Читать книгу Trouble Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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“Cherry,” said I, “you are a nice girl, and all that; but, curse it, I wish that you would talk.”

That was what I said as we came over the rim of the hills, and a blast of sand came up on the wind and cut into our eyes. I blinked out some of it, and wiped out some, and seen that Cherry had just shook her head a little and smiled a bit. That was her way, uncomplaining and cheerful, no matter hardly what happened. But when the sand was blinked out, and a tear or two was running down my face because of the grit that had cut into my eyeballs, I looked across the desert, and there was nothing between me and the edge of the sky.

That was when I spoke up rough and sudden and mean to Cherry, poor girl. Now, after her and me had marched so many miles with the sheriff ding-dong-ing at our heels, and after he had give up in despair, or because he knew that the desert would kill us even if his bullets couldn’t, after all that had passed behind us, you would say that a gent would speak more kind to a lady.

But I tell you that the desert will eat right into the heart of a man and give him no decency, sometimes. And other times it will expand you, sort of, so that your heart gets as big as this side of heaven and the other side, too.

That day was one of the bad ones. There was only one quart of blood-warm water left in the big canteen, and I knew that that would have to do for her and me. But when we topped the ridge, I had a hope that there might be a blueness of mountains somewhere off in front of us; and where there is mountains, there is sure to be water, somewhere, too.

Well, there we were on the top of the ridge, and all that I had seen before me in the way of hope was the blind face of that desert, mostly gray, with a streak of smoke, where the greasewood growed in the hollows, here and there, and a black patch now and again, but mostly only grayness, between us and the edge of the sky.

No water out there!

I turned around and looked behind me. Somewhere in the rear of me the sheriff and his boys were sweating and damning and wishing for the hide of Larry Dickon. But it wasn’t the sheriff and all his guns that kept me from turning back. It was only because, having got across that stretch of misery, it was terrible hard to go back into the heart of it again. This stuff that lay ahead looked worse—maybe it was worse. But anyway, it was new. And I like newness, even in a desert. There was no hope behind me. No hope of water, I mean. And I would of bet my money that there was no hope ahead of me. But still, there was a chance. A hundred to one shot.

Well, that is better than nothing.

Only, when I faced forward, I couldn’t help pouring out my meanness, and there was nothing but Cherry near me to listen, so I give it to her.

“Yes,” said I, as we started down the long slope, “you got your points, and I ain’t the man to deny them. You’re pretty, Cherry. I admit that. You’re mighty pretty.”

She just went on, with her eyes fixed off toward the skyline. Oh, I might be downhearted, but there was no beating Cherry. She would always have hope. She never was done! That light was never out of her eyes.

And seeing her courage, it sort of made me meaner and madder.

“You’re pretty,” I went on at her, “and, on the other hand, you’re proud, Cherry. You’re too damn proud, and I’m here to tell you about it. Yes, you’re too damn proud. You’re set up, you are. And maybe the thing that has turned your head is the way that folks have always set their caps for you. It’s the number of gents that have broke their hearts for you. It’s the way that they’ve fell in love at first sight. Is that what’s made you so damn high-headed?”

That, you would think, would be enough for a gent to say. But it didn’t hold me. I looked at her, and I looked at the desert; and the wave of heat that came up from it, it seared into my face and burned the tears dry in one second.

Oh, it was bitter hot! The leather band of my sombrero was all fire. And there was fire showering down in little flakes and burning through my shirt at the shoulders, where the shadow of the brim of my back didn’t spread. And the sweat kept leaking out of me, and turning to salt the minute that it appeared, with no halfway chance to cool me off. And the backs of my hands, they blistered with the heat.

What shape was Cherry in?

Why, she was worse than me. She went along with her dainty steps; and her gay way, but I could see that her knees were sagging; and she stumbled, when a little hummock come into her way.

“Or is it your good looks that have set you up so much, and your little feet that you’re always looking down at them?” says I to her. “Will you answer me that?”

No, she wouldn’t answer. Not her.

There was times, in the past, when she got rambunctious and showed bad temper and foolishness; but that was always when things had been going too easy with us, and when we had stayed over for a long time in one place, and then, when it come to take the trail again, Cherry could be as mean as any girl in the world.

But when the pinch come, and the long grind of the miles had to be got over, she never faltered.

I suppose that it was thinking of the beauty of Cherry, and wondering how it was that God ever should of trusted anything so good, so beautiful, and so wonderful to an ordinary, good-for-nothing, low-down gent like me—it was thinking of that, I suppose, that made me all of the worse. And I begun to hate myself pretty hard, and love Cherry more than ever, if that was possible. But the more that I loved her, the meaner I had to talk, somehow.

Maybe you have been the same way yourself, sometimes?

Never with a lady, you say!

Ah, well, son, that’s because you ain’t married to one of them.

But when you have took one and give up all the rest, till death do us part, and all that, why, it gets different.

We went on into that desert until I felt that the ground was wavering and staggering in front of us, and poor Cherry could hardly breathe, so that I knew that the time had come for us to finish off the water.

One quart between the two of us!

Why, that sounds like a good deal to you, sitting cool and easy in your chair, with the window open beside you, reading this here history of misery. But I can tell you, man, that it’s different in the places where a quarter of a inch of rain falls every other year, and even the cactus gets yellow and sick to look at, and the sand draws the moisture out of the soles of your shoes, until they begin to buckle and warp.

A mighty lot different, and believe you me!

Well, as I was saying, I seen that the time had come to use up the last of the water, because my tongue was swelling so much and getting so painful that it was hard for me even to talk mean to Cherry.

She seen me pull out the canteen, and she stopped short, and looked at me with a bloodshot, wistful eye. Well, I treated myself to one little swig at that canteen. Then I got down and first of all I eased up the cinches of the saddle so that Cherry could breathe a mite easier, and I moistened my hand with a few drops of the water and I used it to wipe the sand out of her flaring, red nostrils. And her ears went forward to thank me for that bit of moisture—that God-blessed mare!

And you could see that she was hankering after the water bad enough to eat the metal of the canteen! But she wouldn’t show no sign of it.

No, sir, she would act contented, and as if she didn’t wish or ask for anything more in the line of drinkables. But she shook her head and raised it, and looked out at the horizon as brave as you please, as much as to say: “You hop into the saddle again, Larry, and I’ll sure fetch you to good water, clean water, running oceans of it, and there we’ll drink till we can’t hold no more, and then we’ll lie down and we’ll roll in it, and we’ll laugh in it, and wash in it, and wish for nothing else in the world!”

That was what she seemed to say.

I put my arm around her neck.

“Cherry, darling,” said I, “you get the rest of the water that’s in this here canteen. It’s all to you, and you’re mighty welcome. And if there was a gallon of it, it would do me a lot of good to see you have it all.”

I opened up the canteen, and when she seen what was coming she raised her head, and I let her hold the neck of the bottle in her teeth, which was a trick that she and me had between us, and she drank down that water, every drop, and I heard it gurgle.

Yes, sir, it done me as much good as if I’d poured it all down my own throat; and when I got back onto her back, right away, to show me how grateful she was, she wanted to start off at a gallop, but I slowed her down to a walk, because there is only one way to go across the desert, and that is the slow way, you can be sure!

So, on at a walk we went, and always that horizon stayed at just the same distance, and there was no change in it until, along late the afternoon, some blueness began to roll up in it.

Yes, I knew that they was hills. But a long way off! No man could guess how far they were away.

I seen that there was only one thing to pray for, and that was that the night would come soon and bring us freshness and coolness.

We would have to keep plodding along.

I got down out of the saddle. I loosened the cinches until they sagged an inch beneath Cherry’s belly. Then I started walking along beside her. I was pretty far gone, but she was wobbly, too. And so we staggered across the burning sand and wished and wished for the night.