Читать книгу Ulysses and His Woodland Zoo - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 4

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Ulysses Grant Jones, who didn't think it possible for Mr. William Travers to get any madder, at the same time saw nothing to be gained by tempting fate. He closed the door of Travers' Department Store and Supermarket, wherein the owner was orating at supersonic speed, and, to some extent, muffled the most vehement sequence of opinions, all derogatory, that he'd ever heard expressed anywhere by anyone. But Ulysses—and at least half the population of Mesquite—heard very plainly Mr. Travers' concluding bellow.

"And don't ever come back!"

Ulysses sighed lugubriously and buttoned his thin coat around his chest. He was dismayed. To drop ten crates, each of which had contained twelve dozen perfectly saleable eggs, was cause enough for mortification. But to drop them in such a manner that not a single egg survived the downfall, was a feat that could have been successfully performed by almost nobody except Ulysses Grant Jones in person.

Ulysses sighed again and looked without enthusiasm at the cars that were traveling down Highway 63, into the desert or up it into the mountains. It was an ideal way to travel and some drivers would stop for a hitchhiker, especially if the hiker happened to be eighteen years old, clean and gifted with two appealing brown eyes and a shock of light brown hair. But Ulysses still shuddered when he recalled the driver who had picked him up back in Ohio, a few light years away.

He hadn't really been responsible for the crash, but he hadn't dared hitch a ride since. The jinx that rode his shoulders must not, if he could help it, be inflicted on any more innocent bystanders.

He made his way across the main street of Mesquite, Arizona—population 307 when everybody was home, which they usually weren't because anybody who could get out of Mesquite did so—and came to the railroad tracks. He was through in Mesquite almost as soon as he started. It was now just short of noon, and Mr. Travers had hired him as boy of all work only this morning. Nor, as Ulysses had discovered from previous canvassing, had anyone else in the town needed anybody to do anything.

Ulysses trudged moodily up the tracks, reviewing his scarcely dazzling career as he stepped from wooden tie to wooden tie. His parents had died when he was nine months old, and the uncle who brought him up had never let him forget that he was the great-grandson of a hero who'd distinguished himself in the War between the States. It was a proud heritage, one that Ulysses must be worthy of. Ulysses did his best, and succeeded fairly well until he was five years old. Then things in general not only went wrong, but nothing ever went right.

On his fifth birthday, playing in a sandbox that a strong man couldn't have lifted, Ulysses still managed to upset it on himself and the four little guests his aunt had invited to the festivities. Thereafter he was dogged by the same jinx. When he tried roller skating, the wheels came off his skates. His wary aunt never let him help with housework; if he wasn't breaking furniture and vases, he was smashing dishes and windows. He was a good scholar, but the first night he invited the girl of his dreams to a dance, even though there was just one bottle of ink in the entire hall and that was high on a shelf, Ulysses managed to spill it on her dress.

Graduating from high school, he was given a job by his contractor uncle and applied himself assiduously to the various duties of an apprentice carpenter. The first day, he sawed roof rafters to a perfect pattern—but six inches short. The second, he roughed out kitchen cupboards nicely enough but put them in the living room. The third, transferred to the plumbing department, he connected the gas furnace to the water main and the water pipes to the gas line. The fourth, he and his uncle had a heart to heart talk. The uncle had a friend on the West Coast, he told Ulysses, and the friend was in the shipping business. Wouldn't Ulysses like to learn that instead of contracting?

Ulysses would. Equipped with ample funds, he saw no reason to pay for transportation when it would be far more adventurous to hitchhike. The first night out, a genial young chance acquaintance who was also hitchhiking west relieved him of all his money. Not daring to go back, Ulysses could only go on and all the rest was almost too horrible to contemplate.

Though he'd held none of them for more than two weeks, he'd acquired, and been summarily fired from, jobs all the way from his home in Pennsylvania to Mesquite, Arizona. Now, with his total resources consisting of a dime, two nickels and three pennies, he was still headed west.

It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten to buy and mail his usual card in Mesquite. It was always a cheerful card and it always contained a variation of the same message; he was well, having a wonderful time and still hitchhiking. But somewhere up the line there'd be another town and he'd mail a card from there.

The highway, with its tempting stream of westbound cars and trucks, paralleled the railroad. Ulysses glanced enviously at it, then put Satan behind him and stayed on the tracks. Probably he could get a ride, but with the crash in Ohio still haunting him, he didn't dare. It was difficult to understand how even he could wreck a train.

On this line, however, trains were not so numerous that there was danger of the tender of one overrunning the caboose of another. Ulysses roused suddenly to the fact that he had walked for three hours without a single sign of anything that remotely resembled the trusty iron horse. At the same moment, he discovered that he had walked right out of the desert.

That had been cactus, scrub and boulders. This was grassland, with dark splashes of juniper and piñon pine. It was also, as Ulysses remembered afresh when a blast of cold wind snapped like an angry dog at his thin coat, November. Still the mountains towered in the distance, and, since he could neither stay here nor go back, it followed that he must cross them. Just then he heard a train.

It was coming out of the desert, from Mesquite, and on this stiff climb it was panting like an over-worked dog. Ulysses chose a level stretch of track and stepped behind a convenient piñon pine to wait; passengers who boarded without first buying tickets seldom gave brakemen and conductors reason to leap with joy. Presently, still laboring on an upgrade, the train came beside him.

Ulysses ran alongside a gondola, grabbed the ladder, swung up and climbed down into the empty car. It was not a luxurious environment, since the car had contained coal, and gritty coal dust whirled in a stifling cloud every time the car jerked, which it seemed to do every nine feet. But it was better than facing the cold wind, and, more to the point, it was out of sight of the train crew.

Pulling his coat a little tighter, Ulysses bent his head and beguiled the hours by thinking of a roaring fire-place flanked by a table whereon reposed a roast turkey, a gallon of mashed potatoes, two gallons of steaming coffee, four mince pies—and nobody except himself to partake. He rode thus for some hours, and in the furtive glances he allowed himself over the gondola's rim, he discovered that the country was still changing. Here there was little grass land and no piñon pine. The juniper forest was thick, with occasional yellow pines. Definitely, as they climbed higher, it became colder.

Some time after nightfall, the train stopped as though in need of rest. Ulysses unwound himself, thereby discovering that he was not really frozen solid, and climbed stiffly out of the gondola to make a stealthy way along the stalled train. He came to a boxcar whose door stood invitingly open and at once accepted the invitation.

The boxcar, besides being cleaner than the gondola, was considerably warmer. At one end was a heap of cartons which, though not the softest bed Ulysses had ever known, seemed like goosedown itself compared to the layer of gritty coal dust in the gondola. Ulysses snuggled down on them. By the time the train started again, he was fast asleep.

When he awoke it was morning, and he knew at once where he was because, considering the pattern his life had taken recently, he'd have been astonished not to awaken and peer from a freight car at some town he'd never before seen. Ulysses made his way to the open door and peeked out.

The train was obviously on a siding, and the frame depot that met Ulysses' questing gaze bore the legend CONIFER. Beneath, in smaller letters, was printed, 'Elev. 7150 ft.'

The town that lay beyond, evidently the town of Conifer, was not big. It was long, with most of the residences and business places sprawled out along a single street that was also the principal east-west highway. All about, tall pines rustled in the little breeze that was stirring and looked strangely black against the two inches of snow that lay on their boughs and also on the town of Conifer. Obviously it was, or had been, hunting season. Most of the cars that were parked in Conifer had frozen bucks strapped on their fenders and most of the houses that could be seen had deer either hanging on the porches or depending from tripods in the yard.

Ulysses, who'd observed many strange towns and cities, was not unduly impressed by his first glimpse of Conifer, or by anything else except the fact that he seemed to have eaten his last meal forty-seven days ago. Watching his chance, he leaped lightly from the boxcar. The instant his feet touched the snow, the train started to move.

For a moment Ulysses stood indecisively. Trains were few on this line and there was no telling when the next one would come along. But distances were great and how far was it to the next town? Regardless of the distance, Ulysses was pretty sure he'd never live to get there unless he got something to eat first. He made his way to the depot, tried his best to ignore a skinny clerk who looked remarkably like a squirrel and stared at him, made himself as presentable as circumstances would permit in the washroom, then set out to try his luck.

Since he had eyes for nothing except a restaurant and thoughts for nothing except food, his first impressions of the town were not razor-sharp. Conifer, or so it seemed, was populated exclusively by booted and jacketed hunters who were either just getting into cars or just getting out of them. They talked in loud voices, jostled each other and hooted insults at other booted and jacketed hunters on the opposite side of the street. But nobody became angry, and, even though he could think of little except something to eat, Ulysses felt dimly that he might learn to like this place.

He entered the Ski-Hi Cafe, Meals at All Hours, simply because that was the first one he came to. Like everything else in Conifer, it was crowded with hunters. But Ulysses spied an empty chair at the counter, sat down and picked up a menu.

He began at the top, with the special rancher's breakfast, and obviously the ranchers around Conifer, or at least such of them as ate this breakfast, were trenchermen of no small stature. It included fruit or fruit juice, coffee, cereal, steak, eggs, fried potatoes, toast, and it cost two dollars and sixty-five cents. Bacon and eggs were a dollar fifteen, and everything else on the list, with the exception of the final item, was soaringly outpriced. The single tidbit with which Ulysses might hope to allay his hunger pangs was a grilled hamburger sandwich that cost twenty-five cents.

"Yours?" the crisply-starched waitress asked, pausing in front of him.

Ulysses fingered the coins in his pocket. "Er—Can you give me a twenty-three-cent hamburger?" he asked.

"Hamburgers," the waitress said, "are twenty-five cents."

"I know. But—but I—" Ulysses stammered.

"I'll come back when you make up your mind," said the waitress and dashed off to serve somebody who could make up his mind.

Ulysses sat numbly on his chair, scarcely caring if the world came to an abrupt end because, obviously, any change would be a vast improvement. On the point of asking the waitress if he might work out the extra two cents, in time he remembered the disasters and near-disasters in which his previous gainful employment had inevitably culminated. Trouble was his shadow, and just at that moment he writhed at the very thought of bringing any more upon himself or making any for anyone else.

"Are you hungry, Bud?" someone asked.

Ulysses needed a moment to deduce that the question had been addressed to him, and then he turned to face three men sitting at a table intended for four. In order to accommodate an anticipated rush of hunters, extra tables had been crowded onto the floor and the three men sat almost at Ulysses' elbow. All three were dressed in hunting garb and needed shaves, but rough clothing and whiskers were not an adequate disguise for the successful business or professional men that these three were when they were not hunting. The one who'd addressed Ulysses, a middle-aged man with jet-black hair and wise brown eyes, repeated his question.

"Are you hungry, Bud?"

"Come to think of it," replied Ulysses, "I am."

The black-haired man nodded at the waitress. "Bring him the ranchers' breakfast." He turned back to Ulysses. "Sit down with us."

Ulysses sat down, unable to account for this manna but with no intention of questioning it. He ate the special ranchers' breakfast. Then he ate an order of ham and eggs. Then he remembered his manners.

"Gee, thanks!" he said, looking at the black-haired man. "Thanks, Mr.—"

"Corson," his benefactor said. "Pete Corson. This is my brother Joe and this is John Breedlaw."

Ulysses acknowledged the introductions and introduced himself, "I'm Ulysses Grant Jones."

"Where did you come from?" Pete Corson asked.

"Off the freight train," Ulysses answered honestly. "I have a job in San Diego, always supposing I can get there."

"What kind of a job?" Pete pressed.

"I don't know," Ulysses admitted. "It's with a friend of my uncle."

"And who," asked Pete, "is your uncle?"

Ten minutes and thirty-three questions later, Ulysses had provided his benefactors with the information that he was eighteen years old, unmarried, in no trouble with the law, a high-school graduate, of reasonably good character, and sundry additional statistics. Pete Corson left the table, entered the phone booth, incarcerated himself therein for some minutes . . . and returned.

"You're telling the truth," he advised Ulysses.

"Why—I—I—" Ulysses stammered. "Why sure I am."

"I know you are because I just talked with the Chief of Police in your home town," Pete stated. "He seems to be a nice chap. How'd you like a job right here?"

Ulysses hesitated. He'd left his uncle's house in mid-June and should have reported in San Diego a week later. It was now mid-November. Even if the job was still open, it was not unreasonable to suppose that his uncle's friend would be able to restrain his enthusiasm for employees who were slightly tardy in reporting for work.

"I'd consider it," Ulysses answered finally.

Pete Corson said, "You've got it."

Ulysses took a second thought. He'd met many people since leaving his uncle's house, and not all of them were the sort he'd like to have along if he were marooned on a desert island. But this man passed that test with flying colors. Why, though, with his genius for trouble, should he inflict himself on a person who'd been so very decent?

"I'd better not," he said.

"Why?" Pete Corson asked.

"Because—" Ulysses began with the time he upset the sandbox on his birthday guests and ended with the ten crates of eggs that had been so unceremoniously converted into omelette mix in Mr. Travers' store. He included everything in between. "I don't do it intentionally," he finished, "but I just can't seem to help myself. I'm a jinx."

"Did you ever wreck a place by just living in it?" Pete Corson asked.

"Not that I remember," Ulysses told him.

"Then the job's still open. A place to stay, all you can eat and seventy-five a month."

"For just living somewhere?" Ulysses asked incredulously.

"Well, living and watching. Keep porcupines and other varmints out, see that mice don't overrun it—and a few little things like that."

"Where is it?" Ulysses gasped.

"We'll show you," Pete Corson answered.

The four got into Pete Corson's station wagon, that was nearly as long as the box car Ulysses had ridden but somewhat more luxurious, and headed out of Conifer. Their way took them down a narrow and obviously little-traveled road that was flanked on both sides by brooding pines. There was just enough snow to lend exactly the right touch of enchantment, and Ulysses liked it better the farther they went. When eight deer leaped across the road, went a little way into the pines and halted to stare, he gasped in disbelief. Deer were something one found in parks.

"Why didn't you shoot?" he asked breathlessly.

"Deer season closes today," Pete Corson stated. "Anyhow, all three of us have our bucks."

A measured nineteen miles from Conifer, Pete Corson made a right-angle turn down a still narrower road whose entrance was marked by a rustic sign. Segments of pine branches, cleverly placed in a frame of larger branches, spelled out, "Arcadia Sportsmen's Club. Members only." A mile down that road, they came to the lodge.

"There it is," Pete Corson said.

Ulysses gasped, for there indeed it was, a massive log structure. The native-stone chimney at the far end would dwarf an ordinary dwelling. A mountain of wood, some fireplace chunks and some range-size pieces, neatly stacked, practically filled an open-faced shed that formed one of a cluster of outbuildings. Elk antlers, the first Ulysses had ever seen, hung over the door. The whole place suggested expensive good taste.

"There's all the food you can eat inside and all the wood you can burn outside," Pete Corson said. "The water's been shut off for the winter and the pipes drained, but there's a good well. The electricity's off, too—winter winds blow the wires down, but you'll find lamps."

"Seventy-five a month and everything else for just living here!" breathed Ulysses, and at the same time he was trying to stifle a most uncomfortable feeling that there was more to this than met the eye.

"For living here as winter caretaker," Pete Corson amended this. "By the way, club property extends a mile in any direction."

"And I'm caretaker for all of it?" Ulysses questioned.

"All of it," Pete Corson assured him.

"And no work to do?" Ulysses pursued.

"Taking proper care," Pete Corson replied, "is work."

"Now tell me the truth," Ulysses suggested. "Why do you really want someone here in winter?"

To this blunt and wholly unexpected query, Pete Corson had no immediate answer. But after a moment he delivered a thoroughly honest reply.

"To keep out pilferers," he said, "to watch for accidents, such as broken windows and such. To keep the place from being overrun with mice, and also because our insurance is voided unless we have someone here for twelve months out of the year."

"Oh," said Ulysses, who knew almost nothing about insurance but thought it sounded very businesslike. "Why didn't you hire someone you knew?"

Pete Corson remained honest. "Everyone we know knows this place," he confessed. "From the time the first heavy snow falls, which might be any day between now and mid-January, until the time it melts, which might be the first of April or the tenth of May, whoever may be here stays here. He can't even get into Conifer, and not many people care for that sort of isolation. If you take the job, you'll be snowbound. Do you still want it?"

"I still want it," Ulysses declared. "Now if you'll show me around. Then I'll be very grateful if you'll wait long enough for me to write a letter to my uncle. I want to tell him I have a new job."