Читать книгу Red Devil of the Range - Max Brand - Страница 10

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MRS. WINTON was not the most tactful person in the world, but never had she chosen a more tactless moment than this for coming to the front porch. Her husband, badgered and desperate and feeling that he wanted support from some one, turned to her eagerly.

"Here's our Ever, that wants two thousand dollars for a hoss!"

"Two-thousand dollars—for a hoss!" she cried, throwing up her hands. "Where's your brain, Ever? Where's your brain?"

The boy stepped back to the door. His parents thought that the argument was just beginning; they did not know that in reality it was ending.

He expounded his proposal again.

"I've just been telling father that I'd work six years for nothing—as hard as I can work, and I know that I can work hard. I've been a fool of a kid, but I can be a man now. I'm not boasting, but something's happened to me. I know I can be a man now, and do a man's work. I've offered to work six years for the two thousand dollars."

"For a hoss, eh?" said the mother. "The craziest idea that I ever heard in all my born days!"

Her son pulled the door open.

"Well," he said, I know that you're the boss here, and that what you say goes."

He stepped inside and closed the door after him. Even from his childhood his ways had always been those of silence. The door made no sound now, and they hardly realized that he was gone.

Then said the mother, "You been layin' down the law to him?"

"Clay's leavin' the house," said her husband, abruptly.

She made half an exclamation of pleasure, but something told her to cut it short. Her husband rarely overawed her, but this was one of the occasions.

"Well," she said, "sometime he was bound to go. I guess that's the only way to look at it."

"I told him," said her husband, "right in front of Ever. I told him that he was livin' on stolen money.

"What did he say?" breathed the wife.

"He said that he was," replied Ned Winton.

"He said it?" she echoed. "His own self, he said it?"

"Yes," he replied. His voice was stifled as he added with effort, "He's a man, Clay is. I always told you that—Clay's a man. He up and said it, in front of me. That don't matter much. But he said it in front of Ever, too—and he loves Ever. He loves him better than God loves little apples. But he admitted in front of Ever that he had been a thief."

"It's a terrible thing!" she whispered.

Then, with Everard's slowness, and with his voice, she heard her husband saying, "You had to talk. I wish you hadn't talked about it. You put the idea into my head."

A rush of anger flushed her face, brought a thousand words to her lips; but she was silent. She realized, suddenly, that she had put in motion wheels that she could not stop.

Everard, when he entered the house, paused at the door of his uncle's room, where the light slid out across the faded pattern of the matting that covered the hall floor. He tapped, lightly.

"Hello!" said his uncle's clear, quiet voice.

Everard admired the purity of the sound, with no choke of emotion in it.

"It's Ever," said he.

"Come in, Ever," said Clay Winton as he came to the door and opened it. Clay Winton offered, now and again, little touches of courtesy of which most people in that part of the world were incapable. He held the door open now, and smiled at the boy. But Everard did not fail to see that the face of the other was pale as stone.

"May I come in?" the boy asked.

"Why, come in, Ever. Of course," said Clay.

He waved his nephew to a chair; then he closed the door softly behind his guest.

Everard went to the chest of drawers an leaned his back against it. He lifted his chin, and from an altitude looked down on the work of the packing. He had been sixteen years old when this man came to the house, but he felt as though the last four years had composed nine-tenths of his life. He said nothing; he merely watched. Everything had been taken from the drawers and piled on the bed. On the floor beside the bed lay a tarpaulin; and in it shirts, underwear and other odds and ends of apparel were being laid with great rapidity. It was as though Clay Winton had planned long before a quick departure such as this, and knew exactly what he would want.

He said, bending to build the pack, "You can wear my things, Ever. You Take what I leave behind, will you?"

Emotion, with a cold and terribly unexpected hand, gripped Everard by the throat. He could not answer. He could only be thankful that his uncle did not look up at that moment.

"I guess that's about all," said Clay, after a time, looking carelessly about the room.

He folded the outer edges of the tarpaulin over, and with a swift twisting of rope, made his bundle into one that would fit behind a saddle. Then he crossed to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a Colt revolver which he broke open, examining its loaded cylinder, and held out to the boy.

"I want you to have the old gat," said Uncle Clay. "She's never missed, for me. I guess she'll never miss for you, either."

Everard took it, gripped it hard, and then put it away in his clothes. He had used it before. He knew how Clay Winton trusted that gun.

Again, swift emotion choked him, and he could say nothing.

His uncle sat down, rolled a cigarette and lighted it.

"Don't you make any mistake, Ever," he remarked. "Your mother's right. I wouldn't be good for you—in the long run."

He stopped speaking. Sitting in silence, he finished the cigarette with long, slow inhalations. Then he walked to the window and threw out the butt. It made a little arc of sparks through the darkness of the night.

"I'll be saying so long, Ever," he said.

Everard paid no heed, but with lowered head began to pace rapidly back and forth.

Clay Winton went on, "Four years and a half ago, I walked into the Green River First National Bank and pulled a gun on the cashier. It was just noon, and everybody was hurrying out. Nobody but the cashier noticed me and the gun. I made him open the safe; the others were mostly out for lunch, by that time. He brought me the boxes. There was a lot of cash, and there was a lot more in convertible securities. It was worth about half a million. No, four hundred thousand would be nearer. I dropped the stuff in three saddle bags and got away. They only shot me once. I still have the bullet in the left leg. You know how I limp when the first frosts come?"

"I know," said Everard, as he stopped his walking.

"So long, Ever," said his uncle, quietly.

"What horse are you riding?" asked the boy.

"The only hoss I have," said the older man. "That roan bronc."

"All right," said Everard. "When you get outside the corral gate, will you wait for five minutes?"

"Yes," said Clay Winton.

"All right. You wait for five minutes, that's all. Before you ride on."

"I'll do that."

Clay Winton went to the door, picked his sombrero off a nail, shouldered his pack, and left the room.

Then, on the front porch, Everard could hear the spoken good-byes, very brief and stilted. It was an amazing thing to the boy, the ease with which the ties of blood could be broken all in a moment.

Immediately afterwards he heard his mother enter the house.

Then, in his turn, he went out to the porch.