Читать книгу Prairie Flowers - James B. Hendryx - Страница 5

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The Texan drew up in the centre of a tiny glade that formed an opening in the bull pine woods. Haze purpled the distant mountains of cow-land, and the cowpuncher's gaze strayed slowly from the serried peaks of the Bear Paws to rest upon the broad expanse of the barren, mica-studded bad lands with their dazzling white alkali beds, and their brilliant red and black mosaic of lava rock that trembled and danced and shimmered in the crinkly waves of heat. For a long time he stared at the Missouri whose yellow-brown waters rolled wide and deep from recent rains. From the silver and gold of the flashing waters his eyes strayed to the smoke-grey sage flats that intervened, and then to the cool dark green of the pines.

Very deliberately he slipped from the saddle, letting the reins fall to the ground. He took off his Stetson and removed its thin powdering of white alkali dust by slapping it noisily against his leather chaps. A light breeze fanned his face and involuntarily his eyes sought the base of a huge rock fragment that jutted boldly into the glade, and as he looked, he was conscious that the air was heavy with the scent of the little blue and white prairie flowers that carpeted the ground at his feet. His thin lips twisted into a cynical smile—a smile that added an unpleasant touch to the clean-cut weather-tanned features. In the space of a second he seemed to have aged ten years—not physically, but—he had aged.

He spoke half aloud, with his grey eyes upon the rock: "It—hurts—like hell. I knew it would hurt, an' I came—rode sixty miles to get to this spot at this hour of this day. It was here she said 'good-bye,' an' then she walked slowly around the rock with her flowers held tight, an' the wind ripplin' that lock of hair, just above her right temple, it was—an' then—she was gone." The man's eyes dropped to the ground. A brilliantly striped beetle climbed laboriously to the top of a weed stem, spread his wings in a clumsy effort, and fell to the ground. The cowboy laughed: "A hell of a lot of us that would like to fly has to crawl," he said, and stooping picked a tiny flower, stared at it for a moment, breathed deeply of its fragrance, and thrust it into the band of his hat. Reaching for his reins, he swung into the saddle and once more his eyes sought the painted bad lands with their background of purple mountains. "Prettiest place in the world, I reckon—to look at. Mica flashin' like diamonds, red rocks an' pink ones, white alkali patches, an' black cool-lookin' mud-cracks—an' when you get there—poison water, rattlesnakes, chokin' hot dust, horse-thieves, an' the white bones of dead things! Everything's like that. Come on, old top horse, you an' I'll shove on to Timber City. 'Tain't over a mile, an' when we get there—! Say boy, little old unsuspectin' Timber City is goin' to stage an orgy. We don't aim to pull off no common sordid drunk—not us. What we'll precipitate is goin' to be a classic—a jamboree of sorts, a bacchanalian cataclysm, aided an' abetted by what local talent an' trimmin's the scenery affords. Shake a leg, there! An' we'll forget the bones, an' the poison, an' the dust, an' with the discriminatin' perception of a beltful of rollickin' ferments, we'll enjoy the pink, an' the purple, an' the red. Tomorrow, it'll be different but as Old Bat says 'Wat de hell?'"

Thus adjured, the horse picked his way down the little creek and a few minutes later swung into the trail that stretched dusty white toward the ugly little town whose wooden buildings huddled together a mile to the southward.

Before the door of Red Front saloon the Texan drew up in a swirl of dust, slid from the saddle, and entered. The bartender flashed an appraising glance, and greeted him with professional cordiality, the ritual of which, included the setting out of a bottle and two glasses upon the bar. "Dry?" he invited as he slid the bottle toward the newcomer.

"Middlin'," assented the Texan, as he poured a liberal potion. The other helped himself sparingly and raised his glass.

"Here's how."

"How," responded the Texan, and returning the empty glass to the bar produced papers and tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Then very deliberately, he produced a roll of bills, peeled a yellow one from the outside, and returned the roll to his pocket. Without so much as the flicker of an eyelash, the bartender noted that the next one also was yellow. The cowpuncher laid the bill on the bar, and with a jerk of the thumb, indicated the four engrossed in a game of solo at a table in the rear of the room.

"Don't yer friends imbibe nothin'?" he asked, casually.

The bartender grinned as he glanced toward the table. "Might try 'em, now. I didn't see no call to bust into a solo-tout with no trivial politics like a couple of drinks.

"Gents, what's yourn?"

From across the room came a scraping of chairs, and the four men lined up beside the Texan and measured their drinks.

"Stranger in these parts?" inquired a tall man with a huge sunburned moustache.

"Sort of," replied the Texan, "but let's licker before this sinful decoction evaporates."

"Seems like I've saw you before, somewheres," opined a thick man with round china blue eyes.

"Maybe you have, because astoundin' as it may seem, this ain't my first appearance in public—but you might be nature fakin', at that. Where was it this here episode took place?"

The man shook his head: "I dunno, only it seems like you look sort of nat'chel, somehow."

"I always did—it's got so's it's almost what you might call a fixed habit—like swallowin' when I drink. But, speakin' of towns, Timber City's sure had a boom since I was here last. You've got a new horse trough in front of the livery barn." The tall man ordered another round of drinks, and the Texan paused to fill his glass. They drank, and with an audible suck at his overhanging moustache, the tall man leaned an elbow on the bar: "It ain't noways safe or advisable," he said slowly, looking straight at the Texan, "fer no lone cow-hand to ride in here an' make light of Timber City to our face."

A man with a green vest and white, sleek hands insinuated himself between the two and smiled affably: "Come on, now, boys, they ain't nawthin' in quarrelin'. The gent, here, was only kiddin' us a little an' we ain't got no call to raise the hair on our back for that. What do you say we start a little game of stud? Solo ain't no summer game, nohow—too much thinkin'. How about it stranger, d'you play?"

"Only now an' then, by way of recreation. I don't want your money, I got plenty of my own, an' I never let cards interfere with business. Down in Texas we——"

"But, you ain't workin' today," interrupted the other.

"Well, not what you might call work, maybe. I aimed to get drunk, an' I don't want to get switched off into a card game. Come on, now, an' we'll have another drink, an' then Jo-Jo an' I'll renew our conversation. An' while we're at it, Percy, if I was you I'd stand a little to one side so's I wouldn't get my clothes mussed. Now, Jo-Jo, what was the gist of that there remark of yours?"

"My name's Stork—Ike Stork, an'——"

"You're a bird all right."

"Yes, I'm a bird—an' Timber City's a bird, too. They can't no other town in Montany touch us."

"Wolf River's got a bank——"

"Yes," interrupted the bartender, "an' we could of had a bank, too, but we don't want none. If you want a town to go plumb to hell just you start up a bank. Then everyone runs an' sticks their money in an' don't spend none, an' business stops an' the town's gone plumb to hell!"

"I'd hev you to know," Stork cut in importantly, "that Timber City's a cowtown, an' a sheep town, an' a minin' town, an' a timber town—both of which Wolf River ain't neither, except cattle. We don't depend on no one thing like them railroad towns, an' what's more, it tuck a act of Congress fer to name Timber City——"

"Yes an' it takes an act of God to keep her goin', but He does it offhand an' casual, same as He makes three-year-old steers out of two-year-olds."

The bartender grinned affably, his thoughts on the roll of yellow bills that reposed in the pocket of the Texan. "Don't regard Ike none serious, pardner, he's settin' a little oneasy on account he got his claim all surveyed off into buildin' lots, an' they ain't goin' like, what you might say, hot cakes."

"Oh, I don't know," Stork interrupted, but the bartender ignored him.

"Now, about this here proclamation of yourn to git drunk," continued the bartender. "Not that it ain't any man's privilege to git drunk whenever he feels like, an' not that it's any of my business, 'cause it ain't, an' not that I give a damn one way or the other, 'cause I don't, but just by way of conversation, as you might say; what's the big idee? It ain't neither the Thirteenth of June, nor the Fourth of July, nor Thanksgivin' nor Christmas, nor New Year's, on which dates a man's supposed to git drunk, the revels that comes in between bein' mostly accidental, as you might say. But here comes you, without neither rhyme nor reason, as the feller says in the Bible, just a-honin' to git drunk out of a clear sky as the sayin' goes. Of course they's one other occasion which it's every man's duty to git drunk, an' that's his birthday, so if this is yourn, have another on the house, an' here's hopin' you live till the last sheep dies."

They drank, and the Texan rolled another cigarette: "As long as we've decided to git drunk together, it's no more'n right you-all should know the reason. It ain't my birthday, it's my—my anniversary."

"Married?" asked the man with the china blue eyes.

"Nope."

"Well, no wonder you're celebratin'!"

"Shorty, there, he's married a-plenty," explained the man with the green vest, during the general guffaw that greeted the sally.

Again Shorty asked a question, and the Texan noted a hopeful look in the china blue eyes: "Be'n married an'—quit?"

"Nope."

The hopeful look faded, and removing his hat, the man scratched his head: "Well, if you ain't married, an' ain't be'n married, what's this here anniversary business? An' how in hell do you figger the date?"

The Texan laughed: "A-many a good man's gone bugs foolin' with higher mathmatics, Shorty. Just you slip another jolt of this tornado juice in under your belt, an' by the time you get a couple dozen more with it, you won't care a damn about anniversaries. What'll be botherin' you'll be what kind of meat they feed the sun dogs——"

"Yes, an' I'll catch hell when I git home," whimpered Shorty.

"Every man's got his own brand of troubles," philosophized the Texan, "an' yours sure set light on my shoulders. Come on, barkeep, an' slip us another round of this here inebriatin' fluid. One whole year on crick water an' alkali dust has added, roughly speakin', 365 days an' 5 hours, an' 48 minutes, an' 45–½ seconds to my life, an' has whetted my appetite to razor edge—an' that reminds me—" he paused abruptly and picking up the yellow-backed bill that still lay before him upon the bar, crammed it into his pocket.