Читать книгу The Cross Brand - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

Table of Contents

He wakened with a grip of rope stinging his wrists. There was a bandage around his head. His face and neck and shirt were still wet from the water with which his wound had been washed. Above him were the stars. He was seated upon the damp ground, his shoulders resting against the log wall of the cabin.

His brain noted these changes in swift succession. Then a shadow crept over him. It was the shadow of a man swinging up and down across the shadow of a lantern as he dug with a spade in the dirt. The silhouette grew more living as his senses returned. All at once he recognized the face and the bulky body of the father. He stood in a hole which was already almost hip deep, and it was sinking rapidly. At the edge of the growing heap of dirt which the laboring spadesman threw out, lay a limp form, with the pale glimmer of the forehead turned up to the sky and the lower part of the face lost in the black shadow of a beard.

And Jack knew that he was watching the burial of the son by the father. He himself had been dragged out there for what end? To be buried alive with the dead body of the boy? There was no brutality, he felt, which was past the capacity of the man of the bald head. The care with which his head had been bandaged might augur a more terrible torment for which he was being saved.

He moved his legs. The feet, he found, were tied together as fast as the hands, and he was utterly helpless.

In the meantime, the hole sank with astonishing rapidity to the midsection, the shoulders, and the head of the digger. Finally there was only the grinding of the spade against stones, now and then, and the briefly seen shadow of the spade as it swung up above the mound of dirt for an instant. Then the big man climbed out and stood mopping his forehead and neck with a handkerchief. He was breathing heavily, and when he put away the handkerchief, he turned, leaning upon the spade, and peered into the depths of the hole he had just finished digging.

‘That ain’t bad,’ he said at length. ‘That ain’t bad work—not for me getting old. Hello!’

Jack had neither stirred nor spoken, but with this exclamation, the mountaineer wheeled about and strode up to his captive. Propping his hands against his knees, he leaned over and stared into the face of Jack.

‘Wide awake and feeling fine, eh?’ he suggested. His cheerfulness made Jack shudder. He returned no answer.

‘Wide awake and feeling fine,’ repeated the other, as though a proper reply had been made. ‘That’s as it should be.’

He turned again, lifted the body beside the dirt mound, climbed the heap and disappeared into the shadow beyond. After a little time, he reappeared, and stood for some time at the verge of the grave, buried in thought. The place was so profoundly quiet that Jack could hear the rustling of the leaves blown to him from the far side of the clearing, swishing and crisping together like silk skirts on dancers.

And with every moment the horror increased. The big man came back to him, touched the rope which bound his feet with a knife, and then helped him strongly to his feet. He was led in silence to the edge of the grave. The mountaineer held up the lantern until the light fell upon the pale young bearded face within the shadow, glistening on the cross which marked his forehead.

‘What I ask you man to man, stranger,’ said the older man, ‘is: D’you think when God sees him like that, he’ll bear any malice for what he’s done? What d’you think?’

The certainty that he had to do with a madman swept over Jack, but while his blood was freezing in the first shock of that conviction, the other went on to quietly answer his own question.

‘No, there ain’t going to be no malice borne. Look at the chance that he had? It wasn’t no chance at all!’

He dropped a heavy hand upon the shoulder of Jack.

‘Him down there,’ said the mountaineer, ‘was the youngster of the lot. His beard came out blacker’n hell. But he ain’t no more’n twenty-two. Look how white his face is! The sun didn’t have no time to burn him brown. He was the youngster of the four, and he was worth the other three. If it come to walking, running, riding, shooting, there wasn’t a one of ’em that could touch him. I seen a time when he wasn’t more’n fifteen and the rest of us got nothing but snow off the mountains. Out would go Charlie. No matter what kind of weather. That wouldn’t stop him. And he’d come back with a mess of partridge—a meal of something. I seen a time when he was sick. The rest of us done the hunting for a week. We got nothing; nothing to speak of, that is. Charlie gets up from his bunk. He goes out. It was along in the first black of the evening. Two minutes after he started we heard his rifle working. We run out, and right yonder on the far side of the clearing we seen him standing over a bear that he’d just drilled clean. And when we come up we seen that the foam from the bear’s mouth was slavered all over Charlie’s boots. That’s the sort of nerve he had even when he was a kid. He just stood up and kept pumping lead into the bear till the varmint dropped in the nick of time. That’s the sort that Charlie was!’

He dragged off his battered hat and looked up.

‘If I’d had ten wives instead of one and all of the ten had four sons, there wouldn’t of been another Charlie! And he was enough to of got back at the rest of ’em for me! He’d of made ’em get down and crawl in the end—damn them, damn them to hell!’

He uttered the last words with a quiet savagery. His voice did not rise, but his whole big body shook with his rage.

‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘that’s finished! I take my luck the way I find it. Charlie’s gone. I’ll find some other way of getting back at ’em!’

He turned upon Jack a baleful glance.

‘Get back over yonder,’ he said. ‘Don’t try no running away. You got your hands tied behind you, and that way you couldn’t run fast enough to keep away from me. And if I caught you, I’d make you think that hell was a church party compared to what I’d do to you!’

He spoke these violent words in a voice of no more than conversational loudness but they were more convincing to Jack than if they had been shouted at his ear. He obeyed the order and stood quietly while the other shoved and scooped the great mound of soft dirt into the grave. When it was ended he stepped to the side of the clearing, stooped and then returned staggering under the weight of an immense rock which, when dropped upon the mound, sank half its diameter into the soft earth. The father kept up the labor until he had covered the grave of his son with a great heap of boulders. At length he stepped back, filled a pipe, and while he lighted it, looked with great complacence upon his work.

‘Take it by and large,’ he said, ‘it would be considerable wolf that could dig down under them rocks, eh?’

He chuckled softly, then turned his back upon that scene and escorted Jack to the house. Here he hung the smoky lantern on a high peg, motioned Jack to a seat on one of the stools which served the place instead of chairs, and, since the night was growing rapidly cold, kindled a brisk fire in the stove. The draught roared up the chimney and set the flimsy stovepipe shaking and softly rattling. The glow of warmth spread. Above it floated the wide drift of the mountaineer’s pipe smoke.

‘Speaking by and large,’ he said, ‘a man might say that no good comes out of fine looking hosses. They’s only one thing that racing is good for, and that’s for the hosses that does the running. Them that own the hosses go to hell. I’ve seen ’em start. I’ve seen ’em finish.’

He delivered this little series of moralities without looking at Jack in a fashion which was peculiarly his own, canting his head and gesturing toward Jack, while he faced quite another point in the compass.

Jack found no reply which he could make. So he waited, and all the while his eager, restless eyes went up and down the strong body and the unhuman face of the other. He was striving to solve a riddle and meeting with no success. The big man now picked up a poker and inserted it into the fire under one of the top covers of the stove.

‘You think,’ said Jack at last, ‘that I’m going to make a fuss about what’s happened. But that ain’t what’s in my mind. Fact is, I’m glad enough to be up and kicking. I’ll give you my word that you’ll hear no more of me the minute I get my hands free. Or, better still, keep my hands tied, let me get on the back of my hoss, and then turn us loose. How does that strike you?’

The other smoked steadily and gravely throughout Jack Bristol’s speech. He regarded his captive with the most profound attention, wrinkling his brows until the scar, as usual, went out of sight.

‘I suppose maybe that sounds like the right thing for you to do,’ he said at length, ‘but I got something else figured out. You wouldn’t see the why of it if I was to tell you. But a gent needs patience to get on any place. A gent needs a pile of patience. And I’m a patient man! After they done their trick with me, I come up here with my family. Anybody else would have tried to get back at ’em one by one, right away. But I didn’t do that. I waited. I come up here where there was nobody else, and I waited and waited for my boys to grow up. They growed up strong and straight, and every one of ’em was a hard fighter, and a good shot. But I lost the three of ’em by hard luck. And still I had Charlie, that’s worth all the other three.

‘D’you think that I turned Charlie loose on ’em then? No, partner, I didn’t. I kept him here all quiet. He was wise enough and quick enough to of gone down at ’em like a wolf. But I waited and waited. I’d get him bigger and stronger. I’d get him quicker still with a gun. And then I’d give him a list of ’em and turn him loose. That was what I was waiting so patient for. I’ve waited more’n twenty years for it. And at the end of the twenty years, just when Charlie is about to be sprung on ’em, along you come, all made up of hell-fire and claws. And yonder is my twenty years of hoping and waiting a-lying in the ground.’

At the conclusion of this long speech, during all of which he had failed to meet the eye of Jack for a single instant, he rose from his chair.

‘What I been saying,’ he said, ‘you mostly don’t understand right now. But you’ll know more about in a year from now.’

Jack Bristol drew a longer breath. Whatever devilry might be stirring through the strange brain of this man, at least he did not intend murder.

‘A year from now,’ continued the mountaineer, ‘you’ll be riding your hoss around these hills and then you’ll understand everything that I been saying now. And I got patience enough to wait till then.’ So saying, he stepped to the side of the room, took down a length of rope, and with it approached his victim.

There was no possible purpose to be gained by resistance. Jack submitted while he was trussed hand and foot, so that he could not move. Even his head was lashed into a rigid position against a stake which was passed down his back. With this done, the other stepped back, regarded Jack for a critical moment, then went to the stove and took from it the poker.

The fire had turned the end of the iron rod into a living thing. It pulsed with heat. Light waves ran up and down it. It snapped sparks to a distance, and it cast a white radiance over the slanting face of the mountaineer.

The first premonition as to his purpose struck through Jack Bristol. Yet he could not believe. It was only when the big man advanced squarely upon him that he cried, ‘You infernal devil, if—’

Realization of his helplessness stopped his mouth. He waited. A great hand thrust out and the strong fingers twisted into his hair, which he wore quite long. Looking up, quite fascinated by the horror, it seemed to him that the red-gray beard barely sufficed to cover a grin of pleasant anticipation. Then the white-hot iron was thrust against his forehead.

He closed his eyes. A hot fume and smoke of burning flesh choked him. He felt the burning point pass down his forehead. Then it crossed the first mark with a line to the side.