Читать книгу The Long Chance - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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It was a tremendous shock to me. It made my world spin around before my eyes. Who was it that said none of us know ourselves?

The voice of the marshal cut in on my bewilderment. “Give me that gun!”

“What gun, sir?”

“The one you have your hand on!”

Sure enough, I had automatically laid a hand on the butt of my revolver. I grew very hot.

“I meant nothing by that,” I explained. “Just an instinct sir. You’ve been talking very frankly, sir!”

I gave him the gun; he frowned down at it.

“How many men has this weapon killed, young man?” he asked.

“It is a new gun, sir,” said I.

“New, eh? Were you wearing it when you shot the gambler?”

“As a matter of fact I was, sir.”

“And that’s one notch that might have been filed. You don’t file notches, Sammy Cross?”

“Why, sir,” said I, “when a man is out on the trail of an Indian war party, I can understand his filing a notch for every dead man. But, as for the nasty little things that happen in a quiet trader’s store, of course I couldn’t claim any credit for that!”

“Bah!” snorted the marshal.

I turned cold.

“Mr. O’Rourke,” said I, “I’ve taken a great deal from you. May I be allowed to say, sir, that I won’t take another word of any kind in the way of—insult?”

“And what will you do, eh?” said the marshal. “I have your gun!”

“You haven’t my knife, though!”

And it glimmered in my hand that instant.

“A gun against a knife?” said he.

“It’s just as quick!” I told him. “And it will kill nearly as surely!”

He looked at me out of narrowed eyes.

“You cold-blooded young—” he began.

Then he paused.

“Marshal,” said I, “I’m glad that you didn’t finish that sentence.”

“You are, eh? About the war trails that you speak of. I suppose that leading a quiet life like yours, with your books to keep up, you haven’t had many occasions to ride on the war path?”

“No, sir,” I confessed with a sigh, “I lead a rather dull life, on the whole. Terribly dull. There’s very rarely any excitement. In the past three or four years I’ve only joined ’vengeance’ parties half a dozen times.”

“Humph!” said he.

“Seven times, to be exact.”

“You were carrying other guns on the war trails?”

“Why, yes sir.”

“Lemme see them!”

I brought in two rifles and a pair of revolvers. He snatched them from me. He didn’t look at the mechanism, but only at the under part of the stocks of the rifles and the handles of the revolvers.

“Young man,” said he suddenly, “there are eleven notches on these guns altogether.”

“Yes, sir,” said I.

“And these are the only guns you have?”

“One very old one I sold last month,” I told him.

“Any notches on it?”

“Only two, sir,” said I. “It was a stupid brute of a gun. Bore horribly to the right.”

“Only two!” said the marshal. “Only two! Only two human souls sent to eternity by you with that old gun that ‘bore horribly to the right,’ eh? And in three years you’ve only been seven times on the war path! And on those trails you’ve only killed eleven men! And besides those, there are the men uncounted who were knocked over in the quiet matter of ‘business!’ The lives that didn’t count!”

And he added fiercely, “You young murderer!”

The knife shook in my hand. But I checked myself with a frightful effort, for he let the muzzle of my revolver hang toward the floor and made no move to protect himself.

“O’Rourke,” I said through my teeth, “I’ve given you a warning before, and now you can act on it.”

“Shut up!” said the marshal, “Oh, shut up, Cross. I tell you, it makes me heartsick! I knew your mother! And what would she think of a son like you? Answer me that!”

The knife glided out of my hand and stuck point down in the floor. I slumped down on an empty whisky barrel. And from that position I stared up at the man of the law.

“Marshal O’Rourke,” said I suddenly, “tell me the truth.”

“What truth d’you want?” he asked me, savage as ever.

“Tell me what men really say about me?”

“They call you a safety killer!”

I had heard that expression before, used to describe the men who made their business and their pleasure the killing of others, but who would never fight unless they knew that the law was sure to protect them. Of all the men on the border, they were the most loathed, and the out-and-out gun fighters, who slew from an irresistible passion for fight, were considered infinitely above the “safety killers” in morality.

I writhed under that accusation.

“It’s not true! It’s not true!” I groaned. “O’Rourke, I’ll swear that it’s not true!”

He remained there, looking down at me, searching me, with a sort of cruel understanding and compassion in his eyes.

“Lad,” said he, “how old are you? Twenty-six?

“No, sir, a shade under twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two!” he echoed.

“It’s perfectly true.”

The marshal turned away and began to stamp up and down the floor.

“Chandler is a fiend! A hound!” he said aloud, but addressing himself. “And a blockhead like this fool of a boy, throwing his life away!”

Suddenly he turned and pointed a stiff arm at me.

“Do you know what they ask at the other posts when they inquire about this fort?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean, do you know what’s the first question they ask concerning this place?”

“No, sir, I’ve no idea. Unless they ask how the fur trade is going.”

“Forget the fur trade! They merely ask if anybody has yet been able to kill Butcher Cross, the safety killer!”

“The cowardly hounds!” I shouted. “Give me the name of one of them, and I’ll teach him how safely he can call me—”

“Aye, aye, aye!” broke in the marshal. “There’s the murder streak cropping out, a mile wide, and red as scarlet.”

It silenced me effectually enough. And, as I glared at the marshal, I couldn’t help remembering his reputation, which was great and bright along that frontier. There were others who had their enemies, and plenty of them; but there was no man who could point a finger at Marshal O’Rourke and call him anything other than an ideal man of the law, flawlessly honest, brave, gentle, resolute, and with a kind heart beating in his breast. No man was slower to draw a gun than O’Rourke—and no man was slower in putting it up, once drawn. And suddenly I was filled with horror to think that this man, of all the world, should have had to denounce me so bitterly.

“Marshal,” I said to him at last, “I never guessed at these things!”

He was silent.

“Mr. O’Rourke,” said I, “I want to ask you something more.”

“Fire away.”

“Why did you come here to-day?”

“To look you in the face and see how old you were. And to tell you that the next man that dies under your gun serves me as a notice to come and get you in the name of the law as an habitual and merciless killer. And no matter how safe you may play the game, there are courts on this border where you would be made an example!” he concluded.

I shuddered.

For I well knew what some of those border courts were, institutions especially designed to keep peace and a fear of law intact throughout some enormous sweep of prairie and mountains. Courts where the stern judges judged by common sense and not by the letter of the law.

If I were known as an habitual killer, what would happen to me in such a tribunal?

As an habitual killer? And suddenly, looking back over the years which I had lived through so innocently, as I thought, I could recall a procession of strained, agonized faces, beginning with the freckle-nosed boy on that day when I had finally beaten him to his knees and made him confess that he had had enough. And there were other faces of men, young or in the hardy prime of life, rough-bearded, unkempt, whole-hearted fighters, heated with liquor almost all of them, while I was sure to be cold and steady of nerve. They had rushed into quarrels. They had thrust themselves forward like fools, and my gun had brought them down!

Oh, I had no remorse for the honest fighting of the war trails. And even in this fighting within doors, God could witness that I had never taken an unfair advantage. But now I could remember that when the other man made a motion toward a weapon, my heart had never failed to leap high with joy!

God forgive me for it!

“Marshal!” I gasped.

“Well?”

“If you were me—” I began.

“What would I do?” the marshal interrupted.

“Yes.”

“How much money have you?”

“About four thousand dollars.”

“A fortune! You’ve had no bad habits to spend your money on!”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Never drank or smoked, even?”

“No, sir. Smoked a very little.”

“My lad, I would leave this part of the country and never show my face here again until I’d proved myself the right kind of a man in a new part of the country! I’d go, and never come back until I’d washed my hands clean with honest living!” the marshal advised me.