Читать книгу Silvertip's Strike - Max Brand - Страница 7

Table of Contents

As the punchers entered, their employer was revealed walking up and down at the head of the dining room. He had dressed for dinner by buttoning his vest, sleeking the blond forelock with water, and slipping a pair of brilliant elastic garters over his sleeves to leave his wrists supple and free. As the spurs jingled and the heels thundered on the wooden floor, Mr. Wycombe made a movement of his hand that stopped every one. Then he said:

"You waddies have gotta know that there are two thugs steering for this ranch, right now, and aiming to collect my scalp when they arrive. If they look in through the window and start blazing away while we're having supper, they might smash up a lot of crockery. So one of you stand guard outside. Red, you take a turn. Ten or fifteen minutes and you can come back inside and somebody else will take the beat. The hombres I talk about are Morrie Delgas and that skinny little streak of murder, Harry Rutherford. If they start raising the devil, maybe my friend, Jim Silver, will help my song and dance. That's all, boys. Set down and feed your faces."

Red took a handful of biscuits, wedged some butter into them, and left the room to stand guard. The other punchers sat down. The chairs rumbled like thunder. Dishes and cutlery began to clatter. Some one asked Wycombe what Delgas and Rutherford had against him.

"Just old chums gone wrong," said Wycombe.

There were heaps of food—venison steaks, two great bowls of baked beans with a rich scum browned over the tops of them, heaps of biscuits with snowy flanks and crusty tops, mountains of potatoes, huge dishes of gravy. Forks and spoons dug into these treasures. Presently heads were seriously bent; the girl came in and filled the ponderous drinking cups from a pail of coffee. She wore a faint, fixed smile. She reminded Silver of a prize fighter sick with punishment but smiling to show that everything is all right.

When she came by Wycombe, he lifted his head and smiled like a calf at her. Then he resumed his former position, his brow reclining in the palm of his left hand while with the right he casually and in the most disinterested fashion scooped food toward his face. A profound loathing began to work at the very roots of the soul of Jim Silver.

The better the food, the swifter the eating on a Western ranch. Those punchers walked through the provisions on the table and then rolled cigarettes and sipped a second beaker of coffee. They said things to Esther as she went the round, pouring it out. "Regular good stuff," said one, and another: "Where you cook, this cowboy camps." Some of them said: "How's things?" Every one muttered something; up to that time no one had seemed aware of her existence, except Wycombe.

The second round of coffee was finished. Whirls, clouds, long streaks of cigarette smoke hung in the air as the punchers rose, one after another, and went out. Their footfalls boomed through the room, then grew dim and muffled in the dust outside. The smoke seemed to be collecting around the two lamps that stood on the table. There remained at the table only the foreman, Silver, and Wycombe, as the girl came in to clear the dishes away. When she went past Wycombe, he put out his arm and gathered her suddenly into the hollow of it.

"How's things?" asked Wycombe, smiling up at her.

She only smiled down at him vaguely. Danny Farrel grew rigid in his chair.

"I've got to finish my work," said Esther Maxwell. "Please, Steve."

"Maybe you're going to stop working, pretty soon," said Wycombe. "Maybe there's going to be a Chinaman or something for you to boss. Maybe—"

"Esther!" barked Farrel.

Wycombe released her suddenly. She stepped back.

"Eight o'clock and all's well," drawled the puncher who walked on guard outside the windows.

Farrel and Wycombe were staring at one another, Farrel still rigid, and Wycombe leaning loosely forward. In the middle of a smile, his upper lip had caught again over his projecting teeth and stayed there in a snarl. The girl hurried out of the room with a pile of empty dishes. Silver folded his arms, because in that position his hands were close to his guns. It seemed strange to him that the girl should have left the room, unaware that there was murder in the air. He himself could hear the bumping of blood against his temples as his heart beat faster and stronger.

"You've got the say with her, have you?" said Wycombe.

Farrel was as straight as a stick and pale as a stone; he had his two hands on the edge of the table. The hands of Wycombe were out of sight.

"I hate to see a girl mauled around," said Farrel.

"You hate to see it, do you?" answered Wycombe.

He worked his lips until they closed; he moistened them with the swift red tip of his tongue.

Farrel pushed back his chair.

"I'll be going on," he murmured slowly.

He stood up.

"Wait a minute," commanded Wycombe. "I'm going to find out something."

Farrel halted, halfway to the door.

Wycombe had pushed back his chair and sat forward on the edge of it with his hands still out of sight.

"I wanta know," said Steve Wycombe, "what that girl is to you, Farrel."

"Never mind. Nothing!" said Farrel.

"I'm not to never mind, eh?" said Wycombe. He laughed suddenly, turning all white around the mouth and with a devil in his eyes. "Why, Farrel, who are you?"

Farrel said nothing.

Wycombe gasped: "You're going to tell me what to do and how to act in my own house, are you? You're going to tell me how to treat a girl, are you? You dirty rat, what's the girl to you?"

"I'm going to marry her, that's all," said Farrel.

The door opened. The girl came back, not in time to hear anything, but in time to see the attitudes of the two men. She cried out in fear.

"Listen to me—you, Esther," said Wycombe. "Have you been fooling me? Have you been making a fool of me? This bum of a secondhand foreman says that he's going to marry you. Is that straight?"

"Oh, Danny!" mourned the girl.

The way she put out her hands toward Farrel told Steve Wycombe enough.

"You sneaking thief!" he yelled, and came out of his chair with a gun in each hand. "I'm going to—"

"Back up!" called Silver, and shot the left-hand gun out of the grasp of Wycombe.

"You? You, too?" screamed Wycombe." I'll get you both. I'll—I'll—"

He dived under the table and heaved up the side of it with a lift of his shoulders. The whole mass of crockery went to the floor. The lamps were dashed out. Darkness blotted the room, and the scream of the girl made a red zigzag like lightning across the brain of Silver.

It was not complete darkness. The flame of one lamp had ignited the oil that spread out from it in a thin layer on the floor. A blue welter of fire began to play, keeping the room awash with uncertain ebbing and flowing of shadows. Outside, the guard was shouting; the girl had not stopped screaming.

Silver, flat on his stomach in a corner of the room, extended two guns before him and waited. A gun spat fire twice from close to the opposite wall. The voice of Farrel, near the windows, cursed briefly.

"I've got one of you!" screamed Wycombe.

There was the loose impact of a falling body against the floor. The guard was shouting, near the door:

"What the devil's up? What's happening?"

He was afraid to come in, of course.

The gun of Wycombe flashed again, and Silver shot at the glint of the face that he saw behind the little red tongue of fire. He almost felt the impact of his bullet tearing through flesh and bone.

A voice said, "Ah!"

That was Wycombe. There was no vocal strength to the sound; he simply breathed the word out. "Light!" said Wycombe. And now his voice had a great weakness of shuddering in it. "Light! I'm dying! I'm sick—"

The screaming of the girl was ended. That was one good thing. Farrel said nothing. Perhaps he was dead.

Silver went across the room to where Wycombe lay. The burning oil gave only the dimmest sort of a light, but it was enough for him to see that Farrel had been kneeling against the wall between the two windows; the body of the girl lay flat near the kitchen door; and Wycombe had slipped down with his head pressing at a breaking angle against the wall.

"Get a lantern, Farrel," said Silver.

"Esther's dead!" shouted Farrel. "Help! He's murdered her."

Other voices, many footfalls were heard outside the door. Someone carried a lantern, its light swinging wildly across the windows and intercrossing swift shuttles of brightness over the ceiling.

The lantern was brought into the room, and showed Farrel holding the limp body of the girl in his arms. Her head hung down; her arms and legs trailed toward the floor. The wave of cow-punchers advanced in a solid mass.

"Wycombe, did you shoot at the girl?" murmured Silver.

"No!" said Wycombe. "I wish I had. I'm dying. You got me, you sneak, you traitor! I wish I'd killed you all!"

The lantern light came close and flooded over him. His whole breast was flowing with blood, it seemed. The blood ran down to the floor and gathered in two pools. The body of Wycombe was still. His arms lay limply at his sides, with the hands turned palm up. But his face was working violently, the lips covering and uncovering the gleam of the teeth.

"Take Silver!" he said. "Red, Joe, Lefty, Mack, take Silver. He murdered me. He killed me right here. The skunk—he killed me! Shoot him to pieces!"

They looked at one another; they looked at Silver; they looked vaguely back at their employer.

One of the lot helped Farrel with the girl. She had only fainted, it appeared, and now she began to moan. They carried her out of the shambles.

Silver said: "Wycombe found out that Farrel is going to marry Esther. He went crazy and pulled his guns on Farrel. I knocked one gun out of his grip. He threw the table over and tried to shoot up the lot of us. That was why I plugged him. A dirty business, but it had to be done."

He kneeled beside Wycombe in an effort to feel his pulse.

"Don't touch me. Keep your murdering hands away from me," said Wycombe, in a horrible, bubbling voice. "Boys, don't believe him. He's lying. Tear him apart. Let me see you split him open. I've got a thousand dollars for the man who—"

"Shut up, Steve," said a voice from the doorway. "He only stole a march on us."

Silver saw two men at the entrance of the room, one a great, hairy brute, and the other small and dapper, with a pale face. He knew that Delgas and Rutherford had arrived too late.