Читать книгу The Iron Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8
ОглавлениеFire Fight Fire
The center of interest had lain half way between McKenzie and Delehanty ever since the two had met in the clearing. And as for Clewes, he had disturbed the revolutions of the others hardly more than a tiny comet, flashing across the solar system, disturbs the course of the sun through the universe. But now matters were altered. Eddie Clewes had become someone of a little importance and, in fixing the new center of interest, it would have to be a place in the triangle of which Eddie was one of the points.
It would be foolish to say that he did not enjoy the new situation. He leaned back a little and brushed away the hair which had fallen over that magnificent forehead of his, which had surely not been given to him in order that he might waste his time in mischief. He brushed back his hair, then, and he smiled on Delehanty. And he nodded and winked at McKenzie.
It was a very subtle wink, as though calculated to escape the observance of Delehanty. But it did not escape him. And, of course, it was intended not to do so!
“McKenzie hasn’t been telling me that he taught you everything that you know,” confessed Eddie Clewes.
It was the truth, but it was so large a way of stating the truth that it allowed just the proper suspicion to lodge in the mind of Delehanty, and he swung his great mastiff’s head back toward McKenzie.
“Look here, Mack!”
“Well?”
“Have you been stringin’ the kid about me?”
“I dunno that I have.”
“Because,” said Delehanty deliberately, “I won’t stand it!”
“Hello! Hello!” broke in Eddie Clewes.
“What’re you yapping about?” snapped Delehanty over his shoulder.
“I only wanted to warn you, Delehanty.”
“You? You wanted to warn me?”
“Delehanty,” explained Eddie Clewes with apparent earnestness, “I simply wanted to tell you to mind the way you speak. I mean, of course, to McKenzie.”
“Wait!” snarled the Irishman. “You’re warning me! Wait! I want to get all of this. You’re warning me about how I should talk to Mack, eh?”
“You may have known him longer than I have,” said Eddie Clewes, “but, as a matter of fact, he isn’t so patient as he seems, and you’re apt to find yourself in hot water pretty soon!”
“Ha!” gasped Delehanty.
The idea seemed to choke him.
“Did you hear that, Mack?”
“Well?” queried McKenzie, without sympathy.
“I got to learn from him how I can talk to you!”
“Humph!” said McKenzie, but he scowled at Delehanty, not at the youth.
“As a matter of fact, kid,” Delehanty went on, “I want you to get this straight!”
“I’m listening.” Eddie Clewes nodded.
“Then you hear me talk! I never had no lessons that amounted to a damn from nobody at all! Y’understand that?”
“I hear you,” said Eddie Clewes, without conviction.
“Nope. When you talk to me, you talk to a self-made man!”
“Very interesting!” said Clewes, and yawned a little.
He saw Delehanty grow black instantly, while just a yellow spark of fire glowed in the eyes of McKenzie.
Black smoke and red fire—and Eddie Clewes working to fan up the flame! Surely a conflagration was promised before long, if he could have his way with it.
And yet it was not safe. Twice Delehanty had made slight but significant motions toward his revolver. And surely playing with these two giants was like juggling flame in one hand and nitroglycerine in the other.
“You damn rat!” said Delehanty with a heavy emphasis. “I got a mind, damned if I ain’t, to teach you manners and to start in right now!”
“Thanks,” chuckled Eddie Clewes. “I’ll pattern my manners after McKenzie. He’s good enough for me!”
McKenzie laughed a little—a very little—not so much as would unsteady the nerves of his gun hand, say!
“You would think,” went on Delehanty, “that this here McKenzie wasn’t no rough-neck at all. You would think that he was the second son of some damn lord or something. You got your education in Oxford, didn’t you, McKenzie?”
“Hey! What?” cried McKenzie, rousing himself a little. “What are you talking about now? Eddication? Hell, Delehanty, don’t you go talking over your head, y’understand?”
“How come I’m talking over my head? How could I be talking over my head when I’m talking to you?”
“Ah!” said McKenzie, drawing in a deep breath, “do ye mind what ye’re a-sayin’, man?”
“Why should I mind it?”
“Are you asking for trouble, Delehanty, ye ignerant pig of an Irish swine, ye?”
“Good!” shouted Delehanty. “I can see how it is! You and the kid, you’re gunna corner me—oh, hell, don’t I see it clear as day? You’ve heard of what I hauled in last night, and you’re after it, now, one on each side of me—”
“You lie!” put in Eddie Clewes calmly.
“Listen!” breathed Delehanty, his teeth set. “He calls me a liar. That skinny runt calls me a liar! And would he dare to if you ain’t sittin’ here putting him up to it?”
“Why, Delehanty, you thick-headed fool,” said Clewes, “do you imagine for an instant that McKenzie would ask the help of anybody in the world, as long as he had only one man to fight against, and that one man the Dumb Delehanty?”
“Dumb Dele—” began the maddened Irishman. “I’ll send you to hell to tell the devil that Mack is comin’!”
As he spoke, he flicked a gun from his holster at the right hip and it spat a bullet straight at Eddie Clewes.
It should have cleft straight through his body and his heart, but Eddie Clewes was not the sort of a man to juggle fire without expecting momently to be burned. He had been waiting for the explosion to come. He had been making his count upon that very score.
As a result, he was dropping for the ground as the gun was drawn, and as he fell, he heard the bullet hiss briefly just above his head.
He was watching while he dropped, however. There was no chance for a second bullet to come his way, for big McKenzie, with a shout of rage and excitement, even forgetting his gun, for the moment, had flung himself at Delehanty and, in so charging home, had received the second bullet through his body.
But the impact of his rush knocked Delehanty headlong backward, so that he crashed into the midst of the broad fire, which Eddie Clewes had so carefully nursed for the cookery of McKenzie.
The red-hot coals bit instantly into the flesh of the prostrate man, and, with a scream of pain and surprise, he rolled to his feet—and came up standing, with smoke rising from his hair and his eyes staring.
He was thinking of water to cool himself, at that moment, rather than the fight which had been so oddly interrupted. And Eddie Clewes, resting quietly on one elbow, watched the fallen hulk of McKenzie twist slowly over on one side at the same instant that Delehanty sprang up from the fire, and saw the Colt leveled in the death-weakened hand of the Scotchman.
Delehanty himself saw, almost in time. He had dropped his first gun. Now he ripped out the second and fired at the same instant that McKenzie planted his shot.
Both struck, and both had aimed with fatal accuracy.
When Eddie Clewes rose to his feet there were only two living creatures in the clearing. He was one, and the mare was the other, standing at a little distance, with her ears pricked curiously and her eyes shining mildly toward this mysterious spectacle.
His first care was to brush away a spark of the fire which was smoldering in the hair of Delehanty.
And then he composed the pair, straightening them upon their backs, and closed their eyes almost tenderly.
Yet there was no tenderness in this strange young man.
He sat down upon the saddle of Delehanty, lighted a cigarette, and regarded the dead men with a sort of philosophical interest.
But his only spoken comment was, a little later: “Well, you really can’t expect two aces of spades to stay in one deck!”
After that, he stood up. Then he bent down over Delehanty’s saddle and opened the flat pocket under the saddle flap.
There was far more in it than he could have expected. He took out one little packet after another, not wrapped in so much as a single film of paper, and secured only by one or two narrow bands of rubber. As he removed them, he counted each stack of greenbacks—forty twenty-dollar bills, then fifty slips that called for fifty dollars apiece, from the government of the United States and the treasurer of the same, in gold coin! And still packet after packet came forth—of all denominations—up to one thin but precious sheaf of five-hundred-dollar bills!
Even the steady nerves of Eddie Clewes fluttered a little as he passed his fingers over these delightful bits of paper. And still he took out more and more—until he almost began to feel that it was a miraculous saddle pocket, like the ever-flowing pitcher in the fable.
Five thousand dollars he passed, and he could see the brigand entering some prosperous store and looting the cash register.
He reached ten thousand and revised his opinion. No, it was the payroll of some great mine, all the hundreds of workers to get their monthly envelopes—
He went past twenty thousand and changed his opinion again. And still it seemed that he was only starting! Fifty thousand dollars—and he saw Delehanty blowing by night the safe of some small bank—
Eighty thousand dollars!
No, such a man as Delehanty could never have taken as much money as this without shedding blood.
“I shall give back,” said Eddie Clewes thoughtfully, “enough to make things easy for the widow of the night watchman.”
But still the count went on. A hundred thousand! A hundred and fifty thousand. At a hundred and eighty-two thousand and five hundred dollars the count stopped.
“My dear boy,” said Eddie Clewes, “I congratulate you! You are almost rich enough to become honest!”
