Читать книгу Montana Rides Again - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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It was only a few days after this that Mateo Rubriz sat in a cantina in “Greaser Town,” the Mexican adjunct of Bentonville, near the Lavery ranch. Good Brother Pascual had left the table as soon as he had finished his dish of hot frijoles. There remained only Mateo Rubriz and a sallow-faced man with high, squared shoulders such as one expects to see only in a soldier. He looked like an army officer—and a consumptive. He wore the garb of a prosperous Mexican charro, all yellow leather and a starring of silver that brightened and waned as he turned in his chair or lifted his glass to drink the green-white tequila.

He was Jack Lascar. Everyone south of the border knew him, and everyone north of the river knew him; but no one knew his nationality. Some people said that he was in fact a Lascar. They looked at the yellow whites of his eyes and said that.

He carried with him an air of amused superiority. He retained this air as he said:

“If I walk into the street and tell people that Mateo Rubriz is in here—if I tell the gringos that—what’ll they do to you, Rubriz?”

Mateo Rubriz grinned. A stiff wave of flesh rose up from his cheeks and almost obscured his eyes. He leaned forward.

“Your father——” he began.

After that, his voice was so soft that Jack Lascar had to bend his head to hear the words. A dreamy expression came over the face of Lascar.

“That’s what I always wanted to know,” said Lascar. “I always wanted to know who cut him down. It was you?”

“Who else would have dared?” asked Rubriz, leaning back, with a two-handed gesture of triumph.

Jack Lascar grunted. “Then what do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to accept a favour,” said the Mexican.

“Humph!” grunted Lascar again. “Well?”

“You hate one man a good deal.”

“Do I?”

“The Montana Kid?”

Jack Lascar turned a little in his chair, quickly. He glanced over his shoulder at the door. He looked at the window, also. Then he finished the white fire of his tequila and stared at Rubriz.

“Damn him!” said Jack Lascar.

“Once, in Nevada, in Carson City, in the Imperial Saloon,” began Rubriz, “on a Tuesday morning——”

“Damn you!” said Lascar.

Rubriz leaned back in his chair. He looked, at that moment, like a fat, rather soft man of middle age, a pulpy creature half-rotted by time. But Jack Lascar knew otherwise.

“This Montana Kid,” said Rubriz, “is a man who would come to a challenge like a dog to raw meat. Now, if you write out a challenge in English—can you write English?”

“I write five languages,” said Lascar, slowly, bitterly. “And I punch cows for a damned——”

“Gringo,” suggested Rubriz, still smiling.

Jack Lascar was silent.

Then Rubriz said:

“If you wrote out a challenge and nailed it on the post-office notice board, the town would know it. The Kid would know it. He would come. And the sheriff he is not in town. The law is not in town. It is away—for one whole day!”

Jack Lascar lighted a cigarette. He held out his glass. The keeper of the cantina came running in whispering slippers. He filled the glass until drops ran over on to the floor. Lascar slopped the drink into his mouth. A part of it drizzled down his chin and dropped on to the yellow bright leather of his costume, unheeded. He did not even wipe his face as he continued to stare at Rubriz.

“The Montana Kid would come!” said Rubriz.

“He would not come!” said Jack Lascar. “Everybody knows, even the little babies know, that if Montana ever pulls a gun and shoots at another man—even in self-defence—the sheriff will be on his trail with a posse.”

Rubriz closed his eyes to keep the fire in them from being seen. It was his plan, his whole plan—to tear Montana away from the land of the gringos by putting on a seeming break with the law. After that, where was there for him to flee except into Mexico? And with whom would he travel so readily as with Mateo Rubriz? And, once on the road, would not the robbing of the fort at Duraya be to El Keed no more than the drinking of a glass of whisky? If only this Jack Lascar could be used as the lure!

“No matter what he fears,” said Rubriz, “he fears shame more. You know that I have a good reason to curse him?”

“He stole away your son,” Jack Lascar sneered. “He took your son, and carried him away, and made him a gringo.”

“He did,” said Rubriz, with an immense calm which was not an affectation. “That is the reason why he must die.”

He meant that. No matter what friendship lay between them, for that deed, one day, El Keed must die. And Rubriz, staring out the window at the red dying of the day, breathing the sharp, stale scent of cigarette smoke, looking across the little round, iron tables, went on:

“I cannot challenge him, because I cannot appear. As soon as I show myself in the streets, the people rise up in a wave and wash me away into a jail. But you can challenge him. You can name the hour. You can stand in the middle of the street and wait, while everyone wonders that any man could have the courage to wait for El Keed in a fair fight. How will they know that Mateo Rubriz lies in hiding beside one of the houses, or inside a window, with a rifle aimed and ready to end the fight before it begins? Do you hear, Jack? El Keed will be dead before he has a chance to become an outlaw again! He will be dead before he has a chance to run away from the law.”