Читать книгу The Longhorn Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 10

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Two things were of moment—the cooking of Tom Willow and the assiduity of Jimmy as a waiter.

Said Mr. Samuel Raeburn, “You’ve done something to Jimmy, Litton. There’s a boy that can’t open more than one eye at a time, when he’s home. If he’s got to chop some kindling, he develops the blind staggers. If he has to carry in some wood, he has rheumatism. If it’s milking the cow, his hands are laid up for weeks afterwards.”

“Why,” said Tom Willow, “this is the way of it: a kid at home don’t feel that he gets any glory out of bein’ good. What’s the use? The rest of his family is swore in to love him, like witnesses is swore in at a trial. Why be useful to folks like that? There ain’t any use.—Just hand me a mite of a slice of that fried sweet potato, Jimmy, will you?—But in a strange house a boy takes and wakes up. And in a strange house a boy ain’t weighted down by no family love.”

It was in the middle of the party that Mr. Raeburn asked why the electric light was not on in the front room, and Jimmy said, “He’s got a contraption that runs outside from the light—”

At that very moment a loud yell burst on them from the direction of the corral, and at the same time the light went dim in the kitchen. Two or three pistol shots followed, in rapid succession, from beyond the house, and then several piercing cries of pain.

Barry Litton was out the door in an instant, with a gleam of steel in his hand. Jimmy ran in pursuit, but when he gained the scene, the main action had ended.

Up the road, and across the open country on all sides, certain shadowy forms of horsemen were disappearing; and on the ground near the corral, dazed, and slowly writhing, three men were found. One of these last was the huge form of Jerry Deacon; one was young Harry Morgan; and one was big Rush Morgan himself!

Swiftly, while they were yet dazed, Barry Litton tied the three hand to hand, and relieved them of their guns. They could barely stagger down the street, escorted by Litton and Raeburn and Jimmy, until all were standing in the little front room of the sheriff’s house, with the sheriff himself puffing at his long-stemmed pipe and looking them over.

“Thieves, sheriff,” said Litton, “caught red-handed trying to steal the Dead Man Steer.”

“You lie!” shouted Rush Morgan, who had recovered to some extent. “And what’s more, you lie in your heart. It’s only a dirty hound that puts a live wire around a corral fence and pretty near kills three honest men—”

“Hold on,” said the sheriff, who rarely saw a point, but now began to make one out. “Hold on! What was three honest men doin’ in the dark of the moon, on ground that had a sign out agin trespassers? And what was they doing around a corral that had the Dead Man Steer inside of it?”

Rush Morgan cried out, “Are you takin’ the side of this young crook?”

“Crook?” exclaimed the sheriff. “You be careful what kind of talk you sling around here, Morgan.”

“A good-for-nothin’, worthless—” began Rush Morgan.

Big Sam Raeburn closed upon Morgan. “You never saw the day, Morgan,” said he, “when you were worth the shady side of his little finger.”

“You, too, Raeburn, eh?” cried the cattleman, enraged past endurance. “You’re takin’ up with strangers and interlopers, are you?—I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll break you, for this—and I’ll break you flat!”

“Will you?” answered the other. “Then you start in breaking early, and get at it hard. You’ve run this town long enough, you Morgans, and it’s time that some real men took a hand!”

“Pinch ’em! Run ’em in!” exclaimed a sharper voice.

This was Jimmy, dancing everywhere in the foreground, and listening to every exciting word that was spoken.

“Pinch ’em,” said the sheriff, “is what I gotta do. But I don’t need no kids around to tell me my duty.”

“Sheriff,” said Rush Morgan, “you mean to say that you’re gonna take me to your dirty jail—?”

“Dirty jail?” said the sheriff, angrily. “Dirty jail, is it? It’s the cleanest and the most upstandin’ jail that you ever was in in your life, and you know it! It’s one of the best jails that ever was run free in the West. Dirty jail, eh? I tell you, it’s too damned good for you and the likes of you.—March along, the three of you! To jail you go, and in jail you stay till the law lets you out!”

Rush Morgan was instantly sobered. He cried, “A man of my age—You wouldn’t wanta—I can’t go to jail, Dick. My Lord, it’d ruin me—!”

“Then you’re ruined,” said the sheriff, bluntly. “If cattle lifting don’t ruin you, then jail shall!”

At the corral beside the shanty, Lou Raeburn stood with Willow, staring at the looming bulk of the Dead Man Steer.

“You know, Tom,” said the girl, “your chief has some of the strongest men in the county against him, and he hasn’t yet spent a whole day in Holy Creek.”

“Know it?” said Willow. “Sure I know it. I know it so good that I expect a slug of lead through me almost any minute, and a flock of cowpunchers comin’ at me through the darkness like a pile of wild Injuns.”

“What does he gain from it?” asked the girl.

“Him? Litton?”

“Yes.”

“He gets the thing he wants the most.”

“What’s that?”

“Trouble!” said Tom Willow with a great deal of fervor in his voice. “I’ve seen him goin’ around the world, huntin’ for trouble; and that’s a thing that anybody could find, almost with his eyes shut, d’ye see?”

“That’s what I’ve always thought,” said she.

“And it’s true!” said Tom Willow. “They say that them that wants trouble are always sure to get as much as they can hold. But that don’t work for Barry Litton. There ain’t enough trouble in the world, for him. I don’t know what he’d heard about this place, but—here we are.”

“That’s hard on you—following a fellow like that?” she suggested.

“You bet it’s hard!”

“It’s a free country,” said the girl. “Why do you stay on with him, if it’s so bad?”

He scratched his head noisily and stared at her for a moment. “Why,” said he, “I never even thought about that. I suppose I could walk out on him.”

“Of course you could.”

He shook his head, soberly. “No, I couldn’t do it,” he declared. “It wouldn’t seem nacheral to be without him and by myself.”

“No?” she queried, smiling at him.

“It’s like this,” explained Tom Willow. “When you been hitched onto the tail end of a comet for a while, no other kind of travelling don’t seem to satisfy you. If I left him, I’d always seem to be standing still.”

She laughed; the cortège was returning from the jail. Jimmy came running up to his sister.

“Ever see anything like him?” he cried. “He went and run electricity into the barbed wire that Tom strung around the corral, and now he’s got three of the Morgan outfit, and it didn’t cost him a penny apiece! Why, he could catch stars out of the sky, if he sets his mind to it!—My Lord, ain’t the whole town gonna bust out laughin’ when it hears about how the Morgans been rounded up?”

The girl, however, found no more laughter in her. “He’ll come to rest before long,” she declared.

“Where?” asked her brother.

“In the graveyard at Boot Hill,” said she. “Jimmy, we have to go home.” And she slipped away into the darkness even before Litton had come up.