Читать книгу Trouble's Messenger - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

Table of Contents

So convinced was he of the tenderfoot’s superiority that he actually turned his head and looked away from his preferred champion to the flash of the sun on the river and the shadowy forests that walked down to the river’s side on either hand. Across the open land to the south, he could see a dust cloud. It had been approaching for some time, and with such incredible slowness that he could only guess at an ox team and at least two wagons in the train.

“There it goes!” gasped Desparr with a chuckle of pleased excitement.

He had been so long among scenes of violence that bloodshed meant almost nothing to him. A man had to take his chances as he found them. After all, life cannot last forever. His own hair had seemed to be very loosely and temporarily fitted on his head several times in his career, and, therefore, he had less sympathy with others when they stood in danger.

As for Lessing, he glanced down in time to see the glitter of steel in the hand of Dust-In-The-Sky. That flash leaped at the throat of the white man, but again Peter Messenger moved. He stepped just enough aside to allow the gleam of the knife to shoot harmlessly over his shoulder. And he stepped just enough in to bring him to comfortable shortarm distance. Then he snapped a hard fist up to the point of the brave’s chin.

Dust-In-The-Sky was a brave young man. He was as tough as twenty-five summers and winters of mountain hunting and mountain fighting could make him. But a bell had been rung in his brain with a dull buzz like a swarm of bees. His wits scattered upon the winds. He went backward, like one who cannot get his balance, and, after floundering a few steps, he sank to the ground in a loose, helpless pile, his head slumping down upon his knees.

“He had the shoulders,” Lessing said critically, and apparently unmoved by this victory that he had prophesied. “He had the shoulders, and it looked like he had the arms. But he’s got the science, too. He’s been trained, old son. And he’s been trained well.”

“Watch, now,” said the trader. “There’s something more coming. They’re gonna mob him, the red dogs!”

The group had swayed threateningly in toward the white man as their leader fell under that stroke. But now they paused for a moment when Messenger leaned and picked from the ground the knife that Dust-In-The-Sky had dropped. A big, formidable-looking weapon it was, brand-new from the store of Desparr, and with the sunlight appearing to run on it like water and drip from its point.

“Hello!” said Desparr. “Does he mean to tackle that band with a knife? They’ll cut him to pieces in half a second.”

“He won’t tackle them. He’s defending himself, and that’s all,” declared Lessing with perfect assurance. “You watch him, Louis.”

The hand of Messenger rose with the knife and then flicked it away with a swift and graceful motion. It turned over once in the sunshine, and then landed just between the knees and an inch from the scalp lock of Dust-In-The-Sky, burying its blade to the hilt in the ground.

Desparr jumped up with an exclamation. “Did you see that, Henry?” he asked, utterly amazed.

Lessing merely smiled as though he were hearing a twice-told tale. “He had the shoulders and the arms. He has the fingers, too,” he said. “There’s nothing green about that boy but his skin, Louis!”

“There go the Blackfeet. They’ve had enough of that fellow’s medicine, and I don’t blame them.”

The group of young braves, in fact, had withdrawn a few steps, hastily, and some of them picked up their fallen leader. They supported him as they went off. But he was still in dreamland, his head falling back on his shoulders, his face blank, his mouth open, and his feet trailing.

“What a punch!” said Desparr enthusiastically. “An iron hand, Henry. I couldn’t do that with a club, let alone a bare fist!”

“See what the boy’s doing now,” answered Lessing.

The tenderfoot, stepping back to his chosen place of vantage, had folded his arms again and remained exactly as he had been before—his head high, his eye constantly traveling over the faces of the crowd that, by this time, was closely packed about him.

A white trapper stepped from the semicircle and slapped him cordially on the shoulder. The two on the rooftop could hear the boy being invited to take a drink.

His answer was a mere shake of the head, and the trapper drew back with a black scowl. The crowd, at this, rapidly melted away, only a little half-naked Indian boy remaining to gape up at this newly found hero.

“There you are,” said Lessing. “That boy has made three enemies in two minutes, and every one of the three would like to have his blood, especially Beaver Jones.”

“Beaver’s no good,” said Desparr. “I’m glad that the boy could see through him.”

Lessing chuckled. “I’ll tell you, old friend,” he said, “that the boy wouldn’t drink because he doesn’t know that stranger. He wants an introduction, before he’ll take a drink with a man.”

“Aye, or else he don’t drink.”

“Not drink?” said Lessing, rather startled by this suggestion in a land where all men drank what they could get.

“Maybe,” said Desparr, putting out a hand before him in a gesture like that of one who vaguely feels his way toward something of importance, “maybe the business of that boy won’t let him fog up his brain with liquor.”

Lessing snapped his fingers. “Aye, maybe you’ve put your finger on it,” he said. “I’d guess that you’re right, Louis.”

“You’ve won a brand-new gun, Henry.”

“I’ve won more than that,” declared Lessing.

“What else have you won?”

“A good time,” declared the trapper. “I ain’t seen that kind of man in ten years.”

“What kind of man? Fighting man, you mean?”

“Why, the land’s full of fighting men, Louis. How could I mean that?”

“I didn’t know. What kind of a man do you mean?”

“Did you see how he stepped?” asked Lessing.

“He’s fast on his feet.”

“And light. He’s a cat, Louis.”

“He’s about as fast as a cat.”

“He’s a cat,” repeated Lessing with conviction. “It’s been ten years since I seen the like of him.”

“Who’ve you got in mind, Henry?”

“There was that Claud Tamlin, but maybe you’ve forgot him?”

“Nobody that seen Tamlin ever forgot him. You think this kid reminds you of Tamlin?”

“He moved the same way,” said Henry Lessing, “and he held his chin up the same way.”

“But Claud Tamlin was three inches shorter, and a foot wider, and six inches deeper. You could’ve cut three or four of this lad out of Tamlin.”

“He’s young,” said Lessing. “But look at that crowd now!”

“What about it?”

“I’ve seen people move like that when Tamlin was around ... because they always gave him room enough.”

In fact, the casual passer-by now made a wide eddy at the corner of the storehouse, letting the tall young tenderfoot have plenty of elbow room. They did not any longer meet the eye of the youth, either, but pretended to be very occupied with their own business, although, all the time, it was plain that they were scanning him out of the corners of their eyes. The young braves came by most slowly of all, stalking with consummate dignity—and, doubtless, they were busily measuring the dimensions and noting down the features of this strange fellow. The few white men sauntered past, also, and the squaws came shuffling, their heads jutting forward like beasts of burden.

Only a few of the children stood bravely up to the white lad and surveyed him with smiling pleasure or with a sort of grim curiosity, moving from side to side to view him more closely, while the sun burnished and shone from their coppery little bodies.

“I remember Tamlin at Bent’s Fort,” said Desparr at last. “I remember him standin’ up, and the crowd flowin’ around him like water around a rock. He was a rock.”

“Aye, he was a rock, and a wildcat, too.”

“He was both them things,” agreed Desparr seriously. “What became of Tamlin?”

“They got him at last.”

“The Injuns?”

“Yeah. They got him at last.”

“Which tribe?”

“There’s a good deal of question about that. Some says the Sioux, and some says that it was old Broken Feather and his Comanches that finished up Tamlin. And some says that it was these here Blackfeet, as far as that goes.”

“Maybe it never happened at all,” declared Desparr. “If they got his death scattered that wide apart, maybe it never happened at all.”

“Maybe it never did,” agreed Henry Lessing. “But they tell the story of him pretty clear. And how he killed seven men and got seven wounds on that last day’s fighting.”

“That shows that it’s all a fairy story,” answered Desparr. “You see how it works out? Seven wounds, seven dead men. They always have numbers like that in their folk stories.”

“All right,” answered Lessing almost angrily. “But he ain’t been heard of for years.”

“Maybe he’s left the land.”

“How could he live away from buffalo and Injuns?”

“I dunno. I dunno. I ain’t never able to read the minds of people, least of all Tamlin. Well, are you gonna go down and talk to that youngster, Lessing?”

Lessing nodded. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and passed his hand through his tangled hair.

“You’re just likely to be stepping knee-deep in trouble,” cautioned Desparr.

“That’s what I’ve been thinkin’,” said Lessing softly.

But, nevertheless, down he went to the ground.