Читать книгу The Iron Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6
ОглавлениеThe Jungle Trail
He heard the train before he saw it—a moan of labor out of the darkness. Then he came on the tracks, curving up the grade and gliding dimly out of sight in the starlight. The headlight swung through the trees, after a time, like a moving fire; the engine went by, glowing and shuddering with its own might. And Eddie Clewes hooked onto the platform of the caboose as the long freight went by.
He hung on the ladder, for a moment, letting his coat-tail flap in the wind and feeling the gale curl down inside his collar and run skeleton fingers down his spine. And no dexterous rider, swinging into the saddle, ever settled himself into the stirrups with more satisfaction than did Clewes. For these were the horses with which he had been familiar from childhood. Fast passenger or lumbering freight, he knew their dangerous details by heart, and all the wiles and ways of conductors and brakemen who herded them thundering back and forth across the continent.
He watched a few miles of the forest spin behind him. Then he stepped onto the platform and tried the door. It opened at once, and he found himself in the caboose, where a brakeman was hunched over, balancing a great hunk of bread and cheese on one knee and a mug of coffee in his other hand.
“Hello,” said Eddie Clewes. “I’m just in time, I see!”
The brakie reached a hand for the lantern which sat on the floor beside him, one of those stout, iron-bound affairs which, as Clewes well knew, made an excellent impromptu club.
“Hello,” growled the brakie, glowering darkly. “A tramp royal, by God!”
“Thanks,” said Clewes. “Where’s the rest of the bread and cheese?”
The brakie balanced the lantern in his hand and a thought in his mind.
“Where did you eat last?” he asked.
“In jail,” smiled Clewes.
And suddenly the brakeman grinned with cavernous mirth, like a dog when one scratches the right place.
“Are you charity?” he asked.
“Me? Not at all! What’s your rate?”
“Two bucks for my division.”
“Here’s three.”
The brakeman took the money, glanced at it in keen scrutiny, and then pocketed it with a grunt.
“I’m through,” said he, and handed over the remainder of his lunch. And Clewes, without undue pride, sat down on his heels to eat and chat.
And the miles rumbled swiftly away beneath the car, and Sheriff Cliff Matthews and his jail dropped farther and farther until they were hull down on the horizon of Clewes’ memory.
He reached the end of that division in the gray of the dawn. Big mountains towered about him toward the sky. A river flashed down the valley, its voice drowned by the thunder of the train. And the wind was thick and rich with the fragrance of the pines. As for the town, there was not much to it. It lay on the flattened shore of the stream, around a single bend, but it seemed to Clewes that he would doubt his luck and his presiding Goddess of Fortune it he did not take his chance here. So, before the train reached the station, he dropped from the rear platform, raced like a deer until he could master his equilibrium, and then saw the freight snatched away from him and drawing toward the station with a fluttering apron of dust behind it.
He delayed just long enough to enjoy the gleam of the snow on the upper peaks. Then he went down to the riverside, following his nose, for he made a habit of letting instinct lead him. He, like Napoleon, trusted his destiny.
He had not walked a quarter of a mile beside the brawling of the river when he saw a rising ghost of smoke beyond the trees and made for it. He reached, presently, a little clearing, high overtopped by great trees, and at one side of the open space a fire smoked. There was a litter of tin cans of all sizes, here and there, and one of these, of big dimensions, had been propped on three little fire-blackened stones, with the fire working beneath it. The pleasant odor of boiling chicken came forth to the nose of Eddie Clewes. He leaned closer and saw the fragment stirred slowly by the currents of boiling water.
“Make yourself at home, youngster,” said a gruff voice behind him.
“Thanks,” replied Clewes, looking slowly around, and seeing a big man in the garb of a cowpuncher, with a hand resting on the butt of a bolstered revolver, “we’ve met before, haven’t we?”
For there was something familiar in the dark, stern features of the other.
“We ain’t,” said the big man with decision. “What are you doing here?”
“I just stepped off the freight to look around for breakfast, and I seem to be in luck.”
The other approached slowly until he towered above Eddie Clewes.
“Young and fresh,” said the big man. “But if you stay around this part of the country long enough, you’ll get salted down, well enough. Step back from that can, will you? No, just keep facing me. Hold on! I’ll see how many guns you wear, first.”
He reached a hand toward Eddie Clewes, but the latter backed up a trifle more.
“Steady, steady McKenzie!” said he.
That name seemed to make the gun of McKenzie jump into his hand.
“By God,” said he, “you do know me!”
“You’ve had your face in enough papers,” answered Eddie Clewes, wisely disregarding the Colt, which was leveled waist high on the region of his stomach. “But don’t worry. I’m on your side of the fence.”
Murdoch McKenzie regarded him dourly.
“You ain’t on a pleasure trip, then,” he suggested at last.
“No,” said Clewes, “you might say that I’m seeing the country by accident. Sit down and watch the stew, while I get some more wood.”
He did not offer to slip away among the trees, for he knew that those biting eyes were fastened upon him all the time, with a wolfish intentness. But from the edge of the clearing he picked up what he wanted and brought it back. He removed his coat, folded it neatly, rolled back his sleeves to save his cuffs from dirt, and then began to feed the fire adroitly with little dried twigs. McKenzie all the while studied him with much interest.
“Green, but cool,” he said at last. “I dunno but that you’ll do, kid. Only—did you think that you bluffed me out a minute ago?”
“Not at all,” Clewes assured him, and he looked up with his cheerful smile, “but you decided that the pickings might not be worth the trouble. Wasn’t that it?”
The gloomy, sneering face of McKenzie relaxed a little, at this tribute. He allowed himself to nod indulgently.
“More wood, kid,” he commanded, “and keep the fire broad, but not so’s the smoke’ll curl over into the soup, y’understand?”
“Certainly,” said Eddie Clewes, and was instantly obedient.
“A kid that ain’t too old to take lessons; he ain’t too old to learn how to be a man,” said McKenzie judicially. “Reach me that stick. I want to give the slum-gullion a stir.”
Eddie Clewes, obeying again, considered the big man from profile, and from that angle he could see more clearly the crushed bridge of the Scotchman’s nose, disfiguring him for life, and making his nostrils flare out brutishly, perforce.
Another giant had inflicted that hurt upon McKenzie, so rumor had it, in the midst of a terrible hand-to-hand battle in which McKenzie was the ultimate victor. It was said that McKenzie, after the struggle, took his victim’s body by night into the nearest town and laid it on the steps of the courthouse, and wrote with blood from one of his many wounds:
I done this fair and square.
McKenzie.
It had made a great sensation at the time.
But that was only one of the chapters which kept fleeting through the memory of Clewes as he watched his host. Strong as a bull and swift and treacherous as a snake, legend reported McKenzie to be. And all that legend had reported, Eddie Clewes believed. The three hundred dollars in his pocket became a loan upon his mind, for McKenzie had committed murder many times for a smaller prize than that.
“And now,” began McKenzie. Then his ear caught another sound, and, heaving up his dark head, he listened intently for an instant. “Somebody else,” said the giant. “Damn me if I ever come to this jungle again. Used to be a peaceful place, but the West ain’t what it once was. It’s crowded all the time. Crowded with damned tenderfeet, and whatnot!”
He motioned Clewes before him, and the two slipped into the circle of brush.
Presently they could hear a horse approaching from the farther side. Then all noise ceased.
“He’s investigating,” said McKenzie, “but, by God, I’m gunna finish that breakfast if I have to do a killing for it! Keep low and quiet, kid, and remember, if you chance to feel frisky, that I got two eyes in my head and two guns!”
But Eddie Clewes needed no such reminder. He already knew enough and too much about his host.
“Hello!” called a bold voice from the farther side of the clearing. “What’s the game, partner?”
“What’s yours?” answered McKenzie after an instant of hesitation.
“Aces high and draw when you please,” said the stranger.
“It’s Delehanty,” muttered McKenzie to himself. “What brought that devil on my trail again?”
He called aloud, “Step out, Delehanty.”
“Hey, McKenzie, is it you, you——”
“It’s me,” said McKenzie. “Are we friends?”
“Friends? Why not?”
“Then show yourself.”
“Sure. I’ll take my chance with you, Mack.”
And into the clearing stepped a man big enough and powerful enough in outline to have stood as the very twin brother of McKenzie.
