Читать книгу The False Rider - Макс Брэнд - Страница 6

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Afterward, they sat by a fire twenty miles away, on the farther side of Crow's Nest. Christian had had his own mount of course, and the stage line horse had carried Gregor from the scene of the hold-up. Those twenty miles, Barry Christian had insisted upon, and Gregor knew better than to dispute the will or the way of that famous man. For Barry Christian was a master of the art of breaking the law with impunity, as he had proved many times during the long course of his celebrated career. No penalties had fallen to his share, except those which had become his through that still greater man, Jim Silver.

It had not taken long for Christian and Gregor to come to an agreement. One of the most amazing parts of the affair was the speed with which Christian looked through the mind of his new acquaintance. It was as though he knew all about the furnishings of the mind of Gregor and exactly how far Gregor would go. He repeatedly turned his back on Gregor, as he was working about the campfire or attending to the horses.

That was a risky business, because, no matter how awed Gregor might be by the reputation of his new friend, it was also true that there were fifteen thousand dollars on the head of Barry Christian. And for the cost of one little leaden bullet, all of that fortune would be transferred to the hands of Gregor!

It would not take much—a flick of the hand and a jerk of the thumb or forefinger, and Barry Christian and all his famous past and all of his great deeds would lie dead on the ground. It would not only make Gregor rich for the time being, but it would swell his reputation into a formidable size. His own past would be forgiven. He would be mentioned in every newspaper. Reporters would travel three thousand miles for the sake of shaking his hand and snapping his picture, and picking up a few of his wise sayings. Men would write the story of his life, adroitly covering over the evil, and changing sheer crime into clear adventure, for this is undoubtedly true—that the world loves an adventurer and has an almost unsurpassable wish to believe well of him.

These conclusions kept working in the mind of Gregor, but still his hand was held. The same thought had been in his mind when he was with Jim Silver, to tell the truth. To be known as the slayer of Silver would give him a vast name among crooks all over the world. But a certain freezing awe had numbed the powers of his hand, when he thought of murdering Silver. It was a similar awe that prevented him from attacking the great Barry Christian, and it annoyed him to see that Christian seemed to understand his superiority and that the outlaw was able to count on it.

After a time, the irritation passed out of the mind of Gregor. He was soothed and pleased by what he could call his great good luck. Fate, he considered, does not mean badly by the man whom he brings to the side of Jim Silver one night, and Barry Christian the next. It even occurred to Gregor that it was like one of the old legends in which the hero is brought to the crossing of the ways and told to select either the straight and narrow path or the rosy way to evil. Gregor had two sorts of life to choose from—that of Jim Silver or that of Barry Christian.

There was no doubt in his mind as to which course he would take. The mere thought of Silver's way of existence made an arctic ache of cold grip his soul, but with Barry Christian he lolled in comfort. He understood the man more nearly.

For one thing, Christian was not the fellow to live like an ascetic. He brought out a good cooking set of pots and pans, and he prepared as delightful a supper as one could ask for in a camp. There was even pan bread, instead of tooth-cracking hardtack.

What pleased Gregor more than the good food was the pleasant manner of Barry Christian. The man's handsome, mobile face was continually smiling, and his soft voice was a music in the ears of Gregor. Also, Christian talked with disarming frankness.

As they smoked cigarettes and sipped the good strong coffee which Christian had made, while the firelight tossed far-traveling gleams through the corridors of the pines and a troubled squirrel came out to argue angrily from a branch above, Christian said:

"You see that I've dropped a long distance downhill, Gregor. I'm reduced to common stick-up work, these days. I used to do better things. I used to be able to sit back and plan real jobs in a real manner. But that's changed. D'you know why?"

"No," said Gregor.

"Jim Silver broke me," said Christian, looking Gregor straight in the eye. "He beat me twice, and the second time that he smashed me, all my old men lost confidence in me. It began to look to them as though I were no good for rainy weather. They got out from under. However, I managed to make out."

He had been sorting the loot that he had collected from the stage, as he talked. It had been a pretty good haul, on the whole. After the suit-cases had been searched—and then, according to promise, neatly reclosed and stacked beside the road—there was a total of over five thousand dollars in hard cash, to say nothing of a good heap of watches and stickpins and other jewelry. Christian put a thousand dollars and a portion of the "hardware" into the hands of Gregor.

"What for?" asked Gregor, gasping.

"You were on hand for the finish," said Christian. "I always make a split with anyone who's on my side."

"On your side? I would have plastered you with a ton of lead, if I'd seen my chance," said Gregor frankly.

"That was before we really knew one another," answered Christian. "Don't argue, Gregor. You're in the game with me, and you're welcome to a split. It isn't hard cash that I look for so much as other things, in this work. I don't want a lone hand. I want to build from the bottom until I'm bigger than I ever was before, and you'll be my first foundation stone, if you want to come in."

Duff Gregor stared down at his split of the plunder and drew in a breath. Then, without a word, he put away his loot in his clothes.

"But," explained the outlaw, "I only want you if you feel that you're my man."

"Why, Christian," said Gregor, "how can I help being your man? We're together if you say the word. I'm not such a fool as to turn you down. I know your record, man—part of it, anyway." Then he added: "But what makes you want me in? You don't know me."

"I can read a man pretty well when I have a chance to look at him down the sights of a gun," answered Christian.

He ran his long fingers through the flowing silk of his hair. As the cold of the evening began, he had wrapped a scarf around his throat, and he seemed, now, a very romantic figure, indeed. Gregor thought that he had never seen a more handsome or capable face.

Christian went on: "There's another reason. No man could look so much like Jim Silver without having a brain in his head."

"Has Silver a lot of brains?" asked Gregor.

Christian looked sharply at him, as though suspecting that he was being drawn on.

"Silver's beaten me twice," he said simply. "That's enough brains for any man's nut to hold."

"But what does he make out of beating you?" asked Gregor. "He travels around like a lone wolf that's been thrown out of the pack. He eats like a beggar and dresses like a tramp; and he's in as much danger, when he goes to a town, as anybody who's outside the law. What does he get out of life?"

"Well," said Barry Christian, "no matter what the danger, he goes where he pleases. He follows his own wish around the world. He rides the finest horse in the West, and tucked away, here and there, are rich men and poor men he can bank on if he needs them—fellows who would die for him if he gave them a chance and a call."

"But he never gives 'em a chance," said Gregor. "He plays his hand all alone. I'd call it a fool's life."

"Because you and I," said Christian, "don't like what's meat to him."

"He hasn't even a woman he's fond of," said Gregor, "according to what people say."

"The girl he's in love with," answered Christian, "is a lady with very bright eyes, old son—eyes so bright that they dazzle most of us more than diamonds. Danger is her name, and she's what Silver lives for."

Gregor was silent, brooding on the matter.

"Silver's done so much," said Christian, "that his name is known all over the West. And in the East, too, I suppose. Not many people have seen him, because of the way he lives, but he's a man whose name is strong enough to move mountains."

"How?" asked Gregor.

Christian was silent, smoking, thinking. Then he asked: "Gregor, are you with me?"

"Till the last card falls," said Gregor. "We'll shake on that."

Their hands closed together. The eyes of Gregor blinked under the stare of Christian, and he knew, as he confronted the man, that that handshake was a turning point in his life. He had lived very much as he pleased before this. Now he felt that he had hitched himself to a comet that might snatch him to death in an instant. But there was the sort of manhood in Gregor that responded to the challenge and thrilled with it.

"Now listen to me," said Christian. "You have the general build of Silver. You're not quite so much in the shoulders and not quite so lean in the hips. You don't look so much like a panther in good training. But there's a big resemblance. Your face isn't the same, aside from the scars, but the features are very much alike. Enough for me to make a mistake in the half light at the end of today, and that's one face in the world that should be familiar to me. If you can pass me in a half light, you can pass nearly everybody else in the full light of day. And out of that resemblance, you ought to be able to move mountains."

"How?" asked Gregor.

"We'll need to touch you up a bit," said Christian. "For one thing, a couple of gray spots have to appear in your hair above the temples. For another thing, we'll need to make a few scars appear on your face. I can manage both things in a couple of hours so that it would take a microscope to tell that it's a fake. You need one other thing—you need a horse like Parade."

"Then I'm beaten," said Gregor. "I've seen that big chunk of lightning, and I know there's no other like him."

"You're wrong," answered Christian. "I can put my hand on a thoroughbred chestnut stallion with the whole look of Parade about him. Not half an inch smaller, not fifty pounds lighter, and carries himself like a champion. He's on a ranch, not far from here—not twenty miles from here, in fact."

"Four black stockings all around?" demanded Gregor.

"Only one. But what are dyes for, Gregor? I tell you, I can get that horse for two or three thousand dollars, and with you on his back—after you and the horse have been touched up—you can ride into any town in the West and open it up like a nutshell. Along with you will be Barry Christian, looking like a tired old man, and between us we'll take the golden lining out of any place we name. What's the matter with Crow's Nest, with one of the biggest banks in a thousand miles of us?"

The light had dawned in the eyes of Gregor. Now he threw up his hands with a whoop.

"By jove, you're right, and the world's our oyster!" he shouted.