Читать книгу The Coyote - James Roberts - Страница 10

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“What––what did you come here for?” stammered the justice.

“To get away from––from back there in that cactus-bordered country of black, lava hills where I was born an’ where I belong!” said Rathburn grimly, sliding into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Brown.

“Listen to me! I was driven out. I’ve ridden for a week with the idea of gettin’ where I wasn’t known an’ where I could maybe get a fresh start, and here I find a reward notice staring me in the face from the top of the first hill I cross after leaving Arizona. I’ve never been here before; I’ve done nothing to molest you or your town; but you sic the pack on me first off an’ hand-running, without any reason, except that you’ve heard things about me, I reckon.”

Brown nodded his head as Rathburn finished. A measure of composure returned to him. His eyes gleamed with cunning as he remembered that his front door was unlocked and some one might by chance come in. But he again felt troubled as he conjectured what might happen in such event.

“You cannot blame me,” he said to Rathburn. “You’ve robbed, and you’re a killer–––”

“That’s what you hear?” thundered Rathburn. “I admit several robberies––holdups of crooked, gambling joints like you’ve got in this town, an’ petty-larceny bankers who robbed poor stockmen with sanction of the law. I’ve killed one man who had it coming to him. But I’ve shouldered the blame for every killing an’ every robbery that’s been staged in the desert country for the last three years. ‘The Coyote did it,’ is what they say, an’ the crooks an’ gunmen that turned the deal go free. I’m talking to you, Brown, as man to man––a thing I’ve never done with any mouthpiece of the law before. 29 I’m trying to show you how you an’ your kind can make a man an outlaw an’ keep him one till somebody shoots him down. I’m sore, Brown, because I know that one of these days I’m going to get it myself!”

The justice saw that the man was in deadly earnest. He saw the hand resting on the table tighten its grip upon the gun.

“I didn’t know all these things,” he said hastily. “I had to judge by what I heard––and read. Why didn’t you make all this known to the Arizona authorities?”

Rathburn laughed harshly. “Because I’d be framed clear across the board,” he said jeeringly. “It’s the law! It’s as much of a crime to rob a thieving gambler or a snake of a whisky runner or peddler as it is to rob a home! I’ve had to rob to live! An’ all the while there’s been the makings of one of the hardest-lookin’ bad men that this Southwest country ever saw in me. And, now that I think of it, why the devil I’ve held off I don’t know!”

Brown was moved by the sincerity of the man. He saw in Rathburn’s eyes that he was speaking the gospel truth. He saw something else in those eyes––the yearning of a homeless, friendless man, stamped with the stigma of outlawry, rebelling against the forces which were against him, relentlessly hunting him down.

“You say you came here to start over?” he asked curiously. “How do I know you won’t walk right out of this office and turn a trick right here in this very town?”

“You don’t know it, that’s the devil of it!” exclaimed Rathburn. “An’ there’s no use in my telling you I won’t, for you wouldn’t take my word for it. You’ve got me pegged for a gun-fightin’ bandit of first water an’ clear crystal, an’ I won’t 30 try to wise you up because it wouldn’t do any good. Now that you know I’m in this country, you’ll blame the first wrong thing that happens on to me. I’ve got no business here talking to you. I’m wasting my breath. You’ll have to find out from somebody besides me that I was telling you the truth, an’ I reckon that coincidence ain’t in the pictures. Where’s your handcuffs?”

The justice stared at him, startled.

“Where’s your handcuffs?” insisted Rathburn angrily.

“In the drawer of my desk out in front,” replied Brown.

“Go an’ get ’em an’ bring ’em here,” Rathburn commanded. “I’ll keep my drop on you under cover.”

Brown rose and went to his desk in the front room while Rathburn watched him in the doorway with his gun held under his coat.

When the justice returned to the inside room Rathburn moved a chair close against one of the bedposts. He compelled Brown to sit in the chair, put his hands around between the supports in the back, and about the bedpost. He handcuffed him in that position.

Drawing a bandanna handkerchief from a pocket he swiftly gagged the justice. Then he rummaged about the room until he found a piece of rope tied about a pack in the bottom of the wardrobe. With this he secured Brown’s ankles to the front legs of the chair.

“There!” he said, standing back to view his handiwork. “You’re pretty well trussed up. I ain’t trusting you any more than you’d trust me, an’ I don’t figure on you raising any hue an’ cry before I can get along on my way.”

The eyes of the justice were rolling as he struggled in vain to speak.

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“Never mind,” said Rathburn. “I reckon I know what you want to say. Under the circumstances, the same being so much on my side, you’d say you believed me an’ all that. But I took a chance in coming here to tell you what I did an’ I never aim to take more’n one chance in a day. So long.”

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