Читать книгу The Longhorn Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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Si Turner’s place lay on a slight rise of ground at the end of the village, and on the way to the shack they routed out Turner himself to conduct them to the old house. He was living in a new one, now—a tall, narrow house with two stories and an attic, the attic being Si Turner’s chief pride. Whenever he made a lucky strike in the hills and sold out his claim for a comfortable sum, the very first thing that he thought about was a house with an attic; for, as he explained to young Barry Litton, a one-story house was all right for a young fellow, but by the time a man had accumulated a past he needed some place to put it.

“There’s my old traps, for instance,” said Si Turner. “Why, some of them old bear traps of mine have got a history behind them. I tell you what, I can read inches deep in the rust; they are covered with fine print for me, brother.—Then you take things like old broken snowshoes, they walk me right back through times that give me a chill up the back, I can tell you. And where’s there a place for ’em except in an attic? No, sir, I tell you what—a house without an attic is like a man without a memory.”

The old shanty which Barry Litton had asked about was composed of two rooms, a kitchen-dining room and a bedroom-parlor. There was a stove in the kitchen; there were two bunks built against the walls of the other room. There were a few other articles of furniture, about which Si Turner made the comment, “They don’t look right, sitting around the new house; and they’re too good to store in the attic. So there’s a good many times when I come up here and spend an hour or two fiddling around the old house, thinkin’ things over.—You take and look at that ‘M. W.,’ carved into the side of that table, good and deep. It was carved by a good deep kind of a man. Them initials was sunk there into my table by Milton West. It wouldn’t be hard to prove to my grandchildren, if I ever got married and had any, that Milt West was a partner of mine. There’s things about Milt and his fights and his travels that would make a man keep on thinkin’ for an hour at a time ...

“There’s other things about the house that might be you’d like to know about. There’s that slice above the door. Maybe you wouldn’t know that Tom O’Shay, he put that cut there with his own hand? Yes, sir, the ax he throwed didn’t hit me, but it took the hat off my head and jammed it into the wall, there. Look close an’ you can see some of the threads that still stick there in the crack.—You see?”

“I see,” said Litton.

Said Si Turner: “It never would hardly be possible for me to be lonesome, up here in this shack.—There’s that cobweb, d’you mind?” He pointed to a great sheet of silver silk that filled an upper corner of the ceiling.

“That’s a big cobweb,” said Litton. “That would be good for stopping a flow of blood.”

“Well, maybe it would,” said Si Turner. “I reckon that anything cobwebs would be good for, that one would be extra fine at. Well, I’ve seen that cobweb made and kept for eight years, partner! Yes, sir. For eight whole years she’s hung there. And the old lady spider down there in the sack at the corner of the web, with her hands stretched out on her telegraph lines, waiting for news of raw meat. There’s many and many a time, I can tell you, that I’ve sat here, of a summer afternoon, and caught flies and hoisted them up and dropped them on the web, and watched old Mrs. Murder come bustling out and grab the fly. I’ve listened to his poor wings sing for a second or two; and many a morning I’ve looked down in the corner and seen the dead, dry bodies that Mrs. Murder had heaved out of her house!

“There was a day when I seen a big hornet go whang into that nest, and bust about half of the main cables at one crash. Out comes Mrs. Murder on the run. I aimed to think that she’d cut the hornet loose before he spoiled the rest of her web; but not her. She begun to throw out films of thread, and pretty soon she got one of those wings of the hornet nailed down. He was still thrashin’ around and tearin’ things up; and finally, all that web was down except where the ruins was hanging by the ends of two or three of the main cables. It was a sad thing to see that fine old web danglin’ around in the wind that the hornet kept up with his one wing.

“But by jiminy, I tell you what—Mrs. Murder, she kept at her work, and finally she got the other wing lashed; and then she went down, mighty careful. I stood on a chair and watched that hornet gnashing his teeth and sticking out his sting, like the head of a spear, and all shining with poison. A coupla times it looked to me like he was gonna put an end to Mrs. Murder; but at the last she got him, and what was left of that fella is back in my attic, glued to a bit of card. There ain’t more’n a shell left to him, and yet you can’t hardly see where that old lady put in the knife!—No, sir, I never seen a better spider than her; a more keener spider, or a neater about her housework—or a brighter, or a more entertaining spider. For a long winter evening, I wouldn’t know whether I’d rather spend time with old Milt West, when he was alive, or watching that spider up there. Why, she knows me, doggone her!”

He tapped the web with a straw, and out ran a long-legged, hairy horror of a spider, to pause in the very center of the web.

“There she is!—There’s Mrs. Murder for you,” said old Si Turner. “Ain’t she a beauty?”

“She’s as good a spider as I ever saw!” declared Litton, with a slight shiver in his shoulders.

“You give her a fly or two, now and then,” said Si Turner, “and the first thing you know, you won’t be reading your paper, of an afternoon.—You’ll be cocking an eye up at that web.”

Si Turner pointed out other objects of interest on his place. He had been faced with the great question—Ought he to take electricity into the house, or not? But electricity finally had come in; and as Si Turner said, it made the house as bright as day!

This house, with all of its carved initials, its electric light, corral, shed, and spider webs, was for rent at the small figure of ten dollars a month. Barry Litton paid a month in advance. Then Si Turner shook hands, wished him luck, and wandered back down the road.

Jimmy, in the meantime, had scouted about the place and delighted himself with all that was in it.

“Here comes the grocery wagon, loaded down,” said Litton. “You tell the driver where to put the stuff in here—if there’s room for it in the kitchen. I’ve got to go out and have a talk with Tom Willow.”

“Partner,” said Jimmy, “I’ll have everything stowed away like in a pack—with a diamond hitch throwed onto it!”

Tom Willow had put the mule and the horse in the shed in the meantime; and the corral was left to the wanderings of the Dead Man Steer. It was a good corral, with a muddy little stream of water trickling across one corner of it, and a fresh growth of grass covering the ground. The Dead Man Steer began to graze in the most peaceful manner, while Barry, his new guardian, looked down upon him with thoughtful interest.

Both the Morgans and the Chaneys had been slapped in the face on this day; and now the steer was virtually a red rag that would flap in their faces. Barry Litton was more and more pleased as he considered this matter.

From among the many boxes sent up from the grocery store he selected the smooth, pinewood sides of two, and upon these he wrote in large letters:

TRESPASSERS BEWARE!!!!!!

Underneath, he wrote in smaller letters:

ANY ONE ENCROACHING UPON THIS GROUND WITHOUT PERMISSION DOES SO AT HIS OWN RISK.

Barry turned to Jimmy, who had just finished storing and stacking the provisions in the kitchen. “Hey, Jim!” he said, “come here a minute, I’ve got an errand in town for you.”

“Yeah?” said Jimmy, dimly, speaking around a mouthful of fig cookies that distended his jaws grotesquely.

“Will you run down to the sheriff and ask him if he has any objections to my shooting trespassers after I’ve put out these signs?”

“Hey,” murmured Jimmy, “you wouldn’t mean to be really shooting a fellow that just happened along, would you?”

“Go along, Jim, and do what I ask,” Barry said. “Take the mare, if you want to, and she’ll have you there and back in two jumps. I’m going to lie down and take a nap.”

“Are you going to sleep, just when all the excitement’s commencing?” asked Jimmy, amazed.

“Yes,” said young Barry Litton. “I sleep better when I’m thinking, and I think better when I’m asleep.”

Jimmy Raeburn started, cogitated for a moment, and suspected that a joke might be hidden behind those words. But he got the mare, saddled her, shortened the stirrups to suit him, and mounted.

She pitched him, straightway, up onto the slanting roof of the shed, and from this height he rolled off and fell to the ground. A grown man would have been hurt badly, but Jimmy was half wildcat and half boy, so that he landed on hands, knees, and feet. Presently he arose, hardly hurt.

A voice called from the kitchen door, “Come here, Nance!”

The mare, with a fling of her head, one ear forward and one ear back, came dubiously to her master.

“Come here, Jimmy,” said the master.

The boy approached.

“Here, Nance,” said Litton, “I want you to meet my old friend Jimmy. Shake hands with him, girl.—That’s better. That’s the way to be friends.—Jimmy, this is Nance. Give her your hand. Now she’ll be all right. Climb right on.”

Jimmy climbed on, not at all sure of himself. But the mare, after fidgeting for a moment or two, went off gently enough at his mild urging. It still seemed to Jimmy, however, that her bright eye was rolled back at her master, as he stood watching from the kitchen door.

The boy gathered courage and tried her at a trot—and to his amazement, he hardly stirred in the saddle. He tried her at a gallop, and the mare’s long, bounding canter lifted the boy’s heart into his throat with wings. Tears of pleasure stung his eyes. This was the life! And yet for all the might in her stride, Jimmy found that as soon as he grew accustomed to the rhythm, he could sit her without the slightest trouble. Every instant he seemed to fit into the saddle more and more firmly, more tender on the bridle, and observed her fine ears pricking. She seemed to be looking off towards the horizon, as though that far blue region was the ground she longed to gallop over!

Jimmy stopped at the door of his father’s shop.

“Hey, Lou!” he called.

His sister opened the door. “What’re you doing on that horse, Jimmy?” she asked.

“Me and Barry Litton are partners,” said he. “I’m gonna spend a lot of time up there at his place.”

“Are you?” said she. “Is he shooting down any more signs?—Showing off, I call it.”

“You’re mad because he licked Jerry,” answered Jimmy. “So long, Lou. One of these days I’ll give you a ride on the mare, maybe.”

There were still a few people in front of the two warehouses. The Chaney sign was being repaired; the Morgan sign still remained upon the ground. And as the boy rode past, he saw grown men turn their heads and watch him with wonder as he shot past on the horse that belonged to the formidable stranger.

The boy found the sheriff sitting on his front porch, as before. “Hey, Sheriff Dick!” he called.

“Hello, you young hoss thief,” said the sheriff, speaking around the stem of his huge pipe.

“Suppose,” said the boy, “suppose a gent puts up a sign that says nobody can come onto this place, then somebody comes onto it. Suppose he shoots them, is it all right?”

The sheriff took the pipe from his mouth and thought over the words. “That’s kind of a fine point in the law,” said he. “I dunno about it. Maybe he’d better shoot a couple first, and then see.”

“Yeah. But he wants to know,” said the boy.

“It’s kind of a fine point,” repeated the sheriff. “What would he be wantin’ to shoot people for, if they come onto his place? How many would he go and shoot?”

“He don’t care,” said Jimmy. “It don’t make no difference to him who he shoots.”

“Maybe not,” said the sheriff. “The difference is mostly to them that get shot. I dunno but he’s gotta right to shoot the gents that walk in on him. I wouldn’t be shooting too many right at the start, though. Folks need a while to get used to new ideas, like that.”

“He can shoot ’em, then, can he?” snapped the boy.

“I reckon he could shoot a few. You tell him he’d better put a notice in the paper first, though. That would make it all right. You put a thing in the paper, and then it’s legal to do anything you want.”

When Jimmy reached the Turner place again, he tiptoed to the doors, and found his new friend lying face downward on a bunk, soundly sleeping.

Jimmy put up the mare and saved his news, going out to the corral, where Tom Willow was busily stringing a quantity of barbed wire around the outside of the fence.

“What’s that for?” asked the boy.

“How would I know?” said Willow. “It’s orders, is all I know.”

“Look,” said the boy. “How you come to hook up with Blue Barry?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” said the other. He stopped his work, leaned on the top of a corral post, and began to fill an old black pipe with old black tobacco, wet and heavy with molasses. “I was in a port, once,” said he.

“Where?” asked the boy.

“A long ways south,” said the other. “I was aimin’ to enjoy myself, and I was sort of likkered up, when a lot of doggone yellow Malay niggers took out to keel-haul me. They come with knives to do it. I got into a corner and fought, but a table hit me from somewheres, and I dropped. The next I knew, I was being lifted up by the nape of the neck, and I was getting my eyes open to see a young gent before me with the clothes mostly tore off his back. The room was a wreck, and there was blood, here and there. And off in the distance there was howling and yelling for the dead ...

“ ‘Who are you?’ says the young gent before me. ‘I’m Tom Willow,’ says I, ‘on shore leave from—’

“ ‘You come with me,’ says he, ‘and never mind your shore leave. You’ll get your shore leave from me after this.’

“So I looked into the blue eyes of him, and I knew that I’d found my master at last. When he said to come, I went—I’ve been going ever since.”