Читать книгу Sixteen in Nome - Max Brand - Страница 6

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When I had stumbled into that one-room house, Massey entered and locked the door behind him. I was still hot and angry. I turned around and began to demand that the door should be opened, but he paid no attention to me whatever. The smell of food, too, was making my mouth water, and inside that house it was quite snug, for a fire had been banked down in the stove in the center of the room.

No palace ever looked to me as comfortable as the inside of that place. There were two bunks, though only one had blankets on it, but such a heap as might have served for three beds instead of one, it seemed to me. From pegs on the wall hung enough clothes to keep half a regiment warm. Good, strong boots were lined up underneath, and soft slippers for tired feet to take their ease in. Over in a corner provisions were heaped. I smelled ham, bacon, the perfume of dried fruits, and I could see the delicious labels of canned jams and jellies. These were tremendous luxuries. But all I could think of, just then, was a fine, fat slice of bacon and a chunk of bread, washed down with tea. The mere mental picture of such a feast made me fairly dizzy.

I slumped into a chair and waited there, watching Massey with haunted eyes. I got almost exactly what I wanted, but in the meantime some interesting things happened.

Massey pulled off his heavy coat and furred cap and the long boots. The dog took those things one by one and carried them across to a bench beside the wall pegs. The way he handled that big, ponderous coat was a caution. He gave it a flip and threw it across his shoulder, the way a fox will carry a heavy goose, and he unloaded it carefully on the bench. The unloading was harder than the carrying. A sleeve or a flap of it kept sliding off. The thing seemed to be made of sand, the way it kept running down toward the floor.

But Alec kept after it. He got so impatient and excited that he bounced up and down and whined, but finally he had that coat duly tucked away in place.

Back he raced for the cap and snatched that away to the bench, then took the boots both at once—a tag in either side of his mouth—and dragged them off to the line. He took something with him on each return journey—a sort of pull-over knitted cap for the head, a light jacket, and that pair of loose, soft slippers which I've spoken of before.

I suppose that a thousand dogs have been trained by patience and some skill to do much harder tricks than these, and afterward I saw Alec do infinitely more difficult things, but nothing in the animal world ever impressed me more than this housekeeping by a dog, and the joy and shining eyes and wagging tail with which he went about it. I found that I had forgotten all about my grievances against Massey, and that I was looking across to him with a smile and an overflowing warmth of heart. His own face, however, showed not the slightest relaxation. It was like ice.

"Pull off those shoes," he directed. I obeyed dumbly. "Are your feet frozen? Get that brown coat and put it on. Here's a pair of socks. Pull off those wet things and put on these. And here's a pair of slippers."

I still obeyed. My pride was in my pocket. Besides, I was telling myself that Alec the Great had never been trained by cruelty, and that a man who had done so much with a dog by patient gentleness could not be the cold-hearted brute he wanted to appear to men.

I had enough strength, now, to get up and stamp my feet to help the circulation along, and I began to feel a lot better, though just a bit shaky in the knees.

Massey had the fire built up by this time. The crackling of it, the fuming of the smoke through the crack, the tremor and the roar of the draft up the chimney, sounded a great deal sweeter to me than any chorus of Christmas hymns. He put on the kettle of water to boil, and sliced some great pieces of bacon into a frying pan. Then he made a flapjack by pouring water into the top of a flour sack after he had mixed in some salt and baking powder. In this way he composed a great ball of dough, which was fried out in the bacon fat and turned brown there. So I had exactly what I wanted—bacon, fried bread, and a quantity of tea.

It did not occur to me at the time, but now I can remember that Massey hardly touched the food. He pretended that he had been cooking for us both, but really he had been cooking for me only.

When I was warm and full inside, then I began to pay more attention to my host. I cared less about his harsh words and gestures, now. To a boy, actions mean a great deal more than words, and all Massey's actions had been kind. Besides, he was famous, and he was a mystery. Every moment I grew more deeply and affectionately interested in him.

"What brought you to Alaska?" he asked me.

I considered. And then I felt like a fool as I answered:

"Well, I wanted to make some money."

"Have you?" he asked in the same unrelenting tone.

That certainly was an unnecessary question. Tears stung my eyes suddenly, so that I had to scowl as I answered: "You can see for yourself."

"Where'd you come from?" he asked me.

"Arizona."

"Where you going?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"On to Russia, or back to Arizona?"

I set my teeth. "Not back to Arizona. Not yet."

"When?"

"When I can show something more than my face."

"When you can come back rich, eh?"

Well, as I watched his sneer it occurred to me that he was not sneering at me alone, but at all humanity, including himself. There was a sort of general disbelief in him concerning every one and everything. This made it less of a personal insult. I could talk straight out at him seriously, with a vague belief that under the surface this man was good and kind.

Goodness and kindness matter most to hungry young boys and wise old men, it appears to me. In the stage in between, were more interested in smartness and strength.

"Maybe I won't be rich. I just want a stake," I said.

"For what?" he snapped.

"To get a piece of ground and a few cows."

"That your ambition?"

"It doesn't sound much," I admitted, "but it's the life that I want to have ahead of me."

"A shack to live in, and a couple of mustangs to ride, and a couple of dozen mangy cows to herd around?" he suggested.

"A herd that'll grow, and time to grow it in," I said, "and to be my own boss. That's what I want. And to see my own land, and to ride on it. Put up my own fences. Break my own horses. Brand my own cattle. Have some good shooting, now and then. Get some bounties on coyote scalps. Trap a wolf or two. I know it doesn't sound much, but there's more fun on the range than you can shake a stick at."

He turned his back on me and rattled at the stove. Suddenly he astonished me by saying: "Aye, that's what I'd like to do, also. And here I am in Nome."

"What for?" I asked.

"For a stake," he said.

He turned and surprised me more than ever with a broad grin. But he made no further comment on me or on himself. He simply said: "You better turn in and sleep till you've digested that meal. Have you got a mother and a father alive?"

"Yes," I said.

"Do they know where you are?"

"They've an idea."

"Well, you turn in and sleep," he repeated.

And he fixed some blankets on the second bunk for me.

I did as he said, and by the time I had stretched myself out, I was dead to the world. I had done my share of sleeping in the days that went just before, but starvation sleep means miserable nightmares. This time, I dropped away into a happy land.

I dreamed that I had gone into a country where the dogs talked English, and where the king of the dogs was all white except for a smutty tip to his tail and ears and muzzle. I woke up finally, and found that Alec the Great was sitting beside my bunk with his bright eyes only inches from my face. He grinned at me as only a dog can, and then I sat up and looked around me.

The world looked pretty good, I can tell you.

I had lain down as gorged as a snake, but now I was hungry again. The strength was back in my knees. There was contentment in my mind. I looked upon Massey as my savior, and that is what he was. It never occurred to me that in meeting him I was meeting the wildest adventures of my life.

I got up and walked around the cabin. I picked up a rifle in the corner and admired the make of it. I stopped to admire the little stove, too, and then put more wood in it. It was one of the traveling variety, which will fold up small enough to put in your pocket, almost, but which shed enough heat to warm up a barn.

Massey, I decided, was a man who knew his business. If a fellow like him could not make a stake in Nome, nobody could, except some fool with beginner's luck, perhaps. While I was in the midst of these wanderings, I came to the place where his clothes were hanging and touched a jacket.

A deep snarl from Alec the Great warned me that I had stepped across my bounds. That young dog was crouched and showing his teeth at me in the true husky style. But I did not argue. He was watching his master's things, and I admired him for it. Such a dog I never had seen, and such a dog I never will see again!

After a little while, Massey came back. He said to me: "How are things with you now?"

"I'm fine," I said.

"I've got to go to work," he told me. "My job is at The Joint, and Alec goes with me. Do you play cards?"

"Not for money."

"Do you drink?"

"Not yet."

"Then you'd better come along with me," he said. "Mind you, in The Joint, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. There'll be plenty to see and hear, but nothing worth answering back or repeating. You understand?"

"Yes," I said, my eyes beginning to open.

And that was how I went with him to The Joint, which was the great beginning, for me.