Читать книгу The Road to Nowhere - Maurice Walsh - Страница 11

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The clink of iron on gravel waked him. Rogan did not wake with a start, but carefully, guardedly, as one who has come out of quiet dreams to many a desperate dawn. O desolate wakings!

His half-shut eyes, under the brim of old felt, looked along the bridle-path to the left. Two ponies, one behind the other, were coming round the curve of the track at a fast smooth walk. It was a pace he had not before noticed in ponies—a walk that was almost an amble. And they were not quite ponies either—topping fifteen hands and wirily built, with manes and tails uncut but well groomed. The first was a smoke-blue, the second a colorado red with white stockings. Not native stock these. Their eyes were set too far forward and were too small—as if they were a throw-back to some ancient and feral breed.

He was so carelessly intent on observing the horses that, for a space, he did not particularly notice the riders. The smoke was ridden by a woman; white stockings by a tall, slimly built man. The man sat loosely in the saddle, his shoulders easily asway to the gait of his mount; he sported a big black Stetson hat, and his long legs were hidden below loose, yellow leather coverings. The woman wore the same sort of hat, but her legs were cased in the orthodox riding-breeches, and a red neckerchief was tied loosely above a white blouse. No, he did not care for women riding astride. He had seen plenty of them at the Dublin Horse Show, and many of them rode like a sack of flour—too heavy in the haunch and too much fat behind the knee. This young woman—she was young—rode, however, with full-length stirrups, and from saddle to crown she was straight as a lance, and carried herself like a lance, leaning a little forward, so that the firmness of her breasts was outlined against the thin silk. Joan of Arc would ride just like that, with all her iron fighting men behind and watching her straight back out of hard and adoring eyes.

Rogan had somewhere seen horses and riders and high-peaked saddles like these. Where? Of course! That time the cowboy rodeo visited Dublin. What was the name of that laughing plumpish girl who rode the pitching broncho? He remembered how she swung her big hat above her head while she stayed glued to the saddle and loosed a keen and melodious ky-yi-yi. This girl here was not that one. This girl was slim and unsmiling.

The ponies came on. American cow-ponies they would be—imported for the whim of some Western visitors—with a Spanish strain in them. Perhaps all this country-side was being turned into some sort of rodeo film, some soul-destroying unreal reality where the native, himself included, was a mere aborigine sitting stoically on his hunkers.

Rogan was far too lazy or not interested enough even to raise his head, and the drooping leaf of his hat hid all but the riders’ boots. The woman’s boot was of soft fawn leather, with long straight heels and fancy stitching up the front—size five about and a good instep. Now he could see only the pony’s legs, clean and fine and moving with a nice flip from the fetlock. And then the forefeet came together and stiffened, and the hind hoofs slithered an inch forward and stopped.

Rogan pushed back his old hat and looked up. The rear pony stopped short at the other’s tail, and the tall young rider swayed lazily forward and back.

The young woman looked moodily down at Rogan from under her big Stetson, and a queer thought came into his mind: a bad-tempered bonny bit vixen under her own weight of misery. Blue—dark blue—her eyes, and her skin had a nice brown. And those eyes, surely made for smiling between dark lashes, were slumbrously sullen, and a mouth made for laughter had the down-droop of pride and weariness of spirit.

Her lips moved. ‘This your camp?’ Crisp the question, her voice running up resonantly to ‘camp.’

Old and useless conventions have a habit of sticking. Rogan thrust an elbow against the rock behind and drew up a knee, for one was accustomed to rise to one’s feet when addressed by a lady. And there he paused. An odd feeling that this was some kind of unreal film work made his mouth quirk. If this lady-star was merely playing a part, then he must play his; he was the aborigine sitting on his hunkers, older and wiser in breed, hiding his scorn, knowing that life, of no value, so brittle and so liable to disaster, was not worth burdening with small conventions. Let her eyes frown and grow imperious. He would relax and resettle shoulders against boulder. He did that.

‘Have you a permit to camp here?’ Sharp the query and sharply she smacked her long boot with riding-quirt.

Rogan Stuart shook his head, and a small guttural sound rumbled in his throat.

‘You cannot camp here without a permit. You ought to know that. This land is mine.’ There was no doubt of the emphasis on her possession.

Her land! An American woman this, and claiming the ancient soil of Ireland! His forefathers, men of his race, had grown out of this soil, blood and bone, and sunk back into it again, generation after generation—countless generations. And here was this film star insisting imperiously that he must play his part.

‘You will never possess a foot of this land,’ he said deeply.

‘What?’ That word seemed to lift her out of the saddle. Her off-leg came over the fore-peak, her hips twisted, and there she was on the ground, featly as a boy. And all in the same motion she tossed the reins over the pony’s head to trail on the path. So! Was it not thus cowmen tied their mounts to the ground?

She took a stride down to him, and her well-fitting riding-breeches showed that she did not carry any heaviness behind the knee.

‘You are being insolent,’ she cried. ‘Get to your feet.’

She would teach the aborigine manners, and at once Rogan’s sardonic memory recalled some incident in filmdom where the misjudged native chief is slashed over the face by the angry heroine. That quirt would hurt like billy-o—and it might be in his part to give the vixen a good shaking in return—and get heaved into the water by the tall horseman. But she did not use the quirt. She halted close above him, and one high-heeled riding-boot tapped the ground impatiently. Out of sheer instinct he reacted on the instant. For years he had been used to going down to forward rushes, his eyes watchful for the football boots that were not in the least particular; so now, in one motion, he twisted, rolled, and was on his feet.

‘Referee! Now then, referee!’ he demanded, and looked up at the slender horseman. ‘Have you no control of the game?’

The horseman grinned. ‘Kick and carry out—let her rip!’ The voice was unmistakably English or Irish-English, though the slang was Americanese and the speaker an elegant-seeming cowboy. His three-gallon Stetson was back off his white brow and showed his sleek black hair; he sat aside on the big stock saddle, one knee hooked carelessly over the peak, and already he had started to roll a cigarette. A careless, slouching, handsome fellow—and yet, there was something unsatisfactory about him; perhaps it was the dull, almost melancholic haze in or over his dark eyes, or the peculiar fish-belly pallor of the skin round his mouth in contrast to the delicate flush high up on the cheek-bones.

The young woman reclaimed Rogan’s attention urgently. Handsome she was, too, but not careless, not slouching—and the very devil blazed in her blue eyes. She was pointing a tense arm at the tent below them.

‘Produce your permit—or move that tent right out of here.’

Oh, blow it! This was ridiculous—this film was encroaching on reality. Better get right down to reality then.

‘Be sensible!’ he advised her calmly. ‘How do I know you have any authority to order that tent out of here?’

‘Just watch me!’ she said briefly.

She did not look to her companion for help. From the beginning she had acted as if he did not exist; the land was hers, the order she gave was hers; he was—just not there.

She was down at the tent and bending to the guy-ropes before Rogan could move. She knew about tents. But the second rope was not off its peg before a firm hand grasped her shoulder and lifted her upright. For the draw of a breath Rogan had been sorry that she was not a boy; bending over the guy-ropes she had been in a particularly tempting attitude—but one could hardly punt a lady through a tent wall; and the tent was not his, anyway.

She tried to jerk herself free, but Rogan had a man’s grip on her. Her hat fell off. And forthwith, she twisted, lithe as a cat, and smacked him sharply on the angle of the jaw with a gauntleted left hand.

‘Wow!’ said Rogan, and smartly caught her wrist on the return.

‘You brute!’ she snapped unreasonably, and with the readiness of a boy grappled with him.

But she was in the arms of a man who had kept his feet in many a loose maul, and her back heel could not twitch that iron knee. He held her firmly in his arms and looked down into her blazing blue eyes; and with one ear he was listening for the horseman to come trundling down on them. He would just love that fellow to come down for a minute. But there was no sound from above.