Читать книгу Silvertip's Roundup - Max Brand - Страница 5

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IT was all different. You met a woman, and she talked like a man. You met a boy, and he laughed at you. Back in New York, women were not like men. And they didn't stand around like vamps, except when they were on the stage. They didn't talk so easily. They didn't talk as though a stranger were a brother of whom they were a little tired.

He stood at the window and told himself, slowly, that perhaps there had been some excuse for poor dead Joe Feeley if he had been interested in this girl.

Had she said that she was sorry about his death? No, she had not even said that, as he remembered. She simply had said that Larue had started drinking. A nice way to run a place—when a man starts to drink and simply rounds off the party by killing another man.

There was a gentle rap at the door.

"Come in," he called.

He was on edge, ready for anything, because he had not heard a footfall come down the hallway. The knob of the door turned without making a click. The door opened, and on the threshold stood a big man who might have been anything between twenty-five and thirty-five. He had a big head and a big, brown, handsome face. He looked like a wrestler or a heavyweight boxer from the waist up and like a runner from the hips down. Above his temples there were two queer little spots of gray hair that looked almost like a pair of horns beginning to grow from his head. He had a quiet smile and a pair of quiet, steady eyes. But those gray bits of hair that looked like horns gave him a sinister touch, as though he were a devil in the making.

He came in and held out his hand.

"My name is Silver," he said.

Taxi took the hand.

"My name is Taxi Ivors," he answered. "Sit down?"

Silver shook his head. He sat on the sill of the open window, instead, then seemed to recall himself with a start and hastily moved to the opposite wall of the room.

He was big and he weighed a lot, but his step was not a noise. It was only a pressure on the floor. Yet he wore boots, and, although on the heels of the boots there were no spurs, to be sure, such high heels ought to have made a good deal of noise on the bare wood of the floor.

"Sally—that's the girl who runs this place," said Silver, "asked me to drop in and tell you something."

"She has an idea," said Taxi, "that I'm here to go gunning for Charlie Larue. She's all wrong."

"Is she?" said Silver.

His eyes fastened on the face of Taxi. It was not a long look, but it took hold of Taxi like a hand, and he felt the tug of it. His own pale eyes opened wide against his will.

He looked aside hastily.

"She's all wrong," said Taxi. "I'm only here because I want to look up some things for a friend of mine."

"And you're trying to find a health resort, too, she tells me," said Silver.

He was smiling. There was something about his smile that made Taxi want to smile, too. There was a reassuring geniality about it. It met one like the grip of a friendly hand, and hung on, and kept hanging on. Not even a child would mind being understood and smiled at by this big fellow.

"I've got to build myself up a little, the doctors say," said Taxi.

He saw the glance of Silver take hold of him and probe and weigh him as though he were stripped in the gymnasium. Suddenly, fervently, Taxi hoped that all the men out here in the West were not like this—that Charlie Larue, above all, was not like Silver.

"This is a good place to build yourself up," said Silver. "But only if you've got the right sort of a constitution to stand the air. The air here is bad for a lot of people. It was bad for your friend Feeley, for instance. Excuse me—I forgot that he's not your friend."

Taxi said nothing. It seemed to him a good time to say nothing at all, so he smiled a little and kept his lips sealed.

The big man went on talking. He said: "I'm going to give you some information, in case it might be useful. You know Barry Christian?"

"No," said Taxi. "Wait a minute!"

For his mind was catching at something vague, nebulous, distant. It was a name that he had heard before the girl used it. Somewhere in the back of his brain he knew about that name.

"Prison break," said Taxi suddenly.

"That's it," said Silver. "And a lot of other things. Nobody knows the story of Barry Christian, but everybody knows enough about it to fill a book. Christian is one of those fellows who knows how to make other people work for him. You understand? Charlie Larue, for instance, works for Barry Christian."

Taxi listened, with his eyes veiled, but he kept wanting to look up and meet the frankness of this big stranger.

Silver went on: "We don't know where Barry Christian is. But we know where a good many of his men are. We never can hang anything on them. Not very often, that is. But we have an idea about who are the men of Barry Christian. He's so big, Ivors, that a great many fairly honest fellows are not ashamed to work for him. He sticks by his friends. When one of his men is caught by trouble, Christian opens his purse wide.

"If you touch one of Christian's men, you touch the body of a giant. The whole body turns on you—that is to say, the whole of Christian's gang. And you can't tell where you'll find his friends. Your bartender may be on the pay roll of Christian. The ranch you stop at overnight may be owned by a fellow in Christian's pay. The fellow you hire to punch cows may be a Christian man. Barry Christian has his hand everywhere, and the first thing we learn is to fight shy of a man who belongs to Christian."

He paused, and then added: "This may mean nothing to you, Ivors. But, just in case you want to tell the mutual friend of you and Mr. Joe Feeley, you might write to him that it's a good idea to keep hands off Charlie Larue."

"Thanks," said Taxi. He added: "No matter whether you're right or wrong about what I have on my mind, I'm thanking you."

He followed another impulse which seldom came to him. He stepped up close and gripped the hand of Silver. He lifted his head, and looked with his pale hazel eyes straight into the hazel eyes of Silver.

"And where do you stand about Christian?" he asked.

"I'm different," said Silver. "Barry Christian is my hobby. Every man has to have a hobby, you know."

On that speech, he left the room, and as the door closed noiselessly behind him, Taxi was willing to wager a great deal of money that Barry Christian would have preferred to be anything in this world other than the hobby of Mr. Silver.

Taxi lay down on the bed. He could think better when he was lying down. He folded his hands under his head and put his mind on the task before him. The job he had come out to do had seemed very simple. He was merely going to kill a man named Charlie Larue. Now the job seemed to be expanding. It was growing large like the mountains around him.

He got up from the bed and went to sit on the window sill and look at the golden horse that grazed in the nearby field.

As he sat in the window, he could hear beneath him, very dimly, the murmur of the girl's voice, saying:

"I don't care. He may be what you say. But I don't care how much of a fighting man he is—I don't want him to come to any trouble on account of his friendship for Joe Feeley. I was at the bottom of what happened to poor Joe Feeley. Mr. Silver, I'm going to beg you to do something."

"I'll do whatever I can," said Silver.

"Then—Oh, I know that your hands are full. I know that you're after Barry Christian. Everybody knows that. I know that you're in danger of your life every minute. But please keep an eye on the stranger. Or else I'll have his death laid at my door."

Taxi had to lean out from the window to hear what followed. He could barely hear the voice of Silver saying:

"Well, I'll take care of him if I can."

Taxi stood up. He wanted to laugh. It struck him as almost the most amusing thing that he had ever heard—that somebody should try to take care of him!

There were other things for him to think about, however. Most people, at first sight, took him for a harmless fellow, but this man Silver had apparently seen that he was a fighting man. Of that fighting man he had consented to take care.

This was a thing to be heard but not to be believed.

Then, looking out the window, as he heard a sharp whistle, Taxi saw the golden stallion gallop to the fence, where Silver waited for him. He saw the hand of the master sleek the shining throat of the horse. He saw the stallion nosing at the pockets of the man. And it seemed to Taxi that the two of them, in the suggestion of strength and speed and exhaustless power, were of a type—that he should have known beforehand that they fitted together to make a unit.