Читать книгу Happy Jack - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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On a hummock close to the corral fence stood “Happy Jack” Aberdeen. The sun shone in his young face—the last red of the dying sun.

“Here I stand on the top of the dog-gone world,” said Happy Jack. “Where’s the cowboy that’ll get me off?”

The cow-punchers lounged about in front of the bunk house, waiting for the supper gong to strike. The older men smoked on, indifferent to this crowing of youth; but the other youngsters pricked up their ears and began to measure him who stood on the top of the world, as he declared.

Professor Lang, looking out from the window of the living room in the ranch house, pointed toward Jack Aberdeen. He said to Marshall William Kinney, his host: “There’s a splendid young chap, Kinney. There’s a born athlete, I should say!”

The marshal leaned forward to look. He was a big man with a rugged face, and a rugged body, and great hands capable of holding whatever they seized upon. He had carved this ranch out of the wilderness and made it prosper; he had carved a grim fame for himself as a hunter of outlawed men; in his thirty-fifth year, he was already almost more legend than man.

“Him? He’s soft!” said the marshal. “Now, you watch what ‘Shorty’ does to him.”

Shorty, wide of shoulder and deep of chest, came from the steps of the bunk house with a waddling step; he was a bulldog of a man, with the face of a bulldog, also; he wore a faint grin of anticipation as he approached. He looked like a spirit of darkness, compared with the yellow-haired, blue-eyed boy on the mound.

“I’ll wager on the handsome chap,” said the professor.

“You will?” grunted the rancher. “Shorty’s got thirty pounds on him, I guess.”

“What’s poundage? What’s mere poundage?” said the professor. “It’s the mind that wins, I suppose.”

“Is it?” said the rancher, and he looked up at his guest with a faint grin, and noted the hollow chest and the narrow shoulders of the man of thought. “You’ll see,” said he.

“You’ve seen them tussle before?”

“Never. Don’t have to. Anybody oughta be able to pick the winner in that fight! Shorty’s bigger, older, harder, had more experience. When he puts a hand on the kid, Happy Jack will melt. You’ll see!”

“I doubt it,” said the professor. “There’s something magnificent about that young man.”

“He ain’t got any spark in him,” said the marshal.

“He may get one, however.”

“Look at that!”

Shorty had closed with Happy Jack with a bull-like rush. The struggle was swiftly ended. The very first assault thrust Happy Jack from the hummock, staggering. He came back with a leap, laughing, and instantly the two went down, rolled over and over, and came to a rest, with Shorty on top.

“Now you watch him quit!” said the marshal.

In fact, Happy Jack flattened out, and burst into the most cheerful laughter. Shorty arose with a grunt, as the supper gong rang, and gave Happy Jack a hand to lift him up.

“You see how it is,” said the marshal. “They don’t take Happy serious. Been of two minds about keepin’ him on, the last coupla months, he makes so many mistakes with the cows.”

“Does he?” said the professor. “And yet that’s a very intelligent face, Kinney.”

“Face?” asked the rancher. “I want a man with a pair of hands. I don’t care about his head, as long as he can listen to orders and remember ’em! Hands do the work, professor!”

The professor listened politely, looked off to the snows upon the distant summit, and shivered.

There was never a time in this country when he was not either too hot or too cold; above all, in the evening time, prying fingers of draft and cold reached for him and made him unhappy, and his face burned from the exposure of the day and made him drowsy and feverish. He had been sent out here to rest and lead the outdoor life; and an introduction from one friend to another, and then to another, had led him eventually to this ranch of Marshal Kinney’s. He had received here a careless, good-natured hospitality. He had been given horses to ride, a room to himself, and “ranch” food. He was beginning to shudder at the thought of that food—the endless procession of thin steaks, fried brown through and through and drenched in grease; of potatoes fried soggily also; of coffee that made the head swim; of half-baked bread. And now that the fall of the year was coming on, the house was always damp. The sheets into which he crawled at night were cold and clammy; he was glad that the next morning would see him off on the return journey.

He and the marshal sat in the private dining room. This was an innovation in his honor, and he knew that Kinney would much have preferred to sit at the head of the long table where his punchers ate their meals.

The Chinese waiter came running in haste to serve them, dealt out plates and cups and saucers with a huge rattling, and slopped a platter of steaks upon the center of the round table. The marshal proceeded with his meal with his usual haste, his head bowed low, to make the lifting of the hands almost unnecessary. That was another picture which the professor would be glad to get out of his mind!

But conversation began at once. The rancher had something important on his mind.

“Soft,” said he.

“You mean the potatoes?” asked the professor.

“I mean Happy Jack.”

“Nothing has happened to bring him out, perhaps,” said the professor.

“If a ranch don’t bring out a man, what will?” asked the marshal. “No, he’s soft. Look at the way that Shorty handled him!”

He broke off and added with a grin: “But he’s the richest one of the whole gang, just now.”

“Rich?”

“He’s got eighty dollars.”

The marshal laughed, and his grim face softened a little.

“Make you laugh to think of the way those bozos throw their money away,” he said. “Wind up at fifty where they started at fifteen.”

“But Happy has saved eighty dollars?”

“Sure. He had to. I’ll tell you how it came about. He ran into Charlie Lake one evening about six months ago. Charlie was drunk—ever hear of Charlie Lake?”

“No. Is he a rancher?”

“Him? All that he raises is trouble, professor. That’s all! But the kid struck Charlie for a loan, and Charlie was drunk, as I was sayin’. He split what he had in his wallet. That was a hundred and sixty bucks. The kid got eighty and had a fine party. The next day, Charlie was sober. Somebody told him what he’d done, and he went on the kid’s trail. Would of ate him alive, I suppose, but some friends stopped him. The kid agreed to pay it back in six months. And Charlie’ll be over in the morning for his coin, I expect.”

“What if the boy didn’t have the money?”

“Why, I’d have to buy him a coffin, and then go and hunt down Charlie, I suppose,” said the marshal.

“I’ve been wondering, Kinney. Here’s a boy who’s soft, as you say. What would harden him?”

“Nerve is what he needs,” said the marshal.

“Is that the difference between these desperadoes and ordinary men?” asked the professor.

“Desperadoes? You been reading books,” said the marshal. “There ain’t any such things as desperadoes.”

“What about men that break out of prison, and wander for months, shooting down every one who tries to capture them—men whose weapons can’t miss? Aren’t they desperadoes?”

“Spent half my life trailin’ crooks,” said the marshal. “Never seen nothing such as you talk about. Sure they bust loose, once in a while, but they ain’t desperate. They’re ornery. And this dead-shot business, that’s nonsense!”

The professor pursed his lips and was again lost in thought. “When a man has his back to the wall—” he began.

“He generally gets knocked down,” said the rancher.

“And sometimes he suddenly begins to fight like a tiger,” finished the professor.

“Not if I once get my hands on him,” said the marshal. “If I get a grip, he melts, like the kid done, when Shorty laid hold on him!”

The professor looked at the steak plate, half empty now, and crusted at the edges with pale grease.

“Perhaps you’ve been fighting fire with fire and not knowing it,” said he. “Perhaps you’re a rather desperate man yourself, Kinney.”

Hearing this odd remark, Kinney stared at his guest with a good deal of amazement. Then he said:

“Look here, professor; you and me have got two kinds of eyes. You look at words and such stuff; I’m used to looking at cows and men. What you got on your mind, anyway?”

The professor smiled at him. The professor had lost a good deal of the dignity which he had brought with him from the East. He had lost his pallor, for one thing, his face being now all pink, except the nose, which was as red as the nose of a heavy drinker. He had discarded his glasses, too, for he did no reading, and, therefore, he did not really need them; but without the glasses the eyes which had appeared so penetrating and which had overawed classes of students, and even impudent reporters, now appeared dim, pale, blinking, as he searched his mind to find the secret from which his thoughts were springing. Now, therefore, he smiled at his impatient host, and blinked at him at the same time.

“You look like you were getting the range for a long-distance shot.”

“I am,” admitted the professor. “But my theory begins with the thought that all men are very much alike—have about the same powers, I should say—”

“If I can lift twelve hundred pounds—on the level and no faking,” said Kinney, with his sudden, rather savage grin, “how many pounds can your power lift, professor?”

“Perhaps a whole mountain,” said the professor. “Do you know how to move a mountain, Kinney?”

“Sure, buy blasting powder and bust the mountain to bits.”

“Can you make the powder?”

“No. I don’t have to.”

“You can’t make the powder. I can. If the two of us were left alone in the world, you would have to carry that mountain away in twelve-hundred-pound loads, and break your back doing it. I could make powder and smash it flat.”

Kinney laughed, but his laughter was short.

“I know the way that you folks figger things out,” he declared. “You’re always turning around the corner and coming out with a yip behind a man’s honest back.”

“I’m not dishonest,” said the professor. “I’m simply trying to make my point—that the powers of all men more or less equalize. What makes you a strong man is not that you can lift a few hundred pounds more than I can; because, on the other hand, you can not make powder, etcetera, as I can. I don’t even admit,” smiled the professor vaguely, “that you are stronger at all than I am. We each have our conceit. Yours has to do with horses, men, cows, land, and such things. Guns, too. Mine has to do with books. Let me put the matter in another way,” said he. “The component parts of gunpowder are not harmful. Charcoal, sulphur, saltpeter—there’s nothing in that, is there? Even when they’re mixed, they’re only potentially strong.”

“I follow the drift of that.”

“But drop a spark on the powder which you’ve ground up and mixed with your own hands, and what happens?”

“It blows you into kingdom come, of course.”

“Exactly. Drop a spark into it, and it blows you into kingdom come. Now, then, I want to spread out the comparison a little further. I said that all men were much alike. We all have the same appetites, the same emotions, the same tastes, in general.”

“Show me where I’m like a greaser, then?” asked the marshal aggressively.

“Like a greaser,” said the professor, “you are born and you have to die. You are hungry, cold, thirsty. You are happy, gay, charmed, melancholy, despairing. You respect strength, you worship courage.

“I say that all men are much alike. Now, take these various elements of human nature—these emotions, hopes, despairs, attractions, repulsions, and the rest. You change the man by changing the proportions and the manner in which they are mixed. Make Marshal Kinney a very jolly, cheerful man, and perhaps he would not be a rich rancher and a famous fighter, but simply a fat-and-lazy idler.

“But the element of grimness was added to the nature of Marshal Kinney. How? By some set of circumstances, or by the simplest incident. The spark was dropped into him, and he exploded. The world rings with the report.”

The rancher said slowly: “You mean that everybody’s about the same, until he’s given the kick?”

“I mean that, I suppose. It’s not the same impulse that achieves the same result with every man. Put the whip on two slaves and one of them tries to cut your throat and the other weeps. But you never can tell. Whip the fierce one the second time and his spirit may be broken; and whip the submissive one the second time, and he may gain the energy of despair.”

“Humph!” said the rancher. “I don’t see where all of this is driving, professor.”

“I can’t help thinking,” said the professor, “about that magnificent young chap we saw wrestling before supper.”

“Magnificent? You mean Shorty. Yes, he’s got a pair of shoulders on him, and a good grip, too, though it ain’t as good as some I could tell you about.”

He flexed his own fingers and nodded quietly. The man was literally full of combat.

“I didn’t mean Shorty,” said the professor. “I mean Happy Jack, if that’s his nickname.”

“Him? The skinny kid?” The marshal snorted his disgust.

“Not skinny. Not a heavyweight, either. But there’s a touch of quality about him.”

“There ain’t two men on the whole place that kid could lick,” said the marshal.

“Because he’s never been developed. He never has had the spark dropped on the powder,” said the professor.

“He’d never explode.”

“I think he would,” said the professor, “one of these days, something may happen, and when he’s cornered—”

“You seen what happened when Shorty cornered him. He just laid down and died. He quit. He ain’t got the spunk!”

“There wasn’t any necessity,” said the professor.

“He was fightin’, wasn’t he?”

“They were only exercising. There was no fight about that.”

The marshal turned a dark red. “I’d be danged before I’d lie still when I was put on my back,” said he. “I’d be danged before I’d quit cold.”

The professor shrugged. “However,” said he, “I’ll cling to my theory. What a man won’t do for the sake of winning a wrestling bout, he’d do for the sake of his life, say?”

The marshal put back his head and laughed scornfully.

“You got a lot of funny ideas in your head,” said he. “Sparks—men that are powder magazines—desperadoes—”

“A desperado,” said the professor, “is a man who has offered himself to death. He despairs of life. Therefore, he salts and savors every remaining day of his existence with the taste of death. He is not crushed by the hostility of the world, but is fortified, strengthened, increased by it. Put the proper pressure on this fellow, and by heaven, Kinney, he might be a desperado himself!”

“The kid?”

“Yes.”

“You mean that skinny young loon, that softhead, Happy Jack Aberdeen?”

This continued running down of his hero made the professor so angry that he answered coldly:

“I could even conceive, marshal, that this same slender youngster might be able to stand face to face with you.”

Kinney flushed again, a richer, brighter crimson. He was one of those men who are maddened by the least suggestion of a physical challenge, and he said now:

“I’ll tell you what—he won’t have to tackle me. I’ll give him something easier. I’ll turn loose Charlie Lake on him. You want to see him cornered and the spark dropped on him? I’ll drop a spark. I’ll take his eighty dollars out of his blanket roll, and then let him stand up to Charlie Lake.”

“Kinney,” said the professor, “of course you realize that I’m only theorizing—a harmless diversion, surely. You wouldn’t actually make—”

The marshal dropped his fist upon the table, and it shuddered with the impact. “There’s too dang much theorizing, among some of you gents,” said he. “And I’m gunna bring this here case down to the facts.”

“Great Scott,” said the professor, his voice made quiet with horror. “Do you realize that you may cause a fight and then—”

“Fight? The kid’ll run a thousand miles if Charlie Lake frowns at him!”