Читать книгу Pleasant Jim - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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The following morning, he sent in Pedro with the thousand dollars to the bank. He knew that Pedro loved money and that a thousand dollars would be to him as a million to another, but he also knew that Pedro feared his master more utterly than he feared death. He merely scribbled a note to send along, a note to the great banker saying that he wished to have this coin deposited not in his drawing account but against the mortgage. In the meantime, he had other work at hand on the ranch, requiring his presence, and having been away from active labor for such a long time, he was hungry to fill his hands. It is one thing to labor for hire; it is another to be occupied with one’s own possessions, renewing this, creating another, whether it be a broken fence or a new manger. So, from a cloud of dust of his own raising within the barn, he looked up from no jerry-built manger which he was completing and saw that he had guests—two at the rear door of the barn, and another couple striding down towards him.

Suddenly Pleasant leaped out of the manger and sat on the edge of it, alert. One of those visitors was Sam Lee, Federal Marshal for the district!

“Well, Sam,” said he, “what are you trailing through my diggings?”

Sam Lee was a little man, rather withered, ever smiling; one never caught him with a serious expression, so that to some people his smile seemed a grimace.

He came at his meanings, wherever possible, by dint of many circumlocutions and he was so almost femininely gentle that strangers were apt to despise him. Pleasant never could make a mistake like that but once—it was after his old bunkie, Dill Peters, was arrested for running guns into Mexico—he had stood in the street of Fisher Falls and damned Federal Marshal Sam Lee and all his kin for ages back and dared the marshal to step out into the street and begged him to come with rifle, shotgun, or revolver, he cared not which. Sam Lee had not stepped forth; he never sought quarrels; he merely accepted them in the line of his work, and when some fool asked him why he did not face Pleasant: “Because I’m afraid, of course,” said the marshal with his smile.

That speech and that answer had been repeated to Pleasant, and he was well aware that the marshal did not love him; which was now his reason for bringing himself on guard with such abruptness out of the manger.

“I’m a mortal weary man, Jim,” said the marshal, pausing to pass a red and white bandanna across his forehead. “I’m dragged back and forth across the country the way you wouldn’t work a dog, and I’m going to quit, I am. I ain’t gunna stand it no longer.”

“Sit down and rest your feet,” suggested Pleasant, not a whit off guard. “You boys sit down, too.”

The two from the rear door had sauntered inwards and now were joining the marshal. They were exactly the type that Sam Lee loved to use, low-bred, black-browed fellows, rejoicing in the terror they inspired, and hating those who feared them not.

Sam Lee accepted the invitation with a grateful wave of the hand; but the other three did not stir. Their gloomy eyes remained fixed upon the rancher with the never filled hunger of kestrels. Fear began to grow stronger in Pleasant Jim but he maintained his insouciant air. Besides, even if there were four of them, he wore two guns; he could use them both; and every man of these knew his skill.

“And what you been doing, Sam?” he asked, as Lee settled himself on the barley bin.

The marshal sighed and shook his head, which thrust forward on his skinny neck as his back slumped into a curve of weak relaxation. He looked more like a bird than like a man; or if a man, more a beggar than an important and well-paid official. For he was famously ill-garbed and careless of his clothes. It was said that one suit had lasted the hard-riding little man a full ten years and the garments he wore now looked the part for the kirkah or no dervish ever was more full of patches.

“I been chasing, and chasing,” said the marshal, “and I got nothing to show for it. Riding my head off after ghosts, you might say. I kind of think I’m getting old!”

“Chasing what?”

“At Black Mountain,” said the sheriff—was it possible that he brought out the words rather more quickly and sharply?—“I was trying to run down a job!”

Pleasant Jim rolled a cigarette, but his eyes never left the face of the marshal. He nodded with interest.

“That’s rough country,” said he. “What sort of a job?”

“The worst kind,” said the officer gravely. “Someone hooked up with that snaky devil, Tom Rizdal, that smart, gun-running hound! I went for a man, but all that I got was this!”

And he took from his pocket a small, metal matchbox and showed it; opened it, and shook the matches out into his hand. Then his bird-like eyes flashed up at the face of Pleasant Jim.

He could see the latter only through a cloud of smoke, that moment puffed forth.

“Maybe you can find the gent that owned it,” said Pleasant. “That ought to be a clew to a smart fellow like you, Sam.”

“The gent that owned it? Oh, Rizdal owned it, of course. And what good are clews so far as he goes?” went on Sam Lee with much bitterness. “He’s a ghost; fades out into solid stone, you might say; got his friends salted away in every corner of the hills; fellows that would sell their skins for him; Chuck, here, was one of them, till I showed him the light.”

He hooked a thumb at one of the three black-browed men, and the rascal grinned sourly.

“Well,” said Jim, “I don’t suppose that matches tell much of a yarn, at that.”

“Don’t you?” murmured the marshal. “No, you wouldn’t—a good, square, honest, law-abidin’ fellow like you wouldn’t tink much of ’em, Pleasant, but me, I been forced to be suspicious of everything, y’understand? So I put these matches under a glass and what you think I seen?”

Jim was frozen with interest.

“Little pricks all running down the sides of ’em. Telegraphic letters, you see; and arranged in code; maybe ten words on one of those little matches. Well, well, the tricks that the crooks are up to!”

He shook his head in sad wonder; and Pleasant Jim swallowed hard.

“We pelted after him that left this matchbox on the top of Black Mountain,” continued the sheriff, “but he skinned right away from us. He had two horses, and none of us had more’n one. Right through the hands of about twelve men he slipped, and then walked away and thumbed his nose at six of us that tried to bag him down in the valley. It was a good trick, eh? Enough to make the reputation of any—crook. And the way those horses of his ran was a caution. I never hope to see their like again—unless it was right here on your fine hoss-ranch, Pleasant!”

The blow came quickly and sharply home, but Pleasant Jim stirred not a muscle of his face. In the little pause that followed he felt their four pairs of eyes upon him, and the wind blew sweetly in to them the fragrance of the jessamine that grew at the corner of the corral fence.

“Yes, I’d like to match any pair that runs in these parts,” observed Pleasant Jim. “You had a hard ride, Sam?”

“When I seen him going like a bird, I just pulled up and knew that the game had gone bust. Back I comes to Fisher Falls with nothin’ but a matchbox to show for the work of nigh twenty men for two days; and no sooner back in Fisher Falls than I get more work to do. A different kind. I go past Mr. Tucker, the cashier of the bank; he’s setting under the marquee on his front porch during the noon hour. And he says: ‘What you think of this?’ and he handed me a little envelope. This here one.”

Sam Lee took the envelope, accordingly, from his pocket, and from it he took a little sheaf of greenbacks—even at the distance Pleasant could see the corner figures—one hundred dollars. His throat became exceedingly dry; he could not help measuring the distance to the door, and now he noticed that the three deputies had arranged themselves with care so that they blocked his way to either exit.

“This here money,” said Sam Lee, “looks good, it feels good, and it’s printed with a lot of care, but the trouble is that it’s queer, y’understand? And I come out here to ask you where you got it, Pleasant.”

There was not even a rising inflection of the voice as he asked that question, but the shock to the other was just as great.

“Is that my money?” he asked hoarsely. “Lemme see!”

“It’s your money,” said the marshal softly. “There ain’t any doubt about that, because as soon as the cashier seen it, he labeled it quick and put it right back into the sealed envelope that you’d sent it in. There couldn’t be any doubt about that. And so the main thing is just to find out where you got this coin? What horses have you been selling lately, Pleasant?”

Pleasant Jim raked his invention. Absurd fancies leaped into his mind. He would say that it was paid to him for an old debt; he would say that he had received it through the mail; he would say—well, he would say anything rather than that he had taken this money for work performed at the bidding of famous Tom Rizdal. The marshal, having finished his own jeremiad, waited.

He said quietly: “Think it over; let’s have the real facts, Pleasant.”

“Matter of fact,” said Pleasant Jim, “that money came to me through the mail.”

“When?”

“There was a batch waiting for me when I got back from the Charlie Rizdal trail.”

“A fine, proud job you done on that trail,” said the marshal. “Well, it come while you was away? Maybe you saved the letter that it come in?”

“No.”

“An old debt, I guess?” said the sympathetic marshal.

“Yes.”

“Lucky devil!” sighed Sam Lee. “I would wish to be picking a thousand out of the mail, some day. But I got to wait and work for my coin!”

The voice of the marshal was almost lachrymose. “What was the money owed you for?”

“Oh, a couple of horses that I sold a while back.”

“Two?”

“Yes.”

“They must of been bang up fine ones for that price! Eh? Which ones was they? I’ve knowed most of your stock since you set up. Ah, it was that pair of bays that you sold two years back to ...”

“No,” said Pleasant Jim.

“No? Lemme think! Five hundred apiece! Who did you make the sale to, Pleasant?”

“A gent that was passing through; stranger.”

“Hello! You give a stranger a couple of fine horses on trust? You’re a believin’ man when it comes to human nature, Jim. I got to say that!”

So spoke the marshal, gently, but the three assistants grinned widely, their evil thoughts printed plainly upon their faces.

“No, I didn’t trust him. He gave me a deposit, y’understand?”

He felt that he was being cornered, but still he was bound to fight well and valiantly.

“Ah, he’d paid some money beforehand. And now a thousand more—and for two horses!”

Pleasant suddenly began to sweat. He felt that the perspiration betrayed him, but he could not prevent it from rolling down his forehead without wiping his brow with his handkerchief.

“Ay, it’s a hot place—this here barn!” said the marshal.

“It wasn’t money that he left me. He left me a ring. You see? That was my security. I was to keep it a year, and if he didn’t send the money by that time—”

“Was it a year ago that he passed through?”

“Yes. About.”

“Along about this time of the year?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said it was two years ago this happened? Sort of seemed to me that you said two, but no matter. It takes a good ring to be worth a thousand, don’t it?”

“Sure. This here was a ruby and a grand big one.”

“I’d like to have a look at it,” said the marshal.

“Can’t show it to you.”

“You can’t. But why not?”

“I sent it away, you see.”

“Ah?”

“Yes, sent it away after I got the money.”

The marshal nodded in perfect agreement. “Wouldn’t want to have a valuable thing like that lying around loose, of course. What sort of a looking fellow was this one?”

“Dark-haired fellow. Very black looking. I suspect Mexican blood. Looked a good deal like Chuck, there.”

He could not help sharing his own misery with another, and under this thrust Chuck started and cursed.

“I’ll have you know—” he began.

“Pipe down! Pipe down!” said Pleasant Jim smoothly. “I hate loud talk, young man!”

“You, Chuck, shut your face,” said the marshal peremptorily. “You’ll be getting yourself accused of suicide, one of these days, if you start in picking fights with men like Pleasant. Doggone me, Jim, if it ain’t a shame the way that these kids will shoot off their faces! Now, let’s hear some more about the crook that beat you, if you don’t mind. Because beat you he has, and trimmed you right out of a thousand dollars. Kind of makes a fellow squirm just to think of it. But you got an iron nerve, old man, and you take your beatings without whining. You remember his name?”

It was jeopardous work; but Pleasant felt that the trail was turning away from him and towards his man of fiction. He went on agreeably enough, his heart warming with his imagination: “Bentley was his name. J. H. Bentley, I think. And his address was some place in Brooklyn; 917 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn. No, maybe that street address is wrong. I got no head for figures. Maybe I got his address in my notebook, though.”

“Most likely you have,” agreed the marshal. “I’ll tell you what, Pleasant, with your help we’re going to run down this dirty pusher of the queer! And I hate a counterfeiter worse than I hate any snake! Let’s get down again to what he looked like. Middle-aged, you said?”

“Yes.”

“And gray hair.”

“Yes,” answered Pleasant.

There was a loud, snarling laugh from Chuck, and Pleasant looked across at the deputy with an eye as cold as iron.

“He looked like me, a minute ago,” said Chuck, “and now he’s middle-aged and got gray hair.”

“By jiminy,” murmured Sam Lee, “that’s right.”

He slipped from the barley box.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that to the judge, Pleasant. Mind you, now, you’ll probably come out of this, all right; but I’ll have to take you in and let you see the judge. And in the meantime, I got to ask you for your guns. It’s my duty!”

Had Sam Lee turned into a bristling loup-garou at that moment, he could not have seemed a more disgusting or astonishing spectacle to Pleasant.

“Don’t draw, boys!” snapped Lee. “Pleasant ain’t going to be a fool; he knows that four agin one is too much odds. Besides, he ain’t any crook. I know that you just been bamboozled in this counterfeit deal, old son. Just lemme have those guns, will you?”