Читать книгу The Long, Long Trail - Max Brand - Страница 6

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But two days later Morgan Valentine bought a ticket to Chicago and made his reservations; Mary had made up her mind apparently, though not half a dozen words had been spoken on the subject of her departure since that first night. But the next day she was talking of Chicago as though all her life had been spent there, and this experience in the mountain desert was only an excursion off her beaten trails.

"Between you and me, Uncle Morgan," she said, "why not New York?"

This, for some reason, had rather staggered him. But now that the ticket was bought—dated ahead several days—and the step irremediably taken, he was easier. He made a short stay in Salt Springs that day. After he had the ticket in his wallet, he went to the bank and drew out the cash for his monthly payroll. His cowpunchers were numerous as befitted the keeping of his big range, but moreover there were the hired men who worked the cultivable ground, and in the northern part of his domain—the territory of his dead brother—there was a small logging outfit. Altogether, he had some thirty men to pay off each month, and the payroll ran around sixteen hundred dollars. He got it all in gold coin, and it made a heavy little canvas sack—fifteen pounds, or so. It was three in the afternoon before his buckskins jogged out of Salt Springs on the back trail of the twenty-five-mile trip, and though the going was fairly smooth most of the way, it would be dark before he arrived.

That, however, was a small worry to him. The two geldings were sure-footed as goats; and, given their own sweet way and a shambling trot, they could take the buckboard home in rain or shine, through the night and the rocks. They had done it before, so now Morgan Valentine bunched his duster around his shoulders with a shrug, settled back into the right-hand corner of the big seat, and let the reins hang idly.

An hour and seven miles dropped behind him, and still the buckskins were jolting steadily on. The suddenness of their stopping jerked him through a thousand miles of dreams back to the cold facts of earth. The buckskins had their heads high. And just before them was a horseman with a revolver pointing between the geldings and straight at the head of Valentine.

He put up his hands with the utmost unconcern.

"Thanks," said the stranger. "If you've got any coin handy about you, you might throw it this way."

There was deprecatory gentleness in this—the same tone of embarrassment which one uses when one asks a stranger for a match, and it made the rancher regard the holdup artist with more attention. The man sat a down-headed roan, an ugly brute which looked undersized in comparison with the bandit's length of limb; for he was a tall man, with formidable shoulders. He had long arms, also, which appeared extremely capable; and the heavy Colt was poised lightly as a feather and firmly as a rock.

He seemed indiscriminately somewhere between thirty and forty and might have been at either end of this limit. What little hair appeared beneath his sombrero was sunburned and dusted to a pale-gray brown. He had one of those lean, long faces which are thin through the cheeks and wide through the cheekbones and the jaw. He was far from good-looking; and a very wide mouth and a highly arched nose which showed that he clearly belonged in the predatory type of mankind, made up a further debit on the side of beauty. To complete the impression, his eyes were an uninteresting but very intelligent gray. In fact, one might say that the color of this man was gray; for the rest, he keenly impressed Morgan Valentine as being about equal portions of sinew and sinew- hard muscle.

"I suppose," said Morgan, "that you want my gun first?"

"I'm getting old, pardner," admitted the other. "I'm forgetting my A B C's. But?"

The last word was so explosive that Valentine paused with his hand on the way down to his weapon.

"But," continued the stranger, "guns are things that I most generally like to take for myself. Thank you just the same."

"As you please."

He stood up and turned, his hands well above his shoulders, while the revolver was removed from his holster.

"Which I'm acting like a fool amachoor," the bandit was saying apologetically, "and pretty soon you'll begin to be ashamed of being robbed."

He skidded the weapon into the back part of the buckboard.

"Now you can sit down ag'in, pardner."

Valentine accepted the invitation. At close hand, he found that the stranger lived fully up to his first impression. He was, indeed, a grim-faced fellow. Only his voice, which was of the most exquisite and tender softness, counteracted the general effect.

"Now, if you'll gimme your kind attention just a minute, sir," went on the tall man, "I want to explain that holding a gun is plumb tiring to a gent of my nature that hates work. So I'm going to put it back in the leather. But here and there I've met curious gents that wanted to see just how quick that gun could come out of its house ag'in and say how'd you do. So they've let me take a gun off their hip, and then they've sprung a surprise by fetching out some little token of affection from under a coat or a shirt—say a knife, or a derringer. And them that have tried my gun have most generally found it right there on the job talking business."

So saying, he slipped his weapon into its holster.

"I think I follow your meaning," said Valentine. "Which I'm tolerable quick to do when men talk sense."

He added: "Here's the coin." And he kicked the canvas sack so that it jingled at the touch. "I have some in my wallet if that ain't enough to satisfy you."

At this the stranger smiled gently upon him.

"They's one part of my heart that's an aching void sure enough," he declared, "and that's the part where a plumb reasonable man fits in. Pardner, you seem to be it. Nope, I don't want your wallet, I guess. That is"—and here he lifted the canvas sack and weighted it in his hand—"that is, if this here talk is gold talk."

Now, when he lifted the sack and held it lightly at arm's length, Valentine had seen a rippling of muscle under the shirt sleeve that fascinated him. So he murmured absently:

"Yes, it's all gold."

"Maybe it's the price of a few hosses you've just took into town, now—" went on the other thoughtfully.

"Maybe it ain't," replied Valentine.

"Yes, and maybe it ain't. Maybe it's the cash from some little claim you been working for some time—"

"Maybe."

"To cut it short," said the bandit a little sharply, "is this going to bust you or not?"

"Fifteen hundred dollars is quite a bit," observed Morgan Valentine. "Took me three years to lake that much."

"Three years' work in this bag?"

"Yes."

The gray eyes puckered and gathered, and a gleam went out of them, but Valentine withstood the stare. At this, the outlaw stepped back and glanced over the equipage swiftly.

"Judging by that harness and the way them hosses is set up, I reckon I can put that down safe as the grand-daddy of all the lies I've heard lately."

"You forget," said Valentine, "that I didn't say what three years they were—recent ones or a long time back."

The other grinned. There was something remarkably contagious in his smile; in spite of himself Morgan Valentine found his face wrinkling.

"I dunno why it is," declared the bandit, "but I take to you uncommon strong."

"And I think I can begin to say the same about you, my friend."

"Dear me," said the outlaw, and the feminine expression did not seem at all out of place for some reason, "we're getting real friendly, ain't we?"

"Seems that way. You're the first holdup gent that's ever troubled to ask whether or not what he took would bust me."

"Judging by that maybe I could say that sticking you up is one of the favorite sports around these parts?"

"Maybe you could; it used to be."

"How many times have you been entertained?"

"Eight times," said the rancher.

"Dear, dear! Who'd of thought you was that rich?"

"The other eight," said the rancher, "lived in these parts and knew the size of my bank account."

"Eight times you've left your roll behind you?"

"Two of them," replied Valentine, with a glittering eye, "I shot and buried. Two more I carried back to town after I'd bandaged them. Two more were killed by the posses, and the other two gave up before they were salted away."

"You don't tell me!" exclaimed the other, with all the happiness of one who hears the ending of a pleasant tale. "And maybe this little job will gimme more fun than I was looking for."

The rancher examined him for a time.

"No," he said, "I guess the ninth man will be the lucky one."

"How comes that guess?"

"As I said, the others lived in these parts, but you've come a long way, and you'll probably go on a long ways still."

"You talk better'n a riddle," declared the bandit with open admiration. "How d'you know I've come a long ways?"

"By the way your hoss is gaunted up; by the knot in your handkerchief; and by the look of your eyes."

"Eyes?"

"As if you'd been riding into the sun for a good many days."

"Them are all good signs. But I never heard of that last one before now."

"Besides," said the rancher, "you've got a professional air; I wouldn't even waste time sending the posse after you."

"Now, that's what I call real friendly. You wouldn't even put the sheriff out about me?"

"Certainly not. Suppose he caught you? He'd probably get two or three men knocked in the head doing it; and fifteen hundred ain't worth all that bloodshed."

"I see you got a kind heart," said the other carelessly.

"Also, I've noticed that every real professional along your line has a pile of pals. Suppose I get you; the word is passed along. One of your friends comes and tries his hand with me just to get even. You see I ain't bluffing?"

"I see you ain't bluffing," said the other. He flushed and straightened a little. "But if you come from my part of the country, you wouldn't say that I hunted with any gang, I play a lone hand, pardner. I've never seen the crook yet that you could trust as a friend."

There was in this speech such naive and direct comment upon the bandit himself that the rancher could not forbear a smile. The other replied with instant good nature.

"Which you've already said I'm a professional."

He dropped the money bag into the saddle pouch.

"You really work alone?"

"Why, you can call it that. But I got my gang. I got a hoss and a gun, which makes three of us. And they's both been well tried out and not found wanting."

"No? But that hoss of yours don't look particular like a prize, Mr.—"

"Dreer," replied the other quietly, "Jess Dreer."

Valentine looked back into his memory. It presented a blank to him.

"It's the right name," said the other, "but you won't remember it. I'm a quiet man, sir, and I got quiet ways."