thoughtfully.

“When I heard you singing so happily,” said I, “I thought you might have decided to forget him.”

“I can never forget Andrew,” said Mike.

“Then that’s the end for me,” said I, and stood up.

“Lee,” said she, “are you really going to run off again with only two words spoken between us?”

“Well, why should I talk?” said I.

“Are we at least friends?” she asked me.

“No,” said I. “Either I have a hope to have you someday as my wife, or else I’ll never see your face again. I’ll go no half measures and torment myself for years. Either I’ll have a hope, or I have no hope at all!”

“Am I to tell you just what you mean to me?” she asked.

“Yes, if you will.”

“Of course I will. I’ve always loved you, Lee, since the first day I put eyes on you.”

“That’s a fair start,” said I without enthusiasm. “That’s a pretty good opening. You always loved me, so you decided to marry another man?”

“There are all sorts of love,” said she. “Andrew Chase took me off my feet. When you came down to kill him—or he you—I suppose that I hated you, for a while. But now he’s gone.”

“For good?”

“I suppose so.”

“Mike, do you really expect that you’ll never see him again? Do you care?”

She studied the floor for a moment and spoke with her head still bent down.

“A year ago I would have said that I would despise forever any man who did to Leon Porfilo such a dastardly thing as Andrew did to you in hiring Turk Niginski. Well, since Andrew left, I have thought it over and tried to look at it and at myself frankly. I am ashamed to confess that I do not despise him, Lee. Or, if I despise him, I’m almost fonder of him than ever. Can you understand that?”

“I cannot,” said I bluntly.

“I don’t suppose you can. You’re a man all fire and iron. You want everything or nothing. But women aren’t that way, you know. They hardly know what they want in a man, I suppose. But I know this—that I don’t want to give you up, Leon! I think of Andrew once a day, and the thought of him makes my heart jump. I think of you every minute, and it always makes me happy—quietly happy. But I know that isn’t enough for you.”

“It isn’t,” said I bitterly. “I think of my mule, Roanoke, and it makes me quietly happy. But I want something more than that. I’ve got to have something more than that! Can you give it to me, Mike?”

“I’ve told you everything,” said she.

“It’s not enough,” said I, dragging the words up from the roots of my heart. “I’m going to shut out the thought of you, Mike. I’ve got to do it.”

She turned half away from me.

“Mike,” said I, holding out my hand, “good-by.”

She murmured swiftly: “Will you go quickly—before I start crying like a silly little fool?”

I jammed my hat on my head and strode out of that house, never to see it again, I thought.