Читать книгу Twenty Notches - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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On a day, three tramps sat in an empty freight car. It was a big box car so loose with age that the wheels staggered even on the most level tracks, and the whole superstructure swayed and sagged in going around a bend. It seemed to be shuffled and shaken by the wind, and it maintained a steady uproar, like a waterfall. One sidedoor was open, because it would be a long time before they entered a town or passed a station.

Of the three tramps, one was old, one was middle-aged, and one was young.

The old man was on the road because he was searching, he hardly knew for what; but in truth he was looking for death, because he was very tired of life. Yet he would have been the first to deny such a charge, and he sat up cross-legged in spite of his years, with a straight back, and looked out at the mountain-desert, keeping a little smile on his lips, as one who pretends to be content. The only thing that contented him, however, was the horizon line, perfectly sharp and yet entirely vague, always coming straight down to the earth and yet never meeting it, and bounding the moment with a pale-blue wall which receded, disappeared, and to one who stared fixedly, it became a window to infinity.

This old man was placid in his looks and in his demeanor. He had good features, and once he had been a good man. He was built big and solid, so that one could not suspect in him sufficient agility to swing him onto fast-moving trains, or drop him off again. His back was so straight and his face so open that all he needed in order to make him look respectable in both clothes and skin was some yellow laundry soap and a spare bucket of water.

He was the one who spoke the words which began everything. Two brown hillsides dipped into a shallow gully, and in the middle of the gully stood a distant house with a group of aspens in front of it—like shadowy fingers against the sky—and the tall skeleton of a windmill and high tank at the rear.

“You see that, hey?” said he.

“Yeah,” said the middle-aged tramp, chewing his straw. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Well,” said the old man, “that’s Trot Enderby’s house.”

“Yeah? What about it?” said the middle-aged man.

They were plugging up a heavy grade. The labor of the engine sent tremors down the train of cars, and the wheels groaned, running slower and slower.

“Well, that’s what about it,” said the old man. “That’s Trot Enderby’s house. That’s what about it.”

He grew mildly excited. Cynics should not show their cynicism to such gentle-spoken old men.

“Yeah?” said the man of no belief. “He’s somebody, is he? Maybe he’s the first man that ever built a windmill.”

He continued to chew on the straw, smiling in half-secret scorn to himself. It was plain from his demeanor that he despised the straw, that he would just as soon have the straw bitten to pieces in a moment—or it would have made little difference to him if the world of our sorrows had been between his teeth. He would have kept on shifting it carelessly from side to side, like the straw, and smiling secretly, and bitterly, and contemptuously askance at any one who suggested, or hinted at, or dreamed of the slightest virtue, beauty, talent, or goodness in any portion of this universe.

His last challenge irritated the old man suddenly.

“Well, you wanta know, eh?” said he. “You wanta know something about him, do you? You never heard of Trot Enderby’s twenty dead men, I guess? You wouldn’t be interested to know, though. You wouldn’t care about a fellow that could kill twenty men. No, no, no, what would that mean to you—and your straw?”

The middle-aged man stopped chewing the straw and for an instant he narrowed all his attention upon the mere face of the speaker, not in too much disgust, but rather in contemptuous mirth. Then, in place of answering, he resumed his chewing of the straw, letting his head nod from time to time in agreement with himself.

“Why, you loon, Trot Enderby’s got a gun that can’t miss!” cried the old man.

At this the youngest tramp said:

“Well, I wish I had it. I’d like to tap that Denver ‘bull’ on the brain—that McGuire, I mean. I’d like to come up and ask him what he’s thinking about, and then before he answered, just as he reached for his gun, I’d let him have it!”

He alone, of the three, had been lying on his side, with his head upon his arm. One could see at a glance that he was the worst of the three. The others were at least capable of crime, but this fellow was capable of nothing. He was one of those sleek, olive-skinned, brown-eyed, black-haired, lazy, idle fellows who are always waiting for the world to turn fast enough to raise a breeze. In cities they are seen on every street corner, smiling at one another. Sometimes they wear silk shirts with yellow, green, and red stripes. That means their mother is providing for them, a widow, pinching and scraping, but always worshiping the handsome darling. One of these fellows is always standing at the door of a pool room. The little boys go by and admire the way he manages his cigarette, blowing out the smoke luxuriously. They admire the flash of the ring on his finger, and they are able, instantly, to see that the pool room is a place where real men should want to be.

This tramp had on the relics of one of those silk shirts. For it was brown, and black, and green, and gray, with grease, dust, and dirt of a thousand kinds. He had been lying on his side and sleeping soundly in spite of the jouncing and rattling of the loose floor boards. Wave after wave of dust and straw powder—the last load had been of baled hay—walked from the farther corner up to him and stepped into his rather greasy black hair, and was drawn into his nose and blown out again by his breathing. Sometimes he smiled and muttered in his sleep, and when his lips parted, some of the straws stuck to them.

The two older tramps had looked on a good deal, but they could not put their eyes on this hopeless, worthless, languid, useless reprobate. The people of this breed are always handsome, but this one was actually beautiful. He was made and finished with the same exact care which a sculptor bestows on an ideal statue—of a god, say. His hands were like the hands of a woman, a beauty, though they were big enough for strength. He was made for strength, too, as all good statues are—that is to say, his neck was big, and chiseled perfectly, round, and smooth, and columnar, and one could guess that he possessed what the book of canons declares must be—neck, upper arm, and calf of leg all of one measure.

Yet size does not make strength, and there was not a little ugly-faced, clean-eyed, red-headed Irishman of half his size who would have hesitated to jump into him as a wild cat jumps into a dog. One would have expected him to simply fall down and lie limp and smiling under such an attack. The whalebone of courage which stiffens a true man seemed utterly lacking in this youth. Or was it not as much a matter of missing courage as it was enormous, incredible, oceanic indifference?

It was for this reason that both the older men were startled when the youngest tramp rolled upon his back and spoke.

Yet he did not so much as sit up. Some dust, dislodged from the rattling ceiling of the car, fell down upon his face, and he merely winked it away from his eyes. His arms lay loosely joggling on the shaken floor board.

“He’d let him have it,” said the middle-aged tramp. “You hear that, do you? The Sleeper would let him have it?”

He smiled at the older man, his eyes remaining wide with scorn, while his smile touched his lips only. Now he had not mere thoughts but a whole human being to despise, and scorn, and mock, and it was better than a meal to him. His gray eyes darkened; his red-painted nose wrinkled.

“You hear the Sleeper talking? He’d go killing, if he had a gun that couldn’t miss.”

The Sleeper sat up and leaned his shoulder flabbily against the edge of the door. With the jolting, his head wabbled on his strong neck.

“Where’s the house?” he asked.

“Yonder,” said Doc.

“You better go get that gun,” said the middle-aged tramp. “You might need it one of these days unless you wanta be kicked around all your days. You’re a sneak thief, so why don’t you go and sneak it?”

The Sleeper yawned.

“Why, maybe I will,” said he. “I can steal anything. Why not steal that?”

Doc laughed.

“Steal from Trot Enderby? That’s a good one! Steal from Trot Enderby! Go steal out the back teeth of a lion, but don’t bother around Trot.”

“He’s a bad one, is he?”

“You ever hear of a man that’s killed twenty men and yet he ain’t a bad one?”

The middle-aged tramp put in:

“Killed twenty, eh? Twenty what? Twenty rats! Newspapers is where he probably did his killings. A chink and a greaser. That’s two. Put a cipher behind a two and you’ve got twenty. Yeah. I know about the way they work up those things. There ain’t any news except bad news. Killed twenty, did he?”

He had grown savage, but he seemed to regret this outburst of emotion, and with an effort he regained his sneering smile, and again nodded in agreement with himself.

“He’s got a gun that can’t miss, has he?” asked the Sleeper.

“That’s what I said, and that’s what I mean. I tell you what I saw—I saw Enderby shoot a sparrow on the wing!”

“Luck!” said the middle-aged man.

The boy, however, yawned.

“Well, there may be something to it,” he remarked. “It makes rather a long walk, though!”

He measured the distance regretfully, shaking his head a little. He was so greasy, so caked with dust and grime, so marked and scored with it, as with the strokes of a whip, and so inert in his bearing that nothing was more surprising than to hear his easy and clear-clipped speech. Plainly, an education had been thrown away on him.

“Well,” he said at last, “it’s almost as easy to be walking there as rattling here.”

He looked down, then swung himself lightly out from the edge of the doorway and dropped to the ground, running a few easy steps forward to break the shock. The train snorted and groaned its way over the rise, and carried off with it the curious faces of the two older tramps, as they craned their necks and stared back at the boy.

He had turned his face toward the house in the gully.