Читать книгу Trouble's Messenger - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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It was not hard to pick out the stranger. In the first place, where all the others were in motion, he stood fast at the corner of the storehouse, with his arms folded. In the second place, their skins were dark. The other whites had lived so long and so much like Indians that they were almost as bronzed as the braves themselves. But this lad was flushed rather than stained by the sun. Besides, the others were robed, or dressed, in neatly fitted deerskins. But the white boy was in a rough, gray cloth.

“What could he be?” said Louis Desparr almost gloomily.

“I dunno,” answered Henry Lessing. “He’s as straight as an Indian.”

“He’s as blond as a Swede,” said Louis.

“He’s got a pair of arms and a set of shoulders onto him.”

“When he finds what he’s lookin’ for, there’ll be trouble.”

“Trouble for the tenderfoot, I reckon.”

“He might be a first-class fightin’ man,” said the other.

After a moment of reflection, Louis Desparr added: “Look here, Henry. How is it that he knows how to talk good Blackfoot? Not like you and me, but the real lingo, like he was raised with it.”

“Maybe he was.”

“That’s likely, ain’t it? You mean in one of the tribes?”

“Why not?”

“All that he knows about the Blackfeet is their lingo.”

“Yeah, he’s a tenderfoot, all right. Won’t he ever talk none?”

“Not a bit to nobody,” said Desparr. “He acts like he thought that he was a duke.”

They went on with their smoking, still staring fixedly at the stranger.

“He’s looking for trouble,” insisted Lessing. “One of them Indians is gonna pass half a foot of knife between his ribs, if he keeps on starin’ at every face with that sneer of his.”

“Maybe he don’t mean nothing,” said the trader. “He’s too young to know much.”

“Aye, that’s true. He’s pretty young. I’d hate to be that young again, Louis. It makes me feel pretty chilly even to think of being such a kid again. Like jumping off into ice water.”

“Aye.” Desparr nodded. “It’s a hard thing ... in this part of the world.”

“Did you ever ask that boy a straight question about what brought him here?”

“No. I ain’t a question asker. I listen when I get a chance, but him that asks questions is askin’ for lies.”

“He needs to have some questions asked,” said the other.

“Not by me. He’s looking for a man, that’s what he’s looking for.”

“Aye, he’s looking for a man. He’s got a grudge, maybe.”

“Yeah. Maybe he’s got a grudge. You remember old Siwash Pete Larkin, that had the grudge ag’in’ Cap Mayberry?”

“No.”

“Why, it was down on the Columbia, where the fish eaters live, and a low crew they are. And Cap Mayberry come up to a sloop from Portland, Maine....” He let his voice die away, unheeded, for it was plain that Henry Lessing was not hearing a word of what was spoken.

Now suddenly the trapper stood up. He was a tall, lean fellow of nearly fifty, iron gray, hard and tough as bull’s hide from constant living in the open. He was dressed in deerskin trousers, but they were old and fitted rather loosely. He wore a blue flannel shirt, which had faded over the shoulders to a meager tan. His hair was clipped off short across the brow and descended in a matted, unkempt tangle to the base of his neck. He wore what had once been a white belt of the skin of a mountain goat, but the original color had become grimy and hand worn almost past belief. On one side it supported a great knife in a sheath. On the other side was a double pouch to contain ammunition and tobacco. On his feet were clumsy but comfortable moccasins. And it was plain that no man in the world cared less about appearances than did Henry Lessing.

“I’m gonna go down and talk to that boy,” he said.

“I wouldn’t do it,” declared Desparr. “He wouldn’t thank you, and he wouldn’t talk.”

“Hold on!” said Lessing, raising his hand.

A party of three or four young braves, at that moment, was passing the corner at which the stranger stood, and one of them, stumbling or pretending to stumble, fell heavily against the tenderfoot. The shock knocked him from his place and sent him reeling several paces. He who had stumbled did not stay to apologize. He went on with his companions, and their grins were very broad, indeed.

“Now what’ll the boy do?” asked Lessing, muttering to himself.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Desparr. “He’s yellow, Henry. Look at that.”

For the stranger, recovering from the blow, calmly resumed his former position at the angle of the building and continued, with a high head, to look at the passers-by.

“Yellow as a dog,” repeated Desparr.

“Aye ... maybe,” said Lessing.

“The word of that’ll get around,” said Desparr. “There won’t be any peace for that tenderfoot, from now on. Every half growed-up buck in the tribe will try to step on his toes.”

“What’s his name?”

“He calls himself Peter Messenger.”

“Well, Messenger will have trouble, anyway. He’s made for trouble. There never was a man with a chin like that, that wasn’t made for trouble. But yaller? I dunno about that.”

“You’ll see. They’ll try the same dodge again on him.”

“If I was them, I wouldn’t.”

“You think he’s something?”

“Kind of an itch in my bones, I do.”

Desparr chuckled. “It’s that worthless Dust-In-The-Sky,” he observed. “He’s always around raising a ruction. There ain’t any peace when that young buck is about.”

“He’ll lose his hair, one of these days.”

“He’s got some hair already drying in his teepee,” answered Desparr. “Comanche hair, at that. Aw, he ain’t just a young blow-hard. He loves a fight, does that Dust-In-The-Sky.”

“And maybe he’ll get it.”

“Not out of the tenderfoot.”

“Would you bet on that, Louis?”

“I’ll bet. What you want to bet on it?”

“You took a fancy to that pinto mare that I rode in.”

“Hey, Henry, are you gonna bet that mare on a greenhorn that you never seen before?”

“I been doin’ a lot of thinkin’ about that greenhorn,” said Lessing. “I’ll bet the mare. What’ll you bet?”

“What do you want?”

“I seen one of those new Colt revolvers down in the store. How about that?”

“It’s a mighty expensive gun,” said the trader cautiously.

“I’ll throw in my saddle, too,” Lessing said calmly.

Louis Desparr started and shrugged his shoulders. “This is after business hours, anyway,” he said. “The gun ag’in’ the mare, if you want to. But you’re gonna lose. What do you expect? That he’ll follow Dust-In-The-Sky, or that the buck will come back to him?”

“The buck will come back to him. He’s got the taste in his teeth now, and he’ll try to bully the white man. You’ll see, Louis!”

“Aye, I’ll see.”

“There comes Dust, now.”

The same party returned, recruited to seven or eight. They wore an appearance of innocent absentmindedness. “They mean a lot of trouble for that boy,” said Desparr.

“They mean trouble,” agreed Lessing quietly. “And now you’ll have a chance to see.”

Almost the same thing happened. As the group came nearer, one of the other young bucks stumbled exactly as Dust-In-The-Sky had done before, and fell toward the white man.

Then Peter Messenger moved. He side-stepped with a gliding speed like that of a cat, caught the young buck as the latter floundered forward, and turning, by a maneuver that even the sharp eye of Desparr could not follow, he flung the Indian over his shoulder. The latter turned a full half circle in the air and landed with such force that the wind was knocked out of him with a grunt audible to the watchers upon the roof.

He did not rise again, at once. The dust that had been thrown out in a great puff on either side of his body now steamed upward and dissolved in the air. But still he did not rise.

“How the dickens did the boy do that?” asked the startled Desparr.

“That’s what they call a neck lock,” said Henry Lessing. “And if I ain’t badly mistaken, young Mister Blackfoot is gonna have a stretched neck and a sore head for a spell. I never seen that trick done better.”

“It was neat! It was mighty neat!” said Desparr in generous admiration. “I didn’t expect nothin’ like that. But there is Dust-In-The-Sky goin’ in to finish up the job.”

That young brave stepped straight up before the white man and uttered something in an angry voice, but the white man paid no heed to him at all. Oblivious of his presence, he stared past the Indian toward the more distant faces in the crowd that drifted by.

“Look, look, look!” said Desparr greatly excited now. “Seems to me like a real man has arrived out here at Fort Lippewan!”

“Aye,” said Henry Lessing. “I reckoned that before. If Dust-In-The-Sky makes a move to touch him, there’ll be another explosion. Is Dust-In-The-Sky that much of a fool that he can’t tell gunpowder when he sees it?”

The voice of Dust-In-The-Sky rose higher, with a savage snarl in it. That fighting sound stopped every passer-by, and, from a distance, men came running to enjoy the possible fight.

“Stop it, Desparr!” exclaimed Henry.

“Let ’em have it out,” said the trader philosophically. “Bad blood needs the air. As long as they don’t start fighting inside my store, they can do what they please when the sky is over their heads.”

“Well,” said Lessing, “if it comes to a pinch, I’m sorry for the Blackfoot.”