Читать книгу The Cross Brand - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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When he came in, carrying his bridle and the saddle heavy with his pack, he found that the interior of the cabin was less in keeping with its exterior and more in keeping with the appearance of the big man of the bald head. For there was a great deal of dirt and confusion and darkness. The cabin had been laid out and built upon a most pretentious scale as though there had been any quantity of muscle and ax-power available at the time of its construction. Besides this big central room, there was another room at each end of the house, though apparently these apartments were now of use merely as junk rooms.

It was plain, at a glance, that a number of men, and only men, lived here. No woman could have endured such confusion for an instant. Guns, harness, old clothes in varying stages of dirt and decay, rusted spurs, broken knives, homemade furniture, shattered by ill usage, littered the floor or hung from pegs along the wall. Every corner was a junk heap. The useable space on the floor was an ellipse framed with refuse. No one who lived in this adobe had ever thought of throwing things away. What was broken lay where it fell until it was kicked from under foot and landed crashing against the wall.

Jack went into the room at the western end of the house and cleared a space to lay down his blankets. Then he returned to the host who was in the act of dropping more wood into the stove. As he did so, the red flame leaped, and by that light he saw the mountaineer more clearly. The skin of his face glistened as though coated with a continual perspiration, in all the places where the beard did not grow. But the beard came up high on the cheeks and was only trimmed, one could see, where it threatened to get in the way by becoming too long. To ward against that, it was chopped off square a few inches below the chin. And it thrust straight out in a wiry tangle.

The outthrust of the beard completed the regularity of the facial angle. The slope carried up from the beard along the hooked nose, and from the nose along a narrow, sharply slanted forehead. In the middle of that forehead was a peculiar scar in the form of a roughly made cross. Jack had not seen it at first, but when the fire leaped, the scar glistened white and was plainly visible.

Altogether he was an ugly fellow, and his ugliness was summed up in a pair of eyes which, considering the great length of the face and the great bulk of the body, were amazingly small. When Jack came closer, he noted a peculiar freak about those eyes. The beard was chiefly gray and dirt in color. But once it must have been a rich red. And the eyelashes, which were of remarkable length, were still of the original deep red, unfaded to their very tips. So that when he squinted it was almost as though he were looking out of reddish eyes.

He was squinting now, as he looked across at Jack Bristol.

‘A hoss like that one you ride—a man must be pretty interested in traveling fast to want a hoss like that,’ observed the mountaineer.

‘Maybe,’ said Jack, and as he spoke he went to the back door of the house, opened it, and whistled. At once brown Susan whinneyed in answer. During their three weeks on the road they had grown wonderfully intimate, wonderfully in accord.

The man of the cabin marked this interchange of calls with a gaping interest.

‘Might be a circus hoss, to be as smart as that!’ he suggested.

‘Might be,’ answered Jack Bristol.

His reluctance to talk brought a scowl from the other. The big man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, widening the distance between his feet, and hitched his trousers higher. They were secured with a heavy canvas belt, drawn extremely tight. For, in spite of his fifty odd years of age, the man of the cabin was as gaunt-waisted as a youth. He was almost as agile, also, in his movements around the cabin, stepping with the gliding ease of a young athlete. Jack Bristol watched him with a growing aversion. He could not talk to such a great beast of a man, but since he was about to accept the hospitality of the fellow he was ill at ease.

Supper, however, was now ready. They ate boiled potatoes, half seared bacon, stale corn pone, and coffee which was an impenetrable and inky black. And while they ate, on either side of the rough-hewn plank laid on sawbucks which served as a table, they spoke not a word. Jack Bristol rallied himself once or twice to speak, but on each occasion his voice failed him—for when he lifted his glance he never failed to be startled and awed by the red-tinted eyes of the man of the mountains.

Afterward, Jack retired to the pasture, saw that all was well with the mare, and then came in to his blankets. He had barely turned himself in them when he was soundly asleep.

That sleep was broken up by a crashing fall. He sat up and found that the door to his sleeping room was dimly outlined with light, but after the noise there was no sound. A sudden fear gripped Jack Bristol. He realized, in fact, that all his nerves were on edge, for in his sleep he had dreamed of the man of the bald head and the red-fringed eyes, and the dream had been a horror. He stole to the door, and lying down flat on his side, he found that he was able to look into the larger room, and there he saw not one, but two men. The one was his host of earlier in the evening. The other was a younger man, who was also less bulky. The lower half of his face was shrouded, like that of the elder man, with dense beard, save that in his case the beard was of jetty black. They sat now with their heads raised, in the attitude of people listening. The stranger was in the act of finishing a meal. His right hand still surrounded his tin coffee cup. His left hand shoved back his plate.

Presently he shrugged his shoulders, leaned, picked up from the floor another tin plate, whose fall had apparently caused the racket. They conversed for a moment, now, in murmuring voices, not a syllable of which reached the understanding of Jack Bristol. But he had seen and heard enough to alarm him seriously. The fall of a plate would not have been enough to freeze them into such attitudes as he had discovered them in if their minds had been innocently employed. And neither would it be necessary for them to lower their voices so much now. Certainly it was not mere consideration for the sleeping guest which controlled them.

The younger man was now talking eagerly, with many gestures, while the other listened with a scowl so black that the shining scar on his forehead quite disappeared. He shook his head violently from time to time, but the younger still insisted and finally seemed to beat down the resistance of him of the bald head. He half rose. He swept his right hand through a curving, horizontal line in the air, then, with both hands he gestured down. And it came sharply home to Jack Bristol that they were talking about a horse. They were talking about a horse and therefore they must be talking about Susan. For who could speak of any other when brown Susan was near?

The conclusion they reached was now patent. They started up from the table of one accord. Once the elder man was persuaded, he was completely of the youngster’s mind. He caught up from the table a long revolver which had been lying there while they talked. The youth produced two weapons of the same sort, and side by side they strode softly down the room and straight toward the door behind which Jack Bristol lay. But the revolvers were not the chief center of his interest. That upon which his gaze fastened was the forehead of the youth which, when the latter turned toward the door, displayed upon it a great glistening scar in the shape of a cross!

For a moment Jack could not stir. Even noticed at random upon the face of one man, that scar had been a grisly and forbidding thing, but seen on another it was increased a thousand fold in interest. It became a horror. It was a human brand, and certainly there was a grim story behind it. What was of first importance to Jack was that men who were forced to bear this grisly mark of identification in their foreheads would be capable of any sort of action.

He himself rose to his feet, stepped back to his blankets, found his cartridge belt, and drew forth the long revolver which hung in a holster attached to it. So armed, he stole on to the window, but when he came closer to it he saw that he could not attempt to leave in that manner. It was so narrow that he was almost sure to be wedged in it. And if he were he would be at the mercy of the others.

Before he could make a more careful examination, the door to the main room opened and the two entered, the younger man walking first with both of his weapons raised and his shadow lunging before him. He leaned over the blankets, then straightened with a gasp.

‘Dad, he’s gone!’

The instant he lowered his guns, as he spoke, Jack Bristol sprang forward. He had no will to fight them both in those cramped quarters. Either, by himself, would have been more than enough to engage a hardy man. Together, they made tremendous odds. As he leaped in, Jack aimed and drew the trigger. But instead of an explosion and a bullet driven into the body of Black-beard, there was only a loud click and a hollow jar of the hammer descending upon an empty chamber. His gun had been emptied before the attack was undertaken.

Black-beard whirled with a short cry, both guns blazing, and Jack sprang to the side. A bullet stung his side—a mere clipping of the skin. Before him loomed the two-gun man with weapons leveled and not two yards between them. Jack dropped to his knees as the guns roared in unison. The flash had been in his very eyes; the scent of powder was choking and stinging in his throat. Half-blinded, he dived in toward the legs of the other. His shoulders struck beneath the knees. Down upon him toppled the mountaineer with a yell of alarm.

They whirled into a tangle of clutching, striking hands and twining legs. In the background, Jack saw the bald-headed man stepping swiftly about, striving to get in a blow or a shot, but never able to secure a chance without endangering his son. Strong fingers caught at Jack’s throat. He beat the hand away, the finger tips tearing into the flesh like hot irons. And as they whirled again he caught at the flash of the revolver which Black-beard still held, jerked it down, and strove to tear it away. The gun exploded. Black-beard sank in a limp heap, and Jack Bristol stood up with an effective weapon in his hand.

He stood up with the roar of the father ringing in his ears and a storm of bullets pouring toward him. He raised the gun to answer that outburst of fire and lead, but he was struck on the head a blow that knocked the flash of the mountaineer’s exploding Colt into a thousand sparks. He toppled back into a sea of fire that did not burn.