Читать книгу The Long Chance - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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I thought of Uncle Steve Larkin, first of all. I thought of the way in which he had trained me for a life on the plains, and it hardly seemed possible that he could have made such a terrible mistake about me.

“I want to believe you, marshal,” said I.

“And what keeps you from it?”

“Steve Larkin, is he the right kind of a man?” I demanded.

“You don’t have to glare at me when you say that,” and the marshal smiled. “As a matter of fact, Steve Larkin is one of the best fellows in the world. I see what’s going on in your mind. Why doesn’t Steve see that you’re wrong? Because honest Steve can hardly suspect any one of being anything except what everybody ought to be. How could he suspect you? I know what he’s done. He’s had the schooling of you. And the fine old chap grows maudlin when he tells how you hit a running antelope at long range; I’ve seen tears in his eyes when he told about the way you crawled into the cave of the mountain lion last year and dragged the brute out, dead. I’ve seen him stand up before a room filled with men and describe with gestures how he taught you to box, and knocked you head over heels until you learned the tricks. And I’ve seen him show the wrestling holds you had to practice until the day when you laid him on his back! But, my lad, he didn’t watch the faces of his audience, or else he would have stopped talking!”

“He would?”

“Yes,” said the marshal. “He only knew that they were interested. But there are different kinds of interest, and those frontiersmen set their teeth and watched him through narrowed eyes while he talked. For every man was saying to himself, ‘That’s the way that young Sammy Cross was turned into a safety killer, was it?’ ”

“Don’t use that word!” I shouted. “If they want to see killing, I’ll step out and—”

I stopped myself.

The marshal was squinting at me. And he was nodding in the way that I had come to hate.

“Why, lad,” said he, “I understand, of course. You’re not the first gun fighter that I’ve had to study. I’ve seen crowds of ’em and of all kinds. But I never saw one with a handier start in the wrong direction. Don’t you see? You’ve got the killing lust in you. Some men like to shoot buffalo, and some like to trap beaver. But you like to kill and trap men, and you’ve made yourself so expert that to you it isn’t really a danger. It’s only a game with you! Don’t argue and back-talk. Admit that it’s the truth. Fighting is your game!”

I started to give him a quick and hot reply, but checked myself in time. For suddenly I could see that there was truth in what he said. I had been deluding myself into the belief that in staying on with Chandler I had been fulfilling the wishes of my dear mother; but, as a matter of fact, I had been kept there simply as a sort of watchdog, enjoying the chances for trouble!

“Sit down by yourself and think these things over,” said the marshal. “I don’t want to press you. I have no right to talk to you as I have talked. But I think that you’re too good a youngster to stand by while you throw yourself away.”

With that, he walked out of the store; and a moment later Chandler came in, a little tipsy, and singing to himself. He slapped me on the shoulder and asked me how things were running.

“We’re going to have some fun to-day,” said he. “That Canuck trapper that bought the rifles last year is back in town and he swears that you cheated him. They were those old army guns, varnished up to look new. You remember?”

“I didn’t know that they’d been varnished up to look new,” I confessed.

“Well,” said Chandler, “you never suspect anything. Let me do the thinking, and you do the selling, my lad. That’s the best way. But that Canuck is foaming and raging all over town. Be ready for him, old boy. I wouldn’t miss the party when he comes in to stamp on the ‘keed,’ as he calls you!”

“Chandler,” I said suddenly, “I’m going to quit.”

“Hey! What?” he shouted. “Quit what?”

“Quit the business. I’m leaving Fort Bostwick!”

He leaned back against the counter and gaped at me.

“It’s O’Rourke,” he said softly to himself. “That hound always has hated me. It’s O’Rourke!”

He said more loudly, “Sammy, what’s wrong?”

“I’m tired,” said I, “of being the watchdog. I’m going into another line of business.”

Well, his face blackened wonderfully fast and wonderfully dark, and then he said sharply, “I understand. The pay isn’t enough. But tell me what youngster you know of that’s been making the income that you have, and salted away so much coin?”

I didn’t answer. I simply shook my head.

“But you’re valuable to me,” said Chandler. “Why, boy, I look on you the way that a father looks on a son! Who could I leave my money and my business to except to you, eh? And I’ll tell you what, I’ll raise you, Sammy, to two thousand dollars!”

Two thousand dollars! It was a lot of money in those days.

Perhaps if I had been a little older, I would have been more tempted but, to a youngster, money is hardly more than a name. I said, “There’s no use talking, Mr. Chandler, I’ve made up my mind,” and with that I started to leave the room.

He shouted after me, “Sammy, you’ve gone mad. I’ll raise you higher! Why, it’s like losing my own boy! I’ll give you twenty-five hundred a year!”

Well, that offer did stagger me a bit. And yet, when I came to think of it, I could remember how many thousands he was taking in each year. He was growing rich, or would have grown rich if he could have kept away from monte and faro. But the gambling took his coin away almost as fast as he took it in.

“Money doesn’t talk to me,” I told him, and went straight to my room.

There I took out from the mattress the whole four thousand dollars that I had saved. I subtracted two hundred and fifty dollars for expenses. The rest I put in a big envelope, and wrote this note to Marshal O’Rourke:

Dear Mr. O’Rourke: I’m not taking much time to think things over. You’re an older and a wiser man than I am, and I believe that you’ve talked to me for my own good, and the result is that I’m going to follow your advice at once. The first thing I’m doing is sending you the money that I’ve saved here. I feel that it’s been a dirty business, and that I don’t want the coin I’ve saved here. I want you to take this money and spend it where you think it will do the most good. There’s the Widow Callahan, whose husband I killed two years ago, I know that she’s been having a hard time with her family, and she’s been steadily in want. Well, give her some of this. And there are a lot of others, who have suffered on account of me. God forgive me for the evil things that I have done! I just begin to realize them, and it makes me feel like a lost soul.

Keep a good thought for me, yourself, and I shall try to live up to what you may hope,

Faithfully yours,

Samuel Cross.

I had just finished that when Mr. Chandler rapped at my door.

“It’s no good, sir,” I said to him. “I’m not going to argue the matter with you.”

“Sammy, Sammy!” he shouted through the door, his voice trembling with earnestness. “I beg you to think it over a little bit!”

“I’ve thought it over and I won’t change.”

“Just open the door!”

“No, Mr. Chandler. I’m saying good-by to you, now,” I told him.

“Sammy, I’ve decided that I’ll impoverish myself in order to keep you. I wouldn’t know what to do with my life, if I didn’t have you here. I’ll pay you three thousand dollars a year, my lad! That’s just the same as making you the senior partner!”

I could hardly believe my ears. Three thousand dollars a year! And then a burst of rage came hot over me. I must have been making this man rich, and yet he wouldn’t pay me a tithe of my value to him until I put my thumb down and squeezed him. Three thousand dollars a year!

“Mr. Chandler,” I said, “ten thousand a year wouldn’t keep me here another day!”

“You ingrate,” he screamed in a fury. “This is my reward for taking you out of the gutter and making you a man! This is my reward, is it? Well, I hope that you live to repent your ingratitude.”

And he turned and stamped down the hall and down the rickety stairs.

I was rather glad that he had flown into a tantrum. It soothed my feelings about leaving him in the lurch so suddenly. I packed a big carpetbag, put on my best suit, with a couple of revolvers dropped deftly into the clothes in holsters that were slung under the pits of my arms. Then, so equipped, I walked down the stairs and out the back door.

I stopped at the hotel and left my fat envelope for the marshal. After that, I went on toward the dock, half-running, because I had remembered that the boat was due to start down the river that morning. The snow was falling in gusts and flurries that pressed like white moths’ wings, softly and coldly, against my face; but I headed straight on until I could see the tall shadow of the steamer’s smokestack through the snow-mist.

I took a ticket at the office and walked aboard. I had the last berth in the last stateroom; and, thirty seconds after I got aboard, the moorings were cast off, and we warped out into the current.

That moment the snow stopped falling, and on the dock I saw Chandler hurrying up and down and waving his arms. He sighted me at the same instant, and he shouted, “Sammy! Sammy! Come back! I’ll make it all right for you! Everything shall be the way that you want it!”

I stepped to the rail and thundered back at him, “Mr. Chandler, I thank you for your kindness. But I’ve had my eyes opened. I’m through. Good-by!”

“You fool! You fool!” he screeched at me, “you’ll be inside a prison inside of three months! And I hope that you are! I hope that you are!”

I saw some of the passengers looking quizzically from him to me, so I turned my back and walked to the farther side of the steamer; and the roar of the engine a moment later cut off all the sounds from the shore.