Читать книгу The Iron Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10
ОглавлениеFive Minutes to Spare
They wanted to know details. Ah, how they hungered to learn them! And when Eddie Clewes most earnestly besought them to let him go on his way, they simply roared him down.
He was to return with them with all due haste to the town of Culloden, because that was his town, from this moment. It belonged to him, as a matter of fact!
But, first and foremost, there was the story of exactly what had happened—would he please tell them?
The sheriff intervened, at this moment: “Boys,” said he with much disgust, “where and how was you raised, to think that a gent like my friend Larned, here, would be spouting about how grand he fought, and how he done the trick! Why, gents, blasted if I ain’t almost ashamed that I come from the same town with you. Come along and ride with me, Larned, will you? And forget the rest of them. They don’t mean no harm. But there’s a considerable gap between intentions and facts, a lot of the time! Ride up here—and I can’t help saying, Larned, that this is about the grandest morning of my life, and that it’ll mean more to the colonel than it does to me, even!”
“The colonel?” said Eddie politely.
“I mean Colonel William Exeter. Sometimes we forget that the whole dog-gone world doesn’t know about the colonel, the same as we do in Culloden Valley. You never heard about him, eh?”
“I never have, I believe,” said Eddie Clewes.
“It’s this way,” said Sheriff Askew: “The colonel ain’t Culloden, but he’s about half of it, and the best half, by a long shot. He’s our George Washington and he’s our Abraham Lincoln. He’s our Statue of Liberty, our post office, and our town hall. And every acre in Culloden Valley is worth five dollars more because we’ve got a Colonel Exeter with us. Y’understand?”
“I understand,” said Eddie Clewes, and the soul of the confidence man began to expand.
“Of course,” said the sheriff, “he owns the best part of the bank!”
“It’s quite a bank, then?” said Eddie Clewes.
“Quite a bank? Now, I’ll tell a man that it’s quite a bank! Matter of fact, we don’t need no orphan asylum nor old-folks home so long as the colonel runs that bank. He turns the profits into doing good, you might say. When you step into that bank and ask for a loan, he don’t ask you how many acres you got, but how many children you have. He don’t look at your bank account but at your heart, you understand?”
But Eddie Clewes was seized with an unpleasant fit of coughing, at this moment, and could not answer.
“Now the colonel,” went on the sheriff, “will, of course, be glad to see the gent that brought back to the bank the money that would have busted him and it—”
“He’s not rich, then?” said Clewes, some of the light departing from his eyes.
“Rich? Oh, rich enough. But money ain’t what the colonel puts a value on. On his house, and on his family, first of all. He had a pair—a boy named Tom, and a girl named Dolly. Now, Tom was a fine fellow, though he needed a little bridling down, I suppose, and five or six years ago, he got into a mix-up with that same McKenzie, back there—and McKenzie left him dead, of course. We thought that it would of killed the poor colonel. And it did turn him white, but he kept on living for the sake of Dolly. So you can see, Larned, that it will be a great day for Exeter when he meets the gent that brings back the stolen coin and that put McKenzie under the sod in one grand fight!”
“I think that it might be a good idea if I were first—” began Eddie Clewes.
“Not to meet him, eh? I know that you’re modest, Larned. But don’t you be a fool and turn your back on a twelve-thousand-dollar reward.”
“Twelve thousand!” cried Eddie Clewes.
“Seven for Delehanty, and five for McKenzie, though McKenzie was the real snake, and done ten times as much damage as Delehanty would ever have had the wits to do. But I would like to know about the way you came across the pair of them—”
But of the manner in which Eddie Clewes told of the things which he did and which he did not do, it is perhaps better to discuss in the words of the sheriff, as “Boots” Askew related these events a little later in the day to the colonel.
For, leaving the bodies of the dead men and the loot, and most of all, “Mr. Larned” himself, the sheriff galloped eagerly ahead because he could fairly well guess that, by this time, a savage run must have been started against the colonel’s bank. Mile after mile, Askew pushed his sweating, tired horse down the valley. Frightened depositors might run the bank dry, as he well knew, and five minutes might make the difference between safety and ruin to William Exeter.
For all of those reasons, Sheriff Askew rushed his horse at a perilous speed down that winding valley road, and brought it staggering into Culloden.
He could see that he was a true prophet while he was still blocks away. For a little line of people stood in front of the doors of the bank, and across the street had gathered a crowd which waited and waited, and reminded the sheriff of a group of wolves, waiting until starvation has weakened the bull moose.
They were watching to see if that steady file of depositors, drawing out and closing their accounts, might not cause the sudden announcement that the bank had failed to meet payments and had closed its doors!
That the bank had failed!
Yes, that would be tidings worth hearing at first hand. And the sheriff swore with excitement as his failing horse reeled over the last two hundred yards.
He was greeted with a wail of expectation the moment he was recognized. And they came thronging toward him. “What’s the news, Askew? Hey, Boots, what’s happened? Will you loosen up and say?”
“I got news for the colonel!” he told them roughly. “Lemme get through!”
And he thrust a channel through their midst and came presently to the doors of the bank. He glanced contemptuously up and down the anxious line of faces—not men only, but women, also.
“You got a lot of confidence in the colonel, ain’t you?” said the sheriff coldly, throwing away a hundred votes at the next election by that very speech, but the sheriff hardly cared. On such a day as this, a man could afford to be himself and stop politics.
He strode through the doors.
“I ain’t coming to draw my account out,” he told the weary janitor, who was trying to keep the line straight. “But I want the colonel!”
He found the colonel himself behind the cashier’s window.
And never had William Exeter been more magnificent than in this moment of apparent ruin. For he greeted each new face at the window with his readiest smile, and a cordial shake of the hand, and when they would have apologized, he silenced them with the utmost cheerfulness.
“Every man has a duty to the interests of his family!” the colonel would say. “Don’t apologize, but take your money and keep it safe!”
And so he paid them, one after another, as soon as the clerks, working with drawn faces at the last set of accounts which they were sure they would ever arrange in this bank, could check off the correct balance.
The coming of the sheriff, however, was somewhat of a shock for Exeter, steady as his nerves were. For he blanched as he saw the form of Boots Askew.
“Back so soon, Askew?” he said. “Did the trail fade out as soon as all this? However, you’re welcome back. If you’ll step into my office, Askew, I’ll come in, in a moment, and give you your money.”
“Money?” said the sheriff harshly. “What money, Colonel?”
“Your account, your account, of course,” answered Exeter. “And what else would bring you back here?”
“Why, devil take it, Colonel,” said the sheriff, “am I always a scarecrow to frighten away good times?”
Oh, he had built up enough expectation by this time! And he roused it to a still higher pitch as he paused a moment and glanced up and down at the gleaming eyes of those excited depositors.
Only the colonel did not speak. But he gripped the edge of the shelf inside the cashier’s window and looked suddenly down to the floor.
“Because,” said Boots Askew, “we’re bringing back Delehanty dead!”
He let them gasp.
“And with Delehanty,” he continued, raising his voice a little, “we’re bringing back Murdoch McKenzie—dead also!”
A shout began from the little crowd, but in their expectancy of more news, the noise was instantly stifled. And leaning forward with blazing eyes, they waited for Sheriff Askew’s next announcement.
“And with the dead men,” went on the sheriff, “we’re bringing back every penny that was stolen from the colonel’s bank!”
Oh, what a cheer went up then! There was no question of drawing out their accounts, now. But they swept out of the bank to communicate the good word to the others who waited anxiously in the street, and to spread it on and on through Culloden Valley—that the peril was over, and that the colonel’s bank was saved, and all the money which was deposited in it.
The sheriff watched them go. In an instant, that bank was empty, except for the glad, dazed faces of the clerks in it.
And then Boots Askew advanced through the door into the private office of President Exeter.
He found Exeter already there, sitting in his leather chair, behind the big, brown-faced, shining desk. A very serious man was the colonel, a little pale, but not shaken. He had gone through the battle; the first fruits of the victory had been tasted; and yet it was not wonderful that there was more than a little bitterness in his heart.
For when the sheriff said: “Hear them cheering, Colonel!”
“They’re cheering you, Askew,” said the colonel soberly. “They’re not cheering me. They’re cheering you and the wit and the courage that killed Delehanty and McKenzie. But as for me, man, they would have walked over my dead body gladly, if they could have been sure of getting to their money safely, in that way!
“However,” he added suddenly, “this is a shabby way to treat you and to thank you, Askew. But I do thank you, with my whole heart. For my own sake, and for the sake of the poor, panic-stricken beggars who were crushing me in trying to save themselves. In another five minutes, Sheriff, the bank would have failed!”
