Читать книгу Twenty Notches - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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He found a stick to help him up the grade, and this he used, leaning on it almost like an old man. He sauntered as though he knew no other gait.

There was a twisting road, first laid out by meandering cattle, then widened by the wheels of buckboards. It crossed little runlets where the winter rains had washed the surface soil away and exposed the rocks, battered and broken by wheels. It swerved to avoid the smallest hummocks, as cattle will when their stomachs are full. Therefore, this way was exactly to the taste of the Sleeper. He strolled along it with his stick twirling. He paused now and then to look at the rails already well beneath him. They flowed straight across country, like two rivulets of white fire, wavering, and trembling in the heat waves. For the sun was high and fierce.

Its naked face did not seem to trouble the Sleeper. He wore no hat, but this did not bother him. And when he found a great swarming mass of ants building a new nest, he paused for a long time to watch them, noting the busy workers, the big-headed soldiers posted on the outskirts, a squadron of them adventuring upon his shoe. What if they were trodden underfoot, or carried off on his clothes to an irreclaimable distance? It made little difference. The elastic economy of that ideal state would care for such losses quickly. Men, too, might be regarded as a swarm of insects, scurrying here and there, dreaming that they accomplished their own ends but, after all, advancing nothing except the interests of society.

The Sleeper mused upon this thought for some time, and then went on up the slope. As for him, he was not inside the frame of society, but moved upon its verge. He was an observer rather than a participant.

He came to the house of Trot Enderby. It was small, solidly made, and freshly painted. There was an alfalfa patch in front of it, watered from the windmill, now looking pale and naked after a recent cutting. There were a fig tree and a mulberry side by side, and the aspens out in front growing in a depression where, no doubt, their roots could tap underground moisture. Opening on the corral he saw two sheds, neat and solid like the house itself. There was a good strong fence, and inside the fence appeared a pair of half-breed mastiffs which silently followed him as he strolled past.

It was about the hour of lunch. He could smell food, and by the diminishing quantity of smoke that rose from the chimney, he guessed that the fire was dying, the cookery ended. That was the right time to tap at back doors. The dogs, however, discouraged entrance.

He was in no hurry. He never was. He was no more impatient than a growing tree or slowly flowing water, unconscious of a goal. For, as a rule, there was no goal for the Sleeper except to eat once a day. If need be, he could devour enough on such an occasion to last him for forty-eight hours. His stomach was as elastic and as powerful as the stomach of a wolf.

So now he leaned on the fence and looked down at the dogs, while they looked back at him wistfully. By those animals he knew that Enderby was intelligent, or he could not have picked such a pair; he was cruel, otherwise he would not have selected such watchers; he was suspicious, for the same reason; he was parsimonious, for their ribs stuck out cruelly from their sides.

“Hullo, bum,” said a voice from the house.

Behind the screen door, visible as if through clouded water, he saw a man standing. He was short, wide-shouldered, long-armed. Beyond doubt, this was Enderby.

“Hullo,” said the Sleeper.

“Whacha want?”

“A woodpile,” answered the Sleeper.

Enderby tossed the door open and stepped onto the porch.

“Hungry, are you?” he asked.

He looked more formidable than ever, on a nearer view. His weight was all in the massive shoulders and arms; his waist tapered off waspishly, and his legs were childishly small, and bowed out to fit a saddle the better.

“I’m hungry,” agreed the Sleeper.

“Then come on in,” said Enderby.

“Call off your dogs.”

There was a whistle. The dogs went hastily toward their master, and the tramp entered. He went slowly up the path, looking from side to side. The front gate slammed behind him. He felt that he had entered a trap.

Then Trot Enderby stood above him on the porch, looking into his soul with a cold blue eye. The face of Enderby had a broken, battered look, like one who has felt many fists and much weather. His red hair, sun-faded, stood up high on his head, and his eyebrows arched, giving him a constant look of surprise and anger.

“All right,” said the tramp. “Let’s see the chow and then the woodpile.”

“You’ll see the woodpile and then the chow,” said Trot Enderby.

He led the way to the back of the house and showed a new and formidable pile of wood, with the shed for its storage to the rear. Inside of this circle appeared the sawbuck, with a reddish pile of sawdust at either end of it. A pair of big-headed axes leaned against the buck.

“There you are,” said Trot Enderby. “Step right up and make yourself at home.”

By the gleam in his eye, the Sleeper knew that there was a catch. But he hesitated no longer, having committed himself as far as this. Also, he guessed that Enderby would manage to do as he pleased, now that the stranger was in his hands. Yet the Sleeper was very loath. He suspected the bright paint on the house. Even the woodshed was newly doused with green paint, and Enderby himself had a scrubbed look. In the experience of the Sleeper, cleanly people were apt to be hard of heart and of fist.

Yet he entered the circle of the wood.

“Watch him, boys!” snapped Enderby, with a note of triumph.

Instantly, one of the big dogs appeared to the right and the other to the left in the gaps in the hedge of loose wood.

“What’s that for?” asked the tramp.

“They’ll watch you, that’s all,” said the other. “They’ll keep a good close eye on you, son. If you move out of this here, if you so much as try to get into the woodshed, yonder, they’ll go for your leg and your throat. You may brain one of ’em with your ax, but the other’ll tear your throat out. I’ve gotta ride out. Mind you, keep on workin’ steady. You don’t eat if you set down to think!”

He went off down the little board walk which led from the house to the nearest corral gate. He was whistling as he went.

“Hey, listen!” shouted the Sleeper. “I don’t want your handout. I’ll get along without your food, Enderby. I’m quitting now, d’you hear?”

The corral gate slammed. Then Enderby turned.

“You saw your way right through any side of that pile. Mind you, don’t throw the wood around. Saw your way through. Sixteen-inch lengths is what I want. You’ll see some the right size, there by the sawbuck.”

He went on toward the barn.

“Listen!” screamed the Sleeper. “The dogs’ll tear me up, Enderby! They’ll murder me! I don’t want your food—I’m through with the job now!”

Suddenly he stopped shouting and sat down on the sawbuck, for he realized that Enderby would never turn back to him. He was trapped!

He made one pace toward the left-hand gap—instantly one of the dogs flung into his path. The eyes of the brute were red with expectancy. The Sleeper shrank back in horror. Those dogs not only would pull him down, but they’d eat him afterward. They were kept with hunger sharp as the edge of a knife.

Then he told himself that being fairly caught, he would have to submit. He picked out a log, dragged it to the sawbuck, lifted onto the buck its three hundred pounds of weight with an amazing ease, and commenced with the saw. Before he took a stroke, he brought from his pocket a pair of old gloves, which he put on, and then commenced working at the cross-cut. Silver-bright the long blade went back and forth, biting deeper. The end chunk dropped with a thud.

He went on. He spent an hour working that log into sixteen-inch lengths, and then he looked toward the side of the pile from which he had taken it. The heap did not seem to be in the slightest degree diminished!

Nothing was easier for the Sleeper than to give up. He promptly lay down on the ground. The sun was turning the inside of that little amphitheater into a place of fire, but the Sleeper merely laid a big hollow piece of bark over his head and instantly was slumbering.

The slamming of the corral gate wakened him. He sat up to find that it was evening, the sky black with low-hung clouds, and a chilly wind coming out of the northeast.

“Hullo, bum!” said Trot Enderby. “You didn’t work, eh?”

“I worked an hour,” said the tramp. “I couldn’t get through that wall of wood. Not in a week.”

“That’s too bad,” said Enderby. “You’ll be dead of starvation long before that.”

The Sleeper made a pause, to consider. “You mean that you’ll keep me here?” said he.

“I’ll keep you there, and be danged to you,” said Trot Enderby. “Of course I’ll keep you there! If every lazy bum in the world was starved, a sight better for the honest men! Get to work, get to work, and stop your whining!”

There was no argument, no appeal from the Sleeper. He recognized the iron hand of Fate, for he had felt the weight of it before this day.

“All right,” he said. “Just give me a drink of water. I’m dry to the bone.”

“You and water be danged,” said Trot Enderby. “You cut your way out of that pile, or I’ll hold you there a month—and no water, either! And not a stick of wood moved out of place.”

He went stamping on into the house. The two watchdogs wagged their tails and lay down again to keep guard over the prisoner.

As for the Sleeper, a sharp pain burned upward like electric shocks through his brain. He told himself that he would kill Trot Enderby for this.

Then the overwhelming knowledge rolled over him and submerged him in a choking wave—Trot Enderby meant what he said. Trot Enderby had killed twenty men with bullets. What would it mean to him to kill another with—a woodpile.

Even in his moment of trouble, the Sleeper could not help smiling at this. He picked from the pile another log, and laid it on the sawbuck, and began to work.