Читать книгу Twenty Notches - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9

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A hand of ice gripped his heart.

“Have you seen me, kid?” asked Trot Enderby.

The Sleeper mastered himself.

This was the man who had killed twenty men, but the tool of his trade was gone from him into other hands. The Sleeper thought of the old gun which he carried. Very distinctly, as he turned more squarely toward Enderby, he heard some one say in another corner of the room:

“There goes No. 21!”

It was the hush in the room which enabled him to hear this whisper. The weight of fear was in every one, and the Sleeper clearly saw death in the glittering eye of Trot Enderby.

“Well, there you are!” said the Sleeper.

A string of curses flowed from Trot Enderby’s lips. Then he stopped his hand when it was halfway toward the holstered gun at his hip. He was not anxious to finish off this scene of torture, as he apparently planned it to be.

“You talk to the cur!” said Enderby. “I’d take his heart out, if I started on him even with words.”

He jerked his thumb at the fat proprietor, who had appeared at the doorway with his fat, greasy smile, having gone around a back way.

“Well,” said the hotel keeper, “I’ll tell you how it is, stranger.”

“Sleeper is his name!” barked Enderby.

“The fact is, Mr. Sleeper, that Enderby says that the coat you’re standin’ up in is his!”

“Does he?” asked the Sleeper.

And then it came to him, suddenly, that he was so securely trapped and among such enemies that the thing would have to come to fighting, after all.

Well, there would be Enderby, first. And after he dropped, five more. If the remainder had enough courage to rush him, then he did not understand mob psychology.

Sudden warmth flowed through his veins. He was at ease, wonderfully and perfectly at ease. He could not keep back the smile. It came naturally to his lips, and as he glanced around the room, he allowed his look to dwell the split part of a second on each pair of eyes. The smiles disappeared. Sudden gravity swept the lobby.

“That’s what he claims,” said the proprietor. “Maybe I’d oughta say that Trot Enderby is pretty well knowed around here—upstandin’, respectable gent.”

The Sleeper recalled the money in the wallet. “How many respectable men carried such a sum in cash in their wallets?”

“By that you imply,” said the Sleeper, “that I’m the other kind?”

“Well, Mr. Sleeper, I don’t imply nothin’, but we’re askin’ if that’s Enderby’s coat.”

“Certainly,” said the Sleeper.

Every one started at this admission.

“And the trousers?”

“And the trousers,” said he.

“And a wallet with fifteen hundred bucks inside of it?”

The Sleeper took out the wallet.

“Is this it?”

“You dang well know it is,” declared Enderby, bursting out again.

The Sleeper put the wallet back into his pocket, though at this, he saw Enderby lurch forward a little.

“Well,” said the Sleeper, “let’s hear what Mr. Enderby has to say?”

“That you’re a hoss thief, and need hangin’!” roared Enderby. “You—”

He paused.

“Shouting won’t win,” said the Sleeper. “A man’s innocent till he’s proved guilty. What’s your story, Enderby?”

“What’s yours, you rat? What hole can you sneak out at?”

The Sleeper saw a way to better his position.

He pulled a chair against the wall and sat down.

“I’ll tell you in time,” he said. “Let’s have the whole accusation first.”

“Cool, too!” said Enderby. “The dog knows that he’s cornered, and he’s got a little sand in him. Well, boys, I’ll tell you the straight of it. This young rat, he comes along and asks me for a handout—sneaking bum, all in rags. I tell him to come on in, and when he comes I put him in the woodpile and set the dogs to watching him. Hate a bum worse’n poison. Can’t stand ’em!”

He made a little gesture which was oddly like a man throwing down a hand of cards.

“I put him in the woodpile,” went on the narrator, “and there I kept him all day, all night, all the next day, with enough chuck and water to keep him going. He was ten pounds fatter, when he came to see me! I burned some of the laziness out of him! But last night he killed one of my dogs, scared the other one off, and sneaked into my house. Swiped my clothes when I was asleep, got my wallet, saddled my best hoss, and rode off. A professional hoss thief is what I call him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t’ve knowed enough to pick her out from the lot. Now, there’s a straight story. Raise that if you can, you bum, and afterward I’ll try that coat on and show that it fits me like a glove!”

It was a pretty succinct tale. But though heads were nodded, the Sleeper merely smiled.

“I’ll put down that with a better hand,” he said. “I was coming up from the railroad when I met this fellow. We began to talk. We hadn’t been talking long, when he began yarns about cards, and in five minutes he was playing poker with me for my last twenty dollars.”

He paused and looked complacently around the room.

“Well, you ain’t telling us that you beat Trot Enderby at poker, are you?” asked the fat proprietor.

“He’s a good crooked hand,” said the Sleeper, “but I was a little crookeder. He ran up the pack with one crimp. I ran it up with two. That was the difference.”

He leaned back in his chair and laughed a little. It was amazing to see how well a lie rang, when the teller was prepared to back mere words with action. People were grinning, and even chuckling covertly. Enderby was blank. Then his face empurpled with rage.

“The yellow dog! The yellow, lyin’ dog!” was all he could gasp.

“He didn’t get my twenty, boys,” said the tramp. “In fact, he lost a hundred, and then five. There’s fourteen hundred dollars and something in the wallet of this card sharp that he had to hand over to me, and for the last hand we made up another five hundred, with his horse, his saddle, and his clothes thrown in. And that’s how I happened to come to Alcalde so well heeled.”

He turned to Trot Enderby, who was fairly agape. Yet there was a white spot in either cheek, which might well have been taken as signs of guilt.

“Now, Enderby,” said the tramp, “it appears that you’re willing to welsh and call me a thief. Do you dare to stand up and tell the world that I haven’t told the truth.”

“You—” began Enderby.

And he made a motion which has enabled many a man to shoot and be afterward liberated on the plea of self-defense. The famous hip movement! The Sleeper did not respond, except with a smile, and Enderby mastered himself. He actually turned his back in his rage.

“I can’t look at his crooked face!” he said. “I’d bust. Steve, take a slant at the inside of his hands, and you’ll see where my ax handle rubbed off his hide! You’ll see the signature of my woodpile on him, dang his heart!”

The fat proprietor, who answered to this name, went forward willingly and said: “All right, young fellow, just show me your hand, will you?”

“Here,” said the Sleeper. “Can you see it well enough?”

And he thrust out his clenched fist and held it threateningly poised near the chin of the other.

The hotel keeper swayed back upon his heels so fast that he staggered. Yet he did not retreat altogether. He said, being now irritated on his own behalf:

“I tell you what, Mr. Sleeper, we gotta law around here for the handling of gents that travel with hosses that they can’t show no bill of sale for!”

“Have they?” asked the Sleeper politely.

“They have, and don’t you think that it takes long for that law to work, or costs much. Where’s your bill of sale?”

“Here!” said the Sleeper.

And he slid out the shining length of the old Colt. It came readily and familiarly into his hand, and the flash of it sent a shudder through the bystanders.

“Do you think,” said the Sleeper, “that he would have played that game down to his gun, if he hadn’t meant it? I thought that he was only a crooked gambler. But I see that he’s something else. I see that he’s a cur who tries to take men from behind.”

There came from Trot Enderby a wild cry of pain and ecstatic fury. It choked and squeaked in his throat.

“Step outside with me, you—” he began. “Step out and—”

The tramp did not even rise. But he tapped the barrel of the Colt upon his knee.

“Get out of the room yourself, Enderby,” said he. “Even if the rest don’t, you know what I have. Don’t try bluffing, for the sake of your reputation. Get out. I promise you one thing—I don’t want to butcher you, and you know, if you know anything, that you’ve no more chance against this gun in my hand than a house cat against a mountain lion. Get out of the room, Enderby, but once you’re outside, if you really want me to come, call to me inside of three seconds, and I’ll join you!”

This he spoke without raising his voice, and so genially that it had the tone of one speaking to a friend.

Enderby listened as one enchanted by unworldly things.

Then he crossed the room with a white, contorted face, and disappeared through the doorway.

One could have heard the proverbial pin drop, so mortal was the silence. And very audible was the slight creaking of the belts against the labored, deep breathing of those men.

They counted three, though not aloud. Then came a rapid battering of hoofs against the road, and no one needed to ask who was riding off up the trail at such frantic speed. It was Enderby, trying to escape from his public shame.