Читать книгу Trouble's Messenger - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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The trapper wanted to ask a hundred questions. He wanted to ask who the person or persons were who were responsible for such treatment of a lad, and who dared to teach a boy to box by knocking him down unless he learned the proper maneuvers and executed them promptly enough. What mysterious tyrant forced his will so implicitly upon a child? Whose brain was it that had hammered and hammered and heated and cooled and tempered this lad until he was in his present state of mind and body—like iron in brain and in body and in hand?

But he saw, at once, that such a rude probing into the past would bring less than no result. The youngster knew how to hold his tongue. Only a sudden and overwhelming sense of obligation had loosened it sufficiently to make him communicate as many facts as he had already expressed. He resolved on going about things in a more diplomatic manner.

“I remember hearin’ a man by name of Tamlin say that the foundation of good boxin’ was a straight left and a sidestep.”

“And a right cross,” said the boy.

“But uppercuts,” said the trapper, “they don’t grow on every bush.”

“Oh, no,” replied Messenger. “Let me see ... I didn’t even try them for six or seven years.”

He said it carelessly, as if it were a matter of no importance, but it conjured into the brain of the trapper a picture of a spindling lad with tow head, narrow lips, dancing feet, sparring with some dexterous and maturely developed brute—someone whose blow, if not dodged or parried or blocked, would knock the youngster down—aye, and perhaps cut him to the bone, as that blow on the jaw must have done, years before. He could better understand now, the alert, cold calm in the gray eyes of the stranger.

Feeling that he had asked about as much as he could gain by direct query, he went on: “Suppose you tell me, stranger, how you’re gonna get back to the fort. Them woods might be filled with Injuns. I got an idea that they are.”

Young Messenger looked gravely about him at the shrubbery and at the lofty trees. “I could have a look,” he said at last.

“How could you have a look, will you tell me?”

“Why, into the bush, of course.”

“You’re likely to make a lot of noise, wadin’ through that brush.”

“I won’t wade through it,” said the boy.

“What will you do, then, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

“Why, I’ll look over the top of it, like this.” He took two steps, and, jumping up, caught a thick branch with his hands, using the forward impetus of his leap to swing up until his feet were planted on another bough. Still without making a pause, he unbent the bow of his body with a force that threw him up to grasp another branch, and so, in a moment, he was lost to the astonished sight of the trapper. This was done so quietly that there was no more sound than presently a faint rustling, such as the wind might make among the branches.

That thought of a great cat that had first come into his mind as he had looked from the roof of the fort down into the compound at the mysterious young stranger again leaped back into his mind. Like a cat, indeed, perfect master of its body and its weight, and sure as a cat in all his movements. Lessing himself, staring up at the boughs by means of which the boy had thrown himself upward into the heart of the great tree, felt the speed of his heart redoubled. Then all noise ceased at once from among the upper branches. There was a very considerable pause, during which Lessing began to stare down at the water as it rushed and foamed around the point before heading down on the little peninsula on which Fort Lippewan stood.

It seemed to the trapper that his own life and thoughts had been increased in speed, and that they were rushing along like the very river, since this lad, Messenger, had appeared in his life not so many minutes before.

Then a quiet voice said just above his head: “There must be twenty of them in the woods.”

Lessing jumped almost out of his boots and, turning, looked up. There he could see the head of the boy, appearing at one side of a huge branch of the tree. Messenger was stretched at ease upon the limb, body down. “How,” said the trapper, who was proud of the forest-trained keenness of his senses, “how in the name of heaven did you come down through that tree without makin’ no noise?”

The boy smiled a little, and again his face was changed by that unusual expression. “Suppose you had to walk fifty feet over gravel and pick up your rations right at the back of the man who was waiting there, straining his ears to hear any movements, even a breath, or the least click of a pebble under your foot? If you can make the trip perfectly once in three times, you get something to eat. Otherwise, you wait till the next day. That’s one way of learning to walk softly.”

“Aye,” said the trapper, “and, if you’re a born cat, it’s not so hard to be silent in the trees, either.”

The boy swung down from the branch and landed lightly on his feet, with no more sound than a falling shadow. There was simply a flexure of his entire body to lessen the shock of his feet against the ground. Lessing would have asked more questions about that feat, also, but he restrained himself. Sometime, if all went well, he would be able to draw the whole story from the lips of the boy. In the meantime, the explanation would probably be some gruesomely improbable thing such as the silent walk with famine for a teacher.

“There are twenty, are there?” asked the trapper, frowning as his thoughts left the boy and concentrated on the danger of their position.

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re stretched in a semicircle from one bank of the water to the other.”

“What will you do, if you’re left to yourself, to get out of this?” asked the trapper.

“I might go up into the tree and shoot a few of them. I suppose I have a right to shoot my way out?”

“Start shooting, against twenty Indians?” Lessing opened his mouth to say something more, but astonishment choked him.

“Well,” said the boy, as calmly as before, “they have cornered us, I suppose.”

“Where’s your gun? You ain’t got one, have you?”

The boy opened his coat and showed a glimpse of a holster slung from the shoulders and hanging at his left side.

“Is that a pistol?”

“It’s a revolver.”

“At the first shot, you might get one of ’em, but the rest of ’em would hide in that brush like snakes in long grass, and they’d soon begin stalking you.”

“I ought to get three or four of them, I think,” said Messenger thoughtfully. “Several of them are quite a few steps from any cover, considering the angle that I’d have for shooting down at them. Three or four, perhaps even more.”

Lessing moistened his dry lips. “That is plenty fast snap shooting,” he said.

“Fast?” said the boy. “Well, that depends. Fast snap shooting?” He shook his head.

“You wouldn’t call it that?” said the trapper curiously, and half wondering if, after all, there was a good deal of the braggart in the youth.

“Well,” said the boy, “I’ve never shot at a man before today. But I suppose I’ll have to begin sooner or later, out here. All I know is that when you throw the apples into the air and try to get them all with six shots ...”

“Have you done that?” cried Lessing, the hair fairly stirring on his head, and little points of gooseflesh forming all over his body.

“No,” said the boy. “I never got more than five at a time. I never could get the sixth one. Something always went wrong. But one shot I was sure to miss, or else I was slow, and one of them hit the ground before I could shoot.”

He shook his head again, and his brow contracted. It was plain that he did not relish the memory of that repeated defeat. But Lessing was thinking of six little apples, spinning and winking in the air, and the rapid chatter of shots that must have exploded into the midst of them, smashing them to crisp fragments, one by one, until five of the six were gone. No wonder that the lad was able calmly to estimate that he could get three or four of the Blackfeet from the height of the tree before he was able to stop firing because they were in secure cover.

“Well,” said Lessing, “suppose the shooting were out of the question. Could you do anything then, to get out of the way?”

“The river, of course,” said the boy.

“Br-r-r! It’s ice water, and that current is running along this bank like a galloping horse. Look at that!” He threw in a small twig. It shot along for a few yards, and then was twisted under the surface by a downward current.

The boy nodded. “It would be a good hard swim,” he agreed. “But I’ve no doubt that I could make it, all right. I’d have to get my clothes off and make a bundle of ’em. They might get soaked, and the gun along with them, but I’m used to cold water. It wouldn’t take my breath. I suppose that’s what you mean?”

“Aye,” said the trapper. “But I’ll tell you this, Messenger. If you can handle yourself in that water, you’re as good a water dog as any Indian. However, you won’t have to shoot your way out of this corner, and you won’t have to swim out. Maybe you can guess why?”

Messenger looked steadily at him. “You wouldn’t have brought me out here,” he replied slowly, at last, “if you could not get me back again.”

“Thanks,” grunted the trapper. “No, I certainly ain’t that kind of a skunk. Listen, now and....” He raised his head and filled his lungs to shout, but at that moment, oddly enough, a roar of voices sounded from across the trees and the open, rolling ground beyond, at the neck of the Fort Lippewan peninsula. It formed itself into a rolling cry, like a cheer. Wild war whoops accompanied it. And suddenly those shouts were reechoed from among the very trees in front of Messenger and his companion.

“By the jumpin’, lyin’ thunderbird!” cried the trapper. “Did you hear that name they’re all shouting? It’s War Lance himself that’s come!”