Читать книгу The Lost Valley - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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Not even those men who had gone through times of stress with Chuck Neilan, who had proved his integrity, his fearlessness, his indomitable faith—not even these men could call him a handsome fellow. And the next morning it seemed to big Sylvester that the tall man who came and leaned in his doorway was the ugliest of mortals. The nose was as crooked and high as the beak of an eagle. The face was lean and of a bronze that verged on redness at the high cheekbones. The jaw was square, the mouth straight and broad, and the eye was like the eagle again, steady, unwinking, inscrutable, so that men never could tell whether Chuck was on the verge of laughter, oaths, or a gun play.

Certainly not a handsome man and yet a most interesting one. Few men could pass him over with a glance. Big Sylvester, thinking of the prices he had charged the evening before, moistened his white lips and rolled his eyes. And still the tall man leaned there in the doorway with his big, bony right hand draped carelessly on his hip just a little distance above the hand-worn butt of his revolver. Sylvester stared fascinated at that hand and at the drooping fingers that, he knew, could move with the speed of a whiplash as it snaps.

“Good morning,” said Sylvester, and then, finding that his dry lips had moved without an audible sound, he managed to say huskily: “ ’Morning, Chuck.”

The terrible Chuck replied with not so much as a friendly nod. His silence was, to Sylvester, hardly less awful than the explosion of a gun and the tear of a bullet through flesh and bone.

“I done considerable buying in here last night, it seems,” said Chuck at length, with his usual directness coming straight to the point.

“Yep,” answered the miserable Sylvester, “you seemed to hanker after some of the things in the store.”

“I sure did,” agreed the other. “I hankered so bad that I didn’t look at what I bought.” He paused, running his cold eye carelessly over the burly frame of the pawnbroker.

Who could tell—thought Sylvester—perhaps this devil of a man was even now selecting the spot where his bullets should strike home. “You were considerable hurried,” said the nervous Sylvester. “Didn’t stop to do no bargaining. You just grabbed off everything at the first price and walked away with it. Well ... that’s good business for me, but not so good for you.”

This candor surely would disarm the very devil himself. And even the cheated miner smiled, although for the life of him Sylvester could not detect an iota of real mirth in that smile.

Now Chuck Neilan lounged toward the proprietor, and there, resting his gaunt elbow on the top of the glass case, he brought his bright, steady eyes intolerably close to the face of Sylvester.

“I bought a pair of spurs,” he said.

Sylvester nodded.

“They busted before I got ’em home,” said Chuck Neilan.

Sylvester winced under this unexpected stroke. He had no reason to believe that there was anything wrong with those spurs. They had stood ten years in his window—but what was time to gold?

“I’ll fix them for you ... for nothing,” he said.

Chuck grinned. “I bought a saddle, too.”

Perspiration poured out on the forehead of the proprietor. “Yes,” he breathed.

“The leather was all warped, and the lining was rotten. It rubbed away to dust almost when I touched it.”

“I didn’t know,” stammered Sylvester. “Matter of fact, I ain’t looked close at that saddle for a good many years. You wouldn’t wait, Chuck. You just up and walked out with things. You didn’t give me no chance to look things over and find out....”

He was interrupted by the remorseless Chuck. “I bought this here, too,” he said, and held forth on his fingertips the emerald earring. On the brown skin it was the rarest of rare greens. There was a slight tremor of the fingers. Slight though it was, it filled the jewel with quivering lights. The pawnbroker stared at the stone with wide eyes. Surely he had not committed a great wrong in the sale of this little emerald. He had hardly more than doubled the price, but plainly Chuck Neilan was merely producing all the evidence and adding up the deeds that had been wrought against him. When all was done, he would strike a swift balance with a touch of the trigger and call the account quits.

Slowly, slowly Sylvester made his laboring eyes rise, until they rested on the face of Neilan. To his unutterable astonishment, that face was strangely softened, and the cold eyes for the moment were staring into pleasant distance as one who hears music. Sylvester waited, too stunned to make surmises.

“Where’s the other emerald? Where’s the mate to this?” asked Neilan.

“I dunno,” said Sylvester. “I dunno where it is. Only this one was brought in.”

“That a fact?” murmured Neilan. “That a straight fact?”

The pawnbroker nodded anxiously.

“I was looking at it this morning,” muttered Neilan. “Seemed to me, looking it over, that this here must have belonged to some young girl. Eh? Nobody but a young girl would want to wear it, I guess. A green like this would not be becoming to an older woman’s skin.”

“Maybe,” said the other, still anxious.

“Maybe?” echoed Chuck. “Why ain’t you sure? Don’t you remember what she was like ... and what her name was?”

Sylvester blinked. For the first time he began to catch his clue to what was going on in the mind of Chuck. The latter had dreamed over this paltry, low-grade gem until he had visualized the owner and original wearer. He had built her into a fascinating creature of the mind, no doubt.

“It was a man brung it in, Chuck,” he answered.

“A man?” growled Chuck, fierce with disappointment. He brooded with sullen eyes. “How come a man brung it in?” he asked suddenly. “What business had a man with it?”

“I dunno. He just brung it in. That’s all I know.”

“A man,” echoed Chuck, deeper and deeper in the slough of despondency. Then his brow contracted in a murderous frown. His strong, bony fingers closed over the fat arm of his interlocutor. “Did he say where he got it?”

“Why,” said Sylvester, “d’you think he done murder for it? Might’ve been his sister’s or his mother’s? Or maybe he bought it, figuring on having it set for a stickpin.”

“Huh,” grunted Chuck Neilan, by no means satisfied with this matter-of-fact explanation. “When did he bring it in?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Late as that? Sylvester, I’ve smelled out some sort of a queer story behind this here emerald. I dunno why. I dunno how I got at the feeling.”

“It’s the way the morning after has hit you, son,” said Sylvester kindly. “Strong drink does that, sometimes. Some folks see their snakes when they’re drunk, and some sees ’em when they’re just finished being drunk. You were sure lit up last night, Chuck.”

Chuck nodded. “What sort of a looking gent was him that brought it in?” he asked.

“Can’t tell you that, son,” answered Sylvester. “You see, he was kind of partial to not having his name knowed.”

“Eh?”

“He asked me not to say nothing about him.”

A flush ran up the thin cheeks of Chuck Neilan. “Sylvester,” he cried, “don’t that prove I’m right? Don’t that prove they’s something queer about this earring, him not wanting to have anybody know where it come from?”

Sylvester shook his head, smiling. “No use jumpin’ to conclusions, Chuck. It don’t mean nothing. Maybe it’s something that was give to him, and he’s ashamed to let it be known that he’s sold it again. Maybe ... well, they’s a thousand ways of explaining about it, Chuck.”

But Chuck slowly and obstinately shook his head. “I got a feeling about it,” he persisted. “Nothing rides easy in me. I’m all upset. Me having just struck it rich don’t make no difference. Gold don’t mean nothing. All I want is some kind of action since I took a look at that earring this morning. And I figure, Sylvester, that I’m going to get it.”

“Go out and try,” the other advised, deeply relieved at the prospect of getting rid of this troublesome guest. “And good luck be with you.”

But Neilan lingered. “You ain’t told me what his name is,” he insisted.

“Eh? I told you I couldn’t.”

“You ain’t told me his name,” said Chuck Neilan, his mouth drawing to a straight line. “Listen here, you low-down, flat-headed, money-hogging swine ... listen to me, will you? I’d ought to salt you away with lead so’s you’d be an example to other gents of your kind not to cheat us simple folks in Sitting Bull. But I ain’t touching a gun, Sylvester. I’m letting you give bail ... and you’re going to give bail by telling me the name of the gent that sold this to you.”

Sylvester hesitated an instant—but in that instant his eyes, meeting the glance of the other, saw death, and they recoiled from what they saw. “He didn’t give no name,” said Sylvester, his olive skin turning a sickly, wan yellow. “He didn’t give no name at all, but, if you’re dead set on it, I’ll tell you what sort of a looking gent he was. Big fellow with a blond beard ... sort of faded yaller. Big chest sticking out under his chin. Wears two guns. Looks tough. And....”

But the other rocked back on his heels, withdrawing from the counter for the first time. “You don’t need to tell me no more,” he said. “That’s enough to locate him pretty handy, if he’s stayed long enough in these parts for any of the boys to watch which way he started. Yesterday afternoon you say he was here?”

“Right.”

There was no chance for a further exchange of words. Tall Chuck Neilan slid through the door, and the next moment the hoofs of his pinto thudded in the dust.