Читать книгу The Gambler - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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The sheriff was both amazed and amused. “This is something new,” he confessed. “Dog-goned if I ever seen anybody go about his work the way you’re doin’. Maybe you want me to go in partnership with you, Thomas Naseby Corcoran?”

“If you did,” said the surprising Corcoran, “we’d both be rich in six months.”

“Ah?” said the sheriff.

“Because,” said Corcoran, “you have the reputation of an honest man and I have the brains of a crook. Mix the two together and you have something which is very close to the philosopher’s stone.”

“What the devil is that kind of a stone?” asked the sheriff.

“I beg your pardon,” said Corcoran. “I mean that if we worked together, we could turn rocks into gold. But let that go. I’m not idiot enough to try to buy you, sheriff.”

The sheriff grew warm with this delicate flattery. It is one thing to have one’s honesty admired by other honest men. It is quite a different matter to find that even thieves believe in one’s virtue. The sheriff’s heart expanded. He had to bite his lip to keep from smiling.

“Well, Corcoran,” he said more gently, “you’re a queer sort. But you seem sort of square about it. You’ve come to work San Pablo, have you?”

“That’s my main idea.”

“Well,” said the sheriff, “why d’you come to me?”

“Because,” said Corcoran, “I’m a pretty lucky fellow with the cards. D’you see? And before I’ve been here very long, I suppose that you’ll begin to hear reports about me. They’ll call me a good many kinds of a cheat. But, Sheriff, when those reports come to you, I want you to think twice and give me the benefit of the doubt.”

The sheriff studied him for another moment. Then he removed his spurred heels from the scarred top of his desk and brought them with a bang to the floor while he rocked forward in his chair.

“Tell me one thing, Corcoran. Are you prepared to fight your way among tough fellows?”

“I don’t know what you mean, sheriff.”

“Why, man, I mean simply this. You may have been gambling peaceful places before this, and you may have run into no danger. But in San Pablo you’ll find a crew of very hardy gents, Corcoran. They don’t think nothin’ of goin’ for their guns. Colts do more talkin’ in this town than folks do. The shootin’ scrapes and the killin’ would keep an addin’ machine busy to keep track of them.”

“Thanks,” said Corcoran. “I’m glad to know all these things about the town.” He looked at the sheriff so quietly and so innocently that Mike Nolan felt his heart expand again—this time with pity.

“Corcoran,” he said, slapping a hand against his knee, “I got an idea that you’re a good fellow.”

“That’s very kind of you, sheriff.”

“And my advice to you is that you get out of San Pablo as fast as even a tired horse can carry you. Get out before you land in trouble!”

Corcoran frowned at the floor.

“Otherwise,” said the sheriff sternly, “I give you about three hours of life in San Pablo.”

“Why, what could they have against me, sheriff?”

“Nothin’, most like, except the cut of your pants. They don’t need to have nothin’ agin’ you. They’ll shoot you because of the way you got your pockets full of handkerchiefs.”

At this, Thomas Corcoran sighed and shook his head. “I suppose you are entirely right,” he said. “But it seems too bad that the world should be full of such brutal people, sheriff.”

“I’ll have ’em in hand—with a little luck!” answered the honest sheriff. “I’m playin’ my game, Corcoran. The skunks’ll feel my hand on their shoulders one of these days. Don’t you worry none about that, because it’s going to happen. Just you get out of San Pablo and wait till times has quieted down.”

“There is only one trouble.”

“What’s that?”

“I have a commission to execute in this town before I leave.”

“Maybe I could do it for you, friend?”

“That’s really kind of you,” said Corcoran. “But you see, this is a thing which has been entrusted to me by a dying man.”

“Ah?” murmured the sheriff. “Might I ask who?”

“I have to find the stepson of Harry Bristol.”

“That redheaded young devil? You mean Julia Kern’s boy? You mean that hell-raisin’ young thief an’ liar and fightin’ wild cat, Willie Kern?”

“I suppose,” said Corcoran, smiling, “that’s the boy I have to find.”

“More like a son of Harry Bristol than a stepson. Dog-gone me if he don’t take after the old devil himself. I never see such a boy! It’ll be the warmin’ of the whole country, what that kid’ll do when he grows up.”

“Maybe,” said Corcoran, “he’ll straighten up when he gets older.”

“Him?” snorted the sheriff. “There ain’t nothing in him to get better. There ain’t the beginnin’ of no good in him. He’d skin a cat alive for the sake of hearin’ it yowl. He’d beat another kid to death for the sake of the fun of hearin’ him beg for mercy. Darned if he ain’t just like a young wolf.”

“Ah?” said Corcoran. “I’m very interested in that breed. Besides, I have a message to the boy from his stepfather, as I said before.”

“You mean to say that Harry Bristol is dying?”

“Dead,” said Corcoran.

The sheriff rolled a cigarette and lighted it meditatively.

“They all wind up the way that they start,” he said. “Bristol was always headed for the rocks. Finally he went bust on ’em. Bristol dead! How come? Get drunk and pick a fight?”

“No, he picked a fight when he was cold sober and laid in wait for a fellow who was traveling toward San Pablo.”

“The skunk! Did his gun miss fire?”

“The other fellow happened to see the wink of the sun on the rifle barrel. So he killed Harry Bristol.”

“The devil. But Bristol, Corcoran, was a devil of a fine shot and a sure man at—”

“Of course,” broke in Corcoran, “but even the best of ’em have their unlucky days. Can you tell me where to find young Kern?”

“That little devil? I dunno. You start out lookin’ for trouble, and the first that you find—Red Willie will be at the center of things!”

Corcoran stood again in the doorway. “In the meantime,” he said, “thank you a thousand times, sheriff.”

“Wait one minute, Corcoran. Do you happen to know the name of the gent that saved the law all the trouble of a hangin’ by killing Harry Bristol?”

“Yes,” said Corcoran. “I did it.”

And he was gone.

The sheriff sat for a time staring at the doorway as though he still saw the form of a man outlined in it. A silence had come over San Pablo. Though the pause he could hear the rushing of the noisy little Mirraquipa, and his glance wandered vaguely upward toward the ragged heads of the Digger Mountains.

“Dog-gone me,” said the sheriff at last. “If I didn’t make a fool of myself!”

He issued from his office and stood under his veranda watching Corcoran disappear down the street on the black stallion which danced along with mincing steps as though at the head of a procession with a blaring band behind. The rider turned out of sight down the crooked street, and the sheriff wandered across to the half-dozen loungers in front of the Quinnel store. They greeted him with unenthusiastic nods, and yet their silence was a tribute.

“What’s doing, boys?” asked the sheriff.

“Not much news,” answered the nearest man. “Old Curtis had sold out up on Comanche Mountain.”

“Maybe you seen the new gent ride into town?” asked the sheriff gently.

“We seen him,” said two or three, speaking together.

The sheriff saw that there was something on their minds. “I’d of thought,” he said, “that the boys would of thought he was a sort of a show?”

“Well, he was, in a way. But not the sort of a show that big Jeff Toomey thought.”

The sheriff scanned their faces eagerly. Toomey was an old trouble maker in San Pablo. His bulky hands were constantly mixed in quarrels.

“What did Toomey do?” he asked at length.

“There was something about this new gent that seemed sort of queer to Toomey,” said the oldest of the six, who now acted as the spokesman. “He was ridin’ up the street. We could see it all pretty clear from here. He seen this gent in the funny clothes on the black hoss comin’ down the street. And Big Jeff stopped him.

“Looked like he had a good deal to say. We could see him begin to point out things, about the clothes of the stranger. And the boys come out from Jessop’s to watch and to listen. Maybe you could hear ’em laughin’ clear over yonder in your office?”

“I heard something that might of been laughter,” admitted the sheriff. “But my ears ain’t what they used to be by a mile.”

“Well, the stranger let Toomey talk for quite a spell before he answered back something that made big Toomey mad. We seen Jeff haul off and make a swipe at the other gent, but the stranger he just ducked under Toomey’s fist and give his hoss a touch with the spur. How he done it, I dunno. Seemed to twist Toomey around, get one hand in the small of Toomey’s back, and the first thing we knowed, Toomey was out of the saddle. The stranger carried him over in front of Jessop’s and dropped him under the shed. And Toomey lay where he dropped, writhin’ and kickin’ and grabbin’ at his right shoulder. I guess his shoulder was busted. It was a dog-gone queer thing. Then the stranger come on down the street like nothing’ had happened.”

The sheriff drew a long, long breath. He could understand now the singular silence which had greeted Corcoran during his progress through the streets of the town.