Читать книгу Slow Joe - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

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There was only one lamp, and the chimney of that one was pretty much smoked up. It showed me one of the posse sitting in a chair, smoking, not bothered much by what was happening. Alicia was on her knees easing the head of Ellis with one brown arm, and wiping from his lips the blood, as it bubbled.

I got down on my knees, too, so’s my ear would be closer. This kid was dead. I could see that. There was only a breath and a half in him, so he didn’t waste it all in one or two big words. He just whispered.

“Slow,” he says to me, “three mile out of town on the Ginger Pike, there’s a bridge, and by the bridge there’s three willows, and between the roots of the middle willow there’s a new hole, and in the hole there’s a wallet wrapped in oiled silk, and in the wallet there’s six thousand bucks. Get it.”

“Yeah,” says I.

“Shall I go?” says Alicia to me.

“Don’t be a fool,” says I.

She wipes his lips again. He goes on:

“Take that coin north to Kearneyville and find Ruth Edgar. She’s the girl. Give her that money, and give her my spurs. She always kind of admired them. Tell her good-by and God bless her. Kiss her for me. And—God—help my—rotten—soul.”

He was about all done, but his hand made a little fumbling movement that I understood. I grabbed it and gave it a squeeze, and leaning still lower I said in his ear: “I know their names. I’m gunna get ’em both for you, boy!”

Did he hear me?

Well, that I don’t know, but by the way he was smiling and dead when I straightened up, I guessed that he had. I gave him a good long look. Once he’d split my lip in a fight; I seemed to be tasting the blood again. Alicia closed her eyes; her tears were falling on his face; and I thought it was pretty fitting and right that a girl should by crying over handsome Lew as he died. He’d done a lot of heartbreaking in his time. Then I got to my feet and unbuckled the golden spurs that he’d been wearing. I wrapped them in a silk handkerchief that I took out of his breast pocket. There was one drop of blood on that handkerchief. It looked like red ink.

“Look here, you,” says the buck that had brought me into the room, “state property—what’s on a dead criminal, and—”

The other lad had more sense.

“Shut your mouth before you crack your lip, will you?” says he.

My friend pulled up, and I went out of the room and found the marshal. He was lying down flat on the table where I had been eating. In another moment he would have been asleep, but when I stepped in, he was wide awake in an instant.

“How is Lew buried?” I asked him.

“Federal expense,” says he.

“Here’s five hundred to do it right,” said I, putting the cash in his hand. “Flowers, and everything. Right here in San Whiskey you’ll find enough mourners. What d’you say? I can’t stay for the ceremony.”

“I’ll bury him,” said the marshal, “as if you were there to see. So long.”

There was a lot of common sense about Werner, as you may have noticed before this. He didn’t hold out his hand to say good-by and I was grateful for that. I said “So long” to him, and left the house. In the barn, I found Alicia saddling my horse. She seemed to know what she was about, so I sat down on the feed box and had a cigarette and a think, for I needed both. I wasn’t trying to puzzle out the Gregor-Peyton game. There was too much of that. I would have to tackle one thing after another on that trail. I was thinking about Lew Ellis, and the Chinese-running business, and the house he would never build for his girl. Ruth Edgar I didn’t remember in Kearneyville, for I’d been away several years, and these girls, they grow out of short skirts into trouble in just a jiffy.

When I looked up, Alicia was waiting with my brindled mustang, so I got up, stepped on my cigarette, took off my hat, and kissed her good-by. She seemed to take it for granted. Then I put a hundred bucks in her hand, five double eagles.

She tried to drop the coin, but I closed her hand over it.

“You’re not going to get along with your old man from now on,” I said. “If the nap gets rubbed off too much, and you can’t stand the gaff, here’s something that will give you a start. If you need another lift after starting, send me a letter to general delivery, Kearneyville. Can you write, Alicia?”

She pushed back from me a little and looked up into my face for a moment. I guessed that the red-head was smiling at me in the dark.

“Yeah. I can write,” said she.

And then she began to bubble.

“Aw, go on. You may be Mrs. Shakespeare, for all I know,” said I.

I led the pony into the yard, forked it, and waved my hat at Alicia until she was soaked up in the blot of the night. Then I took the Ginger Pike and rode like the devil for three miles, not that I was in a hurry, but that I needed the fresh air in my face.

When I hit the bridge, I saw that there were plenty of willows around, and he hadn’t even given me the direction, but after a while, I saw three that stood together like brothers. I lighted matches around the central one, found a place where the ground was a little disturbed, and in a few seconds, I had the oiled silk of the wallet in my hands.

I didn’t wait to undo it and look at the coin. I just climbed the brindled pony and headed for Kearneyville.

It was ordinarily a good five day trek; I nearly killed my horse and did it in three. Not that I was in such a great rush, because I knew that my men would be waiting for me, all right, at the other end of the line; but I felt nervous, day and night, and had to take the nerves out on something. You know how it is.

As a matter of fact, when I climbed the ridge and looked north, down into the broad, rolling grazing lands of the valley, I was sorry that I had come so fast. Trouble was waiting for me with a brass band, and I knew it.

A fellow has a funny feeling about going back to his home town. He always wants to put on a little dog at a time like that. I looked down at the faded shoulders of my blue flannel shirt, and the thorn-scarred leather chaps I was wearing, and the old, battered boots I had on, and I was sort of ashamed, for a moment. But I had rubbed against the world long enough to thicken my skin. Besides, I never was a dresser. So I didn’t even stand up in the stirrups to brush the dust out of the creases and the wrinkles of my clothes. I just jogged the brindle into the main street and told Kearney that it could like me or lump me, just as it pleased.

It was pretty good, though, to look the old town over. It wasn’t much to see. It was just one of those boom frontier towns that get their full growth before they’re ten years old, and grow gradually senile afterward. It had cheap frame shacks, and cheap looking stores and a couple of hotels with false fronts. I don’t think I ever knew how many people there were in Kearneyville. It had two newspapers, but that didn’t mean anything, because everybody bought a copy of each to see how each editor was cussing out the other fellow. But no matter how small and ornery the town might be, it meant to me the place where I had grown up. It tickled me to see the grocery store’s new sign. The old one was still in the attic of the house where my family had lived; unless new tenants had chopped the thing up for firewood. Then there were the lots where the kids played football and baseball, and the grove where the boys used to go after school, and fight it out. I could still remember some of the socks that I got in the clearing inside of that bunch of old poplars.

There was always a lot of fighting going on in Kearneyville, and that was because the town split into two factions, according to the two parts in the cattle war that had been tearing up the county for such a long time. It was one of those wars where there’s not such a lot of killing, just a cowpoke or a sheepherder found dead by accident, now and then, and some cow rustling, now and then, to liven things up. But there had been a few real gunfights in Kearneyville, too, and the town cut up into alliances. The adults varied in their allegiance according to the way they themselves looked at things. But the kids were divided according to the side of the main street they lived on.

The biggest part of Kearneyville was to the north of the street. The best houses were there, too. And the kids of that side of town held with the Willow tribe. The south side stuck up for the Peytons, and I lived on the south side. We had fewer hands, so we had to fight all the harder and more often. Mostly, though, we got licked. Of course, I remembered those old times, while the brindle was stumbling through the liquid white dust of the street into the rut holes. But I had to remember that I was after one of the Peytons, now. And not being a Peyton, I was nothing, as you might say.

Nothing but a damned deputy marshal, with a shield in my pocket!

I saw nobody except a squalling baby in a front yard, until I got to the old blacksmith shop, and there was old Jud Masters leading out to the hitching rack a horse he had just shod. He looked just the same. Ever since I could remember he had been toothless enough to seem to be grinning. He hadn’t changed. He was just as strong in the shoulders. His Adam’s-apple was just as big. The soot was just as black in the wrinkles of his smile. He wore his spectacles on the same hump, half way down his nose.

“Hullo, Masters,” said I.

He turned around and said:

“Hullo, Runt. When did I stop being ‘mister’ to you?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Masters,” said I. “How’s things?”

“Fair enough,” he said.

He began to look me over. He seemed half mad and he seemed half glad. Old folks from your home town are generally that way when they see one of the youngsters coming back. They half want them to come back rich and famous. They’re half pleased to see that the brats can’t beat out the older generation.

“How’s things with you?” said he.

“You can see for yourself,” said I.

“Kind of greasy, I’d say,” said he.

I didn’t mind that. It was true.

“What’s new in town?” I went on.

“Nothing much. Since you been here, the Thomases and the Edgars and the Sloans and the Wickbys have moved in. All up on the north side.”

That was the stuff I wanted. I asked what houses they’d taken, and he told me. The Edgars had moved into the old Gresham house; so I started that way.