Читать книгу Track's End - Hayden Carruth - Страница 8

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I was too frightened at first to move, and stood at the window staring into the darkness like a fool. I heard the men scramble over a fence and run off. Then I ran out to where Allenham lay. He made no answer when I spoke to him. I went on and met two of the deputies coming into the alley. I told them what I had seen.

“Wake up folks in the hotel,” said one of the men; then they hurried along. I soon had everybody in the hotel down-stairs with my shouting. In a minute or two they brought in Allenham, and the doctor began to work over him. The whole town was soon on hand, and it was decided to descend on the graders’ camp in force. Twenty or thirty men volunteered. One of the deputies named Dawson was selected as leader. 13

“Are you certain you can pick out the man who fired the shot?” said Dawson to me.

“Yes,” I answered. “It was Pike.”

“If you just came, how do you happen to know Pike?” he asked.

“He pulled me up last night by the ear and looked at me with a lantern,” I said.

“Well,” replied the man, “we’ll take you down and you can look at him with a lantern.”

They formed into a solid body, four abreast, with Dawson ahead holding me by the arm, as if he were afraid I would get away. To tell the truth, I should have been glad enough to have got out of the thing, but there seemed to be no chance of it. I was glad my mother could not know about me.

We soon came up to the camp, and the men lined out and held their guns ready for use. Not a sound was to be heard except the loud snoring of the men in the nearest tent, which seemed to me almost too loud. There was a dying camp-fire, and the stars were bright and twinkling in a deep-blue sky; but I didn’t look at them much.

“Come, you fellows, get up!” called Dawson. This brought no answer. 14

“Come!” he called louder, “roust up there, every one of you. There’s fifty of us, and we’ve got our boots on!”

A man put his head sleepily out of a tent and wanted to know what was the trouble. Dawson repeated his commands. One of our men tossed some wood on the fire, and it blazed up and threw the long shadows of the tents out across the prairie. One by one the men came out, as if they were just roused from sleep. There was a great amount of loud talk and profanity, but at last they were all out. Pike was one of the last. Dawson made them stand up in a row.

“Now, young man,” said he to me, “pick out the man you saw fire the shot that killed Allenham.”

At the word killed Pike started and shut his jaws tightly together in the middle of an oath. I looked along the line, but saw that I could not be mistaken. Then I took a step forward, pointed to Pike, and said:

“That’s the man.”

He shot a look at me of the most deadly hatred; then he laughed; but it didn’t sound to me like a good, cheerful laugh. 15

“Come on,” said Dawson to him. Then he ordered the others back into their tents, left half the men to guard them, and with the rest of our party went a little ways down the track to where an empty box-car was standing on the siding. “Get in there!” he said to Pike, and the man did it, and the door was locked. Three men were left to guard this queer jail, and the rest of us went back to the Headquarters House. Here we found that the doctor’s report was that Allenham would probably pull through.

The next morning a mass-meeting was held in the square beside the railroad station. After some talk, most of it pretty vigorous, it was decided to order all of the graders to leave town without delay, except Pike, who was to be kept in the car until the outcome of Allenham’s wound was known. It wasn’t necessary even for me to guess twice to hit on what would be the fate of Pike if Allenham should die.

In two hours the graders left. They made a long line of covered wagons and filed away to the east beside the railroad track. They were pretty free with their threats, but that was all it amounted to. 16

For a week Track’s End was very quiet. Allenham kept on getting better, and by that time was out of danger. There was a good deal of talk about what ought to be done with Pike. A few wanted to hang him, notwithstanding that Allenham was alive.

“When you get hold of a fellow like him,” said one man, “you can’t go far wrong if you hang him up high by the neck and then sort o’ go off and forget him.”

Others proposed to let him go and warn him to leave the country. It happened on the day the question was being argued that the wind was blowing from the southwest as hard a gale as I ever saw. It swept up great clouds of dust and blew down all of the tents and endangered many of the buildings. In the afternoon we heard a shout from the direction of the railroad. We all ran out and met the guards. They pointed down the track to the car containing Pike rolling off before the wind.

“How did it get away?” everybody asked.

“Well,” said one of the guards, “we don’t just exactly know. We reckon the brake got off somehow. Mebby a dog run agin the car with his nose and started it, or something like 17 that,” and the man rolled up his eyes. There was a loud laugh at this, as everybody understood that the guards had loosened the brake and given the car a start, and they all saw that it was a good way to get rid of the man inside. Tom Carr, the station agent, said that, if the wind held, the car would not stop short of the grade beyond Siding No. 15.

“My experience with the country,” said Sours, “is that the wind always holds and don’t do much else. It wouldn’t surprise me if it carried him clean through to Chicago.”

I went back to the barn and sat down in the office. To tell the truth, I felt easier that Pike was gone. I well knew that he had no love for me. I sat a long time thinking over what had happened since I had come to Track’s End. It seemed, as if things had crowded one another so much that I had scarcely had time to think at all. I little guessed all the time for thinking that I was going to have before I got away from the place.

While I was sitting there on the bench an old gentleman came in and asked something about getting a team with which to drive into the country. There was a livery stable in 18 town kept by a man named Munger and a partner whose name I have forgotten; but their horses were all out. The Headquarters barn was mainly for the teams of people who put up at the hotel, but Sours had two horses which we sometimes let folks have. After the old gentleman had finished his business he asked me my name, and then said:

“Well, Judson, you did the right thing in pointing out that desperado the other night. I’m pleased to know you.”

My reply was that I couldn’t very well have done otherwise than I did after what I saw.

“But there’s many that wouldn’t have done it, just the same,” answered the old gentleman. “Knowing the kind of a man he is, it was very brave of you. My name is Clerkinwell. I run the Bank of Track’s End, opposite the Headquarters House. I hope to hear further good reports of you.”

He was a very courtly old gentleman, and waved his hand with a flourish as he went out. You may be sure I was tickled at getting such words of praise from no less a man than a banker. I hurried and took the team around to the bank, and had a good look at it. It 19 was a small, square, two-story wooden building, like many of the others, with large glass windows in the front, through which I could see a counter, and behind it a big iron safe.

I had given up sleeping in the house, with its squirrel-cage rooms, preferring the soft prairie hay of the barn. But when bedtime came this night Mr. Clerkinwell had not returned, so I sat up to wait for the team. He had told me that he might be late. It was past midnight when he drove up to the barn.

“Good-evening, Judson,” said he. “So you waited for me.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“Do you know if Allenham or any one is on watch about town to-night?”

“I think not, sir,” I said. “I haven’t seen nor heard anybody for over an hour.”

“Very careless, very careless,” muttered the old gentleman. Then he went out, and in a moment I heard his footsteps as he went up the outside stairs to his rooms in the second story of his bank building. I put the horses in their stalls, and fed and watered them, and started up the ladder to the loft. What Mr. Clerkinwell had said was still running in my 20 mind. I stopped and thought a moment, and concluded that I was not sleepy, and decided to take a turn about town.

I left my lantern and went out to the one street. There was not a sound to be heard except the rush of the wind around the houses. The moon was almost down, and the buildings of the town and Frenchman’s Butte made long shadows on the prairie. There was a dull spot of light on the sky to the southeast which I knew was the reflection of a prairie fire a long ways off; but there was a good, wide fire-brake a quarter of a mile out around the town, so there was no danger from that, even if it should come up.

I went along down toward the railroad, walking in the middle of the street so as not to make any noise. The big windmill on the water-tank swung a little in the wind and creaked; and the last light from the moon gleamed on its tail and then was gone. I turned out across where the graders had had their camp. Here the wind was hissing through the dry grass sharp enough. I stood gaping at the stars with the wind blowing squarely in my face, and wondering how I 21 ever came so far from home, when all at once I saw straight ahead of me a little blaze of fire.

My first thought was that it was the camp-fire of some mover on the fire-brake. It blazed up higher, and lapped to the right and left. It was the grass that was afire. Through the flames I caught a glimpse of a man. A gust of wind beat down the blaze, and I saw the man, bent over and moving along with a great torch of grass in his hand, leaving a trail of fire. Then I saw that he was inside the fire-brake.

In another moment I was running up the middle of the street yelling “Fire!” so that to this day it is a wonder to me that I did not burst both of my lungs.

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