Читать книгу The Sheriff Rides - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6
CHAPTER FOUR
ОглавлениеLike a hot toddy, the sense of his own virtue warmed the heart of John Signal through three bleak, beautiful days among the highlands, during which he shuddered at night beneath his blankets in the cold, and during the day drove gradually across the range until he came on the third afternoon to a lofty platform, held up as upon stilts, to view the lower regions around him. He saw almost as far as the human eye can reach, for the mountain air was pure and still—distance made objects dwindle in size but hardly obscured their features, except to the south where a reddish haze, like smoke, continually poured upward from the earth to the upper air. That was the desert, as he knew, over whose face the wind is never still, picking up sands and sifting them eternally through the sieve of the air.
Out of that desert mist, while he watched, he saw a streak of black moving, making a pencil line which broadened and evaporated toward the rear as it ran straight on in front toward a range of hills—ran very slowly, but never stopping. He marveled only for a moment, for then he knew that it was a train heading north. The patience of the mountains was upon Signal, and he watched, amused, while the pencil stroke ran on to the foot of the hills where a gap opened among them. There it stopped at a number of houses, clustered close.
Where was the railroad pointed? Not, surely, at this insignificant village which, nevertheless, seemed to be the terminal of the line. But beyond the broad heaps of the hills there was a small valley with a curving gleam of water down its center; and where the river flowed from the western hills, a town appeared, stretched out along the river edges. Still further west, the hills ran against the knees of great mountains which suddenly stood up against the sky, one of them loftier than all the rest with sides more rigidly straight and a great white hat upon its head. By many a description he knew that mountain. It was Monument, and therefore the town beside the river had likewise the same name. That was Monument, to which Colter had commended him.
He frowned at the thought. In making that recommendation, Colter had clearly pointed out that there was little likelihood of proper work being found in the town, except for a gun-fighter or a hanger-on.
But the rigid sense of his own virtue which had supported the boy so stoutly during these past days now faltered a little. What, otherwise, was he to do? To ride on into the unknown, and, at last, find obscure work on a ranch, riding herd? All the miseries of that labor came up in his mind—the blinding hot August days, and the winter blizzards—the weaklings of March which had to be tailed up endlessly—the continual labor, the dirty, ignorant companions, the poor food.
Suddenly the boy put his conscience asleep by saying to himself that he would venture down to the lowlands and find Monument and then—see what might happen to him. Not that he deliberately chose a lawless life, but, having once ridden to the highlands above the law, it seemed a dreary descent to go back to the common ways of common men!
So he rode down for Monument.
It was no easy ride. That which his eye had seen, striking straight across the valley, as a bird might fly, was in reality many a long mile. He came down to the level, however, in the dusk of the day, and there he camped. In the gray morning he rode on up the valley, keeping close to the bank of the river when he had reached that water. It flowed with a hurrying murmur and he smiled a little as he watched it, wondering how much he could have learned from that continual whispering.
The valley narrowed to a pass between two hills, the river cutting a gorge, and, following a trail over the first hill, he came to the top and had his first near view of Monument, laid out like a little map at his feet.
He was amazed by it! For the stories he had heard of mining camps usually figured forth scanty shacks of thin wood, collected largely from packing cases, and patched with canvas—jumbles of dugouts, lean-tos, dog-tents thrown confusedly together. But Monument was different. There appeared before the startled eye of the boy a city of broad streets and structures up to three stories, built of adobe, frame, or brick. Even while he watched, he saw a long procession of wagons, loaded with lumber, come trundling down the main street on the right bank of the river, drawn by great teams of mules. At the chuckholes the teams paused, shocked to an instant’s halt, and then lurched ahead again, all hitting their collars with one rhythm while the loud voices of the drivers and the crackling of the big wheels came up to John Signal clearly and yet at such a distance that he was reminded of the music of the bees and the whirring wings of birds in the tableland of the mountains through which he had just passed.
It was no scraggling frontier town, but seemed built for permanence and pleasure as well as utility. Each bank of the river had been made into a park, the tall trees which originally stood there in imposing files having been miraculously preserved from the hungry axes of the miners. And Signal at last shook his head in doubt, for it seemed impossible that such a place should be free from the influence of the law.
He jogged his gelding down the slope, still scanning the town and the country all about it. It was a mining town set in the heart of a cow country. All the hills, at a little distance, were freckled with live stock, and as he came down again toward the river, he saw a pair of punchers bringing in a hundred beeves toward the town—for the butchers, no doubt. And even those scores of fat steers would not last long among the thronging crowds of the city of Monument.
When he joined the trail, he fell in with the rearward puncher and helped him round into the crowd a runaway.
“Are you an old hand here at Monument?” asked Signal.
“I’m about as old as any,” said the puncher, who was a man of thirty-five. “I’ve worked cows around these parts for eleven year.”
“And worked silver too, I suppose?”
“I never took nothing out of the ground,” answered the other. “What I say is: If you want to stay above ground, you better work there. Them that take the cash out of the rocks give their lives in exchange, before very long. That’s a bang up hoss you got there.”
“He’s not bad,” admitted the boy, pleased.
“A cuttin’ hoss, I’d say, by the way that he pointed that hunk of beef back into the herd.”
It was an ugly roan that Signal bestrode, with jutting hip bones and a ewe neck and a great Roman nose and ears that perpetually sagged back.
“It’s a cutting hoss, too,” said Signal.
“Looks a pile more like a camel than it does like a hoss,” went on the puncher, “but by the looks of its legs, I could tell. Give a hoss a middle piece and four real legs, and he’s worth something.”
“He stands over some ground,” pointed out the boy, well pleased by this appreciation of a favorite.
“And you gotta use plenty of canvas to make cinches for him.”
“He can last,” agreed Signal. “He can run all day. Can’t you, Grundy?”
Grundy tossed his head and snorted, and flicked his ears back and forth, annoyed.
“He’s got the temper of an old woman,” commented Signal. “He’d as soon eat you as a bale of hay. His idea of a good game is to get a man down and walk up and down his frame. But he’s all horse, and he has a head on his shoulders. That’s what counts, I suppose.”
“Of course it is,” agreed the other. “I wouldn’t mind owning a hoss like that, myself. He’s got a turn of speed, I’d hope?”
“Yep. He’d surprise you.”
“What kind of a price would you put on him?”
“More than you’d want to pay, partner,” said the boy amicably. “He’s worth more to me in my line of work than he would be to you in yours.”
“Is that so? And what might your line of work be?”
Signal hesitated. What, after all, was his line of work? To keep his hide and head intact, first and foremost, and for that purpose, of course the horse was invaluable to him.
“I’m drifting on a long march,” he said in indirect answer. “I’m piling off on a mighty long march, and of course I wouldn’t be selling the best thing I got before I start.”
“Are you gunna make a richer strike than Monument?” asked the puncher, with a grin. And he looked Signal up and down with a flick of his eyes which might have meant nothing, and which might have meant a great deal.
The second puncher came up.
“Here’s a kid,” said the first one, “who’s about to make a long march. A mighty long march. I dunno that he knows where!”
The heart of Signal began to beat fast and his color altered a little, for he saw that they were beginning to suspect something about him. The second puncher laughed.
“Maybe it ain’t what’s before but what’s behind that makes him ride,” was the latter’s comment.
Signal reined up his horse.
“What are you fellows driving at?” he asked in resentment.
They made no answer, but worked slowly on after the herd, talking to one another, and not to him.
He looked after them in some dismay, and, making a grim resolution that he would never again allow himself to be tricked into conversation about his own goals and destinies, he cantered up the road again, passed the herd without giving the drovers a glance, and rode on toward the town.
In a few moments, he was within the verge of the city of Monument, and the sounds of the place gathered about him like the ripple of waters about the ears of a swimmer.
So, determined to keep rigidly upon his guard, and to set a special watch over his tongue, he moved on, glancing to the left and right, and feeling extraordinarily like an escaped prisoner, returning to his jail.
Who would attempt to lock the door upon him?