Читать книгу Cracker Barrel Trouble Shooter - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 6

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The snorting little train that ran out of the city of Cannasport, which was the end of the Limited's run, consisted of one small engine with a bored-looking engineer leaning out the window and an ambitionless fireman who pecked desultorily at chunks of soft coal in the coal tender; one box car that was evidently packed with freight consigned for the town of Blissville; and one express-mail-passenger car.

Standing on the station platform with a tightly packed bag in each hand, Bill grinned at the almost unbelievable locomotive and cars. Cannasport was a modern city, with a big rail terminal, and the other trains present made this one look like something dreamed up by a child who wanted to play at railroading. Still, it had been pointed out to Bill not only as the train for Blissville, which was as close as trains could get to Elk Shanty, but the only train that ran there.

Bill crossed the tracks, letting his overcoat hang open. Cannasport itself was in the mountains, and the forested slopes rising on both sides of the city still wore a shabby crazy-quilt of snow. But it was disappearing fast. Swollen to angry proportions by snow water, a snarling little stream pitched down a mountainside and hurled itself, in a shower of sun-tinted spray, over a cliff and into a river.

At the passenger entrance to the triple-purpose car stood a tall man dressed in a blue conductor's uniform. But the uniform lacked the snap and dash of those worn by the Limited's personnel. Bill decided that it must have been tailored, for the same man who was wearing it now, at about the time the train was fashioned. He thought whimsically that neither had changed a particle since. Bill's eyes rested on a gold watch chain, almost as big as a dog chain, that looped across the conductor's vest and on an age-yellowed elk's tooth that dangled from it.

"Is this the train to Blissville?" he asked.

"Yep." When the conductor spoke, he revealed teeth that might have been a good match for the elk's tooth.

"When does it leave?"

The conductor took a massive gold watch from his vest pocket. He squinted at it.

"In just nine minutes, right on the button."

"Guess I'd better get aboard."

"Ye'd better if you're goin' to Blissville. We haul out on time. Got your ticket?"

"Yep." Unconsciously Bill found himself mimicking the conductor. He showed his ticket, and without even glancing at it, the conductor punched it. Bill mounted the steps, entered the car, and looked around.

The car had six seats on one side, five on the other, a washroom, and a wooden partition which evidently marked the boundaries of the passenger department. Once the seats had been neatly covered with some sort of heavy green material, but the car had been in use so long that the green cloth had worn thin. In many places the under fabric showed through.

Bill leaned back and made himself as comfortable as he could. Already, or so it seemed, he was as far from Tenngale and New York as he could possibly get. But this car certainly had history, though by the Limited's standards it was primitive. Scrawled across one side in fading red paint was, "Wild Cat Jackson rode here." In the domed top there was a ragged hole, and after careful scrutiny Bill decided that it was a bullet hole. Nor was time alone responsible for the dilapidated condition of the fabric covering the seats. Careless passengers—possibly with knives—had scuffed or cut some of it away.

Presently the conductor, still leaning on the rear platform, bellowed in a voice that would have done credit to a bull, "All abo-aa-ard!" He came in, pushed the back of one seat over so that two seats faced each other, sat down on one, put his feet on the other, and immediately went to sleep. Surprisingly smooth in spite of its ancient lineage, the train began to move.

Bill propped his elbow on the window ledge, rested his chin in his hand, and watched with great interest as they rattled up the tracks toward Blissville.

The valley, narrow enough even at Cannasport, narrowed still more as they got farther away. Down every tributary valley pitched a wild little stream and their combined volume of water made a raging torrent out of a river which would be impressively wide even in normal summer weather. There were some deserted houses along the right of way, some small cabins and shacks whose purpose Bill could not guess, unless they were used by summer vacationists, and a few farmhouses that were still inhabited.

The conductor came suddenly awake and bawled, so loudly that Bill was startled, "Debbston! All out for Debbston!" Having delivered himself of this, the man promptly went back to sleep. Bill grinned. There were no passengers except himself in the car, therefore nobody to get out at Debbston. Probably the conductor had been on this run so long that he automatically called every place they might halt.

The train drew to a stop beside a collection of a dozen houses, a man took a mail sack out, and they were off again.

Though they passed another small cluster of houses, apparently there was no reason to stop at them. Bill continued to watch, and he felt a ripple of amusement as he wondered what Johnny and Tom Crooks would say if they knew where he was and where he was going. Johnny, with his customary candor, probably would not hesitate to pronounce him crazy. Well, maybe he was.

Bill glanced at his wrist watch and saw that it lacked two hours until noon. Five minutes later the conductor awakened with another mighty roar.

"Blissville! Blissville! End of the run! Aa-lll out." He subsided to a normal tone of voice and nodded at Bill. "This is Blissville, Son."

"Thanks," Bill said.

He turned to peer at the town as they rode into it. It was more than a country village. From what he could see, Bill estimated that about three thousand people lived in Blissville; but definitely it was no city. The main section strayed along the railroad tracks, and the rest of Blissville clung to the sides of the mountain that rose behind it. The streets were quite steep, and Bill reflected idly that when there was ice on them they might be dangerous. There were a good many cars and trucks, some new and some very old, crawling like giant beetles along the streets.

The train rolled to a stop beside a small station across which BLISSVILLE was written in white on a black background. An energetic youngster in shirt sleeves and bluejeans rolled a hand cart over to receive the various parcels and mail sacks from the express-mail section of the car. At the far end of the sun-sprayed station, a furry brown and white dog lay fast asleep, and his front paws twitched as he dreamed.

Bill was a little bewildered and not at all sure of himself when, with a bag in each hand, he left the car and stepped onto the station platform. It had taken much patient research on the part of an overworked railway ticket agent just to discover Elk Shanty, and Blissville was certainly as close as any train came to it. However, the agent had assured Bill that there must be some means of transportation between Blissville and Elk Shanty. The best advice he could offer was that Bill ask after he arrived at rail's end.

Bill pushed open the station's door and a scrawny man, with a pronounced Adam's apple that bobbed up and down every time he moved, looked up from the telegraph key over which he was bending. "Howdy, friend," he said, without any preliminaries.

"How do you do," Bill replied.

"Right smartly, right smartly, now that the winter's 'bout over. There was some mis'ry when I got out of bed this mornin', but I rubbed it good with rattlesnake oil and that fixed it! Yup! That fixed it! Rattlesnake oil will fix any mis'ry!"

"I'll remember that when I get a 'mis'ry,'" Bill murmured. "Can you tell me how to get to Elk Shanty?"

"Elk Shanty! What do you want in Elk Shanty?"

Bill looked furtively about and whispered, "I'm going to rob the bank!"

"Ha!" The other's Adam's apple bobbed furiously. "Ha! That's a good 'un! I'll have to pay it some heed. Next time somebody asks me what I want in Elk Shanty I'll tell 'em I'm going to rob the bank! Ain't no bank in Elk Shanty!"

"I'd still like to get there," Bill said patiently.

"What for? Nobody wants to get to Elk Shanty."

"I do."

"What for?"

"Must be I'm crazy."

"Must be you are." The man glared suspiciously at him. "You ain't joking me again?"

"No. Is there a bus?"

"To Elk Shanty? Ha!"

"Well is there a taxi in town?"

"Yup, but it ain't runnin' and won't be for a while. It got smashed up yesterday."

"Is there any way to get to Elk Shanty?"

"Shanks' mare."

"You mean on foot?"

"That's what I mean." He looked closely at Bill. "You bound to get to Elk Shanty?"

"I thought I'd made my intentions clear."

"You could have rode with the mailman, except that he's sick and won't go today."

Bill murmured, "Another illusion shattered."

"What'd you say?"

"It seems I won't ride with the mailman."

"That's right. And if your mind's set on going to Elk Shanty, then I ain't no man to stop you. Go up to Main Street. That's the first street and you can't miss it on account there's a sign at the corner. 'Main Street' it says. Right there plain as day, 'Main Street.' Turn left to the first road that turns right, away from the river. You can't miss it on account there's another sign there. As plain as day it says—"

"Elk Shanty?" Bill guessed.

"Nope. It don't. It says 'Tower Hill Road.' But it goes to Elk Shanty. Right square down the middle of Elk Shanty it goes. Stay on the Tower Hill Road and you'll come to Elk Shanty all right."

"How far is it?"

"Depends on whether you're riding or walking, and what you might be riding. Now, if you was riding a horse—"

"Skip it," Bill said hastily. "And thanks for the information."

"No thanks needed. Didn't cost me nothing."

Bill went back out the door and up to Main Street. Some passers-by paid no attention to him, but some gazed with frank curiosity and Bill realized suddenly that he was almost the only male in town who was wearing a suit and an overcoat. The rest were dressed hunter style, in jackets or short coats and overshoes. He suppressed a rising irritation. The way some people were looking at him, it was almost as though he belonged in a zoo. Then he shrugged off their stares and strode briskly down Main Street.

As he drew near the end of town there were fewer houses; and when he left the sidewalk to strike down the concrete highway, even these were left behind. Bill felt a rising pleasure. He had always enjoyed hunting and fishing and often he had known a secret desire to live for a while in some good game and fish country. It looked as though at last that desire was going to be realized. He came to the Tower Hill Road, turned right on it, and his pleasure increased.

The concrete he had just left was part of a modern transcontinental highway, a link with all the things Bill had always known. The Tower Hill Road was gravel. Much narrower than the concrete, it was hugged tightly on both sides by sap-wet hardwood forests in which buds were already uncurling. Bill smiled with his eyes as he saw a splash of blue flowers growing right at the edge of a snow bank.

He climbed steeply, and the higher he got the more snow he found until, at the summit of the mountain, there was a foot of snow on either side. The road, however, had been plowed and the warm sun had melted such patches of snow as remained on it. Snow was still melting on both sides and little rivulets were trickling into the roadside ditches. Bill discovered abruptly why the citizens of Blissville dressed as they did.

A runlet of snow water emptied into the road, and the ditch that should have carried it off was blocked with mingled mud and rocks. A miniature pond overspread the road. It looked like a very gentle flow, but there was enough force in the water so that it had washed away all the top gravel and left nothing but soft mud.

Bill put his bags down and shook a puzzled head. If he were wearing boots, or even overshoes, the pond would not be too much of a problem. But all he wore was a pair of oxfords that had been polished and shiny when he got off the train at Blissville. He glanced down at them and saw that they were already mud-splattered. There was another pair of shoes in one of the bags, but that was all he had. He had better wait until he got to Elk Shanty, which certainly couldn't be far now, before changing. There was no point in ruining two pairs of shoes.

Meanwhile, just standing in the road would get him nowhere. He had a choice between the snow banks and the pond.

Bill picked up the bags, stepped into the water, and sank halfway to his knees in mud. But the die was cast; his feet couldn't get any wetter than they were or his trousers any muddier. Bill waded across, came to firm gravel, put his bags down, and stooped to scrape his trousers with his fingers. He wrung them partly dry.

When he picked up his bags, he sighed wearily. He had thought himself in good physical condition and able to tackle any sort of hike, but this one was exhausting. He looked at his watch, discovered that he had been walking for about an hour and a half, and plodded grimly on. It would have been a good idea to find out, from someone besides the station agent, just how far it was to Elk Shanty. But Bill had been in no mood for another long-winded explanation and he had hesitated to ask anyone on the street because they looked at him so curiously. Of one thing he was fairly certain; Elk Shanty lay down this road. Sooner or later he would find it.

The road swung down the other side of the mountain and on both sides the snow banks disappeared. Bill loosened his overcoat and let it hang open. It was spring in the valleys, but certainly it was still winter on top of the mountains. Bill stopped in his tracks.

A hundred feet ahead of him, almost like a floating gray shadow in the bright day, a white-tailed deer leaped from the side to the center of the road and stood for a second looking at him. With an effortless bound, the deer jumped clear across the road and disappeared in the timber. Five more deer, none of which stopped, followed the first, and Bill's heart began to sing again.

This was rough backwoods, but it was a good country. Even if it offered nothing else, it certainly was going to offer fine hunting. Bill wished that he had found the place before and wondered how his uncle had ever stumbled across it. A genteel drawing room, rather than this underdeveloped land, seemed more in keeping with his Uncle Al's character and tastes.

Suddenly the silence of the mountains was shattered by a rifle shot.

Bill put his bags down and listened carefully, trying to place the direction from which the shot had come and the caliber of the gun that had fired it. He knew something about firearms and he had heard tales, which he had never believed, of mountain dwellers. According to some ill-calculated fiction, all they ever did was tend stills in which they made illicit whiskey, and such time as they could spare from that interesting operation was devoted to feuding with their neighbors. Bill had always placed such stories strictly in the category of fantastic tales, but now he wasn't so sure. The place was very lonely and isolated. Anything might happen.

He heard the blast repeated and definitely identified it as no rifle shot at all, but the backfire from a car or truck. Bill moved his bags to one side of the road and waited.

The garrulous station agent had told him that nobody, excepting possibly the mailman, went to Elk Shanty and by now Bill was more than half willing to believe that. But obviously somebody besides himself was on the road and he had something to ride in. He might give him a lift. Two minutes later the vehicle rocked down the slope Bill had just descended and came in sight.

It was a red truck that had seen its best days at least a dozen years ago. One side of the windshield was broken off and a board put in its place. Both doors, neither of which had any visible glass, were tilted forward on broken hinges and wired to the hood. The hood itself, which flapped like a great bird's wings as the truck came forward, was held on with more wire. Bill held his breath because it seemed that the cab must certainly fall off. Probably that was wired on, too.

The contraption lurched to a drunken, shivering halt beside Bill and he looked with interest at the truck's occupants.

A man as lean as a wolf, and with something about him that was suggestive of a wolf's ferocious air, sat behind the wheel. He might have been thirty years old or fifty; his face was so wind and weather-beaten that nobody could make an accurate guess about his age. He was clean-shaven, but from beneath a felt hat that was as old and battered as the truck escaped long strands of curly black hair that was sadly in need of cutting.

Beside the man was a well-oiled, carefully-tended, and obviously much-loved repeating rifle. The third occupant of the truck was as fascinating as the first two.

He was a white hound whose hide was spotted by the dappling known as "blue tick." His head was so big and his jaws so long that to some extent he resembled an alligator. When the dog stood erect, if he ever did, his ears would come within three inches of brushing the ground. He owned long, strong legs and a powerful chest, but slatted ribs showed and his paunch was so lean that Bill could almost have encircled it with his two hands. The body wandered out in a thin tail that was tipped by a cluster of very long hairs.

The hound looked sadly at Bill. The man smiled, and when he did his wolfish look vanished as swiftly and completely as a puff of mist vanishes before the rising morning sun. He asked, "You walkin' because you like it?"

Bill smiled back because he couldn't help himself, and because he knew at once that there was something about this man which he could like greatly.

"No," he responded, "I'm walking because I want to get to Elk Shanty."

"I expect," the man said, as though he had just arrived at some profound decision, "that ridin' would be easier."

"I know it would!"

"Get in, then. But you'll have to set in the middle. Lamb Chops, he sort of favors the outside seat."

Bill threw his bags in the rear of the stake-bodied truck and he saw that it also contained a small gasoline engine which, as with everything else about the truck, was fastened down with wire. He walked around to the door and was about to climb in when Lamb Chops thrust his great head forth, extended a tongue the size of a wet dish towel, and enthusiastically began to lick his face. Bill drew back, sputtering.

"Your dog's very friendly, huh?"

"Tain't my dog an' he just likes you. Lamb Chops don't like everybody, neither." The man spoke as though Bill should consider himself complimented.

Keeping a wary eye on Lamb Chops, who blinked mournfully at him, Bill slid into the center seat. The hound immediately put both front paws in his lap and pushed his face very close to Bill's, as though there were something about this newcomer that he wished to study at great length. Hastily Bill slid an arm around the dog's neck and began to tickle his ear. Lamb Chops sighed, relaxed, and went to sleep sitting up.

"The name is Smith," the truck driver said. "My mother tagged me Elijah, but most folks calls me Rifle Eye."

"My name's Rawls," Bill introduced himself. "My mother named me William, but I answer to Bill."

"Good enough, Bill. We'll get movin'."

Using all his strength on the gear shift, Rifle Eye pushed it into low, shifted into second, and with a fearful clattering of gears they were moving again. However, once it was under way the truck didn't make quite so much noise and they could talk.

"How far are we from Elk Shanty?" Bill asked.

"Fourteen miles."

"Oh gosh!"

"Somethin' the matter?"

"Only that I asked the station agent at Blissville how far to Elk Shanty, and he started to tell me without ever quite getting around to it. If I'd known how far it was, I never would have set out to walk it."

"The station agent's Henry Jumas," Rifle Eye commented. "He knows quite a bit but somehow he don't ever get around to tellin' it. Not sure he ain't smart at that. Elk Shanty's nineteen miles from Blissville. You've already walked about five of it."

Lamb Chops poked a cold, moist nose into Bill's neck and Bill recoiled. Rifle Eye spoke severely.

"Now, you looky here, Lamb Chops! You got to behave yourself when we ask somebody else to ride, else I ain't goin' to take you to Blissville with me no more!"

As though properly chastened, Lamb Chops moved to his own part of the seat and devoted himself to looking out the window. Rifle Eye spoke to Bill.

"He knows all right when you tell him somethin'. Lamb Chops is smarter'n most people."

"Who does he belong to?" Bill asked, remembering that Rifle Eye had denied ownership of the white hound.

"He never yet picked nobody to belong to. Lamb Chops, he'll spend a few days here, a few days there, an' whenever he knows I'm goin' to Blissville he comes up to my place so he can ride along. Likes to get into town once in a while an' see the sights."

"He knows when you're going to Blissville?"

"Lamb Chops knows everything."

"Does he hunt?"

Rifle Eye's warm smile lighted his face again. "Nope. He could if he wanted to, but he's too smart for that. Let some other dog run its fool legs off, an' fight a varmint after they ketch it. Lamb Chops, he's got more important things to do."

A flock of wild turkeys ran across the road in front of them and Rifle Eye clattered nonchalantly on. But when they saw another deer, he stopped the truck and lovingly caressed the rifle at his side. Then he put the rifle down and drove on, speaking more to himself than to Bill.

"Reckon not. I'll wait 'til they're summer-fatted."

Bill withheld comment. He knew perfectly well that deer season was not open and would not be open until autumn. He suspected that the people in these mountains were accustomed to taking what they wanted when they wanted it. But he was not the guardian of Rifle Eye Smith's principles.

"Lot of game around here?" he asked.

"A right smart amount. Turkey, deer, few elk, bear, a shag of grouse an' squirrel, plenty of varmints."

"How about fishing?"

"You like to fish?" Rifle Eye warmed to the question.

"I love it!"

"Goin' to be around Elk Shanty long?"

"I expect to be."

"If you should be here when trout get ripe, I'll show you where we can get our hooks into some goshamighty nice ones. Fair bass, too."

Rifle Eye braked the truck to a quivering halt beside a rutted trail that led into the timber.

"I live up here," he explained. "An' I got to get my engine workin' so I can pump water an' such-like. Took the thing into Blissville to get it fixed. Elk Shanty's a mile down the road. You want to wait until I get things goin', I'll take you in."

"I'd just as soon walk," Bill said.

"Might be quicker. Maybe it will take some little time to get things goin'. Get a chance, come see me."

Bill said with real sincerity, "I'd like to. And don't forget our fishing trip."

"I won't."

Bill stepped out of the cab and a second later Lamb Chops unjointed his long body and slid out behind him. He pushed his great head against Bill's leg, and seemed to be drowsing, and Bill looked again at his scrawny mid-section. It was a real mystery how Lamb Chops ever kept his head and tail together. Bill petted the big hound.

"Looks as though he's going with me," he commented.

"He is," Rifle Eye assured him.

"But—I don't want him."

"That ain't the point. Lamb Chops wants you an' there ain't nary a thing you can do about it. Lamb Chops is a right strong-minded hound dog."

"But—"

"You'll get used to him," Rifle Eye said. "Besides, he prob'ly won't stay with you more'n three-four days, or weeks, or months, before he takes it in his head to ramble on an' stay with somebody else. Be seein' you."

The gears clashed and the truck moved up the rutted trail that led to Rifle Eye's house. Bill waited until it had disappeared, then turned to Lamb Chops. The big hound was sitting in the center of the road and he blinked sorrowfully at Bill. The boy gritted his teeth; the last thing he needed was a tramp hound.

"Look," he said reasonably, "Rifle Eye says you understand what people say. Why don't you go along now and stay with somebody else?"

But when Bill started down the road, Lamb Chops paced along beside him. Every now and then he looked up, and Bill knew a moment's uneasiness because there seemed to be an infinite wisdom and a great understanding in the hound's melancholy eyes. Hastily he banished such thoughts from his mind. Let Rifle Eye believe that Lamb Chops had a superior intellect, if he wanted to. Bill would keep his own thoughts.

Halfway down the long hill at the top of which Rifle Eye had let him out of the truck, Bill got his first look at Elk Shanty. A little creek sparkled in the sun, and he saw the road winding like an undulating brown ribbon on up the valley. Elk Shanty nestled in the valley. Around the hamlet, for about a quarter of the way up the mountain on either side, there was no forest but only scattered trees. Bill quickened his steps, anxious to reach the end of his journey.

The road wound past a clearing in which there was a weather-beaten barn and a neat white house. Three cows cropped at the new spring grass as though they would never get enough of it, chickens scratched in the barn yard, and a brown horse loafed luxuriously in the sun. A young fellow of about Bill's own age, but thirty pounds heavier, leaned over an old-fashioned rail fence that zigzagged across the front of the clearing. His face was florid, his eyes sleepy, and his lips thick and blubbery. Bill came abreast and—

"Hey, Ma!" the other yelled in a high falsetto voice. "The woodchucks are out of their winter holes! There's one going down the road right now!"

Bill felt anger rise quickly, but he controlled it. A fight was the worst possible way to begin any new venture. He kept his eyes straight ahead and walked past.

However, just as he had already discovered that he would find friends in Elk Shanty, so it seemed now that he might find enemies. It was not a comfortable feeling.