Читать книгу Speedy - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10

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The lawyer rose a little, as though somebody had lifted him in his chair by the collar. In fact, his coat bunched loosely and wrinkled between the shoulder blades.

Then he settled down again.

“You’re playing for time. You don’t mean what you say,” he replied, bluntly.

Said the boy: “Maybe I didn’t tell you before, but in my games, I leave the women out.”

“Why?” asked the lawyer.

“Because I don’t like to fool with them,” said the boy, and he frowned.

“Because you think that they’re too easy?” insisted John Pierson.

Speedy shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m not ready to marry, even if I could,” said he. “I prefer a free life.”

“Every man has to settle down some day,” argued Pierson.

“That’s what the anchored ones say,” replied the boy. “It’s put the white on your head. Why d’you want me to turn gray, also?”

At this, Pierson laughed a little.

“You have a way with you, lad,” he admitted. “But here you’re wrong.”

Speedy waited, but with the manner of one who is polite, though he considers that the subject is closed for further discussion. The lawyer, silently, got out a box of cigars from a drawer of his desk, offered them vainly to Speedy, and then cut off the end of one and lighted it.

Through the smoke he squinted towards the boy, seeing him only in part, concentrating on his serious problem.

At last he nodded.

“I think you’re right, after all,” he said. “I jumped at a thought that came into my mind, but I begin to see, now, that you’re right.”

Speedy agreed, silently, with a gesture. He made himself a cigarette with adroit speed, and not a grain of Bull Durham fell to the floor. He lighted the cigarette, flicked out the match and placed it without a sound on the ashtray. The lawyer noted the singular graceful dexterity of every act.

“No,” went on John Pierson, “I was thinking of your cleverness, and the way you accomplish the things that you want to do. However, this is something that you couldn’t manage.”

The boy raised his head a little: “No,” he said, “I’m not a ladies’ man.”

Pierson looked down, scowling to cover a smile. Very little except the handsome tramp had been dinned into his ears by his daughter since the night before.

But he looked up as solemnly as ever.

Then, shaking his head, he went on: “Whether you’re a success in the eyes of the ladies or no is not the question just now in my mind. No, not at all. Your cleverness could jump that hurdle, I think. No, it’s a matter of the men that fence her in. No, it would never do. They’d kill you out of hand, my lad!”

In the brown deeps of the eyes of the boy appeared a glimmering light. For that light the lawyer had waited.

“Oh, they’d kill me out of hand, would they?” said Speedy, gently.

“We’ll talk no more about it,” said Pierson. “The fact is that I thought of you because, Speedy, in spite of your profession, I like you. Because of Brownie I have a reason. Because of yourself I have a reason. Most of all, I think I admired the impudence with which you made a fool of me, last night. And I have an idea that once you gave your word, you could be trusted to the end of the world!”

The boy waved these compliments aside, with a saintly, rather pained smile.

“But about the man-eaters—” he began.

“No, no, no!” said Pierson, shaking his head. “Now that I think the thing over, I’m horrified because I ever dreamed of dragging you into the business. No, I was entirely wrong. Utterly and entirely wrong, of course. I wouldn’t dream of it. Here you are, a fellow who never carries weapons, even—no, the thing would be murder.”

“But—” began Speedy.

“I’d have your death on my conscience all the days of my life!” said Pierson, resolutely. “Let’s talk of something else, Speedy!”

The tramp sat forward in his chair.

“It may seem odd to you,” he said, “but you know that even bare hands and bare brains have handled gunmen before now!”

Pierson raised the flat of his hand and pushed the subject away from consideration.

“I understand,” said he. “The idea of a difficulty to be overcome—that rather attracts you, doesn’t it? But I wouldn’t draw you in. You think that I’m talking of a few reckless border ruffians, but you’re quite wrong. No, no! Devils! That’s what they are, my lad. I’ve been down there and looked them over, myself. I’ve seen fellows who could fan their guns so accurately that they could blow the lettering off a sign a hundred yards away. I’m not simply talking. It’s a thing that I saw with my own eyes!”

“Sign posts are not men, after all,” suggested Speedy.

“I know what you mean,” agreed the lawyer, sympathetically. “But the fact is that they’re a chosen lot of devils, down there in the place I refer to. A chosen lot, by heaven! They’d as soon kill a man as a rabbit. And they do. Constant shooting scrapes, d’you see? And a man who tries to make eyes at that girl is marked down in a moment!”

“Then they must be killing one another off at a rate that will make the place safe for strangers, very soon,” said the boy.

“You’d think so, but you don’t understand the angles of the game,” replied Pierson. “No, no, my boy! All of those ruffians have long ago found out that she won’t look twice at any of them. They’re sure that she won’t elope with one of the old hands. It’s strangers that they watch.”

“Is the girl a half-wit?” suggested young Speedy. “If the whole countryside knows that she’s an heiress, do you mean to say that she has no inkling?”

“The whole countryside doesn’t know,” said Pierson. “Only two men down there have the facts in hand. They’re both ambitious, but they’re both likely, one of these days, to tell her the truth, because each one of ’em will be afraid that somebody else will pick the plum. You see, I’ve sketched the thing in very crudely. Only, believe me that I don’t exaggerate. The finest shot in the world be taking his life in his hands if he went down there with the purpose I suggested. As for you—it would be plain suicide. You’ll wonder that I didn’t think of all of this before. But you know how a dream jumps into a man’s head, and he tries to realize it when he wakes up. Well, the mist has blown out of my brain, now. Let’s talk of something else, Speedy.”

The tramp stood up, restlessly, and turned towards the door. Then, hastily, he came back again, and dropped his hand on the edge of the lawyer’s desk.

“Down there on the Rio Grande—down where the girl is—that’s a real dropping off place, is it?” he asked.

“You bet it is!” answered Pierson, heartily. “The men in the spot I’m talking about are born with a knife in their teeth, and they learn to shoot the eyes out of running jackrabbits before they can walk.”

The boy drew a great breath.

“I never thought much of the Rio Grande,” he said, “but that’s because I never took a good look at the country around it, Mr. Pierson. But from your description of the scenery—why, I see that it’s the very next place where I’m to go.”

“Come, come,” said the lawyer. “You don’t mean what you say! Forget all this, Speedy. I beg you to forget it.”

“Ask a man to forget the lungs he breathes with!” said Speedy.

“You mean that you seriously have the thing in mind? No, but then there’s the question of the girl. She’s not the sort you would like.”

“No?” said Speedy, mildly.

“No,” answered the lawyer. “She’s a pretty thing, but she’s a shrew. A man wants a gentle woman around him. Something to work for. But she’s a wild caught mustang, if ever there was one!”

“Mr. Pierson,” said the tramp, “may I ask you a favor?”

“Certainly,” said the lawyer, putting much heartiness in his voice. “I’ll do anything for you that I can!”

“Then give me the name and address of this man-tamer!”

Pierson jumped up.

“Don’t ask me to do that,” said he. “I’ve promised—but don’t hold me to my word, Speedy!”

“I do hold you,” said the boy.

“Confound it!” exclaimed Pierson. “You mean that you’d go down there and try to marry her?”

“In spite of the guns, I’d like to try it. And as for the girl, well, wild horses have been gentled, too!” said the tramp.

Pierson strode to the window. He turned his back on the boy and spoke loudly, angrily, without turning his head.

“You’ve cornered me, Speedy,” he said. “But if I have to tell you, I have to! Her name’s Mary Steyn, and she lives near Villa Real.”

“Mary Steyn—Villa Real,” murmured the boy, thoughtfully. “I’ll look her up as soon as a train can get me down there!”

Suddenly he crossed the room and stood at the shoulder of Pierson. The latter, little by little, turned. A grin was on his face, triumph in his eyes. For a moment they stared at one another fixedly.

Then Speedy nodded.

“You took me in, that time, Mr. Pierson,” he said. “It was all a little game to bait me, eh? A red flag for a bull. Was that it?”

The lawyer broke into ringing laughter. He dropped a hand upon the shoulder of the tramp.

“Speedy,” he said, “you know that turn and turn about is fair play, eh?”

“Yes, I know that,” said the boy, soberly, “but this was a good, full turn, after all. Well, I’ve told you that I’ll do it. And I will. But you tell me what strings you have on me!”

Pierson shook his head.

“Not one!” he said. “Suppose that you should win—and honestly I think that your wits may give you one chance in three—you may care to remember John Pierson, and remember that he’s a lawyer capable of dealing with estates. But there’s not a string or a hold that I have over you. But, by the way, I’ll be glad to finance you for any expenses that—”

The boy grew suddenly crimson to the roots of the hair. He said not a word.

But Pierson took a quick little step back from him.

“I beg your pardon!” said the lawyer.