Читать книгу The Gambler - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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The sheriff of San Pablo county ordinarily kept his established office in the seat of the county government, that is to say, in the flourishing town of Eugene. Other sheriffs, in similar circumstances, would have wished that Eugene were even farther away from the battle front of crime which had recently been growing to prominence in San Pablo. But Mike Nolan had a childish way of taking his problems seriously. This one he considered with his usual gravity and, having pondered it for a week, he finally told his wife to pack the household furniture. Then he moved bag and baggage to San Pablo and on a day drove his team down the main street of the town surrounded by an ominous wave of silence.

San Pablo was not ready for him with a reception committee. To be blunt, San Pablo did not want him at all. It had other matters on its hands which required all of its time. Among others, for instance, it was very busy in extracting loose cash from the hands of those careless miners who wandered down from the mines in search of a good time with “trimmings.” San Pablo had been supplying both pleasure and trimmings. A rich, steady stream of gold and silver was tumbling daily into the pockets of the townsmen, and they did not wish to be disturbed.

So, to begin with, they started to make trouble for the sheriff. On the first day they sent Ollie Haines to talk to Nolan. Ollie talked with all his customary eloquence, a Colt in either hand, but he had hardly a fair chance to express all that was on his mind. The sheriff spoke the first word, and thereafter for Ollie “the rest was silence.”

San Pablo still was not discouraged, however. It looked about and called up its reserves. It found two men who were not only celebrated as warriors of knife and gun, but who had not the slightest conscience about making members in a mob attack. The two were none other than Chris Newsom, famous for cattle rustling and half a dozen murders, and Hank Lawrence, more famous for murders, but less known for thefts.

The two called upon the sheriff rather suddenly, while he was unsaddling his horse in the little shed which served as a stable for his “string” behind his shack. The sheriff received a slight wound on the upper left arm. Chris Newsom died on the spot; Hank Lawrence managed to crawl away into the night and died in the open field. They found him the next morning.

Since the town would not sponsor this cowardly attack by burying the miscreants or by paying the slightest attention to them, the sheriff put their bodies into his own buckboard. Then he hired three Mexicans to dig a grave. Most of San Pablo attended the ceremonies which were conducted without the aid of a minister. The sheriff made the funeral oration. It was brief but strangely eloquent in the opinion of San Pablo.

For the sheriff said: “Gents, there ain’t no doubt that you can get me. A whole town is a lot stronger than any one man in it. But while you’re gettin’ me, I may be gettin’ some of you. Besides, when you get rid of me, you’ve only got a worse problem on your hands. About the same time that you mob me, the governor’ll be ordering out the troops and sendin’ down a lot of handy boys from the State militia. Well, friends, you can do your thinkin’ and take your pick. Throw in the dirt, boys.”

And he went away while the Mexicans shoveled the earth into place over the rude coffins.

San Pablo retired to think, and having irrigated its brains with mighty moonshine whiskey, it decided that it was best to leave well enough alone, no matter how bad that “well enough” might be. There were no further attempts against the sheriff. He was allowed to come and go. When he went forth to make an arrest, he was not hindered so long as he did not make too many. And the sheriff saw to it that he did not make too many.

He wrote to the governor:

“The time ain’t come to put things straight in San Pablo. San Pablo is having a bust. Right now it would take thirty killings to tame the boys down. And a lot of good men would be among them killings. In about a month San Pablo will begin to wear off its jags, and when its headache starts, I’ll put on the irons and jerk things into order so dog-gone quick that the brains of some of these folks will start swimmin’. That’s what I say and that’s what I mean.

“But right now it strikes me that the best thing is to stand back and let ’em wear themselves down with friction. Here’s two or three thousand gents all handy with their guns, mostly loaded with booze, and all ready to turn in at a lynching party where the sheriff will have to swing.

“In the meantime, they let me go my way. I don’t arrest many, but I get the worst in the crowd. I get the most of the real killers. The small fry can go their own way. They shoot up each other and save the State a lot of money for rope and free board.”

This was the opinion of the sheriff, and this was the opinion of the governor also. He was aware that the newspaper correspondents were happy to have such a primitive and delightful place as San Pablo to talk about. They would not begin to damn the official negligence of the State for a few more weeks.

Such was the state of affairs. The sheriff was every day a little more feared. And every day the people of the town came to see that if they disposed of him they were in reality only beginning a combat with a hundred-headed monster, the law. Besides, behind the sheriff the law-abiding citizens of San Pablo, though a distinct minority, made a solid bulwark. And even border ruffians had an instinct which tells them that their individual prowess with weapons is of no avail against the orderly movements of a large body of men willing to submit unquestioningly to leadership and authority, just as barbarians wonder at, despise, and dread disciplined troops.

It was at this time in his career that a stranger dropped into the office of Sheriff Mike Nolan.

He was a man of little more than the middle height, but so slender and withal so dignified in his demeanor that he made the most of his inches and appeared a tall man until another came beside him. He was a fellow with mild, pleasant gray eyes, and peculiarly pale eyebrows and lashes.

He was dressed in riding breeches, and he carried in his hand a riding crop. The sheriff looked upon him and marveled. But what he wondered at was not the appearance of the stranger but the fact that he could have entered the town of San Pablo and passed in safety through its noisy streets, full of drunken, rioting, reckless men. It seemed to the sheriff well worthy of wonder that such a thing could have been done. It seemed especially remarkable that the half-dozen villains who were lounging across the street from his office and house had not taken occasion to say a few leading remarks in the general direction of the newcomer. For even the sheriff, a man of faultless manners according to the Western code, felt his lip twitching.

However, the smile did not really develop. There was that in the stranger which restrained him. The riding crop in his hand he carried as though it were a veritable scepter. His head was as high as though he owned all of San Pablo, and most particularly the house of the sheriff and all that was within it. In this fashion the stranger walked in upon Sheriff Mike Nolan.

Standing at the door, he removed the white silk handkerchief which was knotted about his collar. This he shook out, folded carefully, and then put away in a hip pocket. Next he removed his hat, with a second handkerchief dried his forehead, then flicked the dust from his clothes with a few deft and wide-embracing motions, and finally stepped through the door and presented himself to Nolan.

The sheriff, amazed, saw one who, it seemed, could not possibly have been spending hours under the blazing sun of the outdoors. Everything about him was jauntily cool; and in his shimmering boots one might have seen to shave oneself. There was a crowning mystery. So soon as the stranger lifted his hat, his pale blond hair was revealed, neatly and exactly parted, neither rumpled by the long ride and the friction of the hat nor blackened with perspiration. Yet yonder at the hitching rack was the horse from which this odd fellow had dismounted, a horse caked with the red dust of Eugene and the gray dirt of all the intervening miles. The sheriff noted all of these things, which have taken so long to describe, in a single flickering glance and in the tenth part of a second. Then he pointed to a chair.

“I am Thomas Naseby Corcoran,” said the stranger.

The sheriff harked far back in his memory. Somewhere he had heard that name. It loomed half lost on the horizon of his mind. Mountain or cloud, he could not tell. In the meantime he noted with much surprise that this enunciation of a middle name did not seem offensive. And the sheriff decided that there was no other man west of the Mississippi who could have introduced himself with three names and seven syllables without being instantly laughed out of countenance. However, he also decided that none could ever address this man as “Tom” Corcoran. One could not even think of him as Thomas Corcoran. One needed the entire title to roll across the tongue, slowly, with dignity: “Thomas Naseby Corcoran!”

“My name is Mike Nolan,” said the sheriff, and stretched forth his hand.

He let his hand drop with a sudden jerk, and his jaw thrust out. After all, the sheriff was an Irishman, and now his blood boiled. For the stranger had not made a movement to take the hand of Nolan.

“Before we become friendly,” said Corcoran, “I think you had better learn a few things about me, sheriff. For instance, you may wish to know about my business.”

“You can keep your business to yourself!” said the sheriff hotly. “I ain’t askin’ no questions of you!”

“My business,” said Corcoran, “is gambling.”

At this, the sheriff opened his small, pale-blue eyes, set somewhat close together, like the eyes of a bull terrier. It did not fit in with his first conception of the newcomer. He would have staked a good deal of money that the other was at the least one of the new mine owners—perhaps one of those Easterners who had already bought up such large shares of the claims on Comanche Mountain. Now he nodded at Corcoran, somewhat at sea because of the foolish error which he had made and still angry because of the first impulse, though he was beginning to see why Corcoran had acted in this fashion.

“A straight gambler, I guess,” said the sheriff, masking a sneer.

“I believe,” said Corcoran, “that I am the crookedest gambler living—when I am playing with crooks. I believe that I am as straight as any when playing with honest men. However,” he added, while he met the sheriff’s gaze with a level glance, “I thought I’d drop in here and get acquainted with you before I opened up in San Pablo.”