Читать книгу Trouble Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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Night came by steps, very slow. And when the darkness arrived it wasn’t any help. The ground was still hot as the top of a stove, and a burning wind cut right into our faces. It swelled my tongue up immediate and made me open my mouth a little to breathe, and the minute that I had to open my mouth it was as though ashes and lye was poured down my nostrils and my throat.

Only the darkness was good and easy on the eyes, and after a while I went along with my right elbow hooked over the horn of the saddle, and Cherry Pie taking most of my weight and all of the responsibility of getting us to water.

She was too weak, now, to carry me. But she could sort of drag me along as long as I could keep my legs swinging. Now and then she would hit a hummock and sag right down almost to the ground, her legs had turned off so weak. And once I stumbled on rocks and knocked myself out with a whack on the back of my head. And when I came to, there was the hot breath of Cherry Pie in my face, and I seen her standing with her legs braced out wide, right over me.

If that had been the death of me, she would never of left to go on and find water. She would of stuck by me until the thirst killed her in terrible torments.

Hunger, you get used to that, after a time. But thirst—well, it never lets up on you till you get delirious. It’s like a combination of being choked together with burning up.

Maybe you understand what I mean?

I got hold of the stirrup leather and finally I pulled myself up and hooked my arm over the pommel of the saddle and Cherry Pie and me went along, wobbling and weaving through the dark.

Not that I had any hope, but because, with my tongue bleeding and paining so much, and my lungs filled with cinders, all that I wished for was to die good and quick, or get delirious, so that I would have no wits to know how much I was being tortured.

Sometimes I wondered why Cherry didn’t kick me away from her and go on to water, if there was any near to us. Any mustang would of served you that way. But not Cherry Pie. And when my senses brightened, now and then, I would always see her nodding and plugging away. And when I spoke, her ears would always prick up. And finally, I couldn’t speak any more, but just groaned, and still that was enough to make her prick up her ears.

Now, after a million years of hell fire, I felt her tugging along as though she was trying to get away from me. And I opened my eyes and looked ahead of me and seen something that made me think that I was sure turned crazy—because there was the moon sailing along right under my feet! I closed my eyes again and waited for the wits to steady and clear, but when I looked again, there I seen that it was just the same thing.

And finally it hit me like a hammer blow.

It was a broad-faced pool of water with the clouds and the moon blowing across it!

Then my feet went plump, plump! into muck, and reeds rattled, waist high, and then there was a little strip of clean white sand laid down like silver by the edge of that water, and I fell on it with my face in the ripples.

We drank, and we rested, and we drank again.

We rolled and we swam in it.

We danced and we played in it.

And I threw water into the face of Cherry Pie, and she loved it and come wagging her head at me.

And—oh, well, it was a grand night.

After a time, the pain went out of my tongue, but when I talked to Cherry there was still a good deal of discomfort, and I sounded like a gent that had lost his palate.

But finally I got together wood and made me a fire, good and plenty big, because I knew that there was no danger of the sheriff ever cutting across that desert. No, that was the reason that he had turned back, because he knew this country a lot better than I did. And now the best that he could manage was to just wire around to the other side and warn the folks around there that they was to look out and try to grab me when I come through that direction.

Ah, but then I would have Cherry and myself in good shape, and they could step high and lively, I can tell you, if they was to try to stop us.

I made myself some flapjacks, and when Cherry smelled them, even the taste of the sweet green grass that she was eating couldn’t keep her from coming over and begging.

A terrible nuisance was Cherry, when she begun to beg, and many’s the time that I wished that I hadn’t taught that trick to her. Because, when she sat down like a dog and pawed with one fore-hoof, she looked so mighty pretty and ridiculous, at the same time, that I never could help giving her whatever I had.

I seen her coming, and I wolfed down most of those hot cakes as fast as I could, but before I was through with them, there she was sitting under the moon and pawing a bit, and nickering at me to let me know that she was there and what she wanted.

I smeared a mite of syrup over a part of a flapjack and throwed it to her.

Why, it was a wonderful thing, the way that Cherry could catch a flapjack out of the air! She made a tremendous lot of noise eating it, too, and raised a pother and frothing you wouldn’t believe.

I couldn’t help laughing at her, the way that she would sit there most like a dog, with her head on one side, watching.

However, she finished up the rest of those flapjacks for me. I never seen such a greedy horse. A regular pig, was Cherry. You would of been surprised—and her one of the finest ladies in the land!

And after that I stretched out in my blankets and went to sleep, watching the sky, and the stars, and the moon that was dying into the west, and wondering how the same God ever could of put so much misery and pleasantness onto the same old earth at the same old minute.

Then how I did snooze!

It was about three weeks since Sheriff Wally Ops and me started playing tag with each other, and I can tell you that during that time I had never slept more than three hours at a stretch, because, when Wally Ops came after you, he didn’t have no manners. Any time of the day or the night was a good time for Wally to catch himself a fresh horse and start whanging away on your trail. Any old time was good enough for him to rout out folks from their beds and send them riding and damning away after a poor gent that was skulking off through the hills, just hoping that he could get shut of Wally Ops and all like him, forever.

But now I knew that I was safe from Wally.

Smart as Wally was, he was too doggone smart to risk himself and his men crossing that there desert. And so, the thing that he done was to turn back and make himself comfortable and turn to the telephones! Just the way that I figured out that he would do.

So, feeling that I was safe, I let go all holds and I dropped into a good, sound sleep.

Ah, when you speak of “dropping” to sleep, I wonder if you’ve ever slid about a thousand miles down hill, the way that I done that night. Because I was dead and gone. You could of took me by the shoulder and shook me, and you would never of waked me up.

Once it seemed to me that I heard the calling of Cherry Pie, but I waked up just enough to tell myself that could only be a bad dream, and then I turned over and went to sleep again.

When I woke up finally, there was the old sun showing his face over the edge of the sky and warming himself up right quick, and gathering all of his strength, and telling himself that he would sure burn up the world for fair, that day!

I got up and stretched myself, and then the sight of that pond made me laugh right out loud for the pleasure of looking at it, and remembering what I had been yesterday afternoon, and what I wasn’t no more.

And then all at once it struck me that I was sort of lonesome. I flashed a look all around me.

I hollered: “Cherry! Hey, Cherry! Cherry Pie! Damn it, where might you be?”

Well, there was no sign of a nicker from Cherry to let me know where that she was. There was no sign and there was no sound of her. And I started running around like a mad man, hunting for the traces of her going.

I found them easy enough.

Why, there must have been half a dozen gents that rode through past the lake, that night, and watered their horses. I could see where they had come by right close to me—near enough to of waked me up a thousand times over, ordinarily, but that night I was all stretched out and sure of myself, and so nothing but a knife stuck into me could of waked me.

So they must of said to themselves: “We might rap this poor tramp over the head, and go along with his horse, but a gent that sleeps as steady and as sound as that, he ain’t likely to make us any trouble! He’ll have his own little job cut out for him in trying to get away from this here desert!”

Now, I could see that they had me beat.

It would be bad enough to try to trail them right across the desert, but once that I had got across, how could I dodge Wally Ops on the one hand, and chase that gang of crooks on the other hand?

Anyway, they had beat me. They had gone, and taken Cherry Pie.

But I held up both my hands to the sky and I swore to God that I would never leave off trailing them until I had made them pay for it, every one.

And that oath I kept, right down to the last syllable.