Читать книгу Pleasant Jim - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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All that Jim Pleasant had been, all that he had done, amounted to nothing. His life, for our purposes, begins with the moment when he ran down Charlie Rizdal in the mountains behind King’s River. It would have been a pity for either of those expert fighters to have a real advantage over the other, but the God of Battle provided that they should meet fairly and squarely on the elbow turn of a narrow trail with a two-thousand-foot outer edge. If there were any disadvantage, it hung upon Jim Pleasant, for at that moment he was busily studying the sky, not regarding the imaginary rings of the poet’s paradise but more profoundly interested in the polycyclic flight of a buzzard which was throwing its broad loops between the peaks that looked into the valley. The conclusion of Jim Pleasant—or Pleasant Jim, as he was ironically and punningly nicknamed most of the time—was that it would be a vast advantage for a fellow on a man-trail to be able to live like a buzzard on the wing. For his own part, he had not tasted of any food for two days and the ache of his stomach made him frown a little; moreover, a terrible sit-fast was forming on his pony’s back, and so Pleasant Jim rode under the burden of many clouds, at the very moment when he turned the corner of the trail and ran into that delightful gunfighter, Charlie Rizdal.

Accordingly, Jim was slow. He was no quicker, say, than a scared wolf or a startled cat; as a matter of fact, his bullet flew wide and only pierced the shoulder of Rizdal, but since it arrived at its mark just a hundredth part of a second before Rizdal pulled his trigger, the latter incontinently fired into the ground. At the same time the impact thrust him half around in the saddle.

He was a man of parts, however, as a man must be who has a reward of eight thousand dollars hanging over his head, and even when he was thrown off balance and thoroughly staggered by the impact of that forty-five caliber slug, he had the presence of mind to observe that his horse was much bulkier than Jim Pleasant’s and that it was, moreover, on the inside of the trail. Accordingly, as he fell back, he clutched the flanks of his good horse with the spurs, and the frantic gelding leaped straight ahead into Pleasant’s mustang.

The latter shot into open space like a pebble snapped from the fingers; but Pleasant had seen the meaning of that charge just in time, and while the poor little mustang spun head over heels towards the canyon floor two thousand feet below, his master was clinging to the body of Rizdal.

One of Mr. Rizdal’s arms was useless now, of course, but with his other hand he picked from the top of his riding boot a long knife which he wore there much as a Highlander wears his skean dhu. Pleasant, in the meantime, was clinging to Rizdal, while the frightened horse plunged madly along the winding curves of the trail and at every corner the body of Pleasant sailed out like the boy who is snapper in the game of “crack the whip.”

He saw the glitter of Rizdal’s knife, but he was not startled into the commission of an act of folly. Rizdal deserved death, beyond doubt, but dead he was worth only five thousand, while, living, he was worth eight; for some people thought that if the bank robber were captured alive he might be induced to surrender some of his old spoils for the sake of a lighter sentence. Pleasant thought in time, and instead of pulling the trigger a second time, he used the long barrel of the Colt to tap the robber on the head.

Rizdal fell from his horse and so did Pleasant, but the latter fell on top. When Rizdal’s wits returned to him, he found his captor sitting cross-legged beside him on the trail, weighing in his hand a scarcely ponderable bit of stone.

“Well?” said Rizdal, sitting up, and clasping his wounded shoulder. “You came out best, as usual.”

Pleasant decided to overlook the compliment.

“I’ve been wondering if it’s worth while, Charlie,” said he. “It’s a long trip; and there’ll have to be a wait, first, while your shoulder is healing; and after you arrive at Fisher Falls, of course they’ll simply hang you. Whachu think?”

“That’s one thing that might happen,” agreed Rizdal calmly. “What’s the other?”

“The other is neater, a lot,” declared the victor. “Here’s two of us to ride one horse. Well, if you was to step over the edge, here, we wouldn’t have to ride double, you wouldn’t have to hang, and I wouldn’t have all the bother of watching over you and nursing you in camp while your damn shoulder gets sound, and while you figure ways to cut my throat at night.”

“I always heard you was a reasonable man, Pleasant,” answered Rizdal, “and now I see it for myself. Besides, if you fuss around a couple of weeks with me in the mountains, here, the greasers that are working your place for you may run off most of your good stock.”

“They won’t do that,” answered Pleasant Jim, without hesitation. “Three years back, when I was just starting, a couple of the boys decided to crook the game on me while I was away on a trip. I had to chase them almost to the Rio, but since then I ain’t had any trouble.”

“You brought back the stolen horses, eh?”

“All except one. One of those greasers had been a prizefighter and he had a cauliflower ear. Well, I brought back that ear, too, and nailed it into a post on my range. It’s a funny thing how I been able to trust my punchers from that time on.”

Mr. Rizdal nodded, caressing his bleeding shoulder.

“Well, Pleasant,” said he, “you could put a bullet through me and say it was done during the fight. But speakin’ personal, I don’t aim to step off that edge of the trail.”

Mr. Pleasant looked up to the mountain heads, from the southern sides of which the tractile clouds were being drawn out upon the wind.

“As I was sayin’ before,” he remarked absently, “there’s three grand more in you alive than dead. I think I’ll take you in, Charlie. Now, lemme have a look at that shoulder, will you?”

They patched up the shoulder between them, working industriously, chatting of odds and ends. From Rizdal’s pack they got iodine and poured it into the wound, while the wounded man’s face went white; yet he did not falter in his sentence.

When the wound was dressed, they moved half a mile down the trail to a little glacial meadow, and there they camped for the next three weeks while the wound closed and healed with magic speed. It was easy to get food. With little snares they caught birds and squirrels for the pot, and once the rifle of Pleasant dropped a deer on the farther side of the little lake. It was grueling and nervous work, for not a minute of the day did the captor dare to turn his back upon the robber; and at night he put aside his weapons in the fork of a tree and tied himself to the body of Rizdal. If he kept so much as a knife on him, that knife might get into the clever fingers of the captive, and Pleasant would be minus eight thousand dollars, and life as well; but when they had nothing but bare hands to use, Pleasant had no doubt of how a contest would terminate. Apparently, Rizdal had no doubt either; he decided to try another method.

On an evening, a lobo at the edge of the trees raised a long, ululant cry, and the two sat up and listened to the ghostly wailing.

“This is the right sort of a place for that devil,” remarked Pleasant.

“Well, the place don’t matter so much,” decided Rizdal. “Put him in a kennel and teach him to wag his tail, he’d still be a wolf. You’re like that, old-timer. They’ve kenneled you up, they think, but you’re still a wolf, and one morning they’ll wake up and find that you’ve slaughtered a flock of the greyhounds and the lapdogs and the poodles. You’re like the wolf, all the time; it’s work for your teeth that you want.”

“Because I go a-man hunting,” remarked the other. “No, it’s just that I want extra cash to clear my farm ranch. This here job will about shove me into the open, Charlie.”

“If you want the cash,” said Rizdal, “I could show you a quicker way.”

“I’m listening.”

“Look how you’re fixed. You turn me in and get the blood money and I hang. All right. Then you have my brother on your neck, and Long Tom ain’t a joke to play the cards against.”

“We gotta take chances,” philosophized Pleasant.

“Sure. I ain’t trying to scare you. Just reasoning. But you admit that Long Tom is quite a man?”

“He is,” replied Pleasant, with quiet decision.

“Now, what a cinch it would be, Jim, to just meet up with Tom and let him drop a chunk of banknotes into your pocket. Eight thousand you get from some damned Pooh-Bah who’ll make a speech to you and then forget you. Say you take fifteen thousand from Tom—who won’t forget. That’s logic, I say; what do you think?”

“Sure it’s logic,” nodded the other. “The slickest I ever heard. But I don’t like floating funds, old boy. I put my money in the bank, and I play dog till somebody makes me play wolf.”

A skein of birds slipped in a long line above the trees, and the robber paused to watch them disappear down the wind.

“All right,” he said. “Only, if ever you’re trimmed, remember what you missed. Also, I don’t hold no malice, particular. But Long Tom is different. Well, you think it over.”

But if Pleasant thought the matter over, he said no word concerning it, and five weeks later, when the pink was just beginning to mix with the gray of the dawnlight, he rode with his prisoner into Fisher Falls and tapped at the door of the jail.

The jailer opened the heavy, creaking door with an oath and a yawn.

“What damn foolishness is up now?” he asked.

But presently his mind cleared.

“Come right in, Jim,” said he. “This here bank is always open, and we’ll honor your check.”