Читать книгу The Long Chance - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9

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That had been a dirty job, wrestling with the bales of hides; and one could understand why white men stood back and left the work for Negroes and half-breeds. But having been raised out on the plains, color didn’t make a great deal of difference to me. On the long trails hunting, it was a small matter what color skin a man wore; but it was a great matter to find a man at all and exchange the time of day with him. Around a camp fire one was as apt to hear pleasant yarns from an Indian brave as from any white man. So what difference did it make to me that the other whites along the wharf had stood back and refused to work on the dock at the moving of the hides? I had gone in for it head over heels, as you may say; and now I stood on the deck grasping the rail, perspiration pouring down my face, covered with the dust and filth of the hides, and their none too fragrant odor in a cloud around me.

Sun-blackened by the life on the plains, I suppose that I looked as much like a Negro, or a half-breed at least, as any man ever looked in this world. But nevertheless, it made me rage when one of the gamesters who had lost money betting against me strolled past with a sneer on his lips and a shrug of his shoulders.

“I thought I was betting against a white man,” said he.

There were others coming close around me, men, and women, too, and the captain shouldering through the crowd with a happy face. I reached out through them and caught the gambler by the arm.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” I told him.

He whirled around at me with a snarl.

“Keep your hands off me, you black dog!” he snapped, and reached for the butt of a pistol which showed under his armpit as he swung about and his coat flapped open. It would have been an easy thing to beat him to the shot for, from his first movement, I knew that he was no such expert as my Uncle Steve had made me through long and cruel hours of practice. But, after my talk with the marshal, I had determined to change my attitude toward fighting. I would never take life if I could avoid it. And here there was no need at all. The jaw of the gambler was just within good arm’s length, and a clenched fist can beat the fastest gun that was ever pulled. My left was back, so I let him have that neatly on the button, and the blow drove him backward through the crowd and sent him rolling under their feet.

There was only a grunt from the captain as he came up. “That served the puppy right. You come on with me, my lad,” he said.

He took me through the gaping crowd into his own cabin, which was finer in its furnishings than the best room I had ever seen in my life, which was the major’s quarters at Fort Bostwick. The mahogany desk seemed to me like a precious red-brown jewel, it was polished so brightly. There was a gay rug on the floor, too; the steamboat man made enough money on his trips to satisfy his flamboyant tastes.

He sat me down and dragged out a bottle of whisky. I took a mere nip, and my eyes opened.

“Aye, aye,” grunted the sailor. “That’s real, eh? It ain’t the kind of thing that you’ve had out there on the plains?”

“Alcohol and quicklime is what they give you out there,” said he. “But this is good for you. Take another drink. Take a real one.”

I wouldn’t do that, and I explained to him that I’d formed the habit of being a one-drink man. You had to form that habit around a trader’s store, unless you wanted to be robbed outright by the first sharpster that came along to make a trade. And besides, the whisky on the plains was such filthy stuff that I’d only been able to down it now and then. The idea of drinking, you see, had never been made attractive to me.

“All right,” said the captain. “Then here’s a go to you, and looking in your eyes, my beauty!”

He tilted the big bottle at his lips, and I swear that I thought he would never take it down. More than a half pint of the raw stuff must have flowed down his throat before he lowered the bottle again. Yet there was not even a moisture in his eyes. He smacked his lips, corked the bottle with a sigh, and put it away in a drawer of his desk. That drawer closed with a promising clinking of more glassware.

“That’s real,” he repeated. “But for me, I never take a real drink before six in the evening. It ain’t safe. No, not safe at all, with a ship under your command. That’s the disadvantage of a captain’s life on this infernal river. But now about you. I’ve cleaned up a tidy sum on your bit of work. And I have five hundred dollars for you here.”

He started counting out the gold in handfuls. I stopped him at once.

“I don’t want it,” said I.

“But you earned it,” he protested.

“No, I don’t want it. It would really spoil the fun of the game for me.”

“Will you shake on that?”

I smiled and shook hands with him. He turned my palm up.

“You never got your strength out of manual labor,” he said at once. “Then how in time did you get it?”

“I don’t know,” said I. “Chiefly it came by nature, I suppose.”

“Tell me,” said the captain suddenly, “where you are bound for.”

“Somewhere East,” I answered.

“New York?” he suggested.

“Perhaps.”

“What would you do there?”

“I don’t know that, either,” I told him.

“And then, why not South?”

“There’s no reason, except that I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Think about it now. Come down the river with me to New Orleans. I like you, my boy. And I think that I could introduce you to some men who would push you ahead into a good position. Understand, I’ve no old family, and I got no great lot of money, either. But I know some real gentlemen, fancy stuff! They could use a man like you.”

I turned the matter back and forth in my mind.

“Why not?” said he, urging me.

“There’s no reason against it,” I decided.

“Then stay aboard this boat.”

“Wait till I get my bag,” I remarked.

“Cut and run for it. We’re an hour late!”

I ran for it, willingly enough, bounded down the gangplank, and was back in a trice with all my belongings. The last moorings were cast off, the big paddle wheels began to beat the water, and out into the current we shot and headed down the river.

I was rather glad of it. The world seemed just then a friendly place to me; and I hardly cared in what direction I floated, for I felt that to make one’s way was an easy matter.

I idled on the boat from stem to stern and from top to bottom. As I sat by the engineer, it seemed to me that there was nothing in the world quite so wonderful and splendid and such a proof of the gigantic powers of man as that old river scow. Wherever I went on the ship, I was made welcome, because the people had seen the lifting of the big bale, and they were glad to talk to me. I had supper with the second engineer and the second and third mates, who were all very kind and promised to show me the sights of New Orleans, when we finally arrived.

Afterward, I went out into the darkness and sat near the prow, listening to the rushing of the bow wave, and watching the lights along the shores slip softly back behind us into the deep darkness of the night. Finally, I stood up with my hands clasped behind me, and let the wind comb against my face and through my hair. It was a glorious, free feeling. And suddenly I asked myself why I should not be a sailor, and learn the great wide seas and the huge steamers that traversed them?

There was no reason. The world was mine, and I was foot free to go wherever I chose!

The idea fascinated me more and more; and, with a smile and a light heart, I was committing myself to a life on the bounding waves, when I heard a sharp cry behind me, and whirled in time to see the dark outline of a man not two steps to the rear of me, with the light from the forecastle glimmering faintly on a bowie knife which was gripped in his hand.