Читать книгу Trouble Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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Mind you, when I say that Sandy Larson walked out of the camp and into my hands, it was not as simple as all of that; but, as he strolled along, I fetched myself along after him. And a cat that could of heard a snake walking, could never have heard me, because I intended to finish Sandy, and I intended to finish him complete and final; and when you’ve had a few years of chasing and being chased through the mountains, you don’t make a lot of noise when you’re going on the death trail.

He went straight ahead, leaning a bit back against the wind, which was rising fast, and sloshing along the slopes of the mountains out of the south. And when he got to a little distance, he paused, but from the hill where he was standing, there was a rise of woods that shut in part of his view of the lowlands.

You could see that Doctor Grace had taught his men to be thorough. This Sandy Larson seen a sizable jag of rock rising up a couple of hundred feet higher, and he started for it as a sort of a lookout tower.

I started, too, but in a different direction. I circled around. I kicked off my shoes and went up those rocks by moonlight as easy as you please, and when Sandy came to the top of that rock pile, he found me waiting for him, with a knife at his head.

He was a very cool one, I got to say, and all that he did when he arrived there and seen the knife, was to nod his head.

“I told the boys that they had better cut your throat than to leave you loose to follow us,” said Sandy.

I looked him in the eye, and the moon was full in his face and I sort of pitied him.

“Sandy,” said I, “you keep your hands up over your head.”

Then I took out his guns. Three of them the scoundrel had, tucked away, one of them hanging from his neck, beneath his shirt, and he seemed a bit green when he saw me take that. But it was a fine thing to have three guns instead of none. It made me breathe easier.

I stepped back a mite and shied the guns onto the ground.

“Now, Sandy,” said I, “you got a good big knife in your belt. Do you know how to use it?”

“I been eleven years in Mexico,” said Sandy by way of answer.

And it was answer enough!

“Pull out that knife, then,” said I. “Because by rights I should give you no chance, but shoot you down like a dog, the same way that you left me helpless when you met me, the other day.”

“True,” says Sandy. “We gave you a bad chance at living. And I’ll tell you, Dickon—”

“You know me?” said I.

“We knew you, Dickon,” said he.

“Then you were fools,” said I, “to think that I was ever born to choke to death in any damned desert!”

“Ay,” said he, “we were fools to think that. We should of guessed that you were intended to die with a knife stuck into your gizzard!”

It done me good to hear him talk, and see the mean light that glittered in his eyes. Why, that man loved a knife, and he loved it so much that he wouldn’t wait any longer to talk. He just came at me on the jump, with his lips grinned back from his great gash of a mouth. An ugly man was that Sandy Larson, with a good length of leg, arm, and a supple wrist, which counts in knife work.

But I doubt if he’d ever spent much time when he was a boy standing against a wall and dodging the knives which gents chucked at him by way of practicing their hands. Because to be on the receiving end of a knife play teaches you about as much as to be on the giving end.

He made a feint at my body and then flicked across a neat cut aimed to cross my eyes. But I dipped just under it, and felt the sharp edge pull and tear at my hair as it whished through.

And at the same minute, I came up under that big, flying arm of his and pushed my knife home between his ribs. It was a smallish, thin-bladed knife, but very useful.

Then I turned Sandy on his back, because it seemed to me that even a murdering hound like him had ought to be looking at the stars, when he lay dead.

After that, I went through him very careful. He had eleven hundred and fourteen dollars on him, and he had nothing else worth talking about, outside of a picture of a wide-faced Swedish girl with a foolish-looking smile. Most likely he had intended marrying her, so I had done her a good turn without ever having seen her.

Then I sized up his guns. The neckpiece was a neat little trick, but no good for me. I let that stay, but I took the Colts, which was new, clean, and all loaded. Besides, I took enough cartridges from Sandy to load up my belt.

After that, I climbed down, got my shoes, and went back toward the camp.

Lying watching them with no weapons was one thing. Lying with two good gats handy was quite another. I had a blind, black wish to turn loose and spray the whole lot of them with lead. There was only five of them. And God give me the wits in each hand to keep a pair of guns chattering and every bullet aimed. I thought that I could kill or down them all. But still I couldn’t bring myself to it. I knew that they needed killing, all of them. I knew that Doctor Grace never took with him anything but the worst kind of killers. But still, I couldn’t do it, and that was flat. Because I had my record and it was long enough, but I never yet killed a man except in fair fight, standing up, with equal chances on each side.

But what could I do? I couldn’t call them out one by one and ask them to fight fair. I might be willing, but would they be?

No, they knew me too well for that. Doctor Grace would be a match for me, but never one of the rest of them.

However, the next best thing to do, it seem to me, was to go to Cherry Pie and get her free and a saddle on her back, if possible.

And getting to her was a bit of a trick, because she was standing right out in the open, down-headed still, with the firelight flickering straight out to her and falling about her feet.

But I wormed my way down through the rocks and across the ground toward her, stopping the minute anything or anyone moved around the fire.

Once Little Joe stood up and looked toward me. And once Dago Mendez got up and walked in a circle around the fire, but neither of them saw me, because their nearness to the fire blinded them, and the moon was still low in the sky and not giving a very bright light.

When Cherry Pie got the wind of me, I thought sure that she would give us both away, because her head went up and she stood like a picture, with her ears pricking.

And what a picture Cherry made, when she was showing herself off!

Well, she seemed too surprised to move, and I wormed in close and knifed those ropes in two with a couple of touches. After that, I wormed right back again behind the rocks and to a place where a growth of shrubs went up, big enough to shelter me, standing upright.

Cherry Pie followed me, and just as she was coming to me behind the brush, I heard Lew Candy say: “There goes the mare. She’s begun to feed, and now she’ll be all right!”

She’d be all right. Yes, I could answer for that!

I stood beside her for a minute, until she got through biting my shoulder to show how glad she was to see me. The pile of saddles lay right ready to my hand and Grace was a fool not to have stacked them in the firelight. I could pick out my own just as I pleased, and I did, and cinched it quietly on the back of Cherry.

After that, I went through a few of the saddlebags and took out a few things that I needed. Why, I could of taken hundreds of pounds of stuff, if I’d wanted to load myself down, but I never believe in traveling with weight when you’re on the mountain-desert. It ain’t handy or comfortable, to travel light, but it’s safe—oh, it’s very safe!

“Where’s Sandy?” sang out Missouri Slim, about this time.

“He’s seen lights on the desert,” said Candy, “and he’s studying them before he comes back. He’s a careful gent, old Sandy is!”

I didn’t smile. No, you don’t smile about dead men, if you happened to do the killing. I always kind of noticed that.

But I figured that I had done about all that I could do, safely. I had got my horse back, and I had a set of guns, finished off with a fine new fifteen-shot Winchester that I took out of one of the saddle holsters.

If I hung around there, the whole gang would jump me pretty soon. So I just sat down and with the point of my knife I wrote on one of the saddle flaps:

Dear Grace,

Most usual, you should keep a lookout on the saddles. And on the lookouts, too!

I didn’t sign it, because I didn’t think it would need signing. He would be able to make out for himself what had happened.

I sneaked back, with Cherry following me. We got into the first draw, and we traveled up it until I seen an inviting looking ravine that opened off it, and I went up into it, seen that it wasn’t blind, and found a place of a sort for a camp. There was good water and grass for the mare. And as for me, it didn’t make no difference. I had to chew hardtack, because I didn’t dare to risk going along with the cooking of a meal, even over the tiniest sort of a fire.

However, even hardtack was licking good, washed down with spring water, after my march across the desert the last two days. Then I turned in and went to sleep. But you can lay to it that I didn’t really close more than one eye. And never would again, as long as I lived!