Читать книгу The Longhorn Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 3

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Every one in Holy Creek remembers the day that Barry Litton, better known as Blue Barry, came to town, because most of the people had a chance to see him, and to see him in action, before that day ended.

It was during the hot middle of the morning—though any time after sunrise was hot in Holy Creek—that a man on a mule rode into the place, following a tall fellow on a mare, brown with black points. They were dust-covered. There was nothing distinguished about them, except the dainty way in which the mare picked up her feet, and the width between her eyes, and the smallness of a muzzle fit to drink out of a pint pot, as the Arabs say of their chosen horses.

When the two came to Pudge Oliver’s saloon, they rode in under the wide roof that was built out as far as the watering troughs. Under that roof Pudge Oliver always kept the sand well wetted down with buckets of water, and although that water was apt to be steaming at the edges, where the sun got at it, it looked cool and inviting to any one who was thirsty, and it drew a great deal of patronage into the saloon.

The tall man drew rein, and looked over a line of idlers on the veranda. They were resting between drinks, and exchanging gossip.

“Willow!” he said.

The man on the mule tumbled out of his saddle, and ran up to salute the first speaker. “Yes, sir?” said he.

The idlers on the veranda looked at one another, and sat forward. Citizens in the town of Holy Creek were not addressed as “sir” unless they were very old indeed, and very much respected.

They were the more surprised because Willow himself wore an air of importance. He was not very tall, but he had a ponderous torso mounted on a pair of bowed legs that looked made to order for hooking around the sides of a rambunctious horse. Furthermore, as he saluted, the loose sleeve of his coat fell back a little and showed a wonderfully brawny forearm covered with hair, and through the shadow of the hair gleamed the reds and purples of some elaborate tattooing.

Here was a man who seemed to have been through the wars; the sort of a man who might have been picked to boss a round-up, and yet he was “sirring” his companion.

“Willow,” said the first rider, “this looks like a place where a fellow might have a drink, eh?”

“It’s kind of got that look, sir,” said Willow, cocking his eye at the battered swinging doors that admitted one to the sanctum. He licked his dusty, cracking lips as he spoke.

“You can’t tell by the outside of a place, though,” said the tall young man. “Go inside and have a look around, will you? If it seems real on the inside, come out and tell me, will you?”

“Sure I will,” said Willow, and proceeded to do so.

He went hastily up the steps and through the swinging doors.

Of course this was at the time when the great Chaney-Morgan cattle war was on—the war that began over the steer that finally had a death’s head branded into its side, so that it was called the Dead Man Steer. And it just happened that Jerry Deacon, of the Morgan outfit, was in that saloon at the time, having a drink and a little argument with a stranger over the merits of the case. Since the stranger disagreed, at the very instant that Willow pushed the doors open, both men were going for their guns, and Jerry Deacon was a split second faster than the other fellow. His bullet laid the other’s forearm open to the elbow. The stranger dropped his gun, and stood stupidly looking at the running blood.

“Hey, quit messing up the floor!” shouted Pudge Oliver. “Go into the back room, there, and let the cook tie you up.”

Willow stepped outside the swinging doors and hailed his companion.

“It looks real and it sounds real,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said the man on the mare.

So Willow reëntered, and at the bar ordered a drink. He paid for it, sniffed it, and drank it.

He went back to the swinging doors and opened them a second time. “Smells real and tastes real,” said he.

“Every man can make mistakes,” said the other. “Have another drink.”

Jerry Deacon’s blood was up. He had meant to split the wishbone of yonder stranger, and he was grieved and surprised because his bullet had travelled a whole three inches outside of his intentions.

He said, “What tastes real, and what looks real?”

“The whisky and the blood,” said Willow, ordering another drink, and licking his cracked lips. “But I got a boss that’s hard to convince. Have a drink with me, bo?”

There were two things about this speech that were offensive to Jerry Deacon. One was that he was called “bo,” which as all people know is short for “hobo,” and the second was that any one should dare to speak lightly of his gunwork.

He edged closer to the bar, as he answered, “I don’t drink with strangers.”

“Stay dry, then,” remarked Willow, as he rolled the second glassful over his huge tongue.

“I dunno that I’ll stay dry, either,” said Jerry Deacon.

“Go and be damned, then, if that suits you better!” said Willow.

“Is that your game?” remarked Jerry Deacon. And dropping the weight of his stalwart six feet and three inches behind the blow, he hammered a straight right against the chin of the stranger.

Willow went backwards on his heels, taking both short steps and long. He hit the doors with his shoulders, stumbled backwards onto the veranda, and nearly fell.

“And it is real,” he shouted to his friend. With that he charged back into the saloon to renew the battle, because he, too, was a fighting man.

The tall fellow now slipped from the brown mare and entered the saloon at the rear of the crowd which was pouring in to see the fight. And as they livened the air with their cowboy yells, he saw Willow receive a right and a left, a beautiful one-two punch, flush upon the end of the chin.

Again Willow staggered backwards on his heels. He should have fallen in a crumpling heap, except that he was made of iron.

After him came big Jerry Deacon. Jerry was good with a gun, but he was far better with his hands. And now he wanted nothing but to smash the stranger to bits. He might have done it with ease, because Willow’s hands were down and his eyes were bleared. It was not kindliness that prevented Deacon from doing just that; but as he charged he was tripped from the side, and almost fell on his face.

This was interference. It was almost mockery. Deacon forgot all about the half-beaten form of Willow, and whirled about, yelling, “Who did that?”

“I did, brother,” said Willow’s friend. “He’s five inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than you are.”

“I’ll lighter you!” cried Jerry Deacon. He was half minded to draw a gun and work in blood, as he said this, but the stranger stood with his hands on his hips, and with such a peculiarly mocking smile on his lips that it seemed to Jerry there would be no satisfaction in anything except in a laying on of hands.

So he went in to break the stranger up, but he did not go in blindly. A really good boxer never does that, and Jerry Deacon was really good. He came with a beautiful long left that worked with oiled precision, though it carried all his weight.

Somehow he missed the mark. He lurched forward, his impetus spent on the thin air; and then the floor rose with dizzy suddenness against the face of Jerry Deacon, and at the same instant the ceiling dropped upon his head. His brain was covered by a wave of utter blackness.

It had all been very quiet and simple, but keen eyes had been watching. Men who rope steers and pitch hay understand that strength is nothing and art is everything. So they comprehended that twitch of the shoulder and that lilt of the body which had cracked a hundred-and-eighty pound whiplash neatly on the chin of the redoubtable Jerry Deacon.

Two or three men ran forward to help the fallen man, but the stranger remarked, “You’d better leave him there. If his neck’s broken, you can’t do him any good. If it’s not broken, he needs some time to cool off before he comes to. Step up and liquor with me, boys, because this looks to me like a real town, full of real people.”

He smiled on them and laughed with them as he said this. And suddenly Jerry Deacon was forgotten. He lay there bleeding quietly on the floor, gradually recovering his wits, while the others filled their glasses from the bottles that Pudge Oliver spun up and down the length of the bar, bringing them to rest at the appointed intervals.

Pudge Oliver filled his glass with the rest, invited by a cheery nod from the stranger. “What’s your name, brother?” demanded Pudge.

“My name is Barry Litton,” said the stranger.

“Blue Barry is what they call him,” said Willow. “Blue for the color of his eyes.”

“Here’s to you, Blue!” called the saloon keeper. “Here’s in your eye!”

“Here’s in everybody’s eye!” said the stranger. “May the world never be rounder!”

They turned bottoms up, and Willow said to a neighbor, “Anybody know that gent on the floor?”

“I know him,” said the man addressed.

“He’s good with his fists,” said Willow, “but he’s had enough from that side of the page. Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll start dreamin’ about guns. If you know him, you better try to lead him out of here on the quiet. Because if he starts any more trouble, that poison will start workin’ on him—under the skin.” He hooked a significant thumb towards Barry Litton, as he spoke.

The cowpuncher who had been thus addressed, after a glance at Litton, went to the place where Jerry Deacon was just beginning to bestir himself on the floor. What the cowboy said to Deacon no one could hear, but it was enough to make Jerry Deacon arise quietly and slip almost unnoticed from the saloon, one hand pressed thoughtfully against the bump that was rising on his jaw.