Читать книгу The Man from Mustang - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

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Silver went out of that room like a cat after a bird, but as he turned the front corner of the building he heard the rapid beating of hoofs begin behind the saloon, and knew that the quarry was on the wing.

Oh, for five minutes of Parade, then—to loose the golden stallion like an arrow at the mark—or for any horse, for that matter. But there were none except down the street, at the hitch rack on the farther side of the hotel, and that was too far away.

He went gloomily back into the saloon. Half the men had scattered to look for the murderer; half had remained to look at the victim.

He was dying, beyond doubt. The bullet had cut straight through his lungs, and Buck was already in his death agony. He kept rising on one hand, and turning his swollen face and his terrible, starting eyes from one man to another, mutely asking help.

But there was no help to be given. The finest doctor in the world could not assist, though messengers had gone to fetch all the physicians in Mustang. Buck himself seemed to realize that there were only seconds to him. Then he tried to speak, and that was the worst of all.

Silver, the indirect cause of his death, was the man he wanted most to talk to. He came clawing across the floor and reached up and caught Silver’s hand in his. He tried to speak, but only a rapid succession of red bubbles burst on his lips. He was strangling. He was biting at the air, and getting none down to his lungs.

Others drew back from that sight of agony, but Silver slipped to the floor and sat by the struggling body.

“Write it, Buck!” he called loudly. “Write it on the floor! Write the name, and I swear that I’ll try to get him for you!”

Buck was beating on the floor with his feet and hands, in the last struggle between death and life, but he understood Silver. He flopped heavily over on his side, dipped his right forefinger into the thick pool of his own blood, and commenced to write. Then death caught back his red-stained hand and turned him on his back. He seemed to be making a last effort to speak as he died. One long shudder ran through his body, and he was gone.

On the floor beside him was written: “Nel—” followed by the sweeping stroke of crimson where his finger had been snatched from the writing.

Silver folded the hands of the dead man across his breast and closed the half-open eyes. When he looked up, he saw that men were standing by with their hats in their hands, and with sick faces.

He stood up and took off his own hat.

“Does anybody here know a woman named Nell, or a man named Nelson?” he asked.

“There’s a woman that does laundry,” said the bartender, instantly.

Silver shook his head.

“There’s Digger Nelson, the prospector,” said another in the room.

“What sort of a man?” asked Silver.

“A regular rock chipper. He patches the seat of his pants with flour sacks and—”

“No!” said Silver. “He’s not the man I want. He’s not the man who hired Buck to pick a fight with Ned Kenyon, and shoot it out. He’s not that sort.”

The first of the doctors came hurrying in. The sheriff was just at his heels. Silver took Ned Kenyon by the arm and led him out of the barroom into a back room, closing the door behind them. They sat down at a table.

Mustang was now well awakened. Scores of footfalls were padding up the street, or pounding loudly over the board sidewalks. Horses snorted in the distance under the spur. Voices were gathering toward the saloon like buzzing bees toward the hive. Presently the sheriff would be sure to want both Silver and Kenyon, but Silver used this interim to pump Kenyon as well as he could.

“Ned,” he said, “do you know what to make of all this?”

“I’m flabbergasted,” said poor Kenyon. “I can’t make head or tail of it. But it looks as though you know the inside workings of everything!”

“I wish I did! I’m only guessing. I’m reaching into the dark and getting at nothing. That’s all! Nothing! Ned, listen to me!”

“The way I would to a preacher,” said Kenyon, with a naïveté that made Silver faintly smile.

“What does this fellow Buck hitch with?”

“I don’t make that out, either. I never saw him before. I don’t suppose that he ever saw me. He says that he was hired—”

Into this stream of meaningless words Silver broke sharply.

“What’s the thing we can catch on?” he asked. “There’s something you have, or that you’re about to have, that other people want—or want to keep you from. Now tell me out and out—have you anything worth money?”

“Not even a horse,” said the stage driver sadly. “Not even Jerry, now!”

“You have some land, somewhere,” suggested Silver.

“Father has a patch—a quarter section. That’s all there is in the family.”

“Where? In the mountains? Some place where pay dirt might be found? Gravel, for instance? Near an old creek bed, perhaps?”

“Pay dirt? The clay runs down about a thousand feet. The old man works that ground about sixteen hours a day, and he hardly makes a dollar a day, clear. I never saw worse clay. We’ve dug wells. We know how far that clay goes down.”

“Wait a moment,” said Silver, violently readjusting the course of his suspicions. “There’s another chance. You’ve been around the world a good deal, partner. And you’re sure to know a good lot. You’ve looked in on some queer things in your time. You’ve seen men in odd positions. You have up your sleeve something that some one would be pretty glad to hush up. Think, now. It must be that!”

Kenyon thought. After his fashion, he took his time, fixing his eyes on distance, and thoroughly combing his memory. At last he said: “No. There’s nothing that I can put a finger on.”

“There must be,” insisted Silver. “There has to be something! Think again.”

“No, Arizona—or Jim, if I can call you that—there’s nothing. Nothing ever happens to me—or nothing ever did happen until—”

“All right,” said Silver. “That brings us back to Edith Alton, as far as I can see. You’re going to marry her to-morrow morning. And some one hates the idea of that. Somebody wants to stop you. Somebody with a first or a last name beginning with Nel. Who could it be?”

Again Kenyon shook his head. “I don’t know. It beats me.”

“It beats you? It’ll kill you before you’re many days older!” said Silver. “Man, man, are you sure that you don’t know any one whose name begins with those three letters?”

“Well, Jim,” said Kenyon, “don’t be mad at me. I’m trying to think, but there are not many people whose name begins with those letters.”

“No,” said Silver. “There are not many. That’s a good point in the deal. It’ll narrow down the hunting field.”

“You look like a hunter,” said Kenyon, rather overawed. “But by the jumping thunder, Jim, I’d hate to have you on my tail with that look in your eye and with that set to your jaw!”

“I’m not on your trail. I’m on the trail of murder,” said Silver. “I can smell the murder inside my nostrils. I can taste it against the roof of my mouth. Murder—phaugh!”

The door opened. There stood on the threshhold a man with a stocky body and a long, triangular face.

“Murder is what we been talking about, in there,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to you two boys in here about the same thing.”

Others were about to follow this stranger inside the room, but he closed the door in their faces, and they did not try to open it behind his back.

He came across the floor, opening his coat to show the badge that was pinned inside it.

“Name of Philips,” he said. “Or maybe you’ll introduce me, Ned?”

Kenyon started up and sawed the air with his hand, embarrassed.

“This here is Sheriff Philips. Bert Philips,” he said. “And this is a friend of mine that’s got into a lot of trouble on my account, this day. He’s Arizona Jim, sheriff. And he—”

He paused. The inadequacy of that nickname seemed to fill the throat of Kenyon, at the moment that he spoke to the man of the law.

“Glad to know you, Arizona,” said the sheriff. “Ned, who killed Buck?”

“I don’t know. I wish—”

“Ever have a grudge between you?”

“Never. I never saw him before he—”

“Ned, you walk out and buy yourself a drink. I want to talk with Arizona.”

Ned Kenyon went out hesitantly, as one who feels that he may be deserting a friend in a time of need, but the calm smile of Silver reassured him until the door was opened and closed again.

Then the sheriff pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Silver. He said: “You know what I’ve got on my knee?”

“Yes,” said Silver. “A gun.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“It means that you’re rather young,” said Silver.

The sheriff frowned. Then, suddenly, he grinned.

“You’re all they say about you,—Silver,” he said.

Silver said nothing at his identification by the man of the law.

“A dead cool one,” continued the sheriff. “Now, you tell me who killed Buck.”

Silver smiled.

“Go on!” urged the sheriff.

“Otherwise you’ll shoot?”

Suddenly Philips raised the gun into view and shoved it back inside his coat.

“Maybe I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I thought for a minute that I’d call your bluff. But now I almost think you mean what you’ve been saying. That right?”

“It is.”

“You’re Kenyon’s friend?”

“Yes.”

“Do you make anything out of this mess, then?”

“Only guesses.”

“Let’s have them, Silver. I don’t know just how to take you. There’s some call you a crook and a man-killer, and others say that you’re the whitest man on earth. Anyway, you have brains, and you’ve been a friend to poor Ned Kenyon. Now, tell me everything you think.”

“I think,” said Silver, “that some one wants to stop a thing that’s due to happen to Kenyon to-morrow.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you. I’ve promised Kenyon not to tell.”

“Stop him by killing him?”

“Gladly, if there’s no other way.”

“Silver, how much do you know?”

“Hardly more than a baby.”

The sheriff laid hold of his chin with a big brown hand and gripped hard, staring over his knuckles at the face of Silver.

“It’s hard,” he said, “but I’m going to believe you. I want to know this: Are you working with me?”

“With all my might!” “Good!” said the sheriff. “And if you have an idea, you can call on me night or day.”

“I’ll have an idea before the end of to-morrow,” said Silver. “And then I may call on you to blow up half this town!”