Читать книгу Slow Joe - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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This fellow Ellis was as cool as they ever came. I’d known that before, but while the icicles are dripping up and down my innards, he slips his hands inside his coat to loosen his guns.

“Who are they?” says he to me.

“God knows,” I answered. “Werner, maybe. There’s a window behind your back, let’s—”

“The lights, first,” says Ellis, and makes a pass at the lamp with a long blue-black Colt already in his fingers.

He never finished that swipe. Through the window behind him a pair of guns went blam-blam-blam-blam—just like that, as if they were two-stepping the piece together, and Ellis keeps right on leaning until he hits the floor.

I was on the floor, too. It’s usually the best place in a pinch, and gives you a chance for steady shooting; but I saw that the window wasn’t the only point of attack. Into the doorway, as big as life steps Marshal Chip Werner, and I see a head over each of his shoulders. I came near potting him as he stepped through the doorway. I would, I swear, because I was fond of Ellis. We’d grown up together, as you might say, and fought our way into a real friendship. But the gun in the marshal’s hand was hanging down, and it isn’t so sweet to take a pot shot at a fellow who is not on the trigger ready to shoot back.

Just then another pair of bullets come driving from the window. One rips off a big splinter from the floor and throws it in my face. The other slug comes winging and humming like a bird beside my ear.

The marshal ups with his six-shooter and covers the black darkness of that window.

“Stop that nonsense,” he says in his gentle, quiet voice, “or I’ll slam the pair of you up the river for life.”

Somehow I felt that took care of the boys at the window.

I got up and laid hold on Ellis. A pair of the bucks with the marshal ordered me to keep hands off, but Werner was white.

“Let him be,” he said, “because Ellis was his friend.”

Was my friend?

Well, I turned him over and it looked that way. He was a mess. He was blown to bits, almost. He was all sopping red. He had the look even to the eyes, which were half open, and what I saw looked like the eyes of a dead fish.

I got up and dusted my hands. Dusted the blood off them, I mean.

“This is a pretty good party, Werner,” I said. “You’ll enjoy the encore in hell, too.”

“Shall I sap him, chief?” said one of the bucks with the marshal.

There were four of them in the room, by this time.

“No, fan him, Bill,” said the marshal. “And put the stuff on the table.”

They fanned me, while Werner took one of the stools and tilted it back against the wall, with himself on the top. He took out a tailor-made cigarette—they were rare in those days—and lighted it, and began to puff slowly and inhale like a fellow who knows what he’s about.

“You’re letting Ellis die,” I told Werner. “I saw his foot twitch, just then.”

“Did you, really?” says the marshal. “Well, that’s too bad. We don’t want to be inhuman. A couple of you boys give him a look. Sam, you’re two parts doctor. Take him into the next room. Call somebody to scrub up this mess. I’ll keep Hyde here with me.”

“Cuffs, chief?” said someone, jingling a pair.

“No, that’s all right,” said the marshal.

They began to carry poor Ellis out; my heart ached. I hadn’t guessed how I had liked that fresh kid. Then the girl barged in and lets her guitar drop with a clangor on the floor. She grabs my arms.

“Joe, what’ll you be thinking of us—of me?”

I took her face between my hands. Her cheeks were red hot.

“I think you’re a good one out of a bad breed,” I said. “You run along.”

“What will happen to you?” says she, leaving go of my arm and beginning to wring her hands.

“I’ll probably stand quite awhile without hitching, that’s all,” I told her. “Now you hoof along, Red, and pray for me every Easter Sunday till I come back, will you?”

She got out of the room, with a big sob breaking just as she reached the hallway. Then I heard her break into a rapid fire of Mexican with a mighty dangerous snarl in her throat.

Just after that, her father came into the room, and he was carrying my bottle of red wine! That was pretty cool! He stopped short for a minute when he saw that my hands were free, but then he went on and put the wine on the table.

“Mighty sorry, Joe,” said he.

“It’s all right, Mike,” I said to him. “I might have known what you would do to get the padlock off your front door. I won’t bear a grudge. I like to stumble on higher ground than you.”

“But,” says Mike, with both his hands in the air, “I know nothing. I only hear when—”

I looked him in the face and he couldn’t stand it. He went out, closing the door behind him as softly as though he were leaving a church.

That left me with the marshal, and the blood on the floor. He went to the door, locked it, crossed the room to the window, and stood there for a while teetering back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. I gathered up my stuff from the table and lodged it about me where it belonged. But I was puzzled. His back was still turned when I said:

“I thought you’d been wanting me for a long time, Chip.”

“Yeah. I’d been wanting you,” said Werner.

I stared at his back, but there was nothing to see except to admire the fit of his coat. He was a great dude, in those days.

He always looked as though he were just about to go to work, never as though he had come in from a job. He was so dapper and neat that I never could see where he put away his guns; but nobody in that part of the West was fool enough to forget that he always wore them.

“I’m glad you’ve changed your mind about me, anyway,” I said.

He smoothed his hair. It was already so slick that I could have seen to shave in it. He didn’t answer.

“I’d rather have you absent-minded on the other side of the room,” I told him. “You don’t think I’m fool enough to try a break through the door, do you? But I could use that window.”

He yawned. He still had his back to me.

“We’ll have a little chat, Slow Joe,” says he.

I eased myself back onto a stool and swallowed a groan. Of course, however, I saw that I never could hope to get away from him without a deal. I had thought, for a minute, that he didn’t have enough stuff on me for an arrest. Now I changed my mind.

There was a big, thick-sided glass on the table, with a chunk bitten out of one part of the rim. I filled the glass, drank from the smooth place, and put the glass down with a thump. It was the worst wine in the world, with an after taste like wood ashes in the throat; but it had a body and a kick to it. I closed my eyes while the stuff warmed me.

Then I made a cigarette and lighted it. The blood-stain was spreading on the floor and turning into mud. I had a fool desire to touch the rim of the puddle with the toe of my boot. My foot kept moving a little back and forth.

Marshal Werner came back and sat down on the stool he had placed against the wall. He teetered back in it once more, knocked the ashes off his cigarette, and seemed to measure the length of it. It was about half gone.

He was exactly opposite me. I thought it a queer thing that two fellows as handsome as the marshal and poor Ellis should have been in that little room, one after the other.

He said: “That’s a pretty girl, Slow.”

“Yeah,” said I.

“A cut above her kind,” says he.

“Yeah,” said I.

“Fire, too.”

“Yeah, fire, too.”

“They’re better that way. With fire, I mean.”

He knocked the ashes off his cigarette again, though the coal was still a clean, clear red. That told me that he was pretty excited, behind that beautiful, cold face of his, behind those gray, misty eyes. I felt better. My own nerves improved a hundred per cent. I took another whiff of smoke.

“Have a sock at this wine,” I suggested.

“A swallow,” said he.

I poured the tumbler full. He came over and slid the red ink down his throat in one pouring. He was no larger than I, but even in drinking he was big.

Then he went back to his stool and sat down again, tilting back once more. He moistened his lips even after the drinking. The tip of his tongue was purple with the wine.

“I’m thinking, Slow,” said he.

“Yeah. I know you’ve been to school,” I told him. “Take your time. I can wait for you as long as the jail can wait for me. Only, this was a rotten play you made today.”

“What play?” says he, absently.

I pointed to the blood on the floor.

“Ellis was my pal,” said I. “I don’t know what you may have in your mind. Before you start your talk, I just wanted to tell you that. Ellis was my pal. Nothing you can say will cancel that out.”

“Oh, Ellis,” says he, as though he’d forgotten there was ever such a man in the world. “I didn’t come here for Ellis. I came here for you.”

“You just slammed Ellis for fun, eh?” said I, beginning to heat up to the surface, even.

“I didn’t slam Ellis,” said he.

“I’m not saying that you did,” I answered, holding myself hard. “But your hired hounds did. That’s the same, with me.”

“My hired hounds didn’t do it,” says the marshal, wearily.

“Then I only dreamed that Lew Ellis was plugged four times through the body,” I said.

“Outside pair of hands did the trick,” he replied.

“Uninvited?”

“I let them come along. I didn’t know—”

His voice trailed away; he was plainly thinking hard.

But I got rather impatient. I still was seeing Ellis lean out of his chair as the bullets hit him from behind. I still could see the jerk of his body as each of those slugs went throbbing into him.

“Then I’d like to know the names of the pair!” I yelled at him, suddenly.

He held up a hand to hush my noise.

“That’s exactly what I hope I can tell you,” said he.