Читать книгу The Green Eagle: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5
ОглавлениеWATER AND FOOD
The next morning, Ben Duck found Albert Panzer seated on the top rail of the branding corral. Ben climbed up beside Panzer and borrowed cigarette makings.
“Feelin’ the altitude any this mornin’?” Ben asked.
“No,” Panzer said. He was silent for a while. “That was kind of queer, wasn’t it? The way we fainted, I mean.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben agreed. “Lot of queer things in this world, though.”
Ben cupped his chin in his palm and smoked thoughtfully. He watched a dude walk into the nearby horse corral and catch and saddle a pony. The dude, a man, treated the horse roughly, and as soon as he was in the saddle, the horse threw him, which gave Ben some satisfaction.
“They’re right intriguin’, though,” he said.
“What?” asked Panzer.
“The queer things in this world,” Ben explained. He blew several smoke rings, only one of which was of satisfactory perfection. “By the way,” he ventured, “did you say anything last night before you went to bed about what happened to us?”
Panzer nodded. “Why, yes, I did.”
“Who to?”
“Well, let’s see.” Panzer considered. “Hard to say. It was in the bar. There was a bunch of them around.”
“Was D’Orr there?”
“Yes, I think he was.”
“How about McCain?”
“I didn’t see him around.”
Ben flipped his cigarette at the corral dust. “I see,” he said. “You just told the story about us fainting to some people in the bar. Any of them remark on the strange coincidence?”
“They thought I was drunk,” Panzer said disgustedly.
“We weren’t, were we?”
“I don’t drink,” Panzer said.
“I never get money enough to afford to,” Ben said. He slipped down off the corral rail. “What do you make of what happened to us last night, Panzer?”
“I don’t know,” Panzer said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, either,” Ben told him. He hitched up his chaps and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I think I’ll go get me a drink of water,” he said.
It was not water he went after. It was McCain. He had seen McCain go limping into the grove of cottonwood trees near the cabins. When Ben found McCain, the man was sprawled out in a hammock swung between two trees. The man’s game leg dangled over the edge of the hammock.
“Howdy, McCain,” Ben said.
“Oh, hello, Donald,” McCain said idly.
“The name ain’t Donald,” Ben explained wearily. “Got a cigarette?”
“I don’t happen to smoke,” McCain told him. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Ben said. “I just wanted to borrow a cigarette to open up the conversation.” Ben sat down on a nearby hammock and teetered back and forth. “I figured on asking you something.”
“Yes,” McCain said. “What have you got on your mind?”
Ben studied McCain. He was more than ever impressed by the man. There was a kind of dynamic force and power about the fellow. It was hard to define.
“Wasn’t the eagle in that puzzle box yellow?” Ben asked.
McCain smiled slightly, showing teeth unusually even and white. “You never showed it to me,” he said. “What are you trying to do? Trap me into making an incriminating statement?”
This old bird is smart, Ben thought. Aloud, he said, “Yeah. Something like that.”
“You suspect me?”
“I guess you’d call it that.”
McCain said, “You must have seen me bending over Panzer last night on the path.”
Ben nodded. “That’s right.”
McCain said, “I was taking a walk last night. I happened to be near the path when I saw Albert Panzer lying there senseless. I thought maybe a footpad had waylaid him, so I looked in his pockets to see if he had been robbed. His money and billfold were still in his clothing, so I decided he had just passed out because of the altitude. Being around senseless people upsets me, makes me ill. So I left immediately. I felt a little ill, and sat down for a time on my way back to the ranch. Then I got mixed up in my directions and lost some more time. By the time I got back, you and Panzer were already there. So I didn’t say anything.”
Ben pushed against the ground with his heels to make himself swing back and forth in the hammock.
“That’s a good story,” he said. “It takes care of everything.”
“But you don’t believe it?” McCain said without any change in tone.
“Nope.”
“It’ll have to do you, I’m afraid.”
“Uh-huh.” Ben stopped swinging. “How does the boss’ face look this morning?”
“D’Orr’s face?”
“Yeah. Bumped into a door last night, he said.”
“I haven’t seen him,” McCain said with no sign of interest.
Ben stood up and gave his large batwing chaps a hitch. There was a cool breeze from the north this morning, and in the distance a cow was bawling. Ben said, “I bet one of them guys that tried to rob me has got a sore face this morning. I sure went over his puss good with one of my spurs.”
McCain showed no interest in that, either.
“Well, so long,” Ben said. “Be careful this altitude don’t give you a faintin’ spell.”
“I’ll watch it,” McCain said.
Ben found D’Orr. There was a strip of adhesive tape down the left side of D’Orr’s face, another down his nose, and two pieces of tape on his chin.
Ben remarked, “That door must’ve been part wild cat.”
D’Orr’s temper was vile. He snapped, “Listen, Donald Duck, four of the guests have been hunting you for an hour. They want you to guide them up to the Forks today.”
“The name is—”
“I know what your name is,” D’Orr said. “And it’ll be m-u-d if you don’t show more action around here.”
With a valiant effort, Ben said, “Yes, boss.”
“It’s those four old maids from Denver who want you.”
“I was afraid of that,” Ben said.
“Please be careful about making slighting remarks about the guests. Especially as high-paying guests as these four. They’ve got the bridal suite.”
Ben said, “That’s the only way they’ll ever see the inside of a bridal suite, too.” But he said it walking away, so that D’Orr did not hear. Yesterday Ben would have made the remark to D’Orr’s face. But the situation was changing. Ben was getting interested in the Broken Circle dude ranch. He didn’t want to get fired.
Ben Duck found the old prospector shortly after noon. It was somewhat of an accident. The four old maids had rawhide constitutions, and more questions than a radio quizz show. So Ben built them a fire to cook their lunch, then left them under the pretext of hunting sagebrush for firewood. He wanted to escape long enough to have a smoke in peace.
The mountains here were arid, bare, rugged and forbidding. There was no vegetation whatever, except now and then a scrawny sagebrush or jack pine in a crevice. There was no moisture to support vegetation.
Four turkey buzzards were circling in the sky. Two more buzzards joined them. Farther away, several crows spun hopefully in the clear, hot air.
“May be a Broken Circle cow over there with a broken leg,” Ben decided.
He swung onto Patches and rode toward the spot.
The old man lay in a gully. Judging from the signs, he had gotten into it and did not have the strength to get out, and had crawled along the sand. He had progressed more by dragging himself than by crawling. He must have spent hours coming the last few yards.
His tongue hung out. The bones seemed to be coming through his skin, although that was only an illusion caused by his starvation gauntness. His skin was cracked; in many places the cracks were the color of old rust from dried blood.
There was a pack tied to the old man’s back, and he had a saddlebag fastened to his belt.
“Hey!” Ben got down beside him. “Hey, what happened to you, oldtimer?”
The old man’s eyes remained fixed. They were like dead eyes.
Unnerved—he had never been around a dead or dying man before—Ben dashed back to Patches and untied his canteen. He forced water between the cracked lips. The old man’s mouth merely filled with water and ran over. The throat was evidently swollen shut, and Ben used his pencil to make a channel down which the water could flow.
There was no sign of life in the old man.
Ben stood up and shouted for the old maids, intending to send them for help. But the wind was against him and they did not hear.
The old man made faint mewing sounds. Ben dropped beside him. “Take it easy,” Ben urged.
The faint sounds kept coming from the old man and Ben realized the fellow was saying, “Water,” over and over.
Ben gave him a little more water.
“How long you been thirsty, oldtimer?” he asked.
After a while, “Two weeks—before I lost count,” the old man managed.
“You been without water two weeks?” Ben demanded.
The other said, “Yes.” His eyeballs moved, seemingly with greatest difficulty, until they rested on Ben. He strained for a time with words. “Food gone—three weeks,” he managed at last.
“For the love of little prairie dogs!” Ben said. He stood up and bellowed for the old maids, but they still could not hear him. “You’ll be all right now,” he assured the old man.
The old man tried to get more words out. Ben got down close to hear.
“Do you—know—Doc Savage?” the old man was trying to ask.
“D-o-c S-a-v-a-g-e?” Ben spelled it out.
“Yes.”
“Never heard of him,” Ben said.
The old man slowly turned his face on its side. He made a gurgling noise and some of the water that Ben had poured into him came out. His knees drew up. He seemed to gather strength. His arms functioned and he started to lift himself.
“Here, here, you’ll bust a suspender,” Ben admonished.
The old man’s voice was suddenly surprisingly clear.
He said, “My saddlebag, get the contents to Mira.”
“Sure, sure,” Ben said. “I’ll get it to Mira.”
Then Ben took hold of the bony shoulders to support the old man and the old man struggled and fought him blindly for a few moments, after which he became still and was dead.
After Ben got over feeling the way that having a man die in his arms made him feel, he looked in the saddlebag. He took out a tin-and-glass puzzle box.
It was a puzzle where you shook little imitation metal feathers—not BB-shot—around until you got the feathers all sticking in little holes in a green eagle. There were ten feathers and ten holes for them.
At the top of the puzzle, it said:
FEATHER THE EAGLE
Under the eagle, there was a piece of poetry. It said:
Hand and eye, wandering,
Down and down, pondering,
Up and up, meandering,
North face,
Wins race.
Ben wrapped the puzzle in his handkerchief and put it inside his shirt.
There was one other thing.
Ben Duck looked into the old man’s back pack to see what made it bulky, and found that it contained a large canteen of water and enough food to last a man at least two weeks.
Ben scratched his head.
The old man had said he was dying of starvation and thirst.
“That’s kind of queer,” Ben said.
