Читать книгу Pleasant Jim - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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A driving tramontana came down from the white-headed upper range that morning, and Pleasant was glad to step out of the wind and inside the snug doors of the bank. The clerks looked up and smiled at him—they knew why he was there—and Lewis Fisher, the president, came in with the broadest of smiles, also.

“Three years ago, Jim,” said he, in his private office, “there was fifteen thousand against you. Now there’s barely twenty-five hundred. That’s progress, my boy. Only twenty-five hundred between you and freedom!”

Mr. Fisher was not yet sixty, but he was the father of the town, had given it being and name, and he looked upon the place and all the people in it partly with a child’s delight in a toy and partly with a sense of unreality, as though they were rather his dream than a fact. He was a public-spirited man. He had built Fisher’s Theater; he had established Fisher’s Evening Democrat; and he had allowed the town fathers to buy a central tract which was to be turned into a park, one day, though so far nothing had been done to ornament the sandy waste beyond the erection of a lofty stone statue which showed Lewis Fisher mounted upon a fiery steed of rather odd proportions. This was the man who smiled on young Jim Pleasant, who answered: “I’m free enough, Mr. Fisher.”

“Never so long as you owe money,” said the banker. “That’s the penalty of speculation. Money makes strength; also, it makes slavery. Credit is the blood in the veins of the commercial giant; it forms the shackles, also. So clear yourself of debt, my boy. I have an interest in your progress. I want to see you get on. That’s why I give you this advice.”

He patted and smoothed the top of his desk as he spoke. He could not touch that radiant, red-shot mahogany without feeling his strength renewed and his faith in himself reinforced. As he spoke, he did not look young Pleasant in the eye but regarded his own hand traveling softly across the polished wood, and the reflection traveling beside it, lit with a green spark from his emerald ring. Pleasant had nothing to say. He merely folded and tucked into his wallet the release which sliced away so large a part of his mortgage and then stood up.

“I’ll be going along,” said he.

“So soon? So soon?” asked the amiable Mr. Fisher. “Not even wait for a little celebration? Not sit in the sun for even a moment—not even wait for an Evening Democrat reporter to get the true story of the capture?”

Pleasant tossed his head, and quivered like an unbacked colt at sight of a halter. “Newspapers make nothin’ but trouble,” said he; “and I got to get back to the place.”

The president of the bank stood up and shook hands.

“It’s a fine thing to have done what you’ve done,” said he, “for a few men like you make an entire community rest at ease!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the face of the great blue-black safe which filled in the corner of his office. Men said that a great fortune was locked behind its doors continually, in cash and in securities.

“Only,” continued Lewis Fisher, a benevolent smile on his rosy, fatherly face, “don’t forget that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!”

A group of admiring townsfolk had gathered around Pleasant Jim’s horse—the one, of course, which he had taken from Rizdal on the trail—but he stepped through the midst of their questions and congratulations and swung into the saddle. An active young man caught the bridle and held the tall horse.

“I’m from the Evening Democrat,” said he, “and I got a couple of questions to ask you, Mr. Pleasant. First, what—”

Never did the Pope of Geneva look more grimly upon a critic than Mr. Pleasant looked upon the reporter.

“Just slack off on that bridle, friend,” said he. “I’m busy.”

And, deftly, he twitched the horse through the group and sent him pelting down the street. By the time the last house of the village jerked away behind him, he had forgotten Fisher Falls and the considerable glory of his last adventure; that was put resolutely to the rear of his mind. There remained in front of him only twenty-five hundred dollars in debt; that paid, his ranch and all that was upon it would be his. In a word, he stood only around the corner from assured success!

Eight miles separated him from his farm, and he made the good gelding turn off that distance at a dizzy speed until he topped the last hill on the verge of his domain. There he drew rein and went on softly, his eyes busy. It was no great tract but all of it was good. Let others have their sweeping acres of desert, pricked with a scattering of bunch grass here and there, burned crisp by summer heat and whipped and beaten by the white winter storms; he preferred this sheltered little valley—it was small, to be sure, but all his from the roots of the stream that ran through it to the widening mouth of the hollow. The self-satisfied skipjacks of the town might sit in their offices and draw down a weekly pay envelope, but he preferred the longer work and the greater gamble with its larger reward. No water famine could destroy his stock and where could better pasturage be found than the short, thick grass which grew here? He did not waste his energies on the maintenance of a clumsy herd of cows, neither did he run a ragged band of mustangs, or keep goats or sheep or swine; instead, his fortune was invested in a glorious bit of saddle stock, tough and hardy with the broncho strain but made taller and swifter by constant crossing upon hot blood. A “flush” cowpuncher knew where to come when he wanted between his knees something that could throw dust in the eyes of nearly every other horse on the range. He journeyed to the valley of Pleasant Jim and picked a mount there. The prices were high, but the quality was unquestionable and a guaranty went with every sale. There were a few instances when the most delightful picture horses had turned out “high-headed fools,” or proved lacking in bottom; Pleasant took back these failures and gave sound stock in exchange, and though this policy cost him somewhat at the moment, it enabled him to push up his prices still farther, for when this solid policy transpired and was talked about, horse-lovers came from still greater distances with wallets stuffed more thickly.

So Pleasant Jim reviewed his past and his present as he jogged his horse up the valley. It might be christened “Pleasant Valley” one of these days. A prickling sense of joy ran up his spine at the thought, for it was, in fact, Pleasant Valley to him.

When he came through the southern gate, a gray two-year-old came dancing to inspect him, then in alarm shot away like a bolt, glancing over the good green turf and disappearing into the shadows of a coppice. There would be a mount for some one—bone and substance enough to please one of those Montana fellows who want a mountain of horseflesh under them! He jogged on beside the creek, taking keen note that the fences were in good repair and all as it should be. Plainly the Mexicans had not been idle in his absence! So he passed the little river pasture where half a dozen brood mares, their foals beside them, lifted their heads and looked at him with recognition in their gentle eyes. A lump formed in the throat of Pleasant Jim, and he breathed rapidly. He had lived with enough bitter hardness to appreciate what is good in life; and looking about him, he was content. Some day he might be able to push his holdings farther up the hills on either side; he could get that land cheap, because he owned the available water beneath it. Some day he might step farther down into the broadness of Fisher’s Valley, too; but in the meantime, this was very good, and he told himself that he was content.

The house itself was tucked between two big trees on a hill near the creek; one room for the kitchen stove and the greasers, one room for himself. In a way, that little place was a fort; the log walls were safe protection, and the four small windows looked out like eyes to every quarter of the valley. So, like a landholder returning to his land, like a herdsman to his herd, like a general to his fort, Pleasant Jim came home.

There was only one stain of unhappiness. Twenty-five hundred dollars remained unpaid, and Banker Fisher had declared that a man in debt is in part a slave.

He quickened his horse, now, for he could see at the hitching rack before his cabin a fine, tall bay, with silverwork on his saddle glinting in the sun. He who owned such a horse as that would be most likely to have an open heart and an open purse to buy another of like quality.

Clattering noises came from the kitchen, and looking through the door, Pleasant saw that the stranger was helping himself to a cup of coffee and frying a few slices of bacon, now smoking in a pan.

“Howdy,” said Pleasant, throwing his reins.

“Howdy,” said the other, without turning around, for at that moment the coffee came to a boil and had to be snaked from the fire with care. He was a big fellow, wide and heavy in the shoulders, gaunt about the waist—the very type of Pleasant himself. Then he turned, and the host instinctively went for his gun, for he found himself looking into the brown face and the keen gray eyes of that undergod of smugglers, robbers, and gun-fighters, the brother of Charlie Rizdal—Long Tom in the flesh!