Читать книгу Speedy - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Samuel P. Chalmers was giving a dinner.

He rarely gave a dinner to more than one man at a time; this evening he was saying to his guest: “Two people can talk, discuss, sir. Three makes the development of a subject impossible. I wanted to have you alone, with me, tonight, Mr. Chase. Because you are the man in Durfee whose opinion counts most with me. I wanted to consult you quietly, and personally, about certain matters of policy.”

Mr. Chalmers affected a grand style, not only in his speech but in his clothes. He wore tails and parti-colored waistcoats, with a double loop of bright golden chain draped across it. His neckties were the joy of the matrons and the despair of the men of Durfee. Anyone other than Chalmers would have looked foolishly overdressed in such cravats; but they seemed to go well with the broad sweep of his blond mustache, which he kept well and cleanly away from his bright pink lips.

Mr. Chase was a large rancher; and his support had, practically unassisted, elected Chalmers over Mr. Pierson. That, added to the fact that people felt that Pierson already had held the office long enough. They had nothing against the latter.

And Mr. Chase was flattered.

He said: “Yeah, when you come to think of it, there ain’t any way so good of settlin’ things as to go and have a good talk with a man. Seems like trouble gets all ironed out pretty slick, before long.”

“It does,” said Samuel P. Chalmers, “and therefore I thought that I would have you alone, Mr. Chase. Your experience in the world, and the brilliance of your achievements as a business man—”

“Askin’ your pardon, Mr. Chalmers!” said a timid voice.

The district attorney had a piece of meat on the end of his fork. He turned rather wildly and saw a timid face, a great, frightened pair of eyes at the window. He turned farther, with a growl.

“What the devil is this?” he said.

“I tried the front door,” said the timid voice, “and they said that you was busy. And then I tried the back door, and they up and said there that you was still busy. And they said that they’d take and throw me over the fence if I didn’t get away, but I kind of had to see you, sir. So I just looked in through this window and—”

“Who are you?” snapped the district attorney.

“I’m Mort Waley’s boy, sir.”

“Mort Waley? I don’t know any Mort Waley. Where do you come from?”

“I come from over in Grant County, sir.”

“I have nothing to do with Grant County,” said the district attorney. “Run along, my lad. What’s brought you here, anyway?”

“It was Pa that sent me, sir,” said the boy. “He’s kind of laid up, or he’d of come himself. He said there was one place to find justice in the world, and that was from Mr. Chalmers, down here in Durfee. So I just walked down, sir.”

Said Mr. Chase, his fat face reddening a little: “You gotta reputation, Chalmers. Doggone me if it don’t warm me up a good deal, to see how folks come to you for a square deal.”

Mr. Chalmers expanded. It was true that he knew few people in Grant County, and that he never had heard of a man named Mort Waley. But a compliment is never paid uselessly to a vain man. His own heart warmed. He cleared his throat.

“Come in, my lad,” said he. “Come in, come in. I’ll have the front door opened. Not exactly my business hour, Mr. Chase,” he added, with a deprecatory laugh, “but the law demands all the time of its servants!”

Said Chase, the rancher: “You go right on. I’d rather be hungry than see folks stay in trouble when they might be helped out.”

“Don’t you bother about the front door, sir,” said the boy. “I could climb right in here.”

And straightaway, he put his knee on the windowsill, and climbed through.

He made a sad picture. He had no coat. His trousers were badly tattered. The shirt was missing, and had apparently been wound around the bare feet of the boy. The rags of the shirt were bloodstained! Blood spotted the floor with darkness where the youngster stepped.

Mr. Chalmers was a man of strong expression.

“By the Eternal God!” he exclaimed. “What outrage is behind this?”

The boy shrank as from a blow. He raised a hand to protect his face. He shrank shuddering back against the wall.

“I ain’t meaning no harm, sir,” said he. “I’ll clean up the blood on your floor.”

“You’ll clean it up?” said the district attorney. “You’ll clean it up? My poor lad, who has done this to you?”

He advanced and laid a fatherly arm about the shoulders of the lad. Humped shoulders they were, with the bones thrusting out a little.

Then he turned towards Chase, whose broad, rather heavy face was pinched with pain and with pity.

“Shaking like a leaf, poor child,” said Chalmers. “Sit down here, my boy. Who did this to you?”

“Nobody, sir. I dunno what you mean?”

“You don’t know what I mean?” cried the attorney, his voice rich and ringing with indignant sympathy. “I say, who reduced you to wander barefoot through—”

He was about to say “wilderness” and suddenly realized that the term was a shade Biblical for the stomach of Mr. Chase.

So he paused on “through.”

“Dad was laid up,” said the boy. “And this here was the last day. He told me to come runnin’ to you.”

“Not another word,” said the district attorney, “until you’ve had food and drink. Sit down here, if you please! Sit right down here—yes, at the table, by God! I beg your pardon, Mr. Chase. I should have asked your permission, first, but—”

The rancher stood up.

“Don’t be a damn fool, Chalmers,” he said, bluntly. “The kid’s sick. He’s wobbly. Bring him over here and shove some food into him.”

“You have a good heart, Mr. Chase,” said Chalmers, gratefully.

“Hell, man,” said Chase. “It’s your house. I’m doggone glad to find out that they lie that called you a proud man, Chalmers. All I gotta say is that you’re gunna have my vote every time, and the votes of all my friends.”

The effect of this speech was to make Chalmers bless the day that brought this youthful vagabond to his door.

By this time, he had brought the lad to the table, and now he forced him to sit down. But the boy looked in terror at the long, bright board, and at the heaped plate which the Chinaman now brought in and set before him with a pleased grin. For every cook loves to set forth his best before the truly hungry.

“Go on,” said Chalmers, bursting with Good Samaritanism, his eyes stung with tears brought by the sense of his own virtue, “eat, my lad, and afterwards I’ll hear you.”

“If you please, sir,” said the lad, shrinking in his chair, “I wouldn’t feel none too good eatin’, when Pa ain’t had a bite for two days, since he was laid up.”

“Two days, eh?” said the district attorney, darkly. “And what laid the man up, my lad?”

“It was three days back,” said the boy. “He didn’t count the shots, right, and when he went into the shaft the next morning, to clean out the broken ground, the last shot went off. It kind of tore off his left leg at the knee.”

“My God!” said Chase. “The poor devil! I remember seeing—go on, boy! How did you take care of him?”

“I come when he hollered,” said the boy, “and he was layin’ on the ground, with a good holt on his leg above the knee, with both hands, and there wasn’t no leg to be seen nowheres below the knee—”

He paused and shook his head, his eyes blank with wonder, still, as he recalled this strange moment.

The two men interchanged glances. The lad was a good lad, it appeared, but a little lacking in the wits.

“Pa told me to go and start up the fire and heat a stove lit till it was red hot, which I done it, and then brung it to him with a pair of tongs and—”

His eyes withered shut. He clenched a fist and raised it before his eyes.

Sweat was streaming down the face of Mr. Chase.

“We know the rest, son,” said he. “We know the rest. It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me. I remember seein’—but that don’t matter. Go on and tell me how your old man is resting now?”

“Why, he’s restin’ pretty good,” said the boy, his stopped voice coming back with a gasp. “He’s restin’ pretty good, I guess. I partly drug and he partly hitched himself along until we got him to the cabin and into a bunk. He says that one day he’ll walk better than ever on one wooden leg. He says that a wooden leg, it sure saved a pile of wear on shoes. I reckon he’s right.”

Chase laughed, shortly.

But the district attorney shook his head.

“A picture of a brave heart, told in a few simple words,” said Chalmers.

“He’s a fellow with guts,” said Chase, through his teeth. “Then two days without food, eh?”

“He was gunna go down to town, that same day, and try to borrow some flour, because he’d run out of money. And then he hoped he’d make a good strike in the mine, and in the two days that would be left, he’d get out enough gold to pay back Mr. Pierson and—”

“Mr. Who?” exclaimed the two men together.

“Mr. John Pierson, of Durfee. Pa was pretty broke about six months back, when Mr. Pierson come along on a huntin’ trip and seen the mine, and looked it over, and liked the color that was showin’. Pa said there was a big vein about to open up, and Mr. Pierson, he said somethin’ I didn’t mostly understand about development, and capital, and words like that; and he would lend Pa a hundred dollars for six months, and if Pa didn’t pay back the money by the end of that time, he was to give the mine to Mr. Pierson, and—”

“By the Lord!” cried Chase, “I never knew why I didn’t like Pierson, before. I know now.”

The Chinaman came into the room.

He announced that Mr. John Pierson was calling.