Читать книгу The Longhorn Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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Pudge Oliver was as honest as he was fat.

“Litton—or Blue—or whatever they call you, mostly,” he said, “you may have worked up a neat little bit of trouble for yourself.”

“How come?” asked the tall young man, with his cheerful smile.

“Why,” said Pudge Oliver, “it’s this way: Jerry Deacon is one of the best men that the Morgan bunch have got, and they’re likely to chip in on his side. You wanta watch your step, unless there’s some Chaneys around. They’d take mighty kindly to anybody that had socked Jerry on the chin the way that you’ve just gone and done!”

“What’s eating the Morgans and the Chaneys?” asked Blue Barry Litton.

“It’s a steer,” said Pudge.

“Can’t the steer eat hay, and not men?” said Litton.

“It’s this way,” explained the bartender, while the rest of the crowd listened with interest, though to them it was a familiar tale. “It’s this way. There was a steer, d’ye mind, up on the range where the Chaney and the Morgan interests sort of overlapped. A Chaney puncher brings him to the round-up with the right earmark; and there’s a Morgan man at the round-up, and he points out that the second part of that earmark is pretty doggone fresh, and without that second part of the earmark it would be a real Morgan steer. Pretty soon those two boys get out their guns and shoot themselves sick. But the Chaneys, they get the steer, in the wind-up; and then the Morgans come over, and by night they cut the steer out of the night herd of the Chaneys, on Chaney ground, and take it back and put it up in their corral. The Chaneys get real wild when they hear this. They get a bunch together, and they make a morning raid, like old Injun days. There’s three men killed in that party—two Chaneys and a Morgan, because the Morgans were ready and waiting, and they turned the Chaneys back ...

“A while later, the Chaneys try again, and this time they get the steer, but they don’t go far, because the Morgans overtake ’em. There’s a fine battle, and out of fifteen men there ain’t a one that ain’t sick with the lead that’s in him, before the finish. The steer runs loose. A coupla times the Chaneys catch him up, and the Morgans come shootin’ for him. A coupla times the Morgans catch him up, and the Chaneys start up the war again; until finally the sheriff takes and catches up that steer himself. Somebody’d branded the critter with a death’s head above a pair of crossed bones.

“The sheriff’s got the steer now, holdin’ it in the name of the law, till a lawsuit is decided on the ownership. Because the Chaneys got the first law decision, and the Morgans, they won the case on appeal; and now it’s in a higher court. They say that the sheriff will sell that steer, if anybody’s willing to buy it, because he’s tired of feeding it. But, first and last, fifteen men have died for that Dead Man Steer, and more are gonna die, before the end.”

“Why doesn’t the sheriff knock the steer on the head?” said Barry Litton.

“Why, he don’t dare to,” answered the bartender. “And nobody else would dare to, ’less he wanted both the gangs down on his head. The time has come, around here, when there ain’t nothing but guns and gunmen, and the days are pretty bad.”

“Why,” said Litton, “seems to me you’re selling your share of whisky.”

“Sure I am,” answered Pudge Oliver, “but there’s been so many holes put in the walls and the roof of this here place by bullets which missed the mark, that when the rains commence she’s gonna leak like a sieve. I’ve lost seven of them big mirrors from behind the bar; an’ finally I give up, and kept that cracked one. Most men can’t stand the pace here in Holy Creek—and doggone me, neither can the glassware!” He sighed as he said this.

“That’s a good name,” remarked Barry Litton. “That’s as good a name as I ever heard for a town—except that it takes a little for the saying of it.”

“It’s this way,” said one of the punchers near Blue Barry. “In the old days there was a Mormon or something comes by this way, and he takes and breaks a wagon here, and has to stay awhile—with all his wives and children. It happens that while he’s here there’s some rains, and a little water is runnin’ in the draw, outside of town. So he calls it Holy Creek, and puts up a sign to that effect when he goes on. But there ain’t any Creek, really, and it sure ain’t a holy town. Still, I guess that’s why the name has stuck so good!”

There was more laughter, after this recital.

“It sounds to me,” said Barry Litton, “like a really good place for a man to put up.”

“It is,” declared Pudge Oliver. “The whisky keeps well here, as long as it’s in the barrel. It’s that kind of a climate. You take a lot of places, there ain’t any regular wind that blows in the middle of the summer. But here in Holy Creek there’s wind pretty nearly every day in the year; just like a dragon was breathing in your face.”

“It sounds pretty good to me,” said Barry Litton.

“People here don’t use starch when they wash clothes,” said Pudge, “and that’s a saving.”

“Why no starch?” asked Barry Litton.

“Because the salt of a gent’s sweat will stiffen his shirt for him in a coupla hours, any day,” said Pudge Oliver.

“I like this kind of town,” said Barry Litton, “because of the people that are in it. It takes a cool man to live in as hot a town as this. Why did you choose this place, brother, to put up a saloon?”

“I’ve been run out of all the other counties in the state,” said Pudge Oliver. “That’s one reason. And the other reason is that the folks around here are afraid to drink the water. The whisky’s purer.”

“I think I’ll try my luck here,” said Barry Litton.

“What kind of luck do you like?” asked the bartender, while the others listened more intently than before.

“I like,” said Barry, “four crooks all sitting at a table with a lot of money in their wallets, and asking for a fifth hand. That’s the sort of weather that I bloom in.”

They laughed again, as they heard this.

“How about a common or garden greenhorn—a regular tenderfoot with a million in his bank?” asked Pudge Oliver. “You wouldn’t shy at that kind of a mark, would you?”

“I don’t like that kind,” said Litton. “Green fruit always makes me sick. I never eat it. The harder the nut, the sweeter the kernel, brother.”

He produced three dice from nowhere, threw them to the ceiling, and made them come rattling back into his palm. “That’s the music that I like to hear,” said he. “But I don’t like the boys to think that they’re playing against luck when they’re playing with me.”

“Look here,” said Pudge, “you mean to say that you make a living out of the cards and the dice? Without keeping your game on the quiet?”

“It’s this way,” answered the stranger. “The more I talk about it, the more some of the wise ones will wink to themselves. They know that a really handy man with the cards never boasts. And they can’t help asking me to sit down while they trim me. That’s the way I always make my stakes. Right now there’s some of the boys along your bar that would like to ask me to a little card game.—Speak up, brothers, and lemme know the truth!” He looked up and down the line.

A long, lean-faced man with an eye that was the blue-gray of steel, looked back up the bar and said, “I’ll play with you, son. I’ll see how good you are!”

“It’s a match!” called several others.

But Blue Barry cheerfully answered, “No, you’re a working man. You can’t juggle the cards or make the dice talk back to you unless your hands are soft. There’s a pair of hands, gentlemen, that are always kept soft. Look at them! The pride of my life are those hands. Never done a stroke of work in their lives—and they never will do a stroke of work, until I change my mind!”

He spread his hands on the bar. Brown, beautifully tapering, slender and long, they looked almost like the hands of a woman; but they were big, with muscular cushions under the thumbs.

“Does it pay you, brother?” asked the bartender.

“Why, man,” answered Litton, “what d’you think—I’ve been around the world, and lived on the fat. I walk where I want to walk, and I talk where I want to talk. I’ve done so much for these hands of mine that they wouldn’t lie down on me and give me a bad deal in return.”

“Well, then,” said Pudge Oliver, “what brings you out here? If you’ve got what you want other places, why would you want to come here?”

“That’s easy,” said Litton. “It’s partly because it’s in my blood. But more than that, it’s to fill out my game.”

“Well?” asked Pudge Oliver.

“There’s plenty of money in the rest of the world,” said the stranger, “but there’s a shortage of men. A big shortage, mind you! I came out here where they grow wild. I want to see what they’re like!”