Читать книгу The Long Chance - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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There was a pause in my life, after that. With all my heart, I longed to be off running buffalo, or trailing hostile Indians, or trapping beaver on the northern streams with Uncle Steve, but the stern voice of conscience told me that my mother had not raised me for any such destiny. She had intended that the culture she gave me should be put to a proper use, and therefore I must lead a quieter life.

Well, what sort of a quiet life could a youngster find in a frontier fort? I looked about me and tried to find the best way out, but all that I could get to do was to keep an account book in a trader’s office. I became a clerk and for three years I remained in that position, learning how Indians can be made drunk and stupid, while their goods are filched away from them, and how cheap beads can be used to buy fine buffalo robes. I learned other things, also. My boss never lost his keen wits, but sometimes he lost the use of his hands and feet from too many potations of the poison which he sold as whisky. And on those occasions I had to take my place with him at the work of trade. For when he was a bit under the influence of liquor there were grave chances that some man, white or red, would try to take advantage of him and loot the place. On those days there was apt to be a call for a revolver shot, or a bowie knife thrown with an accurate hand; but most frequently, there was need for a well-placed set of knuckles on the point of another man’s jaw.

For three years I carried on this intermittent war against my fellows. Each year my salary was increased. I began to share some of the profits of the store. I was a valued man. And then one day the marshal of that district walked in and had a little chat with me.

I’ve never forgotten him. Long afterward he made name and fame for himself; but, even in those old days, he was already a known man along the border. He was short, thick-necked, deep-chested, with a pair of pale, sad eyes.

“Do you know me, Mr. Cross?” said he.

“Yes, sir. You are Marshal Shane O’Rourke.”

“I’m glad you know me. And I trust that you know me as a fellow who likes to keep young men straight?”

“I know that, sir,” said I. “Will you sit down here?”

“When I have to say mean things,” said the marshal, “I’d rather stand up and look a man in the eye.”

That took me back a little.

“If you’ve heard something against me,” said I, “I can tell you that you’re on the wrong trail.”

“Are you sure?” said he.

“Sure, sir,” said I.

“What makes you sure, lad?” he asked.

“I’ve never stolen a penny in my life, never ‘borrowed’ a horse or a dollar. I’ve never been drunk and disorderly. I’ve stuck to my work and never bothered a soul that would leave me alone.”

“That sounds good,” said the marshal, “and I think that It’s true enough. I think that it’s true enough.” He nodded at me while he talked, and then he went on, “Nothing happened to you the last few days?”

“Nothing,” says I.

“Think close,” said he.

“Not a thing. Everything’s been quiet and as usual.”

“H’m!” said he. “I thought that there was some trouble yesterday?”

Frowning, I recalled the record of yesterday, and fumbled with the edges of a pile of buffalo robes that had just been brought in by a party of Piegans that had come away down from their ordinary hunting grounds to trade there.

“Nothing yesterday,” I told him, “except for a fool of a Negro teamster who insisted that he had been short-changed.”

“Did he make much excitement?”

“No,” said I, “we had to take him away from the post, that was all.”

“So drunk that he let himself be led away, I suppose?” said the marshal.

“No, sir,” I retorted. “He was a big surly brute, and he drew a knife on Mr. Chandler. I had to knock him down and carry him out to the shed. He sobered up and went away quite peaceably.”

“All right,” said the marshal, “and what about the day before yesterday. Anything happen that day?”

“No, sir, not a thing.”

“Think close.”

“I am thinking.”

“No other drunken Negroes?”

“No, but the day before that there was more of a commotion. A couple of Piegans filled themselves with raw alcohol and a very little water. They decided that it was a cold day and started to set fire to the store. Of course we had to stop them.”

“I didn’t know that any one here spoke Piegan,” he commented.

“No, sir,” said I, “of course we didn’t have time to persuade them with words.”

“Then what did you use on them?” the marshal asked.

“You would have laughed at it,” said I. “I didn’t want to hurt them, so I just took this ox whip, you see? Loaded handle and a lash that cuts like a knife. I gave them a taste of that.”

I could not help laughing as I remembered.

“You whipped them away, then?” chuckled the marshal, very sympathetic.

“Yes. They scampered, and howled like fiends. Except the chief. He came for me with an old pistol. Luckily I managed to knock him down with the loaded butt of the whip before he murdered me.”

“Didn’t kill him, though?”

“No, the doctor thinks that he’ll live—or did think so yesterday. I haven’t heard since,” I replied.

The marshal turned away a bit and looked through the window. The snow was beginning to fall, and spotting the surface of the pane with splotches of white.

“The day before the Piegan party?” he asked.

“What about it, sir?”

“Any trouble that day, if you can remember that far back?”

“Nothing of real importance. Wait a moment! Yes, a gambler from the river boats came here asking for a gun. We showed him the best we had and asked a fair price. He was very hot about it. Used foul language. Mr. Chandler asked him to leave the store. Then he declared that he was a gentleman and that he had been insulted by being ordered off the premises. He was one of those Southern hotheads, Marshal O’Rourke.”

“Yes, I know the type,” sighed the marshal.

“He finally whipped out a pair of dueling pistols and told us that he was going to teach us a lesson in courtesy that would last us the rest of our lives. Absolutely mad, marshal!”

“I hope that he didn’t do any harm?” the marshal remarked.

“No, sir, I managed to get in a shot from the hip that dropped him.”

“Well, well! That was lucky, eh?” he commented.

“Wasn’t it!” I exclaimed.

“And what’s become of him?”

“Mr. Chandler paid the funeral expenses very handsomely,” said I. “Mr. Chandler is never niggardly about such things, sir.”

“True, true!” said the marshal. “So I’ve heard! But the day before the gambler. Do you recall that day?”

“It’s rather dim. Let me see,” said I. “I believe that I do remember something. Yes, as a matter of fact, a trapper came in and swore that some of the outfit we had sold to him last year had been faulty. Mr. Chandler asked to see the faulty traps. The man cursed us, swore that he would have his money back, and declared that he wouldn’t put himself to the trouble of carting worthless traps all the way back home. Mr. Chandler told him that in that case there was nothing to be done, of course. You can appreciate that, sir? Business rule!”

“Naturally. A business rule!” said the marshal. “Well, such things have to be! Of course! How did the affair turn out?”

“He jerked up his rifle to the ready,” said I, “but there was really no hurry. I could take my time, so I shot him through the right thigh. A bullet there drops a man just as well as one through the heart, for that matter. Excuse me if I tell you a thing that you know perfectly well, marshal.”

“What is your job here?” asked the marshal suddenly.

“Why, I’m the clerk, sir,” said I.

“How many hours a day at the books then?” he pursued.

“Why, sometimes two or three at the accounts.”

“Sometimes, but on an average?” he insisted.

“Well, perhaps less than an hour.”

“And what is your pay, Cross?”

“Mr. Chandler raised me last month. I’m now getting fifteen hundred dollars a year,” I told him.

“Fifteen hundred!” cried the marshal, and stared at me.

Remember that those days were in the long ago. A dollar was a dollar, at that time, even on the frontier.

“Mr. Chandler is very generous,” said I.

“Darned generous,” said the marshal bluntly. “Fifteen hundred for an hour’s work a day! That’s about five dollars an hour, isn’t it, not counting Sundays?”

“Why, sir, about that, I suppose I never thought of it that way!”

“No doubt you didn’t,” said the marshal, with a hidden meaning in his voice. “And now, tell me. It can’t be that Chandler is paying you for anything other than bookkeeping?”

“Why, no, sir!”

“It couldn’t be, for instance,” said the marshal, “that he has you here to do his fighting for him?”

I stared at him.

“Mr. Chandler can take care of himself with any man,” I told him.

“How many fights has Chandler had in the past year?”

I merely stared. There was no answer. I began to “think close.”

The marshal went on: “You tell me first that everything has been quiet here lately and that nothing has happened. Then, in the course of your memories of five days, I hear about a fist fight, the flogging of a party of dangerous Blackfeet, one man shot dead, and another dropped with a revolver bullet! Is this an ordinary program, young man?”

“Why, sir,” said I, “as a matter of fact, sometimes we run on for ten days at a time without a particle of trouble!”

“Exactly!” said the marshal. “And I’ll tell you why! The strangers around here know no better than to make trouble, but those who have the proper information take care to keep away from Mr. Chandler’s hired mankiller!”