Читать книгу Gunman's Gold - Max Brand - Страница 6

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WHEN Arthur Howison got to the middle of the bridge, he stopped for a moment in spite of the heat and looked on the two halves of San Andreas. They were as sharply divided in character as though a thousand miles and many centuries lay between them instead of one small stream of water.

The American part of the town was laid out regularly, and over the big roofs rose the trees which had been thriving for thirty years along the streets. A sense of prosperity and comfort exhaled from that part of the town. But on the far side of the river was a confused huddling of little, square adobe boxes, whitewashed until they threw back the full glare of the sun. A few trees rose here and there, but they looked like green boughs cast into a fire and about to burst into flames.

Mr. Howison, staring at this part of the town with squinting eyes, shook his head. However, it was there that he had to go to find the address that was in his pocket, so he stepped on with the steady and measured step which is characteristic of middle- aged men.

Once in the dusty streets and winding lanes of the Mexican village, the heat seemed to redouble. Howison had to lift his hat once or twice and mop his forehead with a handkerchief that was already wet.

Yet in spite of the heat, he found a group of half a dozen youngsters playing about in the fiery dust. He needed more particular directions than he had received before, therefore he hailed them. His Spanish was not good, but it was enough to ask the question:

"Can you tell me where to find Señor Shannigan?"

They were stilled at once. The veiling clouds of dust fell softly and slowly away from them, and the oldest of the lot said:

"He wants the señor."

"But he cannot see the señor at this time of day," said another instantly.

"I've come a long, long distance," said Arthur Howison, "and I have to see Shannigan. Just show me where his house is."

They showed him. It was hardly a hundred yards from the spot, and it appeared as a long, high, whitewashed wall, with a single door let into the face of it, like a portal into a castle. On that door he knocked, but one of the urchins showed him the knob of a bell pull, and gave it two or three good tugs. Faintly, Arthur Howison heard the bell sound inside the building. The lads scattered, grinning.

Now the door was pushed open, and a blue-eyed girl of twenty stood in the shadow.

She saw the children first, and cried to them in Mexican:

"You worthless little sons of trouble, the next time you bother me I'll give the señor your names!"

There was instantly a chorus of plaintive protest.

"Look there! We have only brought his friend!"

She saw Howison for the first time, and nodded shortly at him.

"It's not the señor's time for seeing people," said she. "You'll have to come back again."

"But when?" asked Howison, putting out a tentative hand toward the door, which the girl seemed about to close. He added: "I've come a long distance. Do you speak English?"

"Sure, I speak English." She measured him with a very direct and critical glance.

"The matter I wish to see him about is important, and urgent," said Howison. "The fact is that every second counts, and it may already be a lost cause. If I'm to see him at all, I must see him now!"

"Must you?" said the girl, totally unimpressed. "But this is a time in the afternoon when he never sees people, and he's already broken the rule once today. He has some one with him now."

"Then while he's still in the way of business, let me see him," urged Howison.

She looked at him again, with a slight shake of the head.

"This may be losing my job for me," she remarked. "But I'll take one more chance. After this I'm going to unhook the bell during his off hours. But come in!"

She motioned him past her into a small room, dark with shadows, but wonderfully cool. A ripple of water passed through it, and now he saw a shallow channel in which the current ran. There were two or three chairs of woven basketry that promised to fit the back of the tired man; there was a screen of Indian feather work in a corner, and the grinning mask of a jaguar on the wall. Not many furnishings, but enough to make Howison feel that he had stepped from the sun-beaten street into a strange little new world.

"What are the hours of Mr. Shannigan?" he asked.

"Seven-thirty to eight in the morning," she said, "if he happens to be up, and six-thirty to seven in the evening, if he happens to be at home."

Howison made a gesture of surprise.

"But how is one to know when he's up and when he's home?"

"One doesn't know. One takes the chance," said she. "I'll go tell him that you want to see him."

She opened an inner door.

"No, he's still busy," said she.

Howison looked through the door into a patio which was shaded by several big acacia trees, growing low, with their branches stretching out sinuously and wide. In the center of the courtyard there was a silver pool of water, and the thin spray of a fountain rose high in the air and showered back with a refreshing sound into the pool.

At the same time, a man's voice said harshly in Spanish:

"Do you hear, Pedro?"

"I hear every word, señor," said a youngster's frightened voice.

"You're written down in the book of the police," said the first speaker. "They have their eye on you. I have my finger raised. If I drop it, they come to catch you. Do you think I don't know you, you rascal?"

"Ah, the señor knows everything," said the humble voice of the youth.

"I know your card playing, too, and the tricks you've learned with them. I have my finger raised, Pedro. Now go over there—go into the hall and wait. I have something to say to your father."

There was a hastily retreating footfall.

Then the harsh voice, somewhat lowered, continued: "Now, José, I've threatened him, and if you play the fool any more, I'll have to make my threat good. From this time use your brain, José. Your boy is all right. He's lazy, but all boys are lazy. He likes to gamble. So do all boys that have the nerve to lose their money on a chance. You sit about the house and do nothing but scowl at him. You call him 'bad' to his face, you ought to have pride in him and show it. The next time you wrangle at him I'll wash my hands of the business. You don't understand him. Your wife does. Now go home and tell her that she can manage Pedro from now on."

There was an obscure and humble murmuring, then another rapid footfall retreated.

A door slammed at the front of the house.

"I'll see if Mr. Shannigan can talk to you now," said the girl, and passed on through the door which she already had opened.

Arthur Howison was a man of the strictest integrity in every way, and yet something made him now, some irresistible impulse, follow her, turn the knob at that door, and open it a crack. The sound of the voices came clearly to him.

"There's another one for you, Sam," said she.

"There's no more for me," said the other.

"He looks—" began the girl.

"I don't want to know how he looks," said the man.

Howison put his eye to the open crack of the door and saw a man lounging prone in a long, low chair with a cushion under his head.

He could have found perfect shade in several parts of that patio, but instead he had chosen a spot where a strong dappling of the sun fell upon his brown face.

He could have avoided it by merely moving his head.

Instead, he chose to close his eyes.

"He's come a long distance," said the girl, "and he looks like big money and an easy job."

"Why does he look easy?" asked Shannigan.

He folded his long, lean hands under his head as he spoke.

The quality of those hands excited Arthur Howison, for they were in contrast with the rest of the man. All else about him was massively made. His shoulders and chest were overlaid with a panoply of flesh that was either fat or good muscle. And his face was arresting through the grossness of the features, and the fineness with which they were finished. It was like the face of an early Pharaoh of Egypt whom the artists blocked out of hard diorite, giving to the head the cold and smiling cruelty of a god, half divine and half brute, but finishing every detail with the most scrupulous and polished care.

It was the ugliest and strongest human face that Howison had ever seen. It seemed to be of bronze, and had the darkness, the metal sheen and polish of that substance. The high, massive cheek bones, the great jaws, the ponderous forehead, spacious and yet retreating, were all, in spite of their bulk, perfectly finished. So were the big, slant, Oriental eyes, and so was the wide, thick-lipped mouth, the most directly brutal feature of that very brutal face.

And—as when one walks around a statue and finds it varying in different lights—with every turn of his head, the big man's appearance varied. Sometimes he seemed a youth in his twenties, with something rather boyish in the delicate modeling about the cheeks. Sometimes he seemed a timeless monster. He had the look of an open-handed man, and again the savage mystery of a sphinx was on him, as though he knew all things, and preferred evil for its own sake.

But most amazing of all were the hands of this man, which, instead of being huge paws, were long-fingered, but powerful as are the talons of a bird of prey. They were the hands of a stage magician, a worker of conjuring tricks.

If it was the most repulsive face that Howison ever had seen, it was also the most interesting.

He ventured only a glance through the door, and then shut it to a crack, for it seemed certain that the all-powerful eye of the master of the house would immediately find out the spy.

He still could hear the conversation, and that appeared to Howison as grotesquely out of place as anything he had ever found.

"Why does he look big money?" Shannigan asked the girl.

"He's got clothes," she said, "that look like the work of a tailor around the shoulders and collar, but he's got the swing of an old cow-puncher. He's got the kind of a tan that comes from riding the range twenty years, and there's a cow-puncher's squint in his eyes. He's a cowhand that's made it and made it big. He's made it so big that he's a regular wow. He's got more money than he knows what to do with, if you take my word."

"You have a good eye, Mary," said Shannigan in a voice which sounded like a soft bass note played on the stop of a great organ, a note that might be swelled until it made the ground tremble. "You've got a good eye, and you've stayed with me long enough to learn how to use it."

"I'd like to unlearn what I know from you," said Mary. "I'd like to throw it over my shoulder to the dogs."

"Now you're weak and silly," said Shannigan. "But now, Mary, my dear, tell me why it's going to be an easy job?"

"Because there's blood in it," said the girl savagely, "and those are the jobs that are always easy for you. They're the ones you have a taste for. They're the ones that you like!"

"Mary," said he, "you're getting so charming that one of these days I'll have to make a choice between two things."

"What are they?" she asked.

"Marry you or wring your neck," said the profound but soft voice of Shannigan, which left, after speaking, a continuing vibration in the ear of the listener.

"I'd rather have my neck wrung than be your wife," said the girl.

"Would you, Mary?" said Shannigan. "Come here, my dear."

"I won't come near you," said she.

"Come here and give me your hand," said Shannigan.

She shook her head, but presently took a step forward, and he lifted her hand in his.

"It's a pretty hand, and a wise one, Mary," said Shannigan. "It's half-wise woman and half-silly girl. That's why you annoy me—because you're in two parts. If you were all of a kind I'd know what to do about you at once."

"I'll do for myself, thank you," said she.

"You're getting more than half to hate me, Mary, aren't you?" said Shannigan.

There was neither a caress nor irritation in his voice, but a bland, impersonal curiosity that chilled the blood of Arthur Howison.

"I've always half hated you," said the girl.

"Why do you stay?" asked Shannigan. "You can go where you please. There's plenty of money to send you."

"I've had enough of your money," said the girl. "It's schooled me already, and sent me here and there. I'll have no more of your money, Shannigan."

"Well, then, go off on your own. You can pack and be gone in half an hour, eh?"

"I hate you just a little more than ever when you smile like that," said she.

"Because I know you won't go," said Shannigan. "You can't help keeping an interest, eh?"

"I want to see the cat in the trap," said the girl. "And I shall see it one of these days."

"That's malicious," said Shannigan, the smile on his thick lips growing more pronounced and more cruel.

"It's not malicious," said Mary. "It's only wanting for you what you want yourself—a situation that will bring out every strength that you have in you, from teeth to toes, and all your cunning wits, besides. You know that's what you want!"

He half closed his eyes as he smiled up at her.

"Pretty Mary!" said he. "You have thoughts, too, and quite big, long thoughts."

He dropped her hand.

"There's a man waiting," she said. "Shall I send him off?"

"No, you've made me a little angry, and I'll soothe myself talking to this rich man who has the sort of a job that I'll like, according to you. Bring him in. Where is he?"

"In the little room with the screen."

"Then he's probably been listening to everything that we've said. Run along, Mary. Sometimes you're not as useful as you might be."

Softly Howison closed the door and retreated to a chair, where he sat down with hands folded, as one who had been long at rest. He felt not the slightest sense of guilt for his eavesdropping. Rather, he told himself that he had looked in upon the working of a machine so extraordinary that ordinary human rules and morals could be disregarded.

So keenly had his interest been taken that his mind was half diverted from his own problem to that of Beauty and the Beast, which had just been partially revealed to him.

"Mr. Shannigan will see you," said she. "There he is, in the corner of the patio."

As he passed out, she stepped inside the door and closed it.

Howison paused for a single breath, for he had a vague feeling that he was confined in a narrow, walled area, with the king of beasts.

Shannigan stood up. He was not so very tall, perhaps not quite six feet. And he was not so imposing standing as sitting, but looked rather fat and gross than powerful. As he took a step to meet his visitor, his face changed, also, and on it came a smile so bland, and a look so open and sincere, that most of Howison's preconceptions were scattered from his wits in spite of himself.

He received a firm handshake, and was presently in a chair. Shannigan sat opposite him, perfectly erect, and yet perfectly in repose. The smile was only on his lips. There was nothing but shadowy patience in his eyes.

"I suppose," said Howison, "that I ought to begin by apologizing for breaking in on your private hours.".

"No one should apologize for doing what he wants to do," said Shannigan.

"Well, then," said Howison, faintly smiling as he heard this bit of materialistic reasoning, "I'll break right into the middle of why I'm here. Just to begin with, it's true that sometimes you act as a special investigator?"

"Outside the law—yes," said Shannigan.

"What I want to do is to act decidedly outside the law," said Howison. "You know Jack Reynolds?"

"I've heard of him."

"You know what's happening to him now?"

"They've arrested him at last, and they're bringing him by slow stages out of the mountains and down toward Deerfoot. There he'll be lynched."

"That's what must not happen," said Howison. "I've come to ask you if you can stop it."

"Reynolds has a dirty record. Why should it be stopped?"

"Because his father was my friend. He died and left Jack somewhat in my care. I slacked on the job. Now I find that Jack is about to come to the end of his rope, and my conscience bothers me. I'll pay all the job is worth."

"It's worth the amount of trouble it gives your conscience," said Shannigan.

"My conscience is troubled a lot," confessed Howison.

"It's a big job," said Shannigan. "And it's a mess, too. It means handling a mob. That can be done with time and planning. But we have no time, and we're too far away to do much planning."

"So you think there's nothing to be done?" asked Howison.

"I didn't say that," remarked Shannigan.

"I'd pay ten thousand—no, I'd pay twenty thousand dollars gladly if you can get the boy off this time."

"This is only the first time. He'll be caught again. He's sure to keep on raising the devil, and he'll hang in the end."

"Maybe," said Howison, shrugging his shoulders, and at the same time breaking into a sweat. "But I'll feel better if I can save him once and give him a chance to change."

The other nodded.

"You can name your price," urged Howison.

Shannigan waved an impatient hand, and again the contrast between the man and the hand struck Howison with peculiar force.

"We'll settle the price afterward," said Shannigan. "I never take payments beforehand."

"It's the only way to do business;" said Howison. "Afterward it may appear that the value of the work done is not—" He paused.

"It's the only way I work," said Shannigan. "If you want me at all, you'll have to want my entire method."

"I'll take you and your method together."

"Thanks," said Shannigan. Then he added: "I need to know a few more things. What's Reynolds in for this time?"

"They've accused him of murder a couple of times. This time they declare that he has gone into the desert with two companions and come out alone."

"Pretty clear case?"

"So it seems."

"But you like this boy?"

"I loved his father. And I haven't done my duty by Jack."

"Would he inherit any of your money?"

"I have no children. Jack would get a big part of what I have."

"And you're a rich man?"

"I have a good deal of money."

"How much?"

"I don't like to say how much."

"I have to know," said the impassive Shannigan.

"Between seven and eight million dollars, at present values."

"Good," said Shannigan. "That's enough money to make a lot of trouble. Men will kill for seven millions as well as for seventy. I'm going to like this job." He added: "What's your name?"

"Arthur Howison."

"Go up to Deerfoot, Mr. Howison," said Shannigan. "I'll soon be there myself and have news for you."