Читать книгу The Mustang Herder - Max Brand - Страница 9

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It seemed to Sammy, for a blinding instant of wrath, that even big, good-natured Rendell had joined in the conspiracy to drive him mad with persecution. But one glance at the frowning, unhappy face of the cripple convinced him.

"Don't you see, kid?" said Rendell. "It's no good! No good at all! It's Furness—that's all there is to it."

"Furness? But Furness simply doesn't understand the law on that point, and he doesn't see that the law will really restore to me"

"Furness understands everything," said Mr. Rendell. "I always knew that from the minute I laid eyes on him. I knew that he understood everything. But I never quite got onto his dodge. I didn't see what side of the fence he was on. But today I see, and I see it mighty plain!"

"What, Rendell?"

"Look here, kid. If you run after Furness and stop him with your talk, d'you know that you'll only collect another chunk of lead? Except that Cumnor missed, but Furness ain't the kind that misses!"

"You mean he's crooked?"

"He is. But smooth. Crooked as a snake and softer and smoother than a snake. That's all the difference there is between 'em."

"Furness? Why, Rendell, I've seen him—"

"Kill Mortimer and run that cur Lawson out of town. Yes, but a crook can be a brave man, you know! I say, Gregg, that you'll never get a penny out of Mr. Furness."

"I remember, now," said Sammy gloomily, "that when he tried to laugh, there was no ring to it at all. No ring at all! But it don't seem possible that he's a crook! Nobody could suspect it!"

"Not until I begin to let the news of this drift around the country. Then there'll be a little change in the feeling about Mr. Furness. But you, kid, what are you gonna do?"

"I'm going back," said Sammy gravely.

"Back to Brooklyn? You're wise, at that. This sort of a country ain't made for your kind!"

"Back to Brooklyn? No, sir, I'm going south and buy me another herd."

"Not again!"

"I've got a shade more than two thousand left. And that's enough to get what I need. I got within a hundred miles of Crumbock last time, nearly. This time I may win all the way through!"

Mr. Rendell was more than impressed. He was frankly amazed and admiring, and he said so at once. Because it was no more his nature to disguise admiration than it was to disguise disapproval.

"Why," said he, "you're a bulldog, son! With twenty more pounds of beef on you, you'd be at the throat of this here Furness, I got an idea! Going south for more hosses! Why, doggone me, kid, you'll be taking them wet, I suppose, this trip!"

"What does that mean?" asked the innocent Sammy.

"Taking them with no papers at all. Taking them just the way they're drove up out of the Rio Grande. Wet! That's all!"

Sammy was interested. He wanted more information and he got it.

"I'm the fountainhead for all the talk you want about the border crooks," said Rendell. "I used to work and run hosses in them ranges. And that's where I was used up. Up here, maybe you think that some of the boys is a mite rough. But they ain't rough enough to be called men, even, down in my home country. They'd use these here bloomin' heroes for roustabouts, and don't you forget it. Why, when I come up here I found that they figured on me for a man, even when I was only no more than a cripple. Well, down yonder on the border they didn't think shucks of me. Not a bit! They used me up so bad that I had to move out.

"Well, sir, down yonder they're all fire-eaters. But right along the river itself is the worst land of all. That's the place where the boys go that ain't got any home. The boys that need more freedom than they can get in this here, free country. There's districts down there where they draw a dead line that no sheriff is allowed to pass. And the minute a deputy or a sheriff shows up, anybody is free to pull guns and start blazing away.

"Down in them parts they go in for the hoss business pretty frequent. Mostly it ain't Texas mustangs that they're after, but Mexican devils dressed up in the hides of hosses. Them boys just ride out in a party twenty strong and they spot a place that's famous in North Mexico for having a good set of ponies, and they kill the greasers that are riding herd, and round up the hossflesh and slide it off toward the river.

"Them that want to buy hosses, and good hosses and buy 'em cheap, goes down to the bad lands, there, and buys 'em up mighty reasonable. I've knowed three-dollar hosses from them parts that looked a pile better than any of them fifty-dollar hosses that Cumnor got today.

"But when you buy them hosses, you buy 'em pretty cheap, but you don't get no papers, I don't have to tell you. You take your chances. And the first gent that comes along and takes a fancy to your herd, he can cotton onto them hosses of yours, if he's able to lick you. And you can't complain to no sheriff because you can't prove that them hosses really belonged to you by rights.

"Besides, after you've drove them hosses five hundred miles into the country, they're liable to stampede and run all the way back to their own pasture lands on the south side of the river, and then you got a thousand miles extra to ride and considerable hunting to do after you arrive."

Such was the story of "wet" horses and cheap ones which Rendell told to Sammy Gregg, but Gregg listened with the fire in his eyes once more. The morals of the matter did not trouble him. If it were wrong to buy stolen horses, Sammy did not pause to so much as consider the subject. He had had a herd of horses stolen from him. Therefore the world owed him another supply. It made very little difference where he got them so long as he was not the actual thief.

Five-dollar horses!

He went to sleep to dream of them that night, and the next morning he was on the train once more and headed for the southland. Poor Sammy Gregg, bound for the land where men were "really bad!" But perhaps you begin to feel that Sammy deserved something more than pity. And I think he did. The storekeeper was right. There was a great deal of the bulldog in Gregg; and there was fire, too, fire that would not burn out!

After he arrived, he spent a week or more learning what he could of the best district which he could head toward on the river. He learned that. He found a bank to which he could intrust his money, and then he set out to see the sights of that frontier town. He saw enough, too, but the thing that filled him with the greatest marvel was the second glimpse he had of his flute player of Munson.

But oh, how changed! The difference between a dying, tattered moth and a young, brilliant butterfly. He fairly shimmered with goldwork and with silks. He sat at a table gambling with chips stacked high before him, and with every gesture he seemed to sweep fresh oceans of money toward himself.

There was little else that stirred in that room, filled with drifting smoke oceans from cigars and cigarettes. No other game was in progress. Men stood about in banks and shoals watching the progress of the campaign of the flute player, studying his calmly smiling face and the desperate eyes of the other four who sat at the table with him. There was a mortal silence while the game was in active progress.

It was only during the shuffling and the dealing that any talk was allowed, and in the first of these intervals Sammy spoke to his nearest neighbor: "Who are they?"

The other did not turn his head. He answered softly: "Look at 'em hard, tenderfoot! The chap with the long white face is 'Boston' Charlie. And him with the pair of blond-looking eyes is Don McGillicuddie. The big gent with the cigar stuck in the side of his face is Holcum. I guess you've heard of him, all right. And there's Billy Champion, him that made the gold strike in the Creek last year. And the one with the chips in front of him is the king of 'em all, poor kid. He's Jeremy Major!"

"Why do you call him 'poor kid,' then," asked Sammy.

"You see him now. He's got them eating out of his hand. They're all crooks, and he knows it. They're rich, and he knows that. And he'll trim them out of every cent they got. Because he's a slicker and a cooler gambler than the best of 'em."

"Is that why you pity him?"

"No, but after he has a million in his poke, he'll let it drift out again like water running through his fingers. They's a curse ort poor Jeremy Major. He's the only man in the world who can't say: 'No!' And when he's flush, he hands out the stuff with both mitts! Listen to me, kid! I've seen a gent step up and touch him for ten thousand in cold cash—and get it! And him one that Major never knew before that day! Aye, them same four skunks that are getting busted now, they know that they can go around to him tomorrow morning and beg back most of what they've lost!"

"But if he's so sure of what he does with the cards, why do they play with him?"

"Because they are gamblers, even if they're crooked. And they figger, every time, that they sure got some new tricks that'll beat Jeremy Major. And so they come and try their luck with him—why, look at Holcum, there! He's been away in the East, and they say that he cleaned up more'n a quarter of a million there. Besides, he got some new ideas, and he come all the way back West to see if he couldn't be the first man that could say that he had busted Jeremy Major at a card table. And now look! Look at the chips in front of Major. And Holcum has got one pile left. That's all!"

Another new and dazzling side light had been thrown upon the men of the West for Sammy. He could not tell how deeply this gay young beggar-gambler-musician was to enter into his life. But he took one more long look at the youth, and then he turned out into the night to find his bed and go to sleep.