Читать книгу Powder Smoke on Wandering River - Jackson Gregory - Страница 3

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It was young springtime in the Tecolotes, with skies at their bluest and delicately tinted mountain flowers lifting in the upland meadows, and the sunshine so softly bright over the wilderness world that it did not seem there could be a place anywhere for shadow and gloom. Yet shadows there were. Young Jeff Cody, riding down a steep cut-off trail to bring him the shortest way from Spire Mountain Flats down through Witch Woman’s Hollow and so on to Halcyon, had shoved his hat back and the sun was on his tanned face, yet a shadow was there, too, and in his brooding eyes. It was only a few hours since he had come upon a sight in Pocket Canyon that had made his blood run cold.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a word or two with Still Jeff,” thought Young Jeff as his rangy sorrel slid stiff-leggedly down the last bit of the steep descent into the lower trail. “And with old Bill Morgan, too.” A queer quirk twitched at the hard line of his lips. “Darn those two old devils, anyhow.”

Tall was Young Jeff, and lean and brown, a sort of golden-brown from the wind and sunshine of the high places, supple and vigorous and graceful in the saddle. Just as from some fastidious women there emanates an elusive, almost fancied fragrance, so from young Jeff Cody there seemed to issue some faint essence of the mountains themselves, a hint of sun-warmed resin from the big-boled pines, of crushed laurel leaves; his boots had trod on wild mint in Pocket Canyon; the coat now rolled up behind the cantle of his saddle had served him many a time as a pillow, placed atop newly cut cedar or fir tips.

From the timbered slope he cut into the lowest quarter of Deer Valley and struck south down in the grassy valley bottom where the wagon track was. He and Wandering River, the flowers and grass and sunshine, had the place pretty much to themselves; most of the wild things that came down here to feed and prey were now taking their sheltered ease in their favorite hidden shady nooks. There’d be deer here later as there were sure to be in the early mornings. A couple of miles ahead of him he saw a brindle cow and an old white horse dozing companionably; both belonged to the Witch Woman.

The valley narrowed crookedly at the point where the horse and cow were, with a ridge running down into it from the west, the wagon track winding about its base among pines. Just beyond was a shadow-filled basin with a small tributary creek glinting darkly across it, a place so thick with willow and alder, laurel and buckeye, that the sun failed to penetrate it save with glancing rays which only emphasized the brooding gloom which filled Witch Woman’s Hollow as a dark fluid may fill a cup.

With no fence to stop him Young Jeff was half across the hollow when a voice hailed him. He frowned impatiently, muttered something altogether ungallant under his breath, but pulled his horse down to a slow trot and then, reluctantly, to a full stop.

“Hello, Mrs. Grayle,” he said, and touched his hat though he seemed half of a mind not to do so.

She had been squatting under a leafy laurel close to the wagon track, idling in the shade when one would have expected an old woman like her to be hunting out the warmest spots in the sunshine. She got up stiffly but moved spryly enough when she had risen, walking toward him with her long willow staff which she used but lightly. His horse pricked up its ears, snorted and shook its head, and was restrained from backing off only by Young Jeff’s spurs.

“What’s your horse scared of me for?” she asked. There was hardly more than a hint of a quaver in her voice, which was as hard and sharp as a knife blade. “Haven’t been telling him ugly stories about me, have you, Jeff dear?”

Jeff didn’t smile at her sally, but then neither did she. Nor did he show any resentment at her calling him “Jeff dear.” She had always done that; she knew that as a boy he hated it and so kept it up.

“Something’s got you worried, Boy,” she said, peering up at him with a deep-set pair of glinting black eyes set in a dark face which, crisscrossed with a thousand lines and wrinkles, looked to be a hundred years old. She fell to chuckling as she laid a hand like a claw on his knee. “Something’s gouging you, Jeff Cody, and gouging you deep.”

He shrugged; the bleak hardness of his eyes remained unchanged and the stern set of his mouth unsoftened.

“I’ve got some riding to do—”

“You’ve been doing some riding already! Let me look in your eyes, Jeff; let me read what’s there, past and present and future.”

His snort was reminiscent of his horse’s a moment ago.

“I thought you’d given up trying to work that sort of thing on me,” he said impatiently. “We ought to know each other too well.”

Her chuckle became a sort of evil cackle; she pushed back the ragged old black shawl from her face, peering up at him more intently than ever; her squinting eyes seemed overflowing with some secret, wicked glee.

“So you’re too smart to believe me the witch that everybody else calls me? Can’t fool Young Jeff, can I? When folks say that I make a brew by the dark o’ the moon, of frogs and deadly night shade and—”

“I’ve got to be riding,” said Jeff. “I thought there might be something you wanted.”

The spite brimming her eyes got into her shrilling voice too as she spat out her next words at him; he had always known that she hated him as she hated everyone else; now any stranger, had he looked at her and heard her, would have known as well as did Jeff Cody. It had never been any secret to Jeff, either, that she took pride in her reputation and in being shunned and talked about; she looked like a witch, there were many of the backwoods folk who more than half believed she was a witch, and now Jeff began to wonder if she didn’t think so herself! At her age, living the solitary life she led, harboring all the universal spite and malice which were such integral parts of her, small wonder if she was a bit mad.

“You’re a fool, Jeff Cody!” she railed at him, and beat his knee with her skinny fist. “You’re as big a fool as even old Still Jeff Cody ever was, as big a fool as old Red Shirt Bill Morgan.” She began laughing, showing the few discolored teeth which the hard years had left to her. “Fools, all three of you!—Do you know why Still Jeff and old Red Shirt hate each other? Friends once, weren’t they? And they let a dead man come between them!”

The thought moved her malevolent mirth a notch higher. Jeff started to ride on but she clutched at him and detained him even more by her words than her grip.

“Talking of dead men,” she mouthed at him. “It’s a good day to talk of dead men, think so, Jeff dear?” She began to sniff like a dog smelling a man over. “I seem to get a whiff of death on you! Haven’t just been visiting with a dead man, have you, Jeff? Didn’t find him back up yonder in the mountains, did you?” She sniffed again, her nostrils flaring, her eyes squinted almost shut. “It wasn’t murder, was it? What are you trying to do, Boy, sitting up there so stony-faced? Trying to hide things from old Mother Grayle? It can’t be done, Jeff! Nobody can hide the truth from me, not when I hanker to find it out. Yes, I smell murder just as plain as you’d smell a rose if somebody stuck it up under that long nose of yours. But why take it so to heart, Jeff dear? Most folks have got to die sometime, haven’t they? And he was an old man anyhow, wasn’t he, dead up yonder in Pocket Canyon?”

By the time she had finished his eyes had narrowed to slits. Twenty hard mountain miles lay between Witch Woman’s Hollow and Pocket Canyon. How on earth did the old hag know?

He did his best not to betray his thoughts by the slightest quiver of a muscle. There were to be noted only the narrowing of his eyes and the hardening of his jaw. He did not treat the woman to an expression of his amazement; he did not ask a single question. He knew her well; she would say just as much or little as she chose, and no urging from him would drive her a jot further. So he sat silent waiting for her.

But she grew as silent and her old face was as set and rigid as his own. So he said, “Guess I’ll be jogging along now.”

She sucked in her lips so that bony chin and nose came closer together than ever.

“I was going to tell you something else, Jeff dear, and it was going to be a warning about the future. That’s why I was waiting here for you, for you can be mighty sure, young man, that I knew you’d be coming along this way today! But you’re such a fool! Go ahead; it won’t be long before there are others lying in some gully, shot in the back—and you’ll be one of them!”

Then she laughed in his face, turned agilely and moved swiftly off toward the dark old stone house half glimpsed in the heart of Witch Woman’s Hollow, her rags fluttering about her, her long stick thumping viciously. Young Jeff Cody dipped his spurs and was on his way, facing straight ahead.

Passing swiftly out of the Hollow he caught a first glimpse of the incredible town of Halcyon only a mile farther down the valley.