Читать книгу The Man from Painted Rock - Jackson Gregory - Страница 3

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When “Hard” Ross was mad he wasn’t a pretty thing to look upon. His rage surged upward through his sunburned cheeks and flared like fire into his gray-blue eyes that were usually cool. The men who went to him for orders and pay, and in whose strong hands the destinies of the Up and Down Cattle Range had resided for a matter of years, were not afraid of him, since they were not the sort of men to be afraid of anything that walked or had a name in the dictionary. But they had a way, at times like this, of going very quietly about their business.

“Do about it!” bellowed Hard Ross at the half-dozen quiet men in the bunkhouse. “What am I going to do about it, huh? Go to the law, you say, Harper? Yes, I’ll go to the law, by God! The law that men have gone to ever since Adam, a long time before the time of crooked sheriffs and rotten judges! The old law, the law there ain’t no bribing an’ no buying up, the law of a man’s right hand!”

It was a long speech for Hard Ross to make before breakfast, a rare bit of eloquence from him at any time, and the men looked at him curiously. Even Sunny Harper, whose yellow, tousled hair and eternal grin gave him his name, condescended to be serious.

“What’s happened recent?” he asked. “Everything was all right when we hit the hay last night.”

“All right?” cried Hard Ross angrily. “You mean we thought it was. Is it all right if a man goes to sleep with a rattler in his blankets or a skunk under his pillow, just because he don’t know he’s got that kind of company? It wasn’t all right any more’n it’s been off an’ on for a year now. Only this time I got something I can put my hands on!”

There was something interesting, almost tangible in the storm of the foreman’s anger. The men, to the last man of them, looked at him with sharp and expectant eyes.

“It’s Silver Slippers this time!” Hard Ross flung the statement at them as he might have hurled a missile at the head of a man he hated. “She’s gone!”

“Silver Slippers?” queried Little John Sperry, his voice a weak, incredulous gasp. “Why, I tied her in her stall last night, Ross. I watered her an’ fed her the last thing.”

“An’ she’s clean gone this morning,” snapped Hard Ross.

“Maybe she broke away an’—” began Little John a bit uncertainly.

“Maybe I’m a fool, huh?” Ross cut him short. “Maybe she shut the barn door after she went out, after I dropped the bolt in the staple, huh? There’s no maybe about it; she’s been stole the same as one hell of a lot of other things has been stole during less’n a year. An’ this time I got both eyes open, an’ I’m getting the dead-wood on the man I want! You boys just set still an’ watch an’ you’ll see something.”

They sat still, all but Hard Ross, who stood at the open door, and the cook, who remained by his stove, a black stream of steaming liquid escaping from the coffeepot in his hands and spattering upon the rough boards of the floor. And then another man came in, a big fellow with round, muscular shoulders and smoldering eyes.

He came to the door from the well, where he had been washing, glanced carelessly about the long, low room, saw Hard Ross and the bright, hard anger in Hard Ross’s eyes, and started back. Every movement this man made was quick, but his leap now, sideways and back, was not quick enough. Hard Ross’s big hands had flashed outward, they had settled upon the other man’s shoulders, they had jerked him off of his feet and into the room and slammed him back, all in a second, so that his shoulders struck heavily against the wall.

“Hawley,” said the foreman, his voice quiet now, his eyes alight with a perfect joy of rage, “I’m goin’ to give you the beating of your life!”

“What’s the matter?” cried Hawley, his big hands wrenching at the other man’s wrists. “What’s eating you, Ross? Just because you happen to be boss here, you ain’t going—”

For answer Hard Ross jerked his right hand free, and with his hard muscles cording to the effort, drove it straight from the shoulder into Hawley’s face.

Hawley’s head snapped back, striking the wall, and he swayed a moment, all but stunned from the one blow; then with a powerful effort he wrenched away from the one hand holding him and sprang to one side. As he leaped the blood was running across a cut cheek and cut lips; his face was distorted with a wrath no less than Ross’s; his hand flew to his hip pocket.

“You damn fool!” he gasped chokingly. “I’ll kill you for that!”

But Hard Ross was not a fool, and he had no wish for pistol play this morning. He, too, leaped forward. He struck again before Hawley’s hand could make the short journey to bulging hip pocket, and there was no man there in the bunkhouse who could have taken that second blow square in the face and stood up under it.

Hawley did not reel now; he fell heavily, not partially stunned but stunned entirely; and where he fell he lay very still.

Suddenly it was very quiet in the bunkhouse. The cook remembered his dribbling coffeepot and placed it back upon the stove. The men who had pushed back their chairs from the breakfast table came forward, looking at the man on the floor.

“You mean he done it?” queried Sunny Harper gently.

“I’ve just explained what I mean in words a young baby might understand,” grunted Ross. He stooped, jerked the revolver from Hawley’s pocket, and flung it under one of the bunks. “Give him some water, cookie. Out’n the bucket.”

But it was Sunny Harper who brought a bucketful of cold water from the well and splashed it over the unconscious man’s face and wrists. In a little while Hawley opened his eyes, wiped the blood from his face, and sat up. And as he moved his body, he moved his right hand. It went swiftly to his hip, found an empty pocket, and dropped again to the floor.

“What’s the next play?” he asked coolly. His eyes, hard, sharp, malevolent, were upon the foreman’s. “I’m down an’ out, I guess, seeing as how you took me when I wasn’t looking.”

“I just naturally took you as soon as I could get you,” grunted Ross. “I couldn’t wait, that’s all.”

“An’ now maybe you’re going to tell me what you done it for?” he said with a keen questioning look in his smoldering eyes.

“No, I ain’t. Seeing as you know as well as I do! But I’m going to tell the other boys, an’ there ain’t no objection to you listening. You boys know how I put this Hawley on the pay list more’n a month ago. You know we didn’t need an extra man real bad, an’ you wondered why I done it, I reckon? I put him on because I had the hunch he was a crook, that’s why!

“There’s another man we’ve all got our eyes on quite a spell now, an’ that’s Bull Plummer of the Bar Diamond outfit. Well, I’d seen this man Hawley with Plummer, chummy as two of a kind, last time there was races in town, an’ I made the bet when he showed up for a job that Plummer was back of it, an’ that means something crooked. So I put him on an’ watched him.

“During the last two months there ain’t been any cattle lost, but I figgered he was just getting solid with us first. An’ then, last night, he couldn’t stand it any longer. I heard him come back into the bunkhouse about two o’clock, an’ I hadn’t heard him go out. But now it’s plain as print to me that he’s the gent who stole the finest blooded little mare as ever was foaled this side the Rockies. An’ any man as lays a hand on Silver Slippers gets what Hawley just got.”

Hawley, sneering, drew himself up and stood against the wall.

“What do you think I done with her?” he demanded. “I went outside to get a drink, an’ was gone about ten minutes. Think I et her?”

Ross shook his head.

“I don’t know what’s gone with her,” he replied bluntly. “She’s gone, and you know what went with her. I reckon you put up the job with Plummer, an’ he rode over or sent one of his yellow crowd to take her off your hands.”

The smile which came and lingered upon Hawley’s cut lips was not pretty.

“You’re sure great at guessing things,” he said slowly. “Only you’re quite some ways off in your guesswork, Mr. Ross. An’ as for proof—”

“Proof!” snorted Ross, flaring up again. “Do you take me for the sort of man that’s going to wait for proof? I know you’re a damn crook, an’ I know you had a hand in the taking of Silver Slippers, just as you’ve had a hand in a whole lot of Bull Plummer’s rotten play right along. That’s enough for me, Hawley. Now, listen to this: Do you want to know why I just beat you up a little instead of killing you outright as you deserve?”

“I ain’t curious,” muttered Hawley.

“All right. But then maybe the rest of the boys has got a right to know why I’m being so gentle with you after you’ve laid your dirty paws on the finest little mare as ever slapped her feet down on a cow range. An’ I’m telling ’em so’s you can hear if you want to! Boys,” and his deep voice went husky with the new emotion in it, “you know I’m putting it straight when I say that there never was a mare that could make Silver Slippers eat her dust. An’ what I’m going to say maybe sounds mushy, but I don’t care a single damn what it sounds like. It’s so, an’ I ain’t the man to shy at the truth.”

And yet he did shy a little and hesitated and cleared his throat before he went on.

“It sounds funny, coming from a man like me,” the foreman continued, shifting a bit uneasily under many watchful eyes. “But I reckon there is just one thing in the world as counts. An’ it’s love! Now wait a minute,” he exploded with sudden fierceness, “until I can finish what I’ve begun, or I’ll have to beat somebody else up this morning. It’s love I’m saying, an’ that’s about what I’m meaning. There’s different kinds of love. I ain’t ever loved a woman an’ I ain’t going to. I ain’t ever been mad in love with whisky nor with poker. I don’t know as a man can say I’ve been crazy mad in love with life, even. But Silver Slippers—my God! I raised her from a sucking filly, an’ I broke her, an’ no man but me has ever slapped a leg across her back. Now you know what I mean?”

For a brief, uncertain moment the man’s hard eyes were unbelievably soft, and more than one man there, wondering, saw that they were wet. And then, suddenly swinging about upon Hawley so that he shrank back from what he saw in eyes no longer soft or wet, Hard Ross cried harshly:

“Why didn’t I pound the last spark of life out’n you? Why? Just because I want that little mare back! Just because you’re the one man I know who can go get her for me. An’ I’m passing it to you straight, Hawley, if you waste any time putting Silver Slippers back there in the barn, without a scratch on the silk of her hide, why then, so help me, I’m goin’ to kill you!”

Hard Ross’s jaws shut with a little click of the large, strong teeth. He turned abruptly and went to the breakfast table. The other men, silent for a little while, went to their chairs. Hawley, his face dead-white save for the scarlet threads of blood across it, turned and went down to the corral for his horse.

And then a stranger came into camp and everything was forgotten in the shock of his coming.