Читать книгу Red Devil of the Range - Max Brand - Страница 4

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THE silence of disaster settled coldly over the four at the table. Mr. Ned Winton looked gloomily down at his plate, and shook his head wearily. Only his wife was on fire with cruel triumph.

Everard spoke first. "I didn't lie to you," he said. "I didn't say that I was in the shop all the time."

"You'd of sat and let me think so, though," cried his mother. "That's what you'd of done. Your precious uncle, there, could talk about the welding work as though that had kept you. It wasn't welding; it was breaking that you were doing. Trying to break heads and bones with your fist—swasting your time—fighting like a regular animal."

Her emotion and lack of breath stopped her.

"What in thunderation is all this about, anyway?" demanded the father. "It ain't that big Rudie Berner that Ever was fighting, was it? Why, Rudie's six three, and made like an ox."

"Fighting! Fist fighting!" stormed Mrs. Winton, the shrillness of her voice sending the blood up to swell and redden in her face. "Right out behind the barn—right when I needed help in the milking and in getting in the wood—right out there behind the barn I peeked around and seen Ever fighting Rudie Berner with his fists."

"We were only boxing, mother," said Ever Winton, looking at her with a strangely cold eye. "We had on six-ounce gloves."

"Fighting!" she insisted. "With your Uncle Clay Winton standing by and encouraging both of you. D'you think you can hoodwink me, Clay Winton? D'you think you can say it wasn't fighting?"

Clay Winton, who had said nothing, canted his head to the side and endured the assault.

"You can't bamboozle me!" exclaimed Mrs. Winton. "I got the eyes that God gave me. Didn't I see Rudie Berner beat my boy to his knees? Didn't I see Ever jump up and whang Rudie till Rudie Berner lay against the side of the barn with his hands down?"

"It was a right hook," murmured Clay Winton, dreamily. "A beauty, on the button! That turned the trick."

"Ever," demanded Ned Winton, with a grin, "did you lick that big whale of a Rudie Berner?"

The grin maddened Mrs. Winton.

"And you're praising him for slacking his chores and fighting and lying to me!" she cried.

Everard pushed back his chair from the table. Again his uncle made the negative sign, and again Mrs. Winton saw it. This time the slender remainder of her patience was entirely exhausted and she cried out:

"Clay, don't you go to shutting up my boy in his own house! Let him talk out!"

"I'll talk out," said Everard Winton, as deliberately as before.

"Clay Winton!" shrilled Mrs. Winton. "I'll have you know"

Everard lifted his hand, and the pain in his face stopped her at last.

"Maybe you're right, Uncle Clay," said he. "I won't say anything. I'll just go out and take a walk."

"Go out and take a walk?You set down right this minute and finish your supper!" commanded Mrs. Winton.

"I'll go take a walk, I think," said the son, insistently.

"Ned!" she cried out. "Are you gonna let that boy defy you like this?"

Everard was already through the screen door and stepping onto the back porch as his father answered:

"He's twenty, and growed up. I can't treat him like a baby no more."

Mrs. Winton turned on her brother-in-law.

"It's you!" she exclaimed. "It's you that has done it all! It's you that's taking him away from his own flesh and blood!"

Clay Winton was a long-suffering man where women were concerned, and particularly with his brother's wife. But now even his patience gave way a little. He said:

"You gotta remember, Martha, that half his blood is Winton blood, and that's what runs in me.

He stood up in turn.

"I'll be stepping out," he said.

"And go and walk with my boy? And raise up his heart agin me?" cried Mrs. Winton. "Ned, are you just gonna set there and see things like this happen under your own roof?"

Ned Winton sighed and leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed.

"Oh, Martha, Martha!" he said. "Wouldn't you leave it be for a while?Wouldn't you let it drop?"

Clay Winton passed through the door in his turn, and his footfall went across the porch and down the steps, sounded hollowly along the board walk, and then disappeared from hearing.

A silence came over the dining room. Mrs. Winton was still red-faced and panting, but there was alarm in her eyes.

"There had to be a time," she said. "There had to be a time. It's just what I've suspected for a couple of years. Clay's corruptin' our boy."

"Martha," said her husband, "a boy that can be corrupted ain't worth the saving. That's all I've got to say. I'm gonna go and cool off."

He stood up from the table, but she ran around it and stood before him, gripping him by both sleeves.

"Oh, Ned!" she said. "Suppose that something would happen to him. I'd die.I wouldn't live none, if anything happened to him; an' neither would you. We're all wrapped up in him. And now—it's shooting and fist-fightin'. And next thing you know he'll go and take and ride that Red Pacer—and have his neck broke!"

He put his hand on her head and waited until he was no longer choked by the pain in his throat. Then he said:

"Well, Martha, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll forbid him from riding the Red Pacer."

"That's something!" she said, eagerly. "It'd be something more if Clay'd decide to take and live in another place."

"I'm goin' out on the front porch," said Winton. "I'll wait there and speak to Ever when he comes back in."

He left the dining room as he spoke, and Mrs. Winton sat down at her place, with the tears working down her face unheeded. At last she sighed, gave her shoulders a short, quick shrug, and settled down to finish her supper.

After she had washed the supper dishes and dried thema task which Everard generally performed—she went out to the front porch and sat for a moment beside her husband.

"Ned," she said, "I want to ask you something."

"Yes?" he said, wearily.

"I wanta ask you where Clay really got all his money."

"Mining."

"That's what he says."

"Are you going to doubt his word every time he speaks?" asked Ned Winton.

"You know, Ned," she answered, "that lying comes dead easy and nacheral to lots of folks. And I notice little things—I notice a pile of little things."

"I know you do," he replied, sourly.

"Ten years ago," she said, "Clay went West, smooth-shaved. Four years ago he came back, and started to grow a beard and a mustache. Then a year ago he shaved off the mustache."

"Can't a man please himself, wearing his face rough or smooth?" asked the husband.

"I'm not a fool, talking to hear myself talk. In the old days Clay always was wild. He had to have girls, dancing, liquor. And now he lives like an old man."

"He's sowed his wild oats," said her husband, sadly.

"Hot blood never grows cold," she answered. "But now Clay lives like a rat in a whole—just like that! He don't leave the ranch once a year, hardly."

"What about it?" demanded her husband, irritably. "He's lazy, maybe. But he's made his pile and he can afford to be lazy, all right. That's his business. What are you upset about?His sitting around and his mustache?"

"You don't put things together," she objected.

"What do you make out of it?" he asked.

"You remember when Clay came back the first time, full of money? He'd made it prospecting and mining, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Done it for years, and finally hit it rich?"

"Yes, that's true."

"Well, Ned, you ever look at the hands of a miner?"

"Sure I have."

"What about 'em?"

"Calloused like leather. Why?"

"You remember the hands of Clay when he came back?"

"Can't say I do."

"Well, I remember them, though," she said. "They were as white and soft as the hands of a

"Humph!" muttered her husband.

"Can you put two and two together?" she demanded.

"I ain't a suspicious sort of a fellow, Martha," he answered, uneasily.

"Maybe not," she replied, "but it's as plain as the nose on your face.It's been plain to me all the while, Clay never dug a penny out of the ground. Faster and easier pay was what he was after. That's the kind of money he's got, and that's the kind of money hell send our boy after!"