Читать книгу Silvertip - Макс Брэнд - Страница 6

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IT was early morning when he got through the Haverhill pass and looked down along the valley of the Haverhill River. As far as his eye could reach, from the height, the bright water was running in wide, sweeping curves, silver-clear just below him, and a dull-blue sheen far off, with winkings of high lights on it now and then.

Men had told him that there was a curse on this country, and, in fact, he had always heard strange tales of it.

So had every one. Very few exact reports came through,

But there were mysterious murmurings. Now and then some one was pointed out as a "Haverhill man," and that fellow was sure to be avoided by all other people on the range. At least, until he had proved himself anew.

There was always talk about the Haverhill country, yet it was odd that so few people had accurate knowledge.

It was not simply that the high mountains encircled it.

Mountains cannot fence any place from a Westerner. But those who went into the valley seldom came out, and if they did, they were not easily drawn into talk. One might have thought that it was a hellish place—but never had silvertip looked on pleasanter country.

There was plenty of water, for one thing. He had ridden up out of a plain where the grass was all dust-gray, but what he looked on now was a soft green comfort to the eye. And from the highlands on both sides he had glimpses of brooks running silver and white down the slopes to the Haverhill River below. Moreover, there were trees. There were big, roundheaded trees in groves that hung against the more brilliant green of the grass hillsides like dark clouds against the blue sheen of the sky. A heavenly place altogether, he decided. Nothing but gossip could poison it.

He made a cigarette, lighted it, began to inhale smoke in great whiffs.

He laughed, threw his hat in the air, and caught it again in spite of the frantic dodging and bucking of the mustang beneath him. He had changed from saddle to saddle all the way during the night. The horses were still fresh, especially that deer-shaped, wing-footed bay mare; so he made no longer halt, but rode down the trail toward the little village that lay at the side of the stream in the central valley beneath.

The trail was very winding, and he never could endure to push a horse going downhill. It meant ruined shoulders too often. So it was nearly prime of the morning before he came off the trail onto a beaten road near the town.

A man in a buckboard came past him from the village. Silvertip lifted his hat and called good morning.

The fellow kept his reins in one hand and his stub of a buggy whip in the other. He kept jerking at the reins constantly, and tapping at the down-headed span of mustangs with the other, without in the slightest degree altering their gait. He returned no salute or gesture or word. The wind tipped the brim of his felt hat up and down, but there was not even a nod of actual greeting.

Silver turned in the saddle and looked back. The stranger had turned also, and was staring. He was a gaunt man, of late middle age. The stubble of his beard gave a gray sheen to his face. His eyes were set in dark hollows. It was a craggy face. It was to the faces of other men as a rocky upland farm is to the rich green acres of a smooth river bottom.

At length Silver faced the town again, frowning. He had been through a great part of the West, and he had been through it on horseback or on foot. He had used his eyes, too, simply because he had to use them to save his scalp. But he could never remember encountering behavior like this.

All that he had heard of the Haverhill country swept over his mind again like clouds across a sunny day.

He rode on at a walk, because he wanted to digest this town as well as he could with his eyes before he entered it.

It looked like any of a thousand other Western villages. There were the same flimsy shacks that seemed to have been thrown together at random—mere tents to be occupied by an army that would soon pass on. For Westerners have had something to do other than lavish time on places to eat and sleep and sit. They have had business to do, and their business has been the whole outdoors.

This was like all the rest, in so far as Silvertip could see, and there was little that his keen eye missed. He hunted every board, every shingle, every window like a hawk searching for game.

As he came into the single winding street, he heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was the same. The signs in front of the shops, and the stores, and the hotel, and the saloons —all were the true Western pattern.

Then he saw a small boy of eight standing in an open doorway with a grown-up's shotgun in his hands.

"Hello, son!" called Silvertip.

The boy made no answer. He turned his grave face to stare after Silvertip, but he spoke not a word, made not a gesture. It was a broad, roughly made face with an expression far older than the possible years. And the eyes were set in deep hollows filled with shadow!

The chill struck again through the blood and up the spinal marrow of Silvertip.

Men may be different in varying parts of the world, but the children should all be the same.

Then he heard the cheerful beating of hammers on an anvil. Yonder was a blacksmith's shop with horses tethered before it, waiting to be shod. And through the open doors drifted thin puffs of blue coal smoke.

Silvertip breathed more easily again. The noise of the hammers rejoiced him, at that moment, as much as the sound of human voices could have done.

He halted in front of the shop, dismounted, and looked inside. A cow-puncher sat just inside the door, making a cigarette as he sat on an upturned tempering tub. The elderly blacksmith was holding a bar of iron with a large pair of pincers, and as he turned it and tapped it with his light hammer, a powerful striker banged on the indicated spots with a twelve-pound sledge.

The head blacksmith spoke two words, or three—no more. And then both turned full on Silvertip. He saw their faces were broad, their eyes set in deep, shadowy hollows!