Читать книгу Dan Barry's Daughter - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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There was a fluster in the kitchen of the hotel. The heart of Mary, the waitress, chambermaid and occasionally clerk in the General Merchandise Store, was full. She had to talk. She would have talked to the wall had not the Chinese cook been there.

“He’s about that tall,” said Mary, reaching high above her head. “He’s about that broad. Why, he’d fill that door plumb full. And he’s all man, Wu. There he goes now! He’s finished washing up and he’s going around in front. Look quick through the window—”

But Wu, with a grunt which might have been directed either at the frying steak or at her remark, turned his narrow back upon her and reached for the salt. One glance showed Mary that her confidant was a thing of stone.

So she kneeled on the chair and poured her heart through the window toward the big man. He was not quite as large as she had made him out, but he was big enough. And he was one of those men who carry about them such an air of conscious strength, such a high headed and frank eyed good nature, that they appear larger than they are.

He carried his hat in his hand, which showed all of a handsome, sunbrowned face. He had taken off his bandanna, also, and opened his shirt at the throat to the evening air. His whole manner was one of utter carelessness, and Mary, when she had peered until he was out of sight, sat down suddenly in the chair with her head thrown back and a foolish little smile upon her lips.

As for Harry Gloster, he paused at the front of the building to laugh at two sweating boys who, in the middle of a great dust cloud, were attempting to drive back a pig which had broken through the fence on the farther side of the street. Then he entered the hotel and went into the dining room.

There was only one other present, and this was a pleasant companion. He was one of those men who show age in the face and not in the body. His shoulders were as wide, his chest as high arched, the carriage of his head as noble as that of any athletic youth.

But his hair was almost a silver-gray and his face was broken and haggard with time and trouble. If his face alone were noted he looked all of sixty. But taking his erect and strong body into consideration, one reduced the age to forty-five. And that must have come close to the truth.

Harry Gloster waved a hand in greeting and sat down beside the other.

“Riding through or living here?” he asked.

“Riding through,” answered the older man. “You?”

“Just blowing north,” said Harry Gloster.

“So am I,” said the other. “In a rush, as a matter of fact. We might ride on together to-morrow.”

Harry Gloster eyed him askance.

“I may be starting in a little while—may not wait for morning,” he parried.

He could have sworn that the other smiled, although very faintly. And Gloster leaned suddenly forward and looked his companion squarely in the eyes.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked sharply.

The older man hesitated an instant and then laughed. He added, speaking softly: “It’s all right, son. But there’s no red dirt of that color south of the town. You’re just off the Pebbleford trail. You’re heading south.” The twinkle in his eyes focused to a gleam. “You’re for the Rio Grande—pronto!”

He spoke just in time to save the heart of Mary from complete wreckage, for at this moment she came in, staggering under the weight of a great tray of food and dishes, yet with her glance fastened on the face of Harry Gloster—who gave her not a look.

To be sure, he had not changed color at the last words of his tablemate; he even managed to maintain a smile, but the big muscles at the base of his jaw were bulging a little and he stared straight before him. The moment Mary was gone again, however, with a last languishing glance from the door to the kitchen, Gloster touched the arm of the other.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said the older man. “Nothing, except that I don’t like to be bluffed.” He made a gesture of perfect openness with a bandaged right hand. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he added quietly.

At this Harry Gloster grew a little pale.

“What do you know?” he said.

“If I were sheriff,” said the other, “I’d lock you up on suspicion and hold you until I’d had a look at your back trail. But I’m not sheriff—not by a considerable distance!”

“Then that’s finished?”

“It is!”

They exchanged eloquent glances, and Harry Gloster drew a great breath of relief. Before he could speak again a third man entered the room, stopped short as his glance fell upon Gloster’s companion, and then advanced again, slowly, with an indescribable change in his manner and step which told that he was facing danger. As for the man beside Gloster, he, too, had altered, sitting a little straighter in his chair, and with an outthrust of his lower jaw.

Yet he said calmly enough: “Hello, Joe.”

“Howdy,” nodded the other. “Kind of far south for you, Lee, ain’t it?”

“A little far south,” answered Lee, while the other drew back a chair with his left hand and sat down slowly, gingerly, never taking his eyes from Lee. He was one of those long legged, long-armed men whose weight is condensed almost entirely around herculean shoulders.

He was handsome, in a way, but his features were all overshadowed, as one might say, by the very shadow of his physical strength. It showed in the straight line of his compressed mouth, in the forward jutting of his head, and most significantly in a cruel flare of the nostrils.

“Yes,” went on Lee as calmly as before, “I’m a little farther south than usual. I’m on a trail. Maybe you could give me a few pointers, Joe.”

Joe grinned, and there was no mirth in his smile.

“Sure,” he said dryly. “Ain’t it nacheral for me to do anything for you that I could?”

Here Mary came to get the order of the newcomer. He snapped a request for ham and eggs at her without moving his eyes from Lee.

“I’m looking for a woman,” said Lee, continuing as soon as the girl had left the room.

“We all are,” said Joe, grinning again.

“Her name,” said Lee, “is Kate Cumberland. That is, it used to be. She’s the widow of Dan Barry.”

“Never heard of her or him,” said Joe.

“Or of Jim Silent?” asked Lee, and it seemed to Harry Gloster that there was a tremor of seriousness in the manner of the speaker.

“Silent? Nope.”

“Or you?” asked Lee, glancing earnestly at Gloster.

“Never heard of him. Who was he?”

“I have no luck,” said Lee, deep in gloom, and avoiding the direct question. “That trail has gone out!”

The comment of Joe was a grin of cruel disinterest. And Harry Gloster said kindly: “Old friends of yours?”

“Dan Barry—an old friend?” muttered Lee as much to himself as to the others. “I don’t know.” He sighed and looked across the room with blank eyes. “God knows what he was to me or to any other human being.” And he added, sadly: “He was a man I wronged, and he was a man who gave me my life when he had it like that—to take if he wanted it—”

He raised his hand and closed it as though he were crushing an invisible something against his palm.

“Well,” said Joe with sinister meaning, “gents like that come few and far between, eh?”

“They do,” answered Lee. “There are some folks that hold a small grudge to the end of time. I’ve met men like that.” The meaning could not be misunderstood.

And suddenly Joe turned white. It was not hard to see that a great emotion had been working in him ever since he entered the room. And now it leaped up from his heart and mastered him.

His head lowered and thrust out a bit more than usual; he pushed back his chair somewhat from the table so as to give his knees clearance for quick action. And his right hand dropped patently close to his hip.

“You’ve met one of them men in me, Haines,” he said, breathing hard, and yet growing whiter and whiter as the passion mounted. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about—you and me. And I’m tolerable glad that we’ve met up. Tolerable glad!”

And, indeed, the battle lust shook him like a leaf.

Harry Gloster eyed them shrewdly. He had been among fighting men all his life. They were a sort of language which he could read with a perfect fluency.

But as he looked from one to the other of these two he could not tell which was the more formidable. There was more nervous energy in Joe, but in the man who had just been called Haines there was a calm reserve of strength which might be employed in the crisis. He was older, to be sure, but he was not yet old enough to be slow.

There was one determining factor which Gloster could see, but which Joe could not. The right hand of Haines had been kept scrupulously out of sight beneath the table from the moment Joe entered. It had appeared to Harry at first that this might be from fear lest the other should note his infirmity and take advantage of it to fly at his throat.

But now that the actual danger of battle had become almost unavoidable, there might be another reason which induced Haines to conceal his wound—and that was an indomitable pride which kept him from taking advantage of a weakness to put off a danger. And, in fact, he was now meeting the last outbursts of Joe with a calm smile of scorn.

Yet, certainly, he was helpless. The four fingers of his right hand were bound together with one bandage. He could not possibly use a gun under such a handicap unless he were ambidextrous—and on his left side he wore no gun!

To reach across to his right hip would be impossible—opposite him there was a man quivering with hate and with murder in his face. At the first suspicious move he would strike and his stroke would be as devastating as a lightning flash.

“Wait a minute!” cried Gloster. “Wait a minute, will you? My friend here has a bad hand—he can’t—”

“You carry people along to beg off for you?” sneered Joe.

“I’ve never met this man before,” said Haines slowly. “And I need no advice or help. When I fight a rat, I fight alone!”

It came home to Harry Gloster with a sickening surety. It was simply the suicide of a man tired of life and preferring to die by the hand of another rather than his own. He watched the lip of Joe curl; he saw him take a short breath, as if he were drinking the insult to the last drop, and then there was a convulsive movement of his right arm. The elbow jerked back and up and the big revolver came spinning out of its holster.

Lee Haines had not stirred; indeed, the smile with which he had uttered his last remark was still on his lips. But Harry Gloster had begun to move the split part of a second before the man across the table.

It was a long distance, but the arm of Gloster was a long arm. One foot planted behind him braced his weight. His fist shot across the table with all his bulk in motion behind it. His hip struck the table, tilted it, sent the crockery spilling and crashing to the floor. But before the first cup fell, his fist cracked on the point of the aggressor’s jaw.

Had it landed solidly, it would have knocked Joe half the length of the room. But as it was, he flinched back at the last instant, seeing the flying danger from the corner of his eye. So the blow merely grazed the bone and partly stunned him for the fraction of a minute.

He staggered up from his chair and back a step. The revolver dropped down to the tips of his unnerved fingers and hung there by the trigger guard. The very curse which he uttered was blurred and half spoken.

“Keep out of this!” commanded Haines, and reached for the shoulder of his table companion. His grip was strong, but his fingers slipped from a mass of contracted muscles. He might as well have laid an arresting hand on the flank of an avalanche.

Harry Gloster went over the table and landed first with his fist on the face of Joe, and secondly, with his feet on the floor. The half numbed fingers of Joe were gathering the revolver again.

The blow landed in the nick of time and it ended the fight, whirling him about and pitching him into the wall with a force that jarred the room. He slumped loosely back upon the floor.

Mary, brought by the uproar to the door of the kitchen, screamed and ran back, and Wu raised a shrill chattering. Lee Haines was already kneeling beside the fallen man, whom he turned on his back.

“Not even a broken jaw,” he said. “He must be made of India rubber.” He arose and faced Gloster, and laid his bandaged hand on the shoulder of the other. His calm was amazing to Harry Gloster.

“That was fast work,” Haines said, “and it saved me from being filled full of lead, which is bad enough, or begging off, which is worse. But if you’re headed for the Rio Grande, don’t let this hold you back. And if you come back again, don’t come back this way. He’s bad medicine, you understand?”

“I’ve never side-stepped a man yet,” Harry Gloster replied, shaking his head.

“You’re not too old to form a good habit,” Haines rejoined. He scanned the magnificent body of Gloster, and last of all his glance dwelt on the hands. His own fingers, and those of Joe, lying unconscious on the floor, were long, slender, bony—intended for movements of electric speed. But the fingers of Harry Gloster were square-tipped, built for crushing power. “No,” he continued, “keep away from him and you’ll have better luck. And start moving now!”

There was such a solemn assurance in his voice that it was impossible for Harry Gloster to answer. He looked down again to the long arms of Joe, sprawled across the floor, and to the long fingered, sun blackened hands. And a shudder of instinctive dread passed through Gloster. He turned to speak again to Lee Haines, to learn something of the history and of the accomplishments of this man—of his full name—but Haines was already moving swiftly through the door.