Читать книгу The Lost Valley - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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When it happened, there were divided opinions. Some said that beginners have luck. Others declared that the devil takes care of his own. And last of all the cynics nodded their heads and admitted—old miner, old fool. But when all the talking was ended, the fact remained that the man who struck pay dirt and started the wild gold-rush was young Billy Neilan, far better and more widely known as Chuck.

Of course, there was no reason in the world why Chuck should have struck it rich. He knew infinitely more about ropes and branding irons than he did about “color” and the ways of getting at it. He knew vastly more about poker than he knew about ropes and irons. And he knew far, far more about guns than he knew about poker. In fact, work was never a thing that troubled Chuck Neilan. What sent him out prospecting was simply the fact that he had never prospected before. And the third day he made the strike.

With typically careless exuberance, he took a well-to-do miner up to the claim and offered to sell out for five thousand dollars. But a miracle happened. The miner was too rich to be dishonest—at least, dishonest to that extent. He merely bought a half interest, and he paid for that half interest four times the price for which Chuck had stipulated to sell his entire share in the claim.

Twelve hours later a big gang of laborers was tearing into the mountainside and opening up the treasures of The Roanoke Queen. But Chuck Neilan was not on hand to watch the proceedings. He had swung his lithe body onto a vicious pinto and spurred the tough little beast toward town, for in Chuck’s pocket was a stuffed wallet that rubbed against his ribs. And in the wallet the stuffing consisted of greenbacks of large denominations totaling twenty thousand dollars that clamored with eagerness to be spent.

All the way down the trail the thirst of Chuck, brought to a fine edge by the drought of Prohibition days, increased in sharpness. It became a consuming fire in time, and he struck the town of Sitting Bull like a whirlwind seeking action.

Sitting Bull was not a quiet, pastoral village. The epidermis of that community had been thickened by many a perilous year of existence in gold-rush times and out of them. The town had seen riots beyond number, and in the early term of its life it had regularly burned to the ground three times a year. Among the old-timers in that city were men whose names had rung and echoed up and down the length of the mountain desert, and yet the hardiest of these looked askance with the expression of men who feel that a storm is about to break when the rattle of hoofs and the whooping voice tore past the window.

“What young fool is that?” they would ask.

“It ain’t no fool. It’s Chuck Neilan,” would be the answer of him who went to look. Soon as that answer was received, men looked to one another foolishly, pushed hats back on heads, and scratched speculatively, then looked to their guns.

Not that Chuck Neilan was a bully or a fight picker. By no means. If he had been, he must inevitably have left a red trail behind him during the first year or two of his vigorous manhood and come to a quick end himself. But, as a matter of fact, Chuck was the best-natured man who ever loved a fight from the bottom of his heart. He was very, very partial to fist fighting, but where his ability was known and some burly fellow wished to close and rough it, Chuck was perfectly willing to accommodate the hardiest of them in a whirl at rough-and-tumble. He would, much against his will, meet the desires of those who wished knife work. But the special domain, the sanctum sanctorum of Chuck, was gun play. He looked upon it not as a means of killing enemies and defending one’s life. It was not that to Chuck. It was, above all, an art.

Chuck would talk with a hushed voice and subdued manner about the grace with which one fellow handled a gun, about the neatness of another, and about the speed of a third. Those were, as may be seen, the three chief articles in his creed: speed, neatness, and grace. He would hold forth at length upon the degree of polish that various gunfighters in the mountains possessed. As a matter of fact, he stood apart and above the rest of them, and he was recognized for his skill.

As has been said before, he was not a bully. Like all men who truly love battle, the only manner of battle in which he rejoiced was fair fight with no odds except on the side opposed to him. Nothing could induce him to attack a man smaller than himself, even though pushed to the wall in self-defense, and he had been known to back out of a room and literally take water rather than lay one of his formidable hands upon some obstreperous youth not yet familiar with the uses of a razor.

Indeed, as the reputation of Chuck Neilan spread and his formidable qualities became well known, he fell into a dearth of trouble, in spite of the maxim about those who hunt for it. Hardboiled battlers avoided him like poison, and law-abiding citizens would by no means risk their necks to subdue a noise maker who, as they were perfectly well aware, had not an ounce of malice in his entire make-up. Yet, although one may be perfectly sure that the lightning will not strike, it often serves to make the cheek change color and the eye grow smaller. Such was the effect of the advent of Chuck Neilan upon even the hardy citizens of Sitting Bull.

He galloped past with a whoop and a cloud of dust, and in the course of the day he plunged into and emerged from three separate parties built around various and sundry proportions of moonshine red-eye. Behold him, therefore, in the early evening striding down the streets of Sitting Bull with the carriage of a wavering reed in the wind and steps as irregular as the first halting paces of a child. His eye, however, remained clear, his voice steady, though somewhat shrill, and, when it was not necessary for him to move about, few would have guessed that he was inebriated, except for the reddened brilliance of his glance.

Of course, a crowd gathered around him. It spread behind like the tail behind a comet. If he sang, they echoed him in a chorus. If he halted, they halted likewise. Most of them were mean spirits who hungered to pick up a few wild tales to tell about the latest coming of this celebrity to Sitting Bull. Those who were actually his friends dared not argue with him about his course of action. For Chuck Neilan was very, very averse to meeting argument from a sturdy, full-grown man. He liked to have such arguments expressed in actions rather than words, and his preferences being well known, his friends gave him a wide swath when he started on a rampage. For that matter, none of the crowd was at all disposed to cross him in the least of his whims. And, though a halting, old woman came in his path and shook her cane at him and rated him soundly and passed quite unscathed in spite of her rashness, there was no stalwart man who would not rather have signed his own death warrant than have taken such action.

So, when he whirled suddenly and with an imperious gesture bade them scatter, they obeyed at once and fled to the four corners of the street like leaves before the wind. Chuck Neilan, staggering and laughing as he watched them flee, now turned again and pursued his uncertain way until a flare of light and a well-remembered window brought him to an abrupt halt in the middle of the block. It was the pawnbroker’s window. There in the very center stood the most brilliant decoration of all, the silver-and-gold mounted saddle which, since his earliest recollections, had always shone in that window, apparently a fixture there for eternity, and far too beautiful for actual use. Many and many a dream had seen him seated in that saddle, rushing against onleaping hordes of Indians perhaps, or prancing through the center of this same street with familiar faces on either side.

He gazed on it now with his heart beating in his throat. Impossible to most perhaps, but nothing was impossible to a man who had twenty thousand dollars struggling to burn a way out of his wallet and again enjoy the air of a free circulation from hand to hand. Chuck lingered only in order to note that the gold spurs were also there beside the saddle, and then he turned and plunged through the door and into the cobwebbed silence of the shop.

That silence, the warmth, and the lack of fresh air caused the excited brain of Chuck Neilan to spin for a moment. His brain cleared as he saw through the cloud the familiar countenance of Mr. Isaac Sylvester. The first Sylvester had founded this pawnshop. The second Sylvester, who was the man who now confronted Chuck with his big hands spread palms down on the top of the glass-covered case, had carried on the same business. The first Sylvester was lean; the second Sylvester was broad. His face was a triangle. The base was the enormous breadth of his jowls. The apex was the stubborn tuft of hair that jutted out at the top of his narrowing forehead. His mouth was a shapeless slit. His nose was a pudgy mass made distinguishable only by the flaring, fishhook nostrils. His eyebrows darted out in the shape familiar to those who have seen a Mephistopheles made up for the stage. Under them were little, beady, black eyes that could glitter with complacence, shine with piercing distrust, or glow invitingly. They glowed in this manner at the newcomer, though a spot of white appeared in the exact center of each of Sylvester’s cheeks. The cowpuncher-miner looked over the pawnbroker with intense distrust and dislike.

“Well, Sylvester,” he said, “how come?”

“Fair ... only fair,” protestingly responded Sylvester, turning his hands palms up and shrugging shoulders that seemed capable of lifting a ton’s weight. “Times ain’t what they used to be when my father was running things.”

“Huh,” said Chuck, and made a wry face. Then he swallowed the ideas that came storming to his teeth.

“That saddle there in the window,” he said. “How much?”

The glance of Sylvester flickered to the saddle and back at the face of Chuck Neilan. By the step with which Chuck approached, he now saw that the man was drunk, very drunk. But would it be wise to cheat him, nevertheless? Other men had cheated Mr. Neilan on occasion, and they had not lived long to boast of their cleverness. In reality, Sylvester hated Chuck more than he feared him. He had long promised himself that, if he could ever lay hands on the formidable cowpuncher, one crunching grip of his massive fingers would serve to end the battle before it was well begun. But the trouble was that, while he was reaching for his man, many, many things might happen. Sylvester looked again at the saddle and moistened his dry lips. And the heart of the cheat in him was dry also as a desert calling for rain.

“That saddle,” he declared, “is all gold work and silver work and leather work made by hand, Mister Neilan.”

“When you call me Mister Neilan,” Chuck said, grinning, “I know you’re going to boost the price on me. How much, I say?”

The pawnbroker burst into perspiration. “It cost two thousand to make,” he said and glanced at it aside. It was rotted with time. It was not worth, now, more than the value of the ornaments—say three or four hundred dollars.

“Two thousand?”

“But time has brought it down some,” said Sylvester, seeing a tremendous profit in the grip of his fingers, and hardly daring to close them over the bargain. “Down to about eighteen hundred ... or ... seeing it’s you ... sixteen hundred dollars, Chuck.”

In agony he had brought down the price that four hundred dollars, and now his brain reeled as he heard the tall man say: “Dirt cheap, Sylvester. Dirt cheap. That ol’ saddle’s mine. Trot it out. Trot it out!”

Weak with the conviction that the entire two thousand would have been paid without demure, the pawnbroker staggered to the window and returned, carrying the saddle. It was flashing enough and brilliant enough to make an eye-catching window display, but the leather was either warped or rotted out of all semblance to a saddle.

“I’ll throw in the blankets,” he declared generously, and he swathed the saddle at once in a great sheeting of wool. Then he breathed more easily. The hungry eyes of Chuck, the eyes of one intent on purchasing, were still wandering about unsatisfied.

“I seen a pair of gold spurs out in that window,” he said. “Maybe ... ?”

The spurs were instantly produced and turned back and forth in the fat hands of the broker, so that the light would catch on them and gleam. A price was named and instantly taken. The crisp bank notes once again rustled on the top of the glass case. The spurs were wrapped and became the property of the miner.

“Now,” said Sylvester, “what d’you think of these?” And under the eyes of Chuck he slid a tray of diamonds.

There was no satisfactory light in the pawnshop, but from the two lamps sufficient radiance fell to make the tray come instantly awash with light, and Sylvester manipulated it slightly back and forth—just a bare fraction of an inch, so that the gems might have the better chance to scintillate. While his hand worked, his brain worked with tenfold speed, estimating how high he might boost the price on each diamond. To his dismay the other was shaking his head.

“Never took to diamonds much,” he declared. “Just as soon have a bunch of old junk glass, pretty near. I like color, son, and lots of it.”

Inspiration descended upon Sylvester. The tray of diamonds disappeared with the speed and many of the other properties of light, and in its place a second tray was produced, burning with the colors of a sunset—rubies, emeralds, topaz, pearls, none of them in any remarkable size, but all in such numbers that the color effect instantly charmed the eye. Hundreds of Mexicans had left this wealth here in exchange for gold. And many and many a gaudy scarf pin had been despoiled to increase the tray in Sylvester’s shop. He looked upon it now with a sad sort of satisfaction. It was his particular hobby, this collection. He would almost as soon keep the tray as sell anything from it—unless he received his price.

The big, brown hand of Chuck shot across the tray with precision. Sylvester quaked. All his insides became suddenly the consistency of jelly. Then he remembered that the integrity of this wild battler was known, and his fear abated. There would be no cunning sleight-of-hand work from this customer. The hand drew back, and into the palm of it fell an earring from which was suspended a long, narrow, beautiful emerald.

“I sure like green,” murmured Chuck Neilan, moving his hand so that the jewel showed a pool of light within it. “I sure like green, but I never seen green before that would match up with this. How much?”

It was worth, perhaps, two hundred; it had been purchased for fifty; Sylvester determined to take a snap chance. “Seven hundred,” he said, “is what I’ll sell that emerald to you for, Chuck Neilan. I like to see a gem like that come to a gent that will know how to appreciate it. Only seven hundred to you, Chuck.” Again his head swam.

“Cheap ... dirt cheap,” the madman was chanting. “Gimme that earring, Sylvester. Got another like it?”