Читать книгу Red Devil of the Range - Max Brand - Страница 12

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EARLY the next morning, Mrs. Ned Winton drove to town in the buckboard with a cargo of fresh butter and eggs to be delivered at the grocery store. There she received part payment in trade and part in hard cash. She hurried through her business, for she had something else on her mind that had to be executed, and it was a thing which she did not wish her husband to know about.

She went, in fact, straight to the office of the sheriff—but not quite to it, for in fact she encountered Sheriff Lewis Darrow walking down the sidewalk with a big stride and she pulled up the buckboard beside him.

He took off his hat to her, lifting it so high that she saw the gleam of the bald spot on his head.

He was not as trim about the waist as he had once been, and his long face was more like that of a horse than ever—an aging horse, but one with plenty of spirit still left to shine out of the eyes. Deep furrows ran down his cheeks, slanting from the temples toward the chin, and his eye was sunk under a sun-faded shrubbery of brows.

She had known him since her girlhood. That long acquaintance and the fact that he represented the law throughout the huge domain of that county made her feel and value highly the sense of possession with which she looked upon him.

"I wanted to talk to you a couple minutes, Lew," she said.

He stepped out from the sidewalk, raised his right foot, and rested the ball of it on the hub of the front wheel.

"All right, Martha," he said, with a smile. "You never let me take up much of your time. I'll stand here all day, if you'll keep on talkin'."

She smiled, and though the smile died quickly, a sense of pleasure remained long after. She had been a very pretty girl, in her time.

"It's about my boy," she said.

"Ever?" said he. "Oh, Ever's all right. Been cutting up a little, has he?"

"He's got into bad company," said she, "with Clay Winton."

The sheriff did not so much as blink. He could face guns, also news like this.

"I always liked Clay a lot," said he.

"He's taken my son away from home," she answered.

"I'm sorry to hear that," answered the sheriff.

There was consideration and doubt in his eyes.

"I want him stopped!" she burst out.

A thousand times before, the sheriff had heard from women requests just as unreasonable as this one.

He met her eye gently and answered, "I'd stop Clay in a minute, but I ain't got the power. There's gotta be a cause for arrest, and a warrant's gotta be swore out."

She stared at the sheriff, and felt her face turning cold and her heart turning hot.

"I'm talkin' to you alone, Lew?" she said, finally.

"You are, Martha," he answered, with a start.

"If ever a whisper comes back to my husband that I've gone and told you, my life's a plumb ruined life, Lew!"

There was a note of desperation in her voice.

The sheriff took his foot from the hub of the wheel, for the mustangs had begun to stir uneasily, backing and then stepping forward. The wheel kept making quarter-turns.

"No whisper ever comes out of me, when things are told to me in private, Martha," he said. "But I'm a sworn-in officer of the law. Y'understand? When you talk to me, you're talkin' right to the law, in a manner of speakin'. Maybe you better not tell me what's in your mind—till you've gone and talked it over with Ned."

A moaning came suddenly from her throat.

"Oh, Lew," she said, "Ned blames me because both Clay and Ever are gone. But I bore down on Clay. I knew he wasn't good for my boy. I knew right well. And I knew that he never dug honest money out of the ground with those soft hands of his. Yesterday, it was put right up to him and he admitted that his money was stolen. Is that good enough to arrest him? But God help me if you bring me into it! Only, I want him stopped! He's gotta be stopped. I gotta have poor Ever back home again, or I'll die!"

Tears brimmed her eyes, but she set her teeth and would not surrender to the pain.

The sheriff let a moment pass. Then he said:

"Martha, I'll tell you what. If you wanta drive on home and forget about what you've told me—why, I'll forget about it, too!"

"And let Ever go with him?" she pleaded.

"You want me to arrest Clay, eh?"

"I do! Something's gotta be done. There's nothing left but that!"

"All right," said the sheriff, slowly. "Where did he steal the money?"

"I don't know that. All I know is that he stole it. It must of been a whale of a lot, too, because he has everything that he wants, and he never has to turn a tap with his hands. He's got it all invested, somewheres. He's just livin' on the interest, all this while. Is that enough to arrest him on?"

"I'm going back to the office and see," said the sheriff. "I'll try to trace it. I guess I oughta say that I'm glad you told me—but I ain't. I'm sorry. I always liked Clay a lot!"

"You never knew him," said the woman, trembling. "You never seen him workin' on a son of yours, an' stealin' the boy's heart away from you."

"No, never saw that," admitted the sheriff.

"I'm gonna drive on," she said. "Mind you, Lew, my life's murdered for me if ever Ned finds out that I've told you. He'd never forgive me; he'll never forgive me anyway, unless Everard comes back—and I—"

The tears suddenly overbrimmed her eyes. She slapped the mustangs with the reins, and drove off without a word of farewell.