Читать книгу The Sheriff Rides - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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Friendship is not sold by the yard; neither is it traded for merchandise; but it is rather like gold, and sometimes the hardest rocks give the richest strike. These two, who had stood on the verge of a life and death battle, now looked upon each other with kindly eyes. Unhesitatingly, Signal turned his back upon the stranger and finished the cinching of his horse, conscious that his back was guarded from danger by more than leveled guns! And he said, as he turned:

“You’d better help yourself to some more of that meat, old man. You may need it before you get in your next shot.”

“Where are you bound?” asked the other with curiosity.

“Yonder,” said Signal.

“Over the range?”

“Most likely.”

“To Monument, I suppose?”

“Monument? What’s that?”

“You ain’t heard of that?”

“You mean the mining town? The silver mines?”

“What else?”

“I’ve heard of that. Whereabouts does it lie?”

At this, the stranger stared at him in some wonder.

“You beat me,” said he. “As sure as my name is Henry—” He paused, cutting himself very short, and went on: “You don’t know Monument?” It was as if he had said: “You don’t know the sun?”

“I don’t know the place. I’ve never been there.”

“You’re from the hind side of the range, are you?”

“Yes, from over there.”

“You don’t have to cover up with me,” said the other, smiling most disarmingly again. “You’re on the run, kid, I suppose. Well, that’s your business. I’m on the run, too. That is to say, more or less. I’ve had to hop a dozen times in my life. I still hop, now and then. If you want to tell me who you are—it goes. If you don’t I shut up. But my name is Henry Colter.”

There was enough force in that name to make Signal, who had just buckled the last cinch, wheel about, his shoulders flattened against the ribs of his horse.

“You’re Colter!” he exclaimed.

“That’s me.”

“Well, I’m damned!”

“To think you had me down, eh?” grinned the other. “I suppose it does seem a little funny; but, as you’ve seen for yourself, I’m not as hard as they’ve made me out, all these years!”

His words came dimly to the ears of John Signal, who was seeing many strong images that rushed up into his mind. There was a picture of a big, rugged fellow, riding a mustang through the streets of the town, burdened with revolvers and a long rifle. That was Dan Garrison, bound outward, men said, to ride until he found death or the life of Henry Colter. Dan Garrison never had come again. He had found the end of his trail, and Colter’s superior gun had won. And there was Ned Levis, famous for his dapperness and his savage fighting, who had been brought down the Bender Creek to the town, five long years before, and had lain for three days in bed before he died, more of exhaustion from the loss of blood than because of the terrible wounds which the bullets of his conqueror had driven through his body. Henry Colter was that conqueror.

Those were two overt pictures, so to speak. But there was much else, such as the wild tales of robbery and murder which, from time to time, drifted upon the tongues of men, not quite enough substantiated to appear in the public press, which rather referred to Colter as “celebrated” than “notorious.” He was one of those men really wanted for a hundred crimes, but not yet outlawed because he had not actually been tried and found guilty for any important action. For he had lived not on the “hind side” of the range, but on the western front of it, where the law had not yet established itself. He had kept ahead of the sheriff, so to speak. And, though all the world knew that he was a criminal, there was probably not a warrant in existence for his arrest.

So famous was this Henry Colter that young Signal looked upon him agape.

“My God,” said he, “but I’ve heard a lot and a lot about you, Colter!”

“Have you?” said the other, not unpleased. “And pretty near all bad, I take it?”

“They say that you shoot straight—and you’re square with your pals,” said the boy, who had much to learn of diplomacy in this strangely tangled world of ours. However, he was talking with one who was quite indifferent to most criticism.

“If they say that, they say enough,” said Colter. “I don’t ask for any more. I shoot straight, and I stand for my pals—all them that stand for me! Now, kid, where d’you aim to ride that hoss tonight—or are you still upstage with me?”

The boy canted his ear a little, at this unfamiliar slang. It was a less sophisticated world than that of today, when all the side-talk of a dozen professions is spilled abroad through the newspapers and shop-talk finds its way into the conversation of the most uninitiated.

However, he could understand the meaning of Colter, and he hesitated a little, not only because of what he would have to say, if he answered at all, but because there was a weight upon his heart when he even thought of the thing which sent him from Bender City to the highlands. He sighed, and instantly the words came.

“They want me for murder at my home town. That’s my story. My name is John Signal.”

The other nodded.

“I knew it was a killing,” he said, unshocked.

“Will you tell me how you happened to guess that?” asked Signal anxiously.

“You haven’t got the story branded into your forehead,” smiled the other. “That needn’t bother you, if that’s what you mean. But folks have to have a reason for coming up to this section of the world. And, after I saw the way you tickled that revolver and danced it out under my nose, why, I didn’t have to ask any more questions. It was guns that made you leave your home town; and you’d shoot too straight not to kill your man!”

This simple analysis left Signal a little bewildered. The other went on genially: “They ran you out, then?”

“I didn’t stay to be run out,” said he. “I knew that they’d be after me.”

“Self-defense, son,” said the experienced Colter. “That’s the gag to use on them—so long as the shooting is done from in front!”

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

“It was done from in front, but it was the son of the judge who dropped.” He exploded angrily: “Damn him, he’d been trading on his father’s name all his life. He tried to walk on me!”

The other grinned broadly.

“And you couldn’t reach him with your fists?”

“It was poker,” said John Signal. “He began to talk and tap the table with his Colt. A man can’t stand for that!”

“He had his gun out?”

“He did.”

“Did other people see it?”

“Two sneaking cronies of young Bill Hampton.”

“They’d testify against you?”

“Of course they would. They’re both employed by the judge. I didn’t have a chance.”

Colter held his peace for a serious instant. Then:

“What do you aim at?”

“A new start in life,” said the boy gloomily. “That’s the only thing that I can do.”

“And why not a start in Monument?”

“I’ve got to avoid towns—and the law!”

Colter laughed.

“You think that they’ll pepper the whole countryside with men looking for you, and a thousand-dollar reward. They won’t! On the hind side of the mountains, the law’s a growed-up man. But over yonder it goes on bare feet and ain’t as big as a baby. In Monument there ain’t any law to speak of. Not for a man that wears two guns and can use ’em! Monument, my boy. That’s the home that’s waiting for you!”

“What would I do?” sighed Signal. “I’m not a miner.”

Colter laughed again.

“Who goes to a mining town to mine? Only the suckers—and five or six lucky devils. The rest go there to get their honey without working!”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“You know me, kid!”

“Yes.”

“What sort of work do I do?” Then, as the boy was silent, he went on: “Your best plan is as plain as the nose on your face. The thing for you to do is to stay here with me until my chums come along. Then throw in with me. That’s the absolute ticket! Why, kid, I’ll roll you in money.”

He explained, during the next pause: “That sounds a lot—from a starved man that didn’t have even a bullet for his guns, eh? But wait and see. Today or tomorrow, the boys I’m waiting for will be up here. We head straight down for Monument. I’ll show you who’s king there, old-timer.”

Signal shook himself like a man rousing from a profound sleep. He said rapidly:

“That’s a kind offer. I take it that way. But the fact is that I want to go straight. You see how it is—I’m willing to work. I don’t mind work. I’ve worked before!”

The other chuckled, unabashed.

“Is that it?” said he. “Well, they all start like that, and feeling that way. The books say that the crooks have got to go down. Sure, because the books only know about the ones that have been caught. Well, I’m forty, and never saw the inside of a jail. You try working. But on Saturday night, you come around and talk to me!”