Читать книгу On the Trail of Four - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

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That seems like a rather simple thing to write down, but it gave me an odd feeling as I listened to him, and as I watched him. There was no venom in his manner of saying it.

“But look here, friend,” said I, “what will become of you if I leave you out here with a pair of busted ribs, to take care of yourself? Can you stand?”

“I don’t know,” said he.

“Try.”

He stood up like an automaton. He tried a few steps and suddenly sank, gasping, to the ground again. I opened up his coat and his shirt and looked. He was not a very big fellow. A hundred and fifty or sixty pounds, I suppose. He had rushed straight in on the weight of my blow. It was as though a fourteen-pound sledge had been swung with a big man’s weight behind it. His side had caved in like the dented part of a paper bag.

I stretched him out and gave him a drink of water and brandy mixed. He accepted it and drank it down. Then he lay quietly, breathing more easily, and watching me with a dull look of wonder. He seemed much more moved by my kindness to him than by the desertion of his companions.

“You’re not in shape to take care of yourself out here,” I said to him.

He shrugged his shoulders. His movement brought a gasp of pain from him.

“I don’t know this part of the country,” I went on. “Do you?”

He admitted that he did not. He had simply followed the lead of the others.

“Then you’re one of the hired men,” said I. “You’re not the one with the grudge against Truck Janvers?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” said he.

It pricked me sharply with anger to hear that sort of bald-faced lie.

“Come, come,” said I. “Do you think that I’m a fool? Didn’t I see the old fellow lying with the knife in his throat?”

“Was that his name?” said he, as cool as you please.

“Whose name?”

“The name of the man that was killed?”

“You didn’t know that before?”

“No,” said he.

“What the devil!” I cried out at him. “Do you mean to tell me that you went out to slaughter a poor devil whose name you didn’t know? You had no grudge against Truck? You didn’t even know the name of the old miner in the shack?”

“Sir,” said he, “I did not know. However, the knife went straight, did it not?”

“It did,” said I with a shudder.

He smiled and nodded, as pleased as a child.

“You,” I shouted, pointing at him in rage and horror, “you threw that knife?”

“Yes, sir.”

I choked.

He went on: “I have done much better than that—however. I have thrown just as accurately for a longer distance.”

I had to loosen the neckband of my shirt. My blood was turning colder and colder. Yet this man was helpless, and by what he said, I gathered that he considered that he had done nothing really wrong.

“But,” he continued as smooth as ever, “it would have been better if I had aimed at your head instead, sir. I remember that there was a wrinkle in your coat just between the shoulder blades. I should have aimed there. It would have been the end!”

I swallowed hard. “I should have lived long enough to put a pair of bullets in you, however,” said I.

“Ah, no, sir!” He smiled blandly at me, and he added: “You came out quickly enough even after the other man died.”

“Where were you then?”

“Lying close to the ground, just outside the door. Very close to the ground, and spread out so that I could not have done anything to help myself if you had seen me. But I knew that you would not see me. You went out looking man high—not ground high.”

This was true enough. I began to see that there was a sort of wit in this cold-blooded devil.

“Friend,” said I, “the question is now: What shall I do with you?”

“Leave me, sir, of course,” said he.

“To die?”

“It is as God wills,” said he with the most perfect indifference. “If He wills that I live, I live; or that I die, and then no man can help me.”

“You are ready to be left, then?”

“Certainly, sir.”

There was nothing more that I could do for him except to make him a soft bed, and this I managed by cutting a quantity of branches from the shrubs and piling them out a good two feet thick. It made a spring mattress, fresh and fragrant.

“Lie on this,” said I.

He paused to give me one questioning glance, and then he slunk onto the bed. The moment that he touched it, however, he uttered a faint groan of relief and joy and lay motionless for an instant, quivering. I could tell by that, how bitterly the torment must have been wringing him. I suppose that every breath he drew was a torture.

I wrapped him as delicately as I could in my blanket, but in spite of my care he drew a gasping breath or two.

“Now,” said I at last, fairly sweating because of the way his pain had gone through me, “do you think that you’ll have a fairly comfortable night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you warm enough?”

“Ah, my blood is ice!”

I took the saddle blanket and piled it over him. Then I built the fire higher. After that, he told me with a warm, drowsy voice that all was well—that the pain was better—that he would sleep.

But, after a moment, something wakened him.

“You, sir?” he said.

“Well?”

“What blankets remain for you, and what bed?”

I told him that it was not a cold night; and it was not—only nippy. I told him to forget about me and go to sleep. I thought in fact that he had gone to sleep, but after ten minutes I heard him whisper a prayer.

Perhaps it was not his pain that made him say it.

I spent a sufficiently uneasy night. For one thing, it was a bit nippy, and though I could have made myself comfortable enough by building two fires and lying between them, I was not sure enough of my position to take such a measure. I could not tell at what time the remaining pair of the dead man’s friends would come snooping back to take a pot-shot at me if possible. Though by the manner of their going I felt that they would not hurry back, still, as I have said before, four years of a hunted life give one a stock of natural uneasiness.

When the dawn came, I built up the fire once more and I made it high enough to warm me well. The exercise of tearing out the brush and breaking it off to raise the tower of flames left me perspiring, and I threw off my coat while I cooked a breakfast.

I was in a black humor, with curses just behind the teeth all the time. For here was I nailed down to one spot in the mountains while the quarry to which I had given a week of hard hunting rolled farther and farther from my grasp.

You can imagine what was in my mind when, turning from the fire, I found that that infernal, cold-blooded scoundrel had dared to reach out from his bed, unfurl the coat which I had thrown beside him, and was now busy in examining carefully the contents of the pockets.

I assure you that I was mute and frozen with rage. He was through estimating the contents of the wallet, which was jammed with four thousand dollars in bills of all sizes. That money lay in a ruffled heap in the coat. He was now perusing a deeply creased poster which I had picked up from a crossroad signboard a few days before. I knew what the contents of the poster were. It began with an excellent likeness of the face of Hugo Ames; it went on with an offer of fifteen thousand dollars reward for my apprehension, dead or alive.

I leaned over my captive, quivering. The confounded rascal had the effrontery to smile up in my face. He folded the poster with care, seeing that the creases corresponded with the old ones. Then he extended it to me—still smiling. He picked up my money and began to arrange it once more and restore it to the wallet.

“What in the devil do you mean by it?” I snarled at him.

“What do I mean?” said he, much surprised. “Why, sir, I of course wished to understand you if I could.” He paused and then nodded and added: “Now, sir, I understand what happened to Miguel and to me! You are Ames!”

What could one say to a fellow like that? He was not a dumb, dull brute. He simply did not understand things in the light with which they appeared to me and to other people. He had his own way of looking at the world, and it was so different from my way that I concluded it would be foolishness for me to reprimand him or to punish him. One doesn’t scold a partly tamed panther.

I was as angry as ever, as I finished cooking the breakfast, which was simple enough, and carried him his food and waited until he had drunk and eaten. For, of course, I had only one cup and one plate. Then I ate my own meal.

“Now that you know my name,” said I, “perhaps you’ll tell me yours?”

“Surely, sir. I am José.”

“José what?” said I.

“I am not a very big man, sir. One name is enough for me.”

I damned him again; this time aloud. Then I went to saddle Spike.