Читать книгу Biff Norris and the Clue of the Worn Saddle - John Runyan - Страница 5

BIFF NORRIS and Chip Edwards sauntered down toward the bunkhouse, thoughtfully. A gaunt, gray-haired handy man limped out of the long building, his arms loaded with blankets. Their eyes met his.

“Hi.”

Hippolito’s swarthy face was twisted with a warm, friendly grin, but his dark eyes were sharp, penetrating and unsmiling. They were eyes that missed but little of what went on about him. He was pleasant enough but he disturbed Biff unaccountably. “Buenos dias,” the tall stranger greeted them pleasantly. “Good morning.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” Chip said.

“Si, si.” He nodded his agreement. Hippolito acted as though he wanted to stop and talk with the boys, but they did not slacken pace. He went on to the barn and around the far corner, still limping painfully.

Biff and Chip watched him until he was out of sight. “Old Hippy’s quite a character, isn’t he?” the Norris boy said. “How long has he been working here on the Huerta Estancia, anyway?”

“I think he showed up here yesterday or the day before, as nearly as I can figure out. I heard Señor Huerta talking with him last night, and it sounded as though he wasn’t too familiar with things.”

“He sure keeps busy, though, for a guy with a game leg. I don’t think he’s stopped once since we’ve been here.” He picked up a twig and broke it, “He knows a lot about horses, too. You can tell that by the way he acts around them.”

“I know one thing about him,” Chip Edwards said. “He doesn’t miss much of what’s going on around here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ten minutes after Mr. Griffen discovered that the saddle was missing, old Hippy was limping around the barn taking everything in.”

“I didn’t figure him that way at all,” Biff countered. “It didn’t seem to me as though he cared at all about what was going on. I thought he was just trying to keep busy.”

They walked on past the bunkhouse toward a small calf corral.

“Could be,” Chip said without conviction. “He doesn’t act half as strange, though, as that government agent at the port acted. Remember him?”

“Come to think of it, he was a queer.”

They had just cleared customs when this Sebastian Alonzo, or so he called himself, came dashing up, breathlessly, as though he had run for a mile or two. “Your baggage it is our unfortunate duty to separate apart from each,” he said in his queer English.

Neither Biff nor Chip had quite understood what he was talking about until he moved to the huge wooden box filled with saddles and, raising the lid, began to go through its contents carefully.

Mr. Griffen saw what was happening and came hurrying over, anger glinting in his dark eyes and tinging his voice. “What’s the idea?” he demanded irritably. “Why are you going through our luggage and gear again? You have no right to do that. We just cleared customs.”

“Si.” He took his credentials from his pocket and showed them to the manager of the polo team. “I am Sebastian Alonzo, special agent of our government. We are begging your pardon, Señor, but this embarrassment is most necessary.”

He spoke pleasantly enough, but continued his search.

“It is true you have clear customs,” he said, turning back to his work, “but to be in the possibility to find these things we look for, now we must examine most closely.”

While Biff and Chip and the members of the polo team stood by, watching uneasily, two other men joined the government agent in his work.

For an hour and a half the trio labored painstakingly. Everything came out of the boxes, piece by piece. Riding gear, mallets and balls, personal belongings. The government agents checked the linings of each suitcase minutely and went through each box for false bottoms. At last, dirty and sweating, they finished the job.

Sebastian Alonzo straightened, wiped his hands on a towel, and directed his attention to Mr. Griffen.

“A thousand pardons, Señor,” he said. “It is our regrets that we have cause you this delay.”

“That’s all right,” Griffen answered testily. “But like I told you, we had just cleared customs and had declared everything we brought along. I think you owe me an explanation. What’s this all about?”

The government agent’s grin widened. “It is nothing, Señor,” he said. “It should be forget and you should have the good stay in our country. Buenos noches, Señor. Good night.”

And then he was gone. His companions stayed behind to finish the task of repacking the boxes. Once that was accomplished, they helped to load them in the van that had been rented for that purpose, flashed quick smiles as they bid them good night, and went their way.

Biff Norris turned to the polo team manager. “What was that all about, Mr. Griffen?” he asked.

Griffen’s face crinkled soberly and the fire came back into his eyes. “Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it,” he replied. “My first thought was that they suspected us of bringing contraband of some sort into the country, but now I wonder. If that had been the case, it looks as though the customs officials would have been the ones to have gone through our luggage so thoroughly.” He shook his head. “I wish I knew just what they were after. Whatever it was, it must have been important, the way they tore into everything.”

The boys talked about it later that afternoon as they jounced along the road toward the Huerta Estancia in the van that carried the big stallion, Ebony, and the gear.

“Mr. Griffen is still concerned about that search of our things the government agents made today,” Chip said.

“I don’t know as I blame him. They sure suspected us of something.”

Chip frowned. “I wonder if we’ve seen the last of this Sebastian Alonzo. I’ve got a hunch this isn’t over yet.”

Mr. Griffen said no more about it when the fellows got together at the hotel where they stopped for the night; but as soon as they reached their headquarters at the Huerta Estancia and he met their host, he asked about it.

“Who knows what the police are doing these days?” Señor Allesandro Huerta replied casually in perfect English. “They may have had to check out some sort of false tip. As I understand it, that sort of thing happens occasionally.”

“I think it must have been more than that,” the polo manager retorted. “They acted as though they were positive we had what they were looking for.”

The ranch owner shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “So long as they didn’t put you in jail, you should count yourself fortunate. Come on to the barn and I will show you where you will be stabling your horses.”

Señor Huerta showed Mr. Griffen the tack room he had emptied for their use while Chip and Biff unloaded the horses and watered and exercised them. The boys were carrying saddles into the tack room when they first met Hippolito.

“You have much work for to do, no?”

Biff laughed. “Not so much, really. Now that we’ve got the horses taken care of, we’ve only got to unload these saddles and gear.”

The gray-haired man hobbled toward the truck. “You need the help, no?”

“It’ll only take us a few minutes,” Chip replied.

“Maybe I could help you?” Hippy asked. “It is only soon that I got this job of doing that which no one else wants for to do. It is this week I come to the Huerta Estancia and Señor Allesandro Huerta say, ‘Hippy, you can try the work for me if you are able for to finding the work to do.’ ”

His smile flashed again. “So you are letting me help?”

“Sure thing,” Biff told him. “Grab a couple of those saddles. We’re taking them to the tack room.”

Hippy picked up two or three saddles and carried them into the tack room. He talked a little, casually, as they worked, but that was all. In spite of his limp, he was able to hold up his end of things, and it wasn’t long before they had the last of the gear in the tack room.

“He’s a nice old guy, isn’t he?” Biff said, locking the tack room door behind them and starting toward the bunkhouse where they would be staying with the rest of the men.

“He seems like a person who is used to a much more important job than being a ranch handy man,” Chip replied.

“Of course he’s getting older, and then he’s got that game leg.”

They were almost at the bunkhouse when Chip stopped and turned uncertainly to his companion. “Biff,” he began, “we’re going to be in the bunkhouse with the rest of the fellows, aren’t we?”

He nodded. “Sure. What about it?”

Color showed in his cheeks. “I was just wondering if–if it wouldn’t be better if we had our Bible reading and prayer out in the barn or–or somewhere away from the fellows?”

Bill looked at him quizzically. “I’ve never known that to bother you before,” he said.

“But we’re with men now. I–I’d just hate to have them think we’re religious fanatics.”

Biff hesitated. It had bothered him to bow his head and return thanks silently the first meal they had with Mr. Griffen and the fellows aboard ship. Not that anyone said anything, but one of the fellows had looked at him and Chip and had smiled depreciatively.

It would be easy to put off reading the Bible and having their evening devotions while they were living in the bunkhouse, or do as Chip suggested and hide somewhere to read, but how could that be a testimony?

“I feel the same way about it that you do,” Biff told him, “but do you suppose that’s the way God would have us to do?”

There were two or three Gauchos and a couple of American polo players in the bunkhouse when the boys came in and began to read their Bibles. They could feel the men’s eyes upon them, but nobody said anything.

Hippy came in and stood at the end of Biff’s bunk, looking at him curiously. Then he limped slowly away.

In spite of the momentary embarrassment, Biff had a warm feeling inside when they turned in that night. The feeling that comes from knowing that they had not been ashamed of the Gospel of Christ and the fact that they were Christians.

After the incident of the stolen saddle, the boys half expected Mr. Griffen to change their plans and leave the Huerta Estancia immediately, but he did not. He said no more about it beyond protesting mildly when Biff and Chip moved out of the bunkhouse to one of the box stalls near the tack room.

“It’s not necessary at all,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is see that the door is locked after you and we won’t have any trouble.”

“Just the same, we’d feel a little better if we were closer so we can keep an eye on it,” Biff said.

“Well, suit yourself.” He turned and walked away.

The first two or three days there was very little for Biff and Chip to do around the Estancia. They fed and watered the horses, exercising them during the mornings; in the afternoons they rode about the pampas or loafed in the shade.

Every now and then Hippolito would stop and talk with them. They soon got well acquainted with him and learned to like him a great deal. They helped him a little with his work, and he helped them with theirs when he had the time. He came out to the barn in the evenings to talk with them until it was time for bed. On one such occasion he came up to the box stall where they had spread out their bedrolls when they were again having devotions.

He saw the Bible and glanced up at Biff who was reading. “Again you are having the reading, no?” he said.

“We’re reading from the Bible,” the Norris boy explained, holding up the well-worn leather-covered book. “It’s our custom to read the Bible and pray together every night before we go to bed.”

Hippy took the Bible and looked at it, thumbing through the pages, carefully. “Why?” he asked simply, as though he had never heard of anyone doing that.

“We want to read the Bible so we’ll know how God wants us to live,” Chip added. “At least that’s one of the main reasons. We’re Christians and a Christian should live the way Christ wants him to and not the way he wants to live himself.”

“And we read the Bible so we’ll know how He wants us to live,” Biff repeated.

Hippolito Uriburu went over and sat down across from them. “It is all right I should stay?” he asked.

They finished their Bible reading, prayed, and spent half an hour or so talking with Hippy about what it meant to be a Christian. He seemed interested in a general way.

“If you’ll bring your Bible over tomorrow some time,” Biff said, “I’ll mark some verses for you so you can read some of those things for yourself in Spanish. It would probably be a little easier for you to understand in your language.”

“My Bible?” he echoed. “I don’t have a Bible.”

That evening after he left, Chip suggested that they get a Spanish Bible for Hippy.

“But where?” Biff asked. “I don’t even know where we could borrow a Spanish Bible for him, let alone buy one.”

“Didn’t they mention a little town around here somewhere?” Chip asked. “Surely they’d have a Bible for sale if we got to town.” The next morning he asked Señor Huerta about it and he told him how to get to Maxima.

“But it is only a small village,” he said. “I don’t know whether you would be able to buy a Spanish Bible there or not.”

There was a question in his voice that revealed his curiosity as to what the American boys wanted with a Spanish Bible, but he did not put it into words.

They both had hoped that they would be able to ride in to Maxima that afternoon, but Mr. Griffen unexpectedly decided that the ponies and men had rested enough and called for a practice match with a team of Gauchos. Chip and Biff had to help with the horses, saddling them before the game and cooling them when the players changed horses between chukkers. It was two or three days later before they had time to do anything on their own.

At their first opportunity to get away, Biff borrowed one of the relief mounts, and Chip put the western type saddle he had brought from Aunt Caroline’s ranch on Ebony, and they rode off toward Maxima. It was only six or seven miles into town, but they went from one store to another before finding a Bible, and it was almost dinner time when they got out on the trail once more.

“We’re going to have to hurry or we’ll miss out on something to eat,” Biff said, touching his pony in the flanks with his heels.

They saw a rider approaching but paid little attention to him until they were almost face to face with him. The boys reined up in surprise.

“You!” Biff Norris exclaimed.

Sebastian Alonzo smiled politely. “Esta V. siempre bueno?” he asked blandly. “Do you continue in good health?”

“What are you doing up here?” Chip blurted.

“What would you say should I tell you it is to enjoy the beautiful ride in the pampas?”

“It would seem funny to me that you’d come away out here to go horseback riding,” Chip commented.

“And so it is. Buenos noches, amigos.” He touched the rim of his hat lightly in an informal little salute and rode on.

The boys turned and stared at him.