Читать книгу The Cossack Cowboy - Lester S. Taube - Страница 9

Chapter I

The thoroughly soaked postilion shook the rain from his eyes and brought his thick leather crop down sharply on the flank of the off-side lead horse.

“Giddup there!” he cried, whacking it again with a heavy-handed blow. The weary animal lurched forward and called upon the last of its reserve strength and endurance to keep pace with its three team-mates.

Through the sheets of pouring rain, the four galloping horses drew the heavy carriage, the coachman perched high on his box plying his whip to the flanks of the shaft-horses, keeping them well into their collars. His body rode the rough jolts of the carriage wheels dropping into water-filled pot-holes, and he leaned from side to side as the vehicle tipped and tilted around sharp curves and slipped and slithered in the mud.

The two flickering lanterns, mounted one on each side of his hard seat, gave out light enough only to see the rumps of the shaft-horses, and the lantern fastened to a short pole fixed to the pommel of the postilion’s saddle gave off even less light. The coachman murmured thanks under his breath that Ketchell was riding up front, for Ketchell had cat’s eyes and it would take cat’s eyes plus a gill of luck to keep from running into a ditch or straight into a tree or merely overturning as they raced through the blinding storm in the dead of night. It surely had to be a matter of life or death to bring out the three senior partners of the most respected firm of solicitors in the whole of London on a night like this; and to drive four fine horses into a state where only shots in the head would relieve them of their forthcoming misery after being literally run to death, well, he would never have thought it of Messrs. Blatherbell, Poopendal and Snoddergas. Never in his twelve years of service with the firm of Blatherbell, Poopendal and Snoddergas, Solicitors, had he even considered, let alone been allowed to press the sleek, well-groomed animals of the firm beyond the most sedate trot, and his hackles had risen when the three partners had bounded into the carriage and Mr. Blatherbell had pounded on the coachman’s roof flap and shouted, almost hysterically, “The Duke’s castle! Hurry, we must arrive within two hours!”

Two hours! He had sat there almost in a state of shock. Why, in broad daylight on a dry road a well-mounted man could barely reach the Duke’s castle in two hours! A series of raps from Mr. Blatherbell’s cane and his muffled shouts from within had galvanized him into action.

“Use yer leather!” he had shouted to Ketchell, and then lifting his whip high in his huge, powerful hand, had brought it down smartly on the flank of the offside shaft-horse. As the horses sprang off with a clatter of iron-shod hooves on cobblestones, jerking the carriage forward with a neck-jarring lunge, he could still hear Mr. Blatherbell, “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”

The coachman did not have to grope for the watch in his jacket pocket to know that the two hours of racing over the deadly, rutted road had nearly come to an end, for not only did he feel the fatigue in his muscular arms but every five minutes since leaving London Blatherbell had thumped on the roof and bellowed that he had so many more minutes to reach the castle.

He breathed a sigh of relief as four lights, two on each side, materialized out of the dark, recognizing them as mounted grooms from the castle come to light his way for the last two miles to their destination. As they sped along the straight, smooth, tree-lined driveway, he rapped lightly on the roof flap, then opened it.

“We’ll be arrivin’ in a shake, kind Gentlemen,” he announced.

“Thank God,” came the squeak of Mr. Poopendal. “An absolute nightmare, these past two hours. Absolute nightmare. Could not have survived it a moment longer. Do you not agree, Mr. Snoddergas?”

Mr. Snoddergas did not answer. Feet planted firmly on the floor, fingers gripping the edge of the seat, shoulders thrust back against the cushion, Mr. Snoddergas was sound asleep, snoring with a buoyant gusto.

Mr. Poopendal peered down from his towering height of six-feet-six affixed longitudinally by one hundred and thirty-two pounds of skin and bones at Mr. Blatherbell’s five-feet-two form gallantly struggling to hold up two hundred and ten pounds of quivering, restless flesh.

“Do you not agree, Mr. Blatherbell?” asked Mr. Poopendal.

“Not more than three minutes left,” said Mr. Blatherbell hoarsely.

“I mean, do you not agree that these two hours have been an absolute nightmare?”

Mr. Blatherbell ran a sweat-soaked handkerchief over his face and turned his ornamented pocket-watch in all directions, vainly trying to read its dial. “Two?” he shouted harshly. “It cannot be. It has to be nearer to three minutes left.”

“Not minutes, hours,” squealed Mr. Poopendal. “An utter nightmare.” He peered again at Mr. Snoddergas, hoping to find him awake, and was struck once more by Mr. Snoddergas’ ape-like appearance. He was five feet-six, a hard-boned, hard-muscled man of forty years of age, the same as Mr. Blatherbell and himself, without the least trace of a waist, the lines of his body running straight up from his hips to his shoulders, shoulders which were square and heavy and held the shortest of necks on which sat a small rounded head covered by cropped hair. His eyes, even when closed, were small and round, and so were his lips and nose and chin. But not his ears. Mr. Poopendal shook his head in wonder as he looked at Mr. Snoddergas’ ears. They were the largest he had ever seen on a man, huge sails which stood straight out like those of an alarmed elephant, measuring almost two-thirds of the distance from his pate to his chin. “Are you awake, Mr. Snoddergas?” he asked hopefully, impatient to explain what a nightmare the past two hours had been.

Mr. Blatherbell came to his aid by jabbing Mr. Snoddergas in his stomach with the point of his cane.

“Wake up, Snoddergas,” he snapped. Mr. Blatherbell could speak in such fashion to Mr. Snoddergas, since he was the senior of the three partners.

The only evident sign that Mr. Snoddergas awakened instantly was the parting of his eyelids by a fraction of an inch. Then his mouth opened wide in a luxurious yawn. “Have we arrived already?” he asked in a soft, sweet voice.

“Already!” screeched Mr. Poopendal. “Two hours of absolute terror, that is what it has been. A veritable nightmare.” He drew his long, black cloak more tightly around himself and tugged down on his silk, stovepipe hat. “I cannot begin to tell you how close to eternity we have been …”

His voice trailed away as the carriage was brought to an abrupt halt. The right-door was jerked open to reveal a line of liveried footmen holding umbrellas. At their head stood a ramrod-stiff, grim-faced butler, impeccably garbed in black tails and striped trousers, a white starched shirt, white bow tie and white cotton gloves.

“This way, gentlemen,” said the butler testily. “Please hurry.” His request was made with only slightly more courtesy than a gimlet-eyed colonel employs while raking down a subaltern who drank the last drop of scotch at the club.

Jumping out of the carriage, they stumbled up the stone steps, the footmen hurrying to shield them with the umbrellas, and then through a massive, brass-studded oak door entrance into a large hall. Other servants waited there to take off their cloaks and relieve them of their stovepipe hats, gloves and canes. With practiced dexterity, the solicitors allowed themselves to be peeled to their cutaways without losing grip on their thick, black brief cases.

“Please hurry,” ordered the grim-faced butler, motioning with an impatient wave of his hand to two footmen carrying gleaming candelabra holding slender, clean-burning tapers. The footmen started walking rapidly across the main hall to a wide, curved staircase leading upward to the first floor, the butler and the three solicitors hard on their heels, their boots echoing loud on the stone steps. At the top of the stairs, the servants turned down a hall to another massive, brass-studded oak door, a twin of the one downstairs, and here they stood aside to allow the butler to draw it open.

Inside the huge bedroom several doctors and servants were grouped around the figure of a white-haired man lying on a giant-sized four-poster bed. The room simmered from the heat of a leaping, log-devouring inferno in a shoulder-high stone fireplace and from charcoal braziers dotted about the chamber.

As the solicitors approached the bed, it became immediately apparent that His Grace, the Thirteenth Duke of Wesfumbletonshire was on the point of kicking the bucket. His bristling white hair was now limp, his long slender patrician nose was pinched, his face waxen and drawn, his thin lips slack and parted, exposing his toothless gums as he gasped for the last few breaths remaining to him.

“Your Grace,” shouted the butler an inch from his ear, since it was common knowledge that the Duke was almost stone deaf, “your solicitors are here.”

The old man’s eyes flickered open, a wicked little tongue popped out to moisten the dry lips, color came to his cheeks, and his hair grew stiff like the hackles of an angry dog.

“Is that you, you blundering beggars?” he gasped.

“Yes, Your Grace,” shouted the three solicitors in unison.

“Lower your faces, you blithering idiots,” panted the Duke. Instantly, the three men leaned forward until they were nose to nose with the dying man. “Where is my will?” he growled.

“Right here, Your Grace,” said Mr. Blatherbell smoothly. “We have a copy in my case, another copy at our office, a copy is with the Lord Chamberlain, and you have three copies hidden about the castle.”

“Tell me what they say,” ordered the old man.

“They say that every bit of your estate goes to your nephew, Lord Percival, and not one farthing to your nephew, Paul.”

“Say it again,” gasped the Duke.

“Every bit of your estate…”

“Not that,” interrupted the Duke. “Tell me again about the part concerning that worthless, shiftless, hell-damned wastrel nephew, Paul.”

“Not a worn farthing, a withered blade of grass, nor a stale turd from the stables. That is how it is phrased.”

A sweet, contented smile crossed the dying man’s lips. “Say it again,” he ordered.

“Not a worn farthing, a withered blade of grass, nor a stale turd from the stables.”

“Show it to me in the will again,” said the Duke.

Mr. Blatherbell opened his case, drew out the will, turned it to the proper page and held it close to the Duke’s eyes. The Duke read it carefully, his smile becoming broader and broader. “The happiest day of my life,” he sighed. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. “Where is Percival?” he asked.

The butler bent down to his ear. “He is on his way, Your Grace,” he roared. “He should be here at any moment.”

“Send someone for him,” said the Duke. “Tell him to hurry. I cannot die until I look into his dear, sweet face again.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The butler straightened up, went to the door, called a servant inside and gave quiet instructions.

“Ah, yes,” smiled the dying man. The happiest day of my life.”

“But My Lord,” said the coachman through the roof flap to Lord Percival Sanderson. “It’s too dangerous to cross here. The upper bridge would be safer.”

Percival heaved his fat, silk-clad body off the seat and leaned out of the window, his bulging, pale-blue eyes staring out into the dark, his full, petulant lower lip caressed gently by a podgy hand, its fingers liberally adorned with large-stoned rings.

“I see absolutely nothing,” he snapped peevishly at the coachman. “You must have a selfish motive to insist on taking the longer route.”

“No, My Lord,” said the coachman tightly. “My only motive is to protect your noble self.”

“Nonsense,” said Percival. “I know all about you knavish, pious-sounding cut-throats, that’s what you are, always scheming to steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes.” His bulging eyes swelled outward even further as a thought struck. “Dead man!” he screeched. “Hurry, you worthless churl, I must get to Uncle’s before it is too late. Drive on!”

“Yes, My Lord,” sighed the coachman helplessly. Turning away, he leaned down from his perch to speak with the postilion, who had just returned from a reconnaissance of the bridge, a lantern hanging from his hand, a wide felt hat protecting his face and neck from the torrent. “What’s it be, Jamie boy?” asked the coachman.

“’Tis a mean one, that it is,” said the postilion, shaking his head. “The water’s racin’ down like it’s fleein’ from the devil hisself, and it’s already a good two ‘ands over the bridge.”

“’Is Lordship said to go over it. ‘E ain’t got the time to go by the upper bridge.”

“Well,” said Jamie, pulling his baggy hat further down over his face, “it’ll be God’s own luck if we don’t all end up swimmin’ tonight, so let’s be at it.” He handed up the lantern to the coachman, who hung it back on its hook beside his seat. “Ow do yer want to take it across? Easy as she goes or flat out?”

The coachman pursed his lips, thinking. “Ow do you see it, Jamie boy?” he asked finally.

“I don’t think she’ll ‘old no matter what we do, but goin' flat out will get us further across afore she drops.”

“All right, Jamie boy. We’ll take 'er fiat out.”

While the postilion walked to the near-side lead horse and mounted it, the coachman flexed his fingers, gripped the whip and set, himself more securely on his seat, bracing his feet tightly against the floor. When he saw Jamie dig his heels into the sides of his mount and slap the rump of the off-horse with his crop, he shouted, “Let ‘er go, Jamie boy!” and they both loosened the reins. The horses sprang forward pulling the heavy carriage down the sloping road leading to the bridge as if it were an empty cart, their hooves flinging up mud and water, the vehicle rocking as it dropped in and out of ruts, the postilion and coachman shouting at the top of their lungs, plying the whip and crop furiously, trying desperately to build up all possible speed.

The plopping noises of the horses’ hooves became sharp thuds as they reached the wood planking of the bridge and sped onto it. In moments the thuds were drowned by splashes as they entered water rising to their knees. Seconds later, they slowed almost to a walk as the river rose to their bellies.

Now the coachman could see the peril, a rushing torrent of muddied water sweeping over the middle of the bridge, sending branches, small trees and carcasses of dead sheep smashing against the thin wooden balustrades, the planking under the wheels vibrating and swaying as it shuddered from the battering it was taking from the debris and raging current.

Furiously the two men struck at the horses, urging them on, fighting not only the dangers of the flood and the weakened bridge but also the terror reflected in the animals’ eyes and their snorts of alarm.

Foot by foot they waded through the rampaging waters, now rising to their chests, then barely a hand below their withers, the postilion kicking his feet free of the stirrups to thump his heels high on his mount’s flanks.

They reached the middle of the sagging bridge and started the pull upward, the water lowering a few inches as they made their way laboriously up the slanted planking, the two men shouting encouragement, laying about them with the whip and crop.

Then suddenly, the bridge collapsed, utterly, swiftly, its death knell a sharp crack as the supports gave way, a crack that was almost a sigh of relief at the end of an unequal struggle. The coachman had barely enough time to lift the flap and shout, “My Lord!” as a warning before he was flung into the cold, greedy current.

The postilion clung to his horse as it sank in over its head, kicking and threshing wildly to escape the trap of its harness and the merciless river. The instant they broke water, the postilion jerked out a knife and cut it free, then slid from its back and groped for the other animals and the carriage drifting rapidly downstream. He was swept against his off-side horse, cut it loose, then the current tore them apart. As he couldn’t swim, he drowned within minutes.

Percival Sanderson awakened to the danger only when the horses reached the middle of the bridge and the water rose halfway up his boots. He sat paralyzed, unable to believe that the coachman had been right. Servants never spoke the truth. His mind, seeking to dispel the horror mounting within him, fastened on the punishment he would inflict on that scoundrel once he was safely ashore. The thought of that insolent clod not explaining more emphatically that the bridge really was unsafe was too preposterous to dwell upon.

Then the carriage was overturned and sent rushing on its side down the swollen river, the horses trapped by the twisted harness and kicking vainly to free themselves.

To his final moment Percival never knew how he managed to stand upright in the jolting, jerking, water-filled carriage and push open the upper door. As he clambered out, his saturated cloak caught on an obstruction. Frightened out of his wits, Percival lunged back, ripping the cloak from his shoulders. The momentum carried him off the floating carriage into the dark, savage river.

“Help!” screamed Percival, struggling to keep his head above water. No one answered.

“Help!” screamed Percival again. “I am almost a Duke! Aid to the Duke!”

He heard a whisper behind him and turned his head. His eyes popped out of their sockets when he saw the gigantic form of an uprooted tree bearing down relentlessly on him. He opened his mouth to scream again, but it never came out, for at that instant the trunk of the tree struck him fully in the face, breaking his neck like a rotten twig.

The first indication that something had not gone well with the affairs of Lord Percival Sanderson reached the castle in the form of the coachman, soaked to the bone, reeling with fatigue on one of the horses cut loose by the postilion before he took his final drink of water. Four brief words by the coachman to the doorkeeper flew to each corner of the old stone edifice quicker than a flash of lightning, and to be scrupulously fair to the memory of the departed ‘Almost a Duke’, it must be noted that they drew appreciative chuckles from the servants. The coachman had said, “The shit has drowned.”

The butler heard the news only seconds later from the mouth of the under-butler, who had been blessed several times by Lord Percival for not having brought up wine warm enough or cool enough during his constant attendance on his uncle.

The butler hastened to the chamber of his master and tiptoed over to the bed. The Duke had held his own during the twenty minutes since the solicitors had come, but it was merely a matter of time and everyone in the room knew it.

“Your Grace,” shouted the butler, “the most distressing news has just come. Lord Sanderson has drowned.”

Trembling, the old man raised himself on one elbow. “What!” he screamed.

“Drowned. Dead, Your Grace.”

Horror welled up in his watery eyes. “Quick! Quick!” he called out to the solicitors. “What happens to my estate?”

Mr. Blatherbell turned pale. “It goes to your next of kin, Your Grace.”

“Exactly!” shouted the Duke. “To that rum-swilling, hussy-chasing, card-playing blackguard. Quick! Draw up another will!”

Mr. Blatherbell opened his case and took out a sheet of paper. The butler hurried over with a quill and pot of ink.

“I hereby leave all my worldly goods to ...” He looked up at Mr. Blatherbell writing swiftly on the paper. “To whom?” he asked. “There’s actually nobody else.”

Mr. Blatherbell’s face brightened. “To the Crown, Your Grace. He would never be able to contest your will under those conditions.”

The old man chuckled. “Blatherbell, you’re a scoundrel after my own heart. Quick, let me sign.”

Mr. Blatherbell placed the paper in front of the Duke and two doctors lifted him upright. The Duke grasped the quill and poised it over the paper. “Hee, hee,” he cackled. “The happiest moment of my life.”

At that instant, he dropped dead!

Silence filled the room as the doctors slowly lowered the corpse to the bed. Mr. Blatherbell reached out to take the quill from the lifeless hand. He tugged and tugged, but the fingers had closed in a vice-like grip on the feather. He looked down at the newly drawn-up will, needing only a very small signature to make it valid. He pushed the hand of the dead man closer to the paper, as if by magic it would leap to life and just scrawl his initials at the bottom. His face twisted as he pondered the affect of this evening on his fortunes, for he was quite aware that he had undertaken the execution of the Duke’s will on a percentage basis rather than his usual fee, and that collecting his commission from the black sheep of the family could be somewhat difficult.

With a low sigh, he released the hand and picked up the paper, tearing it slowly into tiny bits.

“Well,” he said, to no one in particular. “We had best begin looking for His Grace, Paul Sanderson, the Fourteenth Duke of Wesfumbletonshire.”