Читать книгу The Smiling Desperado - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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When Cadigan opened his eyes, he was lying on a blanket in the middle of the floor with the rolled coat of some one for a pillow under his head, and with a circle of anxious faces around him—a dozen men with their hats on their heads, their spurs on their heels, their guns at their sides, as though prepared to start for a day of hard riding through dangerous country. And in the center of the circle, kneeling beside him, was no less a person than Tom Kirby.

“If he don’t come to,” he heard Kirby saying, “we’ll ride to the devil and back until we catch that skunk Lancaster and blow him off the earth.”

There was a rumble of applause in the midst of which Cadigan sat up. This movement was greeted with a shout of delight. He could not recognize the illumined faces before him as those of the surly, brutal men he had known earlier in that same evening. They clasped his hands, they raised him tenderly to his feet, they bade him lean upon them, they conducted him to a bunk, and they would have stretched him tenderly in it, but here Cadigan protested that there was nothing wrong with him.

“Nothin’ but a cracked skull!” said Kirby. “Is that nothin’ to you, Cadigan?”

It was almost the first time he had been called anything other than “the kid,” or simply, “hey, you!” Cadigan appreciated the difference.

“That’s only a small bump,” said Cadigan. “It really isn’t worth thinkin’ about. I can manage myself, gents.”

“Good old boy!” said one. “He’ll always stand on his two feet!”

But Cadigan wanted to think. He wanted to be by himself. It was a passionate need, and he straightway slipped away into the dark of the outer night and sat down against a sweet-smelling stack of newly put-up hay. There he contemplated all that had happened. It was not altogether in the past. Indeed, there was a great deal still running over into his present. For instance, the fierce and riotous happiness which had been awakened in him was still there in his blood like a liquid fire, was still in his brain and in his heart, and he could have sung—though there had never been music in his throat before through all his life!

When he tried to think back to what had happened, he was baffled, for it was like trying to contemplate two creatures. His old self was one. It had been sleepy, lazy, indifferent to the world. His new self was another. Here was no horse to be ridden, no windmill to be climbed and then relax into sleep after the climbing. Here was far more. The man who had insulted him and struck him down had escaped unpunished, and there remained before him the far greater problem than the hand-to-hand conflict. There remained the unfinished task: He must hunt down Lancaster and master him with the work of his gun which his hands could not complete.

Until that was done, he could never rest content. And that wild work lay before him like an endless fairy tale to which a child can listen forever. For how could he ever hope to master the wonderful dexterity, the long and cruel experience, of Bill Lancaster? He remembered the pale, blue eyes of the big man which had blazed at him with cold fury. On what day would he face those eyes again? It was a quiet delight which Cadigan took home to his heart.

Walking back toward the bunk house he was singing softly to himself, and so he almost ran against the figure who was seated on the steps of the shack.

“Is that you, Cadigan?” said the voice of Tom Kirby.

“It’s me.”

“Sit down, son.”

Cadigan sat down.

“I heard you singin’?”

“Sort of.”

“You aim to be tolerable happy, then?”

“Why, you might say so.”

“I always set you down for a doggone sad one. Maybe all you needed was a little more trouble—a little fightin’, Dan, to set you up?”

Dan was silent.

Suddenly the voice of Tom Kirby dropped to a lower note. “Look here, Cadigan,” he said, “me and the boys have been talkin’ this all over. Well, son, the way it looks to us, we’ve played a pretty small game with you-all. We’ve been treatin’ you like a kid when you was doggone near the only man among us. Old Jud McKay he spoke up and told us what we was; he says he’s the only man that ever seen what was in you. Well, we got to admit that Jud has spent a pile of time with you. Now, Cadigan, the boys all put in and say they want me to tell you that they’re mighty sorry for what they done. They all know that they stood around mighty shameful and let Lancaster fight foul. They seen it, and they’d ought to of pulled their guns and shot him dead. Well, they didn’t do it. Partly it was because they didn’t noways figure that their eyes could be seein’ right when they made out Lancaster playin’ a dirty trick on a—a young gent like you that ain’t always practicin’ with his Colt in his spare minutes. And it was partly, to tell you the plain truth, because they was scared to tackle Lancaster, even after they seen the way that you was handlin’ him. Maybe you dunno the sort of a name that Lancaster has in these parts, son. But I’ll tell you that they ain’t no three men that’d hanker to meet up with Lancaster and shoot it out man to man, them all on one side and him all on one side!”

He paused and cleared his throat, having concluded this embarrassing speech.

“It’s all right,” said Cadigan quietly. “You don’t have to do no apologizing. I’ve forgot all that. It happened pretty quick, too.”

“That was it!” exclaimed the rancher hastily, seizing upon this straw with desperate haste. “The way they told me about it, you was as fast as a tiger after him, and he wasn’t no slouch himself. It was all one whirl and bang and then there was you down and Lancaster up and sneaking away. Well, Cadigan, the boys figure that they might of done more, anyways. They’re eatin’ their hearts out because they didn’t take a crack at him, and if you’d been bad hurt they wouldn’t never of rested till they had rode down Lancaster and finished him—or he finished them!”

The very fact that the rancher included the latter alternative as a possibility convinced Cadigan, if he had needed convincing, that he had seen only a small part of the formidable qualities of Lancaster.

“I know,” said Cadigan gratefully, “that they’d of stood behind me. They’re mighty kind, Mr. Kirby.”

The rancher snorted, but he went on quickly: “About one more thing, son.”

“Well?”

“You figure that you’re done with Lancaster?”

“Why—not quite.”

“You’re right! You ain’t seen the last of him. You ain’t even begun to catch a glimpse of him. I’ll tell you why, if you can’t guess!”

“I’d sure like to know what you think,” murmured the roustabout gently.

“Because you’ve stood up to him, which is more’n any other man has done for a mighty long time, old son! You’ve stood up to him, and he ain’t apt to forget it. It’s what you might call a blot, to Lancaster. He claims to be the doggonedest hard one that ever shot up a town for fun. It’d plumb break his heart to have somebody throw this here mess into his face and tell him about the time that a—a youngster, son, got him on the run. You understand?”

“I see,” said Cadigan.

“It’s blood, Cadigan!”

“What!”

“It’s a killin’, boy!”

“You mean that Lancaster—”

“He’ll never stop tryin’ until he’s planted a couple of slugs of lead inside of you. You hear me talk?”

“Yes,” said Cadigan rather faintly.

“Don’t never nohow forget it. I’m tellin’ you the facts!”

“He’ll never forget?”

“He can’t!”

He made his voice grim and low as he spoke. How could he tell that a faint smile of the most perfect content had appeared on the face of his companion in the dark? For only a glint of light fell upon Cadigan’s features from the stars.

“You might be able to sling a gun yourself. But it ain’t no ordinary kind of gun fighter that you’d have to be to face Lancaster. Why, son, he killed Harry Worth and Shank Bristol in one fight when they both jumped him—one behind and one in front. He killed ’em both. He shot Worth first. He had two slugs of lead inside of him. He lay on the floor and scooped up his gun with his left hand and killed Bristol with it. Understand?”

There was a low murmur from Cadigan. After that, a pause followed as the rancher allowed his young hired hand to digest all of this important information. Far off, a young colt began to whinny sharply, and the neigh of the grazing mother which had strayed away rang back like a clarion. After that, there was the thick, wide silence of the night around them. From the bunk house there was not a sound. It was as though the calamity of the evening had forced all the punchers to turn in at once and to fall instantly to sleep.

“I got some advice to give you, Cadigan.”

“Well, sir?”

“If I was you, I’d ride south doggone fast. I’ll loan you a hoss.”

“Why?”

“My heavens!” cried the other. “Do I have to tell you that—now? What sort of a crazy man are you, son? I tell you, unless you get out of the way, Lancaster will get you. They ain’t no possible manner of way to doubt that!”

“Thanks a lot,” said Cadigan in his usual gentle manner. “I’ll certainly have to think about all of this.”

With this, he stood up and sighed. Or was it, as it seemed to Tom Kirby, a mere yawn? At any rate, Cadigan went into the blackness of the bunk house and Tom Kirby went on, after a time, into his own domicile.

He was very gloomy. Often he paused on his way and cursed freely with a liberal and well-educated tongue, which had been improved by constant practice cutting out recalcitrant calves. And what can compare with a calf for the exercise of a man’s vocabulary.

When he reached the big ranch house, his wife knew that there was trouble in the mind of her lord by the manner in which he slammed the door behind him. Also, she heard the faint echoes as he cursed the cook; and from the lower hallway she could hear him cursing his house, his family, his cow hands, his ranch, the state in general, the West from north to south, the country at large, the entire globe, the solar system, the starry universe. He consumed space by a thousand light years at a stride as he rose to the second floor of the dwelling.

He came into the bedroom trailing a cloud of silent fury behind him. Therefore Mrs. Tom Kirby, who was very young, very pretty, and wiser than she was fair, greeted him with a pleasant smile and not a word.

When he slumped into a chair with a grunt, she rose from her place beside the window where she had been letting the cool of the evening breeze ruffle her hair, and going to the man of the house, she removed from his head the towering, massive sombrero which he had forgotten to take off, and then she wiped his heated forehead. Still she said nothing. And, by degrees, the knots disappeared from his forehead. She went back to her chair and turned it softly around so that it faced him.

Nothing is so irritating to a man as not to be noticed by his womenfolk when he is in a passion. Nothing does he love so much as to be awful in their sight! Mrs. Tom Kirby was entirely willing to be awed now and then. After all, it was a small price.

So she waited, attentive, gentle, faintly smiling her sympathy, brooding fondly upon her husband’s face, but yet not quite so fond as she appeared. She saw, by degrees, the storm cloud lifted.

“Doggone me,” said Tom Kirby, “if it don’t seem to me that most men are fools!”

Mrs. Tom Kirby could not resist it. The words tumbled suddenly from the tip of her dainty tongue.

“My dear,” said she, “aren’t you quoting?”

“What?” thundered Tom Kirby.

She was aghast, as one who has touched a mighty boulder and watches it rush headlong down a slope to destroy—what?

“I said,” she answered hastily: “Aren’t you unhappy tonight?”

He grunted, then decided that he could not have heard aright the first time, and proceeded to unburden his mind.

“What’s wrong? Please!” said Mrs. Tom.

“A dead man!” said he gloomily.

“Tom!”

“I said it.”

“Who?”

“Cadigan.”

“Good heavens, Tom, the boy isn’t dead? Oh, you don’t mean it!”

“He will be!”

“Let me go to him!”

“I mean, he’s gunna be got by Lancaster.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Ain’t it enough? Don’t seem to be no logic in you women.”

“Of course,” admitted Mrs. Tom Kirby tactfully, “we aren’t men.”

Her spouse grunted. “I told the young blockhead about Lancaster. I told him to start south—pronto. Well, what d’you think that he did?”

“I can’t guess!” said Mrs. Tom wisely.

“He just yawned. Darned if he didn’t act like I’d told him that Lancaster wore yaller shirts, or something like that. Didn’t seem no ways interested. And when he went into the bunk house afterward, I hear him hummin’ to himself. The young fool maybe thinks because he knocked Lancaster down that he could beat him even with guns. Darned if it ain’t laughin’ at a rattlesnake because it can’t bite through stone!”

“Of course. How terrible!”

“It is. He’s dead. If he had folks, I’d tell ’em to order mournin’ now. But he ain’t got none.”

“An orphan?”

“Him? Sure.”

“No relatives in the world?”

“Nobody, from what he says. He’s in a one-man canoe, up to now. Doggone lucky at that!”

Did Mrs. Tom understand the secret thrust in the last sentence? She did. For she answered sweetly:

“Poor child!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” exclaimed her spouse. “He ain’t as young an’ helpless as all that! Keep some of that sympathy to spend on the first of the month. Maybe I’ll need it.”