Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Pursuit; Or, The Heavy Hand of Justice - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 11

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Pizen Jane was aroused from heavy slumber by the yells of the road agents and the crackling fire of their revolvers. She sprang up in bewilderment and momentary terror.

Men almost ran over her, as they dashed in pursuit of the scout. One came up to her, and, catching her roughly by the arm, jerked her round.

Her anger blazed at the insult. Drawing back her fist, she struck him in the face.

“You don’t know me, I reckon?” she cried. “Well, I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar, and I don’t ’low no mis’rable specimen of a man to treat me as if I wasn’t a lady.”

The astounded road agent put a hand to his tingling face. Then, as she seemed about to give him a second blow, he ducked and stepped backward.

“Pardon me,” he said, not without humor; “but I didn’t know I’d run up ag’inst the hind leg of a mule!”

Other desperadoes came rushing up, and they surrounded her, asking questions.

“It’s none o’ yer bizness who I am, er what I’m doin’ here!” she snapped. “But I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar; and what my bizness is you’ll know ’fore you’re ready fer it, lemme tell ye! And if any o’ you cattle thinks he can make fun o’ me, er tries to git gay with me, he’ll mighty quick wish’t he’d gone to some school of good manners.”

“You was with Buffalo Bill?”

“What if I was; an’ what if I wasn’t?”

“That was him that rid off on that hoss?”

“Foller him and ask him, and then mebbe you’ll find out!”

She folded her arms and looked about defiantly, not at all afraid of them, apparently; and she made a queer figure, as she stood there, thus surrounded, with the light of the rising moon revealing her gaunt form and homely features.

The chase of the scout, to judge from the sounds, was of a lively character; there was a continual popping of rifles and revolvers, as the outlaws took snapshots at him, or at shadows which they mistook for him.

“I reckon they ain’t goin’ to git him,” said Pizen Jane complacently, as she cocked an ear in the direction of the uproar.

“Well, we’ve got you!” was the grim answer.

“And a lot o’ good it will do ye! Now that you’ve got me, what ye goin’ to do with me? I ain’t got no money, and I’m too old and homely fer any o’ ye to want me fer a wife.”

She had recovered her mental balance, if it had indeed been lost at all. Now she sat down on the ground very deliberately, and smoothed her tangled hair and her travel-stained dress.

Some of the pursuing road agents began to come in, breathless and spent. They stared hard at her; and she snapped at them with vinegary answers when they asked questions.

One of the men who soon returned from the pursuit was Snaky Pete.

When her eyes lighted on him they burned with a fiercer fire than had been in them lately. She got up and strode toward him, her fingers outstretched as if she meant to tear his face.

“So, it’s you, is it?” she cried. “Well, I might ’a’ knowed it was you, and I did partly guess it! You low-lived, knock-kneed, white-livered, flea-bitten, devil-hunted——” She stopped, gasping, unable to find words to express her detestation and hatred; but went on again: “Oh, you mis’rable scum of the earth! You pestiferous, walkin’ image of a man! I’ve found you, and now I settle with you!”

She stopped, and slowly drew a revolver from the folds of her dress. In another moment she would have shot Snaky Pete dead, if one of his men had not knocked the weapon from her hand.

She struggled with this man, shrieking, and tearing at him, frantically trying to regain her revolver.

When she was held, for others were forced to go to their comrade’s aid, she stood panting and glaring at Snaky Pete, who had not said a word, but stared at her with wide eyes that hardly blinked.

“Jane Clayton!” he gasped. “I thought——”

“You thought I’d be too much of a woman, and too big a coward to——”

“I thought you was dead,” he said; “I was told it, and I——”

“Hoped I was, eh? Well, I ain’t! I’m alive enough to make things warm fer ye, and I’m here to do it. Leggo of me!”

This last was directed to the men who clung to her.

“Leggo of me!” she screeched at them, flinging herself to and fro.

“Search her and see if she’s got other weapons,” said Snaky Pete.

The men had been astounded on hearing her words to him; the whole thing was to them strange and mysterious. They searched her, but not very thoroughly.

“Now, what aire you doin’ here?” Snaky Pete demanded of her. “You was with that man!”

“Yes, with a man callin’ hisself Buffler Bill, though I don’t know if he tole the truth about it. What of it? He was huntin’ outlaws, he said; and so was I. And we j’ined teams, each to help the other. I jedge, by the way you tried to git him, that he’s the ginuine Buffler. And may the Lord speed him in runnin’ away from ye!”

“I s’pose you know that you’ve run yerself into a good deal of danger by yer foolishness?” said Snaky Pete. “If we’ll let you go in the mornin’, and give ye a horse, will you cut out fer the town?”

“Will I? Not till I git through with you!”

“Then we’ll send you under escort; and if you won’t go no other way, we’ll tie you to a horse and make you go.”

“Pete Sanborn,” she said, scorn in her voice, “of all the mean, low-down cowards on this earth, you’re the wust! You’re afeard o’ me, and you’d better be. Oh, I kin tell these gapin’, white-livered wretches with ye that I know you. And why shouldn’t I, sense I was yer wife fer more’n two years, and had a chance to know how beastly mean a man kin be when he gits down and tries? I come huntin’ ye, fer one thing; and I’ve found ye.”

Snaky Pete seemed afraid of her.

“Shut up!” he said; but she cackled defiantly.

“I won’t! I’m goin’ to tell these men what a coward ye aire. You remember that time you knocked the drunk man down in the street, and then drug him into an alley and robbed him? And do ye recklect that other time, when you stole the gold altar service from a church, and melted it down and sold it? And do you recall that other time, when——”

“Close your head!” he shouted. He sprang at her, wild-eyed and fiendish; but she clawed him in the face, and he fell back.

“Take her away!” he commanded. “Kill her—do anything! Take her away!”

The men dragged her away, while she screamed and raved her hatred of the man who had once been her husband.

Snaky Pete tried to turn the incident aside as a jest.

“Heavens!” he said, “that woman’s got a tongue worse than a whip! She’ll kill me. I did marry her, but that tongue made me mighty sick of my bargain, and I left her. She’s sore over that, and she——”

He stopped as if disturbed by the angry outcries of Pizen Jane, but it was really because he realized that he might talk too much himself.