Читать книгу The Whisperer - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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By the time, two days later, that Reata and Harry Quinn had come close to the Durant ranch, Reata knew very little more about the killing of Cleve Durant than Pop Dickerman had told him. All that Quinn knew, in addition, was the testimony of Dave Bates at the trial. Bates had said that he had asked hospitality at the ranch while he was traveling through the country, and that during the evening he had taken a drink of the whiskey that was offered to him after dinner. When he had drunk the stuff, he began to get very sleepy. He was about to go to bed when sleep overwhelmed him in his chair. He awakened to find the deputy sheriff shaking him by the shoulder. On the opposite side of the room lay Cleveland Durant, dead. On the floor beside his chair was Bates’s gun, with two chambers of the revolver empty.

Quinn’s comment on the story was characteristic. “Think of the poor sucker tellin’ a yarn like that,” he said. “Long as he was goin’ to tell a lie, why didn’t he cook up a good one? Dog-gone me, but I was surprised when I read that yarn in the paper. Dave Bates ain’t a fool. He’s a pretty bright hombre. But for a lot of gents, when the law gets hold of ’em, it sort of freezes up their brains, and they can’t think none.”

“Maybe it was the truth?” suggested Reata.

Quinn stared as he answered: “You mean that Dave was doped? They couldn’t dope Dave. He’s a bright hombre ... he’s real bright, is the facts of the case.”

It was a broad, flat-bottomed valley in which the Durant ranch lay. The naked hills surrounded the district with walls of cliffs. Little trails like chalk marks and a few narrow, white streaks that were roads wound through the country and focused on the town of Boyden Lake, that got its name from the little blue patch of water beside it. So the scene appeared to Reata from the top of the southern hills. It was a bare land without a tree. Patches of shrubbery could get rooting in that stubborn soil, but nothing larger. And the grass grew in mere spots, not solidly. The cattle that grazed were hardly ever clustered in spots of color, but were scattered as dots here and there. Two or three creeks trailed lines of light across the landscape—the ranches of that district at least had water.

“It’s a tough spot,” said Harry Quinn, as he surveyed the broad map. “Yonder ... that oughta be the ranch house. We’ll go down there and take a look. The word is that old Sam Durant will pay high for the right kind of a cowhand, but the right kind for him is hard to find.”

They got a cross trail that swung onto a road that ran between fences of barbed wire. Harry Quinn was indignant when he saw the fences.

“Look at a free country,” he said, “that’s said to be free and all the gents in it equal, and along comes a lot of bums and checks off the free range with fences. Is it right? No, it ain’t right! Is it free? Look for yourself. Suppose you was in a hurry. Suppose you had to make a quick break across country, with maybe a deputy sheriff or something behind you ... why, what chance would you have? You’d be jammed ag’in’ a wire fence in no time, and they’d have you. And what kind of a life is that?”

Reata gave no answer. He had a way of keeping up his end of a conversation merely by smiling and nodding, assuming at the same time a look of such interest that the other fellow was sure to be drawn out. He had had plenty of chance to estimate Harry Quinn on the trip north, and he did not think very highly of his traveling companion. Harry was a good hand with a gun, and probably his nerve was excellent. Otherwise, he was a brawler, a noise maker, and gifted with a very loose mouth. For what important affairs could Pop Dickerman use a man of this sort except actual fighting? And why should Pop Dickerman need fighting men around him?

He asked Harry Quinn bluntly: “What did you and Bates and Gene Salvio do for Dickerman when you were all together?”

Quinn simply answered: “Hey? What didn’t we do?” He laughed, but did not offer any more details. It had been crooked work of some sort, that was fairly apparent. Certainly Pop Dickerman was far more than a mere collector of rags and junk.

A sudden lane opened from the battered road, and at the mouth of the lane there was a board tacked across a post, and on the board, roughed in with red paint, were these words:

$100 a month for the right man.

Try the Durant Ranch.

This sign moved Harry Quinn very much.

“A hundred bucks!” he said. “Why, dog-gone me, that had oughta raise every cowpuncher on the whole countryside. How can a sign like that keep stayin’ up?”

In fact, they had hardly gone down the long line a quarter of a mile before they saw, coming toward them, a big man on a tough, little mustang. He was gripping the pommel of the saddle with both hands. His body was slouched low. When he came nearer, it was seen that his clothes were badly torn and dust covered, and that his face was decorated with a greatly swollen eye already discoloring from red to black.

Harry Quinn ventured to halt him.

“Are you from the Durant Ranch?” he asked.

The big man did not stop his mustang. He allowed it to jog along as he slued himself around in the saddle and shouted: “It ain’t a ranch. It’s an Injun massacre. I’m goin’ to come back with friends and wipe that place up. I’m goin’ to take it apart! I’m goin’ to ... !” Here his rage overcame his vocabulary, and he could merely curse. He began to talk and wave from a distance, but his words could not be made out.

“I’d say that gent was kind of peeved,” suggested Harry Quinn. “Looks like he’s been in some kind of a ruction. But if that’s what they want on the Durant Ranch, you and me oughta get on pretty good there. Gun or knife or hands, I don’t mind a fight ... and when they bump into you, Reata, they’re certainly goin’ to find themselves tied.”

He laughed very cheerfully at this idea, but Reata shook his head a little. Rags, who was riding over the withers of Sue, the roan mare, was now put down on the stirrup leather by Reata, and the dog jumped to the ground and ran happily on ahead.

“Rags might smell out the trouble,” said Reata. “And here’s Sue, cocking her ears. We’ll see what we see.”

“That Rags, now,” said Harry Quinn, “you mind tellin’ me what that dog-gone mongrel pup is good for?”

“He’s not a worker,” answered Reata, chuckling. “He’s a thinker. He’s like me.”

They came out of the lane to the ranch house itself. There was nothing much to it. It was long and low, with an open shed between the kitchen and the rest of the house. This being close to midday, two men were idling in the shade of the house, waiting for the cook’s call. One of them—tall, lean, middle-aged, grizzled—was whittling a stick. The other sat on the ground with his back against the wall of the house. He was a red-headed fellow with a fat, round, good-natured face.

“Howdy, boys,” said the older man as Quinn and Reata swung down to the ground.

“Howdy,” they answered. And Quinn added: “We’re lookin’ for the boss. We seen that sign on the board down the road.”

“I’m Sam Durant,” said the tall man, “and when I put the sign out there, I wanted to get me a real man for the place. How about you?” He looked at Quinn.

“Aw, I can daub a rope on a cow now and then,” said Quinn, “and in this kind of a country I guess that I could stretch a wire, too, if I have to.”

The rancher smiled a little as though in sympathy. And the red-headed fellow sat up and nodded violently.

“We got a lot of snakes and coyotes and what not around here,” said Sam Durant. “How would you be with a gun?”

“Fair. Pretty fair,” said Quinn, brightening.

“There’s a chicken over there that we might use for supper,” said Sam Durant. “Suppose you take a whack at that?”

There were a dozen or so chickens scratching holes here and there, and Durant had indicated a speckled Plymouth Rock twenty yards away.

“We’ll sure eat him, then,” said Harry Quinn, and in a flash he had pulled a gun and fired from the hip. The first bullet knocked a spray of dust into that bird. As it rose into the air with a flop and a squawk, beating its wings as it jumped, the second big bullet smashed into it and through it. It was hurled along the ground, scattering feathers and blood, and lay still without kicking. All the other chickens fled, squawking loudly.

“Hi! That was a good shot!” called the red-headed lad. “That was sure a beauty. You can do it, stranger.” He began to laugh, rather too loudly, and walked over and picked up the dead rooster.

“Give it to the cook,” directed Sam Durant. “Tell him to stew it for supper, Porky. And thanks,” he added to Harry Quinn. “That was a good shot, all right. A fellow that can shoot as straight as that wouldn’t ever go hungry, eh? No, sir, you’d never have to look around very far before you ate. No use in tyin’ you down to life on a ranch and drudgin’ all day long for the sake of three squares. No use at all. And there’s a whole lot of country all around here, partner, and a whole lot of game on it ... from sparrows to buzzards. You go out and make yourself welcome to anything you can shoot. I’ll have to keep the place here open for a gent that ain’t so sure with his Colt.”

Harry Quinn, who saw that he had overshot his real mark, took in a quick breath in order to make a hot answer, but the hard, cold eye of Reata caught him and stopped him.

Sam Durant said to Reata: “Now, maybe you’re the man that I’m goin’ to use, but I’ll have to try you first. It’s a kind of a mean job, too. You see that bay gelding out there in the corral?” He pointed out a well-made mustang in the corner of the corral with dropped head and a pointed rear hoof, taking a noonday nap in the sun.

“That gelding looked so damned good to me,” said Sam Durant, “that I bought it from Bill Chester for a hundred and fifty dollars. But after I got it over here, I decided that I didn’t like it, and I been meaning to return that mustang to the Chester place and get my money back. Somehow I ain’t got around to it. Suppose you just saddle up that hoss and take it over to the Chesters for me. Tell ’em I’m damned sorry to send the hoss back, and that I’d like to have my money.”

“All right,” agreed Reata. “But why shouldn’t I lead him over, instead of riding him?”

“Well, son,” said the rancher, “it’s just an idea that I had ... that Chester would be a lot more pleased, sort of, if you rode that hoss over there today. I think he’d be a pile more likely to take the mustang back and gimme the money that I spent.”

Reata nodded. Something, of course, was in the air. But he obediently pulled the saddle and bridle off Sue, leaving her with only a lead rope that he tied up around her neck. She would follow, unguided, even as she followed her master now to the gate of the corral and remained there, stretching her ugly neck and scrawny head between the bars to see what was going on.

Porky had come out of the house and stood by with a brightly cheerful smile to watch the proceedings, while Reata, leaving his saddle near the gate, took the rope that he carried from his pocket and crossed the corral. There were a dozen other horses in the big enclosure. They herded up around the big bay colt that watched impassively until Reata was near. Then, as the other horses spilled to one side, the bay flashed to the right.

He ran fast, head down, as though he knew what might be the target, but the thin, heavy line of Reata’s rope shot like a bullet from his hand. A small noose opened in the head of the rope and snagged the mustang fairly and squarely. He came up gently on the rope, far too trained to risk a burn.

Moreover, he stood with perfect calm while Reata saddled him. Even when the leg of Reata swung over the saddle, the gelding stood with pricking ears, as though delighted. But at the last instant he shifted with a cat-like spring to the side and let Reata drop in the dust of the corral.