Читать книгу Man to Man - Jackson Gregory - Страница 7

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Had Steve Packard ridden straightway back to Ranch Number Ten he would have arrived at the ranch headquarters long before noon. But, once out in the still dawn, he rode slowly. His mind, when he could detach it from that irritating Terry Pert, was given over to a searching consideration of those conditions which were beginning to dawn on him.

It was clear that his destiny was offering him a new trail to blaze, one which drew him on with its lure, tempting him with its vague promises. There was nothing to cause surprise in the fact that the ranch was his to have and to hold if he had the skill and the will for the job; nor yet in the other fact that the outfit was mortgaged to his grandfather; nor, again, was it to be wondered at that the old man was already acting as actual owner. For never had the oldest Packard had any use for the subtleties and niceties and confusing technicalities of the law. It was his way to see clearly what he wanted, to make up his mind definitely as to a desired result, and then to go after it the shortest way. And that way had never led yet through the law-courts.

These matters were clear. But as he dwelt upon them they were made complex by other considerations hingeing upon him. Most of all he had to take stock of what lay in his own mind and soul, of all that dwelt behind his present purpose.

Riding back to Ranch Number Ten, saying, "It is mine and I mean to have it," was simple enough. But for him actually to commit himself to the line of action which this step would entail would very obviously connote a distinct departure from the familiar, aimless, responsibility-free career of Steve Packard.

If he once sat into the game he'd want to stick for a showdown; if he started out now bucking old man Packard, he would perhaps wind up in the scrap-heap. It was just as well to think things over before he plunged in—which set him musing upon Terry again.

Swerving from yesterday's path, he followed a new trail leading about the edge of the Temple ranch and into the southeastern borders of Ranch Number Ten. At a logging-camp well up on the slope of the mountains just after he had forded the upper waters of Packard's Creek, he breakfasted on warmed-over coffee and greasy hot cakes.

He opened his eyes interestedly as he watched a gang of timberjacks cutting into a forest of his pines.

"Old man Packard's crowd?" he asked the camp cook.

"Sure thing," was the cook's careless answer. Steve Packard rode on, grown more thoughtful than before. But he directed his course this way and that on a speculative tour of investigation, seeking to see the greater part of the big, sprawling ranch, to note just what had been done, just what was being done, before having his talk with Blenham. And so the first stars were out before he came once more to the home corrals.

While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and desultory talk.

There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to the last man of them. For wherever Packard pay was taken it went into the pockets of just such as these, purposeful, self-reliant, men's men who could be counted on in a pinch and who, that they might be held in the service which required such as they, were paid a better wage than other ranches offered.

Young, most of them, too, boisterous when upon occasion their hands were idle, devil-may-care scalawags who had earned in many a little cattle town up and down the country their title as "that wild gang of Packard's," prone to headlong ways and yet dependable.

There are such men; Packard knew it and sought them out and held them to him. The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday.

Ten years ago, that is to say before he came into the cattle country and found work for Packard, Blenham had been a sergeant in the regular army, had seen something of service on the border. Now, in his dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had learned from a military life.

He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making his quarters in the old ranch-house. He was crisp and final in his orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and immediate obedience when he ordered.

Few of his men liked him; he knew this as well as another and cared not the snap of his big, blunt fingers. There was remarkably little of the sentimental about Blenham. He was a capable lieutenant for such as the master of the Packard millions, he earned and received his increase in wages every year, he got results.

This evening, however, the man's heavy, studied indifference to all about him was ruffled. During the afternoon something had gone wrong and no one yet, save "Cookie" Wilson, had an inkling of what had plunged the foreman into one of his ill-tempered fits.

To-morrow it would be a ranch topic when Cookie could have had ample time to embroider the thin fabric of his surmise; for it had fallen to the cook's lot to answer the bunk-house telephone when there had been a long-distance message for Blenham—and Wilson recognized old man Packard's voice in a fit of rage.

No doubt the foreman of Ranch Number Ten had "slipped up" somewhere, and his chief, in a very few words and those of a brand not to be misunderstood, had taken him to task. At any rate Cookie was swelling with eager conjecture and Blenham was in an evil mood. All evening his spleen had been rising in his throat, near choking him; now suddenly he spewed it upon Bill Royce.

"Royce!" he burst out abruptly.

The blind man was lying upon the edge of his bunk at the far end of the room, smoking his pipe. He stirred uneasily.

"Well?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Cool old cucumber, ain't you?" jeered Blenham. "Layin' there like a bag of mush while you listen to me. Damn you, when I talk to you, stand up!"

Royce's form stiffened perceptibly and his lips tightened about the stem of his pipe. But before he could shape his rejoinder there came an unexpected voice from one of the four men just beginning a game of pedro under the swinging lamp, a young voice, impudent, clear-toned, almost musical.

"Tell him to go to hell, Bill," was the freely proffered counsel.

Blenham swung about on his heel, his eyes narrowing.

"That you, Barbee?" he demanded sharply.

"Sure it's me," rejoined Barbee with the same cool impudence. And to the man across the table from him, "Deal 'em up, Spots; you an' me is goin' to pry these two bum gamblers loose from their four-bit pieces real pronto by the good ol' road of high, low, jack, an' the game. Come ahead, Spots-ol'-Spotty."

Blenham stared a moment, obviously surprised by this attitude taken by young Barbee.

"I'll attend to you when I got nothin' else to do, Barbee," he said shortly. And, giving the whole of his attention again to the man on the bunk, "Royce, I said when I talk to you to stand up!"

To the last man of them, even to young Barbee, who had made his youthful pretense at an all-embracing interest in the cards, they turned to watch Bill Royce and see what he would do.

They saw that Royce lay a moment as he was, stiff and rigid to his hands and feet, that his face had gone a fiery red which threw the white of the long scar across his nose into bloodless contrast, that the most obvious thing in the world was that for the moment his mind was torn two ways, dual-purposed, perfectly balanced, so that in the grip of his contending passions he was powerless to stir, a picture of impotence, like a man paralyzed.

"Blenham," he said presently without moving, his voice uncertain and thick and ugly, "Blenham——"

"I said it once," cried Blenham sharply, "an' I said it twice. Which ought to be enough, Bill Royce! Hear me?"

They all watched interestedly. Bill Royce moistened his lips and presented his pitiful spectacle of a once-strong man on the verge of yielding to his master, to the man he hated most on earth. A smile came into Blenham's expectant eyes.

The brief silence was perfect until the youthful Barbee broke it, not by speech but by whistling softly, musically, impudently. And the air which Barbee selected at this juncture, though not drawn from the classics, served its purpose adequately; the song was a favorite in the range-lands, the refrain simple, profane, and sincere. Translated into words Barbee's merry notes were:

"Oh, I don't give a damn for no damn man that don't give a damn for me!"

Blenham understood and scowled at him; Bill Royce's hesitant soul may have drawn comfort and strength from a sympathy wordlessly expressed. At any rate his reply came suddenly now:

"I've took a good deal off'n you, Blenham," he said quietly. "I'd be glad to take all I could. But a man can't stand everything, no, not even for a absent pal. Like Barbee said, you know where you can go."

Cookie Wilson gasped, his the sole audible comment upon an entirely novel situation. Barbee smiled delightedly. Blenham continued to frown, his scowl subtly altered from fierceness to wonder.

"You'll obey orders," he snapped shortly, "or——"

"I know," replied Royce heavily. "Go to it. All you got to do is fire me."

And now the pure wonder of the moment was that Blenham did not discharge Royce in three words. It was his turn for hesitation, for which there was no explanation forthcoming. Then, gripped by a rage which made him inarticulate—he whirled upon Barbee.

Yellow-haired Barbee at the table promptly stood up, awaiting no second invitation to that look of Blenham's. Were one staging a morality play and in search of the personification of impertinence, he need look no farther than this cocksure youth. He was just at that age when one is determined that there shall be no mistake about his status in the matters of age and worldly experience; in short, something over twenty-one, when the male of the species takes it as the insult of insults to be misjudged a boy. His hair was short—Barbee always kept it close cropped—but for all that it persisted in curling, seeking to express itself in tight little rings everywhere; his eyes were very blue and very innocent, like a young girl's—and he was, all in all, just about as good-for-nothing a young rogue as you could find in a ten days' ride. Which is saying rather a good deal when it be understood that that ten days' ride may be through the cattle country back of San Juan.

"Goin' to eat me alive?" demanded Barbee lightly, "Or roast me first?"

"For two cents," said Blenham slowly, "I'd forget you're just a kid an' slap your face!"

Barbee swept one of the fifty-cent pieces from the table and tossed it to the foreman.

"You can keep the change out'n that," he said contemptuously.

It was nothing new in the experience of Blenham, could be nothing unforeseen for any ranch foreman, to have his authority called into question, to have a rebellious spirit defy him. If he sought to remain master, the foreman's answer must be always the same. And promptly given.

"Royce," said Blenham, his hesitation passed, "you're fired. Barbee, I'll take you on right now."

Few-worded was Blenham, a trick learned from his master. Across the room Bill Royce had floundered at last to his feet, crying out mightily:

"Hi! None o' that, Blenham. It's my fight, yours an' mine, with Barbee jus' buttin' in where he ain't asked. If you want trouble, take a man your size, full-grown. Blind as I am—and you know the how an' the why of it—I'm ready for you. Yes, ready an' anxious."

Here was diversion and the men in the bunkhouse, drawing back against the walls, taking their chairs with them that there might be room for whatever went forward, gave their interest unstintedly. So completely that they did not hear Steve Packard singing far out in the night as he rode slowly toward the ranch-house:

"An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl

Than be the King of Rome!

An' when day comes--if day does come--

By cripes, I'm goin' home!

Back home! Hear me comin', boys?

Yeee! I said it. Comin' home!"

But in very brief time Steve Packard's loitering pace was exchanged for red-hot haste as the sounds winging outward from the bunk-house met him, stilled his singing, and informed him that men were battling in a fury which must have something of sheer blood-thirst in it. He raced to the closed door, swung down from the saddle, and threw the door open.

He saw Bill Royce being held by two men, fighting at them while he reviled a man whom Steve guessed to be Blenham; he saw Blenham and a curly-haired, blue-eyed boy struggling up and down, striking the savage blows of rage. He came just in time to see Blenham drive a big, brutal fist into the boy's face and to mark how Barbee fell heavily and for a little lay still.

The moment was charged with various emotions, as though with contending electrical currents. Bill Royce, championed by a man he had never so much as seen, had given fully of his gratitude and—they meant the same thing to Bill Royce—of his love; after to-night he'd go to hell for "yellow" Barbee.

Barbee, previsioning defeat at Blenham's hard hand, suffering in his youthful pride, had given birth, deep within him, to an undying hatred. And Blenham, for his own reasons and after his own fashion, was bursting with rage.

"Get up, Barbee," he yelled. "Get up an', so help me——"

"I'm goin' to kill you, Blenham," said Barbee faintly, lifting himself a little, his blue eyes swimming. "With my hands or with a knife or with a gun or anyway; now or to-morrow or some time I'm goin' to kill you."

"They all heard you," Blenham spat out furiously. "You're a fool, Barbee. Goin' to get up? Ever goin' to get up?"

"Turn me loose, boys," muttered Bill Royce. "I've waited long enough; I've stood enough. I been like an ol' woman. Jus' let me an' Blenham finish this."

They had, none of them, so much as noted Steve Packard's entrance. Now, however, he forced them to take stock of him.

"Bill Royce," he said sharply, "keep your shirt on. Barbee, you do the same. Blenham, you talk with me."

"You?" jeered Blenham. "You? Who are you?"

"I'm the man on the job right now," answered Packard crisply. "And from now on, I'm running the Ranch Number Ten, if you want to know. If you want to know anything else, why then you don't happen to be foreman any longer. You're fired! As for foreman under me—my old pardner, Bill Royce, blind or not blind, has his old job back."

Bill Royce grew rigid.

"You ain't—you ain't Stevie come back?" he whispered. "You ain't Stevie!"

With three strides Packard reached him, finding Bill Royce's hand with his.

"Right you are, Bill Royce," he cried warmly as at last his and Royce's hands locked hard.

"I'm fired, you say!" Blenham was storming, his eyes wide. "Fired? Who says so, I want to know?"

"I say so," returned Packard shortly.

"You?" shouted Blenham. "If you mean ol' man Packard has sent you to take my place just because—It's a lie; I don't believe it."

"This outfit doesn't happen to belong to old man Packard—yet," said Steve coolly. "Does it, Royce?"

"Not by a jugful!" answered the blind man joyously. "An' it never will now, Steve! Not now."

Blenham looked mystified. Rubbing his skinned knuckles he glared from Steve to Royce, then to the other faces, no less puzzled than his own.

"Nobody can fire me but ol' man Packard," he muttered heavily, though his tone was troubled. "Without you got an order from him, all signed an' ready for me to read——"

"What I have," cut in Steve crisply, "is the bulge on the situation, Blenham. Ranch Number Ten doesn't belong to the old man; it is the property of his grandson, whose name is Steve Packard. Which also happens to be my name."

Blenham sneered.

"I don't believe it," he snapped. "Expect me to pull my freight at the say-so of the first stranger that blows in an' invites me to hand him my job?" He laughed into the newcomer's face.

Packard studied him a moment curiously, instinctively aware that the time might come when it would be well to have taken stock correctly of his grandfather's lieutenant. Then, before replying, he looked at the faces of the other men. When he spoke it was to them.

"Boys," he said quietly, "this outfit belongs to me. I am Steve Packard, the son of Philip Packard, who owned Number Ten Ranch and who mortgaged it but did not sell it to his father—my grandfather. I've just got back home; I mean to have what is mine; I am going to pay the mortgage somehow. I haven't jumped in with my sleeves rolled up for trouble either; had Blenham been a white man instead of a brute and a bully he might have kept his job under me. But I guess you all know the sort of life he has been handing Royce here. Bill taught me how to ride and shoot and fight and swim; pretty well everything I know that's worth knowing. Since I was a kid he's been the best friend I ever had. Anything else you boys would like to know?"

Barbee had risen slowly from the floor.

"Packard's son or the devil's," he said quickly, his eyes never leaving Blenham, "I'm with you."

The man whom, over the card-table, Barbee had addressed as Spotty and whose nickname had obviously been gained for him by the peculiar tufts of white hair in a young, tousled head of very dark brown, cleared his throat and so drew all eyes to himself at his side of the room.

"Bill Royce bein' blind, if you could only prove somehow who you are—" he suggested, tone and expression plainly indicating his willingness, even eagerness, to be convinced.

"Even if I can't see him," said Royce, his own voice eager, "I know! An' I can prove it for my part by a couple of little questions—if you boys will take my word for it?"

"Shoot," said Spotty. "No man's called you liar yet, Bill."

"Then, Stevie," said Royce, just a shade of anxiety in his look as his sightless eyes roved here and there, "answer me this: What was the first horse you ever rode?"

"A mare," said Steve. "Black Molly."

"Right!" and Royce's voice rang triumphantly. "Next: Who nailed the board over the door? The ol' cedar board?"

"I did. Just before I went away."

"An'," continued Royce, his voice lowered a trifle, "an' what did you say about it, Stevie? I was to know——"

"Coach him up! Tell him what to say, why don't you?" jeered Blenham.

"I don't think I need to," replied Royce quietly. "Do I, Steve?"

"I was pretty much of a kid then, Bill," said Packard, a half-smile coming into his eyes for the first time, a smile oddly gentle. "I had been reading one of the Arabian Nights tales; that's what put it into my head."

"Go ahead, Steve; go ahead!"

"I said that I was going to seek my fortune up and down the world; that the board above the door would be a sign if all went well with me. That as long as I lived it would be there; if I died it would fall."

There was a little, breathless silence. It was broken by Bill Royce's joyous laughter as Bill Royce's big hand smote his thigh.

"Right again, Steve! An' the ol' board's still there. Go look at it; it's still there."

Again all eyes sought Blenham. For a moment he stood uncertain, looking about him. Then abruptly he swept up his hat and went out. And Barbee's laughter, like an evil echo of Royce's, followed him.