Читать книгу Montana Rides Again - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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In the corral the blood-bay mare was being drawn to the snubbing-post. And that great rider of outlaw horses, Tombstone Joe, was pulling the ropes. The cowpunchers sat like crows on the fence-posts, eight feet from the ground. The Montana Kid was among the crows. From the veranda of the ranch house, he looked like any of the others except that his shoulders were a little wider and the big double cord of back muscle could be distinguished even at that distance, and through the shirt.

Ruth Lavery stood by one of the porch pillars.

“We ought to go down,” she said.

“There’s no use having too much audience,” said Richard Lavery. “That would make Montana want to ride the mare himself.”

“He’s promised not to,” answered the girl. But fear changed the blue of her eyes as she spoke.

“Promises—well, promises are still only words, to Montana,” said her father.

“Don’t say that,” she protested.

“Well, I won’t say it, then,” answered tall Richard Lavery. But he kept his thought in the grim lines of his face.

“You’ve never loved him!” said the girl, nervously, still gripping the pillar against which she leaned.

“Honour and respect him I can,” said Lavery, curtly. “He’s more man than anyone I know.”

At this she sighed, quickly, as one in whom a great emotion is constantly pent. And she broke out, suddenly:

“You think he’s only a tramp.”

“I don’t think he’s only a tramp,” said Richard Lavery.

He looked down at a black band around the arm of his coat. His wife had died two months before.

“You think he’s a tramp—and something more,” said the girl, speaking quietly, mostly to herself. “You sent Dick away to Europe—to get him away from Montana—to get him away from temptation. You’ve never trusted Montana.”

“Now that your mother is gone,” said Lavery, very gently, “do you think that he’ll be with us long?”

She lifted her head a little. She scanned, as if to find the answer there, the long lines of the valley, and the high plateau, and the green pasture-lands for miles and miles which all belonged to the Lavery estate. Dick, who was once Tonio Rubriz, would be heir to half of that estate. Montana had brought him back from Mexican oblivion to share the rich heritage. The other half would go to her and to Montana.

“We’ll be married Sunday,” she said, briefly.

“He’s put it off before,” said the rancher, and there was no mercy in his hard voice. “He’ll put it off again.”

“He won’t! This is the last time! He knows it.” Then she added, in a half-weary, half-sad outburst, “Doesn’t he care about me?”

“Ay, he cares about you. And he cares about other things, too. Horses and guns—and his freedom.”

Down in the corral, Tombstone Joe walked backwards and looked over the mare. Now that he had snubbed her against the post, other men were blindfolding her, working on bridle and saddle. Ransome, the grey-headed ranch foreman, was in charge of this business.

“What you think of her, Tombstone?” asked Ransome.

“Half dynamite and half wildcat,” said Tombstone. “She’s too damn pretty to be good.”

Said the Montana Kid, from the fence:

“You don’t hitch on to a streak of lightning and ask is it good. You ask how far it’ll take you.”

Tombstone turned sharply around to rebuke the speaker. Then he saw that it was the Kid, and instead of answering he rubbed his jaw, slowly, as though he had been hit there on a day.

The Kid did not smile. His brown, handsome face remained perfectly calm, but as he stared at the mare the blue of his eyes burned paler and brighter continually. He pushed his hat back from his forehead and showed the blue-black of sleeked hair. He was so dark that he looked almost like a Mexican. Only, in moments of excitement the blue of his eyes turned bright and pale. He was like the mare—big, but with sinews and proportions that made him look swift and light.

“This here streak,” said Tombstone, “it’ll take you far, all right; it’ll take you to hell, but it might leave you there.”

The Kid tapped the ashes from his cigarette and made no answer. His eyes were on the mare. She was waiting patiently, submitting to the darkness that enveloped her eyes, muffled her thought. And yet there was danger in her patience. Down-headed, still there was nothing about her to suggest the thought of the wild-caught mustang.

In the old days, wild-caught hawks made the best hunting falcons. She was wild-caught. And she was the best. The Kid knew it. He kept tasting her strength and her speed as he had tasted them since the day when he started with many men on her trail. The length of that trail had caused the third postponement of his marriage with Ruth Lavery. Now he sat on the fence to watch this famous horsebreaker try his hand because Montana had promised, faithfully, never to mount the mare until she was well broken. That was why electric thrills kept starting in his heart and flooding out through his forehead and his finger-tips.

The bridle and the saddle were adjusted. Tombstone mounted gingerly. Many falls had taught him shameless caution. He almost acted like a man afraid.

“Let her go,” he said, quietly.

The bandage from her eyes, the rope from her neck, were instantly disengaged. And the mare shot at the sky.

Nobody spoke. They had all seen an infinity of horsebreaking, but this was not the same thing. They stiffened on the fence-posts. They looked with great eyes, seeing and thinking. Horses have to be broken, but the mare looked like Beauty and the man looked like the Beast.

He was a frightened Beast. There was no pretence of the dashing, cavalier ride which a cowpuncher tries to show at a rodeo. Tombstone started that way, sitting straight up, raking the mare fore and aft with his spurs, but after the second jump he was pulling leather like a tenderfoot caught in a horse-storm.

This was a tornado. It rushed as though it would tear down the fence. It turned as though it would bore a hole through the ground. And Tombstone sailed out of the saddle sidewise. He struck the corral soil, raised a dust, struck it again, and lay limp and still.

Three nooses settled over the neck of the mare and held her as she tried to get at the fallen rider and savage him. Someone crawled under the fence and dragged Tombstone to safety. Someone else emptied a canteen over the upturned face of Tombstone. After a while he breathed. Then he stood up.

“She foxed me that time but I’ll get her the next try,” he said.

Ransome, the foreman, said to the Kid, “Well, what you think?”

“She’s a sweetheart,” said the Montana Kid.

He eased himself down from the fence. The side of the fence he was on was the inside.

They were snubbing the mare close up to the post again.

Ransome grabbed Montana’s arm.

“Look at her,” he said. “Don’t you be a damn fool. Keep away from temptation.”

The Kid looked down at Ransome’s hand. Ransome took it away.

“We’ll just have a look-see,” said the Kid.

“You been and promised Miss Ruth!” said Ransome, huskily.

“Did I?” said the Kid, absently.

He walked around the front of the mare and looked into her eyes. She was quiet. The only thing she had learned was the burn of ropes, and she did not fight. Not outwardly. The devil was quiet in her, waiting.

Someone said, from the fence, “He could handle hell fire, but not that fire.”

Another man said: “What’s her name? What you gunna call her, Montana?”

“You better call her before you’re dead,” said another.

“Her name’s Sally,” said the Kid, gently.

He smiled beautifully at the men on the fence. He included them all in the gentleness of his glance. They feared him so much that they almost hated him; but because they loved him, also, no man smiled back.

“Why call her Sally?” asked Ransome, the foreman.

“I knew a gal called Sally once,” said the Kid.

“Did she look like this mare?” asked Ransome.

“She wore black silk stockings all-around, like this one,” said the Kid, gently.

Tombstone Joe was fitting himself carefully into the saddle. Montana said:

“Watch her, Joe.”

“Who the hell is giving me advice?” said Tombstone.

Montana sighed and closed his eyes; when he opened them the hoofs of the mare were beating the corral like a drum. The dust went up as thick as water before it explodes into spray. Through the rifts, or high in the upper mist, they had glimpses of the fighting mare, and of Tombstone clinging like a shipwrecked man.

Something hit the ground, slithering sidewise, ploughing up the dust. With the last flopping turn it appeared as the body of a man. The clothes were white with dust. The face was black with it.

Up on the veranda the girl screamed, but no one turned to look towards her. She had not screamed because Tombstone was on the ground, sprawling. The cry came from her when she saw Montana leave the fence as a puma leaves a bough for a kill.

To the men who watched, close up, the similarity was even greater. They saw the devouring hunger in the eyes of Montana. They saw him crouching, gripping the top rail of the fence with both hands. The next moment he was plunging through the dust that smoked across the face of the corral. They saw him dodging through it while the wild mare tried to flee from him—as though she feared tooth and claw.

He caught her like that, too. As she swerved out of a corner he leaped at her with hands and feet. She soared. He appeared gripping the pommel with one hand, the rest of him streaming upwards. But a moment later he was in the saddle.

The dust billowed like fog struck by a sea wind; the mare was the wind. They had glimpses of her red mouth gaping, the sheen of her wild eyes. They saw her high up, fighting thin air. They heard her strike the ground again and again, the shadowy form of the rider shocked and snapped to either side. By a single foot, a single hand, he seemed to be clinging half the time—as if with talons that hooked into tender flesh.

The watchers were frozen in place because it was not a riding contest. There was death in the air. Tombstone Joe leaned on the fence with his face dripping blood, and black, clotted dust.

The yelling had ended.

Each cowpuncher retained his past position. One was on one knee. Another, on tiptoe, gripped the top of a post and seemed to be yelling, though no sound came. Another held his hat rigidly above his head, but forgot to wave it.

And from the veranda it could be seen that the head of Montana, at every impact, wavered crazily up and down. His chin was beating on his breast. At every lurch of the mare he seemed about to shoot from the saddle, but something stuck him in place. Luck, men might have called it. But it was not luck.

The man or the mare would fall dead, surely.

Then she staggered and stood still, her legs braced wide apart.

After a time, Montana got slowly down from the saddle. He slid down. His face was crimson. Blood from his mouth, his ears, his nose, had covered his face with a red mask. He felt his way to the head of the mare. He put his arm around her neck. He began to stroke her face.

And she, with half-closed eyes of exhaustion, leaned slowly against him. He pulled out his bandana. Instead of drying his own frightful face, he began to wipe the slobber and the froth from the muzzle of Sally.