Читать книгу Six-Gun Country - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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There was no delay. The boy leaped to his feet.

He was a glorious thing to look at. Opposite him two burly men rolled up and stood braced for action. They were not so tall, not so nimble—but they were as tough and as jagged as the rocks among which they had been moiling all their lives. Under those beards were jaws of iron, broad cheekbones. Under their clothes were muscles like slabs of India rubber. They had great arched breasts, and the strength of their arms made them carry their hands far from their sides.

“I’ll do this, to start with,” said the youngster, as he dashed his fist into a beard and reached the jawbone beneath and sent one foeman staggering.

I have no doubt, from his fine bearing, that he meant nothing but the best of fair play, for his part. But there was no sense for such matters in the other two. One of them lunged in instantly from the other side and, grappling the boy around the body, carried him to the earth by the shock of his rushing weight.

Neither did these cold-hearted devils mean to let him get to his feet. The first man, shaking the daze out of his head, came striding back.

“Hold him down, Pete!” he snarled. “We’ll give him something to think about!”

“You coyotes!” groaned the boy. “Lemme get up, and I’ll fight the two of you fair and square!”

He meant it, too. That was enough for me. I had promised myself that no matter how the fight went, I should not show my face. But this was too much for me. I came to my feet and joined that fracas with a rush. I sent a battle cry before me, and the first man wheeled to meet my charge. He put up his hands in good enough posture, but then the firelight struck bright into my eyes, and I heard him shout: “Porfilo!”

It seemed to drain all the strength out of him. It was not a man but a statue of putty that I put my fist into. He went down in a crumbling heap.

His shout released the boy, too. For when the second mountaineer heard my name, he leaped to his feet and sprinted for the woods.

“Porfilo!” said the boy, and sat up with a gasp. “It is Porfilo!” he breathed.

“Get back into the shadow,” I commanded him, and tugged him to his feet with a jerk. “Get back among the trees, before the pair of them try to pick us off from cover!”

We hurried back into the shadows, but there seemed little doubt about what the two men of the mountains would do. They were rushing off as fast as their legs would carry them; as though they had called on the devil—and raised him quite beyond their expectations! Far away, we heard the crashing of the brush as they sprinted on.

“Porfilo,” said the boy, “darned if I ain’t sorry that I got you mixed into this mess.”

He was not as sorry as I was, however. For, every time I had to step into such a fight, it meant that I made not two enemies, but two hundred. Every new story of violence that was repeated about me went up and down through the mountains and turned the minds of many honest, peace-loving men against me.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, very, very heavy with all of these reflections.

“Orton,” said he.

“Your first name?” said I.

“Dick.”

“Dick, you’re a young fool!”

I heard him gasp an indrawn breath. “Porfilo,” said he at last, in a voice as thin as the voice of a frightened child, “that’s a good deal to take from any man—even from you.”

“Is it?” said I, still very angry.

“Too much,” said he. “I can’t swaller it!”

Then I saw what was in his mind. I had been too sick at heart to understand, before.

“What do you want me to do?” said I.

“Apologize!” said Dick Orton. “Or I’ll—”

Yes, there he was ready for it already! His head was back and his body was trembling as much as his voice.

“Oh, the devil!” said I. “I’ll apologize, of course. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Dick!”

This was a great deal too much for him. There was not much light from the fire in the shadows where we stood, but there was enough for me to see the glassy rolling of Dick Orton’s eyes.

“You’re joking, Porfilo!” said he.

“Not a bit,” said I.

“You’re tryin’ to make a fool out of me,” said he.

“Not at all,” said I.

“Porfilo wouldn’t apologize to nobody but the devil himself!” said this silly boy.

“Who has been filling your head full of nonsense about me?” I asked him.

He stepped a little closer to me to study me. “You are Porfilo,” said he, as though there could ever be any doubt as to the identity of my ugly, prizefighter’s face.

“I’m Porfilo,” I repeated. “I’ve apologized for hurting your feelings. Is that apology enough?”

“Ah,” said Dick Orton, “I didn’t mean to ask you to—I mean that I was in the wrong—”

“Of course you were!” said I.

“Then why did you ask my pardon?”

“Because I didn’t want to fight.”

There was no way of handling that young fool without being in danger. He was worse than a bundle of nettles.

“I’m too small for you, maybe?” says he, lifting his head to his full height.

He was about half an inch taller than I.

“Or maybe,” said he, “you figger out that I’m just a kid and that I ought to be home helpin’ Ma with the supper dishes. Is that it?”

I had picked up my pack and now I flung it over my shoulders and turned my back on him and strode away as fast as I could. Because he had gone far enough to anger me in spite of all my efforts at self-control. In those days I felt that I was quite a world-weary man, but I can look back at myself and see that I was a good deal of a child. However, that young idiot would have irritated a saint.

I left him behind and made for my Roanoke with a very hearty wish that Chisholm’s place and everybody in it were in the hands of the devil. Just as I reached the clearing where I had left Roanoke, there was a crashing behind me, and that young giant blundered out into the open starlight. More than starlight. The moon was somewhere, sifting thin shadows of the trees across the ground and showing me the face of Dick Orton.

“I’m not good enough to get an answer?” said he.

He stood before me with his feet braced and his body bent a little; he was full of that same devil of fear that had made him fight the two at Chisholm’s camp a little before.

“Orton,” said I at last with a groan, “do you want me to get down on my knees and beg you not to shoot me?”

Because he had come to that point. One hand, shaking with passion, was fluttering at his right hip, touching the butt of his gun and hovering away from it again in little jerky movements.

He was staggered again by what I said. He could not understand. So I added: “Do you want me to breathe flame and eat iron? I’m a peaceable man, Orton, until fellows like you crowd my back to the wall. All I’m saying is: For Lord’s sake give me a chance to be friendly!”

Dick Orton gasped. Then his eyes rolled from side to side, as though, under the skin of a dragon, he had found a child.

Then, “There’s Roanoke!” he cried softly. “By jiminy, I’ve been wanting to see Roanoke—and there he is! You are Porfilo, no matter how you talk!”

Yes, in spite of what he had seen and heard, he had still been in doubt as to my identity. I was a thousand times too humble to fit in with his preconceived idea of me.

Then he blurted out: “Porfilo, I guess that I’ve been acting like a fool!”

“I’m afraid to say yes,” said I. “Or you’d have a gun out at me!”

“I was scared to death,” said he, “but I thought that you were talkin’ down to me.”

“I’d as soon talk down to a snowslide that was aimed straight at my head,” I said.

I mopped away the perspiration from my face. In fact, I had had a rather nerve-racking passage with this young fire-eater.

“Well,” he said, “I want to know if you’ll forgive me.”

“Sure,” said I. “Thank heaven that there’s no harm done—to either of us!”

“Will you do one thing more for me?”

“Yes,” said I, not pausing to think.

“Then let me ride along with you for a day.”

“What the devil are you asking for?” I growled at him. “Trouble?”

“You’ve given me your promise,” said he.

“Darn a promise!” said I. “If you ride with an outlawed man—”

“I’d rather ride with you than with a king, Porfilo!” says he.

I saw how the wind lay.

“I have your promise!” he cried, very exultant. “You can’t go back on that!”

“Well,” said I at last, “go get your horse!”

He was gone in a flash, and I, cursing steadily, put the saddle on Roanoke, because it was not wise to stay near Chisholm’s after that evening’s scene.

I turned from my work, a moment later, and saw Dick Orton ride into the clearing, and he was on the back of another mule!

I did not have to possess the wits of a detective to put two and two together now. It was perfectly plain to me that Richard Orton, like a dizzy-headed young idiot, had read of the adventures of Leon Porfilo and had started out to parallel them.

But the very first thing he had done was more foolhardy than all of my adventures put together and rolled into one. For it was he who had ridden a mule to hold up the stage, and who had posed as the possessor of my name.

Here was I, who had started out with a hot hatred to find the pretender and destroy him—here was I helpless and buried in gloom. I could not help liking this young idiot. I could not help it. Neither could I say a word to him about the frightful wrong that he had done me for fear he would do some equally insane and romantic act.

If I pointed out to him that this stage robbery had robbed me, at the same time, of my chance to get a State pardon, beyond a doubt he would scurry down to give himself up, confess his crime, and be promptly thrown into prison for the better half of his remaining life!

What was I to do?

I did not know. I wanted to be just to this madman; but I was also hungry to have justice for myself. I decided to go to get advice as quickly as I could.

My companion in the meantime jogged his mule at my side as contented as he could be. We came to a cliff as bare as the palm of my hand.

“Are you going down it?” said Dick, as serious as you please.

I turned and gaped at him. Even a mountain goat would have been dizzy for a month at the mere thought of that precipice.

“Where are my wings, Dick?” said I.

“Why,” he muttered in a rather complaining way, “I thought that nothing could stop Roanoke!”

“Roanoke is like me,” said I. “Overpraised! A darn sight overpraised!”

But Dick merely shook his head. His idea of me and of that tough-mouthed mule I rode was too deeply fixed in him to be changed by mere words!

I turned up along the edge of that cliff and hit for the higher ground because I had my plan for the night’s campaign firmly in mind. On the way, I drew him into talk. Although he seemed to be bubbling over with a desire to hear me chatter about myself, he was young enough to be willing to speak of himself.

“What started you for the high spots, Dick?” said I.

“Hearing about the good times you’ve been having for the last five or six years,” said he.

“Three years!” I corrected him. “Three years, Dick.”

“Is that all? Seems to me I can hardly remember when they were not talking about Leon Porfilo.”

“As for the good times—” But I could not continue in that strain. How could I tell him about the bitter loneliness of the mountains? How could I tell him of that weak yearning which went like water through my blood a thousand times—the yearning to have other men around me? No, I decided that words could never turn the trick. The more I talked, the more glamour he would feel in what I had to say.

So I changed the theme.

“But there was something more than what you had heard of me that made you go wild,” I declared. “What else lies behind it?”

“The old man,” said he.

“Explain that.”

“The old man,” said Dick, “started out selling newspapers in New York. He wound up on a ranch, with plenty of hosses and plenty of coin, but the things that he figgers count the most are the things that he got locked up inside his head while he was stamping his feet to keep the chilblains out of his toes, and shoving papers under the noses of gents on Broadway.

“Back yonder, the big guns are the doctors and the lawyers, and suchlike things. What he has mapped out for me is a lawyer’s desk. Me!”

He threw out his arms and laughed. The gesture startled his mule, and the foolish thing began to buck on the edge of the cliff. I was so thoroughly frightened that I could hardly look. But Dick Orton merely laughed and threw spurs and quirt into his nag to make it buck still harder—all of this with perdition six inches away.

Then the mule had enough, and jogged on its way again.

Certainly I had seen enough of this youngster to demonstrate to me that the man who tried to control him was rather thick in the head. I would as soon try to plan the future of an avalanche. I wondered what sort of a brain was lodged above the eyes of Orton, the father.

“Go on,” I encouraged him.

“There’s nothing to it,” said he. “Same old lingo you’ve heard a thousand times before, I guess. He’s packed full of ambition for me. He herded me through high school, and he sure had his hands full doing it!”

I could imagine that. I pitied the school which had existed with a firebrand like this in its midst.

“Four years?” I asked.

“With a couple of breaks,” said he. “I busted away a couple of times, but each time the old man came out and nabbed me and got me back. I missed six months each time.

“All the while the old man was talking law at me,” went on Dick. “Yep, he never missed a chance. When he was starving back in the big town, he used to go to sleep dreaming about the lawyers that get to be presidents and senators, and the like! So he’s got it planned for me. I’m to step right out and get to where he wanted to be. Sure, I waded through the Latin and all that bunk.

“He used to think it was great. He’d sit back and listen to me conjugate a Latin verb like he was hearing soft music; and when I busted out with some French, you would have thought that I’d handed him a shot of redeye—he’s that far gone on education!”

“Good for him!” said I, thinking of Father McGuire and all of his patient hours spent to teach me the little that I had learned.

“Hey, Porfilo, are you kidding me?”

“Go on,” said I. “I’m listening.”

“It’s pretty silly. The grand bust came when I was shoved into the debating team because they couldn’t find anybody else to take the job in my last year at high school. The boys used to josh me quite a lot about being an orator. You see? It got my back up. I wrote up a line of lingo. I grabbed a-plenty of it out of books. Then I learned it by heart.

“When I was riding home at night, I used to spout out that stuff big and loud and talk so almighty fiery that I near scared my bronco to death. So when the time come for the debate itself, I wasn’t fazed much by the crowd in the assembly room. Back yonder in the rear row was my old man. I took a slant at him, sitting up there looking white and nervous, as if I was on trial for murder.

“ ‘He thinks that I’m gunna bust down,’ says I to myself. ‘Here’s where he gets one big treat.’

“So, when my turn comes, I sashay out and let the boys and girls have it.

“The others on the teams, they had been talking sort of strained and nervous, as if they was apologizing for being up there pretending to try to talk sense. But I hit ’em from the hip. I pulled my punches right out of the ground and talked like the folks in that room was a measly crowd of mustangs, and I was trying to herd ’em into the only corral where they belonged.

“They liked it. Now and then, while I was roarin’ and ragin’ up and down the platform, I took a slant at the old man and seen him turn from white to pink, and then he begun to grin, and then he begun to laugh, and then he begun to rub his hands and rock around in his chair and nudge his friends in the ribs and point out to them what a smart and sassy kid his son was!

“I finished up in a blaze of glory and sat down sweating, and pretty near to laughing, because they give me quite a cheer, with the old man the leading voice.

“After that debate there wasn’t no doubt left in his head. He figgered it out that his son was one of the smartest men in the country, and was gunna walk right through a governorship to the Senate and out again to the president’s chair. All he seen was visions of me deliverin’ an inaugural oration. All that he prayed for was to live till the president could have him to lunch in the White House.

“After that, he begun sort of talkin’ up to me, like he was a little boy, and I was an old man. He didn’t give no more orders to me. He just sat around and suggested things, and when I didn’t do what he wanted, he looked sort of sick and sad. He’d come in and sit down and ask my advice about his business. Sure he did. It would of flabbergasted you to see what a difference that debate of mine made to him—a lot of lingo that I’d picked up out of the books and hung together with pins and paste, you might say.

“Well, I hadn’t minded it so much in the days when he said that I was to be a lawyer and I said I wasn’t, and then he roared out that he’d disinherit me, and give all of his money to charity—me being an only son! That wasn’t so bad. It was just a fight.

“But when it got so that I said I wouldn’t never be a lawyer, and he only turned white and bit his lip and looked down to his plate and stopped eatin’—why, then it sort of made me nervous. I felt that I was pretty near to doing what he wanted just because I pitied him.

“Finally things got pretty bad, and I seen that I’d have to bust loose.

“So I busted. The first thing that I done was to saddle a mule—because if a mule is good enough for Porfilo, it’s good enough for me. I started out to show the old man that I wasn’t the timber that they hacked lawyers out of. And here I am, Porfilo!”