Читать книгу Blood on the Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Gray Cloud, stiff with his wounds, stood up and glared at them, and the deep-throated snarl that meant “Man!” formed and issued vibrantly.

The three instinctively stepped back from the monster.

“Hey, look at,” said Pete Reagan.

“Look at what?”

“Look at the marks of the teeth of the trap!” said Pete. “Got ’em on two of his legs.”

“Look at twenty-five hundred dollars, is what I say. The only time that a piece of wolf ever meant twenty-five hundred bucks, I guess,” said Hank.

“Shut yer mouth,” advised his father bluntly.

He looked meaningly toward his son.

And the son, with instinctive quickness, on a subject about which the entire family was unusually understanding, glanced toward Dave and nodded a little—as much as to say that if the “dummy,” as they were fond of calling the young fellow, did not know the cash value of that lobo, there was no use informing him. Certainly not a penny of that money must come to his hands.

“What trap you get that lobo out of, young man?” asked Bush Reagan sharply.

“You know that line of traps I put up?” said Dave.

“Catch him in one of your own traps?” snapped his older cousin.

“Two of ’em,” said Dave.

“A mighty lot of time you’ve wasted on them traps, away from your proper work on the ranch,” said his cousin.

Hank winked at Pete, and Pete winked in return. They were dark men. Most of the Reagans, in fact, were swarthy, but Dave had his mother’s red hair and steady gray eyes. Bush Reagan, on the contrary, was even darker than his sons. They had inherited from him their complexions, and each had the large mole that appeared on the left side of their father’s face. Now they winked with a good deal of sympathy, for they recognized the favorite family sport—that of putting Dave in the wrong, no matter what he accomplished.

“Kind of wish you’d never put out them traps, it’s taken so much of your time away,” said Bush, frowning and clearing his throat, but also winking at his sons.

“Well,” said Dave, “you’ve had a good lot of coyote skins out of those traps, and several wolves, too, and any number of wildcats. You remember the stack of pelts that you carted into town a month or two ago?”

“Aw, they didn’t amount to nothing,” said his uncle. “What would they amount to altogether?”

“Why,” said Dave, “they didn’t amount to anything as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t get a penny from ’em.”

He laughed a little as he said this; he intended no sting in his remark, but Bush Reagan flushed darkly, and his face contracted. In the worst of us, conscience has power at times and will find the soul with a shrewd thrust. It found the very heart of Bush Reagan at this moment, and for an instant he lost sight of even the wolf, and considered the wasted years of his life and his crimes against this youth.

Those recollections were so painful that presently they hardened him more than ever. He could not endure the compassion that he felt toward his cousin, therefore he shrugged it away.

“You never got nothin’ from the traps that would pay me back for the time that you’ve wasted from the ranch to tend that line,” he declared. “I dunno that even havin’ Gray Cloud makes up for the difference.”

He winked at Pete as he said this, and Pete winked back instantly, keeping the rest of his face as immobile as though it was carved out of wood.

Hank, venturing too close, drew a snarl and a leap from the monster. The leap fell short because the chain brought Gray Cloud up short and tumbled him on his side. But even so, his bone-breaking fangs had clashed a scant inch from Hank’s leg.

“Hank, don’t you be a fool,” said his father angrily.

He had drawn a revolver as he spoke. He was always armed. He was one of those who feel that the dignity of every Westerner can only be secured if he carries a gun.

“We might as well put a bullet through him right now,” he said.

This was not heard by Dave. At the fall of the wolf, as Gray Cloud struggled for an instant to regain his feet, and vainly because of the constriction of the chain and the hampering effect of the wounded legs, Dave stepped forward and leaned to help the animal up.

“Keep back, you dummy!” yelled Pete.

It was much too late for a warning to have been useful. The snaky head of the wolf turned like a flash and caught the forearm of Dave in the yawning mouth.

“Shoot, pa!” called Hank, seeing this.

“Don’t shoot!” exclaimed Dave.

For the knifelike teeth had not cut through the skin. A last touch of instinct had kept the big wolf from biting home to the bone, or even through it, as Gray Cloud so easily could have done. He crouched, ears flattened, eyes green, for an instant. Then he knew perfectly the scent of the man who was not man, because he had saved a wolf from death by steel and death by fire!

Gray Cloud released the arm of Dave. With troubled eyes, he stared at the face of the young man, and saw the hand run back over his head. He lowered that head to escape from the touch. And yet it was not entirely unpleasant. A strange electric tingle ran through every fiber of his great body as he received the first human caress of his existence.

“Look at!” muttered Hank. “Nobody’d believe that, would they?”

“What you doin’ to that man-killin’ wolf?” demanded Bush Reagan.

He stepped a little closer. A chill of mystery struck through his body. The one standing excuse for his wastage of Dave’s money was that the youth himself was so weak in the mind as to be worthless. And every hint that he might be something else was terrible to Bush.

“I’m only making friends with him a little,” said Dave, looking up with a smile.

“I wanta know how you muzzled him, and how you drug him in?” said Bush Reagan.

“I didn’t muzzle him,” said Dave. “He worked the muzzle off. And I didn’t drag him. I carried him on my shoulders.”

“You mean that you had that mug full of teeth on your shoulder, next to your throat—all four miles?”

“He was all right,” said Dave. “I worried a little about what he might do at first. I don’t suppose that I would have tried carrying him at all, but while he was in the traps a grass fire came zooming along, and I had to move fast to get him out of the way.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him and take his scalp and his paws?” asked Pete. “That’d ’a’ been proof enough.”

“I wanted to shoot him,” said Dave, running his fingers deeply into the mane of the lobo. “I wanted to shoot him,” he repeated, “and then something stopped me—something about his eyes.”

The little shop filled with braying laughter from the three.

“Ain’t that like a dummy, to work it out like that?” demanded Bush Reagan triumphantly. If only the entire world could hear a remark as foolish as this, he thought, it would understand what he had had to put up with from Dave during these many years. Not a good influence on his own boys, for one thing, he could say. It was just the same as having a human animal around the house!

Gray Cloud, under this new caress, lifted his head slowly and looked into Dave’s face. The latter, enchanted, smiled down at his captive.

“Look,” he said. “Look at that, will you?”

He laughed softly.

“He sort of understands,” said Dave.

“That’s a sight more than anybody else can do for you,” snarled Bush Reagan. “Now, you back away from that wolf and I’ll put a slug through him and take him in to claim the reward. The boys are goin’ to open their eyes a mite when they see what I bring in today.” He added: “Back away from that, Dave.”

The latter looked with puzzled frown toward his older cousin. A handsome face he had, perfectly regular in contour, though perhaps the features were a little too thick and the brow too fleshy.

“Why would you shoot him, Cousin Bush?” he asked.

“Why? Because I’m goin’ to do it, is enough reason for you!” exclaimed the other.

His sons looked on with a grin and a nod. They knew the vast strength that was locked up in the frame of their cousin, and it was always amusing to see him submit to such a check as this.

Dave stood up from the wolf and stepped back, shaking his head.

Bush Reagan poised his gun; Gray Cloud stood up and silently bared his teeth to face execution.

Then Dave stepped to his cousin and pressed up the barrel of the gun.

The latter yelled out: “What you mean by touchin’ my gun, you half-wit?”

Dave stood between him and the target.

“Don’t shoot Gray Cloud,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t stand it.”

“You couldn’t stand it?” shouted the other. “And who are you? And what difference does it make what you can stand? There’s a price on the scalp of that wolf, and I’m goin’ to collect it!”

Still with his hand under the gun, Dave stared with his baffled eyes at Bush Reagan. Never in his life had he dared to check that formidable authority. But now he said:

“I caught him in my own traps. Nobody has a right to shoot him. I don’t want to see him shot!”

Sudden awe struck the other three silent. A wild cry of rage burst from the throat of Bush Reagan as the spell dissolved.

But his son, Hank, took him by the arm.

“You come outside with me, pa,” said he.