Читать книгу The Gentle Desperado - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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Robert did not waken until the rim of the sun rose above the eastern horizon.

He got up with a sense of guilt that made his heart beat.

“Pedrillo,” said he, “I have slept too late. You should have wakened me before—”

Pedrillo did not answer; there was no Pedrillo to answer!

At first, Robert thought that the Mexican had gone hunting for another rabbit with which to break their fast; but when he found that his wallet was also gone, he began to suspect that some other cause was responsible for the disappearance of his companion. And a moment later, when he discovered that his automatic pistol was missing, he knew that the Mexican had drawn the teeth of danger before he fled with his spoils.

For a moment Robert was blinded with bewilderment and rage. After that, he set about finding the trail. There was not a trace within two hundred yards of the camp, but then he came on a spot—as he cut for sign—that showed a trail beginning. And, looking back, he now could see where Pedrillo had turned with the patience and the skill of an Indian and obliterated one mark of his feet before he made another stride.

Then Robert saddled Pinto, guessing that the Mexican had not been able to catch the pony. Once mounted on the fiery little stallion, Robert sped down the trail of Oñate like a hawk swooping down the arch of the sky.

Presently Robert came to a point where Pedrillo had taken to a rocky draw such as that in which he sought shelter when the seven were behind them. The natural supposition would be that Pedrillo, once in this covert, would turn away from the direction of the town where his enemies dwelt. For that very reason Robert took the opposite way, for he surmised that the Mexican would double on his course like a hunted fox. Some minutes later he was rewarded by sight of Oñate, trotting steadily down the middle of the hollow.

A thrust of Robert’s heels made Pinto leap from the low wall and he landed with a crash at the very heels of Pedrillo, who barely had time to wheel, pistol in hand, when Robert had him by the hair and Robert’s knife was at his throat.

In this moment of extreme danger Pedrillo did not attempt a snap shot. Instead, he dropped the automatic and screamed: “Señor—little father—do not stain your hands with murder! It is only poor Pedrillo who means no harm. You kill me already with your terrible look! Ah, señor, spare me! Let me speak! Let me tell you—”

He was on his fat knees, his face gray and congealed with terror. Robert dismounted and picked up the pistol. No sooner was it in his hand than half his fury disappeared.

“Now the money!” said he.

Pedrillo, with a moan, held out the pilfered wallet and the handful of greenbacks which Robert had given to him the day before.

“I want my own, and not yours,” said Robert in disgust. “Do you think that I am a thief as you are, Pedrillo Oñate?”

“My life!” cried Oñate, waddling forward on his knees, and trying to catch Robert’s sleeve. “My life, my poor life—my father and my mother, señor! You will not murder me?”

“Murder? I shall take you to the nearest town and the sheriff shall have you!”

“The will of God be done!” said Pedrillo, with a sigh of vast relief. “The will of God be done!”

“What a scoundrel you are!” exclaimed Robert. “To rob me and sneak away. Now try to twist or wriggle away from the manifest truth that you were under some obligation to me; that I had at least done enough to warrant kindness from you, and yet you stole my money and left me in the desert without a gun, and in danger of enemies who had been raised against me by what I had done for your sake. This is the fact. Now let me hear how you will disentangle yourself from these plain truths which damn you as a knave, a hypocrite, and an ingrate, Pedrillo Oñate!”

“Call me a knave, and a hypocrite, and an ingrate,” said Pedrillo, “because what virtue is there in me compared with the beautiful soul of my little father—”

“Stand on your feet and talk like a man!” commanded Robert.

“No,” said Pedrillo, shaking his head with such violence that the loose flesh of his throat waved back and forth and his cheeks shuddered like twin jellies, “no, little father, I shall not rise until you forgive me, and believe me! I am about to tell you sacred truth.”

“Well, tell me what you have to say,” said Robert, drawing back a little. At the same time he made a strong effort to banish all his prejudice against this fat, brown fellow. But the effort failed; Robert was a very angry young man. His fingers were tingling with a furious desire to grip the handle of his pistol and—

“Ah, how shall I begin?” wailed Pedrillo.

“With the truth,” advised Robert, “because a short, plain truth is better than a whole host of lies!”

“With the truth and only with the truth do I deal,” said Pedrillo, moving a little nearer on his aching knees. “But alas, alas, little father, this truth is so strange and wonderful and beautiful and strong that even you—”

“Stop it!” said Robert, stamping with impatience.

“Señor, señor,” said Pedrillo, shaking his head, “I said to myself that I would waken you and tell you about her. And then I thought that in the morning I would tell you so that you could help her—”

“Who?” asked Robert.

“The Señorita Larkin. I thought of her and her sorrows. Then I told myself that it would be wrong to tell you; you had your own business. It was not my part to take you from your way. Then I said to myself that I myself would go and do what I could, and though it might not be much—”

“What trouble is she in?” asked Robert, more in curiosity than in anger.

“Ah, that I could tell you!” sighed the Mexican. “But no! If you considered in your great heart among what dangers the lady lives, you would turn straight north to the Larkin ranch and you would never stop until you had come to the place, and there you would fight and die for her! No, I never shall tell you how her land is harried and how her cattle are driven away by wicked men. You would go mad if you heard it! But I myself shall go. Only, I remembered that I had little money and no gun. So I took yours, señor, knowing that you would want to use your weapons and your wallet for none but such a good cause as this one. I took them, and I hurried away to get to the place—”

“You should have asked me,” said Robert. “I tell you seriously, Pedrillo, that another man would have accused you of robbery!”

“Robbery?” cried Oñate.

“Well,” said Robert, “that is what they might call it. But tell me more of the Señorita Larkin.”

“But the whole world knows about her,” said Pedrillo.

“Not I.”

“But you have heard of the Larkin Ranch, of course?”

“Never a word before this moment.”

“That is a great pity,” said Pedrillo. “Once Señor Larkin was like a king in the mountains, his lands were so wide and his cattle were so many. But his rancheria lay in the midst of hills and mountains. The ravines that cut them were so many doors through which the thieves could drive away stolen cattle. In the days of the great Don Gilberto he had ways of fighting men to keep back the trouble a little; but after his death, the robbers had only a woman to fight, and every year her bands of cattle grow less. ‘Give up and go away!’ say her friends. ‘No,’ says the señorita. ‘Some day a strong and brave man will come to help me, and I shall wait here until he comes!’ So still she waits and still—”

“Do you tell me that no one has gone to her help?” Robert asked.

“Ah, yes. They have gone to try, and they have failed! In seven years, seven men have died there.”

“This brave woman—her sons have died fighting for her?” asked Robert.

“Sons? Señor, she is only a girl! She has not twenty years, I think.”

“Dear heaven!” murmured Robert. “Is it possible that a woman could be such a child and still so brave?”

“She is her father’s daughter.”

“God forgive all men!” sighed Robert. “And such a wonderful and beautiful woman is allowed—did you say that she was beautiful, Pedrillo?”

“Beautiful? Alas, señor, if I were to talk of her, you would say that even your poor servant, Oñate, is a fool and a boy! Her eyes—”

“No, no!” said Robert. “I would not go to serve her simply for the sake of her beauty, but only because she is a woman and in trouble. Tell me, Pedrillo—no, first stand up!”

“You forgive me, señor?”

“Forgive you? For what, my poor friend?”

“Because I dared to take—”

“My money? My gun? But only to give them to a woman who needs them? Pedrillo, I not only forgive you, but I should despise you if you had done any other thing. You have taught me my duty!”

“I? I could not!”

“Hush! Tell me in what direction we should go?”

“North, north, señor. North, of course, in the very direction that I was traveling! But consider that there is a terrible danger—”

“We must not be cowards,” said Robert, “dying in fear whenever duty beckons to us.”

“But there is Lefty Tom Gill, leading those manslayers, those—”

“Lefty Tom Gill!” cried Robert. “Is it the man who raided Black Gulch and shot the sheriff of—”

“Aye, señor. But he is older now, and therefore he is more terrible; and his men are chosen from among the worst of all the—”

“Let them be chosen where they will,” said Robert, “I have heard of this man before. He was a scoundrel in the days when my father still was living. He has been a scoundrel ever since. If I can destroy him, I shall be doing a work that my father would have been glad to do had he lived a little longer! I thank God, Pedrillo, who sent you to me to show me what to do!”

Pedrillo, having rubbed some of the pain out of his knees, which had been grinding on the hard rocks until they were a torment to him, now mopped his streaming face. He seemed to have grown older. His flesh hung in folds. Only by degrees did he regain his former assurance and his normal red-dashed color. Still he regarded his reconciled master from the side with an odd mixture of contempt, terror, and astonishment. He measured the distance between them and the hills as though considering that many things could happen before they reached that goal, and then he cried heartily: “Señor, we waste time. Let us go forward!”

“True! True, Pedrillo!” replied Robert. “Let us go forward! But tell me—is it not strange that from the beginning of time women in great distress—even in the most ancient books, Pedrillo—is it not strange that always they are beautiful?”