Читать книгу The Green Eagle: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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It was not a suspicion of anything definite around the Broken Circle Dude Ranch that led Ben Duck to go riding in the early night. Ben had no definite suspicions at the beginning of the evening jog, although before the ride ended, it was a different story.

An intense inward rage really led Ben Duck to go riding.

One of the dude guests had said, “Donald Duck can guide us up to the Forks tomorrow.”

Ben Duck overheard this. He got mad and went riding to cool off, and to take stock of himself.

Because Ben Duck was a genuine cowboy, it was hurting his dignity to work on a dude outfit. He particularly resented being called Donald Duck by guests who were almost strangers. Donald Duck! It gave him a slow burn.

He rode away alone. He rode the west trail, up through the jack pines that grew in thick green clusters on the mountainside. It was steep going. The iron shoes on his pinto pony struck sparks from the flinty rocks. “Easy does it, Patches,” he muttered sympathetically to the horse. Later he got off and walked, digging in with the high heels of his boots, spurs jingling.

He sat on a hilltop and frowned at Wyoming in the night. In the west, the Teton Mountains were snow-covered and jaggedly majestic and white in the moonlight.

“I’m gonna tear into the next dude,” Ben said, “that calls me Donald Duck.”

And get fired. And be without a job. And jobs were scarce, even for a top hand. That wasn’t the remedy. Ben shook his head slowly.

If he even looked like the movie Donald Duck, or sounded like him, it would have been different. He might have excused the dudes. But, although he had no great admiration for the entertaining Donald, he had no desire to emulate him in action or appearance. Furthermore, he didn’t look in the least like the movie cartoon Donald Duck. Or did he?

If those dudes wanted to call him Donald Duck, he’d have to take it. The dudes paid eighteen dollars a day. For that money, they could call the hired help Donald Ducks if they wanted to.

Precious little of the eighteen dollars a day found its way into Ben’s pocket.

No salary would be worse, however.

The remedy would be simple. Own a little ranch of his own, a spread in some valley with a few dogies. A valley that was not so high up in the mountains that there was killing cold in winter, but high enough that summer range could be had up around the timber line. There was just one difficulty. It took money to buy a spread. And money was one thing Ben did not have.

“A danged dude wrangler,” he described himself disgustedly.

He thought of what his dad’s opinion would have been of his present status in the world, and shuddered. Old Man Duck had chased the Indians out of western Montana to make room for a whopping big cow outfit, and he rode the crest until he picked a fight with a group of encroaching nesters, and didn’t draw quick enough. Between the time they laid Old Man Duck in his grave, and the time Ben was big enough to do anything about it, the nesters took over the country and homesteaded all the Duck range. A bank eventually got the ranch, and an uncle got young Ben. Uncle Spud. About all Uncle Spud had been able to teach young Ben was to ride, fight, and be honest. Uncle Spud had trapped beaver for a living. Three years ago he had frozen to death in a March blizzard. Young Ben had gone out into the world and discovered it was hard to make a living punching cows.

“Donald Duck,” Ben said. He said it through his teeth.

After an hour or so he was soothed by the vastness of Wyoming in the moonlight. He climbed on Patches and rode silently down the path. It was purely accident that he was so silent, but he managed to surprise a man on the path.

Ben pulled the horse to a stop and watched the man ahead. The man was turning around and around strangely—and strangely was a mild word for it—on the path. He was a long man dressed darkly, except for his chaps, which were made from the hide of a black-and-white pinto pony. Ben recognized the chaps. He had resented them, because the pony skin was the color of Patches’ hide. The man was Albert Panzer, one of the Broken Circle dudes.

Ben watched Albert Panzer stop turning around and around and drop face-down on the path. He made a move to ride forward, but did not. Another man came out of the greasewood bushes beside the trail and stooped over the one who had fallen.

Ben Duck was quite calm. He liked to know exactly what he was doing before he did a thing. So he did not ride forward. He sat there and watched. The moonlight was bright. Very bright.

The man who had come out of the bushes was searching Albert Panzer. Thoroughly, too. Feeling out garment seams, scratching buttons with the point of a knife, thrusting a pin into hat felt and belt leather. Finally he pried off Albert Panzer’s boot heels, examining them carefully, then hammered them back. He had thoughtfully prepared himself with a hammer and a piece of metal for the operation on the boot heels.

Ben Duck suddenly decided who the searcher was.

“McCain,” Ben said, shaping the name soundlessly with his lips.

It must be McCain, although he could not see the man’s face. McCain was one of the dudes. He had arrived at the Broken Circle four days ago, ostensibly from San Francisco. Ben Duck had an eerie feeling about the fellow from the first. McCain was so thorough about everything he did. It was unnatural. Ben had seen McCain practicing horseshoe pitching. McCain had tossed eleven ringers in succession. McCain had not known anyone was watching.

McCain’s white hair made his age indeterminate, but he was a large man who walked with a definite limp. His blue eyes had a glasslike quality. He spoke very seldom in a rather nasal voice. Mostly he kept to himself, limping about the neighborhood of the ranch.

Limp— Limp— He wasn’t limping now. Ben Duck frowned. It was McCain, all right. But McCain wasn’t limping tonight.

Ben felt of his six-shooter. It was one of the dude-ranch props, and wearing it had embarrassed him. It was loaded with blanks, but genuine .45-caliber cartridges studded Ben’s wide stamped leather belt.

Ben started to put genuine bullets in the six-gun in place of the blanks, then changed his mind. He was one cowboy who couldn’t hit the side of a bunkhouse with a hand gun. Genuine cowboys of this day didn’t wear six-guns. He had shot lots of coyotes on the run with a rifle. He didn’t have a rifle, though.

McCain, and he wasn’t limping.

McCain finished his examination of Albert Panzer. Apparently he had not taken anything. But what a thorough search he had given Panzer.

While Ben Duck was deciding to step forward and bluntly accost McCain, the latter suddenly vanished into the greasewood shadows. He went suddenly, silently, and after he disappeared there was no sound or movement to show what he had done. He might still be there. He might have gone.

Ben Duck moved his shoulders impatiently, because there was a creepy sensation up and down his back. He decided to put some real bullets in the six-gun anyway. He tilted the cylinder out and ejected the cylindrical brass blanks into his palm. The plump weight of the genuine bullets was reassuring as he stuffed them into the cylinder chambers.

He was conscious of feeling a little dizzy, and then it got quite dark. The darkness was pleasant, somewhat like sleep.

The next thing Ben Duck knew, a hand was slapping his face. A voice was saying, “Hey, wake up!” It was a familiar voice.

It was Albert Panzer’s voice. Panzer was bending over Ben and slapping him and shaking his shoulders.

“That’s enough,” Ben said. He pushed Panzer away.

Panzer seemed to be all right. Panzer looked as if he felt fine. Ben felt all right, too, for that matter.

“I guess you fainted,” Panzer said.

Ben hesitated. Finally, “I guess I did,” he said.

Albert Panzer laughed shakily. “Maybe it was something we ate.”

“Eh?”

“I fainted, too.”

“You did?”

“Yes. After I came to my senses, I found you lying here.”

Ben Duck looked around. He was in the same spot where he had been standing when he got dizzy and it became dark.

“How was it?” Ben asked.

“Was what?”

“Fainting. How’d it feel?”

Panzer said, “I got dizzy. I kept trying to stand up and couldn’t. I remember I thought it was the altitude. Say! Maybe it was the altitude!”

“It hit me the same way,” Ben said.

“Probably it was the altitude.”

There was a silence. Albert Panzer was probably thinking. Ben Duck was thinking, too—about Panzer. Albert Panzer had been a dude guest of the Broken Circle for almost two weeks. It would be two weeks tomorrow. He had registered from Chicago. He had said he operated a dressed-poultry business in Chicago, and he had talked a great deal about it. Ben decided he could not put his finger on anything out-of-the-way about Panzer.

“It must have been the altitude,” Albert Panzer said.

Ben got up and dusted off his tight fawn-colored whipcord breeches. Such movie cowboy pantaloons was another thing he detested.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “These high altitudes are funny.”

They weren’t that funny, he thought. He had hunted elk on the highest mountain peaks in Wyoming, and the only difference he had noticed was that you had to do a lot of breathing to get your air.

Albert Panzer bent and picked something off the ground. “Here, don’t forget this,” he said.

Ben looked at the object.

“Huh?” he said.

“You dropped it,” Panzer explained.

“I did?”

“It was lying on your chest,” Panzer added.

Ben took the thing. He was interested. The thing was about five inches square and half an inch thick. It was one of those puzzles where you roll BB-shot into holes. There were—he struck a match and counted them—ten shot, and ten holes for them. Bottom and sides were tin; the top was glass. There was a picture of an eagle, and the holes for the shot were in that. The eagle was green, with yellow beak, yellow talons. There was a verse. A rather goofy verse. It read:

Hand and eye, wandering,

Down and down, pondering,

Up and up, meandering,

North face,

Wins race.

The match he was holding burned Ben Duck’s fingers, and he dropped it, yelped and sucked a finger. “That poetry?” he asked.

“It’s kind of punk poetry,” Albert Panzer said.

“And it was lying on my chest?”

“Yes.”

“Very remarkable,” Ben Duck said.

Remarkable might not be the word for it; strange might be a better one. One sure thing, he had never seen that puzzle gadget before. He shook it, and the buckshot rattled around and two of them fell into holes. He said, “It’s an easy puzzle, ain’t it?” He put the thing inside his shirt, after finding it was a little too large for any of his pockets.

There was a flashlight in one of the saddlebags. Ben used light from this to examine the ground very carefully. Albert Panzer was made curious by Ben’s search. “I lost a dime around somewhere,” Ben said. The statement was not true. He wondered why he was deceiving Panzer.

There was no more sign of tracks than of a dime.

“You might as well give it up, Donald,” Panzer said.

“My name ain’t Donald,” Ben Duck said.

He climbed on his horse.

The thing didn’t end there. Ben had half suspected it wouldn’t. He could not bring himself to believe that he had fainted there on the trail, he decided after he got back to the ranch. Nor had it been something they’d had for dinner. Nor the altitude.

Ben laid in his bunk and thought about it. The distant howling of coyotes made a lullaby that finally put him to sleep. The Broken Circle Ranch might be a phony dude outfit, and the cowhands phony dude wranglers, but at least this was the genuine West where the coyotes howled.

Ben awakened violently. Hands were around his throat, choking. There was weight across his legs.

It soaked into Ben’s head eventually that two men were trying to choke him. He was a sound sleeper. It took some moments to get himself organized. Meanwhile, no air was entering his lungs.

He remembered that he’d hung his spurs on a nail over his bunk. He groped, found the spurs. They were elaborate, silver-mounted things, and they had rowels like buzz saws.

With a spur in each hand, he proceeded to stab and strike. He found a face, concentrated on it. Judging from the sound, he ripped the spur across some teeth. The man made a small sound of agony, like a hurt pup.

“Sh-h-h-h!” his companion hissed.

The hurt man blew up. “He’s ruinin’ my face!” he squawked. “Help me!”

The second man let go Ben’s legs. That was a mistake. A cowboy rides all day and uses his legs to hang onto the horse, so the legs become useful. Ben kicked twice, hit a target both times. One attacker landed with a loud noise on the floor.

The other let go Ben’s throat, and tried to find Ben’s arms and hold them. He failed. Ben gouged him in the face with the spur and drove him away.

“I hadda leggo ’im!” the man gasped.

“Grab him again,” said the man on the floor. “We got to take him out in the hills.”

Ben had groped and found his belt with the six-gun. He drew and blasted away. The shells in the gun were blanks, but they didn’t sound like it. They were deafening.

The pair of assailants fled. Ben glimpsed their silhouettes briefly against the open door, but they were too convulsed by fleeing action for him to tell much about them.

Ben made a mistake. He did not wait to draw on his boots. He plunged outside, stabbed his feet on sharp rocks, speared them on cactus, finally had to stop. He retraced his way to the bunkhouse door in agony and sat on the stoop, listening to the sounds of two horses going away.

By now, the other cowhands had started appearing. The bunkhouse was a long one, and Ben had been sleeping alone in a section at the far end which had formerly been a harness room. It gave him, in effect, a private room.

“I was just takin’ my nightly exercise,” Ben told them dryly.

Carl d’Orr appeared. He owned the Broken Circle. Carl d’Orr was a man with the clothes ideas of a movie hero, and the figure of a pot-bellied financier. He was no cowman, not even a Westerner. Ben had overheard him call a heifer a steer, and Ben had thereafter held his own opinions of a boss who couldn’t tell the sex of a cow.

Carl d’Orr seemed to be enraged. He was holding a large white handkerchief to his face, and the handkerchief was thoroughly bloodsoaked.

“What’s this damned uproar?” D’Orr yelled.

“Visitors,” Ben said.

“Who? Where?” D’Orr kept the handkerchief to his nose, and it was large enough to obscure most of his face.

“Last I heard, they was high-tailin’ it for the hills,” Ben said. “They tried to choke me.”

“Choke you?”

“I guess maybe it was a robbery,” Ben amended.

D’Orr coughed into the handkerchief. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain.

“What did they get?” he snapped.

“I dunno,” Ben said. “I ain’t looked.”

“Well, look and see,” D’Orr ordered irritably.

The puzzle, the little thing of tin and glass and ten steel balls, where you rolled the balls into holes in a green eagle, was gone. Ben had placed it on the shelf over his bunk, so he was immediately sure that it was gone.

He looked in the tangled bunk bedclothes, and under the bunk, to make certain that it had not merely been jarred off the shelf.

In sudden alarm he examined the tobacco tin in which he was in the habit of hiding his money. A relieved breath escaped him. His wealth was intact.

He went back outdoors.

“They didn’t get nothin’,” he said.

“You sure?” D’Orr asked. D’Orr still had the handkerchief to his face.

Ben looked out over the crowd. Some of the dudes had gotten out of bed to see what was happening. Ben located Albert Panzer. But there was no sign of McCain.

“I guess I chased them hombres away,” Ben said, “before they had time to glom onto my bank roll.”

D’Orr snapped, “One of you men call the sheriff and tell him about this.”

Ben eyed D’Orr curiously. “What’s the matter with your schnozzle?” he asked.

“I jumped out of bed and bumped into a blasted door,” said D’Orr shortly. He walked away.