Читать книгу Pillar Mountain - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The rifle appeared to grow greatly in size as it came nearer; it presented a yawning black cavern to the gaze of Philip. Then, behind the gun he saw a man in a red flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows over hairy forearms which were sunburned almost to blackness. He wore blue overalls, tightly belted at the waist. His open shirt exposed a black outcropping of thick hair on the neck and chest. His felt hat was worn slid back so far that both his cheeks and the tip of his nose had been fried to a bright red. He was fat, yet he appeared strong, active, and ready for work.

He said, as he drew closer: “Who in hell might you be?”

“I am Philip,” said the boy.

“Philip what?”

“I don’t know,” said Philip. “I have no other name.”

The man of the gun looked earnestly at the youth; then he gradually lowered his rifle.

“Got some chuck there?”

“Yes.”

“Gimme,” said he, and Philip gave the rest of his provisions.

The stranger stowed a whole section of corn bread and bacon in his fat face and yet he was able to speak around it, though in a painfully choked voice.

“This ain’t bad. Where you come from?”

“Yonder.”

“That’s Pillar Mountain. Nobody lives there.”

Philip was silent. He felt that he was having an odd introduction to the world, but no doubt there was much kindness behind the strange manner of the horseman.

“You got a horse nearby?” asked the rider, stuffing another wedge of food into his mouth before it was half empty.

“No,” said Philip.

The face of the stranger was so stretched with eating that he could show emotion only with his eyes, and these grew round with impatient anger. He tossed his head over his shoulder and glanced down the valley; then he stared back at the boy.

“What else you got around you?” he asked. “Lemme see that rifle. Butt first, mind you!”

Philip presented it duly, butt first. But he was greatly troubled, because he felt that the weapon was about to be taken from him if it were better than the stranger’s own gun, and that it was better seemed patent to the first glance. So he presented his rifle, but he kept his hold on the barrel of it, and at the same time he caught the barrel of the rider’s gun.

“Leave go, you poor fool!” said the other, with a snarl.

He wrenched mightily at the rifles; it was as though they were fixed in rock, and all at once he ceased his struggle. His eyes grew round again, but not with anger.

“What’s wrong with me havin’ a look at your gun?” he asked. “I’m not gunna steal it! Leave go of mine then, will you?”

“I don’t know,” said Philip. “I’m just thinking it over.”

“I’ll give you a hell of a quick start for your thinking, in another second,” said the fat-faced man.

He shifted his hand from the butt of Philip’s gun to the butt of a gun which thrust out of the saddle holster.

“Don’t do that, please,” suggested Philip. He poised his released gun as he spoke, so that it was like a club, held as light as a feather, and the other rolled his eyes up at the impending danger.

“Damnation!” he murmured under his breath, and he removed his hand from the revolver in his holster. “Call off your damn dog!” he added, his voice pitched several notes higher, in what was almost a squeak of fear.

Loafer had failed to understand a good deal of what was happening, but the brief struggle for the rifles was self-explanatory. He slipped around to the side of the stranger and a little to his rear, and then he crouched, waiting for no more than a whisper of command before he launched his great white fangs and a hundred odd pounds of muscle at the rider.

Philip drew back half a step and shifted the rifle in his hand so that the butt caught under his forearm, and his finger was on the trigger. In this fashion, it was like a revolver, and it pointed at the breast of the other.

“I don’t want to make any trouble,” said Philip. “You’re welcome to the food, if you’re very hungry; but I think you wanted to take my gun, and you haven’t any right to that.”

“Me?” said the fat man, making a gesture of protest and rolling his glance to the heavens. “Me? A thief? God bless me, me boy, what sort of a gent d’you take me for?”

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said Philip.

“Me!” said the brown man, his excitement growing. “That have run cows on ten thousand acres, more or less. Me steal a gun! Well, son, I dunno how you was brung up!”

“I’m ashamed!” said Philip, growing a hotter crimson than before. “I really beg your pardon! If—if you’ll sit down here and finish your lunch, I’ll rub down your horse for you!”

“I dunno but what I will,” said the brown man, and cast another glance down the valley.

Then he dismounted and sat on a rock, munching the food and keeping his rifle across his knees. Still, from time to time, he looked down the hollow, but he bent most of his attention on Philip. The latter in the meantime was hard at work over the mustang. He knew all about taking care of exhausted animals, for sometimes the work on the trails of Pillar Mountain wore the two mules to a shadow, and Aytoun had taught the boy what to do in such a case.

First he would have stripped off the saddle, but the stranger stopped him with a yell of protest.

“I might be wanting to start on, any minute,” he declared. “You leave that saddle rest, will you?”

So Philip simply loosened the girths and pushed the saddle back. Then he fell to work, stripping the flabby muscles of the mustang with such an iron grip that the little animal squealed in protest. Nevertheless that enforced circulation soon made the flesh stand out firm and strong again, and the mustang soon was lifting his head and making active efforts to bite his tormentor. When he could not manage this, he merely dashed his heels at the empty air and then turned his attention to the nearest wisps of grass. Then Philip allowed him a single swallow of water and backed him off into a thicker stand of the dun-dried forage.

“He’s better now, you see,” explained Philip.

“If you dunno men, you know horses, kid,” declared the fat man. “That’s a trick that I can use on the trail—if I got the hands for it. Lemme see your hands, will you?”

Philip obediently offered them for inspection, and the stranger, like a connoisseur, bent back the long fingers and looked earnestly at the big tendons of the wrist.

“There’s something to have,” murmured the stranger, looking up from the inspection after a time. “There’s something to have. There’s something to wring necks with!”

He stood up and began to draw up the cinches of the mustang. Over his shoulder, still looking down the valley, he said: “Thanks for the lunch. If you’re ever stuck for a job, you come to me.”

“Thank you,” said Philip.

“You got no idea who I am?”

He was seated in the saddle, once more, smiling complacently down at the boy.

“No.”

“If you had,” said the fat man, “you’d be feelin’ sick. But I tell you, I’m always easy on a tenderfoot. I’m always easy on a kid. You hear me.”

“I do,” said Philip, not quite understanding what was meant.

The stranger rode his horse into the stream.

“If you was to see anybody coming along after me,” said he, “you might say that I’d sashayed over into the woods, there. You hear?”

“I do,” said Philip.

The other waved a hand and then started to guide the mustang up through the rapidly flowing little stream, keeping to its bed until it turned out of sight within a few hundred feet. Philip put on his depleted knapsack. He worked slowly at the buckles of it for his mind was whirling; his first taste of humanity left him most ill at ease!

He had not walked on down the valley for five minutes when a little host of riders broke out of a wood and came storming down on him.

“You seen Joe Dorman up this way?” yelled one in the van.

“On a dead-beat pinto?” burst out a second.

Philip shrugged his shoulders. He was very ill at ease.

“I don’t know what to say,” said he.

A man more elderly than his companions, a hard-faced, keen-eyed man, came to the front.

“I’m the sheriff,” he remarked, and turning down the lapel of his coat he revealed a silver-bright star of office. “Now I ask you—have you seen Joe Dorman?”

“I never heard that name,” said Philip.

“You lie,” said the sheriff coldly. “And you lie like a fool. Everybody knows Joe Dorman. You seen him—where? Where was he going?”

“I don’t know,” said Philip.

“You idiot!” shouted the sheriff. “You half-wit! Which way was he headed for?”

Philip remained silent. He knew that a sheriff stood very, very high, and his heart was in his throat, but for some reason it was impossible that he should betray the secret of Joe Dorman and his spent mustang.

“Will you talk?” yelled the irate sheriff.

“He’s a half-wit, sheriff,” said a kinder voice. “He don’t know nothing.”

“You ought to be able to read his mind if he’s a half-wit,” said the furious sheriff. “I tell you, he’s blockin’ the law. You take that fool in to town and lock him up in the jail. I’m gunna make him an example. You hear? A damn hot example is what I’m gunna make out of him!”

He gathered his men with a shout and they all pushed up the valley in a crash of hoof beats. But when they struck a sharper slope just ahead, their horses slowed down to a staggering trot. Every one of them was terribly spent.

“They’ll never get him,” said Philip aloud. “They’re worse done than he!”

He was relieved.