Читать книгу The Whisperer - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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The welcome for Reata was very effusive. Quinn called out: “Hey, Reata ... dog-gone me, if I ain’t glad to see you! Dog-gone me, old boy, but it’s good to see your mug ag’in.”

Dickerman kept grinning and pointing to the third place at the table. “I knew that you’d be along,” he declared. “Set down there and feed.”

Reata pulled up his belt a notch. “I’m not hungry,” he declared.

Two or three of the cats began to stalk little Rags. He backed against the feet of his master and looked up. Reata held down his hand and caught the slender body as it jumped. Rags, with great dexterity, ran up the crooked arm of his master and perched himself on the broad shoulder.

“Not hungry?” gasped Harry Quinn. “Hey, you gotta be hungry when you take a look at chuck like this here. This is food, old son.”

Reata pulled back the waiting third chair and sat down. It’s a bad job when most of us sit down, bending our bodies, slumping our weight suddenly off the legs. But Reata sat down as a dog might sit—when it is waiting for the start of the race. When he leaned back, no one would be deceived into thinking that this was a lasting inertia. The sleeping wolf is only a second away from the naked fangs and bristling mane of full consciousness. Reata, reclining in the chair, making a cigarette with an idle twist of his fingers, made one think of the same static power. One touch of need could discharge all the danger that was in him.

“Looka here, Reata,” urged Dickerman, “I’m goin’ to take it pretty hard if you don’t join us. These baked beans, they’re prime. Ain’t they, Harry?”

“Yeah, they’ll grow hair on the palm of your hand,” stated Quinn, grinning with much kindness at his rescuer. “How’s every old thing, kid? Dog-gone me, but it’s good to see you again. Pop here, he said that you’d come along, all right. Pull up the old chair and have a shot at this here chicken stew. It’s the goods.”

Reata took from his pocket the snaky handful of his rope, and his unthinking fingers made swift designs with it in the air. The thing seemed alive, as always, under his touch.

“I’m not hungry,” he insisted. “But I want to know something, Dickerman. I don’t think I would have come back, but all at once I remembered that I’d finished one third of the job, and it seemed a shame not to finish the trip. Tell me the next item on the list, and I’ll start again. There were three men. Well, here’s Harry Quinn back with you. What’s the next one?”

“Dave Bates ... he hangs next month for murder,” said Dickerman.

“Yeah,” murmured Quinn, “and the funny thing is that he didn’t do that job. Am I wrong, Pop?”

“He sure didn’t do the job,” answered Dickerman. “It’s like this, Reata.” He looked into the gray eyes and the brown face of Reata for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “It’s like this. My big man ... Gene Salvio ... he’s in a terrible jam. I send out Dave Bates to get him. Dave starts, all right. The next thing I know, Dave is bein’ tried for murder. Charge is that he got drunk and killed a rancher by name of Durant. They find Durant dead, Dave asleep and drunk in his chair, and on the floor is Dave’s gun with two bullets fired out of it. Looks like a good case, and they sock Dave. He hangs next month, and he’s in the pen, waiting for the noose.”

“The funny thing,” said Harry Quinn, “is that Dave never gets drunk.”

“I’m to break open the penitentiary and bring Dave Bates out with me, is that all?” asked Reata ironically.

“No, no. I’m not such a fool,” said Dickerman. “All you do is get up there and find out who really did kill that rancher. You see? Hang it on the right man so clear and heavy that the law is goin’ to turn poor Dave loose. That was what Quinn was riding north for when he snagged himself on those Gypsies.”

The eyes of Dickerman burned as he stared at Quinn.

Reata stood up and threw the butt of his cigarette out the window.

“I’ll start now,” he said.

“Wait for the morning. Harry’ll go along with you and show you the way, tell you everything we know,” suggested Dickerman.

“I’ll go now,” insisted Reata. Suddenly his lip curled a little. “I’d rather sleep in the open,” he added.

“Yeah, and I told you,” remarked Harry Quinn, “that he had the smell of the rats up his nose.”

“Take Sue, then, and get started,” said Dickerman.

“All right,” said Reata. “One more thing. What price do you put on Sue?”

Dickerman frowned.

“He’ll never sell Sue,” said Quinn.

“You’ll sell her at a price,” said Reata. Suddenly scorn welled up into his voice. “You’ll sell your own hide ... for a price. What do you want for Sue, Dickerman?”

The contempt of Reata made very slight impact upon Dickerman. He kept squinting his little eyes for a moment and stroking his hairy face. Then he said: “When all three of ’em are back here ... Harry and Dave and Gene Salvio ... then I’m goin’ to throw in Sue and let you have her free.”

A little glint of yellow light came into the gray eyes of Reata as he nodded.

“If you’re coming with me, build your pack,” Reata told Quinn. “I’m starting now.”

He walked out into the open night, leaving Quinn and Dickerman to stare at one another for a long moment.

“Don’t seem so dog-gone good-natured as he was on the road,” said Quinn regretfully.

“Any sharp knife is goin’ to give you a nick now and then,” said Pop Dickerman. “But he wouldn’t eat none at my table. You notice that?”

“Hey, and how could I help but notice it? And him pinched in the gills, too. He pulls up his belt when he tells you that he ain’t hungry. There’s a kind of a pride about Reata, all right.”

“Pride’s the grindstone that rubs the knife sharp,” said Dickerman.

“Maybe he’s steel,” admitted Quinn, “but how’s he goin’ to cut into that big cheese up there at Boyden Lake? How’s he goin’ to have a chance to cut in and find out who really done the murder? There ain’t a chance in a million, Pop. You oughta know that there ain’t a chance in a million.”

“Sure I know it,” said the junkman. “It ain’t an easy job, and I ain’t offering low pay. Sue ... if he gets out all three of you ... Sue is what he gets from me. Go on now and get your pack.”

Harry Quinn rose with a sigh. He went to the stove, picked the iron spoon out of the pot, and loaded a large heap of dripping beans into his mouth thoughtfully. He was still munching these as he left the room.

When he came downstairs again, carrying a roll over his shoulder, he said to Dickerman: “I’m takin’ the big gray.”

“You wanta advertise that you’re a real man, do you?” Dickerson sneered. “You take the same hoss that you rode down here originally. It’s plenty good enough for you. And it won’t draw no attention.”

Harry Quinn looked sullenly at his chief for a moment.

“Aw, all right, then,” he said.

That was the only farewell.