Читать книгу The Long Chance - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10

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It was not a question of making a swift move in self-defense. One lunge of that long arm and one thrust of that keen-edged knife would have ended my days at that instant. But the figure in black was not making any effort to close on me. Instead, he turned about and confronted a man who stood behind, and there I saw the youth of the beard and mustache with a pair of pistols shining in his hands. It had been his voice that I had heard, and his voice that had stopped the other on his murder errand.

Of course you have guessed who the would-be assassin was. It was my friend the gambler, now with a great lump on his jaw where my fist had chugged home that day. He had seen me standing there in the darkness and decided that it would be a simple matter for him to put me out of his life and out of the world. He had been disgraced and beaten by me, and there are some men who always nourish their revenge with just such a thoroughgoing spirit as this. Kill the fellow who has exposed you; it comforts your soul!

There was no doubt that he was in a good deal of danger now, for the young fellow who was walking toward us seemed in a high state of excitement.

“You low dog!” he said fiercely. “You contemptible, murdering cur! Can you give me one reason why I shouldn’t send this pair of bullets through your heart?”

The gambler stepped back toward the rail.

He had dropped the bowie knife, and thrown his hands above his head in token of surrender.

“Mr. Granville!” he gasped.

“Yes, I’m Granville!” said the youth.

“For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Granville, have mercy on a poor—”

“I’ll have no mercy,” said Granville. “I’m going to march you back to the captain of this ship and ask him to turn you over to the mate to put in irons, and when you get to New Orleans, I’ll see to it that the finest lawyer in the city prosecutes you for attempted murder!”

“Mr. Granville,” whined the gambler, “I want to tell you, sir, that I only intended to startle this young man—frighten him a little—”

“About face and march,” said Granville. “And go softly, and keep your hands above your head every step of the way!”

“One moment, Mr. Granville,” said I. “I think I know a better way. You stand by to see fair play, and I’ll teach this puppy a lesson with my fists.”

“Why,” chuckled Granville, “that’s not such a bad idea. Suppose you do it!”

“Very well,” said the gambler, “will you let me take off my coat?”

“Take it off, then.”

For a fraction of an instant Granville lowered his weapons, and in that instant the other whirled and leaped over the rail.

We ran to the side of the ship, and a moment later saw the head of the rascal come above the water, with a light from the ship glistening upon it. Then he was lost to view.

“He preferred to drown like a rat?” said Granville.

“No, sir,” said I, “he’ll make that island, just ahead of us. If he can swim a quarter of a mile with the current—and any child can manage that—he’ll be safe—just a bit wet and cold.”

“I should have pistoled him, I suppose,” said Granville almost regretfully. “I shouldn’t have let him go without paying him off. But perhaps he’s had a lesson that will take some of the starch out of him.”

He came straight up to me, putting away his pistols. He held out his hand.

“I’ve come to offer you an apology for the insulting remark which I made to you earlier in the day, Cross.”

“Hello!” said I. “You have my name?”

“Yes,” said he. “One of the passengers suddenly remembered at dinner that he had seen you pointed out on a boat coming down toward the Mississippi from the plains. He has told us a great deal about you and made you out quite a legendary figure, Mr. Cross.”

I had been made out a safety killer, too, no doubt! And that thought made me set my teeth. However, I heard him say, “You haven’t called it quits between us, Cross?”

“I do, though,” I said, taking his hand. “Good lord! man, if it hadn’t been for you, I would have had that knife in my back, and then a toss over the rail into the river! I owe my life to you, and—”

“Tush!” said he. “Tush! It doesn’t balance a feather’s weight against the ugly thing I had said about you before. Not a feather’s weight!”

He asked me to come back with him to his cabin. And I went, rather confused, and unwilling to have this fine young man see me in my dirt and rough clothes by the close light of a lamp. He had the largest and the finest cabin of the ship and he made me comfortable in a chair at once, and offered me whatever I would have to drink.

“Tell me, Cross,” said he, “if it’s true that you’ve left the plains and that you are heading across the world with nothing in the way of a worry on your mind? And no family behind you?”

“That’s true,” I answered.

He nodded, and fell into a brown study for a moment. A very queer study, for his eyes were fixed steadily upon my face, but blankly, and he said not a word.

I began to grow red and uneasy after a moment. Finally he said, “Look here. Will you let me ask you to do some foolish things?”

I said to him solemnly, “Mr. Granville, you can command me the rest of my life.”

“Where did you learn to talk like that?” he asked me suddenly. “Excuse me if I’m sharp.”

“I don’t mind,” said I, “if you’ll tell me what’s odd about my speech.”

“A very broad strain of old-fashioned formality,” he said.

“My mother was a very old-fashioned woman,” said I.

“She pruned your grammar for you, I suppose?”

“Yes. She taught me at home, very carefully.”

“Well, it would do. By heavens, the more I think about it, the more I see that it would do wonderfully! Wonderfully!”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Not that I had the plan in mind when I went out there on the deck,” he continued, paying no attention to my question. “Not a bit. But I’d noticed that gambler trailing you about the deck. For an Indian fighter you’re very careless about leaving your back unguarded, you know. I went to keep an eye on the dog. Very lucky I did! Very lucky! Now tell me if I seem to be talking queerly?”

“I simply don’t understand it all,” said I.

“I hardly understand it myself. I hardly understand it myself,” said he. “It’s just gradually dawning on me by degrees—the possibility—but no—it isn’t possible, and I’m a fool and a dreamer. I always have been one!”

He was immensely excited. Now he jumped up and began to pace the floor.

Suddenly he said, “Look here, Cross. Take that coat, will you?”

He had opened a case, taken out a long-tailed coat, and now he threw it to me.

I took it.

“Slip it on, will you? And don’t think that I’m going to offer you a suit of old clothes,” he went on with a laugh, seeing the redness of my face.

I put on the coat obediently. It was a good deal too tight, but he didn’t seem to think so.

“Just a shade snug, but almost a perfect fit. No, you’re just as long in the arms. Well—by gad! By gad! Who would ever have thought it? You’re six feet and one and three eighths inches tall. And just a tiny shade over.”

“Just a tiny shade over,” I confessed, “but how in Heaven’s name could you have guessed that?”

He had turned from flushed to pale, and now he stammered, “Don’t ask me how I knew. I begin to think that Fate has a hand hi this! Why else should I have been sent up the river? Why should I ever have determined on such a thing as this trip?”

Of course, I couldn’t answer. I began to have an uncanny feeling that all was not right in the mind of young Mr. Granville. And then he snapped at me: “Do you much care what happens to you in the next few months?”

I admitted that I didn’t.

“Have you a mind for adventure?”

“I think I have,” I told him.

He lost his enthusiasm for a moment and frowned at the floor.

“You’ve killed men, they say,” he murmured. “That’s true, I suppose. You’ve killed men. Rifle work, they say. And revolvers. A great deal of revolver work!”

I was silent. He seemed to know about me as much as he needed to know.

“I’ve heard,” said he, “that there’s no one quite as quick and deadly with a revolver as you are.”

“That’s nonsense,” I told him. “Of course there are men who are a lot faster and a lot straighter, too. I’ve known some of them, and I’ve heard of others.”

“How could you tell, really,” he asked, “unless you met the fellows face to face and tried out your skill with them?”

I had to confess that that was the only way in which the test could be made.

“I knew it,” said he. “I would bank on you. I would bank a great deal on you. I have met fellows something like you before. In college, in sports. You could tell the champions by the look in their eye. Hold on—I seem to be flattering you a good deal.”

He was, and I was red under it.

Then he said, “Do you think me quite a crazy man?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“That’s the way that they would like to have me talk,” he said with a sigh, “using a great deal of formality. And living up to my position. Damn it—I despise my position! I despise it!”

He jumped up and stamped on the floor.

Then he whirled out of that humor into another one.

“Look here,” said he, “may I talk plain business with you? No, it isn’t plain at all. It’s the wildest thing that any human being ever conceived, but it begins to grow on me. It grows and grows. It gathers. I see farther into it. I can look into the future of this idea, and by Heaven, it seems nearly possible! Will you please listen to me?”

“Yes, Mr. Granville.”

“Ah,” he sighed again, “there you are, talking like a man in a book. Well, I could never talk in that manner. Never! I’ve tried it, you know. No good!”

He went on: “Money’s some object with you, I suppose? I mean, it is with everybody.”

“No, sir,” said I. “Will you let me tell you what’s in my mind?”

“Go ahead, go ahead,” he snapped rather pettishly. “Though you haven’t heard what’s in mine, for that matter!”

There was something almost feminine about the humors and the changing moods of this chap. I wrote him down as the spoiled darling of some rich Southern planter. The son of a vastly wealthy and vastly idle family.

I said: “Chiefly, I’ve been looking for fun. I hardly cared what kind. I’ve done some years of what I thought was work. And then this evening I came within an ace of getting enough adventure to last me to the end of time. The reason that I’m not floating down the Mississippi feet first is because you took a hand in my affairs, and now, sir, my hope is that in some way I can make some manner of return to you. I don’t care in what fashion. I wish to leave it to you. It seems to me that you have some scheme in mind in which I could be useful. If so, please consider that I am simply a tool in your hand.”

When I finished, he stared at me, his lips parted.

“By the eternal!” he said at last, in hardly more than a whisper. “Exactly like a book. Perfectly like a book!”

“I’m sorry,” said I, breathing a little hard, I suppose.

“Hold on!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want you to go off on the wrong foot like that. I don’t want you to do that, you know! But just tell me—if you can forgive my infernal rudeness—just tell me if you could really subtract a year from your life? Not for nothing—but for a pretty good round sum. Anything you want—say—a hundred dollars a week while it lasts—”

“Mr. Granville,” said I, “I can’t take any such salary from you. I want only to serve you. Will you tell me how I can?”

“That’s the devil of it. How am I to tell you? It’s so mad that I can’t. Can’t say a word about it. Besides, it might not pan out. But we’d have to try it, first. Gad, you’re decent to listen to my ravings! To begin with, I could put it this way: I’d want you absolutely at my disposal for the course of a year. To go and come and rise and sit down exactly as I bade you. What about that? Not able to really call your soul your own, I mean?”

His eyes glistened at me. And I considered the idea with a growing excitement. Every young man is tempted by whole-hearted, extravagant affairs. And this was a little more whole-hearted and extravagant than any that I had heard of before. Although still I didn’t know what he could be driving at.

“I’ll make one reservation,” said I. “I’m not to be asked to compromise my honor.”

“Out of the book again!” he shouted, and threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter. “By heavens. Cross, you’re marvelous beyond words!”

I could hardly hear what he said at this point. I should have told you long ago what was really the most peculiar thing about this young man. His voice was extremely husky and low, and after this excitement and burst of laughter, one could hardly understand a syllable that he spoke. He recovered after a moment, and taking a sip of wine, he said, “No, I don’t think that one could say that it is a dishonorable affair that I have in mind. I only know that it’s a necessary one! Terribly, vitally necessary to me! Life and death to me! Life and death!”

He sat gaping at some very dreadful idea.

“Life and death,” he whispered huskily again. “And now tell me, Cross. Are you my man?”

He waited with the moisture standing on his forehead, his hands clenched.

I recapitulated slowly: “I put myself in your hands for a whole year?”

He nodded. He seemed too worked-up to speak. The muscles of his big throat were bulging in and out.

“And for an entire year, you are to do the thinking for me, and I’m to submit to you?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

He managed to speak, then, but he was hardly audible.

“Yes,” I said suddenly. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank God! Thank God!” cried Granville. “But wait—wait! It isn’t enough! Swear it. Swear by whatever’s sacred to you. Your mother, say. Swear that you’ll stay with me through this entire year and do as I tell you to do!”

That made me hesitate. And his suspense was so great that I almost feared he would faint. He leaned against the door of the cabin, as though to keep out a possible intruder, and his face was utterly colorless, and his eyes bulging, as he stared at me.

“I swear by my mother,” said I at last.

“Living, living?” he snapped at me with a terrible eagerness.

“Dead,” said I sadly. And I looked gloomily down to the floor.

“All the better,” said he. “With a fellow like you, that will be more binding. By gad, by gad, shake hands with me to round it off. Not so hard! Good God, you’ve crushed every bone in my hand!”