Читать книгу Powder Smoke on Wandering River - Jackson Gregory - Страница 6

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Arlene Warbuck drifted in at the dance hall like an orchid into an old-fashioned garden to queen it over the country girls, and had everything her own way—until little blonde Chrystine Ward came running in, laughing and blue-eyed and pretty, escorted by Joe Elliot and Jimmie Vane and Dick Lewis, all claiming the first dance with her. Arlene lifted her smooth golden-brown brows and, barely perceptibly, her lovely red mouth hardened. Chrystine Ward, a pink-and-white nonentity, a little empty-headed nobody, was the new teacher up in Deer Valley.

The Warbuck heiress had come with Jim Ogden, in a new top buggy whirled along by a pole-team of high stepping bays that passed everything on the road. She wore real gems, rather more of them than she would have thought of wearing anywhere else on earth, and her gown made ranchers’ daughters and wives poke one another and whisper behind hands, handkerchiefs and fans. The gown, one knew, came from some exclusive Fifth Avenue shop, all the way from New York; it might have been made of moonbeams and stitched with threads plucked from a rainbow; it was, for the time and the place, daringly low cut and there was much of lovely white Arlene Warbuck on display; there were long white kid gloves and darling little high-heeled slippers with glittering buckles. A faint, seductive fragrance like a warm invisible mist from a rose garden hung about her.

She turned suddenly and saw the look on Jim Ogden’s face. He too was looking at little vivacious Chrystine Ward. Arlene bit her lip; Jim Ogden and herself were the only two strictly formally clad people here tonight; Ogden was more or anyhow other than a mere cowhand; he had lived in many places, among many sorts of people; tonight in black suit and white shirt and gleaming shoes, he was not only handsome but “distinguished looking.”

“Are we dancing this, Arlene?” he asked swiftly.

Arlene smiled and took his arm. It was a heel-and-toe polka. They danced, Arlene laughing lightly, Jim Ogden keeping his eyes on her and telling her with them that there was only one girl in all the world. Little Chrystine, dancing with Joe Elliot, kept turning her head watching them, holding a smile in check, ready to give it free play the moment she could catch Jim Ogden’s eye.

Young Jeff, having plowed his way through the crowd standing outside on the porch and jamming the doorway, saw both entrances, Arlene’s and Chrystine’s, coming so close one after the other. He watched them dancing, took in the by-play and wondered idly what was in the wind. The dance came to an end and he saw that Arlene Warbuck’s drifting, soft gray eyes had found him; a swift smile warmed them. He saw also that three or four men were headed toward her, another three or four toward the little school teacher. He made a bee-line to Chrystine.

“Why, Jeff!” she cried as they shook hands like old friends. “I haven’t seen you for ages!” She made a little moue, having a mouth just meant for that sort of thing, so soft and pink and pouting. “Don’t you ever ride through Deer Valley any more? Remember when—” It was a schottische next, hard on the heels of the heel-and-toe. He saw that Arlene and Jim Ogden were again dancing together. Well, there wouldn’t be many men here tonight that Arlene would dance with. She would dance with him if he asked her; her eyes had already told him that. He decided he would not ask her.

“Do you have to squeeze me so tight?” laughed Chrystine.

“Oh; I’m sorry,” said Young Jeff.

“Are you?” said Chrystine.

At last Jim Ogden looked at them, over Arlene Warbuck’s head; Young Jeff chanced to catch the flash in Ogden’s eyes. Oho! Ogden, squiring Warbuck’s daughter, was interested in little frothy Chrystine, was he? Young Jeff began playing up to her; he couldn’t have remained human and done otherwise.

“Do you think Miss Warbuck’s awf’lly pretty?” asked Chrystine.

“You are,” said Young Jeff.

Chrystine snuggled closer in his arms. “You haven’t forgotten the trail by the schoolhouse, have you, Jeff?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

She was so tiny that the fluffy top of her head was inches below his chin. He didn’t see how her cheeks warmed to the tint of wild rose petals; he did see the glance Arlene was sending him: She was expecting him for the next dance.

“Hell take all Warbucks,” was what he said within himself.

A waltz followed the schottische and Young Jeff Cody danced it with Arlene Warbuck. Jim Ogden, relinquishing her, said, “Hello, Jeff.”

Jeff said, “Dance, Miss Warbuck?”

In his arms Arlene said, “So it’s Miss Warbuck now, is it, Jeff?” The queen was inclined to be gracious, piqued perhaps by Jim Ogden’s betrayal of an interest elsewhere.

“I haven’t seen you for three years,” said Jeff. “I scarcely knew you.”

“But you remembered it was three years, didn’t you, Jeff?” He didn’t answer and she asked, pretending indifference and only the most casual curiosity, “Who is that little pinch of fluff you were dancing with?”

“The one Ogden is making a bee-line for now?” he said. “She is the new teacher over in Deer Valley. You ought to know her; your father got her her place.”

He began asking himself why he had come to Arlene for a dance. Just because she was a girl and unquestionably by far the most beautiful girl within eyeshot? Or because Jim Ogden—“What made you decide you wanted to dance with me?” said Arlene abruptly.

That made him chuckle. He answered honestly, “Do you know, Arlene, I was just wondering!”

“There’s no love lost between your crowd and the Warbucks, I know,” she said hotly. “You hate my father, don’t you, Jefferson Cody?”

“Hate?” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s the word for it. What about it?”

“He’s the biggest, manliest man in this whole country!” she exclaimed ready to do battle for Bart Warbuck.

“He’s the richest,” said Jeff, very curt. They stopped dancing and moved toward the side of the room where the benches were.

“Not only the richest, the most influential—”

“Sure. Money buys influence, influence brings the money back, and more.”

A dangerous look flashed into her eyes. Then she began laughing softly.

“The wars of the fathers are visited on the children, aren’t they? Just because your father and mine—Jeff, why don’t you be sensible? Father would like to talk with you; I know. It wouldn’t do you any harm.”

They had reached her seat at one of the benches and he said, “Thanks, Miss Warbuck, for the dance.” But as he was turning to go, her hand on his sleeve in a touch scarcely more perceptible than the fall of a snowflake stopped him.

“Jeff, Dad would like to talk with you. I think it would be wise for you to see him. Will you drop in on him—say tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “No use, Arlene. We wouldn’t have anything to say to each other. We don’t even speak the same language.”

“If I asked you? As a favor to me? We used to be friends, you and I, Jefferson.”

“We were just kids then. We didn’t know what it was all about.” He studied her narrowly and frankly, and suppressed a shrug. “You’ve changed, you know, Arlene.”

“And not for the better?”

“You’re all Warbuck now.” She could take that as she pleased.

She took it with a hardening of her large gray eyes. Then a smile dangerously close to being a sneer made her mouth, too, hard.

“As you like, Mr. Young Jeff Cody,” she said lightly. “Oh, one thing before you go; I just heard the tail end of a rumor being whispered, something about some sort of trouble happening today. A man killed—two men? What about it, Jeff?”

“You might ask Ogden. He’d give you the sort of version that you’d want.”

“Maybe I did ask him. Maybe I want you to tell me too.”

“Doesn’t take long in the telling. Somebody murdered Charlie Carter. Oh, you wouldn’t know anything about him, just an old backwoodsman. Then this afternoon, just about sundown, another man was murdered. That was Bud King. He’s hanging by the neck now, shot full of bullet holes, on an old oak tree over in Long Valley—your valley.”

Arlene’s white shoulders went up shiveringly.

“Who—who was Bud King, Jeff? Who killed him? Why?”

“He was a friend of mine,” said Jeff curtly. “He was murdered by Ogden and six other Warbuck men. They killed him to try to cover up the other murder, and to get him out of the way.”

“He’s hanging there now—out in Long Valley?” she gasped. “And he was a friend of yours—And you come to the dance to flirt with Chrystine Ward, to dance with me, too—Oh, you’ve grown hard, Jeff Cody!”

“Bud won’t be any deader in a thousand years than he is tonight,” he told her. “Hard? Well, a man needs to be.”

He left her, watched his chance, went back to dance with Chrystine. Why? He didn’t altogether know. Perhaps to plague Jim Ogden? To pique Arlene? Or just for the sake of dissolving the moment and all its graver concerns in those large, uplifted, long-lashed blue eyes of the little blonde school teacher?

Well, he had looked things over here and, whether hard or not, had no further interest in the dance. He was turning toward the door, having interests elsewhere, when he saw Rick Voorhees making his way through the crowd outside. Voorhees’ face was dead white, his eyes murderous.

Jeff stopped a moment to watch, to wonder what was up. Voorhees sent his roving eyes up and down, questing someone; they came to rest on Jim Ogden. A look passed between the two; Voorhees made some slight gesture and went out again. A moment later Jim Ogden made his way to the door.

Jeff followed and from the steps made out the figures of the two men moving swiftly down the street. They came abreast of the Silver Bar but did not turn in. A group of men, a dozen of them maybe, were standing at the side of the swing doors; promptly, as though commanded to do so, they fell in behind Ogden and Voorhees. They were Warbuck men without a doubt. Down the street where the old thoroughfare grew crooked and narrower and darker was the Stage Stop Saloon; rumor said Warbuck owned it now.

“They’re getting busy about something,” thought Young Cody. “There’s something coming up. What with Charlie Carter killed this morning and Bud King this afternoon—Warbuck’s making a play and speeding it up.”

He was hailed by several voices as another, smaller knot of men standing in the mouth of the alley on which the Silver Bar cornered, sighted him. “Hi, Jeff! Come over here.”

He stopped, frowning down through the dark.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

They proved to be friends and he joined them, Steve Bannister and Hank Fellowes and Ed Spurlock and Sam Harper and the two Jameson boys, ranchers all of them and neighbors of his, holding forth in the country adjacent to the upper reaches of Wandering River.

“What’s in the wind, Jeff?” they wanted to know.

“I wish I could guess,” he told them.

“What’s all this about Bud King killing old Charlie Carter, then swinging for it? The Long Valley boys don’t seem to mind having their part in it talked about. And there’s talk about a scrap just now in the Silver Bar—you and Hasbrook and Rick Voorhees.”

They listened quietly when he told of these things, their faces lost in the shadows of their wide hat brims, their hard, lean bodies as still as statues. No one hastened to speak when he had finished his recital; he could hear more than one of them draw a deep, quiet breath. Then Ed Spurlock said in a toneless, flat voice, “Warbuck?”

Young Jeff nodded. “Of course.” Other heads nodded slightly.

“There must be twenty-five, maybe thirty Long Valley hands in town tonight,” said Spurlock. “Looks like, if they are making their play, they stand ready to back it up.”

“Yes,” said Young Jeff. “Bart Warbuck never backed down in his life.”

Another man—it was Walt Jameson, hardly out of his teens and eager—who said, “Wonder if it’s all of a piece, huh?” Jeff looked at him. Walt blurted out, “We just learned today that Warbuck’s bought up the Pioneer City Bank.”

Here was news with a vengeance, news which in sundry quarters must bring consternation in its wake. There was a note of incredulity in Jeff’s voice as he said, “That’s hard to believe, Walt. Sure there’s not some mistake? You mean that Melvin has sold us out?”

“He’s sold out to Warbuck, if that’s what you mean. Somehow Warbuck must have put the screws on him too. Kinda bad, huh, Jeff?”

Jeff didn’t answer; no need. Ranchers had all had a tough time of it the last few years; hardly a man of them who hadn’t at one time and another gone to the bank for a loan. They’d known Melvin all their lives; he had played square with them and had prospered in so doing. But “somehow Warbuck must have put the screws on him too.” Warbuck had taken over all mortgages. A mortgage on Young Cody’s horse ranch was among them—and Arlene had said it might pay him to have a talk with her father!

“Where’s Dan Hasbrook?” he asked sharply. “Anybody seen him?”

“Why?”

“I’ve just told you what he did to Rick Voorhees. Voorhees is as poisonous as a rattlesnake; I just saw him and what was in his eyes was naked, for any man to see. And if anything happened to Hasbrook—Well, Warbuck for one wouldn’t cry, would he? Dan told me he was of a mind to nose about a bit tonight—”

“I saw him not ten minutes ago,” spoke up Bannister. “He was headed down the street—”

“Let’s mosey along,” said Jeff. “Down to the Stage Stop. Voorhees and Jim Ogden and their crowd headed that way. You saw them—”

A pistol shot crashed into the comparative stillness hovering over the dark streets of Pioneer City. It seemed but the signal for other shots. They came from down the street, from somewhere near the Stage Stop Saloon.

The Wandering River men broke into a run to find out what it was all about, to take a hand if it proved to be what they thought it was.