Читать книгу The Smiling Desperado - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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No one noticed Danny Cadigan until his tenth year. Up to that point he was simply a sleek, good-natured boy with sleepy black eyes and a sluggish body. But in his tenth year, on a brisk windy day in March, the long rope which was used to pull the fan out of the wind and bind it to the side of the wheel, snapped short at its head, dropped its long length upon the head of the school-teacher, and made her squeal with fear.

She clasped her hands together with alarm and ran back from beneath the mill to see what was happening. Of course, the fan snapped out into the gale at once, and the wheel turned into a flashing gray disk, so rapidly did it begin spinning.

That was not all. She had gone to turn the mill off because the tank which supplied the needs of the school—both for the thirsty children and for the horses which they drove or rode for many miles—had been filled to the brim and the drainage pipe which took the overflow from the top of the tanks had been spurting a white stream and turning the ground in front of the entrance to the school into a lake.

The teacher was frantic. That forming pool meant that the children would tramp into the building with muddy feet for days and days to come. It meant wet shoes, it meant colds, it meant sneezes, it meant swollen red noses and dull eyes and duller brains.

And there was already so much work to make up! What would the trustees have to say to her at the end of the spring term? And how could she explain to them that it was all on account of a pool of water in front of the school, caused by the breaking of the rope which—

No mere man could understand these long chains of causes and effect; it required a woman; it required a woman’s tact and—er—intuition!

So said Miss Sophie Preston in her bodeful heart as she watched the wheel stagger and moan with speed in the full face of the storm, and as she saw the plunger racing loosely up and down, forcing water out of the seams of the pump at every stroke. The stream rushed into the tank faster than the overflow pipe could accept it. And now a thousand little rivulets began to streak to the side of the tank.

Miss Preston ran hysterically back into the schoolhouse.

“Oh,” she cried, clasping her hands, “who can stop the mill—it’s running away! The rope is broken!”

The whole roomful of children poured outdoors. There was that in the words and in the manner of the teacher which suggested a picture of the windmill striding away across the landscape with gigantic steps. In a wide semi-circle, then, they grouped around the four iron legs of the mill and craned their necks to watch the racing wheel. There was nothing novel about it. Every one of them had seen racing mills before; but the hysteria of the teacher was catching. They began to gape and whisper to one another. Besides, nothing is so confusing, so unnerving, as a wind storm. Above the head of the mill they could see the clouds torn to shreds and hurried across the sky. And when one of the eighth-grade boys yelled: “Look at Danny Cadigan!” his voice was a mere whistle above the storm.

Then they saw Danny Cadigan climbing slowly up the long ladder, his fat little body swaying from side to side in the pressure of the gale. He made no haste. He climbed very leisurely, a step at a time, steadying himself on both feet before he essayed the next rung of the ladder. The teacher, seeing him already high in the air, screamed with fear and at that Danny let go with one hand, though the wind was cuffing him hard, and waved a reassuring hand.

“They ain’t no call to be scared,” said one of the older boys, “because Danny never makes no mistakes. He’s just playin’ some sort of a game.”

“He never plays!” cried the teacher. “Oh, what is in the child’s mind?”

For, at the noon hour and at the recesses, Danny usually sat in the shade of one of the trees near the schoolhouse, or else he leaned against the corner of the building and blinked his big, lazy black eyes at the others. Even the activity of sport did not greatly appeal to him. He preferred to drowse and dream and watch the others. He was not even bothered by the bullies of the school, for it was taken for granted that such an inactive one would not fight, and would not offer sport even if he was maltreated. He was merely a drone in a busy hive. At some time he would be stung by one of the workers. But up to the present he was too small to be noticed. He was a nonentity even to the nervous teacher, for he never was either a failure or a great success in his studies; he was never in mischief, but neither did he have a cheerful eye and smile. Take him by and large, he might be considered a neuter. But here he was clambering up the ladder. What could it mean?

That he had some definite purpose dawned in the minds of the watchers when he was seen to work on above the halfway mark and still higher and higher toward the platform above which the wheel was spinning and clanking.

“Go up and bring him down! Quick! Quick!” cried Sophie Preston. “He’ll fall—he’ll be killed!”

The biggest boy in the school ran forward as a volunteer and hurried up a dozen rungs of the ladder until the full force of the wind caught him and flung him hard to one side. Then, with a cry of fear, he looked up just in time to see one of the worn rungs break beneath the feet of Danny. Poor Danny hung at arm’s length and swayed far out in the wind like the flag on the Fourth of July. That was enough for the rescuing hero, for he did not wait to see Danny clutch the ladder again with his legs. He hastened down to firm ground, sick in the pit of his stomach, and from the solid earth he looked up and saw Danny disappear through the trap and clambering onto the storm-swept platform high above.

Here the wind veered and tossed the flying wheel around. Its darting vanes skimmed the very head of Danny, and the teacher, with a scream, covered her face.

“He’s all right! Oh, look!” cried one of the older girls to Miss Preston, and when she stared upward again, she saw Danny standing erect on the platform!

More than that, he was reaching toward the fan and tugging fiercely at it.

“Come down!” screamed twenty voices in a wild chorus, but the words were lost and blended in the whistle of the wind, and all that reached Danny was a mere roar. To answer it, he stood on the very edge of the platform and waved down to them.

Thereat Miss Preston fainted away. But she was hardly heeded. The pupils were too busy gazing at Danny as that pudgy form, standing still near the verge of the platform to gain a great purchase on the fan, tugged strongly at it. Finally, as the wind abated for an instant, he was able to jerk it in. The wheel swung around out of the wind, and in a trice Danny, with the broken fragment of rope, had lashed fan and wheel together.

By the time Miss Preston recovered, Danny was on the ground again.

After that, Danny was regarded with new eyes.

“Were you scared?” asked some one, a little later.

“Scared?” said Danny, and his dreamy eyes lighted a little. “Well, I dunno as—”

“He dunno what bein’ scared is,” said a cow-puncher who heard the report. “That kid’ll come to something—or nothing!”

Miss Preston tried to make much of the young hero, but she tried in vain. When she praised him, he looked at her bewildered, and he shook his head.

“It was sort of fun,” was all Danny would ever say about that adventure.

For two years, after that, he continued to live his usual life at the school. Then an eighth-grade boy took it upon himself to try the battle spirit of Danny Cadigan. It began with a practical joke, in the shape of tacks placed on Danny’s seat. But though he sat down on them and rose again suddenly, he made not a sound. He merely pulled the tacks out of the seat of his trousers and placed them in his pocket.

He said nothing; he asked no questions; and the tyrant grew bolder and more contemptuous.

The next day he said to Danny: “D’you want to know who put them tacks on your seat? I done it!”

“Oh!” murmured Danny, and smote his tormentor fairly upon the root of the nose.

There is something immensely disconcerting about a punch on the nose, smartly given. It floods the eyes with tears; it stings like a hornet; and if a trickle of red follows, the weak-hearted lose their nerve. The bully, jumping back, ran a forefinger under his nose and it came away very red. After that he was willing to call the battle off. But Danny Cadigan was only beginning.

He had never fought before. But he had stood by and watched many and many a grisly encounter with his dull black eyes. Those eyes were glittering and gleaming now. He came swiftly in with his left arm extended as he had seen the best boxers in the school always do when they wanted to make an opening. He bashed that left fist into the stomach of the bully and then cracked home his right hand squarely against the chin of the other.

The big boy went down with a thud, and before he could recover, while he was still groaning: “Enough!” Danny Cadigan flung the conquered upon his face and twisted one arm of the fallen into the small of his back. After that, the bully was helpless. The more he struggled, the more agonizing was the pressure that was brought upon his twisted shoulder socket. Suddenly he began to scream, wild, blood-chilling yells.

And the hand of Cadigan was seen to be dipping into a coat pocket and out again, apparently pressing something into the back of the fallen. Half a dozen boys dragged him away. And then it was found that he had been jabbing the tacks of the day before, deep into the body of the unfortunate victim.

The teacher could not believe it until she saw the blood oozing out on the coat of the unhappy youngster. Then she took Danny to one side and talked long and gravely to him.

“I dunno,” said Danny. “He stuck me with tacks when I wasn’t lookin’. I stuck him with tacks when he was lookin’. Is that wrong?”

That was the last fight of Danny Cadigan for ten years. For, during that space of time, he remained near his home town. And, no matter how mild his behavior, rumor went before him and warned ignorant strangers of the danger that lay concealed beneath that mild exterior.

Until his twenty-second year, the windmill and that one fight were the outstanding features in the life of Danny, except for the death of his father and his mother. As for the passing of his father, Danny did not seem to mind it greatly. He was seen beside the grave in his range-rider’s costume, just as he had ridden in from the nearby ranch where he was working. He was grown, now, into a youth a little above a middle height, with broad shoulders, and a sleek face, and eyes which looked simply stupid to some, and sad to others.

“They ain’t no heart in him,” said the rancher for whom he worked. “When I give him word that his pa had died, he just grunted and went on eatin’ his dinner. That’s the way with that Danny Cadigan!”

Two years later, his mother closed her eyes. But that was very different. Danny came and sat beside the dead body for twenty-four hours, until the doctor came in and tipped up his head and looked down into the dull, expressionless eyes.

“You better get some sleep,” said the doctor. “You can’t do any good here now, my boy!”

So Danny Cadigan left the room without a word, but not to sleep. And when the body was buried in the grave in the cemetery under the elms, he stood beside the hole with his usual lack-luster eyes. There he remained, too, long after the coffin was covered and the mound completed and the little crowd of mourners scattered away. Some said that he stayed there for a whole day before he went back to the range.

After that, the people of that district changed their minds about Cadigan. There was something to him, after all, they declared. There was a hidden fineness. There was something delicate behind his leaden reserve.

But just when they made up their minds that Danny Cadigan would be welcome among them, Cadigan seemed to discover that he no longer desired their company. Two days after his mother was buried, he asked for his pay, mounted his horse, and rode north.