Читать книгу Trouble Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 11

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I didn’t have to look down at that gun which she had just taken from me, because I could feel the nose of it jabbed good and deep into my floating ribs and there was no quiver running down that gun, by which I knew that she had a steady hand.

All that I looked at was her eyes, and they was steady, too.

“Please don’t do that, Miss Ops,” says I. “Because even a sheriff’s daughter might make mistakes while she was joking.”

“Is this a joke?” says she.

“Why,” I began—

But she jumped in with: “Keep your hands away, Mr. Ripley, and raise them up level with your head. And don’t do anything jumpy, because I think that there’s either a heart or a liver or something between the muzzle of this gun and your back.”

Yes, she was as cool about it as that. She didn’t raise her voice a mite.

“This makes me look a good deal like a fool,” says I, getting dignified. “Even if it’s a joke.”

“I hope that it turns out a joke,” said she, “but I’ve got my doubts. Will you put those hands up?”

“All right,” said I. “You can have your own way!”

It was pretty bitter. I don’t suppose that I ever done anything in my life that was harder than lifting my hands up and getting them past the place where I could grab that gun. But something told me that she was not bluffing, and that she had a good, tight grip on that Colt, and I knew how terrible light and easy the trigger pulled.

Anyway, I got my hands up level with my head at last.

“I’d like to know why all of this is done to me,” I asked her.

“I don’t mind telling you,” said Julie. “Because there’s no road that runs past the Murphy place. The road just ends there!”

She added: “Besides, it doesn’t come down from the hills. You ought to fix up the geography of the next story that you tell!”

Can you imagine anything neater or easier than the way that she had caught me? What beat me was her being just a girl and working the game so smooth, because she had listened to me making my blunder without wincing a mite, and the next instant she had that gun out of the holster and slipped into my ribs. I could see that she was her mother’s daughter, and her father’s daughter, too!

“It’s a queer thing—” I began.

“It’s just that,” said she. “But now you begin to walk forward not more than an inch or two at a time, while I back up until we get to that window, where there’ll be a bit of light on your face.”

I obeyed. There was nothing else to do. It was to me just as though the sheriff himself had been on the delivering end of that gun. He couldn’t have been cooler or easier.

All the time you can lay to it that I was thinking, but thinking doesn’t seem to do any good. I didn’t see any way out. I kept hoping, first of all, that when I edged into the light and she seen my face, she wouldn’t recognize me, but then I remembered how her father had scattered pictures of me all over the mountains, as soon as he got into office, and I knew that there was no hope on that trail. She wasn’t blind any more than she was a fool.

“Thank you,” said Julie, “for not making any noise. But it’s to your own interest, also. Because I don’t want you to appear a fool if my brother runs out here. And I won’t send for him until I make sure that I don’t know your face—”

You can see that she was aiming to be square, even in a time like this, and not just tickled with her own smartness. But I almost laughed at what she said, because it was a sure thing that she would know my face, but that I wouldn’t be saved by that!

Then I knew that there was only one way for me to get clear of this mess, and that was to take about the worst chance that I ever went through in my life. Worse than even when Cherry and me rode through Tally Seven with guns talking to us, either side of the way.

She had her eyes raised to me, and as we got to the edge of the window’s square of light I leaned right out into it, so that she could see me fair and clear.

Not meaning either that I’m fair or clear!

But when she seen me, even the nerves of the sheriff’s daughter jumped a little at the look of me and my scars and my hollowed-out face, and my mean look. The look that you get from squinting across the desert to see what cuts up into the desert, or from wondering what’s coming around the next corner—

Anyway, as she seen me, she gasped: “Larry Dickon!” and the pressure of the Colt into my ribs weakened just a mite.

That gave me my tenth part of a chance. I brought down my left hand like a shot and grabbed the gun and her hand that held it and knocked them away from me—and thank God that the gun didn’t explode, because I would have been a dead man, sure.

And with the other hand I caught her and held her so she couldn’t see. Of the whole thing, what worries me most of this day is what I said as I got the gun and her safe, which was:

“You young she-devil!”

I would give a lot to take that back. But when a word is spoke, it is spoke. That’s all that there is to it, as I think somebody may have said before me.

You would like to know what she done, when I had her so quick?

Why, jammed as she was up against me, she said so quiet that nobody but me could have heard: “Larry Dickon, you have killed Danny!”

Cool? Tool-proof steel. That was her!

“No,” I says, “I ain’t killed Danny. He’s safe and he’s sound, and he won’t come through any worse than he started.”

“Except for that lump along his jaw?” said she.

“Exactly.”

“Well, then,” said she, “do you know that you are smashing my hand against the revolver?”

So I was. As I let go, I could realize that I must of been nearly smashing her hand to pieces.

“Thanks,” said Julie, “and besides, do you mind hugging me not quite so tight? I can’t breathe, you know, very well.”

Why, it made my face burn, I can tell you!

I loosened up right quick.

“I sure beg your pardon,” I told her. “If you would please mind not raising a holler?”

“That’s only fair,” says she.

“You wouldn’t mind passing your word?” says I.

She held out her hand.

Yes, sir, when she shook with me, there wasn’t the least trembling to her fingers. She was steady as a rock!

“The fact is, ma’am,” says I, getting more at sea every minute, “that I didn’t aim to er—I mean—that is—I wouldn’t of seemed to—”

“To hug me?” said Julie Ops. “Oh, that’s all right. No bones broken, I think. Were you telling me true about Danny?”

“Does he mean such a pile to you?” says I.

“Ah,” says the girl, “you were lying, and the fact is that you’ve simply—”

“No,” said I, “he’s safe and sound. I give you my word.”

She gave a big sigh of relief.

“Tell me,” she says, “did Danny put up a good fight?”

No, she never said the thing that you would expect her to say!

“It was rather brief,” I admitted, “but Danny is game. He’s dead game. He had an idea that his fist could travel faster than a bullet.”

“You did shoot him!”

It made me mad.

“Look here, girl,” said I, “I don’t take that sort of talk from nobody. I’ve told you a fact. And I don’t lie. I don’t have to!”

That was talking a bit rougher and meaner than necessary, but she was extremely irritating, in her own way, I can tell you!

“I beg your pardon,” said she. “You knocked Danny down with your gun, then, but you didn’t shoot?”

“I used the knuckles of my fist,” said I, still pretty heated.

“And what in the world is all this driving at?” said she. “Am I to be kidnapped to get even with Dad for hunting you?”

“I would even say,” said I, “that you have come pretty near to it. But there was one thing that stood in between.”

“Well?” said this girl.

“It was a pie,” says I.

“What?”

“A loganberry pie,” says I.

“What on earth—” says Julie.

“I mean, that I ate the pie, and that I thought I had better come around and explain—”

“You ate the pie?” said she.

“Yes,” said I, “and afterward, I thought that I had better come around to explain that I done it, and I thought that the explaining would take a good deal of time, and so I arranged for Danny to stop up the road until I was all through—and I seem to of made a mess of things!”

“You do, sort of,” she answered.

“Which I would put right, if I could,” said I, “for the sake of the way that you stood by Lew, if you would tell me what I could do to make up.”

Did she stand there thinking of what she would want? No, she didn’t. She had her answer right ready on the tip of her tongue, but you never would guess what it was.