Читать книгу Speedy - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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The lawyer loved all animals, but above all he loved this little brown and black mongrel. He had used thoroughbred pointers, before, and now he had been amazed by the ability of the cur to do as much as any of the others. It was, perhaps, a little overeager. That was its only fault, and it is the best of all demerits in a young dog. For the rest, it was picking up the right education to a surprising degree; and it loved hunting as much as its master did.

Now, when he saw it spinning on the brink of destruction, he uttered a great cry, that choked short off in the middle, so furiously was he running to the rescue. But he knew, before he had taken ten strides, that he would be too late. It was a bitter moment for John Pierson, and the more so when he saw, or thought he saw, the appealing glance of the dog fixed specially upon him as it was carried down to destruction.

Then a slim form went by him, the tramp, the lazy and worthless sponger, Speedy. He ran like a deer, with a sprinter’s high action, with a sprinter’s long and powerfully reaching stride. It seemed that his toes barely tipped the earth as he fled towards the danger point.

The lawyer shouted hoarse and short in appreciation and amazement. For how had the boy managed to get down from his higher perch so suddenly and appear in this fashion in front of the race?

Even the tramp would be too late, however. That appeared clear. But, reaching the bank of the little stream, he threw himself headlong in, with a long, beautiful, flat dive.

He struck the water below the dog, well beneath it down the course. The power of the current jerked at him, and yet he found his feet with a wonderful dexterity, and instantly scooped the puppy out of the current and flung it well to the shore.

In that effort, he overbalanced. The smooth, powerful sheet of the current was striking him above the knees, and curling to his waist. Now, as he staggered, it seemed to rise in a wave and strike him with a renewed power. Over he went, fighting with his arms to regain his poise, but fighting in vain. Over he went, and though he turned in the water like a snake in the effort to regain his feet, the force of the water had him at too great a disadvantage, and he shot over the brink of the cliff.

The lawyer stood stock still. The moment, the dreadful picture, was burning into his brain, never to be eradicated. And he remembered one thing that would never leave his mind. It was the fact that the boy had not cried out. Silently, like a hero, he had left this life, and left behind him, his wretched trickeries, the thousand deceits of his profession. But his heart was great. John Pierson swore that, from that moment, his heart would be enlarged to look upon rogues with a tenderer understanding.

Then he saw the mongrel standing on the verge of the bank, below the rim of the fall, and barking furiously.

“He has seen the body!” thought Pierson, grimly, and strode forward to see.

What he saw made him cry out like a madman with joy.

For there was Speedy hanging by his hands from a projection of rock just under the lip of the waterfall. He kicked his feet above fifty feet of empty space which lay between him and the cruel teeth of stone on which the stream was shattering.

But even now, the boy swung his body like a pendulum and shifted his grip to another jutting bit of the stone.

What a handhold to swing by over the lip of destruction! The spray from the falls had covered the stone with moss and with green slime. And one slip of the fingers would be the last slip on this earth for Speedy!

Yet, as he swung there, he deliberately turned his head and smiled and nodded at the lawyer.

It swelled the heart of John Pierson to the bursting point.

How could he help? He got out farther towards the ledge, lay flat, and stretched out his hand. But there was still a good distance between him and the place where the boy was working slowly, from point to point.

Now one hand gave way. The boy hung by the grip of the other, only, and at that moment, inspired by the devil, a contrary gust of wind curled a sheet of the falling water aslant and struck it heavily against the body of the boy.

“The end!” said Pierson.

But it was not the end. With a desperate effort, his body convulsed by it, Speedy managed to reach out to a fresh hold with his left hand, and now behold him under the very hand of the lawyer.

“Here!” shouted Pierson.

His arm was strong, his wrist was steel, his body was anchored by a very solid and substantial weight. In a moment he had both of the boy’s wet hands in his. And what a grip they gave him! He was amazed at the strength in Speedy, the idler.

Then, heaving up with all his might, he swayed the boy high as the armpits up to the edge of the rock.

Speedy was in a moment lying on his back on the grass. He lay with his arms thrown out to the side. He lay like a cross upon the green. There was no working of the face, no exaggeration. Only the flare of the nostrils, the stern straightness of the upper lip, the heaving of the breast in long breaths, told Pierson of the strain through which Speedy had been passing.

For his own part, he was shaking from head to foot. He sat down by the boy and pulled out his feet and watched a thing that oddly pleased him, but that oddly touched him in a raw spot.

It was the little mongrel, Brownie, making his demonstration of joy and of gladness of living, and of gratitude, not to his master but, rightly enough, to his deliverer from danger. And now, sopping wet as he was, he lay curled on the not less soaking breast of Speedy’s coat and licked his face, and beat his tail frantically, whining.

Yes, it was very right that he should make a fuss over the boy. He certainly had earned Brownie’s devotion. And yet the heart of John Pierson was a little sore. He was ashamed of this secondary emotion. It made him feel smaller than ever.

At last the boy sat up, held himself there on the stiff of both arms for a moment, and then rose to his feet. The lawyer watched him, but said not a word, for there was not a word to say.

And, calmly, deliberately, Speedy peeled off his soaked clothes, wrung them out, and laid them on shrubs to dry. Pierson noted, with interest, that if the outer clothes were shabby, the underclothes were scrupulously clean. Moreover, the body underneath them was clean, and brown as if from long seasons on beaches—the rather scrawny body of a young boy, but outfitted with stringy muscles that explained at a glance how the athletic feats under the brink of the waterfall had been accomplished.

Well, many an idler might be an athlete as well, trained by swimming, by tennis, by dancing and riding until he was as tautly stringed with power and muscle as any football player or day laborer.

These things occurred to the somber eye of Pierson, as he considered the boy.

He had filled his pipe, and now he was smoking and thinking of many things—and, for the first time in a good many years, not of himself.

Said Speedy:

“That’s the coldest water that I’ve seen in a long time.”

He turned his back to the sun, that it might dry that part of him more quickly.

“That’s snow water,” said Pierson.

He thought it odd that these should be the first words interchanged between them, after the boy’s heroism. But, the more the event receded in time, the more impossible it was to speak of the thing. What made it perfect was that the cause for the courage was so small. If it had been a child say—well, it would not have been half so admirable.

He looked back at the spot of the bank where the toes of Speedy had gouged deeply into the ground as he took his header into the stream.

It seemed to be at the very edge of the falls. And he, Pierson, would never have been able to attempt such a feat. Furthermore, if he had, by this time he would be a pulpy, smashed and broken corpse, pounding to pieces among the rocks where the water shattered itself in volley after volley.

“Speedy,” he said, “I want to say something to you.”

“I’ll tell you something first,” said Speedy. “Don’t you say it. Let it be, please. You’re going to give me some good advice and wind up with calling me a lot of pleasant names; you’re going to apologize for telling me a few home truths, just before this, and you’ll probably offer me a place in your sun. But don’t you do it.”

Even now the lawyer could be a little vexed by the cool insight of the boy.

But he said: “I wish you’d listen to me, Speedy.”

“I won’t though,” said the boy. “It’s happened a couple of times before that people have got a wrong idea about me. Hell, I know that I’m not all bad. But I know that I’m a damned long ways from all good, too. I don’t get away from that, Mr. Pierson. And it makes me sick to cash in on a foolish impression, unless I’ve worked to make it, professionally. And just now,” he added, with a smile, “I wasn’t being professional.”

“No,” burst out the lawyer, “you were being—”

He checked himself before the extravagant word. It had been well enough earned, but something told him that it was not wanted. He could see the relief spread on the face of the youngster as he made the pause.

“What do you call making a fool professionally?” he asked, at last.

“I’ll tell you,” said the boy. “We’re all men, we all have a share of brains, we all want money, we all want an easy time. Well, your dollars are your treasure; your wits are the soldiers that guard it. If I can put your soldiers to sleep, I take your money. That’s my game, and it’s a good game. It beats chess all hollow.”

“You hate to make a false impression,” grinned Pierson, “unless you’ve intended exactly that thing. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” said the boy. “That’s part of it. Now, you and I understand each other a good deal better. Brownie and I are friends. And I warn you—if I take that three hundred—no, it’s four hundred dollars—off you in Durfee, I’ll dance on your front porch and laugh in your face, Mr. John Pierson!”