Читать книгу Pleasant Jim - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10

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The marshal explained that Pleasant must be lodged not alone, but in a cell with some other prisoner. “I’ve got a full house, here,” he explained. “The sheriff, he’s doing quite a business himself, and by the time that I’ve got through bringing in my free boarders, why, it sort of crowds things. But I’ll see that you’re fixed up with a good, clean, decent, up-standin’ sort of a gent for a cell-mate.”

“You’re going to shove me into a cell, are you, without letting me talk to the judge and have a hearing?” asked Pleasant, his heart swelling with helpless indignation.

The marshal was full of sympathy.

“I’d like to do it,” he explained. “I know just how you feel. Understand exactly! But you don’t know the way that the judge is. Everything has to be regular with him; suppose that I went to him and asked him to see you now. ‘Is court open? Is this the proper time to bring a man into court? Don’t talk like a fool, Marshal Lee!’ He has a tongue that a man won’t forget in a hurry, Pleasant! I hope you never have to have a taste of it the way that I have!”

The lambent whimsicality of the marshal had no ending; and Pleasant felt that it was useless to try to bring him to a truly serious consciousness.

“Here’s a place for him,” the marshal was saying. “Here’s a man in your jail that’s as clean, up-standing, and intelligent as you’ve ever had here, I suppose. And the best of it is that Pleasant knows him already!”

He had paused before the barred door behind which sat none other than Charlie Rizdal.

“You’re going to put me in here?” asked Pleasant, grimly.

“You wouldn’t want to be put in with some dirty hobo, would you?” asked Sam Lee. “You wouldn’t want that, old-timer, would you? No, you couldn’t have a better cell-mate than Charlie Rizdal. Besides, Pleasant, of course it’ll only be a day or two before you’re out of this!”

Pleasant Jim said no more; he saw that argument was foolish, and now the door swung softly open upon oiled hinges and he had stepped inside. The marshal paused before him.

“If there’s anything that I can do for you,” he said, “let me know before I go and—”

“There’s nothing,” answered Pleasant bitterly.

“Hold on!” cried young Rizdal. “Are you going to keep me here with this damned bloodsucker and head-hunter? If you do, by God, I’ll throttle him, one of these nights!”

“Friendly, ain’t they? Like a pair of Kilkenny cats!” said the jailer, grinning in a broader self-content. “Marshal, you’re a wonder!”

“Why, Charlie, I’m surprised at you,” answered the marshal with a deprecatory gesture. “Would you want a finer fellow to swap yarns with than Jim Pleasant? Well, boys, so long. Best of luck to you!”

“Mark you me!” shouted Rizdal, leaping at the bars and shaking them furiously. “There’ll be trouble out of this! There’ll be damned bad trouble!”

The mocking laughter of the jailer floated back at him; Rizdal burst into a passion of cursing that raised a murmur of interest from the adjoining cells; and then, as though realizing that nothing could be gained by mere talk, he stopped abruptly, and turning towards his companion, who stood stiffly on the defensive, he winked broadly.

Pleasant, amazed, stared at him.

Rizdal continued in a loud voice: “Pleasant, it was you that landed me in this hell-hole; and I’ll have your heart out for that little trick, one of these days. They’ve put us together, now. Well, you keep to that cot and that side of the room; and I’ll keep to this; and if you cross the center line, by God, I’ll tackle you! You understand?”

“I’m a peaceful man,” said Pleasant through his teeth. “I don’t hunt trouble. But when it comes my way I aim to use both hands on it; and if you raise a hand on me, Rizdal, I’ll break you open like a damned nut!”

A fury of anger had mastered him and his voice as he came to this conclusion; and he was more amazed than ever when, after his outburst, he saw Rizdal nod commendation and smile. The latter sat down on his cot and took from his pocket a little ivory trinket—the roughly worked shape of an ape, which he set up in the palm of his hand and admired for a moment.

When he spoke again, his voice was so carefully modulated that it could reach to his companion, but no farther.

“I knew the old juju would bring me luck before the finish,” said he, “but I never guessed that they’d be fools enough to put the pair of us in one cell! Why, Pleasant, we’ll crack out of this place almost any time that we want to, now that the two of us are together!”

He added: “But play up, for God’s sake. The minute they guess we’re pals, they’ll separate us. But while they think we want to kill each other, they’ll figure that we don’t need any guard more than one another. Sam Lee is smart, but here’s a trick that he’s missed!”

The pleasure of Rizdal was so great that he sat back against the wall of the cell and almost closed his eyes with silent laughter. But his meaning was clear to Pleasant. He answered gravely and softly: “It’s all right, Charlie. I’d never stand in your way, but it’s not my game to break jail; I couldn’t stand outlawry.”

“Wait till they’re through with you,” said Rizdal calmly. “You’ll get a new idea!”

With that, he picked up a book which he had been reading, and opening it again, he went through the pages quite rapidly, and now and again he seemed to be making a covert notation with a pencil which he held. Pleasant, however, was tired, rather bewildered, and felt that he had been committed to a trail of which he had no knowledge. So, following his usual rule, he stretched himself on his cot, folded his powerful arms beneath his head, and fell instantly asleep. A rested brain is better than a fagged one, no matter what the emergency.

He dreamed that he was back on the farm again, breaking a colt and trying to make a mouth on it—a fiery, springing, wild-hearted devil of a two-year-old such as he loved to handle. Too much force and the youngster would have a mouth of brass; but just the requisite power and play combined would keep it sensitive and tender as velvet. He had a theory that thought runs down the reins from the hands of the man to the lips of his mount, and so from the human to the equine brain; accordingly, he broke every colt reverently, carefully, with pains and with love, so that the saying arose: “On a Pleasant Jim horse, a wish is as good as a Spanish bit!” But this animal in his dreams was like a winged spirit and a heart of mounting flame; struggle as he might, he could not rein it; and a vague and vast sense of fear began to oppress him.

He was wakened by the loud voice of Charlie Rizdal, calling: “Hey, you!”

Pleasant Jim wakened with sweat on his brow, and turning his head, he was aware of Charlie at the barred door of the cell, talking to a girl who carried a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other.

It seemed strange to Pleasant that a woman should be allowed in a common jail, but after all, where would a man be found to do the drudgery of cleaning at any ordinary wage; and it was plain that this simple creature could not be offended or give offense. She had a white, rather round face, which possessed a certain prettiness of feature, but her hair was twisted into a tight knot, high on her head, her nose was pink as though from the effect of a perpetual cold in the head; and above all the eye was open, round, blank, unthinking. Never a colt had been foaled on the farm of Pleasant Jim, surely, with so little of spirit. There was scant trace of mind stuff in her; she was body and body alone.

Rizdal spoke to her in a tone of good-natured contempt: “This is a rotten book that you gave me,” said he. “Nothing happens in it. Chuck it for me, will you? And here’s a quarter. Pick up something that’s got a little action, kid! What’s your name, anyway?”

“Sally’s my name.”

“Hey, Sally!” bawled the voice of the jailer. “Ain’t I told you not to talk to nobody in here? Come here, you fool!”

Pleasant Jim sat upright on his cot. He was no lover of the ladies, but a certain tone was not permissible when one addressed them, and now he looked down at his hard knuckles and thought of the broad, soft face of the jailer—a fighting man who had grown pulpy in easy jobs.

“Comin’!” called Sally.

“You poor sap!” shouted Charlie Rizdal. “D’you think I’m trying to make a crush on this cartoon? I just asked her to buy me a book. Here’s the quarter I’m givin’ her. Bite it and see if it’s lead, will you?”

“Swallow your lip, Rizdal!” boomed the jailer. “All right, let her take the quarter. But she’s likely to quit work if she sees that much money all in one piece.”

“Now, Sally,” said Rizdal, “don’t forget.”

“No, sir,” said she.

“And if there’s a nickel left over, buy yourself a ribbon or something.”

“I seen a lovely one in the store for five cents,” said Sally, and she rubbed the back of her hand across her nose and sniffed.

“Run along, kid. Your boss is calling you.”

“Yes, sir,” and away shuffled Sally, the heels of her over-large shoes trailing and scratching on the stone floor as she went.

Mr. Rizdal watched her going, and then he turned sharply on his cell-companion.

“She’s our bet, old man,” he said rather with his lips than with his voice. “Wait till the middle watch, and I’ll tell you why!”

Pleasant smiled again. Never in his life had he seen a tool less likely to be of use for breaking from such a strongly modern jail as this.