Читать книгу The Iron Trail - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9
ОглавлениеJust Steel
Someone has said, or should have said, that a good deed brings a good appetite; and, when Eddie Clewes had finished counting the spoils of war, he remembered that he had not had a share of that same chicken stew. But there were other things to replace it, particularly some bacon from the pack of Delehanty. With the long, keen-edged bowie knife of McKenzie, he cut himself some liberal slices and laid them on a grill made of crossed ramrods and a few twigs. Then he washed the coffee pot and went down to the brink of the river to take a measure of water fresh from the snows.
Never had the eye of Mr. Clewes looked upon Mother Nature’s face with such kindliness. A bird sat on a rock behind him and sang with such violent delight that all the feathers stood out in a ruff around its neck. And it seemed to Clewes that that song was for him.
Then he went back to the clearing and sat down to the cooking of his breakfast and the further examination of the plunder. He sliced several pieces of the bread of Delehanty, and set it up on edge around the fire. Presently the different aromas of toasting bread and bacon and the delicate perfume of simmering coffee were adrift beneath the trees. And while the fire worked for him, Eddie Clewes ransacked the pockets of the two men of crime.
He put the contents all in a little pile, upon a horse blanket—Bull Durham sacks, and bandanas, and cartridge belts, and knives, and pouches, and Colts, and rifles, and matches, and plug tobacco, and even a handful of chicken feed in the shape of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
It made a goodly pile, and, seeing it stacked up, he could not resist the temptation to take the sheafs of greenbacks and arrange them in a neat little cord-wood stack to crown the lot.
Then he settled down to his breakfast.
You would say that this was a most unfeeling young man, but when the rising sun cast a slant ray of brilliance on the dead face of McKenzie, he stood up and put that gentleman’s hat across his chest and head.
After that, the breakfast proceeded merrily until the same little brown bird which had sung to him on the edge of the river came fluttering into the clearing as though it knew that plenty of crumbs and an overflowing heart of kindness could be found there.
While Eddie Clewes sipped from a tin of coffee in his right hand, in his left he extended a crust, and presently the little brown songster had perched with amazing boldness on his thumb and was picking vigorously at the bread, while Clewes smiled with pleasure.
That hearty meal ended, the bird lighted on a stump not two yards away and broke into song once more, as though in gratitude.
“Everybody loves the winner,” said Eddie Clewes. “Even a bird, I think! My dear,” he said at last, pouring himself another modicum of steaming coffee, “you’re not the only artist in this wood. Listen to this!”
And tilting back his head, he sent a fine tenor voice floating across the clearing in a song which declared that he was going back to “Alabammy” to his “mammy,” and sit in the shade the rest of his days, watching the cotton whiten the fields—
The bird, with a critical head held on one side, listened and occasionally flirted out its wings and ruffled its throat feathers as though bursting with impatience to crush this rival singer.
The last note had died on the lips of Eddie Clewes when the brown bird was at it again in gay response, with trill, and whistle, and bubbling cadence, as though it had caught the melody of the river and were singing to bring all the brightness and the joy of the stream here among the shadows.
Vague prickings of the mind disturbed Eddie Clewes. He felt that he should replace the saddle upon the tall mare and start straightway up the valley. But he could not take himself away from this tiny enchanter. So, with his coffee finished, he hugged his knees and dandled one of the great Colts which he had taken from Delehanty, and let the moments slide guiltily behind him.
He was on the very verge of rising, however, when he heard something behind him which turned his blood cold—the sharp crackling of a twig, broken under a weight, an unmistakable and crunching sound!
He had been hearing other such sounds from the trees beyond the open space, but he had taken it for granted that they were made by the wanderings of Delehanty’s mare and the horse of big McKenzie. However, there was no horse behind him.
And then, peering through the woods before him, almost too startled to turn his head to the rear, he saw one, two, three forms of men gliding toward him through the last veil of underbrush!
He was trapped! He was unmistakably trapped in the very moment of his rejoicing. And yet, certainly, he had never accredited Cliff Matthews with brains enough to follow such a trail as he had left—and travel it so swiftly!
He turned about now, and, to make surety doubly sure, he saw two dusty men standing on the edge of the woods with guns trained upon him!
He laid the Colt on the ground. He stood up and faced them.
“Very well, my friends,” said Eddie Clewes; “after the long ride that you’ve had, I haven’t the heart to disappoint you!”
At that moment, the wind blew the hat from the face of McKenzie.
“By the Eternal,” said the more grizzled of the pair who confronted him, gun in hand, “he’s killed Delehanty—and he’s killed McKenzie, too! Hey, fellows, come on in! The job is finished for us!”
There was a rushing through the woods all around. A score of men were pouring into the clearing, and Eddie Clewes waited, amazed. There were no orders to him to hold up his hands. Instead these armed men rushed from all directions to gaze on the two who lay dead upon the ground.
And a veritable Babel of astonished comment rose.
So great was their excitement that it seemed to Eddie Clewes just possible that he might be able to slip away unnoticed. So he stole back toward the verge of the trees, little by little, and at last he was in the act of turning away into the woods and then sprinting for safety when a rough voice shouted, “Hey, there, come back!”
Eddie Clewes stopped as though shot. He had seen too much shooting this morning to take any further chances with guns. And, at the most, they could not give him a very long sentence for the crimes which he had committed. Only—it was very strange that Cliff Matthews was not on hand with his posse!
A huge fellow, his face aflame with excitement, swooped down upon him and caught him by the arm with a terrible grip.
“Gunna sneak off, was you?” he asked savagely. “Gunna slide right away and leave us, was you? Oh, no, son, you’re gunna stay right here and let us have a look at you, because, by God, we ain’t never seen the likes of you before, and I dunno that we’ll ever see the likes of you again! Jerry, gimme a hand, or he’ll be busting me in two and getting away. Hey, Charlie, give us a mite of help, will you? Damned if he ain’t too modest to listen to the music, after he’s started up the band!”
Willing hands assisted that first giant, and they rushed Eddie Clewes roughly to the center of the circle.
He was rarely confused, but he was confused now! There had seemed to him a delicious sarcasm in the remark of the iron-handed giant who had asked for help lest he be “busted in two!” by his slender captive. And yet no one seemed to regard it as sarcasm in the slightest degree.
They surrounded him now with sun-browned, happy faces, smiling at him, nodding at him, eager to reach out and clap him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Sheriff! Come here and talk to him for us. He’s getting a mite mad, being manhandled this way, and damn me if I want the gent that killed Delehanty and McKenzie to be an enemy of mine!”
It brought a roar of sympathetic laughter from the rest, and while that crash of noise beat into the ears of Eddie, he thought it the sweetest organ music that he had ever heard! The first great light had darted across his brain, and more explanation was coming.
An elderly gentleman came through the mêlée, a tall, thin-faced, white-baked man of fifty, perhaps, supple as a youth, and tougher than rawhide.
“I’m Askew,” he said, “the sheriff from Culloden County, yonder. And since none of the boys seems to know you, I’d be mighty glad to hear your name, stranger, because, of all the fine bits of work that ever I seen, there was never one half so clean, or so fine, or so honest as this here play of yours, and the stuff that they stole piled up on the top of their luggage, ready and waiting for the law!”
Let it be said in behalf of Eddie Clewes that at least he had the grace to lower his eyes and to sigh, before he answered: “My name is Eddie Larned. And I’m strange to this section of the country, Sheriff. I’m very glad to know you.”
“You ain’t one half so glad as we are to know you, Larned. I want you to meet some friends of mine that are friends of yours, too, from this here minute. Here’s Jud Grainger, and Sammy Harris, and Oliver Maples, and Chris Loring, and Duds Malone, and Bill Orange, and Doc White, and—”
Those names came with a sort of cheerful solemnity off the tongue of the sheriff, and, with each name, a pair of brawny shoulders heaved into the view of Eddie Clewes and a mighty hand reached for his and crushed it, while he heard some gruff, brief message.
“I had something in the Culloden Bank, old man, so the lead you pumped into them was partly for me!”
“Remember me, Larned, when you need me! Loring, that’s my name.”
“Damned if it ain’t a pleasure to shake with you, Larned!”
“Would of killed my old man if the bank had gone bust—”
So some twenty men crowded before Eddie Clewes, alias that brand new gentleman, E. C. Larned.
And then a new sensation. For someone had discovered that the back and the hair of Delehanty were deeply scorched.
“My God, boys, he not only killed ’em, but before the finish, he must of fought hand to hand with big Delehanty. How did he do it?”
“Shut up, Jack. He ain’t big, but he’s just steel, you can see that!”
