Читать книгу Silvertip's Trap - Max Brand - Страница 8

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IT WAS Sheriff Dick Williams, looking as he always looked—sawed-off and strong and competent of body and mind. He had long ago come to the gray years when time changes the body of a man very slowly, and his face seems wiser, not older, from year to year.

"Hey," answered Bill Naylor. "What's the main idea? You got nothing on me now, Williams."

"Haven't I?" asked the sheriff, his eye twinkling. "Well, I don't suppose I have for the moment. But I can always trust you to start something new before long. What's it going to be this time, Bill? Old line or new?"

Naylor rubbed his knuckles across his chin and frowned. He was neither complimented nor pleased by this banter. He had a feeling that the sheriff knew only part of him, and that there were other things he might show Dick Williams.

"Well," he said. "I wanta talk to you about something."

"Blaze away," said Dick Williams.

"I was just going to ask you: Suppose that the ghost of somebody walked into your house some night, what would you do?"

"Ask him to walk out again," said the sheriff. "Why?"

"Suppose it was the ghost of Barry Christian?"

"Christian!" gasped the sheriff.

He kept staring at Naylor, and his eyes were as round as marbles. All at once he seemed a little boy with the mask of a middle-aged man set over his real features.

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Sheriff. "Barry Christian dropped off Kendal Bridge, and he went down the river—with his hands tied behind his back. And he went over the falls and was smashed to bits."

"All right," said Bill Naylor. "I'm just asking you something. I'm not saying that while he was in the water he managed to get his hands free from the rope that tied his wrists together. I'm not saying that he snagged on a rock and managed to get past the falls. I'm only saying—if the ghost of Barry Christian walked in on you, what would you do? Would you talk?"

The sheriff took a great breath.

"Barry Christian!" he whispered. Then he added: "If Jim Silver hears that that devil has come out of the dead again, he'll lose his mind!"

"Well," said Naylor, "I asked you a question. What about it?"

"Talk to him? Why should I talk to him?" said the sheriff. "I've got guns, and I've got handcuffs. Why should I talk to him?"

"That's the point," remarked Naylor. "Suppose that Christian was to walk in on you, would you want to talk to him—or something else?"

"Well," said the sheriff after a moment of hesitation, "I don't know. I don't know what I ought to do—about a ghost. Listen to me. If Barry Christian should walk into my house some night, I'd talk to him."

"That's all I wanted to know," answered Bill Naylor, and he mounted and rode away.

When he looked back, he saw the sheriff rooted to the same spot, shaking his head in bewilderment.

At the First Chance Saloon, Bill Naylor paused to take refreshment. He stood at the bar, leaned his elbow upon it, and poured down two stiff drinks of whisky. After that he beckoned the bartender toward him. The bartender looked upon him with a judicial eye.

"No credit," he said.

"Don't be a fool," said Naylor, and he pushed a ten-dollar bill over the counter.

The bartender looked at that bill with attention. It was water-stained and pocket-chafed, but it seemed all right.

"Got your girl's picture on it?" Bill Naylor sneered.

"You know," said the bartender, "there's a lot of phony tens wandering around the country just now. A gent has gotta have an eye. But this looks all right to me."

"Thanks," growled Bill Naylor. "What's the news, anyway?"

"About what?"

"Oh, about things. What's the news here in Crow's Nest?"

"I dunno," answered the other. "Things are going along pretty good. Everybody feels pretty fine since Jim Silver saved the bank. Then he went and faded out. You know that?"

"I heard something about it. Why'd he do that? Somebody told me he was as good as married to Wilbur's daughter."

"Maybe he was. They was around a lot together," said the bartender. "But you know how it is. It hurts Jim Silver to stay long in one spot. There's a sort of a curse on him. He's gotta keep moving. So one day he's here, and the next day he's gone, and who knows where?"

"How's the girl feel about it?" asked Naylor.

"I never asked her!" said the bartender shortly.

Naylor understood. Since the recent great events, every one in Crow's Nest took a sort of family interest in Henry Wilbur and his daughter; just as Crow's Nest now felt that it had a sort of proprietarial claim to Jim Silver.

"Well, I been and seen her once," said Bill Naylor. "She's got the kind of gray eyes that turn blue when a girl gets worked up. She's got the nerve all right."

The bartender smiled faintly, as one who deprecates praise of a relative.

"I seen her cut into the crowd when they was after Jim Silver," he said. "I seen her go sashaying right through the middle of 'em with gents trying to paw her off her horse. She saved Jim Silver that day. And now—well, nobody's seen her since Silver left the town. But what're you going to do?"

He was silent, shaking his head.

"There's Gregor in the jail," said Bill Naylor. "They'll chaw him up fine, I guess."

"Yeah. He'll go down the throat. They got everything ready for him. His trial comes in three days. It'll be something like twenty years for Duff Gregor, I guess. That's what everybody says that oughta know. That's what the lawyers say. The town's hired a special fine lawyer to help the district attorney so's they can be sure to sock Gregor for everything that's coming to him."

That was the news that Naylor carried back to Barry Christian. Christian moralized a little on the tidings about Silver and the girl. He said, in his deep, gentle, soothing voice:

"The trouble with Jim Silver is that you never know where to have him. He's not like the rest of us."

"A jump ahead, eh?" suggested Naylor with a grin.

"He's beaten me three times," said Christian calmly. "But the fourth time I think I might win. I think I might take him by surprise, Bill. At any rate, I'm going to try."

"Ain't there room for the two of you?" asked Bill Naylor. "Couldn't you get some place where he wouldn't reach you?"

"Of course," said Christian. "If I ran away, of course, there would be room for both of us."

But by his manner of saying it, Bill Naylor knew very well that nothing in the world was farther from the mind of his companion than the thought of avoiding the conflict. He squinted his eyes as he thought of the thing—two giants, hand to hand. The day would come, and perhaps he, Bill Naylor, would be an eyewitness. For he felt that Barry Christian was going to take him into the presence of great events.